The happiest day of their lives ... so far
Otis and Mrs. Otis welcome a new addition to the world. We welcome him as the newest addition to our family. They're 24 hours in, so I know they're all three tired -- but not too tired to know that they're about to embark on a wonderful journey.

Congratulations to Otis and Mrs. Otis. And congratulations to us, too, because our world just became a better place.

We're hiding over here
Go to eyeofcharley.blogspot.com for ground-level updates, courtesy of us, on the progress of Hurricane Charley as it approaches the Western Edge of America.

And wish us luck. For you praying types, we'll accept those too.

Here it comes
Hurricane Charley is on its way. Nobody knows what's going to actually happen here on the Western Edge, but we're getting ready for the worst. We are not in an evacuation zone, but we're really close to it.

More later if/when something actually happens.

Deep sigh
For the first time in a long time, I wrote a post that I thought was moderately entertaining.

I hit the wrong button. It's gone. And I'm too damn tired to rewrite it.

Ugh.

Wish I had said it first
"Media's the plural of mediocre." --Jimmy Breslin

Wondering here in Allentown
Business this week has brought me to the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton area of Pennsylvania, and of course, I have Billy Joel stuck in my head. And it's getting very hard to staaaaaaaaayy ...

In my quick tour of the area, I have to question why anybody did stay. It's a shell of a city. The local section of Thursday's newspaper was essentially a six-page crime report. The downtown Bethlehem area has some very cool architecture, but it morphs quickly into a depressing neighborhood of dilapidated row houses, places whose occupants would apparently rather mill around outside than inside. A city government official in Easton made news earlier this week by calling a newspaper reporter a "stupid bitch" in the middle of a public hearing. (To his credit, he did resign the next day.) Some of the surrounding area is very pretty, but it doesn't take long to wind up in another depressing little town where nothing has happened since 1940. And normally, I like small towns.

In a word: Yuk.

The last thing you see before the little regional jet lands at the Lehigh Valley International Airport is a big hole where a strip-mining operation kept families fed for the first half of the 20th century. The hole's still there, and there's nothing anybody can get out of it and nothing anybody can do about it. It said to me, "Well, we got ours; you go find a way to get yours."

It's a shame. Small cities in the United States should be centers of innovation and ideas and creativity. Industry and the trades should provide a living wage (Everybody had a pretty good shot/To get at least as far as their old man got). I understand how capitalism works, but I think we're starting to see some of the long-term effects of capitalism on humans. I hope I'm not right about that.

Summertime blahs
My recent reticence is not attributable to anything other than that I'm receiving an awful lot of input these days. But that's a good thing:

This job, about which I was so worried two months ago, is starting to pan out very well. I'm enjoying my little adventure into the real world, and learning a lot that has nothing to do with software. (Thankfully, I'm learning a lot that does relate to software, in an effort to actually keep the job.)

We're getting settled on the Western Edge. The house is good, the yard is good, the neighborhood is good. Kids like it, The Wife likes it, I like it. Nothing about which to complain, or expand upon.

And my life is a large step forward toward completion because I now, like 94 percent of the rest of the world, have an iPod. (Happy birthday to me! and thanks, guys.) From you, I seek recommendations for new stuff to put on this little white box of joy.

A decade of delight
Here in a few minutes, as I write this, I'll be the parent of a 10-year-old daughter. Time flies when you're having fun.

The Old Daughter has seen a lot in 10 years. She has moved 10 times. She has so far only spent one full academic year at the same school. She's been in the tailwind of our pursuit of the Best Possible Situation, and thankfully, she has been very adaptable. I hope to not have to be testing that adaptability again any time soon.

Along the way, she welcomed a brother and a sister after spending almost five years as an only child. She adapted to that well, too, and has been a wonderful role model for both of her siblings.

Sometimes I forget she's a few minutes away from being 10. She can analyze thoughts and concepts in nearly adult fashion; you can tell there's a lot going on behind those eyeglasses, and it's fun to run ideas past a brain that performs at a high level and is unburdened by years of preconceived notions. She also has a maddening tendency to act half her age sometimes. She's a wonderful and complex person, and it's fun to watch her become a person.

I don't have a favorite child. No parent of multiple children does. But each of our children is special in his or her own way. The Young Daughter will always be the Baby. The Boy will always be the only boy. The Old Daughter will always be the first.

A couple of our regular readers are going to become parents soon. I don't claim to be the least bit qualified to give out parental advice, and wouldn't for a second think of doing so. But I do hope they feel a little bit better about their impending parenthood by participating in this forum, and following along as I muddle my way through it -- if nothing else, hopefully, they'll gain the security of knowing that if I can do it, they certainly can.

Anyway, happy birthday, Old Daughter. And thanks for being you.

Where the hell is everybody?
Suddenly, I'm alone with my thoughts. I'm looking at the buddy list of the IM program on the left side of my screen; everybody's offline. What are the chances of that happening? I'm looking at the list window of the IM program on the right side of my screen; "mdgradyfl," a co-worker, is online, but "Away." I try her anyway, and the cyber-brushoff comes back, "Auto-reply: I am away from my computer right now."

The kids are asleep. The wife is in bed with a head cold. It's 9:50 p.m. EDT and everybody who I might call is in bed or headed that way soon. I'm not a big phone guy anyway, so I'd only resort to that as a last option.

But I'm suddenly having a night where I don't really want to be alone with my thoughts. I don't have anything particularly profound to share, really; I'm frankly a hell of a lot more interested in what you're thinking. I know what I think, although it helps me sometimes to bounce it off a few other people to make sure I really think it.

But I'm inspired by knowing what you think. My thoughts are more complete when they're enhanced by the thoughts of other people.

I've been seriously considering the idea of launching another forum, a collaborative in which people can expound on their places in the world through any medium necessary: words, shapes, colors, sounds, photography. I know an awful lot of people all across the country who are incredibly creative, but who are getting paid for something other than their creativity. I'm one of those people. I need an outlet, but more important, I need to know it's not just going into a vacuum.

If you'd be interested in contributing to such a thing, let me know. There's nothing in it for you but the chance to share your thoughts and feelings and skills with a few other people who would be incredibly supportive. I'm sure there's some value in that.

Wherever I go, there I am
The idea goes something like this: Write a little bit about your place in the world. How you got there, why you're there, why you won't leave, why you would leave.

I've been thinking about this sort of thing quite a bit lately. I've had a run of "How did I get here?" moments in the last month or so. How did I come to be driving a Lincoln Town Car down Washington Highway 16 with Mount Rainier looming in the sunrise? How did I come to be getting out of that Lincoln Town Car and into a first-class seat on a cross-country flight? How did I come to be eating on the roof of the Hotel Washington, looking down at the snipers (at least we thought they were the snipers) perched atop the White House? How did I come to be speaking Danish while drinking Czech beer in a bar in Washington, D.C.? How did I come to be living in a 2,400-square-foot house with a tall, beautiful, fun wife and three kids who are already smarter and funnier than me?

See, this story started out to be a story about geography; how a guy from Anytown, USA, could wind up on the west coast of Florida via Cincinnati, Orlando, Texas and Orlando again. How a guy who didn't cross the Missouri state line until he was 12 and who didn't own a home computer until 1999 could find himself jetting all over the country, telling people how to use their computer systems.

It's been a strange run, and I'm wondering how I got here.

For the first time in my entire life, I'm not wondering what's next.

This could be because I'm fast approaching my 36th birthday. The line marking "old" is now behind me, at least by my standards.

This could be because I actually enjoy what I'm doing now, something new and fun and challenging (and at the same time frustrating and frightening). I'm learning a lot about a subject in which I'm intensely interested, and I'm getting paid. Kind of feels like I'm beating the system.

This could be because I don't really care what's next; because I'm trying to milk the very most out of right now.

This could be because what's next kind of scares me. I'm closer to 40 than I am to 30. Like it or not, the clock is ticking. Forty years from now, there's a very good chance I'll be dead.

Yeah, that's kind of a blunt way to put it. But that's kind of my point. The end comes eventually. When my end comes, I'll be ready to answer the question, "What did you do with your life?" in the following way:

I did whatever I wanted to do.

They say happiness is wanting what you have, not having what you want, or something like that. I don't claim to know what happiness is. That's for greater minds than mine to decide. But right now, I'm doing what I want to do. I'm living the life I want to live with the people with whom I want to live it.

How did I get here?

It doesn't really matter, as long as I'm where I want to be. And I am.

Kick in the behind
It has been brought to my attention that I've been a really crappy friend lately. I've already apologized personally. I'm now apologizing generally. I'll try to do better.

The best songs ever
Some of these probably don't appear on too many others' lists of "best songs ever." Some of them you've probably never heard. Some of them are not even on my usual list of favorite songs. But, my memory having been jogged by having heard one of these songs yesterday for the first time in a long time, I offer you a list, not ranked in any order, of what I believe to be the greatest pieces of modern songwriting.

"Don't Stand So Close To Me," The Police: You know this girl. And this man. Every time I hear this song, I get a really clear mental picture of a cold, rainy day in the mid-1980s at Central High School in my hometown. The girl is standing in the rain on Benton Avenue, waiting for the teacher to stop and pick her up. His car, after all, is warm and dry.

"Downstream," The Rainmakers: One of the best second verses of all time can be found in this song.

Well, we picked up Harry Truman
floating down from Indepedence
We said "What about the War?"
He said, "Good riddance"
We said, "What about the bomb?
Are you sorry that you did it?"
He said, "Pass me that bottle
and mind your own bidness"

The song weaves 20th-century history through a float trip down the Mississippi with Missouri historical heroes Mark Twain, Truman and Chuck Berry. You're not going to find many songs with Mark Twain, Truman and Chuck Berry playing starring roles. Plus, I love songs that are musically simple, and it doesn't get much more simple than F-sharp, F-sharp (rest) B-F-sharp. And, this band's drummer has my e-mail address. Nobody else who appeared on MTV in the 1980s has ever sent me e-mail.

"Freebird," Lynyrd Skynyrd. Go ahead, laugh at me. And then go find me a song that connects better with its intended audience.

"Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning," Alan Jackson. Major tragic historical events are fertile breeding grounds for maudlin or jingoistic tunes, sappy songs about heroes and Go-America-Kick-Some-Ass rockers that instantly vault to No. 1 despite being complete crap. This song was the exception: A song that captured what all of us thought at one time or another in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, and did so without being overdramatic. I love a song that tugs at the heartstrings without intending to do so.

"Seminole Wind," John Anderson. You have to 1/have lived in Florida and 2/know that John Anderson was born in Florida to fully appreciate this love song to his home state.

Your turn.

May you have a day as good as this one
It started ominously, late Monday night, with a call from the wife at 11 p.m. PDT, which was 2 a.m. at the computer screen at which she was sitting. She was calling to tell me about the wonders of online shopping, in which, at 2 a.m., one could decide to send flowers to one's grandmother and nobody batted an eye.

Well, American Express batted an eye. American Express wouldn't let her send flowers at 2 a.m.

This did not bode well for me, because I was 2,600 miles from home with our American Express as my only financial instrument.

A glitch between our bank and American Express had rendered my only financial instrument temporarily useless. The problem would be fixed, but it couldn't be fixed until the American Express offices opened at 5 a.m. PDT. My problem was that I had to check out of my hotel room at 4:30 a.m., drive 63 miles from our customer site to Seattle, and return a rental car on which the trip computer read, "47 MILES TO EMPTY" in time to catch my 7 a.m. flight.

But, of course, I had nothing to worry about.

I checked out of the hotel promptly at 4:30 a.m., ready to try to explain away the American Express issue. The desk clerk said, "We're in the process of our night audit ... can we just mail you a receipt?" Why, yes, you can.

At the gas station, I managed to find $3 in singles and change at the bottom of my bag. In my wallet, however, I found a credit card that I thought I had forgotten to bring. It doesn't have much on it, but it had enough to get me enough gas to get to Seattle.

At the airport, I was prepared to deal with Hertz and the American Express. Instead, I got, "Our computers are down. Can we mail you a receipt?" Why, yes, you can.

Along the way, I saw Mount Rainier at sunrise, a sight that was too beautiful to put into words.

Along the way, Delta Air Lines' computers gave me my first free first-class upgrade as a Medallion member.

And at the end of my journey, The Wife was looking as beautiful as ever, the mini-humans were as loud and as fun as ever, and I am home.

Long time gone
The worst thing about letting this forum go stale for too long is trying to re-start it again. Not because there's nothing happening; far from it, in fact. The problem is: Where the hell do I start? So many topics:

We've moved -- one more time -- in pursuit of Home. We like where we've landed, certainly. We're now sharing a city with the Stanley Cup Champions, for what that's worth ...

My new job -- which by this time is not so new anymore -- both fascinates and stymies me. It's a lot more like the real world than my newspaper jobs ever were, which is both bad and good. I'm learning a lot and getting from it what I want to get from it, both in knowledge and in fringe benefits (for instance, I just qualified for Silver Medallion status on Delta. First class, here I come.) ...

I'm in the Pacific Northwest one more time, fine-tuning a project that didn't get off to the flying start the company hoped it would have. It wasn't a disaster, but we were looking for better; so I'm here with a Danish co-worker (meeting yet another Danish co-worker) trying to make it better. At this point, I'm actually capable of helping. That's a good thing.

I'm going to have to miss the Party of the Year (I refer you to the link to A Night in South Carolina in the links list at right, because I'm too lazy to add the link here) because I'll be at a trade show next weekend in Washington, D.C.

I miss my wife and kids and house. I enjoy the travel part of traveling; it's the not-being-at-home part that sucks.

But really, the question is: Do you have any real interest in hearing any more about any of that stuff? Probably not.

So I search for something instead in which you might be interested. The search so far is proving futile. I can't imagine you care about what I think about Ronald Reagan's death (enough coverage, already!) or the NBA Finals (maybe a 12-second shot clock might be a better idea, not that it would help the Lakers any) or the current state of the media industry (I'm certainly enjoying the hell out of looking at it from the outsider's point of view; it's a lot less scary.)

Then, it occurs to me that this is my forum, not yours. I'm not supposed to care what you think. I'm supposed to articulate my thoughts and present them in the written word as a catharsis for myself, not as some sort of weak source of entertainment for you. This is supposed to be All About Me.

But there's something empty and selfish in that, and I certainly don't want to be empty and selfish, especially not on your time.

Now you see my quandary. Help me through it.

Hey, y'all ... still here
Busy time right now. More to come soon. Promise.

Be all that you can be ... really
Anybody else notice how many more advertisements for the armed forces seem to be hitting the airwaves? You know, the ones extolling the virtues of courage and dedication and stuff? Coincidence, I'm sure.

It does too smear the entire effort
Warning: Hard left turn ahead. Hang on, or jump off now.

As a visual journalist, I've looked at a lot of really disturbing images, and have been party to decisions whether to run those images or not. The incoming photo wire shows us everything, and it's up to the editors to decide what to show you. In a run of really disturbing images from the last three years of my journalism career, one sticks out in my mind. It was from the Liberia scuffle last year, the mini-civil war that erupted. It was a picture of a skinny black man, clad only in his underwear, being worked over by uniformed members of the opposition. His face showed the fear and the humiliation in clear detail. I was very shaken up by what I saw -- I saw pictures of wars overseas every day, but this one had particular impact. They weren't just trying to hurt this guy. They were cutting him down to his very soul, and then slashing through it. It chilled me to the bone to believe that people could be that evil to other people, here in our supposedly enlightened age.

But that was Liberia. Thankfully, I live in a country that's above performing such humiliation to its enemies.

Right?

Condoleeza Rice, one of the few remaining members of the Bush Administration for whom I still have a great deal of respect -- and yeah, it's waning, too -- said this of the atrocities allegedly committed by U.S. military officials minding the Abu Ghraib internment camp in Iraq: "The actions of a few should not overshadow the many good works that are being done."

I'm sorry, Ms. Rice. I've been a strong defender of yours for nearly three years now. But you could not be more wrong.

These actions do overshadow whatever good we've allegedly done in Iraq. These actions lower us to the level of Saddam Hussein himself. We were on shaky ground, anyway, frankly. Our job was to go over there and depose Saddam and find those elusive weapons of mass destruction. We should be happy with our 1-for-2 and get the hell out. We shoudl leave so we don't waste any more American lives, and we should leave before any more crap like Abu Ghraib happens again.

High-ranking U.S. officials have been quick and strong in decrying the alleged abuses. But is that message getting through to the Arab world? You think they're broadcasting that part on al-Jazeera? Let's say the message is getting through (the Arab press is known for its objectivity and fairness, right?); one has to guess that probably something is being lost in the translation. I doubt know if there's an Arabic word for "isolated incident,"
especially not when something of this gravity is involved.

I was very much in favor of getting the job done, getting some sort of stable government set up in Iraq and getting out by June 30. Of course, I keep hearing this "June 30" date being bandied about, and I can't help but notice nobody's specifying June 30 of what year. Screw June 30. It's time to get out now, before any more stupidity occurs, before any more people die.

Look at it this way: If a few hundred thousand Iraqis swooped in and took over our shores and installed some benevolent white guy who was sympathetic to the cause as president, and then they decided to hang around for a while after that and break a few more things just to make sure we got the message that a Muslim theocracy was the best form of government ever invented, would you pick up arms against them? You'd be an "insurgent," of course, if you did. And let's say a few thousand Mexicans and Canadians decided to come in and help you out against those occupiers. Surely you'd welcome their help. But they'd be "insurgents" too, and their presence would be used as an argument that "well, we've got the Americans under control; it's these damn Mexicans and Canadians who are coming in here causing problems. The Americans welcome us with open arms."

And let's say that, despite all the good they've done in convincing us that a Muslim theocracy was the best way, some renegade Iraqi unit decided to take a few American "insurgents" prisoner and strip them down to nothing and slap hoods over their heads, and then take pictures.

If they don't like us on the "Arab street," wherever that is, we've sure as hell earned it.

Please feel free to try to convince me I'm wrong on this one. I understand what I'm saying is extreme, and I understand what I'm saying undercuts my previously stated support for our troops. And for God's sake, don't give me any crap about how "they" killed 3,000 of our innocent souls on Sept. 11, 2001. "They," the Iraqis, didn't have a goddamn thing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks. Don't cheapen the deaths of the Sept. 11 victims by saying that gave us an excuse to invade a country just because we had to bomb somebody. And sure as hell don't cheapen the deaths of the Sept. 11 victims by suggesting it's OK for Americans to become terrorists themselves.

I do support the guys who are over there just following orders and trying to get a job done and trying to leave a good impression of the United States.

And I'm sure someone, years down the road, will say that the people who committed these atrocities were just "following orders."

If that's the case, whoever gave those orders should face the ultimate punishment.

War is indeed hell. And it apparently brings out the worst in military units which are being sold to the world as being virtuous and noble.

It's time to end it. Now.

The Man
Just after a Pacific Northwest dawn on Friday, I was sifting through pages of documentation I had written for software I don't know, with Soledad O'Brien giving me the morning's news in the background. Then her sidekick, Bill Hemmer, came on with his solemn, well-we've-got-breaking-news tone.

A book was on the nightstand next to my hotel-room bed. When Hemmer finished his sentence, I threw the book across the room in genuine anger. The sentence was punctuated by 200 pages of Random House hardcover flying into a hotel-room wall.

I was really hoping for a happy end to the Pat Tillman story. You know, guy gives up promising NFL career to join the Army after Sept. 11. Guy refuses all interviews, gives up his $3 million contract, leaves his new bride behind in Arizona to join the Rangers.

It wasn't just that, though. Pat Tillman was no dumb jock with an uncontrolled aggressive streak. He graduated summa cum laude from Arizona State in 3 1/2 years, while ascending from walk-on to starter on the football team. He was picked in the seventh round by his hometown Cardinals, who were willing to risk a low pick on an undersized defensive back. He had worked his way up to a starting spot, and then to a $5 million free-agent offer from the defending champion St. Louis Rams in 2001. Out of loyalty to the Cardinals, he turned it down and took $3 million from his hapless hometown team.

After Sept. 11, a lot of us were pissed, and wanted to go kick some Taliban butt. Most of us got over it. Tillman didn't. His brother joined the Rangers. Out of loyalty to his brother, he did the same.

Some -- many -- of us might question his decision-making skill. We might question the fact that he didn't capitalize on his status as an NFL player to make a splashy entry into the service, only to take some low-risk duty so he could make a triumphant return to the field in a couple of years. The Army would have been fine with that. Would have been a great morale booster. The NFL, of course, would have been fine with that too, in the age of Terrell Owens and no-names like Joe Horn pulling out cell phones in the end zone.

I had to question myself about why the news of Pat Tillman's death threw me into a book-throwing rage, while the other 700-some deaths have simply made me sigh deeply and say a little prayer for their families. It's selfish, really. I wanted the Pat Tillman story to have a happy ending. And it just makes me angry at the monsters who created this situation in the first place.

Even without the happy ending, though, the Pat Tillman story sure as hell has a beginning and a middle that we can all respect.

Rest in peace, Man.

And that capital "M" is not a typo. It's there for a reason.

High in the sky
It's about 9 a.m. Saturday. I'm typing because I'm 35,000 feet over the Florida-Georgia border at present, and I have nothing else to do. Lucinda Williams is singing to me in my headphones. A delightful little girl with glasses, probably not quite 5, sits next to me with a book of animal stickers. She's from "Crystal Springs," she tells me. Her mom patiently explains that's the name of their subdivision. "He means, What state do you live in?" Mom said to the little girl. "Pennnnnn ... sylvania!" she said, very pleased with herself for having been able to get past that first syllable. The first syllable is, after all, the hardest part.

The little girl and her family are heading to Disney World, of course. Her name is Lauren. She explains that her little brother, Dominick, "puked all over me when he was, about, I think, 10 months old." Mom gives me an apologetic look. I explain that it's OK; I have three children, and I've been puked on plenty of times myself, and I wish I was cute enough to share that detail with a total stranger without fear of somebody looking at me like I was a candidate for the loony bin.

I've spent a lot of time lately at 35,000 feet, living my life three letters at a time. Last week, it was MCO-to-ATL-to-MCI and back for my grandmother's funeral. This week, it was MCO-to-ATL-to-EWR and back, with a two-hour drive from the gawdawful Newark airport to western Connecticut to lead some software training. I spent most of Friday night trying to get to the gawdawful Newark airport, caught in a traffic jam in the Bronx. It was my first time through New York, a city which clearly is going to require more careful examination in the future.

No time for that right now, though. I'm headed back to my MCO home base, then off tomorrow morning to SEA via IAH. A week in the Pacific Northwest, living life three hours behind the rest of you. A weekend and a couple of office days, then off to DCA for a whirlwind tour of some customer sites in the Washington area.

Half the fun is getting there, of course. "What's your favorite movie?" the delightful little girl asks. "Mine's The Lion King. I've seen it a million hundred times!" Mom smiles at me and says to her, "I think he's trying to read his book right now." That's OK. I can set aside the wild, savage life of Hunter S. Thompson for a delightful little girl. In a short while, I'll be with my delightful little girls -- and delightful little boy, and incredibly delightful wife -- again, for a little while. Half the fun is getting there, but that's only half the fun.

Grandma, 1921-2004
I have many, many cousins, products of my grandparents' eight children. Most of those cousins have been blessed with some sort of special talent. For a few of them, that talent is a beautiful singing voice.

The story goes that it was the voice of one of those cousins who sang my grandmother to sleep shortly before April 4 became April 5. As 20-year-old Rachel sang "Amazing Grace," a small smile crossed my grandmother's lips, and, while she was tapping along with the time of the song, went to be with her Lord.

My grandmother has earned her rest. She put in 82 pretty hard years on this earth. She was born to migrant-worker parents in a small town in north Texas. They weren't prosperous people even before the stock market crashed, when my grandmother was 7, and the Depression didn't help. My grandmother quit school when she was 11 to help raise her eight siblings. She got married five years later and gave birth to nine children of her own.

Her first child died very young, of some sort of childhood disease that doesn't kill people any more. Shortly thereafter, her oldest brother died in World War II. There are those who say she would have recovered from the death of her son -- childhood diseases were hard to avoid back then -- but that the death of her brother left a void that was never filled.

She went on, however -- "The sun will come up tomorrow," she often told me, "whether you want it to or not" -- and left an impression upon everybody with whom she came into contact. You often hear at funerals, "Nobody had a bad word to say about (the deceased)," but in my grandmother's case, it was true. Testament to the effect she had on members of her family: Four of her sons' ex-wives attended her funeral service. Once you were a member of Grandma's family, you were always a member.

She had a unique ability to view everybody through a totally objective prism. She didn't fail to acknowledge people's faults; she merely accepted them as a part of being human. She knew that many of the people she loved were flawed, and she accepted them just the same -- although she would deliver a scolding when she felt it was appropriate, and when she did, you knew she meant it.

She had a special love for children; it was one of the crowning moments of my life when she picked up my oldest daughter for the first time.

She had been in declining health for several years; I am reminded of this from a couple of years ago.

I wasn't particularly sad when I received the news of her death; I was more relieved that, after many scares, she had finally been allowed to move on. She leaves behind my grandfather, who is 86 and in poor health of his own. She leaves behind a bunch of people who are better people for having been a part of her family.

I wasn't there for the anecdote with which I led; that's the story as it was related to me. I was there, however, for her final trip through Springfield, Mo., the town which she called home for more than 50 years (while secretly and not-so-secretly pining for her beloved Texas).

As she got older, Grandma had a tendency to, shall we say, think out loud. She would say things that she clearly didn't intend to be heard, but because she wasn't hearing anything well -- including herself -- she wasn't aware she was saying them. One time we were sitting in her house, and a white Coupe de Ville pulled up at the house across the street. "That's going to be him sometime," she said of me, "pulling up here to see me in a white Caddy."

As she was driven through Springfield one last time -- in a white Cadillac -- traffic stopped on both sides of every major street in town as her family followed behind, in a procession more than half a mile long.

Had she been an observer of that scene, as my favorite aunt pointed out, she would have said, "That must be some high-falutin dude to stop traffic like that."

And she would have been extremely upset that all these people were making such a fuss over her -- outwardly, at least.

She would have admitted, in an unguarded moment, that it was pretty cool.

A better obit for her can be found here. I'm proud to have known her, and a better person for it. Goodbye, Grandma, and peace to you. Keep an eye on me up there.

And now, a word from Steve Miller
If I buy a certain combination of tickets for my next business trip, I could very well find myself in airports in ... Phoenix, Ariz., Tacoma, Philadelphia, Atlanta and LA.

There. Now the song's stuck in your head, too. Keep on a-rockin' me, baby.

Worth a look
Because he said it better than I would have, I'll send you over here this evening. Share his relief, remind yourself you've been there (and you have; and I sure as hell have) and remember to please be careful, for yourself and for those around you.

And, another quick trip elsewhere: Run over here and drop Mrs. Otis a line telling her how beautiful she looks. New life is the coolest thing ever, and it's always worth celebrating.

Man, it sure is dark at this hour
For no good reason, I'm starting my day at 4:48 a.m. I have no earthly idea why, and I doubt I'll receive any benefit by doing so. But my body has told me in no uncertain terms, "Hey, it's time to get up." So, I'm up.

Back to the office today after essentially two full weeks on the road. I vaguely remember how to get there (point car westbound on the interstate and wake up in an hour and a half, is how I recall it).

From the Things that Don't Really Matter file:

One of the, um, great things about working for a company that's based in Europe is that when I wake up in the wee hours, I already have lots of e-mail. The latest involves some sort of controversy in which I find myself squarely in the middle. This is a lot of fun for me, as the new guy. New people generally just do what they're asked to do. As somebody who's been the new person -- and who's had to work with lots of new people -- I think it generally helps when, if the new person is asked to do something, the existing people know from where the order came. Nothing worse around the office than a lone-wolf new person. Apparently I've been asked to do something which has strongly offended at least one Existing Person, an Existing Person who happens to be in a time zone six hours ahead of mine. But in my string of correspondence regarding the situation, I have been careful to document exactly what I have been asked to do and why I've been asked to do it -- not in an effort to duck responsibility, but in an effort to let people six time zones away know what I'm doing.

Apparently that wasn't good enough. So, I have no idea what I'm going to walk into at the western terminus of my Temporary Long Commute in a few hours. This is the life I've chosen.

Things that do matter:

The Boy turns 5 today. We took advantage of my day off yesterday to celebrate. One of our stops was a go-kart track, which has some vehicles specially built for kids his age. To say he took to it quickly would be the understatement of this or any century. The kid is a natural behind the wheel, which, frankly, doesn't bode well for his parents' future sanity. It took him about two laps to figure out he could keep Dad from passing him by simply driving in front of him. He almost pinched me into the wall, Earnhardt-style, four times. After the fun, of course, comes the presents. He received a pirate ship, a pirate castle, a book about pirates ... you get the picture. The Boy likes his pirate stuff.

It's fun to celebrate The Boy, because he's a lot of fun, and because he was in many ways a triumph. Astute mathematicians will note there are a lot of numbers between the ages of our first and second children. We didn't really intend for it to happen that way, but nature deals the cards, and she dealt us a few really bad hands between 1997 and 1999. You never really forget an experience like that. But days like yesterday remind you why you put yourself through it.

The mystery of me
It has been noted that I've been away for a while. That's because, well, I've been away for a while. I've been to the Lehigh Valley, I've been to a nondescript small town in South Carolina, I've been to the middle of Connecticut and I've had my breath stolen by the beauty of the Pacific Northwest. I've been to towns that barely exist, and to towns that probably shouldn't exist. It's been a wild ride, and if I tried to tell you I've enjoyed every minute of it, I'd be lying through my teeth.

But I've enjoyed a lot of it, and I'm certainly learning a lot about the country into which I've been born. It's fascinating to travel the United States during an election year, certainly. I'm still trying to figure out the differences between each different part of the nation I've seen. So far, all I can see is what's the same. You can pick up CNN and Rush Limbaugh no matter where you are. I wake up with Soledad O'Brien in the red states and in the blue states. People in Connecticut are just as likely as people in Washington state to think Bill Clinton was a sex fiend and nothing else. George W. Bush will probably win South Carolina, and Pennsylvania, and Florida, and every other state I've visited, and most of the states I haven't. I'm not sure what to think about that, other than that being president of the United States shouldn't be as easy as George W. Bush makes it look.

I miss my family when I'm on the road. I miss them a lot, and it makes me question why the hell I made this particular career choice. But I enjoy the work I do when I'm on the road, and it beats the crap out of sitting behind the same desk and dealing with the same people day after day after day. I enjoy the work I do when I'm on the road much more than I enjoy the work I do when I commute an hour and a half to the home office. But I'm not sure it's worth the price I'm paying in time lost with my wife and children. This is the battle that wages inside my head, minute after minute of every day.

I wonder what I'm going to be doing with my life this time next year. George W. Bush knows what he's going to be doing this time next year; he's going to be president, whether anybody wants him to be or not, and he'll likely be contemplating yet another invasion of Iraq because the last one felt so damn good. Osama bin Laden will still be incognito somewhere near Peshawar or Poughkeepsie, there might or might not have been another terrorist attack somewhere (and how quickly we've forgotten about Madrid! Always take the under on Americans' attention span) and I'll still be wondering why the hell I'm doing whatever I'm doing with my life, no matter what it is. (By way of weak explanation, and as perhaps a crucial setup, I refer you back to this, which I batted out long, long before I had any idea I'd be doing what I'm doing now.)

The company for which I work sells software to newspapers, mostly small newspapers. I've seen newsrooms far smaller than any I've ever seen before. I feel like a major-league player who rose fast through the ranks and retired too young, now checking out locker rooms in Class A for the first time and wondering why the hell anybody would be there voluntarily. These newsrooms, like most Class A teams, are populated by two kinds of people: the ones who are trying to get the hell out and the ones who never will. The upside: They're also largely populated by people who believe deeply in what they're doing. The managing editor of the small paper in South Carolina genuinely loves being the managing editor of a small paper in his Palmetto hometown. I think that's every bit as cool as working for the eighth-largest newspaper in the country, as I did. I probably never enjoyed that job as much as he enjoys his.

I'm learning a lot on this journey. I'm learning a lot about my country. I'm learning a lot about my capacity to endure. And I'm learning a lot about myself. Somewhere in there, I need to install some software. I'll get to that. Right now, the other stuff might very well be more important.

Another idea, stolen
Many thanks to RER and, by extension, Up for Anything. This requires I fill in some blanks:

I AM: Sitting in Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, waiting for a flight that leaves at 11:15 p.m. PST, alternately excited and frightened by the career choice I have made which has caused me to question my intelligence, caused me to wonder if I've led my family down the wrong path and is currently causing me to be sitting on my ass in Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

I WANT: My children to never lose the ability to be shocked, my wife to be happy and content and fulfilled in the home she has built, and a black Corvette convertible.

I HAVE: A teddy bear that my wife gave to me 17 years ago, long before she was my wife. She gave it to me when I was a sportswriter spending a lot of time on the road (although back then, I was much more likely to be stuck in a cafe in Stockton, Mo., than in Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.) The bear fit very nicely between the front seats of my truck. It is a small, light brown bear, with a little medal dangling from its neck which reads, "Take Me Home."

I WISH: I wasn't sitting in a middle seat on this overnight flight from Seattle to the other Edge of America.

I HATE: That I have to question everything I do to the point of creating this mental inertia that turns all of my fears and neuroses into prophecies which very efficently fulfill themselves.

I FEAR: Having to do something I don't want to do.

I HEAR: People having a conversation in an Asian language ... a young child screaming ... the voices inside my head ... a girl talking on her cell phone to her friend back in Georgia about how much she drank over spring break ... the CNN Airport Network.

I WONDER: Why I can't just be happy in the moment.

I REGRET: Nothing, really, although one could certainly argue that I should. I've learned a hell of a lot from the myriad mistakes I have made. Occasionally, I even apply that knowledge.

I LOVE: My wife's awful morning breath, the Young Daughter's 100-decibel voice, the Old Daughter's never-ending inquisitiveness, the Boy's full-speed approach to being almost 5, the sight of the ocean, the sight of the mountains, my wife's never-ending support even when I've done nothing to deserve it.

I ALWAYS: Think I should have done more.

I AM NOT: Bound by tradition, dogma, doctrine or superstition.

I DANCE: With my daughters.

I SING: ... but really, I shouldn't.

I CRY: when I read sad news stories, when I hear beautiful songs, when somebody does something nice for me.

Random stray thought

I am who I claim to be. But that's all.

Datelines
Today: Sumter, S.C.
Two days ago: Lehighton, Pa. (Stayed at a very cool Victorian hotel that I'd highly recommend if you ever find yourself in the foothills of the Poconos.)
Week after next: Bremerton, Wash.

I already have qualified for a free ticket on US Airways. I saw the Manhattan skyline from the window of the Newark airport. I've learned a lot about all kinds of stuff I didn't know.

And yeah, I'm kind of wondering how the hell I got here and whether I made the right decision. That little speck disappearing from sight below is my comfort zone. That's a good thing. I think.

Tomorrow night: Home. Looking forward to it, for so many reasons.

Where am I?
Good question. I'll get back to you with an answer in a bit.

Switch
Taking a quick look at the logs, I am proud to have noticed that, for the first time, the leading OS hitting this site is Macintosh, barely edging Windows XP.

Nothing could be finer ...
... than Duke getting its ass handed to it by, well, anybody, but especially by the very middle-of-the-pack Wake Forest. The best thing: It's rendering Dick Vitale speechless. Well, almost.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the sports world, the University of Colorado has scheduled a news conference -- for midnight EST. It's a bad, bad day in Boulder, which apparently is turning into a bad, bad night, and Gary Barnett is probably thinking that having a girl kicker was a really, really bad idea.

Which leads me to another thought: Who is Lawrence Frank and why is everbody treating him like the second coming of Red Auerbach?

This afternoon's visual: I was riding in a rented Hyundai with a Danish co-worker who was singing along with a Jimmy Buffett tape down a back road, with a steep hill to our left and the Potomac River to our right. This road wound around and curved with the river, with scenery that qualifies to be described as pastoral.

Then we rounded a curve, and all of a sudden, there was the Washington Monument.

And now, it's time for sleep. I have systems to implement and planes to catch. Back to the Edge, tomorrow. I'll leave it to you to figure out how I got from Dick Vitale to the Washington Monument via Colorado.

Foreign territory
I work for a software company. That implies that I have some general knowledge of computers. I have just that -- general knowledge. Slightly more knowledge than the average end-user. I don't have the benefit of formal education or intense training; I basically learned what I learned by poking around until I found something that confused me, and then I clicked on "Help" and did whatever it said.

When you work for a software company, though, general knowledge is not enough. I know this. I don't think I really sold them on the idea that my knowledge of the inner workings of a computer goes beyond general. What I do as well as anybody and better than most is manipulate page-design programs. I can remember keyboard shortcuts and draw boxes and apply styles at high speed, and I can assemble said pages in such a way that they don't make the printer choke when I hit Apple-P. More importantly to this company, I can tell other people how to do that.

But: when it comes time to RAID the SCSI with a Gigabit switch, that's where I have to get off the train. I'm in the process of very quickly teaching myself how to do that, how to speak to the Oracle, how to talk in abbreviations and acronyms (JPEG your own TIFF, you EPS! Or I'll PDF your ATAPI.) Today I was in a project meeting, where the hard-core inner workings of hardware and networks were being discussed. I nodded along and said "yeah" at the appropriate points and kept up as best as I could, but I have to confess they lost me at "gigabit switch." I drew the diagram on my legal pad, though, so I have it to refer to when I look up what "RAID" stands for. (Quick explanation: RAID refers to a server drive setup; on the server that was the topic of today's session, the drives are RAID Level 1: the data is written to the server's hard drive and is simultaneously written to another hard drive. If the first hard drive goes kerblooey, the second hard drive can be plugged in to the first hard drive's slot with no loss of data. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. And yes, I wrote the explanation from memory, but I had to look up what the acronym stood for.)

I have some experience at this. When I built The Freelance Gig from scratch -- a gig which included some hard-core hardware setup -- I went in knowing basically nothing. I came out four months later with a Web site of which I'm really proud and some good experience breaking into a computer and installing cards and calibrating monitors and printers. Then, of course, I went right back to being a journalist, and promptly relegated a lot of what I learned to some long-term memory that so far has been difficult to access.

Bottom line is this: I have a lot to learn, and fast. This is what I signed up for, so I'm OK with that. I can toss around the acronyms with the best of them. At some point -- some point very soon -- I'm going to have to actually know what they mean.

Observations from the middle seat
Thoughts I’m thinking while I’m cruising from over the Eastern Seaboard at 37,000 feet, en route from MCO to DCA while hoping my suitcase doesn’t wind up at CLT:
--Here’s the thing about traveling: Everybody’s in front of you. No matter what time you get to the airport, no matter how quickly you get to the gate, no matter whether you were singled out for the security screening, it seems like the whole damn world is in front of me. The real challenge is trying to pleasant and civil to others – remember, the whole damn world is in front of them, too – while wanting to scream, “Would you puh-LEEZE GET THE F--- OUT OF MY WAY?”
--I guess you get used to the whole ear-popping thing after a while. Meanwhile, I was practically Marlee Matlin-level deaf for four of seven days last week. And there’s not enough gum in the world to make it stop happening for me. Any ideas on dealing with that would be more than welcome.
--I’m in seat 11E of a new Airbus A319 as I write this, in which the archaic “No Smoking” light has been changed to a very 21st-century “Please Turn Off Electronic Devices” light. I’m trying to imagine what it must have been like back in the day, when that old “No Smoking” light went off and half the cabin lit up. I can imagine few things more awful. Even more awful than that sinking feeling you get when you see “B” or “E” as the letter in your seat number.
--Laptop + iTunes = good trip.

Life on the road
Headed out today for Business Trip No. 3, back to the home office in the D.C. 'burbs. Dragging a nasty cold with me, an ailment which hopped on for the ride during the last trip to Maryland and hung on with me all the way to Oklahoma and back. Certainly not the ideal way to enjoy a life-changing event.

The demons in my nose have distracted me from the joy of getting out from behind a desk for the first time since I was a globe-trotting sportswriter (well, at least, a Rand McNally Road Atlas-trotting sportswriter). The scenes are very cool:

A D.C. Metro subway packed with Georgetown University students, all dressed up in their politico-wannabe attire, loudly debating the issues of the day but interspersing "dude," "like" and "whatever," as reminders of how old they actually were.

A quarter-inch-thick sheet of ice atop the snow in Maryland, something I hadn't seen for eight years (and would do just fine to not see for eight more.)

A young woman and her year-old son waiting for a plane to Fort Sill, Okla., to see off her husband, who was being deployed to Iraq. The mother and son started their journey at 4:30 EST that morning, driving three hours to the airport in Charleston, W.Va. They changed planes in Chicago. They changed planes in St. Louis. I met them when they were changing planes in Dallas, at about 5 p.m. CST, for the final leg of their journey. The kid was handling things pretty well; he was running around the waiting area with all the vigor and energy a kid that age should have. Mom was pretty worn out, but her spirits were high, too, considering she was getting ready to send her husband off to war. Look behind her eyes, though, and you could see the fear.

Coming back from Oklahoma via Dallas, I found myself crammed into a 737 full of the usual bunch of kids getting ready for a week on the Edge at one of the theme parks -- and NASCAR fans. Entire families headed for the Daytona 500, decked out in the gear of their favorite drivers (mostly Dale Earnhardt Jr.), talking about their ticket situations ("Don't have 'em yet, but I'm ready to pay") and their accommodations (one said, "We got a place down by Disney; I think that's pretty close," obviously not knowing Disney is about 70 miles from the track, and with this weekend's traffic, that's going to be a long damn 70 miles.) I was tempted to share my knowledge of a back way to Daytona Beach, but then, I decided, they get to go to the race and I don't. They can figure it out for themselves.

And, oh yeah, my new job? Let's just say that I'm learning there's a whole lot I don't know. But that's part of the fun.

Allow me to be the first to ask: "WTF?"
I'm somewhere in southwestern Oklahoma. The Grammys are on the TV screen in my hotel room. It's 10:23 p.m. CST, near the end of the show. There are women dancing around in what I guess are Indian costumes, and some guy is, um, singing, and there are people dressed up like Revolutionary War drummers and marching band guys.

Bottom line: I have no idea what I'm watching.

Clear as mud
Just wrapped up Business Trip No. 1, to the current company headquarters in the D.C. ‘burbs. Am in the airport waiting to embark on the next trip, to a little hamlet in southwest Oklahoma adjacent to a big army base. Still trying to figure out this business-travel thing; still overpacking, still at the airport way too early. I guess it takes some time to find the rhythm. All the waiting certainly gives me plenty of time to assess the situation.

My trip last week took me to a nearly empty office. A couple of customers were in for some training. The trainer and a couple of other employees were there. The company headquarters is preparing for a move to the Western Edge. Like any move, trepidation is coming along for the ride. Those who know they are going are anxious. Those who don’t know yet if they’re going are even more anxious. For a few, it’s an easy decision; they’ve lived in the D.C. ‘burbs all their lives, and all they know about the Edge is tourists and big flying cockroaches and alligators and retirees. They like their seasons; the fact that it can be 85 degrees any day of the year isn’t a big selling point to them. But facing the prospect of being home and unemployed has its faults, too. So they wait, with trepidation.

My trepidation, of course, goes the other way. I know where I’m going to be living. What I don’t know yet is what I’m going to be doing or how exactly I’m going to do it. I’m dealing in abstractions, figurative and literal: I have an e-mail address, but no password. I have a cell phone, but no number. I have a computer, but no software. I have a job, but no real knowledge of how I’m supposed to do it. I have a stack of airline tickets, but am not yet sure what to do once the plane lands.

It’ll all clarify at some point, I’m sure. In a few weeks, I’ll be accessing that e-mail and using that cell phone and blasting away on that computer and finding more normal stuff about which to be worried. Right now, I’ll lug all my stuff to the next place and wait.

Now, everything changes
I'm an hour away from walking out of a newsroom as a journalist for the last time.

Things I think when I first wake up

If you're talking about the Super Bowl, and you're talking about anything other than the fact that the Panthers simply ran out of time or that Tom Brady is Joe Montana reincarnated or that Adam Vinatieri is making Scott Norwood really think about what might have been, then you fell for it. You got punk'd by Janet Jackson (who has been irrelevant for almost 15 years) and MTV.

Speaking of ... I always thought the hype around the Super Bowl commercials was basically well-deserved, because for many years, those commercials were a showcase for American creativity. This year, it was more like a showcase for American coarseness. We're taking this "edgy" thing a little bit too far, folks. Flatulence was funny as hell in the third grade. Not so much anymore. Look at the "edge," y'all; it's behind you.

Tonight, I design my last page as a professional journalist. I have two more days in the office after tonight, tidying up, cleaning off desks and hard drives, and tying up loose ends.

How is it that the smallest person in my house is by far the loudest? The Young Daughter, 3, has earned a new nickname: the Diva of Decibels. She loves the sound of her own voice, more than she loves life itself. Good for her. At least I always know where she is.

Beautiful blue sky and low 70s today on the Edge. A good day on which to begin the rest of my life.

For no good reason
Here's where I've been. States in which I've been on the ground at some point in my life are in red. Wonder what I have against the Virginias?



create your own

SPECIAL REPORT
Wonder what's behind this door?
On Feb. 4, 1986, I entered a newsroom for the first time as a professional journalist.

I was a “professional journalist” in my own mind, at least. In reality, I was a 17-year-old senior in high school, hired for a very clerical position in the sports department of the Anytown Daily Bugle. My stated duties were to answer phones in the sports department, transcribe scores, take information from callers and do whatever the full-timers wanted me to do.

But the management had heard me express interest in being a writer, so they decided to test me with an assignment during that first week. My first bylined story appeared on Sunday, Feb. 9, 1986. I became one of the full-timers a year and a half later. From there I moved on to experience every aspect of the newsgathering process, and used some very latent artistic skill to settle into a niche as a page designer who had a knack for making the computer do whatever I wanted it to do.

I’ve done a lot of different things as a “professional journalist.” I’ve worked at four different newspapers; from Anytown to Cincinnati to the Edge to the Very Large Metropolitan Area, back to the Edge. I’ve written stories, edited copy, designed pages, drawn graphics, managed projects, supervised people and even took photos for a story a couple of times. I’ve learned a lot, won a few minor awards and the respect of the people with whom I’ve worked. I’ve made a good deal of money, more than many people who do this job.

Best of all, I’ve done exactly what I wanted to do with my life. And, from Feb. 4, 1986, to where I sit right now, I always said that as soon as it felt like “work,” I’d quit and go do something else.

Easier said than done, of course. In 1988, when I was given a full-time job and could actually call myself a bona fide “professional journalist” without fear of contradiction, I celebrated by quitting college. I knew even then that decision would shackle me to the news business for the rest of my life. I was OK with that 15 years ago. I was OK with that five years ago.

But somewhere along the way, my job has started to feel more and more like work. Tough cookies for me; as a rapidly aging white male, my window of opportunity was about to close on my craned neck.

I didn’t plan it this way, but this is how it will happen:

On Feb. 4, 2004 – 18 years to the day after I dubbed myself a “professional journalist” – I will make good on that boast to “quit when it becomes ‘work.’ ” I’ll walk out of a newsroom as a journalist for the last time.

I’ve accepted a position with a software company that specializes in products for newspapers, magazines and web sites. I’ll be helping to design and implement “Content Management Systems,” basically big databases which hold all the electronic tools necessary to get the news from notebook to print to the web. I’ll be training people to make the computer do whatever they want it to do.

I’ve been making a lot of noise about leaving the newspaper business for the better part of the last two years (see here, and here and, well, here too). The time had long since passed for me to quit bitching and start looking. My first idea was to get serious about finishing my formal education, and that was my original plan for 2004. Then this opportunity came up – the software company was looking for people with newsroom experience to help implement its system in newsrooms. I can bring “newsroom experience” to the table, 18 years’ worth. The rest of it, I figure, I’ll learn as I go.

It’s the first real “job” I’ve ever had. I’ve signed a bunch of non-disclosure agreements and non-compete clauses and other business-y like stuff. I’ll be working with business people and sales people and technogeeks rather than creative people with a nose for the truth.

In past jobs, I’d have to travel for business once, maybe twice a year. In this job, I’ll be traveling to two, maybe three states in a given week. The posting said “50 percent travel;” the people with whom I interviewed say during busy times, it’ll be more like 70 percent. I’ll be a “business traveler.” Right now, I find that kind of cool. In three years, I’m sure I’ll be weary of it.

And yeah, we’ll have to move from the house that we really like in the city we really like. After school’s out in May, we’ll be seeking another house we really like, 90 miles to the west, on the Western Edge.

The money will be good, marginally better than I’m currently earning. The opportunities for advancement will largely be determined by me. Yeah, it’s a volatile industry, but this company seems to be particularly well-positioned to be a player as the new trends in publishing – particularly the electronic variety -- emerge. (Now, that sentence sounded like a Business Person, didn’t it? See how quickly I adapt.) Most of all, I’ll be living my life according to a reasonably set, planned schedule, and won’t be knocked off track by space shuttles falling out of the sky or terrorists blowing stuff up in Morocco or election cycles. I’ll have my holidays and most of my weekends. When I’m not on the road, I’ll be working 8:30-5:30 Monday through Friday, a work schedule that is the envy of all journalists. Even with all the travel, it can be argued I’ll get more time with my family than I get in my current job. Nothing is more important than that.

I’m not going to be terribly far from my basic skill set, and I’m not going to be far from the business in which I’ve spent my entire life. But in some ways, I’ll be a million miles away.

In other words, it’s everything for which I’ve been asking.

Onward, immediately, to the next thing. On Feb. 4, I’ll walk out of the newsroom as a journalist for the last time. I’ll board a plane that night and start our new life on Feb. 5. Not much time for reflection. Certainly no time for sadness or regret.

And, for the first time in a long time, I’m looking forward to the next 18 years of my career.

Well, duh
In a big red bar across top of my favorite news site's home page:

"BREAKING NEWS: Parts of Patriot Act ruled unconstitutional"

Am searching for the most intellectual way to put this ... searching ... searching ... hey, there it is: "No shit, Sherlock."

It didn't take a constitutional scholar to figure that one out. Here's hoping they keep thinking straight and rule the rest of the damn thing unconstitutional.

Margin of error: Infinite
John Kerry has a slim lead over Howard Dean and John Edwards in advance of the New Hampshire primary. Wait, Kerry and Dean are neck-and-neck, with Edwards a distant third. No, no, check that. Kerry has a 13-point lead over Dean. Who's John Edwards?

You know, we could have avoided that whole mess in Florida in 2000 by simply not having had the election. We should just let Zogby and Gallup and the Anytown Daily Bugle call people up and ask them how they would vote if the election were to be held. Have some pinheaded math geek run some formulas to determine the "margin of error," and then present the results as a fait accompli. So much easier to pass the results off as "news," when the candidates aren't making much news of their own; so much more suited to American's attention spans.

Try this idea: Read about the candidates. You don't even have to read a newspaper, although I'd prefer that you do. You can click around on the Web. Hell, watch TV, if you must. Research the issues. Form your own opinions. Then vote for the candidate that best matches yours.

Yeah, it takes a little bit of effort. But it sure seems to me to make a lot more sense than letting the media and a few polling firms choose your leaders.

Forecast: Windy
Winds of change blowing again. Where I'll be dropped, nobody knows. More later.

Referral
Go here. Read to the end. And smile, send along good thoughts and prayers, and high-five the person sitting next to you.

Life is good. It really is. And for a bunch of people for whom I care deeply, it's about to get better in ways they can't even imagine.

Dad, when's Mom coming home? She cooked the books better
Item: Top Enron theives get much-deserved vacations as guests of the United States Government. Mr. Fastow gets 10 years, Mrs. Fastow gets five months. She serves her term first so he can, ahem, stay at home with the kids until Mom's out of jail. When Mom gets home, she's on house arrest for five months while Dad goes and serves his time.

These assholes enriched themselves by almost $30 million by stealing money. It wasn't "creative accounting." It wasn't "shifting resources." It was stealing money. They deserve to rot in prison just as much as a petty thief does. Pardon me if I doubt their qualifications as parents.

And if, in those five months when his wife is cooling her heels at the federal spa, Mr. Fastow doesn't hire a babysitter and run off to some offshore tax shelter, I'll take back calling him an asshole.

Rrrrrrrrring
The real world is calling again. Guess I'd better go see what it wants.

Current mood: Muddled

I find myself suddenly in need of a USB hub. My Christmas haul included a digital camera and a scanner, and I received a hand-me-down Lexmark printer a few days later. All of these devices are USB, which is glorious. Between my two computers, I have eight USB ports, but two of the Mac's four ports are taken by the keyboard and the mouse.

The sun shines in a beautiful blue sky out the window to my right. However, it's not quite 50 degrees. To most Floridians, that's friggin' cold.

I've finally found a minute to answer e-mails that have been sitting in my Inbox for close to a month. Sorry, y'all. I'll try to get better about that.

I find myself on a rotating work schedule for the first time in a long time. This, of course, will be better than my previous work schedule, which was simply, "Be there all the time." For four weeks, I'll work Monday through Friday; for the next four weeks, I work Tuesday through Saturday, with Saturday being a night shift. Then, in four weeks, I switch back. There are worse scenarios, certainly. In an odd development, my job has actually been sort of fun the last week or two, now that Holiday Hell is over. This of course only adds to the confusion about my future; on Jan. 2, I was totally ready to give up newspapers and go work in a cubicle. Now, I'm reminded that some of the quirks of working in a newsroom are really very cool. It's enough to make you think ... well, to make you think I should probably be committed.

My mother's getting married in a few months. This is not something that, really, should not be a footnote in a series of bullet points. But she's been living with the guy for the last five years, so it's really something that was kind of inevitable has that kind of anticlimactic feeling of inevitability. I'm not 100 percent sure how I should feel about it, frankly. He's a fantastic guy, and being married to him will probably add years to my mother's life. And I'm happy that she's going to be doing something that makes her happy, after years of making decisions that have made her amazingly unhappy.

Back in the day, this is the point at which I'd pull the paper out of the typewriter, wad it up, toss it toward the wastebasket (probably missing to the left) and get on with my day. I'm reminded that the sound of pulling paper out of a typewriter was a pretty satisfying sound. No such satisfaction here.

Happy birthday to The Wife
Have you done exactly what you wanted to do for the last 10 years, and done so at the very highest levels possible, on your own terms?

Yeah, me neither.

But she has. This is why I found it puzzling that she's spending her 33rd birthday feeling like she hasn't accomplished anything.

Had she set another goal 10 years ago, she'd be sitting in a mahogany-paneled office somewhere, busting her ass at her $350,000-a-year job doing whatever the hell it was she wanted to do.

Instead, she chose another path. Back in early 1994, before the Old Daughter was born, she decided she was going to be the best stay-at-home mom on the planet. And she dedicated herself 100 percent to that goal. She read all the books. She surrounded herself with friends who shared her philosophies. We whittled down some debt and set some financial priorities. I took a series of better jobs.

After one uneventful pregnancy, we went through very difficult times bringing the next two kids into the world. She was undeterred, however; through every heartbreak, she found the strength to keep trying. She read more books, she talked to doctors, she discovered the Internet along the way. She asked questions. She got answers.

We now have three fantastic children. Not one of them has spent a second in day care. Every one of them is learning what they need to learn to be outstanding members of society, and they're doing so because their mother cares enough to make it her responsibility to see to it that happens. And when The Wife makes something her responsiblity, it happens, whatever "it" is.

Brief interlude from the Old Daughter ... she made her mom a poster for her birthday that reads (unedited) as follows:
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR MOMMY!
Here is 5 reasons why you should be happy about 'getting old' as you call it
1. You get to see new things
2. You wouldn't want time to stand still, would you?
3. You'd get to see your grandchildren.
4. You would see your children grow up.
5. Just because you should!
Here are 3 reasons you get older ...
1. Because you do
2. Because it just happens
3. Because you're a human being.
So be happy about being 33!"

Let's be honest here: If it were up to me, I probably wouldn't change a light bulb until every bulb in the house had burned out. The Wife doesn't operate that way. Problem? Solve it. Challenge? Meet it. Rule? Break it, if necessary. That's what she's teaching our children (well, all but the last part.) That's what she's taught me.

Brief interlude from the past ...
When The Wife was in college, she found herself in a required math class. She's just as mathematically challenged as anybody, and more so than most. She was already figuring her grade-point average as if she was getting a "D" in that class. Being pre-demoralized, she decided to change the course of the future. She stayed after class, she did her homework, she badgered the professor when she got stuck.

Her reward at the end of the semester: A big, shining "A."

Don't tell me she can't do anything she wants to.

Everybody who meets my wife comes away from that meeting a better person. I sure as hell did. I'm proud to know her, and I'm not sure what I did to earn the privilege of growing old with her.

Dispatches from the real world
Last Friday, while I was for the first time interviewing for a job outside the insular world of newspapers, a man sat in the editor's chair at one of the United States' largest and most respected papers. He was a man who had three Pulitzer Prizes in his pocket. He had reached the pinnacle of his profession, and he had done so by being a tough reporter and a fair boss. Many young reporters cited him as a mentor, saying he had helped them develop the skills they need to do a difficult job, and do it very well.

Meanwhile, I was 100 miles from home on Friday morning, sitting in the lobby of a Courtyard Marriott next to a gas fireplace (totally unnecessary in Florida, even in January), talking to a guy about newspaper computer systems. The guy carries a Vice President-of-something-or-other for this small Danish company that is looking to gain a foothold in the fairly competitive market of newspaper publishing systems. This company's philosophy recognizes that the print newspaper is fast becoming a thing of the past, and its system purports to integrate the print side with the web side better than anybody else's system.

While we were sitting next to that unnecessary fireplace contemplating the future of newspapers, this editor up the coast had no particular reason to contemplate his own future. Being Jan. 2, it was likely he was ready to sweep away the debris of a particularly bad 2003 -- besides the big news that we all had to deal with, his paper had a short but ugly labor dispute, also. In that part of the country, it seems, labor disputes are always ugly. This editor's newspaper had been purchased a few years ago by a large, stridently anti-union corporation, and he was feeling pressure from the home office to get the profits back up to where they were before they made a few piddly concessions to the union.

The unnecessary fireplace crackled as the sun shone in the floor-to-ceiling windows. The VP-of-whatever asked me questions about my skills, my history, and my future desires. It's known that I haven't enjoyed my last few years as a journalist, and that I've been contemplating other avenues. Part of me really wants a regular job with regular hours, a job in which I don't live at the whims of whichever terrorist is in a bad mood that day. Part of me wants to try something completely new and different, something outside of the comfort zone I've spent all of my adult life -- and the last year or two of my adolescence -- building. It would involve some risk, certainly. The job involves a lot of travel, it would at some point sooner rather than later involve me moving the family 100 miles to the southwest, and perhaps most frightening, would involve something that I haven't been doing for the last 18 years. There's a chance I wouldn't know how to do it. I know how to do my current job, as well as anyone and better than most. In that, I have solid job security. To give that up in mid-career for something that brings with it not only the risk that I would suck at it but also the risk of being part of a volatile tech industry, well, some would say that's a questionable decision.

I have no Pulitzer Prizes; if I did, I could give you a solid guarantee that I would never be in a position where I would be fired from a newspaper. My current skills earn me respect from my co-workers; a Big Award of some sort would earn me respect from the industry at large. I'd be like this editor up the coast, sitting pretty at the helm of a large newspaper.

My conversation with the VP-of-Whatever went fairly well. He told me to expect a call in the next couple of days from the president of the company. We exchanged business cards and I headed back home, with 100 miles of road in front of me on which to contemplate my future.

As promised, on Monday, the president of the company did call. I was knocked off guard by the strictly-business attitude of the guy. He seemed to have little passion for publishing, or computers, or, really anything. He was a Businessman. I've spent years cultivating a deep contempt for Businessmen. Soulless assholes who care nothing more than making a buck, who hire people based only on what they can see on paper, who don't create anything. This guy came across on the phone as one of those people. He clucked-cluck at my lack of a college degree. He questioned my stated desire to not move immediately, noting that for a while, I'd have a Very Long Commute. He was calling from the home office in Maryland; we ended the conversation with him saying he'd be in Florida later this month, and we'd set up a face-to-face meeting then.

Roughly the time that phone in Maryland hung up, a newspaper editor elsewhere in Maryland was headed into his boss's office, a newspaper editor with credentials as solid as anybody's.

He walked out of that office with the unsteady gait of a man with a boot firmly planted in his ass.

The publisher cited her desire to have a "true partner" in explaining her decision to fire the man who had been her paper's editor since 2000, before her corporation bought the newspaper. She said this guy was an "excellent journalist, but our partnership was not where I wanted it to be in terms of where we can take the newsroom in the future."

In short: She didn't like the guy. So she shitcanned him. His replacement: The editor of the newspaper for which I work, owned by the same corporation. His departure was announced to us at a staff meeting at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday. At 5 p.m. Tuesday, he was in the other newspaper, introducing himself to his new staff, which was less than pleased to meet him.

This means things will change at my place of employment very soon. The editor will lure people from our paper up the coast to work with him. A new editor will come in and change things to fit his or her needs. It likely won't affect me very much at all. It could affect me a lot.

I'm left wondering, though ... my concern was about job security at a small company in a volatile industry in which I have no real credentials.

Apparently, when it comes down to it, having rock-solid credentials at a large, stable company doesn't do you much good sometimes, either.

Things are a lot different out in the real world
More on this topic later.

Welcome aboard, y'all
Time to hop on for another spin around the calendar. Here's sincere hope that this spin goes better than the previous one, for all of us. Happy new year, and a genuine, unrepentant thank you to the people who were the few bright spots of 2003:

To American soldiers who performed the only duty their families and friends really care about: Coming home alive.

To business owners and managers who made do with a little bit less so their employees could have a little bit more.

To The Wife, for giving me a reason to wake up every morning.

To everybody who votes -- no matter which way you vote.

To all of you who are serious about breaking free of whatever binds you to something that sucks and going out in search of something that's good.

Thanks again to all of you for what you contribute to me. I hope I'm giving back in kind. Please tell me when I am -- and more importantly, when I'm not.

F--- 2003
RER calls it "The Year of My Ass." I can't top that, of course. Here on the Edge, this was The Lost Year, a year of working too much, spending too much money with too little reward, and cleaning up after some bad decisions.

But:

We've successfully cleaned up after the bad decisions. We fixed the house situation. We're trying to fix the work situation. (We might have some news on that in a few days, in fact.)

In short: We're fixing to wipe 2003 very cleanly from the books. We've torn the pages out, and they're a few hours away from the shredder. Never has the riddance been better.

Audio text
Sounds all around me. Real sounds, imagined sounds. For example:

... the sound of a phonograph needle skipping on a microscopic crack in the acetate, pop ... pop ... pop ... 33 and one-third times a minute, every minute ...

... the clear, resonant tone of a Telecaster being played through the neck pickup, the notes ever so slightly out of tune, being picked by a dime and pulled by fingers with more confidence than technique ...

... a car door closes, an engine starts, at 2:25 a.m. ...

... the ringing in the ears that never quite goes away ...

... the most beautiful woman in all the world inhaling, exhaling, inhaling again, in the warm arms of a satisfying slumber ...

... the annoyed, urgent tapping of fingers on a keyboard, seeking inspiration and finding none ...

... the door closing softly, signaling the end of another cycle, and waiting patiently to be reopened so the next one can begin.

Random stray thought

Brought to you today by one of the wisest men of the 20th century, George Orwell:
"Language becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish. But the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."

Killing America, one store at a time
Wal-Mart is, of course, the classic American success story. Simple fellow opens a five-and-dime somewhere in the Arkansas Ozarks. Fellow builds five-and-dime into retail empire by selling his stuff cheaper and in greater volumes than the other five-and-dimes. Fellow becomes billionaire, still chooses to drive old F-150 around the streets of Bentonville, Ark. Fellow dies, leaves his family his retail empire and his billions. Now, the little five-and-dime is the world's largest corporation.

That little yellow smiley face who bounces around Wal-Mart's television advertising packs a pretty heavy punch. Yeah, he's making life easier for you, the consumer. But when he bounces off one of Wal-Mart's suppliers, or one of its employees, we all feel the impact.

Full disclosures: My house spends close to $5,000 a year at Wal-Mart. I do not now nor have I ever worked in the service industry. I'm not a member of a union, and I spent years in vocal opposition to the union concept.

But after I stumbled across this in the Los Angeles Times, I could barely control my anger -- or my fear.

By the company's own admission, a full-time worker might not be able to support a family on a Wal-Mart paycheck. ...
[but t]hose who accuse Wal-Mart of shortchanging its employees, company spokeswoman [Mona] Williams suggested, don't understand the modern service economy.

"Retail and service wages are what they are," she said, "whether you look at a department store, a discount store, the local dry cleaners, the bakery or whatever.

"Wal-Mart is a great match for a lot of people," Williams added. "But if you are the sole provider for your family and do not have the time or the skills to move up the ladder, then maybe it's not the right place for you."

This is how Wal-Mart treats its associates. Don't like working for $8 an hour? Tough. Get in our management program or go away. And good luck finding a better job. Remember, we're in complete control of the U.S. economy. Have a nice day.

Wal-Mart has made itself the nation's largest retailer by aggressively cutting costs. The company builds its stores on cheap land -- often squeezing sweetheart deals out of city governments, who are willing to misuse the power of eminent domain to gain the tax revenue a Wal-Mart would generate. They build and operate their stores in an energy-efficient manner. If you're a supplier, and you want your goods on Wal-Mart's shelves, you won't get top dollar for those goods. The company doesn't tolerate waste in any form.

This mindset led Wal-Mart managers in several states to fudge employees' timecards to keep labor costs down. An Oregon jury smacked Wal-Mart for forcing hundreds employees to work unpaid overtime in violation of the Federal Labor Standards Act. Damages for the 290 plaintiffs will be determined next year. The Times noted that Wal-Mart settled similar suits in Colorado and New Mexico for undisclosed amounts, and more than 40 other cases are awaiting trial. It's going to be up to these juries to make it less cost-effective for Wal-Mart to settle suits than to screw employees.

No American expects to get rich working a service-industry job, any more than Americans expected to get rich working in factories in the 20th century. But there's no reason to expect the employees who make the economic wheels turn to have to go begging for the necessities. The factory workers found a way to make sure this happened for them, back in the day. They formed unions and stopped the work at the factory. The companies learned they kind of needed the workers -- at least up to the point where they could send the workers' jobs to other countries, where the labor force was damn happy to be making 13 cents an hour.

America needs a healthy middle class. I thought we learned that in the 1930s, when too few of the people had too much of the money and those who had busted their ass to make sure those who didn't have didn't get any of theirs. The concept of the disposable work force is very, very bad for the country. You can't build an entire economy on white-collar jobs; somebody has to do the actual work. Some of us just want to go in and turn the wheels or stock the shelves or cut the meat or keep the assembly line moving. In a better world, those people could work an honest 40 every week, and have enough money to have a decent house, good healthcare and a little bit of fun on the weekends.

Wal-Mart, like most American corporations, is aggressively anti-union. (Full disclosure: I'm a manager at another American corporation that is aggressively anti-union.) I'm sure it would close a store before it allowed that store's workers to organize. Let's play out that scenario for a second. Let's say the workers in, say, Aurora, Mo., a semi-rural outpost with one Wal-Mart, voted to unionize. Wal-Mart, detecting the start of what could be a bad trend, says, "Fuck you, we'd sooner close the store." The good people of the city of Aurora would rise in opposition to the union effort, not wanting to lose the ability to buy a pair of socks, a box fan, a set of jumper cables and a pound of hamburger all in one stop, at the lowest possible prices. The government of the city of Aurora would also rise in opposition to the union effort, to protect that massive tax base -- and, not incidentally, because they're Wal-Mart shoppers, too. Enough of the workers decide their $8-an-hour Wal-Mart job is indeed better than those other $8-an-hour jobs, because Mona Williams tells them that is so. End of organizing effort. Wal-Mart wins.

I can't argue that the Wal-Mart way isn't capitalism at its very finest. It is. Offer a better deal to the customer, and by doing so, you make money for yourself. Sam Walton died in 1992 as America's richest man. That's the goal, right? The Times writes that current Chief Executive Lee Scott Jr. made almost $18 million in salary last year, plus stock options with an estimated value of $11.3 million. That's a lot of Sam's Choice soda. Still, Scott tells the Times in his defense, "I drive a Volkswagen Bug."

So Wal-Mart is controlling costs. Meanwhile, its CEO is raking in $18 mil a year. If there was any way he could possibly live on $9 million, for starters, I'd bet that Wal-Mart's pass-the-savings-on formula that worked so well in building the empire might work well for its work force.

Profit is good, and profitable companies are good for America. But I'd still like to think that profitable companies that mistreat their employees and think it's OK that to pay them wages on which they have no hope of supporting a family would someday pay the price for that stinginess.

But maybe we're becoming trained to believe that it's beneath us as a society to work at Wal-Mart. If that's the case, we're doomed.

Not necessarily the news
The U.S. administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, said he had escaped an assassination attempt in the country in early December.

My guess is, any American who survives a day in Baghdad can be said to have "escaped an assassination attempt."

Ok, I'll bite
This is a cheap way to fill space when I can come up with nothing on my own. Because I'm working on being a "glass-half-full" person, I look at it as "using my resourcefulness to come up with an alternative solution."

So, a dreaded list. Copy this whole list into your journal.

Bold the things that you have in common with me.

Whatever you don't bold, replace with things about you.

Things I have in common with Lynniechan are in bold.

001. I walked around for three months with a stress fracture in my foot.
002. I'm indifferent towards animals.
003. I'm rapidly losing my hair.
004. I procrastinate.
005. I was 12 the first time I crossed a state line.
006. I procrastinate a lot.
007. I am old enough to have seen Star Wars in a movie theater when it first was released. However, I have seen none of the other "Star Wars" movies.
008. My favorite color is black.
009. I often have trouble falling asleep.
010. I eat a lot, but I'm very picky.
011. I dated a girl for four years in high school and college -- and, thankfully, married someone else.
012. My favorite subject in school was history.
013. I'd rather be outside.
014. In grade school, a boy once asked me why I was so small.
015. I spend much of my free time on a computer.
016. My parents divorced when I was 12.
017. I use instant messenger at work.
018. I rarely watch TV.
019. I hate shopping for clothes.
020. I am disgusted by trash on a table when I am eating.
021. I don't smoke, but I'm not bothered by people who do.
022. I have seen Bon Jovi in concert three times -- all three times as an opening act.
023. I have never had a pet of my own.
024. Not counting times that I have been ill, I have slept as long as 14 hours of a day.
025. I use AIM.
026. I'm liberal in some ways and arch-conservative in some others.
027. I dislike crowds.
028. Growing up, I loved educational toys, especially science, radio and aeronautical kits.
029. If I had an absurd amount of money, I'd own several cars.
030. I would love to have more time.
031. I have never stayed overnight in a hospital.
032. I have "run" a 5K.
033. I live with my wife, three children, three dogs and a cat.
034. I really need to clean my house.
035. I got two Fs in college. One class I forgot to drop. The other, I showed up only for the tests -- I had enough test points for a "B," but the professor also graded on attendance.
036. I hate roaches.
037. I love storms.
038. I have my own computer.
039. I wish I owned more books.
040. Mainstream pop music of the '80s drove me away from commercial music.
041. I really enjoy thoughtful gifts, even if they cost nothing. Still, I'll like almost anything just because the person took the time to pick it out.
042. I get along with most members of my family.
043. I like laughing.
044. Sometimes LiveJournal creeps me out.
045. The only kind of jewelry I like is watches.
046. I am a nonconformist.
047. I designed my own Web page.
048. I'm old enough to have used the original TRS-80 computer.
049. I designed the graphic on this site.
050. I love to burn CDs.
051. I once played the violin.
052. I am opinionated.
053. I have "leave me alone face."
054. I have fired a gun.
055. I've never gone hunting.
056. I don't exercise enough.
057. I have taken tennis lessons.
058. I take great pride in my handwriting.
059. I wish I read more books.
060. I've never swum with dolphins.
061. I've never been to a foreign country.
062. I love food.
063. I can't dance.
064. I am angered by closed-minded people.
065. I'll drink from a juice box if that's all that's available.
066. I like to give gifts, but I don't do it often enough.
067. I have to have at least a sheet covering me at night, even if it’s really hot.
068. I don't have a regular bar.
069. I hate routines.
070. I own few DVDs.
071. I am constantly battling boredom.
072. I need some alone time to stay sane.
073. I'm online a lot.
074. I want to travel more.
075. I'm old enough to have played Atari games.
076. Most of my friends from college are of the opposite gender.
077. I rarely get drunk.
078. I've never had a DUI.
079. I have never been arrested.
080. I think too much.
081. I love wood and tile floors.
082. I carry a laptop almost everywhere I go.
083. I think I am boring.
084. I have an average size car.
085. I enjoy talking about current events.
086. Most days, I'd rather be around kids than adults.
087. I have a low tolerance for loud people.
088. I see "floaters" almost all of the time.
089. There is probably something else I should be doing rather than this.
090. I haven't been to a doctor since 2000.
091. I've never tried sushi.
092. I grew up in a rough neighborhood.
093. I hate getting my picture taken.
094. I would like to someday hear somebody sing a song I've written.
095. I love long, sleek black hair.
096. I love scrambled eggs.
097. I didn't fly on a commercial airliner until I was 25.
098. I dislike the beach but will go if friends are going.
099. I like to say swear words.
100. I always get kissed good night.

Random stray thought

I'm often accused of oversimplifying things. I only do so because most things are really very simple.

Placeholder
This is basically just typing practice. Nothing of substance follows.