11 January 1999: Return to California

Monday, 11 January 1999:

Return to California

I took a few more days off to take a long weekend in California, visiting my friend John in the Bay area. Yeah, I know a couple of you reading this are also friends of mine in that same area, but I was only there three days, and as often seems to happen on vacations, my time filled up way too quickly. Not to mention that when I was on my Boston vacation I was just too darned lazy to try to coordinate cramming more stuff into a quick West Coast trip.

So, maybe next time. There are just too few vacations in this world, regrettably. How long until I retire?

Needless to say, though, going from zero degrees and eight inches of snow in Madison to fifty-plus degrees and sun in California sure was nice. I had a fine time hanging out with John and his friends, many of whom started turning up the "pressure" to encourage me to move out there. And... it's certainly tempting. We'll see.

And I certainly had great travelling weather for my holidays, missing all the snow on my Boston trip, and missing almost all the inclement weather (plus, apparently, cancellations on Northwest; I was flying United) on the California jaunt. Can't beat that with a stick!

I was also rather proud of myself that I managed to pack all my stuff for the trip into one carry-on bag, which certainly made the journey a lot more convenient. I even managed to pack just the correct number of books, as I finished the book I was working on when I left, read the second book I brought, and got partway through the third.

(I was rather annoyed when I got home and had a message on the machine which simply had someone saying, "I'm looking for the home of Mr. Rawdon. Is this Mr. Rawdon's neighborhood?" Click. How aggravating. I wonder if it was someone I know? I'm awful at distinguishing voices on the phone, and often get confused when someone phones me at home or at work without identifying themselves. Still, I do have a slightly smartass message on my machine right now - mainly motivated by all the calls I used to get from people who obviously couldn't infer from my messages that their intended recipient doesn't live here - so maybe the caller was just honked off at me. Ah, adventures in the communications age.)

Okay, about those books: Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn is still highly recommended. It's clearly a book with an agenda, but it's an agenda I can get behind, and it's filled with terrific photos (many of them of the same sites shown over time, both inside and outside) and some great historical comments. The book only slows down towards the end, when Brand starts talking in greater detail about approaches to improve building design, many of which I felt were more-or-less self-evident from the earlier chapters. But overall it's terrific fun. The author bio says the BBC made a six-part TV show based on the book; wonder how I could get a copy?

Second, I read Pat Murphy's Nebula-award winning novel The Falling Woman. This book has one fundamental problem: It's not really about anything, and comes close to being plotless. Its core drama revolves around an archaeologist - Liz - and her estranged daughter Diane, and the fact that Liz is communicating with the ghost of a Mayan woman. But the mother/daughter conflict is not only not resolved, it ends up pretty close to where it started, and the link between Liz and the ghost pretty much goes nowhere. There's some talk about how a major cycle of the Mayan calendar is ending both in the ghost woman's time and in Liz', but the implications of that ending are not really explored.

The book is very well-written, albeit with a somewhat detached air (neither Liz nor Diane - who narrate the book by turns - seem terribly involved in what they're doing), and the background of Mayan civilization and the archaeological skills used in examining it are both quite interesting. But overall I felt it was a book with a neat premise that didn't really do anything with that premise. I definitely preferred Murphy's The City, Not Long After.

Finally, I've started reading David Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, on which the TV show Homicide is based. Several of the show's plots are taken directly from the true crime book about the Baltimore PD's homicide unit; one episode's "B story" in the current season was lifted directly from a one-paragraph aside about a fairly minor case. The book can be very powerful and entertaining - even funny - but it can also be rather dry at times.

Speaking of Homicide, I've started catching up on the episodes I taped over the weekend, including a keystone first season episode, plus Friday's first-run episode, which was quite good, especially the scenes with Lewis. I'm glad I'm watching this show.

Going back to work was relatively painless; I finished up a small bit from last week which spilled over into this morning, patched up a small problem in an internal system that a QAer brought to my attention, and began work on my next major project, which I'm looking forward to. This is the latest chunk of a module which I've enjoyed working on because I've been able to apply all of my experience building the application to get it about as "right" as any part of the system is. There are certainly things I'd change if I could, but overall I think we - and I - did a good job on it.

And yes, the cats were of course very happy to see me when I came home yesterday. Cuties!

Now, if only I can make a stab at catching up on my e-mail this week... you would not believe how far behind I am...

Michael Rawdon (Contact)