On Safari with Oldupai George

Interesting factoid:

• MySQL was bought by Sun for $1 billion
• Burt’s Bees was bought by Clorox for $913 million

In other words, the two companies were purchased for more or less the same amounts. I’m not sure yet what that really means, if anything, other than that lip balm might be as good a business to get into as open source enterprise software.

I missed April 7 this year - too crazy trying to set the foundation for a business startup to change the world or something lame like that. I’m disappointed in myself for this.

April 7 is the anniversary of the start of the genocide in Rwanda. It’s been fourteen years now, which is basically nothing, and it’s insanely important with all the other shit going on in the world to remember what can and has happened when we don’t pay attention.

I recommend (re)reading “We Wish To Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with our Families” or watching sometimes in April. Or, if the opportunities presents itself, going to Rwanda.

Holy cannoli, just noticed that my Dopplr thing somehow spiders my Flickr spot and pulls the photos relevant to a specific trip. That’s cool, and yet it creeped me out. Had a long conversation with Elaine (who is, I feel, on the verge of a major life upheaval that will somehow lead to being in the stands together with me and Eli for a World Cup match in 2010) recently about social networking and still feel I may be too old. Kind of like grandma and touchtone phones.

Still, it’s cool.

PS. Send love to Mark. Don’t ask questions, just do it.

It’s 11:18 PM in Boracay, Philippines, which means that it’s 8:18 AM Seattle time… which means that I am wide bright-eyed awake. I should really be writing my performance review, or sleeping, but neither is particularly likely at the moment. I’ve taken my Ambien (almost took a Levaquin in its place, which would have been bad) so hopefully things will start looking up (down?) shortly.

Boracay has yet to impress me. It’s theoretically one of the greatest beaches in the world, but the noise from the club next door (techno remix of Sweet Child O’ Mine - UPDATE 12:06 AM techno remix of “What a Feeling” from Flashdance; also my room is acting as a resonance chamber or something; it’s louder in here than it is outside the door) is emblematic. The beach itself seems decent enough - haven’t been in the water yet - but it’s backed by an array of shops, bars, restaurants, etc., and is crowded with tourists and hawkers alike, making any notion of relaxation a fleeting one.

Boracay reminds me, so far, of that strip of beach on the northwest side of Zanzibar, the name of which I can’t recall, except not as nice, and not in Africa. I don’t typically dislike places I end up, and I can’t actually say that I dislike Boracay, but I can think of a lot of places I’d much rather be.

The sex trade in Asia is everywhere… in your face in some places more than others, but even here on this (vaguely) remote island you’ve got your aging, paunch-ridden gray-haired dudes with random young Filipinas. I’m not actually sure what to think about this; in many ways, if they’re all happy (and being safe, natch), I’m happy, but there’s something of a train wreck to it. I have to remind myself not to stare constantly.

One thing tonight that made me smile, not stare: I stopped for a drink at a beach bar on the way back from dinner and listened to a woman singing with a decent voice who interspersed random covers with what seemed to be the entire Alanis Morrissette songbook. The thing that made me smile? The bartender who, during one particularly OK tune, started kicking up his own percussive groove on a stack of empty overturned ice buckets.

Also, the Japanese dude next to me made me smile - and wince - by drinking shots (!) of Gilbey’s gin. With a lime, thanks.

PS. The Japanese do seem to have the sexiest phones on the planet.

PPS. The guards on the beach apparently upgrade from sticks to pistol-grip shotguns at around 10 PM.

Must watch - bringing people together via football in Zambia to talk about HIV/AIDS

From here

Mark, in talking about the Sia show he saw recently, said…

I’ve often found (and just as often forgotten) that live music is a tonic for the soul. 

Exactly, so true, so very very true… and a good reminder that I need to get out to a show soon.

Waiting for delayed departure of flight to SFO today (high winds down there have them down to one runway)…

• The entire North Satellite terminal smells like bacon, which is making me very hungry - but not for crappy airport bacon. Now Les Halles‘ bacon, that’s a whole other story.
• Someone got paged to “call 911 on any courtesy phone to reach airport police”. That can’t possibly be good.
• There’s a very sweet looking teenage boy with a guitar (he was playing earlier) and his little MacBook writing music while he waits. Maybe he’s the next (fill-in-with-teen-singer-songwriter-heartthrob-du-jour)
• Landing in high winds ought to be fun
• As of now, we’re scheduled to depart at the exact time my original flight was supposed to (I came early in anticipation of delays to try to catch earlier, less-delayed flight) which means that I got up early for a good reason, for once.
• I know everyone bitches about this, but there really should be a law constraining what is and is not acceptable as a ringtone. Also the Cingular/AT&T people should stop making that damn default ringtone the default on their phones.
• Just learned via Elaine that Ralph Nader announced his candidacy. Oy vey. I mean, yes, Al Gore should have won regardless of Nader in 2000 but I have little patience for someone who can’t see the entire picture and acknowledge that he might have played a role and inability to grasp (or if he can grasp it, acknowledge) political reality. Statements like “if the dems can’t win in a landslide this year, they should just pack up and go home” are either intellectually dishonest or evidence of a gross lack of paying attention. At this point, he just sounds cranky, and diminishing of his own legacy. Not that I’m annoyed, or anything.

From the air… still no f’in pretzels on United.

Just got back from my first ever caucus and it’s very very cool. Massive turnout at the Madrona Elementary School - far beyond expectations and, as it turns out, the capacity of the school. A worried-sounding principal-type voice came on at one point encouraging people to leave if they had signed in and registered their vote for a candidate.

People were friendly and a buzz of excitement was all over the school, with nary an uncommitted person to be found. It was interesting to be hanging out with 100+ of my neighbors (for precinct 1886 of WA legislative district 37), all there to do the caucus thing.  Also weird to be in an elementary school for the first time in a long time.

Some notes I jotted down along the way:

• Suspected based on stickers etc to see a heavy Barack leaning in the district, and that did end up being the case in my precinct
• Big applause for “i’m just looking outside and i think everybody came today” by the coordinator dude
• Surprisingly organized - there must have been a few thousand people at the school. It worked like this: find the caucus location online, show up and park, stand in line to get into the school, find my precinct on a map, note precinct number, find precinct number on school map, go find precinct in large gym, sign in with name etc and candidate choice, then hang out for a while
• The whole thing started with the Pledge of Allegiance which has freaked me out since I was a youth and still does to this day
• The three-tier delegate selection process - of which the precinct caucuses today were just the first step - seems awfully confusing. I am gonna be pissed if the superdelegates end up making the choices, btw
• Guy reading rules talked (from script) about affirmative action and when he got to the phrase “sexual orientation” a big “woooo!” rang out from an unseen queen somewhere in the crowd
• Overheard in my precinct: “I was leaning toward Hillary this morning until I talked to you… just don’t tell my son”. Very cool, seems that’s the point of the caucuses
• The actual process once started: voted in the volunteer precinct leader, who had appointed a minutes-taker and a tally-taker. Leader read the rules again, then tally guy did the initial counting from the sign-in sheets… with everyone watching. They announced the preliminary results: 87  for Obama, 18 for Hillary, and 1 uncommitted
• “OK, where’s the uncommitted? Get him up against the wall!”
• Then we had time for 1 minute candidate speeches: one speechmaker for Hillary, and one for Obama… very cool to see regular people willing to jump up and talk about the candidates. That was followed by discussion time when you could try to change people’s votes… I left at that point, having seen enough to be really excited and educated and also I was hungry for lunch.
• Final note: the Obama speechmaker talked about healthcare (he’s a recent medschool grad) and other things and wrapped up by talking about how having 24 consecutive years of two families seemed a bit third-world to him and how would that look to the rest of the country…

Obama: 87!
Hillary: 18
Uncommitted: 1

Yes we can!