Happy St. Andrew's Day

Us Americans are famous for taking another peoples' holiday and turning it into a drunken barbecue. We did it to St. Patrick's Day, to Cinco de Mayo, to Mardi Gras (which is a drunken holiday in many parts of the world, but not so profane as with us). So I guess, per this post, we may as well leave old St. Andrew alone. But still. It's Thursday, it's November 30th, and I need a justification to replenish my single malt. Is that not reason enough? The ceilidh's at my house.

Chicago: Pot of Borshch

The lady at the hotel bar had a strong Russian accent.

Everyone on the train who didn’t speak English, spoke Russian.

Everyone on the streets downtown who didn’t speak English, spoke Russian.

Our last night, after changing out of business attire and waiting for the shuttle to take us back to the train station, I took a walk around the corner in the hotel lobby to follow the music. It was loud and compelling, all strings and balalaikas interweaving delicious Slavic minor chords. I found a banquet hall full of well-dressed people, each white tablecloth a sea of wineglasses and flower arrangements, a table of honorees upon a dais at one end. A disembodied voice spoke Russian through the loudspeakers, and people applauded and the music swelled; then it dipped, and the voice spoke again and the music swelled and dipped again with the applause. Only because I was raised on American pop culture did it sound vaguely Krasnaya Bratva or Russkaya Mafiya. I believe they were celebrating a baptism.

The wait staff transporting the salads all spoke Russian too.

Not to suggest Chicago specifically is being taken over by a new mob, for the workers at the Hertz franchise at Portland Airport as well as most of the non-English speaking kids at my wife’s school all speak Russian as well. I was just drawn to wonder why the bilingual signs at the airport etc. featured Spanish instead of, I dunno, Chinese.

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Chicago: Not Dorks

For proof, here's the Bean ...


... and here's us at it, being well-behaved and un-dork-like.


Underneath, my enhanced ocular implants detected a temporal distortion field through which people were passing largely unharmed. I was going to draft a paper on this phenomenon, but the hotel staff (who are all Russians and thus allied with you-know-who) got wind of my plans, and to maintain the fragile truce in this galactic sector I've decided to let it go.


See? Not a dork at all.

Next: Foreign agents infiltrate the Heartland.

Chicago: Silver Kidney Bean

Got to O’Hare about five. Weather was nice. For dinner we raided the happy hour whore’s ovaries or however you spell that at the hotel bar. College basketball was on the flatscreen and my margarita kept giving me brain freeze. Almost made me nauseous, it hurt so much. We beat feet about seven so we could check this place out.

The traveling businessman’s dive near the airport where we’re staying has a twenty-four hour shuttle service. We took that back to the airport and walked down and around and caught the train, the L, or El, or Elevated, whatever, except it’s not elevated, not much. The first half hour was every bit as interesting as riding BART out to Walnut Creek, all noisy swaying down the center of the freeway, cars going about twice as fast as us. Tomorrow when I have to be downtown to meet clients I’m taking a taxi, screw this going slow shit.

But I love trains and looking out in the dark and seeing countless brick buildings in the 19th Century style roll by, some of them decrepit, most of them multiply repainted and housing families that live on real hardwood flooring and leave the curtains up on the side by the train tracks. Those old brick buildings pepper the old Gold Rush towns of my home and crop up here and there in the City, San Francisco, which we call the City because it’s the only city, every other settlement in California being a dusty trading stop that grew on oil and war money into a vast suburb without a soul. But back here halfway to the east, the old buildings are real and form actual cities all their own, and it’s strangely cool somehow to see suburbs a century older than my own, and to see them at night from a train, passing by in the dark at twenty five miles an hour. Imagination fills in the blanks and lends them a personality they possibly don’t really have, but maybe they do, I wouldn’t know, I’m a total stranger, riding the Blue Line downtown from the airport.

I grabbed my wife by the lapels and banged my forehead into hers and said, “I’m excided!” and she said, “Me too!” We realized we hadn't traveled out of state together, without children, since we were married: eighteen years ago.

We got out at the Washington St. station and wandered past a crowd of brightly lit red and white striped tents serving German food under a great big fake Christmas tree and gawked like hayseeds at the big tall buildings. The air was clean and cold and the lights were bright. State Street was awash in holiday shoppers herding this way and that with bags and children and gathering around the display windows at Macys. We did that too but they really weren’t worth the look. I wanted to see the silver kidney bean.

Just across Michigan Ave. an outdoor ice skating rink was in full swing under white lights, crowded with people going round and round the wrong way: you’re supposed to go counter-clockwise. But this was probably a Chicago thing. Most of them couldn’t really skate either. I’m no expert, I couldn’t skate if the entire Iroquois nation were after me, but I take it as given that shuffling along the ice like an old man getting used to his new colostomy bag is not an indication of skating skill, nor is flipping over onto your backside and yelling at your wife to quit with the gaw damn camera already. But it was a cool scene altogether, and hovering over it on the upper promenade was the silver kidney bean. Score!

I learned about it when Jenny left a link in comments to her pictures. We walked around and under it for ourselves. The reflections were awesome. People cavorted and office buildings were distorted. Underneath where there is concavity we found three reflections of people that looked just like us and laughed at us and pointed at us, but they weren’t us because they were acting like dorks. Tomorrow I’ll take a camera and prove it.

Shut Up and Sing

We didn’t enter the company talent show to win. We didn’t enter to prove anything. We didn’t even enter to meet chicks. We entered because there frankly isn’t a whole lot of call for the kind of stuff we sing, and hey, man, a gig is a gig.

It was all about raising money for United Way. That was the corporate line. Not that I doubt it. My employer, Infamous Megamultinational Corporation, has about a zillion irons in the fire, and not all of them are about making money. A glance at the past several years’ stock price performance proves that but even so, people like to help people, and if the mighty Corporation can support its people in helping people and get some good P.R. and maybe a tax break or two, then they are there, they are on task, they are resourced, lines up, ready to go. Organizers stepped up to organize, promoters stepped up to promote, talent stepped up to be talented, and everyone was given the green light to volunteer all the out-of-hours time they needed to get the job done.

So to ramp up and draw attention to the fund drives, they had a talent show. Loosely based on some TV show I’ve never seen with "Idol" in the title but that I’m familiar with because of the end of that Shrek movie, it was MC’d by an employee with a knack for public wisecracking and judged by three more employees with a knack for … Well, they were game. Give ‘em credit for that. Over a dozen acts appeared out of the employee pool, people with some honest to goodness ability and a willingness to shame themselves in front of their co-workers, employees, and potential hiring managers. Give them credit too. Risk-taking is one of the Corporate Values by which we are exhorted to live our work lives. Given that when it comes to public musical performance, the less the talent, the greater the risk, some of the performers truly took that particular value to heart.

For our part, it wasn’t about risk, and it wasn’t so much about United Way. It was about singing. Here was a place to do it, with an audience and microphones and everything. How could we resist? Let’s be honest, raising money for charity and all is great, but for creative types, the play’s the thing, or the book, or the song. So here’s our song.



Did it last year too. I think I mentioned it in the old blog (since extinct). We never saw a vid of ourselves, never got any useful feedback, and I think it shows. Besides, we're a bunch of engineers. But you know what? Fun! That's what.



Second from right in the first one and far right in the second one, that's me.

He Calls Me Uncle Don

Shanghai: Nanjing Lu

I flew in a taxi between the fifth floors of modern high rises, then down Yan’an Elevated Road as it swept out from between them and curved down to meet the river. Stone and concrete bank buildings built in the 1920s glowed yellow in their sodium spotlights and looked across the river at the 21st Century.

I paid off the taxi at the statue of Mao and dove into a crowd that swirled like a school of fish. The night sky was a burnt orange in color and the night air ungodly hot. I went up the steps two at a time so the boys selling brightly flashing electronic gizmos were unable to corner me. At the top, the river wall was jammed with people, mostly families on tour from other parts of China. About one in a hundred were tall overfed Australians. About one in three hundred were tall underfed young Americans, set apart by their long hair and ragged clothes.

My eyes widened at the Oriental Pearl Tower. It stood across the river like a spaceship made in some giant toy factory, white and red and violet, China’s bold stake in the ground announcing in ridiculous splendor her intent to own the future. It grinned over the shoulders of countless families getting countless portraits taken, its colored lights always moving. I walked swiftly, dodging proffered postcards and statuettes, and pushed through the crowd to the wall over the river. I stood there to breathe the air awhile.

The Huangpu licked at the stone below me. A constant stream of barges and boats drifted silently by, lit dimly by the million small lights of a hundred tall buildings. Across the water was a glittering Tomorrowland. Brand new high rises lined the opposite bank. A video screen twenty stories tall flashed pretty Chinese faces and bewildering Chinese characters. Near the base of the Tower was a globe of the world a hundred meters across, China showing prominently in red. In the back, glowing through the haze, stood the Jin Mao Tower, China’s tallest building, a 420-meter shepherd of steel and glass and lights. Behind it another tower, to be just as tall, was about halfway built.

I wondered what these thousand people around me thought, many having come in from poor rural cities, raised on communist austerity, now posing proudly before their country’s garish bid to attract global capital. Maybe they didn’t think about it much. Idealism often falls before national pride. Or maybe they were just waiting for the wealth around them trickle down. Some would be waiting a long while.

I fell in with another thousand people and we pressed our way through the pedestrian tunnel under Zhongshan Lu, the street that follows the river. Across the street, anchored by the Peace Hotel and its green peaked roof, Nanjing Lu curved away under electric Pepsi signs. I walked up Nanjing Lu in the street, pushed off the sidewalk by the crowds, and dodged a constant stream of Volkswagen Santana taxicabs. For several blocks there were open shops and street vendors and people on bicycles, people in cars, people walking, people trying to get my attention. I could have done all my Christmas shopping without breaking stride if my people had wanted faux Rolex watches, fancy pen sets, or polo shirts.

Three blocks from the river, the intersection of Nanjing Road and Central Henan Road was the only place in Shanghai I saw pedestrians obey the “no walking” signs. They crowded along the edge of the street waiting for men in green uniforms to let them go. The officers did not let anyone so much as step off the curb if the lights were against them. But once the lights changed we swarmed in all directions. Like a salmon fighting the current I dodged across the street and splashed into a pool of people who were no longer hurrying somewhere but had finally arrived, yet still drifted along in the currents and eddies of Nanjing Lu.

I walked a block. The street, paved in stone and lined with planters and trees and benches, was a canyon between eight-storey buildings. Neon signs hung off the buildings, the colors merging into a bright yellowish light. There was a constant buzz of overlapping conversation punctuated by direct appeals.

“Good evening, sir. What you want? We have many clothing.”

“Hello, sir. You look for dinner? This way please.”

“How are you? Where you from? You like girl? Come see, no pay just to see.”

I walked a second block. The hawkers, teenagers all, were left behind to try someone else. Department store lights flooded the street. Neon signs lit the upper floors. Dresses hung on racks on the second floor, people sat at tables on the third, hair was being styled on the fourth. All the way to the top, lights were on, work was happening, business was booming.

A loud beep brought me back down. A toy train chased me out of the way. It pulled little cars full of people whose feet were tired. None of them were smiling. Shopping is hard work and not very fun.

I walked a third block. More of the same. A street stage presented loud music. A piece of paper hung from a camera on a tripod, listing prices for a souvenir portrait. Families walked – father, then children, then mother. Teenagers ganged past with rockstar haircuts. Girls walked in pairs, hand in hand, arm in arm; girls who smiled at a tall foreigner and tried to make friends, who wanted to go have a drink and “practice English.” A politely smiled decline was not taken as such; but “bu yao” (“no want”) was always understood, and they trolled on elsewhere.

I fetched up in a place where the sky opens up and the lights dim: People’s Park, full of trees. There was a Metro station there, and an underground shopping mall full of cheap merchandise. I turned around and ran the gauntlet all over again, walking swiftly back down Nanjing Lu, past the strollers and the hawkers and the ropers, back to the river, for another breath of air.

For more pictures go here.

Full-scale Model Train Set

One reason I like Portland, Oregon, is it's just plain cool to have highway bridges, train yards and freighter docks all together in one place. I swear, in some respects California is boring. All I ever get is freeways.

There is a place to get good views of the train yard. Interstate 405 isn't it.

All of these were taken while trying to drive a rental in rush hour traffic in the rain, peering over the rims of a cheap pair of reading glasses at a map so I could make sure I hit the right freeway towards the airport and didn't end up halfway to Seattle.

An iron drawbridge with an electric train on it. What could be cooler than that?

Container freight beating the traffic out of town. I am easily entertained.

Final destination, where airplanes make circles around a great concrete fertility symbol. By the way, the Hertz franchise at PDX is staffed entirely by Russians. Just sayin'.

Peaks and Valleys

It's clear that the U.S. and the UK are now floundering.

Blair speaks of Iran and Syria either helping quell Iraqi violence, or face further isolation. In a satirical movie about current events, this would be a laugh line.

The U.S. plans to send a naval armada into the Gulf "to intimidate the Iranians." But the Iranians will make fun and hold demonstrations, and maybe send a few unmanned drones across the bows.

The recent election results have changed much. To many people it's all good news, of course. And maybe they are right. Maybe America's position in the world must get much weaker before we can reunify with any resolve and make her stronger again. It's all part of a much greater historical cycle that Bush's best attempts to defy could not change. The neocons have all abandoned Bush, and with good reason place the blame for how things are now going on his incompetence. Probably this fizzling retreat was inevitable, and the lesson should not only be that we should never go to war without an exit strategy, but never go to war until the American people feel the terrible necessity of it in the marrow of their bones.

But should Iran gather nuclear weapons and reshape a few Asian and European strategic alliances, thus recasting the economies and relative strengths of nations around the world and in particular favoring regimes that are violently repressive and reactionary, that will happen soon enough.

Baby Tape-out

In our biz, "tape-out" is the term used to describe the last step in the design phase of a product. It comes from the old days when a datatape was created of the design of a chip. The next step is to run that design over to the mask house -- the factory -- and start building silicon. It's the key point when logical structures are made to exist in the physical world.

Because there are so many different teams working on so many different things, we are under a constant bombardment of weekly reports, released on different days depending on which manager needs them when, forwarded on different days yet. If one chooses to read them, one can be apprised of roughly what's going on in the broader organization.

Someone's wife is expecting, so a weekly report that just came through says "Baby tape-out expected" for whomever, in bold blue type, with the usual best of luck attached.

"Baby tape-out." YUCK! This is high-tech cuteness gone too far. Or maybe it's just me, but my first image is of a newborn infested with tapeworms. I don't need that image! So here's a picture of my cat.

Suburban Ass

I first heard them when I was working on the other side of the house. There was a loud, hungry tyrannosaur in the neighborhood. Made me jump. Metal rake in hand, I went around to look.

The two old ladies who bought the lot next door had brought in their pets, and somebody's dogs had got in and were joyfully chasing them around. Who knew that a scared donkey sounded just like a goddam dinosaur?

They settled in, and for several years now they have enjoyed hanging around in the shade of the oak tree that also shelters our chicken coop. They like animals that don't bark and chase. They come say hello when I stand by the fence, and I pat their cheeks and knock dust off their backs. There's a lot of dust.

Detroit

This business about Chicago got me to thinking about another great American city I’ve never visited. But unlike Chicago, I have a personal connection with Detroit.

My maternal grandmother Olive was born in San Francisco in 1904 to a schoolteacher named Arvilla. She in turn had come west with her mother and sisters to join her father. Hazen Bartlett left Lamoine, Maine, in the 1880s after all his attempts at mining, fishing and farming failed. His father and grandfather before him hadn’t done much better.

His grandfather, David Bartlett, was born on Bartlett Island, off the coast of Maine, in 1788, the result of his father's affair with a young woman named Esther des Champs. They never married and the child moved to the mainland. Esther's mother Marguerite was of the family de la Mothe Cadillac. Her family held title to two leagues of the Maine coast that had been granted by King Louis XIV to her Acadian grandfather Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac in 1688. It was he who founded Detroit in 1701.

So for those keeping score at home, the founder of Detroit (and namesake for a line of fine automobiles) is my great great great great great great great great grandfather.

Chicago

It has a funny look, that word. Big and round at one end, with a foot trailing in the mud at the other. One of those words that makes no sense if you say it enough. Chicago shicago sh'kaago. What the hell is that? A city? A state of mind? Something unpleasant done to someone who's asked for it? I've never been within a thousand miles of it. The sound makes me think of great buildings steady against the wind, heavy woolen overcoats, an attitude of fearlessness; trains rumbling on the El, sleet chasing couples into blues bars, impossibly bright sunshine fading to blue over a freshwater inland sea. No one goes to the Chicago of my mind but to work, or to enjoy working class pleasures: food, music, baseball, football. Maybe now there is windsurfing too. Chicago is at the top center of the country, the pushpin that holds America to the bulletin board.

I've never been there. My first time will be right after Thanksgiving. I will not quite be attending a conference, doing things for my job, about which details are superfluous. How much of the weekend is spent working and how much getting to know The Loop will be determined by events. I'm taking the Mz. We're looking forward to it.

News Flash: Rummy Gets Promoted

2004: Donald shares a lighter moment while shopping for condolence cards for the families of servicemen.


2005: Donald warns against beturbaned bogeymen lurking about our homes if we don't stay the course.


2006: Donald is promoted to Galaxy Lord of Sector Seven and quits his undercover job posing as an Earthling.

News Flash: I Voted for a Democrat

Before anyone looks into my cubicle to see how things are going and thus compels me to do my job, I feel like surveying the election real quick.

I voted yesteday at 7am at a modern church with rock instruments on the stage and impressionistic paintings of a thorny-crowned Jesus on the walls. I would have gone earlier if the polls were open. Going so late made me miss my morning workout.

Everyone there that early was past sixty: the volunteers, and retired folks with a busy day to get to. The lady who handed me my test form or whatever it's called, hidden in its privacy sleeve, was a sharp-witted blonde of the sort who easily disproves the notion that a woman can't be unaccountably, viscerally attractive after six decades. I said this made my second trip to church this year, the first being the primary. She laughed and said, yep, she hadn't thought of it that way. I said they don't make them like they used to. What with the electric organ, the drum set, the stackable chairs, the motivational banners paraphrasing Tony Robbins, she had to agree.

I went to my little booth, was glad I brought a pair of drugstore cheaters -- last time, I had to squint and hope I was filling in the right circles -- and proceeded to take my test.

Schwarzenegger (R) for Governor. He's doing a good job, he's incredibly smart, and he hasn't done anything yet to piss me off. Won.

McClintock (R) for Lieutenant Governor. I admire McClintock, mostly for his eloquence defending traditional liberty (i.e. gun rights) and opposing unchecked immigration. I'm sure we disagree on some other things for he's a true-blue conservative. Lost.

McPherson (R) for Secretary of State. He's competent. Lost.

Chiang (D) for Controller. The face of the Republican fill-in had the vacant friendliness of a high school offensive tackle who thought debating class would be an easy C, while the Democratic propoganda successfully portrayed Chiang as a typical hard-working, highly-qualified, numbers-crunching Asian. Won.

Parrish (R) for Treasurer. Lockyer (D) needs badly to retire. He pissed me off countless times as Attorney General. And I am heartily sick of these mid-level politicians who bounce from elected office to elected office, building byzantine political alliances within the vast state machine as they go. Lost.

Poochigian (R) for Attorney General. I covered this earlier. Lost.

Poizner (R) for Insurance Commissioner. Bustamante (D) also needs to retire. Apparently a lot of Democrats agree. Won.

Metti (L) for U.S. Senate. L is for Libertarian, the Party Without Principle. Well, I have no use for Feinstein (D) and even less for Mountjoy (R) and would rather like to see a few Libertarians take office. It'll never happen. Lost (to Feinstein).

Warren (L) for U.S. Congress (District 4). The long-term incumbent Doolittle is as conservative as they come and of solid moral character and I'm sick of him. The Dem challenger (Charlie Brown) is a good guy but running in the wrong district. Lost (to Doolittle).

Niello (R) for CA State Assembly (District 5). Evidently the political hobbyist in a wealthy family of automobile dealership owners, he has been a conscientious local politician. Won.

There were other races I ignored for lack of any opinion, or anything to form an opinion on -- State Supreme Court Associate Justices, Park District Board Members, etc.

But the local school district is a mess, suffering from declining enrollment, declining revenue and general incompetence. I wanted the one running incumbent out of there (never mind that I once worked with her husband), and my wife said one of the candidates was a well-intentioned ex-teacher who knows what's going on, and the other guy I voted for (you pick two out of eight) had an appropriate biography somehow, so I voted for them, and they both won.

Propositions are always interesting because they are so direct. If a Proposition passes, it's bound to become law. This makes studying them and arguing them serious business. I did just that over plates of burritos carnitas with a handful of friends. In the end I voted No on them all for various reasons, excepting 1A (which places restrictions on use of gasoline taxes without raising any) and 90 (which, again, does something useful without raising taxes or floating the state a loan). The others were either bond measures, which I see as deferred taxes that the Legislature couldn't pass by themselves, or ill-advised, poorly thought-out social engineering experiments. Some passed, some didn't. The worst (85, 86) didn't.

We also had a county measure that amounted to raising sales taxes to pay for a sports arena, which I joined the majority in voting down. Seems to me if a sports arena is such a good idea, then private concerns can raise the capital for it all by themselves. Government's proper roles do not include basketball. Hurling, now. That could be a government sport. Looks like Calvinball to me. To a first-time observer, it makes about as much sense as current U.S. foreign policy. More on that later. So here's a picture of my chickens.

Lazy Fricker

If I'm too frickin' lazy to write a 50,000 word "novel" in the approximately fifteen days that I might actually be able to make time for it this month, you'd think I could at least cop into some of the alternatives. We have not only

• NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month

but

• NaNoEdMo - National Novel Editing Month (code's broke - they're worse than me)
  
• NaNoPubYe - National Novel Publishing Year
• NaPlWriMo - National Play Writing Month
• NaPoWriMo - National Poem Writing Month
• NaBloPoMo - National Blog Posting Month

Are there more? I bet there are! Let me know! But I can't even post to my blog every day! So here's a picture of my dog.

I Want a freakin' Monolingual Ballot

I'm steeling myself to dive in and read the material and make my election decisions when the most annoying thing hits me: My sample ballot is hard to read and twice as big as it needs to be because half of it is in Spanish. I open the book and the first thing I see is Balota de Muestra followed by mounds of text my eye can't settle on because it's not in English. Sure, there's English in there too, but it's a freakin' pain and that's the least of what's wrong with it:

• Twice the printing cost.
• If you have lived here long enough to be interested in (and eligible for) voting, you've lived here long enough to learn basic English and buy a dictionary.
• Voting citizens around here who don't speak English generally don't speak Spanish either. They speak Russian, mostly, as well as Arabic, Farsi, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Hmong, and a blizzard of Hindi dialects.

I'm all for immigration. I am strongly in support of anyone who wants to immigrate legally to this country. I am strongly in support of new citizens fully taking part in our democratic process. But there's no reason why native speakers of Spanish should be singled out for this unnecessary and special treatment, to the exclusion of immigrants from India or the Ukraine or Southeast Asia. Is this somehow less "racist" than providing the information in English only?

No NaNo Now

It became clear when the first three days of the month were lost to hours of working with customers in an industrial lab out of state, followed by long late dinners and all that rich restaurant food (not to mention lack of exercise) keeping me from getting enough sleep. I came home for the weekend and immediately set to cleaning up some of the messes I'd left behind. My son and I had replaced the motherboard in his computer, but it wasn’t running yet – I still have outdoor projects to complete before the rain hits – I wasn’t completely unpacked from my Civil War trip – I need to study a wee bit for this upcoming election – the dishes need doing …

But most of all, putting 50,000 words together into a format that resembles a novel is an enterprise that requires family support and buy-in. I’ve been traveling a lot more than usual this year and the request was, if I’m going to be traveling, please don’t do that writing thing. Me being away a week here and a few days there is burden enough. Add me being absent and cranky for a couple hours every evening when I am home, and it becomes too much. So there’s just no way this year, and I’m cool with it.

Too bad though because I not only enjoyed the camaraderie of fellow writers in the same pain (such as it can be shared across country) but I have an international high-tech thriller murder mystery going on in my head that has the potential for a shitload of sleazy sex. Some of it is so creepy I wanted to find out if I could even write it, or if it would just creep me out too much. I think I need to read more – a lot more – because I have no sense of what people actually write (and sell) these days. I suspect the market is a lot creepier and a lot sleazier than I can imagine. But who has time for any actual reading?

What I Learned from Rev. Ted Haggard

The commentary around the Haggard affair has been entertaining, if a bit sickening. It's always satisfying, to the yahoo inside each of us who is always ready with a bucket of hot tar and a bushel of feathers, to see a big loud-mouthed fish get caught on his own hook. Hoist on his own petard, as hack writers say. But there is a serious side to it all. Beyond the incalculable pain to his children and how pissed off his wife must be, there are lessons in it for all of us. Personally, I have learned the following, and for this I will always be thankful.

* Christians are normal people with normal human needs
* A man can still aspire to be a hot male hooker at 49
* Meth makes for hot sex

NaNo? No! Now? Nohow!

It's NaNo month. Good luck. Unknown yet whether I can really participate.

So meanwhile, it's picture time! While I'm up here in lovely Beaverton, OR, I have spent all my time turning a conference room into a prototyping lab with an engineer visiting from Belgium and an engineer visiting from Italy and an engineer who now lives in Oregon but grew up Chinese in Vietnam and a project manager from Boston who occasionally pokes his head in so he can write status reports. It's fun, this gig, except it's all we do. No goofing off.

Though there is art in everything, these images challenge the notion.

What are we making? Well, it's ... we took the ... there's this new ... um ... I'll just keep my job, thanks.

Down and over a few streets is the Nike world headquarters. The company hands out shoes to its loyal workforce. Every lunchtime little packs of joggers dash along the crosswalks all over the neighborhood. The entrances to the campus look like the entrance to Disneyland: Exquisitely landscaped berms part to allow the road, a train trestle-like running track crossing overhead. I expected to see The Swoop planted in petunias, but maybe that's just in spring.