I'm posting this update not because I have any particularly huge revelations to share, but mostly because since I haven't posted anything in two weeks, I kinda feel obligated. This isn't to say that nothing's happened; things have, but nothing that really screams WRITE ABOUT ME!!! . Not that it's going to stop me. Oh, and we have some scans of Mary's dance class pictures that we thought you might like.

To get the usual stuff out of the way - I was in DC last week, and am back home this week. Nothing unusual happened in DC, except for the fact that my team's finally managed to find a little direction for the project, and our presence there was actually kind of necessary. I also got out and saw The Matrix Reloaded" during the week, and was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed it, considering the lukewarm reviews I read in the usual places. Ingenious action setpieces (the freeway sequence is phenomenal), and a healthy dose of the same thought-provoking pop-psychology that set the first apart from the pack. It got me on enough of a Matrix kick to go pick up the Animatrix - a collection of animated shorts expanding on the films - on DVD the other day. Good stuff if you enjoy the films and/or animation in general.

This week's most notable events, aside from my catching yet another upper respiratory bug from my daughter upon my return home, was the final chapter of the Monte Carlo saga. Tuesday morning, the National Kidney Foundation of Virginia came and towed it away, hopefully to turn into useful funds for the organization, and offering us a healthy charitable deduction on the coming year's tax return. Making full use of my week at home, I also managed to wrap up the car's affairs with DMV (even if it took me three hours to get someone on the phone - I really hate DMV), and take care of this year's car tax business with the county.

Yesterday brought us Mary's dress rehearsal for her upcoming dance recital. Bunch of cute little kids in frou-frou costumes, lots of fun. Colleen volunteered for pre-schooler wrangling duty backstage, so it fell to Andrew and I to man the camcorder (since they don't allow such things on show day, preferring to offer exceedingly overpriced "professional" VHS copies after the fact). The little guy sat nice and quietly with me until Mary's class came around, resulting in some cranky audio and shaky-cam on the first half-minute or so of the recording, but we somehow managed to salvage it.

While we've already filled in most folks off-line about it, I'll throw out an on-line heads' up about our trip up to Central PA the weekend of June 28. We're not sure of the schedule yet, but we'll sort that out as we get closer to departure. Hope to see everyone in a couple of weeks!

And finally, in the tradition of continuing my political rants in this space, I've included some links to a couple of the guys seeking the democratic presidential nomination in 2004 who's positions I find I'm liking. I think Howard Dean, with his socially liberal, fiscally conservative perspective, is probably the more realistic candidate, as Dennis Kucinich has a reputation as a bit of a loonie (though not in the officially sactioned British political party sort of way), but is managing to draw crowds with his strong anti-war, pro civil liberties message. I believe, at this point, either one would be an improvement over the current administration. I know I'm well ahead of the the major media outlets- who are still too busy running on about terror warnings, those elusive and probably non-existent WMDs, or Martha Stewart -looking ahead to an election that's more than a year away, but I've always been a campaign junkie, and believe it's always a good idea to take an interest in public affairs. So, keep an eye on the candidates, and if you're interested, take a look at the campaign links I've included above.

Gettin' Link-y with it:

• A bright spot in an otherwise crappy economy: The rise of suburban sex shops

• The sociological ramifications of Punch Buggy - No punchbacks!

• the Uhn! Project - a collection of gutteral moans and onomatopoeias from comicdom.

• Another year, another story about duct tape prom dresses.

• This year's most stylish prom ride? Tito the Triceratops

• History of the Internet timeline

• A story of local interest: Is anyone really surprised that kids use school issued laptop computers to download internet porn?

Falls Church, VA--- Unable to procure a room at any of the many fine hotels in the Crystal City area, I decided that I'd try lodging in a different neighborhood for this week's stay in the DC metro. Determined to reach the nights in a calendar year required to reach Marriott rewards platinum status this year, I found space at the TownPlace Suites in the historic hamlet of Falls Church. The hotel is essentially a Residence Inn with a different color scheme and fewer amenities (in other words, no free food, though I did score a spacious two bedroom suite with a full kitchen at less than per diem). It's a bit out of the way, but the metro is fairly close (a brisk 20 minute walk through town, or a few minutes in the car - so far, I've opted for walking as long as the weather holds up), and the train ride to Crystal City is relatively painless. The usual grocery store anchored shopping center is just up the road, and there's an interesting looking blues club around the corner that I'm thinking of checking out if I'm still in the mood later in the week. All in all, it's not a bad change of pace, though I don't think I could manage staying here on a regular basis.

This week's work has been fairly uneventful - the usual schedule of meetings and document reviews. I'm not sure what the rest of the week will hold, since most of the team (save five or six of us) are travelling to Columbus for some software training starting Thursday morning. I'll have plenty of time to coordinate with the help desk guys to get my local network access sorted out.

Last week proved to be a bit more interesting. We were working at home, though on a special, high profile project; with just over 24 hours notice, we organized and implemented a detailed review, coordinated through various subject matter experts within the agency, documented the results, and briefed everything to the executive board. While I personally didn't deliver the briefings, I somehow managed to end up writing most of the documentation - apparently (while you'd never know it from reading this mess of a blog) I've cultivated a reputation for being articulate with the written word, or at least being able to spread enough BS to make the ideas sound important; that's me, the Sam Seaborn of the project. Could be worse, I suppose. Anyway, when all was said and done, the whole team got big pats on the back, and strict instructions to take Friday afternoon off, leaving me time for a whole new set of adventures, which probably deserve their own entry - stay tuned for DMV: an saga of ineffective business practices and shitty service (working title) sometime soon.

On a completely unrelated, but somehow significant note, another institution in the lives of many (including Colleen and myself) has come to an end. Tonight brought the airing of the final episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer EVER. Despite the rabid fan base, critical acclaim, and the inspiration of numerous academic endeavors, the little show with the funny name about "hot chicks with superpowers" never drew the kind of ratings that much less witty and cleverly conceived lawyer or doctor shows routinely do. Still, it provided many an enjoyable and surprisingly literate discussion over dinner in the Parker household, and will be missed. The final episode contained all the elements that made the show enjoyable - action, adventure, romance, comedy, tragedy, and obscure pop culture references, adding up to some of the best damned writing on the tube. The Hellmouth has closed up for good, and as a result, Tuesday nights are going to seem a bit more empty from now on (just as Sundays never recovered after the demise of the X-Files). At least we still have Angel for another year, but I'll be damned if I know how they're going to manage to add James Marsters to the cast (as the trade publications indicate) after Spike's rather bright and incendiary exit this evening. Whatever Joss Whedon and company come up with, rest assured, we'll be there, along for the ride. Grr Argh indeed.

Nobody shoots at Santa Claus...
-chuck

temporal anomaly - I meant to post this a week ago...

The sun finally shines - The last few weeks have been the wettest I can remember since we moved to Virginia almost six years ago. At least our grass is growing again - I have every intention to initiate the inaugural mow of the season, though it seems that whenever I'm home, it's raining (or I'm making arrangements to get a car towed or repaired). If I can manage to put to bed the latest round or car repair (more on that in a bit) before I run out of daylight, I think today's the day. Not that the wait has been a serious problem - the longer I wait, the fewer bald spots I see.

I'm back home again, after a two weeks in DC, one week spent staring at EDI code for hours on end at my desk in Arlington (I won't go into it, since frankly, it was exactly as exciting as it sounds), and a second attending software training by SAP America in the heart of the district, just off McPherson Square at the Microtek training center, just shy of the White House. Regular office hours both weeks transitioned into several hours work each evening at the hotel, since the home office in Richmond hasn't quite gotten used to my being on the road again, and they're having trouble getting some of the new recruits to take over my daily data pulls and report assembly duties, resulting in a little bit of interpersonal conflict over who's supposed to do what, and very little fun for me in Washington.

Last week's training was relatively uneventful, and I didn't learn much that was truly new, as I've essentially been a low-level administrator on our release one deployment of SAP's R/3 package for the last year. Still, it was interesting to learn about these products from a commercial perspective (the instructor was an employee of SAP, and the training was tailored to the private sector rather than the public), instead of filtered through the usual government sieve, composed of numerous, inches-thick volumes of regulations. some of the folks in class (federal drones all) had a bit of trouble making the connection that private companies can buy their supplies from anyone they damned well please without fear or formal protests, congressional inquiries, and the wrath of the small business administration.

Also, corporate training (complete with the hefty per-student pricetag - one week of this class cost more than three semesters of grad school) comes with certain other benefits - free soda machines in the lobby, a more-than-serviceable continental breakfast, and a nicely catered lunch each day. The class was supposed to last five days, though we (actually, the folks from Columbus who were at the mercy of tight USAir flight schedules) talked the instructor into running a little overtime earlier in the week so we could finish in four, which we did, and some, wrapping at around 1pm on Thursday. As a result, a few of us celebrated our freedom by sitting under a 20 foot Fender Stratocaster neck at the main bar of the DC Hard Rock Cafe (only a few blocks from the training site), drinking beer and griping about work all afternoon. All told, Dave from Columbus got a bunch of credit on his Hard Rock All-Access card, and a good time was had by all.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the drive home to Richmond on Friday. The storms, tornado warnings (which I found out today caused the evacuation of our trailer offices in Richmond on Friday), and some truly ugly driving essentially turned I-95 into a really damp parking lot. I left Crystal City around 10am, and arrived in my driveway at 5pm. Luckily, I had a basically comfortable rental car and a bunch of good CDs to pass the time.

This weekend consisted of the usual laundry, dodging raindrops while lugging groceries out of the car, and some trepidation about an unfamiliar noise coming from the front brakes on the van I noticed Saturday afternoon. In hindsight, the quest for nicer weather a couple of hours east in Virginia Beach for Mother's Day was probably a bad idea (despite the fact that we all had a great time at the Marine Science Museum, where Mary proposed a bit of revisionist history regarding her first encounter with the resident Canada goose), since by the time we'd gotten home, the noise that used to sound like a heavy object being pushed across a deep pile carpet turned into the unmistakeable metal-on-metal sound of worn out brake pads chewing on rotors. That this sort of thing should even be a possibility, given the facts that a0 the vehicle only has 22800 miles on it to begin with, b) that we've only put 800 miles on it ourselves (not even enough time to kill the brake pads with bad driving), and c) that Saturn's Certified Inspection process, according to the guy I talked to at the dealership, won't allow a car on the sales floor that doesn't have at least half it's brake pad life left. I guess they missed this one.

An inspection by our trusted local mechanic today confirmed that the front brake pads and rotors were both completely shot. A call to Saturn of Richmond prompted several heartfelt apologies from both the guy who sold us the car and several managers. Within an hour or so, I had confirmation that Saturn will reimburse us for the repairs. Yay Saturn.

I think I'm just going to give up driving. Cars are just too much trouble.

links:

• Apparently, some students at Yale are uncomfortable with communal locker room showers, which seems odd when considering how this article extolls the school's revered nudist tradition.

• I don't think I'd be quite as honest if I found what this guy did the other day, at least not until I read it cover-to-cover first. Six weeks and counting...

• This is apparently why we have things like X-Treme macaroni and cheese.

• who'd have thought it would be against the law to wash horses at the car wash?

• Ever wonder why there are no more Saturday morning cartoons?

• In bad taste? Definitely. Did I laugh my ass off? Most Certainly. The funniest Onion editorial comment in a while, at least since Freddie the Lobster wrote this materpiece

Don't step on the Scientologists,
-chuck

First of all, let us observe a moment of silence to honor the memory of my beloved 1995 Chevy Monte Carlo Z34. After more than four years in service to our family, it recently succumbed to severe valve damage at the hands of a broken timing belt. It will be missed.

June 1995 - April 2003
yeah, I know it's just a stock promo photo - imagine it's blue

Yes, we're writing off the Monte Carlo. Having planned on paying it off with the just arrived tax refund, driving it a few months without a car payment, then trading it in for a van, it just up and died, well, at least decided it needed repairs costing at least twice it's payoff value. As much as it pains me, it's just not worth fixing. By sundown today, the corpse should be back in our driveway, awaiting the arrival of its title after payoff, at which time it will ride off into the sunset on the back of a towtruck as a charitable donation to an organization yet to be determined, becoming, quite literally, a writeoff, at full fair market value (according to Kelley, even with a bum engine, it's worth a few thousand dollars, but try convincing a potential seller that when it's not running) on my 2003 tax return.

Having acknowledged the Monte's passing, a furious web search of local dealer inventory commenced, identifying several possible replacement candidates. After some discussion, research, and a test drive, We arrived home yesterday the proud owners of the VERY low mileage 1998 Chevrolet Venture pictured below:

this is actually it, as pictured yesterday on the dealer web site

Being forced to make this vehicular purchase a few months earlier than planned, my grand financial plans (hinging on operating for a few months without a car payment) were dashed, but I still think all will work out in the end, particularly with a couple of salary windfalls in the form of an end of phase bonus and a small pay raise, retroactive to the first of the year, due in May, and the fact that I can live very cheaply while on the road, diverting a majority of my per diem money to savings and debt reduction, I'll still be able to meet most of the goals I set for myself. The timing seemed quite good as well, as it was unlikely that we could find a deal on a slightly used van than the one we just took advantage of.

The other big news this week is that Mary started reading this week. While she's not likely to burn through "Great Expectations" any time soon, She's managed to take the first steps, having demonstrated her ability to connect the letter sounds of simple words such as "sat" and "sam". She and Colleen have been working through the alphabet a letter a week for a while now, and Mary's getting pretty good at learning the sounds. Pretty soon, we expect that she'll be working through some of the simple "readers" that Colleen has picked up while trying to assemble a preschool program they can work through at home, since the kid's showing a real interest in words, and we're hoping that some sort of regular pattern during the day will help both to focus some of her energy away from destroying the house on a daily basis, and perhaps help Colleen to keep her occupied during the day with something a bit more interactive than the television when she's not out in the yard chasing squirrels, conducting imaginary circuses, feeding imaginary farm animals, or playing hide-and-seek with Jersey (and Roscoe, when he crawls under the fence to come visit).

Given the reports so far, one can guess that I'm back in Richmond this week. Yes, as they rearrange our office space up in Arlington, everybody's home this week, getting started on the design planning and wrapping up loose ends in user support. I'll be back on the road the next two weeks, with tentative plans after that for a week home. With luck, we'll settle into a two on, one off schedule like they've been promising us, so we can manage to make some long term, non-work plans; I'd like to make an extended trip up north before long (and not just to try the van out on an extended road trip), but I want to get the business travel schedule sorted out before any serious plans are made.

Nothing else to report, really - as usual, I'll try to keep everyone posted as things happen.

weekly link-a-palooza - special rampaging animals edition

• Yipyip, the world's strongest poodle!

• Rampaging turkeys terrorize Pittsburgh!

• Jasper, an "unarmed, but possibly dangerous" monkey is on the loose in Green Bay WI!

• Vast army of tiny frogs launch offensive against the state of Hawaii!

• Lucky, the Flaming Cow sows chaos at Easter Egg hunt in Washington state!

• Journalist who was taken in by morning show stunt at Masters' protest (see the link in a previous blog entry) digs a bigger hole for himself by describing his post-dupe experiences

• Project Bertha - cast your vote to fulfill a grandmother's lifelong dream to see the Kentucky Derby in person

• Springsteen's comments on that business with ClearChannel banning the Dixie Chicks due to anti-war statements

• More Screen Savers stuff: some h@x0r defaces Madonna's web site with, among other things, a marriage proposal to TechTV's Morgan Webb

• Bread Mold determined to be more genetically advanced than humanity.

The final exam has been handed in, and I don't have to worry about it anymore.

YAY!

After being poked, prodded, and yanked for a week to get my behind up here to Washington DC because my services were desperately needed for the next phase of the project, I've spent three days here at the Crystal City office reviewing documents, making notes, and waiting impatiently for the activities I'm so desperately needed for to begin. Of course, I should have expected this, as the "we need you here, but have no plans for you once you arrive" game has become standard operating procedure for the project. The only benefit that anyone has derived from my being here this week is the fact that I have had a relatively quiet hotel room in which to work on my Project Management final exam (which has been occupying most of my time and often giving me fits this week) that I think I finally have completed to a sufficient level of correctness. I am eagerly looking forward to the moment when I turn the sheaf of papers in, absolving me from further involvement with a semester that has provided me with more than my share of stress, when combined with all the other crap I've had to deal with these last few months.

I actually consider myself lucky to have drawn a room in a relatively quiet part of the hotel, which I and my fellow business travellers (according to the conversation in the Concierge Lounge) have found overrun with hundreds of middle and high school students on spring break school trips to Our Nation's Capital. I haven't encountered much in the way of disruption beyond a couple of slow elevators full of short people, though some other folks have apparently run into some noise issues with the boisterous young whippersnappers. I'm actually finding it kind of refreshing to find the lobby full of wide-eyed kids rather than the usual stodgy conference attendees each morning; the kids have all been very polite, and genuinely seem to be enjoying the experience. The weather this week has been perfect for getting out and taking in the sights - this city (when they uncuff me long enough to actually see some of it) still manages to impress me; I hope the kids can take away some of the same sense of awe that this place inspires (or at least get to see the cool dinosaurs and the original Oscar the Grouch muppet at the Smithsonian), and maybe learn a thing or two about their country.

(pick up on April 17)

Based on the lack of work for me to do in DC, I did manage to extricate myself late Wednesday afternoon, too late, really, to check out and drive home, so I got a good night's sleep, checked out this morning, and headed back home. I did end up putting a couple of hours in at the office this afternoon before heading down to Fort Lee to turn in my final exam (yay!), then, I shall return to the loving arms of my family, to unpack my bags (I'm home next week, in order to allow the house elves to move our work area from the second floor to the tenth, where I'll actually get a real desk and a phone, rather than a fire-code violating table half-protruding out into the aisle), hang out with the kids, and spend a quiet evening watching Miyazaki's Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (Spirited Away) (I talked a bit about this film a few weeks ago), which I picked up during the week.

Nothing big planned for the weeked - except to enjoy the fact that I don't have to worry about school for at least a couple of weeks, and if the weather holds out, finish the work in the front yard.

A little linkage...

• "All I said was that the Easter Bunny at the Menlo Park mall was more convincing..."

• "God will roast their stomachs in hell..." - the curious pronouncements of Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Iraqi Information Minister and worldwide internet phenomenon

• At least a few members of the media were completely oblivious to a "danger boy" radio stunt at during the recent protest at the Masters golf tournament (check out the arrested protester's name in paragraph 23)

• Clever inmates coordinate their efforts in order to arrange their excretion from prison

• Welcome wishes to the newest Screen Saver

• "SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!" - Amish drag racing!

• The welcome rise of Indpendent Record Labels

• Scientists theorize that paralle l universes are real. The more important question though, does my evil doppelganger NOT wear a goatee while hatching plans for world domination?

• this brings back some memories!

• Tim Robbins' recent speech to the national press club regarding the recent business with the Baseball Hall of Fame

After innumerable postponements, I finally managed to make it to Columbus, OH for a week of software testing aiming to ensure that the cross-agency pay application is able to meet the Agency's contract administration needs. In one respect, the timing of the trip was actually pretty good, as I did not have school last week, so there was no need for me to rush home to Richmond on Thursday so I can make it to class, allowing me an extra day to get my stuff done.

In most other respects, however, the timing couldn't be worse. Due to the combined effects of the war and the general downturn in the airline industry, I could only find one flight to Columbus from Richmond, leaving at 10:20am on Sunday morning. As such, I really had only one day to spend with the family (who got back from PA from late on Friday) before I had to take off myself. I really don't want my kids forgetting who I am, and Colleen was already cracking after handling both kids by herself during their road trip.

To make things worse, the timing belt on my beloved Monte Carlo died last Saturday evening about three blocks away from the house while I was making a quick grocery run, to the tune of $1300 bucks in repairs at the local Chevy dealer. This number seems high to me based on my research, and thanks to January's $1200 auto repair bill, our emergency fund hasn't had time to regenerate much. You expect problems like this to crop up now and then (thank goodness it happened to me close to home, rather than to Colleen and the kids while they were on their way to, or back from Fredonia, PA), but you hope they don't happen so close together. In the meantime, I had the Chevy towed home, and I'm going to leave the corpse in stasis in the driveway until I can get a couple of other opinions on the cost of reanimation, and either the tax refund or the milestone bonus I'm expecting in my paycheck hit the checking account, letting the nigh-invulnerable Subaru Justy handle the family's transportation needs in the interim.

This latest bout with automobile maintenance has led us to re-evaluate our position on which car's going to be replaced by a minivan-to-be-named-later. Originally, we were going to keep the Chevy (which has generally been pretty reliable beyond regular upkeep and a couple of electrical annoyances) and donate or otherwise divest ourselves of the monetarily-worthless Subaru when the van came into play. However, given the money the car's been costing us lately, and the fact that a running, high-trim, normal-for-age-mileage, 1995 Chevy Monte Carlo Z34 is still worth three to four thousand dollars on the open market, and would probably turn out a reasonable down payment for our van, allowing us to throw more of the 'no car payment' surplus to debt reduction rather than down-payment allocation. In the meantime, I'll deal with the minor inconvenience of driving the Subaru to work for a year or so, at which point we'll probably be in a better position to replace it with a reasonable mid-sized car or pickup truck (as I really miss the convenience of my old S-10). Oh well, we'll see...

All inconvenience associated with the trip aside, Columbus managed to treat me pretty well. I lucked into first class seats on the flights out here (through Charlotte - I still can't imagine having to fly 200 miles south to go north, but that's the way it works), though it took me most of Monday to shake the ear-popping business loose (damned sinuses) after the flght. I stayed at Easton town center, where I was within walking distance of all the good shops and restaurants (though staying at the Residence Inn, I was pretty well fed with free breakfast and dinner every day) and still only 10 minutes away from the front gate of DSCC, where the security level is tight and the federal police carry riot shotguns (seems like overkill to me, but cheaper than the new Tahoes that all the cops at DSCR are driving).

I ran into few issues with my testing (thankfully, the last round was a nightmare), quickly ensuring that what went in the front end came out the back end successfully. completing my part of the ordeal, passing the task of putting things in the right place in the hands of the interface guys. I also spent an afternoon resolving some more current problems with my counterparts in Ohio. Otherwise, I spent time wandering around Easton, chatting with the folks at the local comic book shop, and taking a look at a couple of residential suburbs around the Columbus metro area in anticipation of a potential move up there in a few years. The verdict? Worthington, OH is definitely the leading possibility for any future relocation. I also managed to catch a near-private screening of Spirited Away, the latest film from the king of Japanese Animated film making, Hayao Miyazaki, a beautiful family film that puts any recent Disney offering to shame which rose from obscurity in america to win this year's Oscar for best animated feature. I can't wait to catch the subtitled Japanese version on DVD in a few weeks (dubs tend to lose something in the translation).

I spent the weekend just enjoying time with the family, who I missed greatly while we were swapping map locations the last two weeks. I'm home this week, though the folks in Crystal City were trying to yank me up there this morning. However, I'm needed here, both by the office, and by my kids. The plan is for me to make an appearance in DC next week to start the next phase of the project. In the meantime, I'm going stay home, play with my kids, enjoy my wife's company, and wrap up the last of my school work for this semester (I have to prepare a briefing to go along with my case study project in anticipation of having to present Thursday night, and complete my take home final exam due in two weeks, that I'll probably end up submitting via email).

links, links, the musical...oh, never mind

• Move over Archieuthis, scientists have found something bigger to make endlessly watchable Discovery Channel documentaries about.

• In search of America's strange town names. No mention of the obvious in southeastern PA which spawned the infamous MU "we're not here for the books" T-shirt...

• The US Military takes a page from one of my favorite books when developing it's training simulations

• The Send Porn to the Troops movement is meeting with some resistance. (my personal theory? the guys in the sandbox would probably appreciate it)

• Chatterbox Challenge: the world's largest artificial intelligence contest

• The Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld

• Of course you knew this was coming, though I expected someone a bit more low-rent than SMG for the role

• How to make a starship enterprise out of an old floppy disk

• Let 'em rip -Psycologists claim that farting makes for a healthy marriage.

Have you had this conversation yet? I know I have.

I like vodka tonics myself, Ed,
-chuck

It's wednesday evening, nothing's on television, I'm too congested (thanks to yesterday's bout with errant leaves) to sleep just yet, and my homework's done. I'm also home alone this week (except for the pets), as Colleen and the kids took a trip up to NW PA to visit great grandma. I opted to stay home, as somebody has to watch the pets, and with this whole unfortunate military conflict business going on, I'm actually needed to perform critical systems administration functions to ensure that needed supplies get procured. While the workload isn't too terrible, I did spend a good chunk of Saturday in the office doing systems support for the buyers working high priority requirements on overtime. It was easy duty; essentially just sitting there waiting for problems or questions to come up. Hardly anything did, so I cleaned out my email folders, and tried to do some catching up on reports for the week. 20 minutes later when I finished all that, I just sort of sat there, enjoying the silence. There's something rather pleasant about being the only person in the office on a Saturday (the buyers are in the next structure over); it's very quiet and peaceful, and one can freely browse the supply cabinet for the good pens without being interrupted. No word on whether I'll be needed this weekend or not, but if the overtime's offered, I'll probably take it, if only for the extra money (though I'll still feel some guilt about war profiteering).

Since the family's away, this week's been rather uneventful. I took Monday off from work (after thoroughly preparing someone else to handle the major problems) to attend Mary's dance class open house (very cute), and to see the wife and kids off for their journey. After they left, I spent the rest of the day cleaning the house, doing some grocery shopping, and taking some time for myself for a private matinee screening of Daredevil (I love being the only person in the cinema auditorium. It's really the best way to see a film), which I had been looking forward to, and found very enjoyable - very respectful to the comic source material, definitely a labour of love for the filmmakers. In the evening, I sat with the dog and began working through this week's grad school homework. Such an exciting life I lead. The rest of the week's been more of the same, go to work, come home, cook dinner, and do homework, breaking, of course for the new episode of Buffy, and taking advantage of the beautiful weather for two hours Tuesday afternoon to work on cleaning up those few extra leaves that fell during the winter (which I why I can't breathe today.).

This week did bring about my involvement in my first real heated discussion of the current war with Iraq. It started off simply enough, with me throwing my usual two cents about a link (about the political right's boycott of French products) a somewhat conservative friend forwarded to me. A few of us got to talking about the issue (for the record, I think the whole idea, along with the Freedom Fries, is rather silly), which led to some constructive talk about the war and it's origins, interesting stuff, really. Then someone else pipes in, and I'm suddenly being verbally beaten up as a conspiracy lovin' peacenik who's not a good american because I don't support the President's policies and dare to question the motives for war (sidebar: what is the reasoning, anyway - eliminating WMD that may not exist? Regime change? Liberating the oppressed people of Iraq, or to prosecute the war on "terrah"? and if it really was about stomping out terrorist cells, why all the business with the UN and the WMD anyway? The US had, and still manages to cling to, despite all efforts to piss off the rest of the world, broad multinational support in the "war on terror:". And why did the liberation business only come up after the UN decided not to play along? it's all quite mysterious....), and how will I feel when Saddam and his terrorists knock down another American building? (Yes, that was the argument - Iraq was behind the Sept. 11 attacks. I weep for 40 percent of americans polled, I really do). The usual Fox News/Bill O'Reilly tirades and buzzwords. After attempting to calmly explain my reasoning, being careful to avoid anything that sounded remotely like a soundbite from the "liberal media", for fear of being beaten with further "fair and balanced" sensationalism, the next volley somehow managed to involve Bill Clinton and his oval office escapades(?!?!). I just threw up my hands and shut down my email client. It wasn't even worth talking anymore, nobody was listening.

Oh well - that's my week. I think I cured my insomnia. Good night all. My next dispatch will probably be from Columbus, OH next week, that is, if they don't cancel it again.

a couple of links for you - nearly all politically charged, but that's how I'm feeling today

• The text of Michael Moore's Oscar acceptance speech

• This anonymous editorial writer wasn't a big fan of Moore's speech, but you have to love the little Freudian slip in the headline.(3/27 edit - looks like they caught their error: for the record, the word "tirade" used to read "tyrant". I thought the original was much funnier. - chuck)

• The US Justice Department no longer has to worry about simple things like the accuracy of data in the National Crime Information Center database. I'm really beginning to miss the constitution....

• Oh the possibilities

• I don't understand how a three trillion dollar tax cut makes any sense at all when this war has a $75 billion dollar price tag, and war funds are "special allocations" not considered as part of the regular federal budget. To quote Charles Grodin in the film Dave, "If I ran my business like this, I'd be out of business"

• ...and apparently, guys like to quote lines from movies. "That's a fact, Jack!"

• Georgia lawmaker introduces a bill to make it illegal for restaurants to NOT serve Sweet Tea, a southern institution, but one that kinda makes my stomach turn in it's extreme sweetness

• googlism: What does Google know about you?

  THINK...It's not illegal yet
  -chuck

  PS: there's a new archive of old posts below. Due to a temporary case of carelessness, I managed to delete half of February's entries on the home machine. Luckily, I managed to find a recent copy of the page in my laptop's internet cache. Thank goodness I'm lazy about clearing it. Yay apathy!

Well, it appears that www.thisislondon.co.uk may have jumped the gun a bit on noting the start (the only other places I saw this report mentioned at all was DEBKAfile, a non-corporate, always interesting, but often uncorroborated underground news site - still worth a look, though), but it's all a moot point anyway - despite large and vocal opposition to such action both at home and abroad, the White House announced that hostilities have begin in Iraq. Anybody who's reading this knows my feelings on the situation, so I won't launch into another repetitive diatribe, other than to say that I'm very definitely against it, that it's regrettable that the parties invovled chose not to more agressively pursue non-violent means of resolution, and that I hope for a quick resolution of hostitilities with as few casualties as possible.

Despite world events, things were essentially normal this morning here in the office; no obvious changes in security measures (I fully expected to find a ThreatCon upgrade and a closed front gate this morning), and business as usual in terms of parking and building access (not that I think anyone really expects our installation to be a serious target for retaliatory "terrah" attacks - people are spread out rather thinly over a huge chunk of acreage, and there are exactly four buildings with more than one storey inside the gate, two of which are single family residences and the other is the Officer's Club, offering very little "bang for the buck" to prospective attackers). Besides the not-all-that-uncommon mention of a high priority army requisition this morning, you wouldn't know that anything out of the ordinary was going on.

The only intresting thing that happened this morning, cool enough to deserve it's own paragraph, was the revolt launched by a couple of participants on my regularly scheduled boring Thursday conference call - they finally got tired of all the bickering and called bullshit, saying that the whole thing was a waste of time since there were no new develpments since last week, and hung up, abruptly ending the call. All in all, a nice way to end a morning.

My trip to D.C. next week has been cancelled, not due to any concern for safety (the only disruption in Our Nation's Capital recently has been this week's tractor guy incident), but rather because the folks in the front office have decided that, at least for the moment, my services are more useful on the Enterprise Process Support team rather than the SAP development team I mentioned last week (and so are dashed my plans for a European tour in a few months!). Oh well, I'm not terribly concerned, as long as I continue to draw a paycheck and I don't have to go back to writing contracts; and, the fact that my skills are noticed and appreciated by executive upper management (and that I have two different teams fighting over me) is probably not a bad thing.

links, links, links

• I don't know how anybody actually thought Dennis Miller wrote this

• Autobots, Roll Out!: Optimus Prime headed to the middle east

• Well, He DID invent the internet, didn't he?: Al Gore to join Apple Computer's Board of Directors

• Guy attempts to liberate lobster from restaurant display tank by shoving it down his shirt and fleeing to waiting getaway car.

• Pennsylvania closes five miles of highway so that amphibians can mate safely

• Nebraska man marks dog poop in park with little yellow flags

• Trogdor! - Commence to Burninate!

1:45pm - Fighting Reported in Basra

Here's to hoping this all ends quickly and with as few casualties as possible.

-chuck