Spiff is dead.

Long live Spiff!

My old 1992 Geo Metro had been on its last wheels for some time. The engine was still in good shape, true, but the brakes were starting to get a bit rough, the suspension was rocky and made a continuous "miffed mouse" sort of squeaking noise which really disturbed me (especially as it was audible even when I was driving 70 MPH down I-5), and the electrical system, never perfect to begin with, was developing a few shorts that were starting to irritate me. And, one day last week, while driving to work, the engine just stopped. The "Maintenance Required" light flashed, and all of a sudden… Nothing. The car was still moving under its momentum, the electrical system was still functioning, but the engine had simply ceased to be a factor. I pulled over to the side of the road, worried that it might have seized up on me or something, but when I turned the ignition key, the engine started up again just fine. I gave it no more serious thought for the rest of the day, but informed Jennifer once I got to work and had Instant Messenger going that it might be time to consider buying a new car. So that evening, we went to several different dealerships, test drove a few different cars, and we both fell in love with the dark green 2001 Honda Accord LX. After a few hours spent hammering out financial details, we drove home after midnight that night in our new car, followed by the salesman from the Honda dealership who had to come to our house to pick up the title to the Geo.

Spiff II is the first new car I’ve ever owned. Every other car in my life that I’ve ever had has been at least six years old when I purchased it. My old Datsun pick up truck (remember Datsun? They turned into Nissan at some point when someone realized that Datsun was a dirty word in Japanese, or something like that) was nearly ten years old when my parents gave it to me; it was a canary yellow truck with a white and brown camper shell and two front fenders that had, through various accidents and misfortunes, been replaced with primer-black ones. It looked like a big bumblebee. I named this truck Nero, after my uncle’s old basset hound. When he asked me, "Why Nero?", I told my uncle that it was because the truck’s acceleration, like the dog’s, was iffy. "It’s not so much the acceleration that’s a problem with the dog," my uncle replied; "it’s getting him to stop once he does get moving." So I said, "Yep, and the truck’s brakes aren’t that good either."

When Nero died the death of a thousand head cracks on I-80 on the way to Fairfield, my parents bought me my second car: a 1981 Honda Accord hatchback. This thing was tiny. I named it Emmet MacNero, because it was the color of Emmet’s Irish Creme, and was the "son" of Nero. I drove that Honda into the ground; for the last two years of its life with me, it was not allowed to drive on the highways, because its CV joints were shot to hell and I was never able to afford replacing them. I finally got sick of a car that wasn’t really street-legal, so I eventually was able, somehow, to get a car loan from my bank, and I bought Spiff. I got $250 trade-in value for Emmet. Which was much more than I actually god for Spiff.

Jennifer’s family has a tradition of naming vehicles, and each vehicle that the owner has gets the same name; Jennifer has Lucy, and each car she has even owned has been called Lucy. I can’t really bring myself to use the same naming convention with regards to my cars, but I did like the name Spiff — named after Spaceman Spiff, Calvin’s alter-ego in Calvin and Hobbes, the great comic strip of all time. So I decided that this new Honda is Spiff II.

I’m not really into cars or driving. I can recognize a Porsche on the road, as long as it’s clearly marked "Porsche" (otherwise, I’m liable to mistake it for a Camaro); I am quite capable of drooling over a 2001 Jaguar SLE; and I once drove a 1967 Karmenn Gia, which gave me quite a thrill. But cars just don’t do it for me. I know that calls my masculinity and possibly my sexual orientation into question, but it’s true, and I’m secure in it.

But I tell you… Driving this new Honda is a blast. Driving a car which responds to the gas pedal, which can take turns without shaking, which has an air conditioner, doors that open and windows that roll down, and can brake without protesting… It may be enough to make me think that perhaps driving can be fun, after all.

Flying up here this week was quite a memorable experience. I wound up taking a later flight from Sacramento because I had forgotten to make my flight reservations on time last week. But this later flight was one of the most memorable of the dozens of trips that I’ve taken over the past three months.

For one thing, Carlos Santana was on the same flight with me. I, personally, didn’t recognize him at all, not being a fan of Carlos Santana, but his presence seemed to have inspired the entire flight crew. The pilot serenaded us with a couple of songs of his own about taking off and landing, while the lead stewardess showed off her improvisational comedy skills while reading the passengers the safety instructions. "Be sure to keep your seat in the most upright and uncomfortable position possible," she announced, "and if you’re seated next to a small child or next to someone simply acting like a small child, secure your own oxygen mask first before securing your child’s or husband’s." It was the first time I’d ever heard the stewardess’s safety instruction speech applauded; it was also the first time I’d ever seen all of the passengers actually pay attention to the instructions.

It turned out that Carlos Santana had just performed in Sacramento the night before I flew up here, and that he was going to perform the following night in Portland. Opening for Santana would be the band Everlast… who also happened to be staying in the same hotel that I was in during this final week. I like the band Everlast, but I didn’t get to see them or party with them at all, unfortunately.

Meanwhile, I have fantasies and dreams of what things will be like for me when I finally am back in California full-time. I fantasize that I’ll be able to go back to the workout program, that I’ll be able to tutor literacy again, that I’ll be able to spend my evenings with Jennifer and go back to learning how to program in Java, C++, or PHP. These may all be pipe dreams, though; it’s not unusual for me to put in fourteen or sixteen hour days while up here in Portland, and there really isn’t any reason to expect that that will change just because I’m in my home state; my boss, in fact, informs me that the stress level will be "turned up a notch" starting in December. And, unfortunately, it looks like I’ll be doing HTML and front end design only for all of that time.

I’ll miss my window seat here at my picnic table, looking out at the hills to the north of Portland. The leaves on all of the trees on the hillside are turning now, and I love looking out at the trees overhanging the mixture of old and new buildings. And it’s raining up here today; apparently it’s also raining down in Sacramento, from what I hear.

I found the above quote about three years ago when I was looking up information about Jim Henson, just for the hell of it. Jim Henson is one of the very few people outside of my family whose death made me cry; and I had seen a biography on television about him and decided that I was going to do some research about him on my own. I have always admired the great storytellers; George Lucas, J. R. R. Tolkein, among others. And Jim Henson, I thought, did a wonderful job of creating imaginary worlds that reflected positively on our own. I discovered the above quote, and found it very inspirational. Since I found it, it’s been on every incarnation of my personal website, and I’ve tried to live up to it. Sometimes I succeed. More often, I fail. I am usually fairly positive about about the world around me and about the people around me, but I frequently fail in being positive about my work. It’s an attitude thing, boy, and changing attitudes ain’t like dustin’ crops. It’s something that needs to be worked on. Daily. It was very hard for me to maintain a positive attitude towards work this past week, but after two relatively light days spent at home instead of in Portland or in the office in Sacramento, it’s easier. A lot easier.

Speaking of Jim Henson, I saw Muppets From Space the other day on HBO. I’d never seen that film before, and I enjoyed it. Of course, the original Muppet Movie is the best of all of the muppet films, in my opinion, but they’re all a lot of fun. The only thing that I wasn’t thrilled with about Muppets From Space was having the mystery of Gonzo removed. After all, what’s life without a little mystery?

Speaking of movies, last night I took my best friend, his wife, and their housemate to see the re-release of The Exorcist. I’ve always been creeped out by that movie (and anyone who knows me knows that I love horror movies and being creeped out); but The Exorcist is a hell of a lot scarier when you see it on the big screen. There was one scene which had been deleted from the original release but was restored in this version which made my friend turn to me and say, "Richard, that was probably the scariest scene I have ever seen in any film. Ever." I would have to agree; the scene in The Sixth Sense with the little girl (you know which one I mean) was the only scene in any movie that actually made me cry out when I saw it, but this scene in The Exorcist was one of the most disturbing I’ve ever seen. I’m not going to reveal it here, because you (a) have already seen the re-release and know exactly what I’m talking about; or, (b) haven’t seen it and don’t want it spoiled; or, (c) don’t intend on ever seeing it and don’t really care to know what scene I’m talking about.

On a different note entirely. One thing that I miss greatly is running role-playing games like Advanced Dungeons and Dragons or Vampire: The Masquerade. I miss creating vivid and complex worlds — sometimes horrifying, sometimes ludicrous, usually, at least, interesting — and allowing other people to explore them. Creating new worlds on the spot for my players to explore was always a fun and interesting challenge, and it was always exciting to see the look on someone’s face when they "got" something that was going on in my head. I love creating new stories and plots and situations for players to examine and investigate. I told my friends last night that I am considering reviving a particular game that I had run last year called Unfallen — it was probably the most complex plot I’d ever devised for a role-playing game, and I was very proud of how I’d set up the scenario, but the game went on indefinite hold because half of my players left town. Alas, though, I think that my days of running long, involved role-playing games are probably over.

Or perhaps not. Unfallen may find new life as a novel instead of a role-playing game, but I still have some stories inside of me that would best be told to a few people who are willing to explore them with me.

Jennifer will be home in less than two hours. I’ve loved a lot of people in my life, some of them very deeply, and all of the people that I’ve loved have made an indelible impression on me, and I’m a better person for having loved all of them. But I can honestly say that I’ve never loved anyone as deeply as I love Jennifer. In the past when I have lived with women that I’ve loved, I’ve always looked forward to having time to myself; when one of them went on a three-day conference in another state, I was thrilled at having the house to myself and having the time to do anything I wanted. But with Jennifer, it’s entirely different; I enjoy my solitude and the time I can spend with myself, but I much prefer having her there. She actually enhances my life in ways I’d never imagined possible. This is a rare feeling. And I know how incredibly lucky I am to have found her.

Hey, I never promised that every journal entry would be coherent, or, indeed, at all interesting…

My flight from Portland to Sacramento has been delayed by about half an hour, and I am pretty happy about that. It’s given me this chance to sit and relax in a place that isn’t a hotel room, for just a few minutes.

I’ve done more traveling in the past three months than I have throughout the rest of my entire life. No matter where I’ve gone, I am truly amazed by how many people there are in the world. And it’s amazing how different they all are from each other. I had grown up in small suburban towns surrounding San Jose, California; and I spent thirteen years in Davis, California, a college town of about 50,000 people. So I’m used to throngs of people, but not the teeming throngs like I’ve encountered in Portland and Boston. I imagine that if I ever end up in New York or London or Paris, I’ll encounter even larger groups of people, and be amazed all over again.

"The Human Aquarium" is what my boss called Boston. While we walked down Newbury Street looking for a pub, we must have passed hundreds of people milling around; business people in expensive clothes, homeless people pushing shopping carts, college students with pink hair and ripped clothing, and so on. While we drank our beers, I sat back and watched the crowds passing outside, impressed by the sheer numbers of people, and how none of them looked like anyone I knew. One of the cool things about having lived in Davis for so long is that I could go anywhere in the town and see at least two or three people that I knew. I wouldn’t always talk to them or spend time with them, but I would at least wave and exchange a greeting with them. The same is true, to a lesser extent, in some of the major cities of California: if I were to spend a day in San Jose, I’d see at least one person I knew; and the same is true of San Francisco and Berkeley. It might even be true for Los Angeles; but since I have no intention of ever going to that city of my own will, I don’t expect to find out.

But in Boston, there was not a single familiar face who did not work for the same company that I work for. Perhaps it’s just my small-town breeding showing, but I really found this remarkable.

Right now it’s the middle of the day; an unusual time for me to be here at Portland International Airport. There’s definitely a different crowd here than when I arrive early on a Monday or leave late on a Thursday or Friday. For one thing, there are many more older people, and fewer business people. And the business people I’m seeing are of a different stripe than the ones I normally see; instead of really expensive suits and rich leather briefcases, they’re generally wearing jeans and faded shirts, carrying backpacks or imitation leather briefcases. They’re still making calls on their cell phones, of course; but now they’re older model cell phones, instead of the shiny Ericcson or Qualcomms with the headsets or the mouthpiece that dangles from the earpiece like a wire with a bulge in it. I notice that I’m the only one here with my laptop out and running; usually it’s the other way around. I’m usually the only one who hasn’t got my laptop out. Well, at least I’m not working.

There are a lot of individual personalities here; the business man who grunted at me when I tried to make a joke with him while waiting in line is now sitting sipping a cherry Slurpee and reading Alice in Wonderland; a woman across the concourse is wearing the ugliest dress I can conceive of, proving once again that the divide between what men find attractive and what women think that men find attractive is frequently vast; that business man over there, the only one wearing an expensive suit, has complemented his suit with a Scooby-Doo necktie. THere are a few people with frustrated, angry looks on their faces — and all too frequently of late I’ve been one of them — but most of the people here are just looking around, or even smiling.

I hold a number of unpopular opinions of people. For example, I generally believe that people aren’t all that stupid (well, at least no stupider than I am), and that most people are capable of extraordinary accomplishments; that everyone has the ability to be happy, and that many people actually are; and I believe that, if given the choice, almost everyone would choose to be good. My own experiences with people have generally born out the validity of these opinions.

Fifteen minutes later, and I’m finishing up this entry. I’ve just had a conversation with someone I recognized after all; my former boss from one of my previous positions at the University. The first person from Davis that I’ve recognized here in Portland; she’s headed up to Spokane, so she and I won’t be on the same flight, but it was surprising to see someone else here that I know. Perhaps this human aquarium that I share with everyone else isn’t as large as I originally thought.

Flying across the country at night is a relatively rare experience for me. I think I did it once before that I can remember, about thirteen years ago when I flew to Florida with my late grandfather. That time, as the plane came close to San Jose Airport, I looked out the window of the plane down onto the city of San Jose and remarked that it looked like some sort of phosphorescent, cancerous ameoba.

I was not very poetic when I was 19.

Our flight last night took my boss and I from Boston to Denver, and from Denver to Sacramento. For the first half hour or so from Denver, my boss and I had a good conversation, about the vision for our company, about my own concerns regarding the development of my own career, about his wife and my fiance, about life in general. The he moved across the aisle to an empty row so that he could stretch out and sleep. I leaned my seat back and looked out the window, trying to sleep (after having slept only about two hours in the previous fifty or so) but I found myself staring at the lights of the cities below.

The stretch from Carson City, Nevada, to Sacramento, California, is a pretty empty one, sparsely inhabited, with no major cities or towns. The flight took us over Lake Tahoe, and there were plenty of lights there, but, for the most part, it was empty. With no lights and with no moon out, the land beneath the plane was black; it was like flying through emptiness.

But then, a few lights. I have no idea whether it was a city I was looking at or a trailer park or an air force base or something else entirely, but there were lights. Not the huge grouping of yellow lights that marks a large city or even a small town, but a field of widely distanced mostly white lights that actually twinkled. I could see no pattern to them, and no distinguishing geological features near them; no mountains, trees, bodies of water, or anything. For a crazy moment, I thought that the plane had somehow flipped over and that we were flying upside-down and that I was now looking at the stars in the sky. Then I realized that gravity was still working normally and that there were no cries of panic from the other passengers or the crew; I deduced that we were indeed still properly aligned in the air and that I was seeing these lights on the ground. I have no idea what I was looking down on but these lights were exactly like looking at the sky on a clear night.

Nine hours later, I’m on the plane again, this time headed back up to Portland from Sacramento. While I was sitting in the airport waiting for the cattle call to Southwest Airlines to begin, I came up with a million reasons for not flying out: I’d forgotten to change the litter boxes, I should have made the bed before leaving, I left my Palm Pilot at home. But I have a lot of work to do in Portland this week and several meetings to attend, so I can’t really avoid this. Besides, I’ve planned to have dinner tomorrow night with Jennifer’s father, and the chance to spend some time with my future father-in-law, whose company I really enjoy, will make it worth it.

The view from outside the airplane window this morning is certainly different than last night. Most of California and Oregon is cloud-covered. No matter how weary I am of this weekly commute up to Oregon (thankfully I only have two weeks left), I will never get tired of seeing the sunlight play across the tops of the clouds. It’s a beautiful sight, like the starfield we flew over last night. I can stare down on them, on the bright whiteness and occasional blues or browns or greens of the mountains beneath the clouds, and feel the stress of the past week and the apprehension of the stress of the next two weeks starting to fall away — down, down into the stars.

5:00 p.m., Boston time. The materials that we need to set up our booth for this medical meeting (i.e., "trade show") have yet to show up; they were supposed to be here at 1:00. We’ve been here since noon, waiting for these materials to show up. We can’t do a whole lot without the materials, though we were able to set up our network with our bridge and router, and we could test our network connection.

I arrived here in Boston at about 8:30 last night, local time. My plan was originally to spend a couple of hours wandering around, but as soon as I showed up I received a voice mail from our product manager informing me of a bug on the microsite we had built for this conference. I spent a couple of hours fixing that, and was finally able to take a break and head over to a great seafood place for a late dinner. Best flounder I’ve ever had (okay, the only flounder I’ve ever had) and the best Boston Cream Pie I’ve ever had as well. The restaurant is right across the street from the hotel, so I didn’t get to see much of the city, but what I did see was nice.

While waiting for the materials to show up for the booth, my boss and I decided to take a walk along Newbury Street. A historical street with plenty of old brick buildings; I took a couple of photographs with the digital camera I’d borrowed from Jennifer. We sat in a pub and had a beer while watching what my boss called "the human aquarium" wander past. Then we walked back, enjoying the weather and chatting about the company and plans for further expansion of our product.

The booth took five hours to assemble. Just when we thought it was finished, we found a critical bug in the product; as the only developer on site, it fell to me to fix. Spent a couple of hours doing that, while the rest of the group went to a local bakery for a late dessert (about 10:00 p.m. out here by the time the booth was complete). The sales manager thoughtfully brought me some ice cream cake from the bakery which I ate while working on the bug and watching X-Men on the hotel’s movie channel. The repaired files have been QA’ed but have yet to be migrated to our production server; hopefully that will happen before the conference begins tomorrow, which means by 5:00 a.m. PST tomorrow.

Hopefully, things will go more smoothly tomorrow. I’m not entirely sure what my job will be tomorrow, aside from acting as a "floater", and making any repairs to the product that might happen to crop up during the day. It’s become apparent that when we go to these shows, it will probably be necessary to have a developer along to make on-the-spot repairs when they come up.

About 12:30 a.m. now, Boston time. Tomorrow starts with a 7:00 breakfast meeting to review what we’ve planned for the day. Nothing major calls right now, no repairs and no upgrades. With the final release of our new data architecture complete this past weekend, hopefully my work schedule will calm down a bit. I don’t expect that it really will, since we have lots of product enhancements to put into place. But who knows.

For dinner tomorrow we’ve planned to go to Brew Moon; I’m hoping to walk down Newbury Street tomorrow night because I have the feeling it would be a beautiful walk. While walking back to the hotel this evening I saw a church with a beautiful gargoyle holding up a flagpole; I took a picture of it, and I hope that it will come out well. Jennifer and I both appreciate gargoyles, and this was a beautiful one.

Our network administrator took a picture of me with the company digital camera. I made a face while he did so; when the picture displayed on the computer, it became apparent that the church I passed did not have the only gargoyle in Beantown tonight.