Ryan's Journal

So I’m now fully retired again; I think this is the fourth time. Sadly the landlord is selling my current home, so it’s been busy lately packing things up to move. Since my worldly possessions amount to little more than two shirts and a shoe moving isn’t much of a worry, but Audrey has stockpiled enough stuff to supply a relief mission to Uganda and is experiencing slightly more stress. A good portion of her stuff is going on craigslist.org, a site whose purpose is both to assist in getting rid of random junk and also to provide a forum for the world’s oddballs. In the past week craigslist has introduced us to a shopaholic woman who showed up in a tiny Porsche, took everything we had left, forced me to deliver, and then wrote back the next day to see if we had found anything else. There was also a person who wrote about our free CD-ROM drive, but insisted she only wanted something in a nice color. A third fellow showed up with a wolf in his van wearing a cowboy hat, a camouflage poncho, and riding gloves. Before anything else he handed me a copy of his latest film, and then shifted gears completely and did a little dance when I told him that we had two boxes of free stuff (he walked off with two bags full of odds and ends, including a coyote skull). There have also been about fifty bazillion folks who have written about items, set up pickup times, and then flaked completely. Never a dull moment.

A quick political posting. Yesterday the House of Representatives actually voted to remove drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from the budget, which is awesome news. The main argument cited for drilling has been to decrease dependency on foreign oil, which seems suspect given that the same politicans are unwilling to support raising fuel economy standards, an action that would save vastly more oil than ANWR will ever produce. Spoiling one of the most amazing places I’ve ever seen for what appears to be simply a quick financial windfall doesn’t seem justified to me when better options are available.

In a similar vein, Exxon-Mobil is now the only major oil company still pushing for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Sierra Club is calling for a boycott of Exxon, something I think is worth supporting. While companies like BP are heavily investing in alternative energy sources, Exxon seems to be taking a different approach. For my part I’d rather see my $3.00 per gallon go elsewhere.

The comments link is available for anyone wanting to argue these points, but please do so with reasonable facts — the best argument I could find online about why drilling was better than raising the CAFE standards was “…raising CAFE standards would not increase America’s energy supply by a single barrel…” Drill = (maybe) find 3.2 billion barrels. CAFE = save a minimum of one million barrels each day. Anyone who can explain why drilling is the better option gets a cookie.

Aaron called me last week and told me I had to fly home to see U2. The conversation basically went:

“Hey, you wanna see U2?”

“Uh, yeah, of course I want to see U2.”

And thus the evening was launched into action. The concert started at 7:30 Thursday night. As of 4:00, we still had no tickets. The following ad was thus posted on craigslist:

Two tickets needed for U2

We’re heading down to the arena soon to see what’s still available, but figured we’d try craigslist first. You have tickets. We need tickets. Ergo, we need your tickets. Sell them to us. We need two. Not one, or three, just two. Two lovely tickets. And we’ll pay cash and pick them up. Email immediately with your offer.

And yeah, we’ve seen the $168 tickets that are still on Ticketmaster. We like U2, but we like them a little less than $168.

Shortly thereafter two responses arrived, one mocking us for being cheapskates, and the other offering two tickets for $40 each. The catch was that we would have to meet the guy in the South Bay, leaving us barely enough time to make the concert in time; the brothers Holliday were up to the challenge. Decked out in a Museum of Death t-shirt and a Michael Seaver shirt we set out on BART, arriving in Balboa Park an hour and a half later, and an hour after that our treasure hunt ended at the Oakland Arena. Damien Marley rocked for an hour, and U2 put on a hell of a show after that. My enjoyment of the second encore was only mildly affected by complications due to the several beers I had consumed throughout the evening, but thoughts of things like the desert and saltines allowed all embarrassment to be avoided. Waking up at 5:30 this morning to make it to the airport wasn’t the most enjoyable of tasks, but it was a small price to pay.

I’m at the Burbank airport getting ready to fly home for a couple of days to see U2 with younger Holliday. Not wanting to go to the concert without sufficiently dorky t-shirts, I went to nearly every t-shirt shop on Hollywood Boulevard yesterday (for those not familiar with LA, there are about six million t-shirt shops on Hollywood) and had a conversation with the <insert foreign nationality here> owner of each place that went something like this:

Me: “Do you have any U2 t-shirts?”

Them: “Sorry, don’t understand. Me?”

Me: “No, it’s the name of a band. U2. Do you have any t-shirts for them?”

Them: “You? Who?”

Me: “U2”

blank stare

Me: “I think I’ll just look around on my own…”

We’re not gonna be wearing band shirts to this one.

There is a line in the movie Garden State where Natalie Portman, after being taken on a series of outings that get progressively stranger, says “Ah, I must say, I’m continually impressed with how each place you bring us… continues to be weirder and weirder.” I had that same moment today with Audrey when we went to the home of the proprietors of the Museum of Death to pick up a coffin for tomorrow’s Scare the Children party. Entering the house, the living room was filled with skulls, stuffed birds, and other odd bits. Cathee then pulled out the (mummified) guillotined head of a French serial killer before taking us to look at her collection of two-headed turtles (“the largest in the world”) and albino animals. Keeping things slightly more normal, she also pointed out the giraffe skeleton that they had recently acquired, as well as a rocking horse made from an actual miniature horse (“we were the only bidders on eBay!”).

The coffin was in the back yard, next to their pet pig, another two-headed turtle, and an albino turtle. The coffin was of course filled with black-widow spiders which had to be chased out, but the highlight of the trip occurred when I made the comment that she would never have to worry about anyone breaking into her house (imagine breaking into a house and finding it full of body parts…) and she replied “Actually, I’m not sure about our neighbor in the rear, that guy is pretty weird”. Yeah. Anyhow, we drove home with a coffin hanging out of the tailgate of Audrey’s truck, and I can only imagine what further madness awaits for Halloween tomorrow.

My brain decided to swell up to twice its normal size during the past two days, and sadly my skull stayed the same size, so the headache has been tremendous. My money says it’s brain cancer, and if it doesn’t go away tomorrow I’m gonna operate. On the plus side, the roommate went to Jerry’s Deli and brought me soup; life is better when you get sick and people bring you soup.

Unrelated (as most pictures I post are), but this image from the South Georgia trip didn’t seem particularly noteworthy until tonight. Now, for whatever reason, I’m really liking it a lot.

Here’s a big wrap-up from the last couple of weeks:

Last weekend I flew home, having negotiated with the boss for a day off on Monday (the incident with the painters and a Friday night shift that lasted until 3:15 in the morning were solid negotiating points for me). Nadia’s birthday wish was that I attend her party and “not be able to drive home”, and I happily obliged. The Bay Bridge closed for repairs at 1:00 AM, so sadly the night ended a bit earlier than I would have liked, but it was a fun evening and Aaron managed to get me, Chi, and my rented Ford Escape home without incident. Saturday and Sunday weren’t particularly noteworthy with the exception of the best dinner ever at Chow, some Balderdash stupidity (“…about a French squid and his companion, a whale…”), and the lamentations of the third member of the buddy triad, re-dubbed “the Dot” for his missing-in-action hijinks.

I flew out under perfect skies on Monday afternoon, only to hear a warning from the captain halfway to LA that everyone should “hold on” as we steered through storms and watched lightning blaze just outside of the plane’s windows. After landing a rainstorm of biblical proportions greeted me, apparently brought here by an unknowing rain god who was visiting from New York. The evening out was highlighted by Audrey’s apt description of someone who doesn’t own a car in LA (“*censored*”) and Josh’s confirmation that my original guess at the definition of “agro” wasn’t a sign of brain damage.

After navigating through downtown amidst streets closed due a Mission Impossible 3 shooting I again managed to meet up with Josh on Wednesday, and along with Audrey and a rotating cast of music industry folks we spent far too long at the Rainbow. I stumbled home around 2:00, making for an interesting day at work six hours later. Last night’s excitement was a dinner-and-a-movie showing of Lemony Snicket’s, during which I planned to refrain from drinking and failed miserably.

And because it is completely unrelated to anything mentioned above, here’s a nice iceberg picture:

Audrey took me to my first opera performance last night, a recital by Cecilia Bartoli, who is apparently the top dog of the opera world. For a guy who likes his bars with sawdust on the floor opera is a bit highbrow, but I’ll give anything a chance. That said, whether this lady was that good, or whether the music just worked for me, it was pretty much off the hook. I’m not a particularly sentimental guy — on a manliness scale ranging from Richard Simmons to Samuel L. Jackson I’d be in the Liam Neeson range — but during one particularly amazing song there was an actual danger of moist eyes. I’m not saying tears, but there was at least the beginnings of emotion. The lady had talent.

The new roommate has been demonstrating amazing tolerance by putting up with me on various excursions around LA. Unlike past times where I’ve lived in this city, this time it’s actually been fun. A couple of weeks ago we hit the Rainbow, a metal bar on Sunset. I’m not particularly knowledgeable about metal, but Audrey was pointing out the various folks who were roaming about. Last night’s entertainment was the Foxfire Room, followed up with a trip to the Wine Bistro on Ventura, somewhere where she claims to have not only danced on the bar, but been reduced to a state where the owner had to drive her home on multiple occasions. JB, the owner, did not deny these stories.

Upcoming events include a visit to one of her more famous client’s house to install a recording studio, and a concert on Monday by Cecilia Bartoli — I know nothing about opera, but in addition to being a metal-head Audrey’s got three years of training in classical opera. I still am and will always be a northern California boy, but at least for the moment the city of angels isn’t looking quite so bad.

The reason I’m back at Warner Brothers is to upgrade software on several of their servers. Over the past six weeks I’ve done numerous trial runs on development servers, created a step-by-step plan for the upgrade of the production servers, and in general tried to set things up so that the upgrade would happen without incident. All of the supporting software was loaded onto my PC and ready to go, my notes were detailed, and I felt good about the whole operation.

Yesterday, after coordinating with teams around the world, the upgrade was set to start at 11:00 AM. I arrived at the building about ten minutes early, and as I was walking to my office noticed a chair that looked really familiar sitting in the hallway, followed by a monitor that looked really familiar, followed by a lot of papers that looked a lot like the notes I had organized on my desk. Upon entering my office I was greeted by two Hispanic guys in painter outfits, and an office in utter disarray; apparently this weekend I was not the only one working. Mildly flustered, I scrambled to get my notes back in order and to set up to work in my boss’ office down the hall. Shifting back and forth between the two offices I finally managed to get the bare minimum necessary copied from my office PC to my laptop, and after about fifteen minutes I was feeling more-or-less ready to go.

Printing up one last item, I returned to the boss’ office only to discover that a third, unseen painter had gone around and shut and locked all office doors. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: “Hi, can you open that office back up? You guys are painting in my office, so I’m trying to work in the boss’ office and I don’t have the key.”

Him: “Yes, I see you working there.”

Me: “Uh, yeah, that’s where I’m working. Can you unlock the door?”

Him: “Yeah, you can work there, no problem. We’re painting. They want us to shut all the doors.”

Me: “Right. But can you open this door?”

Him: “Yeah, I don’t have that key. I’m just the painter.”

Much fun and one building security guard later I was madly scrambling to get the upgrade back on track. The scheduled checkpoints where I was supposed to give status reports to everyone were particularly entertaining, and made even more fun when the painters showed up with several buckets of turpentine and sent me on a high that I’ve still not come down from. But in the end everything seemed to be working, and the roommate humored me when I returned home and demanded we get margaritas. Several drinks and one DVD rental later I was sleeping on the living room couch, with evil dreams of painters and software dancing through my head.

The top photo is one I discovered back in 2003, taken from the World Beard and Moustache Championships. The bottom photo is from this year’s incarnation. I’m not sure if it’s more disturbing that Sgt. Pepper and the Monopoly Guy are still parading around looking exactly the same or that I recognized them immediately two years later.

Last weekend’s excitement was the North Beach Pub Crawl. Very fun, but… ouch. What I do remember of the evening includes Marina Ho serving us drinks, a heated debate with LSU chick about Boston accents, and the walk to Wo’s. A voice mail from Chi’s co-worker the next day (“Hey, thanks for stopping by last night. Just checking to see if you and your friends are OK.”) confirms the fact that even at our best behaviour we weren’t in an ideal state of mind.

Too much working during the past week, although the problems I’ve been chasing have been interesting. Also, as a random aside, has anyone else noticed that when a hurricane or any other weather phenomenom shows up that requires some meteorogical knowledge to discuss, the good-looking female weather reporters that normally give the TV weather reports are suddenly replaced by crusty old men?

Nothing new, but it’s halfway through September with no pictures, so here’s my favorite shot from the Alaska trip in 2002.