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Into the Wild covers the story of a 23 year old that either had a death wish, or simply wasn’t wired in a way that let him participate in what most call normal society. It is a reconstructed story based mostly on the journals and letters of the young man. It made me think about the role that noncomformists sometimes play in moving society. And related to that, is the story of Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion. As documented in Unforgivable Blackness, he stretched the prevailing society to its limits and never once apologized for living his own life his own way. The most startling part of the book is the language and attitude that mainstream newspapers used in referring to blacks. So, on one hand, things have changed a lot. On the other hand, we still have muslim clerics being escorted from planes being denied passage on US Airlines. The book is a little too meticulously reseached… reading the notes and sidebars interrupts the flow of the story.

Oh my goodness, how did 2006 get away? It wasn’t that long ago that it was 1999 and I was wondering if all the work of Kathy and Jere (and crew) was going to avoid Y2K troubles for ASU. It is suddenly 7 years later, and instead I’m kinda sorta getting ready to use my holiday time to get caught up. Trouble is, the holiday break is almost over and I have done more with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 than I have for either home life or work life. Hence, whatever is coming on Tuesday, I’m not ready.

I will take a moment to be grateful for the successful preventive maintenance done this week. This year the threat wasn’t Y2K, it was zinc flakes under the raised floor of the ‘Copa computer room. Our planned outage went off smooth as silk. I’m also grateful for the ITS’ers that held it all together throughout 2006, achieving strong gains in uptime, and customer service too. On a day to day basis, it is hard to notice the climate changing, but when you look for signs of change, and compare things to last year at this time… well, we made progress. Some details are at http://www.maricopa.edu/its/points_of_pride_all.php

Time does get away. I concentrated in November on National Novel Writing Month, and a vacation to Vermont. The writing was a success; I wrote 50,000 words in 26 days and I have a certificate to prove it. I also saw a stunningly good concert in Randolph, Vermont; a town of about 5,000 the atlas says. I thought I was crazy to go that far to hear two people sing — but then the concern happened, and I found out I wasn’t crazy at all.

The trouble with not writing for 8 weeks is a person may have 14 great ideas all competing for keyboard time. I’ll sort it out. I’ll slow down. I’ll post one thing at a time. Just as soon as I can get ready…