The Lingering Lemon of Death

it is time

i've been working at liveops since the end of 2003, which is a long time in the silicon valley. it is pretty common here to work someplace for a year or two and then move on. when i started at liveops it was really fun. i don't know how to quite describe it, but it was business-focused engineering. together we re-invented the concept of a call center, and our call center quickly grew to what is now probably the largest and best call center in the world.

but as time wore on, it has become difficult for me, and i am not even 100% certain of the reasons. what it feels like to me is that the crazy roller coaster ride that is michael toy really doesn't fit well with a company trying to look and act like a safe, sane, stable (yet forward looking) corporate partner. however i am always up for learning new things, so i was busy trying to figure out how to make all that work. but then i made the mistake of asking one my friends what he was doing.

"come on down and see?". i went and i saw. see michael see tom. see what tom is doing. what is tom doing?

sadly i can't say anything. the stock answer from the web site is this: "We’re undertaking the huge task of bringing a technology to market that has the potential to change the way people live their lives, the way that cell phones, Digital Video Recorders and the Internet have already affected all of us."

whatever the thing-which-we-do-not-name is, it is interesting, and hard, and as the official story says, disruptive.

you can probably guess at this point, that i am leaving liveops and heading to

it is a little frightening when i start at a new company. even after almost 30 years in the tech industry, and many many many times having people and companies tell me that i am a good guy to have around, i always feel like this is the one job where they are going to find out i'm a worthless turd. if humans beings were anything like rational creatures, i would have erased that idea a long time ago. but no amount of rational reflection on that irrational thought seems to make it go away.

i'll miss many many many people at liveops. even the people who drove me crazy were really good people. i'll also miss working for a company with no capital letters in its name. but this startup thing is what i do, and it is time to do it again.

powerpoint powerwash

i am sometimes trapped in rooms watching powerpoint slides, which are a very poor form  of entertainment and an even worse way to transmit information.  here's a poem about that experience

the man with the perfect hair

the pressed striped shirt
and the khaki dockers,
the presenter

presses play
white screen, metamorphosis.
a stylish
yet tasteful
abstract shape emerges

now five powerful words fly onto the screen
moving with brisk purpose,
they achieve their locations.

• each
• alone
• except
• for
• the bullet.

very powerful words
fully powerful
unencumbered by context
they radiate significance

i bask in the glow
and listen to the music of the presenters voice.
a sentence rises in pitch, so exhilarating,
and the next two sentences gently descend,
so relaxing.

my brain becomes cleaner and cleaner
so very shiny now,
so glad i came,
so brilliant, the graphic with the two circles.
the zone in the center where the circles overlap
... genius

when we finally rule the world
i hope everyone will be
as happy as i am right now

another page of depression

here's a page from my note book, they aren't all like like this. i just felt like this one was a good snapshot in words of what it feels like when things are feeling really bad. and just to pre-calm readers. even when i've felt sadness in my chest like a knife, i've never been suicidal. somehow it doesn't run that way for me, but if you didn't know that, the first part of this might be scary.

this is just a journal page. one whole page on depression, obligation and resignation. i really want to somehow resign, to give up. but it seems that there is no quiet end. i can't just sit in the green reclining chair and start reading and vanish into a book. to give up would require violence. not physical violence, but just as real. i would have to knock our kill the hopeful part of myself. i'd have to rip out my ears so that i could not hear my own voice.

which leaves me in a deep and discouraging part of the cycle of depression ... not enough courage to try, not enough courage to give up.

it is a lonely afternoon for moody hopelessness. outside the tan stucco buildings are glowing in the evening sun, radiating the warmth of the day back into the evening air, like those glow in the dark toys give back the light they bask in.

100,000 feet above, a cool spring evening is descending, slowly waiting to swallow the warmth and be breathed in and out as people order lattes and pretend everything is going to be ok.

rsi finally gets me

programmers all fear rsi. this is the career threatening injury for the professional keyboarder. i've seen several people hit by the rsi truck and never recover.

i've flirted with rsi before, but never let it get so bad that it interfered with my work. i remember one time when my daughter (now in college) was 3 or 4 years old, discovering that i could not hold a story book in my right hand and read it to her without pain. i spent a lot of energy figuring out how to setup a work station so that i could continue to work without producing that kind of strain and since then i've been able to steer clear of rsi problems.

until saturday morning.

i woke up saturday morning and discovered that i could not lift my right arm without an intense pain in my right shoulder, essentially making my right arm useless.

the cause? bad ergonomics in my home computer setup, combined with way too many hours playing computer games (mostly world of warcraft) at night. i've actually had low grade shoulder pain for a couple of months, but i figured it was some sort of old-guy pain (i am 47) and was the kind of nagging problem that i was going to have to learn to get used to.

so i am researching ergonomic work setups, resting my shoulder, taking medication to help the swelling go down and things are slowly getting better. today i can move my arm out from my side about 6 inches.

i feel pretty stupid, i should have known better. i should have caught this a long time ago, way before it was a big deal. it is a big deal now. likely it will take a couple of weeks to get back useful motion in my shoulder and maybe months of rehab work after that to really get a fully functioning joint.

click here to repent for the iraq war

Today I got some bulk e-mail from Jim Wallis, one of the many many people in the universe who are way better humans than I will ever hope to be. Seriously, I like and admire him. Anyway, here's an excerpt:

Next week will mark five years since the United States invaded Iraq. We all lament the suffering and violence that continue after these five heartbreaking years.

To commemorate this anniversary, many Sojourners board members are joining with me to issue a statement calling on the U.S. church to repent for the war and to commit ourselves to a new path toward peace.

Would you join us in signing it? Just click here. We all share in responsibility for a war that has been waged in our names and with our tax dollars. The fact that fewer U.S. soldiers have died in recent months doesn't change the fact that this war should never have been waged. Our country should end this war, not try to "win" it, and we must help the Iraqi people build a safer and more peaceful country.

And so, in this season of Lent, I believe the time has come for us to repent for the Iraq war. But repentance means more than just being sorry. It means admitting that the course we have been on is wrong and committing to begin walking in a new direction - starting with an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

For some reason that really bothered me. How exactly is it that I share in this responsibility? I appreciate the humility of that statement. The refusal to separate in order to judge. However, as far as repentance goes, that is not simply a word. That is an action that has meaning to me. That is a turning away from one thing and towards another. What exactly am I repenting from? Having repented, how will I live differently tomorrow?

Maybe my problem is that Jim Wallis sees "we" and I am still stuck in the "me". Maybe "we" do need to repent. I just don't see how clicking to sign, or even physically signing a document is part of that process.

That leaves the question hanging in the air, how would "we" repent and what part in that do I have? I keep saying over and over again that it is so much better to stop at the powerful question than to provide a powerless answer. Wouldn't it be better to have a million people asking themselves what their part is in repentance than to have a million people who feel like they have repented by clicking on a web link?

[ later ]

I read the statement, and it does address this question. The thing you are "signing" does ask you to commit to some new actions. And in thinking some more, I realized that "How do you get people to ask the right questions?" is a fair response. I guess have nothing to say ... move along, no blog post here.

click here to repent for the iraq war.

how can you vote for hillary ... she listens to the devil

This is not photoshopped, this is straight from Reuters. The caption reads:

US Democratic presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) smiles during a campaign rally in St. Clairsville, Ohio February 27, 2008. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton (UNITED STATES) US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN 2008
(USA)

In the background you can see Satan, clearly whispering things in her ears while she smiles. This can't be an accident, this photographer must have framed the shot for just this effect. Wild that it got published though.

For the humor impaired, I AM NOT REALLY SUGGESTING THAT HILLARY CLINTON A TOOL OF THE DEVIL. The photo just made me laugh. Although in a few hours, if you google "hillary clinton, tool of the devil" you might very will find this blog post.

And for the record I have nothing against Hillary. She seems a little more owned by the machine than Barack, but that's an information free feeling, not any kind of fact.

OMG how wrong can I be. Just for grins i did google "hillary clinton tool of the devil", and i discovered this ...

June 20, 2005 "Devil Endorses Hillary Clinton's Presidential Bid"

Wow ... so maybe this picture was taken by a photographer who remembers that goofy story and thought it would be fun to add fuel to the fire.

on barack obama

i do not know who this man is.

sometimes when i hear his words i hear something that i have not heard in my life time. i don't even know what it is, but i know it is there, because i am so shocked when i hear it. i hear something that i dream of, that must exist. something beyond zero sum, me vs. you, where generosity and hope break the constraints which keep us forever running in circles.

as a nation, we have lost ourselves trying to find an identity after the cold war. we need a leader who can do more than work the system. i would love to see what 8 years of barak obama could do for this nation.

i am actually praying that i would be able to see that.

the worst product name EVER

i'm sick, so i spend some of my time each day wrapped in a blanket sitting on the couch and napping or resting, usually with the tv on.

today, i caught a commercial for a new formulation of alka-selzer, and this formulation has the worst product name i have ever heard in a nationally advertised product.

"Alka-Selzer Plus Mucus and Congestion"

wow ... all the fizzy benefits of alka-selzer, plus mucus and congestion! can't wait to try some of that.

http://www.alka-seltzer.com/asp/products/mucuscong_eff.html

and in case they take the site down ... here's a snapshot of the web page proving it once existed ....

what is it like inside my skin, #672 ... disabled by shame

i missed the mineral waters of the spa at ojo caliente.

i was there, right there, i could simply have walked in and bathed in the waters and had fun laughing with my friends.  we had all just driven there for this very purpose.

instead i lay down on the couch, waiting for i don't know what.  for the bad feeling to go away i guess.

earlier in the day, i was driving the pile of leftovers from the retreat center to the recycling center.  i was late because it turned out to be hard to find the recycling center.  when i finally got to the recycling center i passed a little building and rode up to the sorting bins and began sorting the junk.

i HATE sorting the junk.

i have discovered that many people who really care about the environment, i mean faithful careful thoughtful people.  people who live more respectfully on this planet than i do.  these people practice faith based recycling.  if you believed it was recyclable, then you didn't generate trash.  you just need to believe.  they want all the plastic tubs that hummus comes in to be recyclable, so they throw it in the recycling bin.  ta da, they have recycled!

however, many recycling centers actually are pretty strict about what they accept, and so, when you get to the recycling center, you have to separate the faith based recycling from the actually recyclable materials.  only these things have been sitting in a dark bag with old food in them for a number of days and several exotic and complex new fungus species have been breeding in them.  fun stuff.

anyway i am sorting the junk, and ranger laura comes zooming up to the recycling bins in an official ranger pickup truck, screeches to a stop, and i'm sure if she had a gun she'd have pulled it out, hid behind the hood of the car and yelled for me to drop the number 6 recyclable plastic container down and lay down on the ground face down with my hands and arms spread out.

apparently that little building i drove by contained ranger laura, and i was supposed to stop and talk to ranger laura about the contents of my car before i began wantonly and without proper notification, recycling things.  there were no signs explaining all of this, but i was somehow supposed to know.

and now i was caught and just what did i think i was doing?  thank heaven she was there to prevent another one of the many cases of unauthorized recycling that have been plaguing the county.

she made sure i knew what a horrible thing i had done.   she repeated herself several times so i would know how horrible it was.  i had to get back in my car, drive out of the recycling area, drive back in, stop and follow proper procedure and then come back and recycle.

now i suppose a well balanced person would apologize, listen intently to the explanation of how bad it is that this mistake was made, and then just move on.  but somehow i have this stupid little thing inside me which detects shame producing comments, and records them on tape so that they can be played back in an endless loop.

by the time we got to ojo caliente i had been listening to this loop for a couple of hours.  instead of telling it as a funny story, sitting in the hot springs, enjoying my friends, i laid on the couch, paralyzed by the feeling of shame. and when i finally got off the couch, i was a shadow of my normal self.  i ghost walked through the evening.

that's a day in my skin.  i can look at that day with wise eyes from the future and tell myself all sorts of things about it.  but tomorrow i'll have another stupid day like the one at the recycling center and i will probably be just as stupid as i was back then.

spoof movie trailers

some co-workers showed these to me yesterday. they are movie trailers for well known movies ... first up, mary poppins, still one of my favorite movies.

and now another one which i won't spoil by saying to much ...