Earth-shattering news

Today, we finalized our taxes. Pretty much every year since Binary Pulse has been Binary Pulse, we've extended our corporate and personal filings until September. Our corporate accountant does both for us. Today, I found out that my expectation of owing taxes was supplanted by the certainty of a refund. Frankly, just about every year of the past five, our accountant has prepared me for a payment, but actually delivered a refund. I told him I never want to take that for granted, because the first year I expect a refund, the taxman will ask me to pick up the bar of soap he dropped. Actually, next year, if we do as well as we intend, I'm sure my lucky tax karma will catch up to me.

In the meantime, I plan to pour all that refund into the Kill The Business Loan Global Fund as part of our breakneck effort to get debt-free and home owning ASAP. So, I'm a little excited about further accelerating our momentum toward that end.

The other little thread of connection to the title concerns earthquakes in California. In pulling down my bookmarks menu to get to my Blog dashboard tonight, I accidentally clicked on the USGS Earthquake Activity Map. An employee pointed this site out to me a few years back after our first shared temblor at work.

If you've never looked at it (and no one outside of this state probably would have), you should check it out. I haven't felt one for about 3 or 4 weeks, but clicking on it tonight, I was amazed at just how much earthquake activity there is on an ongoing basis. As of 10pm tonight, there have been 333 earthquakes within the past week. 333! Admittedly, the vast majority of them probably don't amount to much more than a terrestrial groan or a bump in the night, but still the sheer volume is astounding. And unsettling. Particularly right before bed.

As long as I'm not jolted awake to Ernest Borgnine or Shelly Winters screaming from a chandelier above me, I'll be okay.

Sweet dreams.

Teeth and time

Syd lost her other front tooth this week, leaving her with that once-in-a-lifetime-unless-you-play-hockey grin. The tooth had been really wobbly for the better part of a month, but, as usual, she was reluctant to let us extract it. The new front chopper beside it has been erupting for weeks -- a behemoth pushing the teeth beside it aside like an icebreaker through glacial floes.

Finally, she relented, and Lori got it out. Surprisingly, Syd sobbed and was quite distraught. It seemed losing both big front teeth concerned her...that she'd look goofy. She admitted that some of our teasing was getting to her, and losing the tooth put her over the edge. We assured her that every kid must go through this time, and that there's nothing unusual about it. True to form, she was fine the next morning and even obeyed Lori's wish to give a big toothy grin for school pictures...yes, they were the next day!

While driving home tonight, I got to thinking about how long ago the sensation and experience of losing teeth seems. I can remember a lot of feelings and emotions about that age, but I can't really remember much about losing teeth. Then I realized it's been about 30 years since I lost my first tooth. It suddenly wasn't hard to explain the deficiency of sensory recall.

But for our parents' generation, many of whom began having children at 18, 19 or 20, those sensations may not have been so remote. In fact, there could have conceivably only been 15 or 16 years between the loss of their own first teeth and the time their children started shucking cuspids.

That got me thinking about the trend of having kids later in life. Perhaps it's no wonder why we constantly remark about how kids are "growing up so fast." Maybe it's not the media or peer pressure. Maybe our own shoddy storage device called the human memory is at fault. If we are so mnemonically distanced from our youth, are we filling our experiential sharing time with recollections of college and our first jobs instead of the playground and our first lost tooth?

If medical research delivers on some of the potential breakthroughs it's pursuing, and people begin regularly having kids at 50 and 60, I can imagine a time when five-year olds are planning retirement and twelve-year olds are lamenting their bad hips and the length of the line at Luby's.

Devil's playthings

I don't like cell phones.

I should, but I don't.

I should appreciate all of the convergent, miniaturized technology they embody. I should marvel at the fact that the Star Trek communicator has become a reality.

They're amazing really. Take pictures, check email, monitor your calendar, and, oh yeah, talk. Talk a lot. Talk about a lot of nothing. Talk all the f*#@ing time. Talk, talk, talk.

I think I would honestly like cell phones if it wasn't for the talking. The incessant yapping. The impolite yammering. Here, there...everywhere.

In line at the movies. In the theater. In restaurants. On the treadmill. In the locker room. And, of course, my favorite, in the car.

I would most likely love cell phones if they were forbidden from cars. Love may be too strong, but I wouldn't abhor them. I hate the fact that the first thing anyone under the age of 25 does when they get in their car is call someone. Stand at the entrance/exit of any parking lot anywhere. It can be an apartment complex, a shopping center, a gas station...wherever cars egress. The cars could be arriving or leaving. I'd venture to say 80% of the drivers are on their phone.

"Hey, I'm in my car." "Wazzup? I'm just starting my car." "Hey, dude, just leaving McDonalds." "Not much, just shifting into second gear, you know? Same ol', same ol'."

Someone should invent an ingenious translation device, and we'd hear what they're really saying. It would sound more like, "Hey, I'm talking about absolutely nothing, paying little attention to my surroundings and endangering the lives of everyone around me. Oh, I like puppies. Tee hee."

I've never walked the line of sounding racist in any blog until now, but Asians can't drive. The males of the species are reckless and the women are clueless. Witness any car crossing four lanes of traffic at 10 MPH and 90% of the time it's an Asian woman rubbernecking at street signs or the sun, or Helen-Kellering amidst the magic spirits divining the way to Happy Nails. There's bound to be a culpable genome lurking somewhere, hiding from the all-knowing eye of science just yearning to prove it. Stick a cell phone against their ears and all of our life expectancies shorten by two months.

So there's the danger part. But beyond that, what can someone possibly talk about so much? And who the hell would want to listen? God, just shut up. Call them when you get home. Wait the five minutes until you get there. Add some friggin' intrigue back into your life. "Hey, where's Chan?" "Don't know, he's not picking up his cell!" See, now you're a man of mystery. Not some self-fixated, my-life-on-aural-display-for-everyone-to-hear jackass.

And lose the f*#@ing ringtones. If I hear another digitized version of "Bootylicious" echoing across a parking lot, I'm gonna lose it. "Listen to this, dude, I got this ringtone...sounds just like a real old time phone ringing. Ha ha." Hey, you sound just like a real idiot.

Text messaging. Slightly better… just lose any auditory component and disable it when in motion. Can't type if you're moving. Not in a car…I don't care if it's even walking. You movey, no texty. If you’re walking in a crowded area, put your phone in your pocket and look the f*#k up! And outlaw that freaking Nextel walkie talkie beep tone. They should replace it with genital jumper cables.

I read a story about a cell phone phenomenon called "knocking." It refers to the practice of calling someone and hanging up before they answer just so they can see your name on their caller ID. Apparently, they think the act shows you care. Not enough to talk to you, mind you, just that you thought you'd ring their phone briefly so they have to reach across the front seat, swerve across traffic and endanger 50 passersby just so they know that Chao Phan cares.

On a cell phone, they call it knocking. On a landline, it's called stalking. Go figure. The fact that the practice happens enough to even warrant a name is nauseating.

Seven- and eight-year olds are carrying cell phones. I saw a girl at the airport in San Jose that was clutching a doll (with a purple crochet hat that matched her own) and talking on a cell phone. She wasn't lost. She wasn't flying by herself. Just walking with her doll and talking. God, I can only pray her dad gave her his phone so she could act like a grownup. "Here, honey, pretend to be a pretentious, prattling, mini-cockerdoodle-in-your-Prada bitch. That's a good girl."

I don't think cell phones make people talk about stupid stuff. I think all the same people are equally stupid in the privacy of their own homes. But, for the love of everything holy, leave it at home.

How can the three or four cell phone kiosks in the plaza in front of every multiplex in America stay in business? Kids flock to them like five-year olds to an ice cream truck. "Oh, look, a new skin!" "This one's so tiny!" "I have to sign up for another three years to get this camera phone that will also cost me another $70 a second to use? Sure! Now I can take ridiculously useless pictures. Here's me at Jamba Juice. Here are my new rims. Here's my foot! Tee hee, I'm so silly!"

Cha-ching.

I know that, in addition to the technology, I should appreciate what a huge revenue center cell phones are. The more crap features they pile on, the more some fat-ass Finn or Korean is laughing all the way to the bank. Viva la capitalism. Honestly, more power to them. But watching all these kids (and adults) mainline asinine bells and whistles like so much black tar heroin is repulsive.

People actually bling or ice out their phones. That's what Generations Y and Zero call adding diamonds (or crystals if you're a playa hater) to anything. I call it an absolutely ridiculous waste of money. Hey, I loved my Walkman when I was 15 but I never painted it silver and glued Shrinky-Dinks on it as a fashion statement.

Everyone says communication is the key to understanding. So cell phones should be the harbinger of a millennium of peace, right? Nope. They're the same insipid devices that Muslim terrorists use to trigger roadside explosives and send homicide bombers to their deaths. Every time little Ho-Chi-Minh starts yapping about the newest 50 Cent track and texting his homies about how he's the Halo frag-king, bi-atch, it's like he's awakened Al-Qaeda sleeper cells to subvert our intelligence, erode our attention spans, crash our cars and mow down our pedestrians.

I don't know. I'm worn out now. I've pondered this blog for months. I thought I'd go for the high brow, sardonic treatise but I settled for a vitriolic, mildly-bigoted stream of consciousness rant. I shouldn't hate cell phones. I do. We managed just fine before them. We still communicated. We knew where we were. We knew where we were going. We knew when the movies started. We knew what we were going to do the next day. We could wait to find out which episode of Buffy was on tonight.

We knew when to shut up.

I'm no Luddite. I prefer the iPod as far as pervasive technologies go. Put your headphones on. No ringtones. No picture taking. Just music.

I figure if I continue to play mine loud enough, I'll eventually blow out my ears and free myself from having to listen to people on their cell phones. And that's better living through technology.

"Can you hear me now? (What?) Good!"

Brownstones are alien-proof

Just a quick post to document my extreme displeasure with the end of War of the Worlds. Lori and I finally had the opportunity to see it this weekend while we were in Coronado. I know it's been getting lackluster reviews, but fellow coworkers all claimed the effects made it worth seeing. We wanted to also see it on the big screen rather than waiting for its arrival on DVD.

All in all, it was definitely a good movie and well worth seeing. I forgive it its occasional glitches in the storyline (the single video camera that survives the aliens' EMP blast) and egregious abuses of probability (the jumbo jet that crashes neatly beside the minivan, leaving a navigable path out of the wreckage), but the ending was simply stupid. For those of you who haven't seen it, don't worry, I think the film is still worth the price of admission. The effects are stunning and the aliens (and their craft) are, frankly, pretty terrifying. The booming warning siren the tripods emitted in the ferry crossing scene was downright scary.

But the end was just way too Hollywood. Even for Spielberg, that ending was just stupidly perfect. It smacked of focus group-infected watering down. As Cruise and Fanning finally stagger into his ex-wife's Boston neighborhood amidst the dying aliens, making good on Tom's promise to return his daughter safely to her mother, we see that the grandparents' brownstone...in fact their entire neighborhood...is the only one left standing in Boston. Maybe the world. In fact, aside from a few abandoned cars, it looks downright homey. No broken windows, no corpses. The mother and her family come to the door in perfectly clean clothes, looking like they just got up from dinner. Not a scratch or a smudge on them. Yet, boy wonder (the son), who somehow managed to survive the holocaust that engulfed him as he deliriously ran headlong into three alien tripods, is still beat to hell. Seems mom didn't think it was worth cleaning him up.

"Gee, mom, do you think I could get a bath to wash the viscous blood, gristle and napalm off me?"

"Don't be silly. Just eat your meat loaf and stop making all that crazy talk about aliens," she replies, making little quotation marks with her fingers.

What a pitiful ending.

The end.

A retraction

Since my last post, I have been informed by my well-educated mother that the "Cell Phone Waiting Area" at the San Jose Airport I last blogged about is not exceptionally unique. Seems San Diego had one until recently. Perhaps every airport in the country (or world) has one of these. Not sure if it's a post 9-11 thing since most people can't park by the curb anymore, but nonetheless, I didn't stumble onto some rare, Silicon Valley anomaly, as I speculated.

I did highlight the fact of how ill-traveled I am. But at least I get excited by really mundane things.

Oh, I forgot to tell you about this other thing I saw on my trip. It was called a "Restroom". Seems that they now have dedicated places to just go and rest. Can you believe it?!! I know we're all busy in this modern world, but a room just for resting? Com'on...

I know the way to San Jose

My first-ever California trip north of Santa Barbara is in the books. Our meeting at Sony went very well. The act of travelling up there combined with the aura of visiting The Sony was admittedly intimidating, but shortly after arriving, I realized we were going to be fine. The entire place and people felt exactly like Interplay and we reacted with the confidence of more than eight years of gaming industry experience. As I mentioned to my staff today, it verified that we do world-class work. It was great.

One of the real interesting aspects of the trip was simply seeing Silicon Valley. The San Jose and San Francisco airports appear to bookend the heart of it. We passed exits to Cupertino (home of my beloved Apple), saw the Oracle campus (very impressive) and plenty of other facilities for eBay and various other dot-com survivors. I particularly liked our excursion across Woz Way in downtown San Jose. For those of you not Mac-addicted, Woz is the legendary Steve Wozniak...one of the original Apple founding fathers. The fact that he has been memorialized with a street made me laugh.

I also laughed at the fact that the main frontage road that orbits the perimeter of the San Jose airport has a "Cell Phone Waiting Area". After a quick look back over my shoulder, I realized it is a turnoff parking lot for people who need to talk on their cellphones. Like a runaway truck ramp for garrulous techheads.

The general terrain and weather up there was pretty amazing. But the very palpable fear that we were in Earthquake City, USA -- and the most expensive place to own a home in the universe -- didn't compel me to daydream long about a relocation anytime soon. We did get lost on some side streets at various times and saw some pretty cool and quaint architecture, I must say.

Admittedly, I'm writing this during commercials, so this entry is neither poignant nor eloquent. Just let it be known that I am officially "more travelled". Whoop de friggin doo. :)

Estoy aqui!

Greetings and salutations. Apologies and guilt. I have been remiss in my blogging obligations. My precious lunchtime at work, once used for blogging, has been dedicated to reading. After finishing Olympus, I have immersed myself into about a 1000-page sci-fi anthology. My remaining window of blogging opportunity, the evening, has been consumed by an increasing amount of late night work. So, here I am on Sunday evening, catching up on ocmehls updates and the blog.

Considering that I had a full two days of work-free life this weekend, it was an exceptionally relaxing one. Work is busy, but we have kept true to our goal of recruiting more help. This week, we started using a Flash/multimedia freelancer fresh in from Milwaukee by way of Chicago. We searched for a freelancer who meets our level of capability/quality for about two weeks and exhausted all of our normal avenues. We finally went through a premium-priced placement agency and found someone. We’re having him run the gauntlet on a project or two, but would definitely consider him for a full-time role if all the stars align. He has some video and animation skills that could be an asset for our growth.

Another work highlight: Tuesday, Tim and I will fly to San Jose for the day for a meeting with Sony Computer Entertainment America. That is the Playstation division of Sony. About five Fridays ago, they emailed us out of the blue saying they had reviewed our Web site and were interested in learning more about us. We put together a kit of samples, and have now qualified for an in-person meeting at their Bay area headquarters. Should be exciting. I’m keeping even-keeled about it since they’re admittedly reviewing a dozen or more agencies, but for us to be invited is an accomplishment. At the very least, it’s another exposure to the big time and our first foray into NoCal.

On the family front, we spent Saturday morning at a birthday party for one of Emelie’s preschool friends. Not your average b-day stomping ground, we went to Goat Hill Junction Railroad Park in Costa Mesa. I had heard about the place through the grapevine some months ago. It’s a large grassy park that, once a month, is inhabited by local model train enthusiasts who host parties and run rides. Most of them are retired old-timers who maintain a little workshop on the grounds and build/work on these really elaborate model trains. The kids enjoyed the long rides, looking at ground squirrels scampering through the grass and feeling the cool breeze. It was great for us parents, too. A little pizza, a piñata and we called it a day.

That evening, we had dinner with the Lyons family at our local Ruby’s. We met them at the pre-school when Syd and their oldest attended, and Lori and Susan engage in activities every few weeks. We had a nice time.

Today, we began with our almost weekly outing to Soup Plantation. I commented that I think, for the first time in my life – either as a parent or child – I have a neighborhood restaurant. We go there just about every weekend, sometimes walking down the long path that runs behind our complex. After that, we ventured out to the Spectrum and saw The March of the Penguins. A great little documentary.

And that’s about it. I’ve been writing voraciously, but resisting from posting anything until it attains greater solidity. I’m on a sci-fi short story now that popped into my head during a dream about two months ago.

August. Cripes!