Living in a commercial

I had the good fortune of being invited to a 49ers game by a friend who has season tickets for the second regular season game in the new "Levi's Stadium".  There are signs all over touting the stadium as the most technologically advanced stadium in the country (arguably the world).  While the technology aspect was impressive what I found to be more interesting was that the stadium is LEED certified.  The LEED certification is not something that is really a fan experience or high visibility characteristic the way the technology or design aesthetics would be.  So overall the stadium felt somewhat hollow and devoid of character.  It reminded me of the gorgeous renovated homes on Billionaire's Row in San Francisco when compared to some of the older homes nearby.  Character vs modern design.  

All of these complaints aside the biggest problem I had was the overwhelming amount of advertisements.  They have sold off the rights to every nook and cranny of that facility.  There is the 501 Club, the Citrix Owner's Club, the Bud Light Patio, the Pepsi Patio, the Niners Yodel (courtesy of Yahoo), and the list goes on.  I'm surprised that my bathroom experience was not sponsored by Quilted Northern, Jurgens, and Lysol.  In years past stadium fans were not subjected to the advertisements that the tv viewers were from commercials, but that has shifted and now stadium fans experience even more.  There is no sign of this trend reversing and I guess I will just go along for the ride.  

CSI Colusa

My morning was off to a relatively easy start and then I got the phone call.  "Did you see the photo I sent you?"  My construction supervisor called me from the field at 830 to see if I received his text message photo.  I had not.  When I checked it I had no idea what I was looking at.  It looked like a stone cylinder so I asked what it was. When you work in construction there are certain words you never want to get a call about.  The obvious one is accident.  Then there are less obvious ones such as 'artifact'.  A harmless little stone cylinder?  No.  An artifact.  That means that an archaeologist has to be called to the site.  Upon arriving an hour or so later the archaeologist finds the remains of a human skull.  Another word you don't want to hear about, 'remains.'  After further investigation it turns out that abalone shells were discovered and these are common as part of a burial ritual.  It now seems we have unintentionally unearthed at the least a Native American burial site and at the worst a Native American cemetery.  The latter is unlikely as we wouldn't have been allowed to dig there much less would a pipe have been allowed right through a cemetery.  That being said a single grave could be overlooked.  Later I received confirmation that the coroner and three detectives visited the site.  After it is determined that the remains are in fact old and not recent then another organization will try to find the modern descendants.  The modern descendants will likely want formal reburial and then we never revisit that site again.  And that is how my morning was derailed.    

I was that guy

Arriving at the airport with an hour to spare I was informed at the gate that I could take an earlier flight if I wanted.  I took the boarding pass and went to grab some food.  The gate agent told me that flight would leave at 130 and I wasn't too far from the gate.  While waiting on my food they announced final boarding for my flight.  As soon as my food arrived I ran to the gate and boarded.  I figured with open boarding and being so late I would be stuck with a middle seat in the back.  Instead I boarded a flight with no more than 30 people.  Every person had their own row and there were still a dozen or more rows empty.  

I settled into a spot and then looked at my fresh out of the oven steaming hot pizza.  I was starving, but I also didn't want to be 'that guy'.  There are few things worse than being in a non restaurant space (office, bus, airplane, etc.) with someone eating hot aromatic food.  I don't care if I love the food and it smells great or if it is week old fish it sucks.  My coworkers used to regularly cook bacon and it was horrible.  Flashback to the present and I am that guy.  I devoured the pizza as fast as I could with the air vents blasting me in hopes of diffusing the smell.  I don't know if it bothered anyone, but I was quite annoyed with myself.  

Not your ordinary science fair

Growing up my perception of the science fair was homemade volcanoes that would erupt a red mixture of baking soda and vinegar.  I don't remember if I took part in them, but this is what I imagined the projects would be like.  Until last week that was still my perception and then I spent two days at the Intel Science Fair in Los Angeles as a judge.  My perception has officially been shattered.  These high schoolers are the ones that you read about it the news as developing new cures to diseases or working on sequencing the genome.  The projects that I saw were so far beyond me that I had a hard time understanding what they were even doing.  You can read about the winners online and that's as easy as a Google search.  However, there were two things that I really enjoyed the simple elegant projects that were based on a simple concept and the passion of the students about what they were doing.  

One student proposed a design for a turbine to sit in the median of a highway and using the wind generated by passing cars it would power the lights on the highway.  He didn't design the whole thing, but he measured the wind speeds at different heights and proposed his idea for the amount of power such winds would generate.  It was such a simple concept and idea.  

I also met four individuals presenting three separate projects whose collective enthusiasm will stay with me forever.  One boy was from India, another was from Sri Lanka, and the two girls were from Utah.  They didn't all speak English as their first language but they clearly spoke a common language.  When they were all telling me about their projects they were literally dancing with excitement.  They shared the same look, the same tone, and the same passion.  It was beautiful to see and bear witness to.  Three of the four one prizes for their projects and I hope that all four will continue to pursue this passion.  

A short detour

I decided to go for a run this evening from my hotel (near Western Ave and Wilshire Blvd) up to Melrose Ave and out past the Paramount Studios.  I got a little lost, but made my way back to my original route.  From Paramount I went back towards Wilshire along Larchmont through some small neighborhoods.  The homes in these neighborhoods were gorgeous.  They reminded me of enormous mansions in Danville, Alamo, or Blackhawk with the classic style of the older homes of Rockridge.  It was an interesting time to pass through the neighborhood as it was apparent parents/spouses were returning home and the domestic help was heading home.  It certainly was hard to believe we were in the middle of such a large city and only minutes from downtown.  In the end I found out that my 4.7 mi journey ended up closer to 6 miles.  Not that 'short' a detour.

A class trip

I've been off the blog for a while partly for a lack of time and partly for a lack of topics.  Don't get me wrong the little man provides plenty of interesting things to write about, but that is a little too personal. 

 

Anyways I have started a new project that has me traveling weekly to LA and with the travel the blog topics are returning.  This morning I got to the airport to catch my flight at 7am and there was a gaggle of teenagers at the security.  There must have been about 30 or more of them.  I instantly had the same thought that probably everyone else at the airport had, "I hope they aren't on my flight."  Everyone else was right and I was wrong.  As they arrived at my gate at 610AM their chaperones informed them that they have until 630AM to be back at the gate, if they left the area they had to check in/out with a chaperone, and they had to roam in packs of three.  When they all disappeared the chaperones mused over how a number of the kids had just left their bags and walked off.  The group was boarding with the B or C group with unassigned seating (as part of Southwest's procedure).  After I boarded I watched all of the students board and move directly to the back of the plane as though it were a bus.  It was interesting seeing them in this moment of uneasiness.  Their chaperones told them to sit anywhere they found a seat, but the only available seats were middle seats and none of them would be able to sit together.  Someone said they couldn't talk to people they didn't know, because they (the teenager) were socially awkward.  Amazingly they all rose to the occasion and started asking to sit wherever they could.  In the end it wasn't that noisy or disturbing a flight, because they were all seated separately. 

 

The students were enroute to Catalina Island as part of a weeklong nature immersion program.  It reminded me a of a weeklong immersion program that my elementary school had where my 5^th grade friends went to the Marin Headlands.  I didn't get to go, because my family went to India for a month at the time.  My lasting memory of the trip that I didn't go on was of an infamous batch of garlic pancakes all my friends had courtesy of the chef at the camp.  I hope that the kids I saw today have memories that they remember when they are 35.  

The bullet train of life

Sometimes on the bullet train of life I feel like I'm just trying to see the roses and not even thinking about how to snag a fraction of a second to smell them.

Fruitvale Station

The HyWy and I watched Fruitvale Station the other night.  I thought the movie was okay.  It seemed to be trying to hard to portray the deceased as neither too good nor too bad.  Of course it is an interpretation of the last few days of his life and as such some creative liberties have been taken.  The part I enjoyed, as I normally do, was seeing places familiar to us in the movie.  Oscar Grant worked at our grocery store so they shot a significant scene at the store.  Another key scene was shot in a gas station we regularly see near the West Oakland BART station.  Along with the familiar scenery was the recollection of those tumultuous first days, weeks, months of 2009.  I vividly remember the start of that year, because it was marked by the passing of an uncle of mine.  It was an interesting juxtaposition of that natural loss against the violent loss of Oscar Grant at the time and even now in retrospect.  Then of course there were the riots that followed.  After the movie was over the HyWy and I reflected on those days that seem so long ago now.  After a little over 1.5 years in Walnut Creek I can't help but feel that Oakland feels so long and far ago.  Amazingly all that felt so far away came rushing back as I watched this film.  

Scratching the itch

I'm itching to blog and I have had this urge for quite some time now, but I can't fin the right scratch for the itch.  I can't find something that I moves me to write.  Of course I could always write about our little man, how he's growing up, and how fast time flies now.  However, I always intended this blog to be more about other things.  It's hard to explain and put into words.  I want this blog to be about ideas, thoughts, and musings that stem from other sources (books, movies, music, life, etc.).  I don't want any one of those sources dominating my blog.  These days I don't have time to indulge myself in sources that would inspire me in such a way.  I guess that's where things are right now.