January 20, 2000

education

Ran late all day long. As I rushed into work, late for a 9AM meeting, I reasoned that it wasn't my meeting, I was just going to listen in. I paused on my way out to go to UT for a lecture ("Performance Engineering in Early Stages of Software Development") to talk to a couple of colleagues. I described the problems I'd been having with allergies. One said "I've just refused to have allergies." She went home sick later in the day. Perhaps she hasn't refused sickness. Just allergies. Anyway, the idle conversation and my failure to judge the amount of time needed to drive to a UT parking garage and walk to Taylor Hall, meant that I was a couple of minutes (ok, five or six) late to the 11AM lecture. Of course, they started on time. I hate that. When I'm on time, they are endlessly fooling with the AV or something.

Walking across campus gives me pause. What would have become of me if I'd gone to school in the era of backpacks and blue jeans? Would I have dropped out of Physics if I hadn't been lugging that heavy book in a stack with others clutched to my chest while dressed in a dress. (No jeans, of course, and, in fact, no trousers! What would happen if you allowed girls to wear trousers!?) God, I feel old. Anyway, the kids slide across campus, dressed in jeans and T-shirts and maybe a sweater on a cool day like today, backpacks over their shoulders or on their backs.

I don't envy them, though. Their world is too fast. No time for reflection. Should they drop out and start a company like Dell? Should they drop out and try to hit an IPO? Does anything they are learning mean a thing for this century? No, it's hard enough for me, mature as I am, to stay calm in a world of hurtling change. I've managed to assemble enough assets to not feel anxious. I'm not Michael Dell, but I'm comfortable and, really, I've proved everything I wanted to prove in my life. The rest is gravy.

Twice in twenty-four hours a woman has looked at my business card and given me a look as if I had just said that I worked for the Mafia. I am not who I work for, but the business affiliations of these two make it amusing. (One IS her company, but the other works for a monolith with no soul as well.) Ah, but as I said, I've proved everything I wanted to prove. I worked on some successful software products, although supported by a company which belongs to others. But I was lucky enough to get some good rewards. The software had some influence in my tiny little niche. I am happy. Anything else I do with my life is icing. Plus, I've become a person whom I like pretty well and that's no mean feat.

"All That Glitters" was a TV show that played on independent stations for a short while in 1977. I figured the WEB would offer up a bunch of cool information on it, but the most that I've been able to find out there is a cast listing on imdb with a bit of a synopsis and I wrote that a few years back. Why do I mention this? I researched this a long time ago and gave up finding anything more to bolster my fading but fond memory. Yesterday I got an e-mail from a guy asking for info about the show because I'd added my info on imdb. Hearing from someone else who saw it is interesting. He remembered one scene exactly as I did.

A shadow wipes the moon away. At first I thought it was a hoax. We were walking the dogs, SuRu and I, and we kept squinting up. "Is there a shadow on the lower left corner?" But finally it is obviously covered. And it finally looks like it was colored over by the burnt umber crayon. A father lectures a child on the heavens in a neighbor's yard. Several families of kids are up late to see it out.

Working on this makes me all too aware of other people's (much better) efforts. However, one comforting factor is that the other journals I read make me feel better about the day-to-day travail, difficulty sleeping, working, dealing with it all. All the 'regular' journal writers I've found suffer from enough procrastination, self-doubt and stuff to make one feel it's OK not to have everything under control.

I'm listening to Bill Bryson's "Neither Here Nor There" on tape in the car. (Takes me a long time to do a book on tape on my short commute if I don't go to Houston now and again.) I enjoy Bryson's take on Europe but it makes me jealous that I don't get residuals for my own hapless tales of travel. It really gives me the 'hey, I could have written that!' feeling although I probably couldn't have. Perhaps I'll review some old notes and torture my readers with old travel misadventures.

"Education should be as gradual as the moonrise, perceptible not in progress but result. "

George John Whyte-Melville, Riding Recollections