Ren: It’s Dave’s birthday on Saturday.
Ben: How old is Dave going to be on Saturday?
Ren: He’ll be 29.
Ben: Wow! That’s almost 30!

’nuff said.

Alex would simply not chill out this morning, so we went for a drive. The weirdest thing about having kids is the realization that you, no matter what it is you’d like to be doing, may at any moment need to pack up, get in the car, and randomly travel to nowhere just to get some peace.

I’m currently in a Jewel parking lot. Why? Because the kid is asleep, and the absurdity of sitting in a Jewel parking lot for 45 minutes is completely outweighed by the quiet and ability to drink my morning coffee in peace.

*sigh* This truck is the most expensive fucking bassinet ever.

I have a pretty stressful job. Generally, the result of my performance is a significant factor in the protection of billions of dollars. Yeah: Billions.

Meanwhile, back home, I have a family whose value cannot be measured in dollars. They are the reason I can work my stressful job, as well as the reason I do so; the income from my stressful job is what covers our house, car, food, yada yada.

The problem is that time, not cash, is what’s valuable to a family. And time is what my stressful job wants from me: as much time as it takes to handle the problems we face. In short, more time than any definition of a standard work-week can possibly cover.

Sure, it’s a badge of honor of sorts; if you can survive and not go apeshit while still getting things done, that means that either you’re pretty damn good at what you do or you’re a damn fine bullshit artist. Either way, you’re damn something.

I often hear about work-life balance, as companies try to avoid attrition by putting a friendly face on “we’ll pay you less to lower our demands on you.” The reality is, though, that simple economics often wins out: time is the scarce commodity, so a premium must be paid to get time.

Of course, there’s a flipside to everything. One of the great things about having a stressful job is that it’s always, always a challenge. I don’t have slow weeks or slow days. When I work, I constantly learn how to work better, and to push my skills further, because otherwise I’d drown.

One thing I fear is that if it weren’t so hard, I’d get bored. I just wish that there were a middle ground where there was a safety valve that I could use to let it go when I hit my limit.

So, I’ve been tagged by Ren. Here’s my thing.

1. Ten years ago: In 1996 I graduated high school with 39 other good midwestern kids. I also started college. I worked as a janitor, cleaning a church and school. I also totaled my first car in a spectacular moment of stupidity.

2. Five years ago: In 2001 I graduated college, worked for SGI, performed in “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum”, had my directorial debut ( David Mamet’s “A Life With No Joy In It”), and went on a date with someone I met online. Not a great moment.

3. One year ago: I got married, went to a conference in NYC( I love New York), got officially hired at my current job (from being a contractor), bought a condo, started trying to sell a condo, and learned that there are some people who don’t even realize what assholes they really are.

4. Yesterday: Worked. Did a lot, but it’s all pretty dull if you’re not a part of it.

5. Today: Worked more. See #4.

6. Tomorrow: Going to pick up my tux and go rehearse for Tony’s wedding.

7. Five snacks I enjoy: Guinness, nachos, chocolate chip cookies. I’m sure there’s others but I can’t think of them right now.

8. Five bands I know the lyrics of most of their songs: Morphine, Underworld, Nine Inch Nails, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, U2

9. Five things I would do with $100,000,000: buy a Ferrari Enzo and a garage in Europe to store it in, dabble in the Energy markets, give my wife the ring she really wanted, buy a place in New York, buy a summer home on Honshu.

10. Two locations I’d like to run away to: New York or Tokyo.

11. Five Bad Habits: working too much, drinking too little, not barbecueing enough, not eating enough veggies, not exercising

12. Five things I like doing: Hanging out with the fam, reading, playing video games, music, traveling

13. Five TV shows I like: Law & Order (CI/SVU too), Soccer games in HD, Time Warp Trio, Psych, House

14. Famous People I’d like to meet, living or dead: *shrugs*

15. Biggest joys at the moment: Dude. I’m gonna be a dad. That rocks.

16. Favorite toys: I just got LEGO Star Wars for the PS2.

17. Five people to tag: I’m the asshole who always kills the chain letter. This is no exception.

In geek circles, there’s been a lot of talk about DRM, fair use, the DMCA, and copyright. Here’s my take.

The screen on my Apple IIc flashed up a hi-res graphics splash screen for a program called Nibbles Away, one of the classic bitwise copy programs for that era. With Nibbles, it was possible to copy the 440k floppy disks in an exact way, preserving even the ordering of data on the media (Which was a then-common copy-protection scheme). At the time, the idea of fair use was being challenged and clarified, and even teachers in schools were getting in trouble for making photocopies of things to hand out to students. Gradually, the right balance was struck, but the one thing that didn’t stick was the use of technology to prevent copies. Time and time again, the digital protection schemes were either worked-around or defeated… Or were they? There were some successful DRM schemes even then…games that no one could figure out how to copy. The interesting thing is, those uncopyable games always seemed to disappear, as the companies who sold them went out of business. Why? Because after the initial market splash of a new game, there will always be other games to grab attention — unless you catch new attention through further distribution.

For years, the very industries that have been pushing DRM have been thriving on a secondary market that depends on the behind-the-scenes copying of their products. Friends tell other friends to check out a game, and they take the copy home and love it. They go and buy the strategy guide, and when the sequel comes out they buy that too. Sure, the first game was lost revenue, but you now have a fan, which is worth far more than one sale.

These businesses fail to recognize that in a saturated market, excitement over your product by those who can’t or won’t buy it can drive sales to people who can and will.

They say that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. In the marketplace this holds very true: companies that are hated are still in the public eye and still make sales. Companies that people are indifferent toward will begin to fade.

Me? I won’t buy DRM-enabled music. Which means I don’t keep up with the latest bands, because I don’t shop the DRM-based outlets (like iTunes). Which means I don’t hear new releases I might buy. Which means not only do I not buy new music online, I don’t buy it on CD either. My excitement about music has been dimmed by DRM, and my indifference to media companies is growing. So not only do I not pirate movies or music, I don’t buy them at all.

Thanks to DRM, I’m one of many customers that these industries are in the process of losing, and it’s going to take a toll when our addiction to popular media is broken by indifference to the sales channels.

So, apparently the founder of YouTube is taking advantage of the sale of his company to go back to school, get a grad degree.

That’s excellent. Some folks would buy an Enzo instead. (To be fair, though, if it were me, I’d do both…)

In any case, I tip my hat to you.

Sitting on the train - full enough that there’s a guy standing in the aisle in front of me talking to a woman about financial markets. Not sure if I care what he’s saying, but he’s speaking just loudly enough that I’m making out every third or fourth phrase. It’s not that I want to eavesdrop, it’s that he’s standing in the damn aisle instead of looking for a seat elsewhere on the train.

Life’s a great balancing act.

I know you’re not supposed to self-edit when freewriting but I just went back and erased something because it was dumb. Guess that makes this a little less than “free” writing. Perhaps “paroled” writing.

The funny thing about technology is that it’s easy to see the benefits of automation but it’s hard to see the complexities of getting something automated. For instance, say you want to have a program that counts calories for you. Well, the program needs to know what you ate, which means someone needs to type in or scan in or otherwise tell the program what you ate. Suddenly, implementing the data entry is more work than doing the calculation. When dreaming about system output, it’s easy to think that all the data is just out there somewhere. But it’s not.

Now approaching Ogilvie Transportation Center.

I’m feeling stressed out. I have a new person reporting to me at work, and on top of that my list of projects and support tasks is only growing. I feel like things are balancing precariously on my each and every choice. In short — I don’t want to fuck it up, and I feel like I’m skirting fuckedness by luck alone.

Deep down I know that it’ll all work out okay; it’s not like I’m in some predatory environment where I’ve got people trying to usurp my job ( who would really want to deal with this shit?). That doesn’t mean that my internal perfectionist isn’t freaking out at how sloppy things feel, though.

On top of all that, I’m going to be a dad again — the difference, of course, being that I’m going to be around for the whole process instead of catching up after two years. Scary stuff - not too long and I’ll be changing diapers again. Wheeeee!

All good stuff, but I still feel like I’m being beaten with wacky noodles or something. It won’t kill me, but it does give the old ego a bit of a wedgie.

Taken with my new Nikon D200, 50mm f/1.4 lens. Edited in Nikon Capture.

I’m thinking about cheating on my wife.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while now.

I’m very tormented about it. On the one hand, I love her. Cheating men often say “I love my wife,” which I always found disingenuous. Now I understand. I love my wife.

She just isn’t meeting my needs.

It’s been this way for a while now. Things have gotten… predictable. It’s kind of the same thing, over and over, week in and week out. It’s good, don’t get me wrong, but I need MORE.

I need more variety, more spice. I want to try new things, have new experiences. I want her to want those things with me. I want to go to certain stores with her and pick out indulgent, naughty items together. I want to get a little messy, take a few risks.

I think that the build-up and preparation is all part of the fun. I like to spend hours and hours getting everything perfect. But she doesn’t appreciate that. It’s gotta be quick and it’s gotta be the same damn thing.

I’m worried about getting caught. My wife knows that I often work late and she’s used to me travelling for business, so that’s not going to be a big deal. What I worry about is her finding mysterious stains on my clothing or being able to smell the scent of my trysts. When I’m home, will she notice my decreased appetite?

I’ve begun to fantasize about the kind of person with whom I would cheat on her. They would have to be into experimentation, they would have to indulge my particular, um, tastes, and they would have to be willing to travel - some of my fantasies take place in Paris or the Napa Valley. It doesn’t matter if they’re a man or a woman I guess - I don’t really have any hang-ups about that.

As long as they love food as much as I do.