Barry's Life in Napa Blog

So we live in a consumer society that is driven by advertising. I get it. I participate in it. I sometimes even enjoy the feeling that I just have to go out and buy whatever new thing is being pushed, even though I'm surely old enough to know I will just feel cheap and used in the morning. What if we all suddenly developed resistance to advertising and stopped buying stuff? We would bring a curse upon all our houses - stocks would tumble (that's what stocks always do, unless they're soaring or crashing) liquidity would become a big problem (even bigger that the problem with understanding what liquidity means) and in general, the economy would go down the toilet. Now I've never been down the toilet, but there have been a few occasions when I've been up close and personal with the toilet after a particularly enthusiastic party, and it doesn't look like something you want to go down. So let's just agree we all need to keep buying stuff all the time, forever an...

I feel I owe an apology to the dozens of readers...well, tens.....OK, any individual who may read here accidentally, for being more than usually spare in my offerings. Taking note that the topic category for this post is "whining and complaining," here's why. After about six months of work, today we are scheduled to launch the new website I have been working on for the City of Napa. I say scheduled, because we have scheduled to launch several other times and had to abort. Today I think it will happen. A few months ago when it was in the news that I would be re-making the City's website, some wisenheimer wrote to the Napa Valley Register something to the effect of "any teenager with a MySpace can make a website." True in some sense, but most teenager's MySpaces don't have 300+pages and hundreds of documents, and most importantly, teenagers don't have to coordinate, coerce and cajole several dozen other people to provide, and then approve, the con...

I bought some newspapers this week. The SF Chronicle called to tell me my subscription had run out, and offered to renew it. $25 for 26 weeks, they said. I told them that sounded like more than I paid last time, and so they looked it up and sure enough, last subscription was $20 for 26 weeks but that was a "promotional" rate. So I asked if they had a promotional rate this week, and so they looked it up and said yes, and so I paid $15 for 26 weeks. A little more than 50 cents a week for the Wednesday through Sunday service, because apparently nothing you'd want to know about ever happens on Monday or Tuesday, or they can't find enough people in the Bay Area willing to work for a living to staff up and deliver all seven days. Lest you think I am now going to describe how I did my laundry or went grocery shopping, never fear, I have not become the world's most mundane blogger. (I'm still third most mundane.) There is an actual point here. Granted the Chronicle i...

I think my computer is failing. It makes these weird noises lately, lots of clicking and a little screeching, which means either the hard drive is going or it has Tourette's. Although the sudden outbursts of foul language usually come from me, so it's probably the hard drive. I always get a little panic attack when I think the computer's dying. You'd think I'd be used to it by now, since this is maybe PC number five that is suffering from end-stage hard drive error. But the panic comes from the feeling that I'm going to lose something precious - something I can't even specifically identify - that is saved somewhere in this box. Maybe it's a photo, or a song, or a piece of video, or something I started writing and didn't finish, a link to something that was really important at the moment that I have forgotten about, an email I meant to answer but haven't - somehow something's going to get left behind. I have to remind myself that although each...

My normal mode is enthusiasm on a Monday morning. When Monday rolls around, I have that feeling that if I just get a good early start, today will be the day I tie up all those loose ends and get caught up at work. Usually it takes until about 11:30am for the enthusiasm to wane. Today, the waning has already begun at 7:17am. Not a good sign. So perhaps today is a good day for some diversion, and I think I have just the ticket. It's a site called Uncyclopedia . I am a regular user of Wikipedia, and I ignore the small minds who criticize it's "wisdom of crowds" comprehensiveness, so this Uncyclopedia site is a hoot since it is a satire on Wikpedia. If you don't use Wikipedia then the whole satire thing is not going to gain much traction with you, so look, you're on your own today. In just a quick look I got some good smirks from Ice Cream Flavors Not in the Top 100 HowTo:Use IYDKWTAAMTYSUTOFRAITYTTAAMYYY to Help You Figure out What Other Abbreviations Mean Wood...

In the last week, I've heard about an old friend who's just had a big tumor taken out of his head, and another friend who is paralyzed with Guillen-Barre Syndrome (one of those afflictions you'd just as soon you'd never heard about.) These guys are both in the 40 to 45 years old range. And today there is a funeral for a local police officer who died from cancer at 39. It puts me in mind of those "storming the beach" scenes. There are always lots of troops making it through, but alongside others are falling, some wounded and some dead. Middle age seems to be that way. You keep trudging forward while the casualties mount up, wondering if there's a blood clot with your name on it out there waiting for you. With all the awareness we have of these everyday casualties, and knowing that there is inevitably some suffering just around the next corner, it's amazing that so many people can screw up the courage to keep getting out of bed everyday. And not only to...

Today I am observing Columbus Day by not getting dressed. To be more specific, not dressed for work. I could say I am observing Columbus Day by having a day off work, but I worked a few hours so that wouldn't be true. So all I can say for my "day off" is that it was really a half day off. Seems there aren't many people any more who have any respect for the 40 hour work week. Seeing as how there were lots of union guys and gals who got their heads caved in to earn the right to a 40 hour week, shouldn't we all honor that by not working our asses off 10 or 12 hours a day and half the weekend, too? Everywhere I look there are people putting in huge amounts of hours, week after week. And a lot of these people have kids, too, little ones. I worry they will be looking back very soon and wondering why they put work ahead of their kids - and we're not talking about people who are working two jobs to pay the rent, right? It's a choice, a mindset. Got to work more to...

It's been a few days since I wrote. I've been feeling kind of low since Jimmy and the other boys at the malt shop made fun of my shoes. I don't know why Janice needs to be so mean. After all, she---WAIT a minute. That's my diary entry from October 1955, not my blog post. Sometimes I forget which decade I'm writing in. Hang on there...I know I've got 2007 right here somwhere...OK, all set. Let's go. I am one of millions who are watching Ken Burns' latest documentary The War . Goes without saying that it is another masterwork, like Baseball and The Civil War . Burns is a special story teller. You've got to love a guy who makes 15 hour film projects that take seven years. (Took him longer to make the film than it took Hitler to conquer, and lose, the free world.) I'm a believer in regular review of key moments in history. Since we're always trying to make sense of the present-day world, it's worthwhile to touch base with the past and recogn...