Back in Ann Arbor

Well, back in Ann Arbor for the Labor Day weekend. No knock against Blacksburg, but one very severe crimp on my style is the lack of a decent bookstore in town. There is a Barnes and Nobles, but its a Barnes and Nobles. They do have a Books a Million, hadn't gone in yet but it doesn't really get my heart racing.

First thing after I got into town was to go to Borders, not so much to buys books, I can get that on Amazon andPowells, but to be around mounds of books and to revel in the atomosphere. That is one thing Barnes and Nobles never got right. Borders did for a while, until they started to lose money. The ethos in the bookstore is often more important than the books themselves. The kind of people in there, the dawdlers, the vicarious readers, the book sniffers, the brownian motion browsers, the flutterby butterflies, and the time killers are a determining factor. The type sof books, the relative chaos of the store itself, the cloggedness of its aisles, the relative sqeekiness of the floorboards, and the level of disgust of the carpeting, all contribute to the desirability of the book shopping experience.

Even though the weather is still stinking hot here, the smell of fall is ever so slightly impinging on the heat and the humidity. You can distinctly hear the excitement over the football season. The energy is palpable. Here in Michigan the sacrificial lamb for the home opener is Appalachian State of North Carolina. A Division I-AA powerhouse. I shared a ride from the airport to home with an Appalachian State fan. A self professed redneck, this fellow and I traded tales through the half hour ride. Somehow it came out that he was staying at a hotel close to the Detroit Wayne County Airport. Why was he heading for Ann Arbor on a Friday afternoon, some of his redneck buddies were at a campus bar in Ann Arbor waiting for him to come and get drunk with them.

I couldn't help but think of him and his unseen buddies today as Apalachian State Mountaineers of Boone North Carolina upset the Big 10 powerhouse, formerly pretender to the national championship at the Big House with six seconds to go. God love the Davids of the world, the Goliaths need the humility lessons.

OK, I'll bite

Michael Vick. OK, there, I said it.

The national media barrage is interesting isn't it. NOT!! How do you enjoy the sports press falling all over themselves attempting to defend him and then pull a 180 when it comes out that Vick had executed dogs. Then the lunatics come out of the bushes, the national pundits start to excoriate Vick about what he did, as they should. But to compare him to Hitler, to Stalin, to Mao? How about comparing him to serial rapists and and Charles Manson? I love dogs as much as the next guy but for Christ sake, you are talking about dead dogs versus dead people. If you were to put innocent anonymous people up against innocent anonymous dogs, you are saying that you would prefer the dog's life to the person's life?

This world is crazy.

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More news stuff. Miss Teenage South Carolina. What was she thinking. OK, maybe she wasn't thinking. Poor kid. Maybe we need to give remedial thinking to beauty contestants.

Blacksburg, Virginia

So, I am now in Blacksburg Virginia, starting out on my new job. This is a startup, something I thought I was prepared for, but apparently not because everything needs to be done, we need testing, procedures, equipment, design rules, flow of information, and a million other things. This does not make me feel secure, but then again, that was the intent, to break out and do something different in motors because the old way is not working and the old ways are dying despite all of our best efforts.

To make things worse, I am not all that fond of Blacksburg. Not much Chowhounding opportunities, not a decent bookstroe around, in a college town yet. Not much Chinese culture, and its a red state. I still have confidence in the company and I need to make it all happen, which is what I had intended to do, but it keeps making me second guess my decision.

Mind you I am not about to quit, I am just going through one of my millions of moments of doubt. The work can be so good, and I guess the attraction is the promise of success, but it is so hard to predict the future. Of course not everything is negative here, there are interesting work and there are smart people I work with, and as if right now we have funding so we can do it up right.

I can hack it, I recover pretty quickly, but my poor mom keeps wanting to move somewhere and settling into her old age, meanwhile I am dragging her all over the place. Guilt, what a feeling.

Strange thing

I went to eat at a Subway here in Blacksburg last night. They now have an interactive screen with a credit card swipe, so if the line is long you can use the touchscreen to order your subs, the first screen is a menu with all the food that they have and then you work your way down the options systematically.

On the one hand I was intrigued by the technology and the application of the technology. Ont he other hand, the concept was a little abhorent, just from a service point of view. How is it that the economy is is a headlong rush towards service and yet, less and less service is being given to the customer. Very strange.