Every birthday, my Dad would come up with something special about
the number.

Nine: “Three squared!” Ten: “Double digits!” Thirteen: “A Fibonacci number!”
You get the idea.

Clearly, I was doomed from an early age.

Even when I had moved out of the house, he would come up with something during
the traditional Birthday Phone Call. Sometimes he had to reach a bit.
Twenty-three: “A prime number… and you won’t be prime again for six more
years!”

Last year was a bit tough. To get anything significant for twenty-six, you have
to turn to Gematria,
the ancient art of Hebrew numerology. Twenty-six figures
prominently throughout the Torah: among other things, it’s the numerical
representation of the name of God (YAHWEH), the number of generations from Adam
to Moses, and the number of lines that it takes to list the Ten Commandments in the
Torah (I bet you thought it was ten).

Well, this year Dad didn’t have to work too hard. “Three cubed!” I was a bit
concerned about next year, until my cousin pointed out that
twenty-eight is one of those rare
perfect numbers,
the next one being 496.

A perfect number! So much to look forward to…

The National Book Award for fiction went to
Jonathan Franzen this year. Makes me wonder, was that just a little “fuck you”
from the National Book Foundation to
to those who are not proper members of the high-art literary tradition? Hmmmm.
Regardless, I have to admire Franzen… he’s clearly a lot savvier than I initially gave
him credit for. No such thing as bad press and all.

But Franzen is not the only budding young genius in America today. Take Randy.
Randy had a great idea this week. We’re all going down to Santa Cruz and a place
called Zelda’s for breakfast Saturday morning. It’s a bit far to go, but Randy
pointed out that there’s nothing better than coffee and cigarettes on a brisk Saturday
morning by the ocean… except maybe if the coffee is served by attractive young
women in small T-shirts. Who can argue with logic like that?

Perhaps I’ll bring a chess set.

There is another place we all used to go to for a Long Breakfast — Crepes on Cole, which
just happens to be a crepes place on Cole St. in San Francisco. As a bonafide
weenie South Bay person, I used to feel very cool driving up to San Francisco
and twisting through all these side streets to get to this nice little
restaurant. Of course, it was pretty crowded. Which meant it probably wasn’t
obscure or hip enough, but what the heck? It made me happy. I have low standards,
and more importantly, so do my friends.

Problem is, I always let Pat drive. Which meant that last year, when Rachel and Ben
were visiting, I tried to take them to Crepes on Cole. And you guessed it — I missed
a turn and we got lost. Bam! There went all my SF hipness, gone in a flash.
Fortunately, after we goofed off most of the day, Rachel insisted that we drive the
Golden Gate bridge. I was a bit dubious. But Ben was no help at all, and Rachel…
well, let’s just say that if that girl wants to cross a bridge, ain’t nobody stoppin’
her from crossing that bridge.

So we crossed the Golden Gate at sunset and the bridge performed on cue. Spectacular.
San Francisco saves the day (and my hipness) once again! Although I could have sworn I heard it
snickering as we drove out of the city. Or was that Rachel in the back seat? Hard to say.

For Halloween, we had a whopping four trick-or-treaters. One small child, three
teenage girls. At least they all wore costumes… I heard that in
Sunnyvale, kids were just wandering around in street clothes. Is Halloween
getting worse every year? Is anyone even trying?

We saw “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Sleepy Hollow”. I hadn’t seen
“Sleepy Hollow” before… not a bad flick. Is it just me, or did both of
the scarecrows in “Sleepy Hollow” look like Jack Skellington (with and without
pumpkin head?) One thing bothered me… Ichabod Crane struck me as
a bit inconsistent. I mean, in one scene he’s in hand-to-hand combat with
an invincible headless ghost. And a few scenes later he’s up on a chair, frightened
of a large spider. What gives?

Anyway, we had Nancy’s chili and Don Little’s garlic tri-tip. And plenty of
leftover Halloween candy.

As for my birthday, that went… ummmm… rather well. Friday night we
went out as planned. We went into the back room of La Bodeguita del Medio.
Everyone bought me free drinks. And I smoked a cigar. It was very Gentleman’s
Club (but not the strip-club-with-plush-chairs variety). Then we went
to F&A’s. Mental note: if you decide to regress about seven years and
drink past your limit, make sure you have lots of good friends around to
apologize to Security and haul your sick, sorry butt home. Woo! Do I still
know how to party or what? Sad, sad, sad.

Well, presumably the next time this happens, in another seven years, it will
be for a more noble cause. “Drink all ze mojitos, Señor Goer…
or ze hostages die!”

The BBQ the next day went on, although I was thinking of cancelling it up until
about three hours before. Renee King showed up briefly! She was on her way to a wedding
reception. And she seemed unimpressed by the fact that there were only two other guests
when she arrived. Well, Renee, if you’d only come an hour and a half late like all the
cool people… Boy, that lady knows how to kick a man when he’s hung over
and down. That husband of hers, Whatshisname, is clearly a bad influence.

I should mention that due to my
weakened condition, I specifically requested “Number” candles on my cake, rather
than lots of little ones. I hope this is not a sign of things to come.

Fortunately, although I did not make it to the store, my friends covered for me
admirably. Barbara showed up right on time with piping hot baked potatoes
and all the fixings, just when I was thinking, “Damn, we need a starch.” I
don’t know how she managed to keep those potatoes hot all the way from
Campbell. That woman defies the laws of Thermodynamics.

Hmmmm… better add “defies laws of Thermodynamics” to The List.

I found a picture of me
and Amber on
Marissa’s website. That was
the day I handed Marissa her belated birthday gift, a handy-dandy Rebellious Young
Writer’s Manifesto Kit (TM).
At first, I was encouraged by her enthusiasm. But lately, I’ve been disappointed in her.
She hasn’t been rushing out and organizing meetings, distributing flyers, writing angry screeds,
and promoting The Movement. No, it seems she’s been buckling down
and writing fiction. What the heck is up with that?

I wonder if I’ll have any trick-or-treaters this year? It seems unlikely, since my townhouse
is essentially part of a retirement community. But you never know. At least Mike complimented
me on my jack-o-lanterns. He seemed impressed that I could carve one with curvy features using
just a regular kitchen knife. I don’t know how I accomplished this monumental feat.
Maybe I was channeling the spirit of Martha Stewart. That’s right, Mike! Fear my l33t
pumpkin-carving skillz!

Anyway, folks are coming over in a about an hour to watch scary movies and eat some
pasta and garlic bread. Time to cut this short.

Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I’m working. I do that for probably
another hour after lunch too… I’d say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen
minutes of real, actual, work. – Peter Gibbons, “Office Space”

I had an interesting conversation with Mike the other day about billable
hours. Lawyers at his firm bill in increments of
0.1 hours. That forces him to be highly conscious of his time.

So I thought it would be interesting to try recording what I did in a day at work. Just as
an experiment.

The results were less than inspiring. Once I subtracted lunch, websurfing, non-work related
emails, walks around the building, and office chit-chat, I discovered that I had worked for
a whopping 4.2 hours. Now I’d had a vague feeling for a while that I haven’t been working
too hard lately, but to see it in such a cold, quantitative form was very unsettling.

My Tuesday night poker buddies put this into perspective. Justin is a UI team manager for
Ebay. “You know, Evan,” Justin said, “when I was a consultant, I worked about fifteen
minutes a day. I just worked at home, swam in the pool, and answered a few emails. For
about a year. But now that I’m a manager… I have no time for chit-chat. I do at least
12 hours of real work a day. No goofing off at all.”

Aha! So the lesson here is, don’t goof off too much, or they just might turn you into a
manager, and God help you then.

So I shall endeavor to do better. In the meantime, let me leave you with this error
message that I received today from Sun’s internal bug tracking tool (edited slightly
to remove uninformative numbers and process IDs):

SQL Server error: Your server command was deadlocked with another
process and has been chosen as deadlock victim. Re-run your command.

“Deadlock victim”. I love it. As far as I can tell, this means: I submitted
a command. Some chump elsewhere in the company submitted a command at about
the same time. And the other guy’s process totally kicked my process’s ass.
That if nothing else tells me that I need to shape up, and fast.