This is an open letter to people I work with who call me on the telephone. You know who you are.

Our office has an excellent voice communications system. It was engineered by Cisco, a fine company, and it is world-class in every way. The equipment is easy to use and it integrates well with our mail system and user directory.

Yes, we have a fine telephone system. Please do not use it.

Here's the thing: when you call me on the telephone, you are essentially telling me that your time is more important than mine. A telephone call, if it is to be answered, must be dealt with immediately. If I don't answer it in four rings, I'll miss it. I have four rings worth of time to stop what I am doing and prepare my brain for something else. I do not do this easily. It is presumptuous to assume that I will not be inconvenienced by answering your phone call. And generally, I won't answer.

So then you leave me a voice mail. Which is understandable; that is, after all, what you do when you call someone and they don't answer. But this is also inconvenient for me. I have to dial in to the voice mail system, retrieve your message, listen to it, and write down what it says. This takes a considerable amount of time, but it is necessary if I want to deal with your message on my own time.

Now that I have listened to your message, I would really, really appreciate it if it actually said what you wanted. No, "a call back" is not a valid option. For me to call you back is not what you want. What you want is for me to do something, or possibly for me to answer a question for you. You see, there's a payload involved. When you say your name, and then "give me a call back," and then your phone number, you have neglected to include the payload. I can tell that you want to talk to me, because you called. I know what your name and phone number are, because of our excellent phone system. You have provided me with no information whatsoever.

Worse, it is now incumbent upon me to answer you by telephone. When I call you, I will be completely unprepared. I will have had no time to think, research, discuss, or delegate your question or request. If you had included the payload, I would be able to reply quickly and efficiently. Most likely, however, I will need to get back with you once I've divined your motives, which necessitates another phone call. So you begin to see the problem.

If you are one of the fine people who leaves informative, detailed voice mails, thank you. It's not perfect, but it does eliminate some steps in the process.

While I speak with you on the telephone, I will be writing things down. I will write down your name and the date. I will write down your question or request along with any supporting information you provide. I will write down possible answers or solutions as I think of them. If I do not write things down, I will not have a record of what was said. See how that works?

I find this whole process very awkward and inefficient. In fact, I'd say our office is crying out for a system in which you would instantly convey your wants or needs to the sender, who would be able to respond in his or her own time frame, possibly after doing whatever research was required to address the original message. It would be great if it could be transcribed into text automatically, and perhaps even filed according to date and the sender's name. What if subsequent communications could somehow be associated with each other, thus forming a sort of record of the discussions that took place?

Oh wait, we do have that. Email, if it is available, is superior to the telephone in nearly every way. Its only shortcoming, which is a distinct inability to express a lighthearted tone, has long been addressed by the emoticon, which was discovered by Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg in 1453 when he accidentally dropped a tray of punctuation.

I'd even go far as to say that those who send me email may well receive a higher level of service than those who attempt to contact me by phone. I'll usually look at your email quickly and decide what to do; easy ones will get a quick response, and the others get done in a day or so. I tend to let a few voice mails pile up before I listen to them, simply because it's more trouble. I don't like doing it at all, but obviously they can't be completely ignored. Rest assured that I'm not avoiding you out of spite.

At least not entirely.

I took some photos today of the protesters, media, and police gearing up for Michael Vick's arraignment on dogfighting charges. It was a pretty wild scene.

Michael just sent me a couple of recordings of our erstwhile band, Ryan. James on vox, Michael and Adam on the guitar, Charlie on the bass, and yours truly on the skins. Ah, good times. Have a listen:

What Price Love - Live (download):

Update: The second track, which is from our album, Rough Draft, has been reunited with its brethren and is available here.

Update 2: Moved the track from this server to a file hosting service.

This is depressing… here's where all the presidential candidates currently stand on the political compass. Boy, they sure are close together, aren't they?

If you remember, this is where I fall, in the opposite corner. Hell, they can't even hear me shouting from where they are.

It's too bad my only ideological compatriots are a lawn gnome and a schizophrenic homeless man. Of course, if Gravel is such a loony, what does that make me?

Okay, so Cheney will be President for a little while on Saturday while Bush gets a colonoscopy. Big deal - he's already President anyway.

What I love is the use of the term 'surveillance' to describe the procedure:

He last underwent colorectal cancer surveillance on June 29, 2002.

"As reported at the time and in subsequent physical exams, absent any symptoms, the president's doctor recommended repeat surveillance in approximately five years," Snow said. "The president has had no symptoms."

See? The President is subject to invasive surveillance, too, just like everyone else in the country since he took office. He gets a crack medical team from Bethesda (pun definitely intentional), and we get AT&T. But it's the same thing.

It'll be interesting to see if they find that conditions have improved since his last colonoscopy in 2002. That's when they discovered the story of Saddam Hussein attempting to purchase uranium in Niger. Obviously, they pulled it right out of there when they found it. And there've been other "removals" as well.

Here's to President Bush's continuing colorectal health.

Apparently I got old while I wasn't paying attention. Observe:

• It's been more than ten years since I graduated from high school.
• I am now older than every single college basketball player in the country.
• Yesterday, my wife asked me if my hair was turning gray (it's not, at least I think it's not).
• Also yesterday, my back was sore after dancing around with my daughter on my shoulders. My back has never been sore before.
• The baby on the the cover of Nevermind, which was released when I was in middle school and essentially defined my high school existence, is now in high school.
• It's recently become clear to me that I have fathered two entire people and am partially responsible for maintaining their well-being.
• I was born closer to Jimi Hendrix's death than my daughter was to Kurt Cobain's death.

Another ominous sign is that the long-standing magical equilibrium between my eating habits (lots) and my natural metabolism (adequate) appears to be slipping. Things are rounder than they used to be. My wife and my mother were in the same room together recently and convinced me to start exercising. So instead of rolling out of bed to check Reddit or tag Flickr photos, I am now on day three of taking the dog for a morning walk.

I actually kind of like it. I don't have to get up any earlier because I had already allowed time for geeky stuff before work. The morning is a nice time to be out - nice temperature, no people, no bumping into things. This morning I saw three stray cats, including one cute little tabby kitten.

I don't think I'm getting much exercise, though. Right now I'm focusing on the will power part of things. Maybe once I've established the habit I'll actually try to get the heart rate up a bit.

Lately I've been trying to force myself to do things that I know are good for me but that I don't like or that haven't been important to me, such as blogging (which I like) and listening to my voice mail when I get it (which I fucking hate, by the way. Email me. I have two in my box right now from Monday, so that's not going very well).

It's not that I feel like I should act a certain way now that I'm old. I enjoy a challenge, and lately I've actually been interested in self-improvement, which hasn't always been the case. I'm running out of computer languages to learn (at least, languages I might actually use, ever - apologies to Haskell, Erlang, Lisp, Smalltalk, C/C++, and the rest of them; I'm sure you're very nice, but I've pretty much got it covered, thanks). As a matter of fact, I think I still managed to avoid being dignified nearly all the time.

Life's too short to be dignified.

John McCain's campaign manager, chief strategist, and chief of staff all quit this week. I'm not a "Washington insider," but I doubt this is part of a sequence of events that ends with President McCain.

Also: New York Times coverage.

Lucas Gray Gambone was born at 10:45 last night at St. Francis in Richmond. 7lbs, 9oz, 19" long. Baby and mom are happy and healthy. And of course I'm the happiest guy in the world.

Pictures on Flickr and below.