There's a famous Temkoian family myth about how I'm death on electronics. My dad got a new TV once that had this little control panel which recessed into the front face. In order to access it, you pushed a little button that had a little label on it that said, cleverly enough, "push", and the little panel came sliding out of the front - very slick when it worked.
The delivery guys came to install the TV, and the first thing I did when they left was to push the little button that said "push". The panel slid out. "Cool!" I said, and pushed it back in. It slid back out. I pushed it in. It slid out. The button was not involved. "Um." I said. At this point, dad walked into the room.
After everyone in the family went through the drill - push it in, watch it slide out, push it in, watch it slide out, lather, rinse, repeat - it was decided that I was very thoroughly at fault and was never to touch the tv or anything else again for the rest of my life. Alas, I did not heed this advice, much to the dismay of electronic equipment everywhere. There's nothing quite like pushing a play button on a tape recorder and hearing that special "crunch" noise which signifies that something has gone contrary to design. My past is littered with the corpses of broken electronica, their only crime to be used by me for their intended purpose.
During my college years I developed an alarming ability to crash any computer system I came into contact with. To me, this signified an obvious calling to the Computer Sciences. I spent the majority of my college career bring the Emory University CS labs (all of them) to a screeching halt. Things got worse when I starting to learn Distributed Computing, a science concerning the breaking up of huge problems into lots of smaller ones and figuring out how to get the load shared out amongst many systems, and the myriad problems one encounters when one wants to do something insane like this. I went from killing one machine at a time to killing off the entire lab in one fell swoop.
In fact, my area of study or work seems to determine the type of object I am most likely to kill. After school it was the Municpal Electric Authority of Georgia, where I applied my digicidal skills to the power grid, bringing down more than one remote telemetry unit by attempting to push the controlling software in strange directions. After that it was working as Emory University's webmaster when I learned how to bring down www.emory.edu simply by upgrading the hardware and software running the web site. At Indiana University I speciailzed in installing and maintaining (and eventually contributing to) a distributed computing software project called Globus, which at the time was a sure way to slowly kill any system onto which it latched. From there to Cox Radio Interactive, where I discoverd my talent for breaking radio broadcasting platforms by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time and accidentally "jiggling" a wire which was known by local engineers to be "goosey" but which was neither advertised nor protected in any way.
Now I work for Verizon Wireless. Apparantly my new skill is causing grief with other people's phones simply by calling them to talk.
Sorry about your phone, Megan!
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Sunday, January 08, 2006
The Godfather (and mother)
How does one classify friends like Brian and Bojana?
I met Brian at Governor's Honors, a summer school for gifted students in Georgia (this is almost, but not quite, a perfect oxy-moron), waaaaaaaay back in 1987. The very first day of our arrival - actually, the first 30 minutes of our arrival - he saw me walking down the hall with my tennis racquet, asked me if I played, and 30 minutes after that we were skipping the opening ceremonies to find the courts. We've been thick as thieves ever since.
Amusing Ancillary Anecdote : Later during GHP, Brian and I played the headmaster of the program, a man with the improbable name of Lonnie Love, and one of the math professors (for Math was our subject), an enormous man named Rolf (who, when he orders a Spaten Optimator, sounds exactly like me when I do it, only he doesn't do it to be funny, he really sounds that way), in a doubles match. These two had never lost a match before, and Brian and I kicked their asses. The best part of all was when I hit a return of serve as hard as I possibly could directly at Lonnie, who was make a feeble attempt to poach. The ball hit him squarely in the middle of his forehead and shot straight up in the air about 50 feet. He played a bit further back from the net after that, a sported a lovely red welt for the rest of the term.
Brian and I maintained contact throughout our college years, he at Georgia Tech and I at Emory. Ironcially, I got degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science at Emory and he has a degree in History from Georgia Tech. Clearly, we are two peas in a pod. We continued to play tennis and dabble in music together and cause a sort of generalized mayhem until Wanda and I left for IU.
Amusing Ancillary Anecdote #2 : Brian talked me into singing a birthday party of I think it was a cousin's of his (sorry Megan!) waaaaay out in the middle of East Bumfuck, Georgia, by the shore of some lake somewhere. This was well before Ben & Wanda (in fact, I left that birthday party early to go to a different party being thrown by a friend of mine from Emory named Bill Carrier, who SWORE to me that Wanda was going to show up - in fact she never even knew that party was taking place), mind you, so having nothing better to do I was all too happy to participate. This birthday party was attended by many, many drunken people. I don't mean they got drunk at the party, I mean they showed up about eighteen sheets to the wind. The power for the electric guitars, bass, and amps was being run from a generator which was sitting in water and which also had no ground. Brian kept getting the shit shocked out of him, my microphone was giving me a mild, constant vibe, and finally I think the generator caught on fire, but that was after I left. We sang "Under the Bridge", by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and some other song I have forgotten but will backfill if I can think of it.
Now Brian, as some of you may recall, was the only person to help us make the move from Atlanta to Bloomington - he helped us load the truck (4 hours of hell), he drove up there with us (11 more hours of hell, since the truck had a governor on it to keep it from going more than 65), and then helped us unload (7 more hours of hell) and for this alone he has our undying thanks, but he also came up to visit us sometimes, which helped make our time there a little less home-sicky. We went to an IU basketball game where he got to see Bobby Knight do his thing, drove around listening to (the apparantly ubiquitous) Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and then much later to the hospital through in ice storm after Brian came down with some sort of horrific flu.
I'm telling you, you don't get friends like Brian more than once or twice per ice-age.
When Brian brought home the most fantastic Serbian woman alive to be his bride, we were ecstatic. Brian's romantic history was to that point a checkered affair, so watching him settle down has been a most salutary experience. Bojana was in medical school in Serbia for a time, and now she's this freak-talented painter, artist, crazy lady whom we absolutely adore. They share so many wonderful qualities : generosity, kindness, gentleness, great senses of humor, adventurous - they are perfect for each-other. And, more's the point, they are family, and we are honored to love them and be loved by them.
Last year Brian and Bojana gave birth to a son - Vuk Kenneth Ginn. On New Year's Day 2006 they asked us to be his godparents. I know most of you who know us will probably not automatically associate us with god. I'm as far off the beaten religious path as it's possible to be and still be safe to come within speaking distance of, and Wanda, though she sings at an Episcopalian church, can throw a rock from where she is and hit me pretty easily. Traditionally our job would be to help enhance Vuk's religious education (which we may yet do, if not in the expected sense), but I believe our jobs will be to spoil that child ruthlessly, and we will undertake to achieve this task with great enthusiasm.
Ladies and Gentlemen, here are Vuk and Brian (I'll hunt down a picture of the three of them and post that asap):
Oh GOD lookit those cheeks!!! Could he BE any cuter?
I met Brian at Governor's Honors, a summer school for gifted students in Georgia (this is almost, but not quite, a perfect oxy-moron), waaaaaaaay back in 1987. The very first day of our arrival - actually, the first 30 minutes of our arrival - he saw me walking down the hall with my tennis racquet, asked me if I played, and 30 minutes after that we were skipping the opening ceremonies to find the courts. We've been thick as thieves ever since.
Amusing Ancillary Anecdote : Later during GHP, Brian and I played the headmaster of the program, a man with the improbable name of Lonnie Love, and one of the math professors (for Math was our subject), an enormous man named Rolf (who, when he orders a Spaten Optimator, sounds exactly like me when I do it, only he doesn't do it to be funny, he really sounds that way), in a doubles match. These two had never lost a match before, and Brian and I kicked their asses. The best part of all was when I hit a return of serve as hard as I possibly could directly at Lonnie, who was make a feeble attempt to poach. The ball hit him squarely in the middle of his forehead and shot straight up in the air about 50 feet. He played a bit further back from the net after that, a sported a lovely red welt for the rest of the term.
Brian and I maintained contact throughout our college years, he at Georgia Tech and I at Emory. Ironcially, I got degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science at Emory and he has a degree in History from Georgia Tech. Clearly, we are two peas in a pod. We continued to play tennis and dabble in music together and cause a sort of generalized mayhem until Wanda and I left for IU.
Amusing Ancillary Anecdote #2 : Brian talked me into singing a birthday party of I think it was a cousin's of his (sorry Megan!) waaaaay out in the middle of East Bumfuck, Georgia, by the shore of some lake somewhere. This was well before Ben & Wanda (in fact, I left that birthday party early to go to a different party being thrown by a friend of mine from Emory named Bill Carrier, who SWORE to me that Wanda was going to show up - in fact she never even knew that party was taking place), mind you, so having nothing better to do I was all too happy to participate. This birthday party was attended by many, many drunken people. I don't mean they got drunk at the party, I mean they showed up about eighteen sheets to the wind. The power for the electric guitars, bass, and amps was being run from a generator which was sitting in water and which also had no ground. Brian kept getting the shit shocked out of him, my microphone was giving me a mild, constant vibe, and finally I think the generator caught on fire, but that was after I left. We sang "Under the Bridge", by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and some other song I have forgotten but will backfill if I can think of it.
Now Brian, as some of you may recall, was the only person to help us make the move from Atlanta to Bloomington - he helped us load the truck (4 hours of hell), he drove up there with us (11 more hours of hell, since the truck had a governor on it to keep it from going more than 65), and then helped us unload (7 more hours of hell) and for this alone he has our undying thanks, but he also came up to visit us sometimes, which helped make our time there a little less home-sicky. We went to an IU basketball game where he got to see Bobby Knight do his thing, drove around listening to (the apparantly ubiquitous) Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and then much later to the hospital through in ice storm after Brian came down with some sort of horrific flu.
I'm telling you, you don't get friends like Brian more than once or twice per ice-age.
When Brian brought home the most fantastic Serbian woman alive to be his bride, we were ecstatic. Brian's romantic history was to that point a checkered affair, so watching him settle down has been a most salutary experience. Bojana was in medical school in Serbia for a time, and now she's this freak-talented painter, artist, crazy lady whom we absolutely adore. They share so many wonderful qualities : generosity, kindness, gentleness, great senses of humor, adventurous - they are perfect for each-other. And, more's the point, they are family, and we are honored to love them and be loved by them.
Last year Brian and Bojana gave birth to a son - Vuk Kenneth Ginn. On New Year's Day 2006 they asked us to be his godparents. I know most of you who know us will probably not automatically associate us with god. I'm as far off the beaten religious path as it's possible to be and still be safe to come within speaking distance of, and Wanda, though she sings at an Episcopalian church, can throw a rock from where she is and hit me pretty easily. Traditionally our job would be to help enhance Vuk's religious education (which we may yet do, if not in the expected sense), but I believe our jobs will be to spoil that child ruthlessly, and we will undertake to achieve this task with great enthusiasm.
Ladies and Gentlemen, here are Vuk and Brian (I'll hunt down a picture of the three of them and post that asap):
Oh GOD lookit those cheeks!!! Could he BE any cuter?
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