mr_cellaneous

So I was on this twelve-hour flight the other day, and I got bored and wrote some things...

• Twelve and a half hours ago I stepped onto a shuttle bus in front of my house. Nine hours ago I walked down a jetway at the San Francisco airport. At this moment I'm about seven miles away, vertically, from Siberia. In another three hours I'll be on the ground in Beijing, China. Once in a while, at moments like this, I step back and remember how epically weird modern life is.
  
  
• The project I've been working on part-time for the past year, and full-time since January, is called BIND 10; it's a total from-the-ground-up rewrite of BIND 9, and it's a pretty big deal for the company. The team I'm working with consists of a half dozen ISC people plus five engineers on loan from companies that are sponsoring the project: two from JPRS in Japan, three from CNNIC in China. Every six months we've gotten the whole team together at ISC's headquarters in Redwood City for a week of design meetings and coding. But this time, CNNIC invited us to hold the meeting at their offices in Beijing instead, and we said yes; oddly enough, it turned out it wasn't much more expensive to fly everyone to Beijing than to fly everyone to Redwood City.
  
  It's going to be my first time in Asia. (Hmm. Should I use the future tense, there? Am I "in Asia" already, seven miles above Siberia-or-maybe-it's-northeastern-China-by-now? Well, either way, the airplane cabin doesn't look any different, so I'll leave the philosophical question unanswered and the tense unchanged.)
  
  
• I gotta remember this "having an airport shuttle pick me up at my house" trick. Least stressful trip to the airport evar.
  
  
• I was seriously dreading the 12.5-hour flight in economy class, but I gotta say, so far it's been quite nice. Partly because of my friend and colleague roshismomma, who's sitting next to me, making conversation possible when she isn't asleep. But also because the gate agent, bless her, offered us exit-row seats, which turn out to be THE place to be on a 747. The people in "economy plus" paid $200 extra bucks each for five more inches of legroom. Meanwhile, I can't reach the seats in front of me without getting up and walking over to them.
  
  I really have no idea why these seats weren't occupied already--nor why there's an empty seat between the two of us, on a flight that's nearlyfull. I'm sacrificing my next little-tiny-bag-of-pretzels as an offering of thanks to the airline gods.
  
  That said, getting to Beijing and landing would be very nice. Really, any time would be fine. Now's good.
  
  
• Harking back to that philosophical question: I may not be "in Asia" yet, but I've looked out the window and seen Asia, which is kind of cool. A few hours ago I looked out at Alaska, bringing to 49 the number of states I've looked at.
  
  
• Airplane food reviews: The Salisbury steak with ketchup was as good as it sounds, attractively plated on a recyclable black tray with accents of reconstituted mashed potatoes, followed by a brownie delightfully wrapped in two layers of plastic, and served with a fine Chardonnay, in the "enh, it's fine" sense of the word. I'm fairly sure the point of the latter was its tranquilizing effect, and it met this requirement admirably. The snack, a half sandwich of pressed turkey and American cheese on dry Wonder bread, left a little bit to be desired, so I sent it back and accepted a Cup o' Noodles instead. It was notable for being the first time a flight attendant has ever given me a pair of chopsticks to eat with.
  
  
• Yep, definitely over China now. Hi, China.
  
  
• Airplane movie reviews: We started with some Hugh Grant/Sarah Jessica Parker piece of crap about an couple of New York sophisticates in the process of getting a divorce from each other who witness a murder and are forced to enter the witness relocation program which requires them to live together in a hick town in the boondocks full of colorful people, where they complain about the quality of the bagels and pizza until the homespun values of the simple country folk blah blah blah I've seen this movie with different actors 96 other times and it was lame then too. We ended with a Robert De Niro/Drew Barrymore thing about a retired dad and his grown kids that's probably just fine but totally failed to grab me. In the middle were The Young Victoria and Fantastic Mr. Fox, both of which I liked a lot.
  
  
• I don't believe I've ever succeeded in sleeping on an airplane. I'll probably have been up for over 24 hours before I sleep. I used to do that all the time in college, so this should be totally easy.
  
  
• The odd thing, though, is that it doesn't feel at all like I've been up a full day. It's this weird kind of lost time. Maybe it's just because it's still daylight outside? (In fact, by the sun, it's only an hour or so later than it was when we left.) It's been a very long flight and I'm quite tired, but at the same time it's extraordinarily hard to get my mind around the idea that W and B have spent a full day together and B's bedtime was a couple of hours ago. I feel like I should be able to call them when I get off the plane and hear that they've just gotten home from the gym. Round planets are weird.
  

...and then they brought some more snacks and then the plane landed and then I rode in a taxi through Beijing for half an hour or so and then I went to dinner and then I slept, and then I spent several days going to business meetings and fancy dinners. I've scribbled a bunch of notes about it but will post them later.

Something I never ever imagined I would hear anyone say:

“Those protests on the U.C. campuses were the tipping point,” the governor’s chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, said in an interview after the speech. “Our university system is going to get the support it deserves."

Seriously. What? I mean, high fives all around and everything, but... what?!

Paul: I think of enthusiasm as the opposite of coolness, and adolescence is a turning point for this. Children are all enthusiastic, they're into what they're into, and it's great and they love it. But then something happens, and suddenly some of the kids start looking down on that enthusiasm and seeing it as immature or dorky. So they invent coolness as an alternative. I always gravitated away from that because I was interested in too many things.

Adam Savage: Yes, and enthusiasm also makes you vulnerable. When you like something, someone can take it away from you. I once gave a sculpture to some friends as a wedding present, and they turned it down. That was really upsetting to me. And that vulnerability itself is also embarrassing. The two emotions are deeply linked, which is why people try not to cry in public.

"Hey, where's my phone? I'd better call Willa and ask her to look for it... hey, where's my phone?"

So yesterday I went shopping with my friend A, who works at a big-box store (she'd offered to get me her employee discount for Ben's birthday present). It was awesome. Like having a high-powered Retail Attorney.

Cashier: "Okay, will that be all--"
A: "He also wants to apply for a store card."
C: "Oh, um, sure, the debit card or the--"
A: "The credit card. The one with the 10% discount."
C: "Right. Um, can I see your driver's license?" [scans it through a machine]
A: "You scanned that the wrong way. Enter this code first..."

Afterward, I gave her a lift to The Gap, because she had a $50 gift card and wanted to convert it to cash.

A: [approaching counter] "Hi! First of all, I want to apologize for what I'm about to do to you. What is your system's limit for cashing out gift cards?"
Gap cashier: "Up to $5, we can exchange a gift card for cash."
A: "Okay. California state law actually requires that to be $9.99 or less, but never mind." [produces gift card] "I'd like to buy ten gift cards, please."

I love watching competent people at work.

"So, Ben, I was curious about something. Last week at school, did they show you a speech from the president?"

"Yeah, they did."

"What did you think about that?"

"It was okay. Some parts were boring, but some parts were funny. Like, when he talked about 'not spending every waking hour in front of the TV and the Xbox,' that was funny. And the part about, 'Sometimes I'd fall asleep right there on the kitchen table,' that was really funny."

"Cool. So did it make you want to smash the state or turn the means of production over to the workers?"

". . . what?"

Adventure #1: World's most incompetent server at the Noah's Bagels in Terminal C of the San Jose Airport. This was pretty minor as adventures go, roughly on par with Bilbo Baggins forgetting his pocket handkerchiefs, but it counts. Seriously: really incompetent. There were, like, eight cents in the tip jar. I'm guessing she put them there herself, and I kinda wish I'd taken them. (Side note: WTF is up with the Firefox spell-checker being fine with the word "Bilbo" but underlining "Baggins" in red? Doesn't knowing the one imply knowledge of the other? But, I digress.)

Adventure #2: Waiting on the tarmac in San Jose while they fixed a fuel gauge on the jet. Again, fairly minor, except for the whining 7yo I stoically endured.

Adventure #3: Arriving in Denver 45 minutes late due to Adventure #2, which was exactly long enough for our connecting flight to Billings to leave without us. Being told by a flight attendant that I would be automatically booked on the next flight to Billings, then finding no flight to Billings listed on the departure board at the airport.

Adventure #4: Contacting the airline and learning that there was one more flight out, leaving three hours later.

Adventure #5: Killing three hours at DIA. Ben's always adored riding escalators for fun, but now, now, he has discovered the seductive charms of moving sidewalks. Lots of typically overpriced airport concourse fast food was also consumed, and a couple of chapters of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince read aloud. (Another side note: WTF is up with airport concourses that look like shopping malls? I mean, I get the crappy newsstands with magazines and Grisham novels and overpriced bottled water and candy bars; people on the airplane need empty calories both literal and metaphorical, and it's not like you can bring in your own damn water anymore. And I get the McDonald's with the $8 Big Macs; you're in an airport, you get hungry, what are you gonna do--leave?--so you pay out the butt for garbage food. And I also get the touristy souvenir shops and jewelry shops, for weary travelers returning home and realizing at the last minute they forgot to buy presents for their spouses and offspring; I have made use of such facilities myself on occasion. But, seriously. Who goes to an airport and tries on evening gowns? Who shops for a Harley-Davidson while waiting for a connecting flight to Omaha?)

Adventure #6: After arriving safe and sound at my mom and sister's house in Laurel, Montana, and sleeping late this morning, a family picnic at Pompey's Pillar National Monument. It's a honkin' big rock that William Clark graffitied in 1806 on his way to Oregon with Lewis and Sacajawea and her baby son, whose nickname was "Pompey". You can climb to the top of the rock, a few hundred feet up, and get a magnificent view of the fields all around, the Yellowstone River flowing by, mountains off in the distance, and infinitely-receding waves of spectacular clouds in the sky. You share this experience with a couple of park rangers and about a dozen tourists. I love how unpretentious national monuments are, and yet how fine. Thankya to President Clinton for designating this place as one three days before the end of his term.

I climbed the rock twice, once with my 84-year-old mom, once with Ben. He climbed it three times, two of them all by himself, and he fell asleep in the car on the way home.

Tomorrow: Yellowstone.

While putting on his knee- and elbow-pads to go skateboarding: "I don't know if they used a lot of Velcro to make these, or if they just used a lot of whatever-it-is that Velcro is a brand name for."

"This is not complicated. For men, sartorial good taste can be reduced to one rule: If Fred Astaire would not have worn it, don't wear it."



Sartorial good taste

Willa read Ben his horoscope just now.

Ben: "Really?? The newspaper is true?"