This is a short, bleak piece about some of our possible near
futures. SF outlets don't want to hear about COVID right now, for the
most part, so I'm putting it here.
"You're insane, Erik."
"I'm insane? Justin, have you thought about what they want us to do?"
"Want
us to do?" Justin slumped against the kitchen counter. "It's not like
we have a choice. Listen, I don't want to do it, either. It's
terrifying."
"And for what?" Erik threw up his hands.
"So the economy can 'get moving'? So rich people can get richer? That's
why we can't stay safe until there's a cure? Until at least there are
hospital beds?"
"Yeah, I guess," Justin said. "And so
that all this can finally end. It's awful. All of this is awful." He
stepped over to Erik, took his hand. "But at least we'll do it
together."
Erik looked down. "No, Justin. We won't. I can't." He pulled his hand away. "I need you to respect my decision."
Justin sighed. So much lost, the last year. The world kept getting smaller. "I guess I don't have a choice."
***
Justin
opened the door from the garage and stepped outside. He felt brittle in
the cold night air. He shrugged his robe tighter around his shoulders
and padded across the yard to the small round stone. To the six-foot by
three-foot patch of freshly-dug earth.
He took a deep breath. "You sure don't make this easy, love," he murmured.
***
The
doorbell was like a recording from another time. A time with dinner
guests, board game nights, New Year's Eve parties. Good times.
If only. Justin heaved himself off the couch and opened the door.
"Hi,
Mr.-- uh, hi, Justin." The young woman carrying a small plastic case
gave him a chagrined smile. She'd been young enough to call him Mr.
Carson when she'd dog-sat for them. Professor Bones had died ten years
ago.
"Olivia! You're our Prefect? How are you? Uh..." he wavered. It seemed dangerous. Forbidden. But... "w-won't you come in?"
Olivia stepped casually into the living room. Of course. She must do this all the time. "Thank you! Um, is Erik around?"
"Olivia,
uh... Erik...." Justin swallowed. He'd been rehearsing this all
morning. "Erik couldn't handle... this. Today. It was too much for him.
Here..." Justin walked over to the window and pulled the curtain aside.
He gestured out toward the stone and upturned earth in the corner of the
yard.
Olivia's hand went to her mouth. "Oh, Justin, I'm so sorry." And then she hugged him.
It
was the first time anyone but Erik had touched him in a year. Justin's
body shuddered, and he started to pull away. And then he realized: it
didn't matter. Not today. Not ever again. Slowly, he relaxed and just...
hugged someone.
Olivia gave him a tight squeeze and
then stepped back. "Sorry, I forget. You're not used to that, yet." She
frowned. "Justin, you know you should've reported... this. There's gonna
be a lot of paperwork. You could get fined." Her shoulders sagged.
"Probably not, though. A lot of people have been making the choice Erik
made."
"So," he said, "I guess you came here to... do
what Prefects do." Justin still found the term 'Prefect' ridiculous, but
it resonated with the Harry Potter crowd. For them -- and the Prefects
were all young adults, infected early and now immune -- it seemed
orderly. Calming.
"Right. OK." Olivia sat down on the
couch and opened her case. Six syringes. In a better world, they'd be
full of a vaccine. In this world, they held active virus. "I guess we
won't need all these." She pulled out a syringe. "The first one's the
important one. That's why I need to do it for you. The other two are
just to make sure. One per day." She took the cap off. "Sit down and
tilt your head back, please."
It was nothing compared
to what the stuff in the syringe was about to do to him. But, for just a
second, Justin felt like he was drowning in poison.
***
Justin opened his eyes. He was freezing and damp all over. Couldn't stop shaking. His chest was burning. He stank.
The
bedroom was pitch black except for a bright, rectangular light coming
from the nightstand. Too bright to look at. Justin squirmed in
discomfort.
"Oh, thank God!" The voice came from the
same place as the light. Erik's voice? But Erik was in the backyard,
now. Wait, no, he wasn't. That had been a lie.
The voice spoke again, and there was movement in the light. "Justin, you're going to be okay. Just hold on, honey."
***
"I
go back to the office on Tuesday," said Justin, pushing down the lever
on the toaster. "Janet is in Gamma Group, like us-- like me... so it's
the first day back for both of us. About half the department's back
already."
From the laptop on the kitchen counter, Erik flashed a big grin. "Congratulations, honey!"
Justin opened the fridge and pulled out the peanut butter. "Are you... going to be okay down there?"
"What,
me?" Erik's eyes, which had been looking off toward his second monitor,
flicked back toward the camera. "Never better! Hey, look." Erik
disappeared, and the camera panned around their basement. Erik seemed so
far away... hard to believe he was just fourteen feet below Justin. "I
got the rowing machine set up. And the new stove! As long as you keep me
in food and TP, I'm great!"
Justin had to try. "Hey, uh... I don't suppose you'd reconsi--"
"Justin."
Erik was suddenly all serious. "You're 44. You barely made it. I'm a
56-year-old ex-smoker. I'll take my chances down here, thanks." Erik's
frown turned deeper. "Besides, you know what would happen if they knew I
was alive. What they do to Hiders."
Justin was staring at the toaster.
"What?" Erik asked.
"I just made breakfast."
"Yeah?"
"Out
of habit. I've made toast every day for the last year." Justin blinked.
"I'm going out for breakfast today. I'm meeting Jarred at Julie's
Brunch in ten minutes."
"Oh. Uh... don't say hi for me."
"Yeah. Yeah." Justin was trying to hide a smile and not doing very well at it. "Hey, I'll check back in with you in an hour."
"Nah, it's OK," Erik said. "I was just about to put on a movie."
***
"Ooh, what's for dinner tonight?"
"Eggplant parmesan," Justin said, looking up from the stove. "It's on the calendar."
"Oh, yeah," said Erik. "Forgot to check. Hey, uh," he paused. "Remember to wipe down the plate before you put it on the stairs."
"Are you kidding?" Justin turned back to the stove. "Gotta keep you healthy!"
***
"Where were you?" Erik's voice sounded a bit choked, from the laptop, but it might have been the connection.
"Hey,
Erik! Sorry, Janet and Lewis invited me out for dinner.... It got a
little late." Justin looked guilty. "I'll throw something together for
you."
"Nah, don't bother," Erik said. "I made spaghetti. I'll put the dishes on the stairs."
"Hey, how about we watch Die Hard and get plastered, later?"
"Um," Erik was looking at his other monitor. "No thanks. Got stuff to do."
***
"Justin!"
"Mmmph."
"Justin, wake up!"
Justin rolled toward the screen. "Erik? What's wrong?"
"You won't believe this! The virus... they've proved it was a bioweapon!"
Justin sighed. "Who, this time? End Times News? The Halon Report?"
Silence.
"It was Halon, wasn't it? Erik, those people are filth."
A window popped up on Justin's screen. Call ended.
***
"Erik, what do you want for dinner?"
...
"Honey, you have to eat. You haven't touched anything in three days."
...
"All right, I'll call when I get back. Love you."
***
"Erik, what did you do?"
"N-nuffin'."
"Erik, what is--. Did you... smash the TV... with the microwave?"
"Made myshelf a drink. Somethin' speshul."
"Oh, great. That's just--"
"Put somethin' in it I've been holdin' onto. Somefin I brought wif me... how long I bin down here, Jus?"
"Four months, Erik. You know that."
"Four mumfs I been holdin' onto these li'l suckers." Erik waved an orange bottle with a white cap in front of the camera.
"Oh, God. Oh, God! Erik, I-- I--". Justin jumped up and ran to the sink, started furiously washing his hands. "Hold on!"
***
Justin
opened the door from the garage and stepped outside. He felt brittle in
the cold night air. He shrugged his robe tighter around his shoulders
and padded across the yard to the small round stone. To the six-foot by
three-foot patch of freshly-dug earth.
He took a deep breath. "You sure don't make this easy, love," he murmured.
Saturday, April 4, 2020
Monday, January 13, 2014
How numbers behave
We have a water cooler at work, with those big water jug things. When
you go to get some water and the jug is empty, you have to replace it; this probably happens 2-3
times/week.
I encountered an end of a jug (and therefore replaced it) three times in my first two weeks in the lab, and then I didn't encounter one again until this morning, nearly a year later. My brain immediately started trying to read meaning into this. Why then? Why now? Why not all the time in between?
The reason, of course, is "just because". If I ever create a course called "Psychology and Statistics" (spoiler: I won't) you can be sure there will be a segment on water coolers.
I encountered an end of a jug (and therefore replaced it) three times in my first two weeks in the lab, and then I didn't encounter one again until this morning, nearly a year later. My brain immediately started trying to read meaning into this. Why then? Why now? Why not all the time in between?
The reason, of course, is "just because". If I ever create a course called "Psychology and Statistics" (spoiler: I won't) you can be sure there will be a segment on water coolers.
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Running downhill
I'm going back to grad school this year. It's been a long time coming -- holy hell, I'm 36; I have articles of clothing that are almost as old as most of my classmates will be. I've been working in computational biology for 8 years, now, since I left the software industry. Over that time I slowly came to the realization that this is really what I want to do with my whole career, and that I really needed to invest the years to get a PhD in order to do it at the level I want to. So far, without a PhD, I've pieced together a couple of really great jobs doing some really fun work, but that's all been a matter of luck; to make this into a lasting career, I need to do what everyone else around me did in their 20s.
I need to go back to school, both to get the credential I need to be taken seriously and to get the knowledge I need to do those jobs as well as I can. Even when I come out on the other side, I'll be the low man on the totem pole; it'll be a big step back in many ways. I may never make as much money again as I do now; if I do, it'll be a long while. But that's OK, because I'll be much better at what I'm doing with my life than I am now. Different doors will be open to me.
Yeah.
That's the story I tell most people about why I'm going back to school. It's pretty true, actually, and if it weren't pretty true I wouldn't be doing it. There's another part, though. The other part has repeated itself dozens of times during the last 8 years, and it goes something like this:
We all went to the bar this afternoon, in my lab. We call this "running downhill". That's hilarious, because my boss always talks about how we take the quickest path to getting drugs into the clinic, and he calls that "running downhill", but there's also literally a bar downhill from us. We don't actually run there; that would be too much effort.
Anyway, we all went to this bar, and while we were there, a colleague of mine who had a couple drinks in him made a comment about how, when they replace me after I go to grad school, maybe my replacement can "do some science, too".
He might have been kidding. He kind of acted like he was kidding. If he was, he was kidding because there's some truth there, too, at least in the collective mind of my chosen field. It doesn't matter how important my work is or how many publications I have. I don't have a PhD, so what I'm doing isn't science. It's just a matter of definitions. It probably doesn't help that I'm currently a computational researcher surrounded by wet lab folks, but I got the same kind of comments when my colleagues were computational.
I used to hate this phenomenon; it cut me deeply, over and over, and frankly it's the thing that got into my bones and made me decide to go back to school.
But now that I'm headed back to school, I love stuff like that. It shores up my resolve to go back, which is something that weakens whenever I actually stop to think about the craziness I'm about to embark on. That comment right there, by my coworker at the bar, was me passing my qualifying exam. Or maybe it was a dozen pages of my dissertation. Or maybe it was me powering through a week of late nights in the lab. Because every time a coworker with a PhD makes a comment like that, I store it up. It's like a giant fucking battery, and it's been charging up for most of a decade now. I'm going to need a lot of damn energy from that battery to get through the next five or so years, so I'm especially grateful when someone just hands me a great big jolt of it.
I need to go back to school, both to get the credential I need to be taken seriously and to get the knowledge I need to do those jobs as well as I can. Even when I come out on the other side, I'll be the low man on the totem pole; it'll be a big step back in many ways. I may never make as much money again as I do now; if I do, it'll be a long while. But that's OK, because I'll be much better at what I'm doing with my life than I am now. Different doors will be open to me.
Yeah.
That's the story I tell most people about why I'm going back to school. It's pretty true, actually, and if it weren't pretty true I wouldn't be doing it. There's another part, though. The other part has repeated itself dozens of times during the last 8 years, and it goes something like this:
We all went to the bar this afternoon, in my lab. We call this "running downhill". That's hilarious, because my boss always talks about how we take the quickest path to getting drugs into the clinic, and he calls that "running downhill", but there's also literally a bar downhill from us. We don't actually run there; that would be too much effort.
Anyway, we all went to this bar, and while we were there, a colleague of mine who had a couple drinks in him made a comment about how, when they replace me after I go to grad school, maybe my replacement can "do some science, too".
He might have been kidding. He kind of acted like he was kidding. If he was, he was kidding because there's some truth there, too, at least in the collective mind of my chosen field. It doesn't matter how important my work is or how many publications I have. I don't have a PhD, so what I'm doing isn't science. It's just a matter of definitions. It probably doesn't help that I'm currently a computational researcher surrounded by wet lab folks, but I got the same kind of comments when my colleagues were computational.
I used to hate this phenomenon; it cut me deeply, over and over, and frankly it's the thing that got into my bones and made me decide to go back to school.
But now that I'm headed back to school, I love stuff like that. It shores up my resolve to go back, which is something that weakens whenever I actually stop to think about the craziness I'm about to embark on. That comment right there, by my coworker at the bar, was me passing my qualifying exam. Or maybe it was a dozen pages of my dissertation. Or maybe it was me powering through a week of late nights in the lab. Because every time a coworker with a PhD makes a comment like that, I store it up. It's like a giant fucking battery, and it's been charging up for most of a decade now. I'm going to need a lot of damn energy from that battery to get through the next five or so years, so I'm especially grateful when someone just hands me a great big jolt of it.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Sunday, April 21, 2013
A dog door-opening solution
I've always meant to document this properly:
We have room-by-room heating, and we have a dog. I've set up pulleys in the rooms we keep warm to close doors behind our dog, and handles he can use to open them. That way, he can go wherever he wants in the house and doesn't leave an open door behind him, letting heat out.
The pulley and handle were dead simple to put together. The handle is just a metal hook like you can find at any hardware store, screwed into the door at nose height with some rope and soft fabric wrapped around it. The pulley consists of two screw eyes, a string, and some socket wrench attachments I had lying around for weights. The string ties to the screw eye on the door, goes through the screw eye in the doorway, and drops down beside the door.
Toby had no trouble learning how to push open the door. It took him maybe a couple days to learn how to pull it open from the other side. He settled on a two-part motion, first swiping the handle with his paw (or with his nose) to open the door a bit and then nosing it open the rest of the way. The only tricky part was getting the amount of resistance just right (by varying the number of weights) without putting him off the concept entirely. Lots of treats.
I used pulleys instead of spring hinges because spring hinges always seem to end up squeaking, and because the pulley seems to give a more consistent amount of resistance.
We have room-by-room heating, and we have a dog. I've set up pulleys in the rooms we keep warm to close doors behind our dog, and handles he can use to open them. That way, he can go wherever he wants in the house and doesn't leave an open door behind him, letting heat out.
The pulley and handle were dead simple to put together. The handle is just a metal hook like you can find at any hardware store, screwed into the door at nose height with some rope and soft fabric wrapped around it. The pulley consists of two screw eyes, a string, and some socket wrench attachments I had lying around for weights. The string ties to the screw eye on the door, goes through the screw eye in the doorway, and drops down beside the door.
Toby had no trouble learning how to push open the door. It took him maybe a couple days to learn how to pull it open from the other side. He settled on a two-part motion, first swiping the handle with his paw (or with his nose) to open the door a bit and then nosing it open the rest of the way. The only tricky part was getting the amount of resistance just right (by varying the number of weights) without putting him off the concept entirely. Lots of treats.
I used pulleys instead of spring hinges because spring hinges always seem to end up squeaking, and because the pulley seems to give a more consistent amount of resistance.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
To Whom It May Concern:
[This letter I sent to a hospital is about a situation in Seattle, but this is very much a national issue. If it worries you, check it out and get involved.]
I'm a Swedish Hospital NICU parent, and I just received a fundraising letter regarding the Lytle Center for Pregnancy and Newborns. I have great respect for everyone I've dealt with at Swedish and feel that we received excellent care there. However, I will not be supporting this Center, and I would like to tell you why.
The recent merger with Providence Health & Services, a Catholic health care organization, and removal of "elective" abortion services from the hospital leave me skeptical that the Lytle Center will truly provide "convenient access to a full spectrum of prenatal and postpartum care" as described in your letter.
"A full spectrum of prenatal and postpartum care" may necessarily include abortion. It may, yes, include so-called "elective" abortion in a time of extreme duress for parents facing one of the toughest decisions of their lives. This is particularly likely in the case of high-risk pregnancies such as ours was.
It may include end-of-life care, as indeed it did in our case: we lost one of our twin daughters in the Swedish NICU and, at that time, felt well-supported in all of our our decision-making by Swedish staff.
It most certainly, in all cases, includes the availability of contraceptive advice.
I am no longer confident that Swedish can provide these things in a convenient manner, nor that it will continue to provide them at all in the future. I will redirect the contribution that I would very much like to send to the Lytle Center to March of Dimes, instead.
Regards,
[Upwind Both Ways]
I'm a Swedish Hospital NICU parent, and I just received a fundraising letter regarding the Lytle Center for Pregnancy and Newborns. I have great respect for everyone I've dealt with at Swedish and feel that we received excellent care there. However, I will not be supporting this Center, and I would like to tell you why.
The recent merger with Providence Health & Services, a Catholic health care organization, and removal of "elective" abortion services from the hospital leave me skeptical that the Lytle Center will truly provide "convenient access to a full spectrum of prenatal and postpartum care" as described in your letter.
"A full spectrum of prenatal and postpartum care" may necessarily include abortion. It may, yes, include so-called "elective" abortion in a time of extreme duress for parents facing one of the toughest decisions of their lives. This is particularly likely in the case of high-risk pregnancies such as ours was.
It may include end-of-life care, as indeed it did in our case: we lost one of our twin daughters in the Swedish NICU and, at that time, felt well-supported in all of our our decision-making by Swedish staff.
It most certainly, in all cases, includes the availability of contraceptive advice.
I am no longer confident that Swedish can provide these things in a convenient manner, nor that it will continue to provide them at all in the future. I will redirect the contribution that I would very much like to send to the Lytle Center to March of Dimes, instead.
Regards,
[Upwind Both Ways]
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Pretend Daddy
(My two-year-old started talking to "Pretend Daddy" while I was out yesterday evening, sort of an imaginary friend version of me. I think this is pretty much how that came about)
They found a way in, last night, when I didn't come home until after my two-year-old daughter went to bed. The Clever Ones that usually linger just out of sight around her saw their chance and took it. They fashioned a doppelgänger from her bright, carefree thoughts of me and started to whisper to her. She began to speak of Pretend Daddy.
She says that Pretend Daddy -- "Ysh-Hothur" in the Unspoken Tongue -- sings better than I do. I can only imagine what perversions he croaks to our daughter in that broken language while she sleeps. He's taller than me, too, she says: she can sense the raw force that's there, hidden for now, just barely invisible to adult eyes.
As he binds more and more of her small being to his will, he will be able to gather more of the Clever Ones to him. We've seen this beginning already: her stuffed Burt the Bee now has... friends... with him, in his plush, yellow hive; to call those twisted souls "other bees", as our child does, is to make a mockery of all that is sane.
We ignore this Pretend Daddy at our hazard; he must be dealt with. And, so, we have an uneasy truce, perhaps even a diabolical bargain.
On the one hand, Ysh-Hothur clearly means to use our daughter as an entry point into this world. He puts our daughter, our family, perhaps the whole of the mortal realm in deadly peril.
On the other hand, he's really useful at mealtimes. "Look, Pretend Daddy's saying you should eat your oatmeal, too!"
They found a way in, last night, when I didn't come home until after my two-year-old daughter went to bed. The Clever Ones that usually linger just out of sight around her saw their chance and took it. They fashioned a doppelgänger from her bright, carefree thoughts of me and started to whisper to her. She began to speak of Pretend Daddy.
She says that Pretend Daddy -- "Ysh-Hothur" in the Unspoken Tongue -- sings better than I do. I can only imagine what perversions he croaks to our daughter in that broken language while she sleeps. He's taller than me, too, she says: she can sense the raw force that's there, hidden for now, just barely invisible to adult eyes.
As he binds more and more of her small being to his will, he will be able to gather more of the Clever Ones to him. We've seen this beginning already: her stuffed Burt the Bee now has... friends... with him, in his plush, yellow hive; to call those twisted souls "other bees", as our child does, is to make a mockery of all that is sane.
We ignore this Pretend Daddy at our hazard; he must be dealt with. And, so, we have an uneasy truce, perhaps even a diabolical bargain.
On the one hand, Ysh-Hothur clearly means to use our daughter as an entry point into this world. He puts our daughter, our family, perhaps the whole of the mortal realm in deadly peril.
On the other hand, he's really useful at mealtimes. "Look, Pretend Daddy's saying you should eat your oatmeal, too!"
Friday, November 2, 2012
Keeper ∅f The Empty Brain
I was a computer science major in college. It was a small department, sort of a university afterthought, and we all pretty much knew each other. So it was extra surprising when this old guy -- practically a mummy, maybe even over 40 -- showed up in an algorithms class. This was firmly an undergrad class, so he couldn't just be a conspicuously creaky grad student. There must have been some oddball situation to explain his presence.
He was annoying. He asked questions all the time, usually about things no one cared about. You might think the professor would be annoyed, too, but he seemed to know this guy in some way. They'd go on and on about some esoteric bit of junk that certainly wasn't going to help me do the homework.
His favorite question was "what about the empty set?" That needs explaining, but it's simple: in set theory, you can have sets of things (set theory is the best-named theory). If there's nothing in a set, it's called the empty set (see? those folks can name!) and abbreviated ∅. A lot of algorithms have to handle the empty set in a special way.
So what this winner was asking, over and over, was essentially "how does this particular algorithm handle this thing that all algorithms need to deal with?" It's the sort of question that lets you seem smart without knowing much. We dubbed this guy the Keeper ∅f The Empty Set, or K∅TES. It was catchy -- we had t-shirts printed; we wrote a theme song. OK, not really, but we did roll our eyes whenever he opened his mouth. I mean, why did this guy need to be the center of attention?
...
This Tuesday, 15 years later, I was a creaky 35-year-old sitting in a classroom surrounded by 20-somethings. This was kind of an oddball situation: I'm taking this class because I need to get accepted into a PhD program that I don't really have the background for. It's a small program, the kind where everybody pretty much knows each other.
I need to prove to the department that I can do the classwork. Here's what I worked out: the professor will write a "recommendation" letter to the department describing my performance in class, however I do. If I do badly, the letter will say "send this dork the thin envelope" and I'll be throwing away the $85 application fee and a whole lot of time. I have one goal, here: impress the professor.
I talked to the prof ahead of time, so he kind of knows me. I don't have all the background that the kids actually taking the class for credit do, but I have other areas of expertise. So I ask questions that are a little off the topic of the lecture, about related esoteric junk that the prof might be interested in but that won't help anybody do the homework.
And getting a chance to ask questions is no problem. Turns out -- and, man, I wish I'd realized this a decade or so earlier -- 20-somethings have pretty much zero self-confidence in class! So the prof will ask a question, and there will be silence, and then crickets, and the crickets will complete the entire first movement of Cricket Symphony #3, and then I'll pipe up and try to score some points.
I'm sure that gets pretty old for the other students. What I'm really curious about is the nickname they've chosen for me. I hope it's catchy.
He was annoying. He asked questions all the time, usually about things no one cared about. You might think the professor would be annoyed, too, but he seemed to know this guy in some way. They'd go on and on about some esoteric bit of junk that certainly wasn't going to help me do the homework.
His favorite question was "what about the empty set?" That needs explaining, but it's simple: in set theory, you can have sets of things (set theory is the best-named theory). If there's nothing in a set, it's called the empty set (see? those folks can name!) and abbreviated ∅. A lot of algorithms have to handle the empty set in a special way.
So what this winner was asking, over and over, was essentially "how does this particular algorithm handle this thing that all algorithms need to deal with?" It's the sort of question that lets you seem smart without knowing much. We dubbed this guy the Keeper ∅f The Empty Set, or K∅TES. It was catchy -- we had t-shirts printed; we wrote a theme song. OK, not really, but we did roll our eyes whenever he opened his mouth. I mean, why did this guy need to be the center of attention?
...
This Tuesday, 15 years later, I was a creaky 35-year-old sitting in a classroom surrounded by 20-somethings. This was kind of an oddball situation: I'm taking this class because I need to get accepted into a PhD program that I don't really have the background for. It's a small program, the kind where everybody pretty much knows each other.
I need to prove to the department that I can do the classwork. Here's what I worked out: the professor will write a "recommendation" letter to the department describing my performance in class, however I do. If I do badly, the letter will say "send this dork the thin envelope" and I'll be throwing away the $85 application fee and a whole lot of time. I have one goal, here: impress the professor.
I talked to the prof ahead of time, so he kind of knows me. I don't have all the background that the kids actually taking the class for credit do, but I have other areas of expertise. So I ask questions that are a little off the topic of the lecture, about related esoteric junk that the prof might be interested in but that won't help anybody do the homework.
And getting a chance to ask questions is no problem. Turns out -- and, man, I wish I'd realized this a decade or so earlier -- 20-somethings have pretty much zero self-confidence in class! So the prof will ask a question, and there will be silence, and then crickets, and the crickets will complete the entire first movement of Cricket Symphony #3, and then I'll pipe up and try to score some points.
I'm sure that gets pretty old for the other students. What I'm really curious about is the nickname they've chosen for me. I hope it's catchy.
Monday, June 4, 2012
Compulsion
In the kitchen at work, on
the counter, there was a white paper plate. On the plate were a
dozen or so packets of red pepper flakes, left over from some lunchtime orgy of probably-disappointing pizza. The plate was there long enough to become part of the scenery.
One day, I noticed that someone had arranged all of the packets in a 360-degree fan pattern around the edge of the plate, with each packet scalloped precisely on top of its clockwise neighbor and under its counterclockwise neighbor, and two packets proudly on display in the center of the circle.
I rotated one packet about 20 degrees.
The next day, it was back in alignment.
Someone was compelled to keep these packets ordered. I quietly campaigned to drive this unknown person mad. I'd wait a few days and then rotate one packet upside down, or flip one over, and it'd be back in formation by the next day. Things were underway.
I started to wonder about my opponent. Was it someone I knew? Did they have some real issues with compulsive behavior? How did they feel about someone so blatantly messing with them? Did they guess that it was me?
Over the space of two days I removed a packet, leaving a gap, waited for the gap to close, and then placed the missing packet next to the whole arrangement; it was swiftly reincorporated.
Maybe it was someone with a good reason to spend a lot of time alone in the kitchen. Nighttime cleaning staff? But, no, sometimes packets would be replaced during the day. The kitchen doesn't serve that many people; it was probably someone I knew, or at least passed in the hall pretty often. I wondered who secretly harbored an inability to let this structure be out of order.
For my part, I couldn't not mess with the arrangement. At one point, I printed some text to look like the front of one of the packets, drew the packet decorations on it ("Brand for Quality!"), cut out my decoy, and inserted it into the fan shape along with a few other minor adjustments to the pattern. The fake packet was gone within an hour, and order was restored.
One day, the packets just disappeared and the game was over. I wondered if my OCD-beleaguered coworker had finally had enough or if someone else intervened on their behalf. I could see them walking into the kitchen and being hugely relieved that they would no longer have to lurk there, making awkward small talk with whoever was in there washing dishes, until no one else was around and they could furtively adjust the arrangement of packets that was so viscerally unacceptable to them. I could imagine how that would feel; I could imagine it pretty precisely, in fact.
Maybe someday there'll be another pizza party and the whole thing will start again. I kind of hope so. I've got these 14 fake packets of red pepper flakes neatly stacked in my drawer, all identically and carefully trimmed to shape, just waiting to mess with someone who has a little trouble controlling compulsive behaviors.
One day, I noticed that someone had arranged all of the packets in a 360-degree fan pattern around the edge of the plate, with each packet scalloped precisely on top of its clockwise neighbor and under its counterclockwise neighbor, and two packets proudly on display in the center of the circle.
I rotated one packet about 20 degrees.
The next day, it was back in alignment.
Someone was compelled to keep these packets ordered. I quietly campaigned to drive this unknown person mad. I'd wait a few days and then rotate one packet upside down, or flip one over, and it'd be back in formation by the next day. Things were underway.
I started to wonder about my opponent. Was it someone I knew? Did they have some real issues with compulsive behavior? How did they feel about someone so blatantly messing with them? Did they guess that it was me?
Over the space of two days I removed a packet, leaving a gap, waited for the gap to close, and then placed the missing packet next to the whole arrangement; it was swiftly reincorporated.
Maybe it was someone with a good reason to spend a lot of time alone in the kitchen. Nighttime cleaning staff? But, no, sometimes packets would be replaced during the day. The kitchen doesn't serve that many people; it was probably someone I knew, or at least passed in the hall pretty often. I wondered who secretly harbored an inability to let this structure be out of order.
For my part, I couldn't not mess with the arrangement. At one point, I printed some text to look like the front of one of the packets, drew the packet decorations on it ("Brand for Quality!"), cut out my decoy, and inserted it into the fan shape along with a few other minor adjustments to the pattern. The fake packet was gone within an hour, and order was restored.
 |
| Scalloping disrupted, one packet flipped, and an impostor |
One day, the packets just disappeared and the game was over. I wondered if my OCD-beleaguered coworker had finally had enough or if someone else intervened on their behalf. I could see them walking into the kitchen and being hugely relieved that they would no longer have to lurk there, making awkward small talk with whoever was in there washing dishes, until no one else was around and they could furtively adjust the arrangement of packets that was so viscerally unacceptable to them. I could imagine how that would feel; I could imagine it pretty precisely, in fact.
Maybe someday there'll be another pizza party and the whole thing will start again. I kind of hope so. I've got these 14 fake packets of red pepper flakes neatly stacked in my drawer, all identically and carefully trimmed to shape, just waiting to mess with someone who has a little trouble controlling compulsive behaviors.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Qualifications
My boss had to write a letter of recommendation for me, to get me into a workshop. He dragged his feet for a while and then eventually admitted he wasn't going to get around to it and asked me to 'draft' it myself.
I was pretty sure he wouldn't even read the whole thing before sending it on. Things I considered including:
I lack the self-destructive streak necessary to do any of that, so I sent him a straight letter. A few minutes after I sent him the draft he emailed me to tell me he'd sent the letter off, so I was pretty sure he hadn't read it. Next time he stopped by my office, I tried to mess with him:
I was pretty sure he wouldn't even read the whole thing before sending it on. Things I considered including:
- Damon once climbed a skyscraper with one hand tied behind his back
- Damon is highly accurate with his eye-lasers at a range of 150m
- Damon cannot be harmed except by weapons made from cheese
- Damon is one-quarter badger, on his father's side
I lack the self-destructive streak necessary to do any of that, so I sent him a straight letter. A few minutes after I sent him the draft he emailed me to tell me he'd sent the letter off, so I was pretty sure he hadn't read it. Next time he stopped by my office, I tried to mess with him:
"Hey, did you like my zinger in that draft?"He bought it hook-line-sinker, but he didn't care. Stone cold unflappable.
"What zinger?"
"You know, in that draft recommendation letter."
"Yeah, what do you mean?"
"'Damon can shoot lasers out of his eyes'. You saw that, right? You deleted it?"
"No."
"Seriously, you sent on a letter to the university that had the sentence 'Damon can shoot lasers out of his eyes?!'"
<shrug> "Well, I edited the letter a bit, so maybe, maybe not."
Thursday, January 12, 2012
The Scent of the Wind
This will make no sense unless you've read Patrick Rothfuss' glop of fantasy The Name of the Wind, which has an unbelievably overpowered hero named Kvothe. And possibly even if you have.
Sweat pooled on Kvothe's furrowed brow. He was weaving so many threads together in his mind. Weaving just three of these threads would break most men's will, and there were roughly sixteen threads involved, so Kvothe's mind was at least as complicated as eight normal men's*.
"Kvothe, the vessel is about to burst! You have to do something!"
Kvothe couldn't spare any effort for speech, but he had been using his spare time in between classes, music, and teaching eighteen different languages to orphans at the same time, to master the art of knitting. He quickly knitted the word "silence" into a blanket and showed it to Denna, who quieted, chastened.
"There!" he gasped, "It's done." The massive water tank had held. The pipes were in place and connected, held there by the force of Kvothe's thought. He placed his hand upon the lacquered handle.
"Now, who would like to try the first flush?"
*As revealed in A Wise Man's Fear, Kvothe is not so good at math, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's not at all a ridiculously overpowered fantasy superhero. At all.
Sweat pooled on Kvothe's furrowed brow. He was weaving so many threads together in his mind. Weaving just three of these threads would break most men's will, and there were roughly sixteen threads involved, so Kvothe's mind was at least as complicated as eight normal men's*.
"Kvothe, the vessel is about to burst! You have to do something!"
Kvothe couldn't spare any effort for speech, but he had been using his spare time in between classes, music, and teaching eighteen different languages to orphans at the same time, to master the art of knitting. He quickly knitted the word "silence" into a blanket and showed it to Denna, who quieted, chastened.
"There!" he gasped, "It's done." The massive water tank had held. The pipes were in place and connected, held there by the force of Kvothe's thought. He placed his hand upon the lacquered handle.
"Now, who would like to try the first flush?"
*As revealed in A Wise Man's Fear, Kvothe is not so good at math, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's not at all a ridiculously overpowered fantasy superhero. At all.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
The best dog property damage story
When you own a dog, you expect the occasional bit of property damage. They'll puke on a rug, or they'll chew up a shoe. Until New Year's Eve this year, the worst thing our dog had done was munch on some drywall, in a bizarre fit of puppy destruction. He got our Complete Works of Shakespeare, too, but that was also when he was a pup. He's seven now, middle aged. Beyond all that.
He's also terrified mindless by fireworks. We know this; we take measures. A week before the 4th of July, we haul out his cage -- pet people insist on calling it a "crate"; it's a cage -- and cover it with blankets so it's nice and dark and cavey. He spends nights in there for a couple of weeks, and he's in there for about three days straight, around the 4th. That pretty much does the trick, and, when it doesn't, he flips out in a cage and nothing gets hurt. New Year's Eve isn't nearly as bad. He hears a few pops, quivers a bit, settles down by 1AM, and that's it.
As usual on New Year's, we stuck him in the bathroom. We figured he couldn't do too much damage to himself or to anything else, in there. Worst case, maybe he goes nuts and eats a roll of toilet paper, right? He was fairly messed up when we came upstairs to go to bed at 1AM, so I sacked out on the bathroom floor with him. I woke up with an aching back, the start of a hangover and the feeling that this was a dog who had weathered the fireworks storm. It was 2:30. I went to bed.
I woke up at 4:30AM. Something was wrong. I got up in the dark, opened the bathroom door, and got a spray of water in the face. Turned on the light. What the hell? The floor was wet, the dog was huddled in the corner, and Something Was Wrong.
It took me several seconds to find the source of the water and several more to believe it sufficiently to do something about it. There was a leak in the toilet water supply line. You know, that plastic tube covered in a strong metal mesh so that nothing bad happens to it, because it would be just terrible if anything bad happened to it. I found the valve and shut it off, and the water stopped.
Except it didn't. My wife was up by this point, and she alerted me to the fact that there was some kind of water noise from downstairs. We went downstairs and saw water streaming from a light fixture in the ceiling onto our hardwood floor. And it kept going from there, sort of jauntily over the edge of the floor by the staircase, in an impromptu, well-lit waterfall.
Well-lit. Around this time, one of our houseguests (of course we had houseguests) stumbled upstairs, took a look at things, and casually suggested that maybe it'd be a good idea to cut the power to that particular circuit, since it was streaming water, and all.
I figure the dog went nuts and attacked the water line at 2:45AM, at the earliest. Any earlier and I'd still have been awake enough to hear him. So the water was flowing for nearly a couple hours. However long it was, it was enough to take a 15'x20' irregular section of ceiling drywall completely out, as in sodden and scarily slumped. The floor... well, we'll deal with that in a few months, after it resumes a shape that more closely resembles what most people think of as a floor. There'll be some replacing, and some refinishing, and altogether enough unpleasantness that we'll just get out of town completely for that.
Meantime, a big chunk of our house is sealed in plastic, E.T. style, and the rest of it is a pretty rough place to be because of the drying fans. The air in here feels as dry and raspy as someplace in the American Southwest where old people move when they're done with the world of the living. The noise is a little crazy-making.
Expected price tag for our dog's little indiscretion: about $20,000.
He's also terrified mindless by fireworks. We know this; we take measures. A week before the 4th of July, we haul out his cage -- pet people insist on calling it a "crate"; it's a cage -- and cover it with blankets so it's nice and dark and cavey. He spends nights in there for a couple of weeks, and he's in there for about three days straight, around the 4th. That pretty much does the trick, and, when it doesn't, he flips out in a cage and nothing gets hurt. New Year's Eve isn't nearly as bad. He hears a few pops, quivers a bit, settles down by 1AM, and that's it.
As usual on New Year's, we stuck him in the bathroom. We figured he couldn't do too much damage to himself or to anything else, in there. Worst case, maybe he goes nuts and eats a roll of toilet paper, right? He was fairly messed up when we came upstairs to go to bed at 1AM, so I sacked out on the bathroom floor with him. I woke up with an aching back, the start of a hangover and the feeling that this was a dog who had weathered the fireworks storm. It was 2:30. I went to bed.
I woke up at 4:30AM. Something was wrong. I got up in the dark, opened the bathroom door, and got a spray of water in the face. Turned on the light. What the hell? The floor was wet, the dog was huddled in the corner, and Something Was Wrong.
It took me several seconds to find the source of the water and several more to believe it sufficiently to do something about it. There was a leak in the toilet water supply line. You know, that plastic tube covered in a strong metal mesh so that nothing bad happens to it, because it would be just terrible if anything bad happened to it. I found the valve and shut it off, and the water stopped.
Except it didn't. My wife was up by this point, and she alerted me to the fact that there was some kind of water noise from downstairs. We went downstairs and saw water streaming from a light fixture in the ceiling onto our hardwood floor. And it kept going from there, sort of jauntily over the edge of the floor by the staircase, in an impromptu, well-lit waterfall.
Well-lit. Around this time, one of our houseguests (of course we had houseguests) stumbled upstairs, took a look at things, and casually suggested that maybe it'd be a good idea to cut the power to that particular circuit, since it was streaming water, and all.
I figure the dog went nuts and attacked the water line at 2:45AM, at the earliest. Any earlier and I'd still have been awake enough to hear him. So the water was flowing for nearly a couple hours. However long it was, it was enough to take a 15'x20' irregular section of ceiling drywall completely out, as in sodden and scarily slumped. The floor... well, we'll deal with that in a few months, after it resumes a shape that more closely resembles what most people think of as a floor. There'll be some replacing, and some refinishing, and altogether enough unpleasantness that we'll just get out of town completely for that.
Meantime, a big chunk of our house is sealed in plastic, E.T. style, and the rest of it is a pretty rough place to be because of the drying fans. The air in here feels as dry and raspy as someplace in the American Southwest where old people move when they're done with the world of the living. The noise is a little crazy-making.
Expected price tag for our dog's little indiscretion: about $20,000.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Touché
I'm a parent of twin daughters. One of them is a little bit over a year old. The other is perpetually three weeks old, because that's how old she was when she died, never having left the hospital. The fact of her death is an odd sort of thing. In a sense, it's a central part of who I am. My scars aren't the fun kind you can show off in a bar. But it's also pretty removed from my day-to-day life: it doesn't, you know, come up in conversation.
I'm sitting at happy hour with some friends and this friend-of-a-friend guy I'm meeting for the first time. The topic of conversation is kids, and this guy, who has just mentioned that he has two adult daughters, stops suddenly and turns to me with this crazy light in his eyes. I don't even see him start to move, but suddenly his fist is jabbing into my sternum, hard. Then he gives me this kind of "what are you going to do about it" sneer and turns casually back to the conversation, which keeps going like nothing happened.
I just sit there, waiting for my breath to come back, because that's what I'm supposed to do. I want to pull myself to my feet and make violence happen. But it's not his fault, what he did. No one else saw a thing, and bizarrely he didn't even mean to do it -- if I fought back, I'd be the one getting aggressive for no good reason.
Because the punching and the sneering part, that's not what happened. What happened is that the guy said, "Well, my daughters both survived to adulthood, so I guess I'm not a complete failure as a parent."
I'm sitting at happy hour with some friends and this friend-of-a-friend guy I'm meeting for the first time. The topic of conversation is kids, and this guy, who has just mentioned that he has two adult daughters, stops suddenly and turns to me with this crazy light in his eyes. I don't even see him start to move, but suddenly his fist is jabbing into my sternum, hard. Then he gives me this kind of "what are you going to do about it" sneer and turns casually back to the conversation, which keeps going like nothing happened.
I just sit there, waiting for my breath to come back, because that's what I'm supposed to do. I want to pull myself to my feet and make violence happen. But it's not his fault, what he did. No one else saw a thing, and bizarrely he didn't even mean to do it -- if I fought back, I'd be the one getting aggressive for no good reason.
Because the punching and the sneering part, that's not what happened. What happened is that the guy said, "Well, my daughters both survived to adulthood, so I guess I'm not a complete failure as a parent."
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Thank you, that settles it.
Pro-tip for software sales people: the correct response to the question "Should I use your software, which costs money, or this other software, which is free?" is not "Good question! Would you like to pay for some consulting services to help you answer it?"
Monday, October 10, 2011
Because of course he'll need a costume.
Our neighbor stopped by yesterday with a few items. It was that neighbor. Not everyone has a that neighbor, but we do. She had an armful of stuff for us, again. I'm of two minds about that: I would love to help her have less stuff, because clearly she has something of a hoarding problem, but I'm a little worried that she's just trying to spread the problem across multiple houses.
This time, two of the items were a child's skeleton costume and a sort of plastic skull medallion. Halloween stuff. At first I thought they were for our infant daughter, which would be odd enough, or maybe for me? But she kept talking about how "he" would look so great in them.
Took me a while to figure out she meant our dog.
This time, two of the items were a child's skeleton costume and a sort of plastic skull medallion. Halloween stuff. At first I thought they were for our infant daughter, which would be odd enough, or maybe for me? But she kept talking about how "he" would look so great in them.
Took me a while to figure out she meant our dog.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Brainworm
Head like a hole, black as your soul.
I'd rather die than give you control...
You may think you're very clever, having discovered that you can sing the chorus of "Head Like a Hole" to the tune of "Blow the Man Down". Your infant daughter may love it. But don't do it.
First, it'll ruin the song for you. Then it'll ruin your life.
Heeeeead like a hooole, blaack as your sooooul.
Iiii'd rather diiiiie than giiiive you controoool...
I'd rather die than give you control...
You may think you're very clever, having discovered that you can sing the chorus of "Head Like a Hole" to the tune of "Blow the Man Down". Your infant daughter may love it. But don't do it.
First, it'll ruin the song for you. Then it'll ruin your life.
Heeeeead like a hooole, blaack as your sooooul.
Iiii'd rather diiiiie than giiiive you controoool...
Monday, October 3, 2011
Eye Protection
If a parent of a two-year-old hands you a phone so you can see an adorable kiddie pic, don't start flipping through the images on the phone looking for more cuteness.
I like to think that I'll never feel the need to preserve an image of a toilet bowl in 'occupied' status for posterity. But my daughter is only one year old, so what do I know?
I like to think that I'll never feel the need to preserve an image of a toilet bowl in 'occupied' status for posterity. But my daughter is only one year old, so what do I know?
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