Category: Personal

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Personal

Car Damaged, Repaired

In June, I was rear-ended on my way home from work. I’d been doing the Martinez-to-Berkeley commute via I-80 for seven years, so I was probably due for some teenager to run into me. Neither of us was hurt. I was stopped and she wasn’t looking. Since I pay for collision insurance, I knew I’d only be out a grand, max. As it turns out, her insurer agreed that it was 100% her fault and agreed to pay my deductible. The damage was north of five grand. It took a month, but I got my car back, and I cannot tell that it’s been in the shop.

State Farm Insurance
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A curious thing happened the week I got it back. I got a letter from my insurance company, State Farm, telling me that I was more than 51% responsible. They had already paid for the repairs, so it didn’t make a lot of sense. I complained and the next Monday they got back to me and apologized for the mistake. My agent, Mark Woodard, called me to let me know and he followed up with the adjusters. A few days later, I got an apology in the mail. Also, this weekend I got another letter telling me they’d checked in to make sure I got the check from the other insurance company to cover my deductible.

So, all’s well that ends well. I just wanted to note publicly that while it was annoying to get the mistake letter, everything else about the service I got was great. The repairs were done by Haw’s Auto Body in Concord. They weren’t fast, but they were clearly working hard to get the best parts.

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Personal

Back up your phone’s contacts easily with Ubuntu and Bluetooth

I’m preparing to hand down my LG Lotus to my wife, who has coveted it since I brought the cute purple phone home, and upgrade to an HTC Evo. We were anticipating the pain of re-entering contacts, so I tried BitPim, software I hadn’t used for several years. It failed on both of our current phones. I was about to go with Sprint‘s solution for backing up contacts but then I discovered that if you’ve got a bluetooth radio, you can easily move contacts to and from the phone.

Official Ubuntu circle with wordmark. Replace ...
Image via Wikipedia

Vicky’s new(ish) laptop has bluetooth. I hit the function key and the little applet fired up. I told my phone to make itself visible for 3 minutes and paired it with the laptop. This is all painless and mostly automatic through the applet. I played around and could move files between the two, but contacts wouldn’t send. Then I discovered that you have to tell the applet that it’s OK for the phone to send it contacts. It’s a button under the list of known devices. The Lotus has a menu item for sending all contacts, and they came over quickly. Vicky’s lame Samsung SPH-M220 requires clicking on a contact, going through the whole process of connecting via bluetooth and then sending…for each contact. She’s going through her list right now.

Once again, it just works on Ubuntu.

Categories
Personal Poems

Mourning is a doorway back into daylight

Following is a song I wrote about 15 years ago. I thought I knew what it meant when I first wrote it, then I discovered a new meaning about seven years ago. I’ve discovered a more profound meaning, and it probably had this meaning all along. Before I explain, here are the words.

How Long Must You Cry

How long must you cry before you wonder why your life’s filled with pain? How long must you cry?

How long must you weep, crying yourself to sleep? Tear-stained memory. How long must you weep?

I know why you cry. I know why you cry. It’s for me. It’s for me. It’s for me. You cry for me.

How deep must you age before you turn the page? Gone is yesterday. How deep must you age?

How wise must you grow before you will know. I’m beyond your reach. How wise must you grow?

I know why you cry. I know why you cry. It’s for me. It’s for me. It’s for me. You cry for me.

When I first wrote this, this was kind of a bitter warning to someone who foolishly spurned my offer of friendship. I didn’t take the song very seriously and thought of it as “you don’t know what you’re missing”. The language is kind of extreme for the actual situation, but it’s stylized.

Years later, I discovered that instead of it being me speaking to someone else, it was someone I’d lost speaking to me. I imagined my father asking me how long I was going to feel sad about him dying. I took it as a statement to myself to suck it up, to repress the bad feelings.

Today, I started thinking of this song as an ideal version of myself, a version of myself who I dreamed I’d be as a child, speaking to myself as I really am. And I’m curious: when will I give up comparing myself to that unattainable ideal? When will I cease entertaining the idea of having a chance to replay the past?

So in this sense, I’m not attacking myself for feeling sad. There’s a version of me that could have been. There were decisions I made that got me where I am, and there were circumstances beyond my control that probably had a greater influence. It’s legitimate to mourn the loss of what could have been. The mourning is a doorway back into daylight. So, I’m pleased to find the song is not a bitter rant, nor a vigorous self-attack. It’s simply a question about when the truth will be accepted.

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Personal

Glad to be Dad

Henry and Tre

I’ve learned so much about myself since becoming a father nearly six years ago. Constantly striving to serve these two little guys has helped me understand my own childhood. I am honored to be helping them through theirs. It just gives me so much pleasure to be around their joyful creativity. So, with Father’s Day around the corner, I hope all my fellow dads are having as much fun as I am.

Categories
Martinez Personal

Love Rediscovered

This past weekend, the Alhambra Senior High Class of 1988 reunited to celebrate our 20th anniversary. It was a mind-blowing experience. Fellow classmate Theresa wrote a great personal account of Saturday’s party that captures the experience perfectly.

For me, the most intense and immediate emotion I felt all weekend was something like sensory overload. My brain was getting so much new information, some visual and some analytical. Everyone looked a little different but were immediately recognizable. For people I hadn’t seen for at least 10 years, I had to reach through time and connect my memories of them then to how they were interacting with me now.

There were some people who I don’t think I said three words to in school, but I knew their faces and I knew their names (even if I couldn’t put them together at first). But conversation with them could hardly be more natural. It was a powerful realization that these were people who share a life experience that’s hard to capture elsewhere.

Part of me was feeling a bit sad at the end because I didn’t spend enough time with anyone, and some people I completely missed! I found myself aching for more time, or time alone with each of them.

It’s taken a bit for me to process the information and emotions of this past weekend, but I think I’ve figured it out. It’s love. It’s the feeling that these people are so valuable to me. That they exist simply makes me happy. The potential for good times with them is infinite. I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to be back in 1988, spending all day with these people again.

To me, love–as a feeling–is the identification of something you value most of all. But it implies action. I want all of my classmates to know that if you ever need help or you want to have a good time, come to me. Need help moving? Need someone to watch your kids? Just want to have dinner? We usually eat around 6:30. Don’t be a stranger, and let me know what I can do.