Inside the Thumbhead

old dog learns new trick

2006-08-18T13:55:00.000-07:00

Man, I'm gonna miss our intern, Perry. He told me how to do this at lunch.

Jellies

2006-08-18T10:40:00.000-07:00

The four of us (Anne, Doug, Bert the Bird, myself) were in Pacific Grove this past weekend, the second of two trips up the Central Coast in recent weeks. While Bert adjusted to the cottage at Bide-A-Wee we spent time gazing at the creatures at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. At least for myself, I like the jellyfish exhibit. I got a few mpegs but they're too large to upload. Here's two traveling companions. We're in the aquarium restaurant. One really works up an appetite after looking at all those fish.

Perry

2006-08-11T10:08:00.000-07:00

Hello, thumbheaders. This is Perry, the intern who's returning to Berkeley after spending part of his summer "working" with us. Looks happy, doesn't he? Wouldn't you if you knew you were getting paid relatively well to design Lego models of engineering processes (guffaw guffaw) while your classmates were coming home with paper hats and hair smelling like french fries?? But I'm sure he isn't the type to rub it in (Hey Cho-Dawg - here's some paper money - treat yourself to some shampoo!! Bwahahahah!!). Yet. He also worked on other things but not wanting to turn this into a bedtime story, I won't go into it. I'd love to show the models he created but they're locked up, much too valuable to display. But I'll show them when I can. Anyway, good luck Perry and I hope to see you next year!

Gary

2006-07-20T15:00:00.000-07:00

My guardian angel decided to give my brain a little nudge with a personal visit. My thoughts on a visual language to condense the mismash of flowcharts into a more understandable symbology have been suspended like bits of fruit in green jello, so to speak. After dropping Doug off at school I drove around looking for somewhere I could get a cappucino and a muffin to kill some time. I was to pick Doug up in a little less than two hours for his driving test at the DMV. I passed on several places in Santa Monica and Brentwood eventually settling on a Starbucks on Main in Venice. The seats were all taken except for one next to a guy who looked like a street person. I took it. His table was covered with colored markers and stacks of paper organized in manila folders. What looked like architectural renderings of floorplans turned out to be abstractions of words. He turned to me, held one up, and cackled. I could only do a Keanu Reeves, "whoa." He told me that for the last four months he was driven to draw words. He was a drifter in his mid-fifties living on the streets but with a new sense of purpose, to express the feelings inside of him through drawings of words. He said he didn't understand where this was all originating from or leading to but felt a compulsion to let it out through words like, Zuma, very nice, July (which looked like it was made of glass shards and lightning), art (which looked like a Calder mobile) all pretty random stuff. He sold some at a nominal price, others he gave away. He said he was suddenly getting more attention. The Starbucks we were in had contracted him to decorate the whole place with his word drawings. He had a feral look in his eyes but was lucid and a good listener. He looked me straight in the eye and said our meeting was no accident. He gave me a picture that is his interpretation of "world."

Doug passed.

The Stupid Lego Smile

2006-07-14T12:06:00.000-07:00

Going through my lego junkyard of loose bricks and bodyparts I began to see a need for a broader range of expressions on the Lego faces. Come on, does a cutlass wielding pirate hovering over a hapless lego victim sport a psychotic little how-can-I-help-you smile on his face? And does the guy about to get sent back to loose piece heaven sport an identical cute smile on his face? No, of course not. But all it takes is the edge of a pocketknife and a sharpie to change all that. My vision is not that great anymore so my effort to put a menacing face on this dumb pompous manager who can't take a joke about his stupid little management hat isn't as good as it could be but you get the point, right?

Shifting into Lego Thought

2006-07-13T10:53:00.000-07:00

I've been wondering how to get away from describing processes in our tech world in terms of those damned flowcharts. So, I asked my director for $100, chipped in some of my own money and sent the bright, fresh, Berkeley intern to the Lego store in Downtown Disney to get an assortment of generic pieces. We are brainstorming on new ways to describe how things get done around here. Perry had some extra bucks leftover so I had him get a box of people. I didn't realize until I began putting them together that(correct me if I'm wrong)- ALL Lego people are yellow skinned! Whoa! I know, some of you are thinking, "What about gear shift head?" Well, he's masked, ok? And do you want to claim a Lego pinhead as one of your own? Be my guest. Anyway, the people that come in the box are unlike those I have scavenged from previous sets. They're regular working class stiffs in suits and uniforms fitting their jobs - construction, medicine, hospitality, even skaters and scuba divers with removeable fins. No pirates or spacemen with ray guns. It's hard to resist breaking away from building engineering process blocks and setting up a gang war between the uppity asian medical staff and blue suited asian lesbos. Sorry, but mixing and matching are what Legos are all about.

Back from the DED!!!

2006-06-21T10:18:00.000-07:00

I've been jammin' if you, my loyal readership, have been wondering where I've been. Near the rocket factory is a cemetery in the adjacent community of Westminster. Next to that is a strawberry patch. Some people believe that the souls of the dead leach into the fruit. What better reason is there to make jam than capturing the sweet essence of spring strawberries and the souls of the deceased in cute little jars for distribution to unwitting superstitious acquaintances? Do you want a jar? Stay tuned; I'm thinking up a contest......

update

2006-05-24T11:11:00.000-07:00

I've purchased the first articles of my Boeing uniform today, some dressy, some casual. I'm still on the fence about incorporating a bowtie. I like them but the dork factor raises the possibility of it not being taken seriously. What do you think? I haven't forgotten about the picture of my new moth/butterfly collection; my camera is at home. So, I'm off to the department store.

Beetle Reunion

2006-05-22T09:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the 20th annual Bug Fair at the California Museum of Natural History. The family usually goes but this time it was just Anne and myself. It isn't that the kids have outgrown or metamorphosed beyond such things but they just had other plans. The first booth you see even before paying to get in is the Western Exterminators, a tad ironic, but I can understand the logic. They do have a great practical knowledge of the local insect population especially the ones I'm interested in, the stinging biting guys. Here I am with Timmy, the Western Exterminator mascot. He didn't speak but he was really good with sign language and enjoyed looking at my collection of butterflies and moths. What we usually do is get a box and start going around buying colorful or unusual bugs for display. This time I got moths and butterflies. Last year it was beetles. Outside, they have a butterfly garden with a couple dozen species flitting around.
I bought a textbook on spiders which are technically arachnids, not insects, but they're small and bug spray kills them. Call them whatever you like. Anne got some really good field guides to butterflies and they are, of course, in color. My big complaint to the spider book is that it's in black and white which makes identification difficult. You can also buy live insects, silk worms and several species of tarantulas from the big mellow guys which crawl slowly over your palm or the smaller angry biting guys (why is it always that way - little guys with attitude and gentle giants?). There are speakers who visit classrooms some of whom seem a bit too enthusiastic about bugs with a wild windswept look in their eyes. I forgot to photograph my bugs so I'll post those later.

A Uniformly Good Idea

2006-04-25T11:05:00.000-07:00

Years ago, when I was still a Rockwell employee, I had the idea to come up with a company uniform like they do in private schools and every franchise business known to man (except not so costume-like). As you would expect, the idea was seen as stupid among my peers. And there wasn't much to work with i.e., logos, patches, embroidered clothing so the idea died. But after our family trip to Japan last year I had a chance to see all sorts of snappy uniforms from the swaggering bell bottomed construction workers to the spotless white chefs hats and aprons of the servers at the curry cafe in the train stations. I saw teams of middle aged custodians dressed in pastel pseudo military garb doing pre-shift arm stretches before tackling the trash cans on the train platform. So why not Boeing? We have a gift shop with plenty of Boeing clothing. Pretty decent quality, a tad boring (see picture). Save some on the clothing expense. Boost morale and a sense of pride. Ok, I'm getting carried away. But I need to go to the ATM and there's one near the gift shop. It's time to resurrect my idea.

Robot to the Rescue

2006-04-22T19:09:00.000-07:00

The Itos spent the afternoon at the Art Center Open House at the hillside campus near the Rose Bowl. While taking pictures of some of the student work the thought occurred to me that this was prohibited. Yup, it was. I missed signs posted near the entrance to the displays. So, my blog fans, I have no pictures to show. The projects were of a professional quality, take my word for it.

We wrapped up the afternoon at the Pasadena Bristol Farms where I bought Cara Cara oranges, orange roughy, mini blueberry and banana muffins among other miscellaneous staple items. As we were pulling out of the parking space, Elizabeth ran up to the passenger side of our car with a prototype resin casting of her next toy. Today my blog is an Easter egg to Elizabeth Blog fans!

Meet My Hartmann Bag

2006-04-18T12:26:00.000-07:00

First of all, it's nice to be back blogging. It's been a difficult two weeks. I was suffering from an irritated achilles tendon (still a little sore) and between the strong pain meds and limited mobility I wasn't up to writing. Hope I haven't completely lost my readers but that's ok. It started out as a personal journal. Maybe that's how it'll end up.

But on to the subject - my bag. A few years ago I went to my local luggage store, Savinar, to get a new set of luggage. I told the salesperson that I wanted luggage that was tough. I didn't want handles or wheels breaking while I was on the road. She said, "Oh, if you want the Rolls Royce of luggage then you want Hartmann." I hated the way it looked. Like my friend, Doug, said, "It looks like something you'd pull down from Grandma's attic." That tweed, the logo, the shape, way too sixties, dowdy, whatever. Fast forward to last week. The handle broke off the Swiss Army bag I settled for so I was back at Savinar to get it fixed. I was also looking for a new laptop bag. I wandered over to the Hartmanns. The look had grown on me. I bought the laptop bag. I couldn't wait to hear the derision from the peanut gallery in Huntington Beach on Monday. And I wasn't disappointed. It was almost universally despised except for my friend Linda who swoons whenever she sees one roll by at the airport (She is having me buy one for her when I pick up my fixed Swiss Army bag). And my twentysomething cubicle neighbor, Lily, is starting to go , "Hmmmm..." as though the derision is beginning to pass and the thought of having something exclusive and secret before it becomes the next Filofax or Burberry's product is starting to gain appeal. It isn't as though Louis Vuitton or Ferragamo is better or worse but Hartmann is under the radar even though all the elements of coolness are there - high quality, retro, unknown, not made in a third world country. And they hardly advertise so the price isn't gobbled up by fancy ads.

The Weekend

2006-03-27T13:05:00.000-08:00

I spent Saturday with these people. Bert, our Senegal parrot, has chosen Doug to be his current best friend. We had a pleasant brunch at the 17th Street Cafe in Santa Monica and did grocery shopping at the Bristol Farms in Westwood and at Famima!! just across the street. On Sunday I hosted the Senshin Bookclub meeting by leading a discussion of Joan Didion's bestseller, "The Year of Magical Thinking," chronicling her observations following the sudden death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne. The books we previously discussed were all written from a Buddhist perspective about difficult personal experiences or church doctrine. This time I wanted to go at it from another angle. I wanted the Buddhism to be outside the realm of the author. How does someone with a non-Buddhist background face the death of a spouse? The meeting instead of focusing on points such as style and structure concentrated on the evolution of her thinking from a Jodo Shinshu point of view. In Jodo Shinshu Buddhism there is a term, tariki, meaning "other power," which derives from our acceptance of reality "as it is." Didion's sense that things were still unresolved was one of her concluding remarks. Ironically, that is where many Buddhist books begin. The hardest part of being a host is not leading the discussion (that's just talkin') but making the chinese chicken salad and getting the empanadas and madeleines, setting out the plates, encouraging everyone to eat; now that's reality - as it is.

Resting Space

2006-03-23T12:49:00.000-08:00

Now I'm working out the canopy design to Doug's bed. I plan to use a combination of light fabric and netting stretched over
flexible rods similar to the way backpacking tents are designed. I want to create a space that is cozy with the minimum amount of fabric. I also want to have a place where I can hang a small moveable led lantern. What's missing from these sketches is the front view. Designing a resting space whose sole criteria is to maximize the feeling of privacy and spaciousness within a minimum amount of space is turning out to be an interesting architectural problem.

Hear the Alarm Clock

2006-03-21T13:26:00.000-08:00

“Boomers! Redefining Life After Fifty” is an excellent blog for anyone at a crossroad in their career. I mainly read the profiles of people who have changed careers. I don’t think younger people would be interested in topics such as, “The Seductive Allure of Tango,” but knowing how people deal with the risks (and fear) of following their passion is universally relevant. Unlike being in school where the institution moved you along and graduated you a corporation can be like an endless college experience. The circadian alarm clock to dig oneself out of the corporate soil and fly away was never started. Read about those who heard the ring.

The Weekend

2006-03-20T15:25:00.000-08:00

Ok, the picture inserter is not working again so use your imagination. On Saturday, my socialble cousin, Jayne, organized a luncheon for the rest of us cousins at Ocean Star Restaurant in Monterey Park. There were sixteen cousins, kids, spouses, and friends. Besides the usual fare of char shiu bao, shiu mai and har gow we had delicacies like duck tongue and stewed tripe. I'll let you google the names of those goodies if you care to know. As you may suspect, Cantonese cuisine spans the spectrum of all that is edible. If it sprouted, crawled, ran, waddled, or slithered, it was cooked and eaten. We didn't even scratch the surface of the choices available to us that day.

On Sunday, we spent the entire day in the gym at Cal State Dominguez Hills attending the 55th Anniversary Gardena Judo Dojo Tournament. Doug lost but to just fight opponents in the 195lb senior division (18 and over) takes courage. Good job, Doug.

Chevalier's Bookstore

2006-03-17T15:49:00.000-08:00

Chevalier's Bookstore in Larchmont Village is small but offers a great selection of travel (especially LA and Calif) books, fiction, religion, poetry and most of all, children's books. The people working there are readers, very nice and helpful. That's David at the counter. I bought Johnathan Gold's "Counter Intelligence" a guide to out of the way but great restaurants in LA. It's cold and rainy outside, a perfect day to read a book.

The Ring

2006-03-16T17:24:00.000-08:00

The Currently Invisible Ring

2006-03-16T10:49:00.000-08:00

I had a ring made from a silver coin my grandmother was given to pay off a debt when she owned a restaurant, Fukuya, in J-town during the fifties and sixties. The computer won't let go of the image right now so I will post it later today. I had Muriel Chastanet make it for me. When I got it my first reaction was, "Hmm, I'm not too crazy about this." But as I wore it, I liked it more and more. It fits the coin, called an isshu gin, a small rectangular stamped ingot, made during the reign of the last Tokugawa shogun. He was running the show during the 1850's when Commodore Perry "opened" Japan to the West. The emperor, Komei was the symbolic figurehead at the time. It was the beginning of a period of great change for the country, an appropriate symbol to have on a ring as I turn 55 to face my own mini Meiji Era.

It's Like Traffic School All Over Again

2006-03-14T15:40:00.000-08:00

It was "Recommittment to Ethics Day" at Boeing. That means two hours of speeches by the CEO, Senior VPs of Communication, the Office of Internal Governance, Ethics, a Medal of Honor recipient, testimonials and case studies. Somebody exercised bad judgement a few years ago and the company was banned from bidding on military contracts as a result. We were penitent. Ethics Day was born! It was fours hours long back then. With final exams! So, two hours of lectures isn't too bad. It's like an Ethics booster shot. For me the best part is the testimonials. Hey, do I know that guy? Or, I know where they filmed that! When the program is over you get your badge scanned for credit. But my attention span hasn't stretched much since elementary school so about halfway through, my mind started to drift. I daydreamed about riding the coolest folding bike I've ever seen, the Strida3. Check out the price. I can't believe it!

Egg Memories

2006-03-13T13:13:00.000-08:00

The Boeing Company photographers sent me some pics of the egg drop contest held during Engineers Week. Here are the contestants with their entries.

Preliminary inspections

The dragonfly, the winning finned-dart, and the graybeard Rick delicately dropping our entry

Engineers love to break stuff and see what's inside.

Da Hood

2006-03-10T10:45:00.000-08:00

I do a lot of banking here. The name derived from the sixties when the building was actually a bank. They have a deli section that used to be pretty good but in recent years they've gotten stingy with the meat on their sandwiches. Immediately north of the "bank" is the Crenshaw Mall. When the Liquor Bank was truly a bank the Crenshaw Mall was an upscale shopping center with a Broadway where the Wall Mart is and a May Company where the Robinsons-May is now liquidating its inventory.
Farther north on Crenshaw at Coliseum Street the developers are building a strip mall with incongruous features that people familiar with the history of the neighborhood would recognize and understand. At the corner is the remnants of a Pontiac dealership sign. Next to the Starbucks with the fifties facade
is a sign that says "Bowl" with no bowling alley around. But there used to be a Pontiac dealership there and Holiday Bowl was the place to be on league nights. The coffee shop was always open and they had everything from chili rice to wor won ton mein on the menu. When the bowling alley left and the news got out that it would all be torn down, people rallied against the developers. The property was locked in a stalemate for years. So, to remember what once stood, the developers incorporated the bowling alley facade and signage into the Starbucks design and the Pontiac Dealership sign with the Denny's Restaurant. Superficially it sounds silly and unnecessary but I found it reassurring to know that the neighborhood cared enough to make the effort to remember its history, when Crenshaw had fancy restaurants, car dealerships, and department stores. I can go even farther north and point out where the Angeles Church of Christ was a furniture store and Tasty Q's, a great barbeque stand, used to be a Del Taco franchise and on and on. Like hermit crabs, businesses shed their old shells while younger ones take their places hoping to grow and thrive and move on.

I Love Toys

2006-03-08T12:40:00.000-08:00

Comedians, actors, talk show celebrities comment on toys from way back like Tinker Toys, the balsa wood rubber band airplane, green plastic army men, the Slip and Slide, to more recent toys like My Pretty Pony, Care Bears, stickers, and Weebles ("Weebles wobble but they don't fall down"). The series is a five hour countdown from 100 to the number one toy. The commentary is hilarious as their affection for and experience with these toys are soo familiar. I found myself bursting into laughter alone in front of the tv. Click on the the title to this post to link to VH1.

The Fridge

2006-03-07T13:57:00.000-08:00

Neat freaks, there's still plenty of room in here for storage. Yes, I have stuff way in back that needs to be tossed but most of what's in here is pretty fresh. Like bookcases, you can tell quite a bit about someone by the contents of their refrigerator. I like food. The orange tub on the top shelf is Pavilion's tomato soup. It's the best. Just to the left is a small dish of tobiko, flying fish roe from Nijiya Market, a caviar that is similar to salmon roe in taste but its granular and feels like you're eating mini fish flavored bubblewrap. Recognize the blue bottle of Soy Vay Teriyaki sauce in the top right corner? Or the asian pear in its distinctive knitted styrofoam sweater? Land o Lakes butter because its small cross section fits the glass butter dish. Anne's Benecol butter substitute. Sriracha sauce - who can be without that? Fresh squeezed Bristol Farms orange juice, yum. White miso in the squarish tupperware. Plastic bag of pre-peeled garlic from the Korean supermarket. And tons of stuff you would never see in this pic. So, what's your fridge like?

Britain's Circus

2006-03-06T14:28:00.000-08:00

This is one of my special toys. It's one of the last made by Britain"s Toy Company in their English factory. They're all made in China now. Ironically, the paint job by the Chinese factory is better, more exact. But there is an old school quality to these figures that I love.

Corporate Sylvanians

2006-03-01T10:26:00.000-08:00

It was the holiday season almost twenty years ago. I walked out to the living room one morning. The tree was up. Toys were everywhere. Sylvanians were scattered on the floor next to the little open roof cottage where they "lived." It was not only a mess, I could've stepped on them and that would've hurt almost as much as stepping on a Lego. So, I knelt down and began to sweep them into a little pile near the cottage. I thought, "that looks like a mound of dead animals." Not good. So I distributed them in each of the partitioned rooms, some in the living room, some in the bedroom, some near the kitchen. To make a long story short, by the time the family came out there was a full on formal dinner going on in the Sylvanian household with daddy and mommy greeting guests at the door. Someone else was holding a teeny tray out with bottled refreshments. Lots of relatives were mingling in the living room anxiously waiting to sit and eat. There was grandma in the bedroom with her arms up (they are moveable) in alarm over some stranger rocking the cradle containing a baby Sylvanian. Elizabeth joined in. We had fun moving the creatures around, changing the social dynamic. What is the point of this story? Here's my idea. Right now my cubicle is occupied by flamingos on fake grass. Don't ask why. It's a long story. I want to put a partitioned office floorplan under the lights and have Sylvanians represent the different types of coporate personalities, executives (probably tanuki because they're sneaky) bears, rabbits, etc. People can come up with all sorts of dramatic scenes. Surfing the web I found that the UK, Japan, and Australia are still into Sylvanians and plenty more are traded on Ebay. You've got to watch out for imitations, as the scale factor is different as well as the quality. Take my word for it, these are fun.

Keeping it Fresh

2006-02-28T13:28:00.000-08:00

I added a couple bloggers to my links. One is called "Stuff from the Park" a blog dedicated to theme parks which I especially like for the photos of Disneyland under construction. They look as though they were taken yesterday. And there is a soft ambient lighting to them that reminds me of museum dioramas. Another one is called "Watashi to TOKYO" a blog from a woman, Mari, who gives us glimpses of life in Tokyo, a blog version of "Being John Malkovich" except you crawl through Mari's brain and not John's to see out. Under "References" I added the online version of the Merriam Webster Dictionary / Thesaurus which also pronounces words for you. Toy links are still under review. I want to include some sites that use cutting edge technology in little toys. Whew. Busy, busy busy.

Meet Victor

2006-02-27T16:11:00.000-08:00

Victor lives one block east of me on West Blvd. We've been friends for many years. He is a chiropractor who also practices energetics, an ancient form of healing. We have plenty of discussions on that. We had lunch at Natalee Thai because the Indonesian restaurant in Palms was closed today. We talked about toys, string theory and Michio Kaku, whom Victor knew back in the day and said was a super friendly, super genius type guy. There was a lot of catching up to do as I hadn't been by his place in months. He's got a ponytail now and damned if he doesn't remind me of Sadao Watanabe. He also visited Japan last year and took some breathtaking pictures of Shimizu where many of his cousins still live. He took this one of a tea plantation near his relatives home. I didn't know he was so talented.

Pop Quiz Bloggers!!

2006-02-25T09:15:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone. I'm alone in the house this morning. Anne is out at a school seminar on retirement benefits. Doug left to spend the day with Jane. Elizabeth is probably just waking up in her den of toys in Glendale. Well, I'm not exactly alone. Bert is chewing on his favorite toy, a toothbrush, and I am trying to sort out the conspiracy that is brewing among the toys surrounding me. And I'm still hopeful a nice warm breeze will pick up around lunchtime one strong enough to keep my kite up in the air. I'm rambling. Sorry. For the past few days I've been wondering what other people feel about blogs. In a few weeks I'll be showing my bookclub pals how to blog and what range of subjects blogs cover. Send me some links to some interesting blogs, please. And send me your thoughts on the subject. So here's today's question blogheads: What happens when you open your journal to the world?

A Neutrino Review

2006-02-22T10:38:00.000-08:00

A physicist performs a magic trick at the dinner table. Electron, muon, and tau neutrinos appear as red foam balls. They exchange places. They completely disappear. The irony is that the reality of neutrinos as presented in PBS Nova’s documentary “The Ghost Particle” is more magical than the trick. This is a great show for those who love to be mystified by things beyond their understanding. I can barely comprehend how anyone can harvest argon from three atoms floating in thousands of gallons of unaffected atoms per week let alone grasp the math behind it all. Do you really want to know how David Copperfield does his tricks? I don’t. Do you want to know the tricks behind neutrinos? Then go here.

Eligible for the Senior Discount

2006-02-21T10:12:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I officially became a senior citizen. They can't keep me out of Leisure World anymore. Anne and I went to Sawtelle Kitchen for lunch and walked along Montana Avenue in Santa Monica and had an Italian ice at Di Dio's. I was waiting for the wind to pick up so I could try out the kite but when it finally did late in the day it was a bit too chilly. We ended up at El Cholo's in the evening for dinner because El Jarrito was closed.

On another note, I wanted to share a magazine discovery, "Make: technology on your time" a quarterly somewhat reminiscent of the Amateur Scientist articles in the older Scientific Americans, the "how-to" projects that pushed the boundaries of common sense to teach us principles of science at the risk of blowing ourselves to smithereens. "Make:" not only has interesting projects but profiles on people who've managed to scavenge the mind boggling technology we take for granted in our daily lives and made clever adaptations to suit a special purpose. There are eye-opening reviews of materials such as 3M's new black electrical tape that self activates when a piece is stretched so that it fuses to itself without that crummy slimey adhesive. Tool reviews are more practical than those found in "Wired" which are biased toward entertainment. Even if you do not build any of the projects like the jam jar jet engine, reading about them is fascinating. It takes a grass roots approach to giving us a feeling of having control over the technology around us by taking it apart and understanding it.

Vicarious Flying

2006-02-19T16:33:00.000-08:00

I wanted a two-stringed maneuverable kite for my birthday so we went to Up Up and Away Kite Shop in Seal Beach where, coincidentally, Monty (see photo) had put the $139.00 Trick n' Track on sale for $99.00. I will try to post a photo of it in flight but it's been a little rainy these past couple days and I also wanted to picture a wildly succesful flight in my mind before the real first takeoff. Plus, is it really necessary to rediscover the electrical properties of lightning? I don't think so. It's a lot bigger than it looked on the wall in the shop when I assembled it in the living room. The technology has evolved tremendoulsly since the days when a kite was a paper diamond with a wooden cross and string to hold it together. And you had to supply the string and knotted rag tail. My birthday kite is made of space age sail material and carbon fiber rods.

Blame it on the Neutrino

2006-02-17T17:44:00.000-08:00

Neutrinos are those elusive high energy particles that are almost impossible to capture zipping through the earth without stopping most of the time. One collided with a nerve ending in my head during early adolescence. I ceased to develop in a curious way. I continued to love toys with unending childlike glee. Cars are only appliances to get somewhere. Fancy watches are beautiful windup motors waiting to be modified to power something that amuses me instead of telling me something so annoying as the time of day. Don't give me clothes at Christmas. No no no.

I was stopped dead in my tracks when I came across this Vespa equipped with a Cozy brand sidecar from India. It's a little toy motorcycle/sidecar setup made big enough to ride! Wheeeee! The holy grail! But there's a problem, a big one. These are Vespa 150's, new retro 60's bikes that cannot pass emissions in California. You can buy them in almost every state except California. Life is cruel.

Extra Extra Extra! We Sorta Lost and Sorta Won Hell I Don't Know

2006-02-16T14:08:00.000-08:00

It was bittersweet. I don't know whether we won or lost. You tell me. I was the team leader of our egg droppers, that I know. We come from two departments. We had to divide people into three teams because five was the team size limit and we had more, so Humpty's Heroes, Ovo-Team, and Not a Crack Team were hatched. We arbitrarily assigned people as placeholders to keep the teams legit but in our hearts we were as one. We collaborated, we shared resources, we synergized, we were team players, corporate citizens. But we also began to drift, to derive variations. By contest day I felt like a Humpty Hero, period. So, at noon, when the eggs were dropped the Heroes had one broken egg out of eight, Not a Crack six of eight, and Ovo had fourteen of fourteen perfect uncracked eggs. The other entries (there were ten others) never seriously challenged the fourteen number but I must give them credit for creativity, like the stack of egg filled Coors cans, or the dragonfly with egg stuffed foamy thorax and abdomen, or the soccer ball o' eggs which, upon impact, sounded like someone saying, "Boof!" after getting slugged in the belly. As team leader it was a department victory but an empty one for a Humpty Hero.

Don't Worry Humpty!

2006-02-15T14:43:00.000-08:00

This is basically our concept for the egg drop contest (see feb. 7th post - Geek Week). We are packing eight eggs into carved out floral foam (what floral arrangements are poked into) cells with a lining of Floam, that gooey glop of styrofoam granules and what is suspiciously similar to Gack. If you're wondering why we are dropping only eight eggs instead of the thirty - five we did last year it's because they have limited the volume to six inches on a side instead of a foot or 216 cubic inches, 1/8th the volume. So we are actually more efficient than last year. Everything fits snugly into the shipping tube so that there's no unnecessary collisions on impact. There are fins to keep the tube stable and vertical on it's descent, and a floral foam nose cone that will crush and decelerate the tube as it lands. I have omitted the baggies that will individually encase each cell (a contest rule) and postal tape to hold the cell halves together and also the caps on the tube ends. Wish our team luck. It's at 11:30am pst. Go Humpty's Heroes!

A Japan Flashback

2006-02-14T15:50:00.000-08:00

The 7-11's in Japan are great. They are nothing like the ones in the US. It's amazing what they pack into those little stores, underwear, fireworks, food (brought in fresh in the morning by local shops), snacks, booze, magazines, medicine. Upon settling in at my cousins place in Setagaya we quickly made a habit of going to the 7-11 for food and snacks. We made friends with the staff. When we gave them a couple boxes of chocolates as parting gifts they gave us a bunch of promotional Snoopy plates that would've taken months of saving proof of purchase stickers for.

Mall Rats

2006-02-13T12:13:00.000-08:00

Hello glowing eyes in the internet forest. It was a busy weekend. A funeral for a friend's mother, keeping up with Anne at the Century City/Westfield mall on Saturday afternoon, and a day with the family in Santa Monica on Sunday. We are in the Santa Monica Place Mall designed by Frank Gehry, slated to be razed for a condo/office/shopping development within the next couple years. Frank Gehry's use of pedestrian construction materials in the mall such as chain link fencing, metal grating, and exposed metal beams looked great when it was new in the seventies (I may be mistaken on the timeframe) especially with it's ocean view. Now it reminds me of a tired amusement park. Unorthodox materials and hip design often do not age well. Thanks to the adjacent 3rd Street Promenade it still remains a great place to people watch.

When Reality Bites, Daydream

2006-02-10T13:26:00.000-08:00

I’m not going to talk about eggs today. Gotta stop obsessing about those damn eggs. It’s hard making them go away in my head.

It felt like a school day when I got to work. You know what I mean, hazy, cool, the building off in the distance, people strolling in, staring down bundled in their thoughts, an indeterminate melancholy in my gut. If I smelled oatmeal cookies coming from the cafeteria I would’ve instinctively started worrying about my report card, performance review, Mrs. Miles and Algebra II, whatever. What is on my mind is my sidecar plan, one of the last dreams shared by my dad and myself, the dream of riding the perfect sidecar combo, the BMW cruiser attached to an octagonal Steib sidecar. I’ve been thinking about it for at least thirty five or forty years. Maybe it was the weather that triggered it today, the thought of a morning ride up the coast, the open feeling of being on a bike, of being with a passenger seated comfortably alongside of me. But I cannot resist thinking that the stars are beginning to align in favor of this happening. Buy the bike, a BMW 1200C, I don’t know where, yet. Buy the sidecar in Washington State at Dauntless Motors. Get them joined up. Ride the hack back down the coast with Anne in this our fifty-fifth year.

One Busy Day

2006-02-09T15:34:00.000-08:00

It's been a busy day and it's all my fault. I brought it upon myself. If you read the blog then you know it, too. But before I get into that I want to thank everyone for their comments on the last post. True, it was a pretty pathetic plea for some attention but those three comments swelled my head and it felt good, damn good. Such an ego. I'm considering changing my blog to "Inside the Fisthead." Should I? There I go again. Don't respond.

Anyway, the colleges are awaiting outlines of what they are expected to do. I am working with people here to come up with those corporate-speak business cases executives want to hear before they pay for anything. And I am in the midst of testing ways to drop eggs and win the egg drop contest for the second time. Well, to be truthful, I am mostly spending my time coming up with ways to win the egg drop contest while others are getting impatient waiting for me to get back to them.

During my quest for the perfect egg packing material I stumbled upon two of the coolest liquidy goops that you can play with, Nickelodeon Splat and Floam. If Silly Putty fascinates you, this stuff is another quantum level up from that. I got it from Target. Splat is pourable plastic that has the consistency of phlegm but you can play with it like plastic. Floam is like Splat impregnated with foamy spherical particles, boba phlegm. Tomorrow, I will status our progress on the egg drop (engineers talk like that) and how all this ties together.

Blogging and SETI

2006-02-08T12:56:00.000-08:00

SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, our lonely planet listening for some little planet friend to say hello, is not unlike blogging. It's rare for someone to blog only to post drooling maniacal rants day after day without caring about anyone listening. Not that I expected a big audience when I started this. Not me, no siree. It was more a way to ease into html and to share an electronic journal that some friends and family (that includes cousins) could read. Uh huh, that right. Ever hear about Statcounter? You can track your hits if you're the type that cares. Who is that person from Turkey who peeks in? And why all the traffic from Colorado? Somebody in Slovenia? Why why why?? Duluth checks in periodically but I'm pretty sure I know who that is. In any case, I shouldn't care about the fluctuations in my very very small readership but I do. Most hits occur in the middle of the week. How come? How do I attract a wider audience? Should I be more wacky and less engineery? Or can they be the same thing? Dammit! My ego. I ... must ... resist ..egotism. So readers, what do you think?

It's Geek Week

2006-02-07T12:54:00.000-08:00

Otherwise known as Engineering Week, many tech companies celebrate by having games like engineering themed jeopardy, lectures by distinguished speakers, and competive events like the egg drop contest. I am signed up once again to participate in the egg drop contest. Last year I co-captained the winning team, Humpty's Heroes. We dropped thirty five eggs from a height of fifty feet onto an asphalt surface insulated with floral and curable polyurethane foam inside a one foot square cardboard box. None broke. The rule then was that the total allowable volume was one foot square. The highest percentage of unbroken eggs wins, so if 1 egg is dropped and it doesn't break it beats three eggs dropped with one broken. but if an entry with more than one lands with no unbroken eggs, it wins. The closest one to us was something like ten or eleven eggs with one broken. To avert another one -sided victory upon the playing field the rules committee have modified the rules to exclude our technical innovations from last year. Tomorrow we will begin development testing of some new concepts.

Deformities

2006-02-06T09:50:00.000-08:00

I've had the roughed out headboard for Doug's bed in the garage for a couple years now. It's a leftover fragment of the bed I completed back then. It's time to give him a decent bed. I am working out the proportions of the headboard to canopy and doing some preliminary nightstand sketches. I'm having a lot of trouble with the nightstands. I don't want it to look like a box yet to be practical it has to provide at least some storage. And since I avoid rectilinear shapes a box becomes my enemy. I like the wood to take on the appearance of folded paper, like origami, although with more asymmetry. So I have to deform it.

Adapting to Termite Life

2006-02-04T12:09:00.000-08:00

Computers have made it possible to create products of incredible complexity in a very short time. What happens to our roles as team members working together making these thingamajigs? There are more people with more specialties for one thing. Each person, although having a smaller piece of the overall pie, has their hands full of important yet microscopic tasks to perform. Say it's a cartoon. In the old days, a few guys would dream up the story, design the characters, do the cells, print the movie and that's it. Now, someone's entire job would be to be in charge of the wrinkles on fabric. But the movie as a whole is a staggering tour de animation force. Even the big boys, the ones in suits, true, they make sweeping decisions that affect larger aspects of the project but their understanding of and contribution to the virtual organism is small. So, what if this "organism," the project, could be represented with a game interface, say, SimThingamajig or something like that, where anyone could not only gain entry into their job "hut" with all the tools they need to do their job, but zoom in and out of the project community to see their relationship to the project from different perspectives and to see the community humming along with the interaction actually representing the progress of the program? That's what we were talking about in the GamePipe Lab.

The GamePipe Lab

2006-02-03T18:07:00.000-08:00

When someone says lab, I see this in my head. Comes from my science fair days, I guess. The GamePipe lab at USC may not be the high voltage fun zone where Victor Frankenstein played but in a way their mission is related, to create LIFE! Well,ok, simulate. And instead of a three hundred pound deranged human, a system of interacting complex processes that act like people and departments that make decisions like "How much should we charge for this spaceship?" or "Hey, did we think of how much time it's going to take to get security clearances for all the new people on this program?" Sort of like simulating an idiot savant who is only good at managing aerospace programs. Wait, don't we already,...nevermind.

Another Field Trip

2006-02-03T09:35:00.000-08:00

In a couple hours I'll be at USC to visit the GamePipe Lab. It explores technology derived from the computer gaming industry and how it may be used beyond simple entertainment by simulating more realistic situations. More when we return.

What's In YOUR Bookcase?

2006-02-02T09:29:00.000-08:00

As a reflection of who we are as a family look at our bookcases. Like this one. An autographed portrait of Ray Bradbury (For Ed Ito at Christmas 1970!), handpicked insects from the Natural History Museum's annual Insect Fair. Puzzles, toy cars, Barbies, bobblehead of Rev. Mas, japanese ball toys (a personal favorite), and, of course, the books. Cookboooks, photography collections, etiquette, fiction, yearbooks, math (not too popular), wind up toys (not a book but I just noticed them). This bookcase is always evolving. Things picked out, looked at, put back. New stuff carefully placed so an avalanche doesn't occur, and old stuff thrown away (rarely). There are bookcases and cabinets cluttered with our archaeology that becomes a problem when people come over and we wonder if they think we're messy, which we are. But a thousand years from now when it is accidentally uncovered by a lucky dig they will say, "Now this culture was happy."

The Good, the Bad, the Utterly Boring

2006-02-01T12:03:00.000-08:00

After Angelo's magical pawnshop, a visit from my Japanese relatives, and a story about blowing up my face, hearing about my workplace must seem like a letdown. It is to me, anyway. But here it is. To anyone in Huntington Beach this will look familiar. It is Boeing. The Naval Weapons Depot is behind the building storing god-knows-what in bunkers that resemble indian burial mounds. To be entirely truthful, this is only the most prominent building on the company grounds. I actually work in a building near it that looks like the picture on the right if you look beyond the cars. If you've been in this business as long as I've been, you'll notice that there are windows, a luxury that was considered a security risk for the first twenty five years of my career. Now we can watch the world pass us by. Whoopeeee!

Angelo's

2006-01-31T12:22:00.000-08:00

This is Debbie Kumagai. She works with her boyfriend, Bob, and Patrick at Angelo's Jewelry and Loan Company in Santa Monica. It's a pawnshop. I immediately got a comfortable and friendly vibe when I walked into Angelo's with my relatives and son yesterday, an unusual feeling since so many pawnshops pay attention to you only when a transaction is imminent. Angelo's is a Ray Bradbury-esque curio shop where the wealthy, impoverished, eccentric, and the completely insane come and go with a breezy casualness. You will not find a lot of flashy gold jewelry or expensive watches here but things like keys, medallions, costume jewelry and class rings are displayed like worn treasures from long ago. For a collector like me Angelo's is captivating because it's all within reach. And here's the weirdest part. I found out that Debbie's aunt is the woman I've been working across the aisle from at my job in Huntington Beach.

Headed Home

2006-01-30T22:54:00.000-08:00

We had a pleasant dinner in the South Bay and wished them well on their return trip. Fun, but serving as host is tiring. And comments are enabled after being accidentally disabled.

Yuji and Kaori

2006-01-30T18:06:00.000-08:00

I've been spending the last three days hosting my relatives from Japan, Yuji and his daughter Kaori. Even though Yuji has only been in the U.S. once before twenty three years ago and for only five days to get married it's mainly a shopping trip for Kaori. Yuji is one of the most giving people I know. I did take him to the Peterson Automotive Museum and a pawn shop in Santa Monica to see guitars, two of his passions. They return tomorrow, something of a whirlwind trip but I've had another couple of my relatives do exactly the same thing ten years ago. They weren't here to shop, though. They just wanted to be taken around. Go figure.

The Day I Blew Up My Face

2006-01-27T12:13:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite sites to visit for old time household stuff like kerosene lamps and mechanical kitchen gadgets is Lehman's. About twenty years ago I ordered a butane powered iron from them. I still have it. It is sturdy and, best of all, cordless. You click a button, turn a knob to adjust the temperature like a Bic lighter, and watch the mechanical temperature dial until it's where you want it and then its ironing time. A little stove-like flame makes a neat little roar. A chore made fun, bottom line. What they didn't tell you about, or, in my excitement, I didn't read about, was the butane filling procedure. The flame started petering out during one of my ironing sessions so I whipped out the old Ronson can and stuck it into the tiny filling hole. It was hissing for only a fraction of a second when the thought came to mind, "you know, maybe I should turn off the...," and before the word "flame" came into my mind I heard a huge boom and felt momentarily as though I was staring out from the inside of the sun. I was in the back bedroom, away from the rest of the family. I smelled burnt hair, my own obviously. When I felt my face, little curly remnants of my eybrows dropped off. I ran to the bathroom and looked in the mirror finding that not only did I not have eyebrows anymore, my hairline had receded by about an inch. Anne was doing her makeup. I asked her, "Didn't you hear that?" She thought I had dropped the ironing board. But go to the site and shop around. It has cool stuff you don't see in this electronic world. And the iron is still there. And, man, it ain't cheap!

Home Sweet Home

2006-01-26T10:54:00.000-08:00

This is where we have called home for the last twenty seven years. It's in an area of LA known as the Westside (not to be confused with West LA) which generally straddles Crenshaw Bl as far north as Washington Bl and as far south as Martin Luther King. The Western boundary is La Cienega and the Eastern boundary is about Western. I may be a little off on that but in any event it used to be a Japanese American community before the Watts riots. Now it is mainly black and Hispanic. But there are a few holdouts like us. And it is not a warzone as many believe.

Smug Alert!

2006-01-25T11:06:00.000-08:00

Doug's a pretty mellow guy now compared to what he was like when we took these pictures. Doesn't it look like he was about to do something bad ? He probably was, circa 1989-90

When We had a Pool

2006-01-25T10:58:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I know I need a scanner. We've been slowly cleaning out the house and came to a big box of old pictures. Everything came to a halt as we took a stroll down memory lane. Recognize Elizabeth, circa 1982 give or take a year or so?

Retro Chinese

2006-01-24T10:06:00.000-08:00

Remember when chinese food meant only one thing? Cantonese. And only one style, with only minor variations. Almond duck, those cubes of pressed meat on a bed of wilted shredded lettuce covered with smooth brown gravy and a healthy sprinkling of crushed or sliced toasted almonds. Chow mein with fat noodles, slightly burnt here and there in a thin gravy with celery, onion, char siu, shrimp, chicken, or beef. Remember Pea chai yu? Snow peas with sliced water chestnuts in a chicken gravy? Hom yu? Steamed ground pork fat? Egg foo yung? egg pancakes with bean sprout? Those restaurants, like Far East and Paul's Kitchen, have given way to the new wave of chinese flavors admittedly more refined, varied, and true to the chinese culture. But I miss the old interpretation like I miss some of the character of old LA. Hidden from the street in Crenshaw Square is a throwback - Kim's. Only blocks from my house with a loyal clientele, it retains all the tradition of the fifties chinese restaurants. And so far, still under the foodie radar.

aughhhh!

2006-01-23T13:07:00.000-08:00

Is it just me or does this scare the hell out of you when you look up from the dashboard?

Microbial Topiary

2006-01-23T11:06:00.000-08:00

The Westside has what must be the only topiary tribute to bacteria and other little microscopic critters. Who needs another bushy standing elephant or giraffe, anyway?

Find This Huell Howser!

2006-01-23T09:16:00.000-08:00

The granddaddy of this tree is the Bodhi tree under which Buddha was said to have attained enlightenment. It was grown from a sapling that came from a tree in the UCLA Bottanical Gardens and that tree was grown from a sapling taken from the famous tree still growing in India today. I took this picture yesterday before our bimonthly book club meeting at Senshin Buddhist Temple. The classroom is in the building to the left. Instead of being situated prominently in the middle of the Temple grounds the tree is in a remote corner of the property which makes a much stronger statement, don't you think?

2006-01-21T13:16:00.000-08:00

A Field Trip

2006-01-20T14:12:00.000-08:00

Originally, I expected to visit the Art Center, next week. But one thing led to another and I ended up having an interesting conversation with Jean Swift, Director of Corporate Relations at the Pasadena campus. I took a picture of her on the bridge/main building that straddles a road that goes under the structure in a cool art centery way. I hope to have the students and faculty work with us to come up with similarly fresh new ideas about how we look at information. The universe does not revolve around the earth and neither should corporate america revolve around PowerPoint or any of those tired old office products. Hopefully Jean and the corporate powers that be and I will be able to make this a reality. Just like those Washington Mutual commercials where people shake the hands of the bank officials and walk out upright, full of inspiration, so did I walk out of the Art Center fully energized, ready to transform the world. Then I had lunch with Elizabeth at a Thai restaurant and calmed down a bit. Duck noodle soup can be so soothing. Elizabeth had chicken with mint leaf, there is a spicy chicken in the middle and my duck soup is in the foreground.

The New J-Town

2006-01-19T13:08:00.000-08:00

As Little Tokyo fades from being the JA center of social activity into an icy i-don't-know-what-it's-good-for place (except for maybe Daikokuya Ramen) the long overlooked orphan cousin to it, Sawtelle, is rising to the occasion by becoming, if not a social hub, a cool J-Town with fresh new shops and restaurants. Yes, there's the JA National Museum, East West Players, and the JACCC anchored in the old J-Town but I'm referring to the spontaneous funky stuff. I know, it's old news, right? But OC take notice! This is what I'm talkin' about! Trust the outcome of the urban dynamic! Then you too can walk by a shop and have real cartoon characters jump out to greet you like they did to Doug. They will protect you from danger while you feed your face!

Wake Up O.C.!

2006-01-18T12:26:00.000-08:00

This was taken near my workplace in Huntington Beach. Orange County needs to take another look at it's urban design philosophy. If I ever got lost and needed to tell someone where I was I'd be a dead man here. "I'm next to a beige wall." Good luck finding me. But there is always another side to the story.

Bread

2006-01-17T14:52:00.000-08:00

On my way back from my visit to the orthopedist (a story for another day) I decided to stop by the Marina Gelsons for bread, not just any bread but panini baguettes, my favorite. They were out. Fiddlesticks! I decided to take a chance on pretzel bread. How was it, you ask? It was only the chewiest, yeastiest, moistest football of bready goodness I ever had, that's all. Even better than the paninis. The needle on my happy meter jumped to the right for awhile. I posted a blt I made for Doug a little while ago. Do yourself a favor. Go get some!

I Miss Japan

2006-01-17T13:51:00.000-08:00

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This is my mom's childhood home in the town of Saijo, near Hiroshima. At one time it was beyond the outskirts of town but now is surrounded by apartments and office buildings. I think of this place and other places we visited and get the urge to go back. Why did it feel like home? I wonder.

How did I (a) post this & (b) pose?

2006-01-16T17:14:00.000-08:00

Don't ask me how I posted this. I have no idea. But it's a picture of me that was taken from the cat door of my friend in Topanga. Hmm, bad sentence. To clarify, my friend is the owner, not the cat. I am not smiling, by the way. I am grimacing. The door is along a hallway so the most natural position would have my head sideways. To get my head vertical required a lot of contorting.

A Pleasantly Blah Day

2006-01-16T16:50:00.000-08:00

It's going to be great when I learn how to post pictures. Then, on uneventful days like this, I can just post a pic and not struggle to find the words to say "nothing much happened" and bore you. It feels quite nice, though, like a day where the puzzle pieces just fall into place.

Another Engineering Day

2006-01-12T10:10:00.000-08:00

It's the kickoff meeting for Product Lifecycle Management Phase Two!!!! Wheee!!! Yippie!!! I'm doing cartwheels and backflips down the aisles!!! What is it, anyway? Don't even ask unless you want to save money on Lunesta or Ambien. But I have to contribute to a little talk on ways specialists can comprehend the myriad processes that go on when you build a complicated space vehicle (or something that goes KAAABOOOM - just joking, wink wink elbow elbow) without being an expert in everything. But the big question is - where is lunch today when my blood report yesterday said my cholesterol is 225? Answer: Two big fat beef tacos and a healthy green salad to soak up the grease. Yum.

Kick-Off Day

2006-01-11T12:57:00.000-08:00

Hello. Hopefully, my posts will eventually include pictures but until I stumble onto the way it's done I'll just have to describe things with words. I am "working" in the "virtual hotel" today, the aerospace equivalent of limbo where you are neither at home nor at the office but in a surprisingly cozy building of small offices and cubicles that are reserved from week to week. These hotels are scattered all over the country clustered usually within the company boundaries. Today I can see red-tailed hawks riding thermals over an open field. I've seen possum, foxes, and all sorts of birds, finches, phoebes, pelicans, egrets, geese, and ducks to name a few. Where am I? Now I'll try to post this and move on to make my template look more lived in. On to the FAQ!