My road-trip mix tape

The Police by Omegaman

Makes you corner like you're on rails….

Seeing Double at the Triple Rock by NOFX

Constant in your face tempo and badass guitar…

Shoot to Thrill by AC/DC

It definitely keeps you awake!

The Crystal Onion

Right after Dubya was elected to the White House, The Onion did a piece called “Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over‘”

I think Bush/Cheney actually used the article as their playbook. It’s the only plausible explanation. Here are some of the most eerie:

During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.

Oh, and this one…

On the economic side, Bush vowed to bring back economic stagnation by implementing substantial tax cuts, which would lead to a recession, which would necessitate a tax hike, which would lead to a drop in consumer spending, which would lead to layoffs, which would deepen the recession even further.

The environment…

Turning to the subject of the environment, Bush said he will do whatever it takes to undo the tremendous damage not done by the Clinton Administration to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He assured citizens that he will follow through on his campaign promise to open the 1.5 million acre refuge’s coastal plain to oil drilling.

The Onion new about subprimes before Wall Street did…

“Finally, the horrific misrule of the Democrats has been brought to a close,” House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert (R-IL) told reporters. “Under Bush, we can all look forward to military aggression, deregulation of dangerous, greedy industries, and the defunding of vital domestic social-service programs upon which millions depend. Mercifully, we can now say goodbye to the awful nightmare that was Clinton’s America.”

I find it a bit terrifying that we get more clarity and accuracy from satires like The Onion, Weekend Update, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report than any of our other media.

Yes, We Did.

Four years ago, I chided the American electorate, ending my blog post with this.

Ultimately, the responsibility is on We The People to keep ourselves informed and educated. We The People failed. I’m not blaming the government, Karl Rove or the neo-cons anymore. It is our responsibility. We need to stop being victims and arm ourselves with knowledge and reason.

Obama in 2008. I’m out.

That last line, at the time, was simply a pipe dream– a careless, fanciful desire. A long shot with absolutely no chance in Hades.

Today, he’s our president elect, and I’m the proudest I’ve ever been of this great nation.

But why did it have to come to this? I have a guess. People don’t start paying attention until it starts hurting. They don’t start conserving until there is a shortage. We don’t look at 10 or 15 years from now; we’re too busy looking forward to next week’s Disneyland trip. As long as the big ‘ol mob is sufficiently distracted, politicians and special interests can rape and plunder unabashed.

In a twisted way, maybe the last 4 years was a blessing. It serves as an example of what can happen when an apathetic and misinformed society sits on the sidelines as its children leaders run around without supervision. Maybe it was good that John Kerry, who for me filled the necessary role of “anyone but Bush”, didn’t get the nod. He’d likely be just another politician.

I am little weary for a couple of reasons:

• His security. Tom had told me that when Shelly watched him speak in 2004, the first words out her mouth were, “Oh my God, they’re going to assassinate him.” I can’t help but feel the same way. I see visions of people who wanted to drastically change the status quo like Martin Luther King Jr, Abraham Linclon, John and Robert Kennedy, and Benazir Bhutto, I cringe a little.
• Bush’s legacy. When George Bush landed in DC, gas prices were below a dollar a gallon, we had a pretty good reputation in the international community, a growing economy and a budget surplus. President Obama will be inheriting a huge turd. Our mountain, as described in his acceptance speech, is steep. Additionally, the expectations that he has set for himself border on “crazy.” He could gobble up terrorists for lunch and shit gold bricks; there are still going to be people who will say that he’s not delivering.

In any case, I’ll take this victory gratefully and just shut up. I’m happy. You done good, America. I’m proud of you and always knew you had it in you.

Now, is it January yet?

My Week in Review

• Found out I need a root canal
• Mamazilla hit a crow with her van
• Dog got sprayed with a skunk, and I had to perform the cleanup
• Jenna barfed Saturday morning, canceling our Great America trip.

There’s always next week. Also, I heard that dRob had a worse week than I. His involved a smashed up Mac Book Pro I think, so I think he has me beat.

This Just In…

I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried. I was listening to an NPR hourly news summary, and I heard the following (in this order):

The White House says we may be able to start reducing troop levels because the conditions have dramatically improved.

Next story…

A suicide bomber blew up a bunch of police offices- the fifth such attack this week.

Huh? Really? Then …

US GDP grew a little, but things won’t get much better until fuel prices (among other things) begin to come under control.

Next story…

Exxon reported the single largest quarterly earnings ever and the biggest of any US corporation EVER- more than $11B

But it’s all good, because…

We found water on Mars.

Oh goody. Does this shit make anyone else completely bonkers?

The Dude In Character

I’ve been a fan of the NPR feature, “In Character.” It deep dives into characters in pop culture. This week’s installment, The Dude.

Taking Inventory

Mamazilla and I have gotten to the nuts and bolts of the kitchen redesign, and it’s been a good excercise in simplification. We’ve taken all the things that we had in our drawers and cabinets and have put them in the garage in various crates and Ikea bags. We’ve temporarily roughed the cabinets in until after we tape and texture the sheetrock. We decided that we wouldn’t bring all that crap back in the house because a) we’d have to move it again and b) it helps visually separate the wants from the needs.

Actually, it’s a lot like what a writer at Unclutterer did.

As I have mentioned in the past, we are downsizing our living space and we must reduce the amount of stuff that we have. The kitchen was the room we tackled last. I came up with the idea of removing every last item from the cupboards to assess what we had on our hands. The end result was quite overwhelming.

You don’t really get a grasp of what you have stored away in those cupboards until you have it laying out for display. I got the same feeling when we had our yard sale last summer. I asked myself, “Where did all this stuff come from?” The accumulation of stuff is gradual, and it tends to sneak up on you. My wife and I have been married for almost nine years now and we have just recently become more conscious of all of the things we have brought into our home.

The taping gets done on the 24th. Then, it’s paint, floor, cabinets. W00t!

Possessed

My inner-Ethnographer is reeling! Since I’m a bit of a craphound myself, I always find these things fascinating. Hoarding is a real mental illness, and it’s interesting to see the different types of things that are hoarded. Books, Disc Players, Used Shampoo Bottles, etc. I’m just wondering how much of this is DNA, and how much is behavior.

Canned

This week, Yahoo! canned me.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it with any of the typical euphemisms. Laid off. Downsized. Rightsized. Reorganized. My favorite is affected. I’m waiting for a romantic comedy where Sandra Bullock tells an unsuspecting Matthew McConaughey that she’s reorganizing her love life and that he’s been affected. Gawd, I’d love to see that.

I’ve been dodging bullets like these in Silicon Valley for the past 8 years. When I worked at AOL, I think we had a culling once a year, every year– mostly around the Holiday times, and I’d survived all of them. I knew at some point, my time would come.

I was sitting at my desk, sketching out a particularly hairly problem, earplugs in and focused. My director’s boss came to my desk and asked if he could meet with me for a second. Thinking that he wanted to talk about the aforementioned hairy problem, I instinctivly grabbed my clipboard, ready to explain our status and current direction.

As I was following him, something started to smell fishy. It dawned on me that I recalled watching KTVU Morning News, and layoffs were happening today. I started to piece things together. “Hey…waitaminnuutt. I never meet with Mr. Lumbergh!,” I realized. (Names have been changed to protect…well, me)

I suppose at this point I could have turned tail and ran. “They can’t fire me if they can’t catch me!!,” I convinced myself. Eh, maybe I was a bit too grown up for that. Okay, maybe not, but it still wouldn’t be very professional.

Over the past couple of weeks, my logic and unrelenting optimisim had lulled me into a false sense of security. The layoffs were supposed to be concentrated in areas that were no longer core to Yahoo!’s direction, and I was in Yahoo! Developer Network. Interaction designers were pretty hard to find, and I strangely enough was an interaction designer. Surely this meant that if you were entry-level QA engineer in an a beleagured property like Yahoo! Voice, you’d better worry. As comforting as all this was, I remained prepared for the worst. Hell, I worked at AOL. I’d been prepared since 2001.

As I turned the corner, Mr. Lumbergh opened the door to the conference room. The table was stocked with bottles of water and boxes of Kleenex. “Oh, shit,” I muttered under my breath.

Mr. Lumbergh began his prepared script, and I gotta tell you, for a second there, I started to feel sorry for him. What a shitty job that must be. Then I imagined how much he probably gets paid for doing it, and I was over it pretty quickly.

When asked if I had any questions, I asked the textbook victim question, “Why me?” Lumbergh had an uncanny talent of being extremely articulate at saying nothing at all. I could have recorded the audio, played it back for you and still wouldn’t have been able to decode it. I felt like I was stuck in the dialog between Neo and The Architect from The Matrix. He asked me if I had any further questions. While my brain was trying to figure out where to start, my mouth simply said, “No.”

Within seconds of me sitting back at my desk to collect my thoughts, the phone rang. It was a recruiter. Now, under normal circumstances, professional code of conduct dictates that you discreetly and in the most emotionally-detached manner possible tell them to take a hike. That ship had sailed.

“SURE!,” I blurted as I sat back in my chair and put my feet up on my ergonomically- designed work surface,” I’d love to hear about opportunities at other companies! What’s that? Mayo Clinic? I heard that’s a pretty good outfit!”

The rest of the day was par for the course. The only wrinkle was that I had encountered was that I hadn’t brought my truck. “Dammit,” I thought to myself. That morning, I had contemplated taking my truck and a dolly with me, but that damned nagging optimist convinced me otherwise. Damned optimist. I’d have to return the next day.

One thing that was humbling was the amount of compassion and love that I’ve received from all of my friends, families and coworkers. Leaving all of my fellow Yahoos will be the hardest part of this whole process. It was really overwhelming. I got a lot of quizzical looks like, “You? Really? Out of all people? What were they thinking?” I’m a pretty humble guy, so it’s difficult processing all of this praise. Mamazilla’s been absolutely wonderful and supportive, and her confidience in me is really calming.

I have other thoughts on the matter, but this post is already too long. I’ll save my insights on Yahoo! as a company for another time.

Five Minutes of Football

I watched exactly five minutes of football this season, and I don’t mean those pesky football minutes (which round out to about 3 real minutes each). I’m talking 300 seconds. After dinner this past Superbowl Sunday, I was curious. When I found it, The Patriots were just barly winning 14-10, there was 57 seconds left on the game clock, the Giants had been marching, and they were already inside the Patriots’ 40-yard line. A field goal wouldn’t be enough. Eli Manning connected to Plaxico Burgess for a game winning touchdown (Plaxico, really? Kinda sounds like it could be a Web 2.0 startup). Despite from some fruitless (but awe-inspiring) field length passes, The Pats came up short.

Most efficient football season, EVAR.