(from 2000)

Mahlen Morris's weblog from 2000, in newer-items-at-the-top style. (All the links to places on the site are broken and just being kept for history.)

Tonight Diane's old friend Nila from L.A. came and visited us for the evening. We had a wonderful dinner at Ti Couz in the Mission, where we (gasp!) easily found parking right where we wanted to be. Then we took BART up to Powell St. to see the tree at Union Square, stumbled across a very odd public lighting of the huge Bill Graham menorah (music by a duo playing guitar and bongos), then went to the St. Francis Hotel to look to look at their display of Santa's, and then did just a bit of shopping (it wasn't nearly as crazy crowded as I had expected), though I must say that for myself, I buy much more for myself than I do for anyone else during the Christmas shopping time. A very nice time with a friend.

To those of you who were under the impression that the glory days of ecommerce are long dead, that only Amazon and eBay would be left standing from the Great Y2K Internet Shakeout, well, I have news for you. Today (the 23rd) we found out that our nephew Jonathan wanted a frog umbrella for Christmas. We checked with a couple local Sanrio stores by phone, but their frog character Keroppi was been discontinued. So I searched for 'frog umbrella' on Google, and, but of course, Frogstore.com came up, and had just the thing we sought. Ahhhh, the glory is still with us, my friends, it's just gotten more specialized and odd. Let a thousand quirky online mall shops bloom.

Since I'm sitting on a 38L typing this, I'm reminded of an interesting trip I had on the 38L a few months ago. I was taking that bus to Van Ness for an errand before work. The driver was calling out the stops in a very smooth, FM jazz radio voice. When we pulled out of Fillmore Street, he says, "Next stop, Van Ness. This is the 38 Limited, we make limited stops only, so if we pass your stop, who really cares, we're going to Van Ness." This was a pretty unusually funny thing for a driver to say, if you don't know.

So then i did my errand, and caught another 38L. This driver was not nearly as jovial as the first (I'm told the 38 line schedules are notoriously tough to meet and thus very stressful), and ends up in a cursing match with a construction worker trying to flag a huge truck into the path of our bus. Then we inch towards Market, and the side of Market we need to merge onto is packed with trains and buses. So, instead of merging, our driver slowly peeps the bus out into Market, and then suddenly guns the bus (and this is a big honking bus, too) into the left-side lane, that is, driving on the wrong side of the street. Since we, the passengers, had just witnessed this guy's temper, there was a slight feeling passed around that we may be doomed. Amazingly, no oncoming traffic came into our lane, and the driver timed the light so that just as it turned green we crossed the street. Then we passengers looked around amongst ourselves sort of smugly, having collectively bypassed and beaten that huge delay.

It's an Ahnuld movie, so natch there's explosions and big muscles and vaguely futuristic stuff and his silly accent that no one comments on. And it's basically a slight twist on his previous Total Recall, so there's a lot of implausable biological science and amusing mind-games with the plot. But it made us forget about mortgage payments and renovations for a few hours, and it wasn't bad or embarrassing to watch, so it's worth seeing, if (as in our case), the people you're with can't find another movie that none of you has seen before or you all have very different tastes. Diane says, "It's a great action flick", and you better listen to her, cause she's my wife!

I am currently sitting on a 38L bus (which will surely be my best friend and most frequent haunt if we get this house on 44th Ave), using my newest my-work-paid-for-it gizmo, the folding pocket-sized keyboard for my Palm, which is basically a laptop keyboard that does nifty Transformer-like things to get small enough to fit in a large-ish pocket (it's a little bit larger than my Palm IIIx). While it's a bit cramped trying to type in this small space (my bus seat) and it's making me realize how shaky this bus is, it is kinda handy, and it is soooo cool to fold and unfold that I feel compelled to do so a few times each day.

And, now having written this, I can easily say that I wouldn't be this verbose if I was trying to use the little stylus to enter this. It was for more easily doing site updates like tis that i bought the keyboard and the wireless cable.

Yesterday (Wednesday) there were three inspectors (fireplace, general, and energy) who came by the new house to give us their assesements of the house on 44th Ave. Overall, their impressions we're quite good, certainly good enough to move in with, although there are a few things we'll want to deal with before too long. But hearing words like "anchor bolts", "permits", and "cracks" and realizing that all of this is our responsibilty and problem,well, heh, yeah. The process moves on...

Whatever that means. Yup, we're in escrow over this house in Sutro Heights, San Francisco. Cool beans, huh?

Yes, the mind-losing process is in full swing. Not only have we been pre-approved for a home loan, but we last night put down our first bid on a near house in Sutro Heights (near the Cliff House). Don't know when we'll find out about it...

The site's been down for a little while, due to me finagling and misconfiguring my home network something fierce, but everything that's important is back up. You didn't miss anything, I've been far too busy with work to do any site stuff. I know, what's wrong with my priorities these days; the site should come first.

This is a Hollywood remake of the classic (and to be honest, much better) Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore 1967 film of the same name. While this version was a bit more fluffy and sappy, it was still fairly decent, as a man who sells his soul to the devil for seven wishes attepts to get the girl he longs for, but finds that Satan has some clever ways to twist the words of his wishes around. Lots of footage shot in San Francisco, which, of course, we can look at any day, but for mysterious reasons is fun to see in a movie.

This is a fascinating book on the environmental and social circumstances that can make an idea become widely known and believed. He derives a small set of needed conditions and three basic principlies from a variety of phenomenon, including a syphillis epidemic, Sesame Street, Paul Revere's ride, the accidental resurgence in popularity of Hush Puppies, the fall in NYC crime rates, and the unabated popularity of smoking. Really makes you look at the whole spreading of ideas in a new way, and makes you look at your friends and wonder, "Salesman? Maven? Connector?" Really interesting, and being widely read at my work.

We saw this comedy concert film a while ago. It is very funny, with some very pointed lines, almost none of which i can remember or repeat on a "family" website like this. The material was remarkably candid in it's discussion of race, in a way that almost no one is in America, so there are some "HAHAHAHA, whoa, am I supposed to laugh at that?" moments. Not only funny and entertaining, but a glimpse, for me, of how the black world sees the country.

Yup, I forgot to notice myself in all the excitement (you know, of life), but mahlen.org has now been up for a whole year! While we have the difficult slow periods and I probably don't update as often as I'd like (for example, there's a whole trip to Tahoe I haven't mentioned, and I'm behind on reviewing books and movies and, oh, I'll stop with the self-flagellation), still, I'm glad that this hasn't gone completely dormant like most personal sites, that some people have actually reached me through the "Where's Mahlen" page, and that Mom can see all the pictures of us that she could possibly want.

As a side note, you may have noticed that I never talk about my job at Yalta Communications. That is largely due to the fact that I've discovered that anyone looking for info on Yalta Communications (like, oh, say, anyone interviewing there) tends to stumble across this site (hey there!), since we really haven't announced our existance yet. So, that makes me a bit hesitant to discuss the ups and downs of life at an emerging company, even though things have been pretty good from where I stand. But Marcel, one of my fellow engineers there, was fishing for ideas on how to get his mom on the Web, as she resists the thing and has no compelling reason to be online. I advised him to put up a personal website, with pictures (excuse to buy a digital camera!) of himself, and then Mom would come and check the site every day. The notion of compelling content is a very personal thing...

On Tuesday, Diane and I went to the Great American Music Hall to see the Bulgarian Women's Choir (often known as Le Mystere des Voix Bulgare). I've seen them several times before, and they were great this time, as usual, although this was the first time I'd seen them with male conductor. This performance had a back to basics feel to it; no instruments, no pop tunes. On the other hand, there were two non-traditional pieces unlike anything I'd heard before, with a very modern symphonic sound, sometimes recalling Aaron Copeland. In those pieces the 19 women were singing in contrasting rhythms and phrases, as well as the usual dissonant chords, and at points you just couldn't believe they could hold it together; but they did. I'm eagerly seeking the new album, as this was another emotional landslide for me; i was in tears by the third song.

Well, it worked! Thanks to a new cable from Syncable Solutions, I can now use any web site and even add news to this site wirelessly; i am writing this now on a 38L bus. The cable links between my Palm IIIx and my work-supplied cell phone. So expect me to update more often but more consisely, as writing with the Palm is still a pain.

I'm updating this page wirelessly. More when i see if it works!

(That title is an in joke for my bro' Clark, don't cha know). This web site has been very infrequently up this last weekend, and will probably continue to be somewhat flaky for some time. That's because I've been putting together a little home network to incorporate Diane's new laptop into the framework of our main computer's printer/DSL/file world, and boy, it's not as simple as just connecting wires together, no sir. But it's up if you're reading this, so count yourself lucky if you can.

Holy High-Tech Household, Batman! Diane's new laptop arrived yesterday from Dell, and it's a beaut, oh indeed. In fact, I'm writing this right now early Saturday morning (you didn't think I'd sleep much with a new gizmo in the house, did you?) from the Dell Inspiron 3800, which is dialed into the net via phone line. Of course, I'm only in our living room, so it's not exactly working from around the world, but hey, I can. The numerous pointing devices (i.e., mouse replacements, are clearly going to take some getting used to, however. So I'll be a crazed nerd all weekend trying to get the machine up to way I and Diane like it.

It's a little hard to admit that I've now seen this film (Diane rented it, honest, i wasn't even at the store with her!), but it's actually not a bad little silly comedy. Crazy, huh? The plot is actually a lot more complicated and interesting than the trailers would indicate, and there are scenes that Diane and I found ourselves quoting a bit. So, really pretty OK.

We saw this historical drama at the nearby Four Star Theatre. It's the true story of three sisters who married three of the most important men of pre-WWII China, H.H Kung, Sun-Yat Sen, and Chiang Kai-Shek. A fascinating look at that period of history, with some very high production values, music by Kitaro, and that one thing that Chinese filmmakers excel at, really cool and convincing big-ass crowd scenes.

This is Tim Burton's retelling of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", and it's quite good. While it starts off as a "good Science" vs. "bad Superstition", it quickly turns into something much weirder and more interesting and creepier. It's clever, there's some nice visuals, and Diane likes Johnny Depp, so, hey!

Gosh, I haven't updated in ages. Well, I've been super busy with a deadline at work, so haven't had much fun time at the 'puter, sad to say. But i did, yesterday, actually ride my bike to work for the first time since i started working in San Francisco again. And, I actually rode the six miles back on the same day after work. And, my butt is actually pretty sore today, since you asked. But it felt great to be back on the bike, and while it's a long commute, I actually felt stronger than I expected to, so I'll attempt to do the ride a couple times a week for a while. But leading experts are predicting that i won't be doing a whole lot of rain riding like I used to do back when I was hardcore and really annoying about it. Those experts aren't displeased with that finding, either.

Now this is a great book. It's most obvious summary is "Studs Terkel's 'Working' for the '90's". That is, it's a series of people talking about their jobs, how they got into them, and how they feel about them. Main differences between Gig and Working are that the interviews are shorter, and there are far more interviews with people in the sex industry in Gig. But there's a great variety of interviews in Gig, including Supermodel, Train Engineer, Heavy Metal Roadie, Mother, Crime Scene Cleaner, and bunches of others. These were collected from Word.com "Work" series, which is archived here. It's just fascinating stuff that you didn't know about all the other people's jobs.

This is a quirky little book that is really not a "self-help" book exactly, it's more like a series of strange, thought-provoking questions that may make you say "Hmmmm" and that seem really deep, but then you're never quite sure what it means. Sort of like a novel, in a way, showing you the human condition for what it is. Interesting, but not rave-worthy.

Wow. This is a truly amazing book. I've been thinking I should read this for quite some time, as lots of book shops put it on their "worker recommended" list. But it felt like it would be a guilt trip to read this, so i've been putting it off. But it's really, really good. Not only was everything I knew about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda completely wrong, but this book is about the essence of humanity, about the role of the West in such atrocities, about the will to survive under impossible conditions, about how differently a genocide is viewed when the victims are black, poor, and not sitting on oil or mineral wealth; oh, I could go on, but really, just read it. I think the comparisons to Michael Herr's Vietnam War memoir Dispatches are appropriate; both of these are brilliant books. Here you can read the first chapter.

I've loved Herz's writing ever since her (now discontinued) column on videogames in the New York Times. For someone of my time period, just dropping the names of old arcade and home games conjures up rafts of joyous memories. Plus, her analysis is spot-on, funny as hell, and thought-provoking, especially on how the suburban fears of teenage arcade use had more to do with class mixing than anything else; this reminded me of Samuel Delany's brilliant Times Square Red, Times Square Blue. (Sadly, Al Gore's running mate, Joe Lieberman, was an opponent of video games in the early 90's; him combined with Tipper Gore's rock lyric crusade make them a real hold-my-nose vote). This book made me proud to play games, and I've recently located an old arcade near my work, which has somehow survived the real estate crush in S.F.

A Hugo award-winning novel about, eventually, a group of people who've left the dead earth and installed themselves as gods patterned after the Indian pantheon living large over a population unaware of the technology they use to maintain the illusion. But (as they say on the backs of such a book) there is only one who dares to defy the gods...well, pretty good yarn, I thought.

One of nice things about my now riding the bus to work every day is that I get to read a lot more. "Slut!" is an interesting look at what she calls slut-bashing (the branding of certain girls and women as loose or sluts), and how that's used in high school and elsewhere to control the behavior of girls and their sexuality. I know it sounds like a depressing and acedemic sort of topic, but it's crisply written, includes many first-person accounts of women's experiences of being branded (mostly by other girls) as sluts, and discusses the hazy ground between a girl's right to explore sexuality and fighting the "slut" label. It even contains a little analysis of the role of gossip in high school, which, brother, made me glad I'm not in school anymore. To anyone who's currently in high school, you have my sympathies.

A wickedly funny movie about a music-obsessed record store owner who explains to the audience, in that painful detail that the frequently scorned usually do, his "Top 5" list of painful relationship breakups. Great insights into the obsessive nerdy types, that, uh, of course, aren't a thing like me. Oh, hey, look out the window, a flying saucer!

This is basically "summer reading", at best. While the plot moves forward and the sentences make sense and describe the scenes, there's not much driving the plot of a young Chilean woman in the 1840's and her passions that bring her to Gold Rush California, and the language is nothing special. Disappointing.

This is a book about what works and what doesn't when designing web pages. What he has to say isn't what most designers want to hear (like, that lots of cool stuff doesn't really help the users and will confuse them), but I think he's generally right, and I'm basing a lot of my ideas here at Yalta on this book. Some improvements I made to this site were based on his ideas. The book, fortunately, is much less irritatingly pedantic than his column, although I still read and can recommend the column. Ironically (perhaps inevitably?), the book itself is poorly designed, with lots of distracting sidebars and long image descriptions, which break up the flow of the text while you're reading it. It's rumored that this is not Nielsen's fault, but it does remind me of the fact that the ugliest and leakiest building at UC Berkeley was Wurster, the Architecture building.

My normal email address (mahlen@pacbell.net) seems to be working again. I just removed the alias from Pacbell and recreated it. So now you can use that when writing to me. Wierd.

For reasons unknown to me, email to mahlen@pacbell.net seems to bouncing, and may have been for some time. But Diane's account, zapmama@pacbell.net, seems to be working ('mahlen' is just an alias to zapmama), so use that one for now. I haven't been able to deduce Pacbell's support site, so I'll have to wait until evening to work it out. I'll say here when it does.

My work is now providing us with cell phones, so if you really have to reach me, the new number is: 415-637-2991. This number doesn't spell anything either, darn it. I miss the days of my home number being 553-TOFU.

I know getting use of a cell phone from work sounds likes a nice perk, but recall that Diane gets a cell phone and a brand-spanking new car. So, yeah.

This is a great book (it better be for $50). Full of solid fact based research on the last 20 years of startup companies, it does a great job of explaining to prospective founders, and CEO's of startups (and those who work for them, like me) what motivates the various players in the startup world (well, yes, money, but more specifically than that), outlines the personal costs involved in doing a startup, and points out the many and sundry ways they can go wrong. Packed full of useful advice and explanations.

Saw this tonight. I never read the comic book that i can remember, but I thought that the (non-animated) movie was fairly well done; not really stirring or sweeping, but not immensely irritating either. It saddens me that this is what I would consider a positive review, but the state of Hollywood leaves me no choice. "You leave me no choice", I'd love to have the opportunity to say that phrase in real life in serious stentorian tones.

On the way home, Diane and I figured out that she'd most want to be Storm, who can control the weather. Diane would make it pleasantly sunny all of the time around her, which would certainly give local forecasters a head-scratching.

It's clearly time for some big dumb summer movies. It had some pretty good John Woo-style karate action, including the "long drawn out fight on a cliff" type of scene (Woo directed). Not really very memorable, but decent eye candy while it's showing.

Tonight Diane and I went to our favorite neighborhood eatery, a sushi place calles Shimo's. We love to sit at the sushi bar and let Shimo pick out stuff for us to try. But the bar was full up tonight, and nobody looked to be leaving for a while, so we settled for a table right behind the bar. But it turned out that one of the people who works there was actually eating at the bar, and she happened to turn around, recognize us, say hi, and then mention that she and her guy are leaving soon. So, when she does leave, we scoot our happy little butts over there, probably irritating the 6 people in line a great deal. But being a regular and always tipping well paid off. Woo hoo! I love getting an unfair advantage!

On Diane and my second wedding/four years of smooching anniversary, we went to a wedding for our wedding photographer Jeanette and her hubby John. There are now pictures here and many movies here. Be warned that these 15 second movies will each take a while to download, as they are each 1.3 Meg, and this site runs on a wimpy DSL line.

Written by the head of Envirosell, a company that researches retail spaces for their effectiveness, this is a fascinating look at how retail spaces work or (mostly) don't work and why. You really will not look at a store the same way after reading this book. I liked this a lot; entertaining and interesting.

We saw this on pay-per-view at the Claremont. What a great movie; complex, strange, thought provoking, funny as hell.

Yesterday, July 4th, was Diane and my two year wedding anniversary. The woman who phototgraphed our wedding, Jeanette, was got married yesterday, so we couldn't get way out of town and get back in time. So we took a little mini-vacation at the Claremont Hotel and Spa in Berkeley/Oakland over the weekend, and got to get an early morning massage, laze (sp?) around, go clothes shopping in Berkeley (I got a very snazzy-looking watch), and otherwise goof off with no possibility of doing anything useful. We only got sun on the day we were leaving, so no major tan action for me.

Today was my last day at Excite@Home. The gang of nerds (Mike F., Wagner, Jaime, Wang, Hieu, Michael T., and my manager Rob) there took me out to a great lunch at the wacky and wonderful Buck's in nearby Woodside, where many countless companies were founded. We resisted the entrepenurial urge, however, but gave in to the dessert urge. That bread pudding would have induced a coma in me if they hadn't helped me eat it.

While it was a bit bittersweet to leave behind so many great people, I'm really looking forward to Yalta Communications, and, as a sendoff and reminder about why I'm leaving, the (pre-holiday) traffic on the way home was awful. Onward!

This is a short story collection by a fiction collective that specializes in stuff that won't get printed by mainstream publishing, so you can assume that there's some wacky and possibly not very approachable stuff here. You'd be right, although the overall quality was quite enjoyable.

I'm not a huge fan of Rucker's, and this story collection confirmed my opinion. I think he's very imaginative, but much of his stuff lacks any compelling narrative arc. Things just sort of happen. Admittedly, many of the stories are from his very early work, which he points out is kind of embarrassing. The best stories in here are the ones that are collaborations with others, like a wonderful piece he does on the Soviet space program. So interesting stuff, but not wow.

Only one week to go before I'm no longer working at Excite@Home! It can't be over soon enough for me. I'm really glad to be closing that chapter of my work life. Yesterday, I went by the building where I'm going to be working (150 California St. at Front), and it was great to think that I'll be working downtown again after leaving Datalex 7 years ago. My work places have been progressively getting duller, so this'll be a nice change.

A little Web moment just happened. I was online, trying to upload a picture of myself to appear on my online-approved NextCard when the guy from Webvan came by with our first order of groceries from them. It was, like, sooooo year 2000!

Let me go on record to say that the last couple days here in the Bay Area have been really freakin' hot. The disadvantages of driving a black car with rarely tended-to air conditioning is becoming apparant; I'm driving it by holding the (black) steering wheel with pieces of paper in my hand. Not as bad as my family's old 1961 Ford convertible Sunliner, which had a metal steering wheel that you used maps to hold it with when it was hot and you left the top down. Well, at least this can't last for too long. Yet.

You careful and frequent readers (which exist only in my imagination, so hello) may have deduced from my last post that career-type changes are afoot, and you'd be so right that I'm scared! Stop reading my mind! Auuuughghghgh...

What I meant to say there was that, yes, I've just quit my somewhat loathed job at Excite@Home, and have just accepted a position at startup Yalta Communications. I can't say exactly what Yalta does yet (as we are still in stealth mode; there isn't even a web site), but we'll be creating the information infrastructure for an industry that could sorely use one. Porn. No, not porn, just a joke, it's something else, honest. Drugs. Hard drugs, that's right, we're the people behind eCrackDealer.com, come by and see our specials on ounces. No, wait, that's not quite right either (you can relax, Mom and Dad). It is a somewhat surprising industry for me to be involved in, but it fits me in an odd way. And it's in the City. Wooohoo! No more awful commute to the Valley!

It's a very exciting opportunity, and i really like the people and the plans that the company has. I start on the 10th, after a week or so of sorely needed off time. Yummy! You can clearly see how giddy I am from this message.

I was just sitting in the Excite@Home lunch hall, with people buzzing all around me, when my cell phone rang, and on the phone was my headhunter, who called with a newly negotiated set of numbers regarding my stock options for my next job, which I'll probably be accepting over the next couple days. This is my quintessential Silicon Valley moment. I could not be more part of this strange world.

I liked the book this is based on quite a bit, so I was prepared to hate this movie. But, in fact, while it's very different from the book (the book is almost entirely presented as internal monologues from the characters), the film is quite beautiful in it's cinematography, it's way of showing flashbacks and experiences often wordlessly, and describing complex emotions with subtle imagery. Surprisingly good.

Seen on pay-per-view in NYC. Really a bizarre masterpiece about someone half-sized floors, speech impediments, puppets and puppeteering, and the thrill of being inside an egotistical movie star's head, even for a few minutes. Awesome and strange.

Well, it's a James Bond movie, right? Not really an even remotely believable plot, but the speed boat chase is cool, Bond is cool, and, um, BOOM, BAM, ZooooOOOOOOM!!! Whatever. Saw it on pay-per-view in NYC.

Rented this a while back. Unfortunately, i knew what the "big surprise ending" was already, so the impact was diminished for me. But i liked the movie and it's style, and Diane, not suspecting, liked it too.

I've been super quiet on the site lately. For those of you who care, I apologize, I've been super busy and the backlog of things to write (7 movie and 2 book reviews, plus news) makes sitting down and typing here all the more frightening. But I'm gonna try. Now.

Our last full day in New York. First we walked to Grand Central Station, which certainly is grand. Then we took a subway train to the Staten Island Ferry. Except that we weren't really sure what stop it was; I sort of assumed that the southern tip of Manhattan would be the last stop, but when we reached a stop called Borough Park, Diane correctly gathered that we had gone too far. So, we performed the delicate balancing act of trying to figure out where to go when we don't even know where we are, and not looking lost, as we were sure that we would becomes of New York's desperate millions if we did (not that we saw anyone threatening; this was solely West Coast paranoia). We did manage to find a train that in fact took us to the correct place, much to my surprise. But that was our brief excursion to Brooklyn (I think).

Then we took the Staten Island Ferry, which, unlike anything else in NYC, is free. Most of the pictures and movies we took are from that trip (again, because we didn't want to look like tourists, except there, where it felt weird not to have a camera). After the Ferry returned to Manhattan, we took a subway to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is so enormous that I doubt i will ever see much of it. But we did look around, although my feet and legs were really starting to hurt from several days of walking. I now can see why "The Upper East Side" has the connotations it does; it's very nice there (by New York standards).

We cabbed back to our hotel, humbled by the mighty museum and it's mighty gift shop. We were going out to a performance group I'd been wanting to see for years called the Blue Man Group, but i didn't bring enough nice clothes that were bearable in the warm weather, so we ran to a Gap and bought a plain black T-shirt for my black jeans.

After much paniced hailing we finally did get a cab, and assumed our "poncho seats", meaning seats so close to the front that we might get sprayed with food thrown from the stage. Since we had no idea when or why we might need the provided ponchos, they added an air of anticipation and mystery to the show for us. Blue Man Group was really great; thought provoking, hilarious, strange, and surprising. I'm really glad I finally went.

Afterwards we ate at Indochine, a place I think I've actually read about in the New York Times some time ago. I think it was pretty darn good, though the waitress did become a bit snooty when I asked for a Thai Iced Tea; only later did I realize that it's a Vietnamese place.

A year ago Perspecta was in a frenzy of activity trying to sell the company before the board of directors stopped funding us. We did manage to pull it off, and were sold to Excite@Home last October.

Now, due to changing priorities within E@H, we found out last week that we get to do it all over again. That's right, the Perspecta technology and the people who support it are on the auction block again, and once again we're looking to find a acquirer. Isn't Silicon Valley grand? Bet you don't hear these kinds of stories when people talk about the Internet boom!

There is a film crew in the building I'm working in right now making a little short about Silicon Valley life. It's being shot in IMAX as a little opening film for the San Jose Tech Museum. So they've constructed a simulation of an office that looks nothing like our offices (I suspect the truth about our cubicles would be a tad bleak), and have scripted pople to rapidly walk around, have exciting meetings, look interesting, play pool, and other such things that don't really happen much around here. Ahhhh, media.

Day Three was Monday, May 8th, my 36th birthday. Another hot day in Manhattan, so we start off the day at the cafe next door with a cold Chai tea for me. There this wacky full-on New Yawker who works at the cafe talks to us for 20 minutes, asking about job and housing possibilites in San Francisco and Los Angeles (we urged him to L.A.). Then we walked to Bergdorf-Goodmans at the southern tip of Central Park, looking at all of the plates and so forth (Diane's new occupational hazard), and also continued the search for red shoes. We then took a cab to Greenwich Village; on the way we heard the eulogy for Cardinal O'Conner's funeral, and we realized that we were passing, in the cab, the place were that very eulogy was being given at that moment.

Once in the Village, the search for red shoes continued, while I nosed around in art galleries (found some neat Warhol's and such, bought nothing). There's really very little but clothing stores in the Village, so that's what we looked through. Then we sat in a cafe called Cafe Cafe. As I was eating a sandwich, I noticed this woman at the counter talking to a friend and the counter person. She looked vaguely familiar. I was thinking, "She looks sort of like that woman, oh what's her name, she was on the Oscars. Gwyneth Paltrow, that's it. But her hairs longer, right, oh, no she has it tied up." Then I leaned over to Diane and said, "Doesn't she look a lot like Gwyneth Paltrow?" Diane looks at her and says to me, "That is Gwyneth Paltrow." Sure enough, a star sighting in Greenwich Village. We were both surprised that I, who barely follows pop culture, would notice her. She left before we could say something stupid like, "Oh, we loved you in Fifth Element!" (hint to Mom and Dad; she wasn't in Fifth Element).

Well, after the buzz from that wore off, we wandered back into the heat (it was in the 80's the whole time we were there, even the nights were hot). We kept looking at shoes all the way to Broadway, then hailed a cab back to the hotel and Azure for dinner again.

After sleeping in a bit, Diane and I went out to get breakfast, and decided that we should get a New York bagel (the other uniquely New York food i wanted to eat was a half-done pickle, but i never found one). So we went to a place nearby called, I think, ESS Bagels, and I got an Everything bagel with cream cheese and lox, and yes, it was yummy. This was the first time I encountered the phrase, "To stay or to go?", which, while I admit is more of a clean contrast than "For here or to go?", really confused me.

Then we walked to the Museum of Modern Art (aka MOMA) While the MOMA itself isn't much a building, for me it was a thrill to turn a corner and see, say, Dali's Persistance of Memory or Wyeth's Christina's World, paintings that we've all seen reprints and parodies of. Then we went up Fifth Avenue to Saks, looking for red shoes for Diane's trip next week to Chicago, and then walked around Fifth Avenue, puzzled by the large crowds and police barriers at this one huge church. I later figured out this was the laying in state of the recently deceased (and, for the gay community, quite disliked) Cardinal O'Conner..

We attempted not to gawk at the enourmous size of New York buildings, but really it is a very tall place. Of course, we were staying at a Midtown hotel, but it never seemed to get any shorter anywhere. After shopping and not really having much in dining clothes, we had dinner at a high-end convenience store near our place called Azure, which had two huge steam tables of food to eat, at $4.99 a pound. One assumes that some people nearby never use/don't have kitchens, and just eat there and at restaurants. Nothing about New York is cheap; our puny hotel room, with a small double bed, noisy fan outside and no table, cost as much as a suite at the beautiful El Dorado in Santa Fe.

We then wiled away the late evening in front of the cafe next door, where, even though it was raining, was still quite warm.

(This is the start of my New York vacation notes)

Very early on the morning of Saturday, May 6th, I woke up after just a couple hours sleep, and leave late to get to the airport for a 6:45 AM flight to meet Diane in NYC (she was already in New York state for a training conference). Time was a little short, but I figured I'd make it, and just have less time to spare than usual. Then, just as I'm leaving San Francisco, i realize that the car is very close to running out of gas. Panic level rises.

I find a gas station at the next exit and get back on the freeway. Then i find the Long Term Parking area of the airport, and notice that the bus between the airport and the lot is just leaving. Not good, as it's awfully early in the morning and there seem to be very few of these buses ever running. Panic rises more. Minutes pass. Realization that there's a good chance I'm going to miss my flight (and connecter flight) is upon me like a box of bricks being dropped on my head one brick at a time.

Bus finally arrives, taking forever to load because of family loading large amounts of stuff. Taking an agonizingly long time, we get to the airport, and US Airways is first stop. Ten minutes till scheduled flight time; do i run? Yes. Surprisingly, security doesn't hassle me about my Palm, cell phone or digital camera. I get to gate 5, and the person at the desk says, "You just made it." I get on the plane and then look at my boarding pass saying, "Now, where am I?"; the flight attendant says, "On a plane!" "Great, that's all I ask."

On the connector flight to La Guardia from Philadelphia, I get on a smallish propeller plane next to a Catholic seminary-trained Arizona truck driver (Howdy, Eric!), we start talking about religion (I was reading a book called The World's Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions) and many other things.

On the SuperShuttle to the hotel (the Loews New York, in midtown Manhattan at Lexington and 51st), there was an Australian woman who was in school in Kentucky, and she said that she uses Excite email to talk to her family and friends in Australia. I sat in the hotel restaurant and watched the great mass of humanity go by amid the universally tall buildings in the warm (mid-80's) weather. Diane finally flew in from Oneida that evening, and i was glad to see her after five days away.

I'm going to write up our trip to NYC soonish (hey, I even took notes for you), but the pictures and movies are now up for you to look at. We didn't take a whole lot, since we didn't want to look like the tourists we were.

Since my charming employers at Excite@Home bought WebShots some time ago, I've been using it to "manage" my screen backgrounds and screen saver. Last week I added some of the "random art" pictures that I had created to a MyPhotos section, so that other people can see them and download them if they wish, and in the little descriptive text I mentioned mahlen.org and invited people to try the Art Generator on their own. Today I looked at the web server logs and, much to my surprise, a lot of people did! So, those of you who are visiting the site for the first time to try it out, the link at the top right where it says An online toy for making Mathematically Generated Art is the one you want to use (I could tell from the logs that many weren't finding it). You'll note from the hit counter page that page hits from Bear, Stearns now dominate the hit counts. Impressive work, folks! Drop me a line and tell me how you like it (or don't)!

I just got back from NYC this afternoon with Diane. I have lots to write about and a few pictures/movies, but will do it in smaller doses over the next few days. Stay tuned!

This morning I dropped Diane off at the airport; this time she's going to upstate New York to learn about new Oneida lines and see how china is made. On Saturday I'll fly in to NYC to meet up with her there and spend some time in NYC, a place I've never been to. Three days is nowhere near enough time to see New York, of course, but it'll be a nice way to celebrate my 36th birthday (on the 8th).

If history is any guide, while Diane is out of town i will spend money on books, records, and Sanrio products. I already bought a Badtz-Maru trash basket this weekend...

This is anction film that takes place at the end of the Gulf War, where four American soldiers attempt to find stolen Kuwaiti gold. They do, but things get very complicated after that. A nicely done allegory about American ideals, greed, and the complications that the real world brings. I liked it, but Diane hates violent films with any sense of reality, so she left the room a lot. Interestingly, the other film she disliked this intensely was Boogie Nights, which also had Mark Wahlberg in it. Go figure.

This is a book by Jon Katz, self-styled chronicler of 'Geek culture', and a story about two boys living in a bleak part of Idaho, who eek out a living working at the local computer store and making fake ID's. With the active encouragement of Katz, they set out to take their skills somewhere where they can make a life for themselves; in this case, Chicago. But they lack the self-confidence that would make this an easy transition.

While i disagree with some of Katz's generalities regarding Geek culture, this is an interesting story about transformation and how poverty makes such changes difficult. You can read an excerpt from the book here. It also reads a lot better than Katz's usual posting on Slashdot. Of course, being the geek I am, i read the book on my Rocket eBook.

LOUD! That's one way to describe this pretty predictable WWII submarine film. A substantial fraction of the movie is shots of sweaty scared-looking guys waiting for depth charges to go off. Diane was disappointed, and I wasn't really expecting much. Plus there was an anachronism that bugged me (a black character who describes himself as "a black man", when none in the 1940's would have done so). But don't bother renting this either, cause the whole effect of the film would be lost on a television (unless you have a huge TV).

Sunday morning Diane noticed that Pooky had this seriously long round claw, so long in fact that it was curving around and poking into his paw. An ingrown claw, I suppose. I cannot for the life of me figure out how we didn't notice this before, since obviously a claw can't do that overnight. He wasn't limping or complaining or anything, but it clearly wasn't good. So, I took him to the expensive but very thorough Marina Pet Hospital, where they cut his claw and, since they noticed a previously unfound heart murmur, they also did a chest X-ray (something like the one i just had for my upper GI exam). Since he shows no symptoms of the murmur being a problem, and his heart and surrounding arteries looked normal, we decided to forgo the kitty EKG and just keep an eye out for it. They also noted what a gorgeous cat he is :)

Of course, we have to give him antibiotics (aka "pink stuff") and soak his paw in a mild soap for ten minutes a day. Unlike Wanfu, Pooky does not like pink stuff at all, so he's sulking a lot in hard to reach places. So hard to cause pain and annoyance to someone for their own good, especially someone you can't explain that to (like children, for that matter, but at least kids can't hide under the bed so effectively).

On Saturday, Diane and I went to a matinee of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre at Zellerbach Hall. They did three pieces: Grace, C# Street + B Flat Avenue, and Revelations. We thought all were quite good; the work was more accessable to me than last year's. As usual, "Fix Me, Jesus" in Revelations was my favorite piece.

We spent the rest of the day wandering the Telegraph area shopping for clothes (I'm now wearing the Krishna shirt I found there). I couldn't help but notice how commonplace laptops are in cafes now; when I was there, my Atari 800 was a novelty, as personal computers were still rare then.

This is a graphic novel by Alan Moore, the author of the amazing Watchmen and V for Vendetta, two of my all time favorite comic books. He is by far and away one of the most literate authors of this medium. From Hell is a retelling of the Jack the Ripper story, based on an insane amount of research and a lot of conjecture and mysticism. Masonic rites, a royal bastard, and a really twisted physician are at the center of this version. While I didn't get as wrapped into this as i did with the other Moore works, it's still pretty ripping good stuff, and makes me want to hunt down more Moore.

I've been reading a book on web design for the past few weeks, and I've taken some of the advice in it to heart, and so have modified these pages a bit. The background isn't green anymore, the links have more words in them, there's less unused empty space at the top. I still have some doubts about the usage of the pointless Flash mahlen.org graphic above, but I'm leaving it in for now as my one bit of dazzle. At least there aren't any hyperactive "mail me" icons of envelopes opening and closing. Tell me how you like it!

I know, I know, it seems like only yesterday that you were still wondering if this "Web stuff" was really worth the trouble (was there really anything to read besides the weather?) But no, it's been exactly six months since mahlen.org went live! Little did we know what we were in for! The crazy accolades from the world press, the late nights coding and writing material and feverishly posting pictures...it's all been worth it, it really has. I'd like to thank the Academy, my parents, Alan and Weird Bob at the lab, Ted Dresner and all the other producers, Amy, Stan, Mr. Peebles, wow, really, you are all my new best friends! And of course my fantastic wife Diane; to you i promise i will never do anything this crazy again. Thank you, every single one of you!

This is a book from 1990 about the previous "young people making obscene amounts of money doing stuff no one understands" phenomenon; the bond market craziness of the mid-1980's. An insider's funny and thoughtful description of Solomon Brothers at it's weirdest.

On one level, this is the story of Dave and Toph Eggers, brothers who, at ages 22 and 8, respectively, lose both their parents to cancer in the span of a month. So Dave becomes Toph's quasi-parents, moves to the Bay Area, and goes on about his life, alternately not wanting to talk about the death of their parents and longing to bathe in the sympathy it engenders (or should, in Dave's mind).

On another level, this is a book about the act of writing such a book, wherein characters in the book start complaining about inaccuracies in how they're portrayed. While this could prove incredibly cloying if, say, i were to write it, Eggers does it just right. The self-conciousness of the book reflects the self-conciousness of the people in the book, who cannot help thinking of their own lives as if they were a TV show, a movie scene, or a book. Really good, and very funny as well.

As a "small world after all" note, Toph was a student at the San Francisco Day School of my friend Jennifer Spaeth.

OK, so i was driving in to work today (when did this become "Mahlen's Commute News"?), and my route down 280 includes some pretty nice scenery, and I'm trying to look at and enjoy said scenery, but at the same time I am doing about 75 and so need to look at the road and the cars in front of me, too. And it occurred to me that this is what life is like; so many beautiful things to see, but you can't pay attention to them cause you have to pay attention to petty daily details.

Yesterday the weather report said it would be 79 degrees F in Redwood City. Coming off of this beautiful weekend, that wasn't hard to believe, but San Francisco was under a thick blanket of fog (why do we say 'blanket', anyway? It's not like a blanket is usually cold and damp). But trusting in technology and forecasters, i dressed in shorts, tee, and sandals.

As i was driving down Highway 35 the fog got even worse, and i needed to be very cautious about what was in front of me. As i stopped at a light with a long line of cars in front of me, i noticed that the cars in front were stopped and blinking. There was a row of maybe seven cars stopped there, with all their occupants milling about. Clearly, the last car had smacked into the next one, and then that car hit the next one and so forth, as the damage to the vehicles decreased the closer to the front you were. Ironically, if they'd gone just another quarter of a mile, they would have hit the edge of the fog and emerged into glorious blue skies, as predicted.

I've now listened to a year (1996) of the weekly This American Life radio programs since January. It's been great to have that to occupy me on the drive down to Redwood City. Many of the shows are quite good, but the Christmas show from 1996 is outstanding. Go to their site and see what i mean. Go on ahead, go there now, i'll be sitting here patiently waiting.

On Wednesday morning i went to the hospital at 45 Castro Street to have an "Upper GI with Barium swallow" and a couple blood draws (probably for cholesterol). The Barium swallow is where you stand inside this X-ray machine and drink a "Barium shake", a white frothy sweetened drink that is opaque to X-rays and thus can tell the doctors what your esophogus and stomach look like. It took about an hour to do, and they had me really pounding the stuff down; given that I was raised right, that was somewhat difficult to do. They took pictures from all different angles and so forth, not the most comfortable thing, but no big deal really either. The shake reminded me of this grenadine and milk drink i used to get at the Cafe Mediterraneum. I saw one of the x-rays on a TV screen, and, although on some level I already knew this, it struck me that, wow, I'm a machine, I'm made of mechanical parts.

All of the large X-ray equipment was painted a light beige; it would have been a lot cooler, though scarier, if they'd painted it black or put rows of alternating LEDs on them.

OK, so i went to see my primary care physician (aka, doctor) this morning about the subtle yet terrifying occasional pains i get in my arms from typing, playing video games, and driving so much (his verdict: I am a fat slob with the upper-body strength of a stepped-on ant). Then, as I'm waiting to schedule a follow-up on something else, i somehow get into conversations about Zip drives, a program that checks an atomic clock to set your system time, Palm pilots, and whether this person should by Excite stock (my thought; "Well, someone should.").

My question: when did the world get so damn nerdy? It used to be that only myself and a tiny handful of people would care about such arcana, and any other normal person would find us mystifyingly odd; now it's like everyone finds this interesting. Is this an alternate universe i created by wishing that people understood what i was talking about, and now they do and yet it's no more satisfying than before?

We saw this Jet Li (so graceful, he's the Fred Astaire of martial arts) movie at the large and packed-with-asian-teenagers Coronet this weekend, waiting in line for some 40 minutes. But it was worth it. Chinese and Black gangs in an uneasy tug-of-war on the Oakland shore. Nutty mindless fun, seething with betrayal. Li did some spectacular and sometimes hilarious martial arts work for this film; it's much better than Black Mask. Especially unusual was the X-ray cam, where, when Jet is breaking the bone of another character in a fight, the camera suddenly sees an X-ray like view of the bone breaking. Diane's actually talking about seeing it again just for the stunt work, and Diane will usually have her teeth pulled out with rusty pliers to avoid seeing a movie twice.

In the interest of bettering the experience all 2 of you regular users have, i have now added the bright green navigation bar to all of the pages except the usage report, which I don't create. This should make it easier to roam around the site, for what that's worth.

This book was loaned to me by my manager at work, Rob. It's a gut-wrenching account of the Earnest Shackleton's expedition across the Antarctic. Their ship got stuck in the ice floes during the Antarctic winter, and then they had to sail back to land across some of the most treacherous seas on the planet. Truly a tale of astonishing courage and ability; nothing you've ever done in your life will seem difficult in comparison. With many amazing photographs from the expedition photographer, Frank Hurley.

A great epic page-turner of a Science Fiction novel by Hugo award winner Vinge. Several interlocking plot lines weave in a way that you are constantly on the edge of your seat. I blazed throught this 792-page paperback in three days.

I'm quoted in this Sacramento Bee article about Stephen King's latest novella being released only in eBook form. I'm guessing i was phoned by them because i used to post to the newsgroups that talked about ebooks quite often, and it's easy to find me. This is as close as i get to having a life, so I'm basking in it to the fullest, I can tell you.

Excite@Home recently built a full gym (run by Club One into the building next to mine. So yesterday, after three years of not regularly going to a gym, I signed up (it's free to employees). That's, of course, the easy part; going is the day to day challenge. I'm probably about 40-50 pounds overweight now, and haven't ridden any of my bikes in years, so i'm going to have to edge back into this carefully.

When Diane and i first met, we were both in great shape. She'd been SCUBA diving, and working out with a trainer; I'd just finished the California AIDS Ride, a seven day bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles. But then all those weekends that we used to exercise became cocooning or chore weekends, and then i started working in Redwwod City, which i can't ride my bike to, and so my health has nosedived of late. Re-acquiring the habit is going to be tough, especially since so much time (at least two hours a day) is taken up in commuting. But we're going to give it a shot.

Wow. I'd heard it was a great film, it got Golden Globe awards and fistfuls of Oscar nominations, but even with that buildup, I was impressed and blown away. It is a great movie.

This is the sequel to Butler's Parable of the Sower, which takes place in a global-warming and poverty-ridden 2025. 'Talents' is about the Humboldt County group of people eeking out a living and slowly preaching the faith that "God is Change" when a far-right fundamentalist becomes the President. Entertaining and thought-provoking.

Yep, Diane convinced me to get a scanner (or rather, her wanting one made it OK for me to get one), so i popped down to Fry's on my lunch hour nad snagged an Epson Perfection 1200U, which was a Best Buy in PC World magazine. It's pretty nice all right; i'm stunned at how well it does OCR (i.e., reading a page of text and understanding the letters).

I haven't even mentioned the foot pedals i got from Bilbo, in order to reduce the strain on my hands that playing Team Fortress Classic as much as i do from meesing up my hands too much. Nifty!

Eeek. Diane brought this home last night, under the impression that I'd like it. No. Nooo. NOOOOOOO! A frighteningly bad Disney film. It's no wonder Diane and I won't have kids; sitting through more nauseau-inducing pap like this would cause my will to live to slowly drain away from my body, staining the carpet and attracting ants. The effects work was actually impressive to a degree, but I learned that effects can't save an awful film with Lawnmower Man.

Recent "kids'" films i love: Babe, Babe: Pig in the City, The Iron Giant. Just because it's rated G doesn't mean it has to be idiotic.

I loved the movie Fight Club, so i thought I'd see what the book had to offer (and the soundtrack, on the recommendation of the guy at Moe's i bought this from). It's not quite the same story as the movie, but you can certainly see where the movie came from. I enjoyed the book, but i can't tell if that was just from the pleasure of re-enacting the movie. But i think i will check out some other Chuck Palahniuk in the future; the book is so original.

You may notice that I'm no longer linking to Amazon.com. That's because many people i respect (Richard Stallman, Tim O'Reilly) are calling for a boycott of Amazon, due to the fact that Amazon is patenting much of the more obvious ideas their site uses (1-click shopping, the affiliate program) and using them to restrict other's usage of such devices. The web is based on free and open standards; attempts to restrict competitors by exploiting the cluelessness of the patent office is not a good thing. (Update on June 23, 2001: Except now that I'm an Amazon Associate, I've changed all the links to Amazon. Sad, yes, what little ethics I truly possess, but owning a house changed me, ya see...)

I've never considered myself a huge comics fan, but I've read some very good ones (Watchmen, V is for Vendetta, Maus, Hothead Paisan, stuff by Mary Fleener and Roberta Gregory), and this is a book-length comic about comics. It's a deep look at the ways that comics communicate to us, with some surprising and profound insights into why they work, and a call to arms; the potential of this art form have barely been scratched.

This is the sort-of sequel to Rim, and it has the same loopy qualities as Rim. Lots of high-tech (sentient tattoos that can move around your body), lots of IN references (the Burning Man festival becomes the Burning Mind event), and lots of eastern religious ideas (chi energy, Tibetan monks driving cabs) all add up to a novel full of interesting ideas, but the ending is really vague and confusing. I suspect that this may be a middle-novel problem, as this is the second novel in Besher's trilogy; perhaps some of the loose ends get tied up in Chi, the conclusion.

The threat promised by our digital camera has been realized; too many pictures! I've finally coded an easy way for me to lazily rotate, annotate, and post my pictures to the site, so go check out the pictures link and see the many photos I've added. Hope you're on a fast Internet line (hint to Mom and Dad!).

Well, Diane is again out of town for the weekend on business, this time in the Savannah, Georgia area. So, after spending much of today setting up a new printer and answering computer questions for my parents, i went to Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley to indulge in my private sins, in this case being books, records, and Sanrio (Hello Kitty) products. On the latter, a new store has just opened on Telegraph called Vivitix, which is a new adult brand of Hello Kitty stuff (including DJ bags, plates, and chopsticks). They weren't fully stocked yet, but in a couple weeks they'll have the new lines in. Anyway, it was a bit of trip down memory lane, eating at Blake's, drinking hot chocolate at Cafe Med, and shopping at Cody's, Moe's, and Rasputin's. The place just hasn't really changed that much, to my surprise.

In addition to being referred to a lot (I read two references to it today), this is a fun novel about Atlanta, going bankrupt, working inside a giant freezer, and the question, "What Would Zeus Do?" Local note; much of the action occurs at Santa Rita prison in Pleasanton, a place i've so far managed to avoid visiting. Both Diane and I tore through this novel, and really enjoyed it.

On Presidents Day Diane and I treated ourselves to an afternoon at Osmosis, a unique and wonderful spa in tiny Freestone that we've been to several times since Colina, my boss at Advent, gave us a treatment there as an engagement present. They are the only American purveyors of Japanese enzyme baths, which is, bluntly, lying in cedar sawdust with enzymes in them that are eating the sawdust. But it really is great, very warm and womb-like, and then they have fantastic masseuses that do luxuriously long 75 minute massages. Yummy. The hard part is finding it, and figuring out who was to drive back. Mmmmmmm, just writing about it makes me want to go back.

I know this is supposed to be a great art film about, erm, a red violin, or something, but i thought it was beautifully photographed dullness. Diane actually fell asleep. Neh.

I put up some examples of images that i (and others, apparently) have created using the Random Art thing here. Nice (computer screen) wallpapers, eh?

Pedro Almodóvar is a great Spanish filmmaker, and this is one of his best films. A big sprawling soap opera of a film, but with Almodóvar's usual twists and kinks, so there are transexuals, nuns, Tennesee Williams plays, lesbian junkies thrown into the mix. Fun.

This is a fascinating though slightly acedemic take on world history that attempts to explain why Europe and Asia came to take over the world, rather than, say, the Aztecs taking over Europe, or Bantu warriors taking over the Roman empire. Diamond's answer to that question, unlike many people's, has nothing to do with the character or qualities of the people of the different places, and everything to do with the opportunities that these different places present to the people who live there. An excellent study of world history over the last 11,000 years that makes you completely rethink your notions of why things are as they are.

Well, I've dove into the Analog tech docs a little and figured out how to remove the page hits that I generate from work or home from the report. So the hit counter will now give much more indicative of what you all do. I have no clue who some of these things are, but HEY, FILL IN THE FORM BELOW and maybe we'll all find out.

This is (subtitled) Chinese political thriller set in ~200 B.C., as Ying Zheng, the king of one of the seven kingdoms of China, attempts to unify China under one ruler, as his ancestors have commanded him to do. The political aspects of the film may have gotten lost on me a bit. The crowd battle scenes were out of this world, rivaling even the scenes in Sparticus. There certainly are a lot of beautiful things to look at in the film as well, but i walked away from the theatre dazzled and confused.

OK, so I actually clicked on a banner ad and found this weird site that conducts polls and custom questionairs and such. So, go fill it out, and then go here to see responses.

You may have noticed that the logo (up ^^^ there) looks a bit different. This comes about by playing with this Evolutionary Art stuff I've been writing for the last couple weeks. It's not even remotely done or anything, but i thought you might like to play with it. If you get an image you like, "Enlarge" it and then right-click on the big image and select "Set as Wallpaper" (these instructions are mainly for my parents; the rest of you, i assume you know how to do this already).

I'm working on this stuff when i get the chance, so it may not always be up and running; hey, what do you want for nothing, your money back?

Many people (OK, just my brother Clark) have complained that there's no 'hit counter' indicating how many people have wasted their precious time on earth at this web site. Well, rather than just snarf a simple hit counter from somewhere on the web, I've decided to instead give you all acces to the page that i use when I'm curious about whose using this page. It's generated by Analog, which reads my web server's log file and determines what it can. It's not updated in real time, by the way; I update it manually, at my whim.

A few things to note; my work is the atext.com you'll see refered to (the original name of Excite was Architext), and pacbell.net is my ISP from home. So clearly, i'm the person who looks at this page the most. Which makes sense, because i have to do lots of page views when testing things. And i'm vain. Or bored. Whatever.

Well, it wasn't quite of Biblical proportions, but last night we were cooking pizza from Extreme Pizza when all of a sudden our kitchen sink started overflowing with hot water, all over the floor and counter top. Diane grabbed towels. We turned off the dishwasher, but water kept on coming. I could hear that the sink upstairs belonging to our neighbors was running, so i ran up there and asked them not to use any water for a bit. That stopped the torrent.

I tried using a plunger (difficult in HOT water) on the sink, but it made no effect. Then i noticed that if i ran the disposal, that the water would sink on the disposal side and rise on the other side; in effect, the water was just running in a circle. Clearly this was a major clog, below our sink and somewhere below where our upstairs neighbors drain was.

Well, our landlord, Ed, is a plumber, and lives in the building. Eventually he was roused and set to work. He cut the drain pipe running through the garage and removed a blockage of who-knows-what at least six inches tall from the pipe. Solved. Exciting.

OK, my commute's still too long (about an hour each way), but i have found a way to enjoyably pass the time. There's a weekly radio show on NPR called This American Life from WBEZ in Chicago which i love. But, with busy weekend life, i never think to take the time to sit around and listen to it. But, their website www.thislife.org has most of their shows on it in RealPlayer format, so that you can listen to it. For a while i'd been thinking, "OK, i'll get a laptop, try to pull the shows down onto it, then plug it into my car's stereo,..." but that was looking like more expenditure than i could really justify, plus i was never certain it would really work. So, i went low tech (well, slightly lower tech), and have been recording the shows on tape and then playing them in the car. Makes me actually look forward to the drive down!

Last weekend I spent some time at my parents house in Orinda setting up my old computer for them to use. While the machine is two years old, it's waaaay better than the Mac Performa that they have been using for many years now, plus i can help them use it from afar and know exactly what to do next when problems arise, unlike on the Mac where i have to call my friend James every few minutes. But the Mac is still holding on for dear life (though it could use some major disk cleanup and maintainance stuff), so my parents are now officially nerdier than I; they now have two computers, side by side, to use. Crazy!

Well, Diane's away on business in L.A., so you know what that means, right? Mahlen parties down!!! RIGHT NOW, as i write these words, I am, um, sitting at my computer in our office at home, listening to some phat rawkin', er, online classical music station, and I'm gettin' OUT OF MY HEAD CRAZY writing some Java code for this page. For fun. If I wasn't married, this would seem terribly pathetic (yes, even to me), so Diane, once again, I want to publicly thank you for marrying me. Because of the ring on my finger, my constitutional nerdiness comes off as being a responsible, level-headed husband. At least that's my story, and i'm sticking to it.

To start a series of book reviews, here's a book about a young '70's black woman who finds herself repeatedly transported back to slave-time Maryland, and it looks like she needs to be there to save the life of a distant ancestor of hers. But there's hardly a more dangerous place for a modern black woman to be. A long reflection not only on the barbarity of slavery, but also how easily one is trained to live within its confines. Really wonderful.

Hofstadter's first major work, Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is a book that directly led to a turning point in my life. I was 19 at the time, living at my parents house after a semi-disastrous first year at UC Berkeley. I was very rudderless, not knowing what to study in college, and not knowing what to do otherwise. While clearly I'd been fascinated with computers since the age of five (i started programming in BASIC when i was nine years old, when personal computers were but a fantasy), i somehow couldn't decide what i really wanted to do.

But GEB was a book that i heard mentioned a lot, so i read it in a month at home while my parents were on a vacation with my brother (i hadn't wanted to go). This book was a revelation. He not only thought about the weird math-like things that i thought about, he went much further with these ideas than i ever had dreamed of. After finishing this, i knew that i wanted to go back to Berkeley and study Computer Science, despite the fact that the degree program was severely crowded at this time (1984, the height of the first wave of PC fever).

Le Ton Beau de Marot is a highly crafted work about language translation and the pathways into the mind that it reveals. Such questions as "What should change and what shouldn't?" when changing languages (or cultures, or time periods, etc.) are the stuff of this book. Very long, very well and cleverly crafted, and great mind-play to boot.

I actually finished this a while back, but have been putting of reviewing it. Bob Zmuda was Andy Kaufman's closest friend and co-writer (and collaborator). He dives deeply into the fascinating personage of Andy Kaufman, who, while best known as Latka on the ABC series "Taxi", was in fact a complicated performer who delighted in baffling, aggravating, and fooling his audience, whether in a major concert hall or on a plane. The stories related here are priceless, and very funny; it was making me laugh out loud while we were flying to and from Albuquerque this past Thanksgiving. To anyone who followed Kaufman's very odd career, this is an essential book. Plus the "glazed donut" story is worth the price of the book on it's own. Truly a view into a very different world.

Well, on the cat front, Wanfu has been a real joy and pain. He tears up the carpet, he's pointlessly aggressive, he completely terrorizes Pooky and Lucy. They spend most of their days hiding under the bed, only coming out when they heard us calling them, and even then moving very slowly. It's like a pair of grandparents being living in fear of their surly, violent teenage grandson. Awful. We were this close to giving Wanfu up to the SPCA, confident that he's a better cat for someone without other pets.

But, he's so full of energy and enthusiasm that we're now trying "Kitty Apartheid", a system where the cats never see him, and he never sees them. One or the other of the two groups are always locked up in a room, while the other cat(s) gets to roam the rest of the apartment. Pooky and Lucy seem much happier and less jumpy, and Wanfu seems less preoccupied (it did seem that he felt more compelled to chase them than, er, wanting to, if that makes any sense for a cat). So, the little white demon (aka, "10,000 curses") is still with us. Should a feline Bishop Tutu or deKlerk arise, that may change.

Yow. Not only a tight little thriller, where the main character is onscreen for the entire film, but also a cogent take on the American virtue of being able to re-invent oneself, and what happens when the dark side of that ability goes WAY too far. I think all of us can relate to Mr. Ripley, and his desire to lie his way into the upper crust of society. I'm still thinking about it...

Well, apart from a bug in my code for this page which left it not showing stories (java.util.Calendar.roll() didn't do what i thought; Calendar.add() fixed it, but i was getting a bit panicky this morning), we seem to have crossed over to the new year with little in the way of Y2K problems/terrorist activity/rapture and souls ascending to heaven. At least Diane and I are still here. Well, she's still asleep, but let's assume, shall we? If the rest of the century can go this smoothly, I'll be ecstatic; maybe a big party every night is the way to live in peace. I'm up for it :)

So, what did we do? Around 11:30 we drove up to the Palace of the Legion of Honor (an art museum less than a mile from our house, up in the woods), set up a boom box (borrowed from Mom & Dad, thanks!), cracked open some champagne (Laurent-Perrier, and damned good it was), watched the fireworks that were going on at the Bay Bridge with the other fine people gathered there, and basically danced through to the new year. Quiet, and yet spectacular.

I've always figured that i'd see the start of the year 2000, but it was always vague what it'd be like. Now i know. So far, a great year :) Cheers, all.