Archive for November, 2007

1.) When my dog amiably holds my gaze for just a second too long and I realize he is probably a reincarnated Buddhist monk, thanking me for the scrap of turkey I gave him under the table.

2.) When my wife calls me three times in a row in a twenty minute period to converse about essentially nothing, just so that she can say “I love you” at the end.

3.) When my in-laws give me a birthday card signed “may the force be with you” to accompany a Star Wars DVD boxed set.

4.) When people look at me–straight-faced–and call Internet Explorer version 6 a “web browser” in an non-ironic way when in fact IE6 is really just a trap, sent here by evil demons from another dimension; the same demons who want me to spend the rest of my life breaking perfectly good code instead of reveling in the first two things on this list.

I wonder if every line of work has an “IE6″? I’m sure it does. But this one, as they say in the marines, is mine. Yet again I’ve spent an evening wrestling my own hands to the desk where they can’t fly through my computer screen, thinking the same thoughts about just what would make a group of humans make a piece of technology–in general such a liberating and beautiful thing–so awful. It’s like being given an endless bankroll and a clock with no hands with which to make a piece of art and making You, Me and Dupree instead. I just don’t get it.

For now, though, I have the other two things. They’re enough. I didn’t code a single table today. Buddha and my wife are winning.