As If I Needed Another Reminder That I'm Getting Older

While watching lacrosse on TV this weekend, one of the announcers noted that a player was following in the footsteps of his father who had played for the university in his day. The comment immediately brought to my mind's eye a slightly faded square Kodachrome, white border around the edge imprinted with a small "Jul 68." A youngish man with shaggy hair, an oddly wide collar and a mustache standing with a grinning little boy dressed in wildly incompatible colors and patterns completed the mental image.

Then I started doing some arithmetic. Had my life gone only somewhat differently than it has, that sepia-toned image could be updated to show a red "Jul 92" in the lower right corner of the borderless 4x6 Fugifilm picture. I could be the father of a college-age kid; I know people my age who are.

It made me realize that it may be too late for me to replenish my supply of college sweatshirts, or at least garments that don't have the word "Alumni" on them. If I wear college gear around here, I'm afraid that someone will assume that I'm wearing it in support of some child of mine away at Santa Barbara, rather than (as it turns out) feebly trying to hold on to the carefree days of youth.

It's time to remind myself that, for a couple more weeks anyway, I still have a first grader.

Backpage Sports Weekend Preview

Memorial Day weekend is usually a good one, thanks to the extra day off. It also happens to be home to a number of big events in lesser-followed sports. The NCAA finals of men's lacrosse take place on Saturday and Monday, one of my favorite events of the year. Unlike football or basketball, which are thinly veiled professional farm systems, the lacrosse finals make you believe you really are watching college kids. Okay, they may be the frat boys that you always hated (or secretly envied), but they look, act and pull for dear alma mater they way real college students do. The sport played at the highest level is good fun to watch, too.

This weekend also offers both the timeless Indianapolis 500 and the peerless Monaco Grand Prix. Put all of that together with the third games of suddenly compelling conference final series (final score point differential through four total games: 7 points) and a bunch of baseball games and you have a great weekend for sporting events.

So put your DVR to work and get outside!

What Impending State Insolvency Looks Like

The people of California will soon begin feeling the pinch of the state's widely publicized budgetary mess. Immediately after a series of ballot propositions that would have raised additional funds failed to pass, the Los Angeles Superior Court announced that it will initiate a one-day-a-month furlough program beginning in July. Amounting to about a 5% pay cut for its employees, the court will close on the third Wednesday of every month. The cost savings are expected to be in the range of $18 million per year.

I happened to be in court on Thursday morning and had the opportunity to engage in what must have been one of the first discussions with a judge about the scheduling quirks caused by the furlough days. The closures complicate life for everyone who uses the court system, in part because filing dates for motions and other papers may be effected, depending on whether the furlough days fall within the period of calculation. Because no published calendar shows the closed days, and because it is only LA Superior that has the furlough (for now), it is inevitable that attorneys are going to blow deadlines.

In the face of a $20 billion budget deficit, $18 million does not seem like much of a savings, but it will take measures like this from state government agencies across the board to bring California's spending into line with its revenues. It's a shame that the elected legislators have left it to their constituents to do the dirty work.

Problem Solving At 350 Miles Up

I acknowledge that I may be the only person not employed by NASA who watches the live NASA TV coverage of shuttle flights, but the mission currently ongoing is a big one. The Atlantis has pulled in the Hubble Space Telescope for its last servicing. The crew is replacing what seems like the majority of the instruments the telescope uses.

Shuttle crews have done this before. What is remarkable about this mission is that the crew will also repair scientific instruments, not just replace self-contained instrument modules. Unfortunately, the work they are performing was never expected to be done, in space or anywhere else. The astronauts, swaddled in bulky space suits and oven-mitt gloves, are expected to undo hundreds of tiny screws and washers in order to access the innards of the instruments.

NASA has fabricated a spectacular array of custom tools to undo fasteners and keep the components from floating off into space. What captured my attention this morning, though, was how utterly common their work was. I, too, have tackled repairs of things around the house. Just like the astronauts, I equip myself with as many of the tools and fasteners I hope I will need. Unlike the astronauts, my tools don't float away from me if I forget to tether them to me. I can also go to the garage (again and again) if it turns I out I have grabbed the wrong tool or, more likely, the wrong size tool. The astronauts don't have that option, which is why they have rehearsed this trip and all of its repairs for two years.

Inevitably, I'll mess something up, like stripping a screw head. I have felt the rising fury, and sense of impending helplessness, of that particular failure more than once. This morning, the astronauts faced exactly the same problem. In order to proceed with their delicate work on the telescope's priceless electronics, they first had to remove a grab handle that blocked their access to a cover panel -- an irritating obstruction, but one that should be dealt with easily. Unless one of the eight screws holding it in place becomes stripped. I could hear in the astronaut's voice the same rising tension as he informed his fellow crew members and the mission control guys in Houston that all of their suggestions to solve the problem would not work. NASA could not possibly be stymied in its billion-dollar mission by an inconsequential handle. They put their best brains on the problem. As Mr. Fixit around here who has faced a similar dilemma before, I love their ingenuity:

The had the astronaut yank the useless handle off with brute force.

That leads to an inevitable conclusion: I must have the Right Stuff.

A Bounty in the Back Yard

Our house was landscaped with a nice variety of flowers and trees. One of the odd pleasures of the house is that, because we bought the house in September, we did not know exactly what flora we had, other than a persimmon tree that we have not figured out how to use. Yesterday we saw a crow escaping the yard with something red in its beak. Upon further review today, we got a nice surprise:


Cherry tree!

The Most Exotic Fish Market Ever

Alton Brown is one of my favorite television personalities (admittedly, that is not a long list). He is the creator, producer and star of Good Eats, a witty and very informative cooking show that has run on Food Network for almost ten years. We have cooked a number of his recipies, and I have learned any number of kitchen techniques and cooking theories through his show and cookbooks.

He will be in our general area this weekend, speaking and cooking at a well-to-do function centered around protecting the environment through responsible food development. Sounds like a fun time, but for one thing: it's at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

So come to the aquarium for the dazzling exhibits, which just happen to be good eats!


There is something inherently wrong with the image, on an aquarium website, of fish grilling.

Tragedy In Paradise

I can now say, sadly, that someone I have known personally has been murdered.

I received word today through a network of old friends that a former colleague and his wife were killed in their home couple of days ago. He was an attorney at the firm where I started my career. I never worked directly with him, but I knew him a little bit through firm events. He was very intense and by all accounts a very good lawyer. I will always remember the moment when he told me, only partly in jest, that if you don't make the witness cry during a deposition, you haven't done your job correctly. Despite his professional ferocity, he was also memorably playful with the kids of the firm's personnel.

Even when I knew him more than 10 years ago, he had a very firm idea of what he wanted for his future. He lived simply, even though he was presumably making pretty good money as a high-hours partner in a large law firm. He told everyone who would listen that he was putting away as much money as he possibly could toward his retirement. It turns out that he had begun to realize his dream. He recently relocated from Fresno to Santa Barbara where he had built a home overlooking the ocean. The firm even followed him there, allowing him to open an office in town.

Unfortunately, that's where the story begins to unravel, it seems. According to published reports, his brother, who was involved in building the house, is under arrest for the murders. The two brothers were in a dispute that ended up in court over the construction of the house.

There is probably a hard lesson to be learned about hazards of focusing too intently on goals, but that's for another day.

Backup, Before It's Too Late

It's official. The old hard drive is dead, taking three years of documents, financial data and photographs with it. The only document I can think of that was unusually valuable is our Christmas card list, and the financial data is all in hardcopy form or on websites elsewhere. Losing the pictures, though, is a kick in the gut. We have a select few pictures stored online (including many of our vacation photos, fortunately), we recently printed out a bunch covering the last few years, we have our annual collages, and I think we may still have all of our old pictures on our much older and now unused laptop. There may be a couple of random CDs with pictures on them somewhere, too. The vast majority are gone, however.

In the era of digital cameras, we probably take six to ten times more pictures than we would with regular print film, so many of the lost pictures were not necessarily great pictures. Still, it is distressing to know that several birthday parties, Christmases, vacations and family gatherings are lost to history.

If you take digital pictures, come up with a backup system or three. It seems obvious, but I suspect many more people are like me than are willing to admit, knowing that backing up is a good idea ... to get to tomorrow.

External hard drives are relatively cheap. Get one. We now have a backup system in place. We don't want to go through this again.

The First Step Down The Long Path Of Image Rehabilitation

It's through the looking glass time. Barry Bonds, the former slugger who is now baseball's most prominent pariah thanks to steroids, just dropped by the Giants' broadcast booth for a couple of innings during tonight's game against the Dodgers. He was completely charming, said generous things about his former teammates, and shared master class level comments on hitting. He has been known to be disarmingly friendly when it served his purposes, but was much better know for being surly and selfish to teammates and media alike. It is hearing him share knowledge of the game at the highest of high levels that is the revelation. He could be a powerful resource for young players based on his knowledge, not his (tainted) records. It will be interesting to see if his little publicity turn develops into something lasting and productive.

There is just the little matter of that indictment for perjury to worry about first.

Approaching Suburban Perfection

After only seven months of residency, we reached a milestone today:


We've had one car in the driveway since we moved in, with boxes and other random bits of our life surrounding the one car we could fit in the garage. With some judicious consolidating of box contents, ruthless scrapping, and plain old unpacking, we managed to clear out the second spot in the garage. This makes us a little unusual among our neighbors, but it gives me satisfaction. What could be more suburban than two cars in the garage and bikes hanging neatly upside-down, unused?

Computers Say The Darndest Things

If Art Linkletter were still around, he could develop a new franchise around the bizarre malaprops generated by speech recognition software. (Okay, so it might be a really low-rated franchise.) I use a dictation program that is remarkably efficient and capable. It can transcribe what I say into Word with surprisingly few errors. The errors that come through, though, can be startlingly revealing.

Stachybotrus is a form of mold that has come to some level of fame in recent years, as it has formed the centerpiece of high profile litigation over mold found in homes. It's the gross, black stuff that you find after water has gotten into your house. According to my computer, Stachybotrus is "sticky boxers."

I can't say that's entirely wrong.

But, eew.

The Worst Investment I Ever Made

... and it wasn't even my choice. It seems that the good money that was thrown after the bad money really hit it off and decided to run away together.

Domino one: Chrysler to declare bankruptcy.

Domino two: GM to default on bond payment on its way toward bankruptcy.

Reconnected

This post is unremarkable in appearance, but a big deal on our end of the keyboard. After a couple of weeks down, the iMac is functional again. We returned from vacation to find the computer on permanent vacation with a disabled hard drive. The rest of the computer is fine, but that is like saying that the patient's brain is great, but the heart doesn't work anymore.

Replacing a hard drive is not a unusual task; I have done it before with other computers. My first computer eventually had much in common with Washington's axe; very little that remained in the case at the end (including the hard drive) was an original part. Replacing any part in the elegant, slim case of an iMac, however, is quite a different than popping open a typical PC case. Thanks to very detailed resources on the internet (accessed through the old PC the kids use), I was able to open the computer, install a one terabyte (!!) hard drive, close the whole thing up again and reinstall our software. Like so many of stylish Hollywood types who embrace Macs, the iMac's slim good looks are achieved largely through plastic and tape, quite unlike the clunky metal screws that hold PC cases together. This makes disassembly and reassembly a tricky proposition (I took many pictures in case I got lost during the rebuild), and not one that can be repeated often, but this operation was a success.

Losing the hard drive, on the other hand, with its three years of financial data, written documents and spreadsheets, and irreplaceable pictures, has been traumatic. We are looking into companies that claim they can retrieve data from busted hard drives; for nearly the cost of a new computer, they might be able to collect all the data we were foolish enough to neglect to back up.

Gotta go now; I need to set up the automatic backup system.

Close Enough For Government Work

I feel so cheated. It turns out that Four Corners, the point at which Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah come together (the only such meeting of four states in the U.S.), has been situated in the wrong place for 130 years. The actual junction is two and a half miles away. The pictures I have of myself there years ago are just frauds now.

This error never should have happened. All they had to do was to follow the big lines until they crossed. Sheesh.

For A Future Vacation: Munich

We have a lot of generalized plans about places we want to visit as a family. Hawaii is high on the list, an American heritage trip through New England is a possibility, and a trip to China to visit my old pals Greg and Kate (who go wherever the State Department sends them) is tentatively slated for next spring.

One place I find myself contemplating is Munich. I think a trip to Europe, if we can manage it, would be a very important experience for the kids, and a lot of fun to boot. I had the opportunity to spend parts of three summers in Munich in the 1980s. I still have a lot of indelible memories. I can still hear the streetcar conductor call out the "Sendlinger Tor" stop. I can see the little glasses of warm Coke they would serve with meals (a thought that came to me just two evenings ago when I observed that the standard drink glass provided to me by Fuddruckers must have been at least 64 oz -- full of icewater, I'll have you know). I would love to find the place on the Marienplatz where we would get doughnut-like pastries right out of the cooker on a Saturday morning.

The city of Munich itself is rich and varied in its history (including a dark chapter as the birthplace of Hitler's Nazi movement), culture and attractions. I would love to show the kids around, and revisit some of the places I saw. There are great little Alpine (literally) villages nearby that would be worth a day trip. I imagine that I might even notice some of the changes that have taken place over the intervening 25(!) years.

More alarming than the thought that it has been 25 years since I visited, though, is the creeping realization that we need to start thinking seriously about taking this kind of trip ... before Kelly leaves home. Only six years left. Ouch.

Where Middle Age Begins

I finally figured out where the boundary line of middle age is. It is the day you host your daughter's 12-year-old birthday party and you realize that you can no longer participate in the party as the ever-present cameraman. You are no longer a benign, unnoticed part of the landscape. You are the Old Guy who is, like, just about to be, like, Totally Creepy Old Guy if you take just one more picture.

I ceded camera duties to Cheryl and took refuge in the TV room for most of the party, I think to the relief of all.

Just Desserts?

A Ferrari crashed in the local hills last Saturday. The driver apparently took a turn too fast and flipped the car. Fortunately, she was not hurt. Unfortunately, the car was not hers; it belongs to her boss, who gave his 23-year-old employee permission to drive it.

No word on the reaction of the boss's wife to this news.

Magical Moments

We've been away for spring break, our first extended getaway as a family in about two years. We kids knew we were headed to San Diego; they did not know we would be stopping at Disneyland on the way there. The surprise was, I think, more for the amusement of the parents than the entertainment of the kids. Listening as the realization that we had pulled off the freeway into the Disneyland parking structure worked its way into the kids' brains was well worth the trouble of keeping the secret.

The kids were definitely happy, although they did not go bezerk when they finally worked out what we were doing. They revealed later how much it meant to them, though. Later in the day, I helped Michael down from a wall where he had been resting after several hours of traipsing around the Magic Kingdom. He said, "thank you, Daddy," in a way that made me look at him and ask him what he was thanking me for.

"Thank you for bringing us to Disneyland."

That kind of unprompted gratitude, occurring at an utterly random moment during the day, made me feel like Father of the Year.

Tomorrowland, Today

On our way to our time-share condo outside San Diego for spring break this week, we surprised the kids with a stop at Disneyland. They refused to believe at first, until money actually changed hands with the parking lot attendant -- sorry, "cast member."

One of my favorite attractions of recent decades has been the "Innoventions" exhibit in Tomorrowland. Housed in the rotating building next to Space Mountain, the exhibit is an unusually Disney character-free area that looks to demonstrate the marvels of modern technology, in a hands-on manner. Nearly a decade ago when we last viewed it, the Internet was the featured new technology. Free play browsers for everyone!

With a few minutes to kill before our Fastpass window at Autopia opened, we decided to make a run though Innoventions. I figured displays dedicated to the glories of 3.5 inch disks would be worth a laugh.

Thankfully, the exhibit has been updated. The display has been remade into the Dream Home, a tastefully decorated home employing touchscreen controllers in every room and Microsoft touchscreen tables throughout. It is very well done and thought-provoking. Plus, the upper level is set up with dozens of Xboxes, for hours (potentially) of relaxing videogame fun.

The whole thing would probably be even more impressive if the iPhone (and other devices with touch screens) didn't exist. The Dream Home is the house of Today, not Tomorrow.
(This blog post typed and uploaded on my iPhone from our hotel room while everyone else still sleeps off Disneyland, day one. Now that is living in Tomorrowland.)

Travelog

Although I have somehow resisted the urge to gush, the iPhone I have had for the last seven months has exceeded my expectations in just about every way (AT&T's propensity to drop calls is the only significant drawback).

One unexpectedly fun benefit of the device derives from the ease with which pictures can be taken and sent. Just like the businessman in the AT&T commercial, whenever I travel now I take photographs of random things and send them home. It provides a fun way for the family to share a little bit of what I'm doing when I'm away.

I'll take shots of the building in which I'm spending the day (Costa Mesa last fall):


Or the meal I'm enjoying on the client's tab:


Or the treats with which I'm spoiling myself:


Or the view from the conference room (northern Las Vegas earlier this week):


Or the view from the airplane (over the Sierras):



It's not a critical function, but a fun one, and one that helps me stay in touch with home when I'm away.