Sunny, with a slight chance of car-swallowing fissures

Is it likely that there will be an earthquake in California today? The good news is that an earthquake is not likely. The bad news is that we have to ask the question.

Work remains a struggle. I'm a few days late on delivery of four small programs. The things work pretty much ok on my system, but they aren't stable enough to hand over to someone else. While donating blood last night, I had a chance to think about the project and have a couple of new ideas to bring to the office today.

The neighbors across the street are putting in a small parking area on what used to be lawn. The boys, aged five and three, sit on the front step and watch excitedly while the little tractor clears and smoothes the soil. We sit on a hill of sandy soil, but the neighbors have, at least in that spot, more than a foot of good topsoil.

Next week brings us the Memorial Day weekend. Lots of people will be traveling. Sandra, Mike, and Marley will go to PEI (more on this later), as will Scott, Val, and Russell. Gas, as we know, is expensive. Using Google Maps, Ahding.com can help us find cheap gas. It covers only the U.S. right now, but GasBuddy provides Canadian resources.

Let's see if I've got this straight. My doctor is too busy to come to the operating room for my operation, so he sends R2D2, whom he can control using a joystick while hanging out, oh, I don't know, here?

Unsolicited emails of the day:

• We found you contacts in our resume database. We are a Lithuanian company which sells software and electronic in the USA, Canada and other countries. We are looking for a Financial Manager. No special knowledge, no education required. You can earn up to $500 per week working only some hours a day.
• THIS WILL BE OUR ABSOLUTE NOTICE
  We have aimed to write to you on a lot times and now is the time to respond!
  Your current home loan certifies you for up to a 3.30% lower rate.
  However, since our previous attempts to write to you have failed, this will be our final effort to get for you the lower rate.

Today is the birthday of James Gosling. Although he's gained most fame for his design effort on the Java programming language, I think that his pioneering work on Emacs is a bigger deal.