And in the morning
He dress and go to hell.
All activated by
A little timer bell.
-Spin Doctors Forty or Fifty

While putting Hallie to bed a little while back, I began to muse about what life milestone really marks the death knell of the fun of childhood. Two ideas came to mind (and one promptly turned around and left. Maybe I should muse on what marks old age, eh?)

Hallie’s world is so different from mine because she is not yet a slave to the clock. Infants don’t schedule their lives around what time it is. They don’t wake up to the sound of a jarring alarm clock: they wake up when they wake up. They don’t eat at a regular time: they eat when they’re hungry. What we experience as 30 minutes of playtime, she experiences as a virtual hour of fun.

While I was unemployed I had the chance to relive life unbound from the artificial stresses of time. At least to some degree, anyway; everyone has their committments. It was a refreshing break to say the least.

We are so rigid with the parceling out of minutes and days. You must work at least 40 hours a week. We must be at work by nine o’clock. Dinner will start promptly at 6 PM.

The third millennium is so much different than the second one.

Sorry, don’t have time for the gym tonight.

Just don’t have the time.

Where does the time go? Does it ever really get here?

I came across a serendipitous article today in the local Business Leader magazine. It sums up my thoughts very well:

For almost all of human existence, time was measured by the calender, not the clock. We charted our lives by the moon, the sun, the seasons, and the migration of the animals. Almost all of the noises and sounds to which we are accustomed did not exist for our great-grandparents. And almost all have to do with transportation, communication and time – getting you and/or your information to someone else on time.

Just think, quietly for a moment, about the stress in your life. How much of it is caused by time? Bedtime, alarm clock, rush hour, appointments, meetings, time clocks, etc. You’re scheduling, or worse, someone else is scheduling, your life around time.

Well, in our little world which we have created for ourselves, we certainly can’t do without accurate time, but it might do you some good to remember it doesn’t really exist. We made it all up. So, some quiet peaceful morning, say to yourself, “Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?” Then, for a while, just be. You’ll find it refreshing.

Next week, the little girl who’s world knows no time will turn one year old. We’ll throw her a big party, cheering her on as her first birthday becomes her initiation into the world of time, one from which she may never escape. Soon she’ll be scurrying from one place to another, beckoned by the hands of the clock.

I hope she’ll be smart enough to take her eyes off her watch once in a while and simply enjoy life.

I got my first paycheck from my new job at Oculan today. It covers four days, and was totally unexpected. I never get on anyone’s payroll this quickly, but since Monday was Memorial Day, the payroll processing company Paychex had a later deadline for payroll this time around.

Though the check is lightweight, it is nonetheless money. It also means that I only missed one paycheck during my time spent unemployed. I could also say I never went a month without a paycheck.

I am well aware of how incredibly fortunate I am. My thoughts are with my friends and relatives who are still out looking.

After posting about the Stones and the music industry, I remembered one of the many quotes from Keith Richards. Keith knows where its at:

Nobody starts off to play an instrument with the idea off making money. You learn the guitar because you have this burning desire.

Even as a senior citizen, Keith Richards kicks ass!

I found myself searching through my music collection tonight for just the right song to fit my mood. I had to reach back to find it in the Rolling Stones’ Waiting On A Friend. The odds of my turning on the radio and finding a DJ in the same mood as I am are about as likely as Britney Spears being a virgin. Some guy programming a music computer in San Antonio days in advance can’t possibly know what I’d like to hear right now. That sucks.

As much as I bitch about the music industry (and as much as they damn well deserve it), I can’t deny that I just can’t do without their product. I’m hooked – a music junkie – and I’m having the hardest time quitting.

I own a ridiculous number of compact discs: three-hundred-plus shiny metal discs. They span the musical spectrum, from rock to, uh… rock. But different kinds of rock. Most of them are from bands you’ve probably never heard of. Many get played once or twice and then go into retirement.

I used to buy a CD about every other week, my musical cravings driven by the Music Choice cable radio service I used to subscribe to. Music Choice does what the local stations could never do: they play new, wild, unproven music. It was gloriously raw and unpredictable, and I didn’t take my headphones off for three years.

But one day the spell was broken. I’m not sure what made it happen really. Maybe the music just wasn’t as interesting, or I got tired of braving billowing cigarette smoke just to see a band play live. No matter what the cause, I hung up my headphones and turned my attention to other things.

My CD collection has largely stayed the same as that day I kicked my music habit. Oh sure, I still dutifully grab one or two for the road, but it’s really been a while since music really moved me. And I really miss that.

The day the music died was Thursday, February 8th, 1996: the day President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. According to some, the law was designed to spur competition in telecommunications. At least that’s what we were sold. What we got instead was massive consolidation:

The law as it existed prior to passage of the new Act contained certain restrictions on the ownership of broadcast stations in order to protect localism and the diversity of voices reaching people through the media. The new Act contains provisions that loosen those restrictions. The Act eliminates a national ownership cap for radio stations that the FCC had established and modifies local radio ownership limits.

In other words, the act essentially killed local radio. The big chains gobbled up stations with the higher profits brought forth through slash-and-burn practices and remote programming — the ultimate cause of local radio death. It’s like the Super Wal-Mart moving in and killing the funky little local shops downtown. Yeah, its shiny and all, but its mighty damn boring, too.

The libertarian in me cringes at government control, but what’s more painful is the loss of freedom of speech that the reduced ownership brought. The only voices you’ll hear are only the ones a very small handful of people want you to hear. And that includes music, too. Goodbye to any chance that promising local artist had to get her record heard.

I miss radio. I miss finding good music. If it wasn’t for the kindness of friends sharing their MP3 collections, I would never hear any music worth buying. The music industry died in the same manner of many of its stars: it overindulged itself to death. In spite of this, my ears are holding out hope that something new will take its place.

I want to be moved again.

I couldn’t end the night without commenting on a interesting event that occured Saturday night. Kelly, Hallie, and I were winding down after an exhausting day spent walking around downtown Asheville and hiking Mount Pisgah. Hallie was not falling asleep like she normally does, only settling after about 15 minutes of holding her (and 45 minutes of her crying before that). I walked into the den of our cabin and plopped myself into a chair, picking up a copy of Mountain Express to read while Kelly read her book on the couch.

I was deep into the newspaper when I noticed something move across the room right above my line of sight. A faint white blur about the size of a baseball made a tight loop on the wall above the window.

Um, okaaaay, I thought, as I checked the level of wine still in my glass. I knew I was dog tired. It must have been my imagination.

I continued reading the paper. A few seconds later it happend again, this time a few feet to the right of the last place. Once again it was a swirling motion, like someone waving their hand. All right, I thought. I did not imagine THAT! I folded the newspaper and stood up.

Being of a relatively open mind, I am not averse to the idea of the existence of things yet unknown. That said, I was stumped to simply explain it away. Twice I saw it. As the saying goes, “fool me once…”

Kelly didn’t look up from her book when I began to pace the floor, trying to justify what I saw and debating whether to tell her. Gosh, what if my wife thought I was, well, weird?

“Uh, honey,” I finally said. “I think someone is trying to get my attention.” Kelly looked up but didn’t really buy into what I was saying. She was way too sleepy at this point for a deep metaphysical talk. I proceeded to start one, anyway, but gave up when I saw I was losing my audience. We went to bed soon afterward.

I have never claimed to see ghosts. I wouldn’t know what one looked like if it shook my hand. And I’m not sure what it actually was that I saw. Still, I could find few possible logical causes. Darkness had long since fallen on the cabin. Nestled in the woods, there was no chance that the light was caused by a stray headlight. Though Kelly was reading behind me, she had already removed her jewelry. Even if she hadn’t, she was reading by a floor lamp reflecting light on the ceiling. No chance for a glint of light to be cast from her ring or necklace. I could blame the light on nothing other than my imagination or an actual event. I was willing to chalk the first one up to imagination, but not the second one.

As we packed up this morning, the owner of the place stopped by and asked us about our stay. “How was the cabin?” he started off. I listed a few mechanical things we had noticed – like the tub not draining properly. You know, nothing major. After every item, he said “Thanks a lot. I wouldn’t otherwise know these things since I don’t live here anymore.” Though all I wanted to do then was get going on our trip to Linville Falls, it occured to me later that his statement had to be a lie. How can you own a house for 10+ years, rent it out, clean it after every rental and then plead ignorance to its problems? It didn’t wash with me. Just one of those things that made me wonder if he had a secret.

Later in our drive, I began to suspect the owner may have been “fishing” for information. After every minor annoyance I would report, he would say “and anything else? Did you notice anything else?” His odd questioning only made me more convinced I had not imagined what I saw. It made me wonder if I wasn’t the first guest to notice something unusual in the cabin.

So, was I imaging things? Or is it time I checked myself in to Dorothea Dix? Or long past time? What do you think?

I just finished up a relaxing few days hiking and enjoying the Asheville area. It was the first vacation with the kid along, marking another milestone we can check off the list.

We hiked Mount Pisgah and Mount Mitchell, though only the shorter trails (no more than 2 miles, though we wound up hiking much more than that). More detail on the trip can be found on Hallie’s page.

I didn’t have enought time to fully check out the wireless scene in Asheville like I’d hoped. The main, uh, stumbling block (thank you! I’ll be here all week!) is that the network drivers for my wireless card in my Zaurus aren’t equipped yet to do sniffing. The drivers I found for my Socket low-power wifi card won’t compile cleanly on my ARM cross-compiler. I didn’t have time to fix this in the past few weeks but may revisit it soon since wardriving is soooo 1337.

The cabin we stayed in was on top of a 2,000 ft hill in Fairview, NC. The cabin not only had no Internet access (gasp!), it also had an incredibly bad telephone line; one that made dialup access impossible. Still, I couldn’t help but see all the SLCs alongside the road and wonder if DSL was available. I also wondered just how far up the mountain an 802.11b signal could travel, bringing high-speed access to the wilderness.

On our Saturday climb up Mount Pisgah, I was one of the few hikers who was more interested in the radio tower behind me than the breathtaking view in front of me. Yeah, yeah. I’m a hardcore geek. But at least I had my with me and got in a long-range QSO.

Asheville also has the distinction of being the first place I’ve ever seen a real-live Segway. A bearded, pony-tailed guy in a tie-died T-shirt (ok, that described half the men in Western North Carolina) was standing on one on Battery Park Avenue while talking to the Asheville police. The police had just finished taking a police report when the guy rolled up to them. Like nearly everyone else who sees a Segway, the cops were grinning at the guy and asking him all kinds of questions about how to ride one. I imagine car owners must have gotten the same attention back when horseless carriages were just taking off.

Tomorrow I start my new job, so I’ll wrap things up. After being so lassiez-faire with my time the past few weeks, it will be strange having to live by the clock again. Strange, perhaps, but wonderfully welcome, too.

I’m writing this from outside the Old Europe Coffee Bar on Battery Park avenue in Asheville. As my previous post suggested, there is a knee-high access point near the table, allowing anyone within range access to the Net. I think the access port is a great idea, only it’s too low to really get good range. As far as I can determine, I’m the only geek one here using it. While I’m here typing away, though, Kelly is devouring the creme brule that we agreed to share.

The weather here is phenomenal. It’s mostly cloudy but we’ve seen enough of the sun to make it fun. There’s a slight breeze, too, making it a challenge to keep the napkins on the table.

There are so many people walking around downtown it’s amazing. Hallie has been especially happy watching everyone walk around her. It seems to me that Asheville has more life downtown than any other city I’ve been to in North Carolina. Kelly has continuously heard me remark about it – probably to the point that she wants me to shut up. 🙂 This place really is cool.

At lunchtime I was reading a boy’s T-shirt at the table next to us. It said “Boeing”, and it sparked an association in my mind with the city of Seattle. Asheville is like the Seattle of the South. Same kind of energy.

Lunch was fun. We ate at the Bistro 1886. Food was great. As I said before, Hallie had a ball just watching people and playing with her spoon.

The cabin is actually in Fairview, south and east from Asheville. It’s way up a mountain, and has an excellent view over Fairview (when the view is not fogged over, that is). It’s a little smaller than we thought, but the view more than makes up for it. The owner lives in the house yards to the right of it and spent the evening walking past out cabin. I told Kelly today that there was something a little weird about him and she agreed. I just get the feeling he’s not entirely sincere, but that’s nothing to stop our fun.

We’re going to explore downtown for a little while longer and then find some trails to go hike in the afternoon. It’d be great to come back downtown this evening when things get hopping, but with the Buggle in tow I don’t see us soaking up the nightlife this time around.

Well, my creme brule is calling me and the Big Girl looks bored, so I’ll stop geeking out so we can have more fun.

We’re heading to Asheville for a few days of mountain R&R. While I’m there I plan to explore some of the wireless hotspots in the city.

A few links provide a good starting spot. Full report coming soon.

National Geographic is displaying the first picture of Earth ever taken from another planet, Mars. Amazingly beautiful, isn’t it?

Seeing this today reminded me of a Carl Sagan speech I read on my friend Chris Hedemark’s website two days ago:

We succeeded in taking that picture, and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

We need pictures like these to remind us how precious our planet really is.