Obama ordered his cabinet to cut $100,000,000 from the nation's budget in the next three months. So this is obviously political theater, since $100M is a totally irrelevant amount of money. Here's a handy graph (click to embiggen):



So what does he think this accomplishes? It just opens him to attack for being disingenuous. Seems like a politically dumb thing to do. Plus, it even sounds small. He could have gone for $700M which sounds much bigger, sort of like TARP. I'm sure that would have still been pretty easy to do.

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I go to starbucks fairly often. When I order a drink, they always ask my name and write it on the cup. When they finish my drink, they announce what it is ("grande decaf latte") and put it on the bar. They almost never mention my name.

So what was the point of asking it and writing it on the cup to begin with?

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Finally, when will this damn oven repair guy get here? This is getting ridiculous.

mjlewis and Kim Nalley got married yesterday. I had the honor to be the best man. Here's the toast I gave at the reception.

Thanks Mike and Kim for inviting us all, and sharing their wedding with us. And wow, what a beautiful day. Can we move this party outside?

Hi, I’m Dave, Mike is my best friend. We’ve known each other for, what is it, Mike? 15 years now? When did we get so old?

So Mike and I have spent a lot of time on a lot of different things over the years. We’ve fallen into kind of a pattern, actually. Mike picks something he’s pretty good at, and then he introduces me to it so he can kick my butt. Magic, racquetball, pinball, the list goes on. Somehow we never start things that I’m good at. Why is that?

But I did beat him to the whole marriage thing. Ok, I realize it’s not a competition, but ha ha, I won! Anyway, I thought I’d share a little of my hard earned knowledge from five years of marital experience. So I was thinking about what to say, you know, advice like, “Never go to bed angry,” or, “Remember that even when she’s wrong, she’s right.” But you’ve heard those ones already.

One thing I should mention is about teamwork. In a successful partnership, you each have to do about 80% of the work. Not every day – you have up days and down days – but you definitely have to do more than half, both of you. I’m not quite sure how the math works out[1].

Ok, so what else can I tell you. Well, it occurred to that my marriage is a sample size of just one, which means nothing, really, right? So I did a search of the scientific literature on marital satisfaction – you all know that Mike’s a geek, right? Yeah, well so am I, in case you didn’t figure that out – and here’s what I found.[2]

It turns out you can predict how successful marriages will be by watching a couple interact and looking at a couple things. First, how much the husband expresses sincere fondness for his wife (the other way doesn’t matter, don’t ask me why); second, both having high awareness of each other, meaning you can tell how the other person is feeling; and third, defensiveness (defensiveness is bad).

So here’s my advice. Mike: tell Kim – and show her -- that you love her, often. Both of you: don’t be defensive! And pay attention to each other, and think of each other, often.

So join me, raise a glass, to wish Mike and Kim a very happy, long, successful marriage. Mazel Tov!

Congrats to Mike and Kim!

[1] Here's why you have to do more than half. When you look at a job or your household, you think of the things that need to be done, and arrange to do about half of them. But you will inevitably underestimate some, generally the things you have little experience at, and you will forget others. If your partner picks up all the slack, she'll end up doing way more than her fair share. So both of you need to think about what feels like half, and do more than that, for it to come out about even. [3]

[2] From The baby and the marriage : Identifying factors that buffer against decline in marital satisfaction after the first baby arrives, Gottman et al, from the Journal of Family Psychology, 2000, vol. 14, no1, pp. 59-70 (27 ref.),

and Marital Interaction and Satisfaction: A Longitudinal View, Gottman and Krokoff, from Journal of Consultiog and Clinical Psychology, 1989, Vol. 57, No. 1, 47-52

[3] No, I didn't include the footnotes in the toast.

I found some more of those hotel differences:

Bidet	No.	Yes. Who uses these things, anyway?
Thermostat	Digital temperature setting with AC and heat.	Dial thermostat, heat only, room seems much warmer than the setting on the dial. I suspect the heat is just on a little all the time.
Crib	Pack'n Play.	Gold colored metal crib, complete with bumpers and tailored embroidered sheets. It's very pretty but much less functional than a Pack'n Play.
Internet	Free wifi.	17 euros/day wifi with a 500 MB download cap. I've noticed that the more expensive the hotel, the less likely it is to include internet access.

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I compared the VIPS restaurant from which we got take out to TGI Friday's. Actually, that was a better comparison than I could have guessed: check out the homepage of Grupo VIPS, the parent company of VIPS, and evidently a joint venture with Starbucks. See the restaurants across the top? Yep, TGI Friday's is up there with VIPS.

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Yesterday was Valentine's Day. Hope everyone felt loved and stuff. Katy excellently arranged for dinner reservations at the Ritz dining room for when it opened at 8:30. Unfortunately Jackson has been going to bed shortly after 7, but we kept him up to go. He was not a happy camper, unfortunately. We ended up alternately holding him and eating for each course to keep him calm.

The courses were:

• An unidentified appetizer which was a brown heart with the texture and consistency of unusually slimy pate. It tasted mild and slightly nutty, but I didn't enjoy it more than to taste, and Katy didn't even try it.
  
• Oysters, cooked in some sauce. Oysters taste to me like seawater, which I don't really enjoy.
  
• Some sort of pumpkin ravioli, but the pasta was more like a won ton wrapper than a normal ravioli. I was too involved with soothing Jackson to try this one. Katy said it was only ok.
  
• Fish. Hake, I think. It was wrapped in bacon, drizzled with honey and mint oil. I liked it.
  
• Kobe beef loin with a "crispy potato millefeuille", which turned out to be giant, super thin potato chips, two of them. There was also a nicely presented square of potato au gratin. The beef loin was again only decent.
  
• White chocolate mousse, tea and coffee, and mignardises. We ended up bailing before the dessert because white chocolate is a crime against god, and Jackson was at the end of his rope.

We were given as a parting gift his and her perfumes from Armani, and a bottle of wine.

Presents aside, I would have found this dinner to be extremely disappointing if I had paid the 98 euros apiece they were charging. Part of our stay included a dinner for two at the restaurant, which we used for this meal. It still cost €40 worth of tip, though. At least the couples around us were very understanding, which was nice of them. I think it helped that Katy and I were significantly the youngest patrons in at least our half of the restaurant.

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Speaking of food, I have a habit when in foreign countries of ordering things in restaurants because the names sound amusing, not because I have any idea of what I'm getting. The first time I tried this here, I ordered something that started with "lomo" and had a big pile of adjectives and modifiers after it. What showed up seemed to be pork or maybe veal cutlets. It turns out "lomo" means "loin". It was fine.

Today I ordered "lubina al horno." Doesn't that sound awesome? We later figured out that "horno" meant "oven". Lubina is sea bass, so baked sea bass. It was good.

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Today I was out with Jackson at the park while Katy attempted to nap. On my way back, a woman came up to me and asked me a question in Spanish. Aside: I get asked for directions all the time. I can be walking along in a crowd of people, and the lost will pull me out to help them. No idea why. Anyway, I replied, "No hablo Espanol." She then asked, "Parlez vous Francais?" "Un peut..." It turns out she wanted directions to the Prado, which I could provide since it was in sight across the street. Another happy customer.

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I'm too lazy to put up Madrid pics tonight, and there aren't all that many good ones anyway. None of the museums allow photos. Tomorrow we go to Toledo, which should provide some more fodder.

One fun thing to do pretty much anywhere is to go to a local market. The Mercat St Josep is a huge building filled with food stalls, selling all kinds of fish and meat and veggies. Generally things are much less packaged than you might see at home, so you get closer encounters with fish and whatnot. Plus, there were entire stalls devoted to organ meats. One guy was selling, among other things, skinned heads of some medium sized animal, perhaps lamb. He didn't want me to take a picture, though.

Mushrooms	Rabbits	Hocks

On thursday, we went to Montserrat, an hour or so outside of town. There's a monastery at the top of the mountain with lots of interesting history. The road to the top has been closed for weeks now due to rockslides, so the only way to get up is via a vertiginous gondola ride, which Jackson absolutely loved. Katy was less impressed.



The view from the top is impressive. Unfortunately, I had the camera on ISO 1600 without realizing it, so most of the photos are really overexposed. A few came out ok.

We had a lovely little hike to a cross out on a viewpoint. The most entertaining part of that was probably the cat that was out there. Montserrat has tons of cats that eat the tourist detritus. This cat was absolutely convinced we had goodies for him, so much so that he followed us all the way back to the monastery, a 20 minute hike.



Then we went into the church to see the main attraction, the Black Madonna, a reliquary statue of Mary and Jesus that dates from the 12th century. The legend is that it was discovered on the hillside and not made by someone, and that when they tried to move it it grew so heavy they decided to build a building around it instead. It's shielded in plastic, so photos are hard to get.



Friday, we took the train to Madrid. Train travel is such a pleasure compared to airplane travel. Security x-rayed our bags but didn't require deshoeing or laptop removal or liquid bans or any of the other ridiculousness that characterizes airline travel. We stuck our many bags on the train 15 minutes before departure, because we're paranoid americans afraid of missing the train -- everyone else got on with 5 minutes to spare. The trip was two hours, one stop in the middle. Jackson even slept the last third of it.

One thing it was not, though, was cheaper than air travel. Our tickets were €210 each, one way.

We're staying at a much higher end hotel next door to the Prado museum in Madrid. It will be nice to be downtown, as opposed to the conference hotel in Barcelona, where nothing relevant was within walking distance.

I will summarize the travel parts as follows: SF0->Frankfurt, 11 hours, of which Jackson slept less than 2. I slept not at all. Frankfurt->Barcelona, two hours, Jackson slept 45 minutes, I again did not sleep. Exhaustion level on arrival: high. However, we made it until 6:30, slept for a few hours, ate, then slept through to the morning. Jackson slept straight through.

Since then, he's gone to bed at 7 or so, woken up at 10:30 for a couple hours, then slept again until 8 or 9. So that's really not bad as time change transitions go.

Our hotel room has an unfortunate layout for having a baby, though. The bathroom area is not separated by a door, though the toilet and shower each have their own doors. And, bizarrely, when you stand at the sink, you are looking through a full window where the mirror would normally be at the bed and the rest of the main room. This means that any light anywhere lights up everything, and there's nowhere to go that's acoustically even a little separate. This sucks when your baby sleeps for 12 hours at a time, since that's a lot of time to be quiet. At least reading lights don't bother him, so we can have *some* light.


So, Barcelona! The main attractions in Barcelona are the weird Gaudi architecture, and the lovely Ramblas, the walking district downtown that includes the waterfront and the old medieval city. Let's start with Gaudi (sadly not, as I had believed, the origin of the english word "gaudy").

You can't talk about the guy without talking about the Sagrada Familia. This thing has been under construction for 125 years, pretty continuously, and is scheduled to be done in 2020. There are eventually going to be 18 towers according to Gaudi's plan, and they're apparently still following his plan. Crazy. He worked on the thing for 40 years, including exclusively for the last 15 years of his life. They fund it entirely through ticket sales and donations, which partly explains the length of the project. Though, as our guide pointed out, 135 years is not exactly an uncommon length of time for a major European Catholic church.

One thing they have changed is the construction techniques. You can see the dark stone that dates from the early construction of the thing, paired with the lighter concrete from more recent construction. It's a little jarring, actually. The style of the statuary on opposite sides of the building is also wildly different. We'll have to come back in a couple of decades to see what the finished product will be like, and to get to take a look without all the cranes and scaffolding. It's hard to imagine someone starting a project like this today.

Here's a pic of a pair of gables, or whatever those are, one built in Gaudi's day, and one built in the 70's out of modern concrete:



Gaudi did lots of other stuff, too. I like his complete hatred of straight lines. Also, tons of his work is covered with broken tiles, which I think is an interesting look:



Ok, enough about Gaudi. The Ramblas in the center of the town are lovely, full of performers posing as statues, some of whom will move if you tip them. Evidently the area is also full of pickpockets, as multiple guidebooks and various members of the travel agency have told us repeatedly. There are also people running the ever popular shell game, which somehow still attracts marks despite being a centuries-old scam.



I can't look at those guys without wondering if they're going to get skin cancer from wearing all that paint all day every day. They do a tremendous job of staying perfectly still, though.



The medieval city is lovely and quite big. It's now full of little shops and tapas bars and even a couple of museums, including the Picasso museum. The streets are tiny and twisty and full of old european feel, and provide a remarkable contrast with the wide Ramblas and the open harbor that surround the city.

Today, I'm at WSDM, the conference which provided the excuse for the trip. Listening to the talks is interesting, but not nearly as fascinating as I think they would have been if I still worked for a search engine. Most of the papers are on some little idea that will never impact me as a user, so it feels a little... academic.

I did feel bad for one guy, though, who had a really unfortunate stutter. I am impressed at his bravery in getting up in front of an auditorium full of people and fighting his way through, as in, "When a user enters his query into a search, search, search, hm, search, search... engine!" and so on. He also had a really excellent irish accent, if you'd like to picture him in all his linguistic glory.

We have a couple more days in Barcelona, then a train ride to Madrid and 5 days there.

Tomorrow, the three of us are heading to Spain: specifically Barcelona for a few days, and then Madrid for a few days as well. I'm somewhat of two minds about this trip.

On the one hand, I really do enjoy being a tourist in foreign countries. Spain is an easy destination, being a first world country with lots to do but also complete amenities and relatively little communication difficulties, even though neither Katy nor I speak Spanish. (Jackson doesn't speak anything yet.)

But on the other hand, traveling with a toddler is notoriously hard. We have an 11 hour flight to Frankfurt followed by a two hour flight to Barcelona. The flight to Barcelona will be in the middle of our night. Luckily, Jackson is super easy going, but even a super easy going 16 month old cries and gets frustrated with being too restrained, and 11 hours is a long flight.

Also, and this surprised me, Spain is cold this time of year. Barcelona is current expecting highs of about 50. It's snowing in Madrid. I don't mind the cold so much, but it does make everything harder, since we need to make sure Jackson is warm, and warm clothes are bulky. Barcelona is at least expected to be sunny. Hopefully Madrid will be too by the time we get there. What's up with the cold weather? Spain is in the south, and Barcelona is on the Mediterranean!

Spain is also tough because of the restaurant schedule. Restaurants are generally open at lunch time, and then closed from 1:30 until 8:30 or 9:00. That's a long gap when you have an unpredictable sleep schedule, and definitely need to eat in that span. So we'll plan to snack in our hotel room a decent amount, I think.

Oh, and this is in a slight way a business trip. Our paper is being presented at the conference, and I'll attend for that day.

Barcelona and Madrid both have casinos, but I suspect I won't be getting much poker in. For one thing, I'm not taking a meaningful amount of cash. But I may poke my head in just to check it out, obviously sans Jackson.

For my writing class, we were assigned to write up an anecdote from our childhood. Here's mine. Warning: pretty long.

( Fishing with my Grandfather, or an Examination of the Utility of Eyelids )

Actually a significant episode from that week was cut for length. Perhaps I'll relate that one some day as well. Also the fish my cousin Jason caught may have been slightly exaggerated for effect.

I've decided to take two classes this quarter, whilst I consider the future progress of my life.

The first is a photography class. I have a pretty good dslr that we bought for our honeymoon in africa (see right). I mostly use it on auto (though I hear there's a better way), and it's really time to move beyond that.

The class is at foothill, and while it's presumably nothing amazing, it will incent me to take a variety of pictures, which is really the path to being a better photographer. Plus I actually have a specific problem to work on, which is pictures of Jackson with no flash in indoor lighting, which I have a lot of trouble getting to look good.

The second class I'm taking is a writing class from Stanford's continuing studies, taught by a poet and writer named Rita Mae Reese. The first class was tonight, and I'm not entirely sure what I think about it. On the one hand, I'm generally a bit down on classes full of the hoi polloi who bog things down with questions and pointless observations (I can be a bit of a snob about some things), but on the other hand, I'm such a novice that I don't even know what questions to ask, so I think the dumb questions will bother me less. On the gripping hand, the real thing I need is a deadline and some technical advice, both of which I'm very sure this class will provide.

This is an interesting step for me in that I generally approach things I do with some degree of confidence. Certainly I've known I would succeed at every job I've taken. Here, though, I literally do not know if I have what it takes to write a decent (say, publishable) story. I have a file of story ideas I've been noting down for years now, and a few half-hearted stabs at writing a scene, but every one of those seems just awful on rereading. Some of which is practice and craft... but some of which is talent, and I don't yet know which to blame.

Well. So far I can blame the craft. I have not taken a creative writing class since early in high school, and haven't written much at all. In a few months I'll have a better sense of how far I will have come (I predict far) and how far I will have to go (again, far) to be able to write something worthwhile.

Wish me luck.

Out with the old:



In with the new:

Coming back on Sunday was all kinds of suck. United really is impressive in their ability to piss off everyone.

We had upgraded to first class using miles, in part because the car seat we had for Jackson doesn't fit very well in coach seats. Last time, Katy left substantial amounts of skin and a certain amount of blood on the plane trying to get the car seat out. The flight to DC was first class, and it was much, much easier.

Anyway, we check in the day before, and are sitting in row 2 as expected. But Sunday morning, Katy goes to print out the passes, and discovers that we are now in row 18, economy (not even economy plus). Uh, that's not good. She calls United and talks to someone, probably in India, who looks at the computer and assures her that we in fact have our seats up front, and puts a note in the file about the conversation.

But, of course, when we got to the airport, no such luck. The agent checking us in evinces zero sympathy, and in fact doesn't appear to believe we have any grounds for complaint. "You upgraded with miles, and that allows you to be downgraded." Her whole attitude was that we should expect that sort of thing to happen. She tells me there's nothing she can do and says that if I could try talking to the people at the gate.

I ask to see her supervisor, and she says no. Uh, nice. I suggest that perhaps there's a reason that United is in bankruptcy if this is how they treat their customers, to which she responds by ripping off the priority tags on our luggage. "Wow," I said, "You're even taking the tags off?" She passive-aggressively replied, "I don't see anything here that says you should have it," gesturing to her computer. "Nice service. Way to treat your customers."

So we go sit through the very long security line (we would have had access to the fast line if we still had first class seats), and TSA decides to look at our bag with the baby food in it. The thug security person tells us that there's a new policy about baby formula, which is that it must be opened before they will let it through.

Um, first of all, we've traveled with formula gazillions of times and have never heard of this. Second of all, the formula we have is in cans. If we open it, how will we carry it without spilling it? We don't have that many bottles with us, and they aren't spillproof in your backpack.

Third of all, formula goes bad after an hour. So actually, once its opened, it's totally useless. So we just told the woman to throw it away. I would have protested but at this point we're getting near boarding time, I've heard enough horror stories about how security abuses people who get uppity, and Jackson is old enough for cow's milk, so we just move on.

I now see that the TSA policy on baby formula and breast milk doesn't say anything about opening it. It does say that they can test it if they want, but the agent didn't indicate that anything would be tested -- she just instructed the other one to open everything (including all the jars of baby food).

I would seriously travel on an airline that didn't have any security. It can't be worth this amount of hassle and time.

When we get to the gate, the desk is mobbed by people who are standby. I go get a gate check tag for the stroller and ask about our seats. The agent is very apologetic and nice, explains that she can't do anything (first class is already boarding, actually, so I didn't expect she could), and suggests that we write United a letter, and that they might compensate us in some way. We should do that.

The conversation was night-and-day different from the first one. She really did understand that we were unhappy for a reason. Was it really so hard?

Anyway, we finally board, and the captain announces that he too is sorry -- they were expecting a plane of a certain size, but ended up with a much smaller one. Presumably they had a mechanical problem, rather than simply lying to all the people who bought tickets who don't have seats. So we got downgraded because there weren't as many first class seats as first class tickets. The people immediately in front of us were United 1K members, super frequent fliers that the airlines love, and they too were stuck in economy.

The thing I don't understand is, why didn't anyone tell us? If the first agent had said, "I'm sorry, we had to switch planes due to a problem, and we only have 1/3 of the first class seats we though, and we have to give them to people who actually paid the fare" I would have been grumpy, but at the situation and not the airline. As it was, I was vowing never to fly United again, and even after it turned out they didn't randomly fuck us, which the agent suggested we ought to expect, I still feel a good amount of residual bitterness.

The gentlemen in front of us also complained they were told nothing. One of them said he had 450,000 miles, and he was going to use those up without spending another dollar and then switch airlines. I certainly don't blame him. Though my guess is that United will do whatever it takes to soothe him.

Anyway, the flight itself was fine. Jackson only cried a few minutes, and slept for an hour and a half. The person in front of me reclined his seat all the way, which was annoying for both of us -- my room was greatly reduced, and every time I needed to do something with Jackson or move around, I bumped his seat. Jackson even grabbed it to shake it at one point. He didn't seem to notice that that never happened when it was up. Perhaps I should have pointed that out to him.

Traveling is always tiring and unpleasant. It seems like many of the people involved actually do their part to make it worse, not better. Does it really have to be that way?

We're going to Spain in February. Dealing with Jackson on a 5 hour flight is fine. I'm not at all looking forward to the 11 hours to Frankfurt, then the 5 hours to Barcelona. Hopefully the trip itself will be worth it.