Back home, safe and sound...

I was out in Oak Brook, Illinois again last week. Working with the good folks at McDonald's. In an odd coincidence, there were two young ladies sitting next to me on my flight out. And one of them didn't know how to fasten her safety belt. It was her first time flying. Even with the flight attendant's instructions. I thought that was really weird - like it's been years since I first flew, but, you know, I don't remember having trouble with the seat belts. Anyway- these two gals were going to the same place I was - they were going to "Hamburger University." What are the odds of that?

I had a pretty neat thing happen. Back in my SSG (Systems Solutions Group) days, we had this running debate over the merits of part of our mission statement which was to "delight our customers." Like when is a customer ever "delighted," you know? Most of the time, we are lucky to have them satisfied, and sometimes it's a struggle just to get sign off and get paid.

Well, after like more than a dozen years of doing what I do, I finally delighted a customer. We did a little demo of the Nutrition Facts application and this was their reaction...


Literally dropped jaws while they stared in wonder at the speaker phone.

That was a pretty cool feeling.

And we made a lot of progress planning for the next phase of the project, which is speech rec everywhere. I think the most challeging stuff is behind us with what we've done already. The next part will be mostly menu navigation (call flows, not like the McDonald's menu). It should be fun because I get to put a lot of effort in to polishing and creating the system's personality. And that's fun for me.

And they spoiled us. Dinner at Ditka's and lots of McFree Stuff.


Ditka's was awesome. Coach wasn't there, but the meal was amazing. They had Pot Roast Nachos. That's right, pot roast nachos. You know, nachos, but instead of ground beef and the like, it had pot roast on it. And filet mignon sliders.

And this was my dessert, banana cream pie - you know to get some fruit in my diet. I couldn't finish it.

I got a T-shirt for me and a "Coach's Kick Ass" cigar for my Dad.

Rachel picked me up at the airport. And we stopped at the recently reopened Granzela's in Williams for lunch on the way home. And I got home and found my desk not at all the way I had left it.


Thanks wife. And let me just sing a few lines from "She Blinded Me With Science" - "She's done it again...she's tidied up and I can't find anything! All my tubes and wires..." Fortunately, she's usually right behind me at her desk, so I will get by. I still don't understand how clutter happens. It just does. It's like my clean desktop is a magnet for scraps of paper with both important and inane things scribbled on them, and mail, and harmonicas and hats and mail and coffee mugs, some half full, others half empty, and so on. I'm going to try to implement a clean desk policy - make the desk a tabla rasa after each work day. That should last until like Wednesday.

I'm reading Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice.

Travis and I are reading it together. I wanted to wait for the Kindle version, and Travis joked, "Yeah that first edition hard cover Kindle version will be worth a lot someday." So I just bought the tree killer version.

I'm about halfway through it. Can't help but think of The Dude in the early 70s instead of the early 90s. Others have made that connection as well. And it reminds me a little of The Crying of Lot 49. It's got a lot of Pynchon trademarks. But it isn't really coming together for me yet. We'll see what happens in the second half. Maybe it's not supposed to. Maybe we are supposed to be, like Doc, lost in a marijuana haze of bizarre events and strange connections- an eternal fuzzy present where nothing changes but everything happens.

God I wish I was still in College and writing things like that last line to finish a paper at three in the morning.

I got this crazy notion last night. Like, OK, we have computers that can be taught how to create music. My theory goes, somebody dumped all of Pynchon's previous works in to a computer. And then also dumped in a bunch of hard boiled detective stories. And then the instructed the computer to write a hard boiled detective story in the style of Thomas Pynchon.

I've got some chores to do. I need to fix those little Malibu lights in the yard and a few more up where we added grass. Should look nice tonight when I'm finished - see I am trying to begin with the end in mind. Because it's over 100 out right now. And sitting here right now is nice. I also want to get the car in the garage again.

And I think we are having construction start next week. Getting the upstairs deck sealed so we won't leak in to the sun room. Which is now, of course, the Hotel Yorba Gym. We're also getting the dryer vented all the way to the outside. Which I think will legally and technically make the room "finished" and add almost 400 square feet to our house. Which in this economy, should add like 10 bucks to the value of our home.