Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1211
Work summit begins. I have obtained a copy of Shellac's mythical album "The Futurist." An incomplete history of US Government Archive fires.
Hello! I am home! Jesus H, that was a lot of driving, lot of charging, lot of wandering around Walmart parking lots. When I got home, I had about an hour, then I had to start the process of drives to RDU to start picking up employees for the summit that starts in (checks watch)… one hour forty-nine minutes. Plenty of time to write to you.
I am very excited to have everyone here. Last night there only eight of us here — about 10 more were arriving on a late flight. But it was still great to see people. I am as 100% full-on remote-work-rules as they come. But it’s still great to see your coworkers once in a while. Like a huddle in a football game. You come together, figure out the plan for the next play, then break and get to work. Only a play is, like, nine months to a year.
Other companies do… quarterly? That feels too much to expect people to leave their families and life — it is hard! I suspect the correct work summit cadence, for us, at least, would be every six months or so. But we are not big and not rich so financial considerations come into play as well.
Look at us. Hotel lobby restaurant. Classy.
This morning I am listening to the Confidenza soundtrack by Thom Yorke. It is good writing music. Melodic and mellow, his voice appears on track two and it sounds quite nice. I don’t much care for new Radiohead, I mean, they’re fine but they don’t move me like OK Computer, but I have to admit I like pretty much everything each member of Radiohead does solo. Thom especially — The Smile? Great band.
In other news, I have obtained my holy grail of record collecting, The Futurist, by Shellac, Steve Albini RIP. This record is notoriously impossible to obtain, for reasons. Per Wikipedia:
The cover of the album contains 779 names—one for each copy of the album. At the bottom of the cover is a blank space for anyone not named on the cover to write their name. Each person who received the album got a copy with their name circled on the cover; this was done for identification of a "culprit" should the album ever end up for sale.
My friend Bill’s name is on the list of names, but he never got his copy. Thusly, he could not sell me his copy, so, this is not his copy, don’t blame Bill (hi Bill). Look. Here is evidence this copy is not Bill’s. Or Tara Jane O’Neil’s, who, you know, does follow me on Mastadon. Or Krist Novoselic since I do not personally know any members of Nirvana.
I’ll never tell you where I got it or who’s name is on it, I will maintain this secret till my death. And in any case Steve’s gone so he can’t crush my soul with embarrassment, Bob is too nice of a guy and, well, actually, Todd seems like someone it would be scary to have on your bad side.
The story of my obtaining of this record is not dissimilar to how I obtained my ultra-rare New Order Waiting for the Sirens Call scarf. They pop up now and again on the internet (there’s one on eBay right now for only $110 or so, not bad!) but back when I was looking for it, impossible to find. So I wrote about it in my journal, which was on Tumblr back then. And a mom found it, whose son had passed away, and she was disposing of his possessions, and didn’t know what it was, Googled it, found my Tumblr post, got in touch with me, and offered to sell it to me. Bob’s your uncle.
One of the great things about publicly journaling on the internet is that you can manifest things like this into fruition (I’m manifesting you all voting for Biden, right? Even though I’m pissed at him?) When a reader comes into possession of an item you’ve made clear you desperately want, you often get first shot. Not a discount or anything — I paid market rate for this Shellac LP — but you get the opportunity. I am deeply thankful, thank you anonymous friend.
Oo I’m gonna go click the “add to collection” button on Discogs this is going to be very satisfying.
The other day I read a bunch of Wikipedia pages about fires in records facilities of the United States government. Man. There is a problem we had that we don’t necessarily have to have anymore: records getting burned up and then, poof, no more records. In 1836 the Patent Office — which shared a building with the post office — burned down, taking all (well, most) of young America’s patent records with it. Back then a lot of patents had models accompanying them, and the models burned. Back then we kept a single copy of a patent, so when the office burned, that was it. The cause of the fire was never determined but some people suspected it was related to cronyism and the patronage system and the post office (nota bene Project 2025 explicitly dreams of bringing back the patronage system what absolute lunatics). The learnings from this fire were that a) multiple copies of patents should be kept, and b) they should be filed by patent numbers and not by name, so it is obvious when one has gone missing. Hence why to this day you get issued a patent with a number.
This was very useful advice because in 1877, the enormously expensive, posh, and famously fire-proof (oh that hyphenation burns, it burns) new patent office caught fire again, because the building was fire-proof but a) the roof was not, makes perfect sense, and b) turns out the patents themselves are not because they are made of paper. Whoops. On the one hand, very embarrassing for Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, the first Patent Commissioner who, well, commissioned the building, but on the other hand, nice job, Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, because the duplicate record-keeping tactic paid off handsomely and unless the 1836 fire, which royally fucked Patents in America for a good long while, the 1877 fire was more of a minor setback and the office was quickly re-opened and the building repaired.
No word on whether they made the roof out of steel in the repairs. I bet not.
In 1973 there was also a fire at the National Personnel Records Center, a facility belonging to the National Archives, and that thing went up in flames and apparently the National Archives did not take into consideration the lessons learned from the Patent Office, and they had no duplicate records and up to 18 million records of American military personnel went poof. When commissioning the building in the 1950’s, they toured other archive buildings that made use of sprinklers and firewalls and other fire protection measures, which were all in widespread use at the time because, you know, paper burns. But the military was like “nah, it’ll look super cool to have giant bid rooms of paper.” Poof. We are still recovering from that one. These days they are using infrared cameras that can read blackened paper.
Here is Burt Lancaster’s military record, charred from the fire.
No fun stories about Jane to regale you with because I have been away from home. BUT, When I was driving home, the song “Dream Song” by Samia came on twice; once her version, once a cover by someone or thing called Shallow Alcove. And there is a couplet on it:
You can see it in your daughter’s eyes
That’s the purpose and the price
They sing it twice, and I could swear that the second time it’s “That’s the purpose and the prize” and singing both price and prize seems pretty brilliant to me.
Anyway, I was driving home from the memorial and I missed Jane so much and that song came on and I had just written you about how sad the memorial was, and I just started bawling in the car. Nothing like a good car cry.
And when I came home Jane was so great, like in a movie. Ran over, jumped up, hugged me, and said she missed me so much. It was so great.
I’m sure she’s being a complete pill at times to Emma this week (who is also super busy with Olympics work so we are in a real state this week), but, man. That really hit home. It was great.
And she’s with me now. She has a question. Gotta go over there.
I’m coming Jane!
Well that was very cute. She asked what my Apple ][ Plus was, I explained it to her, how it was one of the computers I learned on, and she asked about the BELL marking on the G, and I remembered that back in the day you could press CTRL-G and it would make a Ding! sound. So I told her a story about computer class when I was about her age and got all the kids to make lots of Ding! sounds, and she started mimicking it and oh, god, too cute.
All right, well, looks like we have a Moody and Quiet playlist done. I just threw that Thom Yorke song on there so it seems topical. Good stuff, you will enjoy it. All new. All new! New Idaho! What a world. I know I said this a week ago or so, but still!
All right! Bye!