Rock-tober 11, 2019

In 2007, along with team members from our church, Andrea and I were in Tanzania as guests of the Archdiocese of Tanganyika. During our three weeks in the country, it was a fantastic cultural exchange as we met with Anglican and government officials, parishioners, as well as regular folks from towns and villages. As we went from place to place, there were always formal introductions. When Andrea stated her name, there was usually a knowing smile among the Tanzanian contingent we were meeting.

During one session with the diocese ladies group, Andrea introduced herself, and in good-natured shock, the hosting ladies collectively crinkled their brows. "What?! Andrea? In our culture, that is a man's name." In that region, the name "Andrea" was not androgynous like "Pat" or "Chris". Nor was there a feminine nuance like "Jean" vs. "Gene". It was strictly masculine.

They immediately set about rectifying this and peppered Andrea with questions to learn more about her so that a more suitable moniker could be bestowed. During the steady stream of questions, they gleaned that Andrea's birthday fell in November. With this, the questioning suddenly ceased, and the meeting hostesses conferred with each other. They turned to Andrea, smiled, and unofficially christened her with a Swahili name that translated loosely to "Gentle Rains". They went on to explain that her birth month coincided with the start of one of the country's rainy seasons.

When she relayed this to me later, at first I laughed. "Wait a minute. You were named for a thunderstorm? Something loud and sometimes scary? Wow. I guess redheads have a reputation here, too."

Slowly, as I gained some situational awareness, the deliberate and affectionate goodwill of the parish ladies group moved me. They were actually being very honoring in their choice of Andrea's nickname. Tanzania is an equatorial country. Depending on your location and the season, it can be very dry and very hot. The driest time of the year is typically the long six month stretch between mid-May and mid-November. The advent of rain around Andrea's birthday in this largely pastoral country is literally life-giving.

Sting released "Desert Rose" in 1999. It was an exotic collaboration with Cheb Mami, an Algerian singer riding waves of popularity at the time in continental Europe. These are some of the English lyrics:

This desert rose
Each of her veils, a secret promise
This desert flower
No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this

I've written missives to Andrea before, but nothing this flowery. Besides, I'm not sure how she'd take to me suddenly calling her "Desert Rose". It sounds too much like Keats rather than the cigar-chomping, bourbon swilling author of this blog. Regardless, I find myself more partial to the nickname bestowed by that small group of Tanzanian women. Even though the Swahili "Mvua Nyororo" doesn't really roll off the tongue, I find it to be more apt. I've known her over half my life and it's been a grand adventure. While there are times when she can be loud and sometimes scary (she is a redhead), her presence in my life has been life-giving.

Rock-tober 10, 2019

I was talking to a buddy during lunch and the conversation came around to video games. His son recently landed a job at Chik-fil-A for the express purpose of funding his next gaming console - a Nintendo Switch. I checked out the device and was impressed. Its form and capabilities are radically different from systems released just a decade ago.

My last gaming rig was an Xbox 360, and at the time it was the near epitome of gaming technology. Not only did it offer some seriously immersive games, but the device also doubled as a DVD player. Also, with existing subscriptions, it functioned as a portal for streaming services like Hulu and Netflix. While that may draw a yawn today, a scant 10 years ago, a lot of us still had Blockbuster membership cards.

When the latest Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim, came out on its famous release date, 11-11-11, I picked up my copy, loaded it up, and went deep. I submerged myself for hours in that world, constantly working to level up my avatar. Periodically, Andrea attempted a few quests but found it just wasn't her thing. She was content and amused to watch me run around the province of Skyrim, clearing out "just one more dungeon" before turning in. During one session around midnight, she went to bed, admonishing me to do the same. "Sure thing, Babe. I'm close to leveling in alchemy - I just need two more 'crimson nimroots'."

After an annoyingly convoluted search, I found the aggravatingly rare plants but immediately got sidetracked into another quest. Next thing I realized, Andrea was tapping me on the shoulder. I had my hands full trying to take down an Elder Dragon, so I brushed her off. "I know. I know. I'll come to bed in a sec." She immediately rebuffed me.

"No, hon, you won't. It's 5:00 in the morning. You leave for work in an hour."

Before the Xbox 360, my last console was a now vintage, faux wood-grain Atari 2600. These units sold for $199, a bargain considering the Switch is $300, as was the Xbox 360. However, adjusted for inflation, that $199 would set you back a cool $800 in today's Benjamins. My buddy Mike and I spent countless hours dodging a trio of dragons and an annoying black bat in Adventure or digging for the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Even with a stack of game cartridges and easy access to drinks and snacks in the kitchen, sometimes you still needed the arcade experience. Arcade games didn't always translate well to the 2600's 8-bit console. While it sold a crap ton of units, Pac-Man for the Atari did not look good. While they were very functional, Atari joysticks and paddles didn't give the same granular control as high-end arcade games with trackballs, spinner dials, and multiple buttons with special sequences or combos. Sometimes the Atari version just didn't exist. One of my favorites, Tempest, comes to mind.

To remedy this, Mike and I had a plan on the last day of school one year in Junior High. We walked from the school to the arcade downtown with our pockets bulging with quarters and dollar bills we'd hoarded over the past few weeks for just this occasion. We made multiple runs at every game, smack-talking each other from across the room. Periodically, we paused at the snack bar, recounted our exploits, and checked out our high scores. After hours in the shadows, we emerged, blinking at the sunlight, substantially lighter after dropping our horde of loot down countless coin slots, and walked home. On the way, we laid out plans for the rest of the summer. More than likely it involved going toe to toe with our three favorite dragons, Yorgle, Grundle, Rhindle, and that bloody black bat.

Rock-tober 09, 2019

In my current shop, among a core set of coworkers, I instituted the idea of a lunch offense. The premise is that nobody's perfect and mistakes inevitably happen. No big deal. However, if your misstep causes me more work or gets me in trouble with the brass, I will fine you a lunch. Nothing extravagant, but pricey enough to discourage the cited behavior in the future. How can we be expected to learn from our mistakes if there are no consequences?

A recent infraction involved my devoting a couple of hours prepping a report for an upcoming meeting. A colleague comes over to my desk and asks what I was working on. "I'm rushing trying to finish this up for the 10:00 brief."

"Oh. I canceled that meeting because of conflicts."

"What? But it's still on my calendar!"

"Yeeaahh...I forgot to send the cancellation notice. Sorry, man."

"No apologies necessary. You just earned yourself a lunch offense."

As the seriousness of the infraction rose, so did the lunch penalty. One of the guys on the team submitted a leave request for several days around a major national holiday. However, the request was submitted nearly the day of his departure. His coworkers who followed protocol were already on leave, and his absence would have left the remaining team extremely short-handed. The guy's site lead called me and asked how it should be handled.

"Well, what's his story?"

I could hear the annoyance in the lead's voice. "He says it's a last-minute family thing that his wife wants him to attend."

"I know it sucks, but if you're at all able to cover it, let him go and tell him he owes you a lunch for each day you cover his shift."

Particularly egregious offenses warrant levying the maximum fine of 10 lunches. While I've been hit with a lunch fine here and there, I've thus far dodged this onerous sentence. However, it has been exacted in our shop.

Naresh was reorganizing a stack of hardware one day. Zack, his task lead, admonished him, "Just leave it, Naresh. That's got a live database and I don't want anything to happen to it." Naresh pressed on.

"I'm just trying to gain us more room. Relax. Nothing's gonna happen. Why are you always so twitchy?" The words barely left his mouth when he tugged on the box just hard enough to jostle its power cord loose. The box immediately spun down and the sudden silence was like a jolt to Zack.

"What. Did. You! Just! Do!?"

"Ummm... I think it had a loose power cord"

"Did I not tell you to leave it alone!?"

I was unaware of this exchange when I came around the corner. "Hey, I was on a server at it just blipped out. What's going on?"

Zack, trying without success to access the database, sharply nodded his head towards Naresh. I looked at Naresh who was smiling sheepishly. "Naresh? Dude. What. Did. You. Just. Do?"

Unsuccessful in his attempts to revive a database he'd been working on for two months, Zack angrily pushed back from the keyboard. "I'll tell you what he did! He ignored my instructions, insulted me, corrupted a database, and earned himself a 10 lunch offense."

In the following weeks, Zack repeatedly reminded Naresh of his outstanding lunch debt and threatened to start charging interest. Naresh eventually plea-bargained his sentence down to 3 paid lunches and a $25 gift card to Chipotle, Zack's favorite fast food joint. He's never made the same mistake again.

Rock-tober 08, 2019

Years ago, Andrea and I were at a dinner party as guests of her sister and brother in law. Andrea's sister is a nurse and so a number of the attendees were in the medical profession. One doctor in this crowd managed to stand out as he was very loud and very boastful recounting his recent accomplishments. What managed to pique my interest was the rehash of his latest investment coup - an issue of a Superman comic book.

In January of '93, an event in the comic book world was sending shockwaves throughout the industry. DC Comics was killing off Superman. This was huge. Comicdom had, of course, killed off characters before, but never anyone as universally known and loved as Superman. First introduced in 1938, Superman is one of only a handful of characters who have had a continuous presence in the medium from the golden age of comics in the '40s through to the modern era. His death would change the comic book landscape forever.

I was a comic collector at the time and although Superman was not I title I followed, I thought it would be great to have a copy of this historic printing. The whole release event was slickly marketed. The issue itself came sealed in a black shrink wrapped cover with Superman's crest in red dripping font on the front. A ton of merchandise was packed inside:

• the comic
• a poster of DC superheroes carrying Superman's casket
• trading cards
• decals
• a newspaper clipping recounting Superman's death
• a black armband with Superman's crest

I went to the local comic store on the release date and saw a line of my fellow collectors standing in a line that spilled out the door and wrapped around the corner of the strip mall. I realized that any available copies were likely already taken and remembered thinking, "Ah well, it would have been nice." I went ahead and joined the crowd to talk shop about the ramifications of this event on our hobby.

The cover price of this package was $2.50. In the days immediately after its release, our comic book community was hearing stories of this issue selling for hundreds of dollars. Soon, the reported prices were closing in on the $1000 mark.

Back at the dinner party, the doctor was explaining how he managed to acquire a copy of the issue through one of his connections. Another party guest asked if his toddler son had seen it. "Hell no! He's not getting his hands on it! I'm sticking it in my safe and using it to pay for his college!" It became apparent he was not a collector. As he continued to crow about his investment strategy, I started to see red flags.

When he described it, he didn't mention black shrink wrap. If the sealed package was opened, its value would plummet. He also mentioned the cover showed Batman releasing Superman's cape to a gust of wind, and it had a subtitle - "Funeral for a Friend". He was describing Superman #76. The problem was the black bagged issue that was commanding stratospheric prices was Superman #75. I don't know how much the good doctor laid out for this component of his son's college fund, but he was a month late to the party and very misinformed of its value.

As an epilogue, a few decades later I finally acquired a copy of Superman #75. It was still pristine and sealed in its factory black shrink wrap. I've not opened it yet - more for sentimental reasons than for investment purposes. My inlaws' doctor friend should have realized that the value of collectibles can be very fickle, affected by any number of variables. In the case of the infamous Superman #75, DC "miraculously" brought Big Blue back to life, nullifying further speculative investments. My copy cost me a less than stratospheric $10.

Rock-tober 07, 2019

Earlier this summer, when I came across the movie Tequila Sunrise on one of our streaming services, I hit play and settled into the couch to enjoy the show. Released in 1988, it starred Mel Gibson as a reformed dealer trying to keep to the straight and narrow, and Kurt Russell played his lifelong friend and narco trying to rise in the law enforcement ranks. Michelle Pfeiffer rounded out the cast as a restauranteur and Gibson's romantic interest. My reason for spooling up the flick became obvious as a smile crossed my face when Pfeiffer made her screen debut. I called to Andrea who was standing in the kitchen, "You know, I had a major thing for Michelle Pfeiffer back in the day."

Andrea snorted and crinkled her brow, "What do you mean 'had'? I wasn't aware you outgrew that condition."

Yeah...busted. I had a couple of snarky retorts came to mind, but I thought better of it and simply smiled a goofy teenage grin, shrugged my shoulders, and slumped back into the couch.

For the uninitiated, a Tequila Sunrise is a cocktail commonly made from orange juice, grenadine syrup, and, of course, tequila. It gets its name from the colors of the different stratified ingredients resembling a sunrise. Ironically, considering the number of bar and restaurant scenes, the classic drink didn't feature prominently in the movie and was mentioned only once in a single throwaway line.

More ironic was the failure to use the Eagles's 1973 single release "Tequila Sunrise". To be clear, the song "Tequila Sunrise" wasn't about the cocktail, but rather a cowboy who started a tequila bender one evening and continued until the sun came up. One of the first songwriting collaborations between Frey and Henley, it was part of their second album Desperado. It didn't fare well on initial release, peaking at 64 on the Billboard "Hot 100". Nevertheless, it remained a favorite of Frey and became a staple in the group's concert setlists. From the liner notes of Eagles: Very Best Of, Frey said of the song, "'Tequila Sunrise' was written fairly quickly, and I don't think there's a single chord out of place."

Rock-tober 06, 2019

Earlier this year Andrea and I attended a birthday party for one of our longtime friends. It was mostly Andrea's crowd, but we eventually merged into a conversation circle of faces familiar to me.

Everyone was discussing growing up in their hometown and the nostalgia they felt for it. I was seated next to the birthday girl's mother, and she turned to me, "So, where did you grow up?" I straightened up a bit, and a smile crossed my face.

"I'm from Long Beach, Mississippi." Another friend in the same circle chuckled.

"Wow! Did you hear the pride in his voice?" She wasn't wrong. Growing up in Coastal Mississipi was a whole different experience from growing up in other parts of the Magnolia state. I'd like to think the mix of palms, pines, and oaks, proximity to sand and water, and the permeating brine in the air just got into your bones, gifting us with a diverging outlook from the rest of the state. I'm not sure my childhood would have been as idyllic as I remember if I'd grown up north of Hattiesburg.

These days I find myself getting my coastal fix in unusual ways. Phone calls from Mom keep me apprised of family friends still in the area along with the latest spate of business and restaurants attempting to get a foothold. I've found social media is a two-edged sword. My buddy Mike sent a video he shot while on one of his work runs. There was a tropical storm over in Louisiana, but the beaches along Highway 90 were wholly unaffected. He described the scene in the 30-second clip, "It's beautiful out here with the whitecaps in the golden sunshine and the sea oats blowing in the wind."  While it's great to see what my coastal tribe is doing, it's a major drag being a good 20-hour drive away. Perhaps most unusually, I discovered a live cam from the Biloxi lighthouse that I'll have streaming on a monitor in my office. Watching the stop and go of Highway 90 traffic and the progress of a summer squall rolling through is utterly mesmerizing.

Andrea and I caught Anthony Rosano and the Conqueroos as they opened for Bob Seger when he played a nearby venue. It was a great set, and one song in particular reminded me of the conversation at our friend's birthday party. My periodic bouts of wistful yearning for the coastal life of youth are not unique to me, and we're all susceptible to waves of nostalgia about our hometowns. The Conqueroos sate these spells by touring the southeast with their brand of blues and rock. Based in coastal Virginia, they get it. Their song, "Long Island Sound" references a body of water much further north that featured prominently in their formative years as Mississippi's Gulf Coast did for mine.

In many ways, the youthful escapades from the song mirrored my own. Hot rod cars, summer nights under street lights, and kicking off our shoes at the beach is common ground. Like them, no matter where they go, the coastal place of my youth will always be a part of me and the place I call home.

Rock-tober 05, 2019

I was talking to a colleague of mine about what we'd done over the past weekend. I mentioned discovering one of my streaming services had the entire run of the bionic man so I wound up binging a good portion of the first two seasons. He shook his head. "Huh. Never heard of him."

This colleague was a child of the '90s so he can be forgiven for being unaware of Steve Austin and his enhanced skillsets. I explained the premise: "Colonel Steve Austin was a test pilot and astronaut. His last mission ended tragically when he lost control of his craft and crashed." Anyone who's ever seen the show will have a memory of watching Steve's aircraft flipping end over end in the opening sequence. "But he survived." My colleague rolled his eyes.

"Would've been a pretty crappy show if he didn't..."

"No. Seriously." A smile came over my face. "He was barely alive. But they rebuilt him. They had the technology. They had the capability to make him the world's first bionic man. He was better than he was before. Better. Stronger. Faster."

I listed out the prosthetics. "Both legs, right arm, oh yeah, and his left eye." Right now, folks my age are hearing the hyper-realistic 70's bionic sound effects in their heads.

"Pfft. Sounds pricy." I snorted. You couldn't ask for a better opening. I quickly Googled the inflation rate.

"Well, today it would be over 36 million and change. But back then it was a mere 6 million dollars." When he found out how old the series was, he was shocked.

"Does it hold up?"

"Meh. It got pretty campy."

Back in those days, technology was our friend. Robotics and bionics were cool and something to implement whenever and wherever possible. However, along the way, automation and augmentation took a turn down a very dark alley. These days, dystopian views of technology becoming our oppressor rather than our savior are more the norm. Robotics and AI are taking over jobs everywhere from factories to fast-food burger joints, and hyper-intelligent machine learning algorithms are starting their incursion into white-collar positions. A lot of decision making is being left up to circuit boards and transistors rather than human gray matter. From statistical analyses governing insurance coverage to self-driving cars and drone-delivered packages, we're edging closer to a machine age.

This is not necessarily bad - if it's done properly. But really, can we trust ourselves to do it properly? We're already too tethered to technology like junkies looking for a hit. Observe people on the street. Nearly everyone is hyper-focused on their phones in their hands rather than being situationally aware of where they're walking - sometimes with hilarious results. Even in the movies, guys like Robocop and Iron Man are outnumbered by the likes of Terminators, Agent Smiths, and Hal. The Dark Side got Vader while the Rebels were stuck with 3PO.

In 1983, Styx made their position known with the release of "Mr. Roboto". With lyrics like, "I'm not a robot without emotions," their vision of the future was also apocalyptic with the continued dehumanizing of the workforce. They continued on,

The problem's plain to see: too much technology.

Machines to save our lives. Machines dehumanize.

That's pretty bleak, but a good summarization of our use of technology. Who is serving who? Colonel Steve Austin's campy good guy exploits are looking pretty good right now.

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