Richard Dawson should ask this

This is a working list shared with some friends.

Things you can get in a parlor:

* Ice Cream
* Pizza
* Massage
* Tattoo
* Funeral
* Pachinko
* Beauty

English is hard.

Bedroom Haiku

Bright Halogen Lamp
So Hot Flies Incinerate
Smells Just Like LASIK

Lost: Night vision

Please return if found.

Until then, look out traffic! Aieeeee!


I'm like driving around reinforcing racial stereotypes.

Frickin' laser beams

Yesterday I went and got me one of them LASIK eye surgery jobs.

Seems to be working out well so far -- I'm back in front of computer after resting all yesterday -- and I'm looking forward to being able to buy a bunch of cheap sunglasses.

Some early observations:

* Mmm. Vicodin. makes you feel moderately groovy.
* Tons of equipment automation. Reminds me of how they had patients on conveyor belts receiving old-school radial keratotomy in the Soviet Union. (RK cheaper than providing eyeglasses to Soviet citizens.)
* The LASIK machine sounds like the ray guns that the Terminator-bots fire in the opening credits. ("Bzzzzzt!")
* You can smell lots of ozone during the procedure. I don't care what it comes from, but it sure smells like burnt hair and that was pretty gnarly, because you're thinking like "hey, that's what burning cornea smells like."
* I'm not fully convinced if the kids still recognize me.

Watching the Wheels

Friday was my last day at Google -- the third job I'd somehow managed to hold down since college. Stock closed up almost 1% on the news.

I had been with the product management team there since 2002; combined with the startup life that preceded it, I thought it was high time to hang out some with the family.

I hosted a lot of candidate and media interviews at Google and was often asked if the atmosphere at the company had changed much lately. I would always respond that even as of 2002 it was already the biggest company that I'd ever worked for in my life, and that I had a ton of ambivalence about the "big company"-ness of it all. But once I'd opened the lid, the people there and the experience they offered turned out to be nothing short of amazing. And the good things that were there when I had joined -- most importantly the scrappy, passionate, bright people who really enjoy solving interesting, hard problems -- are still alive and kicking, thank you very much. It really is the world's biggest startup company, and I look forward to more surprises from these guys.

We're scheduling some travel and look forward to seeing some long-unseen friends -- frequent fliers will do well to note our plans and avoid sharing the cabin with our circus -- but mostly, we'll probably turn up often at family-friendly venues that give the hipster set the creeps.

Longer-term, who knows? John Lennon took 5 years off after son Sean was born. I'm not sure if I can pull that off, but hmm, it sure would be fun to find out!

Cardio-sympathizers

While it was great to hear that my big scare last week wasn't a heart attack (which begs the question -- so, what *was* it then?), sharing the story with friends and colleagues have brought all kinds of freakish stories out of the woodwork.

Examples:

* Severe chest pain after slouching on the couch for a few hours. Always.
* Anxiety attacks that happen, like, weekly.
* Heartbeats that miss regularly.

Whoa. Get thee to a medical professional, stat! All chest pains deserve medical attention.

Greetings from Fremont

Eat well, exercise lots, and you too can avoid *this* fate: