Month: December 2015

Jonah did an authentic spit-take tonight. In a conversation about salt-water taffy, Andrea and I were remembering my one very failed attempt at making some, years ago. Jonah was drinking a glass of water just as I described my taffy as “a mouthful of vinegar cement.”

Fright Night. Total Recall. Miami Vice. Colin Farrell is the king of the unnecessary 80's remake.

Just received the settlement check in the malpractice case relating to the death of my mom in 2007. It isn't much, especially after lawyers' fees and other expenses, and it certainly does nothing to bring back my mom or make me miss her less.

I'll tell you what has brought back my mom, in a way: my sister Suzanne's dogged handling of this long, slow, frustrating, bureaucratic process, driving it to completion in the face of delays and setbacks and screw-ups. The spirit of our mom, who loved to muscle her way through such hassles and proudly adopted the nickname Superpest, is alive and well in her.

I have only a vague notion of who Maria Conchita Alonso is, but that's not stopping her name from incessantly reverberating in my head this evening.

It's not as bad as the Mandalit del Barco episode of 2013, thank goodness.

I have passed some sort of milestone in my inevitable progression to cranky old man.

Encountering a group of 20-something coworkers having a collective smoking break outside the office just now, my reaction was not the usual nostalgic longing for a cigarette myself, it was anger. I wanted to say to them, “How dare you take your youth and health for granted like that.”

Elvis needs boats! Elvis needs boats! Elvis Elvis Elvis Elvis Elvis Elvis Elvis needs boats!

Oh Jupiter Ascending, why couldn't you be awesome?

Recognized a Luke Perry cameo in the end-tag of a Community episode. Andrea said, “Wow, he looks old.” Looked him up on IMDb. He's the exact same age as us. [http://www.sadtrombone.com/]

Grownups seemed a lot more grown up when I was a kid than they do now that I'm a grownup.

There once was a baby named Kade
By Shane and by Erika made
The news of his birth
Encircled the Earth
And people all over hoorayed

It doesn't seem like it should be much harder to eat a sandwich that hasn't been cut in half first, but it is.

As water cascades down onto my head
I make a great effort of will
And, snapping my thoughts to the moment, I think:
Did I lather yet? Or must I still?

New episodes of Twin Peaks, The X-Files, and Coach are coming, as is a possible Clinton presidency. Looks like 90's nostalgia is on.

[On the ongoing saga of Radio Shack's imminent demise.] I seldom enter Radio Shack stores nowadays, so I suppose I'm part of the problem, but for sentimental reasons I'm still glad to see them cling to survival. I'm just old enough to remember bringing vacuum tubes to Radio Shack with my dad once in a while to plug them into the store's tube tester and replace the ones that didn't make the little light light up. Chuck and I supplied our electronics projects from there decades before anyone coined the term “maker.” My first computer came from Radio Shack, and I have as much fond nostalgia for it as any TRS-80 Model III owner; but I doubt many of them developed a crush on the recorded voice that answered the Tandy Corporation's main customer service line circa 1980. I dialed again and again just to hear some young woman thank me for calling Tandy and politely ask me to wait on hold in a perky Texas twang.

Today is “random holiday spirit” day at school. Kids are supposed to dress in the style of the holiday of their choosing. Archer said, “I'll wear a Santa hat. That will be my Halloween costume.”

Farewell, Candy Crush Soda Saga level 130. You were a worthy opponent.

How old does something have to be before it becomes “vintage”? How about “antique”? Or “ancient”?

There's a part of me that spends every waking moment tortured half to madness by two intractable puzzles: the true nature of reality; and how it's possible for any thinking person _not_ to spend every waking moment tortured half to madness by the true nature of reality.

In a conversation the other day with Jonah, I said something like, “You are in control of your emotions.” Jonah immediately recognized that I was unintentionally quoting a classic episode of Star Trek. So, so proud of my boy.

I am enjoying this interlude between the announcement of a working, reactionless spaceship drive and its inevitable refutation even more than I did the brief period we all believed in cold fusion in the 80's.

Jonah was playing a video game. Archer was watching. Archer jumped up from the couch and ran into the kitchen and back to the living room, saying “Good shot!” It was running commentary.

Just finished listening to Blueprint for Armageddon VI, the final installment in Dan Carlin – Hardcore History's magisterial podcast series about World War I. This installment was nearly four and a half hours long. The complete series adds up to over _twenty-three_ hours – and for this fan it's not enough. I would gladly listen to another six installments on the topics that host Dan Carlin admits he glossed over in the interest of time.

I am amused that, in describing an incident near the end of the war, with just minutes left in this nearly day-long podcast series, Carlin tosses in the phrase, “Long story short…”

“On” purpose. “By” accident.

Thanks,
– Bob

Eight years now that the world has had to get along without Flori Glickstein. It's done its best, but it shows.

Final field trip of elementary school DONE.

By what black magic does Candy Crush Soda Saga keep me from getting sick of the tune that I've now heard over and over and over for 200 levels?

[On seeing the headline, “How Apple Hopes to Take A Bite Out Of The News Business.”] When I saw this headline, I got curious, and so: https://goo.gl/WIQzkC

Enjoyed Neal Stephenson's new novel Seveneves so much that the momentum has me now reading The Baroque Cycle for the third time.

[On the launch of kill-ralphie.com.] “When someone posted to Kill Ralphie, they were contributing a chapter to an ongoing story about a hapless lad who is alternately placed in immediate mortal danger, then rescued, both in the most creative and entertaining ways possible.”

If you're going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear $491 dollars in your hair
For when the City of San Francisco
Tows your car to the impound they have there

Happy Canada Day
Happy Canaday
Happy Canad, eh?

The Plotkin sisters (Janet, Sherri, and Diane) are among my very favorite people to spend time with, and have been for literally my entire life. Not even an expensive tow can detract from the pleasure of an afternoon spent with one of my cousins.

Just realized that I was born closer in time to (the waning days of) the First World War than to today. Dang.

Dammit Bill Cosby. I Spy was one of my favorite things. Now I'll never be able to watch it again.

[On the announcement of a working Star Trek communicator.] Don't tell the makers of this item, but there is almost no price I wouldn't gladly pay.

Googler -> Xoogler

Batgirl, Batgirl!
Batgirl, Batgirl!
Where do you come from? Where do you go?
What is your scene? Baby, we just gotta know
Yeah, whose baby are you?
Batgirl!

(RIP Yvonne Craig)

Until very recently, having time to myself at home would have been a real treat, a chance to focus, catch up on correspondence, get some writing done, work on my side projects. Now I simply miss my family.

As a little kid, I used to watch my dad “make a left” each morning: walk down the long hallway outside our apartment as he left for work, then turn left around a corner and disappear from sight.

Many years later, my kids would watch me from our front window as I turned left out of our driveway and disappeared on my way to work.

Now I hand the kids their lunches and watch them disappear to the left on their way to school.

I wonder if I can sue Ashley Madison for _not_ containing my e-mail in their purloined account database, thereby revealing to the world what a boring faithful straight arrow I am.

A world with no Carl Sagan, no Jim Henson, AND no Oliver Sacks? What kind of cruel joke is this?

Every once in a while I'll spot a 19¢ packet of Kool-Aid at the store and buy it because childhood. Then I'll get home and remember all the other times that I bought packets of Kool-Aid on a whim, and I toss the new packet on the pile.

Today it hit 103 in San Rafael and I made some Kool-Aid, dammit.

Have you ever visited a city that you've never lived in, but where you felt immediately at home? What place or places made you feel like that, and why?

I don't mean getting to some vacation paradise, feeling your cares melt away, and declaring you could spend the rest of your life there. That's different from feeling _at home_.

I've had this experience in Seattle and in Chicago, and conspicuously haven't in many other places, even places that are superficially similar. I'm at a loss to explain what it is about Seattle and Chicago that makes me feel that way (and what it is about other places that doesn't), but the sensation is undeniable, and Andrea has felt it too.

[On the publication of Wired's article “Your Body Is Surrounded By Clouds Of Skin And Fart Bacteria.”] Synchronicity:

Last night this sentence popped into my head: We exist in a miasma of one another's exhalations.

Why did that sentence pop into my head? I have no idea. It's not a typical thought for me to have, and nothing out of the ordinary relating to exhalations or other bodily functions took place to get me onto that topic. The thought sounded vaguely musical to me and I briefly entertained posting it to Facebook.

Then this morning comes this interesting Wired article. The headline's a little more crudely put than my sentence, but it's the same idea, and interestingly, they're both seventeen syllables, like a haiku.

I thought I was old when they started rebooting movies and TV shows I watched as a kid. Now they're rebooting movies and TV shows I ignored as an adult.

Well, that was nice while it lasted, but it's time to go back to work. Gonna give the startup thing another go. Tomorrow I start at Chain.com.

Today I wrote code in Go and in Java and in Javascript and in Ruby and in Python and in SQL. Tomorrow, more of the same. Life is good.

San Francisco 49er

What's a screenwriting workshop doing in the middle of a Vegas casino?

It's my fault, sorry. I was just thinking Halloween needed an authentic scare, and then the Mets came within one game of losing the World Series.

“Fun Size” candies: what are we supposed to think about the other sizes? [Best response: “Regret size.”]

I've been a happy customer of dbrand's quality phone- and tablet skins for a few years. When I got my new Nexus 5X recently I promptly ordered a new set of skins from them. When they didn't arrive after a few weeks I contacted them and got back a remarkably contrite reply explaining that their shipping volume has begun to exceed the capacity of their present vendor and they're looking for new solutions; and in the meantime they shipped me a replacement set of skins AND refunded my money AND gave me a store credit AND included some extras in the replacement shipment they sent. I replied thanking them and telling them they went far beyond my expectations for good customer service, and that the only way for me to balance the scales was to worsen their shipping-volume problems by urging my friends and family to buy their fine products. So here we are: go buy dbrand's fine products!

What more natural, when hearing about a horrifying shooting rampage, than to imagine oneself as a potential victim?

Having imagined that, what more natural than to imagine being able to defend oneself with one's own firearm, if it came to that?

Somewhat less natural, apparently, is to imagine the other potential victims around you, having imagined the same things, terrified, confused, pulling out their own firearms, and looking for the threat they have to neutralize.

You're standing there brandishing a gun. Imagine that.

For decades the fans have been saying we could do Star Wars better than George Lucas if only one of us got control of it.

Well, one of us did, and WE WERE RIGHT.

Life tip: “hurry up!” makes people go slower; “please take your time” makes them go faster.

Discussing the mysterious bad smell in my car:

Andrea: It smells like stinky cheese.
Me: Cheese? Really?
Andrea: Well, something's definitely… fromaging.