A Sad Day

This week someone I work with announced his resignation and I'm not happy.

Over roughly 20 years in high tech and 4 years in college I've worked for several companies, and with some truly brilliant people. I hope none of those people will be offended when I say that no one I have ever worked with or known - anywhere - is as amazing as David Schairer.

The experience of working with David is unlike any other I have had. I once likened working with someone else to drinking from a fire hose. That individual was a source of amazing amounts of information in his field, but there was no ability to control the rate at which the information came out. He could do his job well, but teaching was not something you wanted him to try.

David is entirely different.

First, he's a true polymath, astoundingly well versed in a huge number of topics, ranging all over the technical map and going beyond into classics, languages - both modern and ancient - and vast realms between. British naval history, whiskey, oddball web comics, and any number of other things are stored in his head. In depth. Every conversation with David is a new window on the world, full of twists and turns, unexpected connections, and an amazing variety of facts.

Beyond that, David has the ability to read others and throttle back if he's overwhelming those he's talking with. Truth be told he doesn't always do so - he's so far beyond most of us that it's hard for him to slow down - but he can present just about any information in clear and concise ways, keeping it interesting, lively and relevant. He can entertain, enthrall and teach all at the same time. This ability makes him an powerful mentor, even if he's not thinking of himself in that role at a given moment.

Of course there are some things that David doesn't know, and when those come up he's honest and says so. It doesn't stop him from contributing to a discussion, but you always know where he stands. This particular trait is related to - and probably springs from - an underlying honesty I find particularly appealing.

Another of David's abilities is idea generation. Present him with a problem - "How do we do X?" - and he will supply multiple approaches before anyone else has come to grips with the problem. His ability to see solutions to the kinds of issues we encounter is second to none.

On a personal level, David has been someone I can ask questions of at work - almost regardless of the topic - for my entire time at Concentric. He's one of a core of supremely gifted individuals that make working here so interesting, and who keep me on my toes all the time.

Now, I'm sad to say, David has decided to move on. My job will not be the same, and we who remain will miss him, both professionally and personally.

There are still brilliant people here. That was one of the attractions of Concentric, and why I came back here when I returned to work, but David's departure will leave a gaping hole to fill, and it will not be easy.

I look forward to following David's exploits in the future. And if it should come to pass that I can work with him again, I will be thrilled. He's one of a group that created a level of personal loyalty and intellectual challenge that I have never found anywhere else.

All the best in your future endeavors, David. I'll miss you.

New Tech

So just days before HTC introduces 2 new Android based cell phones we bought new G1 phones from T-Mobile. So far we're very pleased even if we missed the latest and greatest.

I love the integration with gmail, google calendar, and google contacts. It means I don't have to back anything up and I can see my wife's calendar without any effort at all. That's really good. The built in web browser is perfect for the inevitable lookup of something while out somewhere and away from a "real computer".

In addition, though, the phones just seem to work, with nice features - particularly once the 1.5 version of the firmware got installed. They integrate well with all kinds of networks including our home wi-fi.

Some of you will know that I have no love of Apple or Microsoft. With the G1 I get a nice alternative that lets me do what we want, and which gives us an excellent user experience to boot.

Sorry if this post comes across as an ad. I'm just happy to finally have something that lets me carry my address book, calendar, and what-not in a single device that simply works. I used to be able to do this with a Palm Treo, but this puts those old Palms to shame.

The new Palm Pre looked nice, but for me the keyboard was too small and the Sprint sales guys weren't hungry enough. The G1 had a nicer keyboard and an great UI too.

Anyone considering taking the smart phone plunge should at least consider the G1. I can't claim it will change your life, but it could, and it's awfully nice in any case.

On Old Dogs

I just read a lovely article about old dogs that should be shared. Please read it.

To those words can add only one thought. Weingarten mentions people who "seem unmoved by the deaths of tens of thousands through war or natural disaster will nonetheless grieve inconsolably over the loss of the family dog." He goes on to suggest a reason for this seemingly odd behavior. And I agree with him, but I want to add a second reason.

We all do this to some degree, though not necessarily over the family pet. The loss of someone close to us - a spouse or child, a close friend or relative - affects us much more than the deaths of those farther away. It's simple human nature, and those of us who are close to our dogs have simply included them in the circle of companions we'll miss more intensely when they're gone.

I've got some familiarity with old dogs, and they often have a certain accepting dignity about them. I hope I can show some of that as I age.

Fire Department BBQ

I honestly don't know how many readers this blog has but it's already proven to be more than I expected, so I'm going to take a moment and plug a generic cause that I believe in.

Until a couple of months ago I was an active member of my local volunteer fire department. Right now I'm on leave, but that's beside the point. I joined the department - and support it still - because what it does is incredibly important.

While I was responding I went to innumerable vehicle accidents and on many medical aid calls. Those were the day-to-day events we saw. Less frequently we went looking for smoke or fire when someone thought something was out of place and called 911. Sometimes we found fire and did the arduous work of putting it out. A few of those fires were in houses or garages, more were outdoors - wildland fires. Most were small but every single one had the potential to get away. One finally did last year, before anyone even knew it had started: the Summit Fire, the event that prompted me to start this blog in the first place.

I don't tell you this to brag - in truth I was a small part of a team, and nothing I did by itself was of particular consequence - but instead to show you the nature of things that your fire fighters do, every day, for you.

I know that many places - in the US at least - have paid fire fighters, and I appreciate them. I worked with paid professionals all the time, and loved doing so. But here in California - with the budget woes and financial crisis - volunteer fire fighters save our counties money as they save lives and property. They give back to the community every single day in ways large and small, and they deserve your support. Who else do you know that gives their time, money and effort to make you and your neighbors safer, occasionally risking their lives in the process?

On Sunday, June 7th, my local volunteer fire department is hosting its annual BBQ fundraiser. it's the only fund raising activity we do, and the proceeds help fund the department for another year, buy equipment, hire trainers, and so on. Yes, we get county funding too, but money in our accounts stays in our community, and it directly helps you, the residents.

If you live in the Summit area and are served by Loma Prieta Volunteer Fire and Rescue, please come join us on Sunday, July 7th, at the gazebo on Summit Road for lunch, a chance to meet your fire fighters, see the equipment they use, and thank them for their service. I'll be there somewhere, helping keep people fed and happy.

If you don't live in my area, you may have a volunteer fire department where you live, and they will, no doubt, have fundraising activities. Please support them. Their work is important and you're better off for their efforts.

This is a cause I really believe in. Your volunteer fire department might save your life someday, but I am certain they are working to make you, your family, and your friends safer every day.

Thanks for reading this. I hope you can support your local volunteers.

An art related post. No, really!

Last weekend found me installing and unveiling a garden sculpture for Jenny Yamate. This piece has a great history. At the art show we did last Fall at Jenny's gym I had another pumice sculpture that sold to one of her clients. But before it left it was at the gym for some time and Jenny got attached to it.

Well, a bunch of her clients got together and commissioned another stone from me to go where the first one had been.

I had the raw materials already, and needed only the time. Going back to work made things slip, but the piece was done something like two months ago. In an interesting twist, this piece got it's name - Flexibility - before it was even complete. Usually I wait until it's done to name something, but this one clearly had a name right away.

Jenny wanted to have a party for the unveiling, so we did that last weekend. I had a great time, and I hope everyone else did too. Big thanks to everyone who helped make this possible, and to Jenny for being both patient and appreciative!

Here are a couple of pictures courtesy of Neil Wiley, Mountain Network News. That's me and Jenny in the first one.

Politics Again. Sure to Upset Everyone Somehow.

This morning as I was leaving for work the phone rang. I picked up only to hear a robo-call from some (I assume) right wing lunatic asking me if I was aware of the tea parties and "what was happening with our government." It closed by asking me to "pay attention."

Well, I have been paying attention. There are many things going on at both the state and federal level, and I have opinions about some of them. Mostly I'm disgusted.

At the state level the recent news is the CA supreme court upholding Prop 8. I've seen blog posts and Facebook status updates from people - including friends - on both sides of this issue, and I'm afraid I have to come down on the side against prop 8. Strongly. I know this may upset some of my friends and coworkers, but here's the thing. I know several gay couples, and marriage - real marriage, with all the attendant rights and responsibilities - matters to them. And you know what? They deserve it.

These people are just as much a part of America as any other citizen, and they are - or should be - the equals of any of us. But no, they're not. Not here in California. Instead of equality we get a slim majority voting away the rights of a minority, and that is appalling. This nation's founding fathers were afraid of the tyranny of the majority, and here we have a textbook example of the principle, in one of the (supposedly) most progressive states in the union.

Here's a thought: next time around let's modify the constitution so that left handed people can't get married. It's a nice narrow subclass - much like gays & lesbians - so the supreme court should have no problem upholding that too. And then, the election after that, we'll stop bald people from getting married. Don't want them to raise children. And then brown eyed people, after all, you can't trust people with brown eyes. And after that? Jews? Non-whites? Gee, for some reason this is starting to sound familiar.

There is no threat to anyone in gay marriage. All prop 8 does is legalize discrimination. So much for the land of the free.

And as if that wasn't bad enough the state's economy continues to crumble. There isn't enough money to go around and there aren't any places to cut without hurting people - a lot of people. California has been ungovernable for a long time and it's only going to get worse in the coming years. I am not optimistic, but I don't know what to do about it. Moving - thanks to our jobs and the roots we've put down in the community - is not an option we like thinking about. I suppose it could come to that, though.

On the federal level - which is what this morning's stupid robo-call was about, I guess - the picture is slightly more mixed. President Obama has changed a number of policies from the Bush administration for the better, and I appreciate that. Even better, the Republicans are being forced to call themselves a "regional party" now, and their falling support is something I can only call a "good thing."

On the other hand I'm not so sure I like the government owning large chunks of major banks and auto manufacturers, but that might have been inevitable. Or not. The bailout is an enormously complicated thing and I can see arguments on all sides of it. I can even appreciate and agree with many of them, and I have to admit that I don't know what the "correct" solution is, or if there even is such a thing.

What disturbs me is we're starting to hear that the Obama administration is doing some things in the way that the Bush administration did. In the most recent example I know of, they are essentially following a Bush administration policy of denying that the list of visitors to the White House is public knowledge.

Excuse me? Didn't we have screaming lawsuits about this when Cheney didn't want to release his list of visitors while he was setting up his "energy policy"? And don't I recall Obama saying he was going to do things differently, starting with a reversal of the "don't disclose it if you don't have to" crap that the Bush administration was doing? They were going to be more open, or so we were told.

Well, it appears the Obama administration isn't quite living up to it's own ideals in all cases. But then again we knew that already, didn't we? We were told "no lobbyists", but there were all those exceptions for key positions. And then there were all the appointments of people who had "tax issues" discovered only after their selections were announced.

How completely unsurprising. People in power abuse that power, regardless of their party affiliation. We saw it - in spades - in the Bush administration and now we're starting to see it in the current crop of politicians as well.

The Obama administration may be more to my liking - on any number of fronts - but they're still politicians, and we should all know what that means by now. Cynicism, I'm sad to say, is the only defensible position when it comes to politics.

And with that I've probably alienated the last three friends I had. That's a shame, but I have this honesty problem...

I'm About Not To Vote...

I think this will be the first time I haven't gone to the polls since moving to California.

I kind of hate myself for not voting, but I've got my reasons.

First of all I live in something of a media vacuum, and so the dire predictions of disaster if the various things on this special election fail have only slowly been getting to me. This has been made worse by my local NPR station - which has been in pledge hell for the last 1.5 weeks, which means I turn it off immediately after hearing it - so I'm less informed than usual.

But beyond that, I'm truly of mixed mind about the mess we're in.

I may be the only person in the state who think the legislators aren't responsible for this mess. No, we, the citizens are, and I can sum up why quite simply:

• We hate paying taxes
• We don't want to give up services
• We keep tying our legislator's hands with rules and initiatives
• We require that every decision of consequence be encoded in the constitution and therefore go before the people for a vote

That set of choices - and they are (or were) choices - leads to disaster every time.

So here we sit staring at a huge budget deficit. If we pass these silly measures it's going to be bad. If we don't pass them it's going to be worse.

Some claim the measures were all written at the last minute with no review. Maybe true. Some claim we'll be letting child rapists out of prison if we don't pass them. Also possibly true.

All I know is that I'm sick of the games. If we haven't got the money to pay for things there are only a few valid choices:

• Pay for less
• Pay less for what you get
• Get more money to pay for what you need

That's it, people. Nothing else is sustainable in the long term. Either you spend less in some way or bring in more money. It really, really, (REALLY!) is that simple.

From my - admittedly too brief thanks to work - review, every last one of these measures is a shell game. We're moving money from one year to the next or borrowing now and will have to pay it back later (with interest), or something similar. Frankly it's crap.

It is basically impossible to look at any one state program and say "that's a waste of money." It's possible I feel that way about some programs, but others will always legitimately disagree. I assure you that no one ever said "here's a really stupid way to spend the state's money!" and then we all voted for it. No, it never happens that way. The expenses are all good in and of themselves. There may be some unintended consequences of these things, but actual fraud of intent at the creation of a given law or bill is exceptionally rare.

And of course no one ever wants to admit that they get any value for their tax dollar. "I pay too much in taxes" is all I hear - from everyone, nominally on the left or the right. And then the complaints follow. "Have you noticed the roads? They stink! So many potholes! And my kid's teacher has 43 students in her 4th grade classroom. And my friend just lost his unemployment benefits because he still can't find a job. What kind of system lets those things happen? They must be wasting all our money somewhere." Oh the irony of it all.

In any case we're stuck with it. The economy sucks, people are hurting, and we're being dragged back to the polls to vote on a series of measures that are so complicated no one can predict what they will mean for the budget just a couple of years from now.

Well, I've had it. I am no expert at this, and I can't make informed decisions about it, and for that reason I am not going to vote tomorrow. Part of me wants to avoid damage to the system, but part of me also wants the state to see some shock therapy.

That said, the people that really, really need to get zapped are the voters. The initiative process has gotten entirely out of hand and we've handcuffed our legislators at every turn. They have no money to play with, people. X% for K-14 education (prop 98, right?). No, you can't raise property taxes (prop 13). Y% for roads (some other proposition that was approved a few years back). And so on.

We, collectively, deserve everything that goes wrong as a result of this budget crisis. A smarter electorate would have given their legislators the tools to solve the problem and let them do it, not actively prevented it.

The next few years are going to be ugly. There will be fewer police, fire fighters, teachers, and so on. Taxes will be high and services will be low. The standard of living is going to go down.

Maybe that's necessary, though. Maybe - just maybe - if we all suffer enough someone will start telling people the truth: this is our fault, people. Get it through your thick skulls. We need to spend less or take in more money. Anything else just causes the kind of issues we're seeing now.

Happy suffering.

A Conversation You Don't Want To Have

Paraphrased a bit, but more or less accurate, and the gist is definitely real:

Hey Jeff.

Hey Name.

You have a pickup, right?

Yeah.

Any chance I could borrow it?

Uh, sure, but when? I've got some commitments and...

This afternoon?

Well, I'm using it right now, but maybe when I am done. What's up?

I've gotta pack up all my stuff and get it into storage.

You're moving?

Yeah, but I don't know where I'm going yet.

I am not making this up. Someone I know is moving out - with no place to go - thanks to the economy and the loss of a job some time ago.

I'm hearing noise about how things may be bottoming out. I sure hope so. This sort of thing is getting really depressing.

A rough time...

Yes, I've been away for a while again. Sorry about that.

Have you ever had to interrupt some one's vacation to give them awful news? When they were travelling? In another country? With a nine hour time difference? Well, I hadn't either until just a couple of weeks ago.

My other grandmother died. It's been a hard year for my family on that front, as that makes two.

The first to die, however, had been in poor health for some time and it was mostly a relief to have it finally end. This one, though, was another matter entirely. A completely unexpected event in a woman of reasonable health for her age of 90. And her son - my father - was travelling in Europe with my mom when things started to go bad.

They managed to talk to her on the phone before she died, but they couldn't get back fast enough. Aortic dissection can do that, and it's actually pretty good they talked to her at all.

I found myself travelling as a result, assisting with funeral arrangements, helping clean out her apartment, and so on. Not a fun way to spend a week, but necessary.

I cannot claim that's the only reason I haven't written here lately. There are other factors.

First and foremost it seems that all I do these days is work or come home so tired I have no energy left for anything else. As a programmer you know it isn't physical exhaustion that's the problem, but rather mental stress. I wish I could write about that, but I can't. It's enough to know that it's a job and the checks still clear.

In addition there aren't many mundane things to write about lately. The overhead of life rarely makes for good blog posts. The few interesting things that happen tend to wind up in Facebook lately. Of course that's a totally different format. Assuming you're someone I know - and why else would you be reading this? - if you're also Facebook user and we haven't "friended" (I hate that word) each other yet, please do so.

One bit of recent news is that I am embarking on a writing project with some of my stone carving students to document what we teach in our classes. This will wind up online one of these days, and there are at least two of us working on it, so maybe we'll keep each other going and it will actually get finished.

If there's something you think I should be writing about, please let me know. I know I still owe the next post in the water saga, and I will get to it one of these days. But other than that suggestions are welcome.

Geeze... gone nearly a month

Sorry folks. I've been busy with life for the last few weeks and, unfortunately, it's that part of life that doesn't get blogged about. It seems unlikely anyone reading this will want to know about my doing laundry or mowing the yard (well, that might be worth mentioning, actually), and the actual contents of my work life are off limits these days for various reasons.

In general, we (Anne and I) are just fine. We got our income tax rebate checks, had dinner guests over one night, and continue to get by. It's just that there hasn't been much excitement lately. I can't even get that worked up about anything political right now. It appears (based on news.google.com) the most exciting political story this weekend is that the Obamas are getting a Portuguese Water Dog. Oh joy. Can't we, as a country, worry about something else?

I guess it's finally OK for me to mention one significant thing: I've had to withdraw from the volunteer fire department. Technically I'm on a 6 month leave of absence, but unfortunately I'd guess the odds of going back within that time are really small. I don't know if the chief has announced this yet - probably not, as he's even busier than I am - but I don't think anyone from the department reads this. (If you do, please let me know, OK?)

I left because I simply couldn't make the time - mentally - to both work and be a VFD member. The time required isn't that large, but the simple fact is that I wasn't going on calls since going back to work. It seemed more than a bit silly of me to stay on the department without actually going on calls, so I did the honest thing and said so. The six month leave is at the request of the chief, who says if I can come back in that time there's nothing lost. We'll see, but as I say it seems unlikely. They way I am wired, work takes over on just about every front.

I suppose I should mention that we got through the great ATT cable cut of 2009 without much issue. Our Sprint EVDO connection went down, but amazingly Surfnet stayed up. Both are working now, though the Surfnet connection still only "works" in the most generous sense of the word possible. They claim they're installing new equipment to help improve things for us, but we see no change yet. Oh well.

There. One big bit of (not so happy) news and the rest is trivia. That's all I've got to show since the last post. Sorry.