Thirst

Repeat

2007-03-25T23:55:00.000-07:00

Once every three weeks, I have to work on the weekends. Today was my day again. Back on March 3rd, I made March of Joko #3. Since that time, my friends list has doubled, so I thought I would re-share my own personal favorite of the vids I've made this month. Tonight, I re-uploaded in a better format (MPEG-4 vs MPEG-1) because the scenery in this short deserves a better resolution.

A March through The City, Part One.

2007-03-22T01:04:00.000-07:00

One of the favortie things about my job is that it brings me into The City once a week. For those outside the Bay Area, we call San Francisco "The City" here. It is a truly special place on this earth, and although its has its downsides and hassles, I will always look fondly on the days I lived there, which were probably the most creative, and fucked up, days of my life (so far).

I work in another office there. I like the people I deal with, and they like me. Even met a new one today and we got along well. But what's best about The City from my current point of view is that when I left work, its a great place to observe people, architecture, culture and the triumphs and tragedies of our capitalist society. I walked out of restaurant (after shooting some foottage) because I couldn't afford a $12 beer. I saw at least 30 homeless people in a couple hours...

I wandered around downtown and the Embacedero, recording video, until the battery died. The City makes you think. About yourself and the world...

I have to post this blog in written form for now because the most interesting things happened after the battery had died. On a very crowded BART train on the way home, I had a moment. Lately, my mood had been this odd mix of euphoria, desperation and incredible optimism. The desperate part took hold as I stood there in the overcrowded train, deep within myself and my own thoughts. The I looked up.

And saw a train full of people. I looked at each person in turn, trying to understand, empathize and feel waht they were feeling. It took me out of my own head for that moment, and that is what I was looking for. I saw different dreams, ages, genders, colors and social classes, but what I realized as I tried to feel each person individually, is that we all were going through the exact same thing. We were stuck somewhere, returning to our homes and lives, trying not to think, feel or be in that moment the best we could. That we all had in common. But even more so, what we had in common was that we were all human beings. We were all souls. We were all the same person, really.

How important were my traumas, dilemmas or problems when put in context of 50 other people going through the same thing? It wouldn't be accurate to say it made me feel insignificant, more like just part of a greater whole.

As we zipped under the Bay itself at 70 mph. I turned around and saw a man whose face was completely deformed. Some sort of birth defect. Elephant Man or the kid from Mask. I'd be lying if I said I didn't think to myself, "well, at least I don't have his problems." He was rapidly working a Rubik's Cube. It seemed hopelessly jumbled from my point of view, but he moved it with a dexterity and purpose that was indescribable.

The TransBay tube did something else to the train full of people, almost half of whom were checking e-mails on their Blackberries, talking or texting on their cel phones or had a laptop out. There is no wireless reception 300 feet underwater surrounded by several feet of concrete. People were cut off. The Rubik's cubes gears spun and spun faster and faster, and as seasoned commuters can tell just by the number of minutes that have passed, the train shifted into a gentle upslope as we approached the other end of the tunnel.

Rubik's Cube guy slowed the pace of his twisting. Each movement seemed to have more purpose, and there were even a couple of pauses as he analyzed his next move. One side complete.. then two then four, and with a couple last twists, the Rubik's Cube was solved just as we emerged into the twilight of West Oakland.

A dozen cel phones, including deformed Rubiks Cube guy's, announced new voice mails simultaneously.

I wasn't the only one on the train who was able to disconnect from our disconnected connectivity for just long enough to see this small, but amazingly huge human triumph of solving a Rubik's Cube in the time it takes to pass under the San Francisco Bay.

We are all one. We all triumphed in that moment.

-JL

Now, off to make a video.

2007-03-17T02:24:00.000-07:00

How to Get a Head Without Hunting

2007-03-15T03:29:00.000-07:00

I make this in tribute and in repayment to Mom.

How to Get a Head Without Hunting: The March of Joko 13

Add to My Profile | More Videos

March of Joko 12

2007-03-14T00:33:00.000-07:00

The video bwlow this one is so bad, I had to at least prove I could play guitar if not sing that night...

March Of Joko 12. The Not So Bad Open Mic Guy - For more of the funniest videos, click here

Really Bad Open Mic Guy

2007-03-13T22:30:00.000-07:00

All day today, after spending like 30 of the previous 60 hours producing videos, I had a content, worn out feeling. Y'know that one where you feel at peace and exhausted, usually brought on by a mind-blowing orgasm?

It's like I had sex all weekend with my computer.

Tonight, the creativity scrotum was drained. Not tonight, camcorder, I have a headache. Okay fine, let's make it a quickie!

Although part of me thinks I'm phoning it in, this self-depracating and dumb little short will probably get tons of views on Metacafe tonight. Quick and brainless, that's what the masses like.

Really Bad Open Mic Guy - Watch a funny movie here

March of Joko 9

2007-03-11T01:49:00.000-08:00

REVISED VERSION!

This time with music and without misspelling "continued"!

MySpace Prayers: MoJoko9 - The funniest videos clips are here

The Eighth March:

2007-03-10T00:23:00.000-08:00

The eighth video.

How Big Breasted Women Steal Beer; MoJoko8 - Click here for funny video clips

March of Joko Seven

2007-03-09T08:38:00.000-08:00

"Gilbert, you have an overactive imagination,"

The March Of Joko Seven - Amazing videos are here

March of Joko, Part 6. Fun with animals.

2007-03-09T08:37:00.000-08:00

The March Of Joko, Day Six - The most amazing bloopers are here

March of Joko #5

2007-03-09T08:31:00.000-08:00

Maybe the horoscope I referred to in #4 below was a day early.

March Of Joko 5: Vagina Is The Meaning Of Life - Watch more amazing videos here

March of Joko #4

2007-03-09T08:29:00.000-08:00

I tell the world why I'm working on a Sunday. Plus practice Nirvana/Ledbetter's "Where Did You Sleep, Last Night?"

March Of Joko, Part IV: Workhearsal - The most popular videos are a click away

March of Joko 3

2007-03-04T08:19:00.000-08:00

March Of Joko 3: Lunar Eclipse, Left Coast Style - Funny blooper videos are here

The March of Joko

2007-03-02T03:20:00.000-08:00

This evening, I committed myself to a challenge for this month. Something I'm gonna do that will spark creativity, artistic vision and maybe a little contraversy. If not for you, then at least in myself.

Video Blogging. Its a form of personal narrative new to the 21st century. When I've written personal narrative works in the past, I've been influenced by people like Herb Caen, Bukowksi and all of my old friends, The Graphites. In that tradition, I make this commitment.

If you want to wake you inner artist, it is important that you do something creative each and every day. Being fortunate to have somehow connected with a group of internet friends which include a lot of very creative people, I feel I'm not pissing in the wind here. Your thoughts or replies as I begin this endeavor will be appreciated and archived. I want to find my voice in a new medium: video. I want to chronicle my existence and hopefully share some of my thoughts. experiences and humor with a few friends and family.

One, and only one, video from me will be appearing from me each and every day for the entire month of March. If I don't do this, please delete me from your friends. By making this commitment publicly here and now, I am obligated to do it.

Won't be easy. It takes just as much to think up, record, edit, produce, upoad and then publish ideas on video as it would take to write them down. Surely many of you have made similar resolutions to cultivate your inner artist in a regular manner and seen those resolutions fall apart. I know I have. Thank the Creator of the Universe, Squishy Bear, for this great thing called MySpace where a creativite expression can be so easily shared, and a pronouncement made to hundreds...err, about 100 people at the same time!

Join me in making March the most creative month in your life so far....

The March Of Joko, March 1st - Watch more funny videos here

Excitement in Walnut Creek

2007-02-25T14:24:00.000-08:00

It's a cold and rainy Saturday Night, and I am sitting alone in my apartment, working on my latest video. Tedious work, because the program keeps crashing. At about 10:30 PM, I hear two people arguing not far from my window. Then there's a 'BANG!!!'. The unmistakable retort of a hand gun reverberates throughout the courtyard. A scream follows. A door slams. I hear the sounds of someone running over the patter of the heavy rain. A car starts up in the parking lot and speeds away.

Wow. What do I do? DO I pick up my video camera and chase the car leaving the parking lot? Do I pick up the phone? I'm afraid that everyone else is thinking, "somoene else will call 911", and so I go ahead and call.

"Nine One One, May I help you?" A cheery bright voice answers the call. I've called 911 a couple times in my life, and usually the operators are flat and all serious. This one sounded like I was calling a department store.

"I've heard a gun shot just outside my apartment." I tell her.

"Just one?" she replies as if taking my order.

"yes," I go on to describe the yell, the running and the car speeding away.

"Do you want the police officers to visit you?"

Generally speaking, I respect the police, but I wasn't up for any visitors. A few minutes after I put down the phone and get back to work on my video, I hear the heavy boots and the jangling of cuffs, keys and all that other stuff cops wear on their belts go passing swiftly through the breezeway outside my door. There are flashlights outside the window. The police are on scene.

(insert story here about how I almost burn the house down, but that would just be too much information at one time, and will remain for a future story)

A couple hours later, I need to run to the store for some supplies. Pulling out into the parking lot, I have to maneuver my way through the dozen or so police cruisers in my way. They don't park with other cars in mind, and so it is quite the tight squeeze. Fortunately, and rare for a Saturday Night, I am stone cold sober. Walnut Creek PD, Contra Costa Sheriffs, Pleasant Hill PD.. quite the contingent of rollers. Out on the street, I see the K9 unit and a Danville PD cruiser. Danville? Danville is like 15 miles south of here! What's this one doing here? I guess shootings are rare enough in the Diablo Valley that they can act as a mini police convention.

Thinking the excitement is over, I finish up my computer work, and kick myself for the missed opportunity. The camera I use so frequently to satisfy my own vanity could have been of public use, I could have captured evidence, maybe even put a killer behind bars. I realize there were no ambulances amongst the fleet of vehicles clogging our parking lot, so I don't think anyone was hurt. Besides, I further realize that I was looking more for material for my own videos rather than being the good citizen.

I assume everything has wound down when I hear from out the window, 'ATTENTION ANYONE IN APARTMENT 2103!! THIS IS THE POLICE!! WE ORDER YOU TO COME OUT OF THE APARTMENT IMMEDIATELY!! KEEP YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR AND VISIBLE AT ALL TIMES!!'

There is no answer. I immediately go running out onto the patio, camera rolling. I see half a dozen policemen, guns drawn and pointed at the windows and doors of the dark and quiet apartment across the walkway from mine. They repeat their command. One of the cops notices me and yells, "GO BACK INTO YOUR APARTMENT!". I take two steps backwards and stand, still recording, from the sliding glass door. "IF YOU DO NOT RESPOND TO OUR COMMAND, WE WILL BREAK OPEN THE DOOR AND RELEASE THE DOGS!!" Officer Dog barks furiously in agreement.

Not out of any fear or desire to do my duty, I move to the bedroom and record from the window there. Better angle. A few moments later, there I hear the SLAM of a door being broken down. I hope my door is the same as theirs, as it took three full whallops before the door burst open. No gunshots. No sounds of struggle. No biker being dragged out hogtied. A light comes on, and then eventually goes off. Kind of anti-climactic.

Perhaps the worst part is that my camera is not all that good in low light... and although I have yet to preview the foottage, I'll put something together. My own episode of Cops: Walnut Creek.

In the meantime, here is the video that I was putting together all the time that the drama was ensuing. It's just another bit of silliness, but if you like Black Sabbath, Karaoke and Ping Pong, check out Joko's Thursday Night at Masse's.

Bamboodydo!

2007-02-10T07:40:00.000-08:00

Part II of my open mic performance. Its only half the song because I broke a string right before I was going to transition into the guitar solo.

BAMBOODYDO!!!

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Joko Performs at the Open Mic

2007-02-07T08:48:00.000-08:00

As the occasional emcee of TK's open mic, I decided not to perform up until now. That may sound unselfish or something, but really I was just nervous. This last Monday, I actually brought the guitar, signed up an dplayed. Had to introduce myself. Since I was performing, I couldn't film, so this video is just one long shot.

First Of 3. My Open Mic, Addicted To Pain - video powered by Metacafe

I can actually post them!

2007-02-04T18:36:00.000-08:00

Lets see if this works...

Doritos Cashier

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Bud Light Immigrants

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Give a Little Love

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Top Super Bowl Commericals

2007-02-04T18:32:00.000-08:00

The game is still going on, but I'm sure none of the sponsors will be saving any more commercial gems into the 4th quarter. I have no rooting interest for either team, so I actually became more interested during the breaks!

My top 3 commericals:

Honorable Mention: Taco Bell... Carrrrrne Asada...Like Ricardo Montalban!

3. Doritos: Flirting with the checker at the supermarket. Who knew snack foods, or BBW cashier ladies, could be so sexy! If I understood the little blurb afterwards correctly, the commercial was an amateur creation which won some kind of contest. Great job by a guy with his video camera and a friend at the supermarket!

2. Bud Light: Carlos Mencia teaches the ESL class. All humor has the potential to offend someone, and I think that South Asians might have been the only group they could have used and gotten away with this, but I'll be laughing for days at "Bud Light.." . . . "Bood Light"..."Bud Light!". . . "Bood Light", I doubt we'll see this commerical after the Super Bowl.

1. Coca Cola: Grand Theft Auto guy goes good. It was sappy, over the top, and maybe just a bit too feel goody, like-to-teach-the-word-to-sing-y, but it was surprising, funny and the best bit of CGI I've seen on TV.

Well, Indianapolis just had a big interception here in the 4th quarter, so back to the game.

10 years of Graphism

2007-01-25T03:24:00.000-08:00

By far the strangest video yet.

The Hole - video powered by Metacafe

2007-01-09T07:34:00.000-08:00

So I set the camera on the bar without thinking that someone might come and stand in front of it.

My latest exploits at Tomkat's open mic.

There will be guest emcee's for the next two weeks, which means I can bring my guitar and actually sign up to play. Gotta start practicing!

A Joke About The Raiders - video powered by Metacafe

Empty Office

2007-01-04T23:09:00.000-08:00

Empty'>http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1677074291">Empty desks
http://lads.myspace.com/videos/vplayer.swf" flashvars="m=1677074291&type=video" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="430" height="346">
Add to My Profile More Videos

Oh! Deer!

2006-12-06T23:00:00.000-08:00

My newest hobby: videography. It's amazing what the simplest software can do nowadays. I suppose it's not a new hobby; I used to use the family Super 8 film camera to make claymation stuff back in the 70's.

My other new interest: Emceeing.

Looking for a Lemur

2006-11-25T10:39:00.000-08:00

I realize that a lot of my posts are about the office, but the branch manager is becoming more Steve Corell-like every day.

Yesterday, he comes out and asks the the team manager, "Dave, do you know where I could buy a lemur?"

This was not a joke. He seriously wanted to buy a lemur. A live lemur. This wasn't some weird Thanksgiving dinner dish.

"No, but Gil might know," Dave replied.

"Gil, where can I buy a lemur around here?"

I'm satisfied with my reputation in the office as being the "go to" guy in the office. If you have a quesiton, Joko probably knows the answer, but where to get a lemur, much less whether or not its ethical to even own a lemur, even I can't answer.

I didn't know and I responded as such. "No where around here, that's for sure." I was fairly certain that nowhere in the Walnut Creek/Pleasant Hill area could someone walk in and buy a live lemur. "E-Bay?" I suggested.

15 mintues later, the boss walks out from his office dejected. He actually found a source online to buy a lemur, spoke with one of the lemur salesmen, and discovered that California laws forbid lemur ownership in the state.

I'm sure the lemurs are very happy about that.

If you have to live in one of those more exotic pet friendly states, just for your information, a lemur will cost you $5000.

This post brought to you by the Madagascar Chamber of Commerce.

Halloween Story

2006-11-09T20:38:00.000-08:00

Okay, so it's a week late, but I told someone I was gonna record this ghost story anecdote, so here it is.

In the Summer of 1986, I traveled deep into the Santa Cruz Mountains, up into Loma Prieta, with a group of friends. We were all teenagers, and we spent the day down at the lake, drinking beers and watching the empties slowly disappear over the dam.

By nightfall, we were out of beer, no one had any weed, nor were any hallucinogens floating around that night Dave's parents were out of town. We were desperate for some kind of entertainment. I don't know whose suggestion it was, but somehow, a Ouija board broke out.

I was not brought up to believe in God, but ghosts? Sure! Why not? My folks lived in a haunted apartment before I was born. Books on witchcraft could be found in the family library (maybe that was just a 70's thing), Before adolescence, I was really really into D&D. I thought these things could work.

Some of the people in the room didn't believe, and so for the first hour or so, the needle barely moved. Nothing supernatural was happening. Those guys left, and Corey, Kevin, Dave and I started getting some pretty weird and fluid movement of the pointer.

It just flew accross the board. Something was there. Being teenage thrillseekers, we wanted to see this spirit that was controlling our hands. We asked it to point to where it was in the room. The pointer moved to flame of the single candle that lit the room. I lit a lighter on the opposite side of the board from the candle was and then asked again...

point to where you are now

The rotation of the pointer could not have been accomplished by a single set of fingers very lightly pressed upon the plastic, so if you think one of us was moving it, you're wrong. I know I certainly wasn't moving it. As you might have guessed, the spirit had pointed directly at the lighter. I moved the lighter around in an arc. The pointer followed precisely. Next question.

Do you want to show yourself?

YES

then show yourself!

Nothing happened. We huddled, holding our knees up to our chins as we studied the flickering shadows high up in the corners of the room. We WANTED to see something.

Then I got an idea. What if one of us emptied our minds of thought, just opened ourselves up, and let the spirit show itself through one of us. I told my friends this idea. We put our fingers on the stylus.

Spirit, if....

YES

I didn't even get to finish asking the question. The thing shot over immediately to the YES answer. Of course, my friends all looked at me. It was my idea, I should be the medium.

So I got up, sat in a straightback chair on one side of the room, told the spirit I was going to relax, and to please show itself through me. I'd learned a very simple meditation technique a year or so before that seemed to fit what I was trying to do. most of us can never really completely turn off the mental chatter that is our everyday consciousness. Instead, what I would do is space out the

little

natural

pauses

between the words of my thoughts. Essentially thinking of nothing during those in-between moments. About 10 seconds into sitting there in mental blankness, I began to feel muscle spasms in my face. More intense than any twitch, my muscles were quivering. That was all I felt. No presence. Nothing out of the ordinary.

The other guys in the room were seeing something quite out of the ordinary. My entire face began to glow a bizarre green, my face became that of a hideously old man, obviously in extreme pain. They even saw my hair become slicked back.

What I heard was this: "Wha? Oh? Holy SHi!!WHOAH!!! Oh MY GOD!! JOKO!!! GET OUT OF THE CHAIR!!!" I heard a mad rush of feet as the guys stumbled and charged out of the room. On the way out one of them, I think it was Corey, grabbed my arm and pulled me from the chair.

Words cannot convey the feeling that entered me when I hit the ground. It's indescribable and it is one I hope to never feel again. Perhaps one word does suffice in desribing it: DEATH. Death passed through me. Intensely cold, mind gripping. I went into a seizure, spasming all over the carpet. For a full 2 or 3 minutes, I could not utter a single word.

Needless to say, the Ouija board got put away after that.

Other people I've told this story to have told me it was a stupid and dangerous thing my friends and I did that summer evening. I could have opened myself up to something that would not want to leave. For a couple years after the incident, I sometimes worried if the spirit might just show up. I hope I am in touch with my inner spirit enought that I am not at risk for possession, but to this day, I'm thankful for getting pulled from that chair.

Joko the Ticket Scalper

2006-10-10T23:11:00.000-07:00

When my A's beat the Twinkies in the first round of the baseball playoffs, I felt compelled to go and see them in person during the American League Championship Series. Given my newly single status, I was even prepared to buy just a single ticket and go all by myself. Well, the spirit of the playoff baseball gripped the office and, and four of us all were going to go together. We went online and found four seats together for $150 each. Good value for a sold-out playoff game. Somehow, I got talked into putting it on my credit card. As the day approached, two co-workers backed out when it looked doubtful that we would be able to expense the excurcsion, but the slack was taken up when I offered a ticket to my dad, and the boss decided to take his father-in-law.

Today was the day of the game, and it didn't go too well. I might have witnessed Barry Zito's last home start in an A's uniform; we lost 5 to 1. Worse yet, the boss got sick, and couldn't go. Now I had two extra $150 tickets that I had to unload. I posted them on Craigslist. I had co-workers call friends and relatives. No takers. Three hours before first pitch, I boarded the train to the Oakland Colisseum, intent on selling the tickets at the game itself. Mind you, selling tickets at a sporting event for higher than face value is a crime, and (lately anyways) I'm really not a very good criminal.

First thing though, I had to eat. I skipped lunch. It was 3:00 by the time I got there, and I went to a little burger joint right accross from the train station. Turns out this place was the hangout of the professional ticket scalpers. Stragely though, none of them asked me if I wanted to buy tickets. Maybe they recognized me as another seller. I was sure to learn much, I thought! Then, as I was standing in line to order, I learned why none of them were approaching me. "What can we do for you, officer?" one of the dudes quipped in line behind me They thought I looked like a cop!

Well, I should have turned around right there and told them that no, I was no cop, in fact I was looking to do some business. I had decided that the easiest way to accomplish unloading the tickets would be to sell them to a scalper and let him re-sell them. Instead, being a bit nervous about the whole ordeal, I decided I probably wouldn't be able to break through their mistrust, and so I just settled in with my catfish and fries and tried to think of a new plan.

I've seen numerous scalpers on the bridge leading from the station to the stadium on previous visits to sporting events. My plan became to hang out on the bridge, watch the scalpers who would identify possible ticket buyers, and then come behind them and approcah anyone they were unable to make a sale with. I wanted to get my money back, but I really didn't want to get stuck with two worthless tickets.

What I saw on the bridge made me keep going. Three seperates scalpers were being written tickets by cops in the 500 or so feet of this bridge! I'm too old to risk getting anything more serious than a parking ticket.

Ah ha! I would work the parking lot! I start by wandering through the cars, making eye contact with everyone I saw, cryptically holding two fingers up by my chest, trying to tindicate I had two tickets to sell. I'm lucky I wasn't accosted for making inadvertant gang signs. This method didn't work. All I got were strange looks.

"Anybody need tickets?" I started going from one group of tailgaters to another, giving up on any subtlety. Some people stopped me and asked how much,. but they were just curious "what scalpers were selling them for." "I am no scalper!" I protested, "one of my co-workers who was supposed to come got sick!! That's all!!" Whatever. Time was ticking. It was an hour before game time.

I was ready to give up and go to the official ticket office to see if I could turn them in for credit, cash, anything. Finally, a scalper approached me and offered to sell me tickets. No, I told him, I am actually looking to sell. They were good seats. Field level. Behind the home dugout.

"I'll give you a hundred bucks for the pair right now," he offered. No way. I want to get what I paid for them. $150 each. Oh, no, that was too mcuh for him. Oh well. I wasn't selling for $50 each. I was resigned to the idea that if the tickets became worthless I would demand the full $300 from the boss who had taken ill. I walked away. The sclaper walked parallel to me, and I loked over at him, still feeling it was my duty to get something for the tickets. He consulted with another scalper, and then came over, saying very professionally, "work with me here." We haggled. My final offer was $10 from his, so I conceded and sold the pair, 1 hour before first pitch, for $75 each. I still plan on getting the other $150 from the boss.

We stepped behind a port-o-potty and made the trade. It occurred to me as I walked away that I had done nothing illegal! The face value of the tickets was $75 each! It's perfectly okay to sell them at face value, and I had $150 in cash in my pocket. My parting words to the guy were, "sell them to good people, I'm gonna have to sit next to them". His last words were, "I'm taking a big risk here."

Sure enough, his risk didn't pay off. Inning after inning went by, the A's fell bhind, and the two seats next to me and Dad remained empty. He hadn't sold them! About the 4th inning, another father-son pair appeared, smiling, and took the seats. I told them I had sold those tickets to a scalper and I was really curious what they had paid.

"We had tickets for section 254 (second deck, in the outfield), we gave him those tickets and $20 for these!! And we were given our original tickets for free!"

Looks like they made out the best.

Joko

Thirst and suffering

2006-10-09T02:19:00.000-07:00

I've created a new blog dedicated to my metaphysical inquiries.

Please read and comment if you wish at

http://thirstand.blogspot.com

Joko

Let's go OAKLAND!!!

2006-10-04T10:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I called in to work and said I wouldn't be in because of playoff baseball. No *cough* *cough*.. oh, I don't feel good, lying stuff. The boss is a HUGE sports fan and said he completely understood. I came in at 1:30, stayed late, and have the same arrangement for today... A's vs Twins starts in minutes!

Yesterday morning, the boss warned that the senior national vice president over the entire arm of the company would be calling and would likely quiz whoever answered the phone on new important company guidelines. Be prepared. Of course, I wasn't there to hear that, and guess who answered the phone when my boss's boss's boss called? Yup. Me, giddy with excitemen after my Oakland A's beat the Twins.

He asked me trick questions, which I answered incorrectly but quickly recovered after realizing what he was doing. I got the equivalent of a B-, and I'm building the reputation for being the top dog in the office. Oh well.

Tomkat: New Wolverine fan

2006-09-27T20:50:00.000-07:00

Tomkat has decided to move back to the Bay Area from Michigan where he went to find the peace and quiet of Middle America. He bulletined in MySpace that if anyone knew of any job, let him know. Coutrywide is hiring, so eventhough the one other person I recommended for this crazy job has, in some ways, regretted her decision, it could work out.

so I wrote Tomkat today:

"So I talked to my boss, told him about you, and he
said he'd like to talk.

First thing I told him is that you were in Ann Arbor,
and his eyes lit up. "Is he a Michigan fan!!?!" Jeff
is a huge Wolverine fan. He's got commemeratative
programs displayed in his office and a life size Tom
Brady (former Michigan Wolverine quarterback)
cardboard cut-out on one wall. He's got other Tom
Brady memorabelia (sp?) on the walls. Walking into
his office is like walking into an 11 year-old's
bedroom.

So if you come in for interview, look at the cut out,
say, "Tom Brady! Alllright!" and the job is yours.

Oh, and I told him you MOVED to ann Arbor to attend
more Wolverine games. Just fake it.

Joko

My mom on TV

2006-09-25T00:37:00.000-07:00

http://www.animalhead.com/video/painting_gourmet_may06/

Greetings! how do I make links in blogger again? Click here to see my mom on TV!
href what?

I dunno.. if you can't click above just cut and paste into your browser

Changes

2006-09-12T08:41:00.000-07:00

For the last 12 days, I've been searching for the right way to re-start this blog. I've done some very hurtful things to people I love during that time, and as a chronicle of my life, if I were to offer any public explanation for my actions, it should be done here. At the same time, these current affairs are so personal, they aren't something I feel I should webcast.

I did what I did entirely for selfish reasons. Perhaps that goes without saying. I ended my marriage, and because of the way I did it, I have probably ended friendships that we shared with other people. My future is very uncertain at this moment, which is both exciting and terrifying. I made this choice because I want to improve myself as a person and despite slipping back into some old bad habits that I used to have, from here on out, the path I'm on will be the path of my choosing (see my August 18th posting "Meaning of Life").

It's time to concentrate on work. Time to build a new life in a new place. I'm starting over once again.

Best and Worst Day of the Year

2006-09-01T01:31:00.000-07:00

I'm no expert on the Gospels, but I know that Jesus was reported at one point to have said something like, "Never Boast. Those who boast are eventually humbled."

Was I ever humbled today.

Thr irony. I got paid today for the loans I closed in July. A lot of things fell into place in July and I ended up with my best month ever, finishing in the top ten in the nation amongst the 400 or so people nationwide who hold the same position as I within Countrywide. I wasn't shy about telling my referring partners about my success either. I figured it would be a good marketing tool; they'd be more likely to give me business if they knew I am a to producer. All this last month, I've felt on top of the world knowing a big paycheck was coming at the end of the month.

Today was also my last day to fund loans for my September 30th pay. During the last week, I lost over a million dollars in loans for one reason or another, but if everything went right today, I'd still end up with a good month. I spent the day frantically working the phones, doing everything in my power to finish things up. It worked too. I got what I needed to close the two deals I needed to finish up with today. On both loans, however, the borrowers I had been working with for weeks all of a sudden disclosed that they didn't have the funds they had expected for the down payment. Things fell through for them, and its gonna take a little longer to get the funds together. For me that meant that in one day, I got biggest paycheck of my entire life and learned that next month's check will have no bonus, turning the 60 hours a week I work into less than minimum wage.

To say its been an emotional roller coaster would be putting it lightly.

2006-08-28T20:38:00.000-07:00

Incentive

2006-08-28T19:50:00.000-07:00

So the new bossman declares at 4:30 that we have to get over to the local bar to watch his beloved Cincinnati Bengals play the Green Bay Packers on pre-season Monday Night Football. Fair enough. Drinks in the afternoon with the boss likely buying? Sounds good to me.

SO we're sitting there, talking football, and at one point, the boss says to me, "Gil, you have a really good month in September, if you do 14 loans, I will give you my Bengals-Raiders tickets for October and fly you out to Cincinnati for the game." Of course, being a huge Raider fan, I accepted.

If you think about it though, it's kind of weird prize to give an employee. Sports tickets, no, those are frequent corporate incentives.. but tickets to Cincinnati... Ohio?

You never hear on games shows, "Tell them what they've won, Johnny!".... A trip to CINCINNATI, OHIO!! Ooooh Aaaahh...

I do hope I get it though. I will majorly play the part too. Skull mask.. Spikey shoulder pads,.. I'll do the full Raider ensemble, and unlike most Raider fans, I actually Live in Oakland California.

Computers

2006-08-25T00:19:00.000-07:00

If you look down to the post below, you will see what I look like when I write this stuff. I prefer to use my laptop on its rolling Ikea workstation thingy. When on I'm on the computer, I'm actually on the computers. My left hand screen is running no limit hold em at PartyPoker.net most of the time, while on the Mac on my right, I write, check my e-mail, do creative Macintosh stuff. On my left, out of the shot, is Jasmine's former computer, a vintage 1999 Gateway PC.

The PC is really outdated now, and although it still works, the hard drive is maxed and I'm sure it won't run the newest software. The other day, when I went to push the power button, SNAP! It broke off. Later on, I figured out I could use a small stick (I'm using little plastic thing that came with our industrial size case of fillable tea bags) to hit the little black botton on the board where the on button used to be. The machine is also having all kinds of start up problems, and I think it's time to replace it.

I want a Laptop PC, and I'm looking for brand names people know and trust. When it comes straight down to price, some what I've seen so far, Dell seems to have the best deals. You can get a mid-grade laptop there for like $750. I'm ready to get it. Anyone out there own a Dell and hate it?

Hazard Pay for the Banker Visiting the Projects

2006-08-23T20:25:00.000-07:00

Three straight serious, contemplative posts in a row... time for a funny story.

First, a little back story. I had been working on Mrs White's (name changed) loan for a few weeks. Mrs White is an old lady who owns an SFR in San Francisco, free and clear. Her and her daughter decided to put a relatively small mortgage on it to help them out in Mom's sunset years. Perfectly reasonable. I had been dealing exclusively with the daughter as old Mrs White had suffered a stroke and could barely sign her name. For anyone whose signed a stack of loan documents, you will understand that it's quite a challenge even for the able wristed. Daughter had a power of attorney (POA), and we even had made them go and get another power of attorney specific to the transaction and property we were mortgaging. At the last minute, out underwriters in their infinite wisdom (read: fussiness) decided that they wanted to know why we needed the POA for this transaction. Why couldn't Mom sign her own loan documents? They wanted a notarized letter from the borrower explaining the reason why the daughter was signing the loan docs. I know they were doing this to protect Mrs White from a possibly opportunistic child taking advantage of her POA abilities, but there was nothing in our guidelines that required this. We fought it, lost, and I called the daughter to make it happen. Problem is that the daughter just left for a 2 week trip to the Southeast to move her daughter into her freshman college dorm (awww) and visit family. She wasn't around to help us.

I started making phone calls. The notary who had notarized their POA refused to help us. Her doctor, who obviously knew of the stroke, worked at Kaiser Permanente. I called them, and of course, they would need a written request to get any letter from a doctor. The Kaiser bureaucrat at first it would take "about a week". When I pressed further, a week turned into 7 to 10 working days. Ten working days? That's two weeks. If you're not familiar with mortgages, we're very time sensitive. Everything is about getting it done this month. Ten days would push it into next month. No good.

The only choice we had left was to get the letter directly from Mrs White. I know a notary, Pablo, who would come along and notarize something I would write for Mrs White. Problem is that in the house where Mrs White lives, there were other family members who they didn't want knowing that Mom and daughter were pulling a very large chunk of money out of what I'm sure they felt were the family assets. I never once called the house where they lived, and from what I understood, if they knew, it would have been a bad situation. Daughter assured me that if we showed up about 11 AM, Mrs White would be home alone, and I wouldn't have to deal with anyone else. Pablo and I set an appointment, and daughter assured me that only Mrs White would be home. I asked what I should do is someone else was home, and she said don't worry, no one else will be home. For sure.

The evening prior, I told my wonderful wife where I was going the next day. The Sunnydale Projects, about a half mile from where she grew up in The City. I had heard about these projects; they were allegedly some of the worst, scarcity, crime infested public housing places in all the Bay Area. File pic.

"You're not going there," she told me flatly.

"But I'm going to have someone else with me," I replied. She didn't know Pablo was all of 5'7", and stopped protesting. Hey, we gotta do what we gotta do to close these loans!

We were a little late getting out, and then got a little lost finding the place. Getting lost was interesting because I got to see the whole of the Sunnydale Projects district. Frankly, it looked like something out of the Third World. The majority of the units were converted military barracks from WWII. Block after block of long attached homes. No divisions. It was like Gomer Pyle meets college dorms meets Boyz in the Hood.

Finally, we found the place, knocked on the door, and old Mrs White let us in, cane in hand, barely able to speak due to her disability. We had just settled down, pulled out the docs she needed to sign when the front door opened and the son had come home. Very large dude, a bit menacing, and he wanted to know what we were doing in his home with his Mom with these official looking documents laid out in front of her. Oh shit.

"What is this all about?!" he demanded.

On the way over, I had filled Pablo in about not talking to anyone in case someone else was home. "Well, what would we tell them?" Pablo asked quite reasonably.

"I'll handle it," I assured him confidently. Really, I had no idea what I would say.

I was freaking out. As a mortgage banker, I can not reveal aspects of someone's loan to a third party without their authorization. It's a violation of their right to privacy, but somehow I couldn't verbalize that. When the son asked again what the hell we were having his mother sign, I had no answer.

"Hang on," I told him and frantically called the daughter in Georgia. Fortunately, she picked up. "Your brother is here," I told her, "Please talk to him." I handed the phone to the brother who went off into another room. I can't speak for Pablo, but I know I was shitting bricks at that point. If some banker was in my home, possibly taking advantage of my Mom, I would be very defensive. In my head, I said headlines on SF Chronicle the next day, "Countrywide loan officer killed in Sunnydale Projects".

Son came back, apparently satisfied with what big sis had told him. The rest of the transaction went smoothly, except for when Pablo had to physically grab Mrs White's wrist to allow him to take her thumbprint. She wanted to move her hands that way, but her disability prevented it.

I never thought that as a loan officer, I would ever fear for my safety as part of my duties, but today was such a day. Hazard pay!

Stories from my town

2006-08-20T22:08:00.000-07:00

This morning when no one showed for my usual Sunday morning basketball game in Berkeley, I headed over to the court at the end of my street. It would be a lot more convenient for me if I could make this my regular court. It is, how shall I this?, a but rough. I don't really connect with the guys who hang there. We come from and live in different worlds. For half an hour, I just warmed up, shooting around with a couple other guys as a rigorous game of 21 was played on the other end of the court. After that time, when enough people have arrived to play full court, one of the guys I had been shootin with starts picking his team. He shoulda picked me up, but suddenly its like I wasn't even there. I asked him to play and he said, "you're gonna have to wait."

Why? I wanted to know why. I asked him.

"Why?" he scoffed to his buddy, "dude wants to know why"

I looked around and of the 15 or so people now there. I happened to be the the only person there who wasn't black. Pissed off that it looked like I wasn't going to be playing basketball, the activity I love more than any other in the world, I said it. I spoke what I thought to be the truth. "It's because I'm white," I said.

"It's not the color of your skin," a different guy said as I walked away from the court. I felt that leaving at that point would be the smartest thing to do. Getting into a conversation about race relations in that situation is the last thing I wanted to do. In all that time we were shooting around, I was ON. Three pointer after three pointer swooshed through the net. Other basketball players can relate when I talk about getting this feeling in your wrist. You've got distance perfect and it feels like there's this straight line connecting your release of the ball and dead center on the basket. I had that feeling. There was no way the guy didn't want to pick me up because he thought I sucked. In pickup basketball, if you lose, you gotta sit. None of us were there to sit. So stacking your team with the best players is the rational thing to do. I don't know.

Thinking back, what I shoulda done is said, "You don't think I'm good enough?", found the guy who was choosing teams for the other side, and demanded that he pick me up so that I could guard this guy and shut him down. I coulda done it too. If I really really concentrate on defense, even at 36 years old, I can shut anyone down. He wouldn't have scored. I may have fouled him constantly, but I could done it. Life is filled with moments where we later realize what we should of said or should have done.

I'm sure they talked about what I had said right after I left. I've been on courts where a guy stormed off pouting because he couldn't get a game. Each court always has a protocol for how teams get picked, even if 90% of the guys there wouldn't know what "protocol"means. Next time I go down there (it's just too damn convenient not to go there) someone there will know me to be the white guy who stormed off because he couldn't get into the first game and then blamed it on racism. That's not who I want to be known as. I accept that whoever's "next" picks the teams. Even if he didn't want to pick me up because he though I wouldn't;t be good enough, if he thought that, it would only be because his judgments of my basketball talents woulda been solely based on the color of my skin. I showed him otherwise, and I still didn't get picked up.

A couple weeks ago, one of Jasmine's co-workers little brothers was shot in East Oakland not because he was in a gang, but instead because he declined to not join a gang. He is going to be paralyzed for the rest of his life.

Tonight, I walked down to the QuikStop and there were several customers waiting outside a door that was locked. They do this whenever the sole clerk needs to go back and restock the fridge, When the door was unlocked, customers walked out, he let us in, and then relocked the door. While I was waiting, other customers came up, stood at the locked door, and only got let in when the clerk let me and the next guy out. Huh? This wasn't about restocking the cooler. The clerk said it was for security. I pressed him for more info and he told me that the night before, several guys had come in, just grabbed as much stuff as they could, and ran out.

The suburbs are sounding better everyday.

A Secret Conspiracy Within the US Government

2006-08-19T01:14:00.000-07:00

It was June, 2003. I was taking a graduate class in economic sociology at Cal State Hayward. Our guest speaker for the evening was one Don Paul, author of "'9/11' Facing our Fascist State". His lecture was a pivotal moment for me in my attitude towards what will be the seminal day of our generation.

"I'll just come right out and say it," Paul said at the beginning of his talk, "I believe that the events of September 11th were planned and carried out by a secret conspiracy within the United States government." A collective gasp of disbelief escaped from the graduate students gathered that evening. At the time, this was a mind boggling idea.

Paul then began to lay out his evidence. First, an examination of the protocols for the defense of US Capital, something as we might imagine to have been well thought out and prepared for by our military leaders, were not only not followed, but altered in such a way that one has to wonder if it was just for show. Flight 77, the one that hit the Pentagon, impacted 25 minutes after it first deviated from its flight plan. The USAF fighters stationed at Edwards AFB can intercept any plane violating our capitol's airspace within minutes; the fighters launched (20 minutes after a threat was detected) came form Langley AFB, 120 miles south of the capital. Mysteriously, these planes then traveled at 1/5th their top speed on their way to Washington, and as we know, did nothing to stop any attacks.

The next bit of evidence Paul produced had to do with how the WTC ultimately collapsed. Burning jet fuel can produce temperatures a maximum of 700F. The structural steel in the WTC would require temps of close to 1500F to melt and cause the "pancake effect" cited to be the cause of the collapse. We all remember the way the second plane hit WTC2. It hit obliquely, on a corner. If WTC2 were to collapse, it would fall sideways and cause billions of dollars in additional property damage. The controlled straight down collapses were reminiscent of a professional demolition. According to Paul, multiple emergency personnel report hearing explosions just before the collapse. Even Peter Jennings, the anchor of the coverage I watched as I sat at in the breakroom of my workplace, said when the first tower unexpectedly collapsed, "that is a collapse caused by additional explosives." Maybe he heard something in his ear, because he soon afterwards retracted his supposition.

The Bushies and their clan benefited tremendously in the aftermath of 9/11. He got re-elected, his pro-corporate policies passed without question as the congress rubber stamped everything from out first "war time" president in 30 years. His elite family buddies made out like bandits not only from the insurance collected from the events themselves, but more importantly, for the billions of dollars in our tax money being spent in Iraq, Afghanistan and at home as part of our "war on terror."

Back in 2003, the idea that 9/11 was actually orchestrated by elements with the Bush administration seemed akin to the far out Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists. Yeah, right, that's so far out there, how can I possibly believe it? Over the years, as the policies of this administration seemed to continuously be geared towards increasing the animosity between the US and the Middle East, Paul's theory starts to become more and more believable.

DO I believe that Bush,. Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld planned 9/11? No. I don't believe it. Not for sure. Is it possible that they did? Absolutely. It is within the relam of possibity? Absolutely.

Back in 1990, as the Cold War was winding down, I remember vividly the concluding lecture of a course in "American Sociology" I took at UCSD. The professor presented the premise that America needs an "enemy" to focus on in order to survive and thrive. By that point, communism, the thing we had fought as a country for 50 years, was disappearing. We needed a new enemy. At our birth, we fought colonialism. Then our enemy became the land peoples of the frontier. We fought Spain, alcohol, poverty, and in WWII, the Axis powers. Now that communism was disappearing, what would take its place for our national animosity? Some people said drugs. Some people said China. No one thought of Islam, but from s sociological point of view, if Paul is right, that is why the Project for a New American Century has led us down this path. We need an enemy.

Our War on Terror has made a lot of people very very rich (or richer).

In conclusion, I don't know if I really believe that the Bushies actually carried out 9/11. It is certainly possible. Right now, liberals are questioning whether or not the Bush was complicent in the attacks, which is a far cry from actually perpertrating them. I think that the theory Paul lays out in his book (to buy a copy, Googlesearch "Don Paul"), will become like the Kennedy assassination theories of the previous generation. It will be something that a lot of people believe but can't prove, eventually becoming a conventional wisdom that there was a lot more going on than what the official story tells us.

Meaning in Life

2006-08-12T19:54:00.000-07:00

Science is meaningless because it gives us no answer to our question, the only question important for us: "What shall we do and how shall we live? - Tolstoy

I'm not writing about science tonight. The importance of that quote is in the question posed. It is the most important question we can ask (okay, so it's two questions), particularly when we're not sure of the answer.

Max Weber used that quote in Science as a Vocation (1919) my favorite sociological essay. A lot of what Weber and 20th century sociology examined was the process of intellectualization, disenchantment and loss of meaning in modern society. For thousands of years, humanity has asked "what is the meaning of life?", and the answers to that question have been as varied as the individuals asking them, only in modernity, however, as the influence of tradition, community and social class have waned have so many individuals have had to answer Tolstoy's terrifying question all by themselves. It certainly isn't an easy question to answer.

Despite the sociologist's claims of the pervasiveness of anomic modernity, everyone still tries to look to society at some point or another to answer to Tolstoy's question. The prevailing cultural, religious and community norms tell you what to do and how to live. In today's world, the prevailing culture is more of a backdrop and not a determiner of what life means, so at often those socially determined answers don't hold up. Those comfortable in what they're doing and how they're living are either that way because they've never questioned the validity of how society tells them to act or they've thought it out, examined their innermost values and beliefs (which some would argue are entirely socially determined too) and come up with an answer on their own. The latter group has it all figured it out.

I used to think I had it all figured out, then life happened. I used to know for sure what I wanted to do and how I wanted to live. I didn't always do those things, and that was okay because deep down, I had it all figured out. I could stray from the path because I knew where the path was and was confidant I could get back to it when the time came. What I've now discovered is that if you spend years and years not following your answer to Tolstoy's question, eventually, you begin to doubt the answer you had in the first place. Spend enough time on a different path, and that path becomes your chosen path and you lose track of the one you had chosen before. Fine, you say, this new path is good enough. It's at least a path at and I'm not wandering aimlessly though the woods. Sometimes, you're following behind someone else down their path. The answer to "what shall we do?" becomes whatever it is we're already doing and we answer "how shall we live?" with an acceptance of the life that often through sheer circumstance, is the life we're living.

Ten years ago, I moved back to the SF Bay Area to pursue a path that I eventually realized was not my path. I couldn't do the things I needed to do simply because I didn't really believe I was going the right direction. I got off with a vague idea of where I wanted to go next and went through some tough times. Since then, I've followed lots of different paths. Some of them were very rewarding and meaningful, like my love for Jasmine and the early days of the Graphites. Some of them have been detrimental and far from what I still know to be my answers to Tolstoy's question.

Last year, someone told me that 36 is the perfect age. At 36, you've lived enough as an adult to have made some mistakes, learned from them and gained some wisdom. You should be at the peak of your abilities at your profession. Physically, the body really hasn't started to break down yet even if you can't do some of the things you did in your 20's. If at some point, one is "over the hill" then at 36, you should be at the top of the hill. I am 36. I'm at the top of the hill. From up here, I can see everything, and I can't help but wonder where I should go next. If I'm going downhill from here, I at least want it to be on the path I choose, but as I've shown throughout my life, I don't always choose the right path. What do I do and how shall I live?

I think part of this pre-midlife-crisis I'm writing about has been instigated by a new circle of friends I've found through work. On Friday nights, we hang out, play poker, talk about our jobs, politics, religion and what life is supposed to be about. Strangely, a couple of these 20-something co-workers or their friends seem to me to have a stronger certainty over the meaning of life. They've got it figured out. I think they've yet to experience how the traumas, trials and tribulations of life can eventually shake what you knew to be true as a younger person. It doesn't have to be bad things happening either. The mundane routine of going to work, coming home and watching TV and having a few drinks can be comfortable while you're doing it, but do it too long, and it's insidious, dull blade can cut into the dreams of the soul deeper than the sharpest scalpel of the more dramatic.

In India, there is an ancient saying that answers the question of what we are to do and how we are to live. They say that the first twenty years of a man's life are for learning, the second twenty years are for building up a household and family and the third twenty years are for seeking spiritual enlightenment. I did the learning bit. I'm married. I want to build and a household. Although I didn't have this Hindu saying in mind when I set out on my latest path, when I left Sears to go into mortgages, I did so out of sheer pursuit of material wealth. For the first time in my life, I was driven by the desire to make a lot of money. Slowly and not so surely, that goal is starting to come to fruition. Getting out of debt looks like a possibility. It's happening; I finally have a good paying job.

I'm writing all this for two reasons: First, it helps me figure out where my head is at, and second, to ask if what I've been through in the last 15 years sounds familiar anyone reading this, and if so, what's the next stage? From the idealism and purpose of the early 20's to the first steps or missteps of adulthood of the mid to late 20's to the settling down and working hard of the 30's to the questioning that comes from getting to the top of the hill and wondering what comes next.

Nothing stops life, so I guess I will find out.

Shivi and the Handywoman

2006-08-08T21:44:00.000-07:00

Our cat received a phone call this evening from a fan.

Here she is. A Black Cat.

She had a play date today with Hannah, the building handyperson who stops by, usually with some tradesman in tow, whenever our landlord needs to fix something in our apartment. Hannah is very good at her job, and certainly our landlord, Leo, is the perfect landlord, always responding promptly to any of our requests.

Today, Hannah came in for some delayed maintenance our place required. She must have had some spare time today while both my wife and I were at work. The plumber was busy replacing our kitchen faucet.

The new faucet looks great. They also fixed some loose screws and hinges on intereior doors. All in all, that is one of the only good things about renting. No maintenance costs.

Tonight, Hannah called. I immediately thanked her for her efficiency in supervising the repairs. There was a pause, then Hannah asked what our cat's name was. I told her and then she then when on to relate how much fun she had playing with Shivi, our cat today. I almost felt like I should have handed the phone to the cat so she could talk with Hannah.

Some people think there are cat people in this world and then there are dog people. If they're right, Hannah is definitely in the cat camp. Personally, I tink one can be a cat person and a dog person. I love all animals. Although our Shivi cat jumps on our heads at 5:30 in the AM, constantly begs for food and is generally losing her little cat mind as she nears 20 years of age, I love the kitty.

Multicultural Gaffe

2006-08-08T06:40:00.000-07:00

Maybe I should change the name of this blog to "The Quik Stop Journal," as I have yet another anecdote to relate about the corner store and my dealings there. Last night, as I wandered into the Quik Stop, the new Eritrean guy who works there nightly was there with a new guy behind the counter. They were chatting away in their native tongue. I didn't recognize the new guy, but as I have related earlier, I tend to get to know each of the successive clerks who man the counter down the street. The current regular guy is a rather dour type. He's not very friendly and like the previous guy (see the post "Nomoska Kid"), makes occasional comments about the nature of what his customers are buying. I could tell from just a few moments observation that the new guy he was chatting with was much more animated, and I decided to show off my multicultural knowledge once again.

"Wassalamu Alaikum!" I spoke the Arabic greeting known in every Moslem land throughout the world. Eritrea is almost entire Moslem. I knew the dour guy was Moslem, and I just assumed his buddy was too. Normally, the phrase I spoke has to be followed by "Amalaikum Salam". It's automatic. That is what they are supposed to say immediately. There is none of the options in response that one would have with English greeting "How are you?". No response came. Instead, there was an eerie silence as they just stood there, saying nothing.

Mind you, there is a certain irony about using a Moslem greeting at a store when the sole thing you have gone there for is to buy a half pint of booze, clearly forbidden by Islam.

As the regular clerk was processing my transaction, I noticed the new guy was actually physically backing away from the counter. Not only was he not responding to my comment, he seemed to be recoiling in horror. It was an extremely awkward moment, but I couldn't, by Allah, figure out what I had done wrong. The I saw what was printed on the new Eritrean guy's T-shirt.

There, in 5 inch high letters, reminisicent of those white message T-shirts made famous by the Wham! video in mid 80's, was emblazon on the guy's shirt, "MARY IS MY GOD". Beneath the words were a picture of the Virgin Mary holding a baby Jesus. Oh. That would explain it. (Never mind that the phrase itself violates the First Commandment, but who am I to judge).

It seemed to me an apology was in order. "I'm sorry, man," I said, "I came in here saying what I said, and now I see your shirt. My mistake."

"Yes," the new guy stepped forward, frantically pointing at the Virgin Mary, "I am not just a Christian, I am a CATH-O-LIC!!" He really did say each syllable distinctly and in allcaps. I slid out of there before I started another East African religious war.

Jasmine suggested a remove the artsy, wire, 3-foot-long cross thing that hangs in our bedroom and carry it down there, exclaiming, "Hail Mary full of grace!" the next time I go down to the QuikStop. At least I could buy alcohol without guilt, although a box of condoms would be suitably ironic. I think I'll just avoid trying to relate to the complicated international situation at the QuikStop for a while.

I now have a MySpace...uh...space

2006-08-04T00:20:00.000-07:00

I've heard a lot about this place called MySpace.com. Several people I know have pages on this online community. I thought I would join in. Click the link to the right to see the space. Like this blog, it's a lot more convenient to use than the creating of individual web pages with a page designer and then uploading all of the site's files onto an FTP space. Used to take me all day to put photos and text on the web. With MySpace, I can do it in minutes.

The Oakland A's

2006-08-03T07:03:00.000-07:00

My team is in first place going into the last two months of the season. I just have a feeling they're going to hold on this year and finally get back to the playoffs. Being an A's fan for the last 7 years has been a bittersweet experience. They've been good enough to win most of their games, even getting to the playoffs 4 straight years (2000-2003) and being in the hunt the last two, but being just good enough to keep fans from getting too frustrated for 6 months and then ending the season on a losing note is a gut wrenching experience. Every autumn, a little something in me dies when it comes to pass that this team you've watched every night for half a year is once again, not even going to come close to the World Series. Heck, I'd be happy with making the ALCS this year!

Let's Go Oak - Land! (clap clap clapclapclap)

sitemeter

2006-07-31T22:57:00.000-07:00

I found this service called Sitemeter at my wife's blog. I'm making this post to facilitate it's inclusion in my blog

The New Boss

2006-07-15T08:29:00.000-07:00

Over the last few months, I've had some important career decisions to make.... or not to make. I got an offer to leave the challenging world of sub-prime lending to be part of someone else's team in prime lending. The team manager position in a neighboring branch became available and was offered to me. The latter was tempting because it was a promotion instead of a step sideways, but I felt the commute would have been too long and the earning potential not really there. So in the end, I decided to do nothing. I decided to stay where I am. I spent 12 years with my last company, so I'm definitely not a job-hopper.

Another factor in my decision was that we were without a manager in my current position. I've held a "let's-wait-and-see" attitude about what was going to happen next. There is naturally a bit of trepidation when you're part of a business that isn't doing so well, corporate comes in a fires the person in charge and a new boss is installed. Conventional wisdom has it that the new boss being brought it is likely to be a hardnosed, standard-operating-procedures kind of guy who may be looking to clean house. Although I'm still not 100% convinced that the new manager, isn'tone of those types, all the evidence so for would seem to indicate he is pretty mellow. He's very effective, but not an ass-hole about it.

He is fighting for our loans, and that's a great thing. Even in just a week, he has had files pushed through that before would have gotten stuck in the mire of underwriting for days. In no way will the office have that warm, we're-all-one-big-office-family feel it had under the previous manager, who was very mom-like in her management style. Instead, if there is any family metaphor I can use, it's like we've got a big brother who is willing to go beat up bigger kids who mess with us. Right now, that's what we need.

Big brother also likes to have a good time, as we found out on Friday night.

Summer '06

2006-07-13T06:20:00.000-07:00

Two months since my last blogging... Too long!

I find that if I don't make entries here on a regular basis, a certain hesitancy arises. It's as if I only want to make an entry that is significant, something important enough to break the ice. I wait for something really interesting to happen, but even when it does, I don't always find time to write about it.

In the last two months, I've seen close friends get married, almost gotten lost at Castle Rock State Park, had high hopes at the job get dashed against the rocks once again, seen my boss get fired, had two months of a certian amount of freedom at work from being manager-less and now have replacement come in, and certainly not least of all, had many an interesting weekend and evening with my dear wife. Heck, I even ran into the Nomoska Kid as he was wheeling a handtruck full of paper cases out of a local print shop. Turns out he wasn't on vacation or working somewhere else in the QuikStop Empire. He'd quit! It's not exactly like searching for ancient ruins in Madagascar, but certainly some "blogworthy" events.

Well, maybe now that I've written something, anything, I'll be less reluctant to add to this worthwhile endeavor.

Nomoska Kid goes on Vacation.

2006-04-18T00:13:00.000-07:00

I've written before about the Nomoska Kid. Actually, I incorrectly pegged him as the Namasko Kid in previous posts on this blog. I simply remembered it incorrectly in my stories about JojoLapa and other joking I do with my neighborhood Nepalese QuikStop clerk. Suffice to say, it actually feels good to have a particular phrase I share with my bartender.... err coovenience store attendendant. Make a note of the new spelling; it is an informal version of the well-known Hindi word "Namaste".

I was shocked the other night when I went in there to find the Nomoska Kid gone from behind the counter, replaced by the general manager (an, I assume, Nepalese woman in her mid 40's) and some new guy. A trainee! As I have said before, I value my interaction with my local merchant. I expect to be greeted, recognized and conversed with considering the large sums of my hard-earned dollars I spend on overpriced convenience items at the corner store. I needed to find out what sort of chap this new purveyor of everyday necessities made himself out to be.

"Nomoska!" I belted.

The manager/owner/boss lady lady blinked at me and maintained her polite smile. I got the vibe I was being too familiar with an elder, likely married, female. Nomoska is probable something drinking buddies greet each other with. The trainee guy just looked at me blankly. I happened to notice he was of different ethnicity that the Nepalese proprietor.

"Where's the regular guy?" I asked.

"Ah," Boss Lady answered, "He's on vacation."

"Went back to Tibet, did he?" hoping, for my acquaintence's sake that he's had a chance to return home. He often expresses how homesick he is.

"Nepal," said the lady, "not Tibet."

I felt dumb. As you might gather from my ramblings, I'm a bit proud of my worldliness. My knowledge of multiculturalism is something I like to show off from time to time. I KNEW my friend the QuikStop guy was from Nepal; he taught me bits of his language! I just misspoke when I said Tibet. I was afraid I was looking like another ignorant White American, so I thought I would share what I could with my replacement merchant.

"Where are you from?" I asked the shy, thin, sandy-complexioned guy behind the counter as he bagged up my beer, chips and sunflower seeds.

"Africa" he replied.

"Ah, Eritrea?" I ventured.

"Yes." He said kind of suprisedly, and finally looked up and almost made eye contact.

"Wassalamu Alaikum," I used the Arabic greeting, which although is not Eritrean, is known and used by Moslems throughout the world. Eritrea is Moslem.

"Amalaikum Salam." The standard reply to my greeting (I have no idea how to spell those words, or even if there is an official spelling). Again, being new, the guy was a bit shy, but he did ask in a very quiet voice, perhaps curious about me, "How did you know I am from Eritrea?"

"You look Eritrean." Well, he did. He could have been Ethiopian as well, but Eritreans tend to be a bit lighter than their highland Christian cousins, and also there are more Eritreans here in the East Bay. I just made an educated guess.

"Ah, yes." the guy replied, nodding his head, and handing me my merchandise. The Indian manager lady smiled broadly through the whole exchange.

As we welcome people here from all over the world, for those we deal with every day, I think it is important to learn a little bit about where they've come from. A word. A bit of their culture. Something. They chose to come here (in most cases) and simply have to learn about our culture to survive. I like to help them out by learning a bit about their homelands.

World Baseball Classic

2006-03-11T07:51:00.000-08:00

So far, I've only watched one game (US v Mexico) of the World Baseball Classic, but now that we're moving on to the 2nd round, I'm starting to find this intriguing. It's now down from 16 to 8 teams: USA, Mexico, Japan and S. Korea in one group. Cuba, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic in another group. They're playing another round robin, and the top two teams form each group move on to a single elimination playoff.

I checked out the rosters of some of the other teams, looking for current and former Oakland A's players. Wow. There are some great players in this tournament. Of course I want the USA to win, but looking at some of these other teams, there's a very good chance we won't. We lost to Canada already!

The Mexican team has some great pitching, including current A's starter Esteban Loiza. They've get Ricardo Rincon in the bullpen and after 5 years of watching him be mediocre for the A's, I wouldn't be surprised if he blew a game for Mexico.

Marco Scutaro and Ramon Hernandez join a very talented Venezuelan team. If it all comes down to one game, their best pitcher is arguably the best pitcher in baseball right now, Johan Santana. Still, it is baseball, and even the best pitcher can have a bad day.

The Dominican team looks like an all-star team. With Miguel Tejada, Vladimir Guerrero, David Ortiz, Albert Pujols and Alfonso Soriano, these guys will socre lots of runs. I think they have some holes in their team, but if I had to bet who would win it all, my money would be on the Dominicans.

Confusing Graffitti

2006-02-26T07:07:00.000-08:00

"IT TAKES A LOT TO LAUGH...
IT TAKES A TRAIN TO CRY."

The two lines above have recently been spraypainted on a wall at Live Oak Park in Berkeley,CA. I saw it there yesterday when I went to go play basketball. I really have no idea what it means. Any ideas? Please comment.

Stuck in an Elevator Shaft

2006-02-08T19:47:00.000-08:00

Tonight marks the first night I've done laundry since the Great Elevator Shaft debacle. I have enough clothes to avoid doing laundry for quite some time. It's been maybe 9 or 10 days since there have been any clean clothes added to the garment reserve. The impetus to finally lug the loads of laundry the three fllights of stairs down to the sole coin-op Maytag Dependable Care topload washing machine was having to wear the same underwear two days in a row. Enough said.

Last time I did laundry, I had just finished doing some grocery shopping (yes, I am an excellent domestic husband). At the store, I had bought a fifth of Irish Whiskey. My wife and I do not drink wine. I like beer, but it's really fattening. The thing about Irish whiskey though, is that once you start drinking it, it just gets better and better. Consequently, we like to ration ourselves to those little pint bottles you can buy at the liqour stores. Keeps us from getting in too much trouble. They don't sell those small bottles at our local Albertsons supermarket.

I stood there, loading the laundry into the machine, thinking about the fifth on the kitchen counter. I started thinking about drunken laundry. What could go wrong? I don't see any PSA's warning against getting sauced while sorting, carrying or washing clothes. No one says Don't Drink and Do Laundry. There are no Mothers Against Laundering Drunk. Amused and confident I avoided the stairs going back up by using our 50 year old elevator.

On the next trip, I was carrying a load of dry clothes back upstairs. I was wearing my pajama bottoms, which have no pockets. I need my keys to navigate the doors of our apartment complex, and perhaps a little drunkenly, while both hands were in use carrying the basket, I decided to tuck my keys over the elastic in the pajama pants. I'd done this before, and it works. When the elevator got to my level, I leaned forward to manually push open the outer door of the elevator.

Plop! There went my keys, out of the elastic waistband. They actually bounced but yet they kept skidding forward. There was this one tantalizing moment where I had just and instant to decide if I could prevent them from that fatal plunge. I hesitated. A critical mass of my keys crossed into that little crack between the elevator floor and the floor outside and they were gone. Gone into that inaccessible abyss of the elevator shaft. There was a pause, and then I heard the crash of keys falling from very high up.

Damn. Nothing can go wrong drunken washing... yeah right.

Professional Dilemma

2005-12-11T08:13:00.000-08:00

I want to preface this post with a disclaimer. It features embarassing acts from corporate higher-ups, and although I'm certain none of the parties involved are currently reading my blog, who knows whether they might stumble across it in the future. To them, I have to say, "this is funny!" I recognize that as a general rule, it's not wise to relate embarassing stories about one's bosses in a public forum, but given that it's only personally embarassing and not in any way reflective of anyone's professional abilities, there should be no repercussion beyond a little snicker.

We were returning from a successful presentation some 25 miles from our home branch. I was driving, my boss sat in the passenger's seat, and her boss, the regional vice president, sat in the back. Both of the women in my car were perhaps 10 years my senior. As we zipped down the freeway, the three of us had a lively discussion about the business challenges facing our particular team. I was trying to be insightful, and did actually come up with a proposed change to one of our standard operating procedures that both women affirmed was a good idea. It was the kind of change that could only be implemented by executives higher than the vice president, so it wasn't like we were about to start doing it immediately. In any case, I was successfuly impressing my boss and my boss's boss. Although shmoozing has never been my strongest suit, I do recognize the overall importance of being well regarded within any corporate structure.

Then it happened. Looking back, I realize now as I'm typing this, that it might have been the sewage treatment plant under the big highway interchange we had crossed a couple miles before that moment, but that doesn't change the dilemma I thought I was facing. A horrible smell filled the interior of my sedan. One of the two women in my car had farted. It was nasty too. Of course, the windows were all the way up. We were going 75 mph and it was cold outside to boot. Whichever one did it, I thought, knows she did it. Dare I crack the window?

Then it occurred to me that the whichever boss hadn't farted, probably was crinkling her her nose at ME right then. I was the man in the car, and well, men are men. An awkward silence hung in the air with yet-to-dissapate odor. I picked up a thread in our discussion and just started rambling, hoping to distract everybody. I couldn't crack the window. That would be tantamount to blurting out loudly, "Aww man! Who cut the cheese!?"

What do you do in that situation? Maybe I could turn up the fan a little. Nah. That's a little obvious too. Just pretend it didn't happen. Okay. The fart finally faded as farts always do.

As we pulled into the office parking lot, I was stil grateful to be able to roll down the window to use my key card.

I wonder how it would have been different had I been travelling with two men, as is more often the case when talking about upper management in the mortgage industry.

Fighting a Ticket

2005-11-29T19:39:00.000-08:00

Back in August, I was on my way to work. It was 7:30 AM, no rain, traffic was light, and I was heading north on Lakeshore Avenue, a road I travel on every day and have for the last 5 years. Right in front of the Catholic Church, a motorcycle cop on foot steps out into the road, points at me and then points to the side of the road, obviously instructing me to pull over. I comply and the cop approaches my window, asks for drivers' license and registration and says, "I'll tell you why I pulled you over in a second."

I was confused. My car was in perfect shape; I wasn't doing anything wrong. A minute later, he returns and asks if I knew how fast I was going. I wasn't going particularly fast. Maybe 35 mph, the same speed I always travel, and certainly the same speed everyone else travels on that road and so I tell him. Lakeshore is a major artery connecting two busy parts of town. It's got two lanes of traffic going either way and 3 stop lights on a stretch that's at least a mile or so.

"Well," the cop tells me, "The speed limit here is 25 mph. You're getting a ticket."

I was very annoyed. Who gets a ticket for doing 35 in a 25? That's just ridiculous. I didn't know the speed limit was 25. The next section of that same road has a speed limit of 30. That I knew; I had seen the sign before. Grand Avenue, a similar type of connecting street just a block away also had a speed limit of 30. I couldn't recall seeing any 25 mph speed limit signs on Lakeshore. When I returned home, I looked, and there were no speed limit signs from where I turned onto Lakeshore to the spot I got the ticket. That decided it. I was fighting this ticket!

Having no idea if the lack of signing was a legitimate defense, I turned to Google and found all kinds of interesting sites explaining how to beat a ticket. Friends and co-workers offered advice. My favorite was go into court, and if you see the cop who cited you, ask for a continuance (I later discovered that was not possible in Oakland as they require 7 day notice for continuance requests). If you got ticketed in the day, ask for night court and visa versa, thus redcuing the likelihood your cop will show up. Still, I couldn't find anything specific regarding placement of signs except that if it's a residential street, the de facto speed limit is 25 if there are no signs. Hmmm... I didn't know about this.

I took pictures. I printed out MapQuest maps and included legends as to the speed limits of surrounding streets. I was going to ask for the ticket to be thrown out "in the interest of justice." I went to the first court date prepared to make my defense only to discover that it was just an arraigment and they wouldn't hear arguments. If I pleaded not guilty, I would be inelligible for traffic school if I lost a trial. I was risking not just the $75 of the ticket, but possibly hundreds in car insurance rates. I knew this was a bad ticket; I decided to take my chance in court.

A month passed. My intention was to do even more research, take more comprehensive pictures and obtain the "speed survey" for the street in question. I learned early in the process that if RADAR was used to determine your speed, then there must be a valid speed survey on file that justifies the posted speed limit on that road. Well, I've been kinda busy. I didn't take pictures, didn't get the speed survey and started my additional research an hour before I was planning on leaving for court this morning. The 20 minutes I spent on the Internet this morning was extremely valuable. In my notes, I recorded the California Vehicle Code sections that required the speed survey. I learned about some interesting case law which had decided that if a speed limit sign is posted that makes the majority of the vehicles on the road into violators, the speed limit is invalid. I wasn't as prepared as I might of been, but I still felt good about my very first appearance as a defendant professing my innocence in a court of law. I did spend two and half semesters in one of the finest law schools in the state.

When I sat down in the courtroom, I didn't see the cop who thad ticketed me. In a way, I was bummed, because I didn't want to win that way. I wanted to present may case! The cop walked in at 8:35, five minutes late. I guess the clerk knew who was there and who wasn't. The first three cases were dismissed becasue the ticketing officer wasn't there. The next three cases were pretty much automatic convictions becasue the cop was there, but the defendants weren't. I was the first case to be heard where all parties were present. I strode up in front of the bench. There were two tables on either side of the aisle, but despite years and years of watching Law and Order, The Practice, Boston Legal, etc., I couldn't remember which side the defendant sat at. They pointed me to the right table and the cop took the stand.

I was preparing my cross examination in my head. My key was to ask for the speed survey. If that didn't work, I was going to use my pictures (having hastily scribbled "Exhibit "A", "B" and "C" on them just moments before). I thought maybe if I took on a southern accent, they might think I was more Matlockian, and I'd stand a better chance. "Yohh Honahh, I would laik to ask the officah just HOW he chose tha pahticular spot to set up his illegah speed trap..."

I never got the chance. The judge asked the officer to relate the particulars of my infraction, but the cop looked kind of sheepish and began mumbling. Seriously, the guy spoke so quietly that no one in the court could hear exactly what he was saying except the judge. All I caught were "no speed survey" and "if it pleases the court, we'd ask the charges be dropped." The cop looked up at me looking surprisingly embarassed and remorseful. Aha! No speed survey! My plan would have worked. The judge declared "Violation dismissed!" I guess traffic court can't afford gavels or something, because the judge not only didn't rap it, he didn't even have one.

Of course, I was happy. I beat my ticket. In a way, however, it was almost like the cop not even showing up. There was no trial per se, just a dismissal. Still, that embarassed look on the cop's face made it all worthwhile.

I was not the only driver stopped in front of the church that morning. I saw some leaving just after I was stopped, and the cop undoubtedly ticketed lots of other drivers after I left. A few mornings after it occured, I saw the same cop, now joined by another cop, using the same tactics in the same spot. How many of them faught their tickets? Few if any. I'm sure the vast majority simply paid the fine. I feel good for myself in that I saved myself a smirch on my driving record. I feel bad for those who just paid their tickets. At least I know that embarassed cop won't stand in front of the church and despoil the diocese by issuing illegal tickets any more.

Honesty

2005-11-23T06:20:00.000-08:00

Although some consider it gauche to talk about one's own pay, something happened last week that I feel deserves mentioning. I don't intend to laud my own actions nor that of the company I work for, instead this story demonstrates how when you do the right thing, sometimes the universe looks after you.

First the bad part. In my division, if you originate a loan that has a pricing discount on it that has not been signed off on by corporate, you get paid maybe 1/10th of the ordinary commission. Given that the bonus part of my monthly check is by far the lion's share, an unauthorized pricing exception can devastate a month. Worse yet, the branch you work for gets hit with a huge penalty, drawing the ire of the boss. There are some systems in place to spot pricing exceptions in time to get them authorized, but the reports and such are flawed in that they don't indicate precisely what the nature of the discrepancy is. Even if the pricing is authorized, if there is even the slightest error in the extensive form by which one requests an authorization, the loan officer takes the hit. In one way, it is an understandable policy to prevent wild discounts, but still, given that one could lose a very substantial chink of pay each month, I think it's overly punitive.

In October, I originated 5 loans, and had the credit for a 6th given to me for winning an internal contest. Of those six, I thought everything was fine and and authorized. They had funded, and I was expecting the biggest check I've received so far. The boss comes out last week, and announces that of those 6 loans, 2 were showing unauthorized pricing exceptions. One of them was on the one that I had been given; I had no role in how that loan was handled. On the other, I was sure my pricing was right. 3 or 4 times I had checked it. Yeah, my pricing was correct, but on the form under which I had I received my authorization, there was one little error. The margin was off by .25%. The rate points and terms were correct, just a miniscule little difference in an aspect that won't even effect how the company makes a profit. The borrower will likely refinance during the fixed period, and the margin won't ever even kick in. The other error on my gift loan was a small discrepancy in the property type. I any case, I stood to lose 1/3 of my paycheck.

Another loan officer was facing the same situation, and she really went off. Threatening to quit, writing missives to the regional vice president, she challenged the policy, and it was said "we'll see what can be done." Well, it got done, My boss and the VP did their thing and I found out yesterday I still get paid. But that's not the point of the story...

After we found out about the unauthorized pricing exception, but before I found for sure if I'd still get paid, I noticed on my commission report that I was being overpayed on another loan. I was receiving extra commission because of an error on the company's part in how they looked at the loan. On that particular loan, I was making $1200 too much. Nice chunk of change, but still a lot less than what I was losing because of the other issue. Still, given that the boss was trying to do something for me, I couldn't just sit there are not report the error. I walked it in to her office, pointed out the mistake, and left the branch to go out into the field.

A few hours later when I return, the boss calls me into her office with "big news". She read me her e-mail thread where she had reported the overpay. Senior VPs in HR were part of the conversation, and when it was all said and done, they rewarded me for my honesty by letting me keep the extra $1200 that I was overpaid.... and again I don't get hit for the penalty on the other loans. Nice.

That being said, don't think the loan business is some gold mine. In November, I have originated 1 loan for a whopping $300 commission, and that's going to be my whole check.

Second Wedding Anniversary

2005-10-23T06:45:00.000-07:00

For those of you haven't yet the opportunity to read my dear wife's account of our recent trip, please click here to visit "Jasiland". The bulk of the photos we chose to be net-worthy are on her page, and what I want to write here is just an addendum.

Above is my attempt a panorama shot. Anyone who has a digital camera has, at one time or another, takens several pictures and try to piece them together with an editing program. It really sucks when you don't frame it right and you end up with slices missing from you panorama. The shot above suffers from the opposite: too much overlap.

One of the amusing and original aspects of m'lady's
first post on her blog is that she never names the location of our weekend getaway.

No mention of the luxurious cliffside hotel suite I booked at the last minute. No mention of the harrowing drve through scenic forests and mountains we took to get there. She brought her town with her, and I agree, Jasiland is a town that no matter where I am, I love being there. I'm still dying to tell everyone where these pics come from. Those of you who've been there might recognize some of it. For those who haven't, go. Where? Again, I'm not going to say. It's such an amazing place. Using the vernacular of the time, I think it was original said to be that "Men Do' See No mo' nicer spot than this".

Walking around the cliffs will take your breath away. We found out it can be kind of dangerous too. California being the litigious place it is, there are many many signs to remind the hiker to watch his or her step. There are no railings protecting you from the 60 foot drop to the rocky shoreline below. Ironically, it was that at the trail head that someone sprained her ankle turning to read one of these signs.

It was sore for a couple of days, but she's okay now.

I thought it might have been this dangerous aspect to the place that lead them to put the Grim Reaper atop their church spire, but the wife insists that it isn't the "Grim" reaper in this photo, just an ordinary reaper, maybe even a "happy" reaper. I don't know. If I am pumping water, I do not want some guy with a scythe sneaking up behind me, even if he has wings.

When I was taking pictures with wil abandon, I began a theme. I tried to take a picture of every animal I came across. The coast has lots of intresting (and not so interesting) creatures crawling, walking and digging around it. Here are just a few.

We had a great time on our weekend getaway. We both needed some time to relax, enjoy nature, and fight about whose turn it is to take the next picture.

The trip was much better than our First Anniversary trip which I wrote about on this blog a year ago. October 2004 archive

Tricky Gas Station

2005-10-21T06:13:00.000-07:00

Boycott Arco gas stations!!! Do not patron these corporate thieves!

What did they do this time, you ask. Is it their rapacious desire to despoil pristine habitats from Alaska to Argentina? Could it be how their interests are being served in our illegal war in Iraq? There are lots of "big" issues we could hang on all the oil companies. I don't know if Arco is particularly guilty of any of them, but I am calling for a boycott because they tricked me out of at least a half a gallon of gas!

I pulled into the Arco on University Avenue in Berkeley because I saw a lower price on their sign, $2.85 for mid grade, than I had seen at other local stations. After stopping, I noticed the sign said "cash price"; if your used a credit or ATM card, it was 1o cents per gallon more. It is already bad enough that with my new car I have vowed to only feed it the more expensive 89 octane mid-grade gas. I had a twenty dollar bill in my wallet; it was worth it to burn up my last remaining cash, even though at today's prices, that $20 wouldn't fill my whole tank.

My first problem was that I had encountered the slowest flowing gas pump I have ever run into. It is hard to quantify, but I'd guess it took at least twice, maybe three times as long per gallon for this newish-looking pump to do it's thing. At first I thought it might be some ploy by Arco to make it seem like their gas was less expensive. When filling your tank with today's gas, it can be depressing to watch the dollars and cents numbers zoom upwards while the gallons indicater spins at the speed it always has. On this slow pumping Arco machine, the amount I was paying crept comfortably slower towards twenty, as if the gas was at 1985 prices. I later concluded that I just had a bad pump when I saw other customers come and go more quickly.

With all this time on my hands, I noticed the price it showed on the pump was the credit price, not the ten cent discounted price I had earned by giving up my last Jackson. Maybe it was actually charging me a lower price, but just not indicating that on the pump display. How many gallons should I expect for my $20? I'm usually pretty good with math, but it took me a while to figure 2.8599X=20, X=20/2.8599, X=number of gallons I should get. My mind was somewhat numb after just playing 4 straight hours of rigorous basketball. No way to do that without calculator or at least pen and paper. When it finished, I was very confident that it seemed like too little, so I marched with my receipt to confront the attendant.

"Excuse me," I began, "I paid $20 cash, and my receipt shows $2.95 per gallon. That is the credit price." I knew something was wrong here, but I wasn't sure how I expected the guy to fix it.

"Are you sure you gave me cash?" he answered suspiciously. Oh, man, wrong move on his part. With the rough summer I had financially, I KNOW when I'm giving up my last twenty. I was now certain he'd made a mistake. After he reviewed the receipt some more he continued, "Ah, sir, you are being charged for the Premium gas. That's priced $2.95 per gallon."

"But I paid cash!"

"Correct, sir."

"Well?"

"You chose Premium." There has never been any standard by which the oil companies name their different grades of products. By the name alone, no one can tell what super, premium, super plus, performance plus, platinum plus or super premium performance enhancing plus mean. I was starting to catch on that the guy was telling me I had picked 91 octane gas instead of 89 octane.

"I pushed the middle button!" thinking that the slow poke pump had malfunctioned in another way, "I wanted the mid-grade! I pushed the middle button!"

"Go, sir, please go look at the pumps," he concluded, actually waving me off with this hand. I went and looked.

I wrote there has never been any consistency in how they name these levels of gas. One thing that has always been the same is the order they're placed on a pump where you push a button to choose your grade. From left to right, like one is reading, cheap stuff, mid grade, premium. The mid grade is ALWAYS in the middle. Not at Arco. I was aghast to see the 89 octane on the left, the 91 in the middle and the 87 at the far right. He was right, I had picked the premium.

Stepping back into the attendant's hut I exclaimed, "No one does it like that! Why do you guys DO that?" I just asked to make myself feel better. As expected, the attendant just smiled and shrugged.

I know why. Some freekin corporate marketing exec sitting in a room, trying to figure out a way to improve sales of their mid grade and premium gas, which I'm sure less people are using now that it's often $3/gal or more. Rearrange the established pattern of placement on the pumps, and just like when people read, their eyes will pass over the mid and premium before coming to the regular stuff at the end. It's basic merchandising; but it breaks a standard operating procedure that we consumers have gotten used to for 10 years or more. I'm sure I'm not the only guy whose has just pushed the button he normally pushes without reading. How about the guy with the high performance motorcycle or sportscar engine who needs that 91 octane stuff? If he just picked the rightmost button like he normally did, he'd be filling his tank with 87 octane which could damage his engine. At least I only got gypped out of indeterminate amount of gas.

Boycott Arco? I know I'm supposed to boycott Unocal 76 because of what they've done in Burma. Chevron/Texaco ain't exactly been the paragon of corporate virtue either, but like most Americans, I'm most likely to go to the station that has the lowest prices. Even if it was Saddam's Oil Change, Rape Rooms and Filling Station, if they were 6 cents cheaper than the place across the street, I'd go there. I'll go to Arco again, no doubt, just not that pump, and trust me, I WILL be reading the buttons from here on in.

File Drama

2005-10-14T05:51:00.000-07:00

I just finished up doing a loan for a lady who probably didn't "deserve" to be able to buy a place. It is one I'm going to wonder about for years. I'm going to wonder if I've done the right thing. I'm going to wonder if she'll be able to afford the mortgage, property taxes and all the other expenses that go along with owning a home. At the same time, she is now among the landed classes, something that with equity growth, could secure her future forever. She makes $20/hr, and she owns her own home, something that would normally be unheard of in the Bay Area. Well, in a way, we own her home, as she received 100% financing. The sellers contributed $12000 from the sales price to cover the closing costs. She had a thousand dollar deposit, and was expected to come to the table with about another thousand. If you've got two grand and can buy a $315,000 condo, you've got a great loan officer.

I didn't "state" her income higher than it actually was. I didn't gouge her on the rate (not that I could). It was a good loan, using full documentation, on a relatively inexpensive property. My concern is that she faught me and her realtor every step of the way while we were trying to do something for her. She would send me bank statements with the account numbers whited out. Every document I asked for (and there are lots needed when asking for a mortgage) was greeted with, "Why do you need that? I don't think you need that". I'm sure there was no fraud here; I did get everything I was asking for eventually, it was just her attitude. I was helping her fulfill the American Dream, and she acted like I was forcing her to do so. Two days ago, she went to her final signing, but she needed another $1400 in a cashier's check. She didn't bring it. They let her sign anyway, but they won't record with the county until that money is received. Yesterday, I got a call.

"Gil, I don't think I can go through with this loan," she said.

"What? Why not?" My stomach churned. I had put hours and hours of work in with this lady, going back to the beginning of August. I saw it falling apart, but in a way, I was almost grateful. I imagine a marathon runner is relieved at that exact moment he collapases, unable to continue, within sight of the finish line. The runner will regret it later, but at the moment, there is relief.

"They took my car."

"Who took your car?"

"The car lot. I fell behind on my payments so I could have this money for a down payment, and now they took my car. I need the money to get the car back."

"Wow." I was shocked. I didn't know what to say, but once again, she was being wishy washy.
Mind you, I had already beat up my boss twice to get pricing concessions on this loan so that she could come to the table with almost nothing. There was no room to budge. Heck, the loan had already funded; we were just waiting to record. Still, in my short time as a loan officer, I've never had anyone try to back out of a purchase after they've signed docs. I didn't know if she even could back out at this point. I told her I would check on her options and call her back. After talking to the experts at my office, I learned that obviously, we can't force her to come up with the relatively small down payment. If she never paid it, the transfer would never record, and everything would just rescind.

My phone rang. It was her realtor. Of course, the realtor was panicing. She said she had heard a message from the buyer, stating what had happened, but all her attempts to call her back had not been answered. From what she'd shared, our buyer had the same distant, cold relationship with the realtor as she had with me. Even then, the realtor offered to loan the buyer the money to close the deal so she could get her car back. The realtor asked me if I thought she was doing the right thing. She asking me? At this point, all my doubts about my buyer's ability to handle this place came to a head, and I said "no". I told the realtor, that no, I wouldn't do it, but I am not her. She needs to decide whether to risk her own funds on this lady. At the same time, I recognized that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity for the buyer, and she shouldn't back out thinking she could get this deal again sometime in the future. She barely qualified for this place as it was, and although the skyrocketing ascent of property values here in California have leveled off a bit, there is no way she'd ever be able to find a condo at this price again, particularly considering the great loan I put together for her and the concessions being made by the seller. Furthermore, although I couldn't share the specifics of her credit report with the realtor, I knew that once this repossession of her car hit the credit bureaus, it would be years and years before her already marginal credit would have recovered to the point where a lender would even consider doing a loan. All this, and the buyer wouldn't return the realtors calls.

After hours of pleading voice messages from both of us, the buyer finally agreed to let the realtor do her the favor. I told her the cold hard facts outlined above. The realtor used a different strategy. She told the buyer that if God puts someone in your life who is willing to help you, one needs to recognize that and not refuse the help. I will let the cynics come to their own conclusion about that, but as a theological determinist, I would agree with that statement in principal. My only question is are we really helping this lady?

Jojo Lapa follow up

2005-10-06T19:52:00.000-07:00

More on the goofy Quik Stop guy.... It would help if you've already read the post from a few weeks ago entitled "JoJo Lapa." If not, see the links below and to the right.

Soon after my great bonding experience with the Nepalese kid who works at the QuikStop down the hill, I went in again and exclaimed "Jojo Lapa!". He kind of frowned and looked away and responded half-heartedly, "jo jo la pa." Then, in all seriousness, he added, "You see, my people don't say 'jojo lapa'. The people on the other other side of the mountains, they say jojolapa. My people say something different."

"Namaste?" I inquired, knowing that to be the formal way in Hindi to say hello.

"Ah, yes, but more commonly, 'Namasko'", he replied.

Now, of course, whenever I go in, we exchange hearty namasko's.

Tonight when I walked in to buy my nightly can of beer, Metallica's Master of Puppets was playing rather loudly on the radio behind the register. Namasko kid noticed my enthusiasm for the music and asked if I liked it. Metallica is, of course, one of my favorite bands and an important part of my personal musical development. I told him I liked it without really revealing exactly how significant it was to me.

Namasko Kid began a monologue (much to the dismay of the next guy in line) on how he had felt Metallica to be the most significant musical group to come along in recent history, surpassed only in its impact by Nirvana. He told me how strongly he had been influenced by Metallica which made the arrival of Nirvana and the whole Seattle sound somewhat surprising yet that much more profound. Wow. I had taken this guy to be at least 10 years my junior, but from the timeline he was describing, he has to be near my age. Even stranger was that this is exactly how I feel about how my musical tastes devloped and evolved between the years 1986 and 1995. I was tired after a long day at work and just wanted to get home, but I really have to talk to this guy more about music; his tastes and opinions parallel mine.

Speaking of the next guy in line, his conversation with Namasko Kid demonstrates another thing I'd talked about in the first JoJo Lapa post, namely that the guy has a knack for making his patrons feel uncomfortable. I had my single can of Colt 45 on the counter, and the guy behind me notes, "Colt 45, good beer!" He had a bottle of Miler High Life. I should mention that I've seen the guy a million times in the QuikStop, and he me. He is one of our neighborhood drunks, although for me, thats a bit like we kettles calling you pots black. In any case, the old alcoholic black guy turns to the Namasko Kid and says, "he's buying a beer! How come you don't tell him he's always buying beer?!" I was on my way out at that point, but I started to hear the guy complaining that Namasko Kid told him he was always buying beer, and he didn't like that. If you're the neighborhood equivalent of a retail bartender, it's not a good idea to be pointing out to your regular customers that they're a lot of drunks. If we weren't too sodden to drive elsewhere, we might take our business to another convenience store.

Namasko!

San Francisco

2005-09-28T19:40:00.001-07:00

Would Herb Caen have been as good a journalist if he was assigned to write about say, Sacramento or Duluth or Knoxville? There is a spirit to "The City" that inspires one to observe, reflect and report in a way that no other city I have ever been in can. It does take patience and time. Certainly thousands of people, residents and visitors alike, simply pass through or go about their daily business without pausing to absorb the goings on in San Francisco. It is a nice city to drive around, but to really see it, you have to be on foot. Being stationary is even better.

I had the chance on Monday to sit in one of the weirdest spots in SF for a good 30 minutes, and just being there inspires me to make one of my infrequent blog entries. I was leaving the SF Countrywide branch at Van Ness and McAllister, and I decided it was time for a long overdue haircut. Things are picking up for me in my new career, but right now, I am on a rather austere budget. I remembered a hair cut I had back when I was in a similarly tight financial circumstance while living in SF in the late 90's. There was this little Chinese lady who had a barber shop on Market Street who charged a remarkably frugal $5 for a trim. The problem was I couldn't remember where on Market it was. I trudged down to Van Ness and Market to pull $20 out of the ATM I knew was there. Standing there idly "guarding" the B of A was one of SF's Finest.

"Excuse me," I asked the beat cop, "Do you know Market Street pretty well?"

He looked at me mildly scornfully which seemed to communicate something like I was stupid for asking such a question, and grunted a "yeah..."

I related the story of the Chinese lady barber. I refrained from adding the details about how I asked her to give me a haircut like George Clooney (it was the late 90's), and she looked at me in bewilderment and answered "Gaj Crooney? Who he?". The cop had no recollection of a cheap Chinese barber on Market.

He pointed to the east and said, "Now, if you go down to Sixth Street, there's this place..." he paused and looked me up and down. I was wearing my usual worn-out-from-too-many-years-working-in-a-department-store business attire and continued, "...but you don't want to go down Sixth Street." Apparently, the cop had judged my streetwiseness on the conservative side and decided 6th was too dangerous for me. I know the SoMa area can be little rough, but I lived for two years in the Tenderloin. I know how to handle the streets of San Francisco just as well as Michael Douglas. I found it a little amusing that there were areas of Downtown that even the cops won't send people. I think the 6th Street merchants might be a little peeved by that. "There is this Fillipino lady on 7th Street," the cop continued, "right there next to the check cashing place, she's got a little shop. That might be what you were thinking of." I thanked him and wandered the four blocks down market to 7th.

Check cashing places, which also offer things like Payday loans and money orders, thirve in the ghetto. Naturally, folks in and around such places are folks who aren't likely to have a bank account. I weaved my way through the small crowd of inner city dwellers surrounding the check cashing establishment and entered the barber shop. It was 5:30. Thousands of guys in a half mile radius were getting off work. I thought for sure I'd have to wait, but no, I was the only guy in the place other than the little Filipino grandma who looked like she could have cut hair at Corregidor in 1942. It was much like any other barber shop on the inside. Magazines, cyllindrical containers of blue liquid with combs inside, and the faint smell of hair clipper oil. On one wall, an apparently hand made collage of magazine pictures of hairstyles like I had seen many times before in other barber shops. How they could all be handmade and still be so similar is beyond me. All of the hair styles in the pictures would have been all the mode in 1983. Deciding I didn't want to look like Ralph Macchio, I flopped down in the barber chair, and said, "I need a haircut."

I felt so sorry for the ancient barber lady as she kept having to lift her arms to a level even with her head as she cut my hair. Couldn't she have lowered the chair or something like that? Another thing that was weird is that it was the first "dry" haricut I had had in 10 years at least. She didn't do the spraying of the hair with water that seems to be the standard operating procedure of all other barbers. Instead, she cut my hair dry, with what to me seemed like rather dull scissors.

Oddest of all were all the strange people walking by, some even sticking their heads in the otherwise empty barber shop. The traffic noise was loud, so it makes sense that people talking on the street would need to speak up to be heard. The majority of people who were talking loudly as they passed by the 7th Street barbers were not talking to someone else, but to themselves. If you're talking to yourself, is it really that hard to hear even on the busiest of streets? I surmised that although most of the individuals were not talking to anyone else, they still wanted to be heard.

7th and Market has quite a bit of irregular commerce going on. One guy walked into the shop with a plastic bag and asked if anyone (I guess he meant me or the barber lady) wanted to buy a set of computer speakers. Another lady politely asked if the proprietor or myself would be willing to exchange her five dollars in quarters for a single bill (as I write this, I am in dire need of quarters to do my laundry, so I wish now I'd taken her up on her offer). A big argument broke out in front of the barber shop between a guy selling packs of Marlboros loose out of a sack and another man with a peculiar accent. The latter simply would not accept the idea that although he could buy two packs for $5, that one pack would cost him $3, not $2.50. He seemed mildly enraged that this street hawk would be seemingly cheating people that way. Last I checked, I think a pack of Marlboro's will run $4.50 or so in a regular store.

If I seem derisive of the economically challenged San Franciscans, I don't mean to be harsh. I could spend another blog entry making sarcastic observations about the lawyers, executives and other professionals found in the Financial District just a few blocks away. Before I got this current job and was late for a meeting, I never understood why the majority of these folks would always briskly climb an upward moving escalator. I mean, the point of an escalaltor is to save labor, not time.

I suppose if you take the time to notice, we all seem foolish in one way or another; San Francisco inspires me to notice.

McKenna's Horsey

2005-09-07T20:44:00.000-07:00

http://johndeeregirl11.blogspot.com/

Check out this blog. I wandered into it because I saw it was written by someone named "McKenna" my family name (2 generations ago).

I thought it was wonderfully kitschy. Goofy. Ironic. It features a whole series of silly photos of a stuffed animal telling a tragic, yet classic story. I liked it a lot. It reminded me of BatGirl's blog, a Minnesota Twins fans who uses children's action figures to depict stories from the world of baseball.

Then I checked the profile of the author...

When an adult uses kid's toys to tell a story, it's kitschy. That's what I assumed the blog was. Actually, the author is an 11 year old kid. McKenna is now a popular girl's first name, so I was likely misunderstanding any surname connection as well. It puts a different spin on the blog from my perspective, but it is still highly creative in and of itself.

Music Time

2005-09-07T19:20:00.000-07:00

I cry in my car. That may make me sound like one of these super-sensitive post-modern men who strives to take ownership of his emotions. Think what you like, but perhaps because I'm oftentimes not all that at one with my feelings that with the right stimulus, my emotions overcome me. I mean, even a particularly touching TV commercial can make me misty-eyed. I've always been that way, but it's always required some external media influence to let me feel what I do.

In the car, it's my music. Right now, System of a Down Toxicity is in my CD player. Track 7, Chop Suey! played really really loudly causes the tears to flow. If you don't recall the title, you might remember the lyrics Why did you leave the keys up on the table? 'Cause you wanted to..." or "...trust in my self-righteous suicide...". System of a Down is an amazing band out of Fresno that mixes the hard core metal rhythms and guitars I've always loved with a melodic sophistication and poignant, often politcal lyrics. They're Metallica meets Linkin Park meets left-wing protest band. My wife bought me their new CD. I like it, but Toxicity remains my favorite.

Listening to really loud music is my favorite thing about my new car. It's got a kick ass stereo sytem, and cars really have incredible accoustics. I can sing along as loud as I want (if I'm alone) and no one minds. I'll often gesticulate wildly while singing, which gets me strange looks from pedestrians or other drivers. It's truly a time to unwind and be at one with an art form. Again, getting in touch with the art helps me get in touch with myself and my emotions, and hence the occasional tear.

Jo-Jo Lapa

2005-09-05T07:48:00.000-07:00

The Quik Stop market a block away from my home has changed ownership four times in the five years I've lived in this neighborhood. Usually, with each new owner, family members are installed behind the counter. I see the evening clerks several times a week, as I stop in to buy milk, beer or whatever. Sometimes, I'll learn their names, or if not, a little bit about where they're from.

About a month ago, the Quik Stop changed hands again, and a new family took over running the place. The evening clerk is a goofy character. Skinny and tall, he looks about 22 years old. Buck teeth, a big adam's apple, a Nepalese accent and somewhat of a naive "FOB" demeanor distinguishes him from other clerks who've held his position. He hasn't really endeared himself to our neighborhood like some of the other clerks have. I don't think he's mastered the basics of cashiering at an urban convenience store. For example, I've come up with half a dozen items, paid for them, and then have him look at me and ask, "do you want a bag?" Of course I want a bag! I've heard him ask people who've come up to the counter with a six pack of beer, "back already?" I may be projecting, but if I buy alcohol, and then drunkenly need more, the last thing I want to hear the clerk say is "back so soon?". Still, I like being friendly with my merchants, so I looked something on Google last night.

I stood in line about 9PM, with my (first and only) beer purchase of the night. In front of me in line was a guy in a Peacoat (sic) buying imported beer and American Spirit cigarettes. He looked a like typical Berkeley 2nd generation preppy-alternative Indian. My friend behind the counter asked to see his ID, and after he looked at it, started asking the guy what part of India he was from. The guy answered in a perfect Bay Area tone that his parents were from Trinidad, which is in the Caribbean. The Nepalese clerk made some sad "oooohhhs", and then said "so you never been to India?" After the guy answered no, I think I heard the clerk say, "too bad." Again, this guy isn't an expert at making his patrons feel good. The clerk looked genuinely sad that he wasn't able to connect with this American who looked a lot like he did, setting up what I had prepared perfectly.

"How are you?" he asked as I put my beer on the counter.

"JO-JO LAPA!!" I exclaimed, and the guy's face immmediately burst into a beaming smile.

"Jo-Jo Lapa!?! How do you know 'Jo-Jo Lapa?!!?"

Before venturing down the block, having recently learned the latest QuikStop night clerk was Nepalese, I typed "How do you say Hello in Nepalese?" into Google. Several results were returned, "Jo-jo lapa" being the most memorable. I repeated Jo-Jo Lapa to myself over and over as I walked down to the store, making sure I wouldn't forget it by the time I got there.

"So what does jo-jo lapa actually mean?" I asked the clerk as he took my cash.

"It's a greeting, like 'hello,'" he replied and continued, "Who told you to say jo-jo lapa?" still smiling ear to ear. I explained how I looked it up on Google having learned the other day that he was Nepalese. I think I made guy's evening by giving him what the guy in line in front of me wasn't able to: a little familiar homeland connection in this often intimidating and impersonal urban California culture.

Every time I walk in there from now on, I know I'm going to hear "Jo-Jo Lapa!" Fine by me.

Glace Bay MacKenna's

2005-07-31T18:38:00.000-07:00

95 mph

2005-07-27T20:10:00.000-07:00

I was cruising home today after another 12 hour day in the mortgage business. My new Infinity I30 was purring along. The music was blaring; the sunroof was down, and I was in the fast lane passing the sporadic 7:30 PM traffic. It ocurred to me that I was going pretty fast. Glancing down at the speedometer, I see I was doing 95 miles per hour. I didn't even notice. The car wasn't even straining in any way. The ride was as smooth as 45 mph in other vehicles I've driven. The Infinity is a true high speed cruiser. I'm anticipating a few speeding tickets driving my new baby.

My apologies for the lack of pictures, but as you can tell, I got my new (used) car. It's absolutely amazing. The ride is smooth, the stereo is better than what I have at home and its packed full of safety features. With a down payment, I got a great deal on the financing from a local credit union, so my payments will be very reasonable.

On the ride from the dealership back to work, I needed to fill it up for the first time. I stopped at a gas station in the heart of Oakland's Acorn district. I get out to open the gas door. It's locked, and like a lot of these new cars, it's equipped with a release inside the car somewhere. I start scanning the dashboard for the button or switch. I'm looking and looking, and I can't find it. So many functions, the thing looks like a spaceship control panel imbedded in polished walnut trim. Finally, I decide to consult the car's manual. Ten minutes later, I find the page that describes where the gas door release is. It was on the car door!

Buying a car

2005-07-24T09:31:00.000-07:00

Above is not my new car, but an image I found on the web of the model I'm getting.

I fell in love with the Infinity I30 Touring Edition the second I hit the accelerator and felt that V6 (Automotive magazine called it the best V6 on the market) kick in. Vroom! It reminded me of the few times I've been behind the wheel of a BMW. The suspension is amazing. The interior is stylish, and the luxury features are well... luxurious (I'd never make it as an auto mag writer).

I don't have a pic of my car yet, as I'm still working out the financing, but I should have it by Tuesday. It's metallic green with a moonroof, spoiler, the works! It's a 2000 model with 80K miles on it, but whoever the previous owner was, they took good care of it. I've seen the dealership service schedule, and this car hasn't missed as much as an oil change in 5 years. I don't know too much about Nissan engines, but from the reviews I've read online, I can't go wrong with an Infinity I30.

SIDEKICK rest in peace

2005-07-23T08:48:00.000-07:00

My old truck...

I feel like I've lost an old friend

2005-07-23T07:17:00.000-07:00

My good wife has been on me for some weeks to get her car tuned up. She said it was running a bit rough, and I believed her, but whenever I drove it, it seemed to run just fine. We sort of put off her maintenance because of where we are financially right now as, to me anyways, it didn't seem that pressing.

Then the "Service Engine Soon" light came on.

What friendly verbiage for Chrysler to tell their Neon owners that their car is about to have major problems. What's next? A "Please, if it's not too much trouble, the car's not feeling so good," light? The mechanic first charged me for a new spark plug wires, and then as I was driving away, the check engine light came back on again. Turns out, the head gasket is blown, and they're going to have to replace it, remove the heads and have them checked for damage, and remachine if necessary. Estimated repair cost :$1000-$1200.

Worse yet, my regular mechanic had his shop sold out from under him. There was a sad note on the door of his closed garage stating the city of Oakland had taken his business away from him by using "eminant domain." They're going to build a big condo complex on the site where he's done business for 30 years.

While I'm driving my wife's car around, she's got my Suzuki Sidekick. I love my truck. When I'm BARTing all over the Bay Area, visiting CMD branches, I get this great feeling at the end of the day when I see my vehicle parked all by itself in a lonely lot. It's like I'm out hunting or adventuring or doing some other manly thing, and then, returning from my struggles, my faithful mount is waiting for me. Like it missed me. Okay, I'm anthropomorphizing, er, perhaps equineomorphizing would be more descriptive, but it's not unusual to have an emotional attachment to a vehicle. The Sidekick is the first car or truck I ever bought with all my own money. It has run well for several years, although I know it has over 300K miles on it.

As I'm going back and forth to the mechanic for my wife's car, she calls me to tell me that the Suzuki suddenly couldn't make it up the hill. She had to park down the street as the car mysteriously had no power. The engine ran, but it made the whole vehicle shake violently. At first, we thought it might be because I'd let the gas run all the way down, and then parked it on a hill. Maybe sediment from the tank had gotten into the fuel line. Just a minor clogged artery... a little bypass surgery was needed. My old mechanic recommended a colleague of his, and I had my poor Suzuki towed off to the "Auto Repair Master." It's still there. It took him two days to throw up his hands and tell me it needs a whole new engine. They can't diagnose how it happened, suffice to say there is no pressure in two of the cyllinders, and it's beyond hope of repair. Cost to repair: $3500 to $4000. I bought the truck for $3000.

I don't blame the beloved wife one bit for the fact that my car died. She only drove it a few blocks, and I'm sure the same thing would have happened had I been behind the wheel. It is kinda weird not being there when it went through its death throws. It's like entrusting an elderly pet to someone while you're out of town and having it pass away under his or her care. You know he or she didn't kill the animal, but its a tough feeling nonetheless.

To make matters worse, even the rental car company is giving me troubles. When I found out my car was totalled, I called Enterprise of Walnut Creek to arrange a weekend rental. We've gone a whole week now with no vehicles, and tons of stuff to do, including shopping for a new (used) car. They said they would hold their last vehicle for me, and that I should call back when I'm ready to get picked up. I called them after work at 5:15, and they said 30 to 45 minutes before pick up. I waited and waited, checking my cel phone every 5 minutes. Finally, after an hour waiting, I called them up to find they were closed. I called every other rental car place in town; all were closed. I called Enterprise national roadside assistance. I hadn't rented a car, but I was roadside, and I sure needed assistance! They were sympathetic, but couldn't do anything. Man, I was, and still am pissed off. Leaving me stranded after I made a reservation! When I'm done with this post, I'll be calling them, and the manager is going to get an earfull.

So today, I go and look for a car loan and a new car. I've never had a car payment, and in my new job, I get to see how car payments can effect someone's debt-to-income ratio dramatically. Thats why I'm looking for a quality used vehicle.

My next post will be about my new car or truck.

Locked my first loan.

2005-06-01T18:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, on my first day back from our out of town week of training, I locked my very first loan. Locking is the first step in the arduous path before funding. Basically, locking is the customer agreeing to the terms of the loan and sending you their inital documets. Being brand new to the industry, I haven't experienced the pitfalls prevalent on the path to paycheck, but from what I've been told, lots can still go wrong before a lock to becomes a funding.

For one thing, she could simply change her mind. This deal is a refinance, and so there isn't the sense of urgency like there is with a purchase agreement. The borrower cashes in on the equity on the home while paying off her car and a few nasty bits on her credit report. She's also getting a nice chunk of cash to use to visit her family in Nigeria. She bitched and moaned about the interest rate, but then I found out that we're actually lowering her interest rate by a 1.5% compared to what she just refinanced for 16 months ago. Still, making a $250,100 (why the extra $100? Take a guess in the comments) comittment to a financial institution shouldn't be taken lightly. In any case, I feel good about my first ever real borrower, and if all goes as it should, I'll be earning my first real commision in about 15 working days.

It's taken a month to get a locked loan. I was told a month agot that I should average 7 loan fundings per month. I know I'm good enough at just about anything to do better than average, and so my personal goal is 10 per month. In May, I had zero, but that's okay. We didn't even really open until June 1st, and I spent all of May technically still in training. If I hadn't been at Ring Ring last week, I would have locked this loan last week. If I get 5 loans in June, I'll feel okay, because I'm only going to get better.

I've also been told I should get about a 10% funding rate. That means that only 10% of the files that cross my desk should turn into funded loans. My Nigerian friend was about the 11th.

Optimisticaly,

Joko

First tournament ever...and then the 2nd

2005-05-25T00:40:00.000-07:00

I am writing this from my hotel room in Pasadena. Countrywide has sent me off to RING RING, our week of intensive classroom training. At the end of each day of training, we're having a poker tournament down in room 906. Last night was my first ever live tournament. We've had cash game poker nights at our place before, where everyone walks away with whats in front of them, but this was my first ever 9-handed tournament format game of Texas Hold em. No limit Texas Hold Em.

On the very first hand, the guy sitting next to me hummed and hawed, and I really got the impression he had no idea what he was doing. I had second pair with a solid kicker and a flush draw after the flop. I bet strong, he called.. well.. I went all in. All in on the very first hand.

I lost.

Yup. Busted on my very first tournament hand ever. I leaned back in my chair and tried to hide in the corner as it seemed like everyone was staring at the smart guy from the training class. He just lost all his chips on the very first hand.

We had already agreed that the first person to bust would be allowed to buy back in. That extra 20 made the payouts $100 for first, $60 for 2nd and $40 for 3rd. I played my next $20 very tightly and people lost around me. I recovered well and ended up in the money in 3rd place. I made both my original and buy in back. Despite what had happened originally, I am very proud of my 3rd place finish last night. One of the guys I'd beat had been in a real World Poker Tour even in Reno. He had won a sattelite tournament and was playing for a chance at TV and WPT final table or title. The guy who won was the guy who I had lost to on the first hand.

When I sat down to tonight's game, I jokingly thought to myself, "Now, don't go all in on the very first hand again". Tonight's Hold Em Newbie and I ended up all in again on the very first hand. A pair of 5's had flopped, and I had a 5 in my hand for the trips. Good kicker. Once again I was all in on the first hand, but tonight, I won. The exact opposite of the night before. Tonight, I won $20 on the first hand. It was a great tourney and I ended up 3-way with the WPT guy and the guy who came in 2nd last night. When I ended up head to head, the other guy had the chip lead. We played head to head for a while, both of us being very conservative. I started playing a little more agressively and it paid off. My heart was pounding like crazy as I realized I was in position to win my second ever tournament. I bluffed at few pots and he didn't call me. I knocked him out with a trips..and that was it... I won!!!

That $100 should cover my beers for the week.

Full Circle

2005-05-21T08:13:00.000-07:00

Standing there on the corner of Larkin and McAllister, I looked at the two buildings accross the street with a vague nostalgia, a certain animosity and a new sense of accomplishment. I had come full circle. Not much had changed to the appearance of UC Hastings College of the Law in the 8 years since it became the site of my life's biggest mistake. It was still the same glass, metal and concrete as in years past. In previous years, however, it was hard to look at, like an old bully who had beat me up on the schoolyard. Now, finally, I felt like I could face that campus without shame.

I had just walked out of a meeting with the son of Nancy Pelosi, San Francisco's congresswoman and the minority leader of the House of Representatives. Sue, Tony and I were returning from our visit to the SF branch of CMD. Young Pelosi happens to be a sales manager with Countrywide. We had been talking about our business partnership which would involve deals totalling tens of millions of dollars. The office itself was on the former site of Stars Restraunt, accross the street from City Hall and the SF Opera House. I was involved with important stuff with important people in important places.

"Its a great feeling," I shared with my boss and coworker as I gestured accross the street, "That campus was where I went through one of the biggest disappointments in my life." We're really building a strong sense of "team" at my new office, so I had no hesitation revealing my emotions to these two. "Now, I stand here with two top notch mortgage professionals, knowing that I'll soon have more success and earnings than I would have had as a lawyer, and I really feel like I've finally overcome that disappointment. Its like I've come full circle." Sue beamed and Tony shook my hand vigorously, sharing in my optimism and sense of accomplishment.

Soon after I dropped out of law school, I received a gift from a family member of a "Big Dogs" t-shirt. It was basketball gear; something I'm always in need of, and a traditional gift from this family member. It showed Big Dogs playing basketball and the caption on the back read, "If you can't play with the Big Dogs, stay off the court!" If the person giving it to me had been there at the time, I would have thrown it back in their face. It seemed like it was meant as a horrible dig at me dropping out of law school. I felt extremely disrespected, but at the same time, I recognized that emotional depth hasn't been one of my family's strong suit, and there was a strong possibility that the person giving me the gift had no idea that message on it had so much personal significance. Its not like us to smile and give with one hand and then kick you in the stomach at the same time. I never knew if the shirt was intended to be the insult I took it as, or if the person simply saw the big dogs playing basketball without understanding how message would efffect me. I wanted to believe they were innocent as communicating through t-shirt slogans means a serious lack of connection. Although I suppose impersonalizing the resentment it created through Blogging isn't much that much better either. In any case, I stood there, 7 years later, on the site of the "court," with a sense of victory. I was on the court, running with the Big Dogs. Finally.

Almost

2005-05-19T06:20:00.000-07:00

About 150 or so of us sat at round tables in a hotel ballroom. All of us had come to take the Jeopardy test. I finished 12th. Unfortunately, only 11 had scored high enough to make it to the next round of testing. The other 139 of us filed out the door, smiling and laughing, knowing that eventhough we hadn't accomplished our goal of being considered for Jeopardy this year, we had fun.

On the elevator of the way down, someone sneezed. I said, "What is gezundheit?"

The test itself was very tough. 50 questions which got progressively harder. They asked us not to reveal the exact content of any of the questions, particularly on the net, as they don't want to have to come up with entirely new questions in every city they visit. I'll honor that request. The seating arrangement at the tables was very open, in that it would have been very easy to have looked over at a neighbor's answer sheet at any time during the test. I didn't look for any answers, but I did happen to notice that a some of the other folks at my table weren't writing anything for some of the questions. Out of 50 questions, there were only 3 or 4 that I had absolutely no idea. I'm thinking I missed about 7 or 8. As we were waiting for the grading to come back, I discovered through our conversation, that most of the folks at my table thought they missed many more than that.

They read the names of those selected to continue. We all waited with anticipation. No one at my table was selected, and as I mentioned, maybe 7 or 8 percent of the entire group continued to the next phase of testing. They didn't actually tell us our score at the end, so when I say I finished 12th, I should say I tied for 12th with 140 other people.

I had fun and will try again in a year or two.

Wish Me Luck!

2005-05-18T06:44:00.000-07:00

In an hour, I'll be heading out to a attend the Jeopardy auditions in San Francisco! Wish me luck!

In all modesty, I think I have as much generel knowledge (some would call it trivia, but I think that trivializes it) in my head as the average Jeopardy contestant. I just need to get a good draw of categories and be fast on the button.

The first step will be to pass a written test. 50 questions. I wonder what a passing score will be? If one passes, only then does one get to compete in a mock game, in front of the television lights - a screen test. From what I understand, Alex Trebek personally watches and chooses the constestants from the taped auditions. One doesn't even have to win the mock game, but it probably helps.

Another New Office

2005-05-13T06:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, my new boss and I visited one of our CMD branches. My new position as a loan officer with Countrywide's Full Spectrum Lending Division is that of an Account Executive -CMD Dedicated. That means I specialize in borrowers with "interesting" credit and do so on behalf of our partners in the Consumer Mortgages Division (CMD). When one of my colleagues at CMD gets a lead that they can't qualify into one of their "A" loans, they are supposed to refer that business to the Full Spectrum Lending Division. If they do and we then fund the loan (we have loan programs for just about anybody), they get their full commission on that transaction, just like they had worked it themselves. I get my commission, and Countrywide gets to keep the bisiness within the family.

Its a good set up if everyone participates. The borrowers get their money. The "A" paper folks get paid, and I get my leads handed to me without having to solicit new business. For various reasons, however, many of the CMD loan officers are reluctant to give us their "B" paper folks to the FSLD. We're kind of like the red-headed step children of the loan world. Our rates are higher; much higher than a lot of these borrowers are used to. Another problem is that the CMD folks can still get paid under the table for their B paper loans they farm out to mortgage brokerages. Due to the relationship-based business model of the home loan industry, many of the CMD loan consultants trust their brokerage partners more than they trust me and my colleagues at the Full Spectrum Lending Division.

What we need to do is convince CMD that FSL can be trusted with their borrowers. Its kind of a weird set up. Most of us work in companies that have lots of divisions. My wife works at a big wholesale coffee roaster that also has a small retail coffee shop. Its kind of like her retail department not trusting the quality of the beans that come from next door at the roaster. It seems weird that one division of a company should have to work so hard to get the business of another division within the same company. Corporate has already told the loan officers of CMD that they have to use FSL. Its not so rigorously enforced because the "A" paper loan consultants are the lifeblood of the company, and no one wants to piss them off.

A lot of my time is going to spent in CMD branches, schmoozing the "A" paper folks. They'll ultimately form their opinion of me based on how I handle their clients, but in the meantime, I've got to build their trust. My boss is instrumental in this process as well, and she and I made our inaugural visit to my new primary CMD branch. The Downtown Oakland office of CMD will be the main office to which I am assigned.

The visit went well and they've already given me a big transaction to work on. Our formal introduction won't be until next week, but yesterday was a preliminary sit down between myself, the two branch managers and the #1 loan consultant at the Oakland branch. It went well. We all bonded. My boss did the full dog and pony show as to why FSL deserves the business we're already supposed to be getting, and I got to show my face a little bit so that people will get used to me. My wife even made homemade cookies for the branch.

A New Game

2005-05-07T13:55:00.000-07:00

Putting together loans can be kind of fun. It's a numbers game. Increase the interest rate, and you lower the closing costs. Add points, and you can lower the rate. Lower the monthly payment by offering interest only, but then give up any equity building unless the price of the property goes up. What kind of pre-pay penalty period do you use? All these balances and tradeoffs. The possibilities are endless! I've always enjoyed puzzles, and thats what a lot of this is about.

I am still very much in training. I've got a lot to learn, but one of the nice things about our office is that we're brand new, and there's already business coming in. I've been the loan officer for half a dozen or so deals. No takers. So far, I haven't booked a single loan. Every one has fallen through. Given we are only expected to have about 10% of the files that hit our desks actually become funded loans, I'm not too alarmed by the fact that I haven't made any commissions yet, but it certainly would have been nice to have booked at least one.

Week One Completed

2005-05-01T16:19:00.000-07:00

One week down. A career yet to come.

Except for that one summer as an intern at Zilog, this is the first time I've ever worked in an office. Its kinda fun at first. I got my filing system set up in my desk. I'm learning the computers.
I think I'm going to do well in this office.

I twisted my ankle hard yesterday. It was my first game in a week or more. Actually, I suppose it was my third because I played in three different sets of games at three different basketball courts here in the East Bay.

Jeopardy contestant test and audition!

2005-04-29T19:19:00.000-07:00

Can you imagine the excitement I felt when I read the following words:
<<<<<
"PRINT OUT AND BRING THIS LETTER WITH YOU ? ADULT INTERVIEW

Congratulations! We are happy to confirm your appointment for our

Jeopardy! interviews (for our regular shows). To qualify for the show

you must take a written 50- question test. If you pass the test you

will then participate in a mock version of the game and you will be put in

our files to be considered for the upcoming season of Jeopardy! >>>>>>

This is it! Six months ago, I registered online at Jeopardy.com to be considered as a candidate for the show. Two weeks ago, they sent me an e-mail with a request to respond within 48 hours of receiveing the notice. That would qualify me for the San Francisco auditions. I didn't open the e-mail until 4 days after it was sent - well beyinfd the stated limit. I responded anyway. I remembered the date of the auditions as being May 8th.

If you've been following this blog, you'll know I've recently started a new career in the mortgage lending industry. As part of my training, I was to go to Boston for the week starting May 8th and continuing to the 13th. A week on the East Coast doing sales training. Even if the Jeopardy people had allowed for my delinquency in their stated time restictions, I would be out of town, and unable to attend.

We found out yesterday that the training has been moved for those of us on the West Coast. I'm guessing that when they looked at the airfare and everything else, it just seemed more logical to have a West Coast training week seperate from the East Coast one. Its something they should have had already figured out, in my opinion. I told everyone that I had given up an oppurtunity to be on Jeopardy for these meetings, and what horrible irony it was that now, I could have attended, but do to corporate confusion, my life long goal would be thwarted. Make no mistake, I've pictured myself as a Jeopardy contestant from the very first time I saw the show. Ever been with one of those people who know all the answers on Jeopardy and shout them out before the contestants? I'm that person. Still, it made for good office positioning, particularly in retrospect. Allen just took this info and started running with it. He told the branch manager the whole story about how I had forgone my dream of being on Jeopardy to attend the corporate training in 2 weeks. Sue then went on to tell the regional vice president that one of her recruits was being considered for Jeopardy, but missed his chance because of the change of schedule.

Today I got the e-mail I quoted at the top. As it turns out, I had remembered the date wrong from the get go. Its actually for May 18th. My Countrywide Full Spectrum Lending training will not interfere with my opportunity to try out for Jeopardy. I wil be at that hotel on May 18th. I will pass the test. I will do well on my screen test. Alex will pick me, and I will be on Jeopardy some time in the Fall of 2005.

Gil

The training

A New Industry

2005-04-28T19:33:00.000-07:00

***Names have been changed to protect anonymity***

I landed at the office with the nice desks. Seeing those warm burgundy desks comforted me as I stood outside the glass doors. The locked doors. I had arrived 5 minutes early at 8:10 AM. Four minutes later, another guy walked up, tried the door, found it locked then looked at his watch. I walked up and introduced myself. His name is Derek (his fake name), and like me, he was starting a new job that Monday morning. The boss showed up at 8:15 as scheduled.

Its now 4 days later, and things are going well in my new position learning how to succeed as Account Executive with Countrywide Home Loan's Full Spectrum Lending division. I've been challenged mentally, mathematicaly and technologicaly. I think I'm going to like this new career. Remember, I'm not only changing jobs, I have to learn a whole new industry and job description. I'm going to be a loan officer. Having been a big ticket salesman or retail sales manager for 12 years, my comfort level with talking to people on the phone is pretty high. My impression so far is that phone skills are likely the most important part of the job.

More to come...

Sears & RoeBye Bye!!

2005-04-24T08:02:00.000-07:00

I remember the human resources lady looking at my job application. It was 1991, and I had sold through much of my inventory of handicrafts that I had brought back from Indonesia the summer before. "Oh," the lady behind the desk said, "you sold at the flea market, you must know how to sell. We can put you in the shoe department."

That was how I became a commission salesperson. Fourteen years later, twelve of which at Sears, I'm finally done riding the cash register. Good Life. Great Price. Decent Job. Today is the first Sunday I've had off that I haven't had to specially request or call in sick on. No more weekend work. The irony there is that I've got some errands to run, and I'm not sure these places are open today. Never had that problem on a Tuesday.

My last day was a mix of sadness, elation and trepidation. I'll truly miss my coworkers and the laid back atmosphere we (mostly) had with one another. The commissioned sales associates at Sears Oakland aren't the cutthroat, highly competitive, uncooperative teams you find in many other stores. At times though, I did get frustrated when it seemed I was the only one willing to go the "extra mile" to make things right, even if it cost me my own sales. In any case, they'll do fine without me, and I will definitely miss them.

Yesterday was also my last day to get my employee discount. The TV I've been considering was on sale. It's a Samsung 42" HDTV-compatible (4x3) PTV . Yesterday, it was only $999 with free delivery and 1 year 0% financing. I woulda saved another 10% with my discount. Without a doubt, a really great deal. I almost bought it, thinking to myself, a year from now, I'll be making enough that I'll be able to pay it off with ease, even if I can't afford it right now. Then I thought, a year from now, I'll be making enough that I'll be able to afford an even better television. Much better to wait until I can afford the 54" DLP 16x9 Sony Vega I really covet. If my current TV was broke, I woulda bought the Samsung yesterday, but given that this is a luxury not a necessity, its best to wait for what I really want.

Tomorrow begins my new job.

Beginning of the Last Week

2005-04-17T18:00:00.000-07:00

Today I went into work knowing that this would be the last Sunday I'll ever have to work at Sears Oakland. It was a strange feeling. Like the monday of the last week of school. A countdown to major change is underway. Today may in fact be the very last Sunday I'll ever work ever. Retail is the only industry outside of vital infrastructure jobs where people even work on Sundays, and since I don't expect to be back in retail anytime soon, I think I'm done with Sundays.

Major Career Change

2005-04-14T18:17:00.000-07:00

Major change is never easy, and professionally, I am embarking on would could be the biggest change I'll ever make. For twelve years, I've worked for Sears Roebuck and Co., an entity which technically no longer exists (it got bought by K-Mart). For the last five of those years, I've been in the appliance business, selling washers and dryers for the last four. It's been the best job I've ever had. Where else can you make nearly $30/hr teaching people about interesting aspects of what they thought was a dull thing coming in? There's the thrill of making the sale. There is the confidence and fulfillment that comes from knowing that one is a real expert in your field. I know more about washers and dryers than any other salesman I've come across, and I'm really good at selling them too. The hours are great. The environment is not too stressful (provided you make your numbers). Sears gives great benefits, and with so many years under my belt, I got 4 weeks of paid vacation a year. Why would I want to leave that?

After doing my taxes, I got to thinking about how I had made less in 2004 than in 2003. It was just a few thousand, but its ominous for someone in their thirties to have a decreasing income. Commission rates have eroded over the years; store management goes on these hiring spurts where they flood the floor with too many people. A smaller pie cut into more pieces means less food on the Joko Londo family table. Now, the top management is talking about how Sears will have to reduce fixed costs to remain competitive. To me, this means commission rates are going to be cut even further. The handwriting is on the wall. The glory days of appliance sales at Sears are over.

At least once a week, someone would tell me I'm a darn good salesman. Occasionally, one would inquire as to why I was even working at Sears. Surely, someone of my talents could do better somewhere else. I'm not boasting, I'm just reporting what others said. As the K-Mart/Sears merger approached, I started looking. I interviewed with Verizon for a corporate sales job. As I chronicled in this blog, I visited job fairs. One company that I got a really good feeling about at the last fair was Countrywide Lending, the largest mortgage lender in the USA. I went through the process, got a second interview and effective April 25th, I will be the newest loan officer at their full-spectrum lending branch here in the East Bay.

I gave notice at Sears today. Everyone is sad to see me leaving. Again, Sears has treated me very well. If things don't work out as a loan officer, I know I'm one of the best washer/dryer salesman in the whole company, and I could always go back (losing seniority would suck though).

My biggest concern is finances during the transition period. My training salary will be roughly half what I average at Sears. I won't be closing loans during the first few weeks; heck, I may not close one during the first month. They're expecting me to close 7 loans a month. With about a 1% commission going to the loan officer, and the average mortgage in the Bay Area being nearly $400K, I'll likely be more than doubling my current income. That could be months away, however.

I also have to deal with the anxiety of a turbulent economy. If the real estate market collapses, no one's going to be buying or refinancing. So much more rides on the economy and interest rates, whereas people will always need washers and dryers.

Ideally, I want to make enough so that my wife can devote herself to her writing full time. She is somewhat of a vicarious outlet for my own creativity. If I'm not going to write the great American novel, at least I can support her while she does. I got my job at Sears when I was in college and I never really left. I think its about time I got a grown-up job.

A Crack in the Sky

2005-04-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

I spliced together this image out of two pics...

It was a very weird cloud phenomenon, and although atmospheric effects never seen to turn out all that well using the middle-of-the-line cameras I've always used, this one turned out okay.

Pics from California

2005-04-07T21:19:00.000-07:00

Ione, California. Its a small town, 100 miles or so east of Stockton. We went up there to do some research and take some pictures. I'm sharing a few on the blog. The pic below (sorry the foreground is out of focus) juxtaposes an empty vineyard against one of the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.

Here's the story and a pic of the Preston Castle.

The one image I'll remember most from the return home via Highway 104 was the sight of the Rancho Seco nuclear power plant. The plant was closed 20 years ago, but the cooling towers are still standing. Standing in the shadow of those 200-foot tall stacks in the middle of nowhere filled me with a feeling of dread. Just their shape has an iconic power. The news from Chernobyl and 3-Mile Island were accompanied with pictures like the one below. Its a very weird feeling to see one up close.

2005-04-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

My interview with the lending company went much better, despite my best efforts to sabotage myself. The office was beautiful. It took up half the ground floor of a suburban skyscraper in Walnut Creek. Behind the glass walls stood 30 or so of the most impressive desks I've ever seen. These weren't cubicles; these we eight-floor long, beautifully polished brand new desks, each with a matching flat-panel monitor and computer and state-of-the-art phone. This is the kind of place one could do some real "officin"!

The place seemed completely deserted. Not a soul at any of the workstations. Of course, the very reason there were positions available is that this place was a brand new branch. The manager, was in her office in the back, and she sat me down at one of the terminals were I began a battery of personality tests. Standard types of questions. I followed the manager's advice and didn't try to "maximize" my results; I didn't spend a lot of time trying to figure out what the ideal answer was. I went with my gut. After all, I do think I'm very good salesman, and if after all these years, my personality is not suited to my profession, I've done pretty well in spite of that.

During the interview itself, I was surprised to see that she didn't take any notes nor have any type of interview guide in front of her. She asked me one question, and then we just sort of launched into a conversation In fact, I've never been to an interview where the interviewer spoke far more than the interviewee. I could barely get a word in edgewise! This lady could talk! She told me a lot about the company and what "sub-prime" lending is all about. Fortunately, the next guy arrived a bit early, and she left my interview to go set up the next guy on his personality test. This gave me an opportunity to collect my thoughts and mentally prepare my "pitch." When she came back into the room, I thanked her for telling me about her office, and then began describing why my skill set and experience would fit in well with the environment she had described. I sold myself.

On completing my missive, she noted that based on my verbiage, she was definitely going to recommend me to the next level of the interview process, a phone call with the regional manager. She said this was DESPITE the results of my personality test. Huh?! Despite??? Apparently, I scored poorly in relation to what they think makes a good loan officer.

I mentioned my self-sabotaging efforts. They weren't conscious efforts; I want this job. The first was the computer test. The second was the onions I had with lunch. I thought brushing my teeth and mints would take care of it, but when I got home, my wife noted my breath smelled bad. I did have to lean accross the manager's desk at one point to explain the values in the sales reports I had brought. I think she noticed. My third error was in not bringing the phone numbers of my references with me. I didn't think that in today's litigious business climate that anyone even checked references anymore. With law suits being filed for unflattering recommendations, most companies do not allow their managers to speak positively or negatively about current or past employees. I did call the next morning with the phone numbers.

We'll see if my experience and persuasiveness can overcome the stinky breath, bad test scores and lack of attention to detail. I can see myself sitting in one of those desks.

Disappointment and Hope

2005-03-30T09:06:00.000-08:00

Near the corner of Jackson and 5th St in Downtown San Jose is a small storefront with a big sign out front reading "Health Insurance." This is the district office for UGO, the insurance agents for the National Association for the Self-Employed. Nestled in Japantown, surrounded by Sushi joints, Asian supermarkets and across the street from the Shisheido shop, the office itself is rather humble. After spending half an hour in their clutches, I've concluded the offer they're making future employment candidates is rather bold. Not in a good way.

On arrival, I was escorted into the "Conference Room." It was the only other room in building besides a common room. Sitting at a table were three other guys. They were dressed, like me, in the slick manner of professional salesmen. This would be a group presentation, but at least I wasn't being brought in here with a bunch of kids I though as I noted that I was about 10 years younger than the other candidates.

The office manager arrived and started discussing the company, what it does and its growth. Standard stuff. He asked if anyone in the room had experience selling insurance. One guy raised his hand and lamented how hard it was to knock on someone's door and tell them that you're there to talk about death. I guess he wasn't selling car insurance. The office manager then began talking about the costs involved in getting started in the insurance business. I had already gleamed from the company literature that this was a position for an independent contractor - you wouldn't actually work for them. You would be an independent insurance agent associated with their company. That's not what I'm really looking for, but I thought I would at least here them out.

The California insurance license costs $200 to take a 40-hour training class, and then another $190 to take the test and receive a license. Okay, I understand that the license would then be mine personally and add value to my resume. In all modesty, I'm a very talented salesman. In fact, I know I would be a significant positive asset to any company I worked for. I strongly believe that, and would expect any company responsible for my paycheck (regardless of the contractor/employee status), to believe that about me as well. If you believe in me, at least reimburse me for training I receive so that I can work for you. Doesn't that sound reasonable? I'm mulling this over, thinking that I'm not too happy with the offer so far, then they hit me with another one. After you get your license, you pay UGA another $175 as an "Establishment Fee." What? I should pay you?!? Isn't that kind of backwards. Again, I think as a prospective employment candidate, I'm pretty hot stuff. I think I should looking for someplace that would pay a signing bonus, not one where I pay them for the chance of selling their product. Utterly disgusted, I stood up, muttered a "thank you," walked past the office manager and out of room. The look I saw in his eye as I walked out was one of resigned frustration. He's the poor sap who had to try to hook these other guys. This was a horrible offer at best, an outright scam at worst.

One thing about professional sales is that there are lots of bad jobs out there. It costs a company very little to hire on sales staff, throw them into the field, and hope that they bring in more revenue. At worst, these recruits might convince some friends and relatives to buy the company's products, then they fall flat on their face and walk away. These jobs will occasionally be so bold as to ask for fees from their employees disguised as "training materials fees," or now as I learn, "Establishment Fees."

Today, I venture out on another interview. This one with Countrywide Home Lending. Touting itself as the leading provider of home mortgages in the USA, the position I'm interviewing for is that of a loan officer. This doesn't sound like it could fall into the category of "fake" sales jobs I described above, but one thing worries me. As part of what I was asked to bring today, I should recommend two individuals I know who I think might also make good loan officers. I was told to keep the diversity image of the company in mind when making that choice. This leads me to believe there are one of two things going on here. First, the whole thing is a multi-level-marketing (MLM) scam. The MLM company is another pot hole in the road of good sales jobs. Have you heard the good news about Amway? Second, they want to know what kind of people I know. Do you associate with people outside your ethnic group? That's the kind of people they're looking for. As it so happens, the two names I chose, Jamila and Damian, are African-American. After 7 years working in the Downtown Oakland S-Mart, I'm about as comfortable with diversity as a man can get.

We'll see what happens.

Insurance Salesman?

2005-03-29T10:28:00.000-08:00

I'm heading off to a job interview this morning with the National Association for the Self Employed. They provide benefits, insurance primarily, to those in business for thmeselves. At the job fair I mentioned two posts prior to this one, their presenter did a great job making the field sound exciting and full of money making opportunities. The latter may be true, but insurance sales exciting? I don't know about that.

I used to think the same thing about appliance sales, and that was from a perspective of selling electronics in the same store. Applinances seemed boring. It turns out I was wrong; they can be interesting and complex, and teaching people about them is the best part of my current job. Would I also find teaching people about insurance products equally and surprisingly interesting?

I may be putting the horse before the cart here, but I just wanted to write a few things about how I'm feeling.

The Graphite Gazette

2005-03-27T20:03:00.000-08:00

Metal Mistress

by Gil MacKenna

Chapter One:

Los Angeles, CA. 1993

Andrea lit a cigarette as the man in her bed put on his tight, black jeans. He had to lay there on the bed next to her to get them on, and she stared at the tiny ripples of stomach muscles beneath his smooth, tanned skin. She watched with erotic fascination as his small, but well-defined, chest rose when he inhaled sharply to get the zipper closed. She took a drag off her smoke. This one's name was Dave, and he was one of Andrea's favorites.

Dave turned, propped his chin up on his hand, and gave her a smile. It was that satisfied grin he used on most of his band's album covers, and the one that was on all the posters. Andrea briefly thought of the thousands of girls who stared at pictures of this smile, and dreamed nightly of the cute, mysterious guitar player who lay half naked next to her. He belonged to her this evening. It was one of the many priviledges of being Andrea Parsons, President of AP Records, and daughter of Andrew Parsons, founder and Chairman of the Board of International Media, one of the largest financial empires in the world.

"How long have we been lovers?" Dave asked, gently reaching for her cigarette.

"Ten years." she said coldly. Andrea didn't like to think of her rock stars as being 'lovers'. They were fucks, nothing more. They came here for her satisfaction, and because it was in their contracts. She made sure that "twice yearly consultation meetings with company management" were a part of every AP contract. There was no 'love' involved. Andrea kept her cigarette away from his reaching hand.

"Shit, that's a long time." Dave rolled out of the bed and walked over to the liqour cabinet. Andrea liked the way his long hair fell over his back, almost reaching his tight butt. "Got any vodka in here?"

"Of course, Dave." she said sarcastically, "I sent for a bottle of the cheap stuff as soon as I noticed your appointment was coming up."

Dave opened the cabinet and pulled out a bottle. "Cool! Kamchatka! The cheap stuff tastes so much better."

Andrea quietly laughed at his odd taste; she knew he really did like the cheap vodka more. He liked it more, eventhough he now was rich enough to fly to Russia to get the real stuff if he wanted, thanks to her.

"Yeah, ten years is a long time." Dave was pouring himself a drink. "I'll never forget that night you picked me up. The Metal Princess in her Plastic Chariot. You were the only chick I'd ever seen who used her car to impress dudes."

Andrea remembered the Ferrari had plastic panels to make it lighter. A flood of images and emotions assaulted Andrea. That car had too many powerful memories connected to it.

"It was at that shitty little club in Hollywood," Dave continued nostalgicaly, although Andrea wasn't really listening.

She was thinking of her Uncle Paulo.

"and I still can't believe you were only fifteen! There ain't no fifteen year-olds driving two hundred thousand dollar cars."

Andrea turned away from Dave, closed her eyes, and tightly clenched the damp, satin sheets.

Uncle Paolo gave her that car for her fifteenth birthday, soon after she had returned from spending the summer with him and his wife in Rome.

"You were a real wild one, Andrea,"

There was a sound of ice being stirred in a drink, a sound Andrea associated with her alcoholic mother.

Mother decided that the private schools weren't teaching Andrea the importance of social graces. She still acted like a tomboy. She never paid any attention to how she looked, and all of the make up and hair products mother had bought her remained unused in her bathroom. The strange and noise-like music she was getting into worried mother to no end. A summer in Europe would straighten her out, it would teach her how to be a lady.

"You just sat there in that sexy car of yours, and watched us load our equipment into Stan's truck."

Andrea learned a lot that summer. She learned what it meant to be a lady, but a kind of lady her mother did not even know existed. She learned about power, how to use her money, influence, and body to get exactly what she wanted. She learned about marijuana, opium and cocaine. She learned how to drink massive quantities, throw it all up, and continue partying through the night. She learned how to fuck men, and how to fuck women. She learned there was nothing quite as sweet as a good, mind blowing orgasm. She learned how to look out for herself, sacrifice for no one, and take everything her position allowed her to. She decided then that she would not waste away in a big house like her mother, wife to a husband who was never there.

"Finally, you stuck one hand out your window, raised a finger, and slowly called me over." Dave took a long drink from his glass 'My father owns AP Records' you said, 'Get in. Lets go fuck.'"

Celine and Paulo were young Andrea's teachers. Paulo was thirty, ten years his sister's junior. His wife Celine had been a model in Amsterdam before coming to Rome. Andrea learned mostly from Celine, who whispered into her ear late at night, telling her to live each moment at its fullest. Andrea admired her beauty, and slept with her whenever Paulo was away on business. There was a never a shortage of young men, mostly actors, who wanted to seduce the successful movie producer's niece. Andrea went through them quickly, most of whom couldn't keep up with her voracious appetite. There was one man she wanted more then any of them, her uncle.

Chapter Two

Rome- 1983

Thursday Night after the job fair.

2005-03-24T20:10:00.000-08:00

I am a salesman. That is my profession. In all modesty, I'm damn good at. People tell me that I'm good at my job. Customers. Its a nice feeling. Tonight I went to a job fair. I think I fared well. My current employer treats me well, but I've reached somewhat of a plateau in my earnings at Sears.

Gil the Account Executive... Selling financial services to individuals and businesses. I'd be good at it. I know I'd make more money. How will I know how much I will like it until I try it? I know I 'll always be a kick-ass appliance salesman/sales manager. Sears will always take me back. Its because of that, I know I can leave

Poetry

2005-03-21T19:43:00.000-08:00

I remember the sky.
blue, yellow and orange.
I paused at the light.
Feeling like a schmorange.

thirsty with a headache
to the table for a banana
I hear Manilow far off
its the Copa Cabana

SimCity 3000

2005-03-17T07:55:00.000-08:00

Another program on my computer that has me wasting a lot of time lately is SimCity 3000 by Maxis. This is the 1999 version of the famous PC game where you zone your city, build roads and infrastructure, adjust your budget and taxes and then watch while your city grows from blank terrain into a megapolis. Once the city is built, one has to maintain decaying utilities and deal with earthquakes & tornadoes. Fun for fans of civilization building games like me,

In previous versions, the city would morph. Builidings would get more futuristic looking unitl finally, after about 300 years, great colonizing arcologies would form and launch themselves from the tops of your buildings. You had won. Well, in SimCity 3K, thats not happening. Im in the 2300's, and things are just sort of staying the same. I'm wondering if this game will ever have some kind conclusion.

I think the secret is in the name of the game. Maybe I've gotta run this city into the 4th millennium before things start to get interesting again. I want my city to succeed, but the game is kinda boring when you're just replacing old water towers and power plants. I've become invested in the fate of the neighborhhoods, parks and commercial districts I've spent hours and hours shepherding. I don't want to just abandon my city.

I need a third computer so I can blog, play online poker and run my SimCity game all at the same time.

PartyPoker. com

2005-03-16T11:22:00.000-08:00

I love playing online Texas hold'em poker. Its not something I've ever done for money, but I do covet my fake chips at PartyPoker.com. It's an addicting little game that involves using math and psychological skills at the same time. You also have to strategize with an understanding of the personalities of the players at the table. Like many Americans, I started getting excited about Texas Hold Em by watching the Celebrity Poker Challenge on Bravo and then graduating to the World Poker Tour. If you haven't seen the WPT on the travel channel, its truly entertaining television.

Right now, at 11:32 AM, I've had a morning off by myself and have been playing poker since about 10. Like always, you start with $2000 in fake chips from your bank, which the site keeps track of for you. At this moment, I'm sitting at the table with $53K. Right now, at the table, I've won over 50% of my total bank from playing 5-10 hours a week for the last 5 months. I could lose it all back before I stop for the day, but thats not likely.

Whoops.... lost a hand... now I've got 48K...

If you haven't tried playing Texas Hold Em online, I suggest you check out this site. Unfortunately, its not Mac compatible, so you gotta use a PC. Its a nice place to learn, Look for me in the $2k Limit Hold Em fake money games. I go by Joko Londo.

Wardrobe Advice

2005-03-04T08:03:00.000-08:00

What is the ideal color of suit to wear to a job fair? Its going to be for sales professionals.

Drove to Ione and back

2005-03-03T08:48:00.000-08:00

Pictures soom

My Marketing Research Project

2005-03-02T08:32:00.000-08:00

I'm taking a course in marketing research at a local university. It's primarily for my own edification, but the themes I have chosen to vreate my final project on relate back to my profession. I decided to get some feedaback online, and I've been very pleased with the response of the general public.

Want to see my project grow?
Click Here

Waking Up

2005-03-01T08:17:00.000-08:00

..

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ...SNORT...ZZZZZZZZ..

ZZZZZZZ.....HUh? Wha? Whathyadoin.. HEY!! Get that camera out of my face!!

Okay pookies...Take my pic... Just turn out the light before you leave the room.

I found these images on our digital camera while purging the memory card. I have no memory of them being taken. My Dear Wife thought they were cute, so here they are.

Undergrads

2005-02-28T08:19:00.000-08:00

I've been taking a business class at Cal State University East Bay (formerly Hayward). Over the last few years, I've taken several classes at UC Berkeley and CSUEB. My motives have been mostly for my own personal edification, but it has allowed me to investigate other fields, at least from an academic perspective. I'm exploring a career change, but ironically, I would not have taken these steps if my current employer had not provided the benefit of a 75% tuition reimbursement for any and all "business relates" classes up to $5k per year. Its a nice way to continue learning at a big discount.

This semester's course has been an upper dicision undergrad course in marketing research, which I chose because it seemed like it was a combination of two fields I am alread trained in: sociology and sales. I've enjoyed the couse, learned a great deal, but I am going to try stay in the graduate division from here on out. Half the undergrads treat the course like its a high school class. They play video games in class. Read novels. Half of them leave at the break (Its a 3-hour, once-a-week course). My partner in our final project didn't show up to class last time, and answers the question "did you get my e-mail?" with "what e-mail?" Were my classmates and I this way a dozen years ago when I was an undergrad?

Will this thing start?

2005-02-27T08:51:00.000-08:00

My blog has gotten off track. Like many things in my life have been, I took a nice small idea and tried to make it grandiose and huge. Once blown out of proportion, I didn't know what to do with the thing, and so I let it drop.

I've deleted the posts on my personal deterministic theology. The union of omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence in the godhead will wait until another day. Blogs are multivaried, of course, but I've always approcahed personal narrative as something that should be enjoyable and fun, for the reader and the one composing. That'll be my theme here.

For example, did you read about this story? It will likely be a finalist in this years Darwin Awards.

The War Comes to the Store

2004-12-17T20:27:00.000-08:00

I hate the war. The idea that my country is killing people who've done us no harm thousands of miles from our own shores absolutely disgusts me. We have no right to be in Iraq. We have no right to invade other countries.

Up till now, however, the war in Iraq is an idea that I've hated. It hasn't touched home. Except for the protests and how I felt after watching Fahrenheit 9/11, the war hasn't effected me personally. I don't know anyone over there. I don't think I even know anyone who knows anyone whose been over there. There's no rationing, or draft or any of the other trappings of war. Being a working class environment, the military recruiters come by the store from time to time, and a few months back, they convinced a guy named Robert to enlist. Robert worked in my store as the receiving/package-pick-up supervisor. He seemed like a mature, level headed guy, at least more mature than the average non-college-educated guy in his early twenties. He's been in the army for a month now, and he's totally changed. He came back to the store in full uniform today. I listened with disgust as he talked about how great the army is. He talked about how he'll sleep in his gear out in field, so "if any terrorists try attacking us, we'll be ready to roll out of bed and start blowing them away." (He said this!) More scary was how he talked about how much he loved his M-16. I mean he really meant it when he talked about how much he loved this piece of killing machinery.

More than ever, I'm convinced that the military seriously brainwashed the youth that enter into it. Its not job training anymore. Its about turning these poor kids into neo-con killing devices. This war won't be over anytime soon, and although Robert isn't actually a friend or anything, I feel like another Amercan young man has already been killed.

S-Mart

2004-12-01T11:28:00.000-08:00

I woke up the other day to find the company I work for had been bought by another company. It was a strange feeling. After 118 years, Sears, Roebuck & Company was no more. I've been employed by Sears since 1992, so there was some trepidation as I read about the KMart-Sears merger.

I had a feeling Sears was looking for a buyer. The company sold off its credit division to Citigroup a year ago for 9 billion dollars. They own lots of prime real estate and the brandname value of Craftsman and Kenmore are tremendous assets as well. The stock price was floating along at about 40% less than its high 10 years ago. A brick & mortar store, Sears had shown an ability to adapt to new business modes, making the guy who built Sears.com into a profitable and effective online store the CEO of the whole company a few years back. An underperforming business with all this cash & assets, they were prime for takeover.

Me at Sears

Who would have thought it would be K-Mart? I haven't shopped there in years, but we're talking K-Mart here. Possibly the only thing worse than buying something at K-Mart is being bought by K-Mart! Plus, the numbers didn't make sense. How does an organization doing 15 billion in sales volume with 850 big stores and 1400 total locations get bought out by an organization doing 10 billion in volume with fewer stores? How can a smaller company "buy" a bigger one? The offer values Sears at 11 billion dollars. What happened to the 9 billion we got for the credit division? I know some of that went to pay off some long term debt, but shouldn't Sears be worth more than $11 billion? I suppose thats the whole point. When a company's assets exceed the total value of their stock, they are ripe for corporate takeover. All it takes is a group with enough leverage to make an offer. Thats where Lampert comes in.
I suppose I should give my new boss the benefit of the doubt, but there's something scary about this guy. If he himself is not a billionaire by this point, he's well on his way to being one. As the manager of a fund, he resuced K-Mart from bankruptcy, sold off underperforming assets and made the company profitable again. By rolling the K-Mart and Sears entities together, there are tremendous opportunities for either growth or more stripping of assets. Whats scary is we don't know Lampert's real motives. Is he out to be the next Warren Buffet and building himself a tremendous fortune without regard to destruction he leaves in his wake? Will he destroy Sears for personal gain? Here's a short article about what Lampert might do next.

Of course, Sears was well on its way to destroying itself without needing any help from others. Sales had dropped every year since 2000 while competitors were posting increases. Sears had higher costs per sale than other retailers, although recent moves towards converting the stores towards more efficient operations were making headway. The company that was the nation's largest retailer a generation ago was now 7th on that list. By merging with K-Mart, we're back up to 3rd again. Home Depot is second, and we all know whose number one. The 900 pound gorilla named WalMart.

The 900 pound gorilla does whatever it wants, or so the old joke goes. WalMart is notorious for squeezing suppliers ruthlessly. I've never heard that about Sears or K-Mart. Reports exist that WalMart actually pressured manufacturers to move their operations out of the USA to reduce costs. WalMart is a force for outsourcing jobs overseas. I recognize that a global division of labor is inevidble and beneficial. Its better for the whole world that things be made efficiently, but we are in a competition here as well. Our economy competes with others as players in a larger global economy. I believe if we lose industry after industry to other parts of the world, we will eventually suffer. We must preserve the industries we still do well in. For example, appliances are mostly made in the USA. WalMart & BestBuy are now flooding their floors with Chinese made Haier and LG appliances. Sure, you can get a pretty nice looking LG for cheaper than its Whirlpool, Maytag or GE equivalent, but how long can these other companies keep making in the USA before their market share drain forces them overseas? Does WalMart care? Hell no.
Will Sears/K-Mart care? Maybe. Sears has understood that you gotta play nice with your suppliers because their health is realted to yours. The Sears/Whirlpool relationship typifies this attitude. I don't think Sears would ever pressure an appliance manufacturer to move their production overseas.

The 900 pound gorilla must be stopped. I'm now employed by a 600 pound gorilla. Lets hope the 600 pound gorilla behaves itself.

The Changing Morning Light

2004-11-15T07:32:00.000-08:00

I stumbled out of bed at 6:30 AM, and into an amazing sight outside the big windows of our living room. All the buildings were glowing. A pinkish hue reflecting off everything I could see. I could not see the sun rising in the east, but its effects were bathing my senses in an incredible light. I paused a moment and then took up my journal to begin my morning pages. I wrote a sentence and looked up. Things weren't quite as beautiful now. Not as vibrant. I looked down again to write another sentence, and when I turned back, the incredible glow was gone.

I missed it! I didn't enjoy it to its fullest while it was here! I was actually saddened by the changing of the light. The reflection of the sunrise on the city around me made me feel inadequate in my ability to observe the beauty of the universe. It was an instinctual, human emotional reaction to the disappearance of beauty, but it doesn't make sense to be upset at the sun for not hanging at just the right angle for longer than it does. A few moments later, a different set of shades caught my eye. Stuck by the variety of colors we choose to paint the concrete structures we live in, I realized the beauty of the physical world hadn't gone away. It had simply morphed. The blues and whites replaced the red and pink, but it was still beautiful. God was still there.

So like life itself was that one moment. The sunrise of youth replaced by a cloudy adulthood. One moment may glow in different ways, but all of its beautiful.

Rats on the Balcony

2004-10-27T09:34:00.000-07:00

AS I start writing this, I realize that there will now be two posts out of a whopping 7 on this Blog that have to do with rodentia. Little furry creatures are part of my life, what can I say. Well here, take a look at this, a page made by my wonderful wife, Jasmine.
As you can see, having these wonderful little creatures visiting your doorway can be considered a responsibility. They are wild creatures, yes, but we have chosen to help feed and maintain them. Walnuts aren't cheap! Besides, who could resist this face?

Last night, we were watching "The Day After Tomorrow." It was late, about 10:30 PM, when I saw some movement over on the balcony. I saw two little ears sticking up out of a rodent shaped head. Squirrels at night? That never hapens. Squirrels curl up in little balls and sleep during the night. What was this thing? I looked again and saw a sleek body and long, stringy tail attached to this otherwise squirrel-shaped creature. A Rat! Yup, a dirty, stinking, disease carrying, babies-eyeballs-chewing rat! Like this one:

This was horrible! A rat on our balcony! Maybe not as bad as a rat in the kitchen, but terrible nonetheless. Unclean people have rodent problems, not us! Jasmine was freaking out even worse than I. Put the cat outside, she said. Insisting we keep the light on on the balcony (this would drive them away), she started to clean the apartment. Cleaning inside isn't going to do anything to keep rats away outside, but hey, if it makes one feel better. Naturally, we had to stop the movie to "deal" with this situation. If you haven't seen "The Day After Tomorrow," you probably at least know its an apacolyptic thriller about the sudden coming of an ice age. Last night was the coldest night of the year so far. Add the cold to the movie to rat appearing at the slding glass door, and it seemed as is the world was coming to an end.

But is it really all that bad? Why do we feed the squirrels and think they're the cutest things in the world, while cringing in horror at the sight of a rat? They both can carry parasites. They both live comfortably in trees in urban environments. I'm not the first person to think about this question, and there's one obvious answer: THE TAILS. A rat's tail is very useful to the rat; it may even be prehensile, I'm not sure. Squirrels tails, on the other hand are great for show. Falshy, bushy things, I've seen them use their tails to communicate with one another and us too many times to count. Squirrels know their tails are potent tools for manipulation. Their tails have also gotten them in a bit of trouble. Read this anecdote written by the Devil.

Despite the fact that I can intellectually grasp the concept that roof rats and squirrels are cousins and not really all that different from one another, I would never be able to feed the rats. Feed wild rats? It sounds inhuman! As it turns out, we have been feeding the rats. Jasmine has been putting out handfuls of shelled walnuts before going to bed so that any early-morning squirrel visitors would find food waiting for them. Sure enough, she reported, the nuts would be gone when she woke up in the morning. Something was eating them. We figure now that the roof rats have been making their way to our balcony and eating the squirrel food.

Should we feed the rats too?