Words of Danny O'Bigbelly My idea of a good time

When pressed for specific details about the person behind my avatar, I have tended to demurely employ a combination of ambiguity and evasion, peppered with the occasional flat-out refusal. Nevertheless, I have shared many deep truths about my inner self over the last year: my longings, my desires, my lapses, my mistakes, my dreams and, of course, my love of nachos and my family.

I have never willfully lied or mislead anyone here. I wish I could say the same about the real world, but that would be a lie.

Several years ago, we hired some bozos to renovate our new house before we moved in. We gave them a set of keys to the house, which they kept hanging in a hook in the garage. The garage was protected by an electronic keyless entry system attached to the garage door opener. In order to avoid using their brains in any way, the workers wrote the combination on the wall next to the keypad–that way, no matter which crew arrived first at the house first in the morning, they could get into the garage and retrieve the key.

This worked fine until the day the workers tripped the circuit breaker for the garage, disabling the electronic lock. Without the key to the house, I couldn’t reset the breaker, but without resetting the breaker, there was no way to get the key, which was in the garage.

What to do, what to do?

This wasn’t the first time that these brainiacs had locked themselves out of the house. However, since they had just finished installing the new windows, the solution they had used at least twice previously–breaking a window–was deemed less than ideal.

To my good fortune, one of the window panes in the garage was broken. I couldn’t possibly fit through the small hole in the glass, but perhaps someone else could–someone who could navigate the inky darkness of the garage, release the latch on the door from the inside, and let me in.

Eureka! I sprang into action. Quickly trapping a bevy of squirrels, I crammed them into a wriggling sack and then shoved the writhing, chattering assemblage through the hole in the window, which I then adroitly covered with a board. Realizing that they had no other means of escape, the clever creatures worked as a unit to unlock the garage door from the inside and open the door. As they emerged from their dusty prison, I was waiting. I grabbed the door and disabled the lock. From there, the rest was easy.

Or so my daughters earnestly believe. The truth is somewhat less interesting, and does not involve squirrels.

I confess that may have embellished the story somewhat when I told it to them. I didn’t really want them to know how to break into the garage (and I certainly didn’t want to reveal to them that I am a mutant with telekinetic powers).

My children also believe in Santa, although they are beginning to suspect that there’s something funny going on.

What fibs have you told?

You don’t have to reveal the truth. Just share the lies.

Of all of my teachers in junior high school, only one really had a lasting influence on my life (at least, in a way that I can recognize). At this remote time, I can probably only name a few of them, or what courses they took, but I’ll remember his name and what he taught until I don’t remember anything at all.

He was the music teacher. I took music lessons from him for several years, and played in the band. There are many stories I could tell about my days as an aspiring musician, but those are different stories, and music isn’t what this discussion is about.

He made posters with useful tips and advice and hung them all over the band room. They would change every few months. Wherever you were sitting, whether down front in the flutes and clarinets or back in the peanut gallery (the row in the back of the room composed of odd instruments for which there was only one player), several were in view.

I can’t remember any of them now, but I’m sure I’ve internalized them. Listen to yourself. Timing is everything. Practice. Enjoy the music you’re making.

But there was one poster that never changed. Written in smaller letters, and in a different hand than the others, this poster was hung at the back of the room, above the cabinets, out of the line of sight any of the students in the room. If you didn’t look up when you were racing to your seat at the beginning of class, there was little chance you would ever notice it.

Of course, since my attention is always wondering, I noticed it many times. But I had no idea what it meant, and I hated that.

Near the end of my last year in his school, curiosity finally overcame my timidity and I found the courage to inquire. At the end of class, I approached his podium and asked, “Sir, what does Quench not the smoldering flax mean, and why do you post it where it is so hard to see?”

He looked sheepish for a moment, but then the moment passed.

“Step up on the podium,” he suggested, “and take a look.”

From his raised platform, I could see the entire room spread out beneath me. From here, the poster was directly ahead of me, at eye level.

“That’s not part of your curriculum,” he explained. “That’s a reminder to me.”

What do you wish you could keep reminding yourself?

What should be written over your desk, on the background screen of your computer, on the dashboard of your car, over sink in the bathroom, or on the ceiling over your bed?

Many years ago, I had an office in the Howard Hathaway Aiken Computation Laboratory on the campus of Harvard University. During my employment there, the building was demolished to make room for a much larger and more modern facility (renamed Maxwell-Dworkin, after the maiden names of the mothers of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, who donated the money for the new laboratory).

Aiken is a largely-unknown pioneer in computer architecture; many people have never heard his name, and yet anyone reading this posting is doing so via technologies he had a major role in developing. But perhaps the most obscure aspect of Aiken’s work is that he owed some of his key inspiration to work done by an even earlier pioneer who had been nearly forgotten by his time.

Aiken came to Harvard with a proposal to build a calculating machine–a machine that could be modified (or “programmed”, as we would say today) to perform arbitrarily complicated computations at the rate of dozens or perhaps even hundreds per second. It was perhaps the first design recognizable as a modern computer. Harvard turned down his initial proposal. When asked why, they told him that it was because they already had one.

And they did, or parts of one. After the death of Charles Babbage, another great pioneer, and a man who was far ahead of his time (his designs for his “Difference Engine” were unbuildable in his day, because contemporary machine tools were unable to build parts with the necessary tolerances–a hundred years later, the machines were built, and worked), his widow had tried to donate his writings and other work to various British Universities and other institutions, but had largely been met with indifference. Despairing, she boxed it all up and sent it to Harvard, where it sat in a storage room for many years, unused but unforgotten, until Aiken came along.

As Aiken read through Babbage’s writing, he was struck by an eerie feeling, as if, in his own words, “… Babbage was addressing [him] personally from the past”. Aiken always credited Babbage with much of his inspiration and many of his ideas.

Many years later, I walked through the Aiken Laboratory for a last time before the building was demolished. I wanted to salvage a piece of it to take with me. I found an old store-room in the basement, filled with boxes and odds and ends. Poking around, I found an ornate picture frame. Wiping the dust from the glass, I tried to make out what beneath. It was an old manifest, handwritten in a large, bold hand. It had faded considerably over time, and I had to take it into the light before I could make out what it said. It began:

“Contents of box: One piece, Difference Engine …”

I kept it in my office for many years. And I read Aiken’s work, and felt like he was speaking to me through the years.

When I left Harvard, I gave the frame to a junior professor. I hope it works for him.

Have you ever read something written by a stranger separated from you by time and experience, and felt that it could have been written directly to you?

A few days ago, Robin Wolaner, the CEO of tbd.com, a social networking site for the 40+ crowd, announced that the site would be closing on July 13th.  Rather than simply letting the site go dark, she decided it would be better to let everyone know what was about to happen, so that all the members could move to other sites, or exchange contact info so they could keep in touch, and generally say goodbye.

I don’t want TBD to end yet, but people seem to be heading for the exits in droves already. I’m being completely honest when I write that the end of TBD may be the most emotionally significant event that’s happened to me since my youngest child arrived. It’s important to me to have this place as a sounding board for my ideas and to get positive feedback of the sort so freely given here. I haven’t felt this sense of loss since, well, I don’t know. Probably not since my dog was run over in 1979.

But enough about that…

There’s something I want to accomplish before it ends, and if I can accomplish it, then I will cry tears of bittersweet joy and loss.

I realize that by articulating my goal, I may make it impossible to achieve, or rob the moment of its spontaneity, but I cannot explain my feelings about the site without using it as an example.  Therefore I feel that I have to share this desire with you, as I have shared so much with the TBD members over the past year, and they, in their many ways, have shared so much with me.  Like all things on TBD, this is not something I can do alone. Nothing significant accomplished on TBD is done alone; it’s the dialog and interaction that makes it what it is.

So here it is.

Every once in a while, someone will post a question or a discussion topic, or someone will post a response to something, and I’ll make a joke or my best attempt at an insightful comment about it. And then, an hour, or a day, or in one case a few months later, I’ll get a personal message (the TBD equivalent of email) about it. The PM will say something to the effect of:

“What you wrote was so funny/enlightening that I had an epiphany/I spit coffee/soda/milk all over the screen and keyboard/woke up the neighbors with my laughter/pulled a muscle/wet myself.

“Thank you/I needed that/You made my day.”

I want to earn one more of those before it’s over. Just one.

It’s not going to be easy, given the diaspora of TBD members to EONS, facebook, ning, and others, but I’ll be watching for the opportunity.  And I’ll be archiving my PMs and collecting contact information.  These are people I don’t want to lose.

What about you? What do you still want to accomplish before the end–whatever end you’re facing?