Sometimes a c____ is just a c____

... and sometimes not.

So that we don't seem like over-amped activist yahoos, it has to be acknowledged that 'chink in the armor' is a common idiom that you do indeed hear all the time in sports, politics, etc. I use it myself from time to time. It's an excellent term to use to describe a weakness in something that otherwise seems impenetrable. The same could be said about the swastika: an interesting graphical design that is used in many cultures throughout the world. However, one would also have to say that that one would be wise to avoid using either if at all possible. It's important to consider the context when either or these occur and respond accordingly.

It's entirely possible for the phrase to pop up without any malice *IF* it came up spontaneously in a discussion. It's mainly a question of how considered the choice was -- much like many offenses, premeditation is important.

For something like this to get published on a major website after any kind of review is revolting. However, the on-air utterance seems a little more ambiguous -- he may have been reading the prompter or he may have been ad-libbing. He didn't say it with any particular emphasis on the word, which suggests to me he really was just using the idiom.

That's sort of the problem in fixating on superficial(*) offenses like terminology, doubly so when you draw the short straw and have a racial slur that's a homonym of a word used in such a common idiom. Whether it reflects deep racial animus or benign ignorance can't honestly be determined without resorting to Freudian-style speculation on what the offender intended.

Offensive terminology should be dealt with severely, but I can't help but feel like such skirmishes don't truly address deeper problems. Headlines are easy to retract, second-tier on-line editors who write weekend headlines at 2:30 am are easy to fire, and sports anchors easy to suspend. It's easy to just avoid a particular word, no matter what you actually think of a particular group of people.

It's the more insidious stuff that I'm concerned about. It's headlines like "American beats Kwan", or the post-Katrina photo captions that describe black families 'looting' food and white families 'finding' food. It's whenever anybody compliments me on my English. These kinds of things reflect presumptions so ingrained that whoever says these kinds of things doesn't even think they're saying something controversial. It's the kind of thing that needs far more attention, but isn't the kind of thing you can describe in 155 characters or less.



* Look it up. Superficial doesn't necessarily mean minor.

Greatness, insane or otherwise

I've got to admit I was a lot more affected by Steve Jobs's death last week than I expected. If you asked me a few months ago, I would've figured I'd be bummed out for an afternoon and then obsess about AAPL's stock price for the next few days. The only other public figure that actually saddened me tremendously when he died was author David Foster Wallace, who committed suicide in August of 2008 at the age of 46, after battling depression for years. Both were figures that died in the prime of their careers, succumbing to afflictions they had struggled with even as they produced some of their greatest work.

While it might be understandable to feel such emotion for an artist or writer, many remarked at the time at how unusual it was to see such emotion for a high-tech CEO. We know intuitively such a glib description doesn't do service or respect to what Mr. Jobs accomplished. But it did make me wonder why I don't expect to feel the same intensity of emotion when such other larger-than-life figures in the tech industry pass on, from Bill Gates to Sergey Brin and Larry Page, or even to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. No doubt many like myself will express their respects for their great achievements and how much better the world is for their work. But I doubt we'll see quite the outpouring we saw last Thursday.

Speaking for myself, I flashed back almost immediately to my first experience on a computer that I actually wanted to use, the Macintosh at my friend's house back in 5th grade. He insisted I head over to his place after school one day to play on his dad's new computer. Up until then, that generally meant me sitting around fiddling with Transformers while my friend fumbled around with a computer for about two hours, be it a C64 or DOS, loading several floppies or tapes, screwing something up, flipping through manuals, starting over, rebooting, and so on before we finally could play, say, Pirates or maybe some text game for maybe half an hour before it was time to go home for dinner and then miss my TV show because my homework wasn't done. It wasn't anything I even remotely had any kind of interest in.

The Mac changed all that. We played lots of games (we spent weeks on "Deja Vu"), of course, but oddly enough it didn't stop there. We would eventually just start messing around with the computer itself, messing with settings, desktop patterns, and then eventually playing around with text in word processing apps, trying to draw in paint programs and so on. I was always the artistic kid (boy has that changed), and spent tons of time in MacPaint and was the only guy brave enough to try the 'Draw' (vector) programs and have any kind of success with them. After we got my own, even my writing improved as I started keeping a Doogie-style journal and gagging at how awful my writing was upon review a few months later.

It was a powerful experience, and no technology quite matched it for some time (though Unix came close in college). I didn't know about the 1984 ad, I didn't know about Steve Jobs, I just know this thing was awesome and made me want to understand things like hard drives and memory and processing speeds. My enthusiasm for the Mac and the knowledge that resulted has been responsible for many positive development in my career, from my first job as a computer lab geek at UC Santa Cruz to my first job at ILM as (and many are surprised at this) a Macintosh Technician.

I only first learned about Steve Jobs in sort of the past tense as I entered college, because he was long gone from Apple by the early 90s. Lacking the vast archives of the internet, it was amazing what a strong impression he was still able to make as people spoke of him reverently while simultaneously keeping him at arm's length because of the rather volatile reputation he had earned in the early years. Even as Apple showed all the signs of a failing company after nearly a decade of mismanagement since his departure, people were wary of bringing him back in 1997.

The rest is history, of course, but it didn't take long for me to see a very direct connection between that amazing piece of technology I first used as a kid in 1985 and the amazing individual who drove its creation and resurrection while envisioning with near clairvoyance the role it would assume today, and possibly for some years to come. We're reminded nearly every day of how much his work has improved the world. I have no doubt that I would not be where I am today without him.

Thanks, Steve.

Shields Up

The 'coons will have to roll 20s.

Hexes. I'm seeing them a lot these days in games and movies as effects for energy shields or invisibility cloaks, enveloping that awesome ship or sexy covert agent in a shimmering protective grid. At the advice of the folks in the garden shop, a protective hexagonal grid of chicken wire will do the same for my nascent lawn, shielding it from the surprising number of skunks and raccoons in my neighborhood. They've been flipping up large sections to dig for grubs and worms. I was skeptical at first, but it's been remarkably effective in one test area. I didn't buy enough to cover everything, but it seems the coons have only been hitting certain spots. We shall see. Hopefully I'll only need this up for a few more weeks to let the grass's roots grow stronger.

A case can be made for a strong offensive option, though:

I'm trying to talk myself out of buying this, but don't expect much success.

EDIT: Go Bear!

It's the customers, stupid

(Like a lot of topics, there are surely more scholarly viewpoints on economics, but because everyone's involved in it and affected by it, I think we're all entitled to a reasoned opinion.)

Whenever debates on increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations come up, the conservatives generally go to the very tangible bottom-line arguments about wealth redistribution, with some class warfare accusations thrown in to give their arguments a dash of cultural incredulity. Liberals go heavy on the bleeding heart cultural arguments, trying to appeal to notions of fairness and sympathy for the less fortunate, and act like money isn't an issue.

While the bleeding heart arguments do resonate with me, it'd be insane to support something just because it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. If that was it, I'd give to panhandlers all the time for that quick nice-guy feeling, all the while encouraging and enabling behavior that nobody thinks is good. (Ever see people give to panhandlers inside a restaurant? Ugh.) The main reason anybody should be advocating higher taxes to support government work projects and social programs is because it'll make us all richer.

Just about anybody who works in a high-income profession relies on broader economic activity. We rely on large numbers of people buying more goods and services so that we benefit either directly if they buy products and services offered by the companies we work for, or indirectly when they buy the goods and services produced by our clients, or even less directly when the quarterly filings come in and the companies in our portfolios show stellar sales and revenue.

Absolutely none of this happens when there aren't customers to buy these goods and services. And when there are no customers, there are no profits. So my company might lose clients or have less sales. So it may need to cut costs and lay a bunch of people off. Or my stocks might tank from poor earnings reports. So I'll have to re-think getting that new computer or 60" plasma. So I become one less shopper at the AAPL store or AMZN. And the cycle repeats.

If lack of tax revenue forces government to cut medicare and social security, suddenly I have to consider setting cash aside should I need to support my elderly mother. If you have kids, you may need to re-think using the public schools, and look to spending on private. Or possibly moving altogether to a better, more expensive part of town with solid schools. And again, even if we're gainfully employed in the middle class, we're a few less customers at the BBY or the F or GM dealership.

Through work programs we can create moderate income jobs for people that need to get a computer to replace their 8-year-old Compaq still running MSFT Windows 2000, buy a digital TV instead of the dumb half-assed $40 adapter box, maybe sign up for a VZ or S cellular plan (a career necessity these days), and of course, buy food and clothing at the WMT or M. All this while fixing roads, bridges, and pipelines so that we don't have to contend with catastrophic infrastructure failures that end up costing everybody even more money. Infrastructure that, by the way, support vital delivery services such as FDX and UPS, that allows them to charge rates low enough so that most of the stuff you buy from AMZN will have the free 3-5 day shipping. Which makes you that much more likely to click 'Buy'.

This goes for the Social Security and Welfare too. The money doesn't just go into a hole. It goes right back into the economy when they become customers (instead of shoplifters, if worst comes to worst) at the SWY or TGT. Maybe even take the kids to MCD every once in a while.With sufficient income, they might even need to open accounts at WFC or BAC. Are there lazy douchebags on welfare? Sure, but so long as I don't have to hang out with them, get mugged or burglarized by them, and not have them become homeless and screw up my downtown area, I'm not too bothered by it. But by all means, seek and prosecute fraud.

Frankly, I'm sick and tired of the bleeding heart stuff. I like captial-L Liberal policies because they make sense for me as somebody who wants to live comfortably and even maybe get obscenely filthy rich. This is the sort of thing we Liberals/Progressives should open with. Feeling like a good human being stuff just helps me sleep at night, which is important, but that's far from the only reason.

Rocking Out, The Thrilling Conclusion

This lawn project is definitely one of the more challenging home improvement projects I've taken on. One thing I was thinking about often while working on it was how different this was from building the fence.

It reminded me a lot of the difference between the more creative work I'm doing now an the more technical work I'd been doing for the last several years. The fence was kind of like the more technical tasks. It was easy to get a sense or progress while I was working on it and seeing the end to it. Once a piece was in, I could look it over, maybe test it a little, and be pretty sure that part was done or at least was going to perform properly under the expected conditions.

The lawn felt more like the creative work in that it was hard to progress through all the phases sure that I had truly finished them. It seemed that every time I stopped to level or took a closer look at a particular part, I could find some reason to re-rake or re-till to get more rocks out, or re-grade to get a better slope. What looked good one day looked awful the next. All of this while not being totally sure if I was doing any of it the right way! After a certain point you have to just say it's good enough, but whether or not it wasn't will always sort of nag at you.

Anyway, for posterity, here's the breakdown:

A fair amount of gravel and rocks/concrete was mixed into the soil under the tarp.

Pick-axing up the yard. This went quick, but wow, was it tiring.

Lifting up the tarp revealed that, along with the gravel that made it under the tarps, there were a lot of rocks and concrete chunks mixed into the topsoil. Maybe from a previous project. I didn't know what was under there, so it wasn't a good idea to run the tiller through it with out breaking up the surface first.

After tilling, adding in some fresh topsoil, re-tilling, planing & grading, rolling, more planing, etc...

A bunch of hastily selected sod pieces from the Depot.

It's not a fatal mistake, but I really wish I had a quick look at *all* the sod pieces I picked up. A fair number had yellow/brown spots or were totally yellow, probably from having been out on their lot all day. They seem to be all greening up, but it wasn't very satisfying to look at the finished project and see all these dead patches.

The morning after.

After five days...

About two weeks.

All new sod will look okay the first 4-6 weeks, supposedly. After that, any problems with the soil or setup will start to emerge. I just used my snapshot cam on these shots (didn't want to risk the new SLR), so I see the exposures were different. Eh.


Some notes:

Before/after dusk-masks. Be kind to your lungs. Use a dust mask.

20 or so pieces of sod may stress your suspension.

Most of the gravel, rocks, and concrete dug up.

This actually isn't all of it, the rubble pile is now probably taller by about half a foot. Next step is to find some way to get rid of all the rocks/concrete/gravel. Apparently most garbage services have sites called 'transfer stations' that accept bulk waste from construction (which this qualifies as). Fees vary based on weight. Berkeley's will take up to 330 lbs. for about $30 (per one visit). The trick is getting it all there in one visit, which probably means a rental. Arranging for some special bin or hauling costs about $200, again depending on weight. Some places recycle, some don't, I'm just going to go with what's closest.

My guess at the work is roughly two good 40-hour weeks to do this. If it wasn't for all the gravel and rocks I came across, it might have gone faster. It might also have helped if I opted to just dig up and throw out the entire top six-inches of top-soil instead of trying to rake the rocks out of it. That would have been complicated for other reasons.

Rocking out, Part 1

I don't typically like to write about home projects in progress, but I figured I had to write about something or I'd fall out of the habit again.

The main thing on my to-do list since the fence project has been establishing a lawn in my backyard. Lawns are supposed to make weeds easier to deal with and I figured it'd be better for when I finally get a dog. It seemed like kind of a daunting task, so I've been sort of been procrastinating on it. I finally decided to take it on in early August. (Fence was last August, too. I guess something about August kicks me into gear.)

Previously, on 'Kai's Old House'...

So the previous owner tarped over the yard and spread gravel over it, which I guess is supposed to deter weeds. Maybe you didn't see it in the photos from when I did the fence project last year because of all the weeds. This is apparently one common strategy for dealing with weeds, but most people find it doesn't hold up past, say, the 9-12 or so months it took to sell a house in 2009.

The common problem is that the tiniest bit of dirt in the gravel will let a weed sprout up. Once that happens, it's a matter of days before it shoots roots down right through that bio-degradable 'weed blocker' tarp. After that, the tarp makes it that much harder to pull out the weed completely, leaving the roots. What really helped get dirt into the gravel was the really half-assed garden the previous rental tenants set up. That would be the little green patch in the photo that I hesitated to blast with weed-killer at first.

The gravel, after I scooped it all out of the backyard.

I hacked at this in the spring by trying to just yank up the tarp, imagining the gravel and dirt would neatly roll off as I went along, gathering in a neat pile on one side of the yard. But that didn't work. So I finally got a big scoop shovel, a wheel barrow, and went to work scooping the gravel out. It turned out to be relatively easy, about 6-8 hours work. I tried to see if I could do a little separating by raking the dirt/gravel mix around a bit first, which was semi-effective, but I imagine I'd still need to do some sifting if I ever wanted to re-use the gravel or dirt for anything.

The bio-degradable 'weed-blocking' tarp.

The results, at least so far, do not look like an improvement, but trust me, it is.

BEFORE: From Spring, so yes, the green weeds look deceptively pretty.

AFTER: A barren, desolate wasteland. Mission accomplished.

If things go as planned, I'll be able to do some tilling next weekend and maybe even start laying down some sod!

SITREP - August, 2010

There are few things that make you look more like a douchebag than having an entry about your phone at the top of your blog page. I really need to write more often.

Used to be that I did actually blog a lot, but then Facebook came along and I sort of got that writing fix from trying to craft short, succinct little statements to express my impression of something or an event, while also trying to capture a sense of the context. It's a nice thing to exercise, but I feel like my long form's gotten sloppy since it feels like status updates are the only recreational writing I've been doing the last four(!!!) years. I'm finding myself straying a lot whenever I write something long.

There's also that need to just sit and rant or vent sometimes that goes unfulfilled if you're trying to keep something brief. If that need goes unfulfilled, I think I tend to seize the opportunity in conversations to go off on long rants with very little (or frankly, NO) prompting.

Let's clear the gunk out of the pipes by just sort of updating a few items I'd mentioned before...


House

 Have a rapid-deployment X-mas (set the tree up hours after closing)

The house hunt had been going in fits and starts since 2006, frankly, namely marked by periods of going to open houses and generally coming to the conclusion that nothing about the housing market made sense. 600 sq ft studios were going for about $450k. After clearing out all my debts (except for a bit of student loan), saving up, and spurred by that housing tax credit, I attacked the issue again 2009. After a six month ordeal dealing with a short sale with a bit of an inexperienced buying agent (at least with short sales), kind of a sketchy selling agent, and a seller who was sort of coming unhinged from having four properties on his hands that were now worth barely half of what he paid for them, I finally closed on a house.

The deal closed about a day or two before x-mas, which was a nice touch. It's been great for the year and a half I've been in here, but yes, I have not had a house-warming or any kind of event whatsoever. It always seems like there's one more thing I want to take care of before I do that, but soon, mi amigo. Soon.

Fence under construction last year.

The insides are fine, I'm mainly bothered by the outside. There's no lawn, there's some rusty chain link up around most of it (a large section that I just replaced with a wood fence last summer, if you follow me on FB). I've got a bit of a lull in my schedule, so I'm using it to really attack the back yard. The previous owner did some kind of gravel mulch thing that I'm digging up. I'm going to lay down some sod next.


Movin' on up

Pre-emptively drowning my sorrows

After nearly FOUR years in the role of Assistant Technical Director (I really need to check if that's some kind of record), I've finally moved up to the role of lighting TD (and hopefully some sims). I've done some semi-shot production tasks in the past so the whole review/feedback process wasn't totally alien to me, but there's definitely a different feeling when you're fully accountable for a major aspect of a shot. I generally feel like I did alright. Had a few things I was really proud of, one I kind of wasn't, etc.

Unfortunately, you'll probably never see my work because I worked on what by now is an avowed flop. With the talent behind it, I think you would've been right to expect more from it. It works on some levels (at least for me), but I think people would be justified in feeling a little disappointed.

It's sort of an uninteresting failure, relative to my previous project. Now *that* was fascinating. In the case of Cowboys, you had a bunch of really talented people trying to adapt an odd piece of work from a static medium (meaning print, even if it's a comic book) that had a fringe following at best. In the case of Airbender, you had wildly successful source material that had been executed almost perfectly in its animated form. You'd think it would have taken willful, directed effort to screw it up, and I wouldn't blame you. But it certainly wasn't willful. I could go on, and maybe I will in some other post.


Travels

Three generations, three continents

Up until recently I haven't traveled much, and I've been trying to sort of make up for lost time trying to take care of some things and visit places I've sort of been overdue for. This past winter, I visited relatives on my dad's side of the family in the city of Jinan, in the Shandong province in northeastern China. I hadn't seen them since I was sixteen. Besides, that, my father passed on quite suddenly over ten years ago in China, and his brother/my uncle went through a pretty spectacular ordeal dealing with crooked doctors and hospital administrators to settle his affairs. As bad a problem as corruption is in China, you can imagine how much worse it was before the boom times.

It was definitely one of the more fulfilling trips I've ever been on, on par with my first visit back to Brazil in 2004. I visited with my Mom and my niece Mariana from Brazil. About all I remember from the last visit was being a teenager and downing shots of baijiu with the older cousins (and my parents, actually). It was kind of like that again, except the little kids from back then were now the ones taking me and Mariana out to clubs and for Karaoke.

One of the few good bars in Rippongi. Everything else is for expat douchebags.

Also stopped by Tokyo for about a week. Pat referred me to a bunch of great people in Tokyo involved in various aspects of the entertainment industry and I had a good time just experiencing a place that, 'lost decade' or not, still felt light years ahead of us socially and technologically.

Atlantis, minutes before liftoff!

From this summer, I'm coming off of a trip to Florida to take in the very last Space Shuttle launch back in early July. I had booked two weeks expecting there would be scrubs, but amazingly enough, Atlantis lifted off for mission STS-135 a mere minute-and-a-half behind schedule. I took a bunch of pics with an SLR that I was frankly still getting used to, and some video of the launch itself. I spent the rest of the time just kind of relaxing on the various beaches in the Cape Canaveral area, getting an impressive sunburn in the process (I've got this big diagonal tan-line from the camera bag strap).

Whedon makes an appearance. Have to admit he was a pretty cool guy.

After recuperating from Florida for a day or two I drove down the coast to San Diego to check out Comic-Con with Luke and Brenda. It was a nice way to wind-down from Florida, geeking out over TV shows and movies and going to talks. I gotta admit I still have a bit of that judgmental a-hole in me that kicks in when I sit in the huge studio/publisher talks and hear rapturous audiences cheering at announcements for marginally improved re-releases of books, movies, or trinkets that they probably already have in some form or another. I guess it pays the bills.

Anyway, that's it for now. I've written long enough. Hopefully (at least for me) more soon.

RIP RAZR

"slam it on ur palm like a new pack of cigarettes"
-- Guest, fixya.com

This actually worked, believe it or not. It took me a while because I've never smoked, so I'm not entirely familiar with how one slams a new pack of cigarettes on your palm.

Discovering this fix for a problem I was having has affirmed my belief that this crappy old Motorola RAZR I've been carrying around since 2006 is one of those few devices I have that can actually be said to have personality. I've even become sort of fond of all the scratches and dings it has from sharing my pocket with my keys. It's a phone that one imagines might exist in a high-tech world where space smugglers would have had to do something similar to get their after-market Corellian transports to start up as well. As I look ahead to picking up my new 'smart' phone tomorrow, a moment of silence for my semi-trusty companion.

SITREP

I just find it inexcusably lame that my last blog entry dates back to the Bush administration! Some quick updates. Politics free, except to say that, yeah, I'm generally frustrated with the things I expected to be frustrated about, and happy about the things that I expected to be happy about.

I'm really glad the last show turned out well. It was a real crunch -- remember that the original release date was xmas '08, but got bumped to May '09. I'm generally of the understanding that this was because the studio thought it had a real hit on its hands, and indeed it did. Unfortunately *we* still had the deadline set for the xmas release, and that didn't budge. Either way, definitely the absolute best project I've worked on so far in my not-so-short-but-not-exactly-long career in vfx. Get the dvd/blu-ray -- the deleted scenes are pretty great and explain a lot. I kinda think they shoulda stayed in. Current show is looking good, and I'm excited that I'll be seeing a good friend in the credits several rows/sections above me!

Embarked, once again, on the quest to get a house in the East Bay. Sorry to say that it's still a pretty frustrating process. Though prices have dipped, places have been hard to find because sellers have been trying to sit on their properties as long as possible to try to ride out the dip. It seems to be working -- prices have been going back up, spiking around the deadline for the tax credit. Sucks for me. I have one prospect that I'm in contract on, but being a short sale, crap just seems to keep coming up. I'll know for sure pretty soon if this will close or not, otherwise, back to the listings.

Da Bears. Went and splurged on some season tix to Cal Football the last two seasons along with John and Melinda. Because the Bears generally win at home, that's worked out great, though of course there were the two really bad losses to USC and Oregon State this year. While no one in their right mind who remembers the bad old days in the 90s can complain about Tedford's record, it's becoming apparent that there's some final piece to the coaching puzzle that he doesn't seem to have to help the Bears live up to pre/early season expectations.

Speaking strictly from my armchair, it does seem to be that 10% inspiration to go with the 90% perspiration of the old cliche. The sort of meltdowns we've seen against USC/UO just don't make sense when far inferior teams have at least managed a touchdown against those teams. Whatever it is, the team needs to find something in those situations to steel their resolve to go out and play hard and play smart, win or lose. They may have found it in those last two terrific games against ASU and Stanford, but we'll see if the lesson will stick with them past the regular season and the (thankfully inevitable) bowl game into next season. I've got to admit I still see some profound problems in special teams, pass protection, and offensive playcalling. Riley gets more crap than he deserves -- I see an awful lot of dropped passes, and I wonder how many of those overthrows are the receivers not maintaining speed in their routes, assuming the o-line even gives him a chance to squeeze off a decent pass.

Still not watching much TV, but absolutely loving Mad Men and Friday Night Lights. Both are great little snapshots into certain times and places in American culture that have a certain resonance with the current environment.

The Indiana Adventure

Even with less than 12 hours until the inauguration, I've got to admit that there's still some neurotic little part of me that can't entirely believe this is really going to happen. It's not that I fear the unthinkable. Mainly I fear some 'crisis' will erupt elsewhere that can be used to justify a 'delay' of some kind, leaving us all in kind of this ambiguous state where we won't know what will happen next without some thorough discussion and study of constitutional law and legal precedent. What with the Minnesota recount, Burris, etc. I've had enough of those for one election season!

That neurotic little part of me is obviously batshit f'ing loco, but I gotta say that this anxiety was kind of a helpful thing to have during the campaign, if only because it finally got me off my ass and into the campaign offices to help out.

Though I was in Chicago the days up to November 4 mainly to check out a town I've been wanting to visit and take in some sights with an old college friend before the big, big night in Grant Park, I felt the need to spend at least one day helping out the campaigns in the battlegrounds around Illinois.

But which one? Illinois bordered two major battleground states: Missouri and Indiana. Mizzou seemed to be the sensible place to go -- so much hay was made of Missouri and its bellwether status, and none other than fivethirtyeight predicted that Indiana was going to be close but ultimately lost. Indiana has been pretty safely Republican since the 60s! Clinton lost to Dole (Dole?!?) there by 6% in '96!

But laziness won out: St. Louis, MO was a good 5-6 hour drive away while Lake County, IN was (in theory, at least) about 41 minutes away. So I signed on with the Gary Office for what I expected was going to be the go-down-with-your-guns-blazing fight in Indiana, bellwethers be damned.

While Indiana was safely red, Gary, however, was a different story. It was run down but had a large black population that tended to swing Lake County blue. It was because of this that the networks just could not call Indiana in the Democratic Primaries until all the votes came in from Lake County the morning after.

The Indiana Primaries, as best experienced...

Gary was kind of a bleak place, as I had been warned, but I've got to admit I've been in more dangerous parts in East Oakland.

Seen better days

The places I visited had obviously seen better days, but they were actual bedroom communities -- neighborhoods, not the high-density projects that I had grown up around in Oakland. In spite of it all, Gary had a certain kind of look that makes me wish now that I had taken many more pictures.

The Gary office was, as might be expected, much scrappier than the Reno office I was in weeks earlier. It was in a run-down strip mall in a shop that still had the signage for a computer parts store. Next to it was a police department inside a converted mall shop. It didn't have nearly as much schwag to hand out, which kind of bummed me out because so many people wanted it when I went out. I guess it's kind of the penalty of being a safe territory. Like many in California I had to buy my schwag, but in tightly-contested Reno, NV we went out with armfuls of yard signs, buttons, and stickers to hand out at will. But Gary's schwag supply could've been sparse because we were there on election eve -- that sort of thing wasn't going to do that much good anymore.

Appearances aside, the campaign was tightly organized. They had staffers there recently pulled out of South Carolina and they still had the nice packets and lists put together for us. Being election eve, we were now in the GOTV (Get Out The Vote) stage of the campaign. Our mission was no longer to cajole and persuade, but to talk to everyone on that turf about voting and blanket a it with literature with precise instructions on the polling location and what to bring and be prepared for, Obama supporter or not.

Who's turf? No really, who's turf???

This was where that good sense of map-reading and checking lists helped me out quite a good deal. I can't be sure if there was some kind of electoral board chicanery was going on, but it did seem to me the turf for a given polling place was particularly small, so that many people across the street from each may well have had entirely different polling places to go to. I canvassed with a guy who had worked the Gary office before and felt comfortable just heading out after a good look at the map and lists and leaving them back on the car.

The first 3 blocks were good, but after that I noticed a copy of literature already posted with a different polling place on it. Due to previous mix-ups the office told us to go ahead and destroy any of these we found and place our 'correct' information, and my canvassing partner was ready to go ahead and do that. I got antsy and insisted we go back and re-check the map, and indeed, we had gone outside of our turf. Luckily we didn't get far (and we removed our bad info) but I shudder to think about how many votes we could've lost if we'd just tore up the 'wrong' literature and replaced it with ours. I think we wouldn't have been more than a block off, but you never know how this kind of thing could add up. What could that be? 20 votes? 50 votes?

I mainly thought about how crushed these people would be if the campaign misled them. Unlike the sheltered suburbs of Reno, the people in these neighborhoods were thrilled to see us and incredibly kind. Many appreciated seeing an Asian guy out from California and a White guy from Illinois coming over to help out. One old guy undid several deadbolts and a unlocked a screen door to come out and shake my hand and talk. Amost teary-eyed, he told me he had been a lifelong Republican but told me he had to vote for Obama. People hailed us from across the street. It was great to see a bunch of people who have obviously seen a lot of tough times finally have something to be really excited about. "Flip Indiana and we can start the party early tomorrow!", we often told them.

And so it was -- Obama squeaked by in Indiana by 0.9%, the first time the state went blue since '64. By the time it was called, Obama had already clinched the win with the results from the west coast (so 10pm CST, a reasonably good time to kick off a party). But winning states like IN and NV were the kinds of firewalls we needed to keep us from repeating the nightmare scenarios where one silly electoral college-heavy state could've swung the entire election sometime in the wee hours of November 5. IN was particularly sweet since it was a state many had not expected to win.

I actually caught the moment we clinched the win with some shoddy camera work on my digicam in Grant Park...

Countdown to victory!

The whole experience was terrific and I actually find myself looking forward to go back into the trenches in 2012! Hopefully I'll see some of you there.