I’m staying up late (which I shouldn’t do because of weight gain and aging reasons amongst other things) and here I am reading an article that says the mean peak age for swimmers is 21. And most athletes start to see physical declines at 26. Hell, I can’t remember being 26 any more. What a cheery thought. Chess grandmasters peak at 31.4, so that’s a little older. This is all from an article on Wired. Nice, huh?

Well, I’ve been feeling more tired lately and not quite as peppy at the gym. I think it’s just a bad attitude that developed after my birthday which was months ago but the feeling hasn’t abated. Or it’s just because I am old. Eh, screw em. All I have to do is be able to yell at the kids to get off my small and patchy lawn, right?

I hate learning about my limitations at the gym. Today I found out that trying to broad jump as far as I could is not something to be done in those flat minimalist shoes that are so popular with the trendy runners. Three jumps in and I thought I’d jarred my ankle out of joint. My ankle feels fine now, but I feel like I have a stone bruise on my left heel. There was more running in the workout and it’s a good thing we go around the building because limping around causes you to run in circles.

OK, so now when I run or broad jump, I think I’m wearing my Nike Free shoes. They weren’t free by any means but they’re a hell of a lot more padded than my torturous Merrells.

My neighbor put up his 150′ slip-n-slide again on the hill in front of our house. Lots of people out on the slide. I, on the other hand, was busy with the pressure washer, trying to make the driveway safe for those who are afraid of moss. I’m not sure how they do it, but the guys who built the pressure washer seem to have been able to engineer it so it spits pieces of moss all over the person running it and also have it just short enough so you have to bend over and hurt your back. Absolute genius.

I had to complete the task, because it was on my list. My list tends to be pretty short, but it’s still a list. Yesterday I took my monitor in to have it looked at. For $900, I figure they can honor the warranty. It has some weird burn-in-like artifacts, but I’m not sure what had burned it in. Whatever it is, they said they’d fix it but they wouldn’t validate parking any more unless I spent over $50. I figure it’s a $660 repair so I can afford the $1.50 parking.

So there’s breaking my computer and there’s breaking my computer. Somehow I got all my email redirected to the wrong place, but I did figure out how to get it all sorted out. All the spam and ads (and two or three legitimate emails) came in at 6PM. Somehow it’s all kind of working out. Funny how I really have nothing else interesting going on. Going to work, going to the gym, sitting at my computer, wishing I had more free time to fill with nonsense.

Huh, maybe this is why I was silent for a month. Nothing left to say so late in the evening. If I could only remember what I was thinking earlier in the day. It was most likely unprintable or cheeseburgers.

Every year the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference starts out with a keynote speech and people line up for hours for the 10AM event. It’s the only event that’s not under NDA and has press in attendance as well. Every year I take a picture of the media wall for some dumb reason and this year wasn’t any different.

This year WWDC sold out in less than a day and so I figured lining up at 7AM (a sketchy prospect at best) would be too late. I woke up at 4AM because of jet lag from being in Cambridge for the reunion and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I ended up in line at 5AM. The people ahead of me in line were from the art and IT departments of the Watchtower so I was on my best behavior and they were quite friendly as well. So my week had lots of weird sleep deprivation keeping me going, but I was able to hang out with Megan and Nadeem a couple of times. They took me out to get the best hamburger ever, even better than my old favorite at Laurelhurst Market, at Citizen’s Band on 8th and Folsom. Or 9th and Folsom. I always get it wrong. (It’s 8th and Folsom.)

I even made it to Nelsoen’s birthday gathering and hung out in the hotel bar a few nights, talking to all sorts of random people. It was great fun. The only disappointment was that I didn’t know the band playing at the bash. I’d never heard of Michael Franti and Spearhead, but they were fun. They just didn’t have the name recognition, for me, of the previous bands: Ozomatli, Bare Naked Ladies, Cake, or OK Go.

They did have Buzz Aldrin as the final speaker on Friday. I ended up going to a barbecue on Friday night with a bunch of small developers and flew out of San Jose on Saturday. Once again, I almost missed my flight because I was eating. I was in downtown San Jose buying namagashi for my mom and sister and I checked my flight. It was 1 1/2 hours before the flight and I should have been at the airport. But I had to make one last stop before going to the airport.

That’s right. A double-double animal style.

My computer is still being difficult and it is my own fault, but it’s working fairly well. I have the GM of Mac OS X Lion installed and most of the things I use on a day-to-day basis are working fairly well, so I can get back to my usual routine of breaking things on my own.

Here’s a bunch of pictures from my reunion. When I was training for the marathon, I remember there were three goals to have. A realistic goal, a stretch goal, and one that you’re sure to meet so you aren’t disappointed. I remember those were beat Oprah (4:30), 3:30, and have a good time. For my reunion, I only had a couple of goals of having fun and eating a lobster roll. I hit both those within my first 24 hours. My first night, I had dinner with guys I hadn’t seen for twenty-five years. I figured they still wouldn’t be talking to me, but the stress of senior year at MIT was far in the past and we all got along as well as we did in earlier years.

From the left, that’s Ron Duncan, Dr. Mike Malaska, me, and Dr. Juan Alvarez. Ron works at Synopsys, and Mike and Juan are pharmaceutical researchers. Mike was the guy who I was afraid wouldn’t talk to me but, like I said, we’re not in our senior year at MIT any more.

My other goal was easily met because Legal Seafood is next to the Marriott where I was staying.

Reunion weekend is the same as graduation, and I stopped to watch the parade of graduates come from Kresge Oval on the way to Killian Court.

Kresge Oval was also where we had a barbecue on Friday night, which reminded us all about MIT food. It was expensive ($38?) and awful. But it did give a chance to hang out with even more friends.

There’s Mike, me, Banleng James Toh, Ron, and Henry Woo. Henry’s the only one from the MIT Class of 1986 I’ve seen in the intervening 25 years.

Saturday night was our class banquet which coincided with MIT’s 150th. I didn’t take all that many pictures, but I do have prof that I saw Bobby Satcher, who is now Dr. Robert Satcher, M.D., Ph.D., Astronaut. You can see the MIT 150 on the Hancock Building, or whatever it’s called now.

That’s Mike, Henry Dr. Satcher, me, Randall Nelson, and Ron.

Sunday I left pretty early to make it to Apple’s WWDC in San Francisco. I did have a chance to meet the guys at a café, including Dr. Paul Dimilla before I got in a taxi for the airport.

That’s Henry, James, Paul, and Mike.

That’s all the MIT pictures I have so far, and I think 25 years was too long to wait to see those guys.

In keeping with the new “screw with my computer until too late” theme (same as the old theme) I decided to upgrade my Quicken to something that actually runs on a Mac made in this decade. That is, from Quicken 2007 to Quicken Essentials. What a pain in the tuckus that was. And now it’s tomorrow and I need to get some sleep.

Yes there are pictures. I’m going to do something about them soon.

I didn’t get that many pictures last week because, well, I don’t take as many pictures as I should. And some of the ones I took are AWFUL. But I have a few pictures of the guys I hung out with at the reunion (mostly the same group of guys).

I also have a few pictures from the Apple conference, but mostly of the BEST HAMBURGER I EVER HAD at Citizen’s Band. Oh and another picture of a different astronaut, Buzz Aldrin. Anyway, those pictures would have been up earlier, but I’ve been busy DESTROYING MY LAPTOP or at least trying to install all sorts of beta Apple stuff that I’m not supposed to talk about even though it’s been announced already.

So there you go. I’m still alive, a slight bit fatter, and sort of rested, sort of tired and my pictures are still stuck somewhere on my laptop.

I left sunny Boston this morning for cloudy SF and the Apple WWDC. I did get to see a bunch of classmates who had changed but were definitely still recognizable after 25 years! I even have photographic proof that I saw Bobby Satcher, who is now Robert Satcher, M.D., Ph.D., Astronaut and has incredibly cute kids. Come to think of it, I think a lot of the kids I met were a lot like their parents in many ways. Ron and Kyla Duncan’s kids were as nice and easy going as Ron and Kyla. Dara Foias’ daughter seemed as clever and inquisitive as you’d expect from parents who are Dara and her husband the biochem prof.

I felt like kind of a loser, like I often do around MIT grads. Every chem major I ran into had his Ph.D. and everyone else seemed to be in Investment Banking. What’s cool is how my friends can explain to me what they’re doing without making me feel too stupid.

I just had dinner with Megan and Nadeem at the best Middle Eastern restaurant I can remember going to, Bursa in West Portal (San Francisco). I better go before I lapse into a food coma.

Whee! I made it to Boston today and I met up with three of my old classmates, Dr. Mike Malaska, Dr. Juan Alvarez, and Ron Duncan. I also saw Kyla Duncan, M.S. and Colin Shepard (NRS) who works in Hillsboro (where I do) but I had to wait 25 years and travel the width of the US to see him again. I kept describing everyone as the big cheeses while I’m kind of a disappointment and waste of an MIT education. I also met the kids of Dr. Robert Satcher, M.D., Ph.D., astronaut and Ron and Kyla’s kids as well.

I did meet an MIT grad who was serving ice cream at Toscanini’s. That’s some good ice cream. I will opine, however, that the food is much better in Portland. There, I said it. I’m a Portland food snob.

I’m taking some time off from the gym (one whole extra day, so far) because I may have overdone it last week. Or I’m being lazy. Or I’m really, really, in need of a vacation.

I did spend most of the day trying to hang some curtains. It meant taking down the old curtains, washing them, taking down the old hardware, and then putting up the new hardware and the outdated but hopefully clean curtains. There was 41 years of dust on the curtains, much of it from when my dad smoked and my mom burned incense for the Buddhist shrine we have. After all the trouble, I was almost finished putting it all together when I noticed I BOUGHT THE WRONG CURTAIN ROD. I wanted one with the pull string that opened and closed the curtains, but I got one that just sat there. And it didn’t take rings or slides to let the curtains open and close at all. The goddamn worthless things are the type that make you tie up the curtains on the sides of the window with some sort of rope. Or maybe you’re supposed to get your butler to do it. I mean, honestly, where the hell am I going to come up with a butler?

So, tomorrow, back to the drawing board. At least I got the replacement parts for my grandmother’s old barber clippers and I got it mostly working again. That’s something, anyway.