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Nearly four years ago I wrote a post titled the same.

I look back at that and think “Gosh, 2006.” The world was so different then. Lauren and I were in the earliest, most tentative parts of our relationship. We were going to test the strength of our relationship in the crucible of relocation, confusion, and new things.

And I was weary of the Bay Area. I was so tired of the traffic, of the dumpy airport, of vast fields of nothing to do. I was tired of the weight I was gaining, I was tired of the rain, tired of the struggle to make ends meet, just plain old tired. I needed to get away a while.

And I did. I ran back to the place that’s my healing place: Austin. Austin worked its magic, its lazy river heart washed out the toxic bits of mean and hard that had become embedded in me. Yoga, distance, Ruby, quiet, and the steady growing bond between Lauren and I changed me.

And then came schooling again, I reconnected with the learning, growing heart of me. I know this is not a part that I can ever leave to languish ever again. I re-learned mathematics and computer science. I learned new programming lanugages and then came Latin.

And I met wonderful people, from Ryan and Jamie, Matt and Nicole, Alfredo and Nicole, Marcus, Juan and Letty, my sister and brother-in-law and their sweet dog, the programmers of Sodade coffee house, my office mates…all of you animate the days of events and in giving yourself to my life gave my life color and flourish. I saw my sister wed, the gentlest-minded man I knew as a student wed and bring forth a sweet little girl, my best friend married and now has a young son. The sister of a friend I lost and I found each other again, and her life seems to be blossoming beautifully, a marriage looming next year. It’s been wonderful to be close to you all to see these events and positive unfoldings.

And I finished years-long work at my job. Things that were impossible, and unthinkable, slowly stones were broken by the slow dropping of water.

And adversities came: lung infections and appendicitis, but Lauren and I nursed each other, and those great friends mentioned above were there too.

Ultimately my animus returned back to the way it was in 2000 when I left Austin.

And in my world came new friends. We danced the nights away to the pulse of swing, we even dared Karaoke, I ran a 5K. I grew back into the healthy person I had let myself slip from. OK, well, I admit I still love the Chik-Fil-A too much and the Tex-Mex as well.

But this healing place, as big as it is, as tender and loving as it is — it and I need to separate for a while. I need to leave the summer heat and I want to go back to the bigness of a city, the biggest city I’ve ever loved: San Francisco.

When I was in 6th grade my Dad took my family there. The diners, the air, the bay, the tall buildings. I’ve loved the city on the Golden Gate since I before I was a teenager. It feels like going back is just giving into a fate that I’ve been fighting for a decade or two.

As I look back and consider going back to the place I’d lived before, I have to ask “Who was I then when I lived there?” My old romomate is now a father with a beautiful family. My haunts are not for he nocturnal eyeing and trading of phone numbers any more. I feel a break from my amor fati, my sickness unto death, my existentialist metaphor. So many of the things I sought there once I seek no more.

It’s a new day, a new time in this unknown but familiar city. I see something new this time, I see a place of boundless opportunity. It’s to that San Francisco I go. It’s there I go with the most loving girl I’ve ever known, it’s there I go to make, what I hope will be, our home.

And it’s scary there, the stakes high, the competition fierce. But I know that I can’t stay in my beloved Austin forever, I need the bigger confluence of this far-away place.

To the city I must say farewell, to the friends we have here, you are the best part of the friendly heart of my native state. You come with us in photos and memories and cards. I suspect my next post will be written with the Pacific to my left. Merry Christmas to all and Happy New Year as well.

Let me close with the opening of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a work I studied this year whose beauty and wisdom is only matched by its silliness and brutality.

My mind moves me to speak of changed forms in new bodies

Ego ipse quoque mutabo

The League, he about to retire from this blogosphere, has rekindled in me memories of Verbot: Tomy’s miraculous robot for kids toy. Let me take you back to the Christmast of 1984 (or was it 1985?) on a not-at-all-snowy Christmas day in Houston, Texas.

Ah, Verbot, you cute little guy, with your hard plastic shell head, your friendly pseudo-Japanese visage, and your weird white microphone with a dangling black cable antenna… Thanks to incessant advertising during Transformers, everyone knew the sacred name of this proto-Cylon. Verbot was undoubtedly the toy of aspiration in my 4th grade Christmas year. I even recall in art class that the Y bechromosomèd were DRAWING verbot on those vast expanses of manilla paper. I think it would be fair to say that we had Verbot on the brain.

Having incredibly generous parents, come the dawn of the 25th of December, I had a Verbot.

Here’s how it would work.

1. Turn on Verbot
2. Hold in a chest button that corresponded to an action
3. Repeat the command you wanted to associate to the action
4. Hope that the solid red LED would light, indicating successful recording
5. More often than not it would take 3-4 repetitions to take
6. Now, attempt to repeat in proper voice, tone, and timbre the sounds that you associated to each command. A typical session would be:
7. Forward. Forward. No !@%!@!@$!@% I !@$!@%!@ said !@%$!@% you stupid !@%$!@%. Right. Forward. Forward. Pick Up. Pick-úp. Píck-up. Lift. Forward. Forward. NOTE: Cursing is optional, usually on the part of the parent wondering why the heck Santa brought this stupid !@$!@%!@% that doesn’t work.
8. Realize that 6 commands is not greatly entertaining after about 30 minutes.
9. Power Verbot down
10. Think of something cool you meant to do with Verbot, usually about 40 seconds after you slid his switch to OFF.
11. Loop.

I recall on Christmas Day eve, my father and I used Verbot to pick up a mini Pepperidge farm canister of parmesean cheese and move it across the dining table. That’s right, Verbot, petit garçon.

These were the good times.

My father seemed to have better luck with the Verbot because he understood what it was like to have an object of limited understanding, few interesting activities, and limitless capacity to ignore basic instructions: he had 2 kids already.

Speaking in level tones he seemed to be able to get Verbot to stack blocks, something like brain surgery with a cauliflower stalk. What can I say, anyone who grew up coaxing extra horses out of a GTO (think Luke Skywalker) in the canyons of Amarillo must have had a John Connor like grasp of machines.

But as all toys invariably go, at one point Verbot ended his playble life and was superseded by the next wave of kiddie conditioning.

I suspect that Verbot may have been the tipping point for many of us. Combining Verbot (effectively a Turtle) with an introduction to LOGO gave, I think, a generation its first taste of practical robotics. Just last month at Rubyconf there was a session on programming mini-controllers with Arduino.

I wonder how many of us first had our imagination kindled by these ‘bots.

Viva Verbot!

Ah, “Do you listen to ?” that infallible pick-up line of the high-school set, that aureal social filter par excellence. I remember once when the answers to those questions meant so much to me. Today my friend Mike asked me to correlate question: “Have you heard $BAND_NAME”

I’ve heard a great number of bands, but the truth is, I haven’t really listened to music in years.

It’s one of those questions you’re not supposed to say “No” to. It’s up there with, “Isn’t that queso good,” or “Isn’t $STARLET_NAME hot?” Once I used to put music on and do nothing but listen.

Later I would work, code, or work and code with it on. Now, I simply can’t bear anything with words or narrative anywhere near me when I work - unless I didn’t choose it (i.e. at a coffee shop) .

No, I’ve not listened to music in years.