Waiting for Godot, er I mean, Clint

Yesterday's run pretty much covered the full spectrum. I had slow miles, medium miles, and fast miles. I was warm, comfortable, and freezing cold. I felt great, and I felt horrible. The good news is that the horrible part happened at the first, and by the end, I was running really well. The cold part happened mostly around the 5-mile mark; the wind was so strong and icy that I had to turn around and walk backwards for a while.

Overall, though, I'd have to rate the run as "good". I covered 13 miles at a decent average pace, didn't get injured or frostbit, and didn't encounter any dangerous wildlife. I went straight to the office afterwards, and showered in the RDL restroom. I was expecting to spend the rest of the day working on proposals.

But sometimes, you get a break. The folks in Huntsville we were supporting ended up not giving us anything to do, so we got the afternoon off. Taking advantage of this excellent opportunity, I headed over to meet with Tanner to try to finish shooting the green-screen portion of the video we've been working on.

Unfortunately my "green screen" is just a big hunk of cloth, and needs to be hung on something in order to be used. Our plan for the day was to drape it over the fence in the backyard, but the wind was blowing a bit too hard. Big hunks of cloth tend to fly around pretty actively, even in a slight breeze. We still shot some footage, but it was "proof of concept" stuff, with a flapping and undulating background -- not anything usable. Oh well.

Our next agenda item was to go to Sports Authority so he could spend his $25 gift card. We took our time cruising the store, stopping to toss footballs, punch punching bags, do pullups, lift dumbbells, and all the other temptations that probably drive the employees nuts. After nearly an hour, he had only picked out a Frisbee, and needed to find another $12 worth of merchandise...but then he realized that he had forgotten to bring the gift card with him. The mission was promptly aborted and rescheduled, and we headed over to Taco Bell for some soothing comfort food to help ease the disappointment of a non-productive shopping trip.

Band practice was scheduled for 5:00, so after dinner, I drove the kid over to Clint's house. Clint and Phil weren't back from skiing yet, but Tanner was sure they'd be there shortly...so we decided to wait.

As I've stated numerous times here, talking with Tanner is one of the real true delights that I experience in my life. He still has some of youthful naiveté's very very wrong ideas about how the world works (especially in economics and world politics), but he's an incredibly sharp thinker and constantly challenges me to stay on my conversational toes. We talked about languages, reviewing some of the Japanese and Spanish vocabulary we've been learning. We talked about teachers, and some of the things that distinguish the good ones from the bad. We even talked about situational ethics (specifically whether you should volunteer to help someone when they're performing tasks in which you possess no skill nor aptitude).

And after sitting there for the better part of an hour, we finally talked about how dumb it was not to take advantage of cell phone technology to find out when Clint and Phil were actually going to get home!

This led to two things: One was that we learned the missing boys were sitting in a massive traffic jam on I-70, and had long since concluded that band practice would be cancelled. (Andrew, the bass player, had already called them to learn this, which is why he was not sitting there in the street looking as pathetically moronic as we were.) The other thing is a conversation (as yet unfinished) speculating about how to extrapolate the recent boom in communication advancements out to its logical conclusion. In other words, what will our remote communications look like 10 or 20 years from now?

Obviously, the quality and reliability of remote communications will get better; at some point we won't have that annoying cell-phone delay thingy that causes you to stutter and repeat yourself to keep from talking over your conversation partner. And instant internet access from anywhere will probably become ubiquitous. But the real questions surround how the interface will be designed: Will it be like Star Trek, where you can find out anything you need to know, just by prefixing your vocal query with the word "Computer"? Or will talking out loud to computers annoy people to the extent where we'll have to implant neural interpreters that respond to subvocalizations, or perhaps to pure thought itself?

As we've seen throughout history, just because a technology exists, there is no guarantee it'll catch on. (Betamax, anyone?) "Video telephone" technology existed when I was in the 6th grade...and to this day nobody really wants to bother with it. And with all the laws being passed to ban driving while on the phone, I wonder what other social conventions and restrictions will impact the way the technology evolves? Is Blackberry the prototype of a combined tricorder/communicator? Or did Dick Tracy have the right idea back in the 60s? I personally think the implanted chip-in-the-brain idea is the most likely, and that we'll all eventually become cyborgs of some sort -- intimately connected to the global database of all collected human knowledge. And we all know what happens after that.

It's a few years away, though. For now, we can still enjoy the little conversational opportunities that arise from not knowing exactly where the other guys are. I intend to savor those moments, my friends, and I hope you do, too. Have a great day!