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Q: Was Enron smart or crazy? A: Yes

Sometimes I get ahead of myself. I think "that would be good," and move in that direction, even though I should finish going in this direction first. Yesterday's example ocurred when my boss told me that Perl by Example was a good book if you wanted to learn Perl. I've always wanted to learn Perl (and, by extension, regular expressions as they are used in the real world). So I was about this close to going on Amazon (through Schoolpop , of course) to buy it. Then I stopped myself. The fact is, I have too many computer books as it is. I just got four of them of Christmas, and I'm still working on the ones I got last summer. I'm better than I used to be; I used to buy books for whatever I was feeling, only to watch each title collect dust as I took another detour and pursued something else. I'm still too eager to engage in something new, only to blow off what I'm just starting to understand. So many inputs exist at once, plus all the boo...

The Recession Chic Lie is what I've been waiting for someone to write. At my last job, when we were thrown out on the street, it seemed as though I was the only schlub scrambling to find new work. "I'm not in a hurry," one PHP programmer said, "I'm going to go to the Yucatan and do some climbing, and otherwise just drink lattes and read." Uh, great. On the one hand, it makes sense: I was the only father on staff. But I often wonder what kind of support systems some people have. Maybe I'm so near to true poverty that I actually worry about finding work, and that's an unusual thing among the 30-40 college-educated demographic. [thanks to Dooce for the link]

My head is killing me and I know it's neck strain. Funny how sometimes if someone decides not to email you anymore you don't actually notice how often they emailed you. That silence is an interesting marker. Over the weekend I came across a notebook that I started in 00. Journal entries. The strange thing about reading old journal entries is that you see how awfully repetetive you are at the present moment. "You mean I whined about that two years ago?" (As if I should be suprised.) At writer's group we discussed Lord of the Rings and we were as mixed about it as most critical reaction has been, and of course someone slagged Star Wars as being "not that big of a deal." I found myself really taking issue with that. But why defend Star Wars to people? I don't defend it because I think it's better than X or Y. I defend it because means something to me about my childhood. Which is a pointless defense, really. (Another marker: I knew I ...

Per Kate's advice I bought an Odwalla. Now, this site does not currently enjoy sponsorships, but Odwalla would be on my list of potential sponsors. I really don't know what to say about this other than that the web supports all forms of information. Good, bad, you must yourself decide. My writer's group met on Saturday. A great bunch of people, super talented. Talking with them I realized that I am terrified of success.

Not feeling great. Throat is incredibly sore. I have a big meeting today, presenting some drawings and I don't feel up to showing them. Arg. Yesterday stayed home and watched movies, including Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation and Romance on the High Seas. Watched Romance twice. Good Michael Curtiz Warners musical. Curtiz keeps the pace fast, almost ruthlessly so. And Sammy Cahn and Julie Styne wrote the funny and memorable songs, including "It's Magic," which won an Oscar for Best Song in 1948. Maybe the most significant reason why the movie is good is that I.A.L Diamond wrote it with the Epstein brothers (Diamond wrote a lot of movies with Billy Wilder, including Some Like it Hot ).

My new favorite game: blaming Israeli oppression on Yassir Arafat. Yeah, it all started with him. So when the Sharon government washed its hands completely of any obligations made to you during the last presidential administration and bulldozes your house, it's Yassir Arafat's fault. FISHDO. Jeez louise. And I missed this yesterday: Bush calling Pakistanis "Paki's" Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman, did his best to mollify hurt feelings, without actually apologising. "The president has great respect for Pakistan, the Pakistani people and the Pakistani culture. Pakistan has been a strong member of the international coalition in the war against terrorism," he said. However, there has long been a sense that Mr Bush's respect for Pakistan has never extended actually to knowing anything about the place. During the presidential election campaign, he was famously caught out when asked to name the Pakistani president, General Musharraf, now...

I'm having a hard time coming back to work. Unable to concentrate. Saw Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man last night. It was very beautiful, visually one of the most striking things I've seen. But I sort of didn't digest it at first. The level of abstraction kept me at arm's distance. But now, thinking about it and hearing that wild Neil Young music, I feel like it's sticking to me. Especially the images of death, and that feeling of vulnerability you have watching it. Watching it, Bill Blake's death is very close, you always expect bullets and destruction. I think that's what the film wants you to realize, that death is near and certain and part of life.

Saw The Royal Tenenbaums. Good, but it lost steam in the second half. I loved the world that Anderson/Wilson created. But the fact that the kids generated their own miseries made it hard to root for them. Kate perceived more of the sadness in the movie, I perceived more of the humor. Especially at the end. Anjelica Huston is a very beautiful woman.

Well, vacation is over. I really liked Ice skating with Ivy and Sidney at Iceland. It was hard work, and I fell down about two dozen times, but I can see why so many people enjoy it. Ivy and I also had fun with the hot glue gun. Another highlight was Kate, Ivy and I at the Exploratorium. That place really doesn't get old for me, and Kate and Ivy are so much fun, you can be guaranteed of a good time with them. My only vacation regret is that I didn't do more C++. But I discovered that being a dad all day long is far more tiring than working at my paying job.

A dream where Ivy and I had to travel a long distance on bikes. At one point there were few or no streetlights, and I had no light on my bike, so I rode in darkness. For some reason I was sleepy, and had to resist closing my eyes. Then the darkness lifted, and Ivy and I were pedaling through a street fair in North Berkeley, near my therapist's office. We saw a friend of Ivy's, a girl. Ivy played with the friend, and then the friend's father wanted to take the girl home. He handed me a stack of papers, and an arm. I thought it was a doll's arm, but when the father returned to get his papers (and arm) his daughter was clearly missing an arm, there was nothing below her right elbow. I looked in my arms, astonished to see that the arm I held was a living arm. Ivy was very upset by this, and I tried to calm her by telling her that "many characters in Shakespeare were disabled. For example, Richard II was a hunchback." David was there, offering jokes. "Yeah, an...

Sick and tired. Both! And thinking a lot about the bad economy.

Recession hits Bay Area hard Feeling ill-prepared, and reluctant to commit to any longterm vision of anything as far as "career" goes. Bets, as they say, are off.

I�m thinking about Y again. I had a million dreams about him. Strange that I want some memorabilia about him� a magazine from his pile of magazines, a CD from his vast store of CDs (I would burn MP3s from it). His Perl book, a can of Diet Coke from his store underneath his desk. Strange craving to have a piece of him now. He seemed so� permanent. But of course no one is permanent, nothing is permanent but the idea of God I guess.

We had another layoff today. The man who hired me was let go. A charming guy, not always easygoing, but he hired me when I really needed a job. Layoffs are like deaths, transitions that are difficult and necessary and awful. After the meeting my boss said to me, "the hardest thing is that we have to just go back to work as if nothing had changed." I can't believe I haven't been laid off yet. I feel like the least knowlegable person in this building. I guess value isn't measured by college degrees alone? I really don't have the answers there. Who knows what management was trying to do? It's probably the case that, back when the company was much smaller, some of those laid-off guys were hired by the very members of management who ordered the layoff. Awful. And, of course, one is glad one still has a job.

We might be hitting the wall on chip design. And there are questions as to whether or not things like optical fiber and asynchronous clocks will help.

A picture of Rita Hayworth

I don't like my apartment very much. It's very cold, and when I turn on the heater in the living room, it gives off a burning smell. Maybe something bad, but I know it's just cat hair. I'm tired and I should really go to bed, but I suspect I'll work more on C++. I did HTML at work today. I made a form whose fields change dynamically when the user makes a few choices. When the user clicks "submit" the browser turns the form values into a coherent email. That's a neat trick that KJ showed me; if you call the form from a VBScript file, you can get around the Outlook security issues (IE won't allow you to create an Outlook object from the browser). Other movies: People Will Talk Cary Grant and that pretty woman from State Fair, Jeanne Crain. Plus Sidney Blackmer, one of my favorite character actors. You see him in everything from High Society to old Shirley Temple weepies; he even did a Charlie Chan movie. Are actors today that flexib...

The restless nature of what it is I'm doing. I wish I understood more about myself and what it is that I am really trying to do. Sometimes it's like the central contradiction lies just beyond my fingers. It has something to do with avoiding failure. Nothing worse than failure. Recent movies: The Deer Hunter Terribly sad and beautiful. Beautiful Creatures I liked the actresses. But the portrayal of men as drooling sex-obsessed idiots could have used more subtlety. Spellbound Gregory Peck woodenly faints into Ingrid Bergman's arms. She's pretty sexy as the love-struck psychoanalyst. He's gaunt and really annoyed me. The movie drags in the second half, too much bad Freud (in the 40s it was cool & edgy to be "in analysis"), and the murder seems a little far-fetched. But the penultimate scene, shot from the point of view of the killer's gun-sight, is very good. Heist Just ok. Strangely predictable. And Ricky Jay dies! Not fair, Dav...

I'm really tired, but I wanted to write something. :: Have been listening to Radiohead's Amnesiac and I really don't think it works. :: I shouldn't take Ivy to museums because I always think she's going to respond a certain way and my own expectations make it harder for her to just have fun. :: Sometimes I don't eat enough. I put off eating because I want to do something. :: This vacation I did fewer "constructive" things than I thought. But I had fun. A lot of movies. And slept!