I work in the Bishop Ranch Office Megaplex. It is an enchanted dominion of beige and white office buildings, stretching two miles through the heart of San Ramon, CA. Our own building has a variation on a theme of steel and glass and fountains with abstract steel sculpture. We have a suite on one of the five stories, my private office has a view of Mount Diablo, and any time I pace the walkways around the open inner court I can spy somewhere the lady assigned to keep our spotless shiny building clean, dusting a steel handrail or some other task critical to structural shinyness.

It is like something out of Star Trek. We even have aliens: smaller, browner Indians from somewhere deep inside Mexico, who are always outdoors, somewhere around the complex, planting flowers, fixing the fountains, replacing shrubbery with other shrubbery. I’m told that every few months the plants in the lobby are replaced with other plants. Some plants are plastic, some plants are organic. All the plants share a common destiny: they will only stay a while in our lobby, before moving on, probably to another lobby.

When I started here in November they had opened a new cafe in our local complex, which was replacing the cafe that had been there previously. This cafe is called the Lost Ladle, and I have bought many morning pastries and lunch time sandwiches there. Good quality, good value, and some friendly faces. I’m told that it was better than the cafe that was there before.

This morning my pastry was half price. Today is their last day. In a couple of weeks, a new cafe, the Cactus Cafe, will open in its place. Rotated out of the complex, some Alliterative Alternative, to keep my own race of pasty-faced desk jockeys from becoming too complacent or bored with our office environment. Or something like that. I suspect the space is contracted out and whomever is there is often underbid. Anyway, for better or for worse, it shakes up my view of my little planet.

This is how I used to think, back around the first time Bush had become president. And I think that if these things are to happen then I am in a better position to engage them . . . a little more patience, a lot more experience, and with Yayoi, I hope, more inclined toward stability. Here’s to the next round!

The URLs for this are:

http://dannyman.toldme.com/category/general/

And, if you are in to RSS feeds:

http://dannyman.toldme.com/category/general/rss2/

Love,
-danny

I got a good deal on Southwest Airlines for a one-way flight. Unfortunately, Southwest doesn’t fly to San Francisco, so I booked for San Jose. When I got to the airport, I tried the automated check-in thingy: credit card … okay … flight number? Gee, well, I have that … okay … confirmation code?

Look, silly computer, if you know my name and my flight number, what need have you of a string of random digits?

Fortunately, the human-operated line was nearly nil. I told the lady I was going to San Francisco. “You mean Oakland?” “Oh yeah, San Jose . . . you guys fly to Oakland?” Given that I no longer live in Silicon Valley, and that Oakland has a mediocre shuttle bus connection to BART, this is now slightly less asstastic for me than San Jose, which has a free shuttle bus to Caltrain, which can sometimes get you to BART, on the rare hours that it is running, or the VTA, which can very slowly transport you to a mile hike to the Fremont BART. Well, I could catch a cab to the Fremont BART. What, fifteen miles? Figure $20? $30? Well, I saved $70 by not flying through SFO, so it works out . . .

I went to the ID check to get to the terminal. The lady told me to get in the left lane. She motioned to the far left lane, where people were exiting the terminal. Since this was clearly not a security line, I got in the left-most security line, and very quickly and efficiently got myself scanned. I’m very good at this. And I was waiting for some time at the head of boarding group B to grab a nice seat on the plane.

When it was time to board the plane, I stuck my ticket under the scanner, and the guy said that wasn’t it, did I have the extra paperwork they gave me at Security? Eh? I pulled out the ticket sleeve with my baggage tag. No, you see, I had been selected for extra screening . . . they should have done that at the security check point . . . we helped delay the flight another half hour which was how long before the the TSA managed to finally send a jovial fat man and his sidekick down to the gate to wand me down and paw through my bag while everyone else waited on the plane. To be fair, we had to wait for a flight attendant to show, and there was a couple that bailed at the very last minute when they realized they had left their keys in the rental car. At long last I found my way to the very rear rear of the full plane. But at our touchdown in Vegas I got to move forward and secure a vast expanse of leg room in an exit row.

An announcement came over the PA. “If you look out to the right,” we all turned to gaze at The Strip, “you can wave goodbye to your paycheck.”

Now, back to the question of getting home from the airport. Caltrain doesn’t run past, oh, 6PM on Sundays. BART runs until just past midnight, but there’s no BART in San Jose. And the VTA . . . well, we got in about 11PM, so I wasn’t going to wait for the slow-ass light rail plus bus connection plus possible hiking in to Fremont to catch the BART. I grabbed a cab.

The cabs in San Jose are $.25 per 1/10 of a mile. Or, $2.50 per mile, or $25.00 for ten miles, or, with enough twists and turns to get out of the airport, and the BART being some miles off the highway still, a modest $50.25! I paid the nice cab driver a handsome fare, and figured that if nothing else this made his holiday a bit merrier. I grinned at the thought of paying perhaps $100 if the BART weren’t running and he had to go to Walnut Creek. Yuck!

I could have rented a car for less than $40, but then I would have had to return it.

BART was, of course, awesome. The train waited to pull away at Fremont, and then a timed transfer to the Baypointe in Oakland, and all for somewhere around $5.

Next time I fly Oakland, and if for some reason I’m doing San Jose, it better be during the day when I can grab Caltrain, or else I will bribe a South Bay friend with dinner if I have to.

I got home late, to find Newsweek rambling about “Seeing Purple” as if Barack Obama would be our next Preident. At the apartment door was an obstruction — a silvery balloon that said “It’s a Girl” hanging above a bouquet. Did I have the wrong apartment? No, this is me. And the bouquet was addressed to the same number, but the name of a probably former tenant. The key let me in to the same bleak lodgings I had left last Wednesday. Apparently, somebody had a baby, and received flowers about it last Wednesday from some management company. There was no contact information to report the error, and it has been a week and I’m sure the new Mom has bigger concerns than some misaddressed bouquet, so I graciously gave the flowers refuge.

This morning, it was raining outside. Serious, runny rainy, not the winter drizzle that is all over Walnut Creek many other winter mornings. I had something of a cold, and did not want to walk around in the rain, with a sore shoulder-back thing . . . but I steeled myself, and slept in a bit . . . I got up and brushed my teeth and felt none-too-good, called in sick, and slept until noon. I still have some sneezes and a little bit of neck pain, but the extra day has done me good.

This afternoon, I took a long lunch at the coffee shop, a sandwich and orange juice, chased later by a mocha. I checked in with work via IRC. (Yes, yes, we are a geek company.) I wandered off to Safeway and bought a whole bunch of Orange Juice on sale, along with walnuts, apples, and bananas. Then over to Target, where I picked up a floor lamp with enough illuminative power so that the home office, while it is now dark out, is a sufficiently well-lit place to sit and do computer stuff. Bleakness reduced. And I have been tidying up, now that there is enough light to reveal the need for tidying.

Tonight I went to Patong again. It’s the largest beach and shopping area and where the largest group of tourists are. It’s about a mile long and four blocks deep and full of big stores and small shops. Big hotels. The Sheraton and everything — and I mean everything — is destroyed.

The author is visiting ex-pats in the local hospitals. Thailand’s public health system is not the greatest, and being in a foreign country in bad times just adds to the stress. And there is plenty of tragedy to go around:

The first room we went in was a young Swedish man with a major cut all the way down his leg. His Thai wife was sitting next to him with a large bandage on her chin. We asked him how he was doing, and he said that this was nothing because they had lost their 3-month-old daughter. Just washed away. The woman just started crying uncontrollably. It was heart wrenching. We gave them a hug, and they were very appreciative that we came by.

Read the article. Thailand, America, wherever, we are all so many peas in the same pod.

We got shocked on September 11 because a handful of crazies managed to fell two skyscrapers, kill nearly 4,000 people, and shut down air traffic across the United States for several days, and make us all paranoid and confused, but humanity deals with crazier natural catastrophes all the time. Just a year ago, it was several thousand dead in Iran. The United States has reportedly lost hundreds of citizens who happened to spend Christmas on the shores on the Indian ocean, and the locals, who are poor and don’t have the public services that we have, are faring worse still. Tens of thousands missing . . .

We waste our time with bluster about our War on Terrorism, when more of us are killed each year in car accidents and by smoking. The real ennobling effort is doing what we can to take care of all of us. Earthquake in Iran, Epidemic and Genocide in Africa, Tsunami is Asia . . . 9/11 was a taste of “normal” for America . . . a reminder that we, too, are subject to the same flavors of fate as everyone else in the world. There is plenty of sadness and tragedy for us all.

CALLER: What can common listeners do?

HOST: Every last one of our listeners is extraordinary!

CALLER: What could the extraordinary listeners do today about climate change? Call their air-quality districts? That’s just a rhetorical question.

They’re just trying to remind us working stiffs what exciting days we are missing out on.

Several minutes later the Guest mentions that you could WALK TO THE STORE insted of driving. That is what I have been doing ever since I asked myself what I could do . . .

The work week before a major holiday is always very silly.

And I don’t mean silly lalala let’s photocopy our buttocks while downloading eggnog, I mean silly as in vendors splitting up their product lines and Word documents misplaced in CVS silly.

But it is only three days for me, so, I can take it.

HOOYAH!

Yayoi!

Coffee!

• A steamer or milk frother, and/or a french press.

Furniture!

• Perhaps an IKEA Gift Certificate?

Books!

• Amos Oz “A Tale of Love and Darkness”
• John Stewart “America” (Maybe for Yayoi. :)

Software!
(Yes, I can run Windows software.)

• “Pirates!”
• “Tropico 2: Pirate Cove” may actually be a better, and cheaper, game.

There may be some very interesting gift ideas for people at http://www.jlist.com/ which imports interesting things from Japan, including lots of cute stuff.

More to come …

Yes, if you do the math, the week will come out to six days. We can have twelve months, but they will be thirty days apiece, or five weeks. At the end of the year there will be a five-day Holiday, that will be six days on leap years.

Also, daylight savings time will be abolished, as will time zones. Everyone will use GMT, and know what the offset for true noon is in their locality. When people have to make arrangements, they will not have to do any calculations, because time will be the same everywhere. And the first thing you’ll be told upon arriving in town is what time they normally eat lunch. After all, there is really no more important human activity than eating lunch.

In times of austerity, when we need more productivity, we can extend working days to four or even five, as long as we observe a Sabbath day. And the pious types will be happy because one day in six will be for God, which is more than one day in seven.

Anyway, I return now to the incumbent paradigm, which has me working!

The hummus I made myself — chickpeas, a.k.a. “Garbanzo Beans” and olive oil, combined with a potato masher. Bland, but probably healthy, and a lot cheaper than eating out, which I have done a lot lately.

I have to cancel Yayoi’s plane ticket. Due to school schedule complications, she can not come out with me after Christmas.

P. S. Ooohh, thanks for a pita recipe, Mike!

I may be on the car rental thing another month or two as Uncle John may wish to hang on to my wheels for a February road trip to New Mexico. Not a bad deal. The cost of shipping the car is comparable to renting a car for six weeks. And it would be neat to show him California. He could possibly even transport my bike, which saves the hassle of carrying it on the airplane.

Well, my spirits are definitely up. As I just sang to my coworker, “All I want for Christmas is my … Ya yo i!”

Beats the crappy jazz coming out of Sacramento after about 8pm. KPFA insted switches to Greatful Dead covers on Wednesday nights. What this may lack in quality is made up for by its eclecticism. I hope the morning show helps me come around to consciousness tomorrow morning. They ought to have more edge in the voice than Bob Edwards or whomever is calling out the NPR News now that I haven’t been paying too much attention anymore.

Hopefully this new adventure will turn out to have an even better pay-off than I had reasonably imagined.

Oh, and I have DSL at home now. And off-line e-mail on the laptop, so I can catch up whilst riding the bus. I bought a desk and a very good chair the other day, with adjustable back height and almost-high-enough lumbar support. I have to assemble the desk though, which I’ll do after work this evening before some heavy network maintenance tonight.

Things are coming together. And Yayoi can probably make it right after Christmas, which is good.

More money, more responsility, more suburbia. Yayoi’s keen on the weather and the great abundance of Asian culture. I’m keen on taking over the reigns at a tightly-run, open source enterprize.

But I will miss Chicago.

-d

After much reinstalling, and recovering data (there were no system-level backups, but my web site files were undamaged, and I had a database dump for the blog data to October 1, and I was able top pull the latest October entries off a cached RSS feed, but anyway) I’m back online! Yay!

Props to Andrew, who has been doing a lot of the recovery legwork here, and to Joe, who brouht the hardware back online.

-danny