Hoo boy… life took over again. Here’s what happened in the last month:
Kat and I went to her tenth college reunion at Brandeis University, where we met up with friends of hers (in some cases, also friends of mine) and had a lot of fun for three days. Kat even convinced me to dance, which anyone will tell you is both a rare thing and an event to be avoided at all costs. Still, I enjoyed myself. The campus is quite beautiful, and the view from the top of The Rock is pretty nice too.
The day after we got back from the reunion, I went out to Mountain View for nine days to get to know my fellow team members better, and get myself up to speed on what’s going on with Netscape 6.1 and the future of the browser. Despite what you may have heard, Netscape is not getting out of the browser market. If nothing else, it would be kind of silly for them to hire someone like me if they weren’t going to be a browser company any more. Anyway, my parents flew out a day after I did for a vacation, so we met up for dinner while they were on their way through town to the wine country north of the city. That weekend, Peter Murray (good friend and library automation expert extraordinaire) was in town for a conference so we also met for dinner. It was definitely odd meeting up in San Francisco with people I know who live (literally) thousands of miles from there, just as I do.
A few days after that, Kat flew out, my parents came back into San Francisco, and we all set off on a vacation which we’d had planned before Netscape first contacted me about the job. We went—where else?—to Ragged Point for several days, and put relaxation on the top of our “To Do” list. I’m hoping that my pictures come out okay, because if they did I got some beautiful shots. We also saw a pod of (probably) humpback whales off the shore, which is unusual for that time of year. And, of course, we dined like emperors on the incredible culinary creations of Roger Wall, genius chef at the Ragged Point Restaurant. In short, a wonderful time was had by all.
Just as a side note—the more I think about it, the more I like the idea I proposed in my last update: U.S. federal income tax forms should allow taxpayers to vote for the programs on which they’d like to see their money be spent. For example—and I’m being very hypothetical here—assume that Americans collectively indicated that they wanted most of their money to go to NASA, and very little of it to the Defense Department. We’d know which one should get funding priority, wouldn’t we? Of course, in the real world it would likely be the other way around, but that’s not my point. What I’m trying to say is that when you ask people what they’re willing to pay for, you find out what they consider most important. I think that’s worth knowing.
