2021 - Day 6

Today what I’m most proud of is….this blog itself! I have been doing this for many years. Hold on, I’ll look that up. Yikes, 2014! So, 7 years. I haven’t gotten famous or popular, I think my most-liked post has about 20 likes or so, and I have maybe 50 comments in the whole 7 years. But I’m still glad I did it, because you have to be important to yourself, and it’s a sign of my commitment to document my thoughts and feelings. Sometimes I look back through my old posts and it’s interesting how far I’ve come but also how I remain largely the same upbeat and positive person I’ve always been, constantly looking toward a better future. I don’t really regret any of my posts, and some of them I really admire. And some of my photography is really good.

But mostly I just admire my own commitment to keep this going, without anything riding on it. I’m not getting paid, I’m not getting famous, it’s just pure writing for its own sake.

Here’s to another 7 years!

2021 - Day 5

Today what I’m most proud of is my growing barbell collection. Fitness has always been important to me, but it’s always been more about cardio. I’ve run 5 marathons and ridden across the country several times, but I just never was able to get into weightlifting. I always found it intimidating and I think it spoke to my lack of self-esteem, especially about my masculinity. But recently I’ve been working with a personal trainer, and he’s helped me to come to understand the importance of it. And because of the pandemic, we haven’t been able to work out in a gym, so basically if I wanted to work with him, I had to go buy some weights. Because it became mandatory, and because I did it one weight at a time, I was able to make progress in an area of my life I’d never been able to do much with before. And now I find myself the owner of really quite a good collection of weights, up to 50lb. Of course it’s what I do with the weights that’s important, but today I’m just focused on this nice, clean organized set of weights. The weight rack I just purchased from Dick’s Sporting Goods and set up a couple of days ago. Looks nice, doesn’t it?

2021 - Day 4

Today what I’m most proud of is a server that I set up. This requires a bit of explanation: In about a week or so, as part of a larger team, I’ll be participating in something called the MIT Mystery Hunt. It’s a sort of puzzle-solving competition which has been going on for many years and is pretty famous. It typically centers around the physical MIT campus, though for years now it’s had a large online component. But for obvious reasons, this year’s contest is entirely virtual, which seemed like a great time to get involved. As part of a team of about 20-25 folks, most of whom I know from my Austin/Trilogy days, we’re going to enjoy solving puzzles and doing a sort of online scavenger hunt for the better part of a long weekend.

While we have no expectation at all of winning or even coming close, organizing 25 folks to solve over 100 puzzles - at least a dozen of which might be going all at once - is a challenging task. So I took it upon myself to set up an instance of code which some of the leading teams use to organize their efforts. It’s based on a web platform and deployed on a Google Compute Instance. While there were some good instructions, it still took a bit of effort and work to get it deployed, so I’m proud of getting it up and working. Over the last couple of days we did a sort of “dry run” on a smaller puzzle contest called the Puzzle Boat, and it worked great.

If you want to check it out - or join our team! - just let me know. I won’t post the link here because I don’t want web robots to harvest it, but I’d happily show it to you!

2021 - Day 3

Today what I’m most proud of is that I finished a 3D printed design that I’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks. It’s for a set of hexagonal storage compartments that you could mount on a wall, and I mounted it on my wall. It’s something that I wanted because I want to put tiny electronics parts in it, but more so because I am working on my 3D printing skills. I’ve got two printers now - a slightly busted Monoprice mini printer that I fixed up, and then a Creality Ender 5 Pro that a friend recommended and was fun to put together. Makes me feel good to have accomplished this, and also I think it looks pretty stylish. If anybody has any recommendations of things to 3D print let me know!

2021 - Day 2

Today what I’m most proud of is starting the new semester at school. I’ve re-enrolled at Central Oregon Community College (remotely), and this semester I’m taking two classes: HST 105, the Spread of World Religions in the 600-1600CE time frame, and ENGR 201, an introduction to digital electronics. I’m proud of this for lots of reasons: because the content of these classes says something about my diverse interests, because I was able to get up this morning to attend my first class, because being in school is something I’m good at and makes me proud, and because it’s helping me chase my dreams.

I already learned a lot of cool things in the lecture this morning, and one of them was about the nature of thoughts which become universal; that is, the distinction between those religions which caught on globally, such as Buddhism, and those that did not, such as the worship of the feathered serpent gods in central Mesoamerica. It’s interesting to think about which ideas I have or have encountered which have universal applicability, and which don’t. And that’s just Day 1!

2021 - Day 1

I’ve realized that one of the things I really miss is posting on my blog. And one of the aspects I miss the most is posting about positive things about myself and accomplishments of mine. Even if nobody ever reads them, posting here makes me feel better about myself and serves as a reminder of things I’ve accomplished. So my goal here is to post one small accomplishment every day and what it means to me.

Starting here with January 3rd, this morning I rode the Tire Bouchon route in Zwift, which was about 65km. This was notable because it was the last route badge I needed to have completed every single Zwift route (for which there is a badge). I believe there are about 80 badges, ranging from rides of 3km to a route of 173km. Accomplishing this is a sign of my commitment to fitness, as well as a sign of commitment to commitment itself, to following through with something. Some of these routes I rode several years ago, so it’s been a journey, literally as well as figuratively.

This won’t be the end of my Zwift journey, though I’m likely to focus more on my in-person riding once the pandemic lets up.

Something Of Value Was Lost

This one is about the election.

I think Joe Biden is going to win. Everything I read seems to point in that direction. I’m not a fan of Donald Trump, so I’m happy about this. I wanted Mr. Biden to win, I voted for him, I’m glad he’s going to win. So, you know, yay.

My joy, though, is tempered a great deal by the fact that Mr. Trump got - at current count - over 48% of the vote of this country, and possibly as many as 268 electoral votes. The margin here is absolutely razor thin, in every sense of the word. And two of the people who voted for him are my parents. And they are sad. Very sad. They see this whole thing as a giant, ugly step back for America and democracy.

We must stand against racism. And authoritarianism. The scourges of populism and nationalism. We must. And yet somehow we have to do that, and retain our humanity.

I’m saddened by the anger in the responses I see, all across the spectrum. I don’t want to directly quote any of my friends, but I’ve heard Trump supporters described, in the heat of the moment, as racist, sexist troglodytes, evil goblins who want only for the downfall of civilization so they can dance on its grave. And I understand that temptation. Being subject to racism, sexism, transgenderism, ageism, or just good old fashioned “the government doesn’t care about me” ism is traumatic, and anger is a trauma response.

But does it bring you joy, to hate so many of your fellows? Is it bringing you happiness?

Some of those people, undoubtedly, are ugly on the inside. Some of them are truly terrible: white nationalists, authoritarians, greedy sons of bitches. But: 48% of the whole country? You’re telling me that tens and tens of millions of people who live here are just knuckle-dragging racists? Too stupid to think their way out of a rhetorical paper bag? All of them?

I am not saying that they are not wrong. I think they are wrong. But being wrong is not exactly the same as being evil. It is, of course, no less urgent a cause. I am not suggesting that we stand by and quietly let authoritarianism take over our country simply because we are afraid of standing up to our neighbors. But that is not the same as vilifying them.

When you describe them this way, are you sure that isn’t just a convenient way to other all of them so you feel better about your group membership? Isn’t that, in some ways, the exact sin you are accusing them of? Does it help you be happy to think of them somehow as evil? Is it bringing you joy? Is it hard to accept that they are merely wrong?

Time Goes By So Slowly, And Time Can Do So Much

This post is not really about the election - not really. It’s really about time, and economics, and racism, and nostalgia. But it’s worth mentioning, for those who read this in the future - or me, in the future (hi, me!) - that today, November 3, 2020, is the Presidential election here in the United States.

Like a lot of people, I was feeling some…weirdness about this election. I happen to be in Jacksonville, Florida, visiting my parents. This is where I went to high school. I brought my bicycle on this trip and so, without any real clear sense of where I was headed, I set out on my bike this afternoon, just to get the jitters out. I picked a sort of downtown direction, mostly because I’d never ridden that way, and I had half a thought that I would try riding the Skyway, the weird monorail that Jacksonville has (which I’ve written about in the past and is worth a whole post in and of itself).

As I got towards downtown, it occurred to me that I was going to be riding awfully close to my high school. So I decided to stop by.

A few things are worth clarifying at this point. First of all, I haven’t been - physically - to my high school in at least 20 and probably closer to 25 years. I graduated in 1994, 26 years ago, and - although I liked my high school and have positive memories of it - I just never went back. This is an interesting fact in and of itself, and it points to a couple of things about my life, and about Jacksonville. Probably the most relevant thing it points to is the vast gulf between different areas of Jax. My parents and I lived in various different areas of Jacksonville, but all of them out towards the east, east of the St. Johns River and well towards the beach. At some points we actually lived in a different city, Atlantic Beach. It’s worth noting here that Jacksonville is, physically, huge - the fifth largest city in the world, by land mass. It takes almost an hour - more, with traffic - to drive from my parents’ house to my old high school.

(Some of you may wonder: didn’t you go to your neighborhood high school? And the answer is no; Jacksonville, like many Southern cities, tried a system called Magnet schools, where they put the best schools in the worst neighborhoods, to try to attract suburban white kids into inner cities. It worked, sorta: we went there, but then we just went straight home. Being in downtown Jacksonville meant about as much to my high school experience as being on the surface of the moon).

I’m not really sure exactly how long it takes to drive because, well, we never go. Like, literally, my parents and I never - ever - go that way. We just don’t. There’s nothing there that draws us. No restaurants. No culture. Nothing. When I leave my parents’ house, it is more likely that I am headed to California than that I am headed to downtown Jacksonville.

That’s weird, right?

When I lived in SF, I went downtown. Portland, San Diego, Austin, New York City - I often lived outside downtown, but I went downtown fairly regularly. More in some places than others, but yeah, I went there. And I’m a person who loves to explore. I’ve been to almost every corner of Austin or Portland or Oakland because I like to see what’s there. Even the “scary” parts of Oakland were totally fun and full of culture to explore, even if yes, I did lock up both my bike wheels. But I don’t explore Jax - at least, not that way.

But today, I did. I rode down Myrtle, over 13th, down Bay. I took the Skyway. I stopped by my campus. And the high school was appropriately nostalgic for me. It hasn’t changed at all - at least physically, on the surface. I didn’t go in and wander around because, of course, school is in session and that would be creepy. But there’s still the same diagonal courtyard, the same weird double doors. It’s smaller than I remember.

I rode up, of course, on my bike. And this felt deeply weird. You see, I have never - not once in my life - ridden my bike to my high school. Not when I went there, and not since. It turns out, there’s a bike path - pretty nice! - about a block and a half away from the front door of the school, but I found it totally by accident; I had no idea it was there. I’ve literally never - ever - gone in or out of that school except in a car; either one I drove myself, senior year, or - before that - one driven by my parents. Occasionally I took the school bus, but even that was fairly rare.

That’s weird, right?

But this time - for the first time in my life - I rode around. I rode around the area, hit up the Westside. I tooled around for a good 15-20 minutes. And here’s what I learned: downtown Jacksonville, especially compared to the part of Jacksonville that my parents live in, is a completely and utterly different culture. A different country, really. A different planet. And: it is the land time forgot. It looks exactly the same as it did in the 1990s - and even then, it looked old. It is very African-American, of course. And it is also very poor. But I have been to other poor places, and other Black places, and what struck me about downtown Jacksonville, the word I couldn’t escape, was stagnant. It was stagnant: stagnant like a buzzing fly on a hot Southern day. Stagnant like a broken-down Datsun on blocks in a front yard. Nothing was happening. There were no new businesses. No construction. Nobody was putting up new signs - not even for the election. Nothing was for sale. No bike lanes, no construction crews, no orange cones. People live there, of course. Cars were driving around. But nothing was happening.

What makes this especially jarring is that the area where my parents live - also, I remind you, technically the same city even though an hour away by car - is the opposite, all frenetic activity; new businesses, new strip malls, new Mayo Clinic, new apartment complexes and condos and gyms and even a place that only does Live Action Role Playing. In short, the American Dream - as we conceived of it back in the 1950s - is alive and well in White Jacksonville, but in Black Jacksonville it is as dead as a doornail.

That’s…weird, right?

I mean, no, of course it’s not weird. We read about this all the time, of course. Systemic Racism. It’s a thing. But it’s weird to literally ride your bike between Boomtown and The Land Time Forgot. It’s weird to one minute be surrounded by new Chipotles and the next minute riding past a house whose roof has been in the same state of mild disrepair since I was 18 years old. It’s just Weird.

And it’s even weirder when it’s around your high school.

On The Nature of Art Appreciation - Day 83

Let’s talk about art, and let’s start with music. When I was doing a lot of dating, a question that often came up was what sort of music I liked. Often - and still to this day if you catch me in the right mood - my answer would be “I like to listen to terrible music.” This is an answer that of course is designed to be funny and sarcastic. An asshole answer. But, like many asshole answers, it hides a sort of gleaming truth. The fact is, I discovered long ago that most of the music I like - most of the music I really like - is stuff that most other people would find pretty unlistenable. Terrible, even. In the beginning, when people asked, I focused on music that I sorta liked, that I knew was palatable to most people. I like Paul Simon, for example. Saw him in concert and he was amazing. I like Madonna. I like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

But if you told me that I never again could listen to Madonna, I wouldn’t really be that sad. Madonna is music I listen to when somebody else puts it on. When it’s on at the gym or in the grocery store. When I’m alone, in my quiet moments when I want something that I and I alone will listen to, I listen to terrible music. I listen to Freezepop. I listen to 8-bit chiptune versions of old 80s hits. I listen to the Goonies soundtrack on repeat. I listen to Blue Man Group and They Might Be Giants. And that’s just the more normal stuff. I listen to people playing bells in pentatonic harmonies. I listen to a webcomic writer who has a side gig writing intentionally bad rap music that he goes out of his way to beg you not to listen to. I listen to video game soundtracks. I listen to crap. If you had to sit and listen to my musical catalog, you would probably conclude 2 things: 1) I might be insane, and 2) please don’t do that again.

Smash cut to the last 4 days, where I’ve been replaying a video game that I consider one of the best, if not the best video games of all time. It’s called Star Control: Origins. For the moment, it doesn’t matter much what it’s about. It’s a sequel to what’s widely considered one of the finest games of all time, Star Control 2, which came out 25 years ago and I played in high school. Star Control: Origins (SCO) is, in short, sublime. It is well-paced. Comedic. Entertaining. Well put-together. It flows naturally from story-beat to story-beat like a well-written science fiction novel. It has some fun game mechanics and some surprises. It is perfect? No, of course not. It has occasional typos and game bugs now and again. Parts in the middle drag a bit. Some of the bonus content is a little soft. It gets too easy near the end. And yet, if I were trapped on a desert island with only one game, this is the one I would take.

Thing is: I’m pretty much the only one. Oh, there are people that like SCO well enough. It has about a 60% review rating on Steam. One famous critic gave it the 4th best game of 2018. But mostly it was met, commercially and critically, with a collective yawn. It didn’t sell all that well. It ended up mired in this weird legal controversy I won’t go into. And it sat in the shadow of its predecessor, which was, as I mentioned, a game that would sometimes get mentioned in top 10 lists of best video games of all time. Nobody is clamoring for a sequel.

Here’s a little secret: I think SCO is better than the old version. Sure, Star Control 2 is a classic. I had lots of great hours with it. But it’s showing its age. First of all the technical details are limiting. The art is very, very old. The music is 1980s era video game music. The dialog is all told in text. You can’t speed the text up. The game is paced the way games of that era were paced: which is to say, slow. Games back then were expensive and were measured on the number of hours of gameplay they provided. The first 2 hours of the game all you do is run around and collect minerals. Yes, there’s some amazing writing. Yes, the world feels alive. But it takes a long time to get there, by modern standards. So, yeah: the modern one is just way better.

To put this in context for those of you not up on video games, I just tried to convince you that The Monkees are better, musically, than The Beatles.

So here’s the thing I finally learned about art, and beauty: it really, truly is in the eye of the beholder. Now, I do think there is such a thing as bad art, or artlessness. There is art - a lot of it, really - which is so lacking in skill, or message, that nobody would seriously consider it to be good. And of course, there is some art which rises to a level that few seriously question its quality. (a la the Beatles, or Shakespeare). But there is a wide, vast gulf in between of art which speaks to some people, but in a really, really uneven way.

I think Clue (the Movie) is superior filmcraft to Gone With The Wind.

I think the filmmakers behind Marble Hornets, the YouTube series, are better than the ones behind the movie It.

I like Star Trek: The Next Generation better than 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I think the Mona Lisa is honestly kinda boring, art-wise.

And, yes, I like The Monkees better than The Beatles.

And I’m OK with that.

On the Coronavirus - Day 82

As I watch my stock plummet, I feel like it’s finally time to address the Coronavirus. Like the 900 pound elephant who craps all over the room, I’ve mostly been trying to just not stare at it too hard, but it’s here, it’s real, it’s happening, and this is a blog where I write about my thoughts about the world and so it’s time to address this. I wish I had a clear sound bite for you about how i feel about all this. One of the reasons I’ve been hesitating to write about it was because I didn’t. So here are my complex, adult, non-sound-bite-y things to say about the Coronavirus:

First, I have to admit that part of me warms on the inside seeing humanity take an important scientific event seriously. It feels like science is always warning us of this, that or the other thing and mostly people just shrug and look the other way. I see people doing rational things like washing their hands and not shaking hands. I don’t see a lot of pseudoscience. I know there are stories of people not eating Chinese food because of fear of the virus, but mostly I get the sense that people are trying to use their heads.

Second, I don’t think there’s anything really to be all that worried about, at least in terms of the actual physical consequences of the virus. Like, I’m not personally worried about the impact on my health. I think this will mostly all blow over and everyone will be fine in the end.

However, that is cold comfort for anyone who is actually affected by the situation. Some people will, regretfully, die from this, and that’s a shame. I worry a little about my parents, who are older. I worry for my friends that just had a baby (though the disease doesn’t seem to do much to kids).

Perhaps most importantly, I worry about the very real consequences that very real people are currently experiencing as a result of the psychic damage and panic associated with the virus. Just in the last few days I, personally:
- Lost a ton of money in the stock market
- Watched the Game Developer Conference get canceled for the first time ever
- Was told I had to work from home
- Watched SXSW get cancelled

And I know there’s more to come. What’s happening here - regardless of the medical consequences - is heartbreaking for some folks. And it’s hard to know what to say. I mean, I know that for me personally the right answer is to just live my life the same way I always have. I’m not scared. But I won’t fault my friend too much if he doesn’t want to take his kids to the park, or if my parents don’t much feel like going to a football game. I mean, the disease is real, and it will affect some people. It’s disingenuous and rude to say it’s a big nothing.

And, finally, there’s the politics. It’s obvious that Donald Trump is not equal to this moment. On the one hand, I feel compelled to say, in the interest of fairness, that some of his protests are correct; people are overdoing it, there is too much panic, and some of it is unfairly directed at him. Having said that, the man is tone deaf, and it may finally be coming back to haunt him. His government - the one he chose to put together - is now made of toadies and climate deniers, and it turns out they aren’t very good at dealing with a scientific crisis. They’re not even good at being kind and compassionate while they screw it up. They come across like what they are: trust fund babies who just found out they failed chemistry because their effort to buy the answers to the test didn’t work. I absolutely want them to right the ship and turn around their response to this, because real human lives are on the line. But if they don’t - and that’s up to them really - the only good consequence of this whole sad thing is that we will soon get a chance to express our displeasure.

So, those are my complex thoughts. It’s sad, it’s probably ok, and maybe this is just the way the world works now.

On Sonic the Hedgehog The Movie - Day 81

The only thing you really need to know about the new Sonic movie is that there’s a heartfelt quiet scene near the end of the film where the camera zooms in on him, and the theater got completely quiet, and then a two year old voice in the first row just went “Sonic!” and everybody clapped.

It’s not a perfect movie. The plot is cliché, some scenes land a little weirdly. I walked out for 4 minutes to go to the bathroom and didn’t miss anything. But for what it is, and what it was trying to do, it was really fun. Jim Carrey is, of course, amazing, and the guy who voiced Sonic did a really good job. The movie’s emotional scenes, whether they were funny or dramatic, landed correctly and felt right. There was even some funny subplots I wasn’t expecting.

I’d give it a solid B+/A-. If you know who Sonic is, you’ll get a kick out of it. If you think you’ll like it, you will. If you don’t, well, yeah, you can miss this one; it’s not great literature and it won’t win any Oscars.

Still, it bodes well for future video game movies!

On Fry's - Day 81

When I first moved to Austin, almost 20 years ago now, I happened to buy a house that was located on the opposite corner from this strange new store. Not just new to me, but brand new to Austin. Rumors had been floating around about this awesome but slightly bizarre electronics supermegamart that was arriving from California. They were supposedly known for having eccentric private owners, odd decor, and absurdly low prices on merchandise that looked like perhaps it had just fallen off a truck. It was called Fry’s, and it was incredibly good timing, at least as far as Adam Hunter’s life goes. My ex-wife hated it because I always wanted to go there and I spent way too much money. There was something entrancing about the place. First of all, it was incredibly weird. They had a full piano coming out of the top of it, to celebrate Austin being the Live Music Capital. They sold computers, printer paper, perfume and toys. Half the merchandise looked like it came fresh off the As Seen On TV catalog. It was an odd mix of SkyMall and your local nerd’s electronics store. For me, it was a godsend. I bought my first soldering iron there. I fixed my car’s dashboard clock with parts I bought there. I remember once seeing an ad - in the newspaper, if you can believe that - that they were selling complete desktop PCs for $99 each. I bought 4, and started an improptu LAN party in the spare room in our garage. Fry’s was part of my life.

Today, in the process of working on a personal project at home, I discovered I had two parts that, despite claiming to work together, did not. So I needed something new; specifically, a device that lets you record video off an HDMI stream on a computer. Normally, I would head to my neighborhood Best Buy, but last week I had a run-in with Best Buy that left me feeling really taken advantage of, so I thought “well, I’ll check Fry’s”. Their website - as clunky as it is - said that they had a part I could use. It was a weird Chinese knock-off, but it was less than half the price, and the internet said it worked pretty well, so I figured hey, what the heck. This is what I remembered Fry’s for, after all: bizarrely low prices on knock off stuff. So I drove the 25 minutes out to Concord, CA. I’d been to this Fry’s many times over the years, but not since I’d been back, so probably not for 3 or 4 years.

It was, in short, depressing. Let’s just say the Fry’s has gone downhill. In fact, downhill is being kind. Fry’s was always strange. My friends and I always wondered how they made any money; the store looks like it was organized by Milton from Office Space, with weirdly empty shelves next to places crammed with merchandise, as if their corporate Buyer was a 13-year-old boy and a login to Ali Express. But now, all those traits had been magnified tenfold. Whole swaths of the store were practically empty. Products were arranged seemingly at random. Inflatable toy rafts sat next to hydroponic grow lights, which were next to a whole aisle containing only 10 copies of the same Samsung TV. It was one step up from a garage sale. 2 or 3 lonely employees circled around the store on god knows what errand. One lady stood up at the cash registers, processing an online return; I had to wait for her to finish to check me out. That part was particularly telling; Fry’s was always known for the speed of their checkout staff, and I can recall the one in Austin having upwards of 20-25 employees all on checkout duty at one time. I saw maybe 3 or 4 other customers in my whole time in the store, and none of them were checking out. The cafe door - yes, Fry’s had restaurants inside, and yes, the food was weird - was open, but nobody seemed to be running the store, so to speak.

Stores come and go. That’s a thing that happens. It’s the way of things. And, to be fair, I have in recent memory been to other Fry’s stores such as the one in Fremont, and they are not nearly as bad as this one (though it, too, has gone downhill). And Fry’s always was weird and kind of poorly managed. Rumors have always flown around that the super-secretive Fry’s family - which privately owns and runs the stores - has been up to no good, and that working there basically sucked. Their prices were low, but their return policy was crappy, their staff was extremely unevenly trained and, well, yeah. You could argue that it won’t be any great loss when they inevitably shut their doors.

Except for one thing: where do we go instead? I ended up at Fry’s because I was mad at Best Buy. So, fair enough; maybe I should go back. But what if I didn’t want to? Well, OK, time to talk about the nine hundred pound elephant in the room: there’s always Amazon. The “Fry’s of the future”: all the weird stuff and low prices, but without having to walk down aisles of perfume to get there. And I guess that’s a good thing.

So, OK, Best Buy and Amazon.

Hmm.

Is anybody reading this old enough to remember electronics in the 90s? I remember Circuit City. And MicroCenter. I remember Radio Shack, and independent TV/VCR stores. I remember shopping around and comparing ads, CompUSA vs Fry’s versus the guy around the corner. All of them: gone.

Seems…suspicious. I mean, what if you just kinda don’t like Best Buy? And what if you want to look at something before you buy it? What if you don’t feel like paying for Amazon Prime? Or, what if Amazon just refuses to sell whatever it is you want, for whatever private reason? Rumors are always flying around, too, that Best Buy is in trouble. What happens when they go under? (Granted, they always look super busy, but you never know). What if you’re a supplier of some new electronics gadget and Amazon doesn’t feel like stocking it and you can’t get Best Buy’s attention?

Competition is good, and call me a fuddy duddy but I don’t really want to have to buy stuff online. Sure, sometimes it’s incredibly convenient, and the selection sure is good, but what if I want it right now? Or what if I have to see it fits? What if I just wanted to see what’s out there and sorta look the product right in the eye? Besides, what if Amazon starts raising their prices? What if it starts to kinda sorta suck, and products don’t get shipped correctly, or they reduce the return policy, and suddenly it’s not such a great deal?

We might regret closing all the Fry’s.

On The Posey Street Tube - Day 80

There’s a lot of unfortunate things happening in the world these days, and a lot of them feel a bit outside our control. But small injustices need to be repaired as well. Yesterday, I went jogging and was reminded of one of our little local problems; I decided to jog over to Alameda, the island city that’s only about 2 miles from my house. The only reasonable way to get there without circling way around is to go through an underground tube called the Posey Street Tube. It’s notable that - for an area with mostly excellent public transit - there’s really no easy way to get to Alameda. There is a private free shuttle that services a shopping center over there, but the vast majority of folks just drive.

Presumably because there’s no other way to get there, they do begrudgingly allow pedestrian and bicycle traffic through the tube. However, it is clearly an afterthought. You are squeezed into one direction of the tube, and one side of the tube inside that one direction. The entire space can’t be more than about 3 feet wide; barely enough for two cyclists to pass each other if they both slow to a crawl and carefully maneouver around each other. The tunnel is very poorly lit, with yellow halide lamps that cast eerie shadows. Cars are required to put their headlights on because it’s really very dark. The surface you ride on is pretty subpar as well, with transitions from concrete to metal and ridges that can throw you. And, pedestrians and cyclists have to share. When I jog through there, I’m terrified of cyclists, and when I bike, I’m worried I’ll hit somebody. To make it worse, the tunnel makes a curve near one end, creating a completely blind turn.

It’s a bad situation, and it’s particularly notable for this area which generally does such a great job with bike paths and sidewalks. And it’s especially egregious because, like I mentioned, there’s really no easy alternative.

Producing a whole bike path is probably unrealistic; there’s just no room. But it seems like it would be pretty easy to open up both sides of the tunnel for pedestrian/bike traffic, and for using both sides of each direction of the tunnel, a la the Golden Gate Bridge. In fact it looks like it was originally designed to work that way; I’m honestly not sure why it’s closed. That wouldn’t fix the problem but it would help a ton.

Here’s a more professional version of what I just said, along with some good pictures that highlight the issue:

https://i2.wp.com/sf.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/11/Lonecyclistintunnel.jpg?w=580&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C329px&ssl=1

On Interrupting - Day 79

This post is not about football, but football is the backdrop to it. Don’t worry, though: even if you’re not into sportsball it will be interesting. This weekend, randomly, a new American Football league started, trying to compete with the NFL. In an effort to be interesting, one of the changes that they made was radically opening up the field to the reporters and the on-site commentators. There have always been brief halftime interviews of the head coach on the way to the locker room, but this is way more extreme. A few times, a guy would make a great play - or a terrible one - and immediately some commentator would be talking to him on the sideline about what just happened. Sometimes the poor guy would be panting still. Most of the time the players tried to be cool about it. They are, after all, paid performers to some extent. And I’m not saying there’s anything ethically or morally wrong with this. But I could tell it really annoyed the players and coaches and, honestly, I felt for them. Few of us have been professional football players I would imagine, but we’ve all tried to do our job while somebody stood there and, well, made themselves a pest. I remember many years ago working at a large video game company and having the CEO call me directly and ask me how things were going. The temptation to say “they’d be going better if you stopped calling me” was nearly overwhelming.

There’s something grating about having somebody in your face when you’re trying to get something done. It’s like the opposite of a flow state; an “anti-flow” state, if you will. The more we get interrupted, the more annoying it gets until, at some point, we just lose our cool.

I, for one, don’t want sideline reporters interviewing the guy at the circus who just got off the trapeeze or the lady who just finished singing an aria.

On "Why Don't You Just" - Day 78

OK, stop me if you’ve heard this one before. You set out to do something - something adult. Something relatively small. Maybe it’s to change banks for your checking account. Maybe you need to renew your driver’s license. Or hire a plumber. Or get blinds installed.

For me, recently, it was trying to get a car stereo installed in my car.

Whatever. But, for some reason, it just goes super sideways. You try and try, but the universe just says you’re not adulting that day. You fail once, you fail again and then, much to your incredulous dismay, you fail a third time. And then, in the midst of despair, a voice chimes in. Maybe it’s a mental voice (for me it’s usually my mom). Perhaps it’s an actual friend in real life. And they always start with “Why Don’t You Just”. Why don’t you just go to this specific bank? Why don’t you just do it online? Why don’t you try Amazon? Why don’t you just let me take care of it? Why don’t you just admit that you’re fooling us all and actually you sometimes go to the grocery store at 2am and buy an entire pint of ice cream and eat it all while sitting in your car in the parking lot?

You know what I mean.

Anyway. I’ve decided that I’m going to stop saying “why don’t you just”. Because, the thing is, as a wise person once said, everyone we meet is fighting their own battles. We never know what’s going on with people. And, as another wise person once said, everything is easy once you know how. We all struggle with different things.

On $19.73 - Day 77

Yesterday, I found myself in downtown San Francisco, near the Metreon, and I needed lunch and wanted a cheeseburger, so I stopped into the first place I saw called Split. It looked OK, kind of one step up from an In N Out. I asked if they had combos and they didn’t, so I just ordered the burger, fries, and a diet coke. They asked if I wanted them “Split fries” and I said how much was that and they said a dollar so I said sure.

The total? $19.73. I actually had to ask to make sure they had gotten the order right. They had.

Now, my goal here is not to throw Split - whoever they are - under the bus. There are lots of restaurants in downtown SF, and they are all overpriced. But holy cow.

Not to be Captain Obvious or flaunt my white privilege, but I feel like there are a lot of problems with a $20 hamburger. Here are a few that come to my mind (this is by no means all of them):

Some people can’t afford it at all. Let’s start with the most obvious one: many folks just won’t be able to afford it. Anybody who works a normal job and gets a normal salary is going to have a tough time living anywhere where the burgers cost $20, much less, say, the folks who work in the place where the burgers cost $20. And SF loses out on all those folks; their energy, their intelligence and artistry and viewpoint. All gone. Some refer to this as the “whitewashing” of the city, for obvious reasons, and the analogy is apt because it makes you think of coral reefs, turning white under the heat of the economy.

It leaves less money for other stuff. If you’re spending $20 on lunch - assuming you can afford it - you’re not going to buy extra clothes, souvenirs, furniture. You’re going to make do on what you have. You’ll save leftovers and eat them, you’ll live in a place that’s really too small. You won’t buy other things, and that hurts the economy.

It’s just kind of a bummer. Even for those who can afford it, it has a chilling effect on your enjoyment of the city. I bought the burger, for example, but I didn’t like it. Spiritually, morally and ethically it feels bankrupt, triggering feelings of privilege, guilt, and shame. Are you an idiot for spending that much on lunch? Are you perpetuating a broken system? Could the hamburger possibly be anywhere near that good? (Spoiler alert: it really wasn’t).

It’s really bad press. Imagine coming into town for a convention for work. Maybe you’re even on expense account, so it’s not your $20. You’re still going to notice, and go home and tell your friends how incredibly overpriced the city is. And you’re probably going to think twice before planning a vacation there.

I realize that nobody needs to eat out. You can go to a grocery store; I could have gone to one even for lunch. Of course, the grocery stores are just as hyperinflated.

On Hyde St. Studios - Day 76

Today, courtesy of my friend Rachel, I got to hang out at Hyde St. Studios in San Francisco for the morning. For those who don’t know, Hyde St. is a famous music recording studio where some amazing folks have been through and done their thing. We’re talking Digital Underground, Kanye West, Grateful Dead, Cake, Train, etc., etc. Heavy hitters. The real deal. Rachel and a bunch of her friends had gotten together and pooled their money to buy one of their friends a birthday present. That friend plays guitar, sings and writes his own music and they wanted to get him some real recordings, and I was lucky enough to tag along. It was really inspiring and kind of awesome. In fact, very awesome. The place drips with music history, from the gold and platinum records along the walls to the baby grand piano which apparently was sold to them by Frank Sinatra’s mistress when she was moving out. It taught me once again how people who know what they are doing can make something really complex look incredibly simple. The friend - Kevin - turned out to be amazingly good, with what the technician (named Sam) rightly called a Cat Stevens-style sound. In 3 hours they had recorded 3 tracks of him, and done some preliminary - but still pretty damn good - mixing and mastering. I can tell you from experience trying to set up sound recording that what they pulled off represented 3 hours of their time and about 40 years of experience. I thoroughly enjoyed watching him sing and play guitar and watching the engineer work his magic. I know enough about sound production - mostly from watching and listening to my brother - to have an idea how hard it is, and so it was fun to watch. The console is incredibly - it looks like it could launch and guide the Space Shuttle. Something about the environment felt very inspiring, too, from the comfy couches to the array of old mikes and the million switches labeled cryptic things like “Max Out” or “Engineer’s Cut”.

It was also a reminder of why, despite all the expense and trouble, I continue to live in and near San Francisco. On days like today it feels worth it.

On Biking the Richmond Bridge - Day 75

Today I had the privilege of biking over the new Richmond Bridge bike path with a group. There were a lot of little fun side stories along the way, but what you really want to know is how it is to bike the new path, and the short version is: awesome. It’s about 5 miles give or take, and you get amazing views of the various bay islands and inlets including Angel Island. The track is basically the old cement road and it feels very wide and safe. We had a blast. On the Richmond end is Point Richmond, a very cute little neighborhood not that far from the Richmond BART (maybe 2 miles). It would be an easy morning ride adventure. The weather was great and I was reminded of how fun it is to go on rides with a group, as well as hoe handy the BART is for Bay Area cyclists.

On Art Tastings - Day 74

Tonight, courtesy of Jason and Starla and their friend Jacqui, I was invited to attend an art show slash dinner event, called An Art Tasting. I had to leave a bit early because I’m not feeling super great this week, but in the time I was able to stay I had a great time. I especially loved it because it felt very inspiring (which I think was one of the main points). It was a bit of an “amateur artist” night, by which I do not mean to impugn the artists, who were all excellent, just to say that it was definitely a night for people to shine without having to first be as amazingly polished. I would like to get back into producing art and it’s important to remember not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. There are things that I think I can give back and this was an important reminder to just get out there and get it done. The food in particular was amazing and very fresh; full of delicious vegetables.

And - it was right up the street from me here in Oakland! Win-win!

On Bike Kitchen - Day 73

This evening I went by Bike Kitchen. Bike Kitchen, for those who don’t know, is a community bike repair space in San Franciso, near Potrero Hill. It’s been there forever and I used to go and volunteer there. In fact the computer still had the record of my last volunteer shift. 8 years ago. :0 So yeah, a lot of water under that bridge. It was great to be there; I hung out there with my friend Rachel for about an hour or so and just chatted with people about their bikes and helped some folks work on either new bikes or a repair. I don’t know if I actually helped anyone, but I had a great time. It really hasn’t changed at all, which is a testament to how well run it is. The place is so clean and well organized and obviously stable if it really hasn’t changed at all in 8 years. That’s uncommon for any business much less a non profit.

I highly recommend them if you need bike advice or a part; of course everything is used but they’ve got a ton of stuff and it’s really well lit and organized and you can use all their tools! I don’t know how they do it but they got a great thing going.