Our trip to Santa Barbara was fantastic, I've forgotten to mention. The three of us got to stay on Henry and Peggy Hill's boat, right next to Nelly and John and Charlie. We had a great view of the mountains, and flocks of pelicans flew right by and over the sea wall. There was a 5-foot-tall blue heron who stalked our section of the harbor, taking long, slow, gripper-claw steps everywhere. Amita June loved watching the boats go by -- ba, ba, ba, ba. Dinner on Friday night was ahi tuna just minutes off the boat -- tender enough for sushi, but we grilled it up with lime, garlic and tequila and it was very very good.
Yesterday we had a flight at 12:40PM at LAX, so we had to really move it to get to the flight on time. We managed to get to El Segundo at quarter till ten, gas up the rental car, and get all our belongings straight in the parking lot of the Mobil station on Sepulveda right around the corner from Internet Brands. We have a terrible tendency to grow into the containing space for any luggage we have, so the trunk of the car was full of all kinds of crap.
The gas station is right across from one of my current riddles about El Segundo: 740 N. Sepulveda. This non-descript one-story building has a gigantic sign on the roof that says: 740 N. Sepulveda. Maj and I have often wondered why the sign; it's not really a landmark in any way. My theory was that it was some kind of US Customs building that airport officials sent people to from LAX ("Your bag has been impounded; you're going to have to go to 740 N. Sepulveda to file a claim"), and it was so non-descript but had so much traffic that they needed a big sign.
The truth is not far off: we walked by there with Kevin, Joe and John for lunch last week, and 740 N Sepulveda is actually a FedEx training center. So, apparently when you get a job with FedEx in the LAX area, they send you to 740 N Sepulveda to do your FedEx training. FedEx's notorious emphasis on smoothing business processes is probably what led to the big billboard. My guess is that the sign says 740 N Sepulveda rather than "FedEx" because they don't want people trying to drop off packages there.
But here's my current problem: shouldn't FedEx trainees at least be able to find a building on a street with regular ol' building numbers? Isn't putting big billboards on the training center coddling them just a little bit?
tags: santa barbara heron boat henry hill ahi el segundo 740 n sepulveda fedex
Fight or flight
We dropped off our killer Chevy Malibu at Budget and got to the Air Canada checkin counter at LAX with 2½ hours to spare... which was great, since there was a 70-person line overflowing onto the sidewalk. The whole terminal was jam-packed, like a scene from Soylent Green, and we didn't get to our gate until 20 minutes before boarding.
As we were getting on the plane, Amita June grabbed for the boarding passes and I held them away from her so they wouldn't get slobber on them. She SCREAMED with this new scream that is both piercing and stentorian. It was awe-inspiring. It is not a wail of sorrow; it is a sonic weapon of punishment. Maj said, "We have entered a new era."
Amita managed to employ her new screaming skill most of the way back to Montreal on our 4½-hour flight: when she dropped her apple slice, when she wasn't allowed to eat a granola bar, whenever she didn't get exactly what she wanted. I'm afraid we're heading into toddlerhood on a dangerous log flume of spoiledness. Gar!
The good thing is the fine officials at Air Canada managed to put us in the middle of a section of children and grandmothers, so we had a very sympathetic audience. Which was good: if I was stuck on a plane with a baby who screamed like a stuck pig every 10 minutes, I'd be nervously feeling under my seat for a parachute.
We must have looked pretty fagged out when we got on the ground, because Canadian customs didn't give us any hassles, and we got out to the parking lot pretty easily. A brief search for car keys later, and we were on our way home.
tags: air canada amitajune lax malibu toddler airport yul
Parking
We hit the ground on St. Jean Baptiste Day, the national holiday of Quebec. It's the big Quebecois summer beer bash -- kind of the 4th of July, Memorial Day and Labor Day all mashed up into one. It's also the 3rd anniversary of our moving to Montreal -- we drove into the McGill ghetto on SJB in 2003 in my beautiful Citroen, still flecked with mud from the flash flood in Palo Duro Canyon we hit on our drive out from California.
When we got home, we found that the parking lot behind our building had been converted into a garden in the two weeks we were gone. Parking at our apartment has been a political hassle since we moved in a year ago. Our building shares a lot with the building next door, but we don't have access to the alley behind. So we have to pass through the next-door-neighbor's lot. Given also the fact that a) the lot for our building is too slender to actually let someone park there without overflowing onto the neighbor's lot and b) that our landlord has over promised this sliver of land to three (3) different tenants, and we've had nothing but hassles all year.
The spot I managed to carve out for our car in Potsdam-style negotations was a slanted little sliver between a VW bug and a Honda with its front bumper hanging off. The neighbors' landlady has given me a hassle about it from time to time, but has backed off when she saw we had a baby. She renewed her attacks a few months ago, and even though I've shown people leases and surveyors' maps of the land, I simply couldn't park in peace.
So I finally caved in a couple of months ago and asked the neighbor landlady to rent me a spot in her lot. She happily obliged, to the tune of $50 per month, but I felt it was worth it not to have to endure constant hassles from tenants in my buildings and those of the surrounding buildings. I felt a little defeated -- that I hadn't defended my territorial rights sufficiently -- but I had to just let it go.
So when we drove up last night and saw that there'd been a total rewrite of the parking rules while we were in California, well, I just couldn't stop laughing. There'd been about 8 cars in this lot two weeks ago, and now there were plants and fences and all kinds of walkways. The only spots that survived were the paid ones -- ours, the Colonel's Mercedes, and the dentist's Toyota.
I felt a little bad for the people who'd lost their spots, but I'm glad it's not my problem any more. Frankly, it was such a bone of contention, I'm kind of feeling some schadenfreude over it; nobody was every diplomatic or nice to me about parking, so I have a hard time feeling any sympathy for their loss.
What it looks like now is that we'll have a great spot for barbecue this summer -- right where our upstairs neighbor used to park his car. Sweet!
tags: parking plateau mont-royal domestic politics montreal quebec st jean baptiste
Error: Buffett overflow
So, don't get me wrong: I think it's great that Warren Buffett is giving 85% of his US$40G fortune to charity. But anyone familiar with thermodynamics will wonder: how much of the misery created by amassing such a huge personal fortune will be allayed by giving the fortune away to charity? How could the balance sheet actually be balanced out?
I guess I think it's fine that very rich people are philanthropists, but: what about being socially responsible businesspeople on the front side of the equation? Investing in companies that have responsible labor practices, like a living wage, health care, and job security? Not putting your dollars into businesses that put short-term gain over societal goods like ecological protection?
I know that Warren Buffett errs on the side of longevity and sound business practice more often than not, but I can't help thinking that maybe if he'd left that money in the hands of 4 million other people in the first place there'd be a net advantage to the world.
tags: warren buffett philanthropy
RDF, sexp, be friends
I started thinking about building some RDF stuff into WiLiKi, and then I started thinking about RDF and Scheme, and then I started thinking about RDF serialization to s-expressions. I couldn't find a format for doing it, so I wrote the one linked here. Comments welcome.
tags: rdf s-expressions serialization
Lizard
The thing that Biella is holding in this picture sure looks like a horny toad to me.
tags: biella coleman mexico lizard horny toad