KK has contracted ... something. The doctor believes it's shingles, but is also testing to make sure it's not a Staph or Strep infection (I didn't even realize you could get a strep infection externally), which are both a bit more of a problem. Shingles (think localized chicken pox) is apparently more painful in adults, and the girl has been in remarkably good spirits despite itchy spots on her side and a slight fever. The biggest problem at this point has been daycare, which she can't visit until everything she's recovered.

Dizzy has a pretty serious series of 'attacks' on Saturday, involving a lot of muscle seizures and utter disorientation and loss of equilibrium. I was able to narrow down the cause of that to dehydration, but the reason for the dehydration (she still won't go anywhere near a bowl -- I have to give her water with a turkey baster) is still up in the air. The most recent news from the vet's test is good -- it looks like it's some kind of thyroid gland underperformance, which can be treated with supplements in her food. I'm already inclined to believe that diagnosis, as it would explain some lingering questions regarding her general fitness. (The fact that when she and Jake eat the same amount of food, and are the same size, she gains weight while he loses it.)

So that's been most of my spare time in the last few days. Whenever I've had a few minutes to myself I've worked on the new website and cleaned up some old directories on the server that desperately need it.

Things to do this month: revisions on Hidden Things, and scheduling flights to New York (both for the end of this month and in April).

Things not to do this month: devote any more brain power to wedding reception seating arrangements.

What we thought the job was:
Repaint two rooms.

What the job turned out to be.

• Unload both the family room and kitchen, taking everything off the walls and everything off the counters.
  
• Remove all the kitchen cabinet doors.
  
• Remove and dispose of the deceased under-the-counter microwave. (*salute*)
  
• Tape up the family room (easy) and the kitchen (nightmarish).
  
• Prime the family room to cover the very dark paint color.
  
• Paint both the family room and kitchen.
  
• Realize after two coats that no, it's not going to dry darker, it's too much of the wrong color, and we need to redo it.
  
• Retape and repaint the whole thing.
  
• Start painting the cabinetry doors, requiring at least two coats, both sides.
  
• Start rehanging pictures in the family room.
  
• Keep painting cabinet doors.
  
• Retape the rooms in reverse, so we can paint the baseboards.
  
• Paint the baseboards, windows, doorframes, and most of the cabinet fronts.
  
• Start rehanging the cabinets.
  
• Run out of both the white paint we're using, and the tape we need for retaping the kitchen (again, nightmarish) so we can paint the cabinets themselves.
  

That was everything as of Thursday morning. Didn't matter that we didn't have paint at that point anyway, since I was working all day and Kate's wrist (very justifiably) needed a rest by Wednesday night. Last night, we picked up more paint and tape, but I'm still not at home, which leaves Kate to work on the remaining to do list until I get home, knowing we can't work too far into the evening, since she has to be back on a plane. That list includes.

• Finishing coats on the cabinet doors.
• Getting the doors back on.
• Retaping the kitchen for cabinet painting.
• Cabinet painting.
• Installing a new microwave under the counter (which simply won't happen this week).
• Shampooing the carpet throughout the family room while the room is still totally unloaded (a process I foolishly haven't explained to Kate, meaning I'm stuck with the this weekend).
• Reloading the room with furniture currently in the front room, once the carpet dries.
• Rebuilding the front room toward some semblance of normalcy (though I've loved having a couch out there this week).
• Cutting, painting and installing crown molding in the family room. (Hey Dave?...)

We (or at least I) planned to redo the flooring in the master bath over the holidays as well. Needless to say, that didn't happen.

In order to cut down on the (insane) upswing in spam comments on the average-bear blogs, I've added a "Turing Test" on the comments; just before you post, you'll see a little line that asks you to put in a specific letter before trying to post. If you don't do this, the post will fail.

Sorry for the inconvenience; it is unavoidable.

You're always there for me.

... like a needy, codependent friend.

I have (per normal for this time of year) a damn-near crippling sinus headache. This is not news for today -- it is more of a "here's what's going on this week" kind of status.

My basement is noticeably warmer than the upstairs, simply because I left the (three) vents open down there.

Noticeably. Five degree shift, or more. It's damn near toasty down there, at least by comparison.

The heat loss from the (totally shot) window seals upstairs is making the basement a much cozier place to hang out at night.

Which, if you've been in my basement is just... backwards.

Why are the number pads on phones reversed from the number pads on everything else (keypads, 10-keys, calculators)?

Seriously. Someone came up with the idea first -- why the hell couldn't everyone else follow the plan?

There's a simple system I hit upon a few years ago to gauge -- as though an outsider -- my current level of satisfaction with... whatever job I happen to have.

• Stage One: Things are good - Dilbert comics are vaguely amusing, and elicit a smirk every ten strips or so.
• Stage Two: Could be worse, but... - Dilbert comics are amusing, and my most common reaction is a wry, self-deprecating chuckle.
• Stage Three: Would rather be caulking my toilet. No... would rather be caulking YOUR toilet. - Dilbert comics don't induce laughter so much as a grim nod of recognition of the sort exchanged between war veterans trying to manage in regular life.

I'm feeling another grim nod coming on.

Add this to the list of ways I choose not to wake up in the future: in the midst of a dream in which I discover that most of my teeth are loose and starting to fall out... and which then proceed to do so. Ugh.

And good morning.

During the weekly team meeting:

"This issue is becoming a real bone of contingent between the two departments."

Okay, so I upgraded to Moveable Type 4.0.1 a week ago. Here are a few thoughts:

- Can't tell that I upgraded? Yeah, the reason for that is that I'm still using my old 3.x templates for all my blogs. I didn't actually INTEND to do that -- one of the main reasons I upgraded was to reset Average-bear to a fresh, blank, MT 4.0 compliant template for the main page and then break customize it.

Problem: I can't FIND any such templates, either available within the tool, or on the MT website, so the old templates linger.

- It's pretty. It really is. From the point of view of someone making new posts, it's a really nice interface, and they've added some nice functionality.

- It's REALLY HARD to find anything. Yes, the interface is pretty, but it's very very different from everything that has gone before, and I still can't find a number of things that it should NOT be that hard to find: the list of banned commenters, for example, or a way to make a "QuickPost" bookmark (which I JUST found, while writing this, as a "drag and drop" option at the bottom of my entry-post window... and NO WHERE else. That's a fine secondary place to put it, but it should be easier to find. Also, it appears that I need a quick-post link for each of my blogs, which is stupid.

Hell, it took me about four tries to find a link to "Write an Entry," just now, after a week of using it. That should be the easiest to find, biggest damn button on nearly every screen in the program.

Anyway: good, but requiring a LOT of getting used to.

in-ter-mi-na-ble [in-tur-muh-nuh-buhl] - adjective

1. incapable of being terminated; unending
2. monotonously or annoyingly protracted or continued; unceasing; incessant:
3. having no limits

I'm just sayin'.

Annoyed and restless.

That's me this month. Not in the mood to start any projects, annoyed at the end of the day that I haven't gotten anything done.

How much do I not what to start any new projects? I've had the same NETFLIX MOVIE sitting on my table for over a month -- those two hours just seem like "too much commitment required". I've got the full seasons of Torchwood and Doctor Who just waiting to be watched, and they continue to sit, unviewed.

To say nothing of, oh, I dunno, the RPG editing job I'm getting PAID to do and can't seem to get moving on. Or painting the deck. Or the 100 things I need to do on the house.

Bleh.

Although I've enjoyed my Motorola E815 (and it's been nice having exactly the same phone as Kate), the phone itself has been acting up for a good three months, and has been nearly non-functional (hard-to-impossible to charge, due to damage to the charging port) for almost a month, and that's been frustrating enough that I finally gave in this weekend and took advantage of the big discount for a 2-year re-up from Verizon.

((This isn't the fault of the phone, really -- the thing has been used HARD for two years both by a technophile with an expectation of hardy equipment and a toddler who doesn't understand why you cant use a phone as a teething device.))

The E815 has pretty much everything I need in a phone -- video, photo capability, and access to a pared-down internet that lets me check my GMail account and GReader whereever I am. In fact, Verizon folks have told me that if that's all I want, there's no point in upgrading the phone.

What I've been very interested in adding lately, however, is access my work email as well -- especially my Outlook calendar while I'm AFK.

For that, though, I pretty much need some kind of Smartphone, which means adding a pretty hefty chunk of change to the pricetag for whatever phone I got, especially if I don't want to lose any of the functions I already have.

I'd love to get a Palm Treo, and I'd ESPECIALLY love a Blackberry with a camera in it, but the Palms are really really expensive, and the Blackberry I want isn't carried by Verizon (or anyone but AT&T, which Dave has repeatedly mentioned has bad reception in my house). That means that, to get what I want for a price I am willing to pay, I had to settle for the Motorola Q.

I'm nervous. On the face of it, it looks like a decent phone, and I'm hopeful about it. That said, all those buttons just look like something else Kaylee (or I) can break.

But the most annoying part? I was supposed to get it YESTERDAY, and it won't be here until TODAY.

... considering that there are video cameras, mics, and broadband connections in them already, it's kind of stupid that cell phones can't video conference.

I mean, it's all THERE.

I so very badly want to go home, take a nap, and veg out all night, blowing stuff up and watching Dr. Who episodes on my laptop.

I so very much cannot allow myself to do that.

Due to various daycare irregularities, today marks the third weekday in a row during which I am both working from home and looking after Kaylee.

Nothing wrong with working from home, nothing at all. I do it all the time, and I'm easily as productive as I am on site, if not more so.

However.

Anyone who tells you that they can work from home full time and take care of a toddler-age child at the same time is:

a) Lying.
b) Shortchanging either the work, the kid, or very probably both, by turns.
c) Some kind of inhuman working/parenting thing.
d) All of the above.

Things should return to relative normal tomorrow.

If you see one, chances are very good that you have a LOT more.

Three books to catch up on in HP, and I actually don't want to be totally spoiled for every bloody thing that happens, like I am for #6.

Which means goodbye internets. I go to sites that are supposed to be anti-spoiler and the author is talking in great bloody detail about EVERYTHING. Fucking people.

I'd love to do the Splash Mash Dash Sprint Triathlon next month. I mean, it's four blocks away, runs all through and around my neighborhood, and there's enough time to train up that I feel like I could be somewhat ready for it.

Unfortunately, I don't think I can find a babysitter for 5am to Noon. :P

Wednesday last week Kate got into town late, due to flight issues, so that meant she and Kaylee and I finally got back to the house around 2 am. Yuck.

Thursday Kate spent some time at the gym and biking around the neighborhood. She was heard to comment: "street names like TimberRIDGE and NorthRIDGE, all located in HIGHLANDS Ranch seem to indicate hilly terrain. Who'da thunk?"

When I got home, we finished up a project Kate had started -- cleaning out the hallway hutch to make a space for our wedding china and other pretties. It felt good to get that generally cluttered and poorly used area all straightened up.

We then went to Transformers. This is a great, fun summertime flick. If you saw and enjoyed Die Hard for its summer movie goodness, you will enjoy this movie -- that's my personal belief. Good stuff -- lots of funny -- we had a great time.

FridayI had work, and Kate went back to the gym and a longer bike ride. This time, she was lulled into a trap by the innocuous sounding "Venneford Ranch" street name, which is actually both steeper and longer than any of the streets with "Ridge" in the name.

That evening, Dave and Margie and Jim and Ginger and Katherine came over. We ate a lot of good food, talked about home improvement stuff, let Kaylee charm us, and then Dave and Margie and Kate and I played Primetime Adventures, and other three headed home.

Saturday, we dropped Kaylee off at Jackie's and headed to the Aurora Reservoir for check in and orientation for the Triathlon. Met up with Kate's longtime friend Yi Shun and her husband Jim, who came in from Chicago to do the tri, as well as visit friends and do some work meetings. The orientation, bike drop off, and lunch took up most of the day. We headed home, got some pizza for supper, and watched the fourth Harry Potter movie on DVD.

This was not the movie we watched.

My thoughts on HP #4, from a guy who hasn't read the book yet:

#4 is not a movie adaptation of a book. It's a audiovisual summary of the book... and not a great one; about like having a friend a stranger who read the book try to get you caught up before you go see Order of the Phoenix. I was left thinking "if all I had to go on was this movie, I would be wondering what on earth made someone think making a movie from these books was a good idea." It's not... BAD -- it's just... uninspired.

Sunday The Triathlon, about which more has been said elsewhere. Check out my Flickr page for more pictures.

I love Flickr, by the way. I've upgraded to the Pro Account for the extra functionality, more sets, unlimited uploads, and what amounts to a private domain just for hosting my pictures. The price is reasonable, the service is top-notch, and I can pick up prints from my local Target about an hour after making the order. Plus, it allows picture blogging from the phone, and a host of other goodies. I'm in the process of getting ALL my pictures up there.

In the afternoon, we moved Bert-the-Oven over to Jackie's, and moved Unnamed Oven back to our place.

Yes, after getting up at five in the morning and doing a Triathlon, Kate then helped me move two ovens across town. She's like a super hero or something.

That evening, Kate and I went to Harry Potter #5.

My thoughts on HP #5, from a guy who hasn't read the book yet:

This is a great movie. It's fun, it's dark, the translation from book to film is inspired and well-done (notable: this is the only movie that hasn't been translated to film by the same guy as #1, #2, #3, and #4, and it makes me sad and worried that Mr. 1 though 4 is coming back to translate #6), the acting is superb, the real villain of the piece (played by Imelda Staunton) is easily the most HATEABLE character in the HP stories, and quite possibly in any movie I've ever seen. Most villains (and the actors playing them) go for a kind of bad-boy cool -- Staunton goes for the most pleasantly loathsome creature I've ever ...

*shakes head* She steals the movie, then tortures it, while you watch, breathless. She's THAT good at being THAT evil. GOD I hated her.

Anyway: good movie. Easily my favorite of the HP series to date. (Azkaban was good, but still managed to disappoint me in its delivery in some places. Ever nit I've ever picked about the HP series in general is handled with a kind of inspired grace in Order of the Phoenix.

To compare: OotP made me want to read the book because it was a fun movie and I want to reexperience the good stuff from the screen and get all the extra bits that they had to take out. Goblet of Fire made me want to read the book because I figure that the story can't actually be that bad. (I'm assuming/hoping, there, that #4 isn't bad for the same reason #2 was: that it was based on a bad story to begin with.)

Monday Countdown, a plugin for your iGoogle page, is very handy. What date could I want to count down to? Hmmm...

Did a bit of errand running in the afternoon, then picked up Kaylee (I have her all this week, due to some work stuff Jackie's got going on) -- we all sat around and watched Titan A.E., which both Joss Whedon and Ben Edlund wrote for -- good fun stuff, and Kate hadn't seen it. After the wee munchkin was off to bed, Kate and I watched Resident Evil, which she also hadn't seen. Fun Zombie flick. No nearly as scary as the game, but good action movie zombie fun.

Tuesday Kate flew back to New York. Happy Doyce is all out of Happy. :P

That evening, Kaylee and I played and watched a bunch of Avatar, Book 2 episodes. That is one of my favorite animated shows ever, I think. Great stuff.

Wednesday Today! Umm... not much going on. How about you?

You know that ringing in your ears? The one you can only really hear when it's quiet, like when you're about to go to sleep, or just after you shut off your car and the music abruptly stops?

That's the sound of your ear cells dying. Once the ringing fades, you'll never hear that particular frequency ever again.

Sweet dreams.

Hmm. I haven't been posting much. Here's a quick rundown as to the why.

- Allergies. I don't sleep well right now. At all. Nostrils and eyes are burning all the time. In order to sleep, I need to hit a point of exhaustion where sleep is the only option -- this usually means I'm up too late and therefore not sleeping long enough, even if I got to sleep the whole night, which I don't -- I've been waking up pretty regularly around 4:30, 5am, too stuffy and puffy to sleep more, so I stumble into the basement and try to sleep a little more there...

Except there's no alarm down there, so I oversleep, which I worry about, keep checking the wall clock, and don't sleep at all.

-- Work. Yeah. I'm not going to type more about this, but suffice it to say that I have a lot of hats to wear right now. Luckily, more than half of them fit.

-- I needed gas for the lawn mower, took the tank down to the station to fill it up... and theres a hole in the tank, which of course I didn't find until I'd gotten gas all over the inside of the Matrix.

-- Later the same day, I found some pen marks on the coffee table that wouldn't come out. This didn't mean I didn't try however -- whole upstairs reeked of rubbing alcohol for two days, but some of the grooves the pen made were just too deep to get into. I'll eventually have to sand it and refinish it. So... marked up table and yet another headachey stench to deal with.

-- Dogs messed up the carpet something fierce -- yes, on the same day at the gas and the rubbing alcohol. Tuesday was the Day of Suck.

-- Misplaced (and presumed lost) my wallet for a day or so -- needless to say i wasn't really concentrating well on anything but that problem until it was fixed.

-- STILL trying to get all the paperwork finished up to get the Casa solely in my name, even after *mumble swear mumble amount of time* working on it. Stuck in a Catch 22 right now where one group won't give me their sign off until another group does, and the other group won't until the FIRST group does.

Thankfully, Kate flew in last night this morning, and everything today seems a lot better. Time for some Triathlon training!

A magnetized pad of paper for the fridge, for making shopping lists. My last one ran out.

I would love Gmail to timestamp incoming mail with the correct time, NOT 10 hours from now.

That is all. My needs are simple.

Seriously, how does something like that happen?

Also inexplicably absent from my DVD library: Batman Begins, Superman Returns, and Casino Royale.

Movies I'd like to see: Silver Surfer, Waitress, Ocean's Thirteen, and Die Hard 4, about which I have heard many many good things.

My efforts at book revisions are hampered SOMEWHAT by the fact that, on my main computer at home, Word won't let me add new words to the spellcheck dictionary.

Yes, seriously.

Endless.com should be a tribute to Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. Instead, it's an Amazon-like online store for Shoes & Handbags.

Which means:
a) No Sandman references.
b) We may have lost Kate to the Internets.

I decided to treat myself to some ice cream tonight.

However, the ice cream in my freezer was old and kind of bad.

There should be a rule about bad ice cream.

The rule should be "it does not exist."

No, not the holiday season. Though, for me, there is a strong connection between this season and the winter wonderland: stuffed up head and a constant, unrelenting need for tissues.

This is probably the worst time of the year for my allergies. My eyes and nose burn all the time. The sinus pressure is so bad it hurts my TEETH when I chew food. I'm exhausted all the time -- I sleep eight hours and still want to spend every lunch hour napping in my car.

Cannot wait to get to the beach in a few weeks.

U.S. officials have raised a second round of unusually bluntly worded objections to a proposed global-warming declaration that Germany prepared for next month's Group of Eight summit, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Here's a money quote from the U.S. rep:

"The treatment of climate change runs counter to our overall position and crosses multiple 'red lines' in terms of what we simply cannot agree to. . . We have tried to 'tread lightly' but there is only so far we can go given our fundamental opposition."

Nice.

... simply because it is the ONLY thing I couldn't get working 'out of the box' with my Ubuntu format/install on my laptop, and it made me SO FRIGGIN HAPPY when I got it working.

How to: Get Broadcom Wireless cards working in Ubuntu

"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind." -- Aristotle

It's so good. Nathan Fillion is so good.

The ratings for the first night were terrible. I'm sure it's going to be canceled.

But it's So. Good.

Working from home today (more on that later), and while that affords me many opportunities that being in the usual workspace typically curtails, the premiere one these days is the ability to actually post to my blogs. I know: I could be posting from home, after work, but that's evening-time, and between Kaylee and/or my own personal projects, writing up a blog post just takes too much of that time block; only at work do I have that kind of copious free time. (Albeit interspersed between hell-weeks where there aren't enough work hours in the day.)

Anyway, enough about that -- let's not natter away the time when I can actually post, talking about why I can't post. Instead, how about a few week in review posts?

I thought you'd like that. Let's start out with some travel.

I'll back up a few weekends to Easter. Easter was a bit of a challenge this year, due to some last minute plan-changes. I'd planned to be out in NYC that weekend -- had in fact made plans several months in advance, picking the weekend at random and unaware of its holiday status. As the day approached, however, I became aware that it was Easter that we were talking about. So did a number of other people, among which we will include "most of Kate's family."

Example: "Oh, Doyce will be out that weekend? That's nice. Wait... is he BRINGING KAYLEE?!?!?!??? SQUEEEEEEEEEE....."

I don't know that they actually made a sound only dogs can hear, but in my mind, that's exactly what happened. It's worth noting that the question was posed a number of times, both in NYC and locally.

Now, I've traveled out to NYC with Kaylee. It was, in fact, for another holiday -- Christmas -- and while the visit itself was wonderful and full of mirth and wonder, the flights were... fraught. It's not that my little girl isn't a wonderful angelic cherub, but she gets bored when confined to the same restricted space for a few milliseconds long period of time. She loves to spend time with Daddee, but come on: unless you're Lee, there's only so much time you can spend sitting on my lap.

Also, Kaylee's teething, big time. All in all I was, as you might guess, hesitant.

It was Timmy and Madeliene that broke my resolve.

Y'see, Timmy and Miss Madeliene are Kate's niece and nephew. They met Kaylee during the Christmas visit and after some initial shyness and five-year-old assertion of authority on Maddy's part, they pretty much fell in total and complete adoration of Kaylee, to the point where Maddy would immediately demand where I was taking Kaylee if I came to get her when they were all playing together. Kaylee and Maddy look a lot a like (both redheads!) and I think Maddy was simply charmed by that -- honestly, they could be sisters.

When the two learned that Kate and I were engaged and were going to get married, Tim and Maddy immediately asked the only question of any real importance:

"How soon will Kaylee be our cousin?"

It'd like to make yer heart melt, I reckon.

"Fine," I relented, "I'll bring Kaylee out for Easter."

On our second big flight, I learned a few things:
- I really, really don't care if I leave a mess under my seat for the cleaning crew -- I just don't. I want to, but I have bigger fish to fry, you know?
- Trying to keep a teething toddler from kicking the seat in front of you is a little like tongue wrestling a pissed off electric eel in possession of fully functioning rape-whistle.
- At Kaylee's age, CRAYOLA ANTI-ROLL CRAYONS ARE THE BEST THING EVAH -- you can pretty much cross off at least one hour of the flight as "taken care of" with those in your diaper bag.
- The flight back from NYC to Denver is usually going to be much easier than the flight from Denver to NYC: This is partly because the flight out is new and exciting, but also strictly about the numbers -- the flights back from NYC to Denver almost always have an open middle seat between the aisle and the window, whereas the flights out to NYC are PACKED.
- An open middle seat means I can sit there, let Kaylee have her way with the window seat, shield the rest of the plane from her, and maybe even catch a little nap, if she settles down enough.
- I usually sit on the aisle, so I can get up and move around during the flight once or twice with out disturbing a whole row of people. WIth Kaylee, however, window seats are invaluable, and minor disturbing of your fellow travelers definitely falls into the "nice to have, but not remotely critical" column.

Anyway, we got there on Thursday without anyone trying to kill us (it helped that KK and I were sitting in a row with a young middle-school teacher and a kids snowboard instructor who were too busy chatting each other up to let kaylee bother them), and arrived at Kate's just in time for supper and bedtime.

Bedtime was a big new adventure for Kaylee, because it didn't involve a crib. Instead, I'd bought and brought along an air mattress and pump. With a little ingenious arrangement, we actually put most of the mattress under Kate's bed, leaving a perfectly Kaylee-sized end sticking out on my side. Six months ago, this would have been an impossible arrangement, as the girl flopped around in her sleep like a beached halibut, but she's settled down quite a lot since then (I've actually converted her crib to the "daybed, with guard rails" mode), and I was curious what she'd do when she found herself in a sleeping arrangement she could easily get up and leave.

The answer? Nothing. In short, she's got the expectation that someone must come get her out of bed, and will stay there until someone does. I'm sure that wonderful state won't last forever, but for right now I'm very happy about it; for Kaylee "bedtime" means quiet self-play, or sleep, and not much else. It definitely doesn't mean "get back up because I don't want to sleep yet." I won't be very happy the first time she tries that move, I'm sure.

Friday was a pretty uneventful, lazy day. Using Kaylee as a convenient excuse, we basically lazed around the apartment all day, playing and watching kids shows and cooking stuff for a quiet little get together that night. Matt and Ali (redhead) came over, Keeley (Kate's roomate) and his girlfriend Paula (redhead) were there, and we spent the first part of the evening being charmed by the little girl and commenting on the fact that almost half the people in the room were redheads, and the last part of the evening playing a great card-game called Bang -- I was the sherrif for this game, and lasted a remarkably long time, thanks in no small part to my wanton cunning use of DYNAMITE and GATLING GUNS to enforce the law, as mandated by the god-fearing tax payers of the New Mexico Territory, amen.

Saturday, Kate's mom earned an early sainthood by driving into the city to pick us up, thus avoiding any need on our part to call a car service or take the train out. The half hour drive ended in a delicious breakfast/brunch, at which point in time we put Kaylee down for a nap and Kate and I headed out to look at possible locations for our wedding reception. I was a little nervous about leaving Kaye and Barbara in Kaylee's clutches for several hours, but it all worked out fine: in the time it took us to look at our two a-list locales (and decide on one, which we totally did) and get home, Kaylee napped: she basically woke up just as we pulled back into the driveway.

The rest of the afternoon involved some quality time with the little girl, during which we watched part of the Curious George movie, which -- can I just recommend that to everyone with kids? And really to everyone without kids? It's a great, fun, funny time, and I really really enjoyed it -- so much so that I actually went back in and finished watching it after Kaylee went to bed. Fantastic soundtrack, too.

Side Note: Kate's mom has a piano. Kaylee ... LOVES that piano.

Sunday was a big Schafer family Easter -- great food, an easter egg hunt combined with a really good detective-style treasure hunt that led ultimately to full-sized easter baskets for each kid, concealed around the house.

And, of course, Madeleine and Kaylee, glued to each other, the whole day.

Did I mention they're both redheads? :)

I can't, honestly, get to anything from my work 'internet' connection anymore. Not this site, not GMail. Certainly not any of the sites I read on a daily basis.

Amazon.com though... that I can get to. Words fail me.

I'd feel less annoyed by this if I had anything at all to do today, but it's a 'quiet' day with absolutely no to-dos -- a lull before the storm, I suppose, but the bottom line is that even with nothing to "distract" me, I still had no WORK to do. :P I honestly don't think these sorts of measures do any damn good -- my perhaps cynical take on the modern workplace is that people already work exactly as hard as they ever will -- blocking the stuff they do when they're bored isn't going to change that; it'll only change what they do when they're bored.

Me? I read a book.

Adding to that frustration is the fact that the rest of the week is going to be eaten by three full days worth of "Orientation" meetings for a new project I'm joining -- which I've already at least partly gone through, as I'm PART of the training team for the program. I'll be astonished lucky if I don't fall asleep.

Blogging during the day is somewhat hindered at the moment... apologies for the relative silence: I'm fiddling with a workaround.

Whereas my 'Kaylee on my head' shots should really be called "The Redcap Adventures."

(Or possibly "how sunlight and short light hair can make Doyce look friggin bald.")

Thanks to Rey (ages ago), I got into blogging. Not too very long after that, ***Dave got into blogging and, between the two of us, we've co mutually explored what blogging is about -- what's good about it, what's bad about it, and what the dangers and pitfalls are to the medium. These discoveries became (for me) informal guidelines to follow when blogging, then good rules to observe, and finally (at least for me) the unconscious, inarguable constraints that are "just part" of blogging.

Usually these little rules come after a painful episode where something bit you in the ass:

• You said something about someone who was pissing you off, because you wanted to vent, and they saw it, or a mutual friend did, and drama drama drama.
  
• You bitched about work, and a coworker read it, and showed it to your boss, and drama drama drama.
  
• And so on.
  

What's interesting about this -- or why it came back up to the forefront of my mind, now -- is that some folks I know have recently started blogging (or LiveJournaling, or posting on their MySpace page (why MySpace? WHyyyyyyyyyy?), and are running headlong into The Problems with Blogging.

Veteran Bloggers, see if this sounds familiar?

"I hate having to edit myself on my blog. It's MY blog."

Hmm... let me see if I can find...

... ah! Here it is:

average bear: Bi-monthly self-indulgent whining post

I think the great secret to blog longevity is this: whenever you have one of those days where you think to yourself...

"why am I doing this anymore? this isn't what I started this for; it's not personal anymore, it's not private, it's not really the Journal that I hoped it would be..."

...that you take no significant action whatsoever in regards to those questions. (Honestly, those 'self doubt' days are the worst times to make decisions about anything.)

See, eventually the mood passes and you can get on with what you've been doing.

My current conundrum:
- I want to have a place where I can literally write exactly what my day's been like, what I did, et cetera, without alienating my friends or editing myself.
- For something like that, it would really be best to write the whole thing offline.
- If it's offline, what's the point?

I wrote that about four years ago. I bet I could find a statement similar to that boldfaced line (if not the whole thing) on ***Dave's blog... or really anyone's blog.

That's the main problem of course -- you're essentially (unless your one of those money-making superbloggers) talking to your friends and coworkers when you write on your blog, also (secondarily) to the world in general, and at some point, you realize that talking about how you love spending every night poking your cat with a barbecue fork... you're going to run into problems with the people you know.

There's an old internet-forum rule for discussions that goes like this: "If you wouldn't say to someone's face whatever you're about type in a message -- don't type it." The blog corollary is: "If you wouldn't say this to a room full of your friends, commingling with your coworkers and some family members -- well, don't blog it."

Ugh. Rules.

That's the most annoying Problem with Blogging, but there are more. How do I know? Easy: I did a Google search for "the problem with blogging" and collected some other thoughts on the subject. Here's what The Internets say:

The Problem with Blogging...

• ...is that occasionally, a reader will send you something that makes your head explode.
  Yep, just when you thought you were going to have a nice easy day of talking about the Grammys and posting links to boingBoing articles, someone points out something incredibly stupid about the war in Iraq, and you just have to post something angry that ruins your day. The other aspect of that is when you get someone who comments on your blog with something so... umm... frustratingly... challenging that you just wish you'd never seen it.
  
• ... is that it's so shamelessly self-indulgent.
  Heh. Yeah. To blog is to admit that you like talking about you, and stuff you're interested in, and everyone else.... well, they can get their OWN blog!
  
• ... for me, "Gone are the days of writing."
  and...
  
• ... is one sets a standard. And sometimes it's hard to maintain.
  Blogs are time-consuming. This post will have taken me more than an hour, almost two, to get together, tweak, comment on, and format. One post. It bites into the time you have in a day, and if you build up a habit of high-quality (or high-quantity) posting that happens to be time-consuming -- that means that you're either ALWAYS going to be taking up that much time, or you cut down on the blogging and find yourself posting apologies for not keeping the flow up at it's accustomed level. I distinctly remember someone, last year, saying to Jackie "Hey, where have your Quote of the Days been?!?" and her "I'm sorry! I'm really busy!" reply. I've been there. I've done that. It kinda sucks.
  
• ... is that you can never see what goes on behind the scenes in the lives of these people.
  The toughest things about blogs are that people who usually mean well think they know how your life is going and what's going on with it, based on your blog, and the fact of the matter is this -- it's better than nothing, but everything that anyone puts in a blog, that you read, is taken out of context. Always. For all intents and purposes, there are no exceptions.
  
• ... is how easy it is to be misinterpreted.
  Heh. See above. The blogging format encourages you to write quickly and informally, which sometimes mean you don't choose your words quite as carefully as you might. This can leave you wide-open for flames and criticism, by people who sometimes get what you're saying and sometimes don't.
  
• ... is that it creates a culture of impermanence.
  
  
• ... is that it creates a culture of gossip.
  Something that seems to have dribbled onto the blogosphere from Web forums.
  
• ... is that it creates a culture of spin-control, revisionism, and censorship.
  Blogs tend to get quietly, retroactively edited for content by people who've said things they later find inconvenient, and visitor comments that don't suit the blogger's agenda get quietly deleted. God knows I've done it, as much as I don't like to. History is written by the victor, and if a blog page is exclusively "yours," well, you're always the winner, aren't you? The ability to authoritatively 'publish' your version of history is a terribly tempting thing.
  
• ... is that it creates a false sense of connection to your friends, without the same level of communication that talking face to face/phone calls/even email afford.
  Yeah... nothing more to add there.
  

I still enjoy blogging. It's incredibly valuable to me as a scrapbook, daily notebook, daily snapshot, and a public journal.

Aside from the problems, there are great, great things about blogging...

... maybe next time, I'll post about THAT.

U.S. troops to forgo training in rush to Iraq.

Jesus wept.

So I'm being a typical neurotic writer in need of babysitting right now -- I'm working on a third draft of Hidden Thingsight now -- I've got an outline/list of things I need to add/tweak in the story, and I keep circling the end of the story with a frown on my face, because it does not make me happy. In the last couple days, it's felt more like 'circling the drain' circling.

I had a burst of creative emotional energy on Tuesday and literally could not WAIT to get to my keyboard. Of couse, when I did get to my keyboard, the first thing I did was get caught up on a long weekend of work and personal emails, fiddled with some other online to-dos, and by the time I was done, I couldn't even bring myself to open the document.

Ugh.

After beating myself up about it for awhile (and being wisely told to talk to Kate, a suggestion I shrugged away, because she's got tons going on right now), I talked to Kate.

"Go read Teresa's Writing Journey," Kate said. "Now. Do it."

So I went. I read.

Late winter is a bad time for me. I'd managed to hold off the doldrums with regular exercise, but we had a fierce cold snap and I just couldn't do it. But for some reason, I just couldn't figure out myself that my writing blahs were related.

So imagine me slapping my forehead. Hard. Back in South Dakota, I used to have a Regular February Flipout -- toward the end of the month, every year, I'd just get so worn thin and worn out and wound tight that I just spun out. I attribute a lot of this to the lack of sunlight in winter months up there, and I rarely if ever experience it here in Colorado, with all its warmth and sun, but...

... cold snap.
... lots of snow.
... few group activities.
... exercise in the last two months that I can count on one hand.
... reading more online journals than offline fiction.

Right. Duh.

So... I'll see you guys later. I'm going to go outside, walk somewhere (anywhere!) for lunch. Tonight, I'm going to the gym.

Heading to South Dakota with Kaylee and Kate, both of whom I expect to be shocked into speechlessness by the... umm... stark... beauty of the bitter cold.

Like everything else, there isn't a lot of internet connection out there, so I'll see you guys on Monday.

Happy birthday to Kate, who is spending her Special Day stuck at La Guardia airport. Her flight has been waiting to take off... for... four hours, so far.

I really hope the flight finally goes. Yes, we have dinner reservations, and we're supposed to be driving back to South Dakota tomorrow night with Kaylee, all of that stuff, yes, sure -- that's all true.

But aside from all that? I just want her to be here.

So there was a news tagline on the TV yesterday (David over on What Was I Thinking already mentioned it) that read "Should candy makers be banned from marketing to kids?" I couldn't stop and watch it, because Kaylee had some Dragontales that NEEDED to be watched, and I can't find a direct link to any kind of web-parallel to this, but my searching did dig up this related article.

Democrat Senator Tom Harkin yesterday sent a strong message to the food industry, saying that it must move swiftly to stop the advertising aimed at children that was creating a "botched" generation. His speech was given at a joint conference of the American Advertising Federation, the American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Association of National Advertisers. Harkin made it clear to the advertisers that if they did nothing to reduce or even stop advertising to children, then the only way forward would be to instigate legislation.

Tom Harkin is a fucking idiot, pandering to parents who want another scapegoat for the sacrificial altar of their own kid's well being. Yes, that article is old, but clearly the idea is still out there, as shown by the piece televised yesterday, and that idea is sheer damn idiocy.

Little kids don't by candy. They don't buy sugary snacks, or surgary cereal, or wrongbad food of any kind. They don't drive through McDonalds four out of every five days on the way home from daycare. They don't prepare mac and cheese so often that it replaces vegetables as a food group.

Their parents do. You do. I do. We are the ones making those decisions (or, more often, shutting up the toddler whining by shoving a kid's meal into the noise-making orifice). Us. The Adults.

Does advertising make kids want stuff? Yes. In fact, advertising makes everyone want stuff -- that's what advertising is for -- it's up to us to show our children that there's actually a step between seeing an ad and buying the product in which one stops and actually thinks about whether or not the thing itself is necessary, healthy, or even mildly appealing for more than two minutes.

Someone might come along and say that the ads can inform bad decisions in pre-teens and teens who do have some disposable cash and the freedom to spend it when they're out and away from parental supervision. Yes, teens can do stupid stuff when they're not being watched. That's not news, people -- and it's not new. The only way those kids learn to make better decisions is if they see it in their guardians, when they are small.

Here. Now. Us.

Not legislation and bans.

Thought and Will.

/soapbox

It's that cold. I'm the fillet in the upper left, there.

Something like 1 degree Farenheit this morning, with 'highs' to reach 19 or something. Wind chill pushing everything a bit lower than that, of course.

It's been a long long time since I've lived in South Dakota and had to deal with weather like this regularly. I have now had the chance to revisit that type of winter wonderland thanks to Denver's prolonged cold snap, and lemme tell you, I don't miss it at all.

More later, once I thaw out.

"Over the river and through the woods,
Oh how the wind does blow,
It stings the toes,
And bites the nose,
As over the ground we go"

That's all. It's just been a crappy morning.

I can't believe that, a few weeks ago, I told someone my favorite holiday tune was "Let it Snow." What was I thinking?

Still, it is very pretty, afterwards...

(Click for bigger picture.)

Pix is by Kate, unforgiveably reduced in size by me so that my file upload restrictions would accept it.

Update: Kate posted more pictures on her site (and obliquely mentions that I stole the best picture for average-bear; does she not know that 'stealing' is how I get all my best picture? Sheesh!)

There are (at the very, very least) two things that I'm absolute rubbish at:

1. Staying in regular contact and communication with people who are geographically seperated from me. (Bonnie? Virg? Feel free to back me up on this.)
2. Saying goodbye. Goodbye's are a total crap idea in general, and I'd rather have no part in them.

These days, I have to (a) be very good at #1 and (b) deal with the second thing on a distastefully regular basis.

Some days, like today, it really really sucks.

Via Dave (but not strictly following the same rules for sentence selection), my 2006, summarized with one sentence from one blog post, per month.

January: I've never seen Casablanca. I've never seen It's a Wonderful Life. In fact there are a ton of classic films for which I couldn't even summarize the plot.

February: I've been on my new job 12 days.

March: "To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness." -- Bertrand Russell

April: Started another Storyball project this month.

May: Today was the final divorce court hearing, rubberstamping everything. Comfortingly anticlimatic.

June: Dear World, I am on the ropes, I swear. You don't need to pull out the end-of-Rocky2-punch, okay? I fucking give. Love, Doyce

July: Placeholder post to talk about how Kaylee started walking one month ago, yesterday, and has quickly become a motorscooter of walking mobility.

August: My last day with my current company is today. My new job (longer commute, but otherwise what looks like a pretty significant improvement in other ways) begins on Monday.

September: The Saturn basically blew up on Friday morning. Dave loaned me his car in the meantime (thanks, Dave!), and by Saturday at noon, I had new car.

October: I have nothing more to add here. Prague is great.

November: I'm thankful for the wonder that is my daughter. Every day is a new smile, a new private joke, a new giggle, a new way she's growing up and watching and learning and shining like an amazing shining thing. She is my Falling Down. She is my saving grace.

December: Kaylee and I are taking our first airplane ride together this Friday!

Metro area paralyzed by blizzard; CDOT seeks help to plow

Again I say, as I have for most of the last 24 hours: "Holy Friggin' Crap!"

A BLIZZARD WARNING is in effect through noon on Thursday for the I-25 corridor from Monument Hill north through Denver, Fort Collins and into Cheyenne, Wyo. as well as the adjacent plains all the way into Nebraska.

Travel conditions continue to be hazardous over the eastern plains with 50 mph winds. Motorists are urged to stay off the roads. Additionally, wind chills will dip dangerously low reaching down to negative 10 degrees.

Denver International Airport remains closed, and plans to stay closed until Thursday evening. 4500 passengers are currently trapped at DIA.

Snowfall should taper off to flurries sometime around 2:30 pm this afternoon, but high winds will still produce blowing and drifting over exposed areas.

Skies are expected to clear Thursday night with lows in the lower teens, but winds could still blow snow into drifts over the northeast corner of the state. Conditions are not expected to improve until Friday.

CDOT has put out a call for appropriately equipped contractors to help with plowing. Willing contractors should have snow removal equipment or loaders equipped with chains. Suitably equipped contractors are asked to call CDOT.

And I love their closer:

Due to the cold weather and blizzard conditions it is recommended that owners bring all pets indoors during this snow storm.

Got me laughing, I'm sure in some part due to the mandatory Canadian French document translation I'm dealing with right now:

Via Story-Games:

"The amusing irony to me is that I actually had an image of Canadians as complete, flaming tools, an image which has been slowly worn away with time and an understanding that they are not all actually Quebecois."

Allow me to answer that question with a quote:

"I'm so far behind, I think I'm ahead."

So RTD-Denver is opening three new "Light Rail" tracks on Friday, greatly expanding the capacity and usefulness of the electric-powered commuter system that's slowly grown in popularity in the Denver area (home of the 2nd worst traffic in the U.S.).

This is all to the good, as far as I'm concerned. In the past, I'd rarely had any reason to use the bus or rail systems (I either worked really close to home, or in Golden, which has no good mass transit connections to Greater Denver). These days, however, I'm working downtown, so the light rail system has been great for cutting down on my gas consumption (I've only filled up my tank once in November) and mileage (my odometer has been at 3300 or something for a month).

Except...

See, this morning, they started running new radio ads for Lightrail. Groanworthy puns abound.

"It's 'rail' new, and 'rail' fun, and 'rail' fast!"

"You don't need any 'train'ing to use the light rail!"

I'm very much behind these additions to the system.

Despite the ads.

It took me a long time to start voting. Specifically, about 30 years (or, to be fair, 13 years of actual eligibility). My first trip to a balloting station was four years ago, and while it was a largely frustrating result all-around, it felt good to do.

That made yesterday really frustrating. I misunderstood the instructions about where and when I'd be able to vote and planned accordingly. When I found out that I couldn't, in fact, vote where I'd planned to (and then drive straight from work to downtown Denver for an evening appointment), I had to tear down to Highlands Ranch in hopes of getting into a voting station there.

Riiiiight.

Let's put it this way: Jackie got to the voting station about 3:30. At 4:30 she called to ask if I could pick up Kaylee for her, since she wasn't going to be done by 5pm. I did, took Kaylee to the voting station, handed her off to Jackie (and noted her place in line, and the fact that the line to vote ran OUT THE DOOR), then headed downtown, carrying a load of regret and guilt for not staying.

A little after six, I got a text from Jackie: Kaylee had given up on her cherub-like patience with the democratic process and Jackie had had to head back to her place. She's stayed in line for over two hours, and still hadn't gotten halfway through the line to vote. The line was still out the door when she left, and that voting station had only 10 voting machines working. That was one of only four similarly-equipped stations in the whole of Highlands Ranch. I believe the word she used was "livid."

The gist: I shouldn't feel bad for choosing to make my appointment, because even if I'd stayed, I wouldn't have gotten to vote. Fine. Still... it sucks, and if I'd known about my misunderstanding in the first place, I could have bypassed it by heading out to vote in mid-afternoon, swapping vote-skipping-guilt for work-skipping-guilt.

Eh.

Finally, although it's generally (aside from the embarrassment of the gay marriage bans) good news in Colorado (which is officially a blue state for the first time in something like fifty-plus years), that's even a little frustrating, since I had no part in it.

Next time, I'm doing what I did LAST time -- early-morning, 7am voting. So there.

Until then, props to folks like Dave and Margie and De and Kate and all the rest of you who did manage to get out and vote, as well as frustrated folks like Jackie, who tried and simply couldn't.

Forgot my security card at home today, which means I'm essentially trapped at my desk -- pretty much everywhere I need to go in the building requires either the card to beep through, or standing by the door, staring through and miming 'lemme in' at everyone who goes by, which... yeah... no, not really, thanks.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

To be specific, 0 people have my first name (according to this site -- I don't know if that's entirely accurate), and a little over 3000 people have my last name, which makes it uncommon enough that the thousands is the significant digit in its popularity rating.

And yet, there's a commercial company out there that has registered my surname as a .com, and is graciously willing to charge me (and the "thousands of other [yoursurnamehere] users already registered with us") for the right to use myfirstname@mylastname.com as my email address.

Hmm.

... is Sweetest Day?

Seriously, has ANYONE ever heard of this before? (First time for me was -- predictably -- in a jewelry ad on the radio this week.)

Dear Internets,

All of you, stop what you're doing and clean your mouse.

Seriously. Quite browsing or whatever else you're doing and clean your mouse -- pull that mouseball out and CLEAN in there -- get the gunk off the sensors, pick the hair out from where it's wrapped around the trackwheels, and DEAR GOD WHAT IS THAT STICKY SPOT?!?

Just do it. You (or the next person who uses your desk for a few minutes) will thank me.

Sincerely,

Doyce (working at someone else's desk today -- Ewwww!)

I didn't know it, but I like Aaron Sorkin. Sports Night was an inspired show. Last night, following Heroes, I caught Studio 60 and the Sunset Strip, which I liked a lot. It shares a lot of the same qualities as Sports Night: funny but sad, fictional but political, and (according to a number of industry rags) likely gone very soon.

Unfortunately, my batting average on liking shows that get canceled is still damn near 1000.

I have a theory.

If you mention something on your blog, you're telling me (and the world) about it. It's a conversation, of a sort (albeit a slow one), wherein you answer the question "what's going on today?" You are talking to me and the rest of the folks reading what you're writing. It is not private, and if it was intended to be private, you should use email.

1. (Concise) If you're writing on your blog, it's public, and addressed to whoever wants to read it. We the readers are the other side of the conversation -- the other participants.
2. If you, during this (or any) conversation, coyly allude to details relevant to the conversation that only you (of those involved in the conversation) know about, you should expect someone to ask for more information about the elided details (and in fact may already be expecting, as in: getting someone to ask the question is the POINT).
3. If you then refuse to expand on the information, you are either:
-- a. A malicious fucking tease.
-- b. Ignorant of the point of a blog versus that of email; in other words, have your private conversations privately, and quit piquing my interest on topics you don't have any intention of sharing further.

I read the blogs I read because I care about the people writing them. To ask for more info on a post is to say "this, and you, interest me, and I'm curious to learn more about this topic you publically posted." To be told "no, I'm not doing that," is to be told "no, you're not important enough to know me that well."

Which might be true; I'm automatically not important enough to know about your life, if you don't think I am -- it is, after all, your life -- but you can accomplish my exclusion by sending the message directly to the people who are important enough to know, and leaving the rest of the world out of it. Doing otherwise is simply malicious and arrogant; puerile showing off.

I'm bringing this up here because I've run face first into it about five times this week, and I'm well and truly sick of it, and the people doing it.

Wearing my 'winter' jacket while sitting at my desk, and I'm STILL shivering. Bloody air conditioning is unbearbly cold whenever it's anywhere above 70 outside. Damn.

Damned if I know why, but instances of grammatical mistakes and simple typos in my correspondence has increased exponentially since I started the new job.

Maybe it's my brain, protesting the way every. single. one. of my paychecks has been screwed up in progressively more annoying and detrimental ways. :P

The internets are tangled, and pissing me off.

3M: Technical Support... for Masking Tape.

I'm sorry folks, but if you can't figure out masking tape, a support line is not going to help you.

No, I don't want to be taken out to lunch to 'make up for it' -- I want my goddamn paycheck.

Fuckin' people, man.

Record Consumer Debt, and Rising

For the first time ever recorded, Americans owe more money than they make. Household debt levels have now surpassed household income by more than eight percent, reaching 108.4 percent in 2005, according to a May 2006 study by the Center for American Progress. Consumer debt is now at a record $2.17 trillion, reports the Federal Reserve Board and consumers cashed out a whopping $431 billion in home equity last year.

Now, granted, I did cash out the equity in the Casa this year, but that didn't have anything to do with paying off any debts -- aside from the house payments I made right now, the only actual *debt* I have is a minor amount on credit card with a upper limit someone recently refered to as 'cute', and that fact that there's any balance on it at all is bugging me, honestly.

Surprisingly, the article goes on to say that the source of the problem isn't really bad spending habits on the part of consumers (not counting people diving into ARM loans with no significant down payment), but the fact that no one's getting significant cost of living raises -- why? -- major companies are giving their overflow to their executives.

I am on the ropes, I swear. You don't need to pull out the end-of-Rocky2-punch, okay? I fucking give.

Love,

Doyce

So I had a business situation summed up beautifully yesterday, and I have to give Jackie props for doing it.

* My company has a client.

* Said client is a large client.

* Said client used to have their own training department, retained on staff, full time, even when there wasn't necessarily a lot of work to do. The benefit of this was continuing experience with all the training products. The downside was cost.

* Said client now contracts with our company to develop and administer their training for them. This is much cheaper for the client, as contractors will work on your stuff, and when there's nothing to do, they go work on other projects and don't have to be paid. The downside is the fact that guy who wrote your course six months ago probably WON'T be the guy who updates it today, and the new guy needs to get trained on everything.

* Said client wants a new business model for our relationship: The cost of contracting a training solution, but with a dedicated, full-time staff of people who never leave the team and thus retain knowledge and experience with their offerings.

To which Jackie added, "... and a pony."

Pretty much sums it up.

I have, thus far, dropped or spilled every single thing I have touched with the intent of lunchtime consumption.

"Someone's boring me. I think it's me."
-- Dylan Thomas

So many movies I haven't seen that I'd like to. I think the last thing I saw in the theatre was Serenity.

Actually, no: the last thing I saw in the theatre was Corpse Bride, which means I *wish* the last thing I'd seen was Serenity. Those of you who continue to see good movies, please do continue to let me know that you have, because I'm keeping a list.

What I'm doing right now? Trying to get caught up on all these shows I'm hopelessly behind on:

- Battlestar Galactica (Through the first Season, waiting on the second to come out.)
- MI-5 (Halfway into third season)
- Gilmore Girls (Gosh... umm... Through Season Three, I think :P)
- Lost (I've had the 1st season for awhile now, just cuz I missed chunks of it, but it's one of those things I dunno if I'll ever get caught up on)
- Veronica Mars (see "lost")

Shows I wish I was watching, regularly:
- Scrubs
- BSG
- Veronica Mars

Other stuff I wish I was doing:
- More yard stuff
- Biking (I was going to say 'more biking', but one has to start with something about a zero-sum to say 'more'.)
- More face to face gaming (working on this)

Stuff I am, at least, doing
- Writing -- getting some of this done; quite a bit, really. Not ALL I need to do, but some. In my 'pending' pile is a big rewrite to Hidden Things that needs to add approximately a metric ton of wordcount. I'm not really happy about this, as it's already the story I wanted to tell, which means I need to write another story I want to tell and weave it in. Ahh well.

A some point in the middle of the weekend, I lost my ability to have a morning. By that, I refer to the way a person can:

- Get up without falling down.
- Have a shower without forgetting something important (shaving)
- Get dressed without destroying an article of clothing.
- Have breakfast without spilling something on the clothes they DID manage to get on safely.
- Remember to bring along the things you need for work, as you head off... to work.

*mutters*

Right side of my right hand (right side as you look at it, palm down on a surface) is tingling like it's asleep. Been doing it all morning. Annoying.

Also; you know that meaty part of your hand that's opposite the meaty part where your thumb attaches? The muscles in there keep twitching involuntarily.

Someone tell me it's a stress reaction. That would make sense.

Update:

Right side of my face is doing it too.

"To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness."
-- Bertrand Russell

I'm normally a big fan of Bertrand Russell, but in the case I'd have to disagree.

To wit:
My cell phone (motorola, mentioned previously) lets me send text messages "later." That is to say, it lets me write the message up, and then send it "later", whereupon it will ask me the time and place when I WOULD like it sent. It then UPLOADS the message to the Magic Network, and waits.

And then, at the designated time, even if I myself am not currently in an area with service, even if my phone is OFF, it sends the message to whomever I designated as the recipient (even myself, for use as a handy-dandy reminder), UNLESS I CANCEL IT BEFOREHAND, in which case the whole thing just ceases to be.

Now... text messaging in it's current, commonly-used form is a fairly new technology, at least in the U.S. To my mind, it's only REALLY come on in the last three to five years.

Email has been around... how long?

Right.

Go back and read the description of that feature and tell me how many things there are in those two paragraphs that you CANNOT DO with normal email.

Then join me in asking WHY.

*ahem*

Moving on.

I've been on my new job 12 days. I have worked, at some level, on 8 different projects in that time, due mostly to the fact that the actual project I was slated to take on got moved around a lot.

Friday, I was handed a new 'main' project... and almost all my direct reports... and the client... are in Bangalore.

So, with that, I will direct you to 9 tips for running more productive meetings -- I've got a conference call to run.

Forgot my cell phone, so there will be a delay before I can send out pix and movies from the Denver Aquarium.

Be sad about this, for they are cute.

This morning:

1. Leave house:
2. Three blocks away, realize I forgot my work laptop.
3. Go back, get laptop, take off again.
4. Realize I didn't eat breakfast.
5. Realize there's NO places open for drive-through breakfast on the way to work.
6. Take a big detour to get something at BK.
7. Get to work, get out of the car, get halfway to the building, and realize I forgot my security ID, because I left it downstairs on the coffee table on Friday instead of up with the rest of my stuff -- which is EXACTLY what I said would happen when I first set the damn thing on the table down there.
8. Go back home, get card, get some other crap I forgot.
9. Finally get to work, < 15 blocks away, 35 minutes after I first left the house. :P

So I wrecked my old phone this weekend and had to get a new one. Since I wasn't far enough into my current contract, I didn't get any kind of discount and got kind of raked over the coals on the price, but them's the brakes. I liked my old LG phone a lot, but it's been discontinued, so after a lot of hemming and hawing and bitching about having to get anything in the first place, I chose this Motorola Motorola E815

Pretty cool phone: better pictures than the old phone, and it takes short video -- yeah yeah, it's a phone: what do I need that crap for?

Well, I always have my phone, and I don't always have my DVR camcorder or the 'real' camera... and Kaylee's always doing stuff... so there.

The really annoying thing? I've spent three years at this job, unable to get a decent cellular signal anwhere in the building.

THIS phone works just fine, anywhere in the building.

I find this out eight business days before I leave.

Power went out in the Casa last night around 9:30.

My body -- tapped out by 4 or 5 days of staying up til 3am and getting back up at 6 or 7 am -- took this opportunity to shut down for the night. I crashed in my office armchair and woke up there around 11pm, with the power and lights still out.

Friggin' COLD in there, lemme tell you.

Very glad to have that new thermal sleeping bag in the house. Very useful.

Think the heat/power came back on around or 2am.

"The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities."
-- Sophocles

These things come in threes.

1. Looks like the docs have decided to induce labor a little early, so unless bebe decides to come along earlier, we'll be in the hospital around the 2nd of August. This is largely a matter of mom's comfort, and not any kind of medical need on the part of bebe, who is healthy as a horse and, according to Jackie, shares certain other horse-like qualities.

It does, however, take away one weekend I was going to do projects.

This has been mitigated somewhat by Justin and Jackie being AWESOME last night and putting together bebe's crib while I was still at work. One less thing to do, and the major block to our moving other stuff back into the bebe room.

2. Work is a mass of deadlines of which I am the Project Manager. One of my developers just quit yesterday, was escorted out of the building today ("Thanks, we're kinda glad to see you go anyway, so don't worry about those last two weeks, here's your buh-bye package, so... buh-bye), and his project that was due for beta testing today is a horrorshow.

To quote Bad Boys, this is fucking with my timetable.

3. Jake got in a pretty bad fight this morning with a dog he saw as a threat. Jake is fine - the other dog is at the vet, so... one more expense and one more stress I didn't need -- probably a large one.