Category Archives: Scribbles

Moneyball, California Dreaming, and Editing in Public is Hard

Posted on by
5

I spent the majority of last week in San Francisco at an annual corporate training / team-building / liver-decimation exercise. It’s the only time each year that they bring together the consultants from all the regions and branches of Indirect Tax, and while the training sessions were particularly useful and informative this year, what it really represents is a chance for a very decentralized team (about 50 people from four continents) to gather together as a group and renew the personal connections that allow us to rely on each other at two in the morning when the proverbial shit and the metaphorical fan become a lot less proverbial and metaphorical. The latter is accomplished with structured activities, face-to-face time, conversations over dinners, a few war stories between Type-A personalities, and an open bar.

While “what happens in Frisco STAYS in Frisco” I will share the following sequence of Wednesday night texts from a good friend and colleague of almost five years, unedited:

ME: Did we lose you?
HIM: Jiffy saute g’day HDTV
HIM: No
HIM: Sarah heftier jiggly
HIM: Fuck
HIM: Tree grey hoots
HIM: Fucjir I can’t tyie
ME: Where the HELL are you man??? That looks like a serious good time in progress!!!

I’m not going to lie, “Sarah heftier jiggly” became something of a theme and a mantra for the rest of that night. Was this a person, a place, an event? I won’t tell you the answer, but I will say it’s none of those things and all of them. And maybe the best auto-correct fail I’ve ever been a party to.

Thoughts about a movie, my job, and my writing after the cut…

Brand new same old same old

Posted on by
9

I spent the holidays with Sarah here, and as such I didn’t do much beyond be dad and do chores around the house. I think the most exciting thing was putting a new 20 amp breaker in the panel and wiring up power to the cottage near the new horse pasture. Well, that wasn’t all that exciting, but testing the new electric-tape fence was at least somewhat amusing I guess. As I couldn’t find the fence tester I got last year for Christmas, I figured I’d just do what I did last time and use my hand.

Stupid.

The jolt from a solar-powered box with a 2500 milliamp battery is basically equivalent to the zip you get from a 9v battery on your tongue times two. The jolt from an AC fence energizer that can power ten miles of fence and runs dedicated off a 20 amp breaker over 12 gauge wire is…stronger. Like, “red scorch mark on your hand” and “knee buckles out from under you” stronger. Let us just say that I didn’t have to test it a second time.

Anyway, the thing I didn’t do over the holidays was write. Anything. At all.

Crippling self-doubt and authorial insecurities…

It’s not just two days after Christmas and five days to New Years…

Posted on by
1

It’s also Oregon Sunshine’s BIRTHDAY!!!

Happy Birthday, and may all your pony/goat/chicken dreams come true this year! If I can keep from blowing away, your fence will be up/moved/”fixed” and your electrical run by the end of the day tomorrow.

Now sit back and enjoy your day!

[EDIT: This was scheduled to go up at midnight, but auto-post failed me horribly. Sorry, it was supposed to be more timely.]

What happened to that “Bad Pants” guy?

Posted on by
16

A part of me feels bad that I went to the effort of revamping the site only to post one book review (albeit a review of the best book I’ve read in a long LONG time) and then disappear again. I actually do have more to write; I have much more I want to say, and get out, and write through…but I’ve been a bit busy. I know, I know, we all say “I’ve been busy” and it is a kind of lame excuse, and I recognize that it is just an excuse, but as these things go I do have something to back up my continuing tardiness:

WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!!
New Home

We’re right in the middle of moving seventy-five miles out to Monroe Georgia…but it’s worth it. This is the last move I’ll ever make. I’ve spent the last week working my ass off and NOT getting the packing done. This weekend, the office, the storage room, the kitchen and the dining room will be packed. OS has busted out our bedroom and the kids rooms already, and she’s well on her way to having the tack consolidated and the living room ready.

If I can get my stuff “done” then I get to sit on my vacationing ass and write and play Skyrim. There’s a LOT of incentive to get done before the Moving truck gets here Wednesday morning.

If I don’t post again before the big move (and let’s be honest, I won’t), then I’ll just say “Happy Thanksgiving” and “see you all online from Monroe!”

Things I Like: Australian Rules Football

Posted on by
11

So, in switching from Satellite to internet television, I’ve found myself getting all of my non-baseball sports via ESPN3 on my Xbox360. ESPN3 is funny because the sports on offer are somewhat…eclectic. You’ve got your occasional baseball, basketball, etc…but it’s the other stuff that’s really intriguing. Or in one case, addictive.

I have discovered a new passion, and that passion is a combination of soccer, rugby, a few dashes of American style football (the one not generally played, you know, with the foot), a few more dashes of American style basketball (no, I’m not kidding), and several very liberal doses of a game we played in high school called “smear the queer” (apologies for the politically incorrect name). I remember a few years ago there was a sports commercial that implied that US Football players were the roughest-toughest-most manly athletes in the whole world. That, was a LIE.

The men who play Australian Rules Football are, without a doubt, the most bad-ass mofos on planet earth. We’re talking the Seal Team VI of professional athletes. These guys play a more-than-full contact sport wearing only short-shorts, a tight tee-shirt, compression shorts (optional), rubber turf cleats, and a mouthguard (also, strangely optional). No body armor, no thigh pads, no shin guards, and for the love of all that is holy, NO HELMETS! I honestly expect at some point for the testosterone levels to get so high, the players will just strip down greco-roman style and paint their bodies in different colors of woad. Believe me, the current kit doesn’t offer any superior protection over the “warrior aura” of the gladiators and combatants of ancient times.

I’ll give the AFL (that’s the Australian Football League) one thing, they’ve got a very approachable sport. I’m pretty sure I’ve basically worked out the rules after watching less than a half-dozen games; and honestly, who can say that about the US counterpart? I’ll try to describe the general gist of an AFL match from an untrained american perspective, and if any real-life footy fans happen by and want to correct anything here, please drop a comment. I’ll correct as necessary.

A semi-serious explanation of Aussie Rules Footy…

1827 days

Posted on by
10

Download MP3

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

In a few hours I will have completed thirty-five trips around the sun. This isn’t a tremendous accomplishment, for the most part I was just along for the ride and hanging on for dear life; and based on the average maximum age of the men on both sides of my family, I’ve got about ninety years in me, so I’m still a decade away from half way there.

Still, a friend of mine pointed out a few days ago that thirty-five is “the age when even the elderly don’t think you’re young anymore.” That kind of hit me.

Birthdays Past and a list for the future…

The Anticipation of Misery

Posted on by
4

There is no word in the English language that describes that moment when we know something we will not like is about to happen but we also have to make a brave face and happily march into the hail of emotional bullets on the other side of the trench we’ve dug ourselves into. It’s the perfect mix of dread and consignment and acting. No matter how much I might hate for her to leave, no daughter deserves a distressful send off as she prepares to make the five-hour trip across the country by herself.

Cute Pictures and Bad Poetry…

Saying something now…

Posted on by
13

…because I won’t feel like saying anything later.

For once, I’m trying to be realistic about what comes next. In under 24 hours (more like 17) Sarah will walk back down a jetway and board a flight back to her mother. I always try to convince myself that “I’ll be fine” and it won’t really affect me, the practical part of me knows that tomorrow I won’t feel like blogging. At all.

So, I’ve decided to ask my blog-friends for help. When you read this tomorrow (as I assume most of you will), would you please remind me to write more. Write something. Write anything. I always feel better when I do…and I’m gonna need all the kicks in the pants I can get to push me across the chasm between writing nothing and writing something.

I’ve got the genesis of a music-based post largely inspired by finding that picture of my 1974 Van, as well as the next few “What I’m Looking For” lines in various states of done (and by done I mean partial drafts and/or fragments) so I should be able to wrap myself around something.

Or I can just go off on my opinion about substituting “Young Earth Creationism” for science in school curriculum. I’ve got a good sized blog post about that built up after a week with Sarah and “I don’t need to learn that because GodDidIt” being a good enough excuse for a nine-year-old lacking a fundamental understanding of things like heliocentrism, what stars are, the minimal basics of biology, or the fact that atomic particles aren’t imaginary and just made up by scientists who refuse to believe in GodDidIt.

Anyway, I could (and just might) go off on that for quite the spiel but now isn’t the time.

Now is the time to ask for help. Tomorrow will suck, and I need people to remind me to do the things that help me get past the suck that I never remember to do when things suck.

So…please…start reminding me tomorrow. I will deeply appreciate it.

Sometimes it’s not JUST an excuse

Posted on by
12

Ok, I know I’ve missed a few weeks of posting. I know I say “work issues” a lot as an excuse. I know a lot of you think “damn it man, how do we even know you’re really working?” Well, this last week I spent my time at a company retreat/working session/tech conference/happy hour [added that last one entirely based on a joke in an IM with essaytch; credit where credit is due] where we gathered as an organization from around the world (four continents and counting) and took over the Hilton in Downtown Portland. Aside from the Saturday night post-activities activities that will remain both secret and legendary, the highlight for me was the award dinner on Sunday.

I will say that organizational awards, like any peer award, carry a certain amount of politics. I will also say that there were others in attendance who deserved the award just as much as I did. I will ALSO say that it felt DAMN nice to receive. Oh, and I had absolutely NO idea I was getting it, so that made it a really nice surprise.

Anyway, from now on, when I say “sorry, I was busy with work” I’ll at least have something to look at and know that the people who pay my salary and write my performance reviews recognize my commitment and contributions. And really, that feels by far the best of all.

[Word Count: 235]

That was so 2010

Posted on by
15

I did a LOT in 2010. When I start to think back about what I accomplished last year compared to the year before, I’m actually quite proud of where I ended up.

In 2009 I racked up 68,000 frequent flyer miles with Star Alliance (United and Continental) and about another 32,000 with Delta/Alaska for about 100k in a year. It was miserable. There isn’t time for much in life when 80% of it’s spent waiting to board a plane, flying on a plane, or travelling from an airport to a hotel.

In 2010 I traveled to Chicago, Columbus, Minneapolis, Chicago, Bentonville (for the better part of 6 weeks on three subsequent round-trips), Dallas, San Francisco/Oakland, Huston…and then no more. In June we moved from Portland to Atlanta and I traveled exactly once since we got here, the first week we were here, for that final trip to Huston. For the last six months I have worked from my home office, and it has been wonderful.

The reckoning of a year as the sum of its parts…