Tommyjournal   archive    July 2003

note:  readers looking to read about Amr Mohsen are referred to the July 27, 2003 entry, below, and also entries for April 8, 2004, July 17, 2004, and July 27, 2004.



Wednesday  07.30.03

From today's news conference at the White House:
QUESTION: Mr. President, many of your supporters believe that homosexuality is immoral. They believe that it's been given too much acceptance in policy terms and culturally. As someone who's spoken out in strongly moral terms, what's your view on homosexuality?

BUSH: Yes, I am mindful that we're all sinners. And I caution those who may try to take the speck out of the neighbor's eye when they've got a log in their own.

I think it's very important for our society to respect each individual, to welcome those with good hearts, to be a welcoming country.

On the other hand, that does not mean that somebody like me needs to compromise on an issue such as marriage. And that's really where the issue is headed here in Washington, and that is the definition of marriage. I believe in the sanctity of marriage. I believe a marriage is between a man and a woman. And I think we ought to codify that one way or the other. And we've got lawyers looking at the best way to do that.
What a politician's response.

Note the question: what's your view on homosexuality. Set aside Bush's discussion of related issues (like the definition of marriage) and try to find an answer to the question.

Note the implication that homosexuality is a sin: clear enough to not alienate his constituency, but indirect enough to not quite hit people over the head with it.

Someone smack me if I ever say anything so weaselly.



Tuesday  07.29.03

I'm working in Silicon Valley this week.

Last night: I walk into the office of a motel ("Vagabond Inn"). The dude behind the counter is Indian; I look for a statue of Ganesh on a shelf, but alas no. I ask if he has a non-smoking room; he says yes, and he'll give me the "manager's special rate" (about 10% above the rate on the sign outside). I ask about that, he says OK, he can give me the rate on the sign, but it'll be a small room, and if the TV or remote control don't work I'm expected not to complain. "It works both ways," he says, which I guess means you get what you pay for. I am very amused by this little game, I smile and say I just need to sleep, the TV's not important. There's a popcorn machine in the office, and I ask whether I'm allowed to have any (can't take anything for granted when you're bold enough ask for the rate that's on the sign). He smiles and says OK.

The TV and remote control work fine. Well, fine except for the snow on several channels, but that's typical motel TV.

I check for the Holy Bible in the nightstand. It's there. I turn to Leviticus 20:13, cross out "abomination", and write mitzvah in its place.

This morning: I go out for breakfast. A lady ahead of me on line asks if she can be seated in the restaurant's back room because the main room is so loud. Dude says no, "making that exception would be a bad habit." I'm in the main room, and it's not that loud--at least, not until the lady who wanted quiet gets on her cell phone and talks loud enough that I can make out what she's saying from four tables away.

Reflecting on the previous night's rate negotiation, I feel fortunate that my job doesn't entail offering people jacked-up "manager's special" rates and trying to scare them with the consequences of settling for less.



Sunday  07.27.03

About 13 years ago, I started working at
Aptix Corporation, a Silicon Valley startup company founded by one Amr Mohsen. Not too long after joining the company, I found that--like a number of other employees--I wasn't inclined to trust what Amr said.

A few years after I had quit, Aptix sued another electronics company, QuickTurn Design Systems, for claimed patent infringement. Amr introduced his patent notebooks as evidence, notebooks which the court found to have been fraudulently constructed after the dates that were claimed for them. From the court's findings:
106. Based on the foregoing, the Court finds the evidence clear and convincing that Amr Mohsen, the founder, chairman, chief executive officer and lead inventor of Aptix Corporation, fabricated the entire 1988 Notebook, numerous entries in the 1989 Notebook, the three corroborative entries in his Daytimer and the rest of the post-theft "corroboration" all in an effort to defraud defendant and this Court.
I read those court findings, all 47 pages, as soon as I found them on the web a few years ago; they were every bit as entertaining as a good episode of Law and Order. The unfair part, I thought, was that although Aptix lost the lawsuit, Amr never faced criminal charges--until now. It took a while, but Amr and his brother Aly were indicted for perjury and other charges this year.

Aptix never made it big (losing the lawsuit didn't help). I have several pieces of fancy bird cage lining in my filing cabinet. bird cage lining

About a year after I'd quit as a salaried employee, I did a few months of contract work for Aptix. It was fairly dull and unchallenging work, for a company headed by a man I didn't respect. When Suck asked me to write a short bio after I'd written an article for them back in 1996, working for Aptix was fresh in my mind, and I said (writing in the third person, about myself)
To pay the rent, he prostitutes himself as a contract software engineer.
My current boss must have too much time on his hands :) and must have typed my name into a search engine; he found that bio online recently and wrote to me
I had never been to a prostitute before now. Strange, it's not at all what I imagined it would be like. :-)
Life is full of surprises, isn't it.



Friday  07.25.03

From an article in today's NY Times:
Mr. Gates acknowledged today that the company's error reporting service indicated that 5 percent of all Windows-based computers now crash more than twice each day.
If the Beatles were around today, maybe they'd be singing "money can't buy me a stable OS."

The best things in life are free.



Wednesday  07.23.03

Hi everyone. Sorry I haven't written much lately; some days I just don't have a lot to say that I think is worth taking your time with. Some days-- like today, for example. So I'll do the time-honored next-best-thing: quote someone else.

... Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is going wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to theocracy, the worse it will be. A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated.   - C. S. Lewis



Saturday  07.19.03

Happy nineteenth.



Wednesday  07.16.03

Local kids threw a party out in the desert tonight, on a site where hundreds of extras pretended they were in India during the filming of Gunga Din some 65 years ago. Tonight's party featured moonlight, warm dry air, live rock and roll, a spectacular setting, good acoustics, a huge flat rock for a stage, and a cute shirtless teenage guitarist.

Not much else to say, other than that I am decidedly out of place at parties attended by dozens of people less than half my age. (I went for the music, not the audience.)



Tuesday  07.15.03

chair The OCR-A typeface,

a.k.a. DIN 66008,

includes a few curious characters named (appropriately) hook, fork, and chair. If your browser supports unicode, they look like this:  ⑀ ⑂ ⑁

If anyone knows what they were intended for,

or even what they're good for at all,

(other than entertaining easily-amused people like me)

please let me know.

Thanks.

update, 26 Sep 2008: hook/fork/chair were used in machine-read portions of European checks: Eurocheque (Muster)

Monday  07.14.03

For years, I was having occasional recurring dreams about out-of-control elevators. They'd overshoot the floor I asked for, fail to open, head toward crashing into the roof or ground, and so on. I got fed up, declared that I wouldn't have any more such dreams, and they pretty much stopped.

Last night I had another elevator dream. Although this one wasn't out of control, I'm struck by how often I dream about elevators. What does it mean. Should I stop having elevator dreams altogether, or learn to love them, or what.



Sunday  07.13.03

I don't like most social gatherings larger than about four people, but I went to one this evening because I like the person who hosted it and thought that maybe, just maybe, I'd meet one interesting person there. Last time I was at her house there was a hot boy named Kiffy.   [sigh]

Drunk people dominated the conversation for a while tonight, causing me to flee to a splinter group of not-so-drunk people. That only lasted so long, until the group decided that splintering was not sociable and rejoined the main event.

By that time the loud people had gotten hoarse or something and conversation had turned more civilized. I did meet one interesting man, we had a relatively nice one-on-one conversation despite his being intent on talking for at least 85% of the time. I wonder, do people even know that they do that. I especially love it when they stop, say "so what about you," give you the floor for 30 seconds and then go back to telling you about themselves.

Anyhow. I'm back home and conditions are favorable. Temperature 80°F, dewpoint 35°F, calm, full moon, quiet. I'm gonna go for a walk.



Well, I can't just call you 'Man'.

Happy birthday Tyler :)



Saturday  07.12.03

Some critter in my attic woke me up at 6:35 this morning. Maybe I should put up a sign saying that there's no food or water up there. I don't imagine the fiberglass is any more appealing to a bird or mouse than it is to you or me.

I didn't feel like rummaging around up there this morning. If I ever find out what it was, I'll let y'all know. I think it'd be anticlimactic; the longer the critter's identity remains a mystery, the better (especially if it goes away).



Wednesday  07.09.03

Interesting little dream last night. I dreamt I was in Lithuania, and that people on the street reminded me of myself (I'm ½ Lithuanian). It felt comforting (and unaccustomed) to be around people I identified with.

An obvious possible interpretation is that I don't identify with people where I live now. This makes two dreams suggesting a dissatisfaction with where I live (see my journal entry for June 9). Oooooh, look at that, both dreams on the ninth day of the month.

I'd feel like an odd man out just about anywhere. But of all the places I've lived in after moving away from my parents' house, I'd say San Francisco was probably where I felt the most in sync with the prevailing character of the people around me. Los Angeles was at the other end of the scale, I felt molto out of place there. I felt at home in Boulder, Colorado in some ways but not in others.

Then there's the question of how important or desirable it is to feel strongly identified with lots of people around you. I had a good time overall during my two years in Los Angeles (but no regrets about leaving).



Tuesday  07.08.03

I wrote (5 days ago; see below)
Pleasure often has an opportunity cost. What I could have done with all that time I spent looking for sex.
Which prompted the (good) question
so, what do you wish you were doing instead?
I wish I'd spent more time learning. For example--

Just now, in my early 40s, I'm learning to play a musical instrument. I wish I'd learned earlier.



Monday  07.07.03

People ask me if Ace is my real last name. I say yes, and it's my father's last name, it was his father's last name, his father's, ... .

Probably the best response to my name came from a neighbor when I moved here. My name didn't seem real to him, and he found it strange that someone doing what I do (engineering) would move to the middle of nowhere. He figured I must have been relocated and renamed as part of a witness protection program.

He was wrong about that. But it is strange that I live here.



Sunday  07.06.03

This isn't much of a journal, is it. I mean, I write about all kinds of stuff, but usually not about what happened to me that day. Most of my days would be pretty boring to most people, I think.

Not that I'm getting any complaints. Fewer than one in a hundred readers write with any feedback at all; the silent 99+% are presumably gruntled with the way things are.



Friday  07.04.03

Much graffiti falls into one of several familiar categories, e.g. marking of territory, political commentary, artwork, expression of love for one's sweetheart.

On rare occasions I've seen mathematical graffiti. In 1985 I saw a few equations on the Berlin wall:  a well-known series that summed to 2 / 6, and one that summed to ex.

Then there's the curious piece of graffiti shown to the right, which I found on the wall of a building in San Francisco a few years ago. It's more prosaic math than the equations I saw on the Berlin wall, but I am struck by the artist's proclamation of his love for a number.

I won't make a long string of silly jokes about the advantages of loving a number (numbers never say they aren't in the mood, numbers don't get pregnant, etc.).

Why 62, I wonder. It's got a
short, bland dossier at the prime curios site (not that that's an exhaustive or authoritative resource--fun though it is).



Independence.



Thursday  07.03.03

From a recent bj's blog:
Even when we do eventually (hopefully, in my opinion) "come out" it is often coupled with a lot of distancing from what is perceived to be the "homsexual lifestyle" - "why are they so pleasure-centric?" is one remark I hear a lot lately. Hmmm, I don't pretend to know a lot about psychology (oppressed individuals must seek outlets for their frustrations), or how to compare gay people in our culture with non-gay people (str8's by and large forego pleasure, while gays just can't keep it in their pants, or shop a lot in order to control their sexual feelings and/or frustrations?), but I guess I have to wonder, um, what is wrong with pleasure?
Tommy's thoughts:

"self-centered" is commonly used to indicate excess; I read "pleasure-centric" the same way. There's nothing necessarily wrong with the concept of self (sorry, Buddhists)--it's just associated with a characteristic set of common pitfalls. Same goes for pleasure.

Pleasure is seductive; it's easy to not keep it in perspective. Think of experiments that show rats forgoing food in favor of cocaine. Or, think of me, HIV+ from having placed such a high value on sensual pleasure 16 years ago despite the danger.

Pleasure often has an opportunity cost. What I could have done with all that time I spent looking for sex.

Pleasure can be a distraction.

Many pleasures are dead ends, in the sense that there's only so far you can take them. Trying to squeeze ever more out of a favorite pleasure can be a sad spectacle.

In sum: pleasure is great, but what an opportunity it provides to lose one's sense of balance.

In any case--when I came out in 1979, my distancing myself from parts of mainstream urban gay life was due to my distaste for disco, and not because I had anything against pleasure as a 20 year old.

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