blog (May, 2002)
from A to Stink
I left the office for lunch and walked 7-8 minutes down the road to a Mexican restaurant. It was sunny and hot, and I rolled up my sleeves for the humidity. After the meal I made my way out of the mall and the old lady I held the door open for as she was coming in said, "It's gonna be a thunderboomer out there..."
My first footstep on the cement sent lightning down from the sky, thunder chasing close behind. The lady at the hot dog stand was scrambling to close up her large, portable, metal shop, and the now cloud-darkened streets were nearly empty. The rain came and I began running. Running half a mile is not a particularly difficult or unpleasant task for me, but then I usually don't practice in business casual attire and with a gigantic enchilada in my stomach.
I returned soaked and winded. I made my way up to my temporary 2nd floor office only to find the sun shining in the window and the air free of liquid missiles.
For the next hour, I couldn't help noticing that I smelled. bad. I remembered seeing a black stand-up comic talking about how white people smell when they get wet, but I had never smelled like this before. Yet I faintly recalled the odor from somewhere.
I finally realized my Centrum multivitamin, which I carry wiuth me during the day until I feel like swallowing it, had thought that my wet pocket was really my stomach, and began delivering all of the day's important vitamins and minerals to my pants. It was half dissolved, and smelling up the whole room. My stomach growled.
over'earings
Wheelchair-pushing man in Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport:
"It's been like this all day! All the way from Gate F to baggage and I got a dollar. A dollar!"
Small latino child in Bo-Town, a viet/chinese restaurant in San Jose:
"¿y l'america siempre gana? ¿y l'america siempre gana?"
(use babelfish to translate if you aren't spanishly inclined.)
2nd night in San Jose
Yesterday evening Apple held a mixer at a pool hall for the students here at WWDC on scholarship. I billiarded badly for awhile, then set off on my second un- (mis-?) guided tour of San Jose.
One or two buildings away was The Usual, where a band was setting up. I spied a banjo, and made my way inside. The Shitkickers play some amalgamation of bluegrass, punk and metal. The singer wore only jeans suspended by two white shoelaces, and the banjo player knew a good lick or two. A better lick occurred when a man riding his bike down the street outside stopped and began putting on his own show for us, doing blowfishes and drawing circles all over the window with his tongue. He then proceeded to unzip his pants and stick both his seat and handlebar, up against the glass. He knocked his bike over in his hysteria, then finally quit, zipped up, picked up and rode away.
The next two stops on my tour were far less interesting and don't deserve mention. My last visit was to a small, hip coffeeshop. I asked and was granted permission to watch a chess match between a thirtysomething, flamboyantly gay black man and a sixty-ish vietnamesian missing a few teeth. The former had two very-used books on chess, one nearly taller than my styrofoam cup of tea. I spoke to the men some -- first to the viet man, quite a quick and proficient player:
me: how long have you been playing?
he: oh, a little while now
...
me: how many moves ahead do you think??
he: I don't think.
other man:
oh, he's so arrogant...
The midnight closing hour quickly approached, with half the pieces still left on the board, but my new friend's arrogance and unthinkingness was not unfounded, and he moved gracefully to checkmate and the three of us parted.
goin to california with an aching heart
When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find in himself a good an sufficient reason for going. This to the practical bum is not difficult. He has a built-in garden of reasons to choose from. Next he must plan his trip in time and space, choose a direction and a destination. And last he must implement the journey. How to go, what to take, how long to stay. This part of the process is invariable and immortal. I set it down only so that newcomes to bumdom, like teen-agers ain new-hatched sin, will not think they invented it.Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.
-- John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley
Monday I leave Cleveland, temporarily, for San Jose, California. Apple gives out a number of scholarships each year to its Student Developers to attend the Worldwide Developers Conference. I received one, and so I travel to San Jose. Unfortunately, my university's administration won't allow me to change one of my final exams, so I miss Sunday's student mixer and Monday, the first day of the conference. On Friday, after the WWDC is over, I'm heading down to Burbank (near LA) for a few days to catch up with some friends, then back to Cleveland for Senior Week and graduation.
The Art of Turboing
Everyone has had a bad customer support experience at some point in their life. In today's world, the "service-oriented" companies don't see customer service as the "service" they provide. It can be difficult to get help for problems that seem simple and straightforward....
I first learned the term "turboing" when I worked second-level telephone technical support at Xerox. It refers to the actions of a customer who goes around the normal technical support process by contacting a senior person in the chain of command.
-- Rob Levandowski, The Art of Turboing