A Strange Encounter

Today seems to be going absurdly nice, weather-wise, so I went out for a run around the park. I haven't been running consistently since it's gotten colder, so I did have to stop twice and walk a tiny little bit -- though on the whole I think I rocked the loop pretty hard. But one of the walking parts was the initial slope of that hill that Tom and Emma can identify as The Widowmaker, and as I was psyching myself up to start running again, this strange rumpled little old guy in a button-up shirt and a leather hat who looked like he could've been one of the engineers on the Manhattan Project came up to me and started talking:

"You... American?"

"Yes."

"You American citizen? You born this country?"

"Yes..."

"You human... humanity? Or technical?"

"Uh... technical."

"What type technical?"

"Computers."

"Computer is technical? Hmmm... Like what computer -- programming or hardware?"

"Programming."

"Maybe you could tell me question, okay? Let's say you are engineer... science... scientist, and you have proposal for new [unintelligible], and you send to company, institution, you know, and they [unintelligible], you know, give you the brush-off."

"What's the problem?"

"They give you the brush-off."

"Well, you could submit your proposal to a different organization."

"I submit already to multiple company."

"Or you could publish it yourself."

"Publish it... no... I need verification from expert."

At this point he let me go, and warned me to be careful running in the cold -- advise I could have used, perhaps, earlier in the week. "Good luck," I said. Now I'm going over to my parents' house to help them do holiday things and hopefully give Razor his birthday present. Send me e-mails!