Mickey

"Primordial Ethics": Music to my eyes

Let me tell you about Mickey. Mickey is a rock star, by which I mean not that overused expression for a high performer, but literally so, as I define it: Mickey is a portal into the world for thrilling music that will otherwise never be heard. He doesn't constrain himself to the stave (see image, above), may not even know that Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit, but then again, a lot of rock stars don't. He's an insatiable consumer of the work of others and a master synthesist, yet his output is utterly original. And, not least, he's incredibly fun to watch. Rock. Star.

I encountered Mickey's work before I met the man himself. It was the summer of '15, and I was doing my summer reading. I was on the hunt for something that would help me understand the Internet of Things, and after wading through a bunch of crap I discovered Trillions. To this day, it's the only book on the topic that expresses the scale of the IoT without being hand-wavy: "computing as an ecology" means something, and Mickey and his co-authors convinced me that the IoT portends a paradigm shift in your and my favorite technology and everything attached to it. Trillions is nothing if not big.

So imagine my delight upon discovering that Mickey had joined Autodesk as a Research Fellow. He, knowing no better, accepted my immediate request for a meeting, and I, determined to impress him in that meeting, brought with me some of the "elephant diagrams" I used to understand the company....

It's...complicated.

Mickey was, if not impressed, at least amused, and a bit later invited me to join Project Primordial, his effort to help Autodesk think about generative design at scale. Join a cutting edge IoT project with my favorite IoT thinker? Yes, please.

Primordial (which later became and still is Hack Rod) was an education in lots of ways, but most especially a master class in unbounded thinking. I am a repressed person generally, and while that's probably for the best in most respects, it translates into a certain lack of audacity in my intellectual scope (if you're surprised to read that then you haven't met Mickey). And it was with those lessons in mind that I later catalyzed the MX3D Smart Bridge project, about which I've spoken before. What I haven't acknowledged previously was that Mickey was one of the first people I asked to help figure out how to make a bridge smart, and his ideas and especially his questions on that topic have been an inspiration more or less continuously over the (gulp) half decade we've been trying to do so.

So that's Mickey, or at least my Mickey. Now comes a request, from his partner (an extraordinary person in her own right): Mickey, it seems, is going to be bed-ridden for a time, a depressing and boring prospect. She asks for a story "about the goodness that Mickey has brought into your life," and that's what this is, if only a partial account. It was a pleasure to write it, but in addition she asks for reading suggestions for Mickey, which is the exact equivalent of trying to figure out what to get the man who has everything. Indeed, when I want to build a reading list, Mickey himself is my first stop: he's long since left Autodesk, but we are still collaborating, and I've actually just got off a Zoom call with him in which he first recommended The Nature of Technology and then proceeded to chat me (while operating what appeared to be a very up to date if fussy Jacquard loom) enough additional material to keep me busy the entire time he's recovering:

But I have a niche experience that will help here. I've been sick before, and in desperate need of bookish distraction. I read fast, too, so what I really want isn't a book, it's a series, and long enough that I won't be worried about it running out. It also has to be well written, entertaining, and not so tightly plotted that close attention is required. There are some obvious ones--Pratchett's Discworld series and Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin stories come to mind--but I'm sure Mickey's already been there. Here are a few that got me through tough times, and which he might have overlooked:

• Tim Dorsey's Serge Storms series about an amateur historian/serial killer, probably available at SF Public in e-book.
  
• The greatest manga ever, Lone Wolf and Cub (will deliver all 28 volumes upon request).
  
• Samuelson's History of United States Naval Operations in World War II (don't own it, but do own Churchill's own history of the Second World War, which is almost as good, half as long, and likewise available for delivery).
• The Flashman Papers, not nearly enough of them, and dangerously funny, so best not started until the stitches are set.

Get well soon.

Vaccination hero

Governor Newsom accompanied by air DJ

"California will move away from its color-coded tier system that regulates closures and openings county-by-county, the governor said while visiting San Francisco," wrote the journalist, in error. The correct quote is "California will move away from its color-coded tier system that regulates closures and openings county-by-county, the governor said while visiting Talia." Yes, that's Talia's job site, and despite closing Lane 1 for the gavenator, she and the team delivered another 1,350 jabs today, for a total, at this site alone, of almost 40,000 vaccinations since February. Not easy work, but she loves it, and I love that she's doing it.

And if you're wondering, yes, I've had my first shot, but not at one of her sites: she works in SF and the East Bay, so even if she had an open vial at the end of the day, she also has our only car, so someone nearer, if not dearer, inevitably gets it.

Pandemic planning-A year in

A neighbor's tally, outdated daily

Here we are, a full year into the COVID Pandemic. The US has seen far and away the most deaths globally, thanks to the criminally inept handling of the situation by the previous anti-administration and, it must be noted, the fundamentally anti-social ethos of personal freedom that many Americans cling to, often at significant personal cost. But even in places that have taken a more structured and sensible approach to addressing the disease, the experience has been tragic and the virus continues to challenge societies and economies across the world. But what has it been like for us?

Marin County has been less hard hit than many places, and, of course, the disease has been concentrated in the poorer areas, which is to say not where we live. Still, the disease is widespread even here, and we have had a couple of close calls ourselves. The food bank where Talia volunteers (located in the poorest neighborhood in Marin) got hit, so she got tested...negative. A good friend of Gid's got it, so he got tested...negative. Near neighbors were struck, and a couple of "hey, turns out I had been exposed when we last met, so, socially distant as we were, I thought you should know" missives had us waiting nervously for an update. But there's only so many times you can have a "got tested...negative" before you get a "got tested...positive" missive, and it is still the case--no, much more so the case--that you don't want this disease.

And yet we have never isolated rigorously for much longer than a week or two at a stretch, even when the statistics were most threatening. For us, the desirability of strict adherence to stay-at-home orders was counterbalanced by the very real need for our children to see their friends and, once it was possible, to return to school. As soon as the "hybrid" (two part-days at school; fuller description here) option became available for Felix, he jumped on his bike and restarted his face-to-face relationship with teachers and fellow students; the impact on his mood, even on days when he studied remote, was unmistakable. Gid, whose school already offered that option but whose specific teacher did not, then insisted on changing classes so that he, too, could get some of that delicious in-person time. And this despite our luxurious home accommodations for young learners.

Felix's cubby and makerspace

As of this Monday, Felix is back in school full time, and Gid will go likewise a couple of weeks from now. This is a fortuitous return to normalcy, especially considering that their cousins across the Bay and friends in the city are 100% remote and have been the entire time. On the whole, I'd say the boys are no worse for wear, with their learning slowed but not derailed, and their social networks, thanks to a steady diet of networked Minecraft sessions and socially distant D&D and MTG, intact. Indeed, the experience, in the long run, may even prove beneficial: I wish them carefree lives but I am not betting on it, so judge this a valuable lesson in adversity.

The pandemic has been more challenging for Talia, who is the most social of us all and driven to care for others. While her family takes quite a lot of care, we are not always as gracious or gratifying as we might be in recognizing it: until recently, the all-family-all-the-time experience has been frustrating for her. Frustrating, too, was her long job search, which the pandemic obviously did not facilitate. Except that, in the end, it did: on the very same Monday I began my new job, Talia heard about a role administering mass vaccination sites; that Tuesday she interviewed for the position and on Wednesday she took it. Thursday she returned home from work with her first vaccination, and the job has, for the most part, continued to give her renewed strength each day since then. The pandemic, thus, has given Talia both an important outlet for caring and what I am predicting will prove to be a new career trajectory. She surely wouldn't choose to repeat it, but, I think, she may come to see this year as a transformative and ultimately positive one for her.

Then there is me, for whom the pandemic has been worrying but, from day to day, almost optional. My work life pre-COVID had three modes: on Zoom at a desk in my bedroom, on a laptop in a local cafe or library, and at the office running from one meeting to another. I enjoyed the variety, and missed it when options two and three went away. But my productivity has hardly been affected, and my earnings not at all. Recently, I managed to engineer a change in role that is energizing and even better suited to remote work; it may even be that being away from the office facilitated that. I have never looked to work for my social life, which for the most part consists of time spent with my bestie. That time was preserved, and while I hunger for a good party I do not otherwise feel unbearably deprived socially. I have made progress with my projects--home improvements, blogging, saving the world--and at least not lost ground as a parent.

One hesitates to say it, but on the whole it has been a good year. And yet what a relief it will be when it is over.

e-Biking

Yellow: where I bike without an e-bike | Everywhere else: where I bike with one

I work with a lot of fancy technologies--machine learning, robotic 3D printing, a Chemex--none of which has impressed me as much as the e-bike. I got my first one in 2012 to use on my then-new commute to Autodesk (from Fairfax to near the words "Santa Venetia" in the map, above). I got my second one upon our return from Amsterdam, an upgrade in several respects, though still designed for use on regular roads and for commute-length rides. Then came COVID, and suddenly I had nowhere to go. For a month or two the bike just sat in the garage, but eventually I decided to start using it for weekend rides in the watershed and other green areas around Fairfax. I had driven and hiked hereabouts so thought I knew something about my environs, but the e-bike opened up long expanses of fire road and even rougher trails that I had never traversed. The map of Marin came together, and the quite incredible beauty that characterizes my home county was revealed as never before.

Many, many beautiful places, and all the lovelier with Dan in the picture

I've upgraded my tires, but otherwise have ridden all these many miles with the same versatile machine I bought for my short commute. I'm so pleased with it--an Amego Infinite--that I've bought a second, so as to be able to introduce others (Talia first of all) to our extended backyard. For those thinking about getting their own e-bike or who might have a chance to try mine, here's a user manual for future rides.

We all have something to escape right now; I don't know of a better way to get away than this.

Skiing Mt. Shasta

It's been quite a while--pre-Gideon days--since we've been to Mt. Shasta, and I'd forgotten how impressive a pile it is...

We found a place in the town of Mt. Shasta...

With a cozy wood stove...

 

We had great luck with weather: two sunny days for downhill skiing...

And then two days of snow for x-country and hiking:

 

Felix, now 14, showed off his stuff on the jumps...

And, even more impressive, downhilled with the dog:

Any break from home home home is welcome, but this one, by any standards, was a great one.