Rain

Last week I was listening to Blind Melon's No Rain because it was depressingly sunny outside and I wanted the rain to come back. Remember that little girl in the bee costume? I even brought my umbrella to work on a perfectly sunny day; and endured a lot of ridicule for it. Wishful thinking. Well, today I got my wish and right now it's pouring!

I've always loved the rain. I'm sorry that my blog has taken such a sappy direction. Love, nostalgia, etc. But some people are liking it and that's all I've got right now, so we'll see where this goes. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, rain...

I like the way rain sounds from inside a tent. Or against a window. We don't get to hear rain like that, here, though. We just hear cars outside violently swishing through puddles on California Street.

Since it was raining, Kj and I decided to go for a walk. Like I said, I like the rain, but it seems like most people don't. I think you're not supposed to like the rain, or something. You're supposed to dread it like, "Oh man... it's gonna rain!" And everyone around you is supposed to groan in agreement. I think it's related to the "Good, how are you?" effect. Or facing the door in elevators. It's a social norm and it's best to not be a weirdo.

But here I am, defiantly declaring my weirdoness. A friend and I used to go downtown and face the wrong way in elevators too. People do not like that!

You know who has a good reason for hating rain? A turkey. Wait no, that's one of those conventional absurdities. It's not true. Like how eskimos have a thousand words for snow. I bet turkeys actually like the rain. It's a shower. We take showers for granted.

But you know who really has a good reason for hating rain? An earthworm. Those poor things. To them, rain is a catastrophic flood of their otherwise peaceful and quiet subterranean homes. Worms really dread the rain. They say to each other, "Oh worm... It's gonna rain! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!" Do worms run? Slither? Wiggle? I guess they wiggle.

So they wiggle out onto the sidewalk: perhaps the second worst place on earth for an earthworm. How many worms have you squished with your bike tire? You're probably blissfully unaware of 99% of them. And I don't know about you, but I pulled literally dozens of worms apart as a kid. Have you ever baited a fishing hook with a live worm? Of course you have. Everyone has. What a horrible thing to do! You should be ashamed.

Why do they just lie there on the sidewalk? Maybe those are just the dumb ones. Maybe the smart ones are hidden in the grass.

If those dumb ones happen to survive the storm on the pavement -- with its barrage of bicycles, sadistic kids, and baitless fishermen -- they're still totally screwed! Because the sun will come out. And what happens when the sun comes out? They get fried! Right onto the sidewalk! They melt into a 2-dimensional shadow of a worm.

Kjersti pointed out to me on our walk tonight that the one redeeming, enviable quality about a worm is that it can split into two worms. That it can not only survive some of those trials I described, but it can double its own population in the process. Maybe the smart half can wiggle its way to the lawn.

Confession: One time I sent away my hard earned allowance for a Sega Genesis game called Earthworm Jim. It never came. I checked the mail every day, literally for months. To this day I haven't played the game. Don't ever send cash in the mail. Especially to some fly-by-night catalog in the back of a videogame magazine.

Too Many Friends?

Today I was going through the guest list for our upcoming Leap Year Game Night party, and I noticed that I wasn't friends with Marco... Or at least Facebook didn't reflect that real-world fact that we are friends. Naturally I clicked "Add to Friends"... And one of those fancy Facebook DHTML overlays came up and animated a very curious message:

You have exceeded the limit for adding friends!

You are temporarily blocked from adding friends. Block times vary depending on the feature and scale of abuse. Blocks cannot be lifted.

Misuse of Facebook's features may result in your account being disabled.

If you have questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page here.

Click here to go home.

Huh? You can't put a limit on friendship! Damn you Facebook! First it threatens me. Then it tells me to go home. Nice touch. I'm taking my ball with me!

I clicked on the FAQ, and it says, "Facebook has determined that you are using a feature at a rate that is likely to be abusive." What? It was one person. One single click. So what are those limits? Well, to that, the FAQ says, "Unfortunately, Facebook cannot provide any specifics on the rate limits that we enforce." Hmm... If you had good abuse prevention, you would be able to disclose it, right? "But then people could get around it!" you might say. Well, not if it's good! Come on Facebook, get to work! I'm not abusing anything.

Sorry Marco, we'll have to wait for Facebook to trust me again before the world knows we're friends.

Mail

Don't you like getting stuff in the mail?

There's something about getting something in the mail. You know when you get home and you kind of relax a little bit and maybe eat dinner? Then you check your email for the ten-thousandth time that day and there's nothin new or interesting. Then maybe you go check up on some of your favorite blogs. Maybe you check out Facebook to see if you got anything significant. Then you remember, "Hey, the mailbox! Good ol' mail! There'll be somethin' cool there waiting for me!" But how often is any of that really all that thrilling? It's always such a let-down. We're always chasing that feeling. We're such attention addicts.

With email you get mostly spam. Even if the obvious spam is filtered out pretty well, you still get newsletters, or order updates, or bill reminders, or whatever other impersonal messages.

It's not unlike snail mail, where you get newsletters, catalogs, solicitations, or bills. What sucks about opening real mail as opposed to email, though, is that you're in no mood to act on anything. You just want to get something cool and be done with it. You're not going to look at that bill right now. It'll get lost in the pending pile along with those 1099 forms you'll wish you could find later in April.

With blogs, well, the central ego of those isn't you... it's the writer. No thrill there.

From time to time on Facebook you get a wall post, or a message, or a funny BFF Toaster review of you. But usually it's just impersonal crap like, "So-and-so was duped into sending you a notification using our spammy app! Click here to be forced to install it before you and your friend know what you've done!"

Remember the old days when it was just the mailbox and the landline?

There was no caller-ID. You'd answer every call hoping it was the girl from your class who told you she liked your shirt. It was always someone asking for your mom. The worst was when they thought you were her! My mom's friend Barbara did that to me all the time. What a demasculating thing to do to a 12-year-old.

You'd get off the school bus, or walk home from school, and go to the mailbox hoping that neato toy you spent your paper route money on finally came. Or your Nintendo Power magazine. Or a letter from your remote friend. Or a postcard from your grandma. Hell, at that age, you were excited about anything that came addressed to your name! Even if it was crap!

Sometimes you'd be expecting something special or just hoping for something out of the blue, so you'd check the mail. Then check again. Then again. Then just sit on the porch waiting for the postman. You'd try to figure out when it is that he usually comes, and you worry that maybe your residence didn't get any mail that day! You'd wish that every car sound you heard was the mail truck.

The worst was when you'd be waiting for something on a Saturday. No school to keep you busy all day. You just gotta distract yourself and check the mail later. But maybe he'll come early today! How many strolls to the mailbox have you taken on a single Saturday? The worst is that if it doesn't come.... you have to wait until Monday! Or worse, Tuesday if there's a holiday.

Have you ever had someone get the mail and put it in a drawer somewhere and not tell you! Grrrr....

What about when you get home from a long vacation and you go pick up the mail at the post office that's been piling up... What an orgy of torn envelopes and papercuts that always is!

Sometimes you'd be waiting for a package. The UPS man would come like Santa dressed in brown. You'd hear the big truck coming around the corner all the way from the basement. How disappointing was it when he stopped at a neighbor's house instead? Bastards!

Anyway, today I got something pretty awesome delivered to me. UPS brought my new Wii. It had all the stuff that gets ya so excited: the eye-less Amazon smirk on the box, the smell of new plastic and electronics, earlier-than-expected delivery. And all the nostalgia that comes from the words "Nintendo", "Mario", and "Press Start".

I also got a post card. Now this one was particularly creepy because the handwriting on it looked way too familiar. It was my name, that's for sure. And my address. It was handwritten, that's always cool. But something was off. Who wrote this? Let's see... Who's it from? This should be exciting!

Ah damn it. It's from the dentist. And it's MY HANDWRITING! Argh. I feel so violated. I guess I should make my appointment. Thanks a lot.

The rest of the mail was junk, bills, and prospectuses. To the pending pile and the recycling bin.

Happy Valentine's Day

Today I was at work, and everyone was asking me what I was gonna do for Valentine's Day. Everyone seemed pretty disappointed when I informed them of our agreement to basically do nothing. Not that we don't want to celebrate our cheesy love. We just didn't want to waste our money and time buying stupid gifts. Also, as usual on Thursday, Kj had school and wasn't going to be home until 9pm.

But what always happens to me is I catch the Valentine's fever. I decided today that I would finally get that laptop Kjersti's been wanting. The one she's been using is old and bulky and has absolutely no battery life, and is Windows. She hasn't taken it to school, I think because she's embarrassed of it.

So I left work a few minutes early and stopped at the Mac store near the office. I told the guy what I wanted: a white Macbook with a ComboDrive. He started giving me the whole spiel about all the different options. He wasn't a very good salesman. He was just giving me the same old line he gives everyone. But I had just told him I wanted a Macbook! Just give it to me and charge my credit card and be done with it. I had to interrupt him a few times to convince him that I did indeed want to buy a Macbook. I had a train to catch and it was annoying that he was preachin' to the choir.

#1 Rule of Sales: Don't sell to someone who's already sold.

Once I finally convinced him that I wanted the very computer I had come in the door requesting, he rung it up. He didn't try to sell me Microsoft Office or anything else. What a disappointing salesman.

Anyway, that's not the point...

The point is I got Kj a Mac. Now we're both Mac people. Tomorrow we're getting a Wii. We're so chic. We're thinking about starting an independent film festival and putting out our first folk album.

Anyway, Kj didn't follow the rules either! She bought chocolates and champagne.

We had a nice Valentine's night once she got home. I surprised her with the laptop. She got me drunk. We ordered pizza and watched Lost. Perfect.

Interesting fact: My great grandfather had the last name Falentine.

19 Months

Today (Feb 8th, 2008) Kjersti and I have been married for 19 months. Every month on the eighth we go to Chili's to celebrate. I'm not sure why we chose Chili's. We both like the food, I guess. I always get the same thing. Kj usually gets something different every time. I think we like it because it's nothing special. I think we like to feel like we don't need to do something fancy special to celebrate. We always have a great time even if a baby is crying or something. Plus Chili's is always the same, which helps us reflect on how we've changed since the last time, like Holden Caulfield's favorite indian statues at the museum. Also we both like to people-watch and usually there are some interesting characters at Chili's.

Anyway, I thought I'd write a little (or a lot) about how Kj and I met and how we came to be married. Most people don't really know the story. I think our parents don't really know the story. Some people think we started dating at a long distance and were engaged within six months. Some people think we have been together since high school. Truth is, both groups of people are sort of right.

My senior year of high school -- at Brighton High School in Sandy, UT -- I took this German exchange student to the Christmas dance. A group of us all went to dinner, and then to the dance. Kjersti was with my friend Pete. That's when we met. We didn't talk to each other much, but we stared at each other a lot.

I had this architecture class that year. I had senioritis so I had a hard time taking the class seriously. In fact, since it was right after my lunch I usually didn't come at all. But one day I was there because it was snowing outside and I couldn't get my Geo out of the parking lot, so I ate in the lunch room and went to class. I had "A" lunch, and Kjersti had "B" lunch, which meant she went to lunch when I went to class. Anyway, my teacher was her track coach. She and her friend needed a microwave to heat up something, and they knew Mr. Wiscomb had one in his classroom, so they came in. I sat right next to the door and when I saw her come in I -- well, I don't want to get too corny -- but this was the first time I'd seen her since the dance.

She and her friend walked to the back room and tried not to disturb the class too much while Whiskey was lecturing. A few seconds later I stood up and followed her into the back room and went right up to her and said, "How you doin?" or something equally cocky (I was a senior, after all). So we started dating a little bit, nothing really serious.

Then I graduated. That summer we continued to date off-and-on. I think we were both dating other people too, which in retrospect is kind of stupid. I don't think people should date multiple people at the same time if they really really like one of them. But then again we were in high school. Fall came and I went to college (but I still lived at home). Kjersti and her family moved to Idaho and that kind of ended everything. However, we emailed each other from time to time.

Years went by. Five, to be exact. I did my computer science and math degrees; Kjersti finished high school and started college in southern Utah. She went to France for six months. Strangely, while she was in France we started emailing again. Shortly after she got back from France I emailed her and asked her if she was ever going to be in Salt Lake. She came up during the Christmas break and stayed with a friend. We went on a group date... we immediately hit it off again. I felt more like myself than I had in the past 5 years.

Once again, I was a cocky senior. This time in college. I was applying for graduate school and working full-time at a programming job. Kjersti lived three and a half hours away, was going to school and working full-time with disabled people. We'd take turns driving to see each other every week. Sometimes I didn't show up to work on Monday morning cuz I couldn't get myself to leave. Shortly after we started dating again I got an acceptance letter from Stanford. It was kind of bitter sweet because I had to go and I knew it would separate us again. But we had the summer so we just had as much fun as we could.

We did a lot of stuff that summer, but maybe I'll leave those stories for other posts. September came way too fast, and I packed my Jeep and she came with me to help me move-in at Stanford. Then she flew home and I was all alone. I couldn't stand it. I was losing her again. We made a deal to talk to each other every night at 10pm. And we did. Sometimes for hours.

October came and Kjersti's 22nd birthday was approaching. I flew back to Utah to celebrate it with her. I had a few presents sent to her -- she told me once in high school that she really wanted a globe, and somehow she still didn't have one. I brought the ring with me in my pocket. I got a reservation at the Zion National Park lodge (pretty close to where she was living). On her birthday we went and hiked up to this beautiful place called Angel's Landing, which I recommend if you ever go to Zion. At the top there were all these people, so we just sat down and ate wheat thins and took in the view. I was so nervous. I wanted us to be alone and all these people were around. I felt idiotic for not thinking about that. At this point I was certain she was going to say no. Eventually the sun started going down, so people left to hike back down. Finally we were alone. Some cheesy stuff happened that ended with her saying, "Yes!", jumping on me, and almost sending us both tumbling off the cliff. A random guy showed up at that moment, took a picture of us, and left. Then we hiked down in the dark, which was kind of dangerous.

Anyway, we got engaged in October and she wasn't going to graduate until June. So we continued the long distance relationship, but it felt so much better knowing we were both committed to this thing. June came, the wedding was planned for July, and I got an internship at Microsoft in Seattle. Once again, she came out and helped me pack up the Jeep and move up there. Then she flew home. A month later I took a week off my internship, flew in the night before the wedding, got a wedding license barely before the office closed, and the next day we were finally married. :) We got a moving truck for all the stuff we both still had in Utah and drove it up to Seattle. Finally, we both lived in the same city, which hadn't happened since high school! We had a great time in Seattle, I finished up my internship, Kjersti enjoyed not having to go to school or work or anything. We rented a trailer, moved back to Stanford, and immediately left for a honeymoon in Japan. I finished my masters degree and started work at PowerReviews in April of 2007. Life has been great ever since!

So this post was pretty long. I'm sure no one will read it all the way through, but now when people ask me to clarify how Kjersti and I met, I can just send them here.

And for anyone who's interested: here's the video that played at our wedding. Baby pictures and all that cute stuff.

Addy

What if you could send a package to an email address? Or an OpenID? What if you went to an OpenID provider such as claimID.com and entered your physical mailing address? And what if I sent mail to claimID.com/yourname and the post office pinged claimID.com to resolve the physical adddress? What if you didn't need to tell Amazon your shipping address, you just needed to sign in with your OpenID? And what if you moved tomorrow, and you changed your address on your claimID profile, and all your mail just went to the right place? What if you had one communications identity -- online and off -- that you had complete control over?

This is an idea I've been throwing around in my head for a long time. At one point I was calling it Addy. It's something I've discussed with Martin. It's something I've told a lot of people about. It's something I'd like to build but I don't know where to start. But I know where I want to get: getting a letter from my grandma addressed simply to addy.com/grourk.

Gravitron

I guess I'm finally breaking down and starting a blog. Well, I don't guess it... I am. I say, "I guess" a lot. And "basically". But that's not the point.

Basically, I guess the point is I haven't started a blog yet... Mostly because they're called "blogs". That word is fairly ugly, but I guess it's here to stay. The only word that's worse is "blogger". No wait, there's another one: "blogosphere". How many real words were slammed together to make that one?

For some reason the word "blogosphere" reminds me of this ride that used to be at The 49th Street Galleria -- which was this very strange place in Murray, UT that had miniature golf, a carousel, a bowling alley, arcades, a big staircase, and lot of green felt "carpet". It also had this ride called the Gravitron. Basically, it was a giant wheel oriented horizontally. You'd get inside and strap yourself to the outer wall. Then it would spin, and the centrifugal force would push you agains the wall. We used to unstrap ourselves during the ride and try to maneuver ourselves so we'd be upside down, then try to get back on our feet before it slowed to a stop (or else you'd fall on your head). Or we'd try to keep our arms out in front of us as long as we could until they gave out and we hit ourselves in the face or chest.

The 49th Street Galleria was later renamed the Fun Dome, which is a very dumb name because the building didn't resemble a dome in the least. I think it's now a community college of some sort.

Anyway, the ride was torn out after a short time. I think mostly because a lot of people threw up, and it would fly everywhere and hit everyone in the face. EVERY TIME. I never barfed, though.

Actually, I went for ten years without throwing up ever. Contrary to my reputation, I didn't start drinking until I was 22. Here's another interesting fact: centrifugal force does not exist.

Well, this concludes my first post. I may or may not do this again.