after_alex

“Hashing is essentially a scavenger hunt for beer. A few days before the run, volunteer “harriers” map out a course and mark the way with chalk and dabs of flour on the sidewalk. Certain chalk marks mean different things, so each course includes several false trails and weird detours to confuse the runners.

Despite the possibility for total chaos, the group generally stays together because runners at the front of the pack have to scout the possibilities, while the slower runners can follow once the correct route to the beer is determined. Everyone finishes about the same time, whether they sprinted or strolled. ” – article by sfgate

So later today in the true spirit of Oktoberfest, my buddy Jack and I (and probably a thousand other bargain-beer-hunters) are heading to the Annual North Beach Beer Run. This is some sort of cross between hashing as a sport and the drunkards’ marathon known as Oktoberfest . In North Beach, I anticipate that most San Franciscans will be too lazy to run from bar-to-bar, but would rather just kick it with $2 Stellas for the 6-hour duration. But at least it’s cheap beer.

Beer. In the spirit of Oktoberfest…

Truly there are some great things in San Francisco…cheers!

Poor woman, she got nailed real bad.

Track and field line judge Lia Mara Lourenco is helped after a javelin hit her in her foot during ‘Brazil Trophy,’ a national track and field competition, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Sunday, Sept. 24, 2006. (AP Photo/Jonne Roriz, Agencia Estado)
Photo courtesy of AP

And it’s right here in Downtown San Francisco. Yes, the End of the Universe. Just like that comedian said…the End of the Universe is RIGHT HERE (and not Houston, TX). There’s actually two Starbucks’ across the street from each other! Two on one block! One on top of another one! OK, maybe not that, but….

As of right now, I don’t know the answer to this one, but I’m going to walk it this weekend to find out. Help me find the answer, and solve the mystery of the End of the Universe! Oh, and btw I wouldn’t totally rely on Google/Starbucks/Yahoo listings because they’re usually out of date and/or mapped incorrectly. See you on the streets!

A fellow Little Beaner’s blog post particularly got me thinking (he says I’m somewhat touchy these days, but I’m still thinking). Growing older and making decisions are another part of life that I can’t deny anymore, and I hope that I’m making the right decisions. Uncertainty is always a part of the life-decision making process, and these days I realize uncertainty bugs me a bit.

What bugs me is not the question of “what will I be doing in 5 years?” but rather “is the path I’m on…is this the optimal path to happiness in 5 years?” When I reach my usual mental state in the morninng things are usually coherent and my set goals seem just right. But later in the day I ocasionally get those smell-the-roses and contemplate-while-you-browse-Craiglist episodes…and that just fucks up the mindset. I’d just be trying to browse the “free” section or maybe the motorcycles for sale, but then the question hits – what the hell am I doing?

I’m sure a lot of you out there have probably been grappling with similar questions. For the Little Bean Crew, lots of life changes have come about, and lots more are bound to come soon. The problem is not the question of agency and whether I’m making the optimal decisions (and effectively an issue of unrealistic expectation of control over life), but whether I’m truly recognizing and realizing the signals of my happiness at the moment today.

Things are good, my relationship with my girlfriend Victoria is great. Work is good, but could it be better for the long term? I suppose that’s one of the questions. I’m doing some interesting things at work these days – working in information systems for humanitarian disaster aid. I pretty much fell upon the opportunity, but I’m quite satisfied so far with how it’s played out. Again, this job is with SAP. But this time, it’s with SAP Research – the hardcore R&D side of the company.

I’d have to say that I worked hard to get where I’m at, and that I’ve built up the right skills to fit the job. International development and humanitarian experience with information systems background. That fits the bill alright. So I can’t say that the job match was a marriage of convenience (even though I pretty much stumbled upon it – an SAP colleague, who is now my boss, pretty much poached me right as I was about to leave my last SAP position and move back to LA).

But I definitely did not imagine myself working at a tech company when I was even 22 years old (not very long ago…thank god). But I heard a presentation today from Stuart Gannes, director of the Digital Vision Fellowship Program at Stanford. Prof Gannes painted a picture of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley as a division of: core technology long-standing companies (a la Microsoft, Sun, HP), start-ups (a la Web 2.0 crowd and maybe Google….maybe not), and then end-users. Start-ups seem to touch new users in a way that old tech companies can’t – they just have a better understanding of the so-far-untouchable user segments. But eventually these start-ups get acquired and sucked into the gravitational centers of the “old guard” tech companies, eventually allowing the old guard to reach new end users again.

What hit me here is that Silicon Valley is the mix of gravitational institutions and silly, savvy entrepreneurs who [sometimes] have hold of real value for the world. This real value usually gets eaten up by the bigger tech establishment, and some entrepreneurs get eaten too. And it makes Silicon Valley just seem like a blackhole for talent and products….of which it’s hard to get out of. I bet it makes real entrepreneurs feel really stuffy, yet it’s so hard for them to get out of it. Since even if they sell out of a successful venture, they usually end up starting something anew anyway…and then back in the system you go.

So the personal question for me is…so has Silicon Valley sucked me in (and not let me develop…..and find a way out of here)? Or is this it? The end-all is right here, this new center of the world for me. Geez. I pretty much live about 10 minutes away from work – SAP, and 10 minutes away from GOogle. The tech center of the world can’t be any farther than here. Stanford is 10 minutes away, PARC is 5 minutes away. Sun, Microsoft…they’re all here. Is this where life ends?

Oh ya, and by the way, I moved to Mountain View, CA. My new roomate is Kelly – who now works at GOogle (after a year at Jamba Juice). Surprise surprise.

It’s time for me to put my geek hat back on; it’s been a long time since I’ve written any tech-erotica, but now it the time as I’m about drowning in information technology these days…especially now that I work at SAP Research.

“Web Services.” That’s pretty much the internet buzzword of the day. Buzzword of the year, and maybe even buzzword of the decade if this tech resurgence in Silicon Valley lasts long enough. Ignore it I couldn’t, as pretty much everything these days seems to be teeming in the life of web services. Yes, you’ve probably heard the term before, it refers to the modularized and flexible access to data and information over the web – pretty much through http – and it makes life so much more interesting now that the fiends of Web 2.0 have gotten their hands all over it.

These days even the big dogs are turning the way of the web services world. Hence all the “service oriented architecture” talk. Are web services going to liberate the complex, shackled labyrinths of today’s IT enterprises? A lot of people are saying so, but maybe it’s still just all talk. These days everyone’s talking like they’ve been sleeping with the web services girl, but most of them have probably been just eyeing her since 2000 or whatever. But hell, whether you like it or not, web services have been around for a while…I myself even used to program old ESRI GIS web applications using web service technology …to stream maps over the internet. Man, those were the days. Things were slow back then, but nowadays Google Maps got everyone by the balls, and Web 2.0 here we go. Google Maps mashed with just about anything you can think of (like RSS, the Flickr insert on the right side of this page, and other stuff going on right here). It’s web service and API heaven these days. But how long is this all going to last like this?

I don’t know…but in the mean time why don’t you stop talking about the web services girl, and go ahead try to spend a night with her. Everyone else is doing it. Or at least talking about doing it.

[I realize the metaphor here is totally politically incorrect, please excuse my misogynist ramblings as geek mode has taken over]