imMobility in Motor City

Today I picked up a hitchhiker holding a red gas container. I think one should always give a fellow-motorist a helping hand. I picked him up on 275 south on-ramp in Canton. He said he was going to 94 and Middlebelt. I wasn't going that way at all, but he was already in the car and I couldn't just drop him off two exits down the freeway, which is where I was going.

It was odd that his car had run out of gas that far! I asked him about that and he said he came to canton to pick up his paycheck to buy gas. He didn't have enough money for half a gallon of gas?! His boss hadn’t been there and he was going back. He was a slightly overweight, white guy in his late fifties, wearing denim shorts, crusted lips, a heavy breather and seemed extremely uncomfortable. His gas can was impossibly small, maybe 1/2 gallon and empty,

Out of concern for not getting robbed or killed (Really; I am that cynical in Detroit) I kept trying to make small talk and he was very short with his answers. He said he worked as a wall paper hanger or some such. He lived in Wyandotte.

He kept putting his hands in his pockets and searching for stuff. Then he showed me two dollar bills in one hand and another handful of change in the other. "I have four dollars, I think, to get gas. You wouldn't have a couple of dollars to give me, would you?" He asked. "I might. I'll check when I drop you off." I said.

I suggested that I'd take him to the gas station to pay for his gas. He said no, he just wanted to be dropped off at the exit on the corner of Middlebelt and 94. I offered to take him to his car. I asked whether his car was on the north side or south side of 94. He dodged the questions and just repeated that I'd drop him off at the bottom of the exit. Odd.

I dropped him off, fished through my wallet and gave him all my singles: four bucks. He thanked me and started to walk. As I waited at the traffic light to turn around on the westbound I-94, I saw him cross the street and walk up to the on-ramp continuing on to I-94 east. Ha?! "Dude, where is your car?" I wondered and realized that there is no car. I guess he was hitchhiking to Wyandotte, using a gas container as bait.

I don't blame him, nor do I condemn him for tricking me. In fact, I admire his resourcefulness and courage to do what it takes to get by. It's sad to see such crippled mobility options in "Motor City." Really, if I had no car and no one to give me a ride, how would I get from Wyandotte to Canton and back? I guess I'd just walk or ride a bicycle and risk getting mugged or ran over by cars.

Why aren't there economically viable shared-personal or public mobility options that everyone could use? Is this a missed market opportunity or is this a dead-horse of a market? I believe this is truly the single largest market opportunity in the transportation sector.

As for the guy collecting a few dollars in the process, my lesson is: if I am ever destitute, I am getting me a half-gallon gas container.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

Getting Some Social Status

Everybody seems to have some social clout these days. Kim Kardashian has 17 million twitter followers and I don't really know what she adds to the world. With all due humiliation, I think I add a lot more to the world than she does. Granted, I don't support a sizeable and well-loved rear-end, but I have genuinely and measurably done a lot of stuff with my life: designed products, led and mentored teams of engineers, published papers and patents, raised kids, etc. Where is my social clout? Time to do something about that: Fictitiously!

In an attempt to jack up my clout, I started with Yelp, the low hanging fruit. I spent three weeks giving random feedback to any and all businesses that I could find to win status points! Diaper services, dry cleaners, carpet cleaners, gun dealers...

Then it dawned on me that I could actually embed a story, spread out among my Yelp feedback, should the mystery-solving minds of the Yelpers be up to cracking the code. So I started a series of entries. Here are a few:

Kim's Cleaners: 1 star. These guys couldn't get a half pint of blood out of a shirt and pants if their lives depended on it. Very nosey people too. Will not do business with them again.

Zimmerman's Carpet Cleaners: 5 stars. Great job getting blood stains out. Very discreet and grateful for the $20 tip. Will do business with them again and recommend highly.

Tony's Pizza: 3 stars. Pizza was semi warm, but good. Nosy delivery boy, though easy to wrestle to the ground and tie up.

Hanks Guns and Ammo: 5 stars. Great guys all around. Were willing to skip background checks and filed off the serial numbers at no cost.

Victoria's Secret: 1 star. Wish I could give them 0 stars. these jerks will send a thank-you card for your recent large purchases to your house, where you have not brought a piece of their stupid clothing in ages. Then your wife is screaming about “what the heck is this all about?!”

Marriott Courtyard: 1 star. Yah, thanks for your postcards and promos sent to my home address. That’s why I paid cash, you home wreckers!

Joe's Crab Shack: 2 stars. The food is ok, a bit pricy for what you get. Their plastic aprons tear through easily.

Home Depot: 3 stars. Had to ask five people to show me where to find strong black plastic material to wrap something floppy in to pull around that weighs around 120 pounds or so. Good selection of picks and shovels.

Lefty's Bailbonds: 3 stars. Very slow to respond.

McCann Law Offices: just checked in. Feedback to come in a few months.

Well, I am wondering if anyone is going to data mine Yelp and other feedback sites for patterns. I bet you could tell a whole person's life’s habits, behaviors, shopping patterns and much more by this publicly available data. Hey, this might just be the next great startup idea: to aggregate data from various social network sites on people and $$$$. Be warned, if anyone steals this idea from me, they'll be dealt with swiftly and I'll bury the story across many different social networking sites.

7 Steps to Successfully Fail at a Startup

Ok, you have come up with a great business plan, have secured some reasonable level of funding, developed a couple of working prototypes and moved out of the seed stage garage. More investors are returning your calls and you have had to hire a couple of people just to work on the term sheets. It is clear skies sailing. One might think you couldn't fail, even if you tried.

In this article I am going to show you seven simple steps to fail. Of course, there are many other ways, but I am primarily talking about ways that you could fail with the complete illusion of success, rather than just advising you to set a match to the warehouse or some other such nonsense.

1. Your people are the key. You must staff up, you know that. Alas, the seasoned industry veterans won't leave their secure day jobs to join you, so you must hire less experienced but more energetic people. The key to failure is to hire anyone that talks a good talk and has a lot of energy. So go ahead and hire that 23 year old for your Senior Executive Chief Technology Officer. A more critical key is to max out the titles so that there's no room to squeeze in adult supervision at a later point.

If you do end up replacing anyone, you must make sure to replace them with someone much less competent to guarantee failure. Also by making changes at the leadership levels you will ensure that your teams will perpetually stay in a storming stage and the team members will be too busy pulling the proverbial ladder or rug from underneath one another to do anything useful.

Bestow upon your storming unmotivated employees lavish motivational parties. Location is important. It must be in the lobby of an upscale hotel where the employees can engage in further motivational activities that will provide fodder for the juicy office gossip about who ended up with who and how the village idiot ended up with the village bicycle, etc. Create a regular 90210 scene! With less time to do any productive work, as they are caught up in a whirlwind of texting, you are many steps closer to failure.

2. Stick to the plan and stick to what you know. Do on Monday what you had planned on Friday, no matter what happened over the weekend! Stick to your knitting, even if the global warming trends and the entire planet tells you that no one will ever buy your knitted sweaters.

It is important to note that “sticking to the plan” is not the same thing as planning. You must avoid planning completely.  Project planning process,  timelines, resource and effort estimation be damned: You give yourself six months to launch the product, period! After the launch date is inevitably missed, you tack on another six months, and then five and so on. Instill a sense of emergency such that there is never enough time to do it right and be launch-ready. If your product is a basketball, you’ll end up with an elliptical balloon with a thousand Band-Aids on it, thereby firmly ensuring that you won’t sell many, if any!

If you do make any strategic corrections, they must always be too little, too late and after the fact and certainly not until any benefit gained from the correction is nil to negative.

3. Communication. You must ensure that all but the most trivial information is safely guarded and NOT communicated through the ranks. This will maximize the amount of office rumors as employees will make up their own news if they don't hear them from you. Additionally, on the account of your 90210 culture, your boardroom is leakier than a sieve. Yet, you must not formally communicate anything. Secrets are empowering.

4. You have got to spend money to make money. So spend! You don't have time to do any ROI analyses or trade-off studies. If you're not spending the investors' money, you won't get anymore. So spend like it's 1999. This goes for your products' costs as well. Remember, your customers won't care about the product price, since it's so amazing, and there will be no competition.

5. Proper spending. You must operate in feast or famine mode. If you make budgets and control spending, you won't be able to execute on this strategy. As soon as the series x funding is deposited, feast! Order valet parking for the employees. Provide free meals and free on-site massages. Everyone travels first class. When the money dries up, stop ALL spending! Freeze those critical projects that need to get done. Stop payments to all the suppliers to ensure maximum damage to you supply base and credit rating. Wait for series y funding and repeat.

6. Empower your employees. But only your cronies and the yes men and women around you. Don't just empower, give them absolute powers to hire and fire such that there is no rhyme or reason to the way they operate. Let them set up their own little dictatorships and enjoy the privileges of being friends of you.

7. End with the beginning in mind. You can tell you are getting closer to a successful failure by the massive exodus of the worker bees. You’re trying to navigate this ship onto the rocks anywhere between chapter 7 and 11. So you must get rid of any nay sayers or competent employees who might be signaling that you might be heading into the ground . Fortunately you have a few ‘empowered’ cronies who will play the dirty end-game for you. Give the rest a taste of HR. Have that HR crony who has been helping you amass all these hiring failures run the show and fire people on the spot at his or her pleasure. Make sure your final days are the worse days in your company's history. The best way is to perform a massive layoff in a town-hall format, where everyone is expecting to hear  good news but is shown the door instead.

Now sit back and relax; you've done it!

2.0. Re-invent yourself. This process can be repeated by re-inventing yourself while in chapter 11. Ever seen the show Walking Dead, where the dead come back but this time running only on brain stem functionality? In business this happens when you venture into an area where you know nothing about.  Completely new fields and markets because it seems like a great business opportunity. This allows you to make completely new mistakes, yet in theory you’ll be able to follow through the same seven steps again. Albeit these steps will be called steps 8-15, rather than 1-7. If your first go around was code named A123, you can now call the second iteration B456 and the third could be C789 and so on. You get the picture.

On the investment side, in first loop you’ll need smart money; in the second go-around you’ll need gamblers and bottom feeders; in the third iteration you’ll have to find desperate money, and in the fourth loop, go after plane dumb money. Thank god for diversified portfolios.

Good luck!

Mt. Whitney: #1

I had been dreaming of bagging Mt. Whitney for months. At 14,505 feet (4421 m), it’s the tallest peak in the lower 48 states and a pretty hearty climb. So as my days in California were coming to an end, I started to get worried that I wouldn’t get a chance to do it. I went online a number of times to check for permits. The whole year was booked. Then I called the ranger station and resorted to “I have a year to live and this is my … cough, cough…last dying wish…cough, hack…could you please make an exception and … achooo… issue me a permit?” They had heard it all before. No luck.  They said I could try to walk-in, just in case there were cancelations, but not likely for the weekend.

I left Orange County with Milad on Friday at noon. The ranger station closes at 5:00pm, so I had to drive like a bat-out-of-hell and got there at 4:53, dashed in and started the “laying down the charm” process, the the “very sad face and disappointed” look and just as I was trying to pull the “dying man routine,” she found two last overnight permits. The caveat was that we had to have large overnight backpacks to use them. “Yes, we do! no prob!” I’d just carry the sleeping bag and the large pack, what the hell.

I set the iPhone alarm for 5:30 am, but forgot that it was set for weekdays, that old am/pm thing is a solved problem, but now we have to deal with this nonsense. Milad woke up at six and woke me up. We rushed and dashed out the door. He was nervous and worried about this climb. In the car he started nose bleeding and after a mile of hiking, we decided it was best if he turned around briefly after the start of the start of the Mountaineers' Trail . He took the big overnight backpack and headed back.

With my lighter load, I hit the trail hard. The mountaineers route does not actually have a trail. There are cairns here and there, but for the most part it’s guess work, path finding and trusting somebody else’s GPS tracks that I had downloaded to my phone. Turns out this guy had made too many mistakes and unnecessary zigzags here and there.  So I came to use it only as a reference and only when I felt totally lost.

The route consists of several major terrains:

The early wooded area: Lots of bush whacking and creek jumping.

The ledges: The correct ledges on the sides of the cliffs that are hard to find, but not too hard to climb and traverse. There is a lot of exposure (possibility of falling long heights) but overall, if you don’t get lost here, it’s pretty straight forward. I did get lost, and ended working and climbing a lot harder than needed and gained a couple of scratches in return. I ran into a couple of younger climbers here who were also struggling to find the path and between the three of us, we managed to get through the ledges. They were not into stopping and picture taking and sight seeing, so soon they disappeared.

The Open Valley Floor:

In this area the river runs on granite slabs from lake to lake, with the last lake being upper boy scout lake and partially frozen over. This area is the zen of the zen of mountaineering. I wish I could live there for a month. There was not another soul in sight, there was peace, beauty and music all around.

Gravel Shoot (Hell):

This is a long section in a steep gravel grade with ice on one side and rocks on the other: Two steps forward one step back, mixed with scurrying up rocky sections.

Final Climb:

This is an almost technical section that is a fantastic finish to this route: Rock climbing to the summit.

The summit is a broad with eroded rock slabs and a stone hut. There are large crowds who ascend from the Whitney trail. I took the normal Whitney trail back down to see more of the mountain. Where I had only seen two other people on the Mountaineers’ trail, this trail was lined up with hikers. But it was fun to stop and chat with other hikers.

 

The Bear Encounter

I had been sweating for 13 straight hours in long jeans and a long sleeved shirt. I was dusk, and around this turn, up comes this giant baby-elephant-sized brown bear, just galloping up on the trail. And I am half running because it was getting dark. So we both put on the brakes hard and come to a dead stop. The bear's head is the size of a basketball, round and goofy looking, standing on all fours he is as tall as my chest; he looks shocked, takes one glance and turns around and takes off in the other direction, leaving a cloud of dust behind. This whole transaction lasted about 2 seconds. He was quicker to think of what to do than me. He just sensed this dude meant business, or figured the meat under this layer of salt crusted sweaty skin was not worth working for. I took my phone out of my pocket and chased after him (to take a picture, not to give him my number, I don't swing that way), but he was gone! Who says you can't outrun a man? Only then I started to get scared and think “wholly poopsicles, I just almost became dinner!” So I took my knife out of the backpack, found a good sized stick, and walked very carefully and circumspectly down the trail, talking trash to the invisible bears that were hiding all over the woods the whole way down, warning them how badass I was and how I had just beaten the crap out of their head honcho.

Video Diary

Topo Map of the Track

The Third Saint: San Gorgonio

For whatever reason the idea of sleeping on the summit of a mountain crept into my head a few weeks ago. I have slept many nights in the mountains, never on the summit though, and never alone. The objective was always to find a spot sheltered from the wind and cold, flat and soft enough to pitch a tent, get a fire going, cook and sleep comfortably. Sleeping on the summit offers none of those amenities. But wouldn't it be amazing to watch the sunset and the next day sunrise from the summit? Ah, yes, it would, it would!

I considered Mt. San Antonio (Baldy) at first, since I am most familiar with that area. Then I thought if I am going to do it, it might as well be the tallest mountain around, mount San Gorgonio, 11,500 feet, not that tall by world standards, but the tallest in southern California and within an hour driving distance from me.

I needed a tent and a sleeping bag, which I acquired from my favorite store, Costco. Weight is no object, what's a few extra pounds. I made lists upon lists of items to bring. Matches, a spoon, freeze dried food, knife, Gatorade, nuts, crackers, etc.

On the day of the hike, I got up at 9:00 am, way later than I should have, and just dragged my hide around, packed, checked the list, unpacked, rechecked. Have you ever had one of those trip where you say to yourself "you're subconsciously trying to miss your flight, aren't you?" So I got on the road by 11:30, was at the ranger station by 12:30 to change my permit to take the shorter Vivian Creek Trail instead of Momyer and got to the parking lot by 1:30 pm.

The backpack was incredibly heavy; I could hardly hoist it on my back. I had two day's worth of water in the backpack. At a rest stop, I dumped half of the water. Screw it, I had water purification pills, could refill from streams or melt snow. The pack was still a 40+ pounder.

 

San Gorgonio is a vast wilderness. The mountain is eroded and slopes are mostly gentle and vegetated. Redwood trees adorn this wilderness and it's mostly untouched and well preserved. The hike was peaceful and quiet, with the exception of the jingling of my bear bell. I did not come across any bears, as much as I was hoping for the encounter.

Near the summit, I realized that the sun was setting and I was going to miss the summit sunset. I hustled and huffed and puffed and only got a very brief glimpse of the sunset from the summit.

Disappointed and realizing how cold and windy it was, I came to another realization: I had forgotten my warm down winter coat in the car. So much for those lists! A tactical error with painful consequences. I pitched the tent, and shivering like a pan-handler's prick, I dove inside, changed out of my sweat soaked clothes into dry ones and got into the sleeping bag to warm up.
The wind howled and rattled the tent all night. The temperatures dipped bellow freezing; I tossed and turned all night, sat up to laugh at myself, to pee in empty Gatorade bottles, ventured outside the tent for 10 seconds, curled back into a bundle inside the sleeping bag as I lamented another critically missed item on my list: a sleeping pad. I thought "This is how Chris McCandless must have felt like in his final days in that bus in Alaska!" Then I laughed at myself, "Don't flatter yourself, this ain't Alaska and you've only been here one night! Settle down!"

The wind subsided in the early hours of the morning. I am not sure if I slept or not, floated in a state of dreaming awakness, right on the edge of where you cross over into sleep. I notice the light of dawn outside. Ah, catching the sunrise? I pondered. "#*#% NO! I am not leaving this sleeping bag, no matter what. There can be a thousand splendid sunrises out there, I am not going to move. It's #*%#ing cold."

The bright sun warmed up the tent and I drifted to sleep for half and hour or so, then suddenly the tent was hot. Damn green house effect. I stepped outside. It was still cold but less windy. The crisp morning sun was splashed on the world all around bringing an endless sense of serenity and solitude. I fed my chipmunk visitor some leftover rice, heated up some water to make dried omelet and packed with weak and noodley legs, from lack of rest. I started down. I was at the parking lot, sweet parking lot, by 2:00, home by 3:30 pm, in bed by 4:00pm, only to wake up the next morning at 8:30 am.

One more thing knocked off the "Stuff I Wanna Do Before I Die" list. But I am going to have to do this again. It just didn’t hit the spot like I wanted it.

Watch the video here:

The Second Saint: San Jacinto

The last two weekends were pretty full. My plan was to finish off climbing Southern California’s three Saints: Mt. San Jacinto, San Grogonio and I have climbed San Antonio (Baldy) a number of times.

I went for a scouting trip on Saturday and got a permit to San Grogonio, then drove to Palm Springs to size up San Jacinto. What a monster of mountain that one is. I wanted to take the long route from Palm Springs, which is called the “Cactus to Clouds” route. Thank god I didn’t. If the rattle snakes don’t kill you, the heat and thirst surely will. The ‘oven’ at the start of the hike quickly gets up to 95 degrees at 10:00am. By noon it’s 105. A lazy and often tardy hiker like me stands no chance, starting at 1:00 pm.

So I cheated and took the aerial tram on Sunday which took me up to 8500 feet, in a cool 65 degrees temperature, well out of reach of all but the most hardy and ambitious of rattle snakes. I saw none of those.

The video documentary is here.

An Open Letter to My Desert Nemeses

Dear Rattle Snakes:

I understand you are a native American species and I should respect the natives, albeit I am yet to see a legitimate birth certificate. There is no reason for you to lay around all day, be a burden on society and terrorize the unsuspecting, in my case very suspecting, hikers.

I know you have had a rough childhood. Hatching must have been a terrifying experience. I can only imagine what thoughts crossed your mind when you hatched and looked at yourself. "yay, I am alive, hooray...wha...hey...WTF? No arms! No legs! What is this? Some kinda Devine joke?" You must have just wanted to crawl under a rock.

But with passage of time and in your early puberty, you noticed your tail and started playing with it. "Oooooh, this is rather fun!" Yes I know your perverted minds. You were warned that you could go blind, but you couldn't stop and that's how your troubled life began.

It is not too late to stop. You could still be a contributing member of the society. Look at Hellen Keller! Sure there are lots of jokes about her. If only she could look at you and see how terrible you are, alas she is no longer around, even if she were, well she couldn’t see or hear you. Anyway, just stop, please! Can’t we all just get along?

San Gabriel to Intervene

Here is a Peter Gabriel tribute to this magnificent  mountain, San Jacinto, holding the line between the ridiculously artificial life style of Palm Springs on one side and the life of the Apache Indians on the other. 

Sinko de Afflatus

Well, it’s cinco de mayo and I am missing out on the big party back home. Talked to the gang and they are all happy that they don’t have to endure my “sinko de mayo” story this year. It has to do with the sinking of the titanic that was also carrying mayonnaise to Mexico.
I went to Laguna last night with a couple of work buddies and did a stroll down the main street and hit a couple of watering holes. I was sitting at the bar, nursing a beer, when I heard “You have a transformer in your backyard that is really hurting your energy” addressed to me. I looked over, a black haired, older woman sitting close by was talking to me. “Hmmm…interesting pick up line,” I thought, “I wonder how often it works.”
The odd conversation started. She was in ‘energy’ business. In other words, she was a spiritual teller that made a  living by talking to Mother earth who gave her an afflatus every so often, such as the backyard transformer hazard. She ventured to tell that I had two children, sons. No, one of each. No, daughters, but one was a tom boy. Alrighty then. She kept giving me stark warnings about the transformer though. The remedy was for me to buy a bag of tobacco, sprinkle it on the ground beneath the transformer and tell mother earth to be at peace.
I looked for my friend, Bill, who was standing a few steps back and signaled him to come to my rescue. I excused myself to go to the restroom. Before leaving she told Bill “Your mom is here!” He grinned and said “She is?” “Yes, and she has a message for you. She loves you very much. And there is someone else here too. Another close person to you. Maybe your brother.” Bill’s face went dark. His brother died of cancer a couple of years ago. He talks about him often. Bill seemed more annoyed than awed. I left; he humored her for a few minutes and excused himself too.
Yes, there is a transformer in the woods in our backyard that blows up every winter and takes the neighborhood power down for days. Bill has a deceased brother. I guess in this game, if you throw enough noodles at the wall, some are bound to stick.  I always humor the spiritualist who talk about being in the ‘energy’ business. “I am too.” I say “electric cars.” “Oh don’t be so closed minded and skeptical.” I always hear back.
I am not uncomfortable with ignorance. After all, I am ignorant of about 99.99999% of what goes on in the universe and how it all works. But I hope mine is an enlightened ignorance that understands that there are things beyond our current level of comprehension. Heck, it understands that perhaps there are things beyond our total capacity to comprehend. The problem with the ‘spiritual’ ignorance is that it gives up any attempts to understand and uncover the mystery of how things really work; it simplifies everything to mundane and cliché levels of mother earth and father time. As we find out more about our world on a micro and macro level, we realize that the real ‘material’ mother earth and father time stuff is far more strange and mind boggling than the unstudied and lazy spiritual renditions of them.
No I don’t think I’ll be sprinkling tobacco under the transformer in the backyard anytime soon. I will not mediate to levitate either. Though Niel DeGross Tyson qualifies this by saying “…you could perform this stunt if you managed to let forth a powerful and sustained exhaust of flatulents.” An astrophysicists with fart humor, how great is that?!

The Trouble With Taking the Roads Less Traveled

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—   
I took the one less traveled by,   
And that has made all the difference.

And the difference is a torn quad muscle!

Last weekend's hike was fantastic. Headed to the mount baldy ski area and stormed up the trails. On the way back, I noticed a steep gravely slope on the side of the trail down to the ski lift canyon and started to contemplate bounding down the trough. It was about 500 foot of elevation loss that I could do in a minute. The grade ran to the bottom of the ski lift.
A few hikers walking by stopped and asked if I had dropped something down that slope. I told them of my intentions and they shook their heads in disbelief. "That's crazy!" The word 'crazy' is so often used in the English language. “I am thinking of leaping down this 75 degree gravel trough.” “That’s crazy!” Not “wow, that would be fun! We’re going down too!”
We chatted for a few minutes. They had their cameras out for the AFV or a viral YouTube video of a guy killing himself, with a heavy backpack. They asked for my phone number or some next of kin info, just in case I didn't make it. I just laughed, and leapt.
The gravel was deep and my feet sank in; it was a much steadier descent  than it seemed. After the first few steps I began to bound and jump, each step close to a free fall, covering twenty foot of distance. Some gravel was getting into my shoes, but not bad enough to stop me. Soon I was at the bottom, took my hat off and waved at the cheering skeptics at the top. I got cheers from the ski lift riders overhead too, who had their cameras out, somewhat disappointed that I didn’t tumble and make a funnier video.
I was charged and continued the leaps and bounds down all the way to the bottom of the ski lift and crashed on a bench in the parking lot and drank a full bottle of water, had a banana and a couple of cucumbers. A group of ski lift riders came by and said they had me on video and would email it to me. No emails from them yet.
The next day my legs were surprisingly fine. “I am sooo ultra fit!” I amazed myself. But yesterday the swelling of my right quads began and last night the pain kept me up. Today I was limping and could barely walk. Had to lift my leg with my hand to get in the car. Tonight, it’s a cocktail of painkillers and keeping my leg elevated that lets me type. I am not sure when the damage was done and why such a delayed reaction but I shudder at the thought of not being able to hike this coming weekend. I have gotten a permit to Mount St. Gorgonio, the tallest peak in SoCal, a 16 hour round trip hike and just can’t afford being injured.
The moral of the story, spare the cheap thrills and save the legs for another hike!

Into the Wild

It’s one of the most beautiful days in SoCal that I have seen in a long time. I have done grocery shopping, three weeks worth of dishes and now cooking and doing laundry, giddy with spring fever and the freedom of wide open spaces of the greening mountains on the horizons that I’ll be hiking up and bounding down tomorrow. Getting psyched by listening to Eddy.

Life’s good.

Some great lines:

Oh, it's a mystery to me
We have a greed with which we have agreed
And you think you have to want more than you need
Until you have it all you won't be free

…

There's those thinking, more-or-less, less is more
But if less is more, how you keeping score?

…

Society, you're a crazy breed.
I hope you're not lonely, without me.

There Is Pleasure In The Pathless Woods by Lord Byron

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

A Day in a Life

I am often at a loss as to what to say when I am asked “How was your day?” What is a day in the life an engineering manager or director like? It’s mostly meetings. But what goes on in those meetings? Here is a sampling.

Me: Ok I got everyone together to talk about the plans for the preproduction phase A of our latest hardware box.

Jacob: I thought the project was on hold?

Steve: No that’s not true we are restarting next week.

Jacob: But John told me it’s on hold.

Steve: When did you talk to John?

Jacob: Yesterday.

Steve: Well that’s not what John told me today.

Me: OK, regardless, we  are going to discuss plans and not worry about the project status.

Jacob: Well, I am just saying. We can plan. But if the project is on hold then this is a waste of time.

Steve (irritated and with eyes closed): NO IT’S NOT ON HOLD.

Jacob (oblivious to Steve’s irritation): Well, I am just saying. If it’s on hold, then this is a waste of time.

Steve (more irritated): How many times do I have to tell you, IT IS NOT ON HOLD.

Me: Guys, guys. Ok. Here let’s look at this Execl table. What are the deliverables for this program?

Adam: Well, it’s a light sensitive automatic flushing system.

Jacob: I thought it was supposed to be pressure sensitive.

Steve: NO IT’S LIGHT SENSETIVE. That’s in the marketing definition document.

Jacob: Well, I for one have never seen a marketing definition document. Are you sure it’s not light sensitive? I am just saying.

Adam: I saw that document last year. There was no reference to the sensor, just stated an AFS, automatic flushing system.

Steve: And it’s got to be light sensitive to work.

Jacob: So if I don’t turn on the light, it won’t work? That doesn’t make any sense. It’s got to be pressure sensitive. I am just saying.

Why do people ever say “I am just saying?” It’s a completely redundant statement, I am wondering to myself.

Steve: It’s light. That’s how EVERYONE does it. You wanna reinvent the wheel, go right ahead.

The references to the wheel and it’s reinvention are also completely overused, if you ask me. I think to myself. And the phrase “If you ask me” is another redundancy. It’s answering the question and then asking if you asked. So much nonsense must be driveled out to fill the hour of a meeting that’s not going to go anywhere other than agreeing to have another meeting.

Me: Ok, let’s leave the sensor alone for now. We just use a place holder for it for now until we know more. How about the controller. Who has developed a requirements document for it.

Jacob: Steve’s team was supposed to do it, but they were late, so I had my team design it without requirements.

Steve: WE WERE NOT LATE. The project was on hold!

Jacob: But you said it was not.

Steve: You said it was, then why did you design anything at all?

Jacob: We did it before it went on hold. We couldn’t wait for the requirements to meet the timing. We had to design. I am just saying.

Me: So what kind of sensor does your design use?

Jacob: Ummm, I am not sure, there was no requirements.

I press my thumb and index finger on the back of my eyeballs and rub. Hard. Little flashing stars appear before my eyes and the scene is strangely soothing.

Me: So we have a design that doesn’t meet non-existing requirements.

Jacob: Well we have to test it to see.

Adam: When can we start testing? We don’t have a lab set up.

Me: Ralph, do you have a test lab available?

Ralph (looking up from his smart phone): Huh?

Me: When will you have a lab available to test the AFS system?

Ralph: What AFS?

Me: The Automatic Flushing System that we have been talking about?

Ralph: All my labs are booked till December. You need to clear it with Bob.

Jacob: Well if there is no lab, there is absolutely no way I can make the timing. No way, I am just letting you know right now.

Me: We haven’t talked about the timing yet. When will we have have new complete requirements Steve?

Steve: I am not gonna write requirements if the design is already done.

Me: How far is the software?

Jacob: Well we have the first prototype tested in the lab.

Me: What lab? I thought there were no labs?

Jacob: We used the Auto Disposal Lab. That project was on hold.

Ralph: You used that lab without authorization from me??!! That project is not on hold. It’s very critical. I am reporting this to Bob!!!

Jacob: No one was using that lab for weeks. We just used it. You never noticed.

Ralph (threatening me): I am reporting this to Bob. Your team is out of control.

Me: Jacob, why didn’t you clear this with me?

Jacob: Well actually one of the guys on my team did it without me knowing it. It was Ryan. I told him he shouldn’t have.

Oh god, now comes the time to throw the underlings under the bus. I’ll be telling Bob that it was Jacob. And Ryan will get his ass handed to him for taking an extra bit of initiative.

Me: Please clear the lab out and hand it back to Ralph. Ralph, I am sorry, you’ll have your lab back exactly as it was.

Ralph: It better be. My project is delayed because of this. I am statusing out as RED on this one.

Since when did status become a verb, I ponder.

Jacob: The lab was not used for weeks and no one was asking for it. I am just saying.

Ralph: Our project is definitely delayed because of this resource issue.

Steve: I gotta go, I have another meeting.

Jason and Robert follow him out too. What the hell do those two do? I think they are in my organization. I have never heard them talk. They are young and polite, but seem to be always texting each other and grinning.

Me: Ok, I am going to schedule another meeting for next week to continue planning.

Meanwhile hoping that we’d be bankrupt by then or a tsunami hits the shores or the big earthquake finally hits so that I would not have to suffer through this again.

My next meeting is in 5 minutes. Praying for natural disasters.

In Orange County

Writing requires a certain mood; the mood has struck, alas there is nothing to write home about.

The new job requires next to no travel, so there is not much to report on that front. The car is striking but Orange is the most boring of colors in Southern California.

I have a 110 thousand dollar car to test drive this weekend. The question is where? Make a plan? Lately my best laid plans have dissolved into a hopeless heap of knotted ropes laid upon the deck of a sailboat, best to be thrown overboard in the next rising ocean swell. And the ocean always swells, sooner or later.

Driving through the desert seems like the thing to do. Where the hum of the city fades away and the silence deafens the senses. Watching a sunset on the ancient sun baked rocks. Thinking: Am I much better than these rocks? With all my thoughts and wonders, with what I humor myself to be self-awareness? Am I better than them, when they will still be there to be seen for hundreds of thousands of years beyond me? Weathered and eroded, yet still intact?

Not much humor in all of this, is there? Ok here is a joke: A horse walks into a bar and the bartender says “why the long face?”

And to finish, here is a sailing and nailing song:

Shades of Gray

There are times in life where in an insane moment you get all turned upside down. You are aboard your boat, following a compass heading, looking at charts, no need to time any knots on the dead reckoning line, the GPS is giving you every second of latitude and longitude. The sails are full and tuned. The wind is agreeable. The seas are fair, vast and fresh.

Suddenly a squall kicks up and you are thrown around. You react hard and instinctive, pull on some lines and let loose some sheets, fight the tiller, the boat heels over and tumbles around and by the time you are righted, you have banged your head and are bleeding from the corner of your eyebrow. You are shaky and disoriented; you don’t know who and where you are for a moment. After you stop trembling and gather yourself together, you check your charts and heading to find yourself a thousand miles away from where you were. You are dumbfounded, pressing your fingers onto your forehead in disbelief! Were the charts wrong? Were the instruments lying? Were you always there and didn’t know it? Which reality is right? “What the $#@*& happened to my reality?” You shout at blues of the ocean. “Was everything that I ever knew unreal?”

You check and find that you are at your final destination, without having traveled. You had not planned for such an abrupt end to your journey. You had counted on many stops along the way, anchoring in faraway bays, strolling on wayward islands, tied up to moorings in tropical lands. But you see the large land mass and the final dockage in sight. You have provisions unconsumed, lists unchecked, plans unachieved. The squall has taken them all away.

You have arrived. But oh, what you wouldn’t do to turn back the clock, to do things differently, to enjoy the journey more, to steer away from the storms, to remain at sea a bit longer. What you wouldn’t do? But if you were lucky enough to know that there are squalls at sea that can whisk you away in an insane moment, would you have enjoyed the journey more or less? Is not ignorance bliss?

 

Is anything that we know true? Is truth absolute or relative? Not in black and white, rather a tapestry of impressions that lies across the continuum of time and space, lies in endless shades of gray. At any given moment there is a likelihood that you are where you think are with a certain degree of grayness. Yet there is another likelihood that you are not. This tapestry is the fabric of the being human.

Note for further reading: Readers interested in a more pompous explanation of the above may look up “Quantum Mechanics Probability Wave Function” and “Quantum Non-Locality Phenomenon,”  a bigger mouthful than Shades of Gray!

Schrödinger's cat

 

Boys Night Out

I went out to watch a basketball game at a local sports bar with three friends a couple of years ago and things went so awry that I had to write about it. I came across that piece today and thought to post it on the web to the whole world.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OK folks, there is a lot misinformation about what happened on Friday night and I just wanted to give a detailed account of the truth and clear our good names. Also since our names are now in the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security databases, I’ll have to use factitious names or just initials to protect the innocent.

Friday

8:00 pm: the Pistons game: drinking beer, eating nachos, smoking cigars. Didn’t pay much attention to the game but I think the Pistons won by a land slide. Not.

8:15: A.M. suggests going to Windsor to enjoy the various cultures and be exposed to a foreign culture with a strange language. All agree.

8:50: The border guard sends us inside saying “You can come to Canada and do whatever you want, fish, hunt, gamble, but you might not be able to get back in U.S., eh”. Inside the nice lady guard says “there’s no guarantee they’ll let ye back in you know, you got no passports, and these days it’s all aboot passports, eh.”

P.B. “I have been to Canada lots ‘a times and have never been hassled. This is an outrage”

Guard “Sir you can enter Canada, but there is a chance you’ll have to call home and have somebody bring you a passport when you try to get back in!”

P.B. “This is crazy! I am never coming back here again! Canada sucks, no wonder it’s a dictatorship.”

A.M. “Let’s just go back. Can we go back?”

Guard: “Sure. Let me just fill ooout this form, you sign it and back ye go.”

The guard walks us back to our car. Before getting into the car J.P. smirks “Good thing they didn’t search the car.” The guards standing outside look at each other suspiciously. J.P. jokes “Just kidding man…”

Guards “You don’t joke here at the border sir. Please step aside we have to search the car.”

After a thorough search, J.P smirks, “Good thing they didn’t do a body search.”

Five minutes later: Body search inside. Fortunately the Canadian border guards are attractive women as opposed to their overweight-tooth-missing-middle-aged American counterparts.

B.B. “Hey, I know my rights. I am an American, What about cavity search, I demand it!”

P.B. “Damn Canadians! In America they use the good K.Y, Jelly! This is an outrage!”

J.P. “Hey, those are the spare keys to the Focus. I was looking for them.”

B.B. “I usually keep the weapons of mass destruction in my shorts, be sure to do a thorough search!”

Guards: “where were you born sir?”

A.M. “On the border of Iran and Iraq to Palestinian parents. Undergrad in Afghanistan and graduate studies in Sudan.”

Guards “Please come with us for special processing sir.”

J.P. “Those are mighty big guns for these little guards.”

P.B. “You know, if you grease those guns they won’t rust. You gotta use the special PT57 grease; they have ‘em at NAPA. I had a cousin with a 9 mm who…”

10 minutes later

P.B. “Then again the FP45 is less viscous…you can use it on the carburetors too…”

20 minutes later

P.B. “Never use cotton for greasing though; it clogs up the chambers…”

The guards have put their gun barrels in their own mouths and are preparing to pull the triggers. One of them points her gun at us and says “if you don’t leave now we are going to go Abu Ghareib on your ass!”

Five minutes later: In the car back in the U.S.

P.B. “Those damn Canadians, this sucks.”

A.M. “Damn, that special processing!!”

J.P. “Hey good thing they didn’t search my shoes, har…”

B.B. (smoking a cigarette) “Hey, that Abu Ghereib thing sounded like fun, let’s go back!”

P.B. “This is something I’ll never forget, I am never going back.

A.M. “I think we should invade them preemptively.”

J.P. “ No oil though.”

B.B. “But they got that sand oil thing.”

P.B. “But that’s no good for the engine.”

A.M. “Might be good for the hybrid electric engines though.”

J.P. “No the energy content is too low. The conversion is the issue.”

A twenty minute discussion on hybrid-electric vehicle technology ensues.

P.B. “Hey look at that 67 Chevy el Kahuna, 650 cubic foot engine triple over head cam…all POWER”

J.P. “No that’s 625 cubic. The paint job sucks though”

B.B. “I had one of those.”

A 15 minute discussion on the el Kahuna’s internal combustion engine ensues.

Greek Town Casino, ATM machine trip number 3:

P.B. “This is exactly why I wanted to go to Windsor. I hear they have nickel poker tables. Let’s go to white castle!”

A.M. “No man, my luck is turning around.”

30 minutes later: some Greek restaurant in Greektown

April to P.B. (on the phone: “Where are you? I thought you where dead in a ditch”

10 minutes later

Nancy to A.M. “Where the hell are you it’s 4:30!!! $$%# whatever …”

5 minutes later

Jenny to B.B. “$%#^$#” clank.

5 minutes later

Everybody to J.P. “ha ha look whose wife hasn’t called. Poo’ baby, wifey doesn’t love him…”

Cool Trick

Mount Baldy, Round Deux

Climbed Mount Baldy today. I climbed it last Saturday and it took five days before I could walk straight. So today, I did it again. This time with a photo diary.

Long time no post, just this for now……

Falling in Line

Line culture tells a lot about a people. How compliant they are. How respectful of others. How structured they are. How civilized-wanna-be they are. Americans love lines. They consider them the ultimate sign of civility. They look for them and ask “Is this the end of the line?” constantly. Line cutting is a form of personal violation. You can ask to cut, and often, you’ll get in. But if you just cut, accidentally or otherwise, eyes will roll, grunts will be heard. All the other line dwellers unite through secret eye contacts in hating you. They may or may not say anything to you, but you’ll be their common cause of the society going to hell in a hand basket. Often times one grumpy old man will stand out and say “Hey buddy, the end of the line is back there!” Your apologies will fall on deaf ears. There is no excuse for not having sought the very very end, or the start depending on your perspective, of the line.

Deplaning (egress from an airplane) is an art truly mastered by the Americans. You just wait till the rows ahead of you exit. No matter how they have to struggle to get their massive luggage out from the over head compartments, put on their headsets, yak on their phones, pick up their junk. You just f%$#@ing wait. This may seem annoying until you travel aboard. Then you really miss it, where the rows behind you rush and trample you as you are trying to get into the stream. If you are reaching to get your luggage, the folks behind you just dry hump you and push you into the seats and squeeze by anyway.

Boarding in Detroit

Line culture is very different in the rest of the world. I blame it mostly on looking foreign in the foreign lands. People think because you don’t speak their language, they could rip a loud stinky fart in your face and you wouldn’t understand it; on the account of the language barrier.

In China, folks will just cut in. They busy themselves with something else and act like the rest of the line is completely invisible. A gentle tap on their shoulders will usually send them behind you. If they get tapped again, they’ll just make another single person hop until there are either no taps or the end of the line is reached. You have to stay close to the person ahead of you. Any gap, where some amount of light can get through, is an invitation to cutting. Sometimes they just wiggle and twitch their way in front of you. Being an American with a large personal space requirement is like driving a fully laden cement truck in stop-and- go traffic on I-275. Everyone and their brothers will cut in front of you.

In India the cutter will give you a sideway glance and grin and step in front of you. It’s like saying “Ignore me, I am just cutting in! You very very nice man, but don’t speak Hindi.” And a tap would do the trick, but they have already looked at you and grinned, so that makes the tapping a cold hearted act.

Germans cut in, in the most garish manner. Not only they cut, they seem as though they have half a mind to turn around and slap you for standing behind them. The tap is only advised when the cutter is much smaller than you. I do, however, tap no matter what. Sometimes the tap is completely ignored, and then I loudly condemn the entire country “what a bunch of assholes” as I look at the folks behind me, seeking sympathy. Of course they all look away, as though to say “we didn’t see that.” And I go on saying “ha, typical!”

But no one cherishes lines more than Americans. They seek them. They see one and they line right up at the end. The reason for shopping on black Friday, the day after Thanks Giving is the goddamn lines. “Ooooh, look at us, we are standing in line.”

-“Excuse me, is this the end of the line?”

-“No, it’s back there, three hundred feet back, snaking behind the appliance isle.”

-“Would you like to cut in? Go ahead.”

-“Oh, no I couldn’t.”

-“Oh go ahead, that baby looks heavy.”

-“ Is it OK with you? Really?”

-“Sure!”

-“How about the people behind you? Is Ok with you sir?”

-“Yeah, no problem.”

-“How about the lady behind you? Ma’am, do you mind?”

Sometimes I just want to shout “Just get the F%$@ in the line already!” But Americans would never forego the pleasantries of falling in line. It’s the one chance to be truly civilized.

And a great song to close…

Home With Some Eclectic Music

Wrapping it up in China

Flew back up to Harbin from Beijing and watched the cars roll down the assembly line. Then back to Beijing again to meet with more people. The special luncheon held in our honor had my life long  favorite item on the menu. It was a bit fattier than I expected though.

The flight back was an ordeal. Beijing to Seoul to San Fran to Detroit. The Beijing to Seoul segment was utter misery. Sat next to China’s foulest person. This guys mouth had never seen a tooth brush. Sat on the other side of the middle seat, but his breath filled the air and stood still like a living creature that brought tears to your eyes. Got a glimpse of his teeth as he shouted on his phone. 1/2 inch thick with plaque from years of eating forbidden fish and ass meat.