Different Hours

2004-11-22T11:04:00.000-08:00

Well in a victory for all of us closing in on 40 my basketball team won the league championship last night. My team was composed of a bunch of guys who I play at the YMCA with. Good guys all in all and we play well together since we play against/with each other a few times a week. We're are a bit older, though I'd say I'm the oldest, and we beat a team that we probably shouldn't have. Bunch of youngsters. I shot the lightouts and got clutch at the free throw line hitting six in a row (they were intentionally fouling) with time running out. Good stuff. And today I turn 38. Yet another aging athlete trying to hold on to his glory days. Sad, sad indeed.

2004-11-11T13:38:00.000-08:00

This has been taking up all my time. I'm just more excited about music than the mundanities of my life. If you spend some time at Bars & Guitars you can glean pretty much what I'm thinking about.

Here in SF the rains have begun. We've had at least 2 impressive storms that employed lightening and thunder to great effect. Really good old testament fire and brimstone house shaking stuff. Otherwise it's been a steady drizzle.

I'm off to las Vegas this weekend with wife and friends. I'm not much of a gambler, but after living in California for so long it's nice to go out in a city that doesn't shut down at 2am.

Samantha being in Kindergarten has been a really interesting social phenomenon. Once your kid gets into the local public school system it's amazing how engaged in the community you become. I've met the parents of most of the kids in Sam's kindergarten class and they are an interesting bunch. Made some good friends as well. Hopefully I'll know all these people all the way through Sam's high school, though in todays world there's so much moving around. One of the most interesting couples is two gay men who have 4 kids. One of them is sperm donor for all 4 kids and the same woman carried them all. So there's, obviously, a resemblance between them all. The kids range from 5 (Sam's best friend) down to 6 months. My God but those men are knee deep in poop for like 2 1/2 more years. Wonderful people, so witty and such wonderful parents. It makes you wonder why people are so opposed to gay marriage. I've got news for you, "the gays" have absolutely no interest in your life. They're just trying to live, love, and get by like the rest of us. Destroying western society as we know it isn't even on their radar, but I guess everyone needs something or someone to villify. Sin is Jethro living in Creepy Hollow, Ky with a 15year old cousin for a bride or degenerate alcoholic straight people being allowed to breed unregulated, not 2 healthy intelligent people who love each other trying to make a life.

Thus endeth the ramble.

Peace to all.

2004-10-29T17:25:00.000-07:00

It's been nine days since I posted here and I haven't been on vacation, had a horrendous injury, contracted a miserable case of carpal tunnel, I've just been obsessed with the music blog and frankly find writing about music (something I love) much more exciting than writing about my life (which strikes me as modestly interesting at its most ebullient). But I have some kind of weird kinship to this little blog much in the same way that people have a tendency to get attached to inanimate objects. I mean, I could never just delete it. It's much easier to ignore it for days at a time. If you're really wondering what I've been thinking about all this time it's this:

I'M ABOUT TO BE 2 YEARS AWAY FROM 40. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

2004-10-20T16:23:00.000-07:00

So I've been spending alot of time with Bars & Guitars, clearly neglecting this little spot. I was thinking today about something that Gwadzilla wrote recently regarding an email exchange we had. I had told him that working on Bars & Guitars was a bit of a dream job for me, except that I don't get paid. Despite his mild protestations I'm going to stick with that original declaration. His point was that every dream becomes a job once it's an everyday thing. I was bike messenger once and probably dreamed that owning a messenger company would be the best thing in the world. Truth is I never really believed that at all. I loved being a bike messenger, but knew I didn't want to and indeed couldn't physically do it forever. There was no mental stimulation in the job and in alot of ways it was a way to kill time as I waited for better things to happen. I moved into the office and became a first rate dispatcher, eventually seizing an oppurtunity when I saw it starting my company. None of things that had gone before were dream jobs. I certainly never dreamt of owning a messenger company or any company of any kind for that matter. It was an oppurtunity and I took it. Music is a different story. Music is a love, not a dream. If you love something you probably won't tire of it. Of course I'm not talking about key lime pie or the feel of leather seats. I'm talking about something that awakens you both intellectually and emotionally. It makes you think, drives you to find out more and makes you want to be actively engaged with it. Being engaged with it can mean doing it (though I'm no musician), producing it (I don't know what working for a record label is like), or writing about it. The writing part I can do and the more I do it the more I like it. I don't need to get paid to do it. It's simply something that I want to do, if that translated into monetary compensation at some point...well, great. A dream job is first knowing the dream when you stumble upon it, a dream job doesn't grow from a job into a dream. It must start on the other end.

2004-10-12T13:33:00.000-07:00

I've been putting so much time into the music blog Bars & Guitars that I've been a bit neglectful over here. Truth is, aside from the new blog my life is a bit dull at the moment. Though that's not to imply that at other moments I'm living a life far more exciting than yours dear reader. Here's the synopsis:

-I'm not riding my bike enough.
-My basketball team keeps losing.
-Bush is a dirty bastard.
-NBA season is fast approaching and it's up to the Warriors to make up for the dissappoint that is the other bay area teams.
-Samantha loves Kindergarten.
-My wife has officially graduated from business school and can now claim to be a Master at something.
-I can't remember the last time I saw a movie.
-There's tons of good music out there.

Please direct any specific questions to the comment link or email me.

2004-10-07T16:35:00.000-07:00

Not feeling super talkative today. I've been working hard on the music blog. Check it out: Bars & Guitars What I did want to post is the upcoming schedule for the show Austin City Limits. If you don't know, Austin City Limits is the last really delicious music show left. They feature two bands or artists on any given show with half dedicated to each. I'm finally starting to feel like the void that the departure of Solid Gold left is now starting to be filled. As you scan the schedule be impressed by some of these offerings: Wilco w/ Bright Eyes, Elvis Costello, Spoon w/ Ben Kweller, The Pixies, The Flaming Lips w/ The Shins, good God it's a veritable smorgasborg of delicious slow roasted music with gravy.

Check it here

2004-10-06T13:07:00.000-07:00

I tried to watch the vice prez debate. I just couldn't. It's something about Cheney. He makes me crazy. He's sweaty and bald and doughy. Granted Edwards is an airbrushed, toned down, blander version of RFK but still at least he doesn't make your skin crawl. In fact I bet he makes some of the ladies skin do the exact opposite.

Does anyone else love good frozen food? The Annie's, the Ethinic Gourmet, all the Trader Joe's stuff. Forget the wheel, mankind really leaped ahead when we invented the microwave. It's not the I don't like to cook, I do, it's just that everything I cook comes out the same no matter what it is: slightly bland and yet a little too salty. I'm the same way with carpentry: make a chair that looks ok (maybe a little crooked) but for the love of God don't try to sit on it.

What is it with little girls and putting on shows? Samantha spent like an hour last night performing for me. She had costume changes, lighting (me holding a flashlight), Music, dancing. It was frickin' hilarious. She's got some moves too. Her Grandma says that Tami did the same thing when she was little. Is it a girl thing or a genetic thing. I tell ya she's gonna be a star.

Work related: The price change seems to have gone fairly smoothly. No complaints. The huge problem right now is trying to collect money from the Gap. It's not like they don't have any money, it's a Kafkaesque maze of mid level accountants that we're dealing with. They owe us almost $30,000. You try to get the money it's "resend that invoice", "we never received it", "the format isn't right". The killer is that if one of their job numbers is incorrect (if their people give us the wrong one or we get it wrong) they don't pay the entire invoice. So in a typical month they bill to like 80 different job numbers. If the one for $6 is wrong, they don't pay the entire $6,500 bill. The kicker is that they don't tell you that it's wrong. It'll be months before you hear that a certain invoice has to be resent. Frustrating. Chasing money around and around and around.

2004-10-01T13:59:00.000-07:00

Jetset News: Today's the day that the rates go up. Exciting stuff. I guess. More stressful than anything though the feedback from clients since I sent out a letter announcing the impending change has been overwhelmingly positive. We'll see how they feel when they get their bill for the month of October. It's a fair increase that averages on the whole a little more than %12.1. When you consider that we haven't raised the rates in over 4 years this is very fair. It's essentially a cost of living increase of %3 per year. That's what the government preaches anyway.

Music Blogs: I don't know if you (I mean of course all 4 of the fine readers of my blog) are privy to this new thing called music blogs. It's really kinda cool. People blogging about music they like, but putting up MP3's as well, usually like 2 or 3 per day. There's a disclaimer on all the sites saying basically: I'll take it down if this pisses you off. But when you think about it, a popular music blog is getting alot of hits and for a small band or a small label this kind of exposure to the "trend makers" is invaluable. I'm hesitant with that "trendmakers" comment, but I couldn't think of a better word. To put it into high school terms I definitely get the feeling from the music blogs I read daily that it's the "cool" kids doing it, exposing others to music they think is cool. There are no links to the new Justin Timberlake single (or maybe there is), it's all hard to find indie rock, singer songwriters, house music, downtempo, hip hop, rare soul. It's an absolute treasure trove of info for people (and I include myself in this description) who are totally nerded out on music (another high school reference, wait until I work in hesher). I can't get enough, but no longer have the time to spend hours a day browsing record stores. This is an ideal replacement. Here are the Music Blogs that I read pretty much every day:

New Flux
Music For Robots
Clap Clap
Tofu Hut
Said The Gramophone

Each is different. It passes the time.

2004-09-30T13:15:00.000-07:00

Here's a good question that a gentleman in Berkeley has been trying to get journalistst to ask Bush and Kerry, or any politician of a national stature for that matter:

Will you agree never to accept any personal profits flowing from any military action you authorize or promote?

So simple and so telling. It cuts right to the point doesn't it?

I've got a nasty little head cold at the moment. Sucks the creativity right out of me. There's a good article in the New Yorker about Gavin Newsom the current SF mayor. I must say that after a very divisive election that pitted the wealthy Newsom against young liberal Mission dweller Matt Gonzalez, I've been presently surprised by Newsom. If he's the future of the Dems then perhaps I've got some hope.

Here's hoping the snot drains out of my head.

2004-09-28T08:23:00.000-07:00

This chickie-poo is very funny. DC folk may already know her since that's where she's based, but you gotta love a wise ass woman who likes to have a drink or two: www.wonkette.com

Using a little bit of early morning quiet to write and read the paper. Soon all hell will break loose and I get to spend the day alone in the office, answering phones, dispatching, and being frustrated. Did I mention that I have a cold and a sore throat? Let me introduce myself, I am Senor Whiner. Or you can refer to my as El Grande Whinador or El Jefe de los Whinadores. Please no email about my spanglish. It's a joke.

If you haven't taken my advice at listened to Go-Team, then do yourself a favor and go to the www.memphis-industries.com site and check 'em out. One day they'll tour the US and it will be all kinds of fun.

Jetset has been busy as a beaver in the redwoods lately. It's been a very good September, which is what I would expect coming off a typically mellow summer. It's a very standard delivery pattern. Slow summer months followed by a major ramp up in the first 2 1/2 months of fall (Sept., Oct. 2 weeks of Nov.) as companies prepare for the holidays. Things mellow around Thanksgiving, pick up again until Xmas and then January is hit or miss. I wonder to what extent work will be affected by the presidential race. During the Gore/Bush fiasco, as the country waited with bated breath for Bush to ulimately steal the election through a partisan judiciary (this after employing overtly racist gerrymandering tactics in Florida) work was absolutely dead. Next, of course, came the dot com fallout and a general country wide malaise/depression that is only now starting to lift. But in its wake resides a bitterly divided country left in emotional shambles after 4 years (more really when you consider the damage that Gingrich did) of divisive politics by Heir Bush in which he wedged enough issues into the middle of the country that you now have to charter a car ferry 3 months in advance if you want to drive from one coast to the other.

Oh, and this just in from our current administration: despite the worst hurricane season on record, the documented melting of every major glacial field on the planet, the noted sinking of a number of islands in Micronesia, drought, unseasonable heat in Europe, the coldest winter on record in Europe, the jury is still out on global warming. Check back in 10 to 15 years, it should be too late to do anything by then.

It also seems that (despite conservative auto-makers, no guidance from the administration {whatever did happen to all that R&D money for fuel cells}) alternative fuel vehicles are becoming commonplace enough that in 2005 american auto makers will release 3 hybrid SUV's. Unfucking believable. American automakers pulled kicking and screaming to a technology that the Japanese auto-makers wisely began investing in years and years ago. So basically the Prius, the Honda Civic Hybrid are so commonplace now that no one bats an eye at the idea of a hybrid vehicle, that must mean it's safe for the US auto-makers to come out from under their rocks and build some cars.

I'm bitter.

2004-09-23T22:25:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about starting a separate music blog for awhile now. I've added some new links over to the side there under MUSIC check out the flux blog and music for robots. I've gotta credit those guys with turning me on to some great music. There's a band called Go Team out there that makes me feel like I'm 17 again and that's alot from a really cynical jaded music critic. Seriously I like alot of stuff and love very little now adays. I keep waiting for something to grab me that way music did when I was in high school and college. I don't think it's that there isn't good music out there, but that it's harder to investment both the emotional and actual time into a band as we get older. Anyway there's a band called Go Team on a small label called Memphis Industries and it makes me giggle like a little school girl. There's indie rock, Jackson 5, Go-Go (yes go-go my DC brethren), 60's harmonies, silly piano and an palpable love of music coming out of these guys. Check out the Memphis Industries site. Why are the british so much better than us at having fun when it comes to music? I don't completely believe that statement but it sounded good saying it.

2004-09-22T15:32:00.000-07:00

Time for the weekly blogging. I've been a bit overwhelmed with work lately, one of my partners left to go out of town for a week on pretty last minute notice so I've had to work longer hours than I'd like. My partner's met a very wealthy woman. I'm glad for him but I hope these last minute jets to england aren't going to be de rigeur. As far as the financial health of the company goes it was certainly a smart move to let our only office employee go, but it sure does put more stress on the office and me. Samantha seems to be liking kindergarten very much, though the after care and before care seems to be a little lacking and this cause for some consternation as neither Tami or myself feels very good about dropping Sam off there. The main problem is the amount of kids that utilize the after care, there is little attention paid to any kind of sensible student to caregiver ratio. But the most troubling part of the situation is how many "big" kids there are. We're just not comfortable having Sam in situation where there are many 2 kindergarteners on some days and like 20 3rd to 6th graders. I think it's intimidating and stressful for her.

My league basketball team is 3-0 which is nice but there have been so many midweek games thus far that it's been a little stressful getting everything scheduled out. Got a game tonight in fact, but after this it's Sundays from here on out.

Was working under the house the other day cleaning stuff out and smacked my head on a beam. The gash actually compliments the shiner that I got in my last basketball game, now it looks more like I've been in bar fight though I like to tell people that Tami beat me up because I know she'd probably like to.

2004-09-15T17:28:00.000-07:00

You know you've thought about it. We all have. I mean who wouldn't want to dress up like a superhero and completely mess up traffic for a couple of hours. I, however, would probable lobby for something a bit more esoteric than Batman. I'm thinking Green Lantern or Hawkman, someone that everybody kind of looks at you and goes what's he supposed to be and then BAM you hit 'em with Lantern laser or a grimly muttered, "I'm Hawkman dammit". I figure if you're going to be crazy, you may as well go all out.

Check the story

2004-09-13T14:34:00.000-07:00

I've been writing alot more lately. I don't know if it has to do with all the music review writing I've been doing, but the simply task of putting words to paper has been really pleasurable as of late. I checked a book out on writing or freeing the creative spirit. Not the kind of stuff I usually go in for. I think I have an automated reaction of distaste to anything vaguely new age. There's something artificial or escapist about it. But I was proven very wrong with this book. It's by a woman who's been teaching workshops forever all around the country. She writes with a very "new agey, get in touch with your inner self" type of voice, but once I got past that I found her describing my problems with writing to a "T": procrastination, self defeat, convincing yourself that no one wants to read what you have to say before writing anything down, and, worst of all, constant self-editing. I could identify with everything that she. She convinced me that more often than not you've got to simply write. Not since down saying I'm going to write a poem or a story with "X" theme and characters. But simply write about anything for as long as you can everyday. Just let it spill out on the paper, don't edit and don't try to be clever. Just let go. I've been It's really freeing and produces at least one gem in the sea of mush that emerges.

Here are some bands that are worth listening to with recent albums out:

The Fire Theft
The Shins
The New Pornographers
A.C. Newman
The Faint (I think the album "Wet from Birth" which comes out tomorrow, may make these guys huge)

I recently finished a very literary book by Annie Proulx which was great, but now I'm into some really trashy sci-fi fantasy stuff. I think it goes back to being 12 years old and reading the Lord of the Rings, but I absolutely love a richly, well imagined universe.

Ok gotta go pick up Sam from school.

2004-09-08T15:47:00.000-07:00

What a fun labor day weekend. Once again the family headed up to Mariposa County for the world famous Mariposa County fair. It's not really world famous but is such a classic representation of a small rural county fair. It's the event that the county waits for the whole summer. It's full of livestock, weird carnie folk, games of chance, country music, and way too much beer. Samantha absolutely loves it. She's in hog heaven on the rides, loves the terrible food, and could toss ping pong balls at small glass bowls until she was blue in the face. It's been really neat to see her grow steadily more confident at the fair. This is her 3rd year and when we started going she wouldn't even consider going on one of the rides. Now she loves it all, has made little friends with the children of her grandparents friends and just seems so in her element there. It's not that she's a rural kid, it's just that she's grown used to the rural environment that her grandparents live in and slides into the environment very easily. It's the whole adaptability of kids thing I guess. But it's not just her that loves the fair. I must say that I look forward to it every year. I don't want to call it wholesome just because there's pigs and a demolition derby and lots of cowboy hats, but there is something oddly innocent about it. People know one another, enter their pictures, crafts, plants, in the contests, cheer each other on, chat with you even if they don't know you. You're guard is down and I like that. Of course there's also the bald guy with a huge cross tattooed across his chest who has a wandering eye and (due to my careful observation of this nut) absolutely no social skills who has, none the less, managed to find a mate in an obsese, semi-literate alcoholic named Lulu. There are also absolutely no minorities. None. Not even a stray latino. It's a lily white existence and I felt a need to shelter my daughter from alot of the small mindedness. But for the most part the people have good (if sometimes misguided) hearts.

I also had the chance to ride up near Bass Lake. I found a couple of trails in the area through www.mtbr.com (a good resource actually) and Tami and our friend Jeff took a chance on a ride up Goat Mountain Trail. I have to tell you that it was one of the best rides I've been on in awhile. 3/4 of the climb up (about 1300 feet of gain) was on very tight single track. Once away from the main road around the lake we saw no one else. There was a signifigant stretch of fire road as I climbed up to the Goat Mountain observation tower. It was a tough climb mostly because of the heat. I enjoyed a magnificent 360 degree view in which I could see Bass Lake and Yosemite as well as most of the surrounding Stanislaus National Forest. But the really fun part was yet to come. The descent on Goat Mountain Trail was just too much fun. about 4 miles of tight, wooded challenging singletrack. I must say the Retrotec and I rocked it. Once again didn't see another soul on the whole descent. A good mix of tough rocky technical descent, smooth banked loamy trail on which you could really let go without worrying about running into another person. It was riding unlike the bay area, though I imagine it was what mountain biking on Mt. Tam would've been like 30 years ago. Good stuff.

2004-08-31T11:59:00.000-07:00

Well yesterday was the big day. Samantha went off to Kindergarten. She seemed pretty well unfazed by the whole thing, though I was freaking out. You just can't help but worried about your kids when they take steps like this. You just want them to always be safe and happy and unstressed. I think she had a real good day but you could tell when we picked her up that it had been a long day full of new things. A bit overwhelming perhaps. It just breaks my heart knowing that she's growing up so quickly. Maybe one more kid? I don't know. I just don't know.

Actually did some biking this weekend. Took the Retrotec over to China Camp in San Rafael and was reminded once again about how much I love mountain biking. If I had any sense I'd make more of an effort to ride more. But there always seems to be something in the way or something that I allow to get in my way. It's funny because mountain biking is how my wife and I met but now it's so hard to ride together, but as Samantha gets bigger hopefully that will change. Maybe Sam will be into biking and come with. Who knows.

The DFL cross races start this evening. Probably one of the most casual and most fun race series that was ever put on. $5 to enter but free if you wear a dress (hence its pun on cross-race). I always try to make a cyclocross race or two during the fall, they're fun, great work out and usually (usually) a bit more relaxed than the ultra weeny summer race season. Sometimes I miss the days of the Nor Cal Single Speed race series. There were some amazing riders in those races (I can recall such pros as Daryll Price and Travis Brown coming out to race) and a great core group of men and women who were competitive but loved the camaraderie more than the competition, that loved a hard race but loved the beer and BBQ afterward just as much. Those were the silly days of my youth when I would happily ride a 45mile race on my single speed, smoke just about everyone riding geared bikes and then party into the night. But now I'm fighting a gut and spending what seems like a lifetime each day behind a computer monitor. I think I'm whining. I better shut up.

2004-08-25T18:08:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you've just got to let injuries heal properly. I, however, am very bad at doing this. About 2 weeks ago I mildly separated my shoulder playing basketball. It wasn't that bad, really. I felt it come out a bit (maybe the muscle was torn) and I kind of shrugged my shoulder and fell back into place. But clearly I had done some ligature and/or muscular damage. I've been trying to be really good about just staying off it but I've tried to play hoops once in the last 2 weeks and probably will again tonight. It's just certain positions that give me some discomfort. I just have such a hard time being sedentary. It makes me crazy and grumpy. I should just ride my bike more when I can't play hoops, but. It's not so much the near term I worry about with these injuries it 's the long term. Will I one day pay for all these sprained ankles and jammed fingers with an atrociously arthritic limp and fingers that look like they have marbles for joints? Probably. But the die has been cast already so what are you gonna do. I should probably take up yoga or something else that encourages stretching and the general limberness of the body but really that's about as likely as me becoming a pastry chef.

Nice to see old W eating some crow on the whole "Swift Boat veterans for truth" deal. It just seems impossible to me that W could win again. But then I remember that I live in the bay area and it's not the bookends of the country that we worry about it's the middle. I read an interesting book review yesterday talking essentially about what a good job the right has done with creating wedge issues that portray the democrats as woefully out of step with the rest of the country. Not talking about economic issues here but culturla ones: abortion, gun control, gay marriage, etc. The sad truth is that in places like Kansas the right has essentially plundered that state with their economic policies, family farms have been destroyed, employment is terrible, industry deregulation has polluted the state, urban centers have been abandoned. You'd think people would be pissed about this, but instead the right has successfully kept people voting for them by making them believe strongly in the wedge issues and not giving much thought to the economic policies that come along with electing the right. Interesting stuff.

2004-08-24T16:07:00.000-07:00

I like this letter to the editor very much click here

2004-08-23T10:45:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah. I forgot to mention that I think I found another music writing gig. There's a website called Junk Media that publishes alot of short reviews and feature type articles about bands and they've asked my to review the new record by a band called The Faint and interview them. I'll have to interview them on the phone, I hope they're not a bunch of wise ass kids or I'll have to kick someone's ass. We'll see how it goes.

2004-08-23T09:21:00.000-07:00

I often feel like I have to apologize when it's been so long since I last posted. Though I don't really know who I'm apologizing to. It's not like there are thousands of hungry fans patiently waiting for the next word the drips out my head. I've been hard at work the past week creating a new rate structure for the company. We're raising rates with an Oct. 1 start date but we're also changing the zone structure. We traditionally have had SF divided into 5 zones with a rate that corresponds to each zone. We're changing that zone structure to 6 zones, changing the sizes of some the zones, etc. The tricky thing about all this is that the computer system looks into a complex database of street names and addresses to compute the price for a delivery. In changing the zones we have to go in and change the basic premise on which the computer makes its calculation. Let's say the computer formerly recognized that the 400 block of Fillmore was in zone 3 and therefore meant the price of a bike delivery was X dollars. Now we've got to adjust the database so that the computer knows that the segment of fillmore st that is 400 is now in zone 4 and now must price at X dollars. All this nonsense is based on a series of about 60 geographic zones from which the pricing zones are derived. If you want to change the prices you have to carve the geo zones to fit your pricing zones and this involves dumping everything into Excel and making many small (sometimes large) often tedious adjustments to these zones. That's what I've been doing for the last week. Boring.

Went camping this week in the sierras. Specifically a section of the Stanislaus National Forest. Beautiful country just north of a little town called Arnold. A very chilly river ran close to the campsite which was quite refreshing given the 90degree weather. There was a rope swing and lots of good people and too much beer. Samantha even went swimming in the river so you know it wasn't too cold. I've got a great little video of my wife going off a rope swing into the river that I'll try to post a link to as soon as I get it off the camera. Good stuff. We didn't take our bikes which is too bad because there was lots of really good remote riding out there. Next time for sure. It had been a while since I last camped, I like my luxuries (like a nice place where I can crap) so I've never been completely sold on the whole camping idea, and had forgotten how dirty you get. Despite swimming in the river it seemed near impossible to keep Samantha from looking like a 1920's applachian child of coal mining parents who were waiting for the arrival of electricity and indoor plumbing. But that's part of camping and why I can't go for longer than 2 1/2 days at a time. Unless of course you camp like my wife's parents who haul a studio apartment with all the conveniences behind their truck.

In news of my Golden State Warriors it looks like they've finally found a decent sign and trade deal for Eric Dampier. We'll ship him off to Dallas and get a couple of draft picks and players in return. It's a great deal for the Warriors. In the past the Warriors would've let Dampier go for small soda and a bag of chips and then thanked the team we were trading with by allowing them to kick us in the nuts twice. This is much better. I've got hope for this year, could the 10 year playoff drought end?? Hmmm, could be....

2004-08-11T13:24:00.000-07:00

In absolutely brilliant news I have learned that my good friend, vice presidential running mate, hardy soul and all around good egg Mike Fitzgerald has been blessed with his first child. It's a boy named Owen, which confirms my long held belief that Mike was joking when he told me that he would name his male child Phineas. It's a relief, I'm sure, to little Owen if no one else. Who would've thought that years ago when Mike and I would sit in the Palace smoking pot and writing crude jokes on our walls in black magic marker that we would eventually turn out to be responsible parents. I think we both would've shat ourselves laughing if someone had tried to convince us.

Work is settling down a bit. It's strange not having Lance around. He was a good guy, though I don't miss the Grateful Dead and Steve Kimok music. We're getting ready to raise our rates for the first time in 4 years. It seems crazy that it's been that long since we adjusted our pricing. I bet there isn't a retail establishment in the US that hasn't changed their pricing during that time. So we're due. However it doesn't take the edge off thinking about how clients will react. I'm fairly certain that we'll lose a small portion of our clientele in raising our rates. It's inevitable. I'm also confident that we'll be able to get new customers at the new rates to replace those who fall by the wayside. It's still stressful. I'm sure we'll be hearing from our largest and most valuable clients. Hopefully they'll be placated.

In other competely random news I absolutely love my new bike. The Retrotec rocks!! I put a new Marzocchi shock on it and went for a great group ride this Sunday. Fun, fun, fun, It had been a while since I rode with friends. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy it. I laughed hard enough to fall of my bike a few times. My friend Dominc was riding a cross bike which had a rack on the back. I insisted (in lew of making fun of him for the entire ride) that he carry a log on his rack. He found a suitable downed tree, strapped it on and actually did the entire ride with the thing on his bike. Very impressive and hilarious if you're riding behind him. Good stuff.

I'm really disappointed in the US men's basketball team. I'm not disappointed in the players. They are without a doubt playing as hard as they can and doing everything within their abilities to win. However the composition of the team as selected by USA basketball is terrible. I know that many top flight players didn't want to play in the Olympics because of health or security reasons. However this doesn't excuse the players selected. Let's face it USA Basketball is a marketing arm of the NBA. It has little to do with fielding a proper team comprised of players that would play well togehter and bring a skill set to the court that would best enable the team to win. The current team has no true shooters. There's no one that can consistently knock down a 3 pointer or even an 18 footer. We're currently a team of athletes that are used to making swooping drives to the basket, dunking and generally flying over everyone. This doesn't work in international basketball. In I-ball you're allowed to clog the lane, campout, throw elbows, generally create a human wall in the middle. That prevents the US players from doing what they do best and forces them to do what they're worst at: shoot the ball from the outside. I think this USA team will be hard pressed to medal in these olympics. I'll be rooting for them the entire time but this year could be the wake up call to USA Basketball that they need to field a team with chemistry and balance, not a team made up of the NBA's next wave of stars.

2004-08-06T12:56:00.000-07:00

At last a moment to blog. It's been a while. Things have been hectic at work what with firing people and trying to save us from financial ruin and all. I think all will be well. It will take some time but by the end of this year if not earlier things will be back on track. We're well on the way to raising our rates which takes a bit of doing because everyone and their mother has something to say about it and how it should be done. But in the end the owners will decide the best way to increase prices. This will help our cash flow a bit but it does translate into a higher workers comp premium so it's most likely offset a bit, but it will increase the pay of the employees and that should offset our asking them to pay all their health and dental premium. Hopefull it'll all work out. Now we just need to come up with a marketing scheme. I hate sales absolutely hate it. I'm not cut of the salesman cloth. But I've decided that I'm committed to this business for a while longer so I'm going to put the game face on and go do it. My other options were selling my share or just walking, which actually was inticing since the stress was making me crazy and had serious repercussions on quality of life.

2004-07-28T17:30:00.000-07:00

So, yes. The company's financial situation is perilous. Things aren't totally out of hand. I believe with some severe cutbacks we can be profitable again, but right now the belt tightening is difficult. Laying off Lance was a very unpleasant thing. He was clearly upset about it. I can't blame him. If we didn't have to do it we wouldn't. So it's perhaps a bit gloomy around here. It's all just a huge pain in the ass in lots of different ways. It seems very much like a failure of some sort. When we started years ago we had these visions of being a messenger company that did all the right things for its employees: high commissions, health benefits, etc. We did lots of things that most companies our size wouldn't dream of doing and we were proud of that. But we started doing these things when money was plentiful. It was the dot com years and we had more cash than we knew what to do with, we weathered the difficult years following the crash only to end up here, battered by workers comps, taxes, the cost of doing business. We dug out of this hole before and hopefully we will again. Anyone want to buy a messenger service? I'm sure you could make good money if you knew what you were doing.

2004-07-28T12:57:00.000-07:00

Ok here's the new bike. It looks real pretty in the picture because it is. The stems too long, it needs new handlebars, it needs V-brakes instead of the old XTR canti's, all this stuff I have so hopefully over the next few days I'll take care of it all so I can hit the dirt this weekend.

2004-07-27T18:04:00.000-07:00

Lots to blog about but little time. I'll hit some highlights (or lowlights as the case may be) and hopefully expound more tomorrw.

1) I've bought the Retrotec. It's such a pretty bike. And way lighter than I expected. It's got a weird assortment of parts but I've got plently of stuff to bring it around. I'll take some pics and post them.

2) the work saga continues. We've determined that under our current expense/income model we're not making money. Debt is building too quickly. I've had to lay off our 1 salaried employee and cut back the amount of $ we pitch in for workers health insurance. It feels like such a failure to have to do these things, but if we don't cut expenses we'll have too much debt to survive before we can implement longer term measures such as raising prices, giving new employees lower commissions, etc. It's a sad day. But it had to be done.

I'll write more tomorrow.

2004-07-22T10:19:00.000-07:00

I hear word that the link I posted for the pics of Retrotec frames didn't work. I don't know why and I'm not smart enough to try to fix it without wasting the better part of my day. I will say that I've found a Retrotec for sale in the bay area. I found it on Craigslist being sold by a guy down in Woodside. It's about 8 years old but supposedly ridden very little. It's burnt orange (great color) and is set up with alot of older XTR stuff. The guy wants $750 for the whole bike and won't sell me the frame alone. Here's my conundrum: I really only want the frame because I can build it up pretty well with parts I've got. I can get a production Retrotec frame only brand new from the builder for slighty less than a grand, probably slightly over with tax, Do I shell for a new one or buy the used one and get some XTR (though older) and wheel set and front shock, etc. in the deal and pay about $300 less? I'm going to see the used bike tomorrow after work so perhaps things will become more apparent after the viewing. Maybe it won't even fit me? The obesssion continues and if my history of obsessing about bikes (my old Voodoo Wazoo, KHS Fleetwood, Sycip single speed) holds true it will be fulfilled.

Lance crushes the field once again. That time trial was a pretty amazing athletic feat. To dominate his closest rivals like that, wow. Again today he won the stage though I'm not sure what the point of beating Kloden at the line was. Kloden is no where near him in the GC. Oh well. I think Lance is really trying to put an exclamation point on his 6th Tour. And that exclamation point is an absolute drubbing of anyone who believes they can compete with him. But let's face it, this Tour hasn't been nearly as exciting as last years when the race was close and had many intriguing stories not the least of which was Tyler Hamilton competing and getting 4th with a broken collar bone. It would be more appropriate to swap this years tour with last years, Lance should've struggled more to win his sixth, it should have been more dramatic but instead it appears more business like for the best cyclist in the world. My hat remains off to him. I stand by my earlier declaration of screw the French cycling fans and press and add to it a general wave of my genitals to the obnoxious German fans. With the historical obsession of the Germans with the production of a perfect race (something I refer to as uber-honkey) you'd think they'd be happy to see Lance crush the rest of the world. Oh wait, he isn't German. Tainted blood, tainted blodd!!

Lately the blog has been very much and cycling and my general rants and not so much work. That's because work is a crashing bore. It's summer and that's a traditionally slow time for messenger services, indeed we are holding to the historic trend. I just don't feel like writing about it. If something cool happens or terrible or interesting I will.

2004-07-20T13:57:00.000-07:00

Well it appears that Lance has the tour well in hand. He looked so stong on those climbs. I love to watch him climb (Basso as well in this case). It reminds me of being in great shape (oh it was so long ago) riding my single speed everywhere, racing it, creaming geared riders on it, and that familiar out of the saddle cadence, swinging the bike side to side, rocking the bike into a rhythm that seemed unstoppable, on days I thought I could climb forever. Those days are few a far between now, though occasionally when working on the Surly I get a few moments of satisfaction as I pound up Nob Hill, that of course is now followed by a few minutes of vomiting but what can you do...

I'm going to unload a couple of bikes. I want to buy a Retrotec, a mountain bike I've long had my eye on, and I've found one used here in the bay area, built up with XTR. It's a reasonable price as well but I've decided I've got to get rid of my Blue Collar single speed frame and my KHS Fleetwood cruiser frame (such a pretty bike) before I add more to the stable. I've just got no storage.

It's totally goofy but I love the NBA off season. All the wheeling dealing! The Warriors are in the thick of it. It's the best time to be a Warriors fan because they haven't played any games yet.

Where does Lance stand with the greats of cycling. Arguably the top 5 riders in history are: Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Miguel Indurain and Armstrong. Merckx is easily at the #1 spot and I think Indurain and Lance are tied for 4th/5th. Rarified company to be included in at all. History will decide how Lance's legend grows or diminishes.

2004-07-15T13:54:00.000-07:00

I don't know if it's summer or what but I'm having a hard time doing any blogging. It's like the effort to move my fingers is too much, I get overwhelmed and have to eat a Snickers bar.

None the less here I am. I'm concerned with the company's precarious financial situation lately. Since our bookkeeping is more or less inept it's hard to know exactly but my numbers don't look very good. We're spending out more than it being collected so our debt is growing. Not quickly but growing. We need to cut monthly expenses and that means unpleasant and unpopular decisions. We need to cut back on the amount we contribute to employee health insurance and we need to cut back the hours of our only salaried employee or lay him off all togther. These are our only large fixed expenses. The ownership in having a meeting on friday to talk about these issues and we'll see what gets hashed out.

I'm still on Lance's side. I'm choosing not to believe the doping rumors or the self serving book that's recently been published supposedly showing that he was trying to hide his steroid use. Mostly because I don't like the way the French media has constantly attacked him over the years.

How about the Shaq trade? That is a huge NBA shake up. All of a sudden my Warriors are competing with the Lakers for the 8th playoff spot. Who would've thunk it? I love the NBA off season. It's the best time to be a Warriors fan because you can be eternally optimistic since no games have been played yet and thus no losses.

2004-07-07T15:26:00.000-07:00

I've been on the fence for awhile but I've now decided that I'm absolutely pro-Lance Artmstong. I'm rooting for Lance to win and I'm doing it with all the fervor of a whirling dervish with hot cigarette ash in his pants. I do understand why many of the cycling fans that I know are not pro Armstrong. As with many sports it becomes harder and harder to root for the dominant player be it the Los Angeles Lakers, the Dallas Cowboys, Mike Tyson, Barry Bonds, etc. and Lance is certainly that. But I've been hearing so much grousing about Lance's character. None of us knows the guy and while I'm sure he's no angel I also don't think he's the flaming asshole that many people try to portray him as. Is he arrogant? I'm sure. He's the best in the world at what he does, he's earned his degree of arrogance just as Michael Jordan did, just as Muhammad Ali did. Cocky comes with the rarified territory that these athletes occupy. I also think that Lance is an excellent representative of cycling here in the US. He may not be the best rep for cycling on the global stage, but in the US he embodies everything we like in our heroes. He came back from the abyss (cancer) and excelled beyond his wildest dreams. And he's dating a rock star now. I don't know Lance well enough to pass any moral judgements against him. The stories that people tell me (that inevitably come from someone's cousin who works in TV and knows the director of blah, blah, blah) regarding his behaviour on the set of some commercial shoot seem forced at best. Maybe he was having a bad day, maybe the person he was dealing with was being an ass and deserved a response in kind, who knows. I'm on his side because I want to see him make history, because I want the european press to stop accusing him of doping, because I want the french to respect him as great champion in a sport that they revere, because he works his ass off, because he rewards the loyalty of his teammates, because having a good American champion in a European dominated sport might just help us to climb out from under the mess the Bush/Cheney admin has made of our relationships with europe. That's the rant for today.

2004-07-06T15:32:00.004-07:00

I know it's been a long time but I've been on vacation. Just back from the outer banks of North Carolina a few days ago, enjoyed a lazy weekend at home and now I'm back at work. Yick. THe beach was great, got to see much (though not all) of my family and that's always a good thing.

The business was still standing when I returned. That's always a good thing, though I understand there was some kind of plumbing related misshap while I was gone that resulted in poo being on the floor. I can't say that I'm sorry I missed that.

Read a good book about the band Wilco while lying on the beach. It was called "Learning How To Die" by Chicago music critic Greg Kot. It basically chronicles the demise of Uncle Tupelo and the history of Jeff Tweedy as he created records with the boys in Wilco. Good stuff assuming that you're interested in the "alt-country" history and Wilco in particular (a band that is definitely not alt-country). But some of the most interesting a salient points that I thought Kot made revolved around the nature of the music business and how it changed after the great consolidation (Time-Warner merger, etc.) of the labels in the mid to late 90's. Once a few enormous corporations held all the cards that idea of artist development quickly lost out to the need for an immediate return on the dollar. Labels that formerly were able to nurture talent and keep "prestige" acts that don't sell a ton of records on board were forced to part with bands they loved in order to maximize "hits" and 'units sold". As I read about the changing nature of corporate music and how Wilco was dropped after the recording of "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" I was surrounded by the musicial machinations of my 14 year old nephew who proudly played displayed to me his "Yellowcard", "Lit", "Jet" CD's. Bands tailor made to have a hit or two and then fade quietly into the ether of our musical landscape. These bands are ready made and packaged to pump out hits (and sales) by catering to the lowest common denominator of the listening audience. These bands won't grow because even if they wanted to they would never be allowed to stray from formula. They will never challenge a listener much less themselves. Man, don't I sound old and bitter? It's just that I feel there's an entire generation being sold short by popular music. I had to convince my nephews that Blink 182 isn't punk rock, that punk rock stood for something that Blink 182 can barely hint at, that music with integrity is worth more than listening to what's cool because what's cool isn't. I don't really know why I'm ranting about this. I think it has to do with the value that I and my friends placed on the music that we listened to in high school. We believed the music we sought out and loved could change us and in fact did in many ways. I don't think "Yellowcard" is going to change anyone. I know it's a snobby attitude, but at least I understand why i'm snobby about it. There's just better "stuff" out there that will have lasting value, impact, importance over a life time. I have no intention of proof reading all this drivel so...

I've started playing tennis again. It's a lot of fun. I'd forgotten that I really like it. It's not basketball or anything but it's fun to hit the ball. I may even take a few lessons to really blow the dust off. I've been inspired by Maria Sharapova...no not that way.

2004-07-06T15:32:00.002-07:00

2004-07-06T15:32:00.001-07:00

2004-07-06T15:32:00.000-07:00

2004-06-17T12:44:00.000-07:00

i'm torn on the whole Farenheit 9/11 thing. I'm sure that Michael Moore has made a fine film (he always does) but his bias is so obvious that it removes the film almost immiediately from the realm of legitimate public conversation. I doubt that MM unearths hard evidence that would justify an impeach Bush campaign, but if it did his political position immediately creates a distrust outside of his hardcore liberal fans. It does look like an interesting movie and I'll go see it, help make Moore another couple million dollars, if for no other reason than I like to Bush bash.

If anybody has some must read books for me please let me know. I'm leaving for a beach vacation on Saturday and i'm going to need some reading material. Nothing too intellectual please. I'd prefer something on the trashy side.

It just never fails. Give a driver the day off and it gets busy. We've been vehicle slow all week, my best guy leaves to go to chicago for 2 days and it blows up. Jobs going to Napa, Morgan Hill, San Jose, Redwood City, San Ramon, San Rafael and it's only 1:00pm. If you know the bay area geography at all you know that I've basically got deliveries going in every conceivable direction. Must get creative.

2004-06-15T13:12:00.000-07:00

Well I've been out of town for a few days. I went down to LA for a friends engagement party. The party was at a beach out in Malibu. Very good people, lots of fun. Too much drinking in the sun. LA in general is a terrible place as near as I can tell. The people are vacuous and concerned only with what they wear and if they're in the right place at the right time. I think people constantly joke about the differences between northern cali and southern cali, but in fact the differences are right on. In LA the weather was beautiful, both the men and the women were beautiful, everything was grossly overpriced (I don't want to think about how much money Tami and I spent down there but at $9 for a cocktail...) and while I'm sure that there's a very interesting vibrant "scene" that I wasn't exposed to in my brief visit I can't imagine that it is as sincere as what exists in the bay area. By sincerity I mean a real love for the music or art or writing that is being practiced and less a love of simply the act of doing it. This can be translated as thus, "ooh, look at me I'm so cool I do this cool thing." A particular lyric by Paul Westerberg comes to mind, "Playing make up, wear a guitar" and that pretty much sums up my impression of LA. The beach, however, was gorgeous. We stayed in a hotel in Hollywood called The Standard which, unbeknownst to us, is a very trendy see and be seen type of establishment. It has a bar which gets very loud and a restaurant which does the same. It was very odd to walk into a hotel lobby at midnight (our plane was delayed out of Oakland) feeling tired and dirty to find a lobby crowded with the young and beautiful sipping drinks, lounging in clear plexi-glass bubble chairs that hung from the ceiling, a DJ spinning tunes, a scantily clad model who was paid simply to lounge in a glass box behind the registration desk (this seemed to me to speak volumes about LA), it was all a bit surreal. Not that all that stopped us from joining the throng for a drink after checking in, it was kind of fun to hang with the beautiful people for a while but I can't imagine living their unless you're an aspiring actor/actress in which case you're delusional anyway.

At the end of this week the family and I head to the outer bank of North Carolina for a little vacation. I'm really looking forward to it, but I'm sure I'll be blogless for that 2 week period so I'll try to be better this week. This will be one of those rare occasions that the whole family will be together, though my sister Chula won't be able to make it she will be replaced by brother and his new son who couldn't make it last year. Fun and sun at the beach.

I got a review published on line by the Trouser Press. A band called Pond. Check out the review

2004-06-09T12:52:00.000-07:00

Hump day of what's been a pretty slow week. Business has that summer feel that starts happening about now. Summer always seems to hit the messenger business particularly hard. Makes for good nap time in the office though.

I'm sorry but I just don't see what all the hoopla is with Reagan's death. He was old. His time had come. He wasn't that great a president. I understand the emotion to a certain degree because he was, after all, a US President and he's the first one to croak in quite awhile. But the extended viewing, the memorials, the people waiting in line to walk past his casket, it's all too much. He wasn't a national hero. At least not in my eyes. I remember being pissed at him most of the time and getting into lots of arguements with my very conservative college friends about his policies. However, I suppose the man was a saint compared to President Doofus.

The price of gas is killing my drivers. I suppose this kind of external pricing pressure is good from my generally liberal point of view in that it forces Americans to think seriously about alternate fuels. Hydrogen fuel cells, hybrids, etc have always been met with such skepticism. But there's nothing like a good whack in the wallet to make people rethink the wisdom of their SUVs, V8's and gas guzzlers. I imagine that oil producing nations are enjoying good profits right now, but the wiser ones (like Saudi Arabia) I'm sure realize that the long term negatives associated with higher gas prices eventually hurts them. If high prices force countries to wean themselves of foreign oil, make conservation a practical matter (thereby lowering demand), and force money into neglected R&D projects in alternative fuels, then oil producers become the long term losers. I think that despite popular perception oil producers want to the price of gas to come down to more reasonable level. What's forcing the price up is the volatile oil futures market. The instability in Iraq, the recent killings in Saudi Arabia produce an unstable environment and lessened risk tolerance by the markets which pushing the price up. I guess my original issue was that high gas prices are really hurting my drivers bottom line, but I'm unwilling to pull the trigger on some kind of fuel surcharge because I'm not sure my customers will tolerate it.

I'm going down to LA this weekend for a friends engagement party. I have negative views of LA (as any Northern California resident should). I have this vision of a bunch of shallow people competing in a big fashion contest. It's unfair but I'm prone to irrational conclusions until I find out different. But I hear they like to party down there.

2004-06-04T12:47:00.000-07:00

There's just been a litany of disturbing news in the last week:

1) The killing of Doctors without Borders staff in Afghanistan. What a stupid idea. This just seems to highlight everything that's wrong with both the insurgencies in Irag and Afghanistan. The majority wants to begin moving towards some kind of peaceful stability, while a minority blinded by their cause makes things progressively worse. Please don't read this statement as being in favor of the Iraq war. The US continues to make blunders and decisions as despicable as the actions of those who oppose "us".

2) Bush's trip to Europe. Everytime he leaves the country I brace myself for whatever wrongheaded, misspoken statement he's going to make.

3) The continued success of the neo-cons. Their successes are largely diminished by Bush's absurd attempts to justify what's going on in Iraq. Still the movement of this country away from the idea of a separation of church and state towards a theocracy based on the fact that our president believes he was "chosen" by God. His faith based initiatives are little more window dressing that allows this administration to dispense cash to religous organizations that share its fundamental conservatism on all social issues.

Ok my political rambling is out of the way. Not much to report in the way of work. I leave for 2 weeks of vacation on June 19th. It'll be a nice break. I've been handling basically all the administrative duties while my partner who usually does the books is on vacation. It gets a bit stressful but I feel like I have a better understanding of the businesses big picture. I'm looking forward to giving my newly minted MBA wife the books and seeing what she can come up with.

Here's a good quote from a David Berman poem:

"Maybe we need to give up on these simplistic
'us vs. them' oppositions that we shouldn't believe in,
but in our anger do."

When I read that line it really made me think about things like: patriotism, religion, geography, history, all the little things that we as humans use to create "important" differences between each other. So many of these notions should be regarded as antiquated, as done, as relics of a time when we behaved monstrously towards one another. In this day and age it just seems like these notions should be minor considerations within the larger context of "how do we make sure everyone is treated with equality, compassion and justice". And by everyone I mean just that. I don't think that it's the least bit unpatriotic to try to envision a United States that relates to the rest of the world as brother as opposed to a domineering father.

Boy I'm just full of it today aren't I? These things have been on my mind lately.

For those of you that like dance music or like to blast the most bumpin' summer jams from your car as you cruise all cool style in your car check this track out by a couple of DJ's who hooked up with Chrissie Hynde and made an unbelievablely fun track called Straight Ahead at least there's always music to make you feel good.

2004-05-28T12:33:00.000-07:00

It's always nice to see that the US isn't overreacting to any ill defined threats: Bad Story

Me and the little family are headed to Sutter Creek, Ca this weekend. I've been there but the pictures make it look bucolic and laid back. Some friends just finished renovating a house up there and it's one their 40th birthdays so off we go. Should be fun camping out with Samantha. I think she's only slept in a tent outside once before. Though she's slept in a tent on the floor of her bedroom many times.

Here's hoping that everyone has a great memorial day weekend. Until next week.

2004-05-27T08:17:00.000-07:00

I've been way off the back with the blogging. Things at work have been a bit hectic. I partner has gone on vacation for 3 weeks (3 frickin' weeks!! Selfish turd) and the other's brother in law just died of a drug overdose so he's gone to LA for the funeral and general sobbing. So here I am working 10 hour days and waiting patiently for my turn at vacation which begins on June 19th. In addition death related news yet another messenger has killed himself. It's no one that works for me, but I knew him if only from afar. He'd been in the SF messenger scene for a long time, worked for alot of different companies, was one of those familiar faces that I'd always see at the bar on Fridays or at the Wall during the day. He was a drunk and I'm sure he had some trouble with drugs. I suppose the whole long tragedy that is life for some people became too much to bear and he hung himself. Two years ago another troubled soul who was messenger killed himself in the same manner. Things must really bad in order to actually entertain killing yourself much less do it. It's hard for me to envision things being so bad. But who knows, perhaps the act was committed while under the influence and in a sober state it wouldn't have seemed like such a good idea. It's an interesting thing about the messenger community, it's a very accepting home. Many messengers started out with no intention of doing the job for extended period of time but find a group of like minded individuals (over educated, smart, creative) in a unique scene that continues to exist in style as punk rock as punk rock ever was. The scene has artists, writers, photographers all with varying degrees of motivation. A number have successfully published books about the scene (check out: Kyle Shepard or The Immortal Class) or have gone on to sell art works. You often hear about people going from city to city and being messengers, checking out the scene and then moving on. In that way messengering is a lot like being a waiter. It's a skill you can take anywhere and if you're good at it you'll find decent work in any large city. I fell back on it when I moved to San Francisco from Washington DC. The problem with the scene is that it's very forgiving, even accepting or arguably encouraging, of bad habits. There are alot of drinkers, pot smokers, speed users in the scene and there is little that discourages them from using. The messenger scene gives many people who would have a hard time functioning in "normal" society a way to make money and friends who share in their progressive degradation without a word of caution. It's an odd little insular cocoon for some people. Of course I'm speaking in only the largest generalities here. The truth is that most of the long time messengers I know are responsible people, very intelligent and very satisified with the path they have chosen because it provides them with a flexible schedule, a relatively high paying living for what it is and the space to do what they really love. Some are artists, some are bike racers, all are unique. I don't remember exactly where I was going with this except to note that another messenger has taken his own life and while I didn't know him well there are undoubtedly friends and family who did and they will be pondering the questions of why he killed himself.

2004-05-19T17:06:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen the documentary "I am Trying To Break Your Heart" about the band Wilco you should really rent it. It's a great film. If you're a Wilco fan you've probably already seen it, but even if you've never heard of the band or its music you'll find the doc engaging, fun, entertaining and you just might discover you've got a new favorite band.

Work has been fairly stressful lately. Due to a clerical error on the part of our bookkeeper we bounced some checks which has slowly ballooned into a progressively more complicated situation in which the bank no longer gives us immediate access to deposits but insteads holds deposits for 15 days. It's a pain in the ass to run a business without access to your funds for 2 weeks. It's slowly working itself way out. No more ATM deposits for now. Live tellers only. Explain to everyone at the bank what happened and that we're not evil doers trying to bilk the bank out of their hard stolen money. All this after 6 years of banking with not one bounced check. Bottomline is that it was our fault. Our books are a mess. After my wife gets finished with school she's going to go over them and try to put everything in order. I can't even tell you if we're profitable right now, much less what our break even point is. My wife the MBA to the rescue. If she can figure out what's going on with the books of Pixar I think she can put us in order.

Had a delivery to a street I'd never heard of before today. That's a rarity after 12 years in the SF messenger biz. The street is called Knockash Hill. I don't why anyone needs to know that, but it's a good street name and must have some interesting history to it.

The new Morrissey CD came out yesterday. I bought it today. I'm not gay or depressed. I just happen to like Morrissey. Leave me alone.

I do a good imitation of the cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn. Remember the big rooster? Next time I'm drunk at your house ask me to do it.

There's a very good editorial in this weeks SF Bay Guardian (the better of SF's two weeklies) about the way the media covered the recent release of a study that showed that todays more potent (higher THC content) marijuana is leading to a greater level of addiction in users, it's called the "potent pot" theory. Basically, as I understand it, a study was done by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol and Alcoholism comparing survery data from the years 1991-1992 and 2001-2002. What the scientists found was increase in "abuse" and "dependency". The resulting conclusion that more potent pot was getting more people hooked was trumpeted by many, many news outlets from the LA Daily News ("Stonger Marijuana makes more Addicted") to the Seattle-Post Intelligencer ("Abuse and Dependence rise as Marijuana becomes more potent"). The problem was/is that there's no evidence that this is true. And thanks to the complete lack of journalistic intelligence in this country (and I blame the Bush Admin for this) no one interviewed opposing view points or even looked further into the study.

The scientists who did this study used the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, (the APA's official diagnostic manual) definitions of "abuse". The manual allows the classification of anyone experiencing "legal problems related to marijuna" as "abusers". So what happened during the decade between 1991 and 2002? The number of arrests for marijuana rose from 300,000 in 1991 to 700,000 in 2001. Could this increase in "abusers" simply reflect the renewed focus of law enforcement and the draconian drug laws that our country employs? Even more importantly the study found the signifigant increase in "abusers" almost entirely amongst young hispanics and blacks and almost no increase in whites of the same age group. I think this difference can simply be chalked up to the fact that in our country people of color are at a signifigantly higher risk of arrest for drug crimes than whites.

The link to the editorial in SFBG isn't working right now, which is why I just typed all that in an effort to paraphrase an interesting subject. I'll post the link in case they get it working at some point SFBG Editorial

I don't want this post to make people think that I'm a big pot smoker or even an advocate of legalising marijuana. I simply believe that when anybody manipulates statistics, data based studies or the media for their own ends (be it pro government line or anti) it is deceptive and patently unamerican. What I am an advovate of is good clear thinking, sensible approaches to challenging problems, and the constant questioning of the status quo. In fact I believe that's the definition of a good liberal.

2004-05-18T10:59:00.000-07:00

So after much deliberation I decided to try to live my life for one day by following the edicts of bumper stickers. I figured the easiest one to start with was "Practice Random Acts of Human Kindness". Seems pretty easy. So as I was walking to work through the scenic environs of South of Market I noticed a semi-sane lady crossing the street in front of me. I say semi-sane because after working in this neighborhood (indeed this city) for so many years I've got good "questionable sanity" radar. There's also an Episcopal Sanctuary across the street from my office and this building seems to leak broken toys of a human variety at the same pace as the Exxon Valdez leaked oil into the chilly waters of Alaska (at this point say to yourself in a very toy like high pitched voice, "nobody wants an elephant without a trunk" while picturing an unwashed male of indeterminate ethnic identity holding a bottle of Cisco and singing Xmas carols with his pants around his ankles). Anyway, this woman crossing the street in front of me had on a pair of brand new red Pumas. By red I mean the Puma stripe and soles were red while the rest of the shoe was white. A good looking shoe. So in my initial efforts to try to live by the creedo "Practive Random Acts of Human Kindness" I decided to compliment her on her shoes.

"Nice shoes," I say pointing at her feet.

"You like my shoes?" She says. "You want to buy them? I'll sell them to you cheap."

My first conumdrum had been encountered. I didn't want her shoes. I just wanted to let her know that her wise fashion selection had been appreciated by another person and she should keep-on-keepin'-on-sister (hand held in fist of solidarity here). In order to complete my random act of human kindness I wondered if I was now required to buy the shoes off the womans' feet. I didn't want her shoes. I started to wonder if this was a "teach a person to fish vs. give them a fish" type of scenario with some biblical implication that I wasn't grasping. I certainly couldn't afford to put her through cobbling school and had no idea where to find a cobbler for this woman to apprentice under. I can't be completely sure that this woman knew what a cobbler was (unless she was well versed in desserts and that would produce a whole different conversation with hysterical sitcom like overtones that eventually would lead to a clever pun on Devils Food cake).

So here I was left toe to toe with a woman who wanted to sell me her footwear because I'd complimented her on them. I shudder to think about the position I would have been in had I told her she had nice tits. There was really only one way out of this mess and that was to use the same bumper stick philosophy that got me into it. I said, "shit happens" and moved along.

2004-05-13T15:53:00.000-07:00

Thus far these are my favorite rationalizations by the neo-cons for the prisoner abuse in Iraq:

Rich Lowery in the National Review blames the loose morals of the country (specifically the lefts I'm sure):

"Then, there is the very fact of the pictures. The American jailers, who live in a country where pornography is a $10 billion-a-year business, became amateur pornographers�If they had done this stateside in different circumstances, they might be very rich and perhaps even up for an Adult Video Award."

Rush Limbaugh says:

"If you look at these pictures, you cannot deny that there are elements of homoeroticism �I've seen things like this on American websites. You can find these if you have the passwords to these various porn sites, you can see things like this."

&

"This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time� You [ever] heard of [the] need to blow some steam off?"

So you see it's all our fault. Us liberals I mean. We're just fucking up the whole country.

2004-05-13T09:52:00.000-07:00

I didn't watch the video of Berg being beheaded. It was easy to find. Alarmingly easy actually. But I just couldn't bring myself to watch it. This despite a generally voyeuristic aspect of my personality. There isn't much I won't seek out if I'm curious about it. But we, as a country and people, are so desensitized towards violence through video games, movies, and the general blood thirst of the media that watching the Berg video began to feel more like tuning into a cool reality TV show. The outrage that the video is producing just seems so rote and mechanical to me. It's the same kind of emotional turnout that an episode of "Cops" produces: "Man that's so fucked up! Did you see that redneck run right into the side of that double wide trailer. That was crazy!" I think the same kind of thing applys to the US abuses of Iraqi prisoners in Iraq without the video element. I also think that the American people are applying a kind of boys-will-be-boys attitude to those appalling instances. Perhaps because we don't have a convenient video of the Iraqi prisoner abuses it makes it harder for us to "believe" in it.

It is currently an ugly world that we live in.

This show is redeeming: www.spiketv.com/shows/series/index.jhtml?seriesID=10774

There's a show on the Spike TV channel called "Most Extreme Challenge" or something close to that. The show takes a japanese game show that's basically a bunch of regular people being forced to navigate a variety of absurd obstacle course and then overdubs it with english. It's very funny in a "Mystery Sciene Theater 2000" way. The english writing of the show (the dialogue that's dubbed over the japanese contestants) is so clever and usually follows the contestants mannerisms so closely that you end up half way convinced that these people are really saying these absurd things. Anyway, very funny. Go watch.

2004-05-11T09:33:00.000-07:00

Greetings ladies and germs. It's been too long or as the song by America (or is it Bread? Is there a difference) goes "I've been one poor correspondent...(I usually just start humming the lyrics after that)". Can we consider blogging correspondence? A correspondence is a 2 way street and blogging tends to go just one way even with the comments aspect of the blog. My slightly lame attendence here at Different Hours speaks to a problem I had in college when I would take classes that involved keeping some kind of journal that had to be turned in at the end of the semester. I'd start strong with many well thought out entries concerning early American Romantic poets or the dietary habits of the Yanamano indians, slowly get distracted by college life and eventually spend 8 straight hours the night before the journal was due creating a semester of entries. At least I was smart enough to use different pens for each entry.

My wife is currently engaged in the Atkins diet. It's totally counter intuitive to me. No fruit, but go ahead and have as many t-bone steaks as you'd like. No bread, have a whole turkey. Fortunately she's not riding alot right now, otherwise I think the diet would make her loopy from lack of sustaining calories. Myself i recently had my yearly physical and am pleased to report that all the bits and pieces are in good working order. Thanks to an active lifestyle all the vitals tend to fall well within the high end of the healthful range. This is totally boring information but it's also a clarion call to all readers who are over the age of 35 (that's just about all my friends at this stage of the game) that you should be getting checked out regularly at this stage of the game. It sucks to be poked and prodded (and prodded in all the wrong places) but if (God forbid) you're going to get sick it's best to catch it early. And please remember to spay and neuter your cats.

We've started taking credit cards at work, something that in the past always seemed like a time consuming burden. However this state of mind was developed when there was so much business that we could pick and choose accounts and dictate payment terms. We basically didn't want to deal with a customer who only wanted to do one job and pay by credit card. I've come to realize (in this more challenging and realistic economy) that anyway to bring in revenue is a good way to bring in revenue. CC Info is entered in a "virtual" terminal through a website. It's all really quite easy, I don't know why exactly we never did it before. The best thing about it is that it allows current customers to pay their bills via credit card if they so choose. That's a good thing. It's another step into modern business practices for the little company. Pretty soon now I think we may even take out an ad in the yellow pages. I know, I'm talking crazy now.

Samantha turned 5 years old on Sunday. Unbelievable. It's just silly how fast life goes once you have children. I think it's that you have such an obvious, in your face way to mark the passing time. I look at her and can't believe that I used to hold her in the crook of my forearm. Now I can barely pick her up. Crazy.

2004-05-03T21:34:00.000-07:00

once again I'm lazy on the blog. My current time muncher is that I've been spending a fair amount of time on the road. It's nice riding and the weather's been great. I also had a couple of long days in the office, which happens from time to time. Billing goes out the door and it's another month of waiting to see who pays their bill. Doing collections pretty much blows but it's part of the game. I hate when you get an attitude from people like we're imposing for asking for the money that's owed us.

Samantha has strep throat which pretty much took up my whole day. Had to go to the doctor then get the anti-biotic scrip filled and the whole time she's just miserable. A real trooper though. She perked up in the afternoon and seems normal after a half day of anti-biotics. I think we caught it in time. There are a couple of kids at school that have had strep so when she started complaining about a sore throat and had a fever I didn't hesitate to go to the doctor.

I believe our relationship with the dismissed employee is officially over. He opted not to take COBRA for his health benefits, returned his radio and charger, and got his final check. I think we've seen the last. This is a good thing. I'm trying to work the schedule so that we don't have to hire by putting myself and one of my partners on the road a bit more. It's good for our bottom line as well because all the work that we do goes untouched by payroll taxes, commissions, workers comp, etc.

I put a new bottom bracket in the Surly and i think the spindle is just a couple of millimeters longer than the old one because I have some unfamiliar aches in the knees and ankles and hips. I'm sure I'll adjust but I'm no spring chicken these days. I've also committed to stretching more, but please no lectures about how great yoga is. I promise to be better about posting.

2004-04-27T11:25:00.000-07:00

Well, the deed has been done. The worst messenger in SF was fired from my company this AM. He didn't seem particularly surprised or even bummed out or much of anything just "huh, ok". That somehow makes alot of sense now that I think about it. He seemed fairly indifferent to the job despite the fact that it's a sought after one. I think he took it for granted and didn't see the writing on the wall. Still it's a part of the job that I hate to do. Makes my palms sweaty. Gives me butterflies. I'm just no good at confrontation, that's always been a weak spot for me. I think it has to do with being a youngest child. But that's probably a bunch of crap I'm making up. None the less it's over with and I think the company will be much better off with the messenger in question now departed.

Hot as the devil's armpits on an August day around here. A little summer preview.

2004-04-25T21:39:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was great. The weather was absolutely gorgeous. Hot but not too hot, able to take Sammy to the pool, play some basketball and drink a few beers. Just a little taste of summer. I'm looking forward to it. It even stayed warm in the evenings which is one of the things I miss about East Coast summers. Here in No Cal no matter how hot it is during the day, when night falls you lose 25 degrees off the days high temp. That means it gets chilly and the idea of sitting on the porch and reading or having a beer which seemed so great at 3 o'clock isn't nearly as comfortable at 9:30. Makes it a bit easier to sleep though.

Last week I worked on the road 2 days. 2 Days!! After going about 2 months without any days on the road at all. I've been seceding them to my business partner who works 5 days a week (as opposed to the 4 the rest of us work) and takes extra pay for the work he brings in on that 5th day. The poor guy is so broke (mostly due to the fact that he's getting divorced and has to pay child support, but also because he keeps buying cars when he shouldn't) that I give him the day that I might normally take on the road. It was really fun for a couple of different reasons. For one, I remembered how much I enjoy messengering and how good I am at it. There's something special about navigating the city. Not just riding in traffic, though I confess a certain joy from that foolishness, but knowing your way around and thinking about the best way to get from A to B, using shortcuts, accessing accumulated knowlege. We use free call dispatch and in that environment you can really feel when you're on the top of your game because you can sense that you're making all the other riders better by doing your job very efficiently. I also realized that I do miss the physical exertion of riding. The 2nd day I was on the road it was stupid busy. I don't know what happened but every client we have decided to call in a job between 9am and 1:30pm. I road my ass of for 4 hours. Just hammering. Taking on deliveries I had no business trying to do, stretching them to breaking and then getting in them in under the wire. It was fun. I remembered why I started a messenger business. The other reason that I really enjoyed being on the road was seeing the clients that I usually only speak with on the phone. Face to face time is a good thing. Shaking hands and asking how things are going is a good thing. It's also a great oppurtunity for sales. When you walk into a company you've never been in before with a package from a mutual client it's an easy "in". It's not like a true solicitation or a cold call because you're already in the office on business. I enjoyed that as well. The business partner I spoke of earlier broke his collarbone about 3 weeks ago and that opened up some slots on the bike. He's healed (or knitted as they like to say in England) and is ready to get back on the bike. However I think I'll carve a day or half day out of the schedule because I miss it.

2004-04-22T09:53:00.000-07:00

Man it's been too long since I posted (or blogged I guess) last. Funny how life kind of gets in the way of things sometimes. Work has been very busy. This is good and bad. Of course you always want work coming in. That's the idea. That's how the company makes money. The drawbacks to being busy is cash flow. Since Jetset is always paying out employees with money that essentially hasn't been collected yet. We bill on net 30 terms and I often think that we would've been much better served if we had originally set our terms as net 15. So what happens is that when we have a really good month, as we did last month billing about $11,000 over our average, since we pay commission we have very high payroll costs associated with the billing. High payroll also = high workers comp since workers comp is based on payroll. We've got to trim the fat around here one way or another. It's no fun when you have to start thinking about laying off your one hourly worker but when payroll is being covered by line of credit until the money starts to flow in from billing and the owners are forgoing pay, you have to consider all options.

In non work related news my ankle is finally starting to feel better again. I played a ton of basketball last night and it's not my ankle that's sore today, it's my aging bones. I've tried to play twice before last night and my ankle just wasn't allowing me to do the things that I'm normally capable to doing on the basketball court. Couple that with a 3 and a half week layoff and I've shooting some bricks. But last night was good. I played 7 games and every one was a hard fought battle. That's the thing about pick up basketball, be it at the YMCA or an outdoor court, you never know what you're going to get from game to game. It has a lot to do with the level of competition. If teams are evenly matched than the level of play and intensity seems to be higher. Completely mismatched teams = no one even trying and a crap game of hoops. The other X factor is age. Often when playing with high school age kids it's either feast or famine. They play hard or they just want to dribble between their legs alot (they've watched too many And1) and then throw up ugly fade away jumpers. Totally ruins any continuity in the game, makes their teammates resentful and generally makes a mockery of good team basketball. But last night was 7 good games. Everyone played hard. Every game was a battle. Everyone was pouring sweat. The kind of games that as soon as they ended the losing team immediately wanted a rematch. Good stuff. It's why I play.

2004-04-15T21:41:00.000-07:00

Human resources. How we hate human resources. I personally look forward to the day that we begin to employ genetically engineered human beings to do our work. Of course there will be the risk of a "Terminator" style rebellion. But such is the price of progress. I, myself, would rather combat super strength cyborgs than deal with the variety of headcases that seem unable to perform on a consistent basis the very simply tasks of a) showing up to work on time and b) being a messenger. I think back to the days when I was a full time messenger (and I didn't get to work a 4 day week until well after I'd started my own company) and I only missed work unscheduled one time and it was because I had a serious case of the flu. Is my work ethic out of the ordinary? Did I feel a weird and out of the ordinary sense of commitment not just to my employers but to the people that I worked with? I never thought so. As with all jobs I've had throughout my life (with the exception of working for Peoples Drugstore in highschool, those people were bastards) I've tried to be as good as I could possibly be in all regards. I think I succeeded in most cases (screw Peoples Drugs) and it is a point of pride. I like to be good at whatever I do. I know I may no be the best, but I'll be as good as I can be. I suppose it's too much to expect that others would always do the same. The irony is that work ethic has extended to owning a business and trying to create a positive work environment which is then taken for granted. As I've said many times before, whatever.

I'd like to go into detail about what's going on personnel wise but this one person is having problems of such an intensely personal nature that I don't feel comfortable putting it out there. I can't even think of good veiled riddles to point you in the right direction. Ok, it has to with plumbing. Say you were a plumber and you went to a jobsite with what you believed were the right tools. You had standard tools (good ones), plenty of PVC piping and a good truck. After working at the jobsite for a few years (it's a big project) you realize that you hate your tools, that they're all the wrong size, type, they're American standard and you decide you want metric, in fact you don't want PVC piping anymore you want to rip out all the work you've done and put in all copper. You hate your truck. It's a Ford and you have to have a Chevy. All these things are so troubling to you that it becomes near impossible to go to work with the tools, pipes and truck that you have. Something has to be done. But you worry about how the other plumbers will treat you. It's a big change and you don't know if you've got it in you to make it. That's kind of what's going on here.

2004-04-13T08:21:00.000-07:00

100 Words

Stumbled across the above website yesterday. Kind of a cool idea really. Everyday for one month you write exactly 100 words not one more or less and you have to commit to doing it every single day. If you miss a day they won't post all your entries. Check it out it's kind of interesting. Some of the writing is very self indulgent but you often find a pearl.

About 10 or 12 years ago there was a band called Pond. I think they were on Subpop. The record was called Rock Collection. They broke up long ago but I stumbled across a band that has risen from their ashes called Audio Learning Center. ALC seems pretty cool but it really got me curious about that Pond album. So I went down to the underground CD vault (which in my dream world is set up like a dry cleaners and the CDs rotate around on a huge belt driven spinner) and pulled Rock Collection out and dusted it off. That record is frickin' great. If you own it, go listen to it again. It's very hard to find because it's out of print but if you find it used buy it. That shit rocks.

I'm avoiding writing about work because it is a source of terminal frustration lately. I've just gotta cut the dead weight. I'm just not good at firing people. I'll do it if they screw up royally. But not performing up to my standards is such a delicate issue and you've really got to be careful about how you proceed in this litigous day and age. The fella I want to fire has 2 customer complaints against him already and he is on notice, so I'm just hoping he screws up again. He's a nice guy outside of work but a complete jackass on the job and clearly takes it all for granted. We'll see what happens.

2004-04-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

The above lenghy link is to a story on the very recent indictment of Reliant Electric. I believe this the first time in US history that a corporation has been indicted. The indictment stems from the grand jury belief that Reliant actively price gouged, adjusted supply and generally created an artificial power shortage during last summers nasty blackouts. It was all artificially rigged! And it was this crisis that hastened the ascent of Ahnold to the state house. There really can no longer be any trust that the institutions of this country, from politicial to economic and public to private, can operate within an acceptable moral frame work. The dollar is king. Just ask the Iraqis.

2004-04-08T10:42:00.000-07:00

So I heard about this internet only show back in the DC area that has all sorts of local celebs involved (Bill Crandall, Ian McKaye and others). Their first show got about 1,200 hits and they're hoping to get picked up by a local TV station. It seems like real good stuff. Anti-establishment kid show that's masquerading as adult entertainment or vice versa depending on how you look at it. They don't believe in the constant barrage of toy, candy and breakfast cereal adds that our kids are deluged with as they are molded into good little capitalists. The seems like the best parts of Teletubbies, Romper Room, Soul Train and Dance Party USA. I understand that in one segment they have different bands on that perform their favorite kids songs. They've had Ian Mckaye's new band The Evens, Vic Chestnutt and from the pics on the website at least one hip hop group. Sounds really cool and if any of you cats back in DC no more about it let me know. I'm curious.

We did indeed finally make a hire here at work. We hired a girl which is a welcome addition to our male dominated crew. The irony is that the guy we offered a job to, and who subsequently declined it, came into the office this morning and asked if the job was still available. Oh well, tough cookies. I think it actually works out better this way.

I figured out that when Jesus was crucified it's a little known fact that he was put on the cross wearing fuzzy bunny slippers and thus the whole deal with rabbits on Easter. Now you know.

2004-04-06T08:47:00.000-07:00

Here we are yet another work week. This week will prove to be a bit challenging as we have 2 of 4 drivers out (touring musicians, I hate musicians) and 1 of my partners is out for the majority of the week because his son is in town. Makes staffing a challenge. I'm sure there will be a few points this week when I'm absolutely pulling my hair out. Fortunately we have good working relationships with a number of other small firms so sharing work isn't too much of an issue. Also the first week of a new month is always the slowest though don't ask why that is I haven't figured it out yet.

We were very close to removing some of the dead weight from the bike board last week. We offered a job to a fine candidate and were prepared to release the least productive member of our team. In a stunning turn of events the potential hire decided to stay with his current company after they offered him more money. Frankly I think he's still making less than what he would make with us, but he feels a loyalty to his current employer and that's commendable.

After the very exciting final four games this weekend I must admit that the GT-Uconn final was a bit dissappointing, unless of course you're a Huskies fan. I don't think that the final result of that game was ever in doubt. I think the Uconn-Tennesse womens final tonight will be a much better game. Diane Tuarasi has been playing out of her head, it's too bad there isn't a higher profile womens pro league in the US for her to graduate to. She deserves a better stage on which to showcase her skills.

2004-03-30T10:49:00.000-08:00

Well it's been too long since I last blogged. Sometimes life gets in the way of your best intentions. I've been hobbling around lately because I sprained my ankle last wednesday night playing basketball. This sucked for any number of reasons the first and foremost being that I was unable to play in my league championship the next night and we got smoked. Oh well, some things happen and you can't do anything about it. The swelling is finally starting to subside and the beautiful purples and reds are fading to pleasant autumnal yellows. It's like New England on the outside of my ankle. If I can figure out how to place a picture within the blog I'll post a pic of my ankle at its most grotesque. It's starting to feel better but I don't imagine that I'll play ball for at least another week. Riding the bike is less problematic with the exception that I'm unable to clip out of my SPD's with my right foot.

Business here is picking up. The pace has definitely increased. This is a blessing and a curse. It makes covering the work a bit more challenging during the peak times of the day. Because the challenges only occur at those peak times it makes the decision to hire or not to hire a bit more challenging. Essentially we're talking about being well staffed during the 2 two hour peak periods (one in the AM and one in the PM) but well over staffed during the other times. I'm simply starting to feel like the crew that's on the road is simply too stretched. Match that with a couple of riders who I find to be less than ideal in their performance and the recipe for disaster is written. Thus I'm leaning towards hiring a new rider. Because we use "free call" dispatch here it's very important to pay attention to personality as well as experience/rider ability. New hires need to be able to work well with co-workers in a cooperative environment that encourages a hire degree of interaction. Fortunately, we have a tremendous number of people of interested in being employed by Jetset, so we have a good pool of applicants to select from.

We've been challenged on the driver front as well lately. This is mostly because one of our drivers is a musician and has been on tour for the last 2 months. He comes back in about 10 days and his return will take the pressure off the other drivers, though their paychecks have certainly been very good in his absence. It seems to me like staffing is a constant source of complaint and praise for me. This is partially because I'm in charge of scheduling and making sure the road runs as efficiently and smoothly as possible so it's always at the front of my mind when I'm blogging about work. But in the messenger biz it's also true that signifigant increases in business need to be matched by a prepared road crew or service failure is inevitable. It's almost pointless to successfully get a new $5000 a month account if the road is ill prepared to deal with the new volume of work. You've set yourself up for failure. It's a delicate balancing act that we've struggled with since we started the company. It's better than the dot com boom when we had way too much work and a very limited pool of talent to draw from because everyone was well employed. In these marginal economic times we have a huge employment pool but limited business oppurtunities. It's never easy is it.

I recently saw a movie called "North Fork". It's an odd little picture made by the Polish Brothers. They also made "Twin Falls Idaho" which was a real good quirky film. I don't mean quirky as a derogatory term but I'm not sure how else to refer to their films which are not mainstream but also not as marginal as many indie films. I found "North Fork" to be really odd and disjointed the first time I saw it. But on subsequent viewings (thank God for Netflix) I found more and more to like. In the same way that a really good record often won't reward the listener until after repeated spins, I found more and more to like about "North Fork" each time I viewed. It was as if each viewing peeled away another layer. Very satisfying experience. I recommend it.

2004-03-23T15:28:00.000-08:00

So of course I had a Gonzaga vs. Stanford final in the tournament. And now I look like a big boob for it. West coast bball certainly did not represent. I'm still rooting for Stanford in the NCAA womens, that Nicole Powell is a very good basketball player.

My bball league playoffs start tonight. I've been shooting the lights out for the last 4 weeks. Let's hope it continues. We'll play in the championship on Thursday if we win tonight.

Why isn't there a professional Capture The Flag game. I'm not talking about paintball so don't even mention it. I'm talking about a good old fashioned sneak through the underbrush, spend hours in a patch of poison oak, free the prisoners, game of Capture the Flag. I remember having great games with my cousins both in Santa Cruz and at Martha's Vineyard. Maybe it doesn't move fast enough for TV but we could add some hitch like if you didn't capture the other teams flag in 20 minutes you were set on fire. You could also sex it up by having the shirts of buxom female players get caught in the bramble and torn off. On second though perhaps a professional Kick-the-Can league. There's much more running involved and always the possibility that someone will kick the rock the can is sitting on instead of the can and break their foot. It would be even cooler if the league was sponsored by Hanna&Barbera so everyone would be dressed like sea monsters or giant mushrooms.

I've received a few emails about my blog on beer pong claiming that the non paddle version of Beer Pong is legitimate. Let me re-emphasize the fact the Beer Pong without paddles is no less than a horrid abomination dredged from the gooey depths of all that is wrong with the world. If you're throwing the ball then there is no "pong". The terms ping and pong are derived from the noise that the ball makes as it alternately hits the table and then the PADDLE. Thus ping-pong and from there we arrive at Beer Pong because Beer Ping would sound dumb. If you throw your ball at a cup of beer it's okay. Just call the game "cup toss" or "pong toss" or "beer cup chuck" or "Pong Ball Heave" just not Beer Pong. Thank you.

In further developments I've come to idolize Al Franken. Finally a liberal democrat that you can get behind and laugh with. There was a great profile of Al in last weeks New York Times Magazine. He's funny, intelligent, and willing to be as bellicose as those on the right. He's a fighter. I like both his attitude and his zeal. Demos need more Al Frankens and Howard Deans because the country needs to understand that being liberal doesn't = being a push over. It just means you're intelligent and able to think past the status quo arguements and perspectives that we are force fed every day.

I've got Rush Limbaugh pegged as a no paddle pong player. That makes him a tosser.

2004-03-19T19:14:00.000-08:00

Update on the Jetset tax fiasco: As I think I mentioned earlier we did have correspondence with the IRS about out tax misstep in the year 2000. Everyone thought that it was resolved at that time. So back on the phone with the IRS who are kind enough to put the payment requirement on hold for 6 weeks while we figure out what's going on. The interesting thing is that no one that you talk with at the IRS world HQ can tell us why we owe the money that we do. In order to find out why we owe money we have to write the IRS a letter asking them to tell us why we owe them the money. A complicating factor is that we don't have much of a paper trail on this whole thing because we though it had been put behind us. That was immensely stupid on our part. None the less I find it interesting that the helpful folks at the IRS phone center can't give you info as to why they are asking you for money. It's like you get a bill for $2000 from the water company but there's no usage indicator on the bill, just a dollar amount. So you call the water company and say, hey I've got this bill from you guys and I don't really understand why it's so high, did i use alot of water last month? Answer: We don't know. Can you tell my why I owe you so much money? Answer: No, not really. Is there some way in which you can verify that this amount is correct? Answer: Sure, write a letter to us stating that you'd like to know why you owe this amount and we'll pull your file and come up with your answer. This should take 8 weeks.

Seems ass backward doesn't it.

I'm loving the NCAA tournie. I've got a Stanford vs. Gonzaga final. Though MD will always have a special place in my heart.

2004-03-17T12:34:00.000-08:00

I noticed this ad in the local weekly the SF Bay Guardian. It was a full page ad for a 3 day symposium into whether 9-11 was an "inside" job or not. Here's the link: 911 Inquiry Near as I can tell it's a bunch of people who are fervently convinced that the attacks on 9-11 were committed (either tacitly or explicitly) by the Bush Administration. As I followed the various links sending me to various articles on everything from the Bush-Bin Laden conspiracy to suspicious circumstances including but certainly not limited to why airforce jets were never scrambled once the first tower was struck to how a hijackers passport miraculously survived the attacks, I was reminded of a conversation I had in a sports book in Las Vegas.

Not too long ago my wife and I went to Las Vegas for the weekend. It was a little get away without the kid and we had a blast. On our last day there we ended up in the Sportsbook @ Ballys drinking beer and having a good old time betting on the ponies (I also wagered $20 on the Warriors winning the NBA title, they were 65-1 which seemed generous at the time and absurd now). We made the mistake of striking up a conversation with a couple of locals who were spending the day betting on baseball. What started out as innocent conversations about the "system" that they used to bet on football and baseball turned into a lecture on the evils of the Bush Administration, what secrets numerology reveals to us about said administration and a host of convoluted ways of arriving at the conclusion that Bush is Satan. Now these guys were normal appearing, middle age, white guys but when they sunk their claws into a captive audience they wouldn't let go. It wasn't a conversation as much as a lecture. There was no give and take and no response to questions, only the reiteration of points made. I ended up being presented with a handmade flyer the likes of which would've made even the most untalented high school 'zine maker ashamed. I may still have it at home and should scan so you guys have a more insightful perspective into what I'm talking about. I'm prepared to listen to most conspiracy theory and I'm inclined to be distrustful of Bush and his neo-con Christian motives but these guys came off so half-cocked/borderline nuts that even the most open minded person would've had trouble believing what they were saying.

This bring me back to the 911 Inquiry symposium. I imagine that much of what will be said during the 3 days will be interesting, astute, probably truthful and eye opening. But how does a group such as this disassociate itself with the high number of nut jobs that will invariably attend? It will be interesting to see what kind of coverage the local media gives the event.

The other aspect of the symposium is that many of the sponsors run fee based websites and small publishing houses that have a financial interest in selling books, information, videos, etc. to people. I'm not making an undue accusations here, just pointing it out.

One of the interesting things about the folks who market in this kind of conspiracy theory is that their end message is, to a certain degree, very similar to the goverments. The government shrugs the theorists off, counting on people not to believe what is being said. Conversely those trying to prove the government corrupt see those who believe the "company line" as being unwitting sheep, blind to the truth. Those of us in the middle end-up being alienated by both, our distrust neither doused nor inflamed. Myself, I'm inclined to believe that the Bush-Cheney-Ashcroft goverment will do anything to further their vision, however if I'm ever caught handing out xeroxed flyers about how Bush's birth date numbers magically transform into 666 while I'm betting on the Red Sox-Yankees game somebody stop me.

2004-03-16T11:14:00.000-08:00

I've really been slacking off on the blogging. Must be the beautiful weather. Work is so much easier when the weather is nice, though I've made the fateful error of removing the front fender on my bike (because it was rattling so much not because I thought the rain was done for the season but the karmic Gods don't really care about mortal reasons) so it should rain soon.

I'm deep into the NCAA tournament selection process now. I've filled out 5 brackets on ESPN.com's tourney challenge. I'm sure I'll be the one to win the $10,000 prize with my astute predicitions based on fact, logic, statistics and mascot color. The sleeper is Pittsburg as a #3 seed. Please cut me in on your winnings.

My daughter has just completed reading her first book. "The Tin Man" which is a phonics related reading activity was finished yesterday on the porch. It's so exciting to see her doing these things, but also so sad to think about her growing up so quickly. I think we may have another kid though my wife and I have always been comfortable with one. Problem is that one is just going to grow up as well. It's a vicious cycle.

2004-03-12T12:17:00.000-08:00

Another beautiful day in California. But the bay area is very weird meteorlogically speaking. At least it is for someone from the East Coast. Riding my bike to work, at the northend of the GG Bridge its a lovely 65degrees with a light breeze, great riding weather. By the time I get to the center of the span its 45degrees and I'm totally fogged in, my sunglasses are misting over, the bridge fog horn is bellowing every 30 seconds, the traffic's tires hiss on wet pavement. Off the bridge and into the Presidio it's still foggy and cold but as I get closer to the Arguello gate I can see blue sky and temps coming up. By the time I'm on Sacramento street and headed through Laurel Heights towards the Western Addition it is once again 65 degrees Sunny and even the crack dealers seem to be in a good mood. Back home in Fairfax it's probably 75. In the East Bay hills the winds probably blowing at 30 miles per. Pick a climate I'm sure we've got it somewhere.

It's been pretty busy at work lately. This is a good thing. People make money. I think the economy's turning around, hopefully that won't mean an easy election for Mr. Bush. I think I'd be willing to wait 8 months for a serious increase in business if it means kicking Herr Bush out of the house that is white.

Man oh man am I getting excited about the NCAA's. I love the March Madness. I'm going to root west coast this year. It's all about Stanford or Gonzaga. I'm tired of Duke this and Duke that and Carolina Blue, blah, blah, blah. Although the ACC sure is strong this year. But so is the Pac 10. I loves me some basketball. Sometimes I wish I'd gone to a big state school instead of a tiny division III school so I could be a die hard fan of some obnoxiously huge basketball program. Instead I root for the Warriors (which most Div I college teams could probably beat) and get let down each year.

In the circles I tend to run in you can always tell that summer is coming because people start putting on benefits for their "camps" at the upcoming Burning Man festival. This saturday is a huge warehouse party with many DJ's and much debauchery I'm sure. I'm going to sit this one out. Sometimes you've got the party bug and sometimes you don't. I'd rather stay close Fairfax, have a drink at the tikki bar and see a movie.

There is some hope on the Jetset Tax front. We did have correspondence with the IRS in 2000 concerning underpayment of withholding taxes. It was, supposedly, resolved at that time. The back and forth continues, we'll see what happens and I'll let you know.

2004-03-11T15:50:00.000-08:00

I see the ETA is hard at work blowing up Spain. Always good to see that a group can hold steadfastly to its princples even after so many years. They've got the same tenacity as a woman scorned. I guess I could direct you to see my rant on the not so recent Chechnya bombing in Moscow to reveal my feelings on this sort of thing. I'm just so not down with violence as a political tool. This goes for the invasions of other countries as well as the falsifying of pretense to invade said countries. It just shouldn't be a viable alternative in this day and age and it points directly to our barbarity towards each other that it is.

So we were having trouble with the radio this morning and in my infinite wisdom I diagnosed the problem as having to do with the headset. So I foolishly took the whole thing apart in order to clean it out (years of gunk in that thing) and ended up not being able to get it back together. I lost a tiny part, couldn't get things back together, it was a nightmare and I was dispatching with a hand held the whole time. Turns out it was an outside service issue and not the headset. I finally put the thing back together by cannabilizing another headset. I hate feeling like an ass first thing in the A.M. I especially hate being the one to put myself in dopey situations.

If anybody has taken the time to see "The Passion of the Christ" I'd love to hear your reviews and comments. Email me or leave a comment.

2004-03-10T12:20:00.000-08:00

Today, for some reason probably because it's real hot, I've been thinking about beer pong. Beer pong was an intergral part of my college life. It was essentially responsible for me failing out of college. For me it was a recipe for disaster: a highly competitive game involving hand eye coordination and lots of drinking that all of my friends liked to play. So of course I did a Google search on "beer pong" and found these guys:

National Beer Pong Association

Lots of interesting pong related things. One of the things you need to understand about beer pong players (and I still consider myself one though I haven't played in years) is that we're fiercely protective about the rules of the game. Frankly most of what's on the site is absolute crap and the very idea that you would play a game called "beer pong" and not play it with paddles is absolute heresy. I've always harbored a wish that one day I'll have my own 3 on 3 basketball court in my backyard one day, but I may have to amend that to include a game room with Beer Pong table and the official Lambda Chi Alpha rules on the wall.

I was all Katty-wum-puss (as my wife likes to say) this morning. Rode into work and didn't bring clean clothes to change into. I can't wear a stinky jersey all day. Luckily my friend Grey bailed me out with a t-shirt. I don't know why I think it's important that I mention such a trivial detail. I may as well tell you that the arch of my foot hurts. It does. Check the tour schedule for this guy John Vanderslice if he's going to be in your town go see him. It's good stuff and the bass player (Rob) and the drummer (Dave) are good buddies of mine. Tell them I say hi.

I guess I should write something about Jetset. The owed tax issue still looms. I doubt think it'll go away. I know the IRS has been wrong but it's far more likely given our businesses history that something got screwed up on our end. What sucks is that it takes them 3 years to find an error you don't know you made then you get charged penalty and interest. Fuckers.

Even the bad stuff seems good when the weather is like this. Glorious.

2004-03-09T15:08:00.000-08:00

Well the good news is that it is absolutely unbelievably beautiful here today. Actually has been for about the last 3 days and looks like it willl continue through the weekend. It's the kind of day that makes you love northern california, earthquakes and all.

Here's an interesting story. A friend of mine used to own a clothing store/party promotion company called Bullet Proof. They put on great parties, particularly their famous boat parties which were basically floating raves but with great people and great music. I've probably been on about 20 of them and they were always a blast. The brain trust of BF was british and after the dot com fallout he decided to move back to London and manage a club over there. This was about a year ago. According to the couple that now lives at his old flat about a week ago at 6am 5 black suited "thugs" from Homeland Security popped up at his old flat and inquired about the nature of this company called "bullet proof". Couldn't a simple google search have provided them with the necessary answers about the company in question and their insidious unpatriotic ways? What a waste of resources. Not to mention the glory of the American way.

Work developments: here are the current suck ass things about Jetset.

1) The IRS just told us that we owe them $13,000 from the tax year 2000. Oh joy please take money we don't have. They don't tell you why you owe that amount, simply that you do. You've got to penetrate the voicemail hell and get a human that knows what they're talking about in order to figure out if you're getting bent over and screwed and just how hard.

2) A messenger is currently having such challenging personal issues that I don't even feel like I can, in good conscience, blog about them. I mean it's heavy shit. This of course creates a whole slew of personnel issues as there's a possibility that they may take time off. There's nothing worse than starting of your day with another human being breaking down and balling in front of you.

In the grand scheme of things none of it is that big a deal. The IRS thing will work it's self out, I mean if we owe the money then we owe the money and have no one but ourselves to blame. The messenger will figure out life because they're bright and resilient and are in the right city to do it. It just all seems like an uphill battle sometimes for a mere pittance.

Sam's nose is almost all better.

2004-03-06T15:54:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was very busy. It was a good old fashioned Friday in the messenger industry. Problem is that we're a little shorthanded. So it was a challenging day. Fortunately we have a good working relationship with a number of other small independent messenger companies and we're constantly trading work back and forth. I don't like to lean on the other guys too much because it means losing money on the tags we give to them when you factor in admin costs. But it's better that someone else does it than we screw it up. We did about 180 deliveries which is fairly busy for us these days. I'd say our average tag count is about 140. Compare that to the dot com days when we regularly did 270 tags a day and never less tan 210 and you can see how things have changed in the last 4 years. As I was dispatching for the majority of the day (as I usually do) I really had to use a good deal of discretion in lowering customers expectations as to what we could and couldn't do. I think I'm good at that. Getting people to understand and actually be empathetic with the company when it's busy, make them understand that their work is important to us but that we don't want to let them down so "here's a realistic look at what we can do for you". I bend over backwards for customers all the time, going the extra step, doing frequent callers personal jobs for free sometimes, making people feel valued. So it's nice that they'll cut us some slack during intense work times.

This is one of the companies we share work with Rallycap Couriers. Three great guys who've I've worked with alot over the years. Dominic is one of my oldest friends in SF and also the lead singer of Our Lady of the Highway (link's in the link menu). OLOTH is getting ready to do a little tour of the northwest from April 1 to April 8 so if you live in Portland, Olympia, seatac, Bend they'll be up your way and you should definitely check them out.

So Kerry is the man, huh? The election is so far away and so much can happen. I worry that the Dems have picked their man to soon. It's a long way to go and there'll be plenty of mud to sling. He is, after all, a senator with a voting record. Fingers are crossed. Have a good weekend.

2004-03-04T13:49:00.000-08:00

If you go to the "The Passion of the Christ" website you'll find that they noblely market little trinkets. Things like "witness pins" and coffee mugs and t-shirts. I haven't seen the movie yet but it's good to note that Mel keeps the high ground and won't sell out his uncompromising vision of the gospels (though it's just one vision, remember the bible has a number of differing views of the crucifixion within Gospels) by hawking anything less than the finest quality doo dads. I mean he wouldn't sell engaved ball point pens or license plates holders. Or would he?

Todays work related rant falls under the category of "Essential to the business but a constant pain in the ass". Collections. I'd be making a lot more money if my collections ran %100. But of course that's every small businesses dream. In truth it's often a nightmare. I hate just chasing invoices. Sometimes it's a good account that falls behind. You don't want to cut them off because you want to keep them as a client. So you call everyday, harassing the accounting people, charging finance charges, and still you get the run around. It's because the courier service is the lowest on the food chain. Our invoice will be pushed to the bottom of the pile until it absolutely can't be avoided. Problem is that I've already paid out in commission half that invoice. Bad debtors often just go out and get another service that's excited to have their business. It's all vicious but a part of the business cycle. In truth we haven't lost much money on bad invoices. After the dot com melt down we did lose money on a couple of businesses that declared bankruptcy. But surprisingly it wasn't too bad. Often a company like the Gap, which we do alot of business with, is slow paying simply because the bureaucracy is so thick that it takes payments a long time to get processed. In %90 of the cases no one is trying to screw you over, but best intentions without any cash are still worthless.

2004-03-02T14:42:00.000-08:00

I've been debating about putting the knobby tires on the Surly. If I do then I can utilitze all the fun shortcuts to get to work, because right now it's crazy muddy everywhere that there isn't asphalt. But does that mean I'll want to put the slicks back on in 2 weeks? I'm essentially lazy and the idea of changing both front and rear tires on my bike twice in a two week span is almost incomprehensible. Then again maybe the drag of the knobbies will help to get my in a little better shape.

I'd like to learn to play guitar. Is there anyway to just implant that knowledge in my brain because I'm terrible with the whole practice-perseverance thing.

I recently watched the movie "The Missing". It's with Tommy Lee Jones and Kate Blanchet. Fairly entertaining movie if a little far fetched. There's this one scene that I found deeply disturbing for some reason. When the mean Indians (why are they mad? it's not like we killed them, drove them off their land and ruined their culture) take Kate Blanchet's daughter they cook this guy. They skin a cow, tie him up in the hide, hang the hole she-bang from a tree and light a slow roaster underneath him. Such a grisly image. I can't get it out of my head. What an unpleasant way to go.

Here's what I really want to do. I want to own a record store. I want to sit around unpackaging CD's all day, listening to music and riding snarky reviews. That sounds like a little slice of heaven. But you've really got to find a niche to retail music nowadays. You're competing with enormous retailers and of course the whole downloading (legal and illegal) craze. There are some really good record stores in SF. Good locally owned shops that have found a niche in hard to find music or just excellent customer service combined with a knowledgable staff. Amoeba Records is amazing, Rasputin Records is great, but I've always admired Aquarius Records . They've integrated on line shopping with their nice little brick and mortar store in the Mission District. They've done well and if you buy CD's on line consider using these guys.

Another business idea while I'm rambling: Do you remember the great bikes we rode as kids? I had a red Schwinn Stingray. Single speed. Coaster brake. Banana seat. That bike rocked. It was inexpensive but bomb proof and I rode that bike until I was 12 or 13. Why doesn't anyone make a bike like that anymore. Show me a $300 bike and more often than not it's a pile of shit because the manufacturer is trying to spec it to make it look like a $1500 mountain bike. Kids don't need suspension and 21 gears. Someone should start producing a simple steel bike for the pre (and limited post) adolescent. The Stingray needs to make a come back because I don't want my daughter riding around on a Toy's R Us Huffy that's always going to need tuning and is in constant danger of breaking, but I'm not buying a 7 year old a $700 bike. There's got to be a middle ground with quality and price for this generation.

Ok, done with the rant. Have a great day.

2004-03-01T12:15:00.000-08:00

According to this article my wife and I married at the perfect age: Article.

Another of day rain here in the bay area and I don't mean that because the basketball team lost last night. It's been damp here for the last month and the black ants have invaded the house looking for reprieve. So naturally I kill them. I hate ants in the house. They're okay outside or on trees or rocks or leaves but not on my god damn carpet. I'm looking forward to summer. I like long days. I like warm and dry. I like good cycling weather and outdoor hoops.

Not much to rant about on the courier front today. My kid did a serious face plant on thursday and looks like she's wearing a piece of bacon on her face but otherwise all is well. She's resilient and is already non plussed by the horrified looks of strangers. It's not that bad really. All my injuries growing up were in the back of my head. I kept falling over backwards up to about age 14. Stitches in the back of the noggin 3 times. In high school I went to a barber to get my head shaved (I was too dumb to buy clippers and do it myself) and as he got to the back of my head he paused and said, "you get in fights with pipes alot?" I didn't really think I looked like the type for pipe fighting. I also assumed he meant hitting other people and getting hit with pipes as opposed to the syntactically awkward image of me wrestling around in the middle of M Street with a piece of lead plumbing pipe. Whatever.

Here's a question for all you bikers out there. On wet pavement what kind of tires gives you better traction, knobbies or slicks? As I understand it using a slick actually gives better traction on pavement because you want to have as much surface area in contact with the road as possible and knobbies only provide that sporadically as the wheel spins. I suppose it also has to do with the type of tire compound you're using (soft or firm, rubber or synthetic).

This band is really fun: The Darkness It's a guilty rock pleasure in a very 70's metal kind of way. If you ever had any affinity for Thin Lizzy or AC/DC these guys absolutely do it right. The vocals are insane as the guy runs the register in any given song. Humans shouldn't be able to hit highs and lows like that in one fell metal mad whoop.

I'll be back at work tomorrow so I'm sure I'll have something to bitch about. Word.

2004-02-29T17:02:00.000-08:00

Well the phones have been fixed. Made for a challenging week though. We currently have a recently alluded to driver on tour with his band for the next month and a biker on vacation to go see his mother. Both very reasonable requests, but scheduling as always is an issue. We're struggling through a bit. I know I complain about it constantly but that is a major challenge: scheduling for both rider benefit and maximum customer service. It's a crazy juggling act that I'm doing. I'm trying to keep about a 20 different plates spinning at any given time. I'm like a one man chinese circus. I've been told that chinese circus' suck, but I've never seen one myself so I'll withhold judgement.

Bball game tonight. Let's see if we can extend the winning streak to 5 games. I love the basketball.

2004-02-27T13:34:00.000-08:00

Well, after a long absence it's nice to be home again. Had a good trip back east but it's always nice when you walk in to your own house. We just missed the biggest storm of winter here in No Cal. Cars floating away, flooding, mudslides, tremendous wind and rain. I was sure that I'd come home to find a) A tree on top of my house or b) the business under 3 feet of water. My house was safe, but the storm knocked out the phone service to a 5 block area around the office. It's difficult to run a messenger service without the benefit of phones. SBC/Pac Bell were their usual helpful selves by not telling us what the problem was when they knew what it was. Eventually we got our lead phone line forwarded to a cell phone and have been able to survive since that first day in a gerry rigged kind of way. Pain in the ass. I guess it could be worse. Our ground floor office could have flooded as happened to many residences and businesses. I'll be glad when winter is over. It's so much easier for the bikes when the weather doesn't suck. The drivers aren't impacted so much, but they are alot busier. The thing about courier services is that there's not alot of client loyalty outside of your biggest accounts. The big accounts tend not to leave because they usually owe you money and are wary of another company being prepared to handle their volume. But the smaller accounts will leave you as soon as say hi on the street. That's why the phone situation was so stressful. Client calls, can't get through, calls someone else, starts using them and forgets about you. Fickle bastards but thems the breaks. I think we successfully dodged the bullet for the most part with this outage.

In other news my league basketball team is now 4-2. We've won 4 straight after losing our first 2. There's nothing like the competitive spirit of aging athletes.

It was nice to get back on the bike after being out of town for so long. Everything is so sodden that using some of my sneaky urban trail short cuts to get to work was pretty much out of the question. It was kind of refreshing to take a different route though. Felt pretty strong on the 2 speed despite having limited riding time over the last few months. I must say after a trip away from the bay area the view of San Francisco when riding over the GG Bridge is fairly awesome, especially with the dramatic clouds that the recent storms have left us with. It's the little things that make me happy.

2004-02-20T18:19:00.000-08:00

I'm far away from California right now. I'm at the old childhood home in Bethesda, Md. I'm visiting Mom for a few days. It's great to see her with Samantha (my daughter). Samantha's the only girl grandchild and I don't think she gets to see her enough, given that I live on the west coast now. It's always a bit strange returning to the place you grew up. It was odd when I was in college and returning, but I had not yet put down my own roots yet so this was still home. After college I lived in DC for many years and the proximity kept the house that I grew up in fixed with the "home" label. But now that I've been gone for 12 years, on the other side of the country, visiting only occasionally (some years not at all), this isn't "home" anymore. It's "where I grew up". But of course all comparisons are made to the place(s) that you come from. Even back in the bay area I find myself comparing towns to the one I grew up in. I see a tree lined street and think to myself, that looks alot like Chevy Chase or Bethesda. All references are to things that you've already done or places you've already been. That's obvious I guess, because rarely are we making concrete references to things in the future. Those are plans, dreams, hopes and they are not yet concrete. The tricky thing about the suburbs is always needing a car to get around. Here in Bethesda if I need to go and get a gallon of milk i have to get in the car. Nothings close, it's all spread out. Back in Fairfax there's a real feel of a town. I walk to the store or ride my bike to the bar. I could could potentially go weeks and weeks without needing to get in the car (though that never happens due to inherent laziness or inclement weather). It's just different.

Now's the time when i'm glad I have business partners. It's easy to go away from the business and not worry too much about it. i know things are in good hands. That's the drawback to having the pie sliced into larger pieces. There are fewer bodies to mind the shop. That's a completely different issue though, one that can be dealth with at a much later date.

As I think I mentioned in my last post I had to discipline a messenger due to his rudeness towards building security guards. The same guy emails me and asks if he can have an advance so he can get a new work bike. Remember what I said about being taken for granted? sheesh. But I'm not in this business to have my praises sung anyway.

I'll try to post as I can. Like LL Cool J said, "I'm goin' back to Cali, Cali, Cali..." next week.

2004-02-18T12:43:00.000-08:00

The thing about owning a small biz is that it's all people management. You don't have enough money to implement some grandiose scheme but yet there's enough size for little problems to snowball into big ones. Making sure that everyone is doing their job and placating clients when that job isn't done properly is the days work. Take today for instance:

I believe that the business of being a courier is a fairly simple one. You have to balance speed with safety/courtesy/intelligence. It's an old story in the messenger industry. The guys who ride their bikes the fastest are rarely the ones that make the best messengers. They're the guys that ride by addresses they're supposed to stop at, forget to pick up packages, drop things in the street. But man they go like a house on fire!! I don't hire these guys. During my long and glorious messenger career I think I struck a fair balance between speed and not getting my ass creamed by a cab. My strong points were attention to detail, an unfailingly polite manner and a good awareness of what's going on around me (both in the sense of my personal space and what my co-workers were doing). Being a messenger is a social occupation. Your office is the city that you work in. Your co-workers are the people you get plowed with on Friday nights after work. It's easy to get distracted at work. But the most important attribute of a Jetset employee is simply to represent the company and out clients well. Treat the dickhead security guards with respect, smile and say "hello" to the rude receptionist, say "excuse me" to the guy on the phone who's expecting the package you're trying to deliver. It's easy.

Today I had to field a complaint from a disgruntled security guard who was none too pleased when a messenger "dissed" him by not signing his little log book when he entered the building. Now, I'm the first to say that the sign in proceedure for messengers into buildings is stupid. It provides no security to the building what so ever but seems to make everyone feel better, so we do it. If I put on my 3 piece suit (fortunately this is hypothetical because it doesn't fit me anymore), grabbed a brief case and strolled into most buildings in the financial district security wouldn't bat an eye. But put on a helmet and a messenger bag and it's like Osama Bin Laden tried to catch an elevator to the 20th floor. None the less as a messenger it's part of your job (as far as I as an employer am concerned) to play the games. Just smile and play the fucking game. It's so easy. It makes you more effective and more profitable.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah. So I've got to discipline this messenger for doing something stupid and I just don't understand what's so difficult about playing within the confines of the "game". The other annoying thing is that he's a chronic offender, a chronic doer of stupid deeds, his time here is limited.

2004-02-17T14:12:00.000-08:00

Once again the scheduling bites me in the ass. If it isn't the employees wanting time off, it's the other owners. My first instinct is just to hire another courier. It would solve alot of problems, but utlimately would be a disservice to the employees who are working there asses off. Sooner or later ya gotta put your foot down though. Jetset employees just don't realize how good they have it. But like anything in life, if it's given to you long enough you will take it for granted.

I think I went on and on a bit too much in yesterdays post so I'll keep it short today. Funny thing though, my wife talks in her sleep (always has) and last night after she had fallen asleep she said one word loud and clear "Honkey". Kept me up all night wondering what she was dreaming about.

2004-02-16T21:25:00.000-08:00

Been a few days since posting. I've been out of town. It was my father-in-laws 50th birthday party and that, of course, involved drinking an osbscene amount of Budweiser over a short period of time. Fun, but I'm glad someone I know doesn't turn 50 every weekend. It'd be the death of me.

I leave for the East Coast in a few days. Going to see Mom. She doesn't get to see Samantha enough and the stars were well aligned this trip because Tami was going East for a business trip anyway so her ticket is covered. I'll see some old high school friends which should be fun. I hear Joel just had his second kid (Congrats!!) so I don't know if I'll see much of him.

I don't have much Jetset related stuff to discuss. Today was Presidents Day and I stayed home with my daughter (I actually have every Monday off, that's a perk) so I haven't thought much about work for three straight days except to tell people that things were par for the course when one of my Father-in-law's friends asked how business was. That, to a large degree, is the issue with Jetset. Jetset is par for the course. We have a strong customer base, very little debt, little depreciable equipment (couple of computers), lots of experience, and a 5 year office lease. These are all both good and bad things. In considering selling Jetset the value is clearly in the client base. That's where our value is. I'm sure there are companies that would pay top dollar for that alone, but for how long would it work out? A large company would quickly sour Jetset's clientelle which is used to a high end service. A smaller more personable company probably couldn't afford to give us what it's worth. So there we are.

Some info about Jetset that may relevant to people reading. 1) Originally had 3 partners. Now down to 2 as one has sold his share. 2) Another partner has said that she will be selling before too long (within a year that probably means, she's also married to the partner that has already sold. 3) The final partner remaining (besides myself) while being about the nicest, coolest man in the world is not very biz savy. Arguably has some issues with customer service and may not be the most responsible chap in the world. So what this means to me is that i'm the insurance for the 2 that have already committed to selling. I remain and make sure that the whole thing stays afloat while they are paid their monies. Jetset does not hold enough capital to buy out these partners in lump sums, so we pay them off with salary over a specific amount of time. If the company were to go kaput during that time I suppose they would be shit out of luck.

While I bitch about Jetset a good deal the departure of these partners makes the pieces of the pie signifigantly larger (this is good) but ties my future up with Jetset perhaps tighter than I'd like. If Jetset were to sell to another entity (another company, an individaul(s) who wanted to be in this biz) all the negatives (employee and client reaction, community reaction) would fall upon my head because my options would be much more limited than those who would have gone before me. This may be my greatest downfall as a businessman (and I use that term in an almost mocking manner when I apply it to myself). I think far too much about what is fair to my community, my employees, my clients. I hold too much respect for what has been built at Jetset and therefore fear tearing it down. I know how to make Jetset more profitable but I don't like the steps necessary to get there. I'd sooner sell the whole shebang. I guess one option would offering the business to the current employees at a fair price. Selling isn't imminent. It's just something that I think about alot. Diversification (did i spell that right?) is another option. I don't know that I'm biz wiz enough to make that leap. Things will shake out a great deal over the next 18 months and I think that things will come into focus for me. I wish I was an inventor. I'd rather be making and selling widgets.

Hope everyone had a good long weekend.

2004-02-13T10:58:00.000-08:00

"Slow Deaf Child"

There are 3 possible permutations of the way this sign can interpreted:
1) As a notice to a driver that there's a deaf child potentially playing nearby. Slow down. Take it easy.
2) Watch out for a kid that's not only deaf but stupid as well.
3) If the deaf child has grown up and returned to his neighborhood as an adult having found his/her way in the world, experiencing success and failure, love and loss, the sign is cautioning him to slow down.

I like thinking about that. It makes my head happy. I lifted this premise from a poem by David Berman called (you guessed it) "Slow Deaf Child".

You know, sometimes I feel like the principal at a local high school. I'm all about dispute resolution having to do with the stupidest shit. The drama about my messenger hitting on the receptionist at my client's client's office has thickened. I spoke with the fellow about the situation and he professed such sincere confusion that I believe we may have a case of mistaken identity. This guy is many things but he's not a liar. In fact if he was hitting on the receptionist I believe he would've admitted it without hesitation. He says that a) he has a girlfriend b) during the delivery in question the usual reception wasn't even there c) he never dilly dallies in that office he's always in and out very quickly d) the last time he remember talking with this receptionist is about 5 months ago when she offered him a beer while he waited for a package to be ready.

So now I'm in the position of trying to figure out who, if any, of my messengers is responsible for the unwanted advances. The challenges with this are manifold: 1) I have no interest in further involving my client in this mess. She's got better things to do. 2) I do need to make sure the right person isn't paying visits to this receptionist. 3) Is it appropriate to go speak with receptionist apologizing on our behalf and figuring out exactly who it is?

I think I'll send my business partner Andy to speak with her. He's very diplomatic and also british. The chicks love the accent.

2004-02-12T10:49:00.000-08:00

Letter to the Editor

You can read my views on the iPod in the above letter to the editor that was published today in our local weekly.

Presidents Day is this Monday. That's one of those holidays in the messenger business that few people pay attention to. Banks, PO's, Gov, etc. will be closed but all our customers will be doing biz as usual so we must as well. Service industry makes you beholden to those who pay the dough.

This is a great magazine The Week it condenses tons of media into an easy to handle weekly. The cool thing is that it takes a high profile media issue and tells you what the Right is saying, what the Left is saying, and cites sources for further reading. It's a great way to get a broad basic view of an issue. Broad and basic. That's me these days.

This is the kind of crap I have to deal with. So one of the messengers has been hitting on a receptionist at a client of a client. That means a location that we go to frequently but one that is not our client. Well, I guess the receptionist decided she didn't like his flirting or advances and told him to knock it off. Since then he's been "rude" to her whenever he goes into that office. They receptionist complains to my client who then asks to make sure that he no longer sets foot in that office for a month or so. So I've gotta talk to the messenger, alert him to the situation, reiterate that his advances are no longer welcome in this case and too chill the fuck out. It's so much fun to manage personalities.

2004-02-11T13:30:00.000-08:00

Here we are another day at Jetset. Lively conversation about the Supermarket strike in the south land. I wish that I was better informed about the issue, I spent a bunch of time scouring google for info and didn't have a whole lot of luck. My gut reaction is not sympathetic, but part of that is because so many of the folks here at work are knee jerk enough towards any union related cause that they are convinced corporation=bad & evil. As near as I can tell the Stores want employess to pay $5 a week individual and $15 a week for family towards their health benefits. They also want to change the pay tier for new hires to a lower level, not current workers. The unions say this is motivated by greed for profit. The Supermarkets are saying that with increased competition from super centers (Wal-mart, Costco, etc) and specialty stores (Trader Joes, Whole Foods) that current wages and benefits are untenable. I don't think anyone thinks that selling food is a high margin business. I did find a supermarket industry journal that said in 2003 the gross profit margin for the industry was less then %1. Obviously they survive by selling quantity. It doesn't seem to me that the stores are being particulary disingenous here and what they are asking for doesn't seem unreasonable given what I know about the rates that most people pay for health coverage and what Jetset asks our employees to pay. It's also interesting to think of in the context of the dissappearing middle class post from yesterday. These semi-skilled jobs at supermarkets and the like are going to be like gold in a decade. Companies need to be profitable while providing workers with good wages and benefits. We need to be thinking about the balance between the two and not hurl accusations. There must be a middle ground and we need to find it.

Ok completely off the former subject is this line from a Stephen Dunn poem (yeah I'm kinda obsessed about this right now): I'm paraphrasing but it goes something like

"...our farewell hope
that we try with what is left us."

I know I've got it wrong and I can't remember it exactly but I think that I've got the spirit of the line. I was commuting in today (absolutely gorgeous here today by the way) just chewing on the line over and over. It's really a pleasurable sensation, riding in traffic and thinking about poetry. I couldn't decide if Dunn was saying the line with resignation (.i.e. let's make the best of this crap) or more metaphorically we make the best of what other people (parents, mentors, heroes, lovers, husbands, wives, both deceased and living) leave for us in our lives.

Hmmm. Hope everyone is well.

2004-02-10T10:37:00.000-08:00

This article is dense and, at times, complex: cTheory article. The slant of cTheory is definitely of liberal variety (not neo-liberal mind you, a term the article often sites. I had to use this definition to remove the normal associations with the term liberal ( Neo-Liberalism definition ). It talks about the wholesale shipping of tech, service, white collar jobs overseas and the affect it will eventually have on the american middle class, not to mention the world as a whole as corporations pillage other environments and cultures in the pursuit of maximum short term profit. It's an interesting read, though a bit scary. Our world/nation/lives will be very different in 20 years. Maybe I'll just hang on to Jetset for as long as possible because I don't think we're outsourcing courier jobs to India. At least not yet.

2004-02-10T09:22:00.000-08:00

One of the nice things about Jetset is the lively conversation on the radio. For once I'm not being sarcastic. During slow periods we have some good debates. The crew is to the person intellignet and witty. Well, there are one or two loose screws who shouldn't speak, but isn't that normal? This AM we were talking about the Cooper death penalty case. The crew is pretty liberal and, predictably, convinced of Coopers innocence and much more willing to believe that the cops would plant or tamper with evidence to get a conviction than that a manipulative killer may try to escape lethal injection in any way possible. I find myself playing more of a devils advocate simply because I feel like so many liberals are willing to swallow the "liberal" line without their own thoughtful input. The irony is that I consider myself a liberal and am stongly anti- death penalty. I just want everyone to think about why they believe what they do.

Speaking of liberals, I really like Al Franken. He's intelligent, witty and combative. I don't think there's a conservative demagogue who can hold his coffee mug. Limbaugh, Savage and that skinny chick who looks likes Celine Dion are idiots. Flat out idiots. They speak loudly and in generalities knowing that the only people that pay attention to them are the masses already brainwashed to their message. This country is one big machine geared to keep people at each others throats because if we, as a people, put aside the minor differences that we have been convinced are major, we may actually realize that we live in a place owned and run by global corporations whose primary motivation is profit at the expense of freedom, equality and good sense.

But I digress. Or rant.

Did you see that the Warriors set an NBA record for lowest points in a quarter? They scored 2 points on 1-13 shooting (0-3 from the line) with 9 turnovers in a loss to the Raptors on Sunday night. Did I mention that they were up by 16 with 9 minutes to go. Unbelievable. Why do I root for these guys? Maybe I should get into Premier League soccer. I like those Manchester United jerseys.

Oh, btw if you don't already watch the Daily Show on Comedy Central. John Stewart is the next David Letterman only funnier. Much funnier.

Read something today.

Word.

2004-02-09T13:06:00.000-08:00

So this company converts garbage into usable energy sources. Specifically a hyrdogen fuel. Pretty cool. Why isn't our governement funding the R&D for viable projects like this?? Oh wait, that's right we're currently ruled by a president appointed by the courts who has so many ties to the oil industry that he stinks of petroleum 24-7. Our shortsightedness will catch up to us eventually. Unfortunately it will probably be too late to accomplish anything without draconian measures. The oil's gonna run out my friends. It may not be for 75 years but it may be in 25. But it won't last forever. No, it won't.

Here's the top 5 on the iPod right now:
1) Broken Social Scene
2) Silver Jews: American Water
3) songs: Ohia: The Magnolia Effect
4) The Rapture
5) Sun Kil Moon: Ghost of the Great Highway

Good Stuff all.

Jetset Related: I've been thinking lately how cool it would be to buy like 3 of those Scion XB's (you know the weird looking boxy one) pull out the back seats, slap Jetset Courier magnets on the doors and employ hourly drivers to drive them. This, of course, would involve firing the current drivers or offering them positions driving the XB's. Once again I can't imagine doing that to these guys. I figure we could pay drivers like $13 an hour to start and make good money. This is the problem with paying people a commission, especially a high commission. It's hard to figure fixed costs since payroll changes signifigantly month to month. The only way to really increase Jetset's revenues is to increase business signifigantly but that also means having to hire additional workers to cover an increased work load. Right now Jetset does like $50,000 a month in gross billing, it's a very manageable number. To increase monthly billing to $70,000 would take a phenomenal sales/marketing push. Something that the ownership isn't very good at. Also, during the tech boom Jetset was doing almost $100,000 a month in billing and the stress level was through the roof. Every single day of work was a challenge. Just getting all the work done was a daily challenge, much less dealing with hiring, firing, paperwork, and all the day to day. I don't want those times again, though the money was good the trade off was sleepless nights. Basically Jetset needs to change our business model at some point. We need to move away from commission pay to an hourly system. I can hear old messenger folks griping now, "yeah but no one works hard when they're on an hourly." That's always the question, isn't it.

It would also be wise to look at different business areas that would benefit from the infrastructure that's already in place, i.e. phones, dispatch system, 2 way radios. We could probably dispatch just about anything from our office. My brother suggested a business that he saw used in England. He needed to get his car to the mechanic and didn't have time to take it there himself. So he called this service that drove out to his house on a collapsible scooter, folded the thing up, put it in the trunk and drover the car to the mechanic for him. I imagine that the same fellow returned the car, reassembled the scooter and off the went to his next job. It's a good idea. You could target rental car services, garages, Service Centers. I looked into it a little bit and, of course, the largest expense was insurance. Workers Comp on guys riding scooters is predictably high and insuring them to drive other people's cars was also high. You can find these collapsible scooters for about $500 a pop. Not a bad idea. Could pay guys like $12 an hour and charge say $35(?) for each pick up or drop off. The mechanic or rental car agency could tack it onto the bill. It would be well worth it for some busy financial district people to have to deal with such tasks. Something to chew on.

2004-02-07T18:45:00.000-08:00

My thinking is that since it's Saturday I don't necessarily have to write about Jetset. In fact on weekends I try to think as little as possible about work. Let me start on the very mundane end of things. If you're looking for witty and entertaining you may just want to skip directly to something funny like this Red Meat. So Samantha is at a friends for a sleep over tonight. That means I get to go to the movies! Saw Cold Mountain. A bit depressing but ultimately a wondeful movie. Got a little weepy but it was dark so don't tell Tami. I know the movie is fictional (as the book was) but the ability of man to be despicable to man in new and interesting ways always just blows me away. I read in the paper today that the Chechen seperatists blew up a bomb on a subway car during rush hour. Hey guess what guys? I don't have any sympathy for your cause. None. You can eat shit. Killing a bunch of people on the way home from a long day at the vodka factory or vodka bottle assembly line or vodka quality inspection office is no way to garner favor with anyone. You may have the most righteous cause under the sun but the wholesale slaughter of innocents is no longer acceptable in this day and age. This little rant is directed towards Herr Bush, Sharon, Arafat, Bin Laden, Hezbollah, The Unholy Alliance of all that is Jihadist, etc. etc. You've all got your heads screwed on ass backwards. I haven't read the Koran or anything but i've gotta believe that Mohammed didn't really intend to use the "jihad" clause with the same frequency high school students forge "sick yesterday" notes for absences. At last count there were Jihads on Capt. Kangaroo and Mr. Rogers (successful ones as well it would appear), Tony Danza, Hooters Restaurants, and Quentin Tarantino. C'mon guys, it's losing its threatening value.

Hold it. I was talking about movies a second ago. If you haven't seen Lost In Translation, go see it. Just do it. Don't think about it, just go. Say to yourself, "Pete said to see it" and then go.

The Warriors actually won last night! They played great as they often do at home, now if we can get a road win or two perhaps the word respectable can be uttered in the same breath as Warriors.

Speaking of basketball tomorrow is my 4th league game of the season. We're 1-2 right now but we haven't played as well as we can. We should pull to .500 tomorrow. I haven't had a really good game yet this season. Steady but unspectacular. I'm not worried. I've yet to feel that really comfortable rhythm with my shot, that great sensation in which you know the ball is going in before you shoot it. Love that.

I've really been enjoying my commute on the mornings when I'm able to ride my bike at least part way. I've been parking the car on the north end of the Golden Gate bridge and riding to the office. Saves the $5 toll and gets my legs loose and blood flowing. It's the best kind of commute in that it has such a variety of environments. Off the bridge I drop into the Presidio which is usually quiet and peaceful. Alot of the roads I use are empty in the AM but the best part are the shortcuts. There are a couple of short trails that I use to cut off chunks of boring road riding. It's real muddy right now and I'm running road tire on the Surly Cross Check so traction has been an issue. But even that's fun because it's a technical challenge trying to find that balance between momentum, torque and traction. Can't lay hard on the pedal because the wheel will just spin out but must keep the bike moving forward or the whole purpose of riding has been defeated. I kind of end up with this rhythmic weighting and unweighting of the rear wheel by coming out of the saddle and leaning harder over the bars then dropping back to the saddle. It's trying to find the sweet spot that exists at the confluence of trail conditions, bike set up, and rider ability. My bike is set up as a 2 speed with 38x16 and 46x16 (or something like that I don't feel like getting up and counting teeth) thanks to the folks at Paul Components and this handy gadget Melvin. Fun bike but it needs an overhaul and I'm not willing to do it until the majority of the rainy season is over and it's only February.

One last thing. I'm tired of feeling guilty about liking Ryan Adams. First the hipsters love him then they decide he's derivative and uncool. He makes great records whether he's wearing his influences on his sleeve or not. I just think he's pissed too many people off. Much in the way that Howard Dean is now seen as unstable and unpresidential. I'm OK with Kerry but I think the fabled "liberal" media gave Dean the shaft in a big way. Get excited, try to scream, croak instead, lose momentum in national political scene. I've seen a million times.

As the kids like to say: Peace Out.

2004-02-06T13:03:00.000-08:00

First off, i love my iPod. Tami got it for me for Xmas. 40gig deal. Way better than the creative labs mp3 player I had before. The most recent issue of our local weekly ran this article about iPods and how the little device is changing our culture as it relates to music. I, of course, have many opinions on this subject as I'm a compulsive purchaser of music. So I wrote a letter to the editor responding to the article and the fools actually published it. I'll link it next week when the paper comes out. I'm on a roll with minor to insignifigant publishing credits.

2004-02-06T11:16:00.000-08:00

The end of the week is always a good thing. Not that I hate work, hate would involve too much emotion. The weekend is a nice change of pace. One of the great challenges with Jetset is scheduling. We pay couriers on commission so they have an interest in working hard enough to cover all the work. If we can't cover work for a long enough time we have to hire and that's another rider to compete with. I like to keep the staffing as lean as possible while still providing great service. This means that the guys and girls on the board are making real good money. The problem with lean staffing is that if someone calls in sick or wants to take two weeks off to go hunter grizzlies or fish for koi it can be a challenge. On the driver side of our business (versus bicycles) we seem to hire an inordinate number of musicians. As it stands right now we have:

1) 2 drummers
2) a bassist
3) a guy who does something for a Balinese orchestra. Don't ask I couldn't pronounce the name of the instrument he plays.

A creative group. But what happens when they want to go "tour". For these guys that can involve 3 dates around california or, in the case of one of the drummers, a month and a half away part of which is spent in Japan with this band John Vanderslice. Do I hire someone while they're gone and be overstaffed when they return? Do they lose their job making them choose between being a driver and a musician? One of the reasons we started Jetset was to create a place where the courier (by nature a creative type in the same way that actors always seem to be waiters) can make good money and pursue their true love at the same time. We've successfully created an employee friendly business that's a pain in the arse for management (that's me). Oh, well.

I can tell you right now that one of the hardest things in the world to do is be a Warriors fan. Yes, I root very hard for a perenial loser. God, why do they suck so bad? There's talent on this team. They play tonight against the Denver Nuggets. I'm not hopeful.

Here's my literary link for the day: Verse Daily Trust me that all poetry is not fluffy or confusing or unapplicable to your everyday life. Here's your days research project: find poems by Stephen Dunn, Philip Levine and Jeffrey McDaniel. Good stuff.

2004-02-05T13:34:00.000-08:00

"Praise the odd, serendipitous world."

-Stephen Dunn

2004-02-05T10:15:00.000-08:00

The coffee guy pointed out to me this morning that we're in the post-janet boob era. Nice.

This is my Jetset related rant for today: Workers Comp. Our rates were jacked through the roof at the beginning of 2004. From about %12 to %28. The thing that sucks about Worker Comp (a necessary evil) is that business pays %100 of the cost and we are required to carry it. In California our WC costs are twice that of the national average. We are passing some of that expense on to our customers but in the highly fragmented and extremely competitive local courier business you have to be wary of how high you take your pricing. Gov. Arnie has promised to lower rates but even if he's able to do so it's a top down (trickle, trickle) proposition. It'll be awhile before we feel any relief. The profit margin gets narrower. Anybody wanna buy a courier company? You could fire all the couriers and rehire on an hourly wage or as ICs and make damn good money. I can't do that to these guys, they're friends and it would make me feel like a slimeball. I know, I'm a terrible businessman but what the fuck can't you act with a conscience and not be penalized at every turn by government. Oh crap I just sounded like a republican.

The radios have ceased functioning today. We use Fleet Talk a company in New Jersey that manages our transmitter which is currently out. No radio comm with the road. Fleet Talk doesn't call you back or tell you what's wrong, how long it will take to fix or anything. They're also the only game in town so they don't really care, what are we going to do use cups and strings? It's not just us but essentially every company in SF that's affected. Fuckers.

2004-02-04T16:33:00.000-08:00

I often have this arguement at work with Lance. He's a musician. A guitarist. A very good one. Loves Jerry Garcia and Steve Kimok. I can't say we're crazy about the same music. His idea of a really well written song is one that makes the guitar solo longer...and longer...maybe a little longer still. Me, I'm a pop music guy. I like melody and hook. Not pop as in "popular" necessarily, but "pop" as in an Elvis Costello song or Joe Pernice song or something by these guys Best Band in SF. Lance and I don't see eye to eye here. For him good music always = good musicianship. He tells me, "Kurt Cobain is a good lyricist but he can't sing for shit." Can you imagine a Nirvana song sung note perfect by Paul McCartney? It would lose something, like the anguish and the feeling. Will Oldham probably isn't the greatest musician in the world but he's got a way with his material that's original and inimitable. I could name a bunch of other examples but I still think Lance would sneer at me. Fuckin' hippies. This is the kind of guy who thinks punk was a waste of time but would poke his eyes out for a Pantera show.

He can't really get past the fact that it isn't played perfectly (or as well as he can play, I guess). Lance is in this band Grasshoppers he's the guy with the sunglasses.

2004-02-04T11:30:00.000-08:00

So the title "Different Hours" comes from the title of a book of poetry by Stephen Dunn. I like this book a great deal. It won the pulitzer in 2000 (I think). I've been a fan of Dunn's for years. He's very human and very approachable but also lyrical. There's a poem in the book called "at the restaurant" in which he catalogs the pleasantries of a dinner out with friends, others sharing their days goings on, he admits to feeling withdrawn, the last two lines go:

"Inexcusable, the slaughter in this world.
Insufficient, the merely decent man."

It's filled with both resignation and anger. Dunn just hits that feeling of powerlessness on the head. It's the struggle, and he deals with it mightily in the book, that much of life is left to others. It's a point that I've dealt with in my writing alot, the idea that there are really no superheroes but instead a million people who who do thousands of small things that are far more essential than the occasional bouts of magnified heroism we tend to hear about because they are so much louder.

2004-02-04T10:52:00.000-08:00

The problem with the messenger business is that it's a dinosaur. I'd be really surprised if it's still around in 10 years. It's not the greatly feared but ultimately vastly overestimated arrival of the fax machine. It's electronic file transfers and broadband that will do the industry in. Jetset specializes in serving the advertising industry and all its affiliated parts, print production, photography, video editing, etc. This is good business in SF because there's alot of it and they're willing to pay a premium price for a premium service mostly because they pass the cost on to their client. As it stands now prepress and graphics houses use our service to deliver proofs to their clients because a) we're talking huge files sizes which, even with broadband, take to long to transfer b) monitor resolution and file types prevent people from being able to see exactly what colors they will be getting when they go to print that very important Nike ad in Rolling Stone Magazine. This is good for us because it means we take proofs from place to place so everyone can see their pretty pictures before they go to print. Both these technical issues will surely be resolved in the next decade if not sooner, bike messengers will become extinct and the only thing left will be moving things out of town with small pick ups and moving large loads within the city limits.

There's so much romance in being a bike messenger. I was absolutely passionate about it at one time, and still am to a certain degree, and it's still interesting to see new faces get involved with the community. It's become a very ambitiously political group as well. There's a small but vocal segment of the messenger community that's working very hard to become union. They've had some success and seem to fighting a noble fight. As a business owner I understand both sides of the issue and why many firms are so reluctant to embrace the union position. I try to treat my employees as fairly as my budget will allow. We provide health and dental insurance (50-50 split), the 4 day work week, and a fair commission on each delivery. I'd make a ton of money if I tried to make my guys IC's. But I don't want to do that, it wouldn't be fair. I've worked during my long messenger career at IC shops and it sucks. When my partners and I started Jetset we were essentially creating the messenger company that we would like to ride for. Of course I barely ride anymore but sit in the office and dispatch, do managerial tasks, and try to make sure everything works on a day to day basis. I hate the service industry. It burns your soul from the inside.

2004-02-04T10:43:00.000-08:00

The first month of 2004 is behind us and I'm truly surprised to find that it's alarmingly similar to 2003. Already we have: #9 called in drunk, LC moaned about his back all day, Capp spilled Museli all over the floor and then spent a good 10 minutes walking around in it before leaving it right where he spilled it. You get the picture. The mundanity is the struggle. I don't love my work. I guess I'm indifferent to it, but I recognize it's advantages. When I started Jetset almost 6 years ago I never really imagined that it would come this far. I saw a pet project that I would grow out of, instead it's become the monster constantly beating against the closet door. Fuck, it doesn' even wait for me to turn the light out, it's already there tapping its foot and getting cracker crumbs in the bed "where ya been, Pete?" The money sucks, I'm in my prime earning years and I ain't making nearly enough. But the reward is in the time. I work a 4 day week (as does everyone who wished to, this was an important tenet when we started this company), pretty much set my own hours and can take vacation as I please with minimal repercussions. This is all very good because I've got a beautiful 4 year old daughter who just makes me stop dead in my tracks, just the thought of her sometimes makes me stop what i'm doing. I'm 37 and constantly gripped by the dreaded fear of middle age. I know I'm a bit premature (I'm assuming that I'll live past 74 but maybe not). It's the curse of the ex-athlete. Being aware that your body is slowing down, that things don't move as quickly, your first step isn't fooling anyone, more jump shots than drives to the hole. Good days and bad days, sometimes I walk off the court so pleased that I could hang with the 22 year old. Others, heh.

But that's really not what I intended to write about, not directly anyway, but I suppose it's all part of the package. What I really mean to write about is Jetset Couriers and the love/hate relationship I have with it. We'll see how it goes.