While one can argue that the Baby Boomers have borne the brunt of the recession, the situation for people closer to my age isn’t much better. The latter are still more likely to take to cyberspace to vent their frustrations, and they did, starting with the Millennial Generation. Generation X soon retorted by pointing out to those self-absorbed Millennials that enough is enough. Then, somebody else decided to coin a new phrase, Generation Catalano, for the four-year cohort that didn’t quite fit in with either preceding description. I’ve never been sure where I fit. Unlike the Boomers, Generation X has never had an agreed-upon delineation of who exactly is included, so sometimes I am, sometimes I’m not; on the other hand, I’ve never considered myself to be a Millennial. This is probably why somebody felt the need to step in and create Catalano, named after a short-lived TV series (I heard of it but never watched it; I do, however, vividly remember Claire Danes being prominently displayed on the local TV program guide).

First of all, “Generation Catalano” is a ridiculous name, and even if I technically belong because I was born during the Carter administration, I will never claim that mantle for myself. However, I do agree that there is something different about people my age, different even from people just five years younger or older. This is primarily because of the speed at which things change these days, but earlier events have shaped my life as well.

I grew up remembering the tail end of the Cold War. Nuclear war drills involving sitting under the desk were long gone. People didn’t palpably fear annihilation like they did decades before. Sure, the Soviet Union and the Commies were the “bad guys”, but it was soon to be over and everybody seemed to know it. One of my favorite shows from that time, MacGyver, started off with Communist antagonists but very quickly had to move on; some of the early episodes where the bad guys were the East Germans are pretty laughable now. Once the Cold War ended, there were no epoch-worthy enemies left. We had Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein v1.0, and no matter how many people tried to argue they were the next Hitler, you knew in your heart that they didn’t even believe it themselves. I also heard in church about the terrible things being done to the people in Central America (I was far too young to know what liberation theology was), and even that was tricky because The Gipper said that people like the Contras were on George Washington’s side. In any case, compared to thousands of nuclear missiles streaming over the North Pole towards every city in America with more than 50,000, it was pretty third-rate stuff.

With no real enemies, and more importantly a booming economy, there was nothing that a teenager growing up in the early 90s had to worry about. Do well in school, go to college, and you will be fine. Then, when I went to college in the late 90s, this became even more clear. The dotcom boom was more than just making money on ridiculous ventures. It was a time when nobody really knew what to do with this internet thing, so they tried everything. It was weird, it was full of failures, but it was fun. It was discovering a brand new toy that nobody had ever seen before, and more importantly, before it had been monetized. Of course, people tried to make money, and plenty of people did, but it seemed to simply grow on trees. Nobody was really talking about what has become the key to making money on the internet: collecting personal data for resale. It was about using Napster on a dial-up modem, even though it was a pain in the ass and took forever. It was those silly Geocities webpages that everybody threw up because you could and it was easy.

Then the bubble burst and 9/11 happened. 9/11 wasn’t all that surprising. We did remember that people hated the U.S., and that terrorism existed, so terrorists striking the U.S. wasn’t as shocking as it may have been to people who didn’t remember anything before the first George Bush. What the first few years of the aughts held for me went beyond just 9/11 and the way it morphed from a “let’s everybody get together to punish the Taliban” to “Hey, Saddam Hussein!” It was the loss of confidence in the economy. Not just because of things like Enron and WorldCom, which were certainly important. Even more than that, though was the slump. I can’t think of a better picture that sums up the current economic malaise than this. Everybody focuses on the red, current line, which is truly catastrophic, but it’s important to look at the black and especially the brown lines, those of the 1990 and 2001 slumps respectively. Both of those were much slower to bounce back than previous slumps, but especially the 2001 slump was just a bone-crushing slog, lasting for about 4 years before the job recovery was complete, and growing slowly still after that.

This event, to me, is what separates us from Generation X and the Millennials. We probably didn’t remember much of the 1990 slump, but we were around to see the boom of the late 90s and we were poised to take our place at the trough, and then it was yanked away from us. Since then, it has been a decade of lost chances and stagnation.

I’m just speaking for myself, but this sequence of events has led to a very real frustration with the people in charge. Personally, I lay a lot of the blame for the state we are in at the feet of the decisions made by Congress in the early 2000s time frame, although the narrowing of opportunities for the middle class had started long before then. Viewed from afar and with some measure of hindsight, the late 90s is probably more properly viewed as a brief economic nova that temporarily interrupted a fairly constant downward trajectory, but at the time, it’s understandable as to why it was seen as the harbinger of a whole new way of doing things. It ended up as such, but not exactly in the way in which we had hoped for.

Even if you don’t blame the current economic mess on the Bush administration, though, the frustration is still the same. A frustration acutely felt by those who grew up at a time when peace was at hand and a technological Nirvana was upon us, and all we ended up with was Bernie Ebbers and the constant fear of identity theft.

Too young to remember previous hiccups, however brief, and too old to have lived our entire lives with texting and Wikipedia and blogs central to our lives, the people born when the peanut farmer tilled the South Lawn are in a unique spot.

Oh, and the rest of you generations never had it as bad as us.

(As for the title of this post, this should shed some light, literally).

• Current Mood: Serene
• Currently Listening To: "Neighbours", The Rolling Stones

• Current Mood: Udon
• Currently Listening To: "Subterranean Homesick Alien", Radiohead
• Currently Reading: "Angler", Barton Gellman

We stayed in a rental house, for which we have the terrible housing market in Arizona to thank. The house had three bedrooms, two bathrooms (an extra half-bath would have really come in handy), pool, hot tub, putting green, outside grill…if this sounds fun, it’s available for rent for a low price. Because I’m the curious type, I looked up exactly how underwater the previous owners had to be. According to the property tax records, the house sold for about $180,000 in 1999, then for $352,000 in 2006. It is currently valued at $180,000 for property taxes, showing that in Arizona (and Florida and Nevada), what went up really did come down.

The Titan Missile Museum was a lot of fun. Taliesin West was even more fun, which was surprising to me, as I didn’t think I’d get into Frank Lloyd Wright as much as I eventually did. In-N-Out Burger was everything I hoped it would be, and if I could live in one, I would. We also checked out the javelinas and indoor aviary at the Desert Museum (I’d never even heard of javelinas before the trip), and we spent about six hours at the Pima Air and Space Museum, which was nowhere near long enough to see the 300 planes on more than 80 acres. It was too hot and out of season to get much out of Tubac.

Culturally, Arizona sure is a special place. I don’t know if I am just not old enough to appreciate it or what, but the monotony of the place did grow old. I know it probably makes sense to make every house mud-colored, but the lack of variation gets to you. Then, you have the golf courses and other obvious affronts to the desert, which I can’t help but view as the hubris of humanity ripe for a fall. Two golf courses side by side is a bit much, especially when you know how far the water had to travel for those greens.

We also stayed just a couple miles from the Safeway where six people were killed and over a dozen others were injured, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. In fact, we completely unknowingly visited that exact Safeway when the grocery selection at Walmart became too much to bear. I found it odd that there was nary a memorial or other indication that just a few months ago, this had been a scene of a massacre (although it looks like there used to be one there).

If you want to visit Arizona, go in the winter instead of July so you can see the touristy stuff and the weather is nicer (it wasn’t any hotter, heat-index wise, in Arizona than in Minnesota, though). However, I don’t think I’ll be moving anytime soon: I imagine my retirement to be more along the lines of the Maine coast in a Nor’easter than in the sun-baked Southwest.

Of course, I took a bunch of pictures and I’ll post them soon.

• Current Mood: Capstoned
• Currently Listening To: "Moon, Turn the Tides...Gently, Gently Away", Jimi Hendrix
• Currently Reading: "Fear Less", Gavin De Becker

What I don’t get, though, is why banks aren’t coming up with more flexible options. Pretty much every bank that is getting rid of free checking is doing the “maintain a minimum balance or pay a set fee each month” approach. Why not have a variety of options? How about a fee per ATM use, or a fee per check? I’d be much happier to select an option like that. Seems like it wouldn’t be that hard for banks to put together a cafeteria-style menu of account options and let customers choose what they would prefer (with limitations, of course, on how often you can change things, so you can’t game the system too much). A flat fee for unlimited ATM use and checking doesn’t appeal to me because I don’t need those things.

So now, the question is where to go. I could go to a credit union, or just use my wife’s account. But for lack of account options and flexibility, U.S. Bank will be losing a customer.

• Current Mood: Hot
• Currently Listening To: "Purple Haze", Jimi Hendrix
• Currently Reading: "Bossypants", Tina Fey

• Current Mood: Hungry
• Currently Listening To: "Thunder Road", Bruce Springsteen

We prepared for our trip with several guide books, but the best by far was Hawaii The Big Island Revealed. This book was incredibly detailed, with maps, reviews, and do’s and don’ts for the island. We had it with us almost always.

We left early on a Sunday morning to catch the three flights to Kona Airport. Aside from an hour spent in Honolulu running around to get a boarding pass for Julia at five or six different desks, our flight there was uneventful. We got our car, sprung for the upgrade to the red Ford Mustang convertible, and drove the 20 miles to our hotel, the Mauna Lani Resort:

We spent the first day lounging around the resort and checking out the snorkeling (which was wonderful). Julia also got a massage, while I walked around and took pictures of the golf courses and fish ponds around our resort.

On Tuesday, we went to Kailua-Kona for the day to wander around and get some supplies from Target.

Wednesday was the big trip to Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. This park is amazing, and really needs to be seen over a couple days at least. Unfortunately, the lava flows were not cooperating when we were there, but we did see steam rising from the earth, amazing sulphur and mineral deposits, a lava tube we could walk through, and a crater that was a lava lake just 50 years ago. Even that just scratched the surface, though, and there’s a ton to see next time. Oh, and we saw a road overrun by lava 20 years ago:

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday brought sunnier weather to our side of the island, so we spent it mainly at the beach, both at the resort and at the best beach I have ever been to (and what many consider to be the best beach in the U.S., Hapuna Beach). We also had dinner in many great places, such as the Canoe House Restaurant at the resort, and Daniel Thiebaut Restaurant in Waimea for Christmas Eve. The sunsets were beautiful.

Sunday we had a lot of time to kill between check-out and our 11 P.M. flight, so we decided to drive around the entire island. We headed for the eastern side of the lava field to see if we could find lava flows there, but alas, the guards would not let us pass.

The windward side of the island has all the water and greenery. Next time, we’ll have to spend more time there instead of just driving through.

We made it back in time to the flights home, vowing to return as soon as we can. If you have never been to the island, it is well worth the trip!

• Current Mood: Sunday
• Currently Listening To: "The Final Cut", Pink Floyd

Also, in my last post about the wedding, I forgot to mention our fantastic officiant, Tomkin Coleman. He helped us create a ceremony that was meaningful and truly our own.

Thanks again to everybody!

• Current Mood: Sore
• Currently Listening To: "Learning To Fly", Pink Floyd

People often say that something is bound to go wrong on your wedding day. If that was the case for us, we completely missed it, because everything went very well and we were quite happy with everything from start to finish.

Our venue was the Minneapolis Central Library in downtown Minneapolis, with the event put on by Mintáhoe. We loved the library as a venue, and it turned out great. We had plenty of room to get ready, and even though the ceremony was shortly after the library closed, we didn’t feel rushed (only evening weddings are possible due to the library being open during the day). The food and beverages catered by Mintáhoe were very good, and the cake was beautiful.

We did our flowers with Simply State Elegance and they were amazing. Jeni met with us a couple times to put together a plan that had the colors and flowers we were looking for within our budget, and she did an amazing job. Many people complimented the bouquet and floral arrangements.

For our music, we had the Larkspur Trio perform instrumental music before and after the ceremony, and we had Lee Engele as our DJ. The trio was great and handled our requests wonderfully, and Lee kept people on the dance floor. We booked both of them through Macken Music.

Our photographers were Steve and Kelsey Holm from Holm Photo. They did both our engagement photos and our wedding photos, and we’ve been really happy with what we’ve seen so far.

Finally, we ended our evening with a lovely ride from the library to the W Hotel via Peterson’s Pedicabs. The weather that night was perfect, and we were happy to see zombies and various downtown revelers on our ride back.

One more thing: I bought some Motorola walkie-talkies for use on the wedding day. Julia made fun of me for it, but they did come in quite handy when everybody was running around. It’s a good investment.

• Current Mood: Friday
• Currently Listening To: "Casey Jones", Grateful Dead

As for the MSST program itself, it’s going very well. Our first course, dealing mainly with the psychology of terrorism, is already over, and it was very interesting. Ron Krebs, the instructor for the majority of the class, handled the class exceptionally, with a very good balance of lecture and group activities, as well as engrossing readings. I and several of my classmates were interested in taking a course he is teaching in the fall, but the workload just isn’t something I could handle while working, planning a wedding, and electioneering. Our current two courses, on critical infrastructure protection and science and technology in security, are also very interesting. They are pretty broad courses with a number of guest speakers lecturing on their particular expertises (cybersecurity, biosecurity, food security, pandemic preparedness, and so on) and they will provide for a good base upon which we can expand in later classes. They are also great at scaring the crap out of us.

In a little more than a month, the summer semester will be over and I’ll be 25% done with my degree. Not bad. Next on the to do list: thinking of a capstone project.

• Current Mood: Hump day
• Currently Listening To: "Let It Bleed", The Rolling Stones

I moved my computer over, plugged everything back in, and turned it on. Windows 7 refused to boot, halting at a blue screen. When I tried to boot into safe mode, I could see that the problem was with a file called CLASSPNP.SYS. I found this thread with a similar problem, but unfortunately replacing the file didn’t help. All the other searches I did turned up people with the same problem, and no solution. Eventually, I had to reinstall Windows to get it working.

Fortunately, though, I had backups of all of my data, and so I didn’t lose anything, most importantly the paper I was working on for class. It did take several hours to reinstall all of my programs and get everything looking right again, but I didn’t have to spend many more hours recreating documents. Remember: always back up your files, and back them up to more than one place!