In the Pipes

So a dog, a pig and an eel walk into a Kwik-E Mart . . .

One of my favorite childhood books is The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.  Amazing story full of witty language use, amusing to me even now.  Who knows -- maybe his character of Mathemagician is what sparked my life-long fascination with all things geek.  Anyway, near the beginning of the story, the main character Milo gets stuck in a land called the Doldrums, until Tock the Watchdog comes by to get him (and the story) moving again.  Things are a bit like that here just now – long summer days, wrapping up one project, starting research on new designs, making plans for future endeavors.  All important and useful, but a far cry from the hectic endgame days, or the intense crunch-time hours when deadlines are looming.  Plus, a lot of people are out of the office, so it is much quieter than usual. 

The issue with me blogging about things being slow in the office is that my wonderful, handsome, well-dressed manager may use this as a reason to give me more to do.  I have plenty to do, Jeff!  It’s just slow-going to feel like I’m making progress right now.

There actually is a real place called the Doldrums – it is in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, also called the Sargasso Sea . The Sargasso Sea has a number of claims to fame, not the least of which is that it is where most (all?) North American and European eels are born.  It used to be quite a mystery where eels came from, since no one had ever seen a baby eel, which gave rise to all sorts of conjectures of how eels came into being.  So no, I’m not stuck in the mid-Atlantic.  I’m here in San Francisco but in the doldrums none-the-less.  (If I was more motivated today I’d find something clever to say about being two places at once.)

Instead of waiting for a giant talking dog to shake me out of the doldrums, I am taking a few days off to go to Los Angeles to see what trouble I can find down there.  So far, my plans include sitting on the beach and to going to the Kwik-E-Mart.  What?  Didn’t you know about Kwik-E-Mart?  Elise Thompson for LAist site posted a pretty piece on it.  I wonder if there will pig hoofprints on the ceiling?  I figure when I get back next week I’ll be recharged and ready to bang out these designs.  A few days of letting my subconscious work on them can only help. 

I need to pack.  Actually, I packed this weekend, except for the shoes.  Always a challenge to pack enough shoes.  Ahhh, shoes (caution, some less than prim language in the video.)  (also caution, this song may be get stuck in your head for days). 

La Vie en Rose

It has ARRIVED!  The mythical PINK HARDHAT!  Taaadaaaaa!   This means my stuff from New Orleans is out of storage and I’m unpacking at the new house.  Did I mention I just bought a place in San Francisco?

I was given this hardhat back when I was a Schlumberger Wireline engineer working rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.  The story goes like this:

There are different teams on the rig, and it was decided that they would get identified by different hardhat colors.    So the head guy on one team goes to the company man and says, “My team has talked about it, and has decided we want Blue.” 
The company man said, “Blue is already taken.” 
“Ok, well, give us Green then.” 
“Green is also taken.”
“Yellow ?”, said the guy, starting to get annoyed.
“Taken.”
“Hell, then – give us PINK then!” he bellowed, and stomped off.  And that is how they became the pink team.  I think they had to special order the hardhats.

When I got the assignment to log that well, there were a number of burly men wandering around in pink hardhats -- something I’d never seen before, and may likely never see again…unless the Village People do a reunion tour.  I was enamored.  And at the end of the trip they gave me one just to be nice (and to annoy the guys on my crew, since they knew I would be wearing it regularly.)

My roommate has B-O

My roommate has just bought a vintage 1975 Bang Olufsen record player/receiver. (He insists I stop calling it "the O-Bang thingy".)  This purchase has set off a flurry of activity in the apartment:  rearranging the living room, moving the old stereo, figuring out speaker placement, looking for a connector cable. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a cable from 1975? 

Actually, they are still making them; it just takes a week to get one shipped.  But instead of buying one and waiting the week, he's continuing to look around town for it.  I figure it will be a week before he gives up and orders one, which will then take another week to come in.

They are also making this cable to connect to an IPOD.  I love the idea of connecting the IPOD to a 1975 stereo.

In a odd coincidence, not being an audiophile, I'd never heard of Bang Olufsen until my trip to Singapore this past January.  They have a Bang Olufsen store on the retail level of the hotel I stay in there. And coincidently I'm going back to Singapore next week for some client visits.  I'll have to go to the O-Bang store to check if they have these cables in stock.  No harm in having backup cables.

So, since we don't have either cable, we can't actually listen to it.  But I'm sure it sounds amazing.