Tomorrow is Yahoo!'s first open Hack Day. They've previously had company wide hack days, where employees spend a day hacking away on projects they want to work on, typically using APIs or other internal libraries to create a project outside the typical work tasks.

Kinda like a corporate BarCamp, or Super Happy Dev House. Speaking of, the next SHDH is November 4th, which is the day before Kris and I head off to Australia.

I'm looking forward to the event very much. Even if I do have the feeling it may become a subtle Yahoo! recruiting effort. I mean, what better way to find talent than by inviting hackers over and watching them work?

The biggest problem with growing old is having to deal with loss.

Loss doesn't mean just the obvious of the death of friends and family that most people think of when they think of growing old: most people think of the elderly when they think of "growing old." Loss happens much sooner than those twilight years.

Growing old means you have to accept you can't perform athletically where you used to be able to perform. You're that half step slower, the split second off. You have to become crafty, and wiley to compensate for that loss. That is, if the small nagging injuries don't build up to something much worse in the mean while.

You have to deal with the loss of knowledge. All those equations and facts and formulas and processes you learned in school, the techniques and stories and details that you don't use everyday or at least every week on the job or in your passions, they disappear, to be forgotten. You look at your child's homework, recalling when you learned the same things, and think, "I used to know this." You realize you have forgotten more than you currently know, more than you realize.

Loss means the loss of people around you. Not only the loss of death, for that is the biggest of all losses, but rather, the smaller losses of distance when friends move away, or change. Or the losses that occur when a friend moves on to a new phase of life with weddings and children and promotions. The loss can result from a joyous event, but it remains no less a loss.

You have to deal with the loss of childhood. No longer can you just let someone else just take of you. You've made this life you call your own, and you have to deal with the consequences. Each of your actions has consequences, a fact most people try to forget. Every time you have to be an adult and face your life, you are recognizing the loss of those carefree days when someone else provided food, and shelter, and as much love as they were capable of giving. Many people never acknowledge this loss.

And, you have to deal with the loss of your dreams. At some point, you have to wake up from the fog of not thinking, and realize that you haven't achieved your dreams, that this isn't the way you expected life to turn out, that this isn't what you signed up for when you were a kid, hoping, and dreaming and plotting.

And at that moment you have a choice. You can change. You can fight for what you believe in. You can learn to say no. You can learn to say yes. You can become mentally stronger. You can stop worrying about the little details, the pieces of life that others say are important, and focus on the parts you believe are important.

Or, you can choose to accept the loss of your life. If you make this choice, you've already died.

Spent today in Davis, at this year's (here's the full name again) Northern California Mixed Club Division Sectionals of the Ultimate Players Association Club Championship Series. Oddly enough, in a recurring theme, I didn't play this year because of the ankle injury. I thought I was three years out of playing in sectionals, but I was wrong. I played last year, but not the year before. The year before that I played half the tournament, twisting my right ankle in the middle of the finals game against Donner Party.

We finished the day 4-0, eeking a win over King Kong 13-12 (yeah, yeah, double game point). Turns out, if we had lost that game, we still would have won the pool (assuming all the other games went the same), as three teams would have been 3-1, and we would have won on point differential.

Waaaaaay better to win outright.

I just wish I had been able to play. It's hard watching everyone else play, thinking you want to be out there running, throwing, catching, too.

I've given up on this season.

But, like all true ultimate players, there's always next season.

I went up to the City again today. Three times in two weeks! Unheard of! I went up to meet up with Kragen, who was in town briefly with his girlfriend. They're on a around-the-world journey, with originally no plans on coming back to the United States once they started. I'm not sure why they were in town, but I wasn't going
to miss the opportunity to say hello and talk to them, hear how their adventures were going.

I took {the} Caltrain up to Millbrae, and took the BART to the 24th Mission station. I hadn't realized how far around the City the BART goes. I wanted to arrive by seven, when everyone was going out to dinner, and wasn't exactly sure how far away the house was from the station.

Tragically, my bladder was full before the train even arrived at the station, so finding out the plans had changed, and everyone was meeting at a restaurant down the street from the station. On my way back to the restaurant, I received a call back from the friend who was hosting the gathering, to let me know one of Kragen's friends, Kitt, was going to be at the restaurant, I should meet up with him. I laughed, and said, "Will do."

When I went back to the restaurant, I expected to see a group of people, some of whom I also expected to recognize.

Nope. Didn't recognize anyone. I ordered a tasty, grilled vegetable quesadilla, sat in the back of the restaurant and watched people coming and going. I hoped to find someone to meet up with, but struck out there, too.

I wandered back to the meeting house, and sat on the door step waiting for the host to come home. I managed to people watch for a while, seeing a woman walking her dog around the block, a few joggers and an old man across the street that fascinated me. He would walk two steps up the Dolores St. hill near 24th, and stop, take two more steps, and stop. Watching him, I could see the determination: he was heading somewhere up that hill, and he was going to get there.

I waited until just after 8 before I decided to head back home. The host wasn't home yet, and I had to choose between catching the 8:17 BART back to the 8:47 Caltrain, or waiting for the 10 something train, and not getting home until near midnight.

I left.

The whole evening was a bust in terms of seeing Kragen again, saying hello and catching up, but it wasn't a complete bust.

The whole evening was a step outside of my comfort zone. Heading out to hang out with a group of people I've never met before, in an area relatively unfamiliar, definitely not an area I'm comfortable with.

I did okay.

On the train right up to the City today, I sat backwards (seated south), which I almost never do, and on the second level, which I'm growing quite fond of. I've also
learned to sit on the shadow side, as it's much cooler (temperature-wise, possibly even socially).

What I couldn't figure out, sitting up there, looking down, is how the guy on the sunny, bottom side managed to get any work done with the glare on his screen.