Thanks to the holiday this week, it’s a rare Friday in DC for me. The new office, I’ve recently discovered, was empty a month ago, and has been completely recarpeted and painted (notice I didn’t say “cleaned”); this leads to all sorts of new allergens for me to cope with. Ah – Choo. Anyway, here’s […]

Today I spent NINE HOURS in meetings; part of the “kick-off” dog-and-pony show for my workplace’s latest software project iteration. Not that it was particularly different than the last half-dozen “kick-offs” I’ve attended since becoming Information Systems Analyst Guy™; same people, same basic slide shows, same monotone delivery. Ideally, these things are designed to build […]

On the whole, the weekend wasn’t a bad one, though the shadows of a couple of serious downers cast a somewhat nasty pall over a generally okay landscape. Not the best of metaphors, I admit, but accurate nonetheless. I took a few hours off of work on Friday, which is always a good way to […]

I have a small fondness for Rocky Horror, but yeah, I’ve mostly outgrown it; Spaced pretty much nailed the limited shelf life of it’s appeal. Still, the original version is a camp classic that any “hip”, “with-it” student of pop culture ought to be at least passingly familiar with. I say “original version”, because apparently […]

I generally really like my job. I do interesting and challenging work; solving problems, and coming up with new ways for people to perform tasks more effectively. Most days at closing time, I can point to at least one thing I’m proud of having accomplished. Then there are days like today, when all I do […]

George Carlin died. Dammit. He got the lead story on NPR this morning (not sure what that says about the media…). When I heard this morning on the way to work, I knocked off a quick text to Colleen at a red light. You could actually kind of feel the gasp in her simple “wow” […]

Since it’s unlikely I’m going to have a working computer on my desk at work tomorrow morning, I’m just going to go ahead and take care of this now: “I Wanna Be Your Hero” – Def Leppard “Thank You For Sharing” – Vanity Project “Cuyahoga” – REM “One Love” – Pat Benatar “The Human Hosepipe” […]

The (I’m led to understand; I wasn’t there) nice and polite HVAC guy visited on Wednesday, and informed us that our aging and basic central air system had blown a compressor. It’s dead. Shuffled off the mortal coil (though the heating coil is supposedly okay), joined the choir invisible, pining for the fjords. Damn. I […]

in no particular order: Now, I’m a reasonably observant Catholic, but when stuff like this happens, I get really annoyed with the Church. Denying someone marriage because of the consequences of a disability feels all kinds of wrong. On the other hand, there’s news that makes me really happy, like the announcement that Barack Obama […]

Well, it is. It’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 110° F here in Central Virginia, and our air conditioning is basically out of commission until Wednesday when the guy can get here to rape my wallet fix it. We came back from our weekend jaunt, and I found one of my corydoras catfish dead and […]