On The Road Again

I was able to go on a most excellent trip to visit with people from four of the other Tribune newspapers. The icing on the cake was that the trip started in Baltimore, not far from Arlington, my brother Eric and Cindy. Cindy's daughter was visiting, too, with her son Cael. Is he not a cutie? It was a really quick visit. Just long enough to become enamored with the 18 month old. Eric is good with him. He was putting on Cael's shoes and had to take a moment to give him a hug.
Eric drove me slowly up to Baltimore on Sunday. He says that Fall was late this year. It seems to have waited for my arrival, although Eric says it was even better the week after I left. We get changing leaves on our coast, too, but this was very pretty. We drove through the National Arboretum and saw this beautiful stand of trees. Nice.

Our first business stop was the Baltimore Sun. Very nice people. We listened to their complaints about the process and showed them the reports we had created to show how IBM is doing. We was Bill, on the left, and Avinash. Bill is my boss. Avinash is responsible for the Helpdesk in India. They got the brunt of all the complaints. Avinash and I got pal-ly in front of a different beautiful tapestry.

We took a train to Hartford after a morning of meetings in Baltimore. What a long train ride. It started okay, but ended up being a local once we got into Connecticut. It seems like a small state until you stop at every town. Avinash and Bill found this great "Bullet Train" on the right when Bill went out to watch Avinash smoke. That is NOT the local.

The folks at the Hartford Courant were great. They were in the middle of implementing the common news editing system. That's a very difficult process. I believe we responded to most of their concerns.

Then we flew down to Orlando. We met Jervonna from the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel on Thursday morning. She had driven up very early that morning. I really liked her. Where was she when we were in India? She would have been great. She went with us to meet with the folks at the Orlando Sentinel. Same run through of complaint gathering and showing of reports. Did I say that Bill and Avinash got the brunt of the complaints? They were plentiful. I admire their professional demeanor in the face of that. Not an easy day. But we got a lot of good information to help improve our processes.

I got to see KJ again on Saturday. She had a foot operation that Wednesday, so she wasn't at work. Her husband, Steve, brought her to meet me for lunch. What fun. She is as easy going as she was in Bangalore. Loved putting Steve's face with all the good things KJ had told me. I didn't think to take their picture until they were driving away in Steve's truck. Great picture. I flew back in time to drive up to Sunnyvale to celebrate Thanksgiving and an engagement. But that is another delicious story. No pictures. Just know the food was great, the company was better and we are all excited about having two weddings in the family next year. My oldest nephew and my youngest niece will be married; he in March and she in May. MMMMMM. It's going to be a good year.

Yep, Still Alive

Yes, I'm alive. And reading. This has been a very busy month. I will write about my travels in the next blog. I just need to get all this reading out of my brain. Help me, I'm caught in a reading frenzy. Not so much a frenzy. I've been traveling and reading keeps me grounded.

First is This is Your Brain on Music. I was talking to Karen about this. I've been trying to read this for a while. It is a good book. It is just not what I needed to be reading. Lots of cerebelum and tempo. We decided that it would be nice if they would have included real music in this while I was listening. But that would have been a different book. What I learned is that music is a part of every person's life. Who knew?

Adrian did NOT like The Second Perimeter. It was not very deep.Typical spy stuff. But I did finish it. For those who lose ourselves in mindless plotlines, it fulfilled it's purpose.

Satan's Circus is non-fiction about the cops in New York City during the turn of the century. Did you know they were corrupt? Yep, it's true. The book was good for describing a time and place. It's always good to get a better sense of what the city was like before it became civilized. Worst part was the execution of the cop who got caught in the storm. Yuck. Good to read if you think execution is a good thing.

A Ball, A Dog, and a Monkey sounds like a joke. It was not. It's about America and space after the Russian's launched Sputnik in 1957. I remember 1957. I remember the cover of life magazine that was promising a technological miracle that year. I wish I could see it to know what really came true. This is very well written. Fun to read and follow along with the politician's panic and hubris. All the push toward science paid off for my family. I don't know that science education was as big before then. It sure was when I was in school. I remember a LOT of incidents from this book.

Tom told us about this last book, A Dirty Job. So funny. I can't write some of the funniest lines. This Beta Male loses his wife in the first few pages. He is left with a daughter and a mission. The mission is to retrieve Soul Vessels from the newly- or about-to-be-departed. He takes his dear daughter, Sophie, along for the ride. Her and all his interesting employees (in a second hand store, not in retrieving souls.) It took a chapter or two to get to the "can't put it down" stage. Good writing. Strange plot. Pick of the litter.

It Depends on What You Ask

I had dinner last Sunday with "those who have gone before me." It's always nice to see Russ, Dean and Jim. I'm so pleased that they have allowed me to join them. We ate barbecue, which was pretty good. The company was best.

We talked books a bit and Dean reminded me that Alan Furst is one of his favorite authors. I happened to have The Polish Officer lingering on my Ipod, so I read that this week. I like Furst's writing too. I've already written here about another of his books. Lots of stuff happens. It is, after all, WWII and Nazis and run-away Jews are all over the place. Knock twice, wink once. The only problem I have with the books are their endings. Spoiler alert. Here's the ending of The Polish Office. And then they continued to climb to the top of the hill. I can't put quotes on that because I don't remember the exact words. But he leaves you on the top of the mountain! That isn't nice. It was nice when the Polish Officer himself went down to Southwest France. He visited places I know well, even St. Jean de Luz. It took me back to a wonderful place.
I had finished Super Crunchers before I went on that trip to WWII France. When I look for images to put here, I go to Amazon and read the reviews while I'm there. I liked Super Crunchers. It makes you think about how important data is and how important good data is. When I was reading the reviews on Amazon, one reviewer wrote the title of this blog. I don't think Ian Ayres emphasized the importance of asking good questions to get good answers. We all know that you can get pile of bad data if you ask the wrong questions. You could ask Bush about that in regards to Iraq. He wouldn't know the answer, but you would feel better. Sister-in-law Cindy works with databases for a consulting firm. I wonder if she is a super cruncher. This is a good book to read to get an insight into the impact of information gathering.


The main shell of the building across from The Times is completed. Now we have masses of men putting together the insides of that shell. They have moved the giant crane north and have started to build up another building. More pictures of that next week. A lot of concrete is going into the base of the current structure. We have lots of cement trucks lining up throughout the day. I love watching this. I am alone in that. I could really sit in the cafeteria to watch the sparks from torches flying and steel beams flying through the air.