I learned something very cool yesterday. Of course, I'm a science geek, but I still thinks it's cool enough to share.

I'm in Los Angeles this week, doing what I hope will be ongoing programming work for a new client. The client is a big printing facility that spits out reams of paper by the minute, sorts, collates, folds, stuffs, and meters. If you've ever received a one-page explanation of benefits from your health insurance company, or a huge booklet with all the legalese for your policy, this is the kind of place that produced it.

I went on a tour of the facility yesterday afternoon. Among the huge laser printers and folding/inserting machines chained together like a mechanical version of the Human Centipede was a big blue roll printer. It was fascinating to watch in action. At one end was a giant roll of white paper, about six feet in diameter and 17 inches wide. The paper was fed at high speed into a unit that printed two pages side by side. As it emerged from that unit, the continuous paper strip went through a complex series of rollers, some set at a 45-degree angle, that turned the paper over so the blank side was facing up as it went into the next printer. As the paper emerged, now printed on both sides, a blade sliced it lengthwise. The two narrow side-by-side strips were then brought together, one on top of the other, and fed into a cutter that chopped them up into perfectly collated stacks of 8.5 x 11" duplex-printed paper.

That was cool enough, but I noticed that as the paper emerged from the machine that sliced it lengthwise, it passed beneath a piece of wire that had obviously been juryrigged. The wire was wound with a spiral of tinsel, the kind you'd use to decorate a Christmas tree. The tinsel brushed the paper as it sped past.

My guide pointed to the tinsel. "Every big print shop I know stocks up on tinsel at Christmas time," he said. "It's perfect for discharging static electricity from the paper."

Which then makes the paper behave better down the line and helps prevent jams in the equpiment. Pretty cool, right? I know.

Today I read
about a man
who has spent
the past thirty
years writing
someone else's
biography.
And he's still
not finished.

Not to quibble
with anyone's
life's work, but
that's a lot of
years to spend
on somebody
else's life.
I'm not sure
I've even spent
that much time
on my own.

How does that
even happen?
A random turn,
a shiny detour,
and suddenly
you've walked
a hundred miles
in someone
else's shoes?
Too late to
turn back, the
only way out
is through?

No doubt my
own devotion
to invented lives
in invented times
and places
would look as
puzzling to him.
What, reality not
good enough?
Earth not room
enough for you?
I guess not.

Or maybe they're
really the same
thing, these
painstaking
recreations of
unknowable
worlds, fictions
based in fact
or vice versa--
cathedrals
never to be
completed in
our lifetimes,
which, with luck,
will still draw
tourists after
the architects
are dead.

Friends of ours often ask me to remind them what it is that Laura does for a living. It's a little hard to explain, but this article from yesterday's New York Times does a pretty good job of spelling it out:

(Go ahead and read it now. I'll wait.)

A Push to Promote Familiar Brands Online

(Done? Okay, cool.)

Though Laura's name doesn't appear in the article, she's the one who spearheaded most of that effort at General Mills. That's what she does—comes up with digital strategies for her clients, and then gets the work done. The stuff for General Mills happened while she was at her old job. She's now doing similar sorts of things for clients at her new employer, MSL Chicago, where she is Senior Vice President, Director of Digital.

She works damn hard, and works damn smart. I couldn't be more proud of her.

If you talked to them, you'd find out that I could be a real bastard in the workplace. Some people at my last job were apparently afraid to talk to me when I thought they'd messed up, or at all. I made at least one producer at the Sesame Street website cry. Mind you, I'm not proud of this. No, wait, actually I am.

Over the past week or so, I've watched the recent film In the Loop three times on DVD. Besides its scathing, cynical view of the political process that lubricated our way into Iraq, I can't get enough of Malcolm Tucker, the angry, profane press secretary who never encountered a functionary he couldn't intimidate or a problem he couldn't spin his way out of. I want to be Malcolm Tucker, or at least be that articulate when I'm enraged.

Tucker, as played by Peter Capaldi, is also a character on the BBC comedy series The Thick of It. That's the source of the short video clip below (decidedly NSFW in its language), which pretty well sums up the Tucker philosophy.

I think you'll agree, there's a little bit of Malcolm Tucker in all of us.

Hey, look! There really is a tea towel with that embroidered on it:

Fuckity bye.

Dear Miz Manorz,

I find myself flush with discomfort, and I hope you'll give my predicament a swirl.

At my shared workspace, a sign over the privy clearly requests that writers of the male persuasion put the seat down when finished, yet at least one of my upstanding colleagues consistently leaves it up. I'm about to flip my lid! It not just the effrontery that peeves me so. It's also the idea that my female colleagues, in toto, might judge me the culprit!

In loo of direct accusation, please advise me how I might call this breach of manners to the men's attention without upsetting the honeypot. Your priceless advice is of the first water, and I would be greatly relieved should you bowl me over with your insight. I can handle it, and I don't want anything to hit the fan.

Signed, Throne for a Loop

I will have more thoughts to offer on this milestone later, but for now let me just say that my job has ended. Like a wounded deer it kept dragging on, but at long last, finally, my last day working steadily as the senior software developer and architect for (the fine and worthy) BenefitsCheckUp, my employers lo these past six and a half years, came yesterday. This has not quite sunk in yet (probably due to the fact that I'm a little punchy from working every day since mid-June—51 hours Monday to Thursday this week alone—which is also why you haven't seen much of me around these parts lately). I thought the day was never going to come.

Now I'm a full-time writer. (No pressure!) And as such, I'm of course going to procrastinate work on my novel for a three-day blowout with Laura at Lollapalooza. (Thanks, Shana!)

For the online component of a Sunday story about unique office spaces, the Chicago Tribune used several photographs of the offices where Laura works. Check out numbers 1 through 5, from the Imagination offices.

So, the company my wife works for has been redoing their web site—transparently, exposing the whole process. Every week they post updates about the project, and this week's offering is...

Engaging Imagination, with Laura Chavoen, Senior Vice President, Digital Media

The following press release excerpt comes from PR Newswire:

CHICAGO, Oct. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Laura Chavoen has joined Imagination Publishing as senior vice president of digital media. She reports to James E. Meyers, president. Chavoen oversees online publishing, all aspects of digital media strategy development and day-to-day operations of Imagination's digital media department. She also is intimately involved in business development activities for new and existing clients.

"Laura comes to Imagination with more than 15 years of big-time digital media and custom publishing experience," Meyers said. "Her experience at companies such as Scholastic, Yamaha, SkyMall, Razorfish and Harper Collins is an exciting addition to the online publishing and digital media capabilities of Imagination Publishing."

Chavoen's arrival coincides with a significant increase in the staffing and resources of Imagination Publishing due to rapid growth in clients' digital media needs....  [full press release]

What a hectic day yesterday was! After most of a frantic morning at the office, I sneaked out to spend an extended lunch hour watching the new independent supernatural thriller First Snow, after which I rushed back to the office to crank out a quick same-day review for SciFi.com, then stayed late at the office working frantically to try to make up for some of the chaos my absence had caused.

At home that night, even with a nice glass of Lagavulin in hand, watching Borat on DVD did little to relax me. Call me not a fan.

This morning Laura and I hauled two rolling suitcases full of books from Queens to the Strand in Manhattan. Nice little payday, and not one of our books was rejected. Laura has really figured out what books they'll take and which ones they won't—which is nice, because the Strand used-book counter I remember from my early days in the city is one characterized by sneering and snobbishness. I like this morning's Strand much better.