Yay, I’m finally done with that blood test, part of my annual routine, a recurring calendar event as they say. I came home to that gift from my gardener (he works for free, on his own recreational projects): a homemade gourmet lasagna (he’s also a retired chef). Yum.
Before hopping in the car around 7 am (this was a fasting test so they set it up for early), I unboxed a new package, the one containing the new iPad keyboard. I’d ruined the old one using alcohol wipes meant for kitchen counters. I’d done that before and gotten away with it, although when I thought it was curtains, I ordered a new one back then. That new one was not “magnetic” and overall was a dud, but in the meantime the abused keyboard bounced back and was good as new. I’d lucked out.
So had I learned my lesson? Apparently not, as I took to the same keyboard again with the same inappropriate kitchen supply and “surprise! surprise!” I lost keyboard functionality once again. This time I lost the lowercase ‘a’ and the ‘delete’ key, except delete would work with caps lock on, as would uppercase ‘A’.
Then I found blow drying the keyboard, getting the ‘A’ key good and hot, would restore functionality, to ‘delete’ as well, but only until the keyboard cooled off again, then performance would degenerate. I found myself blow drying and typing, blow drying and typing. This was science, combined with persistence. Until I finally gave up and ordered yet another replacement.
So Drugstore Cowboy has William Burroughs in it, I’d forgotten that. We saw it last night. Dave judged this one to be of very high quality compared to the previous two we’d seen: My Private Idaho, and Elephant. Steve Holden had a friend who knew William Burroughs as I recall, and he had a stash of collectible pictures relating to that fact.
Steve who? Steve Holden of holdenweb (his web domain) was the engineering prodigy from Manchester who rose high in Python Nation, joining the board and then chairing it (we’re talking PSF).
I first met Steve at a Chicago Pycon after my wife had died, a tragedy he knew about from a prior Pycon which I’d bailed out of at the last minute (I was already in Washington DC on account of a prior Bucky Fuller symposium — where Ed got an award) upon getting the bad news (her terminal diagnosis) some years before. Steve was the originator of Pycon, helping to spread this European language and emerging conference culture (they go together) beyond the EuroPythons.
Steve was fully aware that Portland was a kind of Mecca (in the sense of hub, grand central, clearinghouse) for open source development in the software engineering realm, his realm and mine. So after moving to Greater DC from Britannia, and building a business there, he decided to try living way out west, in the former territories. Here he’d encounter the history of the western coast: Russian River, Sebastopol… those were places we’d both hang out, when working with O’Reilly Media, the famous publishing company.
We’d take the “puddle jumper” (short flight airplane) from Portland, to the Charles M. Schulz regional airport, outside Santa Rosa in Sonoma County, California. Mostly though, we worked remotely from Portland. He’d set up a conference production business (The Open Bastion) only blocks from my own home office. His apartment was in the same complex currently occupied by Paul, the gardener, and also Glenn Stockton, who knew both.
Another reason Steve moved to Portland is he want to partake of an elective surgery that might finally address his lifelong knee condition, which was only getting worse. The Trailblazers with their legendary sports doctors were also available to a niche demographic: those who could afford their services. Steve had saved his pennies and the operation was a success.
I still use one of those Open Bastion computers almost daily, as a way station / backup, whereas Steve himself has long since returned to England, where he continued his brilliant career.
When Steve first made his debut in Portland, he booked Secret Society, a conference venue, and historically a headquarters for African heritage Masons. Don’t let that surprise you: Masons have been prominent in Portland for many decades, with properties all over, including right near me: The Hawthorne Theater (Hawthorne Blvd and SE Cesar Chavez), a well-known music venue in my chapter.
Most of those properties have since been sold off, but the new owners, most notably McMenamins, the brewpub brothers, celebrate that Mason past, a treasured part of our collective history.
The O’Reilly company hosted one of its famous Foo-camps in that same Secret Society venue, whereas I was a Bar-camp attender.
If all this insider jargon is a bit bewildering, just don your anthropology hat and remember subcultures tend to revolve around a core namespace of esoteric terms, or at least that’s far from an uncommon pattern.
