Daft Musings

Via Bill Gosper and the regional math circles, Neil’s gotten to know Julian, another homeschooled boy his age who loves math as much as he does. So we naturally included him our round of adventures during Kelly’s winter break and invited him to join us at the Exploratorium on Friday.

I wondered whether they’d relate as middle schoolers or math geeks. By putting them together in the back of my car on the way to San Francisco, would I be subject to an hour of fart jokes, or power calculation? I very quickly learned middle schooler and math geek are not mutually exclusive. Almost as soon as he got into the car, Julian rolled down his window and the boys proceeded to do wind experiments half way up the peninsula. It wound down to an explanation on the science of kitty litter, at which point I saw my chance to insert a geeky fact, and informed the boys that the Middle Ages really stank. That seemed to calm the boys down for a while. Where’s the math in medieval aromatics? After a few minutes, they changed the subject to theories of what you could do with a really long conveyor belt and RC vehicles.

Finally, we arrived at the Exploratorium. Julian set me up as the straight man for a really geeky math joke involving infinity, but I got him back by telling him I love infinity, because no matter how much you add to it, it’s always the same. And, hey, kid, here’s a quarter-shaped Exploratorium sticker, now go play with the science exhibits, why dontcha?

The place was created for kids like Neil and Julian, by slightly older kids like Neil and Julian, so the boys were content. Kelly, happily enough, has matured so she can enjoy playing with the exhibits, too. Here are all three children checking out the sand disc:

Kelly and I drifted to different exhibits, in no small part because neither Kelly (nor I) were up to trying to figure out the equations for sand drawings.

The Exploratorium has a new (to us, at least) section about circuits, which had a table for making circuits. This was like a more advanced version of Snap Circuits, a toy Neil loved at an early age. When I checked in on the boys, they were creating some sort of ueber-battery, having done troubleshooting work to sort of the defective circuits from the working ones:

I was hungry for lunch, but both the boys were still riding on Exploratorium excitement, so I took Kelly over to the cafe to have a bite to eat, since I wouldn’t be able to eat on the way back home. I opened the lunch I’d packed for myself, (which involved the remnants of an ongoing field trip lunch), and discovered a biology experiment. Biology was last year for us, though, so I threw it away, and ate some of Neil’s lunch instead.

Alas, we had to leave at 3, so I could get the boys to Cupertino in time for Julian’s math club. Neil had accepted an invitation to join him, which is like accepting an invitation for a nightcap from a Russian friend. Here’s an example of one of the problems they do for fun in the math club:

You leave the Exploratorium at 3 pm, and need to be at the Cupertino library at 4 pm. Inexplicable construction requires you to reroute your way home through the Presidio, but through some wonder of space, time, and political perversion, you still end up going down 19th Avenue and have to stop at infinity red lights. There is a 10% probability that any one of the car’s 3 passengers (with a 5% probability for the driver) will throw up, a probability that increases exponentially every 10 minutes, but which will delay your trip by 5 minutes for each incident, assuming you can pull over to the side of the road fast enough (if not, add another 10 minutes). Calculate how late you will be, and which passenger gets sick.

Oh, wait, I did that problem. Neil and Julian obviously did it, too, and faster than I did, because as soon as I pulled up in front of the library, they exploded out of the car and dashed away, whereupon Kelly threw up.

After the clean up, Kelly and I stuck around in the library, until closing time, when the math club had to close down, too. I got Neil to admit to being mathed out for the day, so we just went home and watched an old Star Trek episode in which Kirk, once again, destroys a computer.

Before my life took a few unexpected turns last year, I often took Neil and Kelly on field trips, especially when there were school vacations. That wasn’t the case so much at the end of last year, since I was busy working, but now my work is in, as I think of it, a state of suspended animation. And so, Kelly has this week off from school, and we’re all free to do as we wish together.

I still have several passes to state parks which will expire in April, so I decided to take the children to one of our local state parks, Big Basin. I found a hike just about the right length for us, and with an interesting highlight: namely the 3.5 mile hike to Sempervirens Falls and back.

The tall redwood trees are always spectacular. At the park headquarters, we saw a cross section of one of the big trees which sprouted around the time of the Pharoahs. The spacing of the rings gave you a perspective on the scope of history. For instance, right now CSA is just concluding a section on the French Revolution, which is much closer to the present day, than say, the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire.

Neil and Kelly got some gymnastic exercise scrambling on an exposed pipe and fallen trees.

We walked right through the Huckleberry camp ground (and had lunch there on the way back), which reminds me it would be fun to go camping again.

We made it to our destination easily. Neil was unimpressed by the falls. They’re not as spectacular as the ones in the middle of the park, true, but them Sempervirens Falls isn’t 12 miles away from a park entrance, either.

A few days ago, I received a parking ticket in the mail. It was a surprise, especially since my car itself had not had a ticket on its dashboard after having been cited. I had parked in downtown San Jose in a metered parking spot, and carefully checked the meter, which was posted as only being in operation between 8 am and 6 pm. To my mind, that meant free parking–but it turns out I was in a 30-minute parking space, and the time limit was enforced 24/7, including at 9 pm when the ticket was issued. I suspected the city’s (and state’s) financial situation had more than a little to do with the ticket, and warranted or not, I might not have received such a ticket two years ago, when the municipal coffers were more flush.

It put me to mind of what one of the predictors of forthcoming economic gloom and doom, Gerald Celente, had said last year. In one of his interviews, he said that as governmental agencies needed more money, they’d start nickel-and-diming their citizens, citing them for new or little-know infractions, raising fees, and playing tricks with taxation. I’d been on the watch for this, and it does seem that I see more people than ever pulled over for speeding, so much so that I now am very careful to stay to the speed limit, no matter how fast those around me are going. But maybe I just see the cops at the side of the road more because I’m looking for them.

On the other hand, other than getting a parking ticket due to San Jose’s enthusiasm about parking enforcement, I’ve yet to see the consequences I might have expected (or that Celente forecast) to years of out-of-control government spending, and the more recent high unemployment. When I go to the mall, the cash registers are still ringing, and people are walking around with multiple bags of newly-discovered goodies. Most of my friends who were working in 2008 are still working today, at the same, equivalent, or even better positions. And during my last Alice-in-Wonderland year, even I was well employed, and earned enough for two years worth of private school for my daughter. The houses which went in to foreclosure are now occupied by solvent families, and we haven’t seen any further effects of Happy Happy Lenderman’s mortgage spree.

I try to keep watching the economic tea leaves, but they’re confusing to say the least. My state still can’t cover its expenses, but the legislature suspects (maybe knows) that it’s much easier to get a federal bail-out, like they did last year, instead of cutting services and salaries. Greece may (or may not!) default on its debts, but would, or could, the U.S.? The debt is astounding, but not debt is too much if you can pay it one way or another. One month unemployment seems to rise, the next month to shrink. I have a new contract which went into a state of suspended animation just as it was scheduled to start: I’m not working, but no one’s really sure the gig is off completely, either. Celente had predicted another economic shock at the end of 2009, but we all know now that didn’t happen. So will it? Or does he go into my pile of debunked pronosticators, like Faith Popcorn, whom I remember for her prediction that we’d all be eating quiche instead of pizza now.

To add to my confusion, today, while I was pumping gas, another person who was filling up, questioned my choice of license plate, which says RLYH8LA. I admitted it is a rather aggro; after all, I really don’t go around trying to offend people. I awkwardly told him vaguely about my last trip to LA proper, which had inspired me to buy the vanity license. Realizing, perhaps, that there was little more he could do to get me to stop being such an LA H8ter, he returned to his car, with its UCLA license plate holder, and glowered quietly at me. Wow, someone likes LA! I thought, so much so that he can get up the courage and question a stranger about her obvious LA hatred! And here, Peter and I had thought the license plate was just the thing to help me avoid getting tickets in LA-phobic Northern California! But I did get a ticket!  So maybe the city of San Jose hasn’t really gone on a ticketing spree, but maybe hired a meter maid who loves the City of Angels, and objected so much to my license that she noted my info even while off duty, and typed the ticket into a computer the next day, because LA H8ters must pay for their prejudice.

So, like most economists, I really don’t know what’s up–or down, and what the future will bring. I paid off the ticket, and plan to avoid street parking, at least in downtown San Jose, whenever possible from now on.

Yesterday and today, I volunteered at Kelly’s school. My contract has been held up ( I often fear, permanently), so I finally decided to take advantage of it and do what I’d done years previously–and work on my childrens’ education.

Understandably, I was nervous about volunteering. Going into the local neighborhood classroom to volunteer last year prompted me to pull Kelly out of public school altogether. Homeschooling her instead had challenges, mostly social, so when I got a full-time contract late last summer, I know I couldn’t put her back to the neighborhood school, but when I could afford a local religious school for her, it was a good choice. Still, my fellow homeschoolers (and my tour of other schools) had told me private schools are little better than their public counterparts. Notably, one of Neil’s dearest friends from last Spring was a new, and delightfully bright, homeschooler who had been bullied at his $15K/year private school.

But my biggest surprise in seeing Kelly’s class was how very functional all her fellow classmates were. Kelly, maybe because she has such a straight-laced brother, is drawn to the rowdy, and such is the case this year. But, honestly, the rowdies are just the youngest in the classroom, who like to joke around. Kelly’s still a bit unfocused, as she was before, but she’s in a class of 13, which is less than half the class size of a public school, so it’s harder for her to drift away. Furthermore, I felt like my time to volunteer was something the teacher incorporated, rather than something she needed.

For example, today I came in with a story to read (of my own choice), and a small craft, similar to that I would have brought to a homeschooling group. I brought “The Garden” from Frog and Toad Together, which just happened to tie in nicely with the fact that the children had recently planted seeds and some of them had sprouted and others had not. All the children listened attentively, and then had little trouble putting together a craft I’d set up for them. Then, to my delight, the teacher improvisingly turned the fact that all the children had created flower masks into another lesson, pulled out a poem scheduled for May, and had them all review colors and a new song. In the meantime, during my 1-1/2 hours there, the teacher taught the children a moral lesson, had them review a song, and taught them phonics. While she was teaching the children phonics (in two separate groups), I read each alternate group  three picture books, all of which were attentively appreciated. Oh, and they cleaned up after themselves, and the teacher was surprised when I cleaned up an artspace the children had been working in, even though adult volunteer clean up after children was de rigeuer in both Neil’s and Kelly’s public schools.

In the public schools, it was rare to be able to do more than one picture book a day, given all disciplinary control than had to be put into place to even get through it. And even then, I’m not sure 1/3 of the students could have told you what the story was about, whereas in Kelly’s new school, I think all of them could have.

Having seen snack time twice now, it’s clearto me that at least one parent cares enough to package something personal for their child; where at public schools it was all too often either dependent on what the school gave or some grocery school package like Lunchables or dry Top Ramen. So this school looks even less than a rich person/two working parents family conceit; and even then, that you might be able to think two working parents are indifferent to their children’s needs. It did come across that this was a school where the families cared about their children. It was sad that such families, like ours, could not send their children to the local schools–and that this obviously made public schools much poorer. When I combine our local property tax (which ostensibly pays for the schools), I’m paying $15K for Kelly’s education this year, too, and we’ll be paying about &17K for her next year. Peter points out that in many other areas, the schools may be acceptable for only the cost of the mandatory property tax. But in the public school, the teachers cannot kick out the unready, the disruptive, and destructive; and unlike Kelly’s private school, as a result, they need parent volunteers to provide the parent than can’t be provided legally.

I went to a private college, while Peter went to a state one. We both got an excellent education, but his required more effort (more in the way of getting into the right classes) than mine did. So private education is still surprisingly effective to me, altough I’m still intimidated at the cost of it.

At the spur of the moment last month, Peter and I decided to get tickets to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the monster industry show where you can see and try out all the new gadgets and electronics goodies scheduled to come out in the next year and beyond.

Peter had told me it was huge, and it was huger than that. There were big gadgets and little gadgets, innovative gadgets and dorky gadgets, true blue American gadgets and completely untranslatable Asian gadgets, simple gadgets and complex gadgets, and everything in between, and in multiple iterations. To top it all off, this took place in Las Vegas, which itself is freakishly gargantuan in its scale. We had nice 4-star hotel rooms which were so cheap we could book a separate room for Neil and Kelly in a casino with its own movie theatre.

But back to CES. On the first day (after we dropped Neil and Kelly off at Chris’ house in the hopes we’d get them back as fluent Mandarin speakers), we were somehow still working under the delusion that we might be able to spend a moment at any interesting booth. We started in the International Pavillion to admire electronic cigarettes, still ignorant that there were about 20 manufacturers of electronic cigarettes (and pipes) at the show, and that all smokers still smoked tobacco. I admired a mini egg-shaped MP3 player/speaker from Singapore, not knowing that a Hawaiian company had already copied the design and begun distribution in the U.S. In the meantime, I (inadvertently) insulted all the Asian companies by taking business cards and shoving them in my purse, instead of attentively studying them before carefully putting them away.

Before I managed to insult all of Asia’s entrepreneurs, we booked it over to the South Hall, where Peter was going to meet one of his comic book heroes, Stan Lee, in person, at the Marvell booth. While he was there, I explored the rest of the hall, and ran across Elvis in the Tiffen booth.

The next day, Peter and I started at the Venetian, where I was hoping to meet up with some of my VZW peeps, but they had been locked up in some private rooms to do penance by talking with journalists. Alcatel Lucent showed off LTE (fast true wireless 4G) nearby, and I agreed it was fast. Then we returned to the Las Vegas Convention Center, which was obviously where the show show was going on.

OMG, was there ever a lot of 3D TV. You could have your old-school 3D TV with paper glasses, or the more sophisticated 3D TV with expensive IF glasses. Or you could have a special lens that would create a holographic effect. There were 3D games and 3D TV shows and 3D movies and they all looked stunning. Wisely, the manufacturers did not provide seating in front of their 3D screens, nor any media which played for longer than 3 minutes, because only sore feet and a break could tear many people away from those screens. As it was, Panasonic had a 52″ 3D HDTV which was permanently blocked by gawpers.

I tore myself away from the 3D effects long enough to have my moment as an insufferable wireless geek. Intel was showing off a VoIP phone (another ubiquitous technology at this show), and when the rep pointed out the RJ-11 jack, I mocked it as the vestige of a dying paradigm. Peter decided it was time for us to call it a day.

I’d brought a skirt to wear the next day, which unfortunately also made the wearing of heels not optional. Luckily, I chose Central Hall as my first destination. It was where many of the bigger companies were, which also meant many of them had seating for their demonstrations.

The marketing person in me was awed by the level of presentation. Casio had set up a regularly recurring showcase of their latest gadgets like a runway show, complete with a television camera recording the show and putting close-ups on one or several of the screens. The spokesmodel came out, smiled brightly, hit her lines, presented the show, and cued up her male counterpart. He smiled, stepped to the other side of the stage, gave his scripted banter. Product introduction, and a dour model-type in sparkly dress moved down the runway holding a Casio product and making sure all the members of the audience could see the precious object before she arrogantly whisked it away.

And repeat. It was cheesy, but in a delightful Zoolander way, and I loved it. The only thing that could have made it better would have been a Mugatu type zapped in the end with one of the Casio gadgets, but for all I know, that’s the 6 pm show every day.

I just had to find out who at Casio had put this together, so when I ran across one of the actors coming out of the dressing room, I asked her. She brightly told me she’d find out for me, and quickly returned with the information that the entire show had been scripted and produced at the Casio headquarters in Japan, and translated to English. “So where were you cast, in L.A. or Las Vegas?” I asked her. “In Japan,” she told me. Her brightness faded when my eyes registered disbelief. “All of us were cast in Japan,” she said, “we work there.”  The fact that I’d assumed this had been created in Casio’s L.A. office probably shows how little I still have to learn about business in Asia. But that the presentation had been totally made in Japan also explained why one of the featured products was a camera phone which you can only get there.

Canon had a fairly stunning presentation, too. This showed off some of their camera in the context of a wedding, with a professional videographer, a bridesmaid with a handheld camera, and a mother-in-law with a camera, all Canon products. But not only was this demonstrated in a promotional movie introduced by a spokeswoman, the cast–at least those who had wielded a camera in the “making of the movie of the wedding”  video–stepping out to further talk about their designated Canon products, in person, and in character. This all made my agonizingly-produced PowerPoint presentations look very lowly indeed.

In the end, there was so much there, and so much of it, again and again, that it all converges into a memory of wirelessly connected 3D TVs, cell phones, computers, and devices–oh, and there were several devices that did that connecting too, complete with widgets (small single-purpose programs). I remember looking at the new Samsung Omnia II, which had widgets and TV and a computer, and asking the rep when the screen would be in 3D.

It was a sign it was time for me to go home and leave the gadgets alone. For now.

I’ve always been a Star Trek fan, which is a complement to Peter, who’s a Star Wars fan, and we both take part in properly educating our children to our respective geek pop cultures. Peter sat the children down to watch the original set of Star Wars movies (technically IV, V, and VI, though they were written, screened, and produced first), and when Neil didn’t know what a “tribble” was, we quickly rented the “Trouble with Tribbles” Star Trek episode from Netflix.

So when Star Trek came to the Tech, I was interested, especially when Neil, even with his very limited knowledge of Star Trek, told me he was interested to go as well.

I thought admittance was pricey. I’ve gotten used to taking my children to museums, and while there’s usually a surcharge for (optional) special exhibits, it’s rare to have to pay more than $10 or $15 for an afternoon’s worth of education and fun. A regular visit at the Tech fits well within this scope, but after having at least two major (and pricey) exhibits which trucked in crowds of paying patrons (Bodyworlds and the Da Vinci Experience), the Tech has learned its special exhibits may be a good way to help fund the regular museum programs. But, still, $25 for me, and another $19 for Neil seemed an awful lot.

That said, Neil and I liked the show. It started with a big room mostly featuring costumes from the different series, and some props from the show. With these was one of the most interesting aspects of the show: how Star Trek inspired modern technology. For instance, cell phones were very much inspired by Star Trek communicators–something that’s not hard to miss, especially when you think of flip phones. Tasers may be thought of as being like the stun setting on Star Trek phasers, since in either real life, or fiction, they work by temporarily paralyzing the muscles with an electronic force. There was a window which mixed real life and fiction by showing historical ships (like Navy cruisers and space shuttles) as somehow evolving into the Star Trek Enterprise space ships.

The next room was a recreation of the ship’s deck, and both Neil and I made sure to have our pictures taken in the captain’s chair. We also got to see ourselves “teleported” in another room which had a teleporter recreation, and see the captain’s quarters as they looked in Star Trek II.

The last and biggest room had more models and an entire wall placing all the major events from all the Star Trek series and movies into a single timeline. I’m not sure I was hard-core enough to appreciate that, since I think of each Star Trek series as something that stands on its own, not as interlocking in a strict sequence. I mean, Star Trek: The Next Generation was a great show, and made rare references to its predecessor, but it was really a different show based on same premise, not a strict sequel. The timeline did remind me how long its been since I watched anything Star Trek. Most of the movies I’d seen when they were in the theater, and that (gasp) goes back almost 30 years. I watched the first two television shows as reruns when I was still in school, but never really got into any of the later iterations, not even Enterprise, even though I really really wanted to like it because it starred Quantum Leap guy Scott Bakula. So, honestly, I don’t really know, or particularly care, about when Captain Jane Away (?) lived, since I can’t name the series she came from either.

Otherwise, we had more costumes, more props, more models, and a quiz game Neil enjoyed and did well at, even given his limited exposure to Star Trek. I vowed to educate my son with the original Star Trek episodes and the good Star Trek movies (II, IV, and maybe VI), but to my surprise, those can’t be gotten at the library, and I have to Netflix them.

I was looking forward to buying a souvenir of our mother-son Star Trek experience, but if I’d thought the show itself was verging on the edge of being overpriced, the pictures certainly were. The only way I could buy any picture of us was to buy a $28 package of 2 or 3 pictures, with an option to add pictures to that at $6 each. I asked if I could just buy a picture of Neil in the captain’s chair for $6, but it wasn’t an option: it was the full package or nothing. Having already spent $42, I couldn’t justify $70 for an hour’s worth of Star Trek fun (even though we were able to add in some fun at the Tech as part of our attendance before we had to go pick up Kelly).

We were the only people attending the exhibit, but to be fair, it we were there on a Monday, the week before Christmas break began. The Da Vinci show cost as much as this exhibit, and that was consistently packed, even though I didn’t consider it that impressive, and it was certainly less fun than Star Trek. So maybe there are more Trekkies/Trekkers out there with more money than I’m willing to part with. As it was, Neil and I had a good time, but I’m glad Peter and Kelly didn’t join us, because it wouldn’t have been worthwile for them.

This year, it was Peter’s turn to hide our presents and put together the Christmas treasure hunt. I’m beginning to suspect he has ties to the nefarious G.N.O.M.E., which stole my presents in 2007, and surfaced this year, having taking presents from everyone except Peter, and leaving notes like this behind:

Our first clue was a rolled-up note in my stocking, saying “David Carroll” on one side and with a Canadian flag on the other. The Canadian David Caroll? Who’s that? We googled him, and found one of the many Canadian David Carrolls in existence was the one who made the viral video “United Breaks Guitars.”

Neil and I dashed to the obvious place: our guitars, and on the back of one of them, we found this song”

Neil plunked it out on his keyboard, but neither of us recognized the tune, until we called Kelly over and she started singing “Jesus Loves Me,” along to it. Funny, I had pegged Lutherans as more of the “Silent Night” and “O Come All Ye Faithful” type, but they’re either teaching all kinds of Christian songs there, or Kelly picked it up at one of the Vacation Bible Schools. Neil returned to Google to research the song: perhaps the author’s name would be a clue, or the year it was written, or the lyrics read backwards. I just picked up on “the Bible tells me so..” and plucked Kelly’s picture bible out of the bookcase.

In there, we found two more clues: the clue to a key

and a code.

We started coming up for all sorts of rhymes for “Blotto”: auto, gateau, koto, until Peter told us to look in Kelly’s room.

There, we found Watto (the doll of the Toyardian trader, not the Toyardian trader himself) with “special delivery” taped to his butt. Neil and I puzzled over that for a while, until Peter hinted my idea that it had to do with the post was the best clue. I walked outside and in the mailbox found an envelope full of cut up pieces of paper.

And so, Neil, Kelly and I set upon trying to piece them together:

And eventually ended up with this:

This was pretty obscure, to say the least. The first picture is Carolyn: Neil and Kelly//a disc, which we eventually figured out referred to the Rammstein album Mutter. The second is the cover for Terminator 2, which is abbreviated T2, which now may be redefined as track 2. And Track 2 on the Rammstein album is “Links, 2, 3, 4.” Then the last piece of the puzzle is a shift key with W1,W2 ^ W3. I don’t know how this was supposed to work, but Neil eventually figured it meant shift left 8.

He took that to the cipher we’d gotten with the key, and solved the puzzle, which, translated from the colloquial German said “a hot scream from the little man.” Given the earlier Rammstein reference, and that we’ve been on a Rammstein kick lately, and that Neil showed us the Lego version of Rammstein’s “Feuer Frei,” in which a Lego fig breathes fire, I looked in one of the Lego boxes.

There I found a present from Peter: a business card holder engraved with “Wer wagt, gewinnt.” I won’t translate this or explain its context, but I will say that work stress brings out the Teutonic maiden warrior within me. In fact, I have a running theory that my contract ran longer than it might have because everyone at the company was afraid to tell me it was over.

Inside the business card holder was a key to Peter’s office. So we all got dressed and drove downtown, where a Christmas service at the basilica was just getting out. In the office, on the ladder was posted a message in my favorite secret language for treasure hunts, Latin: “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” Who is the custodian of the custodians…I pondered, which could be “Who watches the watchmen?”

Peter had a Watchmen poster on his door, and Neil looked behind it to find the key for the office door. And there, inside the office, were our presents: a 1000-piece puzzle cube for Neil, a beautiful dress up treasure chest for Kelly, and an elegant wrist watch for me.

Once again, the fiends of GNOME have been thwarted!

Personally, 2009 has been a year full of the unexpected. I got a job; Neil discovered a math community; Kelly went to private school; and Peter may be on the cusp of a new direction. I’m not quite sure what to make of it all, much less what to expect for 2010, but it has been at parts so surreal that I have taken to calling it my Alice in Wonderland year.

The year started out with me working part-time on a contract, writing for developers on mobile internet technology. The work was nice, since I learned a lot, and earned money to ride us through the rocky ride the credit crash caused.

Early on, we got a new president, whose cult of personality made me nervous. Happily, that cult seems to have faded from the American populace, but he still has solid Congressional support, which has led to some unprecedented and extraordinary acts of government, like a stimulus bill passed seemingly in seconds; the nationalization of two American car companies; and nationalized health care which, as far as I can tell, still doesn’t give me free health care.

I completed my contract work in March, but in the meantime, I scored a columnist gig at Santa Cruz Magazine. It was surreal, to say the least, to have work fall in my lap while others weren’t able to find jobs, no matter how hard they looked.

Neil went to his first math competition, Math Counts, in February, and seems to have been discouraged out of any competition as a result. It was all I could do to get him to come to the Julia Robinson Math Festival at Stanford in June, and only then with the promise that if he didn’t like it we would go. It turned out to be far better than that: he met mathematician Bill Gosper, who became his friend, mentor, and guide to the math community in the South Bay and the Bay area. When Neil took a computer class at Stanford in June, Bill Gosper would meet us after class, and show off complex mathematical equations in graphic form, to which he added riddles, puzzles, and personal anecdotes. Neil absorbed it; I felt like Alice in Wonderland at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.

In July, everything seemed to fall apart. Someone, somewhere, hacked my eBay and Paypal accounts, which ended up with some innocent computer vendor in England sending me an expensive laptop I had never ordered. A few weeks later, it was time to exchange library books for Tamara, the elderly Ukrainian woman I’d been helping since before Kelly was born, but she wasn’t answering her phone. Eventually, I called one of the Russians who lived in her community, and he told me she’d gone to a nursing home, and gave me her number there. But when I spoke to her, she couldn’t remember me. And I haven’t heard from her since.

Then, Comic-Con rolled around, and Kelly and I came down with a flu so bad we could barely move for two days. We quarantined ourselves from Peter and Neil, but nonetheless, it rolled over to them too—exactly as Peter needed to be packing up the van and driving down to the show. So Peter assigned the packing duties to Joe and Mark, which ended up having some consequences. In the end, Peter recovered just in time for the great drive south, albeit with a Neil who mustered himself to the verge of recovery, only due to his desire to keep his record of having attended Comic-Con every year of his life.

At this point, I’d run out of my hard-earned money from earlier in the year. So just about then, the consultancy who’d booked me to do the earlier contract, called out of the blue, and told me they had a full-time contract gig for me, which I could work from home. Regrettably, I had to tell them I could only work part-time, since I was homeschooling my children, and that I would have to take a break in September, because we’d scored cheap tickets to Australia in May for those dates. I still got the gig, though it started out with the Ghastly Powerpoint, at which point I figured my far more unconventional Powerpoints ended it just as suddenly.

And so, we packed up the family to go to Albuquerque, where we got to take part in four days of movie production, thanks to our big Atomic Avenue balloon, playing part of a setting. Yup, on top of everything else this year, we were in a movie. Having lost 10 pounds from the sheer stress and horror of PowerPoint, I put most of my energy into eating food off the craft table, and walking around downtown Albuquerque. Albuquerque is a funky little town, exactly the place where you can imagine a character from a Stan Ridgway song settling in after the car he (or she) was driving breaks down for the last, irreparable time.

When I came back, I was told my job would now be full-time, which left me with a different crisis. I might be able to keep the academics going, but there was no way I could serve Kelly’s social needs, work 40 hours a week, and remain sane. It was a real crisis for Peter and me, but at the last minute (after public school had already started and the Friday before this school began), we discovered there was a place we could affordably (given my job) send her. And so, we sent Kelly to private school, yet unexpected twist in the year.

In September, we went to Australia, which turned out to be both more and less exotic than we expected. Due to a horrendous dust storm, and our fear of a recurrence, we stuck close to the beaches between Brisbane and Sydney. More than anything, Australia struck us as alt.California: a beach- and mall-loving culture, albeit populated by friendly, docile British commonwealth folks. The beaches were stunning. The sky and most animals were weird (i.e. we saw a cassowary, but it still seems like an escapee from a childrens’ movie.) And most surprisingly, there are too few Australians: most of the country is extremely rural, and even Sydney seemed closer in size to a city like San Francisco, than to a big one, like London.

When I returned, I found it I was scheduled to travel out to Maryland for my job. It was several long days of business meetings, which included a fancy dinner at Zaytinya in DC, and seeing the beauty of autumn on the East Coast. My job became a bit more surreal after that though: it was like I’d been switched into a higher gear, and the wheel popped off, but I had to keep driving.

Just as the gig began to veer badly, I received some shocking news: my former neighbor, Dave, had unexpectedly died. It put me in a philosophical mood: was all this worth it, when life is so short? When my job finally sputtered to a halt a few weeks later, I collapsed in sheer exhaustion for 2 days, during which the consultancy had to prod me to do just a few more hours towards future assignments.

So I end the year knowing very little of what I can expect in 2010. This last year has been odd; I can only hope the next one is a little less so, but I don’t know that I can count on that.

Peter and I have discovered there is one sure way to kill a magazine: get Peter a gift subscription to it.

This first happened many years ago, when we were new parents. I found out about a new parenting magazine, called Dad, directed to fathers. In my experience (back when I was still a new parent and thus read parenting magazines), most parenting magazines revolve around some perennial topics very obviously targeted at the mom, not the dad. So when I heard about this new magazine, which promised stories focusing on dad-ness, I sprung for a gift subscription for Peter.

Within 6 months, the magazine published its last issue, and reverted to a subscription to Parents magazine, which despite its implication that it is for both parents, largely features stories on lactating, the woes of a the working mom, and dealing with other moms.

That was the end of that until last Christmas, when I got Peter a magazine subscription to a new magazine called Best Life. It was a magazine featuring style and lifestyle tips for men who don’t have pressing needs for new pick-up lines and skinny jeans, but who still want to look great, actually have money to invest, and care to have, well, the best life.

I think Best Life lasted for all of 4 issues before it folded, and reverted to Men’s Health. That’s not too bad, but it’s not the same magazine.

Now, the Peter curse may seem just a coincidence, given that Dad and Best Life where new magazines, and such “start-ups” are often funded on a sink or swim basis.

But another magazine subscription Peter got last year (from his parents) was Gourmet magazine. During the course of the subscription, this 68-year-old venerable magazine folded. Now Peter gets Bon Appetit.

So, if you want to kill a magazine, you don’t need poor advertising, or incompetent editors: it’s simple! Just buy Peter a subscription, and it’ll be dead within 12 months.

Last week, Liz (the daughter of our former neighbors) called me to tell me her father, Dave, had suddenly collapsed and subsequently died. It was a big shock. Dave and his wife BJ had both taken early retirement to go live on their rural ranch just a few years ago. And in May, I’d visited them there, where Dave was happy, active in local conservationist causes, and improving his land. And, now, he would be forever 56 and no older.

The news hit me hard. BJ is one of the nicest people I know, and it was hard to think of her living alone on that huge ranch. She gave me courage and perspective at some hard points this year, and I always thought of the ranch where she and Dave lived as an escape of my oh-so-technical life. And Dave had been so happy doing homesteader activities, like making his own sausages (which were amazing), and gleaning apricots from another friend’s farm.

BJ had asked that we celebrate his life and going to heaven as a festive event, and requested no black. I brought Kelly, Liz, and another family friend from San Jose, with me to a church in Patterson, where we brought dishes for a potluck, and stories about Dave.

It soon became clear to me that my big-city ways were at odds with most of the gathered. The majority of people spoke about where they lived in terms of acreage and livestock. I wore a new sweater dress; the more typical garb at this event was decidedly country:

The organizer of the event scrambled to get everyone to say the requisite blessing over the food before the city heathen (me) who’d barged in and filled a plate, started eating. My typical party chatter about mobile internet technology and travel abroad wasn’t going to work here. After all, there is no wireless in the wilderness. There’s not much conversation, either: many of my typical conversation starters were answered with a simple “yup.”

Here is BJ, talking to (I think) Burt:

When I told Burt I lived in San Jose, he laughed and said “I’m sorry.” He’d left San Jose to serve in World War II, after which he’d moved out to become a rancher.

In the end, I pulled out my nuggets of knowledge on horses and guns. It was pretty interesting talking about horses and guns with people who actually own and use both, and not just for recreation.

Many people whom Dave had touched in his life came up to speak about him. He’d established and led a boy scout troop in San Jose, and one of his former scouts spoke about him. He’d driven from his ranch to Patterson (a sometimes tough one-hour drive) regularly to come to Mason meetings. He’d worked with other conservationist groups for responsible development in Patterson and the canyon. And many of his fellow co-workers at the Santa Clara Valley Water District came to remember him, even as they themselves had scattered out to their own remote ranches in northern California. Another neighbor of ours drove from Chico to remember Dave. He’d touched a lot of lives, even (and perhaps especially) when he moved to an isolated homestead.