Rob

T r e a s o n !

No substantive updates in a while, I know.

First, the writing gig for Internet Evolution is going well. It annoys me a small bit that I have to write on a specific subject as opposed to something more free–ranging, but the paycheck doesn't annoy me at all, so I imagine it balances out.

The U is continuing to make noises about finishing the Ph.D., but I have to say my heart just isn't in it. I'm looking for outside work and plan on grabbing it as soon as it appears. I'd like to stay in the area for another year or two to put together some funds and re–establish my credit history before heading off elsewhere, but — I dunno. We'll see what's in the cards.

For the first time I am not looking forward to a semester of classes beginning. I am looking forward to other things instead.

Five years ago I entered grad school in awe of the journey that was ahead of me. Now I'm in grad school and thinking … "wow. Is that all there was?" Not a day goes by that I don't think about the fact I hold a Master's degree in CompSci and how phenomenally little that means.

I (vaguely) remember being a freshman at the University of Houston. There was a guy in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Guild who was a Master's candidate in electrical engineering — as a freshman EE, I thought he must've been the smartest thing since Einstein. I'm now one course from a Master's in electrical and computer engineering, and I find myself nowhere near in as much awe of myself as I thought lo those fifteen years ago that I would be.

God. Fifteen years. Admittedly, I spent five years of those in the private sector. Still… have I really been in college for that long?

July 4, 2000, my roommate (nix_guru) and I were kicked out of our apartment in San Francisco. It wasn't our fault and it wasn't our landlord's fault; the person responsible spent eighteen months in the care of the federal prison system for his crimes. Doug and I both had jobs but we no longer had a home. We decided to head down to San José and check on housing down there, but before leaving San Francisco we had a farewell dinner at the Rue Lepic.

I don't remember what Doug had. I had the maigret canard l'orange. We polished it off with a 1996 Clos du Bois Sonoma pinot noir and we said our farewells to The City.

In an era past, Byzantium was called "The City" by those who lived in Europe. It was that night I finally realized the meaning of Yeats' Sailing to Byzantium. I was leaving The City; I doubted I would ever be able to return to it.

July 31, 2008, I was in San José for USENIX at the same time my father was in San Francisco for judicial business. I suggested to him that we eat at the Tadich Grill — Dad shot this down — I then suggested the Rue Lepic. He said he was going to bring along one of his interns, so I figured I should extend an invite to wealtheow to join us. After all, when your father is bringing a lawyer to dinner, you should bring your own. All of us had a lovely dinner, and close to the end of it I realized —

I was having the maigret canard l'orange. A bottle of Clos du Bois Sonoma pinot noir 2006 was on the table.

For a moment I thought about bringing up this parallelism to the table. Eight years ago facing ruin I left town, in this restaurant, this bottle of wine, this meal; and eight years later I was in this town facing the rebirth of my professional career, with the same bottle of wine, the same meal. Admittedly, it was wealhtheow sitting across from me instead of nix_guru, but. Hey. She's prettier than he is, so I'll happily count that as an upgrade.

I was about to bring it all up and then I realized: eight years ago Dad had every bit as much job security as he does today. Eight years ago Bryan (Dad's intern) was probably beginning his undergrad career. Eight years ago wealtheow was probably in high school or not far from it.

So I sat there silently, thanking my lucky stars and a God I can only intermittently bring myself to believe in — and in lieu of a prayer, I thought of Yeats.

After the night ended — Dad and Bryan heading off to the conference hotel, wealhtheow off to the parking garage — I walked around the city for a while. A trolley went past, totally deserted in the late evening. I hopped on board, flashed my day pass, and took firm grip of the passenger rail as I stood on the car's front running board, cold wind cutting into my face as I looked southerly.

From the city's hilltops, the Bay Area looked like a far–off storm of fireflies.

I smiled then and laughed, having returned, triumphant, to Byzantium.

After usenix/evt ended on Tuesday, I spent from Tuesday evening until Friday morning crashed out on John Hawley’s couch. John is a great guy in addition to being a magnificently networked friend. I got to hear quite a lot about his girlfriend, Terri; the two of them seem well suited to each other, and caused me to smile more than once despite my own curmudgeonly nature. At this rate I’ll have to burn my membership card.

I spent Thursday in San Francisco, where I was able to visit many of my old haunts, albeit only briefly. Jeffrey’s Comics and Toys… Stacey’s Books… Eppler’s Bakery. I took the trolleys for their full course, the same way I used to do when I was living in San Francisco and too broke to do anything but sit and watch the city go by, all the while telling myself what I would do when my ship finally arrived. That dream never came to pass — not in San Francisco, at least — but… on reflection, what I got instead was not bad at all.

Thursday evening I was the odd man out at a dinner at a very nice French restaurant, the Rue Lepic. Dad, a law clerk and a 3L law student were the other companions. There was a degree of cosmic synchronicity to it that caused me no small amount of irony, but irony coloring amusement and mirth as opposed to irony coloring tragedy. I doubt I’ll ever tell Dad or his clerk about it, of course. :)

Friday morning it was off on United Airlines to Denver to pay a visit on nix_guru and his wife the lovely and ever–hospitable treneka. nix_guru, trifthen and I formed a Musketeers of sort during our undergrad days. There is no doubt I am closer to those two than I am to my legal brother; when you hear me talk about a brother, you should ask me which of those two I mean and assume I don’t mean my legal brother.

Today, treneka, nix_guru and I went to catch a morning matinee of Wall–E, only slightly ruined by the screaming children behind us. Then nix_guru and I were off for a brief lunch at Tokyo Joe’s, followed by whiskey and cigars in a local cigar lounge. The Havana is a wonderful place — it is easily the friendliest, most genteel cigar lounge I’ve ever been in. We struck up conversations with the other patrons about a broad variety of subjects, aided by Dalmore cigar malt whiskey, Johnny Walker Black Label, Rocky Patel Decade Cigars, Partagas Black and Hoya de Monterey Excaliburs. After a while the other patrons left us alone, leaving nix_guru and I alone to do some very seriously hardcore geeking.

Yes, we geek out in cigar lounges. We developed this habit his freshman year of college, when he was in danger of crashing and burning in Discrete Mathematics. After trying to tutor him on it, I realized he was too stressed out to really be in a position to learn, so I hauled him off to the Tobacco Bowl in Iowa City. He was smoking cloves that night; I was smoking a Hoya de Monterey Excalibur. After he destressed, suddenly he had an a–ha! moment where the Discrete Math subjects just made obvious sense. The success of that excursion turned into many more, to the point where if Doug and I are anywhere within a hundred miles of each other and you can’t find us, start trawling the cigar lounges.

We hadn’t had the change to do a proper cigar crawl in three years. God, I missed it.

I have seen so many people this week, so many people who mean so much to me. Thank you one and all. I am, as ever, forever in your debt for how you have enriched my life.