It doesn’t happen often but every once and awhile someone entrusts me with a living thing they care about. As a semi-successful mom, you’d think someone would ask me to
watch their kids for a while, but it’s always more on the line of cats, dogs, bean plants. And they all flourished under my care.

Except the bean plants.

“Can you take William’s bean plant while we’re gone? He planted seeds for his class. It
sprouted and is doing quite well,” Vicki asked. I looked at the droopy sprout and agreed.
A little benign neglect is all it needed to thrive, just like my kids.

The plant in its industrial strength gray ceramic pot sat under a window and grew
stronger and greener daily. The tiny bean pods were a pleasant surprise. William had
showed them to me, but he was five–what did he know?–and I didn’t think plants that
small would pollinate. Hadn’t they overheard the abstinence-only sex-ed lessons?

I heard once that coffee grounds make great fertilizer for ferns so I figure cold coffee
must be a magic elixir for all houseplants. My kid’s first science fair project will be
studying the growth rate of plants nourished with water, coffee and decaf. My theorywait,
I mean, my kid’s hypothesis will be that the one grown with coffee will grow tall
and full and produce many buds but no real bean pods and that the decaf bean plant
would grow tall and thin and eventually tie itself into a knot and die leaving behind a note
reading, “What’s the point really?” I poured leftover cold coffee on the plant every day.

William’s bean plant was flourishing and, to my surprise, the bean pods continued to bulk
up. I often brewed an extra pot of coffee so we could share a moment. Its tiny stamen
perked up whenever I started the coffee grinder. I began imagining returning the plant to
young William, his eyes misting at the mighty bean plant with its tendrils’ firm grip on
the chopstick stake, the bulging bean pods hanging precariously from their stems, the soil
smelling of Italian roast. Imagine Manheim Streamroller playing in the background.

Then, the cats ate it.

The main stalk remained, but the leaves and pods were gone. I was devastated. William
would be so disillusioned; his mother had told him not to worry about his plant because I
was taking care of it and I had a green thumb. He would have trust issues after that. I’m
sure the bean plant did.

William would be gone another two weeks so I had time to nurse the plant back to health.
I found a warmer, sunnier home for it. I protected it from our cat. I made extra strong
coffee. The bean plant greened up and leafed out, but didn’t produce any more bean buds.

As their arrival date got closer, I panicked. I sent Danny to the nursery searching for
bean plants. Luckily it was spring and the nursery was full of tiny plants. Just not bean
plants. Danny returned with a bell pepper plant (its leaves were the right shape), a tomato
plant (it had tiny yellow flower buds, just like the bean plant) and a periwinkle (it was
pretty).

We looked for suitable substitutions growing in our yard and the woods nearby. Nothing
came close, but it turns out that that was a good thing–growing in our yard is a poisonous
vine that only a week of taking steroids and soaking in a tub of oatmeal and calamine
lotion can soothe.

The bean plant became my coffee klatch of one. I would idly savor an afternoon cup
while the bean plant waited patiently for the remaining coffee to cool. I would make a
mental list of the remaining tasks of my daily grind and the plant, mutilated and bound in
its pot, would alternately dream of retribution and imagine playing the James Caan role in
the remake of “Misery.” Too much coffee will do that.

When the Williams returned home, I avoided them for as long as possible. Their calls
went to voice mail, I emailed my responses rather than taking the chance that Vicki or

William would ask about the plant. After a while, I was confident that they’d forgotten
about the plant and invited them over for a playdate.
William asked about the plant as soon as he had taken off his coat and his mother had
finished slathering him with Germ-X. By then the bean plant was full and leafy and I
figured the bean pods would not be missed. Vicki was impressed that the plant was still
alive. “Look, William, she did a great job with your plant! See how much it’s grown?”
William looked at the plant skeptically but reluctantly agreed that I had done a great job.
I sipped my coffee and nodded, basking in the glow of a job well done and disaster
averted.

As William and Vicki left, bean plant in hand, he whispered to her, “I think she stole the
beans. They’re gone.” Later, I explained what we had gone through and Vicki was
amused and heartened by my genuine concern for the plant and her son’s feelings. I think
she was about to ask me to babysit William when he walked in. And that’s when the
words came out.

“Oh, while you were gone, I had the most delicious three bean salad. Do you want the
recipe?”

Coffee will do that.

Typically around this time of year folks start thinking about what their goals are for the next year. Not me, I am usually thinking about College Football’s national champion and what I am going to get for Christmas. However, this year things have changed a little bit and since my blog site has achieved a modicum of respect people have been asking me things like what is the johnmwillis.com plan for 2009? The first couple of times I tried to ignore their question but they won’t seem to go away. In fact even last week a highly respected blog-o-buddy of mine started telling me his 2009 execution plan. Then he asked me, What’s the johnmwillis 2009 plan looking like? He was already assuming I had one and it would have been extremely embarrassing to admit to him that I don’t have one. Therefore, in a possibly vain attempt to thwart of a potential onslaught of questions like this I have decided to officially launch my first ever “Plan 09 from Johnmwillis.com.” This way, hopefully, folk will stop asking me and I can get back to thinking about and watching college football again. So here goes:

Plan 09 Goals

1. I want to increase domestic readership for my blog site. I appear to have a stronger concentration in Europe than in the US. After a little bit of analysis I realized that I have more high impact “No Country for Old IT Guys” pictures from outside of the United States of America. Therefore, I have decided to get some high impact shots from the USA this year. I am thinking I can start with getting a picture of John Wayne’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame sometime this year. This will accomplish to goals in one. First, I may be able to get more of those Silicon valley type (I’m hoping it could be a California kind of thing). Secondly, throwing a John Wayne “anything” should appeal to a lot of the red states which has not been a strong demographic for me in 2008.

2. Oscar Wilde once said: “I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellect. A man cannot be to careful in the choice of his enemies.” I think I have had it backwards in 2008. I have made some great friends with some really smart people and maybe that has not been the best strategy. Furthermore, Valleyrag and Groundworks as enemies? Wilde would be rolling over in is grave. I need to do a lot better in choosing my enemies in 2009. Maybe Tim Oireilly or Nick Carr, or maybe go big with someone like Larry Eillison.

3. This is another kill-two-birds with one stone action items. You heard it here first folks … In 2009 I will jump out of a plane. Before you get all, he’s mad, I am going to have to steal another quote from another great artist, Salvador Dali, ”The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.“ There is a definite method to my madness on this one. I am almost certain that they will not let me jump out of a plane at my current weight. Therefore, before I can complete this action item, which will have to occur in 2009, I will have to loose weight first. Now if I happen to die whilst falling 20k feet then this item might all be for not, but as I always say “Nothing ventured, nothing ventured.”
   

4. This one is a Biggy. For the last couple of years in my neighborhood, a few people have been taking their kids Trick-or-Treating to different houses using golf carts. Imagine that, golf carts? The first year I didn’t mind as much but, last year one guy had painted his cart in all Crimson and was blasting the Crimson Tide, Roll Tide, Roll Tide fight song from speakers attached to the cart. To steal another brilliant quote from a pure genius: “This will not stand, ya know, this aggression will not stand, man” Jeff Lebowski. In “Plan 09 from Johnmwillis” I “plan” on taking that guy down with the AubieMobile. Yes, an orange and blue cart that will blast the “War Eagle” fight song at disturbing decibels. What does the last two goals have to do with johnmwillis.com you ask? Come on, everything. Think how great of a post it would be, even better, posthumously, of me crashing to the ground after falling from 20k feet. Also, how cool would it be to have pictures of me crashing into the BamaMobile next year’s Halloween.
   

5. If you would have forced me to describe the 2008 Johnmwillis.com plan I would have told you that I did not have one. However, if you were persistent, for example put a gun to my head, I would have told you this. I want to buy an old ice cream truck and sell ice cream on Saturday mornings with my two boys. My main obsticale to this in 2008 was, of course, my wife. Let me tell you, if you guys think I am crazy, you should hear what she says. Anyway, a crippled economy and fierce subversive attacks from my wife and now what I believe might have been involvement from my dog Stevie Ray Vaughn, thwarted my attempts to accomplish this goal in 2008. I am still trying to track down Stevie’s involvement, however all I can say is “Et tu, Brute.” Don’t get me started on Stevie. I was the one who suggested we adopt him from that cage at Pet Smart. I was the one who came up with his really cool name and now just because I promised to my wife that I would walk him everyday he as turned on me   Anyway, I am rambling, I feel that with my best efforts, I shall be triumphant on this item in “Plan 09 from Johnmwillis”. Jingle Jingle Jingle.  Oh yeah, what does this have to do with johnmwillis.com? Absolutely nothing, blogging is fun, however, spending quality time with your children is priceless.
   

Now please let me get back to watching College football “War Eagle!”

Here are some other silly stories if you liked that one.

UPDATE: I decded to take the GirleInYourShirt people down.  Here is a new service called YourOnMyFedora.

If you are lucky enough to sit and have a beer with Nick, the conversation boundaries can range any where from Roman  history to the Heisenburg uncertainty principle.  Nick codes Python based Web 2.0 applications by day and after he puts his kids to bed he pounds out Iphone apps that talk to Google App engine.  Nick will never bore you with that fact that he has written three books and is an accomplished musician.

However, unlike Joe the Plumber, Nick thinks Sara Palin is a loon.  Guess who Nick will be voting for today?

The following is a YouTube Tribute the the Vox Continental …

All out of townies should be required to have a compass and a map when riding the subway. This way they will know what exit to proceed to when they leave the subway car.

Blarney Stone is to NYC as Peachtree is to Atlanta.

Only in NYC would you see a store called “Clothing Bargains for Millionaires”.

To get a hotel room in the summer in NYC where the paint is not peeling off the wall – Starting price $400.00 per night.

No one reads books on the subway anymore. They listen to IPODS or play with their phone.

• Software as a Service
  (Salessforce.com)
• Platform as a Service
  (Google App Engine …)
• Infrastructure as a Service
  (Amazon EC2 …)

The problem I have with this list is that it it assumes all cloud vendors are aaSs and this seems like a dumb aaS assumption. I have talked to the guys over at CohesiveFT and I can assure you they are not an aaS. I don’t know the guys over at rPath , but based on what I have heard, I don’t think they are an aaS either. 3Tera is not an aaS; however, the guys over at GridLayer who host 3Tera’s Applogic might be an aaS. Google acts like an aaS sometimes and no one can dispute that. Now I am not going to call IBM an aaS as they are my bread-n-butter; however, some might say their little aaS Blue Cloud seems to missing a lot of information and calling it an aaS might be a little bit asinine. There is a lot of buzz on a new open source cloud solution called Eucalyptus from the University of California that provides software for an elastic computing architecture. I am not sure we want to call a prestigious bunch like the University of California a bunch of aaSs. Also, what about the fat aaS vendors like Rightscale, Elastra, and Enomaly who are providing an aaS that sits on top of another aaS (ouch). What kind of aaS’s are they? We have all heard of some of the problems Amazon has had with their aaS, and I have heard they are working really hard to wipe all of their dangling items clean from their aaS. It is my belief that there is a huge difference between an exposed aaS facing a customer vs. an aaS that is clothed behind something like a private aaS. Exposing your aaS in public might not be for everyone. In the end, there are a lot of hard working cloud vendors and simply calling them all as aaSs seems like an aaS backward assumption.

Remember, when you assume that everyone is an aaS, you make an aaS out of you and me.

Hint: In the world according to Jon Krakauer, wild always wins.

Last night I made the huge mistake of watching “Into the Wild” in my hotel room. I should have read the book first. I really like Krakauer’s other books, “Into Thin Air” and “Under the Banner of Heaven”, and I was convinced by a friend that “Into the Wild” was the kind of movie that could be seen before reading. After watching the movie last night, however, I think not and now I really must read the book.

Although I love Krakauer’s other books, I just could not seem to get motivated enough to read a story about a young man’s challenge against the Alaskan wilderness. Therefore, I have always put “Into the Wild” on the tail end of a very long list of books I want to someday read. The weird thing about Krakauer and me is that I am the last guy on earth who should even be reading his books in the first place. My closest encounter with the wild occurs when a full-service Marriott is sold out and I have to stay at a Courtyard instead. So, a few years ago, when a friend of mine suggested that I should read “Into Thin Air”, a book about mountain climbing, I told him he was nuts. However, he was persistent, so I eventually gave in, and now “Into Thin Air” is one of my all time favorite books.

Spoiler Alert

So last night after I watched Alexander Supertramp (a.k.a Christopher McCandless) wither away and die in the Alaskan wild, I could not stop thinking how much better Krakauer’s archetypical narrative would have been reading his description of nature’s always-triumphant battle over man . Don’t get me wrong: I really liked the movie, and, if I hadn’t read any of his other books, I am sure I would have probably loved the movie. However, just like I could not image how Hollywood could ever translate Krakauer’s description of his cracked ribs in “Into Thin Air”, I have to imagine I missed a lot last night watching “Into the Wild” before reading the book first. Maybe certain author’s books should never be seen as movies, I am not really sure, but I do know that “Into the Wild” is at least one that should be read before viewing, IMHO.