Given current circumstances, as mentioned previously, Marscon didn’t happen as scheduled in person in Williamsburg this year, but a bunch of regulars stepped up to help create a virtual experience for those of us missing our chosen family of misfits. In the form of a bunch of online meetups, streaming video, and all the other […]

So, given the last ten days or so in Washington, we’re in all kinds of uncharted territory. While the former civics/history teacher in me is fascinated, the concerned citizen in me is, well, concerned, and not in a Susan Collins way. While I am absolutely in favor of impeachment here, because there have to be […]

That thing they say about interesting times? These might be some. That said, I’ve blathered on enough about politics and Constitutional interpretation for this week; if something happens, it happens, but that’s not what this particular utterance into the void is going to be about. Let’s get dull. This week, on the micro/household scale has […]

So, after a couple of “kick the can” extensions, that $900 billion relief package, tied to the omnibus “fund the government” bill, got through both houses of Congress and landed on the President’s desk yesterday. Nobody really liked it; it’s totally insufficient, but that’s what they say compromise looks like, and it would carry us […]

Today inaugurates my last working week of 2020. Thursday afternoon after logging off for the year(!), I shall do the usual run to the pet store to buy cat food, and (assuming further restrictions are not imposed in the meantime and there’s a free table for me to sit down) then visit the Kroger bar […]

…other than the fact that I feel like these guys are always right around the corner lately. Things are going to get better. Kind of have to.

Want to know how to make Chuck figuratively jump through all kinds of bureaucratic hoops and prepare reams of multi-pronged backup documentation for weeks, and eventually forcing a Thunderdome-style brawl between different branches of the financial department to simply get an answer, any answer, so that a critical organizational program gets the support it needs? […]

I know it’s cliche by this point, but 2020 has been, and continues to be the best practical case for evidence of time dilation in terms of relative perception in recent memory. Psychologists and physicists will be writing papers on this for decades. Remember Four Season Total Landscaping? That was only three weeks ago. In […]

Indeed, a week. As briefly teased in earlier dispatches, I’ve spent a large part of the week dealing with petty bureaucrats and their petty power-trips. It has, for the large part, sucked, though after working with some dare-i-say “allies” within the organization, I unleashed a little bit of bureaucratic jujitsu of my own, and have […]

I’m not particularly superstitious, but maybe don’t go camping on Friday the 13th. My mind-clearing getaway trip didn’t quite offer the solace I hoped it would, due to numerous complications. Not saying it was all bad, but all told, very few things went according to plan or as I’d have liked. The first piece, of […]