Work splashing over the gunwales

So, I have a day ahead with no meetings scheduled, no conference calls, nothing but open space, open time, and work.

This article provides the result of a study that shows that the less skilled that we are, the less likely that we are to admit it. Humbling.

We're very close to obtaining the final approval for hiring. It will be fun to have some new people join us. A couple of people have already been hired, as replacements, in our New York office.

A while ago, I mentioned that I was using del.icio.us to manage my online bookmarks. I've added a link on this journal's home page that will take you to the Del.icio.us site. As I find things of interest, that may or may not wind up in this journal, I post the on Del.icio.us. Enjoy and let me know what you think.

Yesterday I mentioned the Dummies series of books. Later in the day, I found this site, which lets you create your Dummies book cover.

The President, according to "Scooter," authorized the leak of a CIA agent's name. Well, isn't that special? And now that Justice O'Connor is free to speak, she's speaking freely. (A tip of the hat to SR on another mailing for bringing the speech to my attention.)

Fudd. Paging Mr. Elmer Fudd.

Say what?

A friend of the family learned that, with a coupon from the local paper, he could get a (much needed) hearing aid for $495. At the store, he learned that $495 product, however, wouldn't be good for his type of hearing loss. (You can probably guess where this is going.) The product that he would need costs $5,600, but they'd let it go for $4,800.

I've had a couple of dentist appointments this week. The anesthetics continue to improve, making the procedures minimally discomforting. Not like the old days. The very old days.

We picked up about three inches of snow yesterday at work, and much less at home. We may see more snow showers today, but nothing that requires much attention. (Note to self: put stabilizer in the gas tank of the snow blower before putting it away for the season.)

Yesterday's mail brought an offer for one of the Dummies books. This one, Guide to Life After 50, 60, 70 & Beyond For Dummies, has tips on how to block cancer, cure high blood pressure, eat sweet potatoes, buy golf balls, and feel like I'm 25. The Dummies series of books came out in the mid-90s. A friend of mine edited a couple of books. I argued that it was demeaning to refer to users as dummies (to their faces) and made it hard for the users to value their own skills and knowledge. My friend replied that the users, of course, loved the books. "Have you got something really simple for me?" they'd ask. "Something really basic. Sometimes I feel like a complete idiot." With a gazillion copies sold, the Dummies series has certain found its mark. Of course, Cliff Notes were my only way of making it through Shakespeare's plays in high school.

And, did you know that there is a Koran for Dummies?

So, now, I'll go read Depression for Dummies. They don't make mention a recent study that shows that John Kerry is depressing.

Nice mention of Niece Lori's blog in an LA media trade paper. (Next-to-last item on the page, just above the obituary.)

A study shows that other cell phone users are annoying, but not me.

If you are planning to walk to Russia, call ahead to let them know that you're coming.

Imagine that an American and a Scot would be ahead of a Canadian in curling. 'Tis true. The Finn, one Markku Uusipaavalniemi, misspelled as Uuspaavalniemi in the story, is still in contention, despite an injury.

We're almost adjusted to daylight saving time. About the worst that we have had to ensure is the loss of an hour of sleep on Sunday. Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka claim that their time changes caused the tsunami. The government is discussing a plan to return Sri Lanka to +5.5 hours GMT, the same as India and the same as it had been in 1996.

The keys to a German nuclear power plant are missing. Many people would suspect terrorists. I think it's this guy.

Bugs and other pests

If you use the American-style dates, then a bit more than an hour after midnight tonight is a special time; 01:02:03 04/05/06.

During a conference call yesterday, the project leader told us that our customer was taking a particular issue very seriously. "They're holding the stick to the mud" said the project leader.

A local extermination business has a sign on the side of their building, showing the pest of the month. This month it's skunks. On the front window, they have a sign about the Bug Club, where kids can learn about entymology. "Have your next party here." Um, no, thanks. Besides, Yucca Mountain looks like a much better place for kids.

Periodically, I check the referrer logs for this journal. The logs don't tell me the user name or email address of the person visiting the site, but they show details such operating system, browser version, IP address and domain name of the Internet service provider. It's interesting stuff. Someone from Costa Rica visited yesterday. Some of entries show up frequently; others are new. This one, though, spooked me a bit.

You may to give up your plans to build a new communications infrastructure with tin cans and string; someone has already patented the idea. (Via)

Finally, Tom DeLay, aka "The Hammer," is stepping down from Congress and will not seek re-election in the fall. Schadenfreude is a malicious delight in the misfortune of others. Shall we succumb to that temptation? Well, maybe a little. (His congressional site is here. His official website is here. As a footnote, his web site has no privacy policy.)

Hey, there's a trunk in my engine.

So, I'm wandering around the net and I see that some guy has posted his Nerd Score on his web page. This might be fun, I say to myself, so I take the quiz.



I work with nerds all day long and I certainly wouldn't rate myself this highly in comparison. Maybe I do know what to do with compressed air, that I take notes in more than one color, that I used telnet daily. I'll bet that there are lots of high school sophomore who do the same.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall...or a stack of wood. We went to the camp yesterday and discovered that the stack of wood at the end of the wood shed had tumbled to the ground. This after another, smaller stack had partially fallen about a month ago. The wood at the camp is cut shorter, about 12", and so isn't as stable when stacked. Nevertheless, everyone's susceptible. My father lost a part of his stack when the sun warmed the frozen ground and caused everything to shift. It happens and it's not a moral issue, much.

There's a small, spring-fed pool by the side of the camp road. The pool was full when the freeze came earlier in the winter and about 3" of ice former. Over the dry winter, the water below seeped back into the ground, eventually leaving the ice to collapse into the dry hole.

My father doesn't wear his hearing aids when he's at home alone so he can save the batteries. Sandra and I have a bit of gentle fun as we wonder how long it will be until he gets his gear into his ears. Usually, it's five to 10 minutes. Yesterday it was 35. It isn't an official visit with one's parents unless you are talking to yourself as you leave.

I was walking from my hotel to the office in White Plains last week when a new Volkswagen Beetle pulled into a parking space. The driver got out, open the rear hood, and took something from the trunk. "That's just wrong," I said to myself. The engine's supposed to be back there with the trunk in the front. The first VW that I saw in person was owned by a family friend, Kaija, in 1957 or '58. I called it the "backwards-frontwards" car.

Dang. We missed Spamarama.

In this article, Dave Eggers explains why nearly every kid in America plays soccer until age 10. After that, they'll do almost anything else. (Which is why ESPN is thinking about broadcasting domino matches.)

In less than two weeks, western Christians will celebrate Easter. (The eastern churches observed the holiday a week later. More about that here with the math that lets you calculate the days yourself.) It's time to think about those traditional meals, such as cooking with Peeps.

The 23-Hour Day

So, when the clock said that I was getting up at 5:45, it was really 4:45. We'll be doing that all day - I know what it is, but what time is really?

The Red Sox open their season tomorrow in Texas. The local papers are working hard to help us get to know the new players. I can recite the 1975 Red Sox lineup, but I know barely half of this year's starting team. Meanwhile, the folks in New York are wondering if the ex-Red Sox players will be ready.

Just after noon yesterday, the April Fool's jokes on the web started getting tiring. The "Hubble Resolves Expiration Date For Green Cheese Moon" photo was clever. There were stories of several key Microsoft employees going over to Google. Meanwhile, Google launched Google Romance, a dating service based on the premise that Google knows more about everything than you do. "When you think about it, love is just another search problem." The British newspaper, The Independent, carried a story about a long-secret romance between Chuck Berry and Sylvia Plath. And so on. There was some fun stuff, to be sure, but the net certainly doesn't need a special day to be weird, foolish, or funny.

And, of course, I was looking around the net because I was doing my taxes and was easily sidetracked. The calculations aren't hard, particularly with a program such as Turbo Tax. The difficulty comes as I try to find that one bit of paper with the information that I need to complete a section. Sandra asked me, at the end of the day, how much more I had to do. I said somewhere between 10 minutes and four hours, depending on the status of that particular piece of paper.

We used Quicken to handle our finances. We've used it since 1992. It has a feature that allows you to rate vendors to whom you've written checks. When I was looking up what we'd paid to the Feds for taxes last year, I noticed a little "Rate Treasury" link in the lower left corner of Quicken. It was asking me if I wanted to rate the United States Treasury. Words fail me.

For supper, Sandra and I went to George's Coney Island Hot Dog in Worcester. We each had a pair of their great hot dogs. The place has lots of booths, most of which were empty at the time we arrived. A passageway opens to the bar next door, where a half dozen denizens were keeping watch in the dark. The only change since our last visit was that there are three signs, one on the door and one behind and one above the counter, telling patrons to turn off their cell phones. I guess they don't want to disrupt the ambiance of the eatery or the bar. You guessed it; one guy came in, walked past all three signs while talking on his phone.

The hot dog place is in a ragged section of Worcester. So, it was a bit surprising to see that, next door, Sonia's Used Cars next door is selling a Mercedes M-class SUV and several other Mercedes sedans, along with the expected collection of used cars. "Hey, honey, let's go get a couple of hot dogs. We can get that Mercedes that you've wanted while we're down there."

Frank Zappa is quoted as saying, "Jimi Hendrix 'There's a guy who shouldn't have done drugs.' Eddie Van Halen: 'There's another guy who shouldn't do drugs.'" Jimi died of an overdose at age 27. Eddie lasted longer, but doesn't look much better than Jimi.

An actually-free zone

It's great to be home. Even though I have a wild day ahead of me at work, it starts from the comfort of home and family.

Spring is sprung and all that. We have the window open overnight and the birds are getting louder by the day. It's nice to see the green showing up on the front lawn. The ground is very dry, so the new growth isn't bursting forth, but it's making progress. We may get some much-needed showers this evening and tomorrow. The dawn was red this morning.

One report concludes that spring in New England starts a week earlier than it did 150 years ago. Meteorological trend analysis is very challenging because 150 years are but a flicker in the earth's timescale. Nevertheless, it's clear that something is happening, even if our attempts to find a cause get all tangled up in our politics and economics.

Besides, New England has enough quirks and foibles, as show in the Strange New England web site, that, as the old song goes, believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.

I was on a conference call yesterday morning. One of the participants lives in Indiana, so we talked for a couple of minutes about this weekend's time change. For the first time in a long time, all counties in Indiana will observe daylight saving time. Not only is the state in two time zones, but the counties have been able to determine if they wanted to observe daylight saving time or not. The workarounds that the computer folks had developed to keep computer clocks in synch now no longer work.

Last night Sandra and I watched a PBS show that included a tour of a Washington D.C. historical site that is currently undergoing renovations. Interesting material. The guide, however, a U.S. Park Ranger, said the word "actually" at least 10 times in the four minute segment. (I counted 10, but there may have been one or two before I started counting.) The only times that I don't cringe when someone uses actually or actual is if that person is singing Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. Then, pretty much everything is forgiven.

This hardware and software is intended to assist people with autism learn about social cues and interaction by providing indications when the other person appears to be getting bored or annoyed. I can also imagine a time when such a device would be standard issue for people in the workplace. Most nerds roll right over folks, barely noticing if the other person knows or cares what they're talking about. (Via.)

The view from Westchester County

I'm back in New York for a few days for training, my personal development goal for this quarter. It's been nearly 20 years since I've taken a programming course. So far, I'm keeping pace. It's a scripting course instead of a pure programming course, but few people in the course could tell you the difference.

This trip is more draining than most. I made the commitment to be here about a month ago, but really wish that I could be at home. I talk with Sandra a couple of times during the day and had a nice IM chat with Krista last evening, but it would still be better to be home.

The hotel continues its gentle decline toward its future as Fred and Ethel's Cadillac Motel and Bait Shop. The heat didn't work in my room yesterday morning. The latch on the window is missing a couple of screws. It's the not-caring about the little things that makes the difference.

A couple more notes on hitchhiking from Mondays's post. The first time that I hitchhiked anyplace was when I was 14. My father was working construction at UMass in Amherst and my mother was taking a summer course. I'd often go to the campus and hang out, sit in the student union, drink coffee, read newspapers, play songs on the jukebox, and watch people. One afternoon, I got bored and decided to go back to the camp, about 35 miles away. I left a note in my mother's car and headed out. I don't remember anything of the rides themselves, except that I got there safely and quickly enough.

Of course, if one of our grandkids who are in the 14-year-old range decided to hitchhike without permission, I would expect that the kid would be grounded until the Singularity.

On the trip to Toronto, we had some trouble getting through the border. The Vietnam War was on and there was a steady stream of young men crossing into Canada to avoid the draft. In fact, we were going to visit one, a guy who had come home on leave from the Army and slipped into Canada. He was working as a reporter for a left-wing paper. Canada was having its own crises at the time as turbulence among the Québec separatists would lead to the kidnapping and murder of the vice-premier and the suspensions of civil liberties in Québec. Me? After a week or so in Toronto, I got out of town, catching a rider with a trucker to Montréal and then re-entering the States at Swanton VT. The rest is kind of blurry. As David Crosby is credited with saying, if you can remember the 60s, you probably weren't there.

It was winter, so we weren't carrying bees. Now, even in the good weather, we can't bring bees from the states (except Hawaii) into Canada.

Grady Booch is a really smart guy. A few years ago, I spent a day working on a project at his house. He has the kind of workspace that you'd expect from an ÜberNerd - massive table, bookshelves on every non-windowed wall, wired and wireless networking, and, of course, Grady, who does his best work with 5"x7" index cards. He travels with the elite of technical world and, occasionally, touching the world of politics. Here, he tells the story of a meeting with Caspar Weinberger. The closest that I can get to that is remembering that my high school principal mispronounced my name at my graduation.

I offer this one without comment: a study reports that men read the news to stoke their anger, while women go to the news to chill out. (via)

That sound that you hear is the crunching of mental gears as depressives learn that eating chocolate can make your depression worse.

A sad note this morning: a former teacher at my high school and, later, a co-worker at a couple of high tech companies passed away on Monday. He was 64.

Travel, as it was and as it is

When I was checking out of my hotel last Friday, I tried to use the automated system that you access through the television. After clicking through a half dozen menu selections, I get to this 404 page. A 404, in web parlance, is the error message means Page Not Found. The system could find the specific page that it was supposed to display and so puts up this default page instead.

The trip home was uneventful, except that it was another full flight. I had the middle seat in the very last row. There was cloud cover over central Massachusetts, so I couldn't see the camp or Mt. Wachusett as we followed Route 2 on our approach to Logan.

As I travel more, my sentiments toward my fellow travelers have soften. These are not intrinsically mean-spirited, self-centered, or feral people. They are, just like me, trying to get someplace and are working overly hard to make this alien world conform to something they can understand. So, after I left the airport and headed out on I-90, it was a nice Welcome Home touch to have someone cut me off at the toll booth.

I'm fortunate that I can drive or fly as I want or need to. For one job, working the graveyard shift, I would get off of work at 7AM, go home, sleep a bit, and then hitchhike to the restaurant so that I could borrow a car from someone working the evening shift, and then go back home until it was time for work. That way I didn't have to rely on hitchhiking at 10 at night. Hitchhiking is an unpredictable mode of transportation. A 10-mile trip could take anywhere from 15 minutes to however long it would take to walk 10 miles, not a good plan if you're trying to get to work on time.

My hitchhiker tales aren't terribly exciting. My longest trip was to Toronto and back (through) Montreal. We took a bus for part of the trip after spending all night standing at the entrance ramp to the New York Thruway. It was early January and the temperature was below zero for the whole night, warming up at dawn so that it could snow. Other trips were of the 50-200 mile variety. I never felt in great danger and never rode with anyone too much weirder than me. During the winter I could tuck my long hair under a knit cap so I would have a better chance of getting a ride. This writer provides some good tips for those few hitchhikers on the road these days. It's been a long time since I've traveled anyplace by thumb and almost as long since I picked up hitchhiker.

Haven't put enough into your IRA to retire comfortably? No problem. We now have learned that pet food is pretty good for you, better than most take-out offerings. Of course, no brand of cat or dog food has made it onto the list of the world's healthiest foods.

Why go to Easter Island when Dublin, Ohio is so close?

It's time for spring, whatever time it is

The snow flurries have stopped, the forsythia are showing a hint of color, and a bit of sunshine is peeking through. The ground, however, is still mostly frozen. We can't call it spring without the mud.

Nevertheless, some places, such as Europe, including the UK, are changing their clocks to Daylight Saving Time this week. Others, such as Australia, are not changing back to standard time because it might bring confusion to the Commonwealth Games, preferring instead to bring confusion to most of their computers. Next weekend, the U.S. will change, except for Arizona, Hawaii, and selected counties in Indiana. (The Navajo nation observes DST because it's spread over three states, one of them Arizona.) All this when there is little data to prove that DST saves any energy and much to suggest that people use more energy (drive) with the increased evening daylight. GMT is fine with me.

The travelers returned in good form yesterday afternoon. The house and other buildings survived the winter well. They left Canada before the start of the Great Seal Guts Battle of 2006. (It wouldn't surprise me if you didn't follow the link tot the story. The short version is that the losers, as always, are the seals.)

The votes are in regarding iPods in the workplace. They're OK or maybe not.

Of course, we could be in Denmark.

Want beef with your Rice Krispies? Didn't think so, particularly if you are a member of the Hare Krsna Society.Well, the same article reports that you can snack on unfrosted Pop-Tarts, even though the law may not let you hang around airport terminals anymore. (I have met a couple in Chicago's O'Hare airport.)

On the other end of the spectrum, my automated search for a technical documentation job found a listing for Director of Research and Development for Buffalo Wild Wings.

And, finally, in the "Lowells talk only to the Cabots and the Cabots talk only to God" Dept., we learn that 'Executive' monkeys are influenced by other executives and not by subordinates. Where are you on the monkey bars?

Colts Sign Away Patriots Super Bowl Hero Vinatieri

First, the Red Sox let Johnny Damon go the Yankees. Now, Adam Vinatieri goes to the Indianapolis Colts. What's next? Are we going to trade Barney Frank to Texas?

My Way - Sports News

Who brings you the morning coffee?

The customer site where our meetings are taking place has a coffee station in the middle of the building. Each morning I pick up a coffee with an extra shot of espresso (the "Eye-Opener"). The woman working at the station started my order as soon as she saw me walk across the floor. "Nice to see you again," she said as I paid for my selection.

Now that we've kicked the United Arab Emirates out of our ports, are we ready to kick them out of our Dunkin' Donuts coffee shops?

There was a time in my life when it was a shot and a beer; now it's espresso and Kenyan.

One writer's comparison of life in junior high school and in a Bush presidency.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms has a kids' web site. There you can see art work from the children of agents to get their perspective on their parents' work.

The first Trader Joe's market has opened in New York and they're going bonkers in Yonkers. (The store is actually in Union Square.) These folks have provided a primer on how to shop at TJ's. We've had one nearby for several years; I shop there every week. Good stuff.

Nice touch on the new Chevvies. If you're listening to the radio, you can turn the car off and even remove the key. The radio will stay on until you open the door. On Chevvies in the 50s and 60s, you could remove the key while driving.

Of rock and roll and leftover candy

For the second time in this series of trips, United had trouble assigning people to seats on the plane. Their excuse, again, was that the seat configuration on the 737 that arrived at the gate was different than the one shown on their computers. As a result, there were several duplicate seat assignments. In addition, up until a few minutes before we pulled back from the gate, they weren't sure who was on the plane and who wasn't. The flight attendant would ask, "If M. So-and-so is on plane, please press your attendant call button. If M. Thus-and-such is on the plane, please press your attendant call button." I don't know if everyone who was finally on the plane was supposed to be there, but the flight to Chicago was uneventful.

Late last night we received email from the systems engineer who has been the lead person on our team in these customer meetings. He's running a fever of 102° and won't be able to attend today's meeting and perhaps not tomorrow's, either. In a word, yikes.

I'm listening to my collection of various versions of Johnny B. Goode. It's one of the most durable rock and roll songs for guitar heroes. The song was among a select few chosen to represent humankind on the Voyager Golden Record. Chuck Berry's version remain the reference standard, but Jimi Hendrix and Johnny Winter take it wider, higher, and deeper.

This time my rental car is a Chevy Malibu. It's a nice enough car. It has, however, this silly little rear spoiler. When I was a kid, I'd attach a playing card to my bicycle frame in the hope that it would sound like a motorcycle.

There are splotches of snow in the shade. Everything else in the open is brown, desperate for spring.

When I arrived yesterday, there was a strong north wind feeding a big storm in the south of the state. I stopped at a supermarket to pick up some fruit and stuff for breakfast. On the exit door, they had posted a very nice, four-color sign that said, basically, that there are high winds today, so please put your grocery carts at the collection stations in the parking lot. That they have enough high wind that it was worth it to them to print these nice signs says, well, none of the other supermarkets that I frequent have such signs.

Mmm, gummi lights.

I've spent too long already trying to think up captions for the stuff on this site. If I had an extra afternoon, I drive to the store to see if they are indeed real.

Before I left, I had to pick up a couple of things at our local drug store. Amid all of the Easter baskets and candy and decorations sit four boxes of leftover Valentine's candy. The candy was marked down 75%.

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: Accepted by iTunes

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: Accepted by iTunes

Fitchburg State College, my mother's alma mater, will no longer send the traditional acceptance letters to their applicants. Instead, they'll learn about their future via podcast.

Tra-la again, spring is here

The vernal equinox, allegedly marking the start of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, occurs at 18:19 UTC today. It's still well below freezing. The sap buckets aren't collecting much because the daytime temperatures are still too low.

Even as my doctor and I try different approaches to my treatment, it's still a "Doc, will I be able to play the piano?" situation. When I'm well, I'm still me. As a friend of my mother's used to say, "We do the best what we are."

We saw a number of long-time friends last night. Some were having a great time, particularly those who were retired. One couple had just returned from Finland. They were there when Conan O'Brien made his visit. Other friends weren't doing so well, their knuckles and fingernails pale from hanging on so tightly. As we drove home, Sandra and I talked about how grateful we are, that, in spite of some troubles that are very real, we have, at the core, a very good life. We are fortunate in more ways than we can say.

In the UK's proposed budget, women can receive free training as "plumbers, sparkies, and engineers." I had to dig around a bit, but I think that sparkie is colloquial for electrician.

I received this note from a list that tries to match freelance writers with projects.

Writing / Editing Write MLM/Network Marketing Articles 3/16/2006
I am looking for a writer that can write original, professional articles about MLM or network marketing. These articles will be used to post to article directories and will be used to promote an MLM lead / MLM education company. I will pay from $5 - 7 per article depending on the length.

So, not only do these folks want us to do evil, but they'll pay less than minimal wage. (I'll reserve my rant about the that vs. who usage for another day.)

Speaking of rants about grammar 'n stuff, always, always spell-check material before you send anything. I apologize for the typo in the title of Saturday's post.

Taking the tin-foil hats to a new level, you can now buy shirts, hats, aprons, and scarves that afford you EMF protection.

Of politics and pie

The travelers left at 7:20 this morning. It will be clear and cool for most of the ride, with flurries in the forecast for PEI for the next few days.

We haven't armed our Coast Guard ships on the Maine/New Brunswick border, as was done in the Great Lakes, but it's only a matter of time. Who knows when the bad guys will come charging across the St. Croix River?

Last weekend, Sandra and I went to Boston to see Spamalot and to spend the night at the Parker House. Good show. Could have been better. The all-white audience seemed to have fun. One family brought their four daughters, ages seven through about 17. It seems that some of the material might have been a bit rich for the younger kids, said by one who sang the Lumberjack Song to his grandchildren at bedtime.

We went to Quincy Market for lunch. Outside, on the back steps of Faneuil Hall, Deval Patrick was having a rally. Patrick is a Democratic candidate for governor. He's making a good challenge at the front-runner, Attorney General Tom Reilly. Patrick's speech was clear, forceful, and inspiring, marred only by the pre-recorded applause that punctuated each of his major points. Oh, and, the crowds for the juggler and the escape artist were a bit bigger.

The Parker House looks a bit worn, like an old rug at an estate sale. The room we had was oddly shaped, with the walls higher than they were wide. The Parker House has a lot of history associated with it. Ho Chi Minh worked there in the pre-WWI years, as did Malcom X. Parker House rolls originated there, as did Boston Cream pie. The rolls were that much different from what you'd get from Poppin' Fresh. The pie, though, was nothing like the layers of foam rubber and Cool Whip that passes for pies elsewhere. As lightning is to a lightning bug.

A few days ago, a drug on human subjects went very bad. Six people people were injured, two critically. The tests were conducted at the UK labs of Waltham, Mass.-based Parexel International. A British tabloid tried to find out from Parexel's CEO, Josef von Rickenbach, if the company would issue an apology. A company spokesman said, "He’s too busy to say sorry."

On the way home from work last night, I heard Bob Newhart's "Mrs. Grace L. Ferguson Airline and Storm Door Company." It's one of the finest bits in comedy delivered by one of the finest comedians.

Green stuff run wild

One would think that the good folks of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts would have found a way to make St. Patrick's Day a state-wide holiday. Apparently, however, the religious and ethnic issues proved too daunting. The commissioners of Suffolk County (Boston, Chelsea, Revere, and Winthrop) went back to the books and discovered a historically significant event - on March 17, 1776, the British were run out of Boston. So, since the early 20th century, Suffolk County has had Evacuation Day as a holiday. The school kids can walk right past the Revolutionary War exhibits on their way to the local pub for corned beef and cabbage.

Back then, in the late 19th centry, school was tough. How tough? This tough. Let me know how well you do with trigraphs, subvocals, diphthongs, cognate letters, linguals.

Woody is making corned beef and cabbage for our supper. I was tempted to make a novel dessert - Spam Swiss Pie - but won't have the time. (Mmm, Spam, whipped cream, eggs, cheese.)

Tomorrow, Woody is going to PEI with John and Suanne, They'll leave around seven in the morning. Tignish, where images of Jesus and the Virgin Mary have appeared on a cloth, is about 100 miles (160 km) away, so they probably won't have a chance to visit the site.

I like cats and I like guitar music, but that doesn't mean this is a good idea.

Tony Blair doesn't know how to use an iPod, but the Pope isn't afraid to try. Draw your own conclusions.

David Weinberger is one of the smartest people I know. Well, I don't know him directly, but we have mutual friends on a technology email list. So, I was a bit surprised when he wrote this in his blog. Of course, I wear penny loafers almost all of the time and shoes with Velcro straps aren't too many years away.

More on working

From Tuesday morning's Worcester Telegram, and I quote, "The Wachusett Regional School Committee decided last night not to revote its decision to set no date for reimbursing $3.1 million received from the state for modular buildings." Standing boldly, they decided not to reconsider a decision not to set a date to do something. They done our town proud.

The problem with a job, says Jackie Mason, is that it takes all day.

And then some. I received an email last night around six, asking me (but not really asking) for a document that needed to be sent to a customer this morning. The material that the customer is seeking hasn't been documented before. It should have been, but it wasn't. So, I'll need to research, write, and verify the material. Fortunately, the customer is in the central time zone, so I get an extra hour of morning.

The white board in my cubicle is located inconveniently at the back of the fixed counter that is my desk. As a result, I can scribble just a few things, such as my phone numbers. (I don't call myself often, so I have a tough time remembering my internal line, external line, and new cell phone number.) It's almost impossible for two people to work at my white board, trading ideas and markers; some problems are better addressed visually than verbally. Anyway, I asked our office administrator if the facilities people could move my white board to the opposite side of my office. She said that she would ask, but that it probably wouldn't happen. "It's against company policy," she said.

"Is yours is like everyone else's?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Well, then it probably won't happen."

In preparation for the bird flu pandemic, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt recommends that we put canned tuna and powered milk under our beds.

Did you know that if you lose a mitten in Canada, the National Mitten Registry may help you restore it to its mate?

How many ways can you make this guy sick? My score is 8.

One more from the Department of the Flippin' Obvious: "Heavy marijuana use for five years or more may impair memory and slow cognitive function, according to researchers here."

Pi-Search Results

Today is day in the U.S. (3/14).

• At this site, you can locate the digits of your birthday in pi. (Mine is at position 125,165,142.)
  
• Here you can see not only pi to one million digits, but also one of the coolest (geekiest) domain names on the 'net.
  

Green for a day

It was the best treatment that the family name has received. Mike gathered family and friends and family of friends to march in yesterday's St. Patrick's Day Parade in Worcester. The float was a trailer carrying a replica of a housefront. Mike's box truck pulled the trailer. Atop the truck was Nate Schroeder, fresh from his heavyweight boxing championship at Notre Dame. The participants wore green t-shirts provided by Mike and his crew. During the parade, the crew handed out balloons to children of all ages.

When Sandra and I arrived, Marian was sitting on a couch with little Cassie asleep in her arms. In front of the truck and in back of the float, various youngsters carried banners of greeting from the Hakkarainen family. At several points, the gang started a chant - "Hakk a rai nen" - particularly when the announcer at the reviewing stand mangled the name. The weather was cool, occasionally showery, but all had a great time.

Worcester County - St. Patrick's Parade

Mike, with family and friends, will have a float in this year's parade:
Worcester County - St. Patrick's Parade (#33 in Division 2). The O'Hakkarainens hope that you'll join in the celebration.