Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Deadshrinker

Jo Beckett calls herself a "deadshrinker". She's a forensic psychiatrist, the expert who is called in when a death is equivocal, when we don't know if the cause is accident, murder, or suicide. She painstakingly recreates the state of mind of the deceased, to such a degree as to meet the burden of proof in a court of law. She tells the truth for those who no longer can, like Orson Scott Card's Speaker For The Dead.

She's the protagonist of Meg Gardiner's thriller The Dirty Secrets Club. San Francisco's most beautiful people are dying in at least pairs, including a rising star in the federal prosecutor's office -- she drove her BMW off a bridge and crashed into an airport shuttle. Little things at the scene don't add up, and Jo Beckett is asked to consult by the SFPD. Her examination leads to the discovery of the Dirty Secrets Club, a group of rich and powerful people linked by awful things from their separate pasts, things they would rather die than see become common knowledge.

DSC has the combination of snappy one liners, quirky characters -- especially Ferd and Mr. Peebles! -- and suspense that Meg Gardiner is known for. It also has a wonderful sense of place. San Francisco and its close environs are as tangibly rendered as anything I've read, and the ways they shaped Jo are vital to the story.

I like Jo Beckett, and she's one of the few characters in contemporary literature I'd like to know personally.

The Oldest Hall of Famer

This is the sport I love.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Gone Tomorrow

Suicide bombers are easy to spot. They give out all kinds of telltale signs. Mostly because they're nervous. By definition they're all first-timers.

This is how Lee Child's 13th Reacher novel opens, and Jack Reacher, the former Military Policeman and current drifter who is a combination of Sherlock Holmes and focused Viking beserker, remains the best thriller character going today. It's no wonder that "Reacher's Creatures" includes such fans as Stephen King, Hugo and Nebula award winning SF writer John Varley, and new convert SI.com NFL columnist Peter King. Oh, and your humble Babble On scribe. I cannot recommend this entire series highly enough.

A Balanced Equation

A couple of days ago, the Applications group, both maintenance and new development, received a request from our overall boss that we report no more than 40 hours a week. This is another facet of cutting our customers' IT costs; it's a very good thing to make sure that we don't price ourselves out of the customers' affordable range. The flip side to this is that we've also been told not to put in time that's not billed back to the customer.

No problem. If all I can bill is 40 hours per week, then I'll make sure I don't work more than 40 hours per week.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Gattaca


In the near future, your place in life, indeed the very opportunities available to you, are determined by your genetic profile at birth. Or, as Ethan Hawkes' character Vincent, a "de-gene-erate", puts it -- and here I paraphrase -- "We don't need class or race to discriminate anymore. Now, we have science." However, there are still loopholes for those clever, desperate, and determined enough to follow their dreams to crawl through.

I believe this is the most deliberately paced movie I've ever watched. And that's appropriate, for it is a meditation on every theme it touches. Consider this key line of dialog: You want to know how I got this far? I never saved anything for the swim back.

Are Weekends Supposed To Start Like This?

During the first two hours after I got home from work on Friday, I felt as if several days jumped out of a dark alleyway and mugged me.

My company, starting next month, is requiring employees to pay a higher share of health insurance premiums. And that, along with flat salaries this year, means effectively a small pay cut. Well, I find that an acceptable trade to still have a job.

There was a letter informing me that the company has engaged an outside auditing firm to ensure compliance with eligibility requirements for covered dependents. Fine, I can deal with providing a copies of my marriage license and birth certificates for each of the kids. It's a little more of a bother to ask my daughter to get me documentation from her university to show that she's taking enough credit hours to be considered a full-time student and to show her expected graduation date. I'm far less overjoyed to give them a copy of some acceptable joint bank account statement, bill, tax return, or lease for my wife and myself. Even considering that the auditing firm expects all financial details to be redacted.

There was another piece of mail that was even less palatable. My latest credit card bill showed that my interest rate has more than doubled since the last statement. I called the credit card company and learned that I hadn't rejected the rate increase after receiving a letter from them back in April. Now, I'm sure they did send the letter, but I don't remember it at all. Of course, that's no one's fault by mine. They did let me reject the rate increase during the phone call, and I'm locked in to my old APR, as long as I don't use the card.

The weekend has gotten better since then, even though the Braves lost yesterday and today to the Orioles, for goodness sakes. At least the re-read of Watchers lived up to my high expectations.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Comfort Day

Yesterday, I spent my morning reading the first half of Gone Tomorrow, the latest volume in Lee Child's Reacher series. Then, in the afternoon, Lisa and I finally caught the Star Trek reboot and had an early supper at our favorite Mexican restaurant. I then proceeded to fall asleep in my favorite recliner at 8:30, missed the penultimate episode of Pushing Daisies, and woke up just enough to drag my sorry carcass off to bed slightly before 1:00 am.

Sounds nice and comfy, eh? So why was it a "comfort day"? Summer planning, my friends, summer planning.

Friday, June 5, 2009

50 - 426: Sketches of Family

In knowing myself, I think it's illustrative to briefly portray those who mean the most to me.

My father Huston - two Latin phrases: Esse quam videri and Semper fidelis.

My mother Alice Faye - the family Caregiver, the one who has always assumed the task of looking after someone chronically sick or weak. There is someone like this in every family I know, and this is the person with the least amount of control over his or her own life. I conjecture that this is why Mom spends a lot of her energy cleaning where no one else can see a spot.

My wife Lisa - my Everyday Miracle.

My daughter Georgia - Teacher-to-be, nearly ready to tackle the world.

My son Andy - the family Empiricist.

My son David - the family Believer.

My mother-in-law Meki - Survivor and inspiration.

300, Again

For the second time since I started this blog, a major league pitcher has earned his 300th victory. The Big Unit didn't do it as the dominating flamethrower who won five Cy Young awards. He did it with persistence and craft, and by all accounts, he appreciates his own achievement and its place in baseball history more for having to work harder for it than he used to.

Congratulations Randy Johnson, and may the Giants treat you better than the Braves treated Tom Glavine today.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

50 - 427: Do you know what your Sin is?

In the movie Serenity, the Parliamentary Operative, a government assassin and a moral monster if ever there was one, asks this question of two people he is about to kill. The first victim, a research scientist whose overconfidence upset a weapons project, never answers, as it's rather difficult to formulate a coherent answer to any question when you're dying around a sword that's been thrust through your chest. The second victim, the rogue hero of the story, is still standing and still fighting.

The Operative answers for the first victim, "It's Pride." The second answers for himself, "Ah Hell, I'm a fan of all seven. But right now, I'd have to go with Wrath."

Like Malcolm Reynolds, I know what my Sin is. Unlike him, I won't claim to be a fan of any or all of the Deadly Sins. However, I must claim ownership of an aspect of Sloth. I'm a procrastinator.

After all, I've been thinking about this post for at least a month.

Procrastination...where did it enter my life? My parents do not suffer from this affliction. My brother doesn't. I'm not following any negative examples there.

On the other hand, I enjoy solitude and a different quality of the life of the mind than anyone else in my family. Call it introspection.

In my career as an IT professional, I have a different rhythm to my programming than my peers. I have always spent a great deal of time contemplating before I write any code, imagining the ways that what I'm about to set down won't work, and then figuring out how to get around it. I'd like to think that there's something rather Zen about this approach.

On the other hand, I also make myself prone to "analysis paralysis" by overthinking what should be simple and easy.

In my personal life, well, procrastination hasn't caused me much but difficulties and heartache. There have been too many instances where I didn't get the girl or the job because I waited too long, where an important decision was taken out of my hands and decided in favor of the other guy because I hesitated too long.

On the other hand, I've been learning how to wrestle this demon, and I can't regret the "not getting the girl" part, because I didn't wait, didn't hesitate when it came to Lisa, and I won the heart of the fair maid.