Mike Ball

Well, I got back home again, all in one piece and absolutely convinced that we ship far to much cargo by truck. I also got the word that blog entries are not a substitute for calling home. Next time I’ll do both.

If I complain about trucks, why do I drive to the Bay Area instead of flying? Actually, I do fly some of the time, since it saves a couple of hours, but I prefer not to. First, I really find airports and airlines annoying, and being cramped into seats without room for my knees is not my idea of fun. Second, most of the time I find driving pleasent, though Orange County traffic jams are not fun. I especially like the trip through the mountains, which have a different beauty every season. In the winter there is snow, in the spring, flowers, and in the summer, well, it gets pretty dry in the summer. It gives me time to think about things, and I enjoy listening to lectures as I travel.

In all, trips by car feel shorter than trips by air. After all, I’m enjoying the trip rather than waiting for it to be over.

Today was another long one, though I did get a chance to talk with a lot of people I only waved at yesterday. It started with a breakfast meeting, Hobee’s as usual, and ended with a couple of hours of dinner. I must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed almost all of it. I truly enjoy the people on this project. There’s an interesting decision point coming soon, when we discover if we get the followon contract to build the #$%^&& thing. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Anyway, when I get done with these days, I don’t seem to have much ambition left to do any deep reading at night. Guess I’ll listen to some music and go to sleep.

Well, I’m back in the bay area again, this time by myself. I came up yesterday, an easy trip, and have been meeting all day. In fact, I turned out to be overbooked and had to cancel a couple of meetings when another schedule changed. It was useful, but it sure gets old! This evening I went to the salad bar with Kevin and Tali and stayed until they were about to close. We even stopped talking about high-performance computers when we noticed Tali’s eyes glazing over, and decided to solve the world’s problems instead. We did manage to trade rumors and gossip about this incredibly inbred world we work in.

I just got a call from my brother’s house. The whole family (except for those of us unlucky enough to be too far away) went on a trip on our new boat. They went to Egmont Key, which is in the mouth of Tampa Bay, and evidently got a wonderful tour. I really wish I could have been there rather than in Palo Alto. There are a few pictures on our website.

Well we went from Venice, which was bright, sunny, and warm to Palo Alto, which was cool and cloudy. The stay in Palo Alto was not a highlight of the trip, being spent mostly in a very cold auditorium listening to incompletely prepared presentations. Some critical parts had changed the night before and nobody had heard them before the talks. Not exactly the ideal scene for a dryrun.

By far the best part of the trip was dinner with Kevin and Tali.

On the way South, we stopped at a motel along the way, and woke to rain. (Diana expressed some questions about where it was, hence the map). On the way through the grapevine we could hardly see the road for the spray. We stopped and had a lovely brunch with Diana, then came on home, in the rain of course. We did make it, but it was neither easy nor fun.

We picked up the cat at the vet’s, and she spent most of the trip home giving us hell for leaving her. She did settle down by evening, though.

I think we all ended up exhausted.

This Monday Flo and I went to Venice (in the LA area) for a “Productivity Summit”, part of my current job. It was in Marina Del Rey, right next to Venice. Venice is an interesting place. It’s right on the beach, and was developed around the turn of the century as an amusement part with canals for boatrides. They put up some cheap houses, and when I first encountered it in the 60’s it was a hippy haven. Since then it’s been gentrified, and is an expensive beach city. We got a little time to go walking on Monday, and I took the pictures you can see here. Southern California is not only stranger than you know, it’s stranger than you can imagine

Today, Wednesday, we came up to Palo Alto for two days of meetings up here.

Well, the last batch of hummingbirds may have disappeared, but we seem to have a new batch that just arrived. We’ve been having a warm spell that last two days, and I was out on the deck using the phone to attend a presentation. The hummingbirds were out on the deck belly up to the bar. I counted at least 6, and there were probably more.

We are on a migration path for the rufous hummingbird, so I suspect that these just stopped in for a snack on the way south. I really wonder how they find the feeder. Do they leave little marks around like hoboes? Do they have very good eyes? Good noses? You just gotta wonder..

This is an interesting list from the New Scientist: 13 things that do not make sense.

I love things like this. I’ve always been convinced that we know far less than we believe we do, and stuff like this just guarantees an interesting future. We haven’t quite hit the end of science yet……

Last Friday I went over to a friends house to play D&D (Dungeons and Dragons). Contrary to rumors, there is nothing of the occult in it, since everyone playing is acutely aware of the artificiality of it. You don’t cast a spell, you say “I cast XXX” and describe what you are doing. The roll playing comes in interacting with other characters, not in the specific actions.

I’ve know about it since the 70’s, but I never played until I had to get included in a game that Andy wanted to go to. My main purpose was transportation and security services, but I liked the people playing, and had fun. Later, Andy found a regular game DM’d (Dungeon Mastered) by one of his teachers, and they needed another character, so I helped them out. When Andy left for school, I got invited to join their adult game, and I found that I really enjoyed it.

Partly, it’s a social thing like any other game. We play at the DM’s house, which is normally chaotic. He has two small children, and some of the other players sometimes bring their kids, so you can imagine what it’s like. I find it a refreshing change from the quiet order that’s settled in at our home since the kids left. Last time, his wife recruited me to hold their 9-month old baby while she tried to finish feeding the others. It’s a chance I don’t get all that often.

The game gives me a chance to pretend that I’m doing things very different from my normal activities. I play a barbarian, dumb, very strong, and very destructive. Sometimes it’s nice at least to pretend that you can solve some problems just by hitting something harder. Of course, it doesn’t always work. Last night we had a big battle, and had (we though) just about won, when the last remaining enemy ran off screaming “Help Daddy” and this really BIG dragon appeared. We ran away, and got away by the skin of our teeth. Next game, fresh and prepared, we’ll go beat him up.

I think most of us play characters who are our opposites. One of the players is a middle-school English teacher, and he loves to play magicians. He spends hours researching spells and feats and planning elaborate strategies. Somehow, this doesn’t appeal to me at all. It’s too much like real life I’ll stick to my barbarian