lifebsideben

Pretty bad storm last night–wind, rain, hail, you name it. Around 7pm Val calls my cell and says “the power just went out!” Ironically enough, I was shortly on my way to Fry’s to buy, among other things, a UPS battery back-up for the new server in the basement (RAID box building updates to come later). So I picked up some Wendy’s on the way back, and we had a nice candlelit dinner, which was actually kind of fun, except that it was Wendy’s after all, and they as usual screwed up the order.

It’s always so cool to have a temporary power outage, with the emphasis on “temporary”. You can remember what it’s like to do simpler things, like read by candle/flashlight, or heaven forbid, TALK to another human at length with no distractions. This all happened right around the kid’s bedtime, so he didn’t get to experience much of it, but Val and I kind of had fun with it. Digging up batteries for the radio, chatting, wandering around the dark house like it was a mysterious new place. Playing tag with the flashlights. Burning ourselves lighting candles. Enjoying the eerie quiet of the neighborhood.

Still, it was weird too, because something kept saying in my mind “hey, go check e-mail” and “flip on the tv”. Apparently the use of electronics has taken root into the reptilian parts of my brain, as well. And even simpler things were raised in our consciousness… Val realized she didn’t know where the flashlights were, if we had a radio that could use batteries, if we had a gas or electric (electric) water heater, if we had a phone that didn’t require power (yes), etc. In George Carlin’s latest stand-up, Life is Worth Losing, he says the fastest way to destroy civilization would be to turn off all electricity, and that it’d take a lot less time to all go to hell than people think. I am certain he’s correct about this, even without the inmates being released from prison in his scenario. We just depend on the magic electron frow from the holes in the wall, altogether too much. Butwhatyagonnado? I need my MTV, or VH1 Soul as the case may be.

I was definitely relieved when power was restored around 3am. In other words, I think everything in the frige/freezer probably survived Hopefully the Tivo and Macs did as well, I didn’t have time to check everything over this morning. I’m pretty glad I shut down the RAID box in the basement the night prior! Now to configure Linux for the UPS I bought, and grab last night’s Apprentice 5 premiere off bittorrent!

Tags: burlingame, family, Life

I wanted to be able to vote and also get to work at a reasonable time, so when the baby woke up crying at 5am, it seemed like a good plan to stay up, and get to the polls as they opened at 7am here. I read a bunch of email, surfed the web a bit, and ended up at my polling place (a church in Burlingame) at 7:00 on the dot. There were already about 10 people for each of three districts in line, and I’d say the average age was 40. I was heartened to see someone younger than myself at the registration table, but then realized they weren’t voting, just tagging along with their mom After a quick 10-minute wait in line, I gave my name to the lady checking names; she was 75 if she was a day. The names are pretty small, and she actually crossed off the name underneath mine accidentially! I looked and saw “Ben Miller” crossed off, and said whoa–wait a minute–that guy is my neighbor and is going to be really pissed off if he can’t vote. She was apologetic and said “I’ll make a note here next to his name, that he hasn’t actually voted.” Hmm. I hope she’s still working when he shows up… Minor drama complete, I finally did vote, which was actually a bit more challenging than I had expected: while I had a sample ballot filled out with my choices in my pocket, there had been slight changes between that one and the actual one, including at least one category where extra candidate(s) had been slotted in. There weren’t really enough of those little collapsable-table-with-shield things, but my neighbors apparently weren’t too worried: several people were (voluntarily) voting with their ballots on a round table nearby, in plain view. When I scanned my ballot in the machine, it was #11 in my precinct. Cool. Not so cool is that I then sat in traffic for an hour to get to work (my typical commute is less than half that…) Blah.

By the way, my kid can’t vote for about 18 more years… but he’s already an activist:

Tags: burlingame, voting

For whatever reason, I’m fascinated by scams, swindles, grifters, and all that jazz. Always have been. I’ve often thought a great movie could be made about this, with kids being the conmen and perpetrating a myriad of schemes as a way of life. Of course, this really does happen, but the film wouldn’t be ‘realistic’; it would be more as if there were no ‘honest’ jobs, and society (at least for kids) was a constant con game. Read whatever you will about me, from that.
How I got onto the topic most recently, is that I was reading Russell Beattie’s weblog as I ocassionally do, and he had a bit about the Rich Day, Poor Dad author. I knew when I read the book, the guy was less than fully truthful, but John T. Reed really exposes the book’s inaccuracies well. Good reading, wasted a lot of Friday night on his site. (Apparently I’ll do anything for entertainment when the wife is out of town!)
Returning to the generic sham motif, I was completely captivated by the stories of “magazine crews”, about kids that sell magazine subscriptions door-to-door, they are often basically indentured servants and controlled essentially as a pimp controls his stable. Great site to read about it here, specifically the ‘true stories’ pages. About 18 months ago when I was still in the Bay Area [Burlingame], I kicked one of these kids out of our “secure” apartment complex because he was harassing the (mostly elderly) neighbors. He definitely wasn’t on the up-and-up, although now I really feel sorry for the kid, considering what he was probably going through. Here’s some more good links to read up on scams, if you’re also into that kind of thing.

Another thing Beattie’s site makes me think of a lot, is moving back to the Bay Area. Like him, I moved to Spain (me Barcelona, him Madrid) for opportunities here, to learn the culture, live a bit different life, etc. I know I wanted to learn more about myself, too, and definitely have. But the job market here is fairly depressed, and we both have families to support. I miss my adopted home, the Bay Area, and all my friends there; but I love Barcelona. It’s tough. If my contract doesn’t get renewed soon, I may not have a lot of options, however. We have plane tickets back to Detroit (family there) for December, and now I’m really considering buying more tickets to go from there right to San Fran, and see what we can drum up. I’m starting to send feelers out to friends I trust there, too. Well, maybe I shouldn’t say too much in case my current co-workers find my blog! But it’s defintely weighing heavy on my mind now. My apartment lease is also up in December. The prospect of trying to scare up a job in the Valley or SF, from thousands of miles away, is also pretty daunting. I’ll see how things shake out in the next few weeks at work, in the meantime I think I’ll update my resume…

Tags: burlingame, Spain