WhimsyLand

Here's a great opportunity to buy two books by terrific poets for under $25.  Just preorder Mary Jo Bang's Elegy (Graywolf) and G. C. Waldrep's Disclamor (BOA) from Amazon.  Here are the current blurbs:

Disclamor:  "Here is a gorgeous book of the most subtle and vivid mysteries, weighted with earth and time."-Li-Young Lee

Elegy:  “This is our beautiful glimpse of forever. Mary Jo Bang’s Elegy is a harrowing, necessary work.” —C. D. Wright

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I've been waiting for a Certain Big Project to solidify for a month now.  One thing about working in my business (engineering consulting) is that your planning horizon is 3 or 4 months.  Also your revenue and cash flow planning.  It makes for an exciting life.  This project is not only large, it could possibly stretch for a year or more.  Life was much easier when I was involved in product companies, which are slow to start up, but slow to die also.

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I was making a mental list of how many billionaires I've ever talked to.  The rules of my game are that they didn't have to be billionaires when I chatted with them.  So far, I've come up with four:  Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Denis Feron.  I don't know why, but I keep thinking I've missed one.

I think it's safe to say the the first 3 on my list are driven, unpleasant, and some cases, ruthless.  Still, they've created businesses that employ hundreds of thousand of highly-paid staff.  They also didn't get where they are by schmoozing their way to the top, and then wire their Board to get 8-figure salaries/options or organize big-ticket birthday parties for their wives on company money.  For examples of the latter, see Lord Black, Dennis Kowalski, or Chainsaw Al Dunlap.  Nor did they get there on their daddy's influence and money (e.g., Howard Hughes or George Bush).

I actually worked for the last one (Denis) when he was a billionaire, so I get an extra point for that.  Jobs I interviewed at the first West Coast Computer Faire in 1977 (I think), which was about the same time I argued with Gates about software pricing.  Ellison I negotiated with (badly) for an Oracle license for an IBM 360 compatible computer that my buddies Dave and Glenn were designing for a large Silicon Valley firm.  Of course, thousand of people have had conversations with Jobs, Gates and Ellison, but I like to think that when I was exchanging view with them, they were still relative virgins.  I mean, Jobs was in a booth half the size of Smoke Signal's or Sol's.

My work with Mr. Feron was much more mundane:  as Director of Technology for the copper conglomerate, I also had the job of scheduling staff to fly weekly down on the company LearJets to Bilbao.  The point was to keep the planes active and filled to justify their expense to Denis' brother, the firm's co-owner. 

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Derek flew back to Chicago today, which necessitated that we solve the Missionaries and Cannibals Problem.  He had the Subaru (now bumperless, but that's another story) and was at Cath's.  The Missionaries and Cannibals Problem is often used in AI (Artificial Intelligence) classes as an exercise to solve via learning algorithms. 

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Zelda Update:  I've obtained again the power of the Dominion Rod and I'm on a quest for Owls.  Not long now.

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Der's back in Chicago and it's Kyle's birthday.  Kyle walked when he was 9 months and talked like an attorney at 18 months.  At some point between his first and second year, he started stalking around the living room with his small paws out in front of him whenever we said, "Do the T. Rex thing, Ky".  I used to read dinosaur books to him and it reached the point where he could "read" them himself, speaking all the lines and turning the pages, not actually being able to read, but using the cues of the pictures and page numbers to segment his dialogue.  It always impressed the grandparents.  Happy birthday, Ky.  I love you.