January 2003 Archives

Picked Bear up from the vet this evening...his original appointment was just to have him be fixed, but I had them check out the limp he's been showing the last week or two. I had a feeling it was going to be bad when they called me at work and recommended taking x-rays.
I stopped by after work and they showed me the results. Our puppy has almost no hip sockets. The limp is caused by his joint popping in and out while he's walking. He hardly ever even gave us any indication anything was wrong.
It's killing me to think that he's been in any pain over the last few weeks/months, and that his joints are this bad this young. The vet recommended a surgery that will help him quite a bit, and she said that down the road he won't even be bothered by it.
I hate to see him with the e-collar he's wearing now (to avoid chewing on his stitches) and knowing he's going to have to have it on for another week after he heals up from this one.
I want my playful puppy back.

Well, I don't know where to start. I was going to bitch about FF's link icon not showing up properly last week, but then all of a sudden I go to put this week's in and the entire text just drops nicely into place, no cut and paste or anything.
I think it's just dumb luck, as I tend to randomly highlight sites as I read them, but I'll take it.
I've also just realized that the css changes I made to make Mozilla happy (why did I do that again?) are making IE 5.5 barf. Nothing like catering to the minority...
the friday five
1. Where do you currently work?
Northrop Grumman Information Technology
Good place for me, the pace suits my style, I get to do DoD oriented projects, and I have an office. What more can a man ask for?
2. How many other jobs have you had and where?
I'm not going to do the math and give a number, but here they are.

• Ranch hand - working cattle for my parents, baling hay, etc.


• Fireworks salesman - what's better than marketing a way to blow yourself up?


• Line Operator, Inteplast - what's worse than making plastic produce bags? Doing it for 12 hours a day, that's what


• Conner's Corner Cashier - yep, a convenience store. Best day was when a woman bought a Sunday paper in the newspaper machine outside (that we didn't own), demanded a refund (which I denied) because the paper didn't contain coupons , and then attempted to buy Fritos with said paper.


• Stockroom flunky - Texas Union Microcenter. This job kicked ass. On campus, laid back, musician co-workers. If they'd stayed open I might still be there. Underpaid, of course, but mellow.


• Tech Support, IBM Global Services - originated the phrase, "The customer always lies". They did, too.


• Software Engineer, NGIT - see above and below

3. What do you like best about your job?
Everything in #1
4. What do you like least about your job?
Sometimes it feels too big, but most everything is contained within my office, so I'm sheltered from the majority of the politics & policies.
5. What is your dream job?
I've often thought something in photography, but there's little market for the kind of photography I want given that my name isn't Ansel Adams. I guess at this point my dream job is having enough (see: a ton) of money to tinker around with my hobbies and get proficient at them.

I was listening to this on the way home this evening. Resonated with my mood...just a lot of stuff weighing on me. Seems like the only thing that makes me contemplate it at all is music.
Lyrics stolen shamelessly from here.
Postal fever, Dow Jones
N'Sync, Rolling Stones
Nasdaq, Taliban
Income dies, Vidal Salon
Crack babies, School Prayer
Columbine, Electric Chair
World hunger, dot.com
It's time to drop the honeybomb
It's time to make the world a better place
Let your love lay your fears to waste
Cuz everything you think you know is wrong
It's time to get together and drop the honeybomb
It's time to let the light shine from within
Don't fight the feeling, just give in
No matter who you are and where you're from
It's time to get together..drop the honeybomb
Ethnic cleansing, CIA
Ghetto Nation, Getaway
Global warming, national debt
Unemployment, biothreat
Hunger strikes, income tax
Hate crimes, Officemax
MTV & teenage mom
It's time to drop the honeybomb
It's time to make the world a better place
Let your love lay your fears to waste
Cuz everything you think you know is wrong
It's time to get together and drop the honeybomb
It's time to let the light shine from within
Don't fight the feeling, just give in
No matter who you are and where you're from
It's time to get together..drop the honeybomb
Got to get mine, then get yours
Got to get his, then get hers
It's all about the cash & clothes
Got to get me some of those
Nike..Diesel..Gucci..Saks
Dolce & Gabana slacks
Ambercrombe..Prada..Gap
Just can't get enough of that
It's time to make the world a better place
(Lay your love) lay your fears to waste
Cuz everything you think you know is wrong
It's time to get together and drop the honeybomb
It's time to let the light shine from within
Don't fight the feeling, just give in
No matter who you are and where you're from
It's time to get together..drop the honeybomb
Greed & sloth & ignorance
That's circumstantial evidence
The world we seem to hold so dear
Only seems to nurture fear
Distrust drives the world apart
Brings us down and breaks our heart
There's the storm before the calm
It's time to drop the honeybomb
It's time to make the world a better place
Let your love) lay your fears to waste
Cuz everything you think you know is wrong
It's time to get together and drop the honeybomb
It's time to let the light shine from within
Don't fight the feeling, just give in
No matter who you are and where you're from
It's time to get together..drop the honeybomb
It's time to make the world a better place
Let your love lay your fears to waste
Cuz everything you think you know is wrong
It's time to get together and drop the honeybomb
It's time to let the light shine from within
Don't fight the feeling, just give in
No matter who you are and where you're from
It's time to get together..drop the honeybomb
The honeybomb.....
The honeybomb.....

Present company excluded, of course.
The rest of you should heed these.
It's no wonder we're living inside the asylum.

1. Where are you right now?
At my desk at work. Oddly enough, I'm not working.
2. What time is it?
10:19 a.m.
3. What are you wearing?
Something from Abercrombie that I always refer to as a sweater but really isn't, jeans, Doc Martens.
4. Any people or animals around you? Describe them.
No. No.
5. What are your plans for the weekend?
Heading back to Ganado for a wedding Saturday, playing some basketball on Sunday. Relaxing, as usual.

Last night's dream was rather epic. The thread tying everything together was that I was some heroic character, pursuing some characters but being chased by others trying to keep me from achieving my destiny.
There were many separate vignettes:
Driving my car down a gravel road, losing control many times. My car had been hit in the parking lot (or I'd wrecked it before parking) and both fenders as well the rear end had been seriously damaged.
Attending a concert of some washed up 70's band and being robbed while there. Deciding to go to Double Dave's afterward for peproni rolls.
Driving through the streets of Mexico City trying to lose a car that was tailing me. Parking in the garage of some combined shopping center/hotel and getting a room in an attempt to escape the hoods that were trying to kill me. The hotel room was where I finally obtained the magic knife. It was some four-bladed device that was infinitely sharp. Once I got my hands on it, my enemies became much more cooperative.

Went to Freebird's today for lunch...it's been a while. One must admire their superiority over the chain-ness that is Chipotle. In fact, we did. Thanks to Mike for the moment of silence.
I've been trying to become a more regular blood donor (only one more till my first official gallon!) and Brian and Mike decided to join me in doing so after lunch. No amount of persuasion or peer pressure was going to convince Tate to follow along.
Arriving at the Blood and Tissue Center at noon proved to me that I'm doing the right thing by usually going at 10:00 a.m. instead. It took us about an hour just to do the screening, usually I've got a needle in my arm after 15 minutes.
The original plan was for the three of us to have the "Great Blood Challenge" of 2003, seeing who had the best drain rate. The center was so busy that idea went out the window. Good thing, too.
I was first to the donor chair and was almost done with my donation by the time Brian got seated. I finished up and went to the canteen to wait for him and Mike while I enjoyed my cookies.
I knew something was wrong when I saw Brian come in with wraps on both arms. Turned out that his first draw was adjusted badly, resulting in air in his bag. The second attempt in his other arm went through both sides of the vein...another failed attempt. They finally got the bleeding stopped and turned him loose. Nearly two hours of sitting and nothing to show for it.
Mike had more success with his first career donation. They had to manually weigh his bag rather than using the agitator-scale, but he emerged unscathed.
For anyone that's never donated before...don't let Brian's story scare you off. Every time I've donated, it's been a painless process. You're doing something good both for yourself and up to four other people. Look into it.

Something has caused my recent dreams to be much more emotionally charged. I keep waking up with the residual feelings that I've expressed in my sleep.
The last dream I had before waking up was one of standing in line. There was a crowd of well-dressed people in an old theater, so old that it seemed musty. The lines were not well-managed, people kept cutting in front of each other and me. By the time my wife and I got to the counter, we were already concerned about being late for whatever performance it was we were attending.
After shuffling through stacks of tickets and making a phone call, the kid behind the counter informed me that although they had a record of my purchase, my tickets were being held at Will Call in Edna (a small Texas town neighboring my hometown). I assured him (not calmly) that I had explicitly stated that I wanted the tickets held at this location, and I wanted them now.
After I realized getting angry was getting me nowhere (and also after sticking my head through the ticket window and shouting at the employee), I asked for the manager so I could at least be mad at someone in charge.
After about another 10 minutes, the manager finally found our tickets. They were in an envelope with my father-in-law's name on it. For some reason he had used our credit card recently, which transferred all our purchases into his name. The manager gave us a plate of chicken and mashed potatoes to make up for the mistake. We sat down to eat, but I worried the entire time about missing the first part of the show.
We never made it into the theater.

"You are sociable and entertaining"
Damn skippy!
Has anyone else noticed the trend of the fortune-free fortune? The lottery numbers on the back indicate more about your future than the words on the front. Most times I'd rather get "you will meet a dark stranger" than the boring sentiments expressed these days.
But you can't argue with sociable and entertaining.

Because then I might have more creative ideas for my site design. I guess it's supposed to work the other way around, though.
I'm not unhappy with things now (other than needing to finish setting up my photo galleries), it's just that I roam the web and see lots of cool pages that I have no clue how to implement and make me wish I could come up with those things myself.
I expect there will be some changes over the next few months; I really want to make things more robust and handle most browsers reasonably well. I also want to be cool, damnit.

"The riches of others makes you more valuable"

by me!
Being the official timekeeper for last night's New Year's party was one of the high points (so far) of 2003. I knew setting my watch against the atomic clock would pay off someday.
Here's to a great New Year!