What!? Can't a guy take a break?

OK. I need to get a new lesson in self discipline.

Nothing to write about that's serious, just a few problems at work, but also a couple of good things in the works...

I shouldn't strain myself by making this too long. Just suffice it to say, that I'm going to be revisiting some of my favorite places in the next thirty days.

I'm sorry that I'll miss the big reunion in NH this weekend. I hope some old friends think of me, or at least tell some tales of my exploits. I know it's a reach, because they have so many tales of their own.

A little manual labor...

It's strange how being removed from a profession which requires manual labor, leaves one missing the doing of it.

After taking care of a few basic housekeeping errands this morning, I met my neighbor out front of our complex. she was looking over the rocks that were placed there for decorative purposes several years ago, and to her lament, they were uncomfortably close to the japanese maple she had planted there ten years ago, and were in danger of having the tree trunk grow into them, causing the trunk to weaken and possibly crack and break eventually.

From previous experience, we knew that these rocks weighed more than a thousand pounds each, and weren't going to be moved easily.

So I thought back to our days of youth, and the memories of moving these rocks in my early twenties was tempered by my more recent memories of aching muscles and aching joints.

The idea of moving thousand pound rocks isn't one to be taken lightly, but I can't help but feel humbled by our old neighbor, Mr Smith, who upon retirement, began landscaping his yard, creating the pond we used to skate upon in winter. The boulders which lined this pond, had to have weighed much more than a thousand pounds each, and I would dare to say that some of them had to have weighed on the order of several tons each. Yet he managed to move them by himself, using only hand tools and simple machines.

So I told her, "Get me a pry bar and some wooden blocks" which she did, and to her amazement, I managed to get the rock out of the ground, and moved into it's new hole, leaving a good clearance of 18 inches between the nearest corner of the rock and the trunk of the tree.

Looking back on it, we hardly spent a half hour doing the labor involved, yet we both felt like a major endeavor was accomplished today, and our level of self satisfaction is much higher than had we rented a "Mighty Mite' front loader to lift the rocks, like she was anticipating.

Nov. 4th.

Every four years, I get to reflect on the fact that I am asked, and in a way, it is my job, to give my say as to who shall run the day to day duties of the executive office of my country.

`If this sounds to you like I'm overstating the weight of this simple function, then you do not understand the fundamental principal of this form of government. The vote is one of the greatest revolutions in the course of human history since we rose up off of all fours and discovered fire.

Instead of passing the mantle of government over the masses through branches of a single family, we decide en-mass who we believe to be best qualified amongst all of us to accomplish this task for a period. And what makes this even more amazing, is that we put those people up for mandatory review after four years.

For all of its faults, there is no system I have ever seen, which comes close to accomplishing the dream of Democritus.  Even the ancient Romans, with their tradition of Cincinatus, never had a system as justly representative of the individuals in the nation as we have.

So, every four years, I take great pride in walking to my polling place, and marking my ballot. Today, I got to do that again, and nothing I have done this year has given me as much pride as this.

No matter what your politics, this is the one act of government we all share in common. The Vote is our sacred right. Practice it. Demand it. Never surrender it.

The Economy

There have been times in the past few weeks when the nightly news has seemed like a bad spy movie involving the collapse of the world economy while bad guys discuss world domination from exotic locations. As such, sometimes what we see happening on the news will seem disconnected from the everyday life we live.

This week, we got a very gentle reminder, that what we see on the news, isn't all that far away.

Here on California Avenue, we've been noticing a steady decline in the day-to-day foot traffic between the various cafe's and hair salons. Several of the restaurant owners have also mentioned a decline in patronage.

On the news lately, there has been talk about the governments proposal to buy up "Short Term" or "Commercial" Paper, or the ability of small businesses and banks to borrow relatively small amounts of money from each other for short periods of time. Things like this are quite literally the grease in the wheels of our economic engine.

Our Payroll at KSP, like that of so many other companies, is handled by an independent payroll management company, which is a company that is associated with, but independent from our bank. This company facilitates the transfer of funds from the company savings account, into the company payroll account and into the various direct deposit accounts of the individual employees.

We had a hicup.

The official story is that they had a trainee managing our account.

What seems far more likely to me, is a failure of  "short term paper".

Two days later, and after a lot of controlled panic in our office, the funds are moving.

Looking back now, I have had days in the past, where my money was managed not day by day, but hour by hour. I would write checks with the hope, simple hope, that a deposit will have cleared by two o'clock. My rent checks would be written with the faith that my landlord wouldn't cash them until the second tuesday of the month. Keeping my dishes in the air was an art-form. That was economy of faith, and it was primed for disaster.

As we learn to maintain the balancing act of weak economies, we become overconfident, and eventually we lose track of one or more of the "Flying Dishes" that comprise our finances.

Eventually, I was able to grow my financial profile to the point where I wasn't living hand to mouth anymore, and a day or two of economic uncertainty doesn't scare me. Those days are far behind me. But it does give me pause...

Guess where I was...

There aren't many places in the world that can make a 42 year old man feel like a nine year old boy again. But there is at least one.

I've been on the high desert of the Antelope Valley at dawn to shoot experimental space planes during test flights. I've been on the slopes of Tahoe for sunset more times than I can count. I've been on top of Half Dome, and I've traversed the desert southwest with my brother. I've done photoshoots with Starlets in Beverly Hills Mansions, and I've consulted for NASA, and Stanford, but there's always been one place that has seemed more distant and Magical than Shangrila. 

Well on thursday, I finally got to go there. I took advantage of an offer from one of my vendors to participate on a training at one of the worlds best sound studios, and since I'm not directly involved in the movie industry the chance to see "5858 Lucas Valley road" (Do a Google search) in person was too incredible an opportunity to pass up.

This place is a perfect example of synergy of design between landscape and housing.  The buildings are all beautiful and perfectly placed, with either Victorian influence as in the Main Residence (Which they didn't let us get near.)  or invocative of Frank Loydd Wright , as in the Restaurant/Health club/Gift Shop. Every building is placed in such a way as to not dominate the landscape so that as you drive up the main road, you wouldn't even notice that the structures, which are all quite substantial, are even there unless you knew to look for them.  And in an effort to keep them all as discreet as possible, almost all the parking for guests and "Visitors" is all underground. 

My visit to this place was arranged as part of a Studio Sound training seminar. So the whole of the day was spent in the largest, and most well respected sound recording studio in the country. (If not the world) I got to listen to the different results of various microphones used with different instruments and vocalists, and they taught us all how microphone placement is just as important as any tricks of studio mixing that you can do. As a matter of fact, thoughtful microphone placement can usually result in less TIME spent in post production.

All of that made me think about lighting. The arguments and techniques for both are all very similar. Both fields are concerned with proximity and shape, reflections and spill, color and tonal range. (That was a shocker for me. Thinking of sound as having color....)

I could go on for days about technical stuff, so I'll spare you.  Let's just say that I have no interest in disturbing the man from Modesto who built the place and just wants to raise his family in peace and quiet, I also have no bones to pick with him as a lot of his fans seem to have these days. He has built what is probably one of the most beautiful motion picture production facilities in the world, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to see the place and to take advantage of the learning experience it offered me.

Thank you George.

A nice reminder of home.

This week I got a nice little respite from "California cuisine"

Some friends of mine introduced me to a restaurant in Redwood city which was founded by a couple who moved here from Portland ME.  And like me, they were missing the little touches of home. Such as authentic New England seafood.

Now, I know what you're saying. New England is as well known for it's cooking as England is. But when you're far away from home, you even begin to miss the less attractive points of home.

So since California restaurants do New England Fish and Chips like they do New York Style Deli's. (Victorian chairs, lace doilies, fresh cut flowers, and creme' sauce on sandwiches made with Sourdough gourmet rolls.)

When we walked into this place, I was greeted with the vision of ordinary pine benches and picnic tables, tin buckets full of oyster crackers. (Imported from Vermont by the way) and bottles of vinegar and mustard. Along with the prerequisite lobster buoys and fishing nets stuck to the wall.

There were maps of the Maine coastline on the walls as well as bottles of Moxie on the counter.

Moxie! They serve Moxie! I'm sold! This place has me head over heals in love!

None of my cohorts had ever heard of the stuff before, so after a brief history lecture on carbonated beverages in Pre-Coca Cola America, they ordered some bottles for themselves and asked me the well versed question, "You enjoy drinking cough syrup?"

Evidently, the couple who run this restaurant have seafood flown in daily, and it tastes spot on perfect to the seafood we used to get at Point Judith, Misquamicut,  Portsmouth, Plymouth, or any other place along the seaboard which had a fishing pier and breakwater. And all this without the stench of diesel fuel to go along with it.

A dinner their ran about $20 a plate, but it was worth it to me. And I even took a bottle of Moxie to go.

Old Port Lobster Shack

Tony 

July 12th, 2008

I do believe, that in Palo Alto at least, Friday, July 10th 2008, shall forever more be known as iPhone day.

The lines at the Apple store have been a steady fixture since Wednesday night, and have been showing no sign of letup. Even with all of the talk about email not working properly, and the AT+T network not keeping up with the rate of activation people have been cueing up to get there iPhones. 

I won't deny it, I even tried to get one on friday night by going to the AT+T store instead of the Apple store, thinking that the crowds would all be at the Apple store. 

However, one glance around the inside of that store, and the look of harried exhaustion on the faces of the employees told me what had happened. Sure enough, they had run out of iPhones by mid -afternoon, and were suggesting to people that they return on Sunday when they might have more. (All of the units that they expected to receive on Saturday were probably spoken for already. They were evasive on that subject. )

In the above picture, you'll see what the line looked like at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday night! That's a full thirty Six hours after they started selling the phones. The line started inside the store and extended out and around the back of the building. The expectations here are that the lines will continue through Sunday evening. When was the last time you saw grown people behaving like this for something they want for themselves and not their children that wasn't either an essential commodity like food or gasoline, or an illegal substance?

All I can say is that I am very VERY happy that I own stock. Long live Saint Steve.