Not to disparage the iPhone, which is very cool, but I think the proliferation of Android apps and the comparability of the HTC phones coming out – including other manufacturers as well – will lead to the eventual displacement of Apple and its phone to the familiar position of loyalist niche toy. That is, the iPhone will end up as the Sony Betamax of the 21st century. Not only did Apple make a blunder through its exclusivity deal with at&t, which is too long, the proprietary nature of it technology will lose out – someone might want to tell Steve Jobs about this open source stuff. And this copy called, get this, ‘Google,’ owns Android and has an entire open source code library. OMG, indeed…

I’m not predicting Apple’s demise just yet – remember how not-so-great life was before the iPod? And while IBM’s negligence in developing software for a machine it created known as the personal computer spawned a little company called that ended up overtaking its progenitor in terms of market capitalization, Big Blue survived – of course, not by building more big mainframe computers.

“Think”: IBM’s successful slogan. Think smaller. If it gets any smaller, it might just be huge. Nice Android. Good boy…

This is it, I thought. “Yes?” I said gravely.

“Well, it’s actually more about his stuff,” she said.

“What stuff?” I asked. “Is he okay?”

“Oh, he’s fine, I guess,” she said. “I’m pretty sure. Anyway, I’m actually calling about the stuff in the apartment.”

I pictured a woman in her late twenties staring down a box of Krispy Kremes and a can of Diet Coke. “Might it be that he is using it?” I offered.

“He’s not in the apartment,” she said, slightly agitated. “And there’s all this furniture still in there…”

“Hold on,” I said. “Where is he?”

“He’s out of assisted living and in dependent care now,” she said. “He was moved ten days ago.”

I looked at the calendar – it was the twentieth. For a moment, about mentioning the notification of kin about such a move, but decided going there would prove equally futile.

“People want that apartment, you know,” she said. 

“But he’s renting it,” I mentioned. “He’s already paid for the month!”

There was a moment of silence. “Well, I guess we can pro-rate it – but we really need that space…”

The conversation sort of devolved from that point on – I said a couple things about stupidity and obesity that I probably shouldn’t have and her wailing didn’t help either. The bottom line was that I was either (a) going to have to hire someone to move his stuff or (b) move it with my brother. I chose (b) because I am essentially a cheap bastard.

We arrived unprepared for this particular move. First, there was an alarm on the door that the guard on the intercom couldn’t figure out how to turn off – every time we opened the door we were greeted by a minute and a half of eardrum piercing beeps. Next, for being a nursing facility, it struck me as odd that no matter how hard we tried we could not keep any of the damned doors propped open which, of course, meant that you’d have to hold the door open with your foot while juggling, say, a floor lamp or a coffee table. For larger items, such as the heaviest couch with a fold out bed in the world, it was safe to say a couple layers of skin from your knuckles or a door knob induced hip pointer was your reward for negotiating through the narrow doorway. (How on earth the staff got a bed or a wheel chair through there was beyond me.)

Ever move a filthy, rolled up oriental rug by yourself? Try doing so while tripping over dust bunny enveloped extension cord.   

As I strained to carry lift the TV into the car, thoughts the move that almost killed me were recalled from the darker recesses of my memory. My other brother, Jim, and I had bought a house in D.C. several years ago. We were both single, so we did have very much stuff – or so we thought. I spent the days leading up to the move packing up boxes or books, wrapping glasses in newspaper, throwing away crap I’d kept since the second grade. We closed the night before we were to moving, and I distinctly remember asking Jim if he were ready – “sure,” he said with an admonished astonishment.

I suppose it depends on one’s definition of ‘ready’ but when I showed up at my brother’s Arlington, VA apartment the next morning, he was anything but ‘ready’. A pizza box sat on the coffee littered with a couple of beer cans, a tomato sauce spattered paper towel or two, an overflowing ashtray, and half a dozen magazines. The rest of the apartment was in similar disarray: the kitchen sink was full of dirty dishes, glasses, and silverware; his bedroom looked as though some heavy metal band had had a cocaine-induced orgy with twenty or so groupies. The bathroom was a Petri dish of various fungi. The only evidence suggesting the advent of a move were three pathetic boxes sitting unloved in a corner of the living room.

“Dude,” my brother said in this sort of pained manner that is usually reserved for the Confessional. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I said.

“I’ve got a boil,” he said. “And it’s huge and it’s in my ass.”

“In your ass?” I said deliberately like a trial lawyer might.

“Well, not in it,” he said. Brothers and spouses share such secrets. Sisters? I’m not at all sure. “Sort of between the cheeks, but closer in, you know, towards the rectum.”

As I was about to unleash an invective of profanity, he gingerly bent down to pick up a Big Mac carton on the floor and grimaced on the way back up. I paused for a moment, trying to stay calm. My thoughts drifted, and I pictured myself moving the items from the apartment down seven floors, the pervasive stench of ethnic cooking – Indian/Latin or maybe even Bulgarian? – oozing from the very walls of the building. Moving my brother’s crap by myself? Sorry, bro, but that wasn’t happening. In my view, there was only one thing left to do: pop the damned boil.

“Ow!” my brother screamed when I tried to kick him in the ass. “Are you insane?”

“Pop it!” I shouted, chasing him around the coffee table, while he made a pitiable attempt at covering rear end with his hands. “Pop that sucker or I will!”

He relented immediately, wincing and hobbling like a sprinter who’s just pulled a hamstring. He opened a drawer in the coffee table, retrieving a pin and a lighter, and then withdrew to the bathroom in a bowlegged waddle.  From the bathroom I heard the pathetic whimpering of a man lacking all courage: this was not a warrior, pulling an arrow from his chest, or a shooting victim; this was simply a man with an evidently painful pimple on his butt.

Needless to say, my brother was about as helpful as, well, a boil on your backside the rest of the day. However, realizing that he would, in fact, be worthless – especially since we would have to move all of his stuff before we got to my stuff because his stuff would be first out, and the feigning of a pulled muscle or an aneurysm would follow – I went to Plan B and desperately called anyone in the metro area I could think of. “I was wondering if you could do me a huge favor…”

“I’d love to,” the respondent would say. “But…” The excuses were typical: my in-laws are in town or I pulled a muscle in my back or I just ruptured my spleen with a knitting needle – gotta go. (Note: the correct way to ask is to say, “What are you doing today?” When they say nothing, attack; any other reply will give them wiggle room to escape.) Yet it is a true friend indeed who would voluntarily agree to help anyone move – this is not someone you should ever blow off or shun, but someone you should cherish as if he or she were your very own personal Jesus. It is in this light that I cast my friend Monika who actually volunteered to help – and no, to the best of my knowledge, she is not insane.

Despite the help from Monika, the rest of the day was a downward spiral, a descent into the bowels of moving hell, if you will. For starters, where my brother would move, say, a book or a fork, I’d move ten boxes of heavy stuff. Monika and I had a Herculean struggle with the largest of Jim’s three televisions – the one with the huge cathode ray tube and sharp plastic edges that gouged your skin. (In fact, I think the manufacturers of television set in the late eighties drew some mysterious correlation between weight, awkwardness, and lack of any handles or means by which to move the thing and quality and price.) By the time she and I managed to lug it up the three flights of stairs – yes, my brother took the third floor bedroom – my sweaty clothes and skin was covered in that grayish grimy dust and dirt that clings to television sets because, let’s face it, once the TV’s in its little nook or shelf, the only time it ever really gets cleaned up is the next time it’s moved.

From there it was back to boxes and more boxes – my favorite of which is the garment box with the mirror box a close second. I preferred the garment box only because while lifting it, its awkward size and girth conjured sensations of my next hernia far more often than I’d have liked. But the mirror boxes offered something akin to the toy surprise in a Crackerjack box: would it be light, heavy, fragile; would the contents slide out on your foot as you lifted the box? Then there were the boxes fill with pretty much anything from staplers to kitchen knives to weight sets – these boxes (mostly my brother’s) tested a potpourri of one’s talents ranging from balance and weight distribution to sheer courage.

Finally, forearms burning like Popeye the Sailor Man, every other muscle strained or pulled, cuts and bruises scattered on our persons like a shot gun blast, we unloaded the last box around midnight, just in time for my brother and I to drive the exhaust hour or so in the U-Haul, to Springfield, VA. When we eventually arrived at our new “home”, the celebratory plans – a chilled bottle of champagne that Monika had brought – quietly and quickly faded. Tired and dirty, a sudden realization hit us: neither of us had the foresight to set up our beds beforehand and there were too many boxes, lamps, paintings and other crap on the two couches we had. So I slept on my brother’s rolled up Oriental rug, and he slept on a box of clothes. Needless to say, neither of us was a ray of sunshine the next morning.

I cannot think of a worse job than that of the professional mover because every day would be a living hell. Jailed junkies and inmates on death row have it better than the men and women who have voluntarily entered into the moving vocation. (To be honest, I think it’s fair to say no one actually wants to be in the moving business, you simply end up there as I imagine proctologists and tax attorneys do.) These are, obviously, not the brightest of individuals but generally come in shapes and sizes: very large or small and wiry. The large ones tend to be, well, very large and not in anything resembling an athletic physique, though there are exceptions. A fellow by the name of Dennis helped me move once. He looked like an offensive tackle; he wanted to be in organized crime. (Again, I think that falls in the “end up in” bucket.)

Of the small and wiry types I have been of a 50 year old Italian man who instructed his colleagues to strap a player piano on his back while he walked up a long flight of stairs in San Francisco; if there is a Hall of Fame for moving employees, my vote goes to this legendary performance. Of the latter type, the one who was my personal favorite was a man we called “Snoop” because he purposefully resembled Snoop Dog, the rapper. Snoop was the brains of the outfit: he enjoyed the logistical aspect of a move, orchestrating his crew like a general in the field of battle. In fact, I recommended Snoop to my brother when he and his wife moved. (If you’re keeping score, we both moved from the house we’d bought together.)

My brother’s move contained a tactical test: after several attempts, some testing the limits of geometry and physics as we know them, the master bed would not fit up the narrow, right-angled staircase. Undaunted, Snoop managed to figure out a way to hoist the bed through a second story window. The gerryrigged contraption resembled a pulley system though not as sophisticated, and whether it was Snoop’s ingenuity or Moose’s sheer brawn I was amazed that they managed to get it through, the damage to the window, the walls, the gutter, and window sill notwithstanding.

In hindsight, witnessing my brother’s move it occurred to me that only the very throes of the move, the not-quite-half-way-there-and-this-is-going-to-be-just-awful sense of it, does one make the pledge: I will never do this again. (For the record, I did materially participate but only move an empty box, a feather duster, and a Dixie cup; I awoke that very morning with a devastating crick in my neck.)

And so, for posterity, I have come up with a list of considerations to contemplate before your next move:

1. “Lift with your legs.” Not that this matters but, like stretching, it should jog a memory or two of your last attempt at something painful.
2. Stuff breaks. No matter how tightly, carefully, or faithfully you wrap or pack something, there is a 50/50 chance it will break. (Besides, when was the last time you actually used great aunt Sophie’s Wedgewood soup tureen?)
3. Prepare…as best you can. While I know of no proven preparatory activities other than, perhaps, flailing you body hapless against the doorjamb or at a banister corner, you should prepare for the move. Mentally, that is. Rent a copy of “The Exorcist”.
4. Allow adequate recovery time. If you move yourself (or foolishly participate materially therein) allow yourself three or four days to recover. You will need each precious second.
5. Get dirty. Not in a prurient sense, mind you, but dress in clothing that you do not have a sentimental attachment to. Rather than attempt to clean your clothes afterwards, I recommend burning them – this will purge all memories of the living hell you went through.
6. Set up your bed first. Inhaling dust bunnies from your old apartment while sleeping on a dirty, rolled up rug is no fun – I speak from experience.
7. Unpack quickly. This will help assure that you don’t inadvertently throw something out, like silverware or insurance documents, or, worse, that you simply store the box in the basement until the next time you move. (Oh so that’s where my collection of baseball cards have been.)
8. Throw it out. You didn’t use it at your old place, do you really think you’re going to use it here?
9. “Pay any amount to have your stuff moved for you because it is worth every penny” – these are words to live by.  Heeding this advice will go well towards saving you additional psychiatric and/or medical costs tangentially associated with your idiocy.
10. Don’t move. Do you really have to? Is your job so bad that you had to take the position in Memphis, TN, during August? So what if you can’t afford your sub-prime mortgage – look what the government did for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Foreclosures are no fun for anyone, especially banks, so stay where you are. Better yet, have them move you!

Driving back from my ex-wife’s house this weekend, I learned from NPR that Justice Souter is retiring. To get directly to the point, as Winston Churchill, a great leader (like yourself) though not a great American (unlike yourself), purportedly put it, you’ve got a lot of issues to deal with at the moment. Recession, credit crisis, budgets, bailouts, healthcare – ring a bell? The last thing you need is another monkey on your back. Now since I also learned that there are no actual qualifications for appointment to the Supreme Court, I’ve got a proposition for you because, let’s face it, you’re going to need all the friends you can get. Ready? Here it is: give me the nomination nod. 

So you’re probably thinking why would this guy ever even want to be on the Supreme Court in the first place. Well, having been unemployed now for nearly two years, I think I understand a thing or two about hardly working and the opportunity to have lifetime employment from which you can’t get laid off is, frankly, pretty darned appealing to me. Who wouldn’t like the idea of having any number of over-achieving clerks actually do your job for you? Plus, if it helps, you know, save the tax payers some money, I can bring my own robes – I’ve got a whole closet full of them.

For the record, I’m not a lawyer though I’ve been told I sort of look like one. (Personally, I don’t think Anthony Kennedy looks like a lawyer either, though John Roberts definitely does; to be honest, Justice Ginsburg just kind of creeps me out.) And I’m not a judge either, though I did sit through jury duty twice and was on a jury once, until I was physically removed by the bailiffs after the judge, a woman, told me for the fifth time not to put my pants on my head and sing “God Save the Queen” while the defendant’s attorney prepared his opening remarks. (What a bitch, that judge!) And even though I’m not a lawyer or a judge, basketball is definitely my favorite sport, because, as we all know, you don’t have to be a lawyer to love basketball. 

Just so you know I’m not originally from Chicago but I’ve been to Chicago, and I have to say the ‘Windy City’ is one of my favorite cities in this great country of ours. I’d go back in a heartbeat I had such a great time. Except for the mugging. And while that ruptured spleen kept me in the hospital for several weeks so I didn’t actually get to see much of the city, I think it’s fair to say Chicago is my kind of town.

Speaking of towns, you could say that Washington, D.C. is like a second home so there is absolutely no way I’m going to get Souter-like and homesick. In fact, except for that one time at summer camp, I’ve never even been homesick. You could probably drop me out of a helicopter in some god forsaken place and, rest assured, I’d be probably end up as Mayor of Anywherevilleland in a matter of months, if not days. Why? Because I share the values that made this country great in the first place, plus I’ve got an awfully charming manner around very small children, dogs, and women who aren’t total bitches. 

Family-wise, I’ve got two wonderful girls, just like you, and once that restraining order finally gets lifted, I’m looking forward to spending as much time with them as possible. The fact that they are not legally allowed to speak to me hasn’t kept them out my thoughts and prayers and when I do finally get to see them, I am going to get them a dog because, hell, I just love dogs! And not in that sort of nutty, perverted kind of way either.

If you’re worried about how I’ll stand up to the scrutiny of my confirmation hearings, let me attempt assuage those fears right now. Having endured five excruciating years married to that bitch who slept with my brother, stole all my money, slapped an injunction on my sorry ass, then divorced me, I think I can handle a bunch Senators no problemo. I’ll tell you one thing: I’m no Harriet Miers, copping out of the running before you’re even in the hot seat. Not me! They can come at me guns a-blazing because I’ve got nothing to hide, anyway.* 

On a more serious note, I hope you don’t misconstrue this solicitation. I am not some sort of sycophant or patsy, a yes-man who will simply ‘do as they’re told’ in service to the King or, in this case, President. No, sir! In fact, if you’re looking for someone to simply treat the Constitution like a puppy treats a newspaper, then you got the wrong guy. However, if you want a moderate, liberal-minded gentleman and scholar who will faithfully, honorably, and with integrity interpret the laws of these United States with a humble eye towards the noble intentions of our founding forefathers, then let’s talk. (JK! Boy, I wish I could see the look on your face right now…)

Look, I’m trying to do you a favor here. If doing you a solid by making this the easiest decision you’ll ever make as President is a crime, then guilty as charged. If you want someone who will keep their mouth shut, I’ll make Clarence Thomas look like a regular Chatty Cathy in session. Who else are you going to get? Winston Churchill? Still dead by my count. Give me the nod and you won’t regret it. So tell those boys with the earbuds in the big black Yukon parked outside my house your search is over. I’m certainly ‘qualified’! 

Future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and Your Servant,

Paul Kriebel
 

P.S.: Roe v Who? Need I say more?
 

(* You can pardon a D.U.I., right?)

Late-1980s Pittsburgh, where I grew up, was not an especially booming job market. Compounding the problem were the tools themselves – there were no job boards on the internet (nor was there an internet). One had to physically type up a resume and cover letters and physically take them to a printer for copying and physically mail them out. If you found a typo after the guy at the print shop handed you a hundred copies of your resume, you were screwed. Then there was the waiting: did the post office actually deliver the damned thing? Did the company lose it? Were they going to ever even call me? With the internet, you know pretty much instantly; back in the days, you needed the patience of Job. Then you’d get the letter: We regret to inform you, it would begin; even worse was how it ended: however, we will keep your resume on file…as if someone, some day, would arbitrarily blow the dust off your resume and shout ‘Eureka!’

But, somehow, despite all odds and after several weeks, I managed to land an unpaid internship with the local PBS affiliate, WQED.

“Let me get this straight,” my father said when I told him. “You work and they don’t pay you?”

My father was an academic, a professor, and as such, he’d had little exposure to the real world. “Kind of like graduate students, huh?” I chimed in.

A look of cruel understanding flashed across his face. Of course, he was annoyed that I wasn’t getting paid but, still, it was a step in the right direction. A sort purgatory faced by college graduates who didn’t manage straight A’s, ace every test they ever took in school, or – most importantly – have a well-placed parent or friend. In other words, 99.9% of the graduating population.

On my first day at QED, I arrived at the poured concrete building on Pittsburgh’s Fifth Avenue extremely hungover on one of those hot, humid days that makes weathercasters happy – a giant ‘L’ floating over Ohio that seems to stay there all summer. Head pounding, I checked in with the receptionist who told me to sit in the waiting room. I went for a brand new Pittsburgh Magazine – television station reception areas clearly had one up on dentist’s or doctor’s offices. In front of me, an entire wall was lined with some 25 TV sets showing a single program. It took a while to register but it was a PBS special about headaches. A college graduate with a major in English, the irony was not lost on me. The thumping in my head was being illustrated before me, with 25 snaking blood vessels throbbing.

“Hello,” I heard a kind voice behind me say. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

I turned slowly. This is you first job, I was saying to myself. Attempt enthusiasm. “Yes,” I said, extending my hand. “It’s my first d-“

“I’m Fred,” he said. It was Mr. Rogers. Mr. Fred Rogers of “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” fame. The show had been filmed in these very studios, in Mr. Rogers’ hometown of Pittsburgh. And though I had heard that he even lived for a time in my parents’ upscale suburb, I had never seen him in person before now.

“Must be that new intern Marina hired,” he said in the same sing-songy voice I had heard for all those years. “You’re Paul, right?”

“Yeah,” I said and told him my name, shaking his hand. He was thin, with graying hair, neatly dressed…hell, think of the show – that was him. Very pleasant, flirting with the notion of being too pleasant but a hair’s breadth from it. He gazed not unkindly about me, smiling blithely, though I got the sense that he knew I was hungover. Great, I thought. You are in standing in front of your childhood idol, and you stink of beer. Not good.

“See you around,” he said, turning on his heel just as he did at the end of each episode.

‘Bye, neighbor, I thought. It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor, would you be mine? Could you be mine?

The job pretty much sucked from that point on, and after the eight weeks, I was relieved when Marina and I sort of reached the amicable conclusion that we’d be better off dating other people. So for the remainder of the summer, I went back to a trade I knew well: working on my father’s property – digging ditches, planting trees, that sort of thing. Of course, I also typed cover letters and sent out resumes with the voracity of a newspaper columnist. It wasn’t until the end of summer that I landed an interview – a real job interview.

I’m pretty sure I was nervous but, to be honest, I don’t remember much of the interview, though I do remember having no idea how I did. It seemed pretty odd to me: you spend half an hour asking and answering stupid questions – “Is there parking? Is it free?” or “Career-minded? Me? Uh, yeah, sure, I, uh, guess so” – and you leave having no idea whether you were impressive or anecdotal. I once interviewed this guy who…

“Did you…” my father started as I walked into the kitchen following that first interview. “Did you get the job?” This was asked not out of genuine interest in my career aspirations, but was, in fact, a favorite joke of my father’s.

There was a television ad in the 1970s that started with the point of view of a television. There is the sound of a door closing, and a previously-unseen, older black woman emerges, startled, from the La-Z-Boy in front of the TV. At that point, you could never figure out what in the hell the ad was about: was the intruder about to commit a terrible crime against this poor woman? Was there news about a horrible tragedy about to unfold? In any case, the anguished woman approaches the camera. When she gets there, she stutters, “D-did you get the job?” Now the camera cuts to a young black man with a look of utter reticence on his face. I cannot remember who sponsored the ad – the NCAAP, perhaps – but its effect was profound. At least to my father, who relished any opportunity to repeat the line.

“Yep,” I said. “In fact, they offered me the CEO position on the spot.”

“You better get a job pretty quickly, smart ass,” my father said mirthlessly.

I spent most of that autumn ripping out an enchanted forest of rhododendrons.

I also watched a lot of TV. Another favorite television commercial from that time asks, “Do you know anything…high tech?” This is posed by an older man who addresses the camera with a pained expression, as if saying these words caused physical harm. (Had I been cast in the ad, I would have responded, “Absolutely”, so as to put him out of his misery.) Perhaps it was that commercial, or the fact that my father taught computer science at Carnegie-Mellon University, but I started to gravitate towards information technology. I read books and audited a couple of classes at CMU, adding a litany of quixotic terms to my resume. Eventually, I landed a job with a small consulting firm, gradually working my way into increasingly senior positions and hopping from firm to firm.

Throughout this “career” of mine, I’ve had the opportunity to interview hundreds of people, and I can tell in less than five minutes whether or not the candidate will work out. Because that’s really what it’s about: do I even like this person? Whether or not they can do the job is secondary to the prospect of spending hours upon hours in an office environment with them. You never want to be the person known around the office as the guy who hired that guy whom no one else can stand.

On one week-long recruiting trip for one or another of my many employers, I interviewed sixteen people a day for five straight days. Superman could have been across from me in that tiny room that final day, and I would not have remembered him. “’S’ on chest? Pretty sure. Wearing a cape? Not so sure.” Earlier in the week, I interviewed this Chinese guy with PhDs in two or three other disciplines. He wore a polyester tie, and it looked like he combed his hair with a cat. As far as I could tell through a viscous Mandarin accent, his answers to the technical questions were perfect. However, his “interpersonal” skills were weak, to say the least. This was not someone you wanted talking to your valued clients. This was someone you chained to a desk in the basement.

“What not like!” he said with the enthusiasm of a birthday party full of four-year-olds, when asked if he liked writing code. When we were wrapping up and got to the “do you have any questions for me” portion of the interview, he asked the only question he or any other foreign national cared about: “Do company sponsor H1 visa?” I sympathized: getting a green card must be like winning an Olympic gold medal. So I told him I wasn’t sure. Before he even began formulating his next inquiry, I stopped him. Did he have any other technical questions? He paused and shook his head. I finished the interview by telling him any other question he had should be directed to the management of the company, specifically someone from the indispensable HR staff.

If those who cannot teach teach gym, then people who can’t do anything work in human resources. And those who do not know anything technology-related invariably wind up as technical recruiters. The technical recruiter’s sole purpose is to screen candidates so that the people who actually know the stuff don’t waste their time talking to people who don’t. These are the people who comb job boards and web sites like Monster or Career Builder, searching to find any number of “hits” and subsequently flood the internet with emails about “exciting opportunities” with “only the best” companies. Most inquiries end up as cyber trash, never to be unearthed from the digital recycling bins of the world. I continue to get these emails, as well, though I think the last time I updated my resume, Clinton (Bill, not Hill) was still president.

The other day I got an email from one or another tech company. I wasn’t doing anything so, what the heck, I responded that I was indeed a “team player” whose skills might compliment the “dynamic environment” of a “different kind of company.” The recruiter responded that my skills and experience appeared to be a “synergistic” match with the “corporate culture”, and we agreed on a date to meet in person. So I went to the office in my gray flannel suit, where I was met by an attractive woman who introduced herself as Lori. She was twenty-something years old in a white blouse and black Ann Taylor jacket and skirt, and she led me towards a small, windowless office.

We started off with some small talk – about the weather (which was yucky) and the Steelers: “I cannot wait for training camp” Lori said in a born-and-raised-here Pittsburgh accent. I nodded or smiled; suddenly I wasn’t sure about going through with this. Then she told me a little about the company, its founders, philosophy, and clientele – all the junk you read in the “About Us” page of the public web site. When she got to the “why we’re different” part, I sighed a little more loudly than I wanted to; she seemed to roll her eyes in agreement, still talking. Then she asked me about myself and my career; I shot into a diatribe about the alphabet soup of technological acronyms and cute names, most real but some made up just see if she were paying attention.

“Yellow Panther Claw is a Java-based daemon that runs on Apache Tomcat,” I was saying. “And I’m going to open source YPC because I’ve leveraged so much that others have freely given,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” she muttered, studying my resume. She looked confused or thirsty; maybe she had an embarrassing itch.

“Can I ask you something,” I said.

Lori seemed to perk up a bit. “Sure,” she said.

“Do you have any idea what I am talking about? Really?” I said quietly, moving closer. “I mean the acronyms, the talk of architectures, protocols, and platforms – it’s pretty much Greek, right?”

She shook her head somewhat embarrassedly after a moment. She smiled, regained her composure, ready to ask another question.

“It’s okay,” I said reassuringly. “I’ve known CIOs and CTOs who don’t understand a damned thing either.” I proceeded to tell her about a former CEO I’d met who’d recently bought an island off the coast of Maine. He was describing his new boat, when someone asked him if he found it difficult to pilot, being so large. The guy was embarrassed to admit that he didn’t drive the boat – he had a captain for that. It was like the business adage that the fewer keys you had, the more important you must be.

“You had the keys to the boat?” she asked.

No, I told her. We were actually on my island. I told her that my island wasn’t as big as my friend’s and even though I might be forced to captain my own vessel, it was still my island. I told her I was thinking about seceding form the U.S., forming my own sovereign nation, but it wasn’t as easy as it looked. You have to draft a constitution, after all, and while we could peg our currency, the Paul, to the dollar, there were policy decisions that needed to be made. What was our stand on global warming? Would we ratify the Kyoto Accord before the U.S.? And what of ‘our neighbor’? Imagine the ramifications of establishing most-favored trading status with countries not friendly with the U.S. when you had to hop on a boat, passport in hand, to get beer and beef jerky from the 7-Eleven?

She was helpful, however, when it came to the flag.

“I think a ‘P’ in the center is a definite,” she said. “Maybe some colors – magenta or greens – those are in. And some sort of pattern, maybe, or just a big anteater.”

“Actually, I’m thinking earth tones,” I said. “I don’t want to be perceived as just some passing fancy, like Czechoslovakia.”

A couple of weeks later, when I tried to follow up, I found out she’d been let go. I felt sort of bad, but then decided she wasn’t cut out to be a technical recruiter. A waitress or a painter, sure, but not a recruiter. The company didn’t seem to want to continue the dialogue with me either, which was fine because they will never be able get visas to my island. It probably won’t matter anyway because there are only two positions currently available: ditch digger and the role of the Lavender Panda on “Paul’s Neighborhood,” an homage to the late, great Mr. Rogers and the only sanctioned television program that currently runs on my island.

Bother me? I thought, as if perhaps I should be bothered, bugged, or otherwise thoroughly irritated by the cursed good health of my children. What was I thinking?

“Not really,” I said. “But, thank God Chase hadn’t sneezed last week, or else I’d be furious now.”

We were sitting in a rented house on the beach in the Outer Banks, a late-June sea breeze coming through the screen door, and I could tell where this was going: it was all her husband Earl’s fault that their kids were chronically ill. She once complained to me that Earl didn’t care about the fact that she had back cancer. I was working at the National Cancer Institute at the time, so I informed her that I was fairly certain that a case of “back cancer,” as such, had been neither diagnosed nor documented. Terri was about to concede as much when Earl walked into the room; she launched a can of tomatoes at him, grazing his forehead.

“I know you think I’m fucked up,” she was saying. “But…”

I was actually thinking that I knew why her kids got sick: both she and my Earl were slobs. If slobbery had a taxonomy or ranking system, they’d be Level 6 black belts or Jedis. I’ve found black, snot-covered bananas under the seats in their cars and fossilized Twinkies in the pantry – and image how old do Twinkies have to get before they fossilize. What I once thought was a new, chocolate-colored rug with intriguing patterns turned out to be the old one with M&Ms ground into it. Their refrigerator was probably a Superfund site; their bedroom was littered with dog hair and grubby clothing, overflowing ashtrays, and takeout boxes from long out-of-business fast food joints. Was it any wonder that she felt compelled to go to the hospital a couple of times a week?

Once, when Earl and I had taken the kids to the park, he asked if I would watch his kids while he picked up Terri and Carrie, their daughter, at the doctor. Having just paid some bills at home, I asked him out of curiosity what his out-of-pocket health insurance costs were.

“Enormous!” he said with a gravity and depth usually reserved for funerals. When he approximated their annual medical expenses, I could think of only a handful of third-world countries that had smaller GDPs.

My drink was empty; as I rose to get myself another, I offered to get Terri a refill too. She thrust her glass at me. I took it to the sink, where I saw dishes from lunch soaking in avocado rinds, squishy bread crusts, a sponge caked with ketchup and mayonnaise. Instinctively, I started cleaning.

“See,” she said, watching. “You’re so…anal.”

She said it with such disgust that you’d think I were a polygamist or an atheist. Yeah, I thought. Well if it’s a mortal sin in your religion to do the dishes, then so be it. Amen. I am anal, goddamit.

The fact of the matter is that I can’t stand seeing dishes in the sink. Sometimes, if I’m at a dinner party and there are empty glasses or dirty dishes, sure, I’ll dive in. According to my wife, compulsiveness – like hypochondria – is hereditary. (The jury is still out on the science supporting this theory.) Terri’s mother apparently took Terri and her brothers to the doctor all the time so it makes sense that Terri would follow suit. And was she also a slob? According to Terri, no, her mother was neat and tidy. Perhaps both suffered some psychological disorder, say, Munchausen-by-proxy syndrome? (Possibly, though I dismissed this due to her abject paranoia of the medical profession, in general, and her selfless love for her children.) One thing was clear to me: my family did not have a single hypochondriac in the brood. Especially, my mother.

If Terri and her mother were the epitome of hypochondria, then my mother was the polar opposite. If Satan was the Antichrist, then my mother was sort of the Anti-Hypochondriac.

Sure, I had had my share of illness growing up – most of these were attributed to gastrointestinal maladies. One night, I threw up about a pound of spaghetti and to this day, while I love pasta, I loathe spaghetti. (My mother claimed it might have been the freezer-burned ice cream I had for dessert: a kid give up on ice cream? Fat chance!) In fifth grade, I drank from a creek that had been contaminated by a sewer-main break a couple of days before. Several of my friends who also drank for it were also sick all week, and their mothers took them to the doctor’s office or the emergency room. Not my mother. I could have gone weeks, lying on my death bed, not eating a morsel of food, and my mother would have thought it odd or peculiar but certainly not something warranting medical attention.

When I was in the sixth grade, we played this version of kickball in the school gym where there were only three bases arranged in a triangle. We didn’t understand why we didn’t have four bases – perhaps budget cuts precluded the purchase of a fourth base or maybe the school was engaged in some sort of “new” kickball curriculum – but no matter: this was gym class, after all. The gymnasium also served as the school cafeteria as well as the auditorium with the stage elevated four feet or so above a tile wall. Home plate was always a couple of feet in front of the wall with the other two bases “somewhere over there,” as Mr. Marsico, our gym teacher, would say, working a piece of everlasting teaberry gum to death.

Mr. Marsico resembled a porn star of the era: greasy black hair and thick mustache, furry arms and chest replete with gold chain. On a fateful day in early January, Mr. Marsico, looking like he arrived from an all-night shoot, released a red rubber ball from a white canvas bag and ordered us hastily into teams. As the gym teacher, he would roll the kick balls at varying speeds based solely on his like or dislike of the kid at the plate. Gnawing in rhythmic consistency, like a horny director of some orgiastic scene. “Oh, baby,” you could almost hear as a cute little girl stood at the plate, a kick ball rolling ever so softly towards her. “That’s it, yeah…come on, baby!”

It was hard to tell if Mr. Marsico liked me or not: the ball came in a choppy bounce when it was my turn up, but I managed to strike it solidly with my shin. “Nice,” Mr. Marsico chuckled as the ball flew into the air and hit an unwitting Peggy Garrett in the chest, sending her to the floor. There was confusion then: should the other team tend to Peggy or…I started for second. Denny Gennosco made a pathetic attempt to grab the ball but so did Byran Billings, who checked Denny fiercely to the floor: I made the decision and headed home. “I got it,” I heard behind me, and sensing an impending high throw that might send me careening, the only logical course of action was to slide. And so I did.

I hit the wall and everything seemed to stop for a moment, perhaps a simple glitch in the Matrix. Then, like the jolt of a defibulator, I was back in time, the rush of unholy pain screaming from my left knee.

“He’s out,” I heard a voice say.

“Uh-uh,” a girl’s voice said.

“Is too,” another said.

“No, no!” Mr. Marsico’s voice said, approaching. “He’s safe.” He was over me, the smell of teaberry and last night’s alcohol suddenly pungent. “You alright, kid?” he asked.

I wanted to be tough, tough like I imagined Mr. Marsico to be, the kind who tells you just to suck it up, deal with the pain. But I couldn’t. “No,” I wheezed pathetically.

When I got home, my knee seemed to puzzle my mother who contemplated it fervently, the way one might consider something from the remotest area of the refrigerator, a piece of cheese, perhaps, or a freezer-burned chunk of ground beef. It’s probably fine.

“Well…” she mused, poking at my other knee. “I just don’t know.”

My right knee was a tiny, bony circle; the other one was round and firm, a swollen belly, nine-months pregnant.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m just not sure…” She looked at the clock. “The doctor’s office is closed, anyway,” she said. “Let’s just ice it, and see how you feel tomorrow.”

It was Friday, and even then I knew that there was no way I was seeing anybody until Monday. “Okay,” I muttered.

Icing injuries was my mother’s way of procrastinating, a little prayer for spontaneous healing.

Once I was riding my bike over a wooden jump my friends and I built. The jump was only a foot or two high, situated on the grass near the road. The first problem was that you had to build speed by coming down the Melwood’s steep, twisting driveway – which sometimes, if you didn’t hit the jump dead-on, left you in the road. The second problem was that the Fox Chapel Borough had recently tarred and graveled the road. So when I came flying down the driveway and hit the jump a little cockeyed, I landed head over handlebars, splitting open my elbow in the process.

My friends took off (of course) and I ran home screaming, my bike a mangled heap. My mother, seeing my elbow, doused a paper towel in rubbing alcohol – then, after I screamed bloody murder, one in hydrogen peroxide – applying the towel to my injury. She managed to remove most of the gravel, but when it came to a dressing she seemed stumped. After a minute or two of searching, she returned with a rather large, oblong-shaped bandage that she place carefully on the wound, wrapping it gently with some white tape.

When my father came home that evening and saw my mother’s handiwork, he immediately ripped it off in one violent, excruciating jerk. My mother came immediately. “What the hell is this?” my father asked, dangling the bloodied wrappings in my mother’s face.

“What?” my mother said, an unmistakable smirk unfurling. “It’s perfect.”

The exasperated look on my father’s face gave way. “No son of mine is wearing a goddam maxi pad on his elbow!”

At my father’s insistence, my mother reluctantly took me to see the doctor on Monday morning. It was a cold day, a dreary gray chill cut to the bone the instant the wind gusted. Though the doctor’s office was in a hospital that contained ample parking, we parked several blocks away and trudged up the mountainous sidewalk to the most distant of entrances. Despite the fact that the modern convenience of elevators existed in this building, we took the stairs – a fact, I believe, my mother somehow thought would cure me of my phantom illness. In the doctor’s office, the receptionist took one look at me and called the nurse, while my mother was informed that, yes, parking was complementary for patients. “I wasn’t sure,” was all my mother could muster.

In the examining room, I eased my pants off, my mother suspiciously eyeing both knees as if, miraculously, my knee would suddenly shrink in size. “I’m still not sure…” she was muttering as the doctor came in. He greeted us quickly but pleasantly, then helped me on to the table. He touched both knees gingerly and without looking up asked what had happened.

“Friday?” the doctor said as my mother informed him of the date of the incident.

“This past Friday,” my mother said. “Before Saturday,” my mother added in case the doctor might be confused.

“Did you think to see someone sooner?” the doctor asked in the manner a social worker might ask crack-addicted mother on welfare about her kin.

“I wasn’t sure,” my mother said, nonplussed.

The doctor picked up the receiver and ordered X-rays. When he finished, he eyed my mother suspiciously.

“I just thought,” my mother said in the face of the doctor’s unremitting gaze. “You know – that it might get more…”

“Swollen?” the doctor said, turning to look at my knee.

“Exactly,” my mother said confidently. “That it would be, you know, bigger.” She sort of mouthed the last word slowly, as if it were a secret I was not privy to – something that all adults knew but kids did not.

“How much bigger?” the doctor said, placing his hands around my knee which had swollen slightly more to the size of a large cantaloupe or honeydew melon. “A watermelon?” he said. “Or like this big,” the doctor said, mockingly, making a giant circle with both hands.

My mother nodded, somewhat embarrassedly. “X-rays,” she mouthed, pointing at the door but not looking up as the nurse wheeled the chair in.

As I was being wheeled out, I couldn’t help feeling like I was betraying her. A strange sense of guilt, maybe, that my leg hadn’t miraculously healed itself over the weekend. This feeling smoldered during the interminable six or so weeks I waddled around like the Penguin from “Batman” with a shattered kneecap. Even then, however, I would sometimes catch my mother looking at me in a peculiar manner – a sort of “I don’t know” head shake – as if the moment the cast was removed, she would be proved right. “See,” I could almost hear her saying, “I told you it wasn’t broken.”

Was my mother secretly a Christian Scientist, a member of some whacky cult that shunned science? I tended to doubt it. Still, I did manage to survive my mother’s faith in spontaneous remediation – hernia, near appendicitis, thyroid cancer – and to love her dearly until the day she died.

“Pedophile?” I said to Earl once as he was about to relate a story about Mr. Marisco.

“No?” he said in a confused manner. “Did you know he was gay?”

I hadn’t, but was thoroughly relieved at the knowledge. Turns out Mr. Marsico was hitting on a friend of ours who had made the mistake of mentioning where he was from. It was innocent enough, I suppose, to find out that your elementary school gym teacher was gay, that he now dressed like Freddie Mercury, and that he hit on much younger men in one of the lobby bars at the Waldorf-Astoria. That was all well and good. What struck me, though – and I don’t know why I thought of it – was whether he was a ‘pitcher’ or a ‘catcher’. But then, of course, it was obvious – the way he rolled those melon-sized red balls down the gym floor, molars locked in mortal combat with a stick of teaberry: catcher. Definitely.

Samuel Kevin Hahn, age 46, of Wilton, CT, on July 7, 2009. Beloved husband of Remi (Pastore) Hahn; loving father of Olivia Nicole and George Caspari; son of Bill and Norma Hahn of Pittsburgh, PA; brother of Scott of Pittsburgh, PA, Linda Fazzini (David) of Phoenixville, PA, and Bryan (Kris) of Harrisburg, PA; much loved uncle of 9 nieces and nephews.

Born in Frankfurt, Germany, on April 4, 1963, while his father was serving as a doctor in the U.S. Army. Kevin was raised in Pittsburgh, PA, and graduated from Colgate University in 1986.

Kevin’s childhood in Pittsburgh, where he avidly followed the Steelers, Pirates, and Penguins, fueled in him a passion for sports that would later propel him into a career in sports marketing, as Research Director Professional Sports Publications.

Sports guided other aspects of Kevin’s life as well. He had a lifelong love of skiing and tennis, among others, and his love of sport combined with his extraordinary generosity, intelligence, and patience made him a natural coach: among his greatest joys was coaching his daughter’s soccer team.

Ever upbeat and selfless, Kevin battled cancer for five years while maintaining and frequently hosting his especially wide circle of friends from high school, college, and business—none of whom he allowed to fall away or to lose touch with one another—all while taking wonderful care of his wife and children, even as they cared for him. He will be greatly missed.

Service at 11:00am, Saturday July 11th, St. Matthews Episcopal Church, Wilton, followed by a reception at the church. The Hahn family requests that, in lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be sent in honor of Kevin Hahn to the following:

Donations to Wittingham Cancer Center
c/o The Norwalk Hospital Foundation
34 Maple Ave.
Norwalk, CT 06856
203-852-2000

Or

St. Matthews Episcopal Church
36 New Canaan Rd.
Wilton, CT 06897

This obiturary can be found here.

• OpenID: This demo illustrates a consumer of OpenID capabilities. Technically, OpenID offers a distributed authentication mechanism, meaning you authenticate (i.e., login) to the site that provided you the OpenID identity. The client application (i.e., web site) accepts that OpenID provider authentication as valid; you are then ‘logged in’ to the site using that identity. Conceptually, this could lead to a wide range of practical capabilities – namely, a ubiquitous, federated, single sign on functionality. However, it is too early to tell whether or not this will fly…By the way, this site is OpenID-enabled.




• Digital Signatures: I had a client who wanted to legally enforce a commitment made over the web, and one way to do so is through the use of digital signatures using an X.509 digital certificate. This demo illustrates one way to issue a credential (i.e., digital certificate) to someone – through a registration process – and then use the issued credential to digitally sign a document. (More complexity in the registration process – such as verification of the registrant’s claim of identity or even an in-person identity vetting – increases the trust process and a number of industry standards, such as Signatures and Authentication For Everyone (SAFE), have much more stringent policies related to credential issuance.)

I intend to add more demonstrations in the future. Please visit demos periodically.

Maybe I’m nostaglic for my youth, that glorious time in your life when you had not a care in the world – but never took advantage of it. “Enjoy your youth,” my father would say. “Because it’ll be over before you know it.” Boy, was he ever right. Still, when I look at my kids when they’re sullen, sulking, or silly, I can’t help think, well, how damned spoiled they are. I never had Star Wars the Clone Wars Legos or Wii. (Pong was about as advanced as we got; hooking up the Atari used to drive my father nuts, especially if Walter Cronkite was within an hour of broadcasting.) Toys today have more sophisticated operating systems than most ‘computers’ of yesteryear – i.e., those spinning tape, punch card, flashing multi-colored light monstrosities.

However, I never thought I’d see some of the stalwart, classic toys of my youth become any more sophisticated. A yo-yo is pretty much a yo-yo; a spinning top is…you get the picture. But I stand corrected. And of all the toys that I never thought could be improved upon, there is one that I’ve seen perfected. The humble whoopee cushion has met the 21st Century.

My kids showed it to me and I couldn’t believe it: the self-inflating whoopee cushion is here. Instead of putting your mouth around the disgusting flatulating end, where you and all your snotty nosed friends with colds put their mouths as well, there is a sponge-like piece in the core of the cushion. When pressed, sat upon, or otherwise exhausted, the center recoils to its former state, sucking air back into the cushion. Genius? Some people in Stockholm will probably want to ‘catch wind’ of this.

The manufacturer, Ja-Ru, already has a patent on the “Self-Inflating Whoopee Cushion” – U.S. Patent Number 6,331,131, to be precise. I’m thinking, maybe, that such forward thinking, technologically advanced companies might want to expand their reach. The whoopee cushion is one thing; curing cancer another. And as my father used to say (and I’m sure everybody’s father said it, as well), “We can send a man to the moon, but we can’t figure out how to make a milk carton that doesn’t tear every friggin’ time you try to open it.” Maybe we can, dad. What better place to start than the ubiquitous whoopee cushion? Flarp!

• Chicken
• 1.5 lbs. boneless chicken breast (about four packets from Costco)
• 1 small onion (quartered)
• 2 cloves garlic (peeled and halved)
• 2 Tablespoons black peppercorns (or colored medley)
• 1/2 Tablespoon olive oil
• 1 teaspoon sea salt (or gourmet)
• 1 bay leaf

• Blue Cheese Dressing
• 4 ounces quality blue cheese, crumbled (Danish, preferred)
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 cup good mayonnaise (Hellman’s – NOT Miracle Whip, for crying out loud!)
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice (OK, use the reconstituted kind if you must)
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/4 teasoon sea salt
• pinch of white pepper

• 2-8 ounce packages of cream cheese
• 1/2 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup hot sauce (Frank’s or, if desired, Cholula)

Place chicken, onion, garlic, peppercorns, olive oil, and bay leaf in 6 cups of water and bring to a boil. Cook for approximately 10 – 15 minutes, until chicken is cooked but not over cooked. Remove chicken using a slotted spoon; discard water and remaining ingredients. Allow to cool on a cutting board.

Meanwhile, combine ingredients for blue cheese dressing. If you’re not using blue cheese crumbles, cut the cheese into brittle chunks. Mix thoroughly and chill in refrigerator until chicken and remaining dip ingredient are ready – this will allow the dressing to set. (You can adjust the blue cheese ’setting’ to your preference; if you happen to love blue cheese, by all means go wild.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit. When the chicken is cooled, shred the chicken…by hand. Do not chop it into convenience, tastless chunks – I agree this is much easier and less time consuming, but, again, you’re cheating yourself. To assist in the shredding, I will take the dull side of a chef’s knife and ‘cut’ the chicken with the grain. This will loosen the stringy meat of the chicken; once loosened, I shred it by hand into smaller, say 1 to 1 1/2 inch pieces.

Now put the cream cheese, cheddar cheese, and hot sauce in a big bowl; stir in the chicken and about 1 cup of the blue cheese dressing*. Mix together with a heavy wooden spoon, smashing the cream cheese against the side of the bowl; blend thoroughly. (Don’t break the spoon or else use a strong metal spoon – I ended up breaking a couple of spoon my first go or so.)

Spread dip out in a 13 by 9 inch glass (or other) baking dish. Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes until cheese bubbles and top of the dip is slightly browned. Let cool for about five minutes, then serve immediately. If you didn’t cheat, you should get raves…Enjoy.

* Save the rest of the blue cheese dressing for the salad eating folk in the crew – the level 6 Vegans, the ones who won’t eat anything that casts a shadow? Those people

What I mean is that a blog, to borrow a line from Woody Allen, is like a shark that has to constantly swim in order to survive. Not that I want a dead shark on my hands, but being an amateur blogger requires a diligence to the blog. You have to write and keep on writing stuff, coming up with ideas, thought, idioms, themes, what have you, in order to warrant an audience of any kind. It’s actually a bit of work.

My idea here, then, is to make a pledge of sorts. And that involves being diligent, staying on top of the blog. Amen. So be it. So I promise to periodically update content on this site, to be witty, urbane, and intelligent. While you are probably not going to get a whole lot of political commentary – likely because, at their core, I think the vast majority of politicians are a bunch of crooks anyway – you may get some. (For example, the self-aggrandizing hubris that motivates the would-be politician to run for office is unfathomable to me.) And as politicians make the promises during campaigns, so to shall I.

Whether or not I can sustain my own, we’ll see…