Wonder how many people are affected by end Q1 falling on a holiday. One of these days even this will probably succumb to corporate interests. Saint Pat's day is under-utilized and so is the spring period in general. We can shove one more corporate holiday in there - say the second monday in march. That will be Easter. Then there will be a known retail spending period leading up to it, and guaranteed to fall before quarter end and tax day. Surprised it hasn't happened yet. Oh - then it hits me. Easter is always on Sunday. It doesn't cost time off. That's why it hasn't happened. And since a solid percentage of the workforce is non-catholic, you only lose a handful on good friday; probably no more than take off at noon every friday anyway. And so another brainstorm comes full circle.

If you seek evidence of bay area sprawl, look no further than the KCBS traffic reports. Now everyday items include the Cochrane Squeeze coming out of Morgan Hill, downtown Tracy, and the daily grind along 37 coming through Sears Point. Sure, people have been moving to these places for years, and they've been reported on for decades if emergencies arose - but they are no longer considered remote nether regions to the central bay area. They're traffic generators. Part of the daily grind. Soon we'll know the names of all the major roads in Stockton.

The swami tells me that some nubile young 27 year-old babe is going to bring me sexual bliss. Sex in the storeroom, on the kitchen counter; unspeakable carnal acts in the supermarket express lane. Bet he tells that to all the guys. I gave him the 20 bucks anyway.

Was just thinking back over my entire adult career path and boy is it ever a twisted road. The coolest stuff was working on process control for sputtering machines and plasma etchers. I mean like I actually figured out how long to hold stuff in an iridescent gaseous cloud (and what gasses to inject into the system and when) to make it do cool things. I designed circuit boards. 25 bucks worth of cheap parts and you could automate anything. There was that stint in the thermo-electric plastics biz. Could always find work because I could fix stuff. Anything. Become one with the machine. I fixed 30 dollar car stereos and 6 million dollar cameras. Color TV's. Oscilloscopes 'til my eyes bleed. Usually took about half an hour. A week on the erratic stuff. I was always like the guy on the assembly line with a soldering iron. When anything with wires or valves wasn't working, I was the guy you called. Robotics galore. Wafer feeders and aligners. Some of the stuff I never knew exactly what it was. All I knew is that when the operator pushes the yellow button it's supposed to do something. My job was always to figure out what it was supposed to do and why it wasn't doing it - and then fix it. No pressure but the company is out of business until I fix the dang thing. Then the PC came along and I figured out how to add it to my repertoire. Communications was always my gig. But I wrote the backend. Found that the language called 'C' is both elegant and precise and learned it well. Became a Unix geek. The chat rooms, your email. Turned a computer into an online community. Hardware, software. Then scale it to oh, 25 million simultaneous users and keep it working 24/7. No pressure but the company is out of business until I fix the dang thing. Been there. Done that.

I think the message I'd like to tell folks is not to become a slave to any machine. There's a point at which you control it, and a point at which it controls you. I could probably be earning a tidy but steady sum if I decided only to fix Veeco Leak Detectors or the 6 million dollar camera. But the pressure can kill you. I learned the hard way that you don't want to be the bottleneck between profit and loss in an organization. If you're the one person who can fix the one machine they need to have running, you're a bottleneck. You can ask and get anything you want, but the pressure to perform is severe. Yeah, I can fix your radon drilling rig. I know the things inside out. A million bucks if you need it today. A thousand for tomorrow, but only a hundred bucks if you need it done right. The stress level is roughly proportional to the capabilities of the beeper they require you to wear.

Holy Mary, mother of Christ - just realized I'm not wearing a beeper. No electronic leash. Free at last. Oh Lord almighty we are free at last....