Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

Since I returned to Seattle last weekend, I’ve been having balky performance with my cable internet.  The guys on the support line say they can see I’m experiencing 25 - 60% packet loss.  So, if my posts this week suck, it’s because the best 25% of my material is pouring out of my cable and onto the driveway, and passersby on the sidewalk.  To their delight.

It surely is a different experience calling Comcast’s support line now than it was when I first had cable internet installed about 5 years ago.  I remember the kid who originally showed up to install my cable modem - young, confused, rattled.  I helped him as much as I could, but when he finally left, he hadn’t been able to make it work.  After he was gone, I cabled it up correctly and it worked fine.

The support lines were much the same in the early adoption years - people who barely knew their way around Windows trying to guide you through the arcana of home networking over the phone.  These were Windows 98 days, too, btw.  The first call was always wasted - the tech  would go through his rudimentary progressions - reboot, unplug, how many lights are blinking - then arrange for a “level two callback”.  There was usually less than a 30% chance anyone would actually call back.  The flat fact was, Viacom/Comcast was a tv cable company, and very few people anywhere inside or outside their company knew much about the system.  And the five of us who were the first subscribers weren’t enough of a revenue stream to devote resources to.

It’s like night and day now.  The techs know their equipment, know how to user their diagnostic tools and seem to be able to visualize the architecture of your setup.  I’m wondering if they also have a rating system for how technically proficient the customer is, because they seem to engage me at an appropriate technical level and don’t try to bullshit me.

Still, I’m sitting here on Friday morning, two technically proficient support calls and one tech visit later, still experiencing packet loss.  To be fair, the issue is intermittent - the phone techs could see the problem, but everything was dunky-whorey when the onsite visit occurred. 

Another guy is due here this morning.  He’ll have to deal with Mrs. Perils, or my mother in law (who experiences intermittent packet loss herself) as I’ll be at a client’s.  Better posting tonight, I’m sure.  Meanwhile, from what I’m seeing, it wouldn’t hurt some of you to cut down on your packet intake a little bit.  I’m doing what I can to help.

If you’ve never visited WaiterRant, a blog about life at tableside in a New York bistro, you should go there today - there’s an especially fine post with this Elmore Leonard-esque line just sort of tossed into the salad:

 This lady’s got so little body fat I’ll bet you could read the serial numbers off her breast implants.

A couple of other work-related blogs worth checking out:

Opinionistas - the travails of an associate at a large New York law firm

Clublife - a bouncer at a nightclub (in New York, again - is this the only place where people have interesting work?) observes the endless stream of Guidos and Guidettes from behind the velvet rope.

Back to Seattle late Friday night.  I’m going to have to change how I manage the end of these trips.  It doesn’t help that my plane usually arrives around midnight, but all too often I hit Friday night like I’m crossing a finish line, and spend the weekend catching my breath.  I need to make definite plans for the weekend after I’m on the road, starting like Thursday, so I’m not feeling disappointed Sunday night.  Especially since I realized this was the last weekend of summer.

Saturday, for instance, was mostly wasted watching a dull-as-dirt OSU football game, but I’d ponied up $20 for ESPN Gameplan, so I felt obligated to watch it, plus surf to the surfeit of other games.  Two exciting overtime games, Michigan State-Notre Dame and Miami-Clemson, sorta made up for it.  Got my butt out of the house for a run before the Florida-Tennessee game came on.  It’s never satisfying for me watching SEC games, I’m always flummoxed and annoyed when I realize (again) that it’s impossible for them both to lose.

Saturday evening, we walked up to the Seamonster Lounge on 45th to hear one of our son’s high school friends play guitar in a quartet that featured a drummer, bass guitar and a Hammond B3 organ.  We’ve slithered into the Seamonster on a couple of other occasions to hear bands we like and shake it a little, but it felt like it would be vaguely incestuous to get up and boogie when it’s your kid’s friends playing.  May have to get over that, as I’v had to get over seeing doctors much younger than I.  I love the Hammond B3, with its retro look and its improbable electromechanical construction (it has a separate unit from the keyboard, a spinning spindle spinner thing, that produces its signature tremolo).  You wonder how they can still get parts for them.

We’d heard the guy playing the Hammond, Ron Weinstein, a couple of other times.  He’s graying and grizzled, probably nearer 60 than 50, and he’s a virtuoso.  I’m not sure how he came to form this band with younger musicians.  I believe this is our friend’s first real band, and he’s playing more like funk than the jazz sound we’ve heard from him before.  It will be interesting to see where this leads.  The crowd was mostly his school friends, plus his mom, and a couple of women who came in to dance, not realizing it was a family recital.  With cover charge.

Yesterday, I did bestir myself to get a kayak paddle - nothing ambitious, just noodling around down by the University of Washington. 

When I’m here in Milwaukee, I often take a run through the park next to my hotel after work, clean up and catch a quick bite at the hotel’s cafe.  There’s the usual collection of road warriors in attendance - the table full of travelling co-workers extending their work day with an intricate exercise in alcoholic team-building, and several loners like me not quite ready to lock themselves in their rooms for the evening, pursuing our loner activities and bantering with Jill, the bartender.  One guy is reading a novel by the light of the candle on his table, I have my computer open answering email and IM-ing with Mrs. Perils and wracking my brain for blogging material.

And then there’s a guy at the bar, chubby and pretty far into his cups.  He’s chatting up another man and woman at the bar, and has Jill chasing around for a large snifter and whatever whole fruits she can find.  He’s intent on performing some amazing magic tricks for the other two and Jill, pleasant soul that she is, is humoring him.

I’m not sure what all the mechanics of the tricks were - I didn’t want to get too far into this guy’s penumbra, and he made at least one trip to the men’s room in the interim - but I looked up at one point to see a rumpled napkin moving across the bar seemingly under its own power.  The source of its locomotion is revealed to be a whole lime underneath it, but I have no idea how it received or executed its marching orders.

A few minutes later, the woman has ordered a fresh beer in a long-necked bottle, and is proceeding to roll it between her hands like a Boy Scout starting a fire with a stick.  After a couple minutes of this, she rests it on the bar and her male companion taps the mouth of the bottle with a beer glass, and beer foam starts gushing out of the bottle.  Back atcha, I guess.

Sometime during the course of the ensuing conversation, the woman mentions her husband in passing, and her companion, who has been leaning closer with his arm resting on the back of her chair, soon finds it necessary to turn in for the night.

Such are the entertainments on the road in Milwaukee.

I was waiting for a sandwich today at a Quizno’s in Milwaukee when I was startled by a familiar song playing in the background.  Turned out is was a song by Seattle band Maktub, a group I’ve danced myself silly to at the Showbox, Bumbershoot, and other venues that prefer to remain unendorsed by me.

Maktub.  At Quizno’s.  In Milwaukee.  Definitely a no-dancing zone for me.  In view of all the bands we’ve loved that have become dust in the wind (no, never loved that one), it would be nice to see one get paid.  I hope they are.

I’ll talk about the marching band reunion a bit, but first a little background. I was conceived within view of Ohio Stadium - my parents were students at OSU and living on Lane Avenue (sorry, Mom. She’d hasten to assure you they were married), so there may be some predestiny involved in my arriving at this juncture. I was introduced to the Ohio State marching band in the early 60s when my parents got a couple of their records. I was already a Buckeye fan, had started to play the trumpet, and was transfixed by the sound of a first-rate all-brass band playing a ripping repertoire of school songs, classic marches and concert pieces. From that point on, I always had it in my mind to play in the band if the opportunity arose.
Eventually, the opportunity did arise, I tried out for the band and made it. They have a grueling week of tryouts, both for their up-tempo high-stepping marching style and for playing acumen. I began my lifelong running regimen in preparation for band tryouts. The pride of the shared achievement creates a bond among bandsmen, especially in your “row” of people playing the same instrument, as you practice, travel and perform at places like Ohio Stadium, the Rose Bowl (I got there in 1971) and, yes, even Michigan Stadium.

Here’s my Mom, me and the future Mrs. Perils at the 1969 homecoming game.
For the last 30-some years, the band has been sponsoring a reunion at an early-season game. This year, over 650 alumni participated. They allow us to perform in the pregame and halftime shows, designed so that we can rehearse music Friday night, walk through our formations and find our spots at an early Saturday morning rehearsal, and not embarrass the organization at game time.
When I was in the varsity band, the first time I saw the alumni band I swore I’d never participate in it when I graduated. I disdained their comparative lack of precision and general dishevelment, and resented having to share precious field time with them. For many years, I kept this promise to myself. However, my youngest brother, 10 years younger, made the band and, in his senior year, wanted me to come to the reunion, and I did. On the field that day, our routes through our respective Script Ohios came close and he glanced over to me as he made a turn, and in that moment I was glad I’d done it, and knew why I would come back in the future.
That’s a compelling aspect of our reunion - it’s “vertical” as well as “horizontal”. A normal class reunion is “horizontal” - everyone’s the same age, and you were all in school together. The OSUMB reunion has that characteristic, but there are also people from a wide range of years - this year, from 1934 to 2004. A good friend of my brother’s played in the alumni band this year while his son played with the varsity band. I remember sitting at a rehearsal a few years back. I had just turned 50, I think. Sometime during the rehearsal, they announced the passing of one of the older members, one who had been in attendance the year before. Later in the rehearsal, a young woman trumpet player leaned over to an acquaintance and whispered excitedly, “I’m pregnant!” So it has this whole birth-and-death thing going on.

This clarinet-playing fellow predates October, 1934, when the band became all brass and percussion. He must still have his faculties - everyone else seems to be scrambling through their charts at this Saturday morning practice while he looks pretty self-assured.
There’s another kind of crossing-over occurring as well. Each year, there’s a new crop of alumni band members who were in the varsity band the year before, and they’re looking across the divide from the other side for the first time. I mean, all of us in the alumni band gaze wistfully at our counterparts in the varsity band, with their crisp turns, sharp uniforms, near-perfect playing and their youth in general. It’s a lot harder, I think, for these first-year alumni to apprehend that Stygian separation.
It’s a lot of fun, though, mixing with people from so many different years, to hear their various Michigan game and bowl game experiences. This year, the current members of C Row threw a party Friday night and invited C Row alumni. We were properly venerated (veneration is not a social disease), and they caught us up on new traditions (a seeming oxymoron, but it illustrates how one can become prehistoric). We had no sympathy when they complained about a bus trip where they were forbidden to put South Park on the bus’ video system. Our bus rides across the bleak late-autumn Big Ten terrain involved some singing, a hazing ritual that resulted in people arriving in downtown Chicago in their underwear and an old-school Greyhound driver, Feasel, who might swerve the bus violently when someone was using the lavatory.

Old and young C Row members. I’m front row, third from left.
And it’s also still a dead-flat thrill to strut onto the field while over 100,000 cheer, and awesome to look up at the huge video screen and see yourself marching toward it.

I don’t watch much, if any, TV news, and I was working pretty hard last week in order to spring myself for my trip to Columbus, so the full effect of the disaster in New Orleans took longer to seep into my consciousness than it did for others more attuned to the culture.

It’s hard for me to excoriate the city, the Corps or whoever for not preparing to the nth degree for the worst possible case.  I mean, I live here at ground zero for earthquake/volcano activity.  I have a stash of food & water downstairs, a product of the Nisqually quake 2-3 years ago, but I’m not sure how complete it is.  And I certainly haven’t gone to the expense of strapping my house to its foundation, or taken other precautions.  I have carried earthquake insurance for the last 10 years or so, only because the bulk of my equity is resting (precariously, as it turns out) on a foundation that may date back to 1906.

My point is that I can’t blame anyone for being caught short by the severity of Katrina’s effects on New Orleans or the Gulf coast.  I really can’t fathom the lethargy of the federal response, however, which is epitomized by the photo of GWB gazing out the window of Air Force One as he flew from the friendly confines of a sycophantic San Diego Navy audience to the friendly confines of Pennsylvania Avenue, using his reflection to practice just the right look of concern for the plight of theoretical humanity 6 miles below.

On my shuttle to SeaTac last Wednesday evening, I rode with a guy who was headed to Atlanta.  He had family in New Orleans, including his mother in an assisted living facility.  He’d heard that she was “alive”, or “safe”, I’m not sure which.  As events unfolded, those designations seem a lot more precarious than they did then, and I hope he succeeded in locating everyone he was looking for.  By comparison, my mission seemed very frivolous, but I went anyway, and my next posts will deal unabashedly with that frivolity.

As I indicated a couple of posts ago, I’m headed to Columbus later in the week to meet with family and to perform with my Ohio State marching band alumni at the Buckeyes’ home opener against Miami (OH) this Saturday.  About 650 of us (including 6 guys from the 30s according to the roster) will march and play for pregame and halftime, culminating in the quad Script Ohio”

In order to be able to participate somewhat, or at least not detract significantly, from the band’s sound, I’ve been heading down to the basement, as I did last year, to terrorize the arachnids with my trumpet.

Those arpeggios and triplets might roll flawlessly off my tongue, but in order for my fingers to keep up, a good trumpet player always keeps his valves lubricated.

Not even spiders should have to endure the cacophony of my second day of practice.

Someone’s broken into a Children’s Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota and stolen a pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in the making of the Wizard of Oz.   The museum’s curator ruefully recalled the encounter with the suspect, posing as a travelling farm implement salesman stranded in Grand Rapids.

“I told him he could sleep in the barn (where the museum is located) as long as he locked the door and didn’t open it when my daughter inevitably came knocking.  Little did I know that guys who are interested in Judy Garland’s clothing items, well, wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about my daughter.”

It would be an amusing tale if that’s as far as it went.  However, a review of the farmer’s DairyCam tapes (installed, he maintained, for security purposes, but, well…) disclosed the following image of the perp:

FBI agents ran the image through their database of men who have taken flying lessons in the last six months AND checked out the latest Harry Potter book from the library, came up empty, and left town without comment.  However, Mindy Lingstad, a copy editor for the Grand Rapids Lutefisk, recognized the individual as Vice President Dick Cheney, and the game was afoot.

The article states that, in all, there were four pairs of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland during the course of making the film.  Speculation leaked from the most forward-thinking liberal think tank in residence at the Blue Moon Tavern in Seattle, WA centered on a theory that the administration, following loosely on the theme of the Lord Of The Rings, was attempting to acquire all four pairs of the coveted ruby slippers.

Once obtained, the Chosen Four - George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and Condi Rice - would slip them on, click them 3 times in unison, and whisk the Administration from it’s insoluble conundrum in Iraq to the friendlier climes of Kansas, where the tenets of evolution would not be applied to their pre-Cambrian concepts of foreign policy.

In a related rumor, it is speculated that the Administration is importuning NASA to nudge tropical storm Katrina towards New York, there to deposit an unprepossessing wood frame house on Hillary Clinton as she bicycled from the Bolshevik Nostalgia Museum to a rally for Cindy Sheehan.  Just for insurance.

And Toto, too, if Roseanna Arquette can play Dorothy, and gets it on with the Tin Man.