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I just got a check from a client. I don’t know who signs the checks, but they’re awesome.

It reminds me of my credit-card signature.

Every week I get a couple of leads for web projects. Usually we have a phone conversation or two, trade some e-mail, and then the project either gains momentum (in which case I write a formal proposal) or sputters out (in which case I move on with my life).

Of course sometimes it takes a little prodding to get potential clients to understand that they need to actually tell me what they need. Sometimes I get vague requirements like “Yeah, uhh, I need a web site for my collectible Pez container business” or whatever. Then I have to explain there are a lot of facets to web sites, how much some of them cost, and so forth. After doing that, sometimes I never hear back from the person… generally because they expected to pay a few hundred dollars for a site that rivals Amazon, and when I tell them it will be several thousand dollars and the site most definitely won’t rival Amazon, they change their minds and decide to do it themselves in FrontPage or whatever.

Anyway, there are times when I don’t know whether they’ve gone off to learn FrontPage, or they’re just really busy with things and would in fact move forward with the project if only I moved things along. So I do my best to follow up with all of my leads, if nothing else so they’ll remember me six months from now when they find out FrontPage is a piece of crap and their site looks like something built by a nine-year-old, and then I’ll get their business.

So I wrote to one of these mysteriously quiet leads today, reminding him that he had promised to call me to hash out some details of his proposed project. He wrote back with what must surely be the strangest reply I’ve ever heard from a lead:

Umm.

Who the heck is Mike Jones? And what does the mayor of Honolulu have to do with a baseball team? And– more to the point– how in the world does this have anything at all to do with a web site?

I guess I’ll write this one off. Heh.

I just got back from Dick’s Sporting Goods, where they’re apparently having a Random Sale.

I was in the market for a couple of breathable poly shirts (it’s hot out there playing ultimate!) so I perused the racks and found several I liked. The only problem was some had red clearance stickers on them while others didn’t. Some didn’t have price tags or labels at all. And they were on the same rack, same style, just different sizes or colors.

It turned out that the Nike shirt I wanted wasn’t on sale. But the Reebok one was, and it was actually half price from the red clearance tag (sweet– a shirt for $7!). And the third Reebok one, which also had a clearance tag but for a different amount than the first one, was not marked half price, although the woman gave me a discount anyway.

So in the end I walked out with three nice shirts at a good price, but shaking my head because it was literally impossible to know how much I was going to spend. Whee.

It seems that “old school recess” is a trend that’s catching on around the country. Basically it’s a group of adults who get together frequently and play the same games we all played as kids: dodgeball, floor hockey, Duck Duck Goose, kickball, and so forth. It’s being heralded as a Good Thing because (as we all know) the majority of adults in this country have weight problems or just generally don’t get enough physical activity.

It’s funny to read about these because I think back a couple of years when I organized a dodgeball game with a group of friends at church. We all sort of laughed and decided it would be hilarious to play dodgeball for a night. About a dozen guys showed up, and we ended up having such a good time we decided to do it the following week. Week after week the games continued, but other people heard about it and started coming. At one point we had around thirty people coming to play every week. Since we were on a full-sized basketball court, there was plenty of room, but when you have twenty or so balls flying around at high speed, things get interesting.

A few months ago I was standing on the sidelines of an ultimate tournament wearing one of my Google shirts (which they gave me for free for my help on a project). Some guy came up to me and asked if I worked for Google; I told him I didn’t but he went on to explain that he was asking because his company team was going to play against the Google team in the next week’s Boulder kickball league. I had no idea there was a kickball league in Boulder, but it must be a hoot.

With all the craziness in elementary schools these days– where kids aren’t allowed to play tag or climb on the monkey bars or run around too much because someone might get hurt– I wonder what this rising generation will do for exercise. Sure, they play soccer and lacrosse and so forth, which is great, but in many ways it’s those goofball games like Red Rover that define what it is to be a kid.

Speaking of Red Rover, in college I was in charge of organizing some activities for a workshop and I decided it would be fun to play Duck Duck Goose and Red Rover. The former went really well (we had about thirty people, which made for a big circle to chase around) but the latter ended up being sort of a disaster. A few turns of “Red Rover, Red Rover, send so-and-so right over” went just fine, until we screamed for Amy Hansen to come over and she ended up getting clotheslined something fierce. As I recall, she was just about knocked unconscious and ended up with neck problems for a week.

On that note, the article I just read had this quote in it:

Amen to that. But bring on the dodgeball! I need to get that going again…

Yesterday I was driving home from work and the guy behind me was doing something weird to his face. I couldn’t quite make it out in my rear-view mirror… was he talking on some strange cell phone? Rubbing his cheek? Then I realized what it was.

He was brushing his teeth. While driving at 60mph on the highway.

Slate just published a handy chart showing five of the high-profile scandals that have taken place during Bush’s reign in office. It makes a nice Venn diagram because several of the players are implicated in multiple scandals.

Although Bush and Cheney played major roles in several of the issues, it’s Alberto Gonzales at the heart of it all– he was involved in every one.

Since the air conditioning in my car died last year and it’ll cost more than the value of my car to fix it, I decided that I should get the windows tinted so it won’t get quite so hot on these long summer days. So I had it done yesterday, and today I drove down to Denver (about 60 miles each way) for some meetings.

Man was it scorching hot. I couldn’t roll down the windows because I have to wait 24 hours for the tint to dry (or whatever). So I had the sunroof open, the internal fan blowing hard, and still the sun was baking me. Woo.

But hey, now I’m all gangsta cool and stuff.

Today is Kyra’s birthday (she turned 10) and she was clothes-shopping with Laralee, looking for a suitable outfit, when La sprung the big question on her:

“Do you want to get your ears pierced?”

I imagine that’s what every ten-year-old girl wants to hear, because Kyra was ecstatic. She forgot all about the clothes and started dreaming of hoops and colors and danglies and whatever. Of course it’ll be six weeks before she can take out the posts and get “real” earrings, but she’s so excited it’s fun to watch.

I guess my little girl is growing up…

I went out and played ultimate at lunch today, and it was a great game. We had a big crowd and some amazing plays. But wow was it hot. The fields had just been watered, so there was a lot of humidity rising off the grass, making it even more oppressive.

After an hour of running in 95-degree heat, and then biking back to the office, I was beat. I think I had a whiff of heat exhaustion, because I was literally seeing double for about half an hour. After laying down for a few minutes and sipping some water everything came back into focus, but I think that’s the first time I’ve had symptoms like that. Gotta be careful on these hot summer days.

As part of our family trip to Laralee’s reunion in Utah, we decided I’d fly back home while she and the kids stayed around a few extra days and then drove up to Idaho to visit her mom and family. That meant I would have a chance to run the gauntlet at the airport, testing whether I could still fly without showing photo ID. According to the TSA’s New Policies Designed to Keep Us Safe, you can no longer go through security– even with “enhanced security screening”– by refusing to show your ID. Apparently “I forgot it” remains an acceptable excuse, so I figured I’d give it a go.

I showed up about an hour before my flight with just a backpack and headed for the Frontier ticket counter, where I told the woman I didn’t have ID. “Nothing at all?” she asked, apparently amazed. But when I was steadfast, she printed a boarding pass with the legendary “SSSS” code on it. I walked to the security area and plodded along as the line made its way through the checkpoint. When I arrived at the checkpoint I gave a friendy “Good morning” to the TSA agent and handed him my boarding pass. He, too, was incredulous that I didn’t have ID, so he directed me over to a nearby holding area.

So far this wasn’t a big deal; it was pretty much the way it’s been for the last few years. But now the adventure began. I was asked to fill out a TSA form with my full name and mailing address. I shrugged and did so, curious where this was going to lead me. There was another passenger there filling out the same form, and a couple of TSA people (including a supervisor). The supervisor picked up a cell phone and called someone, reading off this other guy’s name and address.

There was a pause, she re-read the name and address, asked him to confirm that was really where he lived, confirmed with the guy on the other end of the call, and waited. After a few more minutes of all of us standing around, she asked him if that was really his home address (it was somewhere in Santa Fe). He insisted it was. Then she started asking all kinds of other questions:

“How long have you lived there?” (He said it had been a few years.)

“Where did you live before that?” (Pecos, Mexico.)

“Who did you live with in Mexico?” (His mother.)

“What’s your mother’s name?” (Esperanza or something.)

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” (No.)

“Where do you work?” (At an asphalt company.)

“What’s the address of your employer?” (Somewhere in Santa Fe.)

After barraging him with all of these questions, she repeated everything to the person on the phone. While all of us continued waiting, I asked the guy where he was going. It turns out he wasn’t going anywhere… he was just trying to get into the terminal to see his thirteen-year-old son, who was on a layover. In other words, he was being subjected to all kinds of personal questions, asked to reveal his family and employment history, and he wasn’t even getting on an airplane!

I was stunned.

Anyway, the clock continued to tick. It had been about twenty minutes, and I was starting to worry that I was going to miss my flight for this nonsense. I asked one of the TSA guys who was hanging around doing nothing how long this usually takes, and he told me he’d seen it take “a lot longer than this”. This guy was all business: he was absolutely serious that twenty minutes was nothing in the identity-verification game they played. I asked if some other TSA person could call the magic phone number to verify my identity while they sorted out the craziness with this other poor guy. Nope. Apparently only a supervisor can make the call, and even if another supervisor called, they’d use the same number so I’d have to wait for this first woman to finish anyway. What?

A couple other TSA guys wandered over. I started chatting with one of them (he was really nice, and even shared his last Altoid with me) and explained that I’d been waiting for a while, and my flight was leaving shortly, and asked if there was anything we could do to speed up this ridiculous process. I told him I’d be willing to go through extra screening or whatever (like the Good Old Days) but he said this was a new policy and they had to verify everything using this inane process. I told him I found it really hard to believe there was only one guy somewhere in a TSA office who handled every passenger verification. Couldn’t someone else call? He agreed that it was indeed sort of silly, and promised to see what he could do.

A few minutes later yet another TSA guy came up to me. Apparently he was another supervisor, and he was willing to help. However, the TSA didn’t provide him with a phone to call the secret office, so he was forced to do it on his personal cell phone. He grumbled about that for a minute, and after getting through to someone he had to explain who he was, give his TSA identification code or whatever, and tell them why he was calling from an unauthorized phone. But finally I guess they accepted his credentials, because then the questions for me began:

“How long have you lived at this address?”

“What’s your home phone number?”

“What kind of car do you drive?”

He passed along this vital information and waited. I asked him what the heck the guy on the other end was doing. “Is he looking me up in the phone book or something?” He looked at me and smiled. “Oh no. It’s much more involved than that. You’d be surprised how much information they have on you.” That’s a direct quote. He went on to explain this process was sort of like a credit check, but more involved. As someone who had a security clearance long ago, I’m well aware of how “involved” The Gov can be when they investigate Citizens. But for crying out loud, I’m just trying to get on a one-hour airplane flight here!

The clock continued to tick, and it was becoming clear that I was in real danger of missing the flight. We were pushing forty minutes by now. I pointed this out to the guy, who assured me that he was doing what he could but that The Process just took time. For the love of all that is holy, I could’ve done the verification myself by just going to Google and searching for my name! I have no idea what kind of databases they were cross-referencing back there.

At long last I was cleared, and allowed to hop to the front of the screening line. I went through the metal detector, which beeped at me. Apparently my watch (which contains very little metal!) set it off, so I dropped my watch in the bin about to cruise through the x-ray scanner and walked through again. All was well, but I was asked to move into the little glass cell to await a Wanding. I argued that the metal detector had just passed me, that my flight was about to take off, and that I had already been subject to forty minutes of scrutiny (not counting the time in the security line itself). She insisted that I had to wait for an authorized screener to attend to me– as a woman she wasn’t allowed to give me The Wand. I was saved by one of the other screeners, who was rooting through my backpack and called me over.

This new team (there were three of them) used the bomb residue swab to check my shoes (a pair of cheap sandals from Target– clearly a security risk) and laptop. They also emptied everything from my pack, pausing to examine the network cable I’d brought as if it was some kind of bomb component. Finally I was cleared, so I stuff everything back into my pack, ran up the escalator, and zipped down to the gate…

… to learn that the plane had left early because (in the words of the guy at the Frontier counter) “everyone was on board and we paged you several times”. I told him I’d spent close to an hour in security, but of course there was nothing he could do because the plane was already on the tarmac.

So I’m sitting in the terminal now, writing this and reflecting on how absolutely ridiculous this whole thing has been.

I wonder if the guy from Santa Fe was able to give his son a hug.

I wonder how the type of car I drive has anything to do with my identity.

I wonder whether I’ve been added to a watchlist now because I didn’t follow protocol.

I wonder how any of these New Policies do anything at all to deter an attack on a plane.

And I wonder why so few people seem to think anything of the police state we are gradually becoming.