I’m drinking my extra-strength coffee at Stumptown. My cell phone rings; it’s my younger brother. It’s a call I’m expecting: he’s on his way down from OHSU and is supposed to meet me downtown so we can hang out.

“Hey, are you still at Stumptown?”

“Yep.”

“You gonna be there for a bit? I want to check my email.”

Urrrr. “Yeah. Sure. Come on down.”

I’ve got a few minutes. He’ll be walking here from the bus mall. I decide that this is a good time to upgrade the software for my website. I download the latest WordPress release, unpack it, and open up an FTP window to start deleting the old files on my server and uploading the new ones.

He strolls in, walks up to my table. “Watch the master at work,” I tell him. “This will only take a minute.” He sits down next to me.

“What are you doing?”

“Updating my website.” Files stream through the air from my laptop to the local wireless node and up the hill to a machine in a closet at PSU.

“What?”

“See, I use this software to power my website; it’s PHP-powered and uses a lot of Javascript, and –” and he doesn’t know what any of that means, ” –and…well…it’s complicated.”

He is unimpressed; he has his arms crossed and is tapping his elbow. “You want to get something to eat?” Like a lot of men in our family line, he needs to be fed on a regular basis or else his blood sugar will flip out. This has the effect of turning us into super-irritable bastards who will bitch you out at the drop of a hat.

“Sure, just let me finish uploading this.” Go, packets, go!

Tap tap tap. “Is this going to take much longer?”

“Shouldn’t. Looks like it’s almost done.”

“You can’t do this later?” Tap tap.

“Look, I’m almost done. I can’t stop halfway or else my site won’t work. Here, check your email.” I open up a new Firefox tab for him.

The checking-of-the-email tactic doesn’t buy me much time, since it’s over and done with in less than two minutes. “Okay, you ready now?” he says.

The last file has finished uploading. “Almost,” I say. “Let me run this script to upgrade everything.” My fingers tap the keyboard; his fingers tap the notebook he is clutching to his chest. “There…it’s done.” I show him my website.

“Cool,” he says and stands up to leave. “Send me a link to that shit sometime.”

Sure, dude. Sure.