Blog Master G

It is not often that I am so fuming with anger before 7am and screaming profanities. But Happy’s pissing on the living carpet (again!) will do that to me. He only managed to leak a little bit, but it’s getting ridiculous. Sure, he drank a ton last night, but we took him out twice — once right before bed and just an hour prior to that. And this morning, I was on my way down the stairs to take the dogs out. And there he went. The good news is that it wasn’t stinking and that there was barely anything there.

On a brighter note, the Giants beat the Braves last night to advance to the National League Championship Series for the first time since the quake series in 1989. Go Giants! And speaking of earthquakes, I was talking to my physical therapist yesterday about the ’89 quake and our respective experiences. She said that this is “earthquake weather” — she remembers that October week 13 years ago when the last Big One hit and how the weather was quite similar to how it’s been this week (ass hot). Hmm…Giants in the NLCS, it’s October, it’s hot. Are the planetary forces lining up to rock the Bay Area once again? The only saving grace that does not point to a repeat of 1989 is that the A’s got beat earlier this week.

I finally got around last night to uploading a bunch of photos from the last few weeks. This morning I sent out the photos from the dinner party to the FF kids. There are also some funny Stella, Happy, and Enoch photos in there.

Rather than write an entry today specifically for the blog (I’m feeling a bit lazy), I thought I’d recycle some text I wrote this morning about the weekend in an email to Larry:

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Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 11:38:01 -0700 (PDT)
From: Gabe
…

Jen and I had a fun weekend. Had some friends over pretty much all weekend and did a lot of partying and hanging out. It actually reminded me of the Vassar days. Saturday night after having a couple pitchers of beer at our local brewery (walking distance from where Jen and I now live, which rocks), we went to the adjacent 24-hour Fitness. Enoch was hitting on this chick whose dad owned the place (he got her number). Then we all went to get swimsuits and hit the hot tub (Enoch being the only one of us with a 24-hour membership). So we were all wasted and kickin’ it in the hot tub. Enoch and I went into the sauna at one point for quite some time. Jen (the only sober one) said that our eyes were all glazed over when we came out. Of course, there were warning signs everywhere saying that you should not use the hot tub or sauna while intoxicated. Ha! And we even ended up with this funny sign from the wall that says “Co-Ed Wet Area.” Enoch’s going to hang it on his bedroom door.

…
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Just a sampling of the fun weekend we had. Ben and Jess joined the party last night for sushi at Sushi Ko and to watch the Sopranos and Curb Your Enthusiasm, which was hilarious.

“People ask me if…I’m dead.” This rocks. This dude running for Senate in Montana is actually blue. Has the true leader of the Smurfs emerged at last?

Have you hugged your financial planner today? In an industry filled primarily with old white men in suits and an undying sternly countenance, working with planners who actually care and take the time to listen to you as the whole person is a rare and wonderful thing.

Jen and I are fortunate enough to have the most amazing financial planners, Tom Swift and Arthur McCord of Financial Avengers. During our two-hour meeting with them last night, they not only enthusiastically encouraged us to buy a house and start a kennel later down the road, but they actually asked us how we feel about negative returns. Who does that? Not many planners I’ve known.

Here’s a message I posted at my company, encouraging others to contact the Avengers.

Thank you, Tom and Art, for being such wonderful people, good friends, and great business people. You continue to astound me.

I hate virtual presentations. It’s 7:37am and I’ve already been at work for nearly an hour. Although working for an international company presents the amazing opportunity of working with people overseas, something inevitably goes wrong when presenting to a group. This morning I had three folks calling in to my office — from right here in San Rafael, Seattle, and Bangalore, Karnataka (India). First, NetMeeting wouldn’t open on my computer. OK, everyone had a copy of the presentation, so I could deal with that. But then my stupid administrator virus scan and Previo fire up simultaneously. The latter is easy enough to cancel, but the former is a bit more difficult to get out of the way. All this while trying to click through a PowerPoint presentation. But alas, I made it. It’s over with now, and I feel better.

I truly believe that everything happens for a reason. Last night Jen and I went to George’s amazing hilltop mansion in Novato to talk with the book crew. Jen blew everyone away with her publishing know-how and her samples of Diagnostic Imaging and BioMechanics. (Jen rocks.) So at the end of the meeting, we get to talking about dogs. Here’s my casual IM narrative to Jonty this morning about what happened:

GabeVC99: hey, speaking of being self-employed: something really cool happened last night.
jyamisha: what’s that?
GabeVC99: my dad’s in the planning phases for writing another book (another version of “100 faces of marin”) and he has all these rich marinites who are funding it.
jyamisha: woah
jyamisha: sounds cool
GabeVC99: jen and i are going to do the production. so last night we went to this dude’s AMAZING hilltop mansion.
GabeVC99: he doesn’t say much during the meeting, but afterwards, we get to talking about dogs.
GabeVC99: (he has a kennel outside with 4 dogs in it.)
GabeVC99: he asks if i like dogs. and i said, hell yeah. jen and i love dogs so much we’re hoping to start a kennel here in marin.
GabeVC99: he lights up and starts telling me about the 90 or so sled dogs and KENNELS he owns in tahoe!
GabeVC99: and says, in all seriousness, let me know if you need an investor!!
GabeVC99: pretty cool, eh??

Tonight when we meet with the Captain, I plan on getting advice from him on the kennel front, too.

Yesterday while IMing with my old college buddy Dan Merrill, he pointed me to this great Apple ad wherein the chick is so stoned that Apple had to pull the ad from TV because people complained. I think it’s hilarious. “It was……a bummer.” Ha!

Today started out as one of those days when you know things just aren’t going to be good. As he has an annoying tendency to do, Happy Dingo pissed all over his legs first thing this morning. It’s good that he’s no longer going in the house, but sometimes he sees Stella go somewhere new and exciting, so he wants to try it out, too. Rather than taking his time and aim, he gets all worked up and starts pissing while he’s sniffing and walking all around.

6:35am: Jen and I slowly try to force ourselves out of bed. We’re not moving very fast. 7:08am: We’re off to the ferry terminal. Jen is early. This is good. 7:20am: I return home to walk the dogs. 7:40am: Feed the dogs and make coffee. 7:50am: Shave. No hot water. Uh oh. Think of Plan B. 7:55am: Shower won’t heat up. 8am: Turn on computer to confirm first meeting at 9am. Computer won’t get an IP address. Internet connection won’t work. 8:05am: Still no hot water. Call Larkspur Shores answering service. “Building 2700? We just paged someone.” 8:10am: Still no hot water. Time to make decision: Stick around until “someone” gets his act together and water is heated, or make a run for Autodesk Club One. 8:15am: Now I know why I have that gym membership. 8:30am: Shower. 8:45am: Drive to office to print out docs for meeting. 9am: Arrive on the dot to meeting (back in other building where I showered). Phew.

Last night was better. Jen and I had dinner at a yummy burrito joint deep in the Mission. Then we headed to the San Francisco Hilton for a Vassar Admissions info session, led by our classmate and Assistant Director of Admissions Marivel Oropeza ’99. The event was quite formal, but enjoyable. Marivel did a great job presenting. It’s always fun talking about Vassar. But damn was it hot in that room!

Here’s an email exchange I had with The Miscellany News’ current Editor-in-Chief wherein I provide some history of the misc.vassar.edu Web servers. It’s pretty incredible to think that The Misc. first went online 8 full years ago. And that I was first involved nearly that long ago.

Before falling asleep last night I had this realization that, as of this past Monday (9/30/02), I now own individual stocks for the first time ever. It’s a cool feeling. I’m so used to thinking in terms of stock options — including the thousands of valueless Headlight.com options that I once had — that it took awhile for it to sink in that I now own several hundred shares of stock with real value. Good stuff.

For some reason, my uneasiness and frustration with working for someone else has been sparking up. It’s hard to explain, but, in a nutshell, I have this burning desire to do something I’m passionate about that would generate good income and not involve working for anyone else. I feel like there’s something there, right under my nose, but I can’t put my fingers on it. I’ve always felt this way and just worry that as time passes, the harder it will be to identify and pursue.

Tonight Jen and I are meeting Dad and the book people to talk about doing production for the book. We’re going to this guy’s house in Novato where he apparently has 90 Malamutes. Rock on.

This site rocks. Maybe SUV drivers who commute solo with their big American flag stickers will get the picture some day that oil is a limited resource and they’d be doing a hell of a lot more good for this country by selling their gas-guzzling road hogs than slapping a sticker that says nothing more than “proud to be a resource-wasting American.” I’m glad to see someone leading such an important grassroots campaign. These rules of engagement lay the law for what types of SUVs to tag with the “I’m Changing the Climate” bumper sticker. I just sent this email to the guy who runs the site.

I also had an interesting email exchange today with a coworker about that site. Here’s my latest reply on the topic.

With two fur children to take care of for years to come, this online vet resource could come in quite handy.

I love solving problems. That’s a big part of why I love technology so much. I just solved a challenging PHP/MySQL problem that I’ve been working on since last week. Now I have a truly functional (yet quite simple) CMS for my Web site — with good database design. There’s a main table for content and referenced table that contains the content categories. And I finally got the forms that manage the content to work splendidly. Next it’s time to create content and apply new design!

This morning on NPR I heard a story about West Coast ports, including Oakland’s, being shut down and locking out dock workers. This is crazy. West Coast ports from San Diego to Seattle are all shut down. Collectively, they brought in $300 billion in goods last year. It’s estimated to impact the national economy at a rate of $1 billion per day that the ports do not operate. I got to thinking about unions, how much influence they can have, and how inter-connected everything is. The ports being shut down affects not just the dock workers. Next, it affects the truck drivers who are paid by the load and cannot pick up their shipments from the cargo ships. Then it affects manufacturers and suppliers who build consumer goods and supply our stores. It’s surely impacting some of Autodesk’s customers in the manufacturing industry. So it could even impact me. If Autodesk’s customers don’t do well, Autodesk doesn’t do well. Then our stock price might be impacted and everyone’s job is at risk.

OK, enough of that, but you get the idea. The world and its daily operations are more connected than anyone realizes.

It’s been a really fun weekend so far. It feels like it’s been longer than a couple days.

Friday night after work (after dropping off Happy D. at Planet Canine), Jen, Stella, and I headed to Sacramento to meet up with James and Tracy for a night out. We dropped off Stella at Nana’s house and said hi to Mom, who’s in town these days preparing to sell the house (and trying to deal with that reality emotionally). We rendezvoused with James and Tracy at Tapa the World on J Street. We powered up with some coffee and sangria. Then we headed to James’ favorite bar, The Zebra Club. After one drink there, we headed to Club-2-Me, further down J Street. We had a pretty good time.

Saturday we headed back home to begin cleaning mania and shopping to prepare for our dinner party. I did all the cleaning while Jen did the shopping and cooking. We had the FF kids and cohorts over — Katie, Jeanine, Tiff, Miguel, Isaiah, and Aniko. Jen made her famous lasagne and her newly-famous eggplant parm, both of which were a great hit. We all had great fun. Our neighbors Stacey and Tony were also having a party, so before our guests arrived, Jen and I had gone next door for a few. Later on in the night, Stacey arrived with a tray of Jello shots, which were a huge hit. She and Tony later returned with even more Jello goodness. They received several rounds of applause.

Today is a nice, chill day. I’m just IMing with Pete Dog and hanging out. We had some yummy waffles and fake sausage patties for breakfast and now we’re just lounging around. We may take the fur children to to the dog park later on.