It Was Traffiky

On April fourth I wrote that I ran around in circles grabbing things for Monday morning and then headed to My friend’s under the impression that I had a bit of time to eat before I caught Charlie but I took a wrong turn and ended up in GGP.  I used the new Oak path though on the way to get back on track. I took the bruised elbow route to her house and it was traffiky.  I dropped off my bike her house and walking with her to Little Star.

She asked if I wanted to attend the Tango Competition and I said that I was interested in going even though I didn’t know how to Tango. We rushed back to her house then because her dance classmate had indicated that she would drive us. I bought a bottle on the way and filled a flask while she was getting ready.

The three of us arrived at the Airport Marriot in Milbrae a bit early. I had listened to the gossip in the car and knew that the show would be late in starting. The girls did a lot of hellos and introductions on the way in. The first salon was late but all three were interesting. The show also included a showcase, a senior salon and several exhibition pieces. I noted that there had been several glitches in the course of two of the performances and the ministry of culture played a big role in the show.

On the way to eating with her instructor my friend mentioned that the host was not especially well organized and that many of the people she was used to seeing were absent.  I got to meet her instructor.  He was a well-mannered porteño that discovered Tango in law school. I noted he was really sophisticated and well-traveled.  While my friend had studied under him her classmate had in fact followed him all over the world.

There were a lot of teachers making performances after that and they were all porteños too. This lasted until around 1230. After that I sat and watched while my friend danced. Her classmate grabbed us right when the music settled into a heavy beat with pauses for a bit of rockabilly and swing. We spoke to the star of the show as we were leaving.  We were callin her classmate the “mayor” because she knew everone.  The night was a lot of fun.  I was alseep around 2.

In the morning I was up at around 830 and made it to West Portal around 935.  I found the professor right where he said he’s be.  I noted that when we sat down he told me about the basics. We were at Starbucks. He opened his notebook and told me about the classes he needed covered and what it entailed.  Essentially the class would meet once a week for 3 hours and that the labs were 40 pages. The idea was to provide a slice of life on top of the software training.

The idea behind the class was to improve upon the crash courses offered elsewhere but to be faster than accredited classes. He said that the classes were mostly made up of young students that and needed to brush up—working professionals and even city and county workers. I noted that there was likely a steep learning curve. I noted also that where academics looked at pedogogy he professor looked at the data. He said that the curriculum was not sanitized.

He told me that he was an SFSU alumni and tended to focus on new tutorials with an emphasis on integration. He said that he liked to look at tutorial data. We looked at the table of contents and he showed me a few exercises. I noted that his curriculum was a far cry from my experience in industry where I often had to make undocumented snapshots.

He told me about his back ground and we got off topic for a while.  We were really just getting to know each other.  He gave me his opinion on where the industry was headed and why he felt that way.  Essentially he didn’t like cheerleaders that did the most simple stuff with html and made it out to be an industrial process.  He also told me about his career at engineering firms and city departments.

I told him about my academic and industry career.  I tried to focus on social justice issues because that was what he was talking about.  He agreed around then that tested concepts needed only to be augmented to accommodate the new ways the tooled were used. He gave several examples of how new tools were made out to be a new “science” rather than a new way of looking at tried and true ideas.

We returned to the syllabus and started talking about the weeks that I would cover.  He described then the group of steps and the model that he wanted me to support.  He then said that week four was not well developed and that it was an overview of the advanced steps. He called it a hodge podge.  He then said he needed to check downloading the data at his lab. He said that there would be a lot of massaging data. I noted I was rusty but he said all I needed to do was provide a case study.  He said that I would then bring what I do in week three to a certain point.

After this he set up a potential set of steps and that was where I had to think what I would do. It was at this point that he asked me how would I do this and what part? I eventually asked what the problem was and gave examples. He said that the presentation should only take 10 minutes.  We made plans to meet and he said he would show me the lab.

In this period I noted that my friend—across town—had made mention of us interacting but I went to the Castro and started writing.  When I hadn’t heard anything I stopped by Ace hardware to get some cords. Later I stopped by her place and within a few hours we had met my biking buddy for dinner at Hawker's Fare.

We had decided to eat there instead of going for ramen or sushi. We discussed Falernum. We shared the poached chicken. We discussed the fire that they had had in their neighborhood and then discussed the neighborhoods housing situation. We were talking about something but I interjected with a bit about Linda Radner's famous violins piece. We talked about the ladies ride and having a housewarming party.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.