101, 420, 666, 911

Four numbers I didn't choose, but definitely drew

101: THE STUDENT

This is the 101st article I’ve written. Been writing a couple of years now; still not a writer.

At my last job, I wrote plenty—emails, decks, dashboards. When I quit, my one goal was to sell the house before JFran retired.

I emptied the garage and found a time capsule: model trains, a box of Spider-Mans, stacks of photo gear and old negatives.

I texted a few snapshots to old friends—“Haha can you believe this?” “Do you remember that?” They remembered. I lingered.

From an old album: me, about to walk across the stage at Wheeler Hall, still buzzed from wine up behind the Campanile.

I got rid of most of that stuff—that was the point. I reboxed what stuck with me. Then we drove up the mountain. For a year, memories sloshed around as we wandered—no screens, no keyboards. Another year passed as we settled into our new home. On my birthday, I popped the cork on that brain brew. Words showed up.

At first, I wrote from memory, drinking it in. It helped me find my footing after we left the mountain. Sometimes I floundered, missing the structure the grind had given me.

Oh yeah, and then—last year—both my parents died. Heavy shit, but you must move on, and writing helped me work it out.

420: THE REBEL

In my first job out of college, we got stoned at lunch. One afternoon, still foggy, I forgot to unplug the PC I was fixing. Pulled the video card out, and it arced across the bus, frying the motherboard.

I panicked. I told Perry. Perry was a fat cube rat, buried in monitors, manuals and fossilized burritos. He lived for it—spare parts, wire, zip ties, duct tape, whatever kept things running.

Perry squinted up at me through greasy bangs and dirty glasses, shrugged, fished a new board from under a pile, and showed me how to fix it. Didn’t even tell our boss.

Last week, I wrote about my two hours with a mad scientist, Cliff Stoll. Same nerd joy, different road.

The Amazing Spider-Van calls out to me every time I spot it idle in our driveway. She needs to run.

666: THE SHADOW

Cliff reminded me of another mind I knew—Jim Gray.

Jim was the first to earn a Computer Science PhD from UC Berkeley. Later, he won the Turing Award—the Nobel of computing. Jim left academia to work for IBM and DEC in R&D, before I met him at Microsoft Research.

Jim designed the rules that make modern databases safe. No ACID, no Amazon. No AI.

I didn’t know any of this when I met Jim—he was the tech sponsor for my client, Charles Schwab. But the minute you talked to Jim—just like the minute you talked to Cliff—you just felt how smart they were. It wasn’t a personality. It was a charge in the air.

Jim didn’t flinch. Even when Schwab’s CIO—whose one job seemed to be beating up vendors—came at him.

A week earlier, we’d been in a planning meeting. Then he was gone.

A morning soon after that meeting, on calm seas, Jim left in his sailboat Tenacious for the Farallon Islands, about 30 miles west of San Francisco. He went alone, to spread his mother’s ashes. She had died at 97 a few months before. The Coast Guard and hundreds of volunteers scoured satellite data and the ocean. Nothing.

Death becomes more familiar as you get older. The Jims add up.

Last year, I got sick. Took too long to bounce back. Still not right.

Logically, I know the deal. Aging is a slow ambush. But emotionally, well, the brain is a funny thing.

Last year, I got a t-shirt for my longest, hardest ride—peak performance at 58. This year, I took what I could. Watched my buddy finish strong; I’ll catch him next time.

911: THE CALL

When we first got settled here, JFran talked about needing a ‘purpose.’ I was so burnt out by work, I couldn’t imagine needing anything at all. JFran teaches; she’s good.

You have to find your cheese. Business at Wirepine is good. Shockingly good, considering I’m a terrible salesperson. But JFran is the best, and word of mouth is strong. So, I’ve got websites to build, logos to make, slogans to write. Small business is scrappy. I’ve had to start keeping track of what day of the week it is again.

There’s no shortage of good things to do. My New Jew Crew is expanding. I’m getting better at dodging the boards and skipping the meetings to do the work that matters.

There’s time for all of it. Everything fits in the new box.

I’m still hooked on crack-level news alerts and dopamine scrolls, but I’m getting better.

This week, I finished a couple good books. I used to tear through sci-fi as a kid, but reading got hijacked by CS 101, then Mastering Linux, then The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed—sign me up for anarchy. Shevek, the physicist, has strains of both Cliff and Jim.

To balance the weight, I alternated chapters with Not Suitable For Work by

Michael Estrin

, a story of how tech killed L.A.’s San Pornando Valley.

101/420/666/911: Play the hand you’ve got.