I dislike San Jose. I find it boring, sterile, artificial in the worst sense. For my experience, it's like a little clone of Denver. People who've spent more time there disagree on how boring it is, but several agreed with this perspective.

Last night at aikido, the guy taking falls next to me got swung round like a ragdoll, and at the apex of his fall, the heel on his outstretched leg came around and nailed me in the side of the upper leg, while I was standing relaxed and not seeing him about to take me out. It dropped me like a rock: I was halfway down to both knees before I had any idea what was happening (another nice reminder that my training really has been sinking in to a pre-conscious level). I was pretty seriously gimpy for the rest of the night; today is better, but that muscle, the large outside quadricep, is profoundly unhappy, and it'll be a little while before I can train again. At least it should just be muscular, and not joint or ligament or anything. Not-training will also give my big toe a chance to heal: I jammed it hard on my rug on Monday night.

I'm having a nice day: my leg is substantially less gimpy, I lost my iPod and then found it again (I'd checked the laundry basket already but had to overturn it entirely to find the iPod), and in a couple weeks I will see a special friend I hadn't expected to see until June. Plus I have a ton of wonderful new music to listen to. I tried replacing my broken bike pedal, but the pedal is pretty well corroded into the crank: the thing needs a tuneup anyway, so I'll punt and bring it to the shop tomorrow.

I'm writing a document for work. One of my roles at work is to say true things, out loud, usually with a smile, which no one really wants to hear. I am the unvarnished voice of technical reason, a foil to the politicking. And so, in a document clarifying a technical issue where people regularly sound off with phantom issues that have no possible data or conclusions attached, I have sections labeled "Actual Problems" and "Principled Complaints", to reflect problems that we know exist, and things that people just don't like. It's yet another sign I shouldn't be in management (my career goal, besides the one-year stint as a CEO, is to end up as Chief Scientist, which would be still hands-deep in technology), but it's fun to write.

I had a lovely date with a woman on Sunday, who I promptly challenged to googlestalk me. In the process of googlestalking myself, I found this bit I wrote in 2002, when the Dynamics sang at Lincoln Center and I flew out to see them. Neat.