Happy Birthday....To Me!

newborn
Originally uploaded by Barnaby.

Yup...today is my birthday, the big 38. I've always had weird feelings about my birthday. Starting with the fact that it falls between Christmas and New Year...just an odd time to throw in an additional celebration. My parents make an extra effort, which I appreciate. My grandmother went so far as to give me her birthday, which is May 19th. She would always send me a gift then and my mother also would do a little something for me on that day...she still sends me a card. The second image is the page from my grandmother's calendar from the day I was born. It includes her notes on my name, weight, and the phone number of the hospital room where my mother was. I found it in her house after she died.


Tonight I'm having a mystery dinner with Sheri (and possibly others), I have been given a hint that it may include fish.

Beyond that, it's been a day of introspection. Not only because I'm closing in on the big 4-0, but also because I've decided to leave A9...though what for is undetermined.

Yule Tied
It's getting close to Christmas and I'm starting to feel guilty even saying the word. I'm half Wasp (with some Catholic) and half Jewish. We've always celebrated Christmas on both sides of my family, more as an American holiday than as a religious observance. A staunch supporter of liberal causes, I long ago settled on "Happy Holidays" as a way of respecting everyone's form of celebration. However, the recent flap over "Happy Holidays" vs. "Merry Christmas" has left me feeling not so happy or merry. First, I'm tired of being politically correct. Second, it serves as a constant reminder for me of the liberal/conservative split that is more severe than I can ever remember it being in the US; at least in my lifetime. Uttering "Happy Holidays" now makes me think about the War in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, Abortion, Tookie Williams, the Environment, and a myriad of other bothersome things. Festivus is starting to look more and more appealing...or maybe this is the solution: http://www.chrismukkah.com

suburban blues

I think this sums up a lot of what's wrong with this country. People simply aren't willing to put their actions where their mouths are. It's really not that hard to save gas/energy/help the envirnoment. Too many people think that they would need to give up creature comforts to make a difference.

If you have to drive an SUV, drive a smaller one. The difference in fuel consumption is huge. We get about %25 of our oil from the Persian Gulf (http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/rankings/crudebycountry.htm)...A)... 2006 suburban gets 17 MPG, the 2006 Ford Escape gets 22 MPG, the Escape Hybrid gets 31 MPG. Other than the fashion statement of having a large SUV, there's very little additional "utility" in the large version. If everyone were willing to make a shift to smaller vehicles, walk a bit more, insulate their homes and take actions beyond adding a bumper sticker...we could easily eliminate oil imports from the Middle East...and keep Tahoe blue.

AIRLINES
I fly a lot, not 100k, but solidly between 25-50k per year. I used to fly more, but it has gotten harder and harder, so I fly less as the level of abuse continues to grow. We all know the airline industry is having a rough time of it, and the attacks of 911 certainly made things worse for these businesses overnight.

I just wish that they handled the situation with more grace, style and integrity.

Grace
I always felt that the best measure of grace is how you handle it when something goes wrong. I recently saw a study of airline on-time arrival rates that said this past year was the worst in history, less than 80% of planes arrive on time. Given that passengers have a significant delay 1 out of every 5 trips, it’s amazing how poorly the airlines deal with these situations. Personally, I’ve been delayed 3 out of the last 5 flights.

-San Francisco to JFK in January, with a plane change in Chicago. Connecting Flight canceled. I spent an hour in line, twice getting rebooked on successively cancelled flights. Ultimately, I made it to NY, 8 hours late. During the whole ordeal I got 11 e-mails on my Blackberry from United titled: ** UNITED AIRLINES ON TIME DEPARTURE MESSAGE ** telling me that my canceled flight was going to depart ontime…the last one arrived hours after the originally scheduled departure and cancellation. It’s not that I blame United for the weather, I blame them for understaffing the CS counters and having terrible information systems. I took some fun pictures of the freaky tunnel between terminals at O’Hare to pass the time.




-Burlington, VT to San Francisco, plane change in Washington Dulles. My flight was canceled due to a mechanical problems and there was a half-full USAir flight to DC departing around the same time, which would have allowed me to catch my connection. Unfortunately, I committed the offense of using frequent flyer miles to take this trip…so NO!!! United would not put me on their codeshare partner…I must be punished and made to sit for hours in Burlington and even more hours in DC to arrive 6 hours late and well after midnight.

San Francisco to Seattle on Alaska Airlines. Here we were delayed on the tarmac for 2 hours (it’s only a 2 hour flight) due to a mechanical problem. An hour into the wait the pilot said it was resolved and that we were just waiting on the paperwork…an hour after that, what must be the world’s longest form was filled out, and we were on our way. To their credit, Alaska did comp us a free drink, which is one of the small things that makes me think Alaska is better than most. United didn’t offer so much as an extra bag of peanuts.

Style
In the 30+ years I have been flying, people (including me) have been complaining about the airlines. One of the principal complaints used to be about food….they have found a fix for that, they just eliminated the food. Actually, that’s not true…they have morphed it into a strange experiment where they try to sell you the food, with little success as far as I can tell. I’m writing this at 35K feet and they tried, unsuccessfully, to sell me a “$3 Mystery Snack Box” earlier today.

The overall decline in amenities and comfort lead me to wonder where will it stop? I’m writing this on a Northwest Airlines flight, serviced by Mesaba Airlines. Now, I’d never heard of Mesaba airlines until today and I think I’ve found the new race to the bottom (pardon the pun) for this industry: cleanliness. I’ve been on cleaner buses in Mexico than this. I took a few choice snaps of the crusty seats, lost potato chips, and less than restful restroom (mercifully not shown).


Integrity
Here’s a big one for me. I don’t know anyone who travels frequently who doesn’t feel like the airlines lie to them.

Micro-Lies
It may seem like a small thing to some, but I think the situation with electronics is emblematic. We are prohibited from using electronics from the time the doors close to 10 minutes after takeoff and 10 minutes prior to landing. During the flight, nothing that can receive or transmit any radio signal is may be used. The fear is that this equipment may interfere with the plane’s navigation and control systems. Problem is nobody knows. It’s my understanding that no significant scientific studies have been done to determine the risk of this actually happening. So, based on someone’s hunch, millions of people are inconvenienced on a regular basis. What’s worse is, nobody really believes these warnings, so many of us either intentionally or accidentally violate the rules by leaving cell-phones, games, etc turned on. At some point there will be electronics that can interfere with the increasingly complex systems of airplanes, and the “Cry Wolf” syndrome may actually cause a crash. Two pet peeves include the premature order to extinguish all electronic gear…the crew on my first flight today issued the mandate 25 minutes before landing…..OH WAIT…I’m 30 minutes out of DC and they just said I need to shut down…oh well…there’s no real dange….

NEXT DAY
Whew…I’m back. I managed to shut down my laptop just in time to avoid taking the plane into a fiery tailspin.

Hmm...well looks like I'm not doing so well at my attempt to keep a journal, but I'll keep trying.

Lot's going on and done since my last post, so I'll mention some of the things that stick out in my mind.

Boat life continues to be good, though I'm not looking forward to doing laundry! Last Sunday I went sailing with a friend, we dropped the crab trap and had a nice sail around Puget Sound. Upon retuning to the trap we found a bounty of 5 crabs (4 Dungeness and 1 Red Rock). We then motored down to eavesdrop on the Chris Isaak concert on the pier while eating our catch. The concert, food and tunes combined to create a memorable evening. I'm looking forward to more evenings of the same this summer.

Work is good, if busy. Lot's of activity and a fair amount of progress on my project. Can't talk about it publicly, but I think it will be big!

Also went back East to Vermont for a board meeting at the Putney School, my high school. I am now officially a Trustee of the school. The meeting was at graduation, which brought back serious memories. I signed up to chair a committee on technology, which is an area the school has fallen behind in. I hope to help out with the selection of a hardware platform and the integration of technology into the both the education and community experience. Part of what makes this challenging is that Putney is located on a 500 acre working farm in VT and has very liberal leanings. Computers are seen by some members of the community as too "corporate" or simply the antithesis of an interpersonal community…I believe the opposite.

Well, I'm off to do laundry!

Back in Seattle...just finished moving onto my boat with Sheri. God I hate moving..I've had movers the last couple times I've moved, but seem to have forgotten the pain. Next time, I'm hiring movers!

Got wireless internet access on my boat today as well. So far, I'm really enjoying being on the boat (48 hours in), and my cat, Mousse, also seems to have adapted instantly to the new environment. I've had her for 16 years and she has lived in many places with me, so I guess she's not fazed by moving anymore.

I'm now in Marina del Rey, CA at my father's apartment looking out on the boats. I came down last night for a business meeting today. On the flight down I watched a documentary titled "RevolutionOS," which is about the open source/free software movement.

I have to admit, I don't really "get" open source software. I mean I understand the basics, but what I don't really have is a sense of it's future. I still see a big divide between the development community and users. The UI's and applications that your average programmer wants to use are so radically different than what consumers want...I wonder if/when that gap will truly be bridged. Otherwise, I guess it will be permanently relegated to professional IT applications. Sure is interesting and I would love to study/think about ways to apply the model to other human endeavor.

Very nice application Blogger! Hmm...where to start...well
here are a few things going on in my life.



I've been working on finding ways to increase the profile of my father's
website:



http://www.fineartship.com



He has a small business in LA that does art shipping, called descriptively
enough: Fine Art Shipping. It's an
interesting business moving fine art, packing it, crating, etc. they employ a
small staff that includes "art handlers," a profession I didn't even
know existed until recently. I have been experimenting with the Google
sponsored links program. It has been very interesting to see what gets searched
on and what gets clicked on. So far the most successful keywords have been:
-Crating
-art shipping
-art handler
-museum quality
-art storage
-art packing

Since Google rankings work in part on the number of links to a site, I hope
they spider my blog.

I'm also in the process of moving out of my apartment with my girlfriend,
Sheri, and my cat, Mousse, on to my sailboat: Miss Eulie. Miss Eulie, the
namesake of this website and my boat, was my Great Great Aunt, who lived in Maryland
and was born in the mid-1800's. I inherited her diary from 1876 and some
letters, so I feel a connection. Plus it's a cool/unique name. Her full name
was Eulalie Bouic.

I hate moving! Hopefully, next time I get the urge, I can just sail to my next
desired location.

I was also just asked to join the Board of Trustees of my high school, The Putney School. I am really excited about this and hope I can make a significant contribution, especially in the school's use of technology.

Finally, I bought a Bajaj Chetak...a wha? you say, well it's a cool red scooter
from India. The Bajaj company has been around for about 50 years and was
originally making Vespas under license from the italian manufacturer. My new
scooter is a 145cc with a 4 speed manual transmission. It gets about 100 miles
to the gallon.

All for now.

This is my first post!