It's Not How Well the Dog Dances

Back to Old Europe

30 December, 2015

Kim and I are wrapping up our whirlwind tour of America today, waiting to board our flight back to Vienna and then the train to our lovely Brno. Hopefully the fog will have lifted…

Here is the obelisk that stands behind the Brno cathedral Petrov. This photo makes me sad because it is going to encourage my friends and relatives to think that Brno is like Transylvania or something, which it most certainly is not. At least I assume it is not, never having been to Transylvania myself. The point is that Frankenstein’s Monster is not about to lurch hungrily out of the fog at you, despite appearances to the contrary…

Everyone says the fog, is pretty unusual for Brno. Hopefully it ends soon.

While in California, we visited my family, which resulted in this:

Mom, in the middle front, was recently diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a kind of bone marrow cancer. Fortunately she has been responding well to the treatment and everyone seems optimistic about her prognosis, which is a real relief. My grandfather — Dad’s father — died of the same disease back in 1985. Anyway we thought it would be a good idea to try to get all of us together for Christmas, which was made possible by many many pounds of jet fuel and (on Kim and my part) many thousands of Air Miles. It was a really good visit, and exactly the right length (6 days).

We stopped in Philadelphia on the way home and saw a few folks and fixed a few things at our house there. It is always nice to see all our old friends. Kim and I are both surprised I think that, as much as we love the city, we don’t really miss it. I guess 20 years in one place may be long enough, or at least long enough that it is time to take a break.

Also, I really like not having to fix anything in our Brno apartment. Having a landlord is great!

Everything’s Bigger in America

24 December, 2015

Today I’m writing from a coffee shop in the Santana Row “village” (see below for rant) in San Jose, California. It’s Christmas Eve, 2015. I’ve been in the Czech Republic now with only brief interruptions since June 2015, so I’ve had a fair bit of time to acclimate to the European lifestyle. Coming back for the holiday brings a bunch of thoughts, including how weird it is that everyone understands English, but one stands out:

Holy crap everything is just enormous!

Like, seriously huge. Cars, houses, roads, plates of food, stores, things in stores… I feel like Gulliver or something. Only the people are roughly the same size. Well, they’re roughly the same height, anyway. Nonetheless, it apparently takes one of these to transport a family of four to dinner:

It’s not like big cars are a new thing in the U.S. After all, my father drove us around in one of these when I was a kid:

(Wow I really wish he had kept that car…)

What I do think has changed since the Johnson administration is the size of everything else. I’m not sure, but I wonder sometimes if the American obesity crisis is simply an attempt to expand to fill all the space we’ve made for ourselves. (Really I think it’s because we’re being poisoned, but that’s a subject for another blog.)

The contrast with Brno, where the average monthly salary would not quite buy the gas for the truck above, is quite impressive. You can make arguments for both lifestyles, I guess, but I know which I would prefer.

Oh, and about Santana Row… blearrgh. Why do we tear down real towns with character and interest, so we can build fake ones instead? Not enough room for luxury retail? Bad land-use laws (this is probably it, really)? I think I feel another blog coming on on the importance of decent legislation…

My God, What Have I Done

23 December, 2015

So my crazy nephew Elliot Brock has decided it is imperative that he host his own 4chan server RIGHT NOW.

4chan? Seriously? But, I’m supposed to be his hip nerdy uncle, so I’m all, sure, I have a spare Linode that isn’t doing much, you can use it if you want. The catch is you have to learn enough emacs that you can sysadmin the thing yourself, because there is no way I’m waking up late at night to fix it when it breaks.

Yes, I am making a young person learn emacs. Call me evil, if you want…

Anyway, got a web root set up for him, he’s taking to emacs quite well for a 14-year-old with a post-millenial attention span, so far so good. (Is it possible to have a negative attention span, actually?) The point of the exercise is of course for him to actually learn something about networking, linux system administration, etc. And to create another emacs user because otherwise vim will get him, and that will be the end of that. Groan.

Happy Birthday to Me

20 February, 2015

Today on my 47th birthday I am going to say thanks to Mom and Dad for raising me right (to the extent anyone could have, anyway).

Things I got from Mom:

* My determination to believe, sometimes in the face of the evidence, that people are basically good and that we are all made of the same stuff — put another way, that it is wrong to blame people for their bad circumstances when external forces are almost certainly to blame

* My “What, me worry?” optimism

* My love of animals

* My belief that I can do more or less anything if I put my mind to it

Things I got from Dad:

* My love of music and my musical ability (although I think Mom may actually have a better ear). Some kids get praised for throwing a ball — I didn’t even have a ball, I got praised for singing on pitch. (n.b. if you want your kid to know how to throw a ball, you should get him one and throw it with him.)

* My inclination, tamed by two years of beatings in graduate school but still present, to use five syllables when one would do. Put another way, my love for words and playing with words and everything wonderful about language.

* My intolerance for bad music and bad taste in general. This of course flies in the face of Mom’s proletarianism, which makes for an interesting internal tension.

* My belief that I can do more or less anything if I put my mind to it Mom and Dad fought through some rough years bringing us up, but no matter what they put looking after us first, perhaps to a fault (my memory on this is fuzzy, but I’m fairly certain that Dad, after a long string of defeats, finally lost his partnership at the large lawfirm he was at because he took two weeks off to direct the music for my junior-high-school production of The Mikado, starring me.) I’m only now beginning to really appreciate how difficult that business of putting your kids first can be, as I watch parents around me go through the same traumas Mom and Dad did.

Anyway: Thanks, Mom and Dad. I am a lucky, lucky boy.

No Upgrades Available…

18 February, 2015

… on my flight to Tel Aviv this weekend. I thought about pleading with US Airways that it will be my birthday and I really, really *need* a lie-flat seat and complimentary alcoholic beverages for that 11-hour trip, but I don’t think it would have worked.

The nice thing about US Airways is that it is often possible, for $300 and 30,000 miles, to float yourself into that privileged area up front. I mean look there is no way it’s actually worth $300, but on the other hand I almost always try, so that must mean it actually is worth it by some definition.

The fact that my Quaker grandparents would consider all this insanely self-indulgent is not lost on me. I try not to think about it when I glide serenely past the masses waiting to board coach.