Entry... 4/3/2000 9:23am

I haven't even been at work for a whole hour, and already I am ready to leave. Don't these people have a freaking clue?

Entry... 4/4/2000 8:57am

Well this month is going great so far. Yesterday afternoon, like a complete idiot, I wiped out my journal entries from the weekend. I had written up a nice long entry, had some links, talked about last week, some movies that I rented over the weekend, the things I did. I had posted the punchline to a joke yesterday, but the joke was blown away. Of course, the entry wasn't great literary prose in any shape or form, and the world will not end because it is gone forever. I just hate the feeling of loss. You'd think I'd be used to it by now. So, onward. No looking back. I am not going to bother to recreate the entry. Too much happened to try to fit it all in again, and I couldn't recapture the essence of it. Let's just pretend I was a lazy ass and didn't write at all this weekend. That's an easier truth to swallow.

Last night, I was supposed to go out and have a few microbrews with my new boss and new colleagues who are visiting from Colorado and Alabama. But, alas, I got blown off. So instead I went to see High Fidelity, the new movie with John Cusack. I really liked this film. Great characters, witty, and funny - it was the Empire Records movie that Empire Records wanted to be. Not a lot of stuff blowed up good, of course, but worth your time.

Entry... 4/11/2000 6:30pm

Well, I suppose you could say that April's log is suffering. And I suppose I could say that you're right. I have little chance at work to reflect and write here (not that I have anything amazingly observant to contribute), and little chance at home. A lot has occured in the week since I last wrote. Perhaps I'll try to play a little catch up here and now.

One word. SNOW?!?!?!?!?!!?!? This is April, people! Can we start the month over please? After enjoying a great start to spring, and one 70 degree day, we got nailed with a heavy, wet, slushy snow. 13 inches of it in one day where I live. And the lawn had just turned green, too. It's just not right.

I had a major blowout with a member of my organization yesterday. I won't even say that he is a coworker, but someone I understand works for us down in another site. He developed some shoddy, home grown application that he has installed on some users machines so they can do an extract from one database system into another. It's a cobb job, but he'd be the last to admit that he has no idea what he is doing. Just to get it to work a few months ago, he enlisted the help of a few people in my office. The application has been working until Friday. Then things went bad for him. Instead of trying to figure out exactly why the app was no longer working, he pretty much demands my immediate attention on the issue and dictates to me some solution that, in all honesty, just doesn't make sense to do. I balk, instead wanting to know exactly what this app does and how so that we can explore networking or client/server side issues. He accuses me of intentionally holding up the works, and that there is much downward pressure to gt the job done right NOW. I find myself all alone on this, since my supervisors have all left on business trips. I basically do enough research to prove that what he is asking me to do will not solve the problem, and I was right to balk. However, I have come up with a laundry list of other possibilites. In a 5 o'clock conference call that will live in infamy, between me and him and a tech down there, he suddenly bursts forth with "Ok guys, we've been dicking around with this thing for so long that we've lost a day, I am now going to leave the room and you two figure out a way to get it down before anyone goes home!" With that he left, and stormed out of the building. How about them apples? Needless to say, we just went home. Today, I make my follow up calls and learn that he has come up with some work around to the problem. This he could have done in the first place without involving me, nor going so far as to treat me and the other tech like children. The insolent bastard!

There is a great conspiracy afoot. It involves light bulbs. One year ago, I had my car inspected. It badly, and I mean badly, needed new tires. But I am a broke assed, down on my luck kind of guy, and I couldn't afford tires. I took the car to an inspection place that actually refused to inspect my car because of the condition of the tires. So, still being broke, I merely took it somewhere else. Through the window, and across the brightly lit work floor, I could see the tech walking around my car. I then saw him walk away from my car for a very long time. I waited, quivering with fear of rejection, for the tech to return from the floor. He appeared. "Sir?" "Yes?," I almost shouted, fearing the worst. "It appears you need a license plate bulb." "Oh... is that it?" "Yep, that'll do her, sir." "Well, go right ahead, son!" So, I got the inspection and got soaked for a simple lightbulb. But, hey, I wasn't going to complain! As inspection time rolls around again, I find myself once again in trouble with the car. It has great tires. Great brakes. Everything is fine excet for a crack running right down the middle of my windshield. They tell me that cracks, if out of the line of vision, will not prevent you from passing an inspection. This crack was safely out of sight, until last Sunday night, when it took a nasty left turn and crossed right in front of the driver's eyes. Nice. So today, I had one of those Insta-Windshield places come and replace the glass right in the parking lot at work. I was actually surprised at the low price. Buoyed by my good fortune, I decided to take the beast to get inspected right away (before something else broke.) And so I did. The first place I went (Yes, the same dolts who passed it last year) didn't have an inspector on duty. Curses! But I stopped on a lark on another place and they took the car right in. I watched the early news, read an article about a company that manufactures caskets at a rate of one every 53 seconds (wow!), and waited. And waited. Before long, the tech came out and said "Well, sir, the car is clean... but it needs one thing." "Yes?" (Ready for this?) "The license plate bulb is burned out. I can replace it for you." With a wave of my hand, the deed was done. New bulb. The Orange sticker is mine. Expensive car this month. Insurance is also due. Tch. Does it ever end?

Let's see... what else, what else. My company announced another acquisition/merger that scared off all the stockholders and the street price plummeted like a duck shot out of the sky. Even more unexpected resignations followed. My winter Volleyball league is done. We had the playoffs last week and were, of course, eliminated right away. Looking back, I'm glad that I tried to play in a league that was above me, as it forced my game to a higher level. I have much more confidence on the court these days. My summer team has shaped up, and I must have missed a meeting because I got named Captain. The last time I missed a meeting, I was elected President and couldn't get out of it for 8 years. We are supposedly floating the docks this weekend at the club, and I look in great shape to have the cash for my new motor by the end of the month. I will now start to make the nagging, whining "Can I have my boat back, please?" calls tomorrow. The lake, by the way, is way above normal this year, and the new legislation that will keep the reservoir from being emptied goes into effect, so we will have lots of water to play in all summer long.

So all in all, we got some great things going on, some really bad things going on, and some so-so things. Life, right?

"I'm very fond of stupidity. I think it's probably the most important and least understood aspect of American life. American society,...has a concept of coolness and cuteness...both are factors of stupidity...Now that we've established diplomatic relations with China...those people are ready for coolness, cuteness and stupidity...It's not getting any smarter out there...You have to comes to terms with stupidity...and make it work for you." - Frank Zappa, 1979

Entry... 4/11/2000 6:30pm

I just finished watching my television for the night. Standard Tuesday night fare is Just Shoot Me and NYPD Blue, but tonight Just Shoot Me was a rerun. I watched two shows that I'd never seen before. The first one was Dharma and Greg, which turned out to be a running dick joke, and an oh-so-obvious case of mistaken paternity. The second show was brand new, called Talk to Me. Again, nothing I'd add to my calendar. One socially redeeming point of the show were the appearances of Beverly D'Angelo (Vacation) and Gene Simmons of Kiss. Too bad he didn't have more speaking lines, I find his acting charming. He once played a bad guy in a really campy Tom Selleck pre-Blade Runner type of movie called Runaway. Naughty, naughty. Speaking of Kiss, my tickets for their farewell concert arrived from Ticketmaster today. I managed to get 3rd row.

Entry... 4/13/2000 12:26pm

The past few days at work have been absolute hell. Everytime I walk through the door, someone else has fiddled with something and broken it, leaving the mess to me to fix or clean up. It's getting very tiresome. I reminded my boss today that it's time for my annual review. It better be a good one.

Are you Getting it?

Rented the movie Guinevere last night. It was a lot different than I expected, and I really can't put my finger on what exactly I expected, but I just know it was different from what I got. A young girl, uncertain of her goals, takes up with an charming, older man whose career is in its sunset. Sarah Polley, another Canadian in the movies, played the title role. Actually, the "Guinevere" was just a nickname that the photographer gave her for no apparent reason. He liked it to "Sweetie Pie." Her character's name was actually "Harper," which I find to be a charming name. Throughout the movie, the soundtrack included some very Irish singing over an orchestra. A single female voice, just like in the movie Titanic. Sarah was given vocal credits at the end, but it didn't say for what. I wonder if she sang those parts.

Soda Play has a great Java based virtual toy. If I had the time, I would reverse engineer it like everything else I do.

Tired of the guys on TV who say "Wazzzzzzup!?!?!?" into telephones/intercoms, etc? Now you can enjoy the characters of South Park in their very own Wazzzzzzzup? parody.

Desk pop can count up by 2, to 188.

Entry... 4/14/2000 11:05pm

I decided to try out something different in terms of my left side menu. It's easily transportable, and good practice for me. You can see the changes on this month's entry, and on the main Captain's Log page. I don't know if I will carry it through the whole site or not yet. I may play and come up with something different. Perhaps I'll do a different one every month since it it easy to modify. Mix it up a little bit, I think.

I visited Atom Films in the wee hours of the morning today. They present a number of film shorts (delivered right to you via Real Player, etc) produced by new Directors trying their hand at presenting their stories visually. A friend of mine told me about this site last night.

I went out for lunch yesterday, and dropped by my regular used CD haunt. They are training a new employee, which is always fun. "F10? I press what to reserve a CD? F10?!?!" I bought a CD by a band I heard on MP3.com called Channeling Owen. They have a really good sound, and feature a cello player. She adds such great dynamics to the music. I suppose that you could call her a "Lead Cello" player.

I finally called the Marina where my jet boat is getting a new engine. They tell me that the ice is off the lake, and the engine is in place. All they have to do is hook up the shift cable and take it for a test ride. I can go up and get it within the next two weeks. Tomorrow I go up to the lake to float the docks, so the timing is excellent. I'll be able to launch it the same day I pick it up.

All I can say is, thank God it's the weekend!

Entry... 4/15/2000 12:14am

Today was a beautiful day. I found myself in a good mood all day long, and I didn't snap at a single person. No, really. No, I'm not on drugs. We had more visitors from Denver at work for meetings about the migration of our data center to Colorado. Things went well. All of our operators got offered jobs out there. Now they have to make the complicated choice of leaving or not. I volunteered my services as a taxi (hell, I got the car to do it) and shuffled one of the guys to the airport. It was so nice to get out of the building for a little while and enjoy the fresh air. In fact, I didn't get enough air. I came home and wrote out some checks and paid some bills, and then just drove around Albany. Took a long walk around Washington Park. I got a kick out of the group of dog owners. They stand around and talk to each other, watch the dogs play together, and toss a tennis ball now and then. Probably a great way to meet women. Everyone seemed to have a big dog. Labs and Shepards, mostly. There was one very tall, very dapper gentleman with this little tiny Dashound, and the pair simultaneously looked exacly right and wrong. Had a Guiness and a rack of ribs at BEFF's for dinner and then took in a movie at the cheap theater. I saw Pitch Black, a sci-fi based scary movie. Lots of pot holes, lots of tense moments, and a good scare now and then. Not the best out there, but worth the 3 bucks.

My college roommate e-mailed me today, I suppose simply to remind me that I am (and remain) a total geek. He sent me a link to an E-Bay auction for an old calculator watch, with a touch screen, and asked if I used to have one like it. I did have a calculator watch, yes. In fact, a few of them, but no touch screens. The first one was black plastic, and not only had a 4 function calulator, but it had a calendar (complete with month display) and 8 different little tunes it could play, to remind you of events. I enjoyed the Fu-Manchu type one the most, and featured the watch in a horrifyingly bad high school video I made called "Samurai Kitchen." The second calculator watch I had was a more sturdy metal, silver colored, with little buttons that you could run with your finger, or a pencil tip. This one had a Memory, and Memory Recall button. Geek check, Guilty as charged.

Entry... 4/19/2000 10:38pm

I seem to be running a few days behind. I keep thinking to myself that it's not even the 15th of April, but yet we are solidly on our way to the 20's. It's been a busy week so far. Work has been one emergency on the heel of another emergency. There's no end in sight. My review is finally going forward, but I really am not expecting much at all from these people. I keep hearing about wonderful opportunities and assignments if I stay, and I am hearing about wonderful opportunities if I leave. So, it's all up in the air as to what I am going to do. Somehow I am still staying on top of everything that is going on, and having some fun while doing it. Softball practice got moved due to the rain to this Thursday, so that league will be kicking off soon. I have a few more sessions of Monday volleyball, and then it will be on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I'm moving band night to Monday for the summer. I fully expect that we will be skipping a lot of practices over the summer. We don't have a lot of gigs scheduled right now, anyway.

I had a fairly busy weekend. Saturday was the one of the annual work parties at my yacht club. We had to build a lot of docks this year. Some because of ice damage on the foam, but most just because it was time to retire the steel frames. It can only last for so long in that application. Crews were able to rebuild all 10 docks needed, and we put the main "T" structure out and found all of the anchors. At the end of every season, we tie the anchor chains together with airline grade cable and sink the whole mess to the bottom. The theory is, in the spring, all you have to do is follow the airline cable from chain to chain and you can pick up all the chains in order. This sometimes doesn't work. No problems this year, though. I helped my Dad move some equipment around at his house, and took a look at an Access database that he created. I also got to see my Sunfish. It has a bright, shiny new paint job and a refurbished bailer system. I guess I'll be taking it to the lake this year on my Jet boat trailer. My Dad plans to build a cross member for the trailer so that it will accomodate the Sunfish. I went to Saratoga on Saturday night and saw the band Bicycle Mary. I had heard of these guys from a local music resource called CRUMBS and heard their original stuff online. Turns out that they play a lot of covers and do the bar scene. These guys were great! They played Dave Matthews, Billy Joel, Tonic, Dada, The GooGoo Dolls, and lots more. The bass player does most of their singing, and their harmonies still knock me out. On Sunday morning, I hooked up wth a buddy for breakfast (Pancakes and Ham) and went to see another taping of Sounding Board. This time the band we saw was MK4, featuring Mary Kay (who owns Valentines) and two of the guys from the band Arc. They put on a great show. I had never heard them play before, and I guess I will have to again.

South Park is new all this month. I got home in time from band practice tonight to toss a video tape in and record it while I watched it in the living room. My television in the family room is very broken. It started breaking a year ago, I think. The screen would shake and scrunch up until you pounded on the floor (or on the TV) and then it would be ok. Now the sound is totally gone. Maybe next month I will actually take it to Radio Shack and get it repaired.

Entry... 4/20/2000 3:06pm

Easy come, easy go. We used to have an Employee Associatation at work. It was a voluntary program, in which automatic deductions were made from your paycheck and put into a fund. The fund was used to furnish the office with popcorn for snacks, and for flower baskets whenever an employee had an event in their personal lives, like a passing or a birth, or to buy shirts and sweaters with a company logo for everyone. It was a good program, but it needed to end since our new company has a line item in the Human Resource budget that handles these sort of things. After a lot of to-do about what to do with the remaining fund, it was finally decided to reimburse employees for their contributions. I got a check yesterday. So today, I used that money to buy a new softball glove. It is only the second glove that I have owned in my life. The glove I used last year, I had gotten from my parents when I was playing little league. I can still fit my hand in it, and it really does still work, but ok, it's small. So, new glove. And what an eye opener that was! The cheapest gloves I saw were 30 bucks, and some of the dark leather ones were $160! I am left handed, so that limited my choices. I dug around and found a Rawlings glove that I liked and a Mizuno glove. I had never heard of Mizuno before, and the attendants gave me lots of information on it. Turns out that they are the leading provider of golf equipment, and tops in terms of supplying baseball equipment to the major leagues. Well, news to me. The Rawlings glove was actually a nice fit, but it was a 14 inch glove. A little too big, and if I ever wanted to toss a baseball around, I'd lose it in the glove. So I bought the ($70, ouch) Mizuno glove (and thanks to the Employee Association, it wasn't as big of a bite) and some glove conditioner. The check out guy told me more about conditioning the glove than the salesguys did! It was nice of him to share that info with me, even though he had a long line waiting behind me.

Link fest. I had these hanging around at work, waiting for an opportunity to add them: MegaStar Online, Blue Lawn sports a collection of essays, DIY Records on-line CD store, Estrogen and her online journal (Check out her links page for more...), and last but not least - Crack Aficionado online magazine. This is a great site!

Entry... 4/21/2000 3:46pm

Thursday night is usually "church" night for me, but it got moved to Wednesday this week and I couldn't make it. So I found myself with a free Thursday night. A quick run to the store yielded sour cream and milk, and a stop at the video store yielded a Steven Dorpff movie called Entropy. So over a meal of perogies and reheated boneless chicken, I watched the film. It was your basic too-hip-Director-Jake falling in love with a fast-to-love-French model named Stella. Bookended by wacky time lapse footage and a lot of MTV styled cutting, the story explored their whirlwind romance as it bloomed and eventually died while Jake lived in New York City during the making of his first film. To mix things up a bit, toss in him being friends with the band U2, a Las Vegas wedding, stress on the set and his over protective family. I generally liked the movie. The best moment of the film came during a shower scene, when their new kitten ("Puddy Tat") climbed the curtains. Priceless. At the end of the movie, Jake attempted to pigeon hole his relationship with Stella in a handy bucket. He claimed that "Everyone has their Stella." If he meant in the sense that we all have that "one true love" who got away, then I don't agree with his assesement. In every relationship, both parties take home memories of the good moments, of the bad moments. The sun light lazy afternoons in the park, the arguments, long walks under blue skies, the jealousies. All conspire to leave their marks on our memories. I think what might be a more valid explanation is that we all have "a Stella" in lives from relationships that ended without the proper closure. In these situations, perhaps we look back and wonder "what if?" instead of looking forward.

But I babble. Onward.

I must lead a sheltered life. I had no idea that some of this stuff existed.

Desk top pop can count is now 190.

Entry... 4/24/2000 12:10pm

My Brother should be at DMV today registering his new (to him) car. I spent a little time underneath it on Saturday night, helping him fix an exhaust pipe. After a quick light check (Volvo fuses suck!), everything looks good. Saturday was a day full of projects. I went to the lake with my Dad again, and we finished the docks. I also put new hardware on the swing set. They got some really nice custom swing hardware off the internet. This stuff is heavy duty, and has bushings inside the mechanism to allow greater response. The kids should be having some fun this summer. Of course, the installation meant a few hours of standing outside in the cold rain. That wasn't fun. We had lunch together and then drove south to his house. I had to install some software on his laptop, and write a database report for him. One thing led to another, as it always does, and I ended up completely removing and reinstalling the latest version of Office on his desktop. Puttered around a little and came home. That's when my Brother and I started our trips to the auto parts store. I did get a new toy for myself - a very powerful, extendable magnet. It's very cool and only cost 2 bucks. After all the projects were done for the day, I just didn't feel like going out. I was going to go see a band downtown, but they didn't start till midnight. Instead, we descended to the band room and made some noise.

How was your Easter? I had a good one. My parents came over for dinner yesterday. My housemate and I spent the whole day shopping and cooking. We made banana cream pie, ziti, cole slaw and biscuits. We used a food processor for the first time for the cole slaw, and it came out more like a slurpee. Good, though. My Mom brought a ham and potato salad. So much food! We played cribbage after dinner, and had a nice time.

I spent Friday night at a friends house watching a couple movies and ordering out for pizza. We watched Pushing Tin (which I had already seen, but liked) and Double Jeopardy. Double Jeopardy was better than I thought it would be, but full of plenty of plot holes.

This has got to be one of the coolest sites on the web. Visit the TerraServer, billed as the "Vertical portal for Overhead Imagery." I found my house. Here's the picture:

Entry... 4/25/2000 4:21pm

I got a nice surprise yesterday, and yes, I am being facetious. The marina that is fixing my boat called to tell me it was done (yay!). They gave me the total bill (boo!), which turned out to be $300 higher than the estimate (double boo! hiss! yick! ouch!). So, I am going to be strapped, but I think I can swing it. I look to be in the water May 5th, and maybe earlier if I take a different weekday off to launch it. I still need to hear if the docks are open. They should be, as long as the water level goes down. The lake is so high that it is fast approaching the spillway.

I found a couple of really great articles on Salon magazine about Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins. They were so good, I decided to rip em off and post them on my site.

Here's a couple of guys who went on an impromptu, 12 month long trip that took them around the world. Check out their website. An amazing trip. Here's another good site, Roman's Ranch. Check out his Archive pages for great quotes and humor, and tales of his many hikes.

It's actually a nice enough day outside to want to do something outside. Work ends in just a half an hour, and then I believe I will do just that. Perhaps a walk in the country. Not really an excellent adventure like some of the people I visited today, but exciting enough for me. Maybe I'll hunt down and devour an innocent ice cream sundae.

Entry... 4/26/2000 2:03pm

This is Echo's online journal and cam. The site takes forever to load, so beware. Or you can visit Courtney. Xeney has a great website - Have you ever had some Bad Hair Days?

There's a new kind of camera about, and it's called the Lomo. There's plenty of cool stock photography on their website.

Is warp drive just around the corner, or what? read about the NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics (BPP) Program at NASA.

Check out this online simulation. It may take you awhile. A day in the life of..... There's other cool stuff at ConceptLab

Clerks, a well known movie by Kevin Smith and the folks at View Askew have announced that their animated TV show based on the movie (well, 6 episodes of it) will be aired on ABC on May 31st. Depending on the ratings, we may see all 6 episodes (edited for television, of course.) Kevin tells all on his website. In other animated series news, Comedy Central is making its play this week to try to keep Matt Stone and Trey Parker around. The creators of South Park are being offered a few thousand bags of money to develop shows for major networks. Their leaving would spell the end of the show. More on this as it happens. be on the look out for 300 minutes of original programming on E! online. Using Shockwave, Parker and Stone, David Lynch and Tim Burton are all coming up with stories. Some of these will be R rated, and available only to adults in a restricted area of the site.

I've been quiet regarding the whole Elian Gonzalez debacle. I don't really want to go off on some long winded rant, but I do want to say this. I do not believe that the Miami relatives are capable of caring for Elian. They strike me as a selfish, short sighted lot. They claim that the opportunity of living in America and their familial love for Elain should override any bond the child has with his own father, or the country that he is a citizen of. This boy is 6 years old. Can you imagine having your whole future decided for you like this? They claim that they are acting in the child's best interest. I don't see it. They ask "What sort of life will Elain have in Cuba?" I ask, what sort of life will he have here? This morning in the shower, it hit me that if Elian does stay here in America, he will absolutely have no chance at any kind of "normal" life. For years, our media will dog him at every turn. "Welcome to Elian in America, Day 345. This morning, Elian had a breakfast of eggs and white toast, a meal he could not have gotten in the FACIST CUBA where he would have been living if we PROUD AMERICANS had not stepped up to save him." And as time goes on, the headlines are there to tell us about this no-longer regular kid from next-door. "Elian has first day at school!" "Elian skins his knee during recess. Racial bias present in our elementary schools. Family holds tearful press conference!" "Elian gets engaged!" "Elian is really from Mars!" "Elian seen in drunken Manhattan orgy!" and the eventual "Elian dies from drug overdose at 32. How could this have happened? Family holds tearful press conference." What kind of life is this? At least in Cuba, he has a chance to be a normal little boy again. Oh wait, and with his father and on his own legal soil. Let's not forget that he has no citizenship here. No rights. There are no laws that protect him. Look at the thousands of Haitian babies, children, Mothers and fathers that float ashore here. We imprison them in camps, and ship them back the first chance we get.

Entry... 4/27/2000 9:00am

I'm in a great mood already this morning. I had the pleasure of an ultra-fast, cold shower this morning. That always starts the day off right. Rented the movie The Blood Oranges last night. Ah, it had so much potential, but it just plain fizzled. At least I did manage to sleep well last night. The night before was a toss fest, and little sleep. The dreams, however, were lucid.

Trust the folks at Screen-It to let you know exactly how many naughty words are used in a movie. This can backfire, I would think. In many cases it might make you want to see a movie. They also tell everything else about the movie, so if you don't like spoilers then don't read this site.

Play the Northwestern Mutual Insurance companies Longevity Game! According to this thing, I am going to make it to 80. God, I hope I'm not still working here.

Entry... 4/28/2000 10:42am

Ah, thank god it's Friday. This has been a hell week. Things are getting crazier every single day. My review process is supposedly done, and will be in place for my next check, but I don't even know what they are recommending or even thinnking. Too many "ifs" to deal with. My gut feeling is that I'm not going to be happy with it, and then my instant reaction is to spank myself for even getting my hopes up. Well, there's many other jobs out there. Pity that they kill themselves to keep (and reward) people who turn their backs and leave anyway, and the employees who have been around for awhile get taken advantage of.

A friend of mine bought herself a Miata. Nice car. I got a ride around the block, and I was impressed. Totally impractical, though that doesn't stop one from wanting one.

My weekend sure filled up. I'm going to see the band Bicycle Mary again tonight. Tomorrow morning, I have to go to a work party for the summer volleyball league. We take rakes and hoes and other implements of destruction and prepare the courts. Tomorrow night, wine and movies at a friends. On Sunday, I am going to a party/memorial for a gentleman who died recently. He lived in the house I used to rent a room in. I have to get to Kinko's and make some big color copies of some photographs we have of him. Maybe I'll do that at lunchtime today.

My friend, LoaferX has written his first "Tale fo the Trail" on his website. Take a peek, should you be inclined.

Shower this morning: Lukewarm to cold.