Ponderings

OK, that's it. I've been moving away from American Airlines for years, and they had sort of dropped to the "if there are no reasonable alternatives available," category. They managed to rise to the "after this last time, it's just not worth getting there." I feel dehumanized, manipulated, and I can't sleep because I have this sneaking suspicion that I'm a bad person for being upset that they're screwing me over. I hate it when I feel like I'm the one who has to apologize and beg when at some level I realize that someone else is being unreasonable. So, I'll rant in the hopes that I'll convince myself that it's not my fault and I can get back to sleep. If I convince others to take their business to a company that cares about customer service, all the better.
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While cooking chicken for dinner this morning, I managed to ignite my
shirt. I'm OK. I could tell that something was wrong from th smell; I turned off the burner assuming I had flipped something out of the pan and stepped back. Then I noticed that I was still hot and reached down to find a burning flaming hole in my shirt. I was not at all sure what to do at that point, because I didn't want to burn my face or hair getting the shirt off, but I also didn't want to take any significant time to put it out while still on my body. I ended up deciding to pull it off, which did burn some of my hair, but in retrospect was clearly the right move given the circumstances. My fingers are a bit blistered where I found the fire and my chest and stomach are a bit burned. The shirt is of course a loss, but dinner is fine.

I was talking about the last half of 2011 with bouncingleaf last night. One quick conclusion: I had a busy 2011. And really it was a good year.

I think work is the biggest success of 2011. I've long had a goal of establishing a lifestyle company with close friends that would be fun to work for and that would be doing interesting things. The goal would be to be successful without being so driven by success that we fail to have fun. For me at least, I think Painless Security is well along that path. I'm enjoying working with Margaret and Kevin; they are doing great work and our clients are happy. There are opportunities to turn some of our consulting into products and that would be great. I'm not sure Margaret and Kevin are as happy as I am. One of the goals for 2012 is going to be to make sure that we're all enjoying ourselves and to try and tune things so that's true.

I've started to think about spirituality and to some extent religion this year. I've had some really wonderful experiences. It's great to have lots of new things to think about on that front.

For me at least, one of the ways to judge how stable something is and how important it is is to watch how people respond to challenges. This year has given me increased confidence in the strength of my relationship with mrw42. Both of us have gone to significant lengths to address some concerns that came up. I think it's really wonderful that our relationship is able to survive both when times are great and when there are challenges. I also am very pleased that we continue to learn and grow together. We've had some great times this year. We had a great get away for our anniversary early this month and we had a wonderful Christmas with our family. I continue to be amazed that I have someone as wonderful as Margaret in my life!
Things are very exciting on other parts of the relationship front as well.

Being a parent continues to be a wonderful experience. It's neat to watch Zoe grow and to watch the complexity of her play increase so much. She reminds me so much of myself..

This year was also filled with friends. I had an opportunity to get together with chardin several times. It's always wonderful when we can connect together. I got to see several groups of other friends in Austin, Germany and California; it was wonderful.

I'm really looking forward to 2012.

One of the things that been making me really happy lately is work. Our entire family is working for Painless Security, and everyone is doing great stuff. Kevin has been coming up to speed on some new technologies We had a review meeting with the client yesterday that went very well. They have more work they want to do for the next phase and were happy with what we delivered.

Margaret put in a lot of work over October and November. I was kind of worried that she didn't seem to be getting to all the things she wanted to get to. I would have been less worried had I realized at the time all that the did get done. Of course the work quality was excellent. Even though the client and I kept redesigning components of the system out from under her, she managed to give multiple great presentations and significantly advance our understanding. It's still a hard task to explain some of the technology involved, but we're making progress. She's great at making sure that systems really do fit together and at making things easy to understand. I think the design will slow down a bit now and we can really get on to fleshing this out.

I love working with a group this great. This is the sort of thing I've wanted to do for a long time and it makes me happy that it is working out.

As several people have pointed out on LJ, Anne McCaffrey died recently. It's sad to have lost such a wonderful world and culture builder. I've always had a special attraction to long series of speculative fiction. There's sort of a necessary evolution. The first book or so can stand on its own: it presents something the reader has not considered; it can be unique and distinct, all its own. However you cannot both keep continuity and maintain that. If your opening really is all it can be, then the events of the opening will establish context. Definitely for the characters in your opening, but often globally across the society. So, later books tell a kind of arbitrary story: the action and characters depend as much on arbitrary things that happened earlier in the series as anything inherent in the story being told. The opening may be about the world, some concept, something new. But later, the series is as much about how that concept affects people in the story as anything else. Keeping a series meaningful and enjoyable across this transition is hard. McCaffrey was a master at this.

Pern is almost certainly her most famous body of work. That accomplished the series transition multiple times. The beginning brought us into a new and unexpected world. Later books helped us imagine how such a world might spring out of something familiar. Still later books followed the discovery of the broader universe as the natives of Pern began to re-interprit their world.

Pern was certainly not the only world and cultural exploration that filled my desire for long series worth reading. There were many worlds to explore. I will miss her creations.

Sure, McCaffrey was not hard science fiction. Among the wonderful world building, there sure were some cringe-worthy moments. I recall a description of evading sonar detection on a space ship. And the later Pern books certainly had their moments. No creation is perfect; the imperfections add a beauty of their own. So I'll take this time to think about McCaffrey and all the other giants that gave my imagination a run for the money.

Lots of wonderful stuff going on. For my birthday I mentioned it would be cool to have some pictures for social networking, for professional shots, etc. meadmaker was wonderful and spent an evening here photographing me. I will be working with mrw42 to upload these pictures, hopefully this weekend. I really appreciate the help and hope I have an opportunity to repay the favor.

Then there's mrw42. Recently she reminded me how wonderful it is that she's in my life. Among other things, recently she put a lot of thought into a problem that's been bothering me a great deal. Also, she's very supportive in general and helps me believe in myself. I need to be better about doing the same for her.

While I'm being happy about meadmaker and mrw42 I should mention that they've conspired to bring fresh bread into our family. Mark showed Margaret how to make fresh bread that doesn't take too long, and she's been doing it regularly. This is of course wonderful for everyone here.

Work is going great as well. I've also been having some great conversations with people I met at the beginning of October and have been doing a lot to think about some new stuff.

Today, I was flying to the UK. I went to pick up my bag. The person helping me handed me a bag. "This is not mine," I said.

"You're Samuel Hartman, right? "

"Yes."

"Then this is your bag." Well, not really. I'm kind of aware of what bag I checked and this sure isn't it. Later, my bag, also tagged as mine, appeared. So, somehow I checked one bag and two bags got checked as mine. I kind of suspected something horrible was going on, because I was sitting on my first flight and just before the door closed, someone ran up to me and handed me a bag tag. I already had the tag for the one bag I had checked. They were quite certain my bag had been retagged. Seems they were wrong.

Yet another argument that airport security is all about inconvenience and doesn't actually make us safer.

Yesterday, I had a wonderful birthday party. I'd like to thank mrw42 and Kevin for all the hard work they put into the party. Margaret gave it her best effort to try and make me happy, and she certainly succeeded. I had great friends, wonderful food, lots of wonderful kids running around, and a fire! What more could you want for a birthday? Her post about the party is here

[If this comes across as negative towards people who do need a wheelchair, that's not my intent at all. My point is that there are a lot of fairly negative things about not being treated as ably as you are.]
Hi. I'm totally blind. When I first started using the United website several years ago, the special assistance tab on the website had an option for visually impaired passengers who need assistance but not a wheelchair. I appreciated that: it's very frustrating to be forced to sit in a wheelchair and treated as less capable than you are. The sort of humiliating treatment that you get is typified by an experience in Paris on a non-United flight. The purser noticed that I was standing once the wheelchair arrived, came over and said that I seemed to be walking well for someone who required a wheelchair. On my last two reservations, this option has disappeared. I may select a wheelchair or no assistance at all. I'd like to understand why this has changed, and express strong disappointment at the decision.

Lately, all three of the adults in our household have been doing work for Painless Security. This has been making me incredibly happy. Kevin and Margaret are really skilled and it is a pleasure to work with them. Also, I feel like we're building something together. We have a variety of interesting projects and are looking at ways to turn the company into more than just a consulting company. This week we've been making some decisions (or preparing to make some decisions) on which projects to take and on how much effort to spend on them. Being in a position to do that with people I enjoy working with makes me so incredibly happy. Thursday was kind of cool as we were putting together a quote for a large project. I think Margaret and Kevin find that sort of paperwork annoying; I agree. But I was filled with joy to think that we were all putting our minds together to figure out what we as a group could do and how we could pull it together. Several other situations recently have filled me with the same sort of joy.