louisgray.com: live

Though I've never made a serious inquiry to seek employment at Google, I was surprised to learn this week that Google, in a race to hire talent, is loosening its requirements for job applicants, including their long-mandated requirement of a 3.0 average in college. The surprise wasn't so much that the world's most innovative search engine was on a quest to lower their collective IQ, but instead that this rule existed in the first place. Given the technology industry's many stories about dropouts founding companies, Google would be one of the last places I'd expect to require going back into the dustbins of history and finding my old university transcripts. Yet, it turns out my "stellar" 2.71 average at Cal would have had me rejected from their front door without discussion.

(See: Google Lowers Its GPA)

After graduating from high school with a 3.17 average (3.5 adjusted for AP and Honors courses), I didn't exactly anticipate rolling through Berkeley with a spotless 4.0 average. I'd always lacked the gene that forced me to study and was always distracted with things I found much more important than rote memorization. While others locked themselves away in libraries and avoided seeing the outdoors, I was either writing for the newspaper, editing my homepage, seeing an A's game, or just watching the Simpsons. After my first semester as a freshman at Cal, I sported a 2.88 GPA (to the best of my memory) and the highest it ever got after that was 2.96, just shy of the not-so-magical 3.0 mark.

When this laissez-faire attitude saw the addition of another full-time distraction (a girlfriend) in my Junior year, my grades fell even further, with a 2.0 average the first semester and a 2.33 the second, totaling a 2.16 overall. In fact, during that year, I had to meet with a counselor in the Political Science department (where a 2.0 GPA was mandated for graduation in the major) to explain my 1.7 GPA at the time (5.1 grade points over 3 classes) and say I'd do better in future courses.

Yet, to me, I didn't really care what the final numbers said. While working full-time and forging a double major, it seemed obvious, at least to me, that nobody outside of the university would ever need to know my GPA when I graduated, and to date, nobody in the interview process has. All they saw was what they needed to see - a two line summary showing I'd graduated from UC Berkeley in 4 years with 2 majors. Now, 7 1/2 years out of school, it's my accumulative work experience which is the headline, and my alumni status simply forms as a backdrop showing I jumped through the right hoops in the right order on my way.

That said, I'm somewhat incredulous that Google ever had this requirement, and then stuck by it for so long. How would a 3.2 from a local junior college trump a 2.7 at Cal or Stanford (where their cofounders started), and how would they ever hire anybody from UC Santa Cruz, so famously on a pass/fail system? Was the rule in place to make sure they weren't hiring folks with low aptitude levels, or instead, to make sure their prospective employees were planning to do their homework and not play hooky come classtime?

I just have to shake my head at how such an innovative company who wants to seek the highest level of talent would set such an artificial bar. While they are already getting press for "lowering standards" to acquire less-robust folks, I think it's about time, not that I'm going to revise my resume and offer them a look now.

Listening to ''Jumbo'', by Underworld (Play Count: 5)

It's no secret I'm not a big fan of planning ahead of holidays. I tend instead to ignore them until they have crept up and there's no time to prepare anything big. That's true whether it's Halloween or Christmas, anniversaries or birthdays. As far as I'm concerned, most holidays are completely overdone as it is, and they don't need my help to push them to higher levels of grandiose. This year's Halloween is no different. I didn't purchase a costume, I didn't buy candy for potential trick or treaters, and I didn't plan on dressing up for a Halloween event at the office today. Yet somehow, despite a lack of any planning, it all worked out.

This morning, while considering what it would be like to ignore the holiday altogether, and be a "Bah Hambug" to the day's events, I started to think how I could use piecemeal items I already owned to make something resembling a costume. I ran through the items I had around, in my head - from PJs, to t-shirts, to ball caps, shorts - anything... and I came up with the idea to go as a software engineer, simply by wearing a company t-shirt, shorts, flip-flops and black socks pulled up to the knees. After all, some of our engineers wear this stuff every day. 

In my mind, the "costume" fit the minimum criteria needed to say that I had "dressed up" for Halloween, but obviously the minimum. Nobody could say that I had spent too much money, worn too much makeup or any of that. In fact, I ran a very real risk of people not knowing what the heck I had planned. But surprisingly, more than two-thirds of the people who saw my outfit had me rightly pegged as a company engineer, and some specifically identified a colleague who most resembled my getup.

In the afternoon, we gathered to award prizes and offer colleagues' kids the chance to trick-or-treat from cubicle to cubicle. Gathered in the main conference room, they announced costume winners - from most scary, to most funny, and finally, most original. I looked around at every one else's costumes - from ninjas to ballplayers, vampires, princesses and butchers. But it was my name called as "most original", winning me a $25 Starbucks gift card, which I'll probably exchange to someone else at some point. But the point had been made. With almost zero planning, and no investment, I ended up a winner. Surprisingly, nobody asked for a recount. They got the trick, and I got the treat.

Listening to ''4.Five ft 5-Live Sofia 6-7-05'', by Underworld (Play Count: 11)

In my twenty-plus years of researching all I can about baseball, I've amassed a fair amount of knowledge on the subject, and I'm occasionally trotted out to spar with other trivia junkies to see who can know the most obscure items. While that's fun, it's a rarity when I can find somebody else as passionate about the sport, who also knows their history and is happy to talk about it. This afternoon, on our way home from the Cal football game, we struck up a conversation with couple from the San Joaquin Valley, and got to hear first-hand stories about the LA Dodgers from decades long gone by.

Not devout Cal fans, the couple had rightfully anticipated today's contest to be a good one, and had driven the two-plus hours to the BART station to catch the game. They regaled us with stories about how they traveled to see the Reds take on the Cubs at Wrigley Field, and the Giants at the Washington Nationals at RFK Stadium earlier this year. But the best parts came when the husband told me he had grown up an LA Dodgers fan in the Walter Alston era, abandoning his fandom when Tommy Lasorda took over the managerial position.

Cautiously, I asked him if he had ever seen pitching legends Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale take the mound. He had - and said he had seen one of Koufax's then-record four no-hitters. We talked about speedster Maury Wills coming up in the 1959 season, along with pitcher Roger Craig, who later gained notoriety for losing 20-plus games for the expansion New York Mets in the early 1960s, and eventually becoming the Giants manager in the 1980s. Each of his memories would spark more questions from me - as he remembered Steve Garvey clubbing 5 doubles in a game, and St. Louis Cardinals great Stan Musial setting the National League record for career doubles, forcing the game to be abruptly stopped to recognize the feat. I wanted to know which catcher took over following Roy Campanella's car accident, and what had sparked Juan Marichal's famous beating of Johnny Roseboro after a high and tight pitch.

Our conversation was cut short by our needing to exit the BART, find our car, and head home, but it came too soon. It's not often that I can benefit from knowing the ins and outs of sports and find someone who can not only add stories, but appreciate the conversation. He seemed excited that some under-30 kid would have taken the time to know about the baseball of his childhood, which had long since faded to memories by the time I was born. I left, wishing them well, happy, almost as pleased with our exchange as I was the Cal football game, and I hope that our conversation similarly brightened his day.

A good friend of mine recently teased that I focus too much on the world of sports, and that I've made a jump to try and act like a jock, when I so clearly am a nerd. But there's so much more than just the final scores and the physical rough and tough. In sports, especially baseball, there is history and tradition, and a commonality between random people that is special. You can love sports for the sweat and the physicality. I love sports for the challenge, the energy, the statistics and the meaning of it all - not just for today, but forever.

Listening to ''No More Tears'', by DJ Tiesto (Play Count: 6)

Ivan Pavlov's research centered around conditional reflexes, most notably for his work on dogs' anticipation of feeding, and how they would drool at the sounds associated with dinner, even if the food had not been presented. As a result, something can be called "Pavlovian" if you respond immediately to a sound in anticipation of what will come next.

In our home, our 16 year-old beagle thinks she has us mastered. Her mealtimes are fairly regular, as soon as I get up in the morning, and around 5:30 in the evening. My wife and I work together to make sure somebody gets home around 5:30, and at latest, six, to get the beagle her dinner, and as far as the dog is concerned, the rest of the day should be focused on an intermittent schedule of napping and snacking. Yet, despite her inability to master the English language, she can communicate quite well, and has discovered a way to summon our attention through a Pavlov-like action.

If her water dish runs low, whether intentionally or not, her drinking the lowest levels of the water causes her dog tags to hit the side of the metal bowl with a "ding, ding, ding!" While she won't directly tell us that her water is low, and she would like a refill, the bell-like "ding, ding, ding!" stops me from what I am doing, forcing to me to walk into the kitchen and fill her water dish, as expected. In effect, that turns our roles in reverse, with her using a bell to manipulate me.

It may be time for some experimentation of our own. What if we changed the bowl to plastic? How would she tell us then?

Listening to ''The Great Escape'', by BT (Play Count: 6)

Before the Saturday sports got started, I thought I would get something accomplished today, so I took a few of my watches to a nearby watch repair shop - three to get new batteries, and two to have repairs made to the bands. After I had ignored the task for a few months, I thought it was about time to do something useful.

I drove up to Cupertino and met a kind man who said he could take care of everything, cheaply, and get it finished, all by this afternoon. He took down my name and phone number, and I swore I would be back between 4:30 and 5 to pick them up.

Then I went grocery shopping, put everything away, and settled in to watch the A's game. With the A's game completed, I wrote the previous post, and relaxed, ready to endure what may be a long, cold, winter, baseball free. Then I looked at my one remaining good watch, and noted the time: 6:30. I had completely forgotten my appointment, and the kind old man who no doubt got everything done I had asked, was left to shut down his store without seeing me tonight. Also, given he had asked me to pay upon receipt, he hasn't gotten anything for his efforts either.

Wow - do I feel bad. But I can't go over there now, as the store's closed, and it will be closed Sunday and Monday as well. I may have to trek up there on Tuesday as soon as I can, and deeply apologize. It may be a bigger deal to me than it is to him, but I sure do feel like a louse.

Listening to ''Dimensiond - Tonight'', by Club Class (Play Count: 3)

As noted previously, we've had to move our schedule around a bit to make the mid-week, early evening A's games. On Tuesday, when I arrived back home just before 3 p.m., I rushed in, slammed the door, and expected the beagle to come bounding forward to see what all the noise was about.

But, unlike the watchdog we all would expect to dominate intruders, Molly was sound asleep. I put my stuff away, and she didn't stir. So, here to document her hard work, we present Molly the beagle, sleeping on her job on the watch, guarding the couch and chair.


It's tough work being a lazy, spoiled, dog!

In a single-person survey conducted in the Louis Gray household this evening, it was determined that ongoing issues with the blog's look and feel have directly impacted sleep patterns to the point of ridiculousness. Apparently, after an "all clear" note sent yesterday that highlighted the potential to ongoing changes, issues with the blog became only worse, and continued efforts to post new stories, or make changes, consumed efforts until after 3 in the morning, Pacific Time, before the site's administrator relented.

After coming home yesterday evening from the Cal and Oregon football game, which has pushed the team into Top Ten status in the college polls, I attempted to post my quick game recap, but for some reason, the new blog site theme opted to try and publish the nearly 500 posts to date, rather than just add the one. Multiple times, this failed part-way through, and it was impossible to publish at all. After this nonsense, I changed themes a few more times, and tweaked settings, all in vain.

With the beagle as my only companion, the wife long since asleep, we tried to make louisgray.com functional, and gave up in frustration before 4 a.m. came, in some attempt to rest before Sunday began in earnest. Yet, the post which should have made it to the Web at 12:45 last night didn't go live until almost noon today, when a "perfect storm" of settings, preferences and themes were found to meet the minimum standard needed. So, here we are. The site once again looks interesting, but once again, lacks the subpage content I had been so excited about the last time you were updated.

Be assured that we will keep fighting - sleep be damned.

Listening to ''Enemy'', by Gabriel & Dresden (Play Count: 12)

If you've visited this site more than once, you may have noticed a somewhat radical change overnight. The site's dominant color has morphed from a dark purple to a light blue, the sidebar has switched sides, from right to left, and a number of under the hood changes have taken place.

So why the change?

Given the Web site has my name in the URL, I am going to constantly tinker until I find the ideal way to deliver content. Though happy with the ability to post new items quickly with RapidWeaver, I have been disappointed with some elements of the program - most notably how the theme I was using handled subpages or permalinks.

Ideally, when visitors come to read a specific post or page, they should see that the page is part of a bigger structure, and not orphaned. It should retain elements of the site, such as the title, directory or sidebar. The old theme didn't do this, so I had a lot of visitors to permalinks who had nowhere to go, and left. Now, with this newer theme, the permalinks retain linkage to their category, and the all-important sidebar and navigation. It's much, much better.

For example: A permalink page before the change | How that page looks now with the new theme

Does this mean the end of change? Of course not. I'm not sure that the light blue is ideal, or that the fonts are perfect, etc. But now, I have a better platform to start from to make continued changes. Stick around - we just might get it right after a while.

Listening to ''I'm a Big Sister, and I'm a Girl, and I'm a Princess, and this is my Horse'', by Underworld (Play Count: 3)

Rather than try to summarize the day and the ensuing five years, I thought I would slip into the e-mail archives to show my response to that day in a message to my father that evening. That's one benefit of holding onto e-mail like this - a stamp in time. Only names of specific people have been removed.

Today I woke up at 5:30 for the second day in a row (rougher for me than you), so that I could get into the office by 6:45, to prepare for the Web seminar by 7, and hold the two sessions at 8 and 10. By 6:10 I learned of the first jetliner crashing into the World Trade Center, and watched CNN live as the second jet flew into the second tower, much to my bewilderment.

I of course assumed that both planes were empty, outside of a rogue pilot and crew, but could not fathom that they were hijacked commercial liners, full of people. That was unbelievable. As I still intended to get to the office on time, the plethora of news began to billow - two more planes unaccounted for, an explosion at the Pentagon...

I got in the car, and listened to KGO 810 as the news unfolded. Traffic was usual for that time of the morning, but it seemed everyone was doing as I was - listening to the radio, staring blankly ahead. There were fewer lane changes, and our speed seemed steady, more so than normal.

Getting to the office, I set up camp in the conference room and tried to contact this morning's presenters in the UK, to no avail. All lines were blocked. I talked with Global Crossing, our conferencing provider, and learned that our conference calls would not be allowed - that all lines had been allocated for the US government and emergency services' use. I had no choice but to cancel both sessions, and e-mail all 150 registrants of our decision, kissing $35,000 of our eMarketing promotion budget away with the seminars' cancellation.

Following that, I tried to stay focused on work, communicating with (NAME) regarding our product demonstration Flash piece, but little else got done. A TV was set up in one conference room, and executives and peons alike stopped to gander at the horror that was New York. (The Company) was eventually closed by 2, in a surreal day that saw ZERO calls to our front desk, and Web traffic similar to that of a holiday such as July 4.

That day coincided with what was supposed to be a big marketing effort for us, so beyond the horrific human element, I had tried to push forward as a good corporate citizen and do the best I could. Though we recognized the disaster, we didn't recognize the scope of it until the conference provider flat-out denied us use of the conference lines needed for the seminar. Though we were at war with an unknown enemy, we didn't see the full  impact until the towers themselves fell. Even our Web designer, in San Francisco, stopped taking calls from me after he was forced to evacuate the city. It was a day we'll not ever forget, even though were removed 3,000+ miles from the bloodshed.

Listening to ''Another World'', by DJ Shog (Play Count: 5)

As seemingly every other nerdy non-sports-playing, spelling bee winning youngster did, I was subjected to the childhood role of wearing bright metal braces for a significant portion of my elementary school career. Whether for braces tightenings, checkups, or other random maintenance, at one point I was seeing our dentist every two weeks, and just had to remember after school to take one bus rather than the usual route home. In junior high and high school, we maintained less-frequent visits but stayed within a standard deviation from the normal target of twice a year, without too many incidents.

But this changed once I got to college, and now in the workplace. Whether as a result of a series of moves in the Bay Area, lacking a single contact for all things teeth-related, through sheer apathy and annoyance to the dental profession in its entirety, or through too much time consumed by work and other activities, the regular checkups turned to irregular checkups, and then... no checkups. As I didn't think I had any issues to speak of, there wasn't any need to go in every six months just to satiate the ADA's mandatory need for cash. After all, what's to stop them from deciding we should all go three times a year instead, as a ploy to increase revenue?

My somewhat-intentional dentistry boycott all backfired on me starting last Friday, when while snacking on Skittles at the office, a wayward filling popped itself out of a back left tooth, leaving a hole in its place. That evening, my wife set me up with her dentist for an appointment this last Tuesday to get it taken care of, plus X-rays and cleaning while we were there. Made sense.

Tuesday: I headed to the dentist's, got introduced, assessed the situation, and we took X-rays. My hopes of a quick 1-hour procedure were shattered, when he felt the filling's ejection indicated the tooth it was attached to was in a state of rebellion, not due to any lack of hygiene on my part, but because the filling, placed by my old dentist a decade or so ago, had outlived its usefulness and attacked the tooth. Great. So much for trusting the whole field. In fact, the new dentist recommended I replace all my existing metal fillings. So, we did a quick cleaning, and scheduled to now investigate putting in a crown on that tooth the very next day. I went home more annoyed than ever, and still had a hole where my tooth should have been intact.

Wednesday: Back to the dentist, to start the crown. Or so I thought. He did "deep cleaning" on the left side of my mouth, and drilled away at the offending tooth, eliminating decay, and shot me up with all sorts of painkiller. While that was fun, at the end of it all, he announced that he had changed plans altogether, had not started the crown at all, and instead had done fillings on that tooth, and those neighboring it, as a preventative measure. He said he didn't want to start the crown if my tooth were to rebel further and necessitate a root canal. Uh-oh. So, he sent me off, said to watch for later pain, and to come back the very next day to see if they could start the crown. At least the hole in my tooth was gone.

Thursday: Third consecutive day at the dentist's, so I started off plenty sullen. More painkiller. More shots in the same places as before, already sore, but this time, they cut all around my tooth and fitted it for a temporary crown, while a third-party lab would make me "the perfect fit", which I wouldn't get for two more weeks. The hygienist put in a temporary which would fit in very well in Pirates of the Carribean, as it's gold and, at an angle, is only half as high on the exterior side as the interior. Arrgghh Matey!

But they weren't done with the marathon. It was suggested I come back the very next day to "deep clean" the right side. You wouldn't want to have one side clean and other not, or so I was told. Apparently the Earth was about to spin off of its axis and I would be responsible. Sigh.

Friday: 4 days, 4 visits. I took my place in what I consider "my chair" now, and readied for the deep cleaning. But they then said I was there for deep cleaning and a filling. What? They never mentioned that before. I guess another "change in plans". Cute. I was told it was again, preventative, and that  the whole field of dentistry had moved to a doctrine of preemption. Chalk another victory up for the Bush doctrine, I guess. Whatever. What was I going to do? Leave? Argue? So I got more shots. More pain killer, but on the right side this time, not the left. More drilling. More thumb-twiddling. But it really didn't take that long, leaving my words slurred and seeing me exit the office with a gold tooth on the left side, fillings on both sides, and somehow trying to favor both sides of my mouth when I eat, so you can guess there are a few things off of the dinner menu for a few days.

Two weeks from now, we go back and get the crown finished, or so I've been told so far. Given this week's nonsense, I wouldn't be too surprised if I walk in and had been asked to be fitted for false teeth, the implantation of a diamond stud, or to once again, get braces, as a preemptive measure. And everybody who knows I took a self-imposed dentist vacation says this is all my fault. If you ask me, I shouldn't have had all these metal fillings put in there if they weren't supposed to stay. That's silly, and now I'm at the stage of getting a crown because the last dentist didn't know his work was going to mess me up.  Arrgghh Matey!

Listening to ''Escape Velocity 015'', by DJ Irish (Play Count: 2)

So what do you give to an overgrown ball of fluff who has everything? How about a surprise trip to Sunnyvale and all sorts of new smells?

Dog-sitting for a friend this weekend, Iorek, a young samoyed weighing in around 60 to 70 pounds of lean, mean white fur, took a trip back to Sunnyvale with me after the A's game and soon found himself king of the manor - or at least our living room.

You can also see him as he tries out our love seat, and finds he is simply too big.

When I moved to Belmont just after graduating from UC Berkeley in 1999, I certainly didn't have a whole lot of furniture, having been a starving student, so I started over from scratch - buying a new desk, a new bookcase, and a new dresser, assembling each at the apartment, after somehow squeezing them into my small car, and lugging them up three flights of stairs. While the desk didn't follow me along to my next two moves, the dresser and bookshelf did, so they've given me about 7 years of good service - at least until my dresser began to fall apart, making the morning's search for socks just that much more memorable each day.

After a few weeks of going into the other room to get my things out of each drawer individually, my wife and I set out to a number of different stores on the peninsula to see if we could find a good-quality solution for something less than what we pay each month on our mortgage. At our first stop, one of the more-promising dressers was $650, while others were $999 or above, and some peaked at $1,500. Our next two stops weren't much better. In fact, one store didn't have much below $2,000, which seemed a little steep for something I couldn't live in, drive around or surf the Web on. That left IKEA as one last stop. I was skeptical, knowing the low-price leader is often the high-crap leader, and it was certain to be a not-so-exciting experience.

After making our way through a series of parking garages, we entered the IKEA maze as hamsters in a Habitrail, missing only the sawdust and an exercise wheel. Packed in like sardines into narrow walkways, with arrows telling us which way to go, we darted past bunkbeds and stoves or dining sets, past housewares and beanbag chairs, to find anything that resembled a dresser - and to our surprise, we did find some options after all. They weren't nearly the quality of the previous stores, but the prices, in the range of $149 to $249, were significantly less. And as my wife has now mentally committed to our purchasing flat-screen TVs for the house, that's where any of our available money should go, not just a glorified wooden box for shirts, socks and pants.

Though we chose a good dresser, we didn't much feel like dragging it out of the store, packing it in the car, and taking it up the stairs today. But we marked it down, and will try IKEA's catalog or online store, and make someone else do the grunt work. But I am not so sure I want to step inside an IKEA again - to be pushed through like schools of fish among the masses, in a claustrophobic mess of wood, bright paint and screaming kids. I'd rather throw my things in cardboard boxes than do that.

Listening to ''Envio - Time to Say Goodbye'', by Armin Van Buuren (Play Count: 3)

Let me first apologize for the lack of non-ANtics updates to the site of late. Schedules haven't been all that forgiving. Yesterday alone saw us spending "quality time" in the car to the tune of six hours or so, and we didn't arrive home until after 2 a.m. Needless to say, until they've perfected the technologies of voice-to-text blogging while driving and can upload while I'm behind the wheel, you're going to see gaps.

Earlier this week, one of my best friends and colleagues had the sad news that her father had passed away after a long battle with cancer. With his services in Stockton, we first drove up to my parents' home in Sacramento, to drop off our beagle, and then turned right back around to Stockton for the service. After the service, we returned to Sacramento, and then had the trip back to the Bay Area to take us through the late hours. With 2 hours 20 minutes to Sacramento, and an hour between Stockton and Sacramento each way, you can see how the time added up.

But it was all well worth it.

My colleague's father lived to a ripe old age of 91, and shared some of the same passions we do - including a love for A's baseball. The well-decorated ceremony included a floral arrangement in the shape of an A's baseball, with an A's logo, and we were even asked to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the service, which otherwise closely followed Buddhist traditions. The man, who passed on his love for the game to his daughter, had held season tickets behind home plate for more than 20 years, had managed youth baseball leagues, and once, many decades ago, had played against Joe DiMaggio, in semi-pro baseball. Though I only met him a few times, it was clear he loved his baseball, and his family. The service's program had his smiling face on the front, wearing an A's cap - of course.

Aside from the baseball elements, the service itself was beautiful - honoring the Buddhist traditions and ceremony, full of incense and Japanese song. We were very lucky to have the opportunity to share in that, and we hope he knows how much we appreciate the contributions of his family.

Following the service's conclusion, we headed north to my own family, ostensibly to pick up our dog, who languished without us for a few hours. We spent the evening with yet more food (I was full from the reception after the service), and played plenty of cards, as we tend to do when we get together. After several rounds of Uno, a family staple, we played hearts until I lost. I lost because I took too many risks, and never shot the moon, but we still had fun, and didn't mind driving the midnight hours back to the Bay Area, only to start off our Sunday routine hours later.

Listening to ''Engreossing Moments'', by ATB (Play Count: 3)

If you take a look at most of the posts to this blog, it's fairly clear I am a night owl by nature. I'm often more productive from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. than most people seem to be from 8 a.m. to noon. I am commonly up late, and when I do get up early, it's only to race into the office, not to saunter around the house and grab a leisurely breakfast or any of that nonsense. Today was a whole other matter. With my wife and mother-in-law on an end of summer trip to Idaho and Montana (of all places), the pair needed to catch an early flight out of San Francisco, and you can guess who got drafted to play chauffeur. That meant we were up at 4:30 a.m., to leave home by 5, pick up the mother-in-law at 5:30, and drop them off at SFO by 6.

By the time I turned around and made it into the office, it was 6:30 a.m., and as anybody knows, you never gain brownie points with management for the extra hours you may put in that they don't see. If you're not sending out e-mails and making calls immediately, it really doesn't count in a world where you don't punch a clock.

Sure, there were others there, but mostly those who deal with customers on the East Coast, necessitating a regular early start. For me, it was something resembling alien territory, and I still felt somewhat guilty leaving the office by 5, even though I had effectively put in what could be considered a 10 1/2 hour shift, mainly to make sure the dog was fed.

With my wife out for the week, the beagle, at home by herself all day, would no doubt have started consuming the furniture and wreaking general havoc were I not home exactly by 5:30 p.m. to give her dinner. She does, after all, seem to have an internal alarm clock that's more accurate than most watches. I think we made it by 5:27, and she ate at 5:40, just within the levels of acceptability.

That catches us up to my appropriate amount of whining that I'm fatigued. Maybe when I was younger I could handle big shifts in schedule, and pull all-nighters, but not any longer. As with Saturday, I'll be lucky to keep my eyes open through the full nine-inning game tonight. But we'll give it our best shot.

Listening to ''One Eye Shut (Original Mix)'', by Robbie Rivera (Play Count: 5)

Conventional wisdom has it that traveling West to East is harder on the body than going East to West, but for the large part, I find the reverse to be true. Often, I overcompensate for the time shift by staying up into the wee hours while on the East Coast, with 1 and 2 a.m. bedtimes being common. Last night, following the conclusion of the A's game, which wrapped up around 1:00 Boston time, was no different.

For me, the struggle comes after the coast-to-coast travel when I arrive home. Today, that was exacerbated by our being forced awake at 5:30 East Coast time to just barely make our flight, which means for those of us in California, I've been up since 2:30 a.m., not a good thing. And my body has never taken to sleeping on flights, so while others dozed, I read and listened to the iPod.

Upon arriving home, the travel and lack of sleep caught up with me. After unpacking, we found the A's on TV again, for a 1 p.m. start. But I couldn't make it through the fourth inning before my body gave in to the jetlag, and I zonked out on the couch, eyes fluttering awake only to see the final score, and Huston Street shaking hands with Jason Kendall to close out the 5-2 win over the Mariners. Funny how even subconsciously, I wanted to be sure the A's had won.

This isn't the first time the East to West travel has caught up with me. On other business trips, I've come home, only to struggle through the 10 o'clock primetime of CSI or Law and Order. Makes me look like a wuss. But it's just the way it is.

On the flip side, it is amazing, even in this modern age, to have seen both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, as well as the Great Lakes, in the same day. Flying from Boston to Chicago to San Jose will do that for you. I'm still in awe with some of the modern amenities we all take for granted.

Listening to ''Shivers'', by DJ Armin van Buuren (Play Count: 12)

With one last day here in Boston, my wife and I traveled on the Metro to the Harvard campus, and though we didn't pick up an admissions form, we did get to see landmarks of the Revolutionary War, monuments to those students who lost their lives in the Civil War, and in a more modern twist, we stepped inside the campus' bookstore and a number of the nearby shops and eateries.

As I had expected, regardless of an institution's interpreted valor, nearly all college campuses follow the same format - large lecture halls, narrow stairways, cement, brick and columns. Having attended UC Berkeley myself, and returned several dozen times post-graduation (mostly to attend Cal football games), it was fairly simple to note the similarities between Harvard's setup, the surrounding Cambridge community, the meandering tourists and the streets' cast of characters.

Really, the only superficial differences between Harvard and UC Berkeley was Harvard's lack of a central bell tower, and the age of its buildings. While UC Berkeley was the first UC institution to start up in 1868, Harvard had been well under way in the previous century. Notes throughout the campus and its diameter remind you of this. Monuments celebrating George Washington and Abraham Lincoln also dot the area.

The homage to history got me thinking - in two centuries forward, what of today will be marked and kept holy, preserved for future onlookers? Will it be our capitol buildings? Our ballparks? Sites of riots and disaster? What will be erected to remind others of what we will someday leave behind? It's an answer none of us will ever know.

Listening to ''Motion'', by Paul Oakenfold (Play Count: 5)

After a few months of relative stability, we're hitting the road again - this time heading East, to Boston, Massachusetts, where we will be staying through Saturday, when we return to the Bay Area. Though I expect to have full Web access, my daytime activity, all work-related, will surely disrupt anything resembling regular posting.

Maybe, if you're good, we'll present pictures, but no guarantees.


Where We'll Be This Week

Listening to ''Integral'', by Pet Shop Boys (Play Count: 1)

So much for getting any sleep tonight. There was an earthquake at 5:27 this morning, which was strong enough to shake the place up here on the 4th floor, and after the quake hit, there was a rolling aftershock. Definitely the strongest one I've felt since moving to Sunnyvale in 2003.

Preliminary results have the quake coming in at a 4.7... not too high, but more than 10 times stronger than the 3.5 we felt here a year or so ago - the previous "best".

USGS Update on the Quake | USGS Quake Map

I've yet to be in an earthquake that made me nervous, and have to admit we've enjoyed our minor to moderate quakes. Hopefully I can continue saying that in the future as well...

Going along with my earlier story around senior prom, there are certain benefits to being married to a full-time teacher. One of them, and probably the most obvious, is that my spouse gets her summers off - which means lots of sleep-in time for her, more home cooked meals for me, and chores may mysteriously get done while I'm at the office by the housecleaning fairy!

Thursday marked the final school day and graduation, and my wife wrapped up the ceremony through emotionally saying goodbye to this year's seniors, who will no doubt be replaced in her heart by next year's seniors in the same fashion. Friday was an administrative clean up day, and the next two months see her out of the classroom and more at home, with time to focus on all those big projects that didn't get done during the school year. It's part of an annual ritual around these parts to see if the condo gets repainted, if things are finally sent to goodwill, or if our furniture will get upgraded. And as with the beginning of every summer, I don't yet have the answer.

In parallel begins the bigger threat of my expanding waistline. Mondays through Fridays might find me coming home to an elaborate home-cooked meal, not seen since August of 2005. While we may have been able to get away with cereal or whatever was in the freezer before, our excuses are gone, and we'll look into buying ever larger belts and slacks as we accommodate the largess.

And somehow, while she recuperates, I keep going, because the office still needs me, and I don't get summer break. It's almost enough to get me looking into what it takes to be a first-year teacher anyhow.

Listening to ''Bigmouth (1992)'', by Underworld (Play Count: 8)

11 years after I was supposed to attend my senior prom (I didn't end up going), I finally made it tonight, although I have to add a slight caveat - it wasn't for my graduating class, and I got to go as a chaperone/adult and not as a happy-go-lucky 18 year old on my way out of high school and a step closer to the real world. Instead, my attendance was one of the many side-benefits of being married to a high school teacher. Last year, I had the privilege of attending Junior Prom on my birthday, and this year, a little over a year later, I got to take the same kids to their Senior Prom - held on a Hornblower boat for a San Francisco Bay tour.

Despite being older than these kids by more than a decade, and finding myself slip into the realm of being an old fogey, aghast at some outfits, some intimate dancing and not "getting" every rap tune, we still managed to have a pretty good time. The boat cruise went through some of the most breathtaking sights around the Bay - from Alcatraz to the Port of Oakland, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge and by downtown San Francisco. The boat itself featured full meals, desserts and drinks, and two separate dance floors - one with fast-paced, mainstream music, and another (much less popular) that was considerably more mellow.

Though we tried to be the stand-offish security types who look askance at odd behavior, we too got on the dance floor - trying to beat these teeny-boppers at their own game. Unfortunately, the musical preferences strayed closer to rap than the occasional techno anthem - though we were treated to a variety from Fat Boy Slim to Green Day. One of these days, I swear I'm going to volunteer as DJ and see if I can win some converts. But that's one of those unrealized dreams, probably.

So long as I stay young enough to avoid looking creepy, I won't mind doing this year after year. We should get out, and the price is right. Most of the kids are there to have a great time, and the less "square" the chaperones, the better off they'll be. At least now I have a positive prom story to go with my own Junior Prom travesty and skipped Senior Prom.

Listening to ''The American Way'', by The Crystal Method (Play Count: 8)

Just trolling through older e-mail after coming home from yet another tremendous A's victory against the rival Angels, when I ran across a plan in 1999, where I offered one of my best friends enough money to buy a new computer after his last one bit the dust. The idea was that he would use the money to but a Macintosh, and then we'd work with him to get the software he needed to get up and running. The loan could be paid back easily, at $100 a month, no interest, until it was resolved.

I had entered into this contract because I had nearly a full year in Silicon Valley under my belt, and felt I could afford $800 or so, while I was also very eager to get my friend moved from the PC "dark side" to Macintosh. I knew that for sure he would be happy with his move, and I would do whatever I could to support his choice.

But, weeks later, after my check had cleared, he told me that a second friend had set him up with boatloads of pirated, free, Windows software, so he took the $800 I gave him and bought an no-name AMD machine, thinking he could mooch off both friends' generosity and get everything he wanted. I was furious, feeling that I had been tricked into being generous, and very nearly demanded he return the money to me, now that I knew he wasn't going to be added as an Apple customer, but joined the drones in lock step behind Microsoft. I felt betrayed, and that my opinion, which should have held some value, had been ignored. But I also was very concerned that if I fought too hard, I could lose the friend, one I intended to keep for life, over a stupid computer OS choice.

Friends fight and families fight. I had introduced new wrinkles in our relationship - technology and finances, altering our roles. For months afterwards, not only was our relationship strained as he struggled with his new computer, but we couldn't have a conversation without my thinking about how much money he owed me, or when the next check was coming. I think the strain was reaching him too, for after four months of $100 checks coming in regularly, the fifth month's check was for the remainder, ending his need to pay me, and ending my need to bug him for it, even though I still hadn't fully forgiven him for using Windows.

One good thing for me was that my expectations were proven right. When his computer finally came in, the trials were immediate. He wrote, in his "now online" e-mail,

"From late Thursday night, to early Saturday morning, I was TOTALLY (censored) PISSED and in a BAD (censored) mood! Although Windows 98 had already been installed on my computer, the (censored) computer wouldn't even complete the boot-up process whenever I turned the (censored) on. Even more perplexing, the computer would always seem to do something different, or achieve a different percentage of the boot before it (censored) up -- every single time I restarted! So it dind't seem like an error in the program.To make matters even more annoying, everytime I turned off the monitor, I had to wait at least a minute to turn it back on again, or the thing would simply stay black. Granted, I bought the 17" for $169, but I still figured it would at least (censored) work! But it didn't (censored) work! And I didn't know what the (censored) to do! So I suffered for two days straight..."

For me, having him struggle was a dark, moral victory. I had been proven right, and several years later, he saw the light, moving to Apple. And I had been paid. But I felt that he should have listened, and I was mad at myself for having tried to put such a silly thing in front of a friendship that's lasted the better part of two decades.

Listening to ''Innocence'', by Paul Van Dyk (Play Count: 5)

After the long day, which started very early as previously noted, my half-awake mind labored to guide me home from downtown San Jose, which in itself doesn't sound so rough, but has never been an easy thing for me - as whether we are leaving a San Jose Sharks contest, or are in the downtown area on business, I always seem to muck up my directions home. Today of course was no different, as I found myself on a scenic tour of the San Jose area, looking upwards at the freeway overpasses, which mocked me with their inability to offer available onramps. After a ridiculously circuitous route that showed me areas of the town I didn't knew existed, I literally had ended up a block away from my starting point, and opting for a different route in my second chance at redemption, I eventually found my exit point - though certainly not in the most direct manner.

While San Jose is notoriously bad for me - I must have some form of mental defect that just won't allow me to adapt to places where I'm not familiar. I take known routes to and from places, and if there are deviations from the norm, we have a good chance of being two or three U-turns away from success. If it weren't for Google Maps and Mapquest telling me how to get places - both new and old - I'd probably be a complete disaster. I know it's a weakness, and don't find myself getting better at this skill over time in any way.

Tonight's escapade got me thinking about other mental feats that I completely suck at - and the most obvious follow-up is with names. Even moments after introductions, I cannot remember names - and that can put me in odd situations when somebody more adept remembers who I am and I don't know them, except possibly by face. I may know what company they are from, what job title they hold, or even where I saw them last, but their name may as well be anonymous for as likely as I am to recall it.

My mother is similarly notorious for lacking name memory - and probably isn't the first person I'd call for directions, but those seem like funny excuses to use for maladies such as these. One of these days I'll lose somebody's name in a public setting and damage the relationship - or the next time I'm doing the world tour of your local neighborhood, I'll run out of gas or park on the side of the road for the night. There are just some things my brain isn't programmed well to do.

Listening to ''Superfly'', by Yellow