Then A Hero Comes Along...
A few weeks ago I spent some time in Sacramento. This is a city where you can turn your head to check your blind spot while driving, accidentally make eye contact with the person in the car next to you, and inadvertently find yourself engaged in an impromptu drag race with the other driver. This happened twice; I lost both times, largely because, in both cases, the other person was the only one racing.
Now I'm in what I think is San Jose. Boundaries are fluid in the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm essentially somewhere in Silicon Valley, the not-so-fertile crescent just south of SF proper, the home of runaway valuations and some of the brightest minds in tech. I'm not going to talk about tech; I'm going to talk about a robbery I saw earlier today.
This isn't as dramatic as it sounds. Don't get excited. It was about as mundane as a crime could possibly get, except for perhaps parking at a metered spot and not paying, or a person smoking a cigarette within 25 feet of a building.
So I'm walking past the entrance of a Safeway, and three of the employees come walking (I said "walking") out of the front door, all of them looking in the same direction. One of them calls out, without any energy or emotion, "Hey, come back." They might as well have been telling a room full of senior citizens that the dining hall is now open. It was just about as apathetic as you can possibly get.
So I followed their eyes and saw a guy on a bicycle, about 50 feet away, and he's holding a large case of beer in his left hand. One of the employees says to the other one, "He just stole that case of beer." Another responds, "Well, shoot. This keeps happening." And they just stand there, staring at him, as I walk by them.
Now, he's on a bicycle carrying a massive case of beer in one hand, so this guy isn't going that fast. But the three Safeway employees are not in shape, as is plainly evident by their outward appearance.
Here's my next thought: I could foil this crime!. I'm not really in shape either, but I'm basically a head atop a couple of legs, and I'm pretty trim. So, I think, if I started running, I could catch up to this guy very quickly, grab the case of beer out of his hand, and run it back to Safeway. Seriously, I didn't rationally come up with this plan, it just struck me for an instant. I could save the beer! I swear I thought this, which is just how retarded my brain when it reflexively kicks in with an idea.
Of course, logic kicked in and I realized that no one risks their life to save a case of beer. What exactly did I think would be the end result in all of this? The local news station shows up and covers the story? "Today at Safeway, a case of beer might have been stolen had it not been for the heroic efforts of a local software engineer who currently resides primarily out of his car." This never happens. More likely, the guy who stole the beer would shoot me or kick the crap out of me. If I ever end up on the news, it's not going to be because I did something heroic, it's going to be because I did something idiotic.
The job search is going well. Spending time in Silicon Valley and interacting with the people around here serves as a great reminder that our society is still progressing like crazy at a rapid clip. I'm the kind of person who tends to think of big leaps forward as things that happened in the past; like all social and technical change that's going to improve our lives has already been accomplished, and that the world is just this static thing that I'm cruising along inside of until I die. Naturally, this isn't true, but I so often need to be slapped in the face before I remember it.
Now I'm in what I think is San Jose. Boundaries are fluid in the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm essentially somewhere in Silicon Valley, the not-so-fertile crescent just south of SF proper, the home of runaway valuations and some of the brightest minds in tech. I'm not going to talk about tech; I'm going to talk about a robbery I saw earlier today.
This isn't as dramatic as it sounds. Don't get excited. It was about as mundane as a crime could possibly get, except for perhaps parking at a metered spot and not paying, or a person smoking a cigarette within 25 feet of a building.
So I'm walking past the entrance of a Safeway, and three of the employees come walking (I said "walking") out of the front door, all of them looking in the same direction. One of them calls out, without any energy or emotion, "Hey, come back." They might as well have been telling a room full of senior citizens that the dining hall is now open. It was just about as apathetic as you can possibly get.
So I followed their eyes and saw a guy on a bicycle, about 50 feet away, and he's holding a large case of beer in his left hand. One of the employees says to the other one, "He just stole that case of beer." Another responds, "Well, shoot. This keeps happening." And they just stand there, staring at him, as I walk by them.
Now, he's on a bicycle carrying a massive case of beer in one hand, so this guy isn't going that fast. But the three Safeway employees are not in shape, as is plainly evident by their outward appearance.
Here's my next thought: I could foil this crime!. I'm not really in shape either, but I'm basically a head atop a couple of legs, and I'm pretty trim. So, I think, if I started running, I could catch up to this guy very quickly, grab the case of beer out of his hand, and run it back to Safeway. Seriously, I didn't rationally come up with this plan, it just struck me for an instant. I could save the beer! I swear I thought this, which is just how retarded my brain when it reflexively kicks in with an idea.
Of course, logic kicked in and I realized that no one risks their life to save a case of beer. What exactly did I think would be the end result in all of this? The local news station shows up and covers the story? "Today at Safeway, a case of beer might have been stolen had it not been for the heroic efforts of a local software engineer who currently resides primarily out of his car." This never happens. More likely, the guy who stole the beer would shoot me or kick the crap out of me. If I ever end up on the news, it's not going to be because I did something heroic, it's going to be because I did something idiotic.
The job search is going well. Spending time in Silicon Valley and interacting with the people around here serves as a great reminder that our society is still progressing like crazy at a rapid clip. I'm the kind of person who tends to think of big leaps forward as things that happened in the past; like all social and technical change that's going to improve our lives has already been accomplished, and that the world is just this static thing that I'm cruising along inside of until I die. Naturally, this isn't true, but I so often need to be slapped in the face before I remember it.