I think this notion needs to be made into a new Sesame Street song for kids. 

“A Stall Doesnt Mean You’re Dying,

As long as you have altitude, you can keep on flying!” 

Imagine if Cookie Monster sang it – I smile just thinking about it.

I bring this up because in my most recent flight lesson, my instructor told me that we were going to practice slow flight and how to recover from stalls.  All I could think about was “kiss your ass goodbye” but that was the FUD generated by all the years of equating stalls with engine failures.  “Look, there is Billy Joe Walsh on the thirteenth lap – oh NO!  His engine has stalled, he is out of the race”.

Of course, in flight, stalls mean something completely different.  I knew this but I still couldn't get over the crushing fear that when the stall warning horn came on, my ass was grass.  In flight, it simply means that Bernoulli is showing you he’s still the man and the airflow is out of whack over the wing.  Generally this means you are headed DOWN, which is precisely what has to happen in order to get the airflow back into calibration and for you to keep on keeping on.  Still, when your instructor tells you that she might throw a “power-off stall” at you when you’re near Mt. Si, I guarantee you will freak.  Case in point:

Stall Warning blaring in my ear.  She tells me to keep pulling up which is precisely the thing you DON’T want to do, but she was taunting me.  Pulling up, eventually the nose just falls towards the earth at which point she cheerily informs me to gun the engine, pull up the flaps and enjoy my flight.  “See, that was a power off stall!”  To which I replied, “yes, I know, which is why I just shit my pants.”    Power off stall?!  Could that SOUND more terrifying?  See, it’s not really a ‘power-off stall’ which to me sounds like YOU HAVE NO POWER, but a ‘low-power stall’ which I guess is too long to say and would ruin the joy of instructors everywhere who get to use this phrase to watch students go into a terror-induced coma.  Everything in aeronautics is precise – you’d think they’d get this terminology right.

Ah well.  Dear reader – remember: A Stall is Not a Stall, it’s just a momentary lost of upward thrust.  Unless you’re in a ‘78 Monte Carlo, in which case you are really are toast.

Got back on Delta, and what did I see?  The guy in front of me accidentally set the seatback entertainment unit to “Spanish” when he first sat down, and then proceeded to struggle the entire flight to change menus.  Now I don’t know much Spanish, so I couldn’t help him (and why would I – too much comedy!), but I do know the big blue “HELP” button that persists in the corner of the screen at all times… Maybe he could try that in future? 

It happened again today – the flight attendants on Delta were really friendly – again.  People actually smiled when interacting with them.  I am seeing a trend.

I’m flying to ATL today for a few meetings and speeches.  On Delta, which I never fly, and I must say I’m very impressed with the service.  I’m nothing on Delta – no elite status on them or any of their partner airlines – I’m one step above Jethro who’ve they’ve obviously stuffed somewhere in cargo because they had oversold the plane by – count ‘em – 5 seats.  Wow.  However, it’s a good plane (767-300), on-demand seatback entertainment, decent food (although I have to pay for it), and the flight attendants are actually nice.   Amazing that civility gets a mention these days, no?

A few funnies:

· The security line: heinously long at 5am. Luckily, I have my magic United card so I can get to the front of the line. Now keep in mind what I just said –the line is practically from the metal detectors to Nebraska. So you would think the TSA checker-dude who makes sure I am who I say I am would be hauling ass, checking off names, issuing cryptic stamps and shoving me thru the metal detector as fast as he could. You’d be wrong – dude wanted to engage in conversation with me. Asked me where I was going (uh – ATL, like it says on the ticket), if I knew how to get to the A gates (uh – I fly approximately 6 trillion miles a year , hence I’m in this special line, hence I probably could build the airport out of toothpicks in my sleep, but yes, thank you), if I was having a good day (sure, I just skipped 30 minutes in a security line, but the more you talk to me, the further along the 400,000 people in line behind me are in constructing some way to lynch me while making it look like a biiig misunderstanding). Dude – just stamp the little paper and let me go.

· The dude next to me is Japanese and is clearly used to traveling in cramped quarters.  He literally got on, put a blanket on, and is now sitting forward in his seat, head looking at the place he is soon to be, sleeping.  I couldn’t sleep like that even on four percoset, let alone naturally.  Impressive.  He does, however, smell like a strange combo of noodles and fish, which at 6am  is just friggin revolting.  I’m sure I smell like beef and fries, tho, so he is probably blogging in his sleep right now about how much Americans stink.  I do think he got the blanket because I turned the air thingy on as soon as he sat down.  My air thingy is hooked directly to the turbofan engines and is blowing like a muther.  Freezing, yes.  Stinky, no.  I might get hypothermia, but I won’t smell tuna at 6am.

· The dude next to him is just a prick.  Slammed his seat back (apparently he forgot that there are 30 rows behind us).  Ate with his mouth open the entire time (stinky salad – natch).  And is just someone I want to punch in the head because he is annoying.

· The chick in front of me is playing a trivia game on the seatback but she, also, apparently doesn’t know the seatback monitor is located in the headrest of the person in front of her.  She is SLAMMING the touchscreen when she wants to answer a question and then, and I’m not making this up, she pumps her fists when she gets an answer correct.  The person in front of her, a little Chinese woman, is going to have to go to the ER for whiplash when this flight is over.

· Meanwhile, in some sick twist, my friend Heatherlyn is up in first class even though she bought her ticket about a day ago and paid less than $300 more than me for the privilege.  Beytach. 

So I'll admit it.  I have an iPod touch - but I only use it for browsing the web and taunting my wife by having yet another piece of kit that I rarely use in the house, sucking up power as it rests in my electronics cozy in the kitchen.

I figure, hell, for $10 I'll try the new software update.  It has Exchange Mail and I want to see how good/bad the integration is.

Problem is - capacity planning at the old Fruit Stand clearly isn't a core competency.  In fact I'd say borderline retarded rhesus monkeys are running the poor little OSX servers that ostensibly power iTunes.

Since 6am this morning I've been trying to get the update, only to see this:

Huh?  Did someone miss the memo?  1.1.4 is about as current as Scott Baio.  For the love of all things holy, if you're going to generate the world's biggest hype day for a product with little incremental value above the current release, please, please hire some competent IT people.  Or at least monkeys that haven't been used for cosmetics testing.

• Four Seasons in Palo Alto: I was there for a night - late night, early morning, needed coffee.  Now keep in mind this is in East Palo Alto - kind of like the ghetto version of 90210.  Room was fine, place was trying to be all pimped out with plasma TVs, etc etc.  Then in the AM: the Hamilton Beach coffee maker.  Seriously - does this company still even exist?  How in the hell do they think this is anywhere approaching acceptable?  Predictably, the coffee tasted like warmed over piss.
• Intercontiental in San Francisco: Also a nice hotel, half the price of the "Four Seasons".  Keurig coffee maker in the room complete with a selection of pods.  Coffee actually tasted like coffee. 
  

So…. one of my team was in Singapore last week which happened to work out well for me as Samsung just launched the Omnia phone. 

http://omnia.samsungmobile.com/

Of course, I asked her to pick one up for me.  I had no idea how much it would cost, which is how I usually get into trouble in these situations.  True to her word, she texted me (I was in dublin and she in Singapore) in the middle of the night with the price (which is more than my first mortgage was on my condo) to which, under the influence of several Guiness, I said “YES YES YES!”

Check the specs on that thing – HSDPA (fast fricking access), 5MP camera with geotagging, GPS, WiFi, every other app known to man, a touch sensitve screen, acceleramator for rotation – whatever.  It is just crazy.  And I will have it in 2 days – I might just might meet Sumita at the airport with open arms (then take the phone, leave her there and run home with my new phone, using GPS all the way.)

I hate Adobe products in general.  For all the shit we get about releasing bloatware, one just need look at Adobe Reader to see the true definition of ‘application that has 100% too many functions for the average person.”  I hate Flash less, but that’s because i think it was an acquisition.

I say this because our homegrown product called “Silverlight” is enabling some real web innovation.  This morning when I logged on the machine, I noticed my new MSN Toolbar had a new skin just in time for the fourth of july

look at that!  Flags and red, white, and blue – all delivered magically without any software download or user intervention.  It’s this kind of magical serendipity that makes people smile and drives loyalty.  Then, I saw the coup de grace – there are fireworks exploding behind the buttons…  they are animated, so I can’t show you.  Instead, just go to

http://www.newmsntoolbar.com/

and download it today…

I bought what I thought was “Visine” last time I was in Japan to give my eyes a break after being on 17 hours of airplanes.  I often had kind of a fuzzy feeling when I got off the plane, so I thought – voila – Visine.

Apparently, body chemistry of Japanese nationals is very different than mine.  The “Visine” I think is actually sort of of “Fire Acid” which causes me to wince in pain for a solid 5 minutes post-application.  I literally can’t even open my eyes – they are just streaming tears.  An hour later, I’m still not sure my eyes are “refreshed” as much as terrified to get tired for fear of me dousing them with another application of firewater.

The bottle clearly says Visine (altho it is hard to read through my streaming tears), but now I’m thinking this is actually a Japanese brand of Vodka or something.  Those kooky Japanese – I can totally see them putting Vodka in a little tiny bottle like this.

In case you needed some help, the hand towel dispenser in the Dublin office bathroom helpfully tells you what to do when you’re finished with the towel you used.

So, this is my first time on Air France and it is probably my last.  It certainly isn’t horrible, but the beauty of competition is that I have a choice on my European routes.

The good: the food is pretty good.  Good lobster at the beginning, the steak was pretty much par for the course for meat that has to be frozen and re-warmed at 37000 feet.  Service has been good – nothing to complain about.

The bad: Satan designed the business class seats.  Oh, I’m quite sure they are Givenchy (that’s gih-VON-sheeee) designed.  The leather and fabric accents serve to tell you that you probably paid too much for this ticket.  Two things: 1) where the hell is my storage?  I have precisely one little cubby into which I can shove something I brought on board (like a Zune – seriously  -it’s that small).  2) The deal killer - the headrest has probably caused me brain damage.  Let me explain.

On these flights I like to get on, kick back, have dinner, work for a few hours, and then catch some sleep so I’m not totally wasted when I get to Europe.  That generally means I make the seat go into ‘bed’ mode and crawl in for some nighty time.  Tonight, however, this is not to be.  The headrest is like a slab of granite covered in white leather.  And it moves precisely two inches in either direction.  Meaning when you go to bed mode, your head is laying on your kitchen counter.  I kid you not, I walked around the cabin to see how others were coping with camping at 37000 feet and it was a comedy of contortion.  People had pillows wedged between the seat and the rock.  People were trying to slink down in the seat, but that meant you had to go all fetal.  People were abjectly sobbing in the aisle, wondering what happened to their neck and if their flying to Paris, one of the more athiest countries in the world, somehow brought this plague down upon them.

Finally, dear reader, I said Fuck it.  Back to work.  But then my in-seat power didn’t work, so that’s only good for another hour or so.  Then, it will just be me and the champagne.  Ahhh.  Traveling.

I'm running (?) a project here at the big M which has it share of mind-bending problems.  Often times, we the team sit around a white board and try to brainstorm our way out of what seems to be the Armageddon of the day. 

A couple of days ago, I mentioned to one of the guys on the team that I feel like we're sometimes running a suicide hotline.  Most mornings we come in and try and talk people (or countries, in this case) back into the building from the precipice, where they are contemplating the sweet release that only bailing on said project brings.  It shall not be - we haven't lost one (willingly) yet.

Recently, however, as our heads throb from the drama-of-the-day, the smell of whiteboard markers and coursing electrons that make up the seemingly infinite number of Powerpoint decks, I've resorted to saying yelling:

"FUCK IT!  We'll do it live!"

Which, I'm pretty sure, causes the random guy in our hallway who isn't on the team - a quiet and polite Indian dude - to ask how the fuck he ended up in what equates to a mental mosh pit.

The reference, of course, comes from one of the dumbest men on the earth in his early days on TV - Bill O'Reilly.  There have been countless remixes of his famous meltdown on GooTube, but this one is my absolute favorite.  To see the "Live!" reference, skip to 1:30, but at only 2 minutes, it's one of the funniest 120 seconds of time you'll spend all day.

Remember - when life (or work) just gets to be too much - fuck it - do it live.

So I’m sitting here on the plane, finishing a glass of Orange Juice.  Or am I?  I distinctly remember ordering a vodka/OJ from the stewardess/flight comfort-and-safety-engineer before take-off.  What’s disturbing is as I am finishing this beverage, I can’t tell if there is vodka in it.  Which means either one of two things: one bad, the other benign. 

First, it might just mean that she forgot the vodka.  That’s fine – it just sounded refreshing tonight, but I doubt they serve Danzka on this flight, so who cares.

Second, it might be that I can’t taste the vodka, which is distinctly NOT fine.  That either means I’ve grown so accustomed to vodka that it simply appears to my palette as a slightly off water, or it means that I need approximately a fifth of vodka before I notice.  Either scenario is sub-optimal from a liver-health standpoint.

Time to dry out.  Bud Light Lime is all I’m drinking for the next week.  Just after tonight – we’re all meeting in the hotel bar for some debauchery.  Then I promise- only Bud Light.  

Side note:  There is a dude across the aisle from me writing a mail – and his font is FRIGGING HUGE thus enabling my favorite pastime of corporate espionage via dumbasses who don’t have privacy screens on their machines – but here is the first sentence, verbatim:

Predicated upon the assumptions hereinafter set forth and such further assumptions as may be required for you to prepare a letter that based on the assumptions, as lease of the 185^th street property would constitute an operating leads and not a capital lease under Canadian regulations.

No, I didn’t transcribe it incorrectly – that is what it says.  If the poor bastard who receives this mail has the foggiest clue about what to do with this sentence, other than drop a couple of stamps of acid and just ride his mellow, I want to meet him.  Actually no, I don’t.  If he understands that blather, I want to punch him in the face.

There was a story this morning on NPR regarding California’s recent decision to allow for same-sex marriages, and the reporter was covering the first such unions from San Francisco City Hall yesterday.

Cut to a protestor from Fremont, CA.  Here we go:

“God does not want this.  God will punish this country for allowing this.  Look at all the jobs going overseas.  God is punishing us.”

Uh – that’s your example of God’s wrath?  Ford shifting production to Ontario?  How about 9/11, floods in the midwest, earthquakes, school shootings, hurricane Katrina and Rita – pick ONE, for God’s sake, that seems a little more vengeful that union steelworkers getting retrained in knitting as US Steel is closed down.

Post Russert’s death and the dozens of eulogy’s I’ve read, I’m reminded of my own Jesuit schooling and just how much they instill the notion of questioning everything and the importance of logical reasoning in everyday life.  Such training would never allow such a poorly formed syllogism to escape my lips.

This man obviously went to state school.

Yeah, I didn’t quite get to 5,000 feet, but I did get to fly for about an hour at around 3.5k feet.  Holy crap – everyone needs to do this.  Talk about quality reflection time (once you get past the terror of being 5k feet above the planet with only a thin composite skin, some plexiglass shielding, and a 180HP engine turning a wooden prop you from plummeting back to earth).

It’s pretty amazing how primitive airplanes are.  You can literally see all the little cables, newels, and bolts that hold these things together and control the flight surfaces when you’re doing 120 knots (note how I’m using “flight surfaces” like I know what i’m talking about). 

Nothing really witty here – just another - “HOLY CRAP”.  This is smoking.

Teeny, teeny, teeny.  But it feels huge once you’re in the air.

Yes, those are the only two seats in the airplane. 

At least, it is if you have been following the Yahoo/MS/GOOG musical chairs game…like I have…

http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2008/06/phase-one-of-internet-is-over-and-we.html

This is a fake blog post from Jerry Yang.  His explication of how Sergey has resorted to calling him his Bitch and throwing Legos at him to prod him to get water for the meeting is just priceless.

Namaste, FSJ, namaste.

Last night was my daughter's ballet recital.  My daughter, all 3.5 years of her, was the first up and did a great impersonation of a bunny hopping.  "First in, first out!" was all I could think about given the fact that the recital began at 7pm and I hadn't eaten dinner yet.

It was not to be.

My daughter wanted to stay and watch the rest of the dancers, which meant I was left to my own wonderings as more and more kids came on the stage.

I looked around the room - there were the other dads, also wondering how they got suckered into staying past their daughter's allotted dance time.  One that I know, Jeff, looked at me and mouthed "do you have a flask?".  Sadly, I did not.  That is, however, when it got interesting.

Keep in mind we live in, I believe, the Aryan compound of Seattle: Magnolia.  All the kids are from this area as that's where the school is located.  I say this to set the stage - you wouldn't expect a scent other than Faconnable cologne wafting around you at an event like this.  Yet...intermingled with the Lexi, Bimmers, and Audis in the parking lot, there must have been an ElCamino with someone selling weed.  Yep, sitting there in my seat, wondering if I could fake an ankle injury and escape the event, I smelled the distinct aroma of cannabis.  I'll admit I expected a little more high-class intoxication - Oxycontin, for example, but weed will do in a pinch if you're forced to sit through 30 dances.  I looked around trying to find the pothead in our midst - I felt like Jane Goodall, trying to find the elusive silverback.  No dice - way too many Polo and Nautica shirts that acted as some kind of stealth shielding for transgressions past.

Turning my attention back to the stage, there was a very good quartet of older dancers that was fun to watch, altho they were dancing to some song from Moulin Rouge.  "Good," I thought, "now we get to watch some older kids for whom this is a real lifestyle rather than a way to blow 45 minutes once a week."  Then, however, more little kids.  Little kids, who looked sort of like rhesus monkeys after huffing on a can of Redi-Whip.  I'm pretty sure there is nothing that any little kid could do that hasn't been done before.

"Oh look, Suzie made a scrunchy face as the curtain was closing!"

"Brittney-Lynn is standing still, in shock! Isn't that cute!"

No, not really.  It's a cliche.  At the hundreds of recitals that will certainly take place this spring, I guarantee the behavior of the little 'uns will be the same.  I'm sure it's cute if it's your kid, but if it's not, all you can think about is the parents taping the show so they can win $10k on America's Funniest Home Videos.  Speaking of which - have those guys heard of inflation?  I think the prize was $10k when I was 12 - that was some cash back then.  Now, it's a week of gas for a Hummer...

Ah good - more grown kids.  Talented.  Funny contrasts, tho - some very lithe ballerinas commingled with very...um...German?...ballerinas.  You can tell who is going to appear on PNB's stage and who will probably fade away into Flag Squad at their local high school. 

But, I digress - the oddest thing I saw was the skanky ballerina. 

I guess I never noticed before, but there is a piece of nude fabric which covers the cleavage portion these 16 year old girls chests underneath their leotard.  I probably never would have noticed except that ONE of the 12 ballerinas on the stage had removed hers.  What was going through her mind?  Is she going for the Lolita look, trying to snag one of the few rich single dads in the audience?  Is her boyfriend in the audience and she is appealing to his baser instincts, inviting him to leap from his seat at the conclusion of the dance professing his true love of her chest dancing skills?  Is there a talent scout for Ricks' Strip Club in the audience?  I can see the crossover.  I'm not sure how many people noticed it, but I was transfixed trying to figure out the rationale for her inappropriate décolletage. 

Then it hit me - she's the toker that I must have smelled.  Kids - know this - pot, spandex, and ballet don't mix.

It's funny to look at traffic referral logs and see how people end up at my blog - looking at the logs this AM, I found a Cisco post I wrote a few months ago that still makes me laugh.  It's a oldie, but a goodie..

---

Now, before my Cisco friends say "hey, you're being a dick today", let me just explain to you my post title.

I had a meeting on the west side after lunch today and rather than head back to the east side only to end up a 3000 pound slug trundling back over the floating bridge, I decided to work from the west side.

Many of you may know that our house is undergoing surgery to make it less small (think of it as the reverse of stomach stapling).  That also means it's a pain in the ass to work there since there are men with large airguns, saws, and I think gravity disruptors around at all times.  And we have no walls on the main floor, so it is cold as a brass jockstrap.

Anyhow - I went to my parents' house to work.  Get there - remember my dad had some friggin industrial strength Cisco Access Point in the house, and that meant I needed a friggin driver for a frigging PCMCIA card which Vista doesn't friggin have.

Those of you who work in the tech industry know where this is heading: the dreaded Cisco support site.  Here is all I want:

*  a 2.4MB driver file - probably the most common thing downloaded on the Internet (besides music, porn, and Kitten Calendars)

To get this, I have to search Cisco's site, end up on a page describing the card, navigate to another page with a tree control where I have to search again, scroll down to see that they have hihglighted the adapter model I need (GOD FORBID YOU JUST LIST THE FUCKING DRIVERS IN A TABLE!), click on it, and see the dreaded Lock icon.

This fucking little set of 14 pixels means you have to register to download the software.  No big deal, right?  WRONG.  Cisco offers you about a dozen confusing options to register, including basically telling you to fuck off.

What the fuck is this?  Am I a Registered Guest?  A Partner?  A Registered Customer?  Who the hell knows?

Once you realize those links just tell you about the 'levels of access' you can expect should you figure out what the hell you are, you are taken to another screen:

http://tools.cisco.com/RPF/register/register.do

Oh yeah - I dare you to do complete this form without crying like a little child.  I end up just filling it out, only to be told that I am stupid enough to have tried to fill this out before, at which point they sent me a mail telling me how to reset my account.

Now - in most cases, getting your account reset involves - wait for it - MAILING SOME DUDE AT CISCO.  Fuck me.  Seriously - what year are we in?

After 20 minutes of fun, I just searched the web, found some hack site, and found the driver and loaded it.  I hate Cisco's site, and I'm going postal on it.

This morning at the gas station where I was doing my part to keep King Saud in Bentleys for years to come, I saw a truck with a bumper sticker that read, “I Love Hooters”. 

Really?

I have been to exactly two Hooters in my lifetime.  One in Bellevue, before the sterilization Nazis drove them out of town and replaced them with “The Store Where Everything is Just Super”, and the other in Orlando, FL.  Food sucked.  “Talent” at both locations (c’mon Florida, what the HELL!?) was worse than your average Friday night in Belltown.  It was…fine.  But fine enough to defile my car’s paint with a sticker professing my undying love?  Nope.

Even if the talent were up to snuff – something like they show on their website- there is just something fundamentally wrong with Hooters. 

Pantyhose. 

Is there anything less sexy than a thin layer of tan polyester stretched across someone’s calves?  Isn’t this fashion misstatement in the purview of my great grandmother?  There is nothing sexy about them – if the goal is to get me sexually aroused so I’ll stay longer - drink watery beer, and tip heavier - the mere thought of having to peel off some hotties nylon leggings lest I get shocked by the static electricity they surely must generate when they rub together tends to put a damper on any phallic arousal I may have had.

Furthermore, aren’t these puritanical? What is the purpose except to hide bare flesh from the menfolk?  And at Hooters?  Isn’t this a huge oxymoron?

Yes, pantyhose gross me out.  They should be relegated to the dustbin of history like cloth handkerchiefs.  Who thought those were a good idea?  Let me blow snot into a piece of cloth and then let me shove that back in to my pocket.  Why don’t I just blow my nose directly into my shirt?  At least I won’t be putting my hand there when I’m fumbling for my keys.

“I Hate Pantyhose”.  That’s my new bumpersticker.