n the words of Chato Cadena, from the fantastic-but-canceled-by-shortsighted-studio-executives television series Kingpin: "I don't believe in ghosts - but I saw one."

The following occurred in Winter of 1992 on an empty road somewhere in the desolate stretch between Los Angeles and Fresno. Good friends who attended University with me at the time know this story already, but for casual acquaintances and readers, this is probably new.

_________

Finals week, UCSD.

Thanks to an unfortunate coincidence between the physics and chemistry departments, I had THREE finals scheduled back-to-back-to-back on the same day. I didn't know it at the time, but students in such situations were allowed to petition a rescheduling of one of their final exams. No matter ... on about four hour's sleep, wired up to my eyeballs on caffeine, I marched to campus with countless facts and formulae precariously crammed in my beleaguered skull ... with bright hopes of swinging some Post-Finals Genuis Effect mojo into the three hours when the knowledge actually mattered. Hours pass, and by the time I turned in the final of my final exams, the morning light that greeted me bled into an inky nightsky.

Having already packed my belongings for the trip back up to SF in the trunk of my car, I stupidly thought "Hey, I'm packed. Why not drive back home tonight?"

So on four hours of sleep over 48 hours, I began the northbound drive from San Diego on the 5 freeway, crossing Los Angeles at midnight. An hour north beyond the Grapevine is a vast expanse of farmland and rural desolation; in the wee hours, the only vehicles on the road are long-distance trucks, rumbling landlocked leviathains ferrying their cargo hinter and yon.

And it was here, miles from civilization, the effects of my fatigue rapidly began catching up with me. Sleep researchers call them micronaps ... lapses of consciousness lasting a few seconds ... during which my wheel would drift over the bumps in the road to a loud BRBRBRBRBRBR (between friends, we refer to this phenomenon as 'brailling') that jerked me awake, only for me to drift off a few minutes later. Dangerous, I know. Did I mentioned I was young and stupid?

An hour or so north of the Grapevine pass, I saw in the corner of my eye a young boy, who couldn't be older than 10, dressed in a black leather jacket too large for his frame, huddled on the side of the road. He has a scared look in his eyes, and shivering from the December air. A runaway, I thought as I approached the boy's position. What's he doing way out here? Kid's probably hungry and been walking for hours. Maybe I should pull ove-

He runs. Across the freeway ... a hard sprint that places him on a collision course with the trajectory of my car. I stomp on my brakes full-stop, and even as I hear my tires screech, I know there was no way I can stop in time. Brace for impact in three-two-one ... but as he crosses the beam of my headlights, he vanishes ... just fades from sight.

For a full five minutes, I sit roadside, gasping for breath ... pulse roaring in my temples while I try to cool my nerves.

Where the hell did he go?

I search the grounds around where the boy stood, walked the line next to the long black stripes on asphalt where my tires left their mark. Nothing.

Did I imagine the whole thing?

No matter. Clearly, I was in no condition to drive and desperately needed rest. I pull into a convenience store parking lot six miles up the road, put my seat back and promptly drop into a dreamless sleep.

And to this day, driving along that stretch of road between Los Angeles and Fresno during nighttime still gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Who was that boy? What happened that night?

Your turn.

Tell me a time when you've had a brush with the inexplicable/supernatural.

ast week, This week:

• Fixed the domain-name registration issue that threw me into a frenzy for a few days. Domain-jacking scum : 0. Thanks for the help from those who chimed in their advice!
  
  
• Had a wonderful week with a person who always brings a smile to my day. You know who you are.
  
  
• Cleaning up a presentation in Keynote I will be delivering next week.
  
  
• Ate more gelato than really healthy.
  
  
• Caught up 80% on backlog of emails. Hurrah.
  
  I fear my posts are sounding more and more like twitter blurbs.
  
  More substantive updates pending.
  
  

whimsical tour through a century of major world conflicts, told through ethnic foods representing their respective countries.



PS: For those of you who can't tell your matzah from your falafel, a cheat sheet of the 'cast'.

he rollercoaster of my "high Beta" life continues its relentless pace.

Last week: TED was a phenomenal experience, and I am grateful for the connections that got me a chance to mingle with some of the brightest minds in the world, including a 5-minute conversation with Al Gore (!!!). Got a chance to meet a BMW executive who took me behind the wheel of a hydrogen-powered BMW 750 to showcase its seamless switching between H2 and conventional gasoline modes.

BIL was a huge hit, and while I felt unprepared for my speech/presentation, it seems the audience received it enthusiastically and I had strangers mob me after the talk to continue the conversation. More on that later.

Yesterday: Car accident. No bodily injury as far as I can tell, but car is gone. If you're a RL friend, can fill you in on details of that by voice or email.

Today: As VP Membership of Adobe Toastmasters, I am hosting my good friend, Bruno Bowden (lead engineer at Google Earth), to speak at Adobe's San Jose HQ office at 4pm and share secrets/hidden parts of Google Earth to an audience of Adobe folks. Non-Adobe employees are welcome to come by if you are in San Jose - just email me your particulars and I can pass your name to Security for a guest pass.

Chocolates will be served by Cacao Anasa.

From time to time, I want to curl up in a ball and sleep for a week straight.

This is one of those weeks.

But no rest for the wicked, as the saying goes.

	Only two bags of this design in the world ... The much-coveted, subject-of-wild-rumors TED swag bag for attendees. With about $600 of electronic goodies and one-of-a-kind gifts inside.
	Hydrogen Powered BMW Drinks Hydrogen, belches out water as exhaust.
	A Jawbone in every Bag Last year @ TED, Jawbone showcased their wares, but teased everyone by saying they are not for sale. Now, they are free in every bag.

o.

A few of you who know me IRL know this has been a HELL of a few weeks - in every sense of the word; your support and caring means more to me than I can convey in a simple blog post. All I can say here is - thank you.

In a moment, I will begin the long drive toward Monterey for pre-TED get-togethers; If I had my druthers, I'd reschedule these things, but unfortunately, commitments are what they are and there are promises to keep.

It's not all downside - I am having dinner tonight at 7:30 with fellow TED attendee Jon Staenberg and some mutual friends/business contacts. Local Monterey folk, LJ friends (I'm looking at you mauitian), are welcome to join in - please message me and I'll fill you in on details.

A repeat from a previous post: are there folks I know in Monterey, or people I should meet with when I am there? Are there others on this list who will be attending BIL or TED that I should meet? Please speak up!

More soon.

wo unrelated contacts in as many weeks suggested I take some of my essay-ish writings/dream journals and publish them on Divine Caroline, which looks to be a user-generated-content online version of the Oxygen Channel.

Does anyone reading this have any experience with/heard of Divine Caroline?

Also: on behalf of a client willing to pay good $ for the right person; I'm looking for a community of portrait/manga artists with a good eye for detail (preferably in the San Francisco area) - is there a specific group/community I should be aware of to make some inquiries?

o.

Through a confluence of good fortune, positive relationship-building mojo and no small measure of social engineering, I will be at the uber-l33t and completely sold-out-a-year-in-advance TED Conference in Monterey, CA. Hurrah!

This will be my first time in attendance, so a question: for those of you more familiar with its attendees and the environment - suggestions, recommendations, input?

Since I will be in Monterey, I've also signed up to speak at BIL, a 'counter conference' that is to TED what BARCAMP is to FOOCAMP, an open-source collaborative counterpart to its expensive, exclusionary cousin. Both have their virtues, and I will be speaking on the topic of positive psychology borrowing heavily from Martin Selgiman's fine work in Learned Optimism.

Are there folks I know in Monterey, or people I should meet with when I am there? Are there others on this list who will be attending BIL or TED that I should meet? Please speak up! :)

his weekend, I will be photographing History Channel's City of the Future contest, where top architecture firms from major metropolitan areas compete to assemble their vision of skylines of their respective cities 100 years in the future.

Local LJ friends/long-time lurkers/friends without blogs ... want to meet up for lunch?

Poll #1123628
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Lunch/Get-Together at Ferry Building?

eath, as the saying goes, is the great equalizer, and sooner or later, we're all bound for the bone orchard.

For Major Andy Olmsted, it was sooner - much too sooner. As a solider serving in Iraq, he understood, better than most, the ephemeral nature of life and had the presence of mind to entrust a final blog post to a good friend in the event of his untimely death.

On January 4th, 2008, MAJ Andy Olmsted's team was ambushed, and he was KIA in Iraq. As my only sibling is an officer in the U.S. Navy, I've thought hard about the harsh price that war extracts from the youngest and brightest of our citizenry.

The following are excerpts from MAJ Olmsted's final words/post:

What I don't want this to be is a chance for me, or anyone else, to be maudlin. I'm dead. That sucks, at least for me and my family and friends. But all the tears in the world aren't going to bring me back, so I would prefer that people remember the good things about me rather than mourning my loss. (If it turns out a specific number of tears will, in fact, bring me back to life, then by all means, break out the onions.) I had a pretty good life, as I noted above. Sure, all things being equal I would have preferred to have more time, but I have no business complaining with all the good fortune I've enjoyed in my life. So if you're up for that, put on a little 80s music (preferably vintage 1980-1984), grab a Coke and have a drink with me. If you have it, throw 'Freedom Isn't Free' from the Team America soundtrack in; if you can't laugh at that song, I think you need to lighten up a little. I'm dead, but if you're reading this, you're not, so take a moment to enjoy that happy fact.

...

I do ask (not that I'm in a position to enforce this) that no one try to use my death to further their political purposes. I went to Iraq and did what I did for my reasons, not yours. My life isn't a chit to be used to bludgeon people to silence on either side. If you think the U.S. should stay in Iraq, don't drag me into it by claiming that somehow my death demands us staying in Iraq. If you think the U.S. ought to get out tomorrow, don't cite my name as an example of someone's life who was wasted by our mission in Iraq. I have my own opinions about what we should do about Iraq, but since I'm not around to expound on them I'd prefer others not try and use me as some kind of moral capital to support a position I probably didn't support. Further, this is tough enough on my family without their having to see my picture being used in some rally or my name being cited for some political purpose. You can fight political battles without hurting my family, and I'd prefer that you did so.

On a similar note, while you're free to think whatever you like about my life and death, if you think I wasted my life, I'll tell you you're wrong. We're all going to die of something. I died doing a job I loved. When your time comes, I hope you are as fortunate as I was.

...

I wasn't the greatest husband. I could have done so much more, a realization that, as it so often does, comes too late to matter. But I cherished every day I was married to Amanda. When everything else in my life seemed dark, she was always there to light the darkness. It is difficult to imagine my life being worth living without her having been in it. I hope and pray that she goes on without me and enjoys her life as much as she deserves. I can think of no one more deserving of happiness than her.

"I will see you again, in the place where no shadows fall."
Ambassador Delenn, Babylon 5

I don't know if there is an afterlife; I tend to doubt it, to be perfectly honest. But if there is any way possible, Amanda, then I will live up to Delenn's words, somehow, some way. I love you.

Andy, I've never known the privilege of sharing a cold one with you and hearing your laughter, the playful twinkle in your eye I can just visualize when you regale others with your stories. Now I never will - but your words will echo in eternity, as will your love for your family and friends.

I've considered your request to play 80s music in your honor, and combed through my extensive collection - the one that kept coming back at me was Joey Scarbury's 1981 hit single from the TV Show "Greatest American Hero."

Been playing it on repeat since hearing about your passing, and its lyrics, in connection with news of your death, holds a new poignance.

Look at what's happened to me,
I can't believe it myself.
Suddenly I'm up on top of the world,
It should've been somebody else.

Believe it or not,
I'm walking on air.
I never thought I could feel so free-.
Flying away on a wing and a prayer.
Who could it be?
Believe it or not it's just me.

It really should have been someone else.

May your G.A. carry you to Valhallah on swift wings, and may your love carry Amanda through these dark moments of her loss.

o it seems the 'privilege meme' (authored by Will Barrett) has been making the rounds; people bold the things that are true about their upbringing from this list as a way to showcase how much 'privilege' (read: unfair advantage) they had over their peers - perhaps supposed to feel guilty about it?

As an immigrant for whom English is my THIRD language (and whose parents started over in their mid-30s in a new country with a new language), the entire excercise irritates me on so many levels I felt the need to create a counter-meme. The truth is, by global standards, EVERYONE who just lives in the westernized world is absurdly privileged, and it is incredibly destructive to focus on the miniscule 'unfairness' of how so-and-so got to go to a museum as a kid, and you didn't.

Go through the list below. Bold the stuff that's true about you.

Or I'll make it easy on you and just list the stuff that's UNtrue.

Poverty
1	Unlike 50% of the world, I have always had access to clean, potable water.
2	I don't know anyone who does NOT have access to clean, potable water, and until I read the above, did not know the percentage of world population that does not have this benefit.
3	I don't know anyone who died from malaria.
4	I don't know anyone who died from malnutrition.
5	I don't know anyone living on less than US$1000 per year.
Government, Education, Internet
6	I live in a country where the average citizen has a life expectancy over age 40.
7	I live in a country that has a literacy rate of over 95%.
8	I have a connection to the Internet either personally or through a library in my city, and through that, can access the repository of the world's knowledge with a few keystrokes.
9	My country does not enact nationwide internet censorship and will not forbid me from reading articles or posting comments critical of my country's leaders or policies.
10	My country does not jail or execute citizens who express dissent with its current leaders or government policy.
11	From age six to eighteen, I have access to a public education system that is free to residents of my community.
White, Heterosexual Males (others, please skip down to next section)
12	If I am financially successful, I am told the only reason I have a comfortable lifestyle is because of my 'white privilege' - any hard work, risk-taking or personal work ethic I applied to better myself during my schooling or career is discounted. I am obligated to 'share the wealth' and endure confiscatory taxes of my income and investments as 'reparations' to nonwhite strangers I'm presumed to have oppressed on my way to to top.
13	If I am financially/professionally unsuccessful, I am solely responsible for my failures and can expect to be openly ridiculed by mainstream culture ('hick' 'poor white trash' etc).
14	I must never acknowledge reverse-racism/anti-white discrimination; the existence of women-only fitness clubs, race-gerrymandered college admissions or government set-aside contracts for less-qualified competitors are all legitimate recourse against centuries of oppression perpetrated by people of my skin tone/gender.
NON-White Heterosexual Males (N-WHM)
15	If I start a business, there exists an entire federal bureau dedicated to granting me access to capital, consulting and mentoring, based on my ethnicity or gender.
16	There exists advocacy groups of my specific ethnicity/gender/sexual orientation, who strongarm special privileges for my group from governments and give me access to free legal and media representation if I ever feel aggrieved by a WHM and wish to make a big to-do about it.
17	There exists Oppression Studies majors at most universities where students can earn bachelor's and even advanced degrees just by studying/cataloging how those with my ethnicity/gender/sexual orientation don't have it as good as WHMs.
18	If I, as a minority, express an opinion skeptical of the notion of 'white privilege,' I will be scolded as a 'self-hating [minority type]' who has 'internalized my oppression;' there is only one correct opinion to have on the matter and if I dissent, I can expect to be branded a 'race traitor.'