Curt Doolittle

Form: Diary

  • (memories)(personal) Loved my ex-wife more than life itself, for almost twenty y

    (memories)(personal)

    Loved my ex-wife more than life itself, for almost twenty years. Used to think she was obsessed when she said she needed to put on makeup to go out. In my opinion she was beautiful just getting out of the shower. More beautiful in ragged jeans, a sweatshirt, no makeup and running socks.

    Anything else was gilding a lily and all that.

    Dolling up is for other women. Not for us.

    As for men, we don’t see details: women are beautiful. It’s their nature.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-05 02:16:00 UTC

  • ack… sulfites. I can’t focus for three minutes on anything. Today will officia

    ack… sulfites. I can’t focus for three minutes on anything. Today will officially be a day free of cognitive value.

    Damn. And I have SO MUCH work to do. 🙂

    sigh…

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-04 01:48:00 UTC

  • OK. Read a lot. Wrote one good piece today. Tomorrow it’s back to product design

    OK. Read a lot. Wrote one good piece today. Tomorrow it’s back to product design. They have sort of caught up with me again. And this week I have to keep it to the grindstone.

    Philosophy takes a back seat for a few days. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-03 15:55:00 UTC

  • Ok. Thats the second bottle of scotch. I deny responsibility now. I didnt even o

    Ok. Thats the second bottle of scotch. I deny responsibility now. I didnt even order it.

    Vika is wearing a naughty nurse costume and Vitally is a Dexter theme.

    Both of them scored. Awesome couple.

    Pretty good company party. 😉

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-31 20:04:00 UTC

  • I mean. What is the appropriate reaction to women dancing half naked on your tab

    I mean. What is the appropriate reaction to women dancing half naked on your table? I don’t want her to leave. But it is a private table after all.

    There she goes.

    Uncomfortable moment avoided….

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-31 19:51:00 UTC

  • RUTHLESSLY MORAL DOT ORG (personal history) I have managed to put a few companie

    RUTHLESSLY MORAL DOT ORG

    (personal history)

    I have managed to put a few companies out of business for immoral practices in the past.

    The first company, I was 28, and it took me a few years to put the crew together, but we eventually used racketeering laws to take them down. Didn’t cost me a cent. 🙂

    The second company, I was 30, and just out of the Justice Department (Yes, I used to work for the JUSTICE DEPARTMENT. My libertarian friends might find that interesting.) For a very short time. But before then, I spent a few years working in technology related to the bankruptcy system. It only took me about 90 days to force them into a sale after I got the justice department and one other federal agency involved. But I managed to force him to lose most of everything he had. Cost me a few thousand dollars.

    The third company I helped set up the owner with the IRS but it was easy. They took all his houses and his Bentley. They left him a motorcycle for some reason I can’t attribute to much other than irony. Cost me a few thousand dollars.

    The key thing is patience and determination.

    And the next is to find people who can profit from pursuing an injustice. And that, it turns out, is a pretty common preoccupation in America.

    Starting with …. journalists.

    🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-25 18:46:00 UTC

  • FREAKING COOL TIMES MTV 1981 It was so freaking cool at the time. To be there. T

    FREAKING COOL TIMES

    MTV 1981

    It was so freaking cool at the time. To be there. To know we were going through the change.

    THE EXPURGATION OF MIDDLE MANAGEMENT 1985

    It was freaking cool to see it. At the time. To know that American business, like american politics, was abandoning the socialist method of production. And to sell franchises of every sort to those newly unemployed middle managers.

    THE BERLIN WALL 1989

    It was o freaking cool at the time. To be there. To know the world was changing. To lose that feeling of possible nuclear war. The relief of it all.

    THE MICROSOFT-ING OF SEATTLE 1992

    It was so freaking cool to be there. To be part of it. The flood of money and wealth and nerds everywhere. The Entros Restaurant. The Galleries. Reasonably inexpensive housing. The feeling that the future was a straight vertical line into infinity.

    QUAKE 1995

    It was so freaking cool to be there. The feeling that the world had changed. That everything was changing. That the future we read about in science fiction was happening. That William Gibson didn’t imagine a future – he created it.

    WEB BOOM 2000

    It was so freaking cool to be there. Just to participate in it. Just to do a startup and have it explode overnight with everyone else’s. To know that none if could possibly work, but to run with the pack, economically naked through the financial streets wearing nothing but network cables and no chance of crossing the finish line.

    SEPTEMBER 2001

    It was freaking horrible to be there. To see it. To experience it. To know that the world was forever changed.

    HOUSING BOOM 2006

    It was so freaking cool to be there, Just to revel in it. I means, stores were full of interesting stuff, and consumption was everywhere. Knowing all the while that we were running naked through the financial streets wearing nothing but fiduciary instruments made from toilet paper.

    IPHONE 2007

    It was so freaking cool to be there. To know the world just changed. To know that the problem of teaching people the use of computing hardware, was the abstraction created by the need to use a keyboard to control a machine, rather than the intuition of touch, was gone forever.

    NOW

    It pretty much sucks since then. And really, I am pretty sure that somewhere between 2017 and 2025 it is gonna suck on a scale that no one alive remembers. I dont know what that suck is going to look like. But it’s really, really gonna suck.

    Just no way these economic conditions, the world’s demographics, the state of existing knowledge, can function with the current allocation of power and capital given the allocation of individuals.

    Just no freaking way. It isn’t a complex model. It is just napkin math.

    Pretty curves. Pretty lines. Very un-pretty conclusions. There is no rainbow there.

    Because the incentive to protect the existing order is such that there is no means of easily transitioning

    The only hope for the USA is the secession and nullification movement.

    Otherwise, there will be something very bad.

    I don’t know what.

    But the disruption of world patterns of power, transit and trade will mean a lot is up for grabs. It’d be like the USA didn’t survive the second world war, and everyone ran around picking up the british empire.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-25 16:13:00 UTC

  • WORKING YOUNG (personal) (silly) I started working for my father’s business at a

    WORKING YOUNG

    (personal) (silly)

    I started working for my father’s business at age seven. On holidays. I would take the list of deliveries and get them out of the cooler, put them in the truck, strap them down, then ride with the driver, walk up to the house, ring the bell, say something polite and cheerful, get back in the truck, and do the next delivery. I earned one dollar an hour.

    At twelve I got a paper route. It was the biggest paper route in town. One hundred and eight to one hundred and twenty newspapers on sundays. Sunday was very heavy and took me a lot of trips. I used a wagon if I could, and a red sled in the snow. But usually just a canvas shoulder bag. And walked from house to house.

    It is very cold in upstate NY in winter. 🙂 But the air smells amazingly good.

    I loved delivering the papers. But I hated collecting the money. Too much human interaction with too many strange people. It made me exhausted.

    I saved up, patiently, in a jar, and bought my mini bikes. 🙂

    But I understood inventory, cash flow, receivables, sales, revenue, and, unfortunately, a lot about filing in alphabetical order, and how to serve customers by the time I could do multiplication tables. 🙂

    Dad made me practice introducing myself and shaking hands a lot. Incredibly valuable really. And more of the same: I actually know what all those little forks, knives, spoons and glasses are for. 🙂 And how to tie a necktie. That kinda stuff. Which, if you’re an Aspie, turns out to be awesomely confusing to normals.

    LOL

    Life is awesome. Too bad we don’t get a couple of trial runs.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-23 18:48:00 UTC

  • We scored an amazing apartment today. We’ve been living in an enormous (palatial

    We scored an amazing apartment today.

    We’ve been living in an enormous (palatial) second floor walk up apartment, or the past year, with eleven foot ceilings right on the main street, and it’s fully serviced by the hotel. They want to up the rent to what is probably a market rate, but which is just too high for me to feel comfortable with.

    V found two great apartments. The first decorated perfectly and in an amazing building, but the rooms are a little too rectangular – enough to bother my spatial OCD. The second is brilliantly designed with a circular hall, and has a large round turret window living room, heated floors, and a perfect master, guest bedroom and office.

    And its a six minute walk from the office. 🙂

    AND I CAN PARK MY CAR UNDERGROUND!!!!!!!

    Now, you know, if it was a year ago the place would have made me uncomfortable despite the wonderful concierge. But you know, you sort of adjust your expectations.

    🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-21 17:17:00 UTC

  • (personal) Never realized that my aversion to conflict, which drives my interest

    (personal)

    Never realized that my aversion to conflict, which drives my interest in politics and political economy, was part of of the Aspie-thing, rather than just a reaction to how my father treated my mother and us. I feel that I have to protect everyone (its terrible really) and that I just wish conflict would end so that I didn’t have to. Aspies particularly don’t understand interpersonal, emotional conflict. It’s very distressing. It’s incomprehensible. And we don’t like things that are incomprehensible. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-20 09:58:00 UTC