better to have lunch and
scared to death than to not have
lunch and scared to death

There is a lot of wisdom in these seventeen syllables.

Today’s Haiku is adapted from the New York Times article, So Long to Tech’s Dream Job By Kate Conger (who has covered labor dynamics in Silicon Valley since 2017) where Ms. Conger quotes a tech worked named Rachel Grey saying:

“I suppose it’s better to have lunch and be scared to death than to not have lunch and be scared to death, but I don’t know if it’s good for you to be there,” she added.

Ms. Grey and Ms. Conger are talking about the days when, “The company’s cafeterias served steak and shrimp, kitchens were stocked with fresh juices and gyms offered free workout classes.”

The things, I guess, that made working in tech, a dream job.

Ms. Gray started with Google in 2007.

Not sure when Ms. Conger started in her field but as I pointed out, she has been covering tech for the NYTimes since 2017.

Almost entirely by accident and by being nosy, I started working in online tech back in 1995.

It was a dream job then and for me, its a dream job now.

And you know why?

Nobody really knows what I do and they are very happy with what I do and they are also happy to have me here to do what I do even though they aren’t sure what I do.

I have long counseled newbies to the field to TAKE OVER and be the expert because NO ONE ELSE WANTS to do this job.

Of course, you can get hired and then go to your new boss and say, WHAT DO I DO and your boss, because they are the boss, will come up with something.

But I am telling you, take the initiative, tell people what they should doing online and they WILL BE GRATEFUL.

Mostly because, the boss doesn’t want to have to think about online.

So you can do what you want.

What also makes this a dream job is or at least was, was the lack of rules.

I did so much stuff online because there was no one to tell me you can’t do that online.

People ask if I studied web design in college.

I tell them there was no web when I was in college.

Never learned what I couldn’t do so I did it all.

I launched my first major news website in the Spring of 2000.

That fall my boss said we needed a way to put High School football scores online.

I invented a way to do that.

A few weeks my boss said we needed a way to put school closings online.

I invented a way to do that.

Oh man oh man, but it was the wild wild west and anything goes and almost everything did.

Looking back through history you can spot jobs like people who can send Morse Code real fast or photographers or the early pilots.

Jobs before there were rules about having that job.

What a life.

What a dream.

I still feel that way.

Of course I never worked where the company’s cafeterias served steak and shrimp, kitchens were stocked with fresh juices and gyms offered free workout classes.

But today I work 5 blocks from the Atlantic Ocean where I can walk on my lunch hour.

I do agree with Ms Gray.

It’s better to have lunch and be scared to death than to not have lunch and be scared to death.

But its best to have lunch and walk the beach.

It’s great to be here.

If I am dreaming, don’t nobody wake me up.

there was something
very real, work-like about
this new phase of it

Adapted from the passage: About this time Mr. Bixby appeared on the scene. Something like a minute later I was climbing the pilot-house steps with some of my clothes on and the rest in my arms. Mr. Bixby was close behind, commenting. Here was something fresh — this thing of getting up in the middle of the night to go to work. It was a detail in piloting that had never occurred to me at all. I knew that boats ran all night, but somehow I had never happened to reflect that somebody had to get up out of a warm bed to run them. I began to fear that piloting was not quite so romantic as I had imagined it was; there was something very real and work-like about this new phase of it.

In Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain (Boston, James R. Osgood and Company, 1883).

In the book Mr. Twain recounts his adventures as a student or ‘cub’ pilot on the Mississippi River around 1855.

Pilots stood a four hour watch on and four hour watch off through out the day that required getting out of bed at Midnight every other day.

Mr. Twain writes that on his first day, “The watch was ended at last, and we took supper and went to bed. At midnight the glare of a lantern shone in my eyes, and the night watchman said —

‘Come! turn out!’

And then he left. I could not understand this extraordinary procedure; so I presently gave up trying to, and dozed off to sleep. Pretty soon the watchman was back again, and this time he was gruff. I was annoyed. I said: —

‘What do you want to come bothering around here in the middle of the night for. Now as like as not I’ll not get to sleep again to-night.’

The watchman said —

‘Well, if this an’t good, I’m blest.’

The ‘off-watch’ was just turning in, and I heard some brutal laughter from them, and such remarks as ‘Hello, watchman! an’t the new cub turned out yet? He’s delicate, likely. Give him some sugar in a rag and send for the chambermaid to sing rock-a-by-baby to him.’

It is at the this point that we get to the above quoted passage.

This morning I got up.

I have had to get up in the morning most of my life but there it was today.

Standing in the shower, I had time to ponder the act of taking a shower.

Using the Google I learn that home hot water heaters (as we might recognize them) were invented in 1897 but still by 1920, only 1% of US homes had indoor plumbing or even electricity.

One online article states: The establishment of standardized plumbing codes in the 1940s finally paved the way for widely available, safe indoor plumbing that relied on the storage tank water heater. 

My Dad was born in 1920 and I wondered when did he get used to a DAILY hot shower.

In 2024 I expect … EXPECT … to take a morning shower in not only HOT water but hot, fresh water.

I stood under the gush of water and tried to imagine all the I’s that had to be dotted and T’s that had to be crossed to make sure this minor miracle of the industrial age was so thoughtlessly made available to me at a rate that I was able expect my morning hot shower to work

If it didn’t work, it was some kind of an emergency for somebody.

But I digress.

I had a day yesterday and slept heavily last night to wake up a minute before the alarm and was able to switch that off before it sounded and woke up my wife.

Got the coffee going in the dark and into the shower.

Out in my robe, got my coffee and tablet and sat in the dark ready to find out how much the world had changed overnight.

My tablet glowed in the dark.

Morning coffee and reading out of the way I got dressed and packed up and off to the car to get to work by 7am.

Something was wrong or at least I thought it was as I am mostly confused in the morning anyway.

It was cool almost cold and it was dark.

But what was going on?

Something wasn’t right.

I felt, like I like to say, there was one boot off.

One boot off but I couldn’t tell which one.

Up in the dark and off to work.

I do it but I never get used to it.

I do it but I have never liked it.

Getting up and going to work in the dark adds something very real and work-like about this phase of a job.

And I pulled out on to the parkway and drove to work.

Between me and work are several high bridges over the Inter coastal water way.

From the top of these bridges I can spot the eastern edge of the United States and the Atlantic Ocean and the sun coming up.

And this morning was cold and dark and no sun.

Wait just a minute.

What was going on here.

Not any clouds or anything, but the Sun wasn’t coming up or something.

Something wasn’t right.

I checked the clock and I was on time.

I checked the traffic map and traffic was as it usually was.

I got to work and parked.

I got out in the dark, got my bag out of the back and locked the car.

As I walked the walkway to the front door I hauled my watch out of pocket and popped it open.

I held it in the light of the doorway light to read it.

6:00am!

I looked around the dark.

I looked at my watch that I hadn’t looked at since last Friday.

6:00am?

Boy Howdy, I hate the time change.

cooking is something
that we human beings are
uniquely good at

I was refreshed to read the article, ‘AI cannot taste the way a chef can’: are chatbots a threat to fine dining? in the Guardian on Aug 16, 2023.

The article quotes tech entrepreneur Nikhil Abraham as saying, “AI will always be playing catch-up with human creativity, and the humans who are at the edge of creativity will always outsmart AI and have experiences that are more valuable.”

I don’t worry so much about AI so long as I can unplug my computer.

I hold that at least once a week you should unplug you computer and wave the end of the cord in front of your monitor.

To enlarge the scale on this theme, I bring up the story of the small town in North Carolina that lost power for several days when some nut put a bullet through some piece of equipment at a substation.

I hope AI remembers this story.

Maybe it does.

Maybe it does and someday it will design its own computer housing to be indestructible.

There is this story from back in the ’60s when some University Professors toured the at-that-time leader in computers for public use, Texas Instruments.

The Professors were looking for computers for their schools and they were shown the latest developments in machines that most likely had about 5000 bytes (5k) of memory and were cutting edge for their time.

According to the story, one of the Professors noticed this giant stainless steal box in a corner and asked what that was for?

The company tour guide said that was the computer housing they were developing for the Navy.

It had to be able to survive a missile attack the tour guide pointed out.

The Professors looked at the steel box then said, “That’s what we want!”

The tour guide looked at them and asked if they were expecting a missile attack?

“No”, said the Professors, “… grad students!”

And so was born the idea that any computer housing had to have at least 17 screws in it until Apple came along with their twist-and-pull to open box around 2005.

The point here is the human competent.

Those darn grad students wanted to get in there to see how the darn thing worked.

Those darn humans who, at the edge of creativity, will always outsmart AI and have experiences that are more valuable.

And cooking is where AI will lose.

As the article says:

“… robots and software can’t replicate what a chef does, even if you can codify a recipe. Like, an eggplant is smaller or larger than before, the fire is a smidge hotter than the last time I cooked.” When chefs create and execute a dish, they’re using all their senses, plus intuition. And as of now, AI doesn’t have senses of its own.“

I guess I could be worried about that … as of now … but, as of now, I am not.

The article ends with this line.

AI cannot taste in the way a chef can.

Even if you’re repeatedly using the same ingredient, let’s say a piece of fruit, AI cannot account for ripeness, sweetness, texture.“

Thinking of the human competent and the role of the chef in the statement AI cannot taste in the way a chef can, I though to that wonderful George Orwell book, Down and Out in Paris and London.

Mr. Orwell, needing employment, worked in the kitchens of Hotel X though tradition has it that he worked at Maxim’s, a landmark restaurant to THIS DAY in Paris..

Back in 1933, Mr. Orwell wrote this about Chefs and dining in a restaurant.

It is not a figure of speech, it is a mere statement of fact to say that a French cook will spit in the soup — that is, if he is not going to drink it himself.

He is an artist, but his art is not cleanliness.

To a certain extent he is even dirty because he is an artist, for food, to look smart, needs dirty treatment.

When a steak, for instance, is brought up for the head cook’s inspection, he does not handle it with a fork.

He picks it up in his fingers and slaps it down, runs his thumb round the dish and licks it to taste the gravy, runs it round and licks it again, then steps back and contemplates the piece of meat like an artist judging a picture, then presses it lovingly into place with his fat, pink fingers, every one of which he has licked a hundred times that morning.

When he is satisfied, he takes a cloth and wipes his fingerprints from the dish, and hands it to the waiter.

And the waiter, of course, dips his fingers into the gravy — his nasty, greasy fingers which he is for ever running through his brilliantined hair.

Whenever one pays more than, say, ten francs for a dish of meat in Paris, one may be certain that it has been fingered in this manner.

In very cheap restaurants it is different; there, the same trouble is not taken over the food, and it is just forked out of the pan and flung onto a plate, without handling.

Roughly speaking, the more one pays for food, the more sweat and spittle one is obliged to eat with it.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Maybe this AI in the kitchen deserves a second look.

Post Script: Pictured above is Chef Paul Bocuse, named tje best chef of the Century in the 1900s, renowned for recipes like Poularde de Bresse au riz sauce supréme or Rable de liévre a la créme and Oeufs durs aux oignons dits a la tripe. I ran across an interview with him on YouTube where he was asked when was the best time to be a chef?

“1946 – 1947!” he answered, “Right after the war …. People ate everything!“