Casting Work Away

I finished listening to the DVD commentary of Cast Away.

Tom Hanks was on Sixty Minutes last December. He said something that I think about regularly: do what you love to do; that is half the battle. He said from his experience, one cannot go into film or television hoping for fame, money, or even power, as those things are often fleeting. He said go into film/television because it's something you enjoy, and you'd be doing it anyway.

Of course his comments extend beyond Hollywood: if it's something you enjoy doing, and you'd probably be doing it anyway, then it's a likely profession/avocation/vocation.

I ask myself often: Is this what I'd rather be doing? There are a lot of grays in my answer. It's not a resounding yes; it's not a distasteful no. And I'm sure if I ask myself this during work tomorrow, my answer would vary.

Are we working at what we want to work on? That's a fair question.

Fondly Remembering Cycling

The Tour de France started a few days ago. As I write this, American Lance Armstrong is 6th in the GC (for you cognoscente).

I was a fan of bike racing so long ago, it's not even funny. Example: I had the issue of Velo News that announced Greg LeMond was going to France to ride with Bernard Hinault's Renault team. Example: I own a copy of a Bud Greenspan's documentary on Eddy Merckx, cycling legend.

I recall being amazed at the movie Breaking Away. I read Sam Abt's Tour de France stories in the NY Times, because when I started to follow the Tour, it wasn't on network TV (today it's covered daily on The Outdoor Life Network).

All this was in the early eighties, during my teen-age years.

I had log books detailing all of my riding. I dreamed of becoming a racer. Despite my fervent interest in bike racing, I only competed in one race, and on that rainy day, I got a flat. It didn't stop me from attending races though, and the highlight of all this interest was watching a criterium near Central Park in New York City. Greg LeMond raced that day, and when he finished, I got his autograph.

I trained with a pack of boys (Jose, Shawn, Dave) sharing the same innocent dreams. We rode hard and fast up and down Bayonne Park, and stalked all the bike stores, driving the owners nuts with our demands to see Campagnolo bike parts. As boys, we didn't own bike shorts, or real cycling jerseys. Whenever we saw "a real rider" wearing these clothes, we'd watch them warily, wondering just how fast could they go.

Like most boy-hood interests, this one faded away. By the time Greg LeMond won his second Tour de France, cycling had already left my life. Sometime before college (1986), I got into an accident: I looked down to shift, and next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground, having run into the suddenly-stopped car in front of me. My bike (Panasonic DX-2000) was broken beyond repair, and on a "spare" bike, it was hard to go fast.

Fast forward to today: I do own a dusty racing bike, bought with practically my first paycheck out of college, but I never rode with the same fervor like I did. In fact, I hardly ride at all. Golf has filled the places in my heart where bike racing used to live. I used to be able to recite the winners of the Tour de France, and the years when Merckx and Anquetil won their five Tours, but now I look that up, like everyone else.

"On va! Allez allez!", people would write, on the roads the Tour de France riders would race over. I have gone, but I fondly remember.

Paying Off My College Loan

I received confirmation today from the lending bank that they have received my final student loan payment. My student loan towards Rensselaer is now "paid in full". I called the bank and inquired about the final payoff amount (almost $700), and wrote them a check in the middle of June.

The loan to pay off my college education was $16,000, but thanks to simple interest (8%), I owed a total of $23,000. I started paying off this loan in August of 1991. I knew from the notes that it would take ten years. And here I am, ten years later: absolved of this almost-$200 monthly obligation.

I can recall times I let the monthly payment 'slip' a few weeks, but I never failed to pay the full monthly amount every month. I like to think that Jenn and I were able to get a mortgage because of my dutiful payment of this loan through the years.

Was college worth all this though? Yes. Absolutely. It's true I don't need to use physics, chemistry, or advanced calculus, but I am always learning using the methods I picked up at school. My perspective and sensibilities about technology and science were gained at Rensselaer.

I first logged into UNIX at RPI, and I still refer to my school-aged battered copy of The UNIX Programming Environment. I wrote hard software there (a C-like interpreter, a shell). I attended a co-op at JPL, where I discovered what I could contribute as a computer professional.

But even beyond all the 'school' stuff were the people, and experiences: learning to ice skate at the Houston Field House; being a college radio dee-jay; going to midnight movies; road trips; absurd drinking games; bonding over ice hockey, pizza, dinners, and late-night studying. Many of good friends are from RPI, class of 1990.

College was where I tried growing up. College was where I gained some perspective. College was my launching pad.

My student loan, pricey as it was, pales in comparison to the actual value of my collegiate experiences.

An Artifical Heart

Today, a human heart was replaced by a fully enclosed artificial heart.

As I read about this ground-breaking surgery, I was amazed that the doctors and engineers who built the heart don't expect the patient to last more than a month. I was also amazed that the company who built the heart is located in nearby Danvers, Massachusetts.

The patient wishes to remain anonymous, but I frankly have a hard time believing he'll stay anonymous. If it were me, I'd be on TV as soon as reasonably possible.

My other thought about all this: we are soon going to be able to make cyborgs: half-human, half-robot beings.

Abysmally Hot

Abysmally hot day today. Over ninety degrees! But in the late afternoon, the bright blue sky disappeared, and dark clouds thundered in. Before you knew it, a drenching rain was on hand. I drove in it to get take out, and it was a fabulously active sky: lightning, thunder, swirling clouds. It rained urgently.

As I write this, mild conditions prevail. Tomorrow will hover around ninety degrees again. Then relief on Monday: high seventies!

IM

My wife and I have been using Yahoo! Messenger to communicate to one another during the work day. If you are on-line and feel like sending me an instant message, download Yahoo! Messenger, and look for Yahoo! ID rick_umali.

When I was in college, I used to chat on-line all the time using Connect, an ancient dumb-terminal chat program. Later, I was a fervent user of mIRC, which is Internet Relay Chat. My login then was bitflip. Recently, I thought about grabbing the bitflip domain name, but it was already scooped up.

I briefly flirted with ICQ (my number is 58388303), but it always felt like a heavier application than Yahoo! Messenger. At my last job, an older version of the ICQ client wouldn't work behind the corporate firewall, but that's since been fixed.

As if e-mail wasn't enough!

Boy, The Way Glenn Miller Played

Theme from All in the Family

Boy, the way Glen Miller played. Songs that made the hit parade.
Guys like us, we had it made. Those were the days.
And you know who you were then, girls were girls and men were men.
Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.
Didn't need no welfare state. Everybody pulled his weight.
Gee, our old LaSalle ran great. Those were the days.