Year: 2003

At the risk of further annoying the Bush supporters who visit the site, I found the following comments from NPR’s “A Prarie Home Companion” amusing:

“The President was on television as well, reiterating the goals of the war, which is a good thing to do since they do keep changing…”

Another good one:

“You probably saw the videos of the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down. Al Jazeera TV showed that as well, but they showed it backwards.”

[Ascend soap box]

The movie “Dave” was on TV tonight, and listening to Kevin Kline give a speech about creating jobs and instilling hope and pride in people provided quite a contrast to Bush’s speech today threatening Syria. Imagine the power for good you would have if you were President of this country — JFK decided to put a man on the moon, and because he was President the country followed him and less than ten years later Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Teddy Roosevelt believed in conservation, and before his term ended there were three new national parks, triple the amount of protected forests, fifty-one new wildlife refuges, and over a dozen new national monuments including the Grand Canyon. Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman believed that wars could be prevented by providing a forum for countries to discuss their differences, and the League of Nations and United Nations were created. The current President had an enormous opportunity after September 11th — even anti-American countries like Libya were suddenly sympathetic to the US, and the entire Arab world was for the first time asking us to sit down with them to discuss peace. The President chose to lead the country in a different direction, and I can’t help but feel that because of his decision we missed out on what could have been another great undertaking by one of America’s leaders.

[Descend soap box]

Stumbled on something while traveling memory lane tonight — some day my old co-worker, mentor, and cube-mate Steve Hood will visit this site, and he will be shocked to see the only known photographic proof of the existence of evil Steve. If only I could find a photo of Colonel Shandel on skis, a recording of Dave Baggeror talking about how his weekend was a “real wicked pissah” and a video of Brian Day peeling out in his twenty-five year old BMW then this site could be officially re-dubbed the Andersen Consulting Center for Strategic Technology Home Page.

If I owe you an e-mail or a phone call please be patient with me — I promise to sit down and catch up on correspondence by this weekend, but between working late and then hitting the gym I’m woefully short on free time. On a more positive note, if you haven’t written to me in a while and you can send something before this weekend then I can guarantee a fast reply 😉

There are probably some advantages to settling down and leading a stable life, but when considering the myriad options of things to do after Warner Brothers a “settled” life just doesn’t seem that appealing. I’ll let the wind blow me where it will, but the possible destinations as I see them are all good ones:

• Train for a marathon. Three months of training, focus and decent sleep would be sufficient to run a solid time for the twenty-six miles.
• Travel. Europe, Nepal, the Andes, Australia/New Zealand, and road trips in North America are places I’ve thought about, but anywhere is possible.
• Go back to work in technology. If the right job comes up I don’t think I’d have any qualms about taking it.
• Go to work in another field. A seasonal ranger job is looking mighty tempting.
• Do nothing but pursue hobbies. Take photos, work on some open-source projects, read, do some hiking. Can’t go wrong there.

The future is most definitely wide open and very promising.

Went home for the weekend and the usual shenanigans with my brother ensued. Today’s hangover wasn’t terrible, Jenn claims I wasn’t overly obnoxious last night, and I woke up without any tattoos, so all is well.

Other recent developments:

• Senior management has decreed that my position at Warner Brothers should be filled by a full-time employee rather than a contractor, and while I was tempted to take their offer I decided I like the free-wheeling life too much. As a result I’ll probably be embarking on a second retirement some time in July or August.
• I was up until 3:30 Friday night and spent another six or seven hours converting the server that runs this site from Windows 2000 to Linux. When I have time I’ll post my notes about this ordeal.
• I’ll be going to the Galapagos Islands in thirty-one days. After three years of trying to organize this trip my excitement level about it actually happening is reaching nearly unbearable levels.
• Jason pointed out a web log from Baghdad.
• And on a lighter note, Dave Barry pointed out an example of what a great tool the internet is for helping to simplify confusing subjects.

George Clooney was eating lunch a few tables down from me today, Clint Eastwood was supposedly roaming the other side of the lot, but sadly Gunther has disappeared.

I’m not normally one to get all excited over seeing a movie star, but today, standing outside of the Friends set, I saw someone who got me so excited that I could barely contain myself. That’s right, amazing as it may sound, I saw Gunther. Details on this incredible story to follow.

Over the weekend I was able to scan in several more photos from trips taken in September and December of 2000. No captions yet, but I’ll get to them. This weekend I’ll hopefully be off to Death Valley to try out a new Canon Elan camera body and a 19-35mm lens that should allow for some interesting photo possibilities.

The drive from LA offers five hours of time where the mind can just wander. Last night, after seeing several people demonstrating in support of Bush, it again wandered to the current political situation. Two thoughts in particular struck me:

First, the whole situation with Iraq began as an effort to fight terrorism, but has since morphed into something else. The nation’s present stance of fighting Iraq in defiance of world opinion would, it seems to me, do much more to promote animosity towards the United States than any possible benefit gained from removing Saddam Hussein from power. Am I missing something? Someone must be reading this journal who feels otherwise — post something on the message board, because I really would like to hear a well thought out opinion to the contrary.

Second, in addition to political and moral arguments against going to war, the issue of cost is now one to be considered. There are estimates that the total cost of war with Iraq and its aftermath would be between $60 billion and $100 billion, but people don’t seem to understand what an incredible amount of money that is. Consider that instead of being used to fight Iraq, this amount of money could be used to:

• Convert the US oil economy to hydrogen ($100 billion). Not only could the country begin freeing itself from dependence on foreign oil, but the environmental benefits would be huge, as could potential economic benefits derived from the technology change.
• Build a reusable space vehicle ($50 billion) capable of putting cargo into orbit for a small fraction of the cost of the space shuttle. A large amount of startup funding with an even larger payoff for success should be enough to motivate the Boeings and other companies that are out there.
• Rebuild the Bay Bridge ($3 billion), build a 200 mph mag-lev train that runs from San Diego to San Francisco ($31 billion), and an expansion of BART to entirely circle the Bay ($5 billion).
• Give every man, woman, and child in the country $400 ($100 billion).

Insomnia again last night — I slept about an hour, woke up, and finally gave up trying to sleep at 5:00 AM. I then spent a good part of the day trying to simplify some of the most complex code on our site, so it will be interesting to see what I actually did come tomorrow.

During my lunch break there was a guy standing outside of the main gate of the studio lot waving a sign at cars — while I first figured he was just a random nut, when I got closer I was able to read his sign: “I need you to give me a recurring role in a regular series, but will settle for bit parts.”

I’m suffering from insomnia tonight and decided to read a bit rather than just lying in bed awake. I suppose I knew that this was a Lewis Carroll poem, but ever since I was a kid I’ve associated it with the Muppets — I can still remember watching Scooter fighting the Jabberwock and then galumphing back (“galumph, galumph, galumph…”):

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. ‘Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jujub bird, and shun The fruminous Bandersnatch!’ He took his vorpal sword in hand: Long time the manxome foe he sought — So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood a while in thought. And as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back. ‘And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’ He chortled in his joy. ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogroves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

Who responds to an e-mail like this one??? I’d almost like to send out fifty thousand copies just to see what sort of person writes back:

“This sum of US$6,000,000.00 is still sitting in my Bank… According to Nigerian Law, at the expiration of 5 (five) years, the money will revert to the ownership of the Nigerian Government if nobody applies to claim this fund. Consequently, my proposal is that I will like you as a foriegner to stand in as the next of kin to Mrs. Ann Barbara Myers… The money will be paid to you for us to share in the ratio of 60% for me and 40% for you.”

In addition to Nigerian bank scams the recent spam harvest also includes numerous stock tips, opportunities to enlarge a prominent body part “safely and naturally”, e-mails from moral and upstanding women wanting me to visit their web sites, and my personal favorite, the chance to buy “Affordable Califirnia Health Insurance”. Unfortunately e-mail spam can’t be handled in the same way as junk mail.