Microserfs

Mom was always taught that other people's problems were more important than her own.

"Anything else . . . ?" I asked.

"And now I'm wondering. That's all." "Wondering what?"

"I seem to feel myself losing . . . myself. This sounds so bored-housewife. But I'm not bored. But I have problems, too." I asked her what they were, but she said that problems were best not spoken of, and this is, perhaps, my family's main problem. "I'm joining a metaphysical discussion group."

"That's it?"

"You don't think I'm nutty?" (I have never heard anybody use the word "nutty" unironically before, and there was a satellite-link pause before I could say, "God no!" Karla and I have a metaphysical discussion group between ourselves almost every night.)

"Of course not."

Spent the latter part of the day set on "WANDER," cruising this glorious Bay with Karla. The freeways- they're so gorgeous-the 280 cresting the big hill going north, past all the Pacifica and Daly City exits; the Highway 92 cloverleaf to Hayward and Half Moon Bay off the 101. So sensual, so infinite, so full of promise.

Walking through the paddocks-we did the ru

During di

Abe:

It stopped raining today, so I wnet out and bounced around on the trampoline. But it wansn't the same without Bug standing on the sidelines outlining quadripoligeia in exquisite detail.

I wonder if maybe I don't talk to enough humans in a given day... I have a few casual interactions, but nothing really. And people I'm technically close with, like my family...I don't discuss deep things with them, either.

Anyways, it seeems okay for us to talk abuout things. I've never really done this before. And sometimes I feel kind of lost. There- I've revealed too much. I'm going to send you this before I can stop myself.

Barbecue di

We were discussing the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held every January in Las Vegas and every July in Chicago, and Mom asked us why CES is so important, and Ethan, disdaining food, plucking a grapefruit from a tree beside the wisteria vine, replied pronto. He's so nice to my mother. They get along so well. But he's not Eddie Haskell nice. He's just nice nice. He's also an information leaf blower:

"The CES began as an a

After this, Susan said, "You'd think I was at Sea World and had asked Ethan about Shamu's feeding habits. How does he remember this stuff? He just reels it off."

Bug has broken up with Jeremy, who he says is too politicized and too extreme. He was fairly open about it with Karla and me.

"Jeremy wanted me to be just like him, which wouldn't be so bad, except he's just like all of his friends. It's like Coeur d'Alene all over again-except with pasta and better defined pectorals. And it doesn't a

In the middle of all this, Dad was putzing around in the background. He's building my space station I'm designing in real space and real time. He asked me where the box with 8-stud beams was. ("Over there by the bowl of plastic eyeballs." "Oh right-there they are.")

Bug continued, "I know I'm sort of a nerd and I don't dress nicely and I grouch out at times, but I still want to be me. I want to find somebody else, sure, but I also don't want to end up harder at the end of all of this." He went back to work.

Ethan sauntered through. "Milestones? Are we meeting our milestones, oh content delivery system of mine?"

Susan, Emmett, Dusty, and about a dozen Chyx organized together over the Net, and decided to picket Fry's for fostering female de-intelligence by not selling tampons. The San Jose Mercury News interviewed them, took their picture, and left soon enough. Victory!

SATURDAY

Michael and Ethan broke down and told everyone the news-we have NO money. They made sure Dad wasn't around for the news, which was nice. We'd more or less suspected this all along, so in the end it came as no surprise.

Suddenly Microsoft doesn't look so bad. How could we have been so stupid to leave? Microsoft is a business first and only-not a social welfare state for 13,000 people who lucked in at the right moment.

Michael is petrified we might have to sell his Lego. "It's so pretty-it would be murder ... a sin ... to take it all apart. And last week ID magazine came in to take its picture."

The thing is, we agree about the Lego. It is too pretty to sell. Somewhere a few weeks ago, like a piece of DNA with just the right number of proteins added, it became alive. We can't kill it.

Suddenly it occurred to me that Ethan could sell his Patek Phillipe watch. That's 35 million yen right there. I said, "Ethan, sell your watch," and he said, "I can't believe you thought this was genuine," and dropped it into the coffee pot saying, "Six dollars. Kowloon. 1991."

We got nothing done in the afternoon. In fact we got drunk. We have no idea what we're going to do. Work some more, I suppose.

Abe looks like he's all set to go nonlinear. His e-mail is becoming telltale to an amazing degree:

At 21, you make this Faustian pact with yourself- that your company is allowed to soak up 7 to 10 years of your life- but then at 30 you have to abandon the company, or else there's something WRONG with you.

The tech system feeds on bright, asocial kids from diveorced backgrounds who had pro-education parents. We ARE in a new industry; there aren't really many older poeple in it. (lie are on the vanguard of adoldescence protraction.

As is common with Microsoft people I worked like a mental case throughout my 28s, and then hit this wall at thiry and went *SPLAT*.

But just think about the way high tech cultures puropose-fully protract out the adolescence of their employees well into their late 20s , if not their early 30s,. I mean, all those NERF TOUVS and FREE BEVERRGES! And the way tech firms won't even call work "The office:, but instead , "the campus".

It's sick and evil. At least down in California VOU"RE not working on a campus.

With you’re 30s begins "the closing"...you realize that it' not going to be forever...the game becomes a lot more serious. People get more involved in their work.

Conundrum: I can't imagine not giving myself fully to a job....00% of me. but if I DO, I'd never "have a life" (whatever that means.) The problem is, who'd UJRNT to have a job that couldn't absorb you 100%??