If you've been watching the news for the last day or so, you're aware of the mess the District of Columbia is this week....flooding, mudslides - MUDSLIDES! - and all sorts of other apocalyptic happenings thanks to the long soaking rain on Sunday and Monday.

While it did take me four rather than two hours to get up here yesterday (because of flooding and mudslides on the outer loop of the beltway, which diverted everyone over to my inner loop route), besides high humidity, an orange tinge to the Potomac from my hotel room window, and really wet sidewalks, those of us here in Northern Virginia didn't run into too many problems on Monday.

Tuesday, so far, is a different story.

I'm currently sitting in my hotel room watching my email for instructions. You see, I arrived at my office this morning to find a growing crowd of familiar faces huddling on benches in the lobby...turns out that power's out for my building, which means no elevators. The stairs are also out, because some security genius decided that it was a good idea to lock all the stairwell doors above the 2nd floor (of course, with no power to the upper floors, it's not like we're going to get anything done up there).

Given that Monday's events shut down a bunch of government departments, and that the lights in my hotel room (which is right across the way from National Airport, which never stopped running, so I figure I'm almost as golden as a Richmond cul-de-sac on the same bit of grid as a Ukrops grocery store) flickered a bit last night, I shouldn't have been surprised.

Anyway, somebody got a call from the boss, who'd heard that things aren't likely to be resolved before noon. a few folks have taken over the wifi-enabled lobby of one of the local hotels to try and get some work done in the meantime, I opted to return to my hotel, since the wifi card in my government laptop hasn't worked since they upgraded it, and I've got pretty solid (not to mention free) broadband here in my room.

On my walk back to the hotel, I saw that a couple of other buildings were experiencing similar issues...so I'm not alone.

In the meantime, I'll watch for instructions, send a few emails, and read the paper....

twiddling thumbs
-chuck

PS: Nobody's got anything to say about the hair (look here ↓)?

afternoon update: the office power never came on...I took a walk at lunch, and the last time I passed around 1pm, It was still out. I changed out of my work clothes when I got back and committed to "working from the hotel" all day, except when I went out for a while so housekeeping could do their job.

I'm just going to let this picture speak for itself:

I felt like it was time for a change.

so, what's the verdict?
-chuck

You know that feeling when you really just don't want to get out of bed? That was pretty much my morning this morning...my first morning back to work after a self-imposed long weekend; I just needed a break from the office grind for a couple of days. Getting back in the grind wasn't my idea of a particularly good time, even if today was kind of a wash, with the just because "hawaiian shirts, tacos and virgin margaritas" long lunch office morale booster event. I don't own a hawaiian shirt...but I have a dark grey/black shirt that's kinda cut like one...So I was dubbed the "goth hawaiian" for the day. I do, after all, crap bats.

Today's also solstice, which upset my co-worker Diane a bit, since she couldn't make it to Stonehenge to recharge her "wannabe wiccan" powers. No danger of her going all "Dark Willow" on us for another year. Of course, Diane, who shares with me a fascination for Reefer Madness and all things Firefly didn't get the numerous Spinal Tap references tossed about, which is something that has to be fixed immediately for the good of pop culture obsession.

No one knows who they were or what they were doing...

Anyway - that's the office today...the long weekend was a fairly laid back affair, with a few family outings and the beginnings of research into this year's big home improvement project...about 800 square feet of new carpet. I'm sure there'll be more on that in this space in coming weeks. I've mostly got an idea of what we're going for, I just need to nail down prices and schedules.

It made sense to stretch this past weekend out - for one, I'm actually at home this week, which is kind of a novel experience. Also, Mary wrapped up first grade last friday and had her birthday on Monday...lots of good reasons to stay home.

Anyway - we did a lot of hanging about the house doing laundry and whatnot, though we did spend Saturday at Busch Gardens ("yay" family fun passes. And extra "yay" to upgrading one to a season pass, so we get free parking and a food and swag discount!), where Andrew proved to be the big daredevil in the family, taking on Da Vinci's Cradle and Escape from Pompeii without flinching. Mary wasn't up to it, but did manage to both ram the back of the car ahead of her (containing Colleen and Andrew) and almost run over a squirrel in the LeMans racers. I'm glad she's got quite a few years left until I have to teach her how to drive.

I've been mostly offline for the past couple of days, but last week, I did find another one of those delightfully strange things that I'd never have found without my beloved internet...Harry and the Potters, two brothers from Boston who both dress up as Harry Potter and sing clever ditties about situations in the Harry Potter books, with a flavor reminiscent of TMBG and Nerf Herder. Fun Stuff, particularly tunes like "The Human Hosepipe", "The Hogwarts Tonsil Hockey Team", and "The Weapon", which if there's any justice in the world, will get optioned by WB and used under the end credits of the OooP movie.

Of course, that would be cool of them, so it'll never happen.

My Wizard Scar Still Burns for You,
-chuck

yeah, it's all over the news...Spider-Man outs himself (no, not that way) to the press as part of Marvel's big Summer Crossover no, we're really not ripping off "Watchmen" at all, really, we promise event, "Civil War".

Not sure how this is going to play out...Pete going public seems to be totally against character (of course, one could argue that the reason that the only comics I still read are 70s and 80s "Essentials" collections and Dan Slott books is that nobody writes Spidey in character any more), but I hold on to a little bit of hope that there might be an interesting story to be told here before the whole thing gets retconned out o existence.

The best response I've seen comes from the Gamers With Jobs boards someone mentioned that this event isn't as big as Gwen Stacy dying, and elicited the following response:

Dude, that "Holla Back" chick is dead?

action is his reward,
-chuck

As I write this, I've just returned to the quiet environs of my hotel room after a last-minute decision took me to the Webb For Senate election night victory party...

I was planning on a quiet evening with a good book and Veronica Mars reruns, though amongst the GOTV emails I received from the Webb and Miller campaigns this morning was an invitation to "Come on Down" to the Webb party, which was, oddly enough, about two blocks away from where I'm staying.

Now, I didn't really have a horse in this primary, both candidates were kinda "eh" to me - generally okay with me on most issues, though I'd been leaning toward Webb, based primarily on the general negativity of Miller's constant mailings, and Webb's impressive performance a few months ago on the Colbert Report; I was content to wait to see who won, then get behind that guy in the race against George Allen for the position of junior senator from Virginia.

Still, the chance to go to an election night rally was too good to pass up, and it was pretty likely I'd see some people I hadn't run into since the 2004 presidential campaign.

So, I crashed the party...

It was a good time. Free food, a kickin' band, and a room full of like minded people getting progressively more excited as the evening wore on, returns kept rolling in, and rumors of John Kerry making a surprise appearance spread around the room (he didn't, at least while I was there -wed. update: I head he showed up later; oh well-...though there were appearances by many of the big guns in Virginia politics, including Leslie Byrne).

I met, or became reaquainted with some interesting folks, including Allison from Redefeat Bush, Eric from Virginia Grassroots Coalition, and the prolific teacherken from DailyKos; as well as a bunch of others who I'm sure I'll be seeing more of in the months ahead, since I wrangled a handful of invites to upcoming Webb campaign events...

Anyway - Webb won the primary by a little over six percent, and gave a rousing victory speech (although the lack of significant confetti was kind of a let down) and I managed to see the back of my head on the 11 o'clock news after having a nice evening out.

I'm going to bed now,
-chuck

comments from the wife...

I had an interesting week last week as a small brown bird flew out from under the hood of the van everytime I started it. It happened monday morning when I went shopping. It happened again Monday evening when I drove to Mary's brownie meeting. It happened again wednesday. So on thursday evening after taking the trash out, I decided to take a peek to see if it was still there and got a good scare as the bird flew out into my face... it didn't actually hit me but I felt the breeze from it's wings.

I went back inside and told Chuck about the van's new resident. He wondered if there were any eggs... We checked and sure enough there were.

I was worried about the eggs and any potential baby birds so I got out the yellow pages and found the number of a wildlife rescue organization in powatan. I left a message and about 1/2 an hour later I got a call back and spoke to a very nice lady... I explain the situation and she advised us to move the nest. Apparently if you keep the new loction within 8 feet of the old one the mother can find it... she may not continue to care for the eggs however.

So while we were out friday evening we stopped at micheals craft store and picked up a box to use as a new nest location. Chuck cut a hole in it for the mother to get in and out and hung it up on the tree on the other side of the driveway.

We shooed mom off the nest and relocated it while she screamed at us from a nearby tree.

We don't know if she's caring for the eggs... I haven't seen anyone going in the box or in the box the couple of times that I checked but I didn't see her around the van except when I started it so she may be there sometimes but I don't see her.

-Colleen

we'll keep you posted!

all the little birds on jaybird street...
-chuck

I remember the discussion in hushed tones twenty years ago among small groups of fourth and fifth grade boys on the playground the week after the original Transformers: The Movie came out. "A whole bunch of them get blown up!" "Prime Dies!" "Spike Says 'Holy Shit!', can you believe it?" "Dude, Charles Foster Cane Plays A Frikkin' Planet!"...

...okay, maybe not that last one, but that summer, that movie was all that mattered.

Anyway - next summer, the dreams of all those ten year old boys are going to come flooding back, with Transformers, the live-action movie, directed by Michael Bay, and produced by Steven Spielberg, set for release July 4, 2007.

I have absolutely no idea if it's going to be good, but I've got high hopes for lots of fancy quick-cut (it is Michael Bay, after all) robot-on-robot carnage, hopefully with the signature sound and Peter Cullen voicing Optimus Prime. I'll be there...I figure Andrew won't be able to pass up giant robots, either...

There were a couple of pictures out there that show that Bumblebee's not going to be a VW Beetle, but rather a yellow Camaro...I'm not sure about that, but at least the teaser poster looks cool:

You Got The Touch! You Got the Power!
-chuck

PS: Colleen's got an interesting story to tell about an unexpected avian visitor to share...once she writes it up, I'll post it!

...clown'll eat me

help,
-chuck

I've been thinking about getting a little more interactivity going on around here for a while now, but never got around to it, partially because there just weren't enough people kicking around here to make it worthwhile, and partially because I'm lazy and cheap.

In the four years and change I've had this instance of the site up, and the year or so I've had a top-level domain pointed at it, a small but loyal cadre of visitors have been hitting this space regularly - heck, most of you even know each other. That almost sounds like a community...

Anyway - this place, thus far, as been nothing by my rants for a while...I figure it's time I open up the floor, so to speak, to the rest of you; therefore, I introduce to you now...

...the fancy new forum/bulletin board system I just added this afternoon. I have no idea whether such thing is going to catch on...but, the app (from the fine folks at setbb) was free (sorry about the ads, but as I said, I'm cheap), and I got it up and running in about 10 minutes, so I figured it was worth a shot.

Anyway - take a look, get an ID, and start talking...about anything at all, really. Maybe this'll be fun!

-chuck

Yeah, the world's onto this whole business about today's date being 6/6/06, from silly fluff newspaper pieces to the special tuesday release of the remake of the Omen...you know, there's even an actual documented phobia of this number, Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia...somebody's got way too much time on their hands.

Me, I'm just going to ignore the whole hooey (except to make this post, which is all leading up to one of my favorite jokes I've ever seen scrawled on the wall of a public toilet, and maybe listen to a little Iron Maiden on the ipod), and post a picture of the kitten and I playing video games from a couple of months ago...

(click to enlarge)

and now, the groan-inducing joke:

668, the Neighbor of the Beast,
-chuck

As many are aware, according to the wise philosopher Lewis Black, the End of the Universe is located in Houston Texas, where he once observed (and this link offers photographic proof) a Starbucks across the street from a Starbucks.

Well, I believe I have found the OTHER end. Just off of exit 143 of I-95, at the intersection of Garrisonville Road and Mine Road in Stafford, VA, there exists a 7-Eleven across the street from a 7-Eleven. This exit is one of my usual lunch/bathroom breaks on the drive back from the office in DC, and I honestly passed through this intersection dozens of times before I actually noticed this strange phenomenon, still, I got a good laugh out of it when I made the connection.

This weekend, with the help of my lovely wife, I obtained photographic proof:

click to enlarge

Slurpees for everyone,
-chuck

Most of you reading this were a part of this weekend in one way or another, so I'm not going to dive in with intimate details you already know. To summarize for the rest of you, we made a whirlwind trip up north for Jennifer's bridal shower, and to meet Kimberly, the new woman in Doug's life.

In short, a good time was had by all; on the way up, we stopped by Colleen's dad's place to drop off Girl Scout cookies and work on making arrangements for Alexis's summer visit; at My Mom's, the kids had a great time running all over my mom's with Mya, while Mike and I took a nice long drive in the pimpmobile to escape the excessive levels of estrogen filling the house. Oh, and we all got to meet little Johnny, Bob(by) and Stacey's new arrival. Cute kid...despite the statements of nearly everyone I know, I really like babies...I just don't want any more of my own, thanks.

After the party, we made our way south to Harrisburg to visit with Doug, and meet Kimberly...who was instantly adopted by the kids, and immediately fell into favor as she shared pet rat stories with Colleen. We like her a lot, Doug - if you screw this one up, we're going to have words, okay?

In any case, it must really be true love, if Doug moved to the east side of the river without complaint. And Kimberly, if you're reading this, I hope we didn't scare you too much with our overstimulated kids and my excessive geek tendencies, and if you click here, you'll find an old picture that includes the pink guitar!

The trip also gave me the chance to really put the Vibe through it's paces on a long road trip. I'm happy with the results; the whole trip, including my crappy shifting when scaling Peters Mountain, and the stop-and-go Saturday morning in the Springfield "mixing bowl", I averaged over 35MPG! The car's also very comfortable, at least for the driver; Colleen and the kids were mostly locked into their various video games - the Nintendo DS for Colleen (Trace Memory) and Mary (Nintendogs), and the Leapster for Andrew.

That about covers things...as for this week, I'm back up in DC this week, doing the usual things (and I did get the car that pulls to the left, dammit!). No huge plans, though work willing, I'm going to try to catch An Inconvenient Truth (the Al Gore global warming movie), which is playing in at least two places here in the DC metro; or barring that, X-Men. Who knows, though, what I'll end up doing.

I'm also planning on getting around to posting some pictures over the course of the week as Colleen sends them to me and I get around to formatting them. Keep your eyes on this space for those.

Stay Safe and Sane,
-chuck

That's one way to refer to this weekend in the Parker household. The war's by no means over, but we won several thrilling victories in the past three days. My office is once again organized, the living room is missing several pounds of clutter (much of which came out from under the couch cushions), our bedroom is in better shape than it's been in a long time, and perhaps most thrillingly (thanks to the over-and-above efforts of my beautiful wife - God, it turns me on when she goes on a domestic streak!), the shower/bathtub thing is once again WHITE!. The only front in the downstairs theater of operations in serious contention is the kitchen, though ongoing efforts in that region show great promise.

While the previous paragraph is probably more than enough o fill most weekends, I also managed to get around to installing my new super-bargain-priced Sony DVD burner (which is too fast for words...wow), mow my poor excuse for a lawn, pull one of Mary's loose teeth (she's got a big hole in the front of her face), play with the kids a bit, and record another little instrumental tune for my ongoing home recording project, tentatively titled Chuck Can't Play Bass!: Volume 1 (though that'll probably change - the title, not the fact that I suck at the bass guitar).

I'm at home this week (thanks to the holiday on Monday), which ought to give me time to get the Vibe in for it's first oil change, as I just rolled over 1000 miles (averaging over 30MPG overall), and as the saying goes, "I am the final machinist on my engine", a nice way of saying that there are all sorts of nasty metal filings from the "break-in" period floating around my crankcase which I'd rather not have around. Just in time for the top-secret weekend roadtrip (wink, wink).

Mary's class also has a field trip to Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden this week, for which either Colleen or I will serve as chaperone (it'll probably be her, though I might swoop in at the last moment depending on how my allergies and tolerance for tons of six year olds fare), so somebody's going to have to stay with Andrew - so I've taken the day off on Wednesday. Either way, it'll be a nice break.

We never got out to see X-Men this weekend (like apparently everyone else in America, given the grosses), but it's definitely on the short-term agenda. Even if the reviews are mixed-to-weak, I can't resist a comic book flick (and Colleen has a bit of a Hugh Jackman fetish, so there's that). We did do some shopping, though, where we picked up, among other things, a cheapie box set (fifteen bucks for almost 8 hours programming) of America By Rail DVDs, which have Andrew completely mesmerized.

And keeping with movies, my Kevin Bacon score in regard to Steve Carell and Morgan Freeman got one degree shorter this week, as a couple of my office buddies are taking a few days off to be extras on the set of Evan Almighty, which has been shooting in and around Richmond. These two went to an open call in DC a few months ago (one of them ended up in the upcoming Flags of Our Fathers), and occasionally get calls to be "background actors" when something comes to the area. I'll be sure to have them say "Hi!" to "Easy Reader" and everyone's favorite "Man-O-Lantern" for you.

And yay for citizen activism! Net neutrality got another big boost last week as the Internet Freedom and Non-Descrimination Act of 2006 was approved by the House Judiciary Committee, and will go before the full House for a vote soon. Unfortunately, my representative to Congress voted against approval - he's gonna be hearing from me again.

"Dude. I'm trying to get my rock on, and you're totally harshing my mellow,"
-chuck

PS: Today's Holy Crap that's some weird $#*%! link of the day: Klingons For Christ!

There's nothing else to say, really....

Just Brilliant!

Happy Memorial Day,
-chuck

Chuck is sick with the cold of mysterious origin. Chuck went through a whole box of tissues yesterday. To put things bluntly, Chuck feels like crap. Still, Chuck came in to work this morning and built a huge PowerPoint deck or the training team.

Wolverine says:

I've been saving that one up,
-chuck

P.s: - I think I witnessed a heretofore undocumented sign of the apocalypse yesterday. While waiting for the elevator in the hotel lobby, I heard a muzak version of a Replacements tune. Yeah, it was "Can't Hardly Wait" which has a horn section, but still, the 'Mats as damned near literal elevator music? something is very, very wrong here.

I'm back at work this <blows nose> week in DC after a busy, busy weekend at <blows nose again> home, with dance <honk> recitals and all sorts of<pfffft> other activities.

And yeah, I somehow ended up with some really annoying cold-like symptoms beyond the usual allergies. I'm still tempted to blame the irritation and whatnot on my exposure this weekend to more tobacco smoke/leftovers at my neighbor's house while I was doing a little extracurricular operating system installation and wireless network setup, and that it'll all pass as all the irritants get blown out into tissues...still, that doesn't necessarily explain the aches...oh well.

Anyway, what you've all been waiting for is the recount of the Dance Recitals on Saturday. For the record, both kids did very well on stage; you can see definite improvement in their coordination and ability to follow directions (except for when Andrew lined up in the wrong place...at least he had the choreography right). There are pictures of the kids in their costumes in electronic format somewhere (Colleen gave me hard copies for desk display, but I don't have the files); I'll get them posted when I find them...they look pretty good.

As for the recital itself, it was typical of the shows put on by this school...for the most part, there's not a lot of serious "ballet technique" (hardly anybody's on pointe, ever) on display - at least according to Colleen - a lot of it looks like audition pieces for some pop starlet's backup dancers. Sill, there are a couple of very talented older kids studying there (whose names I don't know, but generally refer to with names like "tall dance boy", short dance boy", "athletic build blonde", "tall skinny brunette", etc...Colleen could fill you in if you care) who, when they find the opportunity, manage to transcend the material they're given; which is generally a lot of very similar looking choreography (all the solo pieces quote each other mercilessly) set to lame "hot" country music. Still, when these kids are on, they're on, and I really enjoy watching them do something I can't.

The little kids are always cute, and thankfully, there was a general lack of eight year olds dressed up in hoochie outfits. The music for the little ones was generally a mishmash of Disney Channel fare, though there were a few bright spots, chosen by the more interesting members of the faculty, including an Alanis Morisette tune (no, not that one...) that worked really well with one of the older pre-teen ballet groups, chosen by the teacher with the Lisa Loeb glasses and funky two-tone hair. However, whichever teacher insisted on inflicting "Butterfly Kisses", one of the most vacuous, cloying, pieces of lite pop drek in history, needs to be punished. Severely.

Finally a few general comments - either the dance school or the hosting high school got a nice bonus this year, since the Vari-Lite rig in the room got quite a workout - somebody wanted to get the most for their investment, which meant pushing EVERY button on the control console at some point during the performance.

Also, a new development this year was a huge upswing in "YOU GO <insert-name-here>!" shout-outs during the set changes...I don't remember these things happening before...the best way I can describe it is "Redneck Night A The Apollo"...just weird.

The rest of the weekend was full of more basic stuff - we didn't get to see Over the Hedge on Friday, though we managed to catch it Sunday afternoon. The reviews I read said "Pixar good", though I wouldn't go quite that far. Still, it wasn't bad, and the kids enjoyed it, and there was a nice subversive message decrying the absurdity of modern cookie cutter mainstream suburban living, which I'm sure most of the folks from Woodlake down the street didn't realize was directed at them. That, and Ben Folds reworking of "Rockin' The Suburbs" under the credits actually made the tune much more biting and really drove the point home.

I also did a bunch of laundry, paid my bills, did the grocery shopping, and, as mentioned in the beginning, did a couple of hours' work helping the neighbor set up her new wireless router and clean up her hard drive. I even got paid (I wasn't expecting payment, though she insisted, and she got a much better deal than the geek squad guys at Best Buy would've charged anyway).

You Oughta Know,
-chuck

Remember the 8-bit era of gaming when this was all you needed to get you started?

Best Freakin' video game plot EVER!

-chuck

It's another quiet Friday afternoon - the people I was supposed to meet with today (who specifically asked me for help with something that I designed last year) couldn't be bothered to show up at the office today. Well, my messages are bouncing around the voice and email networks serving as proof that I made the effort; my conscience is clear.

Given that, I figured I'd while away a few moments typing gibberish into notepad, which, oddly enough, you're reading right now. Enjoy.

Coming up tomorrow is yet another BIG DANCE RECITAL SATURDAY™, with two shows in the afternoon (once again, the school couldn't get both the kids in the same show). Colleen hustled the kids to rehearsals all last week, and it appears that things are going to go smoothly (let's hope, anyway). I'm sure to bore you later with a full recounting of the day's events.

As a lead-in to this Saturday's almost-certain frantic activities, we're toying with taking in a movie this evening...and no, it's not going to be The da Vinci Code...

<here ensues an unrelated aside>

I suppose I should comment on my absolute distaste for the book and the phenomenon surrounding it. While the manufactured controversy surrounding the film's release is horridly distasteful, as the "startling revelations" or whatever is nothing new to anyone who hasn't seen a few hours of The History Channel in the last few years, or read a book or two. If something starring Tom Hanks (who stole my hair for this movie, damn him!) shakes your faith in your religion, your problems are a lot bigger than a movie.

Rather, it's the fact that the book was just plain poorly written. Any potential the subject matter had was unartfully diluted by Dan Brown. The fact that the movie was directed by Lil Opie Cunningham and adapted by Akiva "Batman & Robin ought to be considered evidence of crimes against humanity" Goldsman doesn't inspire confidence in the film being any better. I'm afraid even the powers Sir Ian McKellan and Audrey -yum!-Tautou can rescue this flick from the ravages of mediocrity. I'll probably catch it on cable next year. Still, it's gonna be number one this weekend, so what can you do?

...it looks like it's going to be two weeks in a row of talking animals for yours truly; Over the Hedge is the oher film hitting this weekend, and oddly enough, the better reviewed one. I hear there's a smack-you-over-the-head multi-front advert campaign for this one that I've almost totally missed (huzzah, once again, for not having cable at home). Several online reviews from folks I generally trust say it's better than it has any right to be; we'll see. It'll probably be worth it at least for Shatner as an opossum with a penchant for overplayed death scenes, and Steve Carell (who's actually in Richmond this week filming something or other...if I see him, I'll say "hi!" for you) playing a spastic squirrel.

I expect that's all for me at the moment; there's nothing else really to say, other than share a few fun little links with the masses:

• While I admittedly make use of myspace a little bit, I'm under no illusions that 90 percent of what's out there is nothing but pre-teen blinky emo crap™. This entertaining article takes a humourous, notat all scientific look at the science of myspace's failure. Plus, it coins the worthy term "assclownstorm" and has a funny picture of a goth kid.

• Here's a fun new blog discovery I made this week that probably appeals to nobody but me, but I got a good laugh outof the review of Weird War Comics #119 at Dave's Longbox, featuring possibly the most unintentionally funny (not to mention tasteless) comic panel I've ever seen

what you see above is an actual, honest to god statement my wife uttered to me Sunday afternoon. How does one respond?

YEAH! Bow-Chicka-Wow!

Okay, seriously, this statement didn't devolve into the Penthouse Forum situation one would hope for, and everyone's dirty mind immediately leapt to. Those of you who know my wife are well aware that she makes a lot of her own clothes, and the duct tape wrapping was done in order to create a custom pattern for a dress to be named later.

This isn't to say, however, that the resulting wrapping didn't resemble all the dominatrix gear we've got hidden in the back of the closet.

I'm kidding.....or am I?

making you write bad checks,
-chuck

I'm writing this week from a corner suite (actually, it's a handicapped-accessible room, but it's twice the size of a normal room here) at the Key Bridge Marriott, with a sweet view of the Potomac and the DC skyline. Not that I don't have the DC skyline memorized by now, but hey, it's still kinda nice.

I got to stay home last week - work was nothing worth speaking of, so I shall not speak of it. The monday-to-friday period of the week outside of the office, kind of runs together; nothing really happened there, either; some emails and phone calls with far-flung friends and family, catching up and trying to arrange visits both short- and long-term (yes Doug, we are going to meet the woman in your life one of these days...), and some other life details, but nothing worth writing about. I did take the afternoon off on Friday and had lunch with Mary at school - have school cafeterias always been so small? - it was nice to get out of the office and add a few hours to my weekend.

The weekend is a little fresher in my mind. As part of our continuing efforts to rclaim the house from clutter, Colleen kicked the kids and I out of the house for a few hours while she went through a bunch of stuff, and threw away a big chunk of it. I let her do this, as most of the stuff cluttering up the house isn't anything that could even generously be described as "mine"; and I feel it would be rather rude of me to simply pull a dumpster up to the house and start pitching things willy-nilly. Of course, I'm very close to doing that, and the threat of such an action is finally starting to serve as motivation to the other humans in the domicile to do something about it, especially since I'm anticipating a huge carpet replacement project in the next couple of months, and would like to have as little to get out of the way as possible.

Anyway - while Colleen did that, Mary, Andrew and I went out for pizza, a movie (Ice Age 2: The Meltdown - which was only okay, but the kids enjoyed it), and ice cream (somebody's gotta teach Andrew how to eat an ice cream cone). A good time was basically had by all. I feel I must make one comment on the movie-going experience- the film in question is pretty much geared solely toward kids, right? How does one explain the family grouping that followed us into the theater, no one appearing to be under the age of say, 17 (and, apropos of nothing, nobody under, say 250 pounds on a 5 foot 3 inch frame - seriously, the father figure was wearing a t-shirt emblasoned with "I'm In Shape - Round is a Shape"), attending this feature? Is anybody really that big a fan of Ray Romano's ouvre? Really? Just a strange observation.

Sunday, aside from mother's day observances, was pretty quiet - the biggest project was the final cleaning and voyage of the venerable 1990 Subaru Justy we've been hauling ourselves about in in some manner, since 1994. While it never really stopped running, in recent years it's been running very roughly, and has become more expensive to insure, thanks to its total lack of modern safety features like airbags and antilock anything. And with the introduction of the vibe to the driveway, we're not using it anymore. Since I'd feel really guilty selling it to some gullible high school kid for a couple hundred bucks (since it's probably going to finally die about a week after I get rid of it), we took advantage of the services of vehicles for charity, who hauled the car away Monday afternoon - Colleen was almost able to hold back her tears as she snapped some final pictures before they took it.

And now, a moment of silence in memory of the "fun" justy, offering it well wishes in the future, whether it gets parted out or rehabilitated by a new owner:

misty watercolored memories,
-chuck

P.S.: - if you're reading this in Pennsylvania on Tuesday - it's primary day! Go vote!

Over the last several months, there's been a LOT of discussion all over the place about immigration in this country. I'm not going to get into the topic, partially because there are very few people spouting on any side who really have an idea of what they're talking about, but mostly because I don't have a really strong opinion on the issue right now -there are plenty of other things that concern me a heck of a lot more at the moment.

Still, all those afternoons in hotels with Lou Dobbs on as background noise piqued the interest of my inner social studies teacher (he's still in there, and loves the idea of the profession, though not necessarily the practice), who started thinking about whether all the citizens who are railing against immigration, both legal and illegal, would qualify for citizenship themselves where they born elsewhere and had to go through the naturalization process.

As such, I did a little bit of research on the process...specifically, the US history test the INS administers. Thanks to Google, I found a wide variety of online quizzes claiming to be based on the actual questions the INS uses (the Danbury, Connecticut Library has an excellent resource with a LOT of test variants). And surprisingly most of them seem to pull from the same bank of questions, which lends credence to their accuracy.

working on that assumption - I found this one, which scores it for you and gives you a pretty little bit of code to post your results. I'm fully aware this is just one of those little kludgy things that people stick in their MySpace profiles for kicks, but it's functional and essentially correct, considering what it is.

And oh yeah...I got 10 out of 10.

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 10 out of 10 correct!

Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test?

thanks, Mr Ely,
-chuck

Here's another entry in the occasional series Issues Chuck felt motivated to write about...

I've been seeing little spikes on this issue showing up in various places around the net over the last couple of weeks, eventually leading me to surf over to www.savetheinternet.com and do a little reading to figure out exactly what everyone was talking about.

It turns out it's a pretty important concept if you're big on the concepts of free speech and equal access to information. Basically, "Net Neutrality" as a concept refers to the idea that every page on the internet is equally accessable to everybody, from humble little pages like the one you're reading to the big corporate sites. Everybody gets the same opportunity to be read.

This sort of thing is a good idea; everybody gets an equal chance to let their content develop it's own audience, the good ideas float to the top, internet as the modern public square...all that good stuff.

Like most good ideas, somebody wants to mess it up. As congress re-examines the country's telecommunications rules, the big guns in the telecom service provider industry, the Verizons, AT&Ts, and Comcasts of the world, are pushing hard to pave over our fun little town square, with all of its colorful street preachers and pundits, and replace it with a Wal-Mart.

Essentially, if the telecom guys get their way, they'll be able to prioritize traffic on their service, and those content providers who are willing to pay the fees/tolls/protection money get to ride the superhighways, while the rest of the world gets stuck on a rut-filled dirt road. All of a sudden, all those really interesting and useful little sites (who are currently paying the same bandwith rates as everybody else) get a lot harder to see (or blocked altogether) because the sites with money get priority.

That sort of thing is a bad idea because it effectively does away with the whole concept f free speech, freedom of information, equality and neutrality. The little guy with the big idea simply won't have the same opportunity to be heard as before.

Anyway - I felt moved enough to send off the following little missive to my congress-critters:

Easy as that...a hair over 300 words, short and to the point. Even Senator Allen ought to be able to understand it.

If this issue bugs you too (and it should, if you're reading this, it's a safe bet you're an internet user), drop your senators and representative a line. savetheinternet.com has a nice quick form that IDs your representatives by ZIP code if you don't know.

And if you don't know already, shame on you,
-chuck

five minutes later edit: I took my "even Senator Allen could read it" comment to heart, and cut some of the fat in the entry before the letter. Superfluous material all, even if it was kinda clever.

The usual greetings to the usual people...7pm and all is well as I type this (it'll be significantly past that when I get around to posting it, given my lack of internet connectivity at the moment (5/2 lunchtime edit - and since I missed my train by like five seconds this morning and am starting out about 20 minutes later than everyone else - that's enough toreally throw me off!); the weather's nice, and I'm on entirely the wrong side of the hotel to get a nice view of The DC skyline (though I can see The Continental and the balconies on the Rossyln Holiday Inn (sadly, nothing's happening over there right now). I just had dinner at the Concierge Lounge (chicken fingers and a nice pasta salad), and, since I was feeling a bit jaunty, a well-poured pint of Guiness at the hotel bar. All in all, it's a pretty standard week.

I'm pretty sure it's going to be a relatively quiet week as well; having finally wrapped up all those design documents I've been working on for weeks and weeks, we're settling into the "build" phase of the project, where we pass our designs on to the programmers to build things. My purpose through all this is to answer inevitable questions from said programmers, and start building the test scripts needed to make sure that the final products are ready for prime time. That's significantly less work for me for a couple of months, which ought to mean normal length workdays and some time in the evenings to check out a few of the sights around here I haven't taken in yet.

Ideally, anyway. We'll see. (5/2 lunchtime edit - I knew it - somebody scheduled a meeting this afternoon - blocking two hours to go over 50-odd design documents- it took us two hours to pore over three of them last week. No plans for tonight, apparently)

We took another trip out to Busch Gardens this weekend, and since the weather was so much nicer than the previous weekend, we managed to hit a few more rides (we'll catch them all before the summer's out, I'm sure), and the kids rode their first coaster, the relatively tame Big Bad Wolf. It was a great experience for Andrew (who got his "I survived my first roller coaster" T-shirt), and a bit less so for Mary, who's sort of in a transitional phase - she'd be perfectly happy to ride the kiddie rides she's really almost too big for all day long, and is really freaked out by anything bigger. She made it through the coaster ride, though I think it'll be a while before she gets on another one. Andrew's up for anything though, any time, anywhere.

Beyond the coasters, we hit a few of the others, including the Roman Rapids, which Mary liked quite a bit more, though she and I ended up thoroughly soaked by the end of it. The problem was that the weather, while beautiful,sunny and breezy, wasn't particularly warm, so we stayed wetter longer than we would have liked. I don't suspect this'll be a problem in the future. And hopefully we won't lose the new car in the parking lot next time - did you know that the front of a black G6 looks just like the front of a black Vibe when you're stumbling through the parking lot after a day of corporate-sponsored-can't-offer-a-good-irish-style-beer-in-the-Ireland-area-theme-park-fun?)

Edit: Hang in there, guys; we've been where you are right now; once you get things processed yourselves, call us if you need anything.

That's all from here.

...truth, unfiltered by rational argument,
-chuck