John Abell, Dot Com

We've moved

2008-11-16T18:20:00.001-05:00

If somehow you stumbled upon this blog know that is it no longer updated. I keep it going as a repository for posts already written and not easily ported to a new site, but I concentrate now on maintaining Planet Abell. Hope you stop on by,

Time vs. Fortune

2008-04-04T15:06:00.002-05:00

A nice little piece at Freakonomics on the trade-off between making money and spending time wity your family.

My thought in a comment there.

New Google Talk bots bring real-time translation to IM

2007-12-19T23:12:00.000-05:00

New Google Talk bots bring real-time translation to IM

This is very (or "effing," as one friend puts it) cool, and the inevitable failures should prove to be more amusing than annoying for something which -- think about it -- defies the laws of nature as we know them, or at least the gods.

But I was really jarred by this passage:

"Another bizarre problem in testing was that some combinations of bots would begin to translate each other. When translating English to German, for example, the English bot would occasionally re-translate a statement that was just converted from English to German."

Isn't that what caused SkyNet to become self-aware?

Bonsai in a Box: Week 2

2007-08-24T14:00:00.001-05:00

Bonsai in a Box: Week 2, originally uploaded by John C Abell.

This is a bonsai seedling from "The Mini Bonsai Kit," one of those point-of-sale gifts you find at most chain bookstores. Nancy gave it to me as a gag on my last birthday because I've tried to cultivate three bonsai plants -- all mature -- in my life, and all three have died. Possibly from neglect. I admit nothing.

This summer I've been lucky with my deck planting. I don't have anything fancy, and my success hasn't been universal (the second crop of scallions have died; I surrender, and the second crop of bib lettuce is too close to call) but I have about 20 viable tomato plants from seed, some parsley and some basil. Yes, I love pasta & tomato sauce.

Bolstered by my new agri-savvy, and determined to make amends for all those fallen bonsai, I unboxed the bonsai and commenced to give it the Green Acres treatment. The variety for these kits is a crapshoot, but I was lucky enough to get a pine (pinus banksiana), which means I can (or perhaps should: note to self, check on that) leave outdoors for the winter. This variety can grow to 100 feet, so it will be amazing to train it to be a miniature tree.

I should have started taking pictures earlier, and "week 2" is deceptive. The germinating process took eight days: the seeds had to be soaked for 24 hours and then refrigerated for a week for cold stratification.

I know very little about growing one of these, and every peek I have taken as literature online is depressing. Typical:

"You may have been the lucky recipient of one of the many 'Bonsai Kits' available, go on try it!, follow the instructions, watch those precious little seeds germinate, poke their heads above the soil, and die. On closer inspection you will probably find the seedling has rotted at about soil level, this is called 'Damping off' and is a fungal attack. You can overcome this by adding a fungicide to the first watering and then as directed by the instructions. Bonsai 'kits' put people off the hobby, convincing them that bonsai are difficult to keep, as such they should be avoided."

We'll see.

Next step, I think about now, is putting the plant outside in "dappled sunlight" for a month, and then into direct sunlight. Next spring it is to be repotted into pure bonsai soil. I have no idea when it will be ready to be pruned and wired.

Assignment Zero

2007-03-29T11:25:00.000-05:00

I'm honored and flattered to be part of the "pro" contingent in the citizen journalism project called "Assignment Zero."

Their mission?

We're covering a story: How the Web makes it possible for the crowd to be the source of good ideas. But instead of one journalist reporting, we've created a site where many people can work on the story, with editors as guides.

The "ams" are simply people getting together on their own time to contribute to a project in journalism that for their own reasons they support. The "pros" are journalists guiding and editing the story, setting standards, overseeing fact-checking, and publishing a final version.

So it's the editorial equivalent of massive parallel computing. A "Seti@Home" for aspiring citizen journalists.

My area is "Information Topics," and this being the early stages of "let's put on a show" it remains to be seen where the sweet spots and perimeters are.

My first blog entry over there is here, copied below for the click-disabled:

Nobody uses the phrase “information superhighway” anymore (and thank you) but this early portend of the Internet is telling. Not “news superhighway” or “advertising superhighway” or virtual community superhighway” – no, “information” got top billing.

Strip out all the hype and the fancy jargon and put aside all the hair-pulling about how we gotta make money off this thing before it kills us and you are left to gaze in awe at the most efficient means of communication coupled with the most comprehensive repository for anything that can be distilled into bit form.

Forget about what that leaves out. What it leaves in is as incomprehensible as infinity.

The basic DNA of life is information. Before we have “Lost,” we have ideas, and these ideas are based on information (nightmares are information, too). Before we have a Pulitzer Prize-winning story, we have people who actually know things we will take for credit writing about, and we need their information. After a scoundral lies for his own selfish purposes information – hidden or manipulated – is waiting to set us free.

For the first time in human history it is conceivable that anyone, anywhere can accomplish any thinking task that requires information (apologies for that redundancy) by tapping into this thing.

Maybe “Information Superhighway” isn’t so obsolete after all.

New York City in 30 Hours, or, Arthur Hasn't Lost His Touch

2007-02-01T16:45:00.000-05:00

Arthur and me

An overnight trip to NYC from DC hardly seems worth it on paper. But New York is the city where I was born and raised and lived the first 32 years of my life, the place where I got my start in journalism, so for me it's a return to comforting locale. For Audrey it is a thrilling place to shop and walk around The Village. For Nancy it is a trip down memory lane, the city to which I lured her in 1983 with promises of illustration fame and fortune (which came true) and a lot of stuff about me that was never going to happen, silly girl.

Any way you cut it New York is for us both a sentimental and familiar destination, a place where we can experience the moments rather than being distracted by the locale.

Part of the justification for a trip was to keep a promise to Audrey that we were well on our way towards breaking. She turned 13 last month and we had pitched the idea of letting her turn into a teenager (chronologically, anyway, since spiritually that happened some time ago) in The Big Apple. This plan was logistically challenged since her birthday didn't fall near a weekend and we are not big on missing school for frivolities. Mid-December became impossible because Nancy was swamped with business. And so on, and so on.

But then, out of the blue, I heard that a bunch of ex-Reuterites were going to descend on New York for an impromtu reunion with Art Spiegelman, the best writer Reuters ever had and an important mentor to me. He was going to New York on a routine business trip and, because he is beloved by many and in somewhat ill health, this presented his pals with an opportunity to have a party in his honor. Private room in a restaurant with a dedicated -- open -- bar.

So it was settled. We had reached critical mass. With just a day or so warning we got our acts together. We got to New York on a Sunday afternoon and would be leaving Monday night. Just like real jet setters, only the kind who drive station wagons.

And I'd get to see Arthur for the first time in maybe 10 years.

Hundreds of people showed up, some from as far away as Australia and the UK. California, Chicago, Washington DC and Virginia were represented.

There were great tributes from all the right people. Roast-like stories from times past about Art's terminal innocence ...

"Arthur, that man is hitting on you."
"What do you mean?"
"He wants to have sex with you."

... and straightforward tributes like the story of the newspaper client who, for some reason, didn't need to hear an elaborate pitch to be convinced to renew their Reuters contract.

"Why?"
"Arthur Spiegelman."

I did not get to tell my own story, but I will here.

Arthur gave me chances to write, report and edit that simply were not justified by my resume in the early 1980s for the simple reason that I had no resume. On one occasion during my schooling Arthur let me desk "Tylenol II," a pretty big story about the second time someone had doctored a bottle of the pain medication, creating a national panic.

He sat me down in the middle of a swirling newsroom and gave me scraps of wire copy and hand written notes containing potential bits of the story and he told me to write a new lead -- top to bottom -- the one, given the time of day, that would likely make it into client newspapers of anyone using our coverage. The Money Story. A High Profile Assignment.

My version, drawn from those pieces of paper, came out something like "Tylenol was being pulled off supermarket shelves for the second time in less than a decade ... (para two) Supermarkets that were pulling Tylenol off the shelves included ... " -- and I proceeded to list them.

"NO!!! NO!!! NO!!!" Arthur, standing behind me, bellowed in a voice that I had never heard from him before, an angry voice -- the only time I ever heard an angry voice from him -- at a decibel level that could be heard for miles.

I mean, the newsroom fell silent.

He pulled me from "The Money Story, High Profile Assignment" chair I had occupied for all of about three minutes, took my place in it and banged out in two-finger staccato something like "Americans from coast to coast were in a state of panic over the discovery of a tainted bottle of Tylenol, the second time in ... (para two). "Supermarkets, pharmacies and convenience stores across the nation were clearing their shelves of the popular pain medication and police were aggressively following leads as the company scrambled yet again to defend its tarnished brand."

I should have just stood there quietly, melting into the landscape, taking it all in, hoping the 200 reporters who had witnessed my humiliation had by now been distracted by their own work.

But, I had no slip of paper about any police stuff. So how the heck was I supposed to know to write that, huh?

"Art, how do you know that the police are following up on leads," I say, like Oliver Twist asking for more gruel.

"What else would they be doing?" He turns around only long enough to let me see a look of incredulity before he turns back to continue writing "my" story. After he cemented the all-important first three grafs, he permitted me to sit down again and carry on.

You just don't get kicked in the ass and then in the teeth and then offered a hand up like that anymore -- ain't it a shame?

As I left the New York party I got to say my little private thank you and goodbye to the man known as "Dr. Lead." As we embraced I told him that the tributes were nice and all but those people had no idea how important he was, how important he was to me.

And of course, Arthur's prose was perfect again. "Somebody did it for me. Now you do it for somebody else."

I should be so lucky.

Thanksgiving, Redux

2006-11-22T23:19:00.000-05:00

We got the organic phyllo only from this display. And then two Whole Foods employees told me, no pictures allowed.

Every year it is a lottery, and this year we went down to the wire deciding what to do.

It has been ages since we spent the holiday with extended family. In recent years past we've done one of three things: a blowout home-cooked-meal (whose inverse proportion to work and enjoyment is staggering); descending on friends (the reason we have fewer and fewer), or eating out, which only the truly masochistic do on big holidays.

But this year brought some new considerations.

I've been a vegan for a year -- started just after T-Day last year -- so 1/3 of the potential meat-eaters in this family would be on the sidelines on this, the high holy day of carnivorism.

Nancy is inundated with work in which I have a supporting role, so who really has the time anyway?

And then there is the fact that the kitchen is also newly spotless, and the only way to properly show respect for this rare condition is to rope it off for at least a few days. The prospect of turning it upside down so soon for one meal seems almost too painful to contemplate.

And yet, we three all wanted to make Thanksgiving Thanksgiving.

So we hemmed and we hawed. At one point the decision was to do no cooking whatsoever and go with an unprecedented "option 4" by getting takeout -- fried chicken (in the name of everything that is holy) & Indian food. In the end, even though everyone would get his or her way, nobody liked that idea. Perhaps it sounded too much like a death rows inmate's final meal request.

This morning something clicked and we decided to cook. Got everything we needed from Whole Foods, Harvest Bread Company and Safeway in a couple of hours.

I'll be taking the lead on cooking again this year, and we will have a bird. But the secret to our success will undoubtedly be that we will be modest in our plans. No impossible recipes, not too many things to make.

With any luck, we will have achieved the balance that eludes us and, from the tales one hears, most people on this unusually stressful holiday. We will be cocooned in our own home, with a sensible amount of work to do in the kitchen, free to be ourselves. And for that I give great thanks.

Working with Students

2006-10-08T23:56:00.000-05:00

Sarah Bloom at work

The Online News Association conference was great and I met a lot of very cool people yada yada yada but one thing I did was unequivocally a lot of fun: mentoring (their word, not mine), a couple of senior journalism undergrads who were part of a very impressive project to have students cover the sessions for the ONA itself. For the time being, in fact, the ONA's landing page redirects to the student's coverage of the convention, and it is all good stuff.

The program was run as it has in past years by Claudette Artwick, Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications at Washington and Lee University, but this is the first time I got involved.

My students didn't need much help. Sarah Bloom covered a panel about election coverage and Rebecca Shillenn of American University a breakout on how to make money doing enterprise journalism (or how to make money not doing enterprise journalism, as the case may be).

I was impressed with both of them and envious of their skills and professionalism.

My only question to them is: why the heck are you getting into this business?!

Getting Carded

2006-09-06T15:51:00.000-05:00

At the beginning of my career I was a news dictationist, a position somewhat akin to "copy boy" on the food chain and one which evaporated with the advent of mobile reporting equipment -- laptops and modems. But it was a great way for a punk with no skills to learn and a great place to yearn -- and yearn I did, to be crafting stories rather than transcribing them.

People took pity on me after a while and I got some paint-by-number stories and gradually more and tougher and "let's make Mikey eat it!" type assignments. I played their game and got so far into the tent that I had the audacity to ask to be included in the 1982 New York City Working Press Pass list issued by the NYPD even though I wasn't a reporter even in name. And they didn't even blink.

It was a tremendous ego boost to get one but it had very little practical value for the kind of reporting I (and Reuters New York journalists) was engaged in: press conferences, interviews, canned events. This sort of credential was for the sober-on-demand tabloid hack who fell asleep in his car to the hum of the barely-legal police band scanner hidden under the dash.

I had an NYPD pass each year from 1982 through 1989, when I left New York to run the New England Bureau in Boston, and I cannot recall a single time that I used it to do any reporting.

But it did come in handy.

Once I used it to get a cop to let me cross Seventh Avenue on Thankgiving morning, when that street was locked down tight for the impending Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I got plenty of jealous (or was it angry?) looks from spectators.

And, flashing it played a key (though in a far too circuitous route to recount here) role in my getting a first date with the woman who would become my wife, now only days short of 17 years.

Come to think of it, that's kinda harder than getting past cops and firemen anyway.

School Daze, Phase II

2006-09-03T15:49:00.000-05:00

The day after tomorrow Audrey starts middle school, which in these parts is seventh and eighth grade. No more staying in the same classroom all day long, no more little kids sharing the halls, and lots more focus on status, cliques and, perhaps most of all, personal attire.

Seventh grade is becoming an ever more distant memory for me but I think the most serious issue about clothing back then was whether wearing really worn jeans -- with tears, exposing a knee -- was acceptable. These were the hippie days and they were our slightly older role models but school was still a place where "looking nice" mattered to our parents. So it was a tug of war to look a little grungy or exactly like Beaver Cleaver.

These days the issues are, well, different.

Here are some excerpts from the dress code for my daughter's new school, provided with the orientation package (did I even get a dress code guideline in my day?)

It should be pointed out that the entering class is 12 years old:

No spaghetti straps (shirt must be worn over or under it)
Tank top straps must be at least 1-1/2 inches wide
No tube tops
No "see-through" tops (without a second shirt)
No low cut "guy" tank tops or "muscle shirts"
No midriffs-belly shirts
No tops with backs exposed
No underwear visible
Shorts and skirts -- no more than 6" above the top of the knee
Pants should be secured at the waist/hips with pant legs pulled down
All pants should be worn in such away so that bare skin is not exposed

I guess the policy on piercings and tats are still be worked out.

I'm not going to embarrass myself further by making silly arguments about VH1 and video games and Bravo being the root of all evil. Things change, parents are always outraged or at least queasy about many of the choices their children make.

But it sure does seem that these particular things are happening earlier and earlier in life.

The Smartest Guy in the Room

2006-07-02T15:47:00.000-05:00

It's Sunday, usually the slowest day of the week anyway. But this is the Sunday before July 4, which means that land speed record pizza delivery times are possible, paying extra for two-day shipping on anything ordered today is probably a mistake and taking a little time to heed some advice you are about to give someone else is a good idea.

It isn't so much advice as a request -- nay, plea. And I am not the first to make it. But maybe seconding a motion will create a groundswell that even a Sherman can't brush off.

Here it is: we need to get Samer blogging again, and I am returning from a lazy blogging break to make my case. Samer abruptly stopped sharing his thoughts about his life and the extraordinarily wide variety of subjects about which he is knowledgeable in May of 2005 -- there is one post after that, but it is clearly half-hearted. Officially, the story is that blogging is hard, and time-consuming, which can be true. Unfortunately a lot of people who really shouldn't be allowed near a keyboard and an Internet connection do somehow manage to find the time, filling the Internet with a shrill, self-involved cacophony that, by its sheer volume and, in my view, little else, has media companies quaking in their boots. But that is a subject for another time.

When pressed, Samer will say the despair he still feels from a company restructuring which found me and all of his co-workers without chairs when the music stopped, the event which was the subject of his penultimate blog entry, contributed mightily to his hiatus. He has also said that of all the things he might write about, he could think of nothing that was not already being done better. This is, of course, false modesty and not the Guinness talking.

One of the ironies of my crusade is that I would moan -- and I mean audibly -- at the subject of blogging five or six years ago. I vowed I wouldn't read them and -- heaven forbid -- would never bother trying to create and maintain one as perhaps the least worthy member of the human race to opine. This is still true, and my own extremely humble (i.e., pointless) web site is billed as a blog-free zone with thoughts only from truly wise people.

When Samer, as ever on the cutting edge, would tell me I should be taking this seriously because the world was changing again 17 minutes since the last paradigm shift I would do my Luddite routine (not really a routine, I guess) and he would roll his eyes and gracefully swivel his chair away from me and back to the screen. This is something else Samer does very well that I can actually take credit for, his perfection of that move coming as it did from frequent practice at my expense.

Samer used to work for me, but only in the most literal sense of the word. The truth is that he was the man behind the curtain. I came to be the Salieri to his Mozart -- smart enough, but just, to recognize the raw genius in him that others perhaps did not always see, but not nearly enough to compete with it. Of course, Samer is a much more civilized person than Wolfgang Amadeus and I have no intention of ending up in an asylum for his murder.

No, Samer must live, go forth and multipy. He must help tilt the balance of sanity in what is (sigh) widely referred to as "the blogosphere." He must participate, if only to lend credence to his argument that blogging should be seen as an important force of nature.

Don't get me wrong. Samer is neither shy nor disconnected. I ask him things via IM at strange hours and he a) is there b) knows the answer and c) explains it patiently. He has recently become an active Flicker-ista, revealing yet another of his many talents. But it isn't the same. The world needs the words.

So, this is start of my campaign to get Samer back in print (a phrase that will surely date me):

My Top 10 reasons that Samer should resume blogging:

10. Whenever Samer tells me about beer I am already drunk and remember nothing.
9. Iceland's tourist industry depends on it.
8. I still have unused Samerfest tickets.
7. It turns out that there actually aren't enough Apple blogs -- someone said so on digg.
6. I am this close to understanding climatography
5. If Dan Kim can do it ...
4. If Brian Green can do it ...
3. If I can do it ...
2. I'm sick and tired of having to ask him to explain everything to me.

And the number-one reason Samer should resume blogging:
1. Redheads dig guys who blog -- I'm just sayin'

Why I will never buy anything from Martha Stewart again

2006-03-25T16:47:00.000-05:00

a little while ago I wrote about one of the best customer service experiences I've ever had. This is about one of the worst.

more than a year ago Nancy purchased a gift subscription to Martha Stewart living magazine in a burst of generosity towards a co-worker who quickly revealed herself to be undeserving. So Nan canceled the subscription and was told she'd be cut a check in a few weeks.

we called from time to time over the past year, a total of four times, being assured that a check was cut and was on its way. But today we learned that Martha Stewart had mistakenly sent the refund check to the giftee, and that she had cashed it. No problem, you're thinking, because mso will just cut a new check and send to my wife and will eat the $19.95 one of its employees squandered by paying off the wrong person.

but no.

I was told in no uncertain terms, by two front-line customer service reps in two divisions, that since a check had been issued and cashed, there was nothing mso could do. When I told the second rep, who had checked with her supervisor, that this was ridiculous and demanded to speak to the supervisor, she said she'd take my phone number. When I insisted on speaking to someone else now, I was put on hold mid sentence.

And this was not the normal hold -- no, not the kind with music that sounds vaguely familiar in a sugary kind of way, butchered arrangements of often great popular tunes that Michael Jackson probably owns and sold to the lowest bidder to make ends meet, but absolute, dead, silence. Not a peep or a beep. Hold from hell for irate customers, a noise vacuum inviting self-doubts about whether the line is even still connected, challenging me to blink first by hanging up and giving up.

A half-hour later, while I made other calls on another cell phone to jinx mso into returning to our conversation, a new voice did pierce the silence. I asked if Mike was a supervisor, knowing full well he wasn't. I refused to begin telling him original details until he assured me that he could address my predicament, otherwise I'm not wasting my time with another flunky.

Mike is pleasant and unrattled and seems to have a pulse, so I go along with him. I am put on hold for two brief periods. Music to soothe the savage breast plays now. He checks on me, assures me that he is moving the ball upfield.

After my final five minutes of waiting mike comes back and with mild pride says the credit dept will look into the matter. 'Unfortunately, they aren't open on Saturday' and would I like to leave a number so they can get back to me on Monday or would I just like to call back. 'I'll double my chances and give you a number,' I tell him.

Of course, he says, if I don't hear back then by Monday or maybe Wednesday at the latest by all means 'feel free' to call later in the week. Why, thank you, I think.

So, Mike, I still have a question. I'm really no better off than I was a hour and a half ago, am I? I'm still waiting for dispensation from strangers to whom I can't talk to directly but who will decide on some mysterious basis whether I should get my money back even though we all agree that mso sent my money to the wrong person?

'No, you are a bit better off,' Mike says calmly. 'At least it's in the right department now, and I did note that you were 'irate'.'

I lay it on thick at the end of the call, telling Mike that it must seem obvious to him that this is the most idiotic customer service posture imaginable, putting me through this for about the price of one share of mso stock. I point out the demographic of my zip code, which has one of the highest household incomes in the country, and that 'until five minutes ago' my wife was a martha stewart living magazine subscriber.

I tell him I hope that this conversation had actually been recorded 'for quality assurance' (mike: 'most of them are') because some highly-paid consultant would really want to use this in a workshop with mso customer service management about exactly what not to do.

In all, this takes nearly 90 minutes, and the saga isn't over. More than once it was suggested to me that I could maybe get the money back from the person who got it. a) I can't, b) it wasn't my mistake, so I shouldn't have to and c) I am not martha stewart's collection agency, I say. You are free to pursue the giftee in small claims court if you so desire, I say.

So, we'll see. I'm not sure if the main lesson here is that big is bad and small is more capable of being good or whether there are nuances of corporate culture beyond my understanding that are to blame. My general experience has been very good with large service companies and horrible with large retailers, one of whom had no customer service support for the European cell phone I had purchased and actually blocked calls from the U.S. to its European support telephone numbers.

But when it comes to missing the forest for the trees, Martha Stewart bakes the cake. It is one thing for a company to forbid a customer to make an international phone call at his own expense for help on a product he really shouldn't have but quite another to throw money out of a window and claim a debt has been settled in full. And it is interesting that the perception of Martha Stewart is that she is arrogant and imperious -- not knowing her, I don't know whether this is true or not, but it is exactly how I would describe my treatment at her company's hands.

I should have been prepared for this lunacy. A few years ago my mother-in-law had to send back a Martha Stewart catalogue product that was not as advertised and asked that the cost of return shipping be born by the company. Many mail order retailers do this and my mother in law could probably support a small town on what she spends buying things over the phone. 'Oh, Martha Stewart doesn't do that,' said the rep, and that, as they say, was that.

Forget missing the forest. Maybe this one is more like the apple not falling far from the tree.

there's no business like it

2006-02-09T16:45:00.000-05:00

i've begun implementing my secret plan to humiliate myself in public (more, i mean) by wheedling my way into the reston community players as a volunteer carpenter. my goal, of course, is not only to achieve serene fulfillment in the creation of the perfect piano stand but rather to be "discovered" and give my family and what few friends i have left more reason to be embarrassed to know me.

but i don't care.

while we've always been aware of the rcp in our nine years in reston it has only been in the last year, sadly, that we have attended performances. this even though we realize community theater is precious and we are lucky to have a troupe in our own little town. a company, mind you, which, at 39 years, is nearly as old as the town itself.

the catalyst to attending for the first time was the daughter of friends, who has been cast in the past three rcp productions, including "beauty and the beast," nominated for 25 (!) washington area theatre community honors, in which she shared "chip" duties with another young thespian. previously she had done a turn in "honk" and most recently in "the crucible", which just ended its run.

there is no chance that even i have the gall to audition for a musical, although my only tread of the boards was as captain von trapp in the 1969 production of "the sound of music"* (*at public school 149 in new york city, when i was in the sixth grade) but the next rcp production that hasn't been cast yet is the british farce "run for your wife."

perfect. i used to work for reuters, and my acting ambitions are farcical. it's a sign.

of course, i may not muster sufficient courage, although that's why god invented alcohol. and there is certainly no reason to believe that i'd be cast for anything, including "potted plant (stage left)." but every single person i've met so far that is associated with the rcp is exactly as i would have expected and hoped, and it is way fun to be involved in community theater -- even if my destiny is merely to perfect the technique of engineering ersatz spinning plates.

a death on the block

2006-02-02T16:44:00.000-05:00

andy at the fairfax rod & gun club, may 1999

our friend and neighbor andy took his life this week. it's anybody's guess if somebody saw it coming but it couldn't have exactly taken anyone who knew him a little more than slightly by surprise. not so very long ago andy came close to doing the same thing in the same way. this time nothing got into the way.

andy, a former deputy sherrif and prosecutor, private investigator, sailor, world traveler, all-round lover of life, and, apparently, unrepentant alcoholic, committed suicide in a somewhat public way, by shooting himself in his backyard after, but certainly not because of, an argument with the woman in his life. five years ago he threatened to take his life in his backyard, gun in hand, pointed inward, after, but certainly not because of, an argument with his then wife.

so when a neighbor called us this past monday night to tell us what had happened down our cul-de-sac, where a few hour earlier i had noticed some emergency vehicles parked and idling with no particular sense of urgency, i cannot say that i was as shocked as i was saddened. i hadn't been home at the fatal moment but my wife was sure she had heard a gunshot as she stood by an open window.

this time andy was not spontaneous, as he had been in his earlier attempt, leaving a note, i am told. but he did not betray his intentions or torment to the world. over the previous weekend he had removed leaves from his property, filling what looked like two dozen 30-gallon bags for pickup. i saw him twice earlier in the day, as he zipped by our house in one of his two saabs, tooting his horn and waving as he always did.

i do not spend too much time in the front of our house but in our mayberry-like community someone with whom you are happy to exchange a few words always seems to be passing by with a dog or a child, and if driving stops in the middle of the road oblivious to any cars which may follow, and when another does come down the street it merely diverts with no honks because that's the way it's done around here, as you lean on an open passenger window chatting with the driver, engine running, like it was the back fence. andy was often coming or going in his car, but he never stopped. he always looked very much on a mission.

i had played a small roll in andy's earlier drama. that time, law enforcement officers toting shotguns walked down our quiet street, telling some residents to stay indoors for their own safety. by chance i called andy's house, thinking i could get an account from someone close to the action beyond my view. andy's then wife answered the phone and her trembling voice made clear she was not just a witness but a principal. i went to their house, found another neighbor already there, and he and i stayed for a few hours as police consoled and counseled her and as she made a difficult decision to commit andy for at least that evening and an easier one to insist that andy's guns be removed from the house, something the police, even under those circumstances, could not themselves see to.

in virginia, there is no restriction on gun ownership for anyone who has never been convicted of a crime, or has never been involuntarily committed to a mental institution, or has never been subject to a restraining order. residents can buy virtually any kind of non-automatic gun, rifle or shotgun every thirty days. in some counties there is no waiting period if you go to a dealer who can make an instant "brady" background check. it is also easy to qualify for a permit to carry a concealed gun in public by showing mininmal shooting proficiency, filling out some forms, wating at least 45 days and making two trips to court.

of course -- i do appreciate the irony -- no permit, training or registration is required to openly carry a handgun. in almost every corner of virginia it is perfectly legal for anyone who is at least 21 years old to strap iron on the hip. and there is also no restriction or accounting of what a homeowner can possess and keep in one's home. people don't exactly broadcast gun possession -- it makes one both a target and a threat -- but i know that, besides me, there were at least two other households on this small block where residents keep or kept handguns in their houses.

because part of my relationship with andy involved the fact that we both owned guns and went shooting at his exclusive outdoor range once, his then wife, adament that she would not live in a house with andy and guns anymore, gave him an ultimatum: i would "hold" his collection indefinitely, or she would leave. i think andy agreed because he did not want his marriage to dissolve, although it did end not long thereafter. and then he asked for them back.

nancy an i attended a memorial today at which, according to another friend, mourners were to talk about "crazy andy" -- crazy, in this context, being neither ironic, literal or pejorative. there were many friends and family and colleagues who had many touching memories. but i was mostly moved by the several grown children and young adults whom andy had mentored and loved and in some cases even taken in as their parents went through an ugly divorce, all of whom considered him a surrogate or second father and pivotal in their lives, and whom he has now abandoned.

andy's former wife and last girlfriend sat together and embraced often during the ceremony. they are friends and see each other regularly and that is how life should be for those who decide, even every day if necessary, that life is worth living. if andy blamed anyone but himself for his demons (i doubt it), i think he would have been wrong. he pulled the trigger, for better or for worse. he bailed, leaving others to feel pain and guilt, if they so choose, in addition to the sadness one might have for another person's despair or weakness or for the senseless waste. i hope no one feels it necessary to enable andy posthumously by accepting any culpability for his action.

i will remember andy as a curious, intense guy who seemed to like himself way too much to do what he did. but, there you go.

good, old-fashioneed service

2006-01-26T16:42:00.000-05:00

Isabella (C) and Nancy

A few years ago I picked up a semi-commercial espresso machine that my boss’s boss’s boss mercilessly taunted me into buying. He had an Isomac Millennium -- he named it "Milly", which was affected and beyond eccentric, created awkward silences by referring to his espresso machine as his mistress and did a lot of posting on coffeegeek.com.

Naturally everything your boss’s boss’s boss says, thinks or does is interesting and when he is amusing he is "really" funny but my wife and I actually are coffee lovers and so I was intrigued by the notion of kicking it up a notch, coffee-wise. Over the years we had bought crappy consumer machines for around $100, worthless battery-powered frothing devices and even a stove-top esspresso pot which exploded in our tiny SoHo apartment, scaring the cats (and us) and causing no real collateral damage but curtailing the home-espresso-machine debate for a few years.

Boss man could sense weakness (that's how you get to be boss man) and decided to make me his hobby. He’d walk past me in a hallway, no eye contact, deadpan, pretending not to know I was there and then as we passed he would whisper, ‘Did you get it yet?’). I'd get an e-mail at an odd hour from his blackberry with the subject line "Did you get it yet?". IMs from the ivory tower would appear. "Did you get it yet?!"

I figured joining the coffee geek club would be a good career move, and took the leap. it was a fairly tough decision as these things go because of the value proposition. I have had an easier time closing on houses and cars. I mean, $1,500 is a lot of money for A CUP OF COFFEE. if the value proposition makes no sense I will not pull the trigger, no matter what the amount involved. I once ruminated for more than a decade before parting with $100 to buy a dorm-sized refrigerator. I feared it would seem unforgivably excessive and reveal to the world my lethargic and consumptive lifestyle and why should I not have to fumble my way downstairs to the kitchen for a cold drink in the middle of the night like my parents and their parents before them had to? (Of course the lid is off now and we also have a water cooler in our closet and a second small fridge in the basement.)

But go an order of magnitude up in price and things get more complicated. My Isomac Rituale (I got a bit of revenge on boss man by getting a newer, slightly more advanced model) and virtually-mandatory high-end grinder/doser Mazzer Mini (just like boss man) set me back 10 times the first fridge and cooler. But I was able to justify my spendthrift ways (sort of) by cutting way back on trips to Starbucks et al. Not spending an estimated $50 a month as a family for take-out lattes and hot chocolates would pay for my replacement extravagance in about three years, I reasoned, just as I had rationalized years before that going to Starbucks wasn't extravagent because I had made so much on Starbucks stock.

Apparently aversion to the cost of becoming your own barrista is a common hurdle for first-time buyers because the company from whom I bought what we quickly named Isabella (naming your machine, i have come to realize, is neither affected nor eccentric) had a no-return policy, and specified “buyer’s remorse” as the reason all sales were final. Not a great sign. But it all worked out. We welcomed Isabella into our home and she has been the perfect guest.

Until, that is, a few weeks ago.

Isabella stopped working, or at least, stopped working consistently. She would fire up and stay stoked for a while, but then decide to shut down. Finally, she would not start at all. Like any high-tech repair that would involve original packing and freight shipping I dreaded the prospect of dealing with any part of it.

When is the last time you recall dealing with any company whose customer service rocked? I called the store where I had bought Isabella, Chris Coffee, and they answered on one ring. I told them I had a support question, they asked me the model, patched me through and the technician answered on one ring. He put aside what he was doing, walked me through some disassembly, asked me to get some electrical readings and call back (again, two rings to his desk) and then told me the part I needed. It is on its way.

There is nothing more important than your reputation, the world’s impression of you. It can buy you eternal grace and forgiveness of almost anything. Your product may not be the market leader, or you may charge more than the competition, but if people like working with you, you win. And that goes for the people who represent you; often the least-paid employees of a company face the public and if they don’t do you proud, you lose. Conversely, they can be your best ambassadors: my familiy frequented a local restaurant whose food was for years mediocre at best (it has become quite good) only because every server there treated us like returning family.

So, Isabella will soon be back on line, and I can’t imagine doing business with anyone other than Chris Coffee for my espresso needs. If Isabella weren’t so jealous, perhaps an upgrade … ?

i'm sorry (if i must be)

2006-01-13T16:40:00.000-05:00

On slippery slope, Bode Miller apologizes - Sports - International Herald Tribune

When I was a kid and some altercation with another kid was getting a little out of hand some well-meaning adult would always step in and make one of us, or both, apologize. “Tell Billy you’re sorry, John,” would be the usual refrain, delivered lyrically, as if sing-song would add power to the command.

I’d always comply -– no other way to get rid of the narc and prevent escalation to the court of mommy and daddy -- but it was not sincere, expressed in the most grudging way possible. And if “Billy” was foolish enough to gloat when the adult left I would retract it with a new dose of pain. “I didn’t mean it, stupid!” I’d say, delivered lyrically, knowing sing-song would rub salt into the wound.

I still find myself occasionally reluctant to apologize for something that I should be sorry for, still wrestling that old instinct to the mat before doing the right thing. I don’t have much to apologize for these days, fortunately, but I am reminded of this sort of evasiveness very often. Apparently we all had the same experiences growing up because public people don’t seem capable of apologizing directly for bad behavior and dumb remarks and never seem to do so without pressure from, well, a grownup.

An apology is: “I was wrong.” An apology isn’t: “I’m sorry, if anybody was offended by my [words][deeds][what my words/deeds were interpreted to mean].”

Bode miller is the latest practitioner of the art of the non-apology. In an apparently true statement on “60 Minutes”, the reigning overall World Cup champion said he had raced drunk. Under pressure he issued a statement, because his comments had “caused a lot of confusion and pain” for his team “and even just family and friends who have supported me, who I think are subject to only what the media puts out in America.”

Some inner circle. They only know what they read about their homey Bode in the newspaper.

“And because of the way I made those comments in the 60 Minutes interview it caused a lot of confusion and pain for all those people and obviously that’s nothing I want to do so firstly I’d like to apologize to them,” Bode said.

So, he’s sorry for outing himself about being guilty of RUI? For letting the world know what his friends and family and team might have known all along and kept silent about for his benefit?

An apology is: “I’m sorry for drinking on the job. It is especially poor behavior for an elite athlete. I have set a terrible example, and I’m sure my bad behavior has contributed to poor performances that let my teammates and fans down.”

Oh yeah -- I’m sorry for wasting your time with this diatribe. I mean it -- really.

santa, science and the holidays

2006-01-03T16:39:00.000-05:00

my favorite "season" comes to an end today with the dismantling and storage for another year of our outside christmas decorations. for us the season begins back in october, with halloween -- not my favorite holiday but a fav of my wife and daughter who, at 12, is developing new takes on, well, just about everything (more on this later).

our spirits begin lifting in earnest as october begins, as we anticipate the next three lighthearted months. after halloween passes, and everyone is officially sick of whatever remains of "our" candy, we stay on an upwardly spiralling emotional trajectory through thanksgiving, no matter how we choose to celebrate it, which is followed a week later by my daughter's birthday, and then christmas.

by new year's (a sort of phoney holiday, i have decided, although not quite as bogus as groundhog day) i am not so much weary from all the work that has been associated with holidays as i am irrationally apprehensive about what is to come, or just let down that it will be three quarters of a year before the fun begins again.

and now the next few seasons will be transitional, i think, since my daughter is far from the wide-eyed believer of all manner of things that she was, for far too short a time, only yesterday. she tried to find a middle ground for halloween, at first declaring that she would not wear a costume -- but would go out and collect candy, studiously not describing this activity as "trick or treating". she then blinked, i think after gaining consensus with her two best friends, and the three set out in disguise (audrey as gogo yubari from "kill bill volume i") with dads in tow, but at a respectful distance.

for these next few years, the better to establish her credentials as a adult, audrey will cease to believe in Santa, returning to the fold after only a few soulless years, i hope, as i did after my skeptical, uncomfortable and often angry teens.

nancy and i have already outed ourselves as the handmaidens of the easter bunny, a fiction audrey discovered was not entirely as we had described when i forgot to lock a door and she saw several dozen plastic eggs and bags of candy on our bed a few years ago. she herself scientifically proved the non-existence of the tooth fairy a couple of years ago by intentionally not telling us that she had lost a tooth before putting it, in secret, under her pillow and discovering the next morning -- eureka! -- that nothing had been exchanged for it as she slept. quod est demonstratum: the tooth fairy depends on parental notification.

but santa, like god, is another matter, beyond the reach of science. while i count myself as a defender of this faith i will not be evangelical not just because that isn't my style but because i don't have to be.

audrey will see the truth of the matter for herself when the time comes, or she will not. that is the way of the world.

all for one

2006-01-02T16:38:00.000-05:00

so the fam has decided to join me in vegan-ville, each for their own reasons. my wife, nancy, has been a vegan and a vegetarian and has always been a wiser eater than i, light years ahead of nearly everyone on nitrites, trans-fat, etc. my daughter, who recently turned 12, finds it appealing i think because there is a certain cachet about it just now -- there are hip eco undertones, with so many pop icons living the veg lifestyle (or at least saying they do). or perhaps i sell her short.

but as a family of vegans it will be the first time in living memory (sorry for the hackneyed journo phrase, but i am a hackneyed journo and am using it exactly as intended: to gloss over the fact i don't know the fact and am too lazy to ascertain it) that we will all be eating from the same trough. For the previous two years, give or take, i had been an atkins adherent, which didn't exactly exclude my wife and daughter but meant i had to be picky in other ways, and avoid such communal food as bread and pasta. when my wife was a pure veg a few years ago, she was the odd one out.

so now we are potentially in sync and, since i am mr. mom at the moment, will happily bear the lion's share (can vegans use that metaphor? this one, not a fanatic, certainly can) of meal prep.

the nokia 770

2005-12-28T16:38:00.000-05:00

my big gift to myself this season was the nokia 770, a linux-based tablet that is the size of two decks of cards and weighs about 8 ounces. this device is, among other things, proof that there space for internet appliances if the size and price is right. this isn't really a computer, but a sleek web-surfing and emailing tool.

The pros:

intuitive virtual keyboard, which appears whenever you tap into any text-entry field. very extensive character library. the cons of this pro: the implementation of "guessing" the word after the first few letters shrinks the space key so that i often chose a wrong word instead of a space.
the rss reader. this is actually the nerve center of this device, since any rss feed -- news, your gmail box, flickr streams, blogs -- can be added. the most recent eight items display on the home screen, and tapping jumps to the reader, so the browser isn't invoked at all as a matter of course, which speeds things up.
the email client, which is configurable to non-standard ports and employs various security standards. it will import a contacts file. the con of this pro: it is not easy to delete mails because it is not easy to select them. "select all" requires three keystrokes, and it isn't possible to select a single email, or multiples but not all, by tapping on the mails themselves. Then again, gMail (and I presume other web-interfaces mail services) works just fine in the browser.
gaim works.
the resolution of the screen is really quite breathtaking.
a nice implementation of "right-click" by holding down the sylus to the page
bluetooth, which makes dial-up possible (and with 3g rolling out that means broadband virtually everywhere)
even the lowest brightness setting is more than enough.

The cons:

very little memory. a "busy" web page will sometimes raise a "memory low" message even if the browser is the only app open.
fairly slow switching between programs.
on mine, anyway, it loses connectivity often and for no apparent reason. it does, however, reconnect seamlessly and without any pesters.
some have complained that there is no ebook reader included. the device itself, given the generous, bright, hi-res screen, probably does lend itself to reading.
the left nav button is very close to the edge of the inverted cover, making it hard for people without delicate digits to use it.
on a web page, the nav buttons jump from embedded link to embedded link and thus cannot be used for scrolling; the only way to scroll is to use two hands.

this device has caused the pendulum to swing back for me: i went from three devices at one time (palm, phone, blackberry) to deciding that the madness had to stop and it had to be one (cellphone, on as many steroids as possible) and now back to two. While internet activity is widely available on phones it will never be a satisfying experience at least because the screens must be hoplessly small.

while pricey -- as an early adopter i didn't blink at the nearly $400 cost, including state tax -- the prospect of freeloading wifi prompted me to give up t-mobile's pricey vpn service, which means that the nokia 770 will pay for itself -- in a couple of years :)

go vegan!

2005-12-02T16:37:00.000-05:00

So I’ve decided to go vegan. I’ve been considering it for a little while but made the final decision while at Costco where I picked up a few (ahem) things, later leavened by a few more essentials at Whole Foods.

I’m switching gears in a weight-loss diet program that I have been fairly faithful to for about two years – 90% compliance I would estimate, with periods of a few days to few weeks of “bad” behavior, usually around holidays, birthdays, the occasional night out, that sort of thing.

I have been an Atkins adherent, and that approach has been very good to me: I lost 60 pounds (about 18% BW) and have kept it mostly off. During my most recent slacker period, though, I put back on 20 pounds and have been chipping away at that.

But it has been slower going and I think this is for at least a couple of reasons: while I still exercise regularly and frequently (running, cycling, yoga, strength) I’m doing somewhat less than when I commuted by bicycle to work every day (45 miles round trip). Using the liberal end of the running vs. cycling conversion rule of thumb, I’d have to run more than 50 miles a week to equal that in cardio, and I don’t -- 20-25 miles is my average.

My other theory is that there are diminished returns for a diet like Atkins. You just can’t do it for very long (health concerns notwithstanding) and have a consistently rapid weight loss – or so it would seem. Or maybe it was just too many beers (even though they tend to be Michelob Ultras).

So I am going to the other end of the spectrum, and I am very excited about it: low-fat vegan cuts out all meat and dairy and the latter, I think, is going to make a huge difference in weight loss and body shape. The fact is that most of the foods I really like I could not consume on Atkins. While I like meat and fish I don’t live for it really, and alternatively feel very deprived if I cannot have bread and pasta and rice and potatoes – all the high-carb-content foods Atkins forbids.

Another benefit of this is that carbs are what I really need most for workouts, so I’ll be paying close attention to any differences to my endurance as I introduce what could be large quantities of carbs. I’ll have to have doppio espressos instead of breve cappuccinos, but I can handle that. But I can have fruit with abandon again and vegetables I could not previously have, like corn and peas.

Thanksgiving, Again ...

2005-11-22T16:36:00.000-05:00

We are cooking this year for a change and are having what should be an odd mix of the traditional and some Chinese creations from one of Nancy's friends. We seldom cook for Thanksgiving because, frankly, it is more trouble than it is worth since preparation always takes 10 times as much time as enjoyment. We always vow, "Never again!" but weaken after a two or three years since every variation on the celebratory theme has very tiresome flaws.

We rotate between:

eating out (upside: no preparation and no cleanup, downside: no leftovers);
quasi-mooching off friends (upside: limited culinary responsibility and no cleanup, downside: audience participation in another family's holiday dramas; limited leftovers) and
cooking at home, with or without guests (upside: plenty of leftovers; limitless alcohol intake; no special attire required [i.e., pants optional, possibly even with certain guests];

downsides:

preparation must begin promptly two weeks after the previous Thanksgiving and yet everything must be cooked in the two hours before mealtime;
'The Meal" actually lasts only about 20 minutes since preparers are too tired and too drunk to last any longer and thus is the dictionary definition of anti-climax;
cleanup requires help from the Army Corps of Engineers).

more running self-absorbtion

2005-11-04T16:34:00.000-05:00

A friend completed the 30th Marine Corps Marathon and I am so proud of her!

For myself, running at least four times a week has become the norm but my stamina is strangely inconsistent. I can generally do 5-8 miles now, which is much more than twice my best only a few months ago, and have done 12 miles and even a 21-mile near marathon.

But there are days when I can barely do three or four miles and I can't figure out what the factors are: sleep, nutrition ???
(the picture is the halfway point of my 21-mile run)

two over easy, and then eggs benedict

2005-10-03T15:33:00.000-05:00

last week was pretty much a wash running-wise, though I did do a nice bike ride (22 miles rt) which I haven’t done for a while. when i lay off the running for more than a few days it not only seems harder to get started again, it actually is harder to maintain the level i come to expect from myself. If I can do five or so miles a few times a week and then do no running at all for several days, three miles then seems tougher—that sort of thing.

So after one of my no-excuse-for-it four-day hiatuses I ran 3.5 miles on two successive days last week, instead of my usual 5. I didn’t cry for my mommy but i didn’t exactly try to extend either. Then the bike ride and two days off (darn weekend. gotta get up earlier) and on a monday I got back into my favorite motivating routine: i hitch a ride with my wife to her work, which is five miles from where we live, and let her dump me on the side of the road (dramatic emphasis added). gotta get home, right? this always works and while the prospect of really having no recourse sometimes fills me with a sense of foreboding i never regret having done it.

on this particular monday i was feeling stronger than usual and when i reached that fork in the road where I leave the trail and branch home i had a forest gump moment. i had got this far, so maybe i’d just keep going.

ok, i didn’t reach the pacific but i did get to the next town, another 4+ miles. i stopped there to get some water (i picked this day not to carry any?) & pee & sit & stretch and in 15 minutes i turned around. gotta get home, right?

I had never done more than 6 miles before, and today i did 12.