EXCITING CHRISTMAS LETTER ADMINISTRATIVE NEWS BREAK! I’m not allowed to hand out my Christmas letter to my UPS customers anymore. Allegedly someone called the center and complained about the 2016 letter, so now this document is purely an online publication. Happy Holidays!

I know that is pretty lame, but I’m not going to let it ruin my year in review. After considering a few novel approaches for this year’s summary, I decided to write about some random details of my life in extra detail- electron microscope detail. I could start off with my job (still at UPS) my family (we are plus one feline) or my water heater project (still working on it), but I really feel like those stories have been fully flushed out. So hold onto your hats for an in depth look into some rather inconsequential aspects of my life.

Speaking of hats– my UPS Elmer Fudd hat is missing. It looks just like my UPS baseball cap, but it comes lined with a furry material and the ear flaps fold down when it gets snot-freezing cold outside. I think I wore it one day in October, but now it is nowhere to be found. So now I’m faced with the moral dilemma of doing nothing and hope it magically appears in a random place in my house or ordering a new hat and admitting defeat. Anyone who has never lived with a six and seven year old might think the first approach is crazy, but that hat could be in a million unthinkable places in my house.

This spring I installed a new ceiling fan in our family room. Since we moved into the house seven years ago we have been slowly replacing fixtures from the random/cheap motif the previous owners seemed to have wholeheartedly embraced. We started with the low hanging fruit, and quickly agreed the fan on the vaulted ceiling was the crown peach of the project. OK, so my knowledge of fruit harvesting is a bit thin. I guess the fixtures in the bedrooms were the strawberries since they grow on the ground– you can’t get lower than that. But I’m digressing here. So I came home one day and noticed a fancy new box-o-fan on the front porch. Installing it was pretty straightforward. I followed the instructions and had it working in an afternoon. The only complaint I had– and I seem to see this a lot in my life– is that whoever wrote the instructions had never actually installed the fan. I could have cut the installation time in half by putting the entire fan together first and then lifting it to the ceiling as the last step. So I guess this speaks to instructions on instructions. I think the best approach is to assume the quality of the instructions is adequate at best and for a completely different type of product in the worst case.

In financial news, I’ve come up with a revolutionary device to help the general population save money for retirement– I call it the 401K LOTTERY! Half of the money taken in by traditional lotteries are given to individual states with the remaining assets divided up among the winners. The 401K LOTTERY! (yes, the exclamation point is part of the name, as is it being all in caps.) is run by insanely large banks. Every time someone buys a ticket half of the money goes into their individual 401k and the rest goes to the pool for winning tickets. This method combines the excitement of winning wealth beyond your wildest dreams with the joy of realizing that every day you are becoming a less productive member of society and the only thing that will sustain a declining lifestyle is your meager savings until you eventually die.

Katherine and I played a fun game the other night after the kids went to bed. I would name a city and she would look up online how much it would cost to fly there and how long it would take. I guess it wasn’t so much of a game since there wasn’t a winner or an optimal strategy, but it was still an entertaining activity. The longest trip we found was to Madagascar which costs $3000 and takes the better part of two days. Perhaps your mind went in a different direction when you read “games” and “after the kids went to bed” but when we tried it while the kids were awake one or both of them would interject something along the lines of “BUT I DON’T WANT TO GO TO TOKOYO!” every time we would pick a new city.

This summer I ate lunch somewhere I have not been to in 18 years. It was a small steak house that isn’t too fancy named Wilma and Alberts. Travel directions: fly into Schipol Airport in the Netherlands, take the train west to Haarlem, and walk to the main square. It is right next to the church– you cant miss it. The only slight criticism I have is that it takes an entire day of international travel to get there. Also they don’t open for lunch until 11, so plan accordingly.

OK, I admit that our trip to Europe was a pretty “big” thing we did this year. But I would like to take a moment to explain why Holland is such a cool place. No, it isn’t the cold wet weather or the fast food herring-on-a-stick stands that are littered throughout the towns. It is actually easier to take public transportation than to own a car in Amsterdam. I could see more trains, busses, and trams from the front of our hotel than exist in the entire state of Colorado. While there are many socioeconomic forces at work that are beyond the scope of this letter to explain this disparity of public transportation, I firmly believe that the underlying root cause revolves around parking in Amsterdam. Back in the day when automobiles were making their debut in Europe, the only remaining open space in town was right next to the canals. I could just imagine citizens making a sizable financial investment in a new vehicle only to park slightly outside of the lines and see their pride and joy tumbling into an unpleasant mixture of water, sewage, and herring-on-a-stick litter. I believe this would have a largely negative effect on the car’s resale value.

So that about wraps things up for the year of details. I’ll leave things with a quote I read on the wall of the restaurant where we ate last night:

“At one point in your life you either have the thing you want or the reasons why you don’t.” — Andy Roddick.

Welcome Humanoid—I, Ertok the Evil Alien Overlord, have been assigned the process of downloading and summarizing recent memories from unit 5d-301, also known as Omar. On a side note, he didn’t seem to enjoy the memory nasal probe. None of them do, which is strange considering how much recreational time these humans spend on digitally probing their own nasal cavities. Sure, the NP-5000 penetrates slightly deeper and contains various sharp, pointy objects similar to a Swiss Army Knife, but otherwise the processes are identical. And really, why am I stuck on this remote planet monitoring meaningless humans anyway? Just because I drank a bit too much space ale last holiday and vaporized the arm of the Assistant Regional Supervisor of Remote Planet Observations? His two other arms remain intact, so as long as he doesn’t plan on a career in professional hyper-circuit-plasma-ball, he should be fine. And trust me, he doesn’t have anywhere near the upper thorax for it anyways. But I digress– commencing download.

What’s going on? Where am I? Where is that voice coming from? I have to think about what I did this year? Why does it feel like someone crammed a Swiss Army Knife up my nose? It’s extracting my memories and digitally recording them—GREAT!

I spent a considerable amount of time getting my team ready for the annual Boulder Kinetics race. By team I mean myself, Katherine, and the sprawling mass of Styrofoam, random bicycle parts, and strategically placed duct tape that calls itself home in the two car garage of my house. As many alert readers recall, my first attempt at the kinetics race ended about 5 feet into the Boulder reservoir. This year I actually completed roughly 70 percent of the race. Three things kept me from finishing the race: 1) the paddle mechanism was too deep in the water, 2) I wasn’t exactly in peak physical form, and 3) a previously unknown sea monster was covertly attaching itself to my craft during the water portions of the race, thereby significantly increasing my coefficient of drag. Obviously, I need to spend more time on the last issue.

A few weeks after wrapping up the loose ends at Kinetics, Katherine and I decided to spice up our lives a bit by getting a dog. We discussed our dog needs, looked around at the local animal shelters, and finally decided to adopt Maury—a six month old black lab mix that was too scared to let anyone else play with him. They warned us Maury was what they called a “high energy” animal. I think a better way to describe his situation is to say he smokes crack several times a day. (Side note—our attempts to take a cute picture of Maury holding a crack pipe in his front paws were unsuccessful.) To go along with his high energy, Maury has a perpetual appetite. We feed him twice a day, and he thinks that every meal has barely managed to save him from starvation. Maury also has “jaws of death” teeth. Much like firefighters use the “jaws of life” to open up damaged vehicles, Maury’s teeth are very effective at ripping apart any type of dog toy we throw at him, regardless of any “indestructible” rating on the label. Despite his very active lifestyle, we have found that making him fetch his dog toy down one and a half flights of stairs fifteen to twenty times in a row will somewhat wear him out.

We spent a lot of effort this year deciding where to go for a vacation in November. After shooting down almost all of Katherine’s ideas, I finally agreed on a Caribbean cruise. My main objection, obviously, was that I couldn’t hone my bowling skills while sailing to the Grand Caymans. Thanks to Norwegian Cruise Lines this is no longer a problem. The Pearl, one of their newest and largest ships, is equipped with just about every possible leisure activity known to man—including a fully equipped four lane bowling alley. We flew to into Miami, got on board the ship, and spent five days getting spoiled with great food and entertainment. The highlight of the Grand Caymans was going on a snorkeling excursion where we found ourselves up close and personal with a friendly group of stingrays. On the ship we got to see Second City—a Chicago based comedy improvisation group—on several nights of the cruise.

I can’t, in good faith, write this letter without mentioning the worst crisis this country has been forced to deal with since the Monica Lewinski ordeal. Yes, I’m talking about the ongoing Writers Guild strike. Whose life hasn’t been radically altered now that new movies and television shows have been indefinitely put on hold? Several of my own personal creative ideas will have to wait until the strike is over to see the light of day. Here are a few gems from my computer’s hard drive:

Saturday Night Live News Story: …and now for a special report on Senator Larry Craig, we present Tobias Fünke….

OK, this might need a bit of an explanation here just in case a) you don’t watch as much TV as I do or b) you are from the far, far, future, (perhaps an alien species too far advanced for us to understand) taking a bit of a look-see at our Inter-Web and none of this makes any sense. Actor (adult humanoid) David Cross played Tobias Fünke on the regrettably short lived TV show (primitive two dimensional serial image and sound display device) “Arrested Development” who was, much like the Senator (regrettable evil needed to keep social order), in deep denial about his homosexuality (eww, if it involves old men, hot if it involves attractive college-aged women).

House: Special Billing Unit

Doctor House addressing a group of twenty accountants waiting patiently in the large classroom: “OK, team—my REAL team has, for this fiscal year, seen fifteen patients, saved eleven of them (eventually), and been forced to defend itself in five malpractice lawsuits. Strangely enough, it appears that most of our patients don’t have any insurance to pay for the extensive battery of tests we run with our revolutionary shotgun approach to diagnosis. In order to keep this facility financially solvent, you will find new, creative, and possibly ethical ways to make these deadbeats pay their bills.”

So that about wraps it up for the year. And as the snowy weather moves in, here are a few things to consider: wear dry socks, put on plenty of Chapstick, and always remember that the dog can jump the fence in the front yard if he is standing on top of two feet of snow.

It was just another typical retro 80’s Saturday night for me– I started streaming the original Tron movie on my 75 inch flat screen television, pulled out a cold six pack of Jolt soda from the refrigerator, and popped in a 5.25 inch floppy disc into my gaming computer which contained a slightly pirated version of “The Oregon Trail.” I was so excited to start the game that I hardly noticed the freak electrical storm brewing outside.

I can’t say exactly what happened next, but Jeff Bridges was playing glow in the dark death Frisbee, the last empty soda can fell on the carpet unnoticed, and the largest atmospheric electrical discharge ever recorded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration all occurred the nanosecond the game’s title screen appeared on the monitor. In defiance of all the known laws of man and science, I suddenly existed solely INSIDE The Oregon Trail!

The game is in some ways similar to the matrix in The Matrix. Pretty much everything is reduced black and bright green characters on the screen. However, due to technological restrictions of the time, characters in The Oregon Trail game can’t do super cool things like learn Kung Fu in three seconds, stop bullets mid-air with their thoughts, or eat fresh baked cookies from the Oracle. 

Despite these limitations, I quickly adapted to life on the trail. The first decision I was faced with involved what type of transportation to purchase. I splurged and bought a top of the line model. This thing had everything– four wheels (no, not four wheel drive, just four wheels), a cover, and only a few large holes in the floor. I expect this will help to minimize loss of supplies and offspring throughout the journey. At the start of the journey I proclaimed, “No farting in the covered wagon!” In all honesty, my family did quite well adhering to this rule. The oxen, on the other hand, were in no way shy about clearing out *everything* from their lower bowels at any random moment in time. At least I would have the courtesy to run behind a rock when I needed to take care of business.

The journey across the Oregon Trail is filled with many unique dangers. While many travelers have been forced to deal with coyotes, bears, and sharknados, our largest setback involved fording a river during the peak of spring runoff. “Let’s just go around it!” was the first thought that came out of my mouth. It turns out that was a really, really bad idea. Plan B involved scavenging the area for materials until we were able to build a rudimentary CNC machine. Once this was functioning properly we used it to build a slightly less rudimentary saw mill. From there we applied to the local water resource management agency and in six to nine weeks we received a permit to build a temporary bridge. Once this was completed the crossing was a breeze.

After a few weeks on the trail everything settled into a predictable routine. While our navigation system was rudimentary at best, I suspected the end of our journey was near. One night, after the wagons had been circled and dinner had been served I took a moment to reflect on my video game life. The moon was nowhere to be seen and the cloudy arms of the milky way stretched clearly across the sky. Everything just seemed like it was going to work out OK. The cook, who looked exactly, and I mean spot on, like Sam Elliot from The Big Lebowski, was just finishing drying off the last mug with a dirty towel and wandered over to me for a few words.

Sam: I’ve got two things to say. First of all, when children are old enough to be afraid of the dark they aren’t REALLY afraid of the dark, they are just beginning to understand the utility of the light.

Me: Yeah, wow, that really makes a lot of sense. I guess I never really thought of it that way. What is the second thing?

Sam: You just died of dysentery.

Me: That’s shitty.

Sam: Yeah, you should have gotten that looked at the last town instead of sneaking off to the brothel.

“One of these days I’m gonna sit down and write a long letter to all the good friends I’ve known, and I’m gonna try and thank them all for the good times together though so apart we’ve grown.” (Full disclaimer: I didn’t write that– Neil Young did.) So to all my friends, casual acquaintances, and complete strangers who just randomly happened across my website, I give you my (hopefully not too) long letter.

“Goodbye 145276, hello 140513” After driving the same UPS truck for the past 13 years, I got to work one day and found a different truck parked in my spot. I approached my center manager who explained how he took 145276 to a farm upstate where she can relax and briefly enjoy the fresh air before being violently crushed in an industrial hydraulic press and unceremoniously dumped into a nearby scrapyard. My mathematically inclined readers might notice that 145276>140513. Yes– somehow I managed to receive an even older truck.

“Panama: A man clap trap cabana nap” is a world famous palindrome AND accurate title for our spring break festivities. While I’m sure some alert readers and every half sentient AI bot out there will proudly proclaim “That’s not the same backwards and forwards!” I counter with “prove it isn’t a palindrome in some strange language such as binary or Bostonian!”

We choose Panama for a vacation for two main reasons. Number one: I’m turning into an old man who really likes to only book direct airline flights from Denver International Airport. Number two: I was filing my taxes through Turbo Tax last year and it specifically asked me if I was the owner of any previously undeclared Panamanian bank accounts. The answer was “No,” but it got me thinking that I should at least look into the idea a bit. 

Our flight landed at the lovely time of 4:56am local time. We got through customs in five minutes as we didn’t check in any luggage and at 5:08am we were trying to find the metro station. The only person we could find in the area was a lone taxi driver who flat out denied any existence of a metro station and kept showing us videos of a monkey island he could drive us to. Despite his best efforts we located the metro station, completely avoided Monkey Island, and made it to our hotel safely.

I don’t like to brag, but our Airbnb was located on the 62nd floor. (Honestly, I didn’t even know we would be that high up until we got there.) On the first night in the room I stood out on the balcony and pointed to the “medium old” part of town and said we should walk over there in the morning. The problem is that when you are so high off the ground things don’t look nearly as far away as at ground level. (Incidentally, this applies equally well for regular people, flat Earthers, and Halo enthusiasts.) This led to an excess of sunburn, crankiness, whining, and hunger by the evening. And it wasn’t just me this time. Aside from this slight hiccup, the trip was a success as I got to torment my offspring by starting off every conversation with the local population with the cat joke. Seriously, they REALLY hate when I do that.

Nothing brings a family together like a good ole fashioned elaborate fake holiday ruse. My brother-in-law and his family came to visit us in June and we wanted to stage a surprise birthday party for his daughter at the end of their stay. We were so afraid she would catch on to our plan we felt the best, no, truly ONLY, option was to spend the entire week talking about our plans for “Mountain Time Zone Appreciation Day.” Being from Michagan, they had absolutely no way of realizing this was a completely made up holiday. We kept sprinkling in details of the holiday all throughout the week to keep everyone unaware of our true intentions. In the end, to be honest, they didn’t really care too much one way or the other.

In Community news, (“Six seasons and a movie!”) the movie is stuck in a holding pattern worse than at Newark airport during the annual Sopranos convention. But in my own special tribute to the show I found the creepiest image of the human being mascot from the show on the internet, printed it out, and quietly slid it into Isabel’s mellophone case while nobody was looking. While that may seem beyond completely random, the sophomores in the band were tasked with wearing predominantly white outfits that day and it seemed like the most logical outfit to achieve this goal. (NOTE TO READERS: I add stuff like this so when I’m crazy old I can look back and remember the fun times when I was more than just a head in a jar on a forgotten shelf in the basement of my ungrateful great great half son in law. CAN SOMEONE PLEASE GET THAT SPIDER OFF MY JAR! THAT’S ALL I’M ASKING FOR!)

This summer I was looking through our automobile stable and decided it was time to add another stallion to the mix. OK, ok, maybe a Nissan Leaf isn’t really a “stallion” of the car world. Let me think of a more appropriate analogy here. I’ve got one– this summer I was in the market to add a solid third-string car to our roster when I got wind of a veteran left outfielder with perhaps a few decent years left released on waivers due to an over-hyped prospect coming up from the farm team. Now the world of electric vehicles in Colorado is, well, unique. A few years ago we test drove a Nissan Leaf for two hours and the dealership didn’t even call me back. Due to reasons beyond my understanding, the situation completely reversed and Nissan began a policy of basically giving away Leafs to the first 500 people who came in to check out their newly built dealership in Fort Collins. This is a solid vehicle– over 700,000 have been sold since 2010. No, it isn’t perfect, but it gets me to work and really all I need to do is plug it every couple of weeks to fill the battery with electrons, positrons, or tachyons. (AUTOMOTIVE DISCLAIMER: adding the incorrect type of subatomic particle to your electric vehicle can cause decreased acceleration and possible destruction of the space-time continuum.)

I’m going to wrap things up with an original, insightful, and possibly true nugget of wisdom I shared with a young woman on my route who was getting married in September. I told her that a new marriage is 85% having a roommate, 10% having a financial partner, and 5% enjoying “other” activities. I really believe she took it to heart more than my other advice which was to be married in their own shallow graves like Dwight and Angela from “The Office.”

Imagine this: After a moderately busy day at work, I’m sitting in my La-Z-Boy making saltine and peanut butter sandwiches.

One side of my brain (I’m not sure which– possibly the inside) is busy mentally writing a letter to the cracker company. “Dear Zesta, I should start out by saying I quite enjoy eating your saltine crackers. I find them pleasing to my palette and very reasonably priced. However, as I was sitting in my La-Z-Boy eating saltine and peanut butter sandwiches I realized a potential quality control problem with your product. When I get to the bottom of a sleeve of crackers, occasionally there is one left over. Each peanut butter saltine sandwich I make uses exactly two saltines. I was wondering: is there supposed to be an odd or even number of crackers in each sleeve? Personally, I would prefer to have an even number. Which leads me to my question: what should I do with the last cracker? I tried using both one and three saltines with peanut butter, but found the results unsatisfactory. Any information you can provide me on this matter would be greatly appreciated.”

The rest of my brain was busy processing information from earlier in the afternoon– the shorter days, the first significant snowfall of the year, the icy roads I had to navigate all morning and, of course, the trailer park where I got a UPS truck stuck twenty miles away from the center. It all reminded me (with the exception of the trailer park bit—more on that later) that is was time to write my annual Christmas letter. I jumped up from the La-Z-Boy, looked down at the last couple of saltines, sat down again, finished the last of the crackers, got up again, let the dog outside, decided I, too, had to empty my bladder, grabbed a soda from the refrigerator, and then raced to my computer to start writing. Oh, yeah, and somewhere in there I had the oil in my car changed.

Speaking of automobiles, I just realized that I’ve been driving my Saturn almost as long as I’ve been writing Christmas letters. Based on my personal experience, 1996 was a good year to buy a Saturn. In the seven and a half years I’ve owned this vehicle, it has served me well. However, after consulting my ancient Chinese astrological charts I discovered that 2003 was destined to be “the year of the broken alternator.”

Here is what I learned from the situation:

1. When the battery light on the dashboard goes on, hoping it will just turn itself off in a few days may not always be the best solution.
2. Anyone familiar with northern Colorado will agree that being stranded alone in a non-functioning vehicle in the complete void of civilization between Loveland and Greeley is not the best way to start an evening.
3. When #1 and #2 are no longer just hypothetical situations, it is possible to take your girlfriend’s car to Wal-Mart, buy a new, fully charged battery, install it in the vehicle with the broken alternator, drive to a nearby mechanic for repair work, and finally return the slightly used battery the next day without the woman at the customer service desk realizing what happened. When she asked the reason for the return, I simply said I made a mistake and only needed a nine volt.

September 25, 2003 marked my one year anniversary working at UPS. I’m not sure why, but I expected the day to be kind of special. Nothing too fancy– maybe a nice bottle of wine or some flowers. You know, just a little something to make me feel like I’m important to UPS. But no, UPS just went on like it does every day, completely oblivious to my feelings.

Now that I completely understand / mentally repress everything that happens during the morning shift at UPS, I find my mind occasionally wanders while my body is busy running in and out of the delivery trucks. Just looking at a box moving down the belt can reveal a lot about its contents. Packages from a company such as L.L. Bean have a distinct look and feel that says, “Hello, I’ve got a sweater inside me.” Packages sent from less frequent shippers say things like, “This is a care package for my son who just started college.” Or, “I used to be a box of coco-puffs cereal.”

Sometimes during the spare seven nanoseconds between loading boxes I ask myself questions like, “Come on, now Omar, really, do you even know how long a nanosecond is?”, “Do you like movies about gladiators?”, and, of course, “Who comes up with these street names?” One part of town in Fort Collins is full of “Lord of the Rings” themed street names such as Shire, Hobbit, and Gilgalad. One morning when a coworker asked if a package for an address on Gilgalad Street should be loaded on one of my trucks, I replied with one of my favorite Hobbit songs, “Gilgalad was an Elven-king. Of him the harpers sadly sing…” I stopped only because someone threw a moderately heavy package at the back of my head, but that’s another story. (one I don’t remember, for some reason.)

I made my first official “career move” at UPS in September when I started working as a Saturday air driver. So now, in addition to my usual responsibilities of loading trucks Monday through Friday, I now spend Saturday mornings in a brown UPS truck. After I put on my cute little brown uniform, I deliver packages in the towns of Fort Collins, Laporte, and Belleview. For anyone not familiar with northern Colorado, Laporte is a small town up in the foothills where people go to get away from the hustle and bustle of Fort Collins. Belleview is nestled even further up in the mountains where people go to get away from the hustle and bustle of Laporte, usually with little more than a handful of cows and several high caliber firearms.

Driving UPS trucks has been a good learning experience for me. After one moderately sized Friday night snowstorm, I found out what a UPS truck can and can’t do. It can descend a moderately icy inclined entrance to a trailer park without much trouble. After I delivered the package, I discovered that getting back up and on to the main road was not a simple task. After several failed attempts, I looked around, found some trash to stick under the rear tires, and was soon on my way.

Well, that just about wraps things up for 2003. Will 2004 be the year I resolve the odd saltine cracker mystery? Will I keep working at UPS? Will my coworkers keep throwing packages at the back of my head? If you want to know the answer to these and many other totally unrelated questions, stay tuned for the 2004 edition. Until then, just remember my favorite line from the movie “Office Space.” Bob: Looks like you’ve been missing quite a bit of work lately. Peter Gibbons: Well, I wouldn’t say I’ve been MISSING it, Bob.

Welcome to my fourth annual Christmas letter. Well, I can’t pretend my life wasn’t drastically changed this year when my dad died. I’ve tried not to dwell on it too much, but I don’t think that I could write my annual Christmas letter pretending that it never happened. Don’t worry though– that isn’t all that has happened to me this year.January 6, 1998 was the date. I’m not going to explain what happened in any kind of detail, but I will say that he went to the hospital with Pneumococcal Pneumonia and died two days later from complications that followed. His down fall was very quick and relatively painless– not a bad way to go.The one piece of advice I have when someone is forced to deal with the loss of a loved one is to ask how to help instead of assuming to know what to do. Some of our neighbors brought over a bunch of greasy Chinese food and had dinner with us the night after my dad died. While I am usually a big fan of greasy Chinese food, that night I just wasn’t in the mood. They meant well, but it just didn’t really help much. On the other hand, I asked one of my best friends to drive me up to my apartment in Boulder so I could get some of my things. There is no better feeling than being driven across town in rush hour traffic so I could change out of the underwear I had been wearing for the past three days.

OK, I guess I can go on to talk about the rest of the year.

The next Saturday morning I tried to put the events of the previous week behind me by going on my company ski trip. It started out innocently enough when I boarded one of the two busses Rogue Wave chartered for the day. Once everyone was settled the busses headed up I-70– destination Summit County. A light snowfall greeted us as we arrived at the base of Copper Mountain. After making a not so quick stop in the ski rental shop I hit the slopes. The light crowds and constant snowfall made for excellent ski conditions. A dozen or so runs later I climbed back on the bus wet, sore, and immensely satisfied from the day’s activities.

Instead of commuting straight back to Boulder the plan was to stop in Silverthorn for dinner and drinks. The idea was to enjoy a relaxing dinner and miss the evening ski traffic returning to the metro area. The intentions were good, but the results turned out disastrous.

After a hearty meal at Old Chicago’s we got on the busses to head home. The only problem was that I-70 was closed by the highway patrol minutes before we arrived. Instead of preparing for hot showers and comfortable beds we patiently waited near the on ramp to I-70. Information was scarce and the mood quickly changed when we realized the busses were not moving anytime soon. To say that everyone handles stress differently would be a monstrous understatement in this situation. Most people slept, talked, or played charades. Some people, however, didn’t handle the situation quite so gracefully. The names are not important, but I honestly believe the threat of legal action was the only factor preventing some of the occupants of the bus from being physically restrained and placed in the under carriage storage compartments for the duration of the trip.

In February I had the honor and privilege of representing Rogue Wave Software at the 1998 Software Development West conference held in San Francisco, California. My only responsibility for the week was to spend several hours a day at the Rogue Wave company booth answering whatever questions the attendants would throw at us. I answered a lot of questions during my booth duty, but the most common question by far was “What is the coolest thing I can get from you guys for free?” It was kind of sad to see people who make a good living as computer programmers going from exhibit to exhibit begging for cheap pens and crappy T-shirts.

The coolest thing about going to trade shows is having an expense account and a whole lot of free time. Despite the week long cloud cover and constant drizzle, we sampled quite a few lovely restaurants and bars in the downtown San Francisco area. The most exciting evening started out at what was called the “Vendor Bender” party. As a reward for countless hours standing on the concrete floor of the convention center, the organizers of the convention hosted a party that included a dinner buffet, two open bars, a DJ, and a live band. As best I can remember, we stayed at the party for the entire time and didn’t leave until the bouncers started kicking people out. After a quick cab ride back to the hotel there were still quite a few of us that just weren’t ready to go to bed. We had a lot of fun in the wee hours of that morning, unfortunately I can’t reveal any more of the specific details of the night as a high level company executive reminded everyone that the events of the evening were not to be made available to the general public. I was kind of worried about waking up my roommate by coming in at such a late hour, but it turned out to be a non issue as he was already up and getting ready to go downstairs to eat breakfast. Needless to say I didn’t join him.

When the spring rolled around my mom decided that she wanted to move out of her big house and into a townhouse. Of course before that could happen we had to sort through the belongings all four members of our family had accumulated over the past 21 years. It’s easy to say that you love someone when things are going well in life. It’s even pretty easy when things are going bad. The true test of love is when you have to spend countless hours in the basement trying to decide what you want to keep and what to throw away. The whole thing was so stressful that I ended up getting in a big fight with my mom when I thought she was putting too much tape on the packing boxes. For a woman in her early fifties she put up quite a struggle when I decided to take matters into my own hands and wrestle the tape gun away from her. There were a few tense moments, but we somehow managed to survive the whole moving process.

In my continued half hearten attempt to earn a Masters degree, I enrolled in a graduate level mathematics class during the summer session at the Denver campus of the University of Colorado. It turns out the class was taught by the same teacher and convened in the same room as the class I took last year. This year, however, I had to deal with a full time job in addition to the demands of the class. This drastically reduced the amount of time I could allocate to my homework. Sometimes I could work on my assignments after work on the nights I didn’t have class. When that wasn’t an option I employed the time honored tradition of doing my homework on the bus on the way to school. At the rate I am going I will have all the required credits for my Masters degree in the year 2007.

That pretty much describes the important and/or entertaining events for 1998. The year didn’t go anything like I imagined, but I guess that is what life is all about. As I am writing this I am getting ready to spend the next 6 months in Europe on company business. I’ve never been out of the state of Colorado for more than two weeks at a time or out of the United States at all, so traveling half way around the world will be an exciting experience. Since I am leaving the beginning of January it will have to wait until my 1999 Christmas letter. Until then, I’ll end this letter with one of my favorite song lyrics:

Old man look at my life,
Twenty four and there’s so much more
I live alone in a paradise
That makes me think of two.

My name is Teaky, and this year I became the proud cat-owner of the Lutfey family. My modest kingdom consists of big-male-human named Omar, big-female-human named Katherine, two small-female-humans named Isabel and Samantha, one big-male-dog named Maury, and one small-male-fish that I call a tasty snack when the opportunity arises. While the big-humans understand the proper protocol for addressing cat-royalty, the small-humans feel it is completely appropriate to touch me or try to pick me up when I’m preoccupied with critical tasks such as hunting dust particles in the living room. I’ve looked into replacing the small-humans, but apparently there is an enormous amount of paper work needed to be filed with the Human-aine Society. The big-male-dog doesn’t pose any challenge to my authority as he seems to focus on pretending to be asleep 20 hours a day only to pounce on the chance to eat human food left momentarily unprotected.

It has been brought to my attention that an annual event summarization must be filed with the proper authorities. While in the past this task has fallen to big-male-human, my arrival in the household has clearly altered the structure of authority. Hence I will now be in charge of the annual Christmas letter.

Big-male-human continues with his daily ritual of dressing up in brown clothes, driving away, and returning later in the day smelling of sweat, diesel fuel, and various random dog-units. On days when he stays home he likes to stay in his bedroom well past the completely appropriate wake up time of 7 am. When this happens I have to jump on the bed and stick my nose in his ear to make sure he is still alive. Sometimes he accidentally closes the bedroom door and I have to sit in the hallway and meow to revive him. Fortunately I’ve never been unsuccessful in reviving big-male-human. In a related note, he doesn’t seem to appreciate everything I do to make his life better such as clearly announcing that the sun will be rising in two hours.

My attempts to expand my domain proved unsuccessful when I acquired a small-baby-bunny and deposited him in the office near my litter box. This resulted in much commotion among the big-human units that included significant yelling, texting, and rearranging of furniture. Fortunately small-baby-bunny was quite adept at playing hide and seek, so he was able to avoid capture for more than a day. Unfortunately he received significant trauma when being relocated from his nest and died the next morning. After the small-baby-bunny was disposed of I was not allowed to freely play outside anymore. Hardly an appropriate manner to treat your superior, in my humble opinion.

Wow– this is a lot of work, and these windows aren’t going to stare out of themselves. I hereby delegate this work to big-male-dog.

Hi! This is Maury. The cat told me to finish this letter. I was busy taking a nap, but I’ll make sure to catch up on my sleep tomorrow. First of all, Teaky is totally correct that I spend all my time trying to get food that I know I’m not supposed to have. Have you ever tried the food they give me? A scoop of the same brown pellets in the morning and again at night gets old after a while. Now don’t get me wrong– I scarf it down like I haven’t eaten for a month, but why is it so wrong to want a taste of all the great food in the rest of the house? My proudest moment was getting a chocolate chip muffin from the kitchen counter. Now to be honest, I was pretty sure that Mom’s special silicone muffin wrapper wasn’t food, but I just didn’t want to take the chance. And I don’t know why they made such a big deal about it– she got it back a few days later. I do have to say that silicone slides through my digestive tract like nobody’s business.

Aside from the muffin incident, the biggest thing that happened to me this year was getting sent off to doggie heaven. I made it through so many things such as swallowing countless tiny pieces of so-called indestructible dog toys, constantly running into the corner of the kitchen island at full speed, and leaving half a corn cob in my stomach for six months. I couldn’t, however, survive the diagnosis of “cancer everywhere.” Doggie heaven is great– the toys are the best and everyone loves it when you fart. While, yes, time is an artificial human construct not defined by the laws of quantum physics, I am a good reminder that while it may not always seem to be the case, yesterday is not the same as tomorrow.

So to wrap things up I’ll share a few things I’ve learned over the years. Introduce yourself to everyone who doesn’t look like they could eat you as a snack, be insanely excited when people you know come home, and ALWAYS make a play for the food on the counter.

Dear friend,

Another year has passed before us and I am taking time out of my busy schedule to personally write you this letter explaining to you what is going on in my life. Please do not infer that just because I am constantly referring to you in the generic second person and not including any personal information about you that this is one of those tacky one-size-fits-all impersonal letters that are being mass mailed to everyone I know instead of taking the time to write individual letters. I would like to think that you know me well enough to realize that I am above that type of behavior.

Anyway, I guess that this part of the letter should be devoted to my accomplishments over the past year. I have managed to stay in school for another year. If you do not already know, I am currently a senior attending Colorado State University. I am currently working toward degrees in both Computer Science and Mathematics. I am, however, considering staying in college for an extra semester to get a minor in Viking Cuisine. My counselor, who coincidentally lives in the Viking homeland, is always telling me that I should expand my dining horizons.

During the school year I am employed as a tutor for the beginning level computer science students. Earning a wage that is comparable to that of migrant farm workers, I give helpful advice and words of encouragement to students who have not mastered all of the ins and outs of C++. Most of the time the problems are simple– a missed semicolon or a misspelled word, but there was one guy this last semester who would always sit at the computer closest to my desk just so he could turn around every five minutes and say “Its not working” and expect me to correct every single problem in his program until it was completed. In retrospect, it probably would have been considerably less strenuous for everyone involved if I just sat at his terminal and wrote his entire program for him. That way I would have fewer visions of impaling him with a computer monitor and he would not have to suffer the strain of repeatedly turning his head around to talk to me. Needless to say (although I am saying it anyway) this young man was quickly labeled “The dumb guy.” In the end the other tutors and I decided that taking a big permanent magic marker and writing something to that effect on his forehead, while being completely accurate, would have probably gotten us into some kind of trouble.

In other news, I am putting the four weeks of winter vacation to good use. I went to the dentist last week and in addition to having no cavities, I also received, at no additional cost, a dinosaur toothbrush. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until I got home and opened up the box that I realized that the actual toothbrush was designed for the mouths of three year olds and didn’t really fit my brushing needs. I have decided to keep it in its original box and hold onto it as a collectors’ item. Not all toothbrushes go up in value, but I have a good feeling about this one.

I guess that I could talk about the other members of my family now. My sister Karen was in town for the holidays. We spent most of our time together coming up with excuses to not walk the dog. My other sister Barf, who does not actually exist and is a figment of my imagination, is currently in counseling. She is depressed because nobody is paying any attention to her. My dog Cal is doing fine. He has learned through continued positive reinforcement that if he whines enough when someone is in the kitchen, he will eventually wind up with a doggie biscuit. My parents are doing typical parent activities such as working, paying for me to go through college, and detonating small explosive devices in the back yard.

Getting back to my sister Karen, she is attending school somewhere in one of those “I” states, but I always seem to get them all mixed up. She is a graduate student in the area of sociology which means that I have no idea what is going on in her academic life. She is going out with some guy named Jeremy, who is also a sociology graduate student. I don’t know much about him except that he plays a lot of computer games which means that he automatically gets my approval. Karen recently received her Masters Degree and is now working toward her Ph.D. thingie. While she was here last week she told me that she and this Jeremy guy got married in a super-secret ancient Indian ceremony. It involved, among other things, that Jeremy spend three days and three nights naked in the woods with only a small plastic spoon that he had to use to hunt down the largest moose in the entire state. This is sort of a secret, so if you see my parents, please do not mention the wedding.

I also have a girlfriend who is named Karen. She is working at Longs pharmacy where she got promoted to the position of technician. She spends her days being nice to all of the customers and pretending she cares about their medical problems. “Young lady, you just wouldn’t believe how good this here medicine is when it comes to getting rid of them pesky little heartworms!!!” “You’re right sir, excuse me if I get nauseated at the mere thought of that, have a nice day.”

Karen has also spent the last two years letting her hair grow out. It is now all the way down to her knees. I keep on telling her that she should get it cut, but she refuses to listen to my pleading. She said something about getting into the “Guinness Book of World Records” if she can just grow it out another thirty-two feet. I guess that we can all root for her to make it.

Getting back to me, I am planning to graduate on May 10th ish 1996. Everyone is welcome to come and see it provided that I in no way incur any financial responsibility and that you leave when I grow tired of your company. Hope to see you there.

I really cannot think of anything else to say, so hope that I can see/hear from you a lot next year. To all my Christian, Jewish, and very tall friends, have a happy 1996!

Omar Lutfey

PS: You will be happy to know that my spell checker now has the word “heartworms” added to its database.

Welcome to my 2010 Christmas Letter.  This year has been crazy busy due to an important new addition to my life at the very end of 2009.  I’m talking, of course, about the new Gateway netbook I received as a Christmas present.  Now I can wirelessly connect to the inter-web from any room in the house.  Oh yeah, I suppose starting off the year with a seven day old kiddo has kept me busy too.

Life with Isabel Grace Lutfey has, among other things, kept us quite busy.  This whole raising offspring experiment has been a completely new experience for me.  I read (OK, maybe quickly flipped through would be more accurate) a few of those “here is exactly how you should raise your child in 413 pages” books, but after a year of being a parent, I’ve come up with my own set of cliff notes.

If the baby you are looking after is exhibiting an error code (such as crying at the top of her lungs without an end in sight) follow these simple steps*:

1. Change diaper
2. Put food in mouth (the baby’s mouth, not your own)
3. Play with

*Please note that the order is important.  Playing with a baby who has a full diaper can have negative consequences.

Getting Isbel to sleep when we want to rest has been a bit of a challenge.  To help quiet her down I’ve been known to sing her songs at night.  I generally start when I’m putting on her bed time clothes by singing her the pajama song.  It goes something like this: You say pajama, I say pajama, pajama, pajama, let’s call the whole thing off.  (note the different pronunciations of the middle vowel sound of the word pajama for proper comedic effect)  After that I move on to the Mamas and the Pappa’s “Dream a Little Dream” and/or the Eagle’s “Take it to the Limit”.  If all else fails I move on to an improvisational version of a song I call, “Daddy needs to get some sleep so he doesn’t accidently drive his UPS truck into a ditch tomorrow.”

Another important thing I’ve learned relates to Isabel’s toys.  These come in two categories.  The first type includes objects that we purchased for the express purpose of being a toy for our daughter.  These include typical things like a big bouncy ball, stackable plastic rings, and the oddly creepy Curious George doll whose head lights up when you squeeze him.  The second type includes objects that we had no intention of Isabel playing with, and, as a matter of fact, we would much prefer that she left alone altogether.  These items include things such as our cell phones, the television remote control, pretty much all the food we store in the lazy Susan, and, much to his dismay, our dog Maury.  Which stuff does she want to play with 94% of the time?

As Isabel just kept getting more and more mobile, we realized that living in a townhouse with roughly 17 flights of stairs might not be the best place to live.  So after a lengthy search we found a house on the west side of Loveland.  It has a nice back yard for Maury and plenty of room on the main floor for everyone to coexist peacefully.  We have spent several weekends painting the inside, but the end of that project is in sight.  While there are always going to be minor projects to tackle, we are more or less settled into our new place.

I really jumped on the facebook bandwagon this year.  Now I share pictures and insights about my life with a bunch of other people on the internet.  My favorite posts of the year are as follows:

On child care: Isabel would not go back to sleep when I put her back in her crib at 3am. I tried everything to get her to stop screaming, but in the end I had no choice but to charge her with resisting a rest.

On working at UPS: While I’m not a big fan of shaving my face every morning to drive a delivery truck, I think most of the FedEx drivers look like homeless Star Trek extras.

After a two year hiatus, the kinetics race was brought back to life.  After losing the corporate sponsorship, we moved the race from Boulder to Longmont.  While it was a much smaller event than past competitions, the race was a success at showing there are plenty of people in Colorado who want to race crazy human powered contraptions over land and water.  My craft did fairly well this year.  In addition to not suffering any major structural issues, I completed more than half the race before a broken chain considerably slowed my progress.  So I just need to make a few drive chain adjustments before starting the race next August.  Check out boulderKinetics.com for more information on the next race.

I am proud to announce that I am officially a United States of America Patent holder.  After three years, two different laywers, and one big stack of bills, I own the rights to patent number 7,825,545 a.k.a. “Energy Conservation and Control Systems”.  Now I have the next 17 years to do something with it.  Check out blackremote.com for more about this project.

Well, that about sums things up for this year.  It has been quite an adventure starting a family, but I think I’m getting the hang of it.  (as evidenced by NOT A SINGLE visit by family services, the Loveland S.W.A.T. team, or any basic cable reality television camera crew.)  2011 promises to be another eventful year as (SPOLIER ALERT) the sequel to Isabel is scheduled to be released on May 31.  Maybe the second time around we will have a better idea of what we are doing.  So, until then keep your head up, the dog out of the toilet, and the kids from sticking metal objects in the power outlets.

Welcome to my 2019 experience! A lot of “things” and “stuff” happened to me this year, and this is my attempt to project said events through the lens of my hopefully witty banter.

Emotionally speaking, I invested a large portion of my year applying for a contest to build a more efficient air conditioner. To be honest, a lot of people ask me why I’m trying to build a new type of heat pump. In either a dream or field trip to an alternate vertex of the multiverse I experienced a world where we sucked energy directly from the ground and oceans to power our society. I know, I know—I’m more than just a little bit crazy.

Ok, back to the Global Cooling Challenge. While it didn’t receive much attention in the main stream media Sir Richard Branson made a promotional Youtube video on the subject, and he was on The Simpsons, so it must be legit. I filed a provisional US patent and did my best to complete the application.

So did I win? The quantum goggles I am wearing say that both happened. Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, was made aware of my idea, immediately flew to northern Colorado, confidently walked into the UPS center before all the drivers left for the morning, and carried me off just like Richard Gere retrieved Debra Winger in “An Officer and a Gentelman.”

Also, nobody seemed to care about my idea and I went back to cobbling together cheap Walmart mini-splits and one hundred gallon horse troughs in a continued attempt to show the world how we can save the planet.

Side note– explaining these events following a more Newtonian physics interpretation of cause and effect, I did not win the competition. This branch has been pruned from the time line tree and my eventual encounter with Elon will happen at an alternate set of time/space coordinates.

In less nerdy news, we spent a week this summer to go on a road trip through Colorado. With so much cool stuff in the world to see it can be hard to remember that we have an amazing backyard. By that I mean the state of Colorado– OUR backyard isn’t really anywhere you would want to spend an entire week. We mapped out our path on Google and it turned out to be exactly the same shape as the piece of the dolphin toy that we pulled out of our dog’s mouth before she could swallow it.

Our journey started in Canon City– home to the state’s largest population of incarcerated individuals and shady rafting companies. To be fair almost none of the rafting companies are run by prison inmates. Due to a large snow pack and warm spring weather we got to experience a record water level on the river. I spent the entire trip wondering how we all managed to stay in the raft. By some minor miracle everyone made it through the river safely.

For reasons that I don’t totally understand, the highlight of Montrose was the huge Russell Stover chocolate factory. Ok, I DO understand the need for chocolate, but from a business perspective putting this out in the middle of the western slope of Colorado seems a bit odd. While I did exactly zero research on the subject, I’m going to say that it was put there because someone lost a bet. Despite this, it was a fun place to visit and our kids were able to buy some high quality Halloween candy for 5 cents each– a good deal as long as the cost of getting there isn’t factored into the equation.

Our final destination was Glenwood Springs. I never knew this, but apparently there is an entire amusement park on a nearby mountain top. My favorite activity had to be the laser tag. I know that as a parent I should provide a helpful environment to allow my children to acquire new skills. However, I took this time to completely slaughter everyone at this game. The lesson I taught my kids is the old man isn’t going to go down in laser tag without a fight.

In pet news, we leveled up +1 in the dog department. While budget constraints prevented us from purchasing a new state of the art robotic canine, we did acquire a great used carbon based unit from the local Humane Society. As best we can tell, Mya is a mix between a whippet and a perpetual energy machine. She splits up her free time between sleeping on Kat’s lap and completely freaking out when I come into the house wearing my UPS clothes.

Being that 2020 is just around the corner, I feel an unexplained need to list some of my future sports predictions. This might have something to do with the fact that I’m writing this while watching a football game. Here are, in chronological order, things I believe will happen:

• 2030: Computers will replace referees in the NFL
• 2039: Robots will replace players in the NFL
• 2041: Tom Brady will retire from the NFL shortly after undergoing painful and expensive robot conversion surgery.

To end this year, I thought I would make a list of things I would like to see get done in the future. I gave it the catchy title of “The exponentially increasing in difficulty to do list.” Each item is exactly 17.3 times more difficult than its predecessor.

• Blink my eyes
• Get the house cleaned up
• Build a revolutionary heat pump
• Transition the world off fossil fuels
• Rearrange the atoms of the earth and moon into a space craft to escape the eventual death of the sun
• Escape the prison dimension that we currently understand as “time”

Will any of these actually happen in 2020? Please make sure to take the leap day into consideration when setting up any calculations. I’ll finish things off with the most insightful comment I made all year. “Samantha, stop making now sad.”

Well folks, it’s that time of year again– the days are getting shorter, annoying Christmas music is playing at the mall, the political forces that run our nation are gearing up for the next presidential election, and, of course, it’s time to publish my third annual Christmas letter. This brings up the question of whether I should even try to construct a letter that surpasses the high standard that I set for myself when writing the first two Christmas letters. Consider the world of movies for a moment. By the time they get to making a third movie in a series it pretty much just sucks. I am sure they meant well when they made “Superman 3”, but putting Christopher Reeves, Richard Prior, and a wacky evil computer together isn’t something to be proud of. Even “Return of the Jedi” wasn’t as good as its predecessors. Oh no, they built ANOTHER Death Star for the good guys to blow up at the very end. On the other hand, I listened to the School House Rock CD (which I own, of course) and learned that three is a magic number. I don’t think they would have made a number magical if there was an inherent problem with it. In conclusion (of the introduction), I know the risks but I am none the less going to give it a shot. If you are not completely satisfied with this product, just send any unused portion to the address provided for a full refund.

In case you didn’t already know, I left my job at Saxe, Inc. Among other things, the thought of developing software to help companies send out more junk mail slowly wore down my will to live. After a while I would wake up in the morning and stare at the ceiling thinking the world would be a better place if I just called in sick for the day. Even the lure of the cappuccino machine and the ping pong table (see last year’s Christmas letter) wasn’t enough to convince me to stay. My departure was civil and professional, considering the fact that several of the upper level managers were (and to the best of my knowledge still are) minions of Satan.

One of the last things I did before leaving Saxe was use up all of my vacation time on a road trip to see the Indianapolis 500. My friend Tina and I drove a total of 2,048 miles to watch thirty-three men drive around a big loop 200 times. Of course not all of them made it all the way through to finish the race. I don’t have exact numbers, but quite a few of the racers stopped themselves by smashing into the outside walls, a few just ran into each other, and then there was one guy who was driving along minding his own business when his car just caught on fire. I felt bad for the guy, but then a bunch of people came along and extinguished him.

The sheer magnitude of the Indianapolis 500 is impressive. Hundreds of thousands of people converge to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway one day a year to see the big race. The planning required to pull something like this off is extensive– roads are blocked off, businesses are closed down, and special busses are brought in to move the masses more efficiently. Every effort is made to ensure the audience enjoys the race. Having taken all of this into consideration, I don’t understand why they built one of the world’s largest racing facilities in a climate that on average receives more precipitation during the last weekend in May than the entire Amazon Basin gets all year. I guess I am still a little bitter about the fact that we were forced to go to the race track three different days before the race track was dry enough to get the race finished.

I really should have had a new job lined up BEFORE I left my old job at Saxe, but then it would have been a lot harder to take the entire summer off. After a few weeks of doing no productive work, I realized my summer needed a little more structure. Applying the theory that there cannot be light without darkness, good without evil, and “tastes great” without “less filling” to my otherwise unproductive summer free time, I decided to go back to school to start working toward my Masters Degree. After a rather flimsy search, I decided to take a graduate level mathematics class at the University of Colorado at Denver. It was rough, but twice a week all summer I got up, shaved, showered, and made my way to downtown Denver in time for my 4 PM class– even if it was raining. A lesser person might have just stayed home and watched that old episode of “The A Team” where George Peppard and company save the defenseless workers from the evil bad guy while narrowly eluding the military forces that are relentlessly pursuing them for the crime they didn’t commit. You know the one. Anyway, I got through summer school with only minor bruises and am planning on receiving my Masters degree sometime in the next 8 to 10 years.

All good things must come to an end, and my “summer of unemployment” was no exception. After evaluating my bank account, I begrudgingly realized that an “autumn of unemployment” was not a financial option. I started sending my resume out to companies and eventually was hired at company called Rogue Wave Software. Rogue Wave’s current focus involves brokering brides of the Philippines to wealthy but socially underdeveloped gentlemen. Of course it’s all a front to hide the fact they are really developing, marketing, and supporting digital dynamic reusable hierarchical multi-platform modularized procedural language libraries.

I am currently working in the Technical Support division of Rogue Wave Software. We have constructed an international array of computers connected through a highly evolved network of PPP, ISDN, and T1 telecommunication lines that allow for the fast, efficient, and reliable movement of information allowing us to seamlessly communicate in our ever increasing global community. Does this investment in time and money improve our relationship with our customers? I don’t know, but it runs Quake really well.

One of the more interesting aspects of this job, besides, of course, playing Quake, involves the notion that part of our responsibility involves helping the customers so they don’t have to call us in the first place. To achieve this goal we are constantly reporting bugs in our software, finding problems with our documentation, and publishing helpful hints on the Internet. The more successful we become at this venture the more people get fired due to a decrease in the number of customer calls. But, since most of us in technical support were just recently hired, we are only performing our jobs at a level where our wages are garnished.

With the possible exception of leaving a bunch of store bought tortillas in my refrigerator for an entire year just to see what would happen (they shattered when I tried to move them), I believe that my crowning accomplishment of the year would have to be the day that I completed all the levels on the “Duke Nukem 3D” CD that I bought for my computer in January. Anyone can get through a few levels and then give up, but I had what it takes to get through all 30 levels (and one of the secret levels that I am not allowed to talk about) without getting burned out. Sure, I could have stopped half way through and gone outside or read a book, but that would have been a cop out. I stuck by my guns– knowing that I made it down a path where so few see any value whatsoever.

I am sending this letter by E-mail as much as possible in an effort to promote living environmentally friendly lifestyles. Remember to recycle folks, because if you don’t all of us will have to live with the garbage until the sun runs out of fuel and collapses on itself with the resulting explosion enveloping the planet Earth as we know it– instantaneously converting countless generations of accomplishments back into the basic building blocks of matter from which we were created. And that’s a long time.

That about wraps things up here. If you ever question how to live your life, just remember what everyone tells John Cusack in the movie “Better Off Dead”– “Go that way really fast. If something gets in your way, turn.”