I remember his son. He'd been an intern here at the company during my first two summers as a contractor. Nice guy. Heavily into Goth. Black everything. How was he doing?

Well, he's been working long hours at Sun as a contractor, bottom line he's been clearing over $100 an hour after taxes and agency deductions, banking $5 - 6,000 a week. Young, sharing a house up in the Oakland hills with three friends, so his overhead is $300 a month rent plus whatever he spends on food against $25,000 a month income after taxes. I don't think he's quite yet 25 years old. Young Goth programmer making his way around Europe on a motorcycle. He owns many motorcycles. At his age, I would too.

Life stumbles on.

The Blues Alley festival, a fence off two blocks of downtown Oakland near Jack London Square and charge $5 cover for nine hours of electric blues, drinking beer and eating barbecue under a hot sun sort of an affair. Older Afro-American couples in the late morning - early afternoon when I was there today looking for photographs and not really finding any. I've had similar results over the years. One or two good shots, everything else problematical. Does your city have blues festivals and jazz concerts in the street? Lots of that stuff in the Bay Area. Annual parades and events, controlled establishment supported craziness, I suppose. Good for tourism. Good for the locals, as long as they don't make too much noise or burn any buildings. I don't remember this stuff in Seattle and New York when I was growing up, although there was Seafair in Seattle with the Gold Cup unlimited hydroplane race, half a million people watching from around Lake Washington in the 50's when there were eight hundred thousand people living in all of Seattle itself.

Hmmm. I guess a good day today, no thoughts of doing all that much, maybe shoot some pictures at Lake Merritt when I go over for breakfast tomorrow. Saw the geese in the early morning light on the lake today, maybe I can catch them on film.