This looks oddly familiar

Add this to my list of reasons to be thankful I walk to work. Apparently all it takes to bring down two major connections to the Bay Bridge and force the rerouting of some 80,000 cars a day is a an overturned exploding tanker truck full of gasoline.

Oops.

Not sure where all those cars will have to go now, but the driver of the truck hailed a cab and went straight to the hospital.

No wonder they're endangered (Gesundheit!)

I don't know why this cracks me up so, but it does. It truly does.

I saw the sign

Another sign you've lived in San Francisco for a long time:

It hits 73 degrees outside, and despite wearing shorts and leaving both your ever-present light sweater and your jacket at your desk when you step out for lunch, you still walk on the shady side of the street, eat under a tree, and go back inside early because it's just too hot out.

This may also be a sign that I'm going to have to move to Alaska in the globally-warmed inconvenient future.

Blister in the sun

How cool is this?.
Note Sunspot 953 spinning into view (4 times the size of planet Earth!).

Taken by: P-M Hedén of Vallentuna, Sweden
Courtesy of: spaceweather.com

Lest we forget

...For the first time in all of time men have seen the earth: seen it not as continents or oceans from the little distance of a hundred miles or two or three, but seen it from the the depth of space; seen it whole and round and beautiful and small as even Dante -- that "first imagination of Christendom" -- had never dreamed of seeing it; as the Twentieth Century philosophers of absurdity and despair were incapable of guessing that it might be seen. And seeing it so, one question came in the minds of those who looked at it. "Is it inhabited?" they said to each other and laughed -- and then they did not laugh. What came to their minds a hundred thousand miles and more into space -- "half way to the moon" they put it -- what came to their minds was the life on that little, lonely, floating planet: that tiny raft in the enormous, empty night. "It is inhabited."

The medieval notion of the earth put man at the center of everything. The nuclear notion of the earth put him nowhere -- beyond the range of reason even -- lost in the absurdity and war. This latest notion may have other consequences. Formed as it was in the minds of heroic voyagers who were also men, it may remake our image of mankind. No longer that preposterous figure at the center, no longer that degraded and degrading victim off at the margins of reality and blind to blood, man may at last become himself.

To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold -- brothers who know now they are truly brothers.

-- Archibald MacLeish
December 25, 1968
New York Times

Happy Earth Day.

I'm on the list.

Ok, so it's not so much a super power as just a freaky talent. And not so much a talent as perhaps an odd coincidence. Because really it serves no purpose but to startle me and wig me out.

I know you're dying to hear so I'll just tell you that every time I look at a clock with a digital readout, the time happens to be 1:11 or 3:33, or 5:55. Really. Now I know you skeptics out there, -- and I usually am one -- are just saying that no, it just seems that way because it stands out, and all the other times I glance at the clock and it's an ordinary time like 4:17, it doesn't even register in my brain. And really, that's not such a bad argument.

But seriously. I wake up in the middle of the night, roll over to look at my clock and it's 2:22. I walked into the kitchen and opened the microwave door to prepare lunch at 1:11. I'll wake up in the morning to the singing of the damn pre-dawn birds and it's 5:55. I'll turn off the radio in the car and the clock will say 3:33. I'll lay down in bed and reach over turn out the light at 12:12. This happens so much that I'm going to start logging each time I look at a clock, so I can calculate the percentages and prove it to the world.

Now if only I could put this ability to some sort of use.

Progress goes 'Boink'

I called in sick today. Legitimately, in case you were wondering. I'm generally not one to squander my time off on mental health days... partly because I'm a bad liar and fear my attempts at a gravelly voice and fake coughs are transparent as Saran-wrap, and partly because I'd rather save my PTO for actual out-of-Dodge vacation. Today I'm not exactly sick, per se, but I think I'm having an unpleasant reaction to the nasty Option B antibiotics my dentist prescribed to try to tackle the persistent mysterious tooth problem once and for all. Without going into details, I decided it was necessary for me to be close to home today.

At any rate, so here I am this morning, sitting on my couch rather than sitting in my soul-sucking cubicle. I left my laptop at the office, so I can't do work, I certainly am not going to clean the apartment or anything crazy or productive like that, and I'm not venturing out because I do feel icky plus it's raining. I figure I'll play some video games later. But this morning? I've reacquainted myself with an ornery little boy and his tiger.

I happen to have the complete set of Calvin and Hobbes, 3 gravitational volumes of every comic in the order they were originally published, and they've been sitting on my shelf awaiting my attention for months. These are tomes that demand deliberation, not mere casual perusal. Ahh, I'd forgotten how truly excellent this strip was. Bill Watterson was genius, I tell you!

My day has improved considerably.

String Theory

Ok. Here it is. I've mentioned knitting in passing a few times here, and brushed it aside for later. Well it's later, and I'm coming out of the yarn closet.

My friend Zoe is something of a knitting evangelist, as it turns out. No one in my family ever knit when I was growing up, so I was fascinated watching Zoe knit a snazzy sock while we traveled to Hawaii last November. She lent me some needles and yarn, showed me the basics, and before we left, I had my first little purple garter, stockinette, and rib stitch swatch. Hilariously, the only thing I brought back for myself from Hawaii was how to knit.

I was obviously craving craft time, because the very next week I ran out to get needles and yarn; I needed to put what I'd learned into practice before I forgot how to cast on or bind off. The first picture, above, is the result of that. The next few pictures, in order, are the scarves I've completed so far. I'm working on two others, so I'll show them off later. It's funny, even though I don't have a book with tips and how-tos, I've learned a whole lot from one project to the next, and the quality has improved (while still, somehow, completely lacking quality).

Just for the record, I wouldn't exactly call myself a Knitter. Not because that carries any particular connotations or anything (believe me, today's knit enthusiasts are not sitting in your grandmother's knitting circle). Mostly it's because I haven't made anything beyond a few scarves, and can't imagine I'll ever knit a big soft blanket or a whole funky handmade sweater. I may attempt a hat or a pair of socks at some point, just to see if I can do it. But otherwise this will probably remain just a skill I picked up along the way.

So I guess if anyone has any scarf (or hat or sock) orders, put them in quick. Otherwise, your lovely knitted wear will end up in the same place as the ceramic urn or large serving bowl I promised a few years ago.

I think glass blowing is next on my list...

This mobile life

For whatever reason, I've always liked mobiles. And I became especially fascinated with them a number of years ago after seeing a spectacular Alexander Calder retrospective at the SF MoMA.

I have one very cool abstract mobile that my sister gave me (via her former neighbor, who used to work at a shop that sold them) which hangs in the corner of my bedroom and reminds me a little of a school of coy. I also have a goofy one of colorful construction paper spheres that I tediously glued together from a kit.

Truly interesting ones are surprisingly expensive, and even though I don't really have places to hang any more, I got to thinking of ways to make my own after the kit. I don't really have a good workspace or the tools or supplies to do anything interesting, so never really put anything together.

But a few weeks ago, while staring at my orchid wall in the back room and wondering what to do with my growing collection of epiphytes and interesting lichen-covered sticks that filled the space between recuperating flower plants, I had a flash of inspiration.

I got out the kite string, hot-glue gun, peat moss, wire and fishing line, and proceeded to make a horrific mess of bark and moss and grit and bugs. And after a little trial-and-error learning curve, I ended up with what you see in the two pictures here, hanging in the window in the airy back room, swinging in the breeze of the windows that won't close completely. Unfortunately it's a little too large to capture well in a photo, not to mention that it's difficult to capture the form since it's always changing, but you get the idea. You'll just have to trust me that it's a little less Blair Witch and slightly more elegant than these photos might suggest.

I played around more with balancing the individual branches in surprising ways than I did with working out the dimensions, so the unfortunate result is that some of the branches bonk into each other as they spin around, taking away a little from the neat fluid motion of the whole. Also, the balance changes considerably when I water it, and I'm sure it will shift as the plants grow and take root on the branches. But I worked out a system of wire loops and strings with clasps so that I can take it apart and rebalance as necessary.

Anyway, it's not bad for a first attempt, and it certainly scratched my craft itch. If only I had a little more room, a reliable air plant supplier, and a completely legal way to collect the lichen-covered wood pieces, I'd be ready to start taking orders.

Salad Bowl days

So, I've been working for the same company for nine years now. Nine years. That's longer than I've done anything, with the exception of live with my parents. And by default, it makes me something of an old-timer at the office. Granted, there is a handful of people outside of the Chief Whatever Officers who've also been there about the same amount of time, and far more who've been there for 5 or 6 years. But still.

In those years I've seen a lot of change, of course, as the company has grown from 40 or so people to over 200, been acquired, taken on new customers and projects. And by default I am perceived as something of an expert on certain subjects since I've been working with them since the inception. Which means that I get to spend a lot of time in meetings. Sometimes useless and futile meetings. But often they can be quite productive and serve as useful exchanges of information or as collaborative decision-making exercises.

Anyway, this afternoon in a meeting with people from Engineering, QA, Project and Product Management, Support, and Broadcast departments, it occurred to me why I often leave these gatherings so exhausted. You know how hard you have to concentrate when listening to someone with a heavy foreign accent, to understand what they're saying? And as long as you focus, it gets easier after a while as you get into the groove of their style of speech? Well, I realized that that process gets broken for me when shifting back and forth between multiple accents.

In this one meeting were thick Indian, Chinese, and Russian accents, as well as Scottish, an unidentified Northern European and an Eastern European accent... or French. I can't tell anymore. Individually, I can generally cope fine, but when going from one to another in rapid succession, it takes so much of my concentration to hang on every word that I left the meeting mentally drained.

It's really neat, actually, that there's so much diversity. And I'm totally amazed that some of the non-native English speakers can communicate so well with one another. Or maybe I'm the only one struggling because of my complete language deficiency.

That's it really. I don't have any summary here. Just thought I'd share.

There's one for you, nineteen for me

So it's official. My taxes are done and there's still a week to go before the deadline! I think maybe that's a first.

Not like my taxes are terribly complex or anything given that I am single, don't own a home, and don't have serious investment income. I mean, even after going through the pain-in-the-butt exercise of itemizing all my deductions, the standard deduction was still slightly higher (really, I thought I was pretty charitable last year, with all the donations and museum memberships and stuff, but apparently I'm either a horrible person or a horrible tax planner. Or perhaps both.).

I think my goal for this year is actually to make some big investments or something (how's that for a clear objective with attainable milestones...), just to complicate things enough so I can justify the expense of hiring somebody to do my taxes and related financial planning for me. Because honestly? Despite the relative ease of my current status, and even using straightforward tools like TurboTax, I'm pretty much at the limits of my ability to understand what I'm supposed to do. Seriously, when I clicked on a "see more information on this topic" link to see more information on this topic, this is what it returned:

Section 197 tax is the tax you pay if you elected to recognize the gain on the sale of a section 197 intangible, and to pay the tax on the gain at the highest rate. See the government instructions for more information.

Intangible indeed.

Tangentially, while making the necessary adjustments on my CA state return, I was asked if I'm eligible for "Ottoman Turkish Empire settlement payments." Unlike most of my tax-related ignorance, I'm actually curious what this relates to. And yet, exactly like all the rest of my tax-related ignorance, I just assume that if I don't understand it, it probably doesn't pertain to me...

And finally, I'd like to point out how ridiculous it is that I'm supposed to pay California "use" tax on anything I purchased outside of the state, online, or over the phone but didn't get charged CA sales tax. To quote the form:

If you purchase items from an out-of-state seller who did not collect California sales or use tax, you may owe California use tax on these purchases.
You may report the California use tax on your personal income tax return instead of having to file a use tax return with the California State Board of Equalization.

Do people really do this? I'm sort of assuming (hoping) that this only applies if, say, I bought my yacht in the Bahamas and now the state is expecting its 8.5% of $2.3 million, and not so much for all the miscellaneous Amazon.com books, iTunes songs, and such that I bought but for which I didn't keep records. And seriously? The Board of Equalization? Um, yikes.

A bird in the hand

Apparently there are people who live here and remain unaware that there's a flock of wild parrots in our midst. I have no idea how this is possible, honestly, unless they're just that incredibly self-absorbed, unobservant, and unaware of their surroundings.

Ok, I mean, I'll be the first to admit that there are certain things that I remain completely oblivious to, no matter how obvious to someone naturally attuned. Like cars, for example. Or boobs. A whole fleet of the things may pass me by and I wouldn't be able to tell you anything about the make, model, color or size of any of them. While my roommate would immediately pick out the 2007 BMW 6-Series 650CIC Convertible containing the double-Ds.

But still. Those birds are hard to miss. I'd lived in San Francisco for all of maybe 3 weeks before I heard this crazy squawky out-of-place cacophony pass overhead and wondered what the hell sort of bird it was. And in all of 30-minutes of research (remember, this was the late 90s, before the internet encompassed every imaginable piece of information and certainly before you could find it easily even if it was out there... in other words, pre-wikipedia) I had discovered that there was a small errant group of cherry-headed conures cheerily waking the City's dead year-round with their raucous yammering.

Anyway, no one really knows how they got here, but the stories bear a striking resemblance to the explanation for where the wild parrots of Brooklyn came from, variously a busted open crate at the airport or aboard a cargo ship, smugglers, unhappy pet owners, a closing pet shop, and such. And, interestingly, there seem to be feral populations of a variety of non-native parrots in several US cities besides NYC and SF. However they got here, they seem to be thriving (rent the movie!)

I mentioned before that the flock descends on a little park downtown before sunset every evening. So tonight I popped in again on my walk home, armed with a petstore mix of sunflower seeds, peanuts, pistachios, and other seeds and nuts. After a minute or two of summing me up, a few brave parrots edged over to me and nabbed a few bites from my hands while hanging upside down from the branches of the tree I stood next to. Once deemed a non-threat, I was promptly mobbed with several parrots on each hand, a few on my arms, and one chorus leader on my head. I'm not sure why I found this so entertaining -- there's no way I'd want a pet bird, but experiencing their distinctive personalities first-hand was a hoot. (Ahem.)

That said, my finger is still sore from the little troublemaker shown here. He'd periodically give me a little nip and it took me a few minutes to notice that he only liked the black sunflower seeds from the mix. Whenever he'd eaten them all (he'd brush the rest aside with his beak in my palm to be sure), he'd look at me and clamp down on my finger until I'd replenished the supply. The one time I had both hands filled with birds and couldn't get more seeds, he stared at me with a twinkle in his eye and I immediately knew what he was up to. "Don't even think about it," I said, yet he clearly had and he grabbed onto my sleeve and crawled, beak over claw, up my arm to my shoulder where he proceeded to try to bite my ear. All I could do was turn my head and try to keep my ear out of reach. It was then that he went back to my hand and chomped on my finger as hard as he could. The little fucker. I unceremoniously transferred him back to the tree branch and he got the idea, squawking loudly in my face and flying off.

Yeah, hard to miss.