Real Kato Blog

A couple of weeks ago, I went to New Zealand on a business trip. Amy came along for fun. I think we've mostly recovered from the jet-lag. Mostly.

New Zealand is a beautiful, beautiful country, even in winter. (Apparently, summer is winter in New Zealand. Also, left is right. For the first day or so, I even got up and down confused.) The locals tell us we got lucky when it came to the weather; it was mostly clear (or "fine", as they call it) with temperatures in the 50s (er, 10s).

It's just getting there that's the horrible part. Our trip there spanned thirty hours and four different flights... each way. The flight from San Francisco to Auckland (the third leg of the flight out) was nearly fifteen hours long. And the flight was completely full... full of about 300 Catholic teenagers headed for World Catholic Youth Day in Australia. (At least they weren't rowdy.)

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Posted by Ken in: life

Happy July Fourth

Tuesday, 2008 August 5 - 10:41 pm

Er, August. Fifth.

Geez, I'm officially a month behind on blog posting. Now, granted, I spent a good deal of July out of town. But I feel like I should have at least micro-blogged or something. (The kids, they're all twittering these days.) So much has been happening, and letting it all just pile up has made it seem that much more overwhelming.

Anyway, I'll try to catch up.

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Posted by Ken in: life, travel

Back from the Future

Tuesday, 2008 July 22 - 10:26 am

Well, hello everyone. I've just returned from the future! Specifically, I just got back from New Zealand, where they are sixteen hours ahead of us. In the future, people talk with a different accent, they drive on the other side of the road, and they love rugby.

I'll have a full report, including pictures, shortly, once I've lifted the fog of travel and jet-lag.

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Posted by Ken in: life, travel

Daisy, Daisy...

Saturday, 2008 June 28 - 9:49 am

The other day on NPR, neurological research Jill Bolte Taylor was discussing her experience of having a stroke. It occurred in the left hemisphere of her brain, affecting her ability to speak, read, and put events together in order. Because her logic was impaired, she had a hard time even recognizing that she was having a stroke, or figuring out what to do about it. She was barely able to call for help, having to match the "squiggles" on the phone against the printed phone number of a neighbor.

After the stroke, she was left without her memories and her sense of self for years. She had to relearn how to read and speak, and reestablish relationships with friends and family. But she did recover, for the most part, and has since written a book about her experience called My Stroke of Insight.

The reason I mention this story is because it touches on one of my greatest fears: losing my mind to the point where I lose my sense of self, whether it be due to old age, a stroke, Alzheimer's, or some sort of brain trauma. If I lost my identity, it'd almost be like dying. And aside from being mauled by a thresher, being buried alive, or being digested slowly in the belly of a Sarlacc, I can't really think of too many worse ways to go.

And here's the thing: I can already tell that I'm not as smart as I used to be, at least in some respects. It's like I'm the HAL9000 and I've lost a couple of computing modules. I can feel it. Compared to when I was in college, I'm not as able to absorb information and grasp concepts as quickly now. It takes more mental effort; I have to make analogies to things I already know, draw pictures and diagrams, and write things down. I know it's a natural process; I mean, that's just the way the brain works. Over the years, it's less capable of taking in raw data, but tries to make up for it by organizing information more efficiently... like, by making analogies.

But when confronted with a completely new idea, or when needing to memorize large amounts of information, I just can't do it as well as I used to. So I have to wonder: is this the start of the eventual decline? Thirty years from now, will I even realize (or care) that my mind is going? Maybe I'll look back on this blog entry and say, "What a load of hooey... and hey, look at that shiny thing!"

There are a number of times in my life when I wished I'd had a "Save as..." command on myself, preserving the ideas and feelings and abilities of my life at the time. This is one of those times. I have a happy marriage and great friends, and I want to preserve a snapshot of that. If I do have a stroke or something and I lose my identity, please don't let me forget all that I have.

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Posted by Ken in: life

Reversal of Fortunes

Monday, 2008 June 2 - 11:01 am

I normally try to avoid work-related posts here, but this one seems important. Reversing several years of downsizing, our company is now hiring software engineers. We have a number of open positions. I won't go into specifics here, but if you're local to the Raleigh area and you're looking for a job, let me know and I'll email you the details.

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Posted by Ken in: life

Whatchew Been Up To? (Redux)

Saturday, 2008 May 17 - 4:04 pm

It's been so long since I've posted anything about myself, "whatchew been up to" is, I suppose, a legitimate question now. Unlike before.

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Posted by Ken in: life

Deep in the Heart of Taxes

Sunday, 2008 April 13 - 4:40 pm

During tax time last year, I was shocked into a temporary state of Republicanism when I found that my various sales of Apple stock caused me to owe several thousand dollars in capital gains taxes. After squeezing every drop of [legal] deductions out of my returns, I still got socked with a combined federal and state tax bill of about $5700.

This year was somewhat better. I'm actually getting some money back on my federal return. I still owe money on my state return. I blame this on the bizarre NC-4 tax withholding worksheet, which somehow told me I was eligible for eight exemptions on my state taxes. And I believed it. D'oh!

So between my federal and state taxes, and the stimulus-package tax rebate that'll be coming, my net is somewhere around... zero. Which is good, I guess.

There was a question on Yahoo Answers recently (more of a rant than a question, actually), that went something like this: if all the damn liberals are so much in favor of higher taxes, why not make an optional line item on the tax return, so liberals can voluntarily pay more?

I answered thusly: "Sure, sounds reasonable. Also, conservatives who want lower taxes should voluntarily avoid using taxpayer-funded services, like roads, public parks, and the military. If conservatives want to continue the war in Iraq, the should go fight there themselves.

"Or maybe, just maybe, we should all get together and try to do what's in our common best interests, rather than just trying to maximize our personal gains."

My response received a couple of thumbs-ups and a couple of thumbs-downs before the question was deleted by Yahoo altogether.

It does make me wonder, though: are Republicans, because of their anti-tax stance, more likely to cheat on taxes than Democrats? And if so, shouldn't they be audited more frequently?

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Posted by Ken in: life, politics

This is the kind of post I write after reading David Sedaris

Thursday, 2008 March 6 - 11:43 pm

You know, it's been so long since I've posted anything meaningful, I feel like I owe you something. So here's a little story for you. It's the story of when I moved to North Carolina.

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Posted by Ken in: life

Your People Are Causing a Disturbance

Tuesday, 2008 February 26 - 10:15 pm

So I had another birthday recently. That makes me officially older than dirt. At least I still have a beautiful and thoughtful wife.

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