Remains of the Day

For Cubs fans only

When the Cubbies make the playoffs, you have to deal with my endless ramblings on baseball. That happens, well...it's happened only three times in my life until now. 1984, 1989, 1998.

I was still battling the flu bug all day. The past two days I've lost about ten pounds in snot. It's disgusting but true. I've had these occasional dizzy spells, but the most noticeable symptom right now is my leaky nose. Arriving home just as the first inning was starting, I immediately downed a tablespoon of Vicks 44D. Wow! That stuff must be 100 proof. I kept the bottle close as I knew I might need to take a few shots during the game to calm my nerves.

Dan came by with pizza, a gracious supporter of the Cubs now that his Reds were home for the playoffs. And then the first pitch was tossed and the game was on. A recap of this Cubs' fans thoughts during one tense evening...

• Inning one. Kenny Lofton was a steal for the Cubs. A true leadoff guy. Sure, it would be nice to have Patterson healthy to patrol centerfield, but then who would lead off for the Cubbies? Lofton is a vet and doesn't seem to be fazed by the playoff atmosphere.


• Inning two. Wood swipes a Castilla groundball behind his back and makes it look casual. I know right away I'll be able to watch this highlight for the rest of my life and it will never get old.


• Top of the third: Wood hits a single. I actually feel more confident when Wood or Prior are at bat than when Alex Gonzalez, Troy O'Leary, Paul Bako, Tony Womack, Doug Glanville are standing at the plate. The Cubs have some terrible hitters on their roster--it's a miracle they made the playoffs. Anyway, why are pitchers such terrible hitters anyway? Aren't they the best athletes on their high school teams? I think I'd look better at the plate than most pitchers. Sosa strikes out. He looks terrible right now, swinging at everything and trying to pull every pitch. Sosa's the type of hitter that just doesn't inspire any fear in the playoffs the way someone like Bonds does because he's still got some fundamental holes in his swing. Will he just try to hit to right for once?


• Bottom of the third: how did Giles turn around an inside Wood fastball? And Giles is 5' 8"? That's like my height! Ridiculous.


• Fourth: Cubs blow a bases loaded no out situation because Gonzalez and Bako strike out (what a surprise) and Wood pops out. Moments like this can instantly sap any Cubs fan of all hope because of the weight of history, polluting our memories. But at least the Cubs hitters look to be patient, and the ump has a tight, tight strike zone tonight. If we can just get Ortiz out and get to the Braves middle relievers...


• Top of fifth: Sosa tries to pull yet another pitch away and rolls over it and into an inning-ending double play. Sammy, Sammy. Please go to right field. Please.


• Fifth inning. Kerry Wood doesn't seem to have the big overhand curve going today. It's almost all fastballs and sliders. Maybe he couldn't get it going in the bullpen during warmups. Too bad. Wood once struck out Chipper Jones on two curves that Jones said "even God couldn't hit." Wood threw a few curves, but they seemed to hang up and roll instead of snapping down like the knee-buckling snapdragon that turns batters to stone. He hangs one to Fick who crushes it, but way foul. Okay, Kerry, stick with the slider and heat.


• They're showing shots of Kerry Wood's wife every inning now. Wow, she's quite attractive. Go Kerry.


• Top of the sixth: Cubbies load the bases. Baker decides he doesn't want Gonzalez striking out yet again to kill this potential rally. Sends free-swinging Simon to the plate. Seems like a good idea. Ortiz has to throw strikes with the bases jammed, and Simon swings at everything, even teenager girls dressed up as sausages. Simon swings the bat like he's trying to swat a bee that's attacking him. Whiff. If the Cubs blow this rally again, I may kill myself. And then Bako, he of the .229 batting average, hits a slow grounder to first. I immediately think double play. And then Fick boots it!! Thank you Robert Fick! Bako is so slow he still gets nailed at first, but the Cubbies have tied it. And now Wood is up, and I feel better than when Bako was up. And Kerry crushes it into left center! Dan and I are screaming our lungs off; I think it has to be out of the stadium! But it bounces just short of the wall. Still, it plates two, and sore throat and all, I'm howling with joy. Cox bring in Ray King to face Lofton. When did Ray King gain all that weight? Sheesh. Lofton hits a short flare to center. Of course Andruw Jones, the human web gem and best center fielder I've ever seen, will nab it. But what's this?! He lets it drop! Wood scores and Cubs are up 4-1! Jones has definitely lost a step in center this year. Jones of two years ago definitely catches that one. Atlanta's defense is handing us some gifts.


• Seventh inning: Wood is wild tonight, but as is his pattern, he can be wildly effective. If you don't know where his pitch will be, it's tough to hit it because all his pitches are nasty. He'll either strike you out or walk you, and tonight he's doing a lot of each.


• Eighth inning: Wood has runners on 1st and 2nd, and Sheffield is up. Sheff is scary. It doesn't matter who's pitching. Until their fastball is in the catcher's mitt, Sheff can turn it around instantly with one snap of his wrists. Sheff walks and the bases are jammed. The winning run is coming to the plate in the form of Chipper Jones. You have to turn him around to the right side with the lefty. Yep, that's what Baker's doing. Gutsy effort, Kerry.


• Chipper was out!! The first base ump misses the call and calls him safe on what would have been an inning-ending double play ball. Ah my Cubs fatalism, honed over years of tragedy, rises up in my throat. And Baker is bringing in Farnsworth, the biggest head case ever. Can things get any worse? Farnsworth looks like he's hyperventilating, and he immediately walks the first batter he faces, Andruw Jones. Bases are jammed. Bring in Borowski, Dusty! Oh no, Borowski just started warming up! Where's Dave Veres? I have no confidence in Farnsworth in tight situations. The only time I want to see him is when there's no one on base. But then he induces a hard-hit grounder but one that's hit right at Martinez who's in at short now. Martinez nearly tosses the ball past Grudzielanek, but maybe it is the Cubs year. Inning over, 4-2 lead.


• Top of the ninth. Sosa gets thrown out trying to stretch a single into a double. The commentators say it's a great play by Sammy. I say it's idiotic running on Sheff, an accurate thrower from the outfield. Undisciplined risk-taking is just stupid. Well, at least Sosa went to right.


• Bottom of the ninth. JBorowski. I love JB. Gutsy Polish retread from the Mexican league, good control, throws strikes, gutsy. He usually makes it exciting, but he makes opponents hit the ball to beat him. Best reliever in the Cubs bullpen. And though he does bring the tying run to the plate, he proceeds to strike Furcal out with a fastball down the middle. Why Furcal takes it I have no idea. I don't care. I'm screaming, crying tears of joy. The first Cubs playoff win since 1989, when I was 15 years old.

I feel amazingly well. Maybe it's because I've downed the entire bottle of Vicks 44D over the past two hours. Is that bad?

Braves and Yankee fans may laugh at how excited Cubs fans get over every win, but the fact that the Braves don't even sell out their playoff baseball games anymore tells me they don't deserve to go the World Series. The Cubs will never not sell out Wrigley for a playoff game, even if they made the playoffs 12 years straight.

I switch immediately to Baseball Tonight to catch highlights. I can't imagine tiring of seeing the Cubs highlights from this game anytime soon.

• Johan Santana is a lot of fun to watch. He has filthy stuff, and he could very well dominate the Yankees in his next start. Still, leaving a game because of leg cramps? I've never heard of a pitcher getting knocked out by leg cramps.


• Pat Gillick is out as Mariners GM. Good. He should be embarrassed for doing nothing the last two years to improve what was clearly a team that needed stretch run help to go anywhere.


• Steve Kline of the Cardinals says he hopes Mark Prior "takes a line drive on the head and we never have to see him again". The Cubs Cardinals rivalry is as hot as it's ever been. I can tell because I feel a visceral hatred for the Cardinals, for that most overrated of hothead managers, Tony Larussa, for Matt Morris and his ridiculous little goatee, and now for Steve Kline, some ridiculous left-handed specialized relief pitching nobody. I hope he has to come to bat against one of the Cubs pitchers next year, especially Prior. Or maybe Farnsworth. Plunk that little punk in his ass with a 98 mph fastball and see how tough he talks. And if he charges the mound, give him a good little smackdown like Nolan Ryan on Robin Ventura.

Tomorrow, the best pitcher I've ever seen, Pedro, goes to the mound, against another stud, Tim Hudson. Isn't playoff baseball awesome?

Living on the West Coast is brutal at these times. I'll have to miss the Cubs game while I'm off in Tacoma for business. Go Tivo. Go Cubs!

A day of popcorn

From lordoftherings.net:
From December 5 - 11, the studio will release 100-150 35mm prints of the Special Extended Edition of The Fellowship of the Ring in cities across the country. On December 12 - 15, these prints will be replaced with Special Extended Edition prints of The Two Towers. On Monday, December 8, and Monday, December 15, both films will be presented back-to-back. Then, on Tuesday, December 16, participating theaters will show a one-time-only marathon of both Extended Edition prints followed by an 11pm screening of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The official opening of the film will commence at 12:01 AM on Wednesday, December 17, 2003.

Okay, is there any doubt where I plan to be for about 12 hours from Tuesday December 16 to about 2 in the morning on December 17? Will there be chamberpots under each seat, or will I have to bring my own?

Return of the King trailer...awesome

The new LOTR: ROTK trailer is available to download online now in a beautiful 20Mb Quicktime format. Look to OneRing.net for updates on the best places to find it.

The Matrix Revolutions trailer was nifty, but the ROTK trailer is awesome. If it doesn't get you pumped for the last segment of this, the greatest movie fantasy trilogy of all time, then you're already dead.

I feel...so cold...I see Blue...

Yeah, it was funnier when Will Ferrell said it in Old School. My throat tickled yesterday, and during the night a full-blown flu attack erupted. I tossed and turned most of the night, shivering yet feverish, in cold sweats. In the morning, I couldn't really talk, my throat was on fire. Most of the morning I was groggy and would occasionally pass out for 10 minutes at a time.

By mid-day, I wasn't quite as woozy. I don't know what's going on in my body, but I like to think of it as all sorts of alarms sounding, emergency defenses kicking in, white blood cells like stormtroopers marching off to battle.

What a year for U.S. Postal, huh?

I received a copy of the soundtrack to Lost in Translation in the mail Saturday, purchased off of Amazon Marketplace, so what better activity in my state of delirium than to chill out to awesome synth tunes like Alone in Kyoto by Air or Tommib by Squarepusher or Girls by Death in Vegas. But when I stuck the CD in my Powerbook to rip it onto my iPod, the Powerbook spit out some error message and coughed up the CD. I looked on the CD case and it said something about how this was a promotional version of the CD and had some wcp encryption that would render it unreadable by computers and many car stereos. How frustrating. So I own the music, but not really?

By evening, I felt up to meeting Ted for dinner. Ted's at Microsoft now, and way way back in the day he was the first manager I ever had, when I was in consulting. He spoiled me by being a really good manager. He showed me some great photos of his two kids, and I remarked how stylish and professional they looked, all black and white and set against pure white backgrounds.

All my kid photos were shot at Sears. Here's Eugene in the cowboy outfit, with a faux canvas mountain range in the background. Giddyup. Here's Eugene in the sailor outfit, set against the white clouds in blue sky background. Here's Eugene in the brown corduroy suit with orange dress shirt, color palette matched to the faux autumn leave background. There were a million background, and the photographer would just yank one after another down like window shades. The resulting photographs won't win any awards, but I love them anyway.

And though I don't have kids, I can understand why parents love showing people photos of their kids. They're ingenious and demanding little things, advancing so rapidly in size and intelligence and understanding. The same impulse exists for travellers who want to show off slides from their trips. The modern day slideshow is the Ofoto photo album. I receive seemingly one or two Ofoto slideshow album announcement every week, some containing hundreds of photos, many badly shot. And while I must admit to rarely opening any of them, I understand and can empathize with the impulse to share, to want communion over and validation of personal history. If I weren't so self-centered I'd click through every one of those Ofoto pics.

Sometime soon I'll have to have that cyst removed from my sinus. It means cutting a hole in the top of my mouth, and a week of not being able to speak. On the positive side, the liquid diet should do wonders for my waistline.

"Sometimes I pretend I have only 10 seconds to live." Noel, from All the Real Girls

Cubs win!

There's nothing like playoff baseball. Football and basketball are exciting, but when the Cubbies make the playoffs, my life takes on new meaning. This is an annual occurrence for Yankees and Braves fans, but for Cubs fans it's like going to a bar with your buddies and bringing home the hottest girl in the joint. On rare occasions it happens, but even when it does, it's so unbelievable that you know you should just count your blessings, but before long you think that you deserve it, setting up the the inevitable heartbreak.

The only negative: I ordered Fox Sports Net this morning, just to watch the Cubs games. I got all settled in my sofa, food and remote controls within reach, and switched to channel 639 a few minutes before game one of the doubleheader. And then the clock hit 10:00am, and the screen went black. The games were blacked out in Seattle, in favor of the meaningless A's Mariners game. Puh-lease. I cradled my head in my hands, disgusted.

I tried desperately to order MLB's streaming video and audio feeds online, to no avail. Not surprising, as MLB.com is a terrible website. Instead, I had to track most of game one on a lousy Internet applet. How ridiculous is it for me to be shouting at my laptop screen, especially when Dusty left Prior in game one past 130 pitches.

First the Astros lost--thank you Brewers!!! The Astros lack of starting depth finally caught up to them, having to start Robertson and Villone in back to back games. And with Prior going, if the Cubs could just muster a couple runs, say, 4 of them, then things would be hunky dory.

Game two was over quickly, as the Cubs jumped all over Vogelsong for 6 runs in the first two innings. I wasn't home to see highlights of the celebration, but I knew it was essentially over. The Astros had choked big time, and if the Cubbies didn't finish them today then Wood would have sealed it tomorrow.

The Cubs still have to be the longest shots going into the playoffs b/c of their weak offense, but if Wood, Zambrano, and Prior's arms are still functional after so many 120 pitch outings, then of course the Cubbies have a chance. Ortiz, Hampton, and Maddux just don't scare you as a front three, and Smoltz has just recently come back off of the DL. The Cubs were clearly outclasssed the last time they faced the Braves in 98, but this time they have a better shot. That Braves offense is scary, but the best of offenses can be shut down.

When was the last time a Red Sox-Cubs World Series was even a possibility? Would that not be the highest rated World Series in history? If it happens, I'm going to every game, that's all there is to it. I'll sell my car if I have to.

Intellectual cat fight!

Read about it in Talk of the Town in this week's New Yorker, and as with everything, found the evidence online. Where's Michael Buffer?

Main Event: Snotty and renowned investor Jim Rogers vs. snotty and self-righteous Harvard Business School student in dueling e-mails

Isn't intellectual warfare glorious? And we thought all we had to enjoy was Noam Chomsky making his audience members cry by ridiculing them.

To e or not to e

Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a novel called Gadsby that includes about 50,000 words, none of which include the letter "e". If you have a copy, I'll make you an offer on it.

I need my medication

This is a tough weekend for Cubs fans. I'm as jittery as Nicolas Cage in Matchstick Men. If they fail to make the playoffs, please break down the back door and come check on me.

More commercials

New theatrical trailer for The Matrix Revolutions. Supposedly, the new trailer for Lord of the Rings: Return of the King is playing before some New Line movies like Secondhand Lions. So ladies, if your date looks at his watch and then mysteriously disappears partway through some chick flick for about three minutes...

Why are they called trailers when they're shown before the movie? In olden times, these commercials for coming attractions were shown after the feature film. Movie execs finally wisened up and realized it would be a lot smarter to play these ads before everyone had cleared out of the theater, when they had a captive audience.

Intelligent life

Interesting rumination on how discovery of extra-terrestrial intelligent life would affect religion.

MS Office 2003

A new, more souped up version of Outlook in Microsoft Office 2003? That would be a good thing.

Why not add news aggregator functionality as well? Most news aggregators copy the Outlook 3-pane layout anyway.

Looks can be deceiving

Identity theft has gotten a lot of play in the press recently. I hadn't paid too much attention as I consider myself fairly web savvy and guarded. Still, an attempted identity theft e-mail which landed in my inbox yesterday really opened my eyes as to how crafty the enemy can be.

The e-mail came from service@paypal.com and looked like a PayPal e-mail in its graphics. Its body contained the following text:

Please verify your information today!

Dear Paypal Member.
Your account has been randomly flagged in our system as a part of our routine security measures. This is a must to ensure that only you have access and use of your paypal account and to ensure a safe Paypal experience.
We require all flagged accounts to verify their information on file with us.
To verify your information, click here and enter the details requested.
After you verify your information, your account shall be returned to good standing and you will continue to have full use of your account.

Thank you for using PayPal!

Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered.


A couple things looked suspicious right from the start. The line formatting, as shown above, was strange looking. Some of the wording looked strange for a professional correspondence..."This is a must to..." And the fact that I couldn't reply to the e-mail, given the gravity of its message, was also odd. But all in all, I could completely understand if a trusting novice web surfer might find this believable.

The link in the e-mail sent me to this website. The URL in the browser address bar immediately looked fishy. Instead of starting with http://www.paypal.com/, it had some random DNS address. And the page was not secure and didn't require any authentication before requesting all this extremely private info. Yeah, riiiiiight.

However, the page itself was well designed to mimic the PayPal.com look and feel though, complete with the same navigation and links to actual PayPal.com addresses. It even had the "Processing Login" animation that ran for about five seconds, though the ellipsis was cycling a bit too quickly. But all in all, a well-designed trap for the naive and unaware.

Of course, I didn't provide any info, and I logged in to PayPal.com directly and noted that nothing seemed amiss with my actual account. I then reported the site to PayPal which responded that this was indeed a fraudulent site.

PayPal users beware.

Silver, but feels like lead

My copy of Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1) arrived on my doorstep along with The Fortress of Solitude and The Namesake.

The combined weight of this fall reading weighed about 82 pounds, mainly because Neal Stephenson's latest numbers 944 pages. Hurrican Isabel could have come through Seattle and carried the house into the Puget Sound and that package would still be sitting on the doorstep.

Ooh, goody goody.

Flatus odor judge?!?

Popular Science's list of the 18 worst jobs in science would be humorous even if you just read the job titles.

Flatus odor judge
Dysentery stool-sample analyzer
Barnyard masturbator
Fistula feeder
Prison rape researcher
Metric system advocate
Postdoc

But the job descriptions are even funnier. And you thought telling someone you were a consultant was embarrassing.

Waking up in cold sweat

I had a vivid dream last night that I was getting married. It was the day of my wedding, all family and friends were sitting in the church, I was backstage in my tux running around, shaking with anxiety. Why? Because I had no idea who I was marrying. It was like one of those dreams in which you're going into a final exam without having attended a single class all quarter, except this time I was about to head on stage and await some unknown bride to come bursting through the rear auditorium doors and come strolling up the aisle.

The most tempting analysis and interpretation is also the most obvious and literal, and it's one I'm going to resist.

Sofia Coppola loves Will Ferrell, too

From a USA Today article:
And she continues to indulge her weakness for Saturday Night Live alumni by amusing herself on the plane with a DVD, The Best of Will Ferrell. "Real highbrow, huh? He is so funny. My favorite skit is the Actors Studio guy. I liked Old School, too."

Okay, could her star possibly be any brighter right now?

My Lost in Translation infatuation is in its second week. I took my sisters and Keila to see it this weekend, my second time.

Why do birds...suddenly appear?

One of the depressing things about the shift of studios to grab as much revenue as possible for their big movie vehicles on opening weekend is that smaller movies get very narrow windows in which to reach their audience. And so it was that I had to dash off to the Varsity to catch So Close before its one week run came to an end. Ever since China took over Hong Kong, many of HK's top directors and actors have fled to Hollywood, and the talent and funding drain temporarily sapped the HK film scene of its vitality. So I was both hopeful and skeptical as the opening scene unfolded...

...bingo! This is the type of fun, entertaining action flick that HK used to crank out with unmatched regularity. Forget Charlie's Angels and all those American knockoffs. HK has been producing female action heroes since the days when Cameron Diaz was in a training bra. The gorgeous Shu Qi emerges from an elevator in a glorious white pantsuit, wearing designer shades and stilettos with retractable spikes that allow her to hang from ceilings while blowing bodyguards away. Dazzling.

All the men in this movie, and even the plot itself, is a sideshow. It's all about Karen Mok, Shu Qi, and Zhao Wei, kicking serious butt. And because the action is top notch, the slapstick humor is charming instead of annoying. It's a delicate balance, and So Close achieves it.

The movie is never so good as in the beginning, when for no reason at all, Shu Qi's handler decides to play the Carpenter's "(They Long to Be) Close to You" while Shu Qi is fighting her way out of a heavily guarded building, shooting several dozen bodyguards in the knees on her way out, smiling mischievously the whole time. Call her the anti-Trinity.

Just like me, they long to be, close to youuuuuuu....

Of course, if you're in Seattle, you have just one day left to catch it, while crap like Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star lingers for weeks, taking up screen space and stinking like so much rotting garbage.

More than this

Lost in Translation is still stuck in my mind. In particular, the karaoke scene. It has a spot in the pantheon of most romantically supercharged movie date scenes, alongside Uma Thurman and John Travolta's date in Pulp Fiction, and Clooney and J.Lo in Out of Sight.

Who would've thought Bill Murray singing More Than This by Bryan Ferry could be so romantic? Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson and Sofia Coppola all deserve Oscar noms.

Galileo

On Sunday the 21st, the satellite Galileo, first launched into space in 1989 on the shuttle Atlantis, will float into Jupiter's atmostphere and disintegrate in the heat. The NASA events surrounding Galileo's final day will be webcast live.

It seems like the space program can do no right these days, but the story surrounding Galileo is an amazing one and reflects the heroic resourcefulness of teams of smart people trying to overcome one crisis after another. The first problem was how to get the satellite to Jupiter. The use of certain types of propellent on the satellite was rejected because of the risk of carrying that propellent up in the shuttle.

A scientist devised an ingenius method for overcoming this problem. Instead of launching the satellite towards Jupiter, he proposed launching it in the other direction, towards Venus, where it would use the gravitational pull of Venus as a slingshot. Another scientist built on this idea and proposed that Galileo then hurtle back towards Earth where it would circle Earth twice, using Earth's gravitational pull as a slingshot as well, multiplying its speed enough to whip around and shoot across the gap to Jupiter. Ingenious.

But then, soon after Galileo was launched, another problem arose. The high gain antenna on Galileo was stuck for some reason and would not open. The low gain antenna could not send information quickly enough, putting the entire value of the project at risk. Just as in Apollo 13, teams were formed to work around the problems. One worked to try and free the high gain antenna, and another team to see if the software on Galileo could be rewritten to improve the throughput of data from the remaining systems on board.

The high gain antenna was never fixed, but the other team managed to beam up completely new software, taking advantage of additional memory modules and advances in software design. In addition, a tape recorder that had been installed on board for backup was repurposed as a cache to store data being collected by the satellite but that couldn't be beamed back through the low gain antenna quickly enough to free up memory. This cache would store this data for beaming back during downtime between Galileo's intense data collection assignments. This all had to happen as the satellite was in space, on its way through space. Amazing!

The rest is history. Galileo became the first satellite to discover that asteroids can have their own moons (the asteroid was Gaspra, its moon Dactyl). It witnessed the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashing into Jupiter, generating explosions more powerful than the largest hydrogen bomb. Ironically, because of Moore's Law, Galileo has had to do all of this with computing power dwarfed by that of your average child's video game console today.

It's a reminder of the promise of the space program. There are a few events which, if witnessed during my lifetime, would fundamentally alter my entire world view (no, I'm not referring to a Cubs victory in the World Series, though the Astros can start losing anyday now, okay?). For example, a catastrophic nuclear war. Another country dethroning U.S. as the pre-eminent superpower (China?). And the discovery and contact of extra terrestrial intelligence or beings. Someday, and perhaps unexpectedly, we may confirm we are not alone in this universe, and perhaps that will unite us all as human beings.

White hot pain, white hot rock

I've had lots of trouble with my sinuses this year, and these past two weeks it's affected my sleeping. I haven't been sleeping deeply, or well, and during the day I wander about in a constant drowsy stupor. The roof of my mouth aches, my upper teeth ache, and sometimes I have trouble just enunciating.

My regular doc was out of ideas, so he referred me to an ENT, and today I visited said ENT. It began innocently enough. Fill out some forms, nurse escort to sitting room with subscriptions to the usual lousy magazines, doc comes in and makes some small talk while looking in my ear and throat.

And then things took a turn for the...not so good. Doc sticks something long and metallic in my nose to look at my sinuses. Not so comfy. Doc asks me some questions, and decides I need a CAT scan.

I lie on my stomach on a long platform, facing forward as if flying like Superman, and then the platform rises and slowly extends my head into the hole in the center of a giant donut-shaped apparatus. Presumably this is the CAT scan machine. It slowly extends my head into the machine, one centimeter at a time, taking scans of cross-sections of my head. This happens some 27 times, lasting about five minutes, until my neck is aching from craning my head back this whole time.

Back to see the doc and wait for the scans to be developed. When they return, he hangs them up on a light box mounted on the wall, just like in the movies, and we both stare at them. He looks with a diagnostic eye, and I with simple curiosity and, admittedly, a bit of trepidation.

"These sinuses here look normal," he says, pointing at two large dark spots. "As do these." He explains the white and dark spots, what I'm looking at.

"But this," he says with a frown, pointing at a white area on the scan, "looks like a problem."

Oh crap!

"It might be a cyst, but whatever it is, it's swelling and causing pressure which may explain the discomfort in the roof of your mouth. Let's take a look at the roof of your mouth." He puts one of those long circular mirrors on the end of a metal stick, like the ones dentists use, in my mouth.

"Hmmm, yeah, this looks tender. I think what we should do is stick a needle through the roof of your mouth and drain it, send it away for tests."

What?!? An innocent visit to the doc had taken a turn for the horrific, the likes of which hadn't been seen since Janet Leigh got offed in the shower in Psycho. I was too shocked to say anything, and suddenly the doctor had strapped on some gloves and was holding a humongous syringe, 200cc's, the type you stick in a horse, and he was asking me to open my mouth wide.

And then I felt this white hot pain in the roof of my mouth, and then a sudden explosion of pain in my sinuses, like they were being ripped out my nose by a vacuum. My upper teeth felt like they were being forced out of their sockets by some force from within. I nearly choked.

The doc removed the needle. It was half full of a reddish fluid, like blood, but darker. He asked me to open up again and did this again, filling the needle. My eyes were watering from the pain in my sinuses.

And just like that, the doc told me to make an appointment to see him again in 10 days and sent me on my way. My sinuses felt terrible, my mouth tasted of blood, and my nose started running, but despite this I managed to mumble directions to the receptionist to set up a followup. After the joy of this visit, I can hardly wait. Let's hope it isn't a tumor, though the doc suggested it was more likely a cyst. I didn't even know what a cyst was, except that I'd read about cysts the size of watermelons which had been removed from patients in the past. It was all too terrifying, and the rest of the afternoon was a painful blur.

Fortunately, in the evening, I had the White Stripes concert to distract me. Pete, Maren, Molly, and I thought we were going to be early, but the Yeah Yeah Yeahs started exactly on time and were blasting Y Control when we walked in. Karen O is one crazy chick. She sang half the songs with the microphone actually inside her mouth. Their set was short, just over half an hour of crazy punk, and then we had to stand and watch Little Audrey and Betty Boop cartoons while the roadies set up for the Stripes.

A lot of the crowd members were too damn tall. I could barely see the stage. Some girl passed out and security guards carried her out. Just when the crowd was going to lose it, Jack and Meg strolled out on stage. Meg was in a white short-sleeve shirt and white pants, and Jack was wearing a red t-shirt and pants that were split straight down the middle: the left half of the pants were red, the right half black.

They sure love Meg. Who's more beloved--Meg Whitman or Meg White? Pick'em. I would have never predicted that Elephant would sell a gazillion copies, not because it isn't good, but because it seems a little too out there to appeal to the mainstream. What do I know? Jack looked like Gríma Wormtongue from The Two Towers, except with better dental work.

To end this rambling story short, the White Stripes ROCKED. Best concert I've seen in a long long time. The Stripes are one of those rare bands who sound better live. They've studied the masters of punk and blues and learned not only how to rock but also how to carry themselves on stage. Some people (Sofia Coppola and Spike Jonze, e.g.) are just flat out cool, and in the music world no pair is cooler right now than Jack and Meg. Are they really younger brother and older sister? Who knows? Who cares?

The Seattle Seahawks Exhibition Center is a terrible venue for a concert, especially acoustically, but fortunately we were close enough that it didn't matter. And, for a few hours, I forgot about the hole in the roof of my mouth. If you're lucky enough to catch the Stripes live, don't be a fool. Go to school.

Lost in Translation

Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation was wonderful. Ditto Bill Murray. Ditto Scarlett Johansson. Ditto the soundtrack. It's my favorite movie of the year thus far.

Brought back memories for me of the time I was sent to Hong Kong for a week by a consulting firm to meet with people in their branch office. They wanted me to consider transferring there to help start an industry practice. The firm put me up for the week in a posh hotel with a window view from up on high of the harbor. I didn't know anyone and spent the week wandering around the city streets, feeling like an alien. Many things do, as they say, get lost in the translation, and many of the events in the movie reminded me of incidents from that visit.

I couldn't shake that feeling of loneliness and alienation I felt during my stay, and a week or so after I returned to the States I turned down the offer.

Other things in the movie that rung true. How sometimes, it's easier to talk about your problems with complete strangers than it is with friends and family. How you meet someone in a foreign country, and shortly thereafter you're spilling your guts to each other, and how that's all facilitated by sexual tension. And that moment when you have to say goodbye, how it comes too soon, and how awkward that can be because the moment is overloaded.

Go see it!

Take some time off

From Motley Fool: While Europeans take about six weeks of vacation each year, we Americans average only 10.2 vacation days per annum, with only 4.3 nights spent away from home. Of course, on the whole, we get paid more than our European counterparts, and we own more stuff. We likely have more squirreled away in our retirement accounts, too. But if you drive yourself into an early grave, what good are the millions?

The Death Star

Karen was just telling me that she took over this room from a guy named Chad who left for MIT to work on his Master's degree, and that he's an inventor who created some cool holographic technology. And then, I kid you not, we fire up the computer to look up Joannie's flight, and I come across this post in Metafilter while goofing around.

It's that technology from Star Wars, used by the rebels to project stolen plans to the Death Star, lighting the inevitable path to the unprotected, vulnerable core, which, once destroyed, leads to a cataclysmic chain of events in which the entire structure erupts in a massive explosion (a Star Wars trope, so to speak, featured in Star Wars, Return of the Jedi, and The Phantom Menace).

What a co-inky-dink!

Visiting family in the O.C.

Okay, not quite. Hermosa Beach, at Karen's new apartment, for the weekend. Joannie gets in tomorrow morning from New Zealand, so it'll be a Wei family reunion in L.A.

I didn't watch much TV on the 11th, but flying always reminds me of 9-11. The loss of a more carefree way of life always strikes me when getting off of airplanes. In the past, a whole crowd of people would be waiting just beyond the door as you walked off the gangway, all smiling strangers looking past you, expectantly, and then the one familiar face looking at you. After sitting on an airplane for hours with strangers like an orphan, that moment when you see your friend or family member is the transition from being lost to being found, claimed and pulled back into the world.

Now, no one is allowed to the gate without a boarding pass, cars are shooed away by police, so such reunions happen by baggage claims or on curbs. I have to remove my shoes and walk through metal detectors in my socks. Sometimes I have to take off my belt as I'm wanded front and back, up and down. It's not that the inconvenience bothers me. Most of the security personnel at Seatac are almost sheepish, embarrassed that they have to subject us to these stringent procedures and thus surpassingly polite. Rather it's the reminder of the event that shifted us all into this mode of heightened suspicion that always depresses me.

After reading this article about a photo of one of the people who jumped out of the burning Towers, I couldn't stop imagining myself having to jump out of a burning building, the flames and smoke and scorching air behind me, and a fall of several hundred feet before me, the sidewalk far below. The article notes that jumpers fell through the air about 10 seconds, and I can't help thinking that when I did my Nevis bungy jump in New Zealand, I free fell about 9 seconds.

Of course, the bungy jump was 9 seconds of exhilaration. Now, thinking about those who leapt from the Towers, I feel guilty for having enjoyed myself then.

The Falling Man has become the iconic image of the horror of 9-11, just like the photo of the young girl burned by napalm in Vietnam became the visual embodiment of all that was wrong about the Vietnam War.

More than ever, time spent with family and friends is precious. Seeing Alan and Sharon and Ryan and James and Jeff in NYC last weekend, and getting to spend time with Joannie and Karen and Mike this weekend, even if just to sit around hanging out, doing nothing...these all feel like stolen moments.

I'm reminded of those times when one wake up in the middle of the night to sneak a midnight snack from the fridge, and running into another light sleeper, and sharing a hot cocoa and conversation at the dinner table in a bathrobe and slippers, the only ones awake. Bonus memories.

Karen has passed out, listening to tunes on my iPod. Hopefully she's listening to a happy song.

Is that a jammer in your pocket?

Jamming device aims at camera phones | CNET News.com

Some folks may wish to buy one of these to wear in their rear jeans pockets to prevent themselves from showing up here. Karen and I went through and rated quite a few. Tough judges.

Dilemma for espresso-drinking liberals

Seattle is all huffy over Initiative 77, a proposal for $0.10 tax on espresso drinks to fund child day care for lower-income families.

I'm amused mostly by the editors of newspapers everywhere tripping over themselves to claim the title of worst coffee pun headline. A check on Google News reveals the following contenders:

Coffee Addicts in Froth Over Espresso Tax (Yahoo News)
Seattle residents frothing over proposed espresso tax (Katu.com)
Espresso fans working up froth (Arizona Republic)
Proposed Espresso Tax Steams Seattle (Guardian)
How soon could city grind out a new tax? (Seattle Times)
Seattle in lather over espresso tax (MSNBC)
Editorial: Espresso tax a grande idea (The Collegiate Times, VA)
Coffee drinkers perk up against espresso tax (Tuscaloosa News)
Espresso-tax debate has foes steaming (Seattle Times)

Enlightening chat

Transcript of chat With Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane.

The room is on fire, and other crap

Ooh goody. The Strokes' new album has a title (Room on Fire) and a pre-order button up at Amazon. The boys will be going on tour, and tix to some of their shows are up for sale already with reduced service charges as compared to evil institutions like Ticketmaster.

In other good news, Cory Doctorow's new short story collection A Place So Foreign and Eight More is out, and Cory has, just as he did with Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, posted much of it for free on the web at his site Craphound.

Since my DVD player lost its mind and was shipped off to the vet, I have to resort to reading and listening to music.

View from these straight eyes

I don't make it a point to watch every week, but if I'm channel surfing and it's on, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is a hoot, especially the endings when they watch their subjects in action.

I'm thinking of filling out an application for some of my buddies in NY and NJ. Their wives and girlfriends would thank me.

If I were to set up some service like this, who would handle each of the five categories?
Fashion
Food & wine
Interior design
Grooming
Culture

I have my ideas for the first two and the last. Interior design and grooming I'm less sure about. Of course, all of my choices are women.

It could be a high margin business.

X Prize

How many people have enough money to enter a competition to build a spaceship? More than you'd think.

The X PRIZE, according to its website, is a $10,000,000 prize to jumpstart the space tourism industry through competition between the most talented entrepreneurs and rocket experts in the world. The $10 Million cash prize will be awarded to the first team that:

• Privately finances, builds & launches a spaceship, able to carry three people to 100 kilometers (62.5 miles)


• Returns safely to Earth


• Repeats the launch with the same ship within 2 weeks

Among the project's supporters are Tom Hanks, Tom Clancy, and John Glenn.

I was chatting about this with a colleague at work. The answer to the Jeopardy question of what all those people who got rich during the Internet boom are working on is, "What is the X Prize, Alex."

Steven Levitt

Steven Levitt has been featured recently in both the NYTimes and Fortune. He's an innovative economist with some creative ways of studying social phenomena using statistics and unique leaps of imagination.

Most of his notable papers are published online, including:

• An Economic Analysis of a Drug-Selling Gang's Finances


• Catching Cheating Teachers


• How Do Markets Function? An Empirical Analysis of Gambling on the National Football League


• The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime


• Why Do Increased Arrest Rates Appear to Reduce Crime: Deterrence, Incapacitation, or Measurement Error?


• Winning Isn't Everything: Corruption in Sumo Wrestling

Unfortunately, most of his papers cost $5 to download. Still, if you're building a business plan for a drug gang, it's a small price to pay for a jump start on your financial model.

Manhattan Magic

I flew JetBlue to NYC this weekend. The only flight they have out of Seattle is a nightly redeye to JFK.

JetBlue has a similar business model to Southwest, offering cheaper prices by doing away with meals and purchasing a fleet of small airplanes to focus on a flights between a few select airports which offer them favorable financial terms. But in a few respects, JetBlue is better. You don't have to draw numbers for seats, they don't have seats that face each other, and best of all, they offer 24 channels of DirecTV for each passenger.

Among the channels offered are CNN HLN, NBC, MSNBC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic, ESPN News, Discover, and the History Channel. I was able to catch up with all my fantasy football players on the flight home.

One of the highlights of my weekend was meeting and hanging out with my nephew Ryan. I don't find newborns all that cute; they look like aliens. But after a few months have passed, babies become amazingly cute. They become amazingly chubby which gives them plump cheeks, five to six chins, and rolls of fat at the joints of their arms and legs. Ryan has hit that stage of adorability. He loves peek-a-boo and is very ticklish.

Here is my first ever attempt at wearing a baby in a Baby Bjorn. It may look like Ryan is crying, but I promise he isn't. He's actually practicing his "I just won the U.S. Open Men's tennis final and I want to show more emotion than Pete Sampras" victory scream.

People say that women gain weight after their first baby, but all of the new moms I know look just like nothing every happened soon after their baby was born. Sharon is no exception. Of course, having to get up several times in the middle of the night will do that to you. Mother's are much better at that whole "get up to play with the screaming baby in the middle of the night" thing, and a side benefit for their sacrifice is additional calorie consumption.

Here, I was telling Ryan to "smile! smile!" and Sharon thought I was talking to her.

Alan and I took the 7 to catch the U.S. Open women's final. We were in section 331, which may sound high, but there aren't really any bad seats in Arthur Ashe Stadium.

Still, from that section, the closest one could get to winner Justine Henin-Hardenne was outside the stadium, under the big screen.

The loser of the Open gets $500,000, and Henin-Hardenne took home $1,000,000. When that figure was announced, a guy sitting behind me and resembling comedian Dave Chappelle started shouting, "Marry me, Justine! Me! Me!" She is kinda cute, but the most attractive part of her is definitely her game. She's not very tall, but she gets her whole body into her serve and and groundies, basically hitting the crap out of every ball she can get her racket on.

I also wish I had some video of James doing his card tricks. Last we met, he was Luke Skywalker in the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back, unable to lift his X-Wing out of the swamp in Dagoba. This time, he was like Luke at the beginning of The Return of the Jedi, powerful and monklike, ready to meet Vader. His ambitious card trick is super smooth now.

The weather in Manhattan was perfect, a postcard from an autumn to be. I'm quite jealous of the fact that you can order just about anything and have it delivered to your door. Pizza, sushi, Chinese takeout, Vietnamese, drycleaning, Krispy Kreme...I could so use that type of service in Seattle.

King Ryan in the Big Apple

I finally met my nephew Ryan this weekend. He has a Friendster page.

I've been acting as his nanny this weekend. Apparently the title for a male nanny is a "manny." Some men might be embarrassed to contemplate life as a manny, but I'm not going to turn my nose up at the idea, especially if I can make millions writing The Manny Diaries.

Ryan is a city baby. He loves exploring the sidewalks of New York in his stroller. I tried walking around with him strapped into the Baby Bjorn. That thing is pretty darn nifty. Sharon said that when Jeff walks around town with Ryan in the Baby Bjorn, women flock to him. I think it's because Jeff is a model, but Ryan is undeniably cute. I actually think he looks like me as a baby in a lot of ways, though we're all hoping he grows up to look like Jeff.

The other reason I'm in Manhattan is as a late surprise visit for Alan's 30th b-day. He was on call last night, and I was hoping the nurses would let me change into a hospital gown and wait in one of the rooms for Alan to come by, but Sharon and I just ran into Alan while roaming the halls of the Weill Medical Center.

James and Jeff and Jen took me out last night. We went to one of those New York bar/clubs where the name isn't listed out front. Apparently we were there for someone's birthday. That's what people in NYC do, they go to bars/clubs for people's birthdays. We weren't the only ones there for a birthday, either. There were some four or five birthday parties there. Of course, we never found out whose birthday it was.

I knew I was in NYC because the everyone was dressed up, everyone was standing around, the music was really loud, and it was really dark. Also, I bought two glasses of Black Label on the rocks and it cost $26 before tips. C'mon, brother, at least fill the glasses for that price!

The DJ was pretending to be spinning some turntables, but really he was just playing songs he had burned onto CD-Rs. A few dropped on the ground and James passed them around. They had labels like "New Hip Hop" and "Missy getting shizzy". He looked incredibly foolish pretending to do real work up there.

Tonight I'm taking Alan to the U.S. Open Women's Final. Justine Henin-Hardenne was listed as questionable earlier because she cramped up after her 3-hour marathon against Capriati, but she better get her Belgian butt out there. Alan and I are big Henin-Hardenne fans because she hits a beautiful one-handed backhand. So few one-handers anymore. So few real DJs. Old school.

Men talk about stuff, women talk about relationships

A late night at the office, and after a while the brain seizes up and fizzles out like an overheated car engine and one has to take a break while listening to the drone of the cleaning guy's vacuum. Tonight's diversion is The Gender Genie, an online application parses a block of text and guesses whether the author is male or female.

Naturally I plugged in some of my own writings, and then I plugged in some posts from Jenny's weblog as well. The Gender Genie did well. Occasionally I write like a girl, but usually not, and Jenny is most definitely a female, which both she and Adam will be glad to know since she gave birth to a child recently.

The algorithm is discussed in both the NYTimes and Nature. From the Nature article:

The program's success seems to confirm the stereotypical perception of differences in male and female language use. Crudely put, men talk more about objects, and women more about relationships.

Female writers use more pronouns (I, you, she, their, myself), say the program's developers, Moshe Koppel of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, and colleagues. Males prefer words that identify or determine nouns (a, the, that) and words that quantify them (one, two, more).

Supposedly the algorithm should be correct about 80% of the time, though the online app, which asks its users if it was right or not, is currently performing below 50%. Who knows if that's true or just the result of jealous users. Supposedly the algorithm is even better at detecting differences between non-fiction and fiction, achieving 98% accuracy.

I'd be interested to compare the algorithm's success rate with simple human judgment. I wonder if humans have an innate ability to detect an author's sex from the text itself the same way humans have a very perceptive intuition about other people's emotions.

And yes, it should be called the Sex Genie, because only pronouns have gender, people have sex. But perhaps calling this software app the Sex Genie might cause undue excitement among some Internet users or might infringe upon the copyright of some kinky toy.