Cruise of the lifetime

I found a Somali cruise package that departs from Sawakin (in the Sudan) and docks at Bagamoya (in Tanzania).  The cost is a bit high @ US$800 per day double occupancy but I didn't find that offensive. What I found enticing is that the cruise company is encouraging people to bring their 'High powered weapons' along on the cruise. If you don't have weapons you can rent them right there on the boat. They claim to have a master gunsmith on board and will have reloading parties every afternoon. The cruise lasts from 4-8 days and nights and costs a maximum of $3200 per person double occupancy (4 days). All the boat does is sail up and down the coast of Somalia waiting to get hijacked by pirates. Here are some of the costs and claims associated with the package. $800.00 US/per day double occupancy (4 day max billing) M-16 full auto rental $ 25.00/day ammo at 100 rounds of 5.56 armor piercing ammo at 15.95 Ak-47 riffle @ No charge. ammo at 100 rounds of 7.62 com block ball ammo at 14.95 Barrett M-107 .50 cal sniper rifle rental 55.00/day ammo at 25 rounds 50 cal armor piercing at 9.95 Crew members can double as spotters for 30.00 per hour (spotting scope included). They even offer RPG's at 75 bucks and 200 dollars for 3 standard loads "Everyone gets use of free complimentary night vision equipment and coffee and snacks on the top deck from 7pm-6am." Meals are not included but seem reasonable. Most cruises offer a mini-bar... these gung ho entrepreneurs offer......... get this..... "MOUNTED MINIGUN AVAILABLE @ 450.00 per 30 seconds of sustained fire" Sign me up! They advertise group rates and corporate discounts......and even claim "FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY" They even offer partial money back if not satisfied....here's some text from the ad. "We guarantee that you will experience at least two hijacking attempts by pirates or we will refund back half your money including gun rental charges and any unused ammo (mini gun charges not included)... How can we guarantee you will experience a hijacking? We operate at 5 knots within 12 miles of the coast of Somalia. If an attempted Hijacking does not occur we will turn the boat around and cruise by at 4 knots. We will repeat this for up to 8 days making three passes a day along the entire length of Somalia.  At night the boat is fully lit and bottle rockets are shot off at intervals and loud disco music beamed shore side to attract attention. Cabin space is limited so respond quickly. Reserve your package before Feb 29 and get 100 rounds of free tracer ammo in the caliber of your choice." As if all that isn't enough to whet your appetite, there were a few testimonials "I got three confirmed kills on my last trip. I'll never hunt big game in Africa again. ---- Lars, Hamburg Germany   "Six attacks in 4 days was more than I expected. I bagged three pirates and my 12 yr old son sank two rowboats with the minigun. PIRATES 0 -PASSENGERS-32! Well worth the trip. Just make sure your spotter speaks English" ----Ned, Salt Lake city, Utah USA "I haven't had this much fun since flying choppers in NAM. Don't worry about getting shot by pirates as they never even got close to the ship with those weapons they use and their shitty aim--reminds me of a drunken 'juicer' door gunner we picked up from the motor pool back in Nam" ----"chopper' Dan, Toledo USA.

This is so fake. It is funny. I got it in an email today. There are dozens of links to the exact same text. Not one link to anything. Even Snopes had nothing to say. Still, I like the idea.

Very Local News

• I was stuck outside the office waiting again this morning for a little bit. No bit deal. it did give me an opportunity to hit NPR.org on my phone and find out that I can listen to some news stories that way. It is a bit clunky, but it works for the most part. I bet it is perfect on an iPhone, liberal sheep.
• OLED wall paper. I'm not even going in to what that means beyond "wall sized screen savers" and "TV that is on the wall". Give it several years. Screw paneling.
• Chrysler is going to declare bankruptcy. I hope they come out the other end a better company, or part of a better company. I hope and wish and prey for all the best things to happen to the people who work for Chrysler. I still crack up when I think of Fiat and Chrysler getting together. Apparently Fiat makes better cars for Europe than they made for the U. S..

Tired

I walked in this morning and found the door locked. One of the other guys named John was already waiting. We talked about how we both feel burned out a bit. The long hours and crushing deadlines have taken their toll. They are still exacting a price. My job is not done. We made something that is good and it must be better. The developers, testers, packagers, we have worked hard. Our job is never done.

Software is never done. It is an evolving work of effort that is simply captured in a state and distributed, then left to sit or continued until the next state is achieved. Projects do not end, they are replaced by higher priorities.

The stress level at our company never hits zero. There is nothing resembling down time at any moment. I've heard that some places where my friends work are in a state of "go slow" waiting for the economy or people or whatever limiting factor holds the rains at the moment. That will not happen here. Not today. That is not how things work here.  Maybe that is a good thing. God, help me, it is a strain.

There is an old saying "I'm sick and tired of feeling sick and tired." That is true. This morning I came in with a headache. I started to feel just plane sick by mid morning. Nat is taking Elle in to the doctor because Elle is showing signs of being sick. A child died of Swine Flue this morning in Houston. People are throwing the term "pandemic" around. The markets don't seem to be too upset about it yet. That is very important to many people. I'm not sure I care. Europe has issued a warning to people traveling to the U. S. or Mexico.

I do miss doing one thing at a time and attempting to get it right. I know that this multitasking causes me to make more mistakes. If five people walk in my office and demand things done, I have no authority to tell them that I must get something else done first. There is no way to appeal decisions made by others. I have no control over my destiny or the complexity of my tasks. It makes for stress and loss of productivity. I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Very Local News

• The camera on my G1 phone is OK. It needs a tremendous amount of light to take a fare picture. It is auto focus which is more of a problem than a cure if I'm honest. It means pictures taken in low light are dark as well as out of focus. The G! disparately needs a flash.
  I do like the crop feature. You can crop a picture right on the phone. Nice. That is much better than digital zoom. If only it had video record functionality.
  
• Pig-bug
  
• I'm not worried about Swine Flue. I'm well stocked on oinkment.
• H1N1 (Swine Flue) is giving pigs a bad name, so the PC crowd says to call it by it's scientific name.
• Houston has th first death by Swine Flue. A 23 month old baby. That is too sad for words.
• The CDC is all over it. The stops get pulled in regards to bureaucracy when it comes to disease control. That is a good thing.
• Mass has been canceled in parts of Mexico City. No restaurants beyond take out and no tourists. The drug dealers are still killing each other.
• I almost hope the waring of masks trend catches on long term.
  
• Ever since JW Bush got a shoe thrown at him, it has become fashionable to throw shoes at politicians in the middle east and some other places. Terrific. There are rules to take one's shoes off  before political rallies.

WWII The last great war

Tell it like it is and they'll live longer.

Hitch Hiking

I had my first and last adventure with hitch hiking today. I was mad at Nat for not giving me a ride to work at 11:30 after missing the morning due to severe weather. In her defense, she was up all night with Elle's worries and her own over the weather. The news said we got seven inches of rain in our area. Just north of us got ten inches of rain.

I was walking along in the mud, complaining to myself out loud about having to walk in the mud and a big box van honked and stopped. I said 'heck with it' and ran up and hopped in. The guy was happy to give me the ride. He was Mexican, young and didn't seem to mind. It turns out he was turning on highway 6, so I hopped out there and waited for the bus.

It was a while before I notice a bus coming round the circle. Just after I did, someone whom I normally ride the bus in with in the morning pulled over and offered me a ride. He normally gets off  before I do so I declined. I know know why he takes the bus. He drives a Tahoe. I'd take the bus too.

Once I got on the bus, evey one was chatting about the storm last night. The scene was jovial. It reminded me of the mood after the hurricane last year. People were looking out for on another. It was kind of nice. I would say something like "we need a storm more often." but I just don't want storms any more often than needed. Don't want to lynx it.[end]

Very Local News

• I have one of those USB sound cards on my box at work. We order workstations that do not have them on the motherboard. It was $4.00 plus shipping. Not the most robust piece of hardware in history. When I increase or decrease the volume, the left channel is about 0.4 seconds faster than the right. I can live with that for $4.00.
• All the power lines at the poles were buzzing this morning. I mean every single one I walked under. That kind of worries me. Does that mean the system is over loaded? Does it just mean it rained last night? Is it terrorists, aliens, vandals, vandal-alien-terrorists? Have they always done that? I haven't flushed my ears over the weekend or anything.
• Sky news had a "Foreign Matters" entitled "no nukes is good nukes." They were talking about MAD. Mutual Assured Destruction not applying any more due to terrorists not giving a crap. Commy bastards.
• EU advises against traveling to the U. S.. Many people in Mexico have died from Swine flue. Now ther ehas been an earth quake in Mexico city. Wars. All we need is a meteorite.
• Had an opportunity to look busy in front of a client today. Fortunately, I was busy. Funny how that works.
  
• Got VNC working on the phone. Well, it kind of works. it is so slow and difficult to use over the touch interface that is is pretty much useless. VNC and SSH are required tools for support people like myself. Handy to have them on the phone.

Sunday again

My Sundays are boring. Whenever we make plans to do something, they never come round. I end up sitting on the computer all day surfing the net. Not the I have a problem with that. I would like to get out of the house . I believe Nat and Elle would like that too. Too bad we are so broke. It is just not worth living life when you have no money to enjoy it. When you are broke, you are just a drone feeding the dreams of people who have money. That sucks. No wonder there are revolutions of the masses and mass beheadings of the rich every so often. It doesn't make anything better. No one ends up with more money out of it. You just end up with some other asshole in charge.

I read a blog that says 25% (from memory) of children think the world will end before they grow up. The blogger blames the rhetoric of climate control. I'm incline to believe that.

There was another blogger who interpreted an interview with Mahatma-Jib-Jab to say that the leader of Iran thinks Obama is a fool. I'm not sure what to think of that.

Obama says he will release new terrorist recruitment photos to guarantee the U. S. will be hated for generations to come.

Bloggers in Briton are thinking seriously of leaving the country to let her self destruct. The Governor of Texas mentioned the word 'succession' at a rally a week ago. I say that Western civilization cannot stand the plague of political correctness and ramped liberalism that we simply cannot afford. But that is just me.

Is it always like this? Does every generation hit some wall of unbelievable ignorance while watching their leaders travel the path to self destruction? Is it me? Am I the sain man in a crazy world, or the other?

Very Local News

• Almost everything online is moving to a two sentence paragraph format. I noticed it in news stories a while ago. Then I noticed it in blogs and now Twitter is making the situation tragic. When will we boil communication down to five characters? There can only be a couple hundred thousand different ideas humans want to communicate with different facts attached after all. I should paten that.
• I'm watching the Mythbusters MacGyver episode. I watched MacGyver.
  
• The music is back behind us. As fare as I can tell, the guy next door is still not back home from being arrested last week. Yup, this is the hood and I'm ashamed of living here.

Whole lot of luck

The pilot said it was mostly luck and a little bit of experience.

What's in a name?

Our company is a small company that has become a medium company. This means paperwork. One of the fasots of paperwork is asset tags. Everything gets a bar code and a number. Computer names.have been obfuscated to the point no one can remember one from the other because they are ABC123 kind of names that read like serial numbers.

his has not always been the case. A precious few computers lying around still have names like johnyrottin or one of the names of a level of hell or something sufficiently geeky. They are all filtering out the bottom and beeing replaced as their tasks/duties are upgraded.

We had an old box named toast that was just not working any more. We replaced it with one called sonoftoast. It was one of those moments where every one agreed that it was the thing to do. Giving a box a human kind of name just felt good. There will be one out there for a while. I think that makes us feel better somehow.

Very Local news

• Now, well after the checks have been cashed, several top economists have stated that there is no such thing as 'too big to fail'. Just let the big banks fail. Where the hell were they when trillions were flying out of the tax payer's pockets? The experts have no idea what is going on.
• The idea is that if an institution becomes that large, it should be broken up, even if it means using antitrust laws. I'm all for that. Start with those banks in Panama and the islands. Oh, wait. Never mind.
• Don't be surprised if you loose your credit card soon. Regulations are coming and the credit card companies do not want to let people get grandfathered in to a different set of rules. If you pay off your card and pay your bill every month, you are most likely to get the ax.
• High fructose corn syrup lobbyists are really pushing that it is no more harmful than sugar.
• SLES was already 2 DVDs. Now they moved the devel RPMs to the SDK, Which is two more DVDs. I mean , shit! How much code does it take to get a computer on the net these days?
• I got an email about Chrysler going bankrupt.  What happened to Fiat?
• Microsoft just reported the first quarterly drop in revenue from last year in the 23 years it has been a public company. I may have to stop ranting about them so much if they are no longer the evil empire. ... Nah!

One

Once came I to the sun to rest.
Not one man, I, but three.

The trees snuff the sun's light from me.
The leaves dance in what is left.

Born, was I, under a labored star.
Sleep, I find, holds me still

The rain, I hear, helps me fill.
Travel, I must, through worlds far.

Task at hand

Amongst the work there is a moment to be had.
Stand up straight and look around.

It is too quiet and calm here in the light.
The sun warms and lights up the world.

Relax in the shade and watch the world just stand before me.
Glory, majesty, bright fine morning. Something is right.

I fear the calm and light sometimes. All is gone eventually.
Back to my toil I flee.

Maybe the after life is just standing up and looking around.

Very Local News

• GM spent $3 million on lobbying our government during the time they were getting by on the ump-teen billion from the U. S. tax payer earlier this year. Bastards.
• This morning in the shower I was looking forward to my walk around the parking garage at lunch. How depressing is that?
• Pirates
  
• That captain, Richard Phillips, has become a celebrity. His fifteen minutes are waining. I hope he really is the individual man who takes charge. If so, he will not have a problem shedding the celebrity vale and getting back to his life.
• The French are shooting back at the pirates. There was something about pleasure craft that was won back after gun play.
• That pirate captured by the Seals is going on trial in New York. That is just what the Big Apple needs, a high profile international trial that will probably end with the perpetrator walking free on some Maritime loophole.
• Not that I buy it, someone says if a bunch of ice melts, sea level will go up 4 meters. I looked out my window at work and thought the Target parking lot would be flooded. It looked interesting in my mind's eye.
  
• A plane flew by the office today towing a hat. It was an advertisement of course. It looked dangerous. I couldn't see the plane.

Very Local News

• I have some pictures of a beautiful sunrise on my camera. They have been there for over a week. I just haven't had the strength to pull them off and put them up. I had time this weekend if I had remembered. They are worth the effort.
• The Pirate Bay is in dire straight.s I can't help but think if they had named the place something more bland, they would not have the trouble they have now. Something like "P2P4U" or "File Heaven", but both of those are taken to my knowledge.
• The writer's guild and studios have struck a deal well short of some deadline that would have caused another gap in all the shows. I wonder what the contract says about online content. No I don't.
• I have never intentionally clicked on a Google Ad. I've never intentionally clicked on a banner ad of any kind. I've seen some ads and and gone to Google and looked something up. What is going to happen when Google dies? I get it will some day.
• I needed a new belt. The one I had was made of strange leather loops and not working the way it should. I only get belts when I absolutely have too. Push had come to shove. I got a $10.80 plane black belt at Target during lunch.
  
• 1 out of every 10 people in the world is a registered voter in India. (not registered voters, people)
  

Making it look easy

I hate it when people make it look this easy. We have s couple of those locks we use around here for different things. Drat.

Saturday

Another day in Kelly's life gone by. Another day to log in the book. I am terrified of reading that book when I'm on the other side and falling asleep. What are we judged for. I like the Red Dwarf approach. We meet ourselves and decide for ourselves what happens to us. Not that I think I've done a good job. I just think that is fare.

I don't miss the day. The world doesn't need me to approve.

What is this world. Why are we here at all? Which his the truth?

• We are here to please a god who toys with our lives every moment, who know everything, that has ever been or ever will be, and yet, still lets it all happen.
• We are playing a video game or board game with our friends and most of us are NPCs. Our soles or guardian angels are people playing the game. I've plaid games and know that I do not like this one. I do not like a board teen guiding my life when they should all be out getting laid.
• We are accidents of chemistry. Our consciousness is a by-product of electricity flowing from one place to another in grey goo between our ears. All that is art and science is just something to talk about before the end.
• We are the sum of quantum wishful thinking. One moment of consciousness by one entity once, brought forth all the universe and all things in it. That is how quantum works.
• We ride the back of an elephant which stands on the back of a gigantic turtle swimming through the empty space around a sun.
• We exist to provide mosquitoes a meal.
• We live the same moment over and over and over. We are stuck in the same moment, or year, or life looping endlessly. No beginning or end. Just Ground Hog Day without the happy ending.
• We were planted in the genetic line of apes or worms or bacteria by aliens long ago just to see what happens. They drop in occasionally snatching hill-billies and probing them for kicks.
• We are actors playing a part for a TV show. The single target of this TV show has no idea he is the number one attraction of the rest of existence. Or, The whole planet is the unwitting player.
  

I would like to write a poem for God. I would like it to be beautiful. I would like it to make a difference for the better. I would like it to plead our case. Maybe I just want to plea my case. Screw everyone else.

People in the rain

It is very interesting watching people in the rain. You learn a bit about society just waiting for a shower to wash the streets while people try to ge from one place to the other.

In a spotty light rain during commute times people run from their cars to the door and back. People on the bus go from one cover to the  other. People in cars splash people on the sidewalk. People who are used to walking every day have rain gear of some kind on their person. Umbrellas work for the door to the car trip, but not for getting anywhere when the wind blows.

In a heavy stormy rain people make other arrangements if they can. The bus is half empty of commuters. Some people just walk in the downpour, but not so much these days because of mobile phones and other electronics that cannot stand the first hint of moisture. I've walked from one place to the other in a bad storm and it is just not that big a deal if you are not cold, and have nothing on you that will die.

Hurricanes are interesting to be out in. I've only walked around to the back yard during a hurricane so I do not have extensive knowledge. There was someone else across the street doing pretty much the same thing I was doing which was taking care of something that had blown down.

Mud is to be ignored on long hauls and deal with after the fact when traveling by foot in the rain. That is the rule I've had for some time. I've noticed others with the same rule. If you do not do it this way, you will hit some impasse that you cannot get around without great stress.In a storm, you must avoid any extra stress because things could turn bad very quickly and possibly without notice.

Rising water can be deadly. People get rightly nerves when the water starts coming up. Even if you can swim, there are many layers of treachery below the water line waiting for hapless victims to wonder their way. In this part of the world you might run in to an open manhole, snakes, running water dragging your over debris, floating colonies of displeased ants, electrical shocks, submerged fences. The list is endless. It really is best to find a high dry spot and wait if you have the opportunity.

it is better when people feel like something is a disaster because they are far more willing to help one another. You are more likely to get a ride when a hurricane is coming than if it is just raining. I guess that is always true.

This morning it looked and sounded bad for the longest time. There was barely a drop until after lunch time. People were in a mode where you could tell people knew something was about to happen. It didn't for the longest time. The skies looked like the end of the world had fallen. Then, people waited for the other shoe. No one was on edge that I could tell. Just a static electricity feeling in the air.

Then it rained.

Then, it kept raining. It is due to rain through tomorrow. It is going to be a rainy night. I used to know a girl named Stormy Night. It was so dark outside the evening lights came on before 15:00.

People travel in their cars, splashing through puddles, waving off water from their windshields. People run, walk, stumble from dry spot to dry spot. No one is dancing and singing.

The rain hits the windows on our floor and people start wandering how they will get home, and how bad the traffic will be. People have alternate plans for commuting and getting things done when it rains like this. Most of them just want to get home in one piece. Once there they will huddle and watch TV.

I have a friend saw a tin roof on a small building and said he wanted to sleep in there while it was raining. No sleep as deep as under a tin roof in the rain. I really want to try that. I've had the opportunity of sleeping in the rain in a forest in a tent. That was really cool because the tent didn't make much noise, leaving me to hear the echoing drops hitting every leaf in the trees for as far as the ear could hear. It was like hearing in the third dimension for the first time in my life. I slept like a rock.

Very Local News

• It is starting to look like Windows XP was the home run. Microsoft has feed back from corporate customers that they wan to use XP for an indefinite period. What they have works and they don't want to deal with an upgrade. This puts a crimp in the whole model of forcing your customers to upgrade every three years.
• eBay is spinning off Skype. Skype is an online phone service that lets you talk for free most of the time. They paid $4 billion four years ago. I bet it goes for $15.95 and a book of coupons..
  PayPal and stumble upon are going too.
  
• The average visitor to YouTube costs Google between 1 and 2 dollars.
• One of the machines at work answered a ping, but I couldn't get hold of it in any other way. I could not log in or even get a response. It turns out it was being imaged. I thought about it. The system is using tcp/ip to talk to an FTP server. It answers a ping. it is no good to me in this state.
• Dissertations can be had for as little as $20 a page. i may have to look in to that since I cannot even spell dissertation without the aid of a spell checker..

Very Local News

• Work work work! It is amazing how much time gets eaten up by stupid shit like SVN user rights and bad hard drives. I'm busting my ass and have to stop and fix stupid things along the way. It isn't like it is any one else's job to fix them either. I'm that guy too. I design, build, implement, and fix. I have trouble keeping count of the hats.
• Saw the jack rabbit again today. He was faster, zig-sagged more, and was more wily. The little guy is learning. I said out loud "All you had to do was stand there and I would never have noticed you."
• Solares doesn't suck. It has some really nice features. Too bad no one outside of the hard core server world use it.
• A friend of mine got laid off. She is some kind of auditor for an insurance company or something like that. Never really figured it out. It was a big surprise to her. There was little or no hint to it. Her name is Anna. Please remember her in your prayers.

People

What to do standing on the corner, watching the world go by.?  Hold up a wall, flip a coin, stare at people, laugh way too loudly at nothing, talk to yourself like you are nuts, There are millions of ways to entertain yourself when there is no reason to worry about your next meal or a dry place to sleep.

So many people have their rush on. No one stops. No one smells the roses. Non that their are any roses around here. Someone could make them selves a killing if they opened a stand that sold something with bright colors and made people feel like they should take their next breath. The damp and dark are free I suppose.

No one is themselves. That is, they all try to fit in to that mold where they don't look any one in the eye and they walk fast. They look like their thoughts are in an alternate universe.

Sometimes it feels like I'm in a cage and every one deliberately averts their eyes..Other times I just feel inevitable. If I walk up and ask someone the time, they snap at me or ignore me. Only in the South do people give you the time and strike up a conversation.

They all act like they have somewhere to be. There are loitering laws against just standing around and watching people go by. There is no limit to what you might learn.

Once in a while you get that special person who makes the world look them in the eye as they pass. These are special people. Sometimes they say something enlightening as they go by. Sometimes they just look. Then there are those times you feel moved to be involved. You feel like giving they guy playing a guitar on the side walk because his song moves you.

But not today. Today it is just drones walking on rails made of rules,guidelines and laws. Today, the wheels do not squeak. The valves make no knock. People walk around without looking at one another and take a very long time to fall in to their grave.

I stand and watch. I do nothing about ii ... but watch.

Very Local News

2009-04-15

• We had to get an extension on our taxes because a hospital is dragging their feet. We are close to getting the deduction for medical expenses. That would be very nice.
• I got a USB key to boot. I still can't control which boot it uses. That comes next I suppose. The software I found seems to just grab the first .bin or whatever to boot. I need to point it somehow to the correct .bin to gte multiple boot CDs to work. No idea how to do that. I bet they have adoc on their page. If only I had time to do track it down.
• I need the bigger battery for my phone. Nat has preemptively said no. Not sure how the case thing will work with the extended battery. It is a box hanging off the back of the phone. Doesn't look bad, but changes the form factor.

Very Local News

2009-04-14

• There is a tax payer advocate system in the IRS. The chick in charge says she fusses at people most of the time.
  
• Money is the new sex conversationally speaking. You don't talk about money with your coworkers or neighbors. It is taboo. There are rules expressly forbidding discussing salary between coworkers.
  
• Nat is under the weather. There is something going around work. My office partner says he is woozy. I'm doomed.
• It is offal funny that our government changed the bankruptcy laws in early 2007 I believe, just in time for a huge down tun that would have great to have those old laws around. How convenient for the rich and powerful.
• I set up a color printer last week. I got a call this afternoon saying it wasn't working. 'Drat!' Got there and found out it was a Corel issue. I haven't messed with a graphic program in years.

Media

2009-04-14

Some newspapers, that is the media companies who own them, are going about the e-reader thing the wrong way. If they got together and offered a single reader you could subscribe to hundreds of papers and other media outlets, they just might pull it off. What they are doing is coming out with their own hardware and service structures that are way over priced.

Amazon and Sony have the e-book market summed up for the moment. The papers should partner with one or the other of them. That isn't going to happen either.

I don't want fifteen pieces of equipment to get news. I used to have a TV. Then I had the TV and computer. Now I have my computer and my phone. Many people have netbooks, or whatever they call them this week. They sell like hot cakes and look like the next big thing. Netbooks can do all of the things these readers can do and many functions of both a phone and a laptop. It looks like they are cheaper than the readers. I don't get it. Why would any one buy an e-reader except for the form factor and coolness ration.

Here is a thought; TV was basically free before cable. News papers used cost the reader less than the cost of printing. Advertisements paid for the rest. Something very interesting that has happened lately is the cost of gathering information has gone through the roof. I have to pay for internet access at home and on our phones. I pay for the devices separately. I pay for the content directly What happened? I used to drop $0.50 on a paper and a couple bucks on a TV every fifteen years.

Then comes the whole debacle over having the machine read aloud or not. Some say it violates the voice actor's rights or something. For God's sake. Who has the patent on reading with one eye closed? This is getting ridiculous. Next they will say you have to pay them for the privilege of shining a light on your document.

[end]

too bussy

No tim to talk. Working 24/7. I'll post again soon. Still on the bus at 21:00. Stay shiny.

Very Local News

• Are these "Very Local News" posts or Twittering sapping my creativity? A couple bloggers think that the instant gratification of Twittering saps their juices and they think the service is killing their creativity. Not sure I buy it. I think it is just another place to write something down.
  
• 42
• I heard that Alamo in Austin had a get together last week where they showed the new Star Trek movie as a surprise. They said they were going to show The Wrath of Kan, but showed the new movie instead. Someone in the movie industry gets it.
  
• Dell sells desktops an servers that are cosmetically different. Dell, however, does not cross pollinate the drivers. When they sell a server, they only support server OS options and vice versa. This bit me in the ass three times today. It will continue to bite me in the ass for as long as we use Dell.  I believe HP only supports the OS you purchased on the box. I should feel lucky.

The only good pirate is a dead pirate

Captain Richard Phillips is now safe and healthy aboard the USS Boxer after Navy Seals launched a rescue attempt that ended when snipers killed three pirates in three shots, all direct hits to the head. Vice Admiral William Gortney, Commander of Navy's 5th Fleet, told journalists at the Pentagon Sunday evening a decision was made to take the shots after the pirates were spotted pointing an AK-47 into the back of Captain Phillips. As soon as the shots were fired, Navy Seals "scurried down" a tow line attached to the lifeboat, and were the first to get to Phillips. They surveyed the scene and found three dead pirates. Phillips was alive, although tied up. The fourth pirate, who is now in U.S. custody, left the lifeboat hours earlier with the understanding he would negotiate from on board the USS Bainbridge, the massive Navy destroyer that shadowed the lifeboat for several days. ... But sometime soon after the boats were hooked together, shots were fired from the lifeboat and the pirates were seen holding a gun to Captain Phillips back. Acting on a standing order from President Obama to move in when Phillips was in "imminent danger" snipers were ordered to fire. They established clear head shots on all three pirates. One of the pirates was visible through the front window, and the other two were revealing their heads through the top hatch, presumably to get fresh air. It would be their last breath. Fox News

Some folks say that the word 'pirate' has lost the meaning it once had. It still means the same thing, but it has lost the fear factor that was once associated with it. People think of Jack Sparrow and Walt Disney when you say pirate. That is sad.

Now I hear this news and I rejoice. Even Fox News calls it a happy ending. The concept of measured response to aggression is ridiculous. When someone does something blatantly against the rules just to make money or piss you off, you must make god-damn sure they get the shit knocked out of them and know that you are ready to do it again, every time. The next time we get your families too. Go after the French. Leave U. S. vessels alone or suffer the wrath of the seals .

Obama gave an order to shoot when the hostage was in imminent danger. I suppose it hinges on the meaning of the word 'imminent' is. That does not compute. I'm glad. It still kind of makes me step back and ponder our president.

imminent: ready to take place; especially : hanging threateningly over one's head

Sounds to me like being held hostage at gun point is imminent danger. I'm not a lawyer though. Often I hear about bad people getting it. I do try not to shout in glee. This time I could not stop myself. I heard the words "head shot" and "hua!!" came from me like I deserve to say the word.

Easter

This has been a good Easter. We went to Sheryl's place for dinner. We got there a little bit late because we had to wait for the tornadoes and all to pass by. No one seemed to mind. I watched some folks work on trailer brakes. I did manage to find Google My Maps on my phone. I was able to use the GPS to find my location and stick a pin in my friends and family map. Oh, and had some devilled eggs. That is productive.

I also found a piece of software called UNetbootin that let me create a magical rescue boot image with all kinds of useful utilities at my fingertips. We have a bunch of servers at work with no CD/DVD, a more an more common thing these days, that need utilities run on them regularly. This image has utilities to partition, back up, restore, wipe, diagnose, goodness knows what else. It is what Knoppix was supposed to be before it turned in to a netbook OS. I need a toolbox in my pocket dammit. I don't want to put up a link to the utility because it is just something some guy put together so I want to use it for a while before I recommend it.

Now I just need some more USB drives. Fortunately, they are dirt cheap.

DVD with a single large file

So, I'm trying to burn a single large file, greater than 4 gigabytes, to a DVD for long term storage when I notice an error with the couple of different programs I normally use. I google around and come up with a colution on the command line so quickly, that I don't have time to pirate any for money software.

Error message.

File capture002.dv is larger than 4GiB-1.
-allow-limited-size was not specified. There is no way do represent this file size. Aborting.

Link

Job done. Thank you google, open source software, people who actually use their computers, and people who use their computetrs and then go in forums and help people who display an interest in using their computers for more than porn and facebook.

>  mkisofs -allow-limited-size -udf -o ./test.iso <full path to file that is bigger than 4G>
>  cdrecord -verbose -dao -driveropts=burnfree test.iso

Patients Damnit

There is a reason people slow down. It is not always a good reason to just whip around people who have slowed down. Know the situation.

Life of Dungeons and Dragons

A sad day for DnD players. Dave Arneson past. It sounds like he was the one who said "Let's play a game." Every one else seems to have followed his lead. I wonder if he carved dice by hand and killed a bare when he was three.

A buddy of mine went to all the shows and had no compulsion to just walk up and start talking to people. He has few social boundaries.

Though Gygax was the the man that gave everyone DnD, it was Arneson that actually conceptualized the idea of role-playing. The story is that Arneson was playing a medieval wargame at his house where he was trying to come up with reasons why you wouldn't want specific troops to die.  He made a rule that one of the figures on the map was "you".  After that, people would get in character and talk smack to each other as if they were the medieval character.  Somehow, the rest of the troops were ditched, and people only played their character.  Since Arneson was the game judge, he came up with scenarios that pitted people's characters against environmental obstacles and monsters while everyone's character was fighting each other.  The players discovered that they enjoyed working as a team against Arneson's obstacles more than they did fighting each other.  These environmental obstacles eventually became Blackmoor. Later, Arneson was running his Blackmoor game at his house and invited Gygax over to play.  Gygax went over and immediately realized the potential of this new way of playing games, wrote the game down and published it. Still, the very first DM ever was Arneson. I was fortunate enough to talk to him a couple of times.  (I wouldn't describe the man as "fun", "crotchety" is more apropos.)   I have some stuff signed by him too. Blackmoor was a land filled with knights, wizards, frogmen, robots and spaceships.  It's funny that no one has ever tried to match the creativity of that setting since.  (Maybe Darksun).  I may have to add a Frog Temple to the current campaign, in his memory. -Adam

  There are official words about his death and life.

Dave Arneson, one of the co-creators of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy game and a pioneer of role-playing entertainment, died after a two-year battle with cancer, his family said Thursday. He was 61. Arneson's daughter, Malia Weinhagen, said her father died peacefully Tuesday in hospice care in St. Paul. ... Arneson and Gygax were dedicated tabletop wargamers who recreated historical battles with painted miniature armies and fleets. They met in 1969 at a convention, and their first collaboration, along with Mike Carr, was a set of rules for sailing-ship battles called "Don't Give Up the Ship!" In later years, Dave published other role-playing games and started his own game-publishing company and computer game company. He also taught classes in game design. He was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design Hall of Fame in 1984. Weinhagen said her father enjoyed teaching game design at Full Sail University in Winter Park, Fla., in recent years, where he taught students to make a solid set of rules for their games. "He said if you have a good foundation and a good set of rules, people would play the game again," Weinhagen said. Arneson is survived by Weinhagen and two grandchildren MSNBC

I never met the man. I never cared enough to know he existed while he was alive. I do not morn his passing. I'm glad he was there and did a good job. I move on.

Very Local News

• Craig's list gets more hits and searches than MySpace.
• Many people say Windows is easier than Linux. No, they do things differently. Shutting users up is easier in Windows and getting things done is easer in Linux.
• I liked Dilbert this morning. I'm getting to the point I don't get user friendly any more. I'm just not up to the minute on geek stuff these days.
• I was watching Battlestar Galactica last night and every one had their glasses tilted forward so the lights would not reflect. I get angry that no one on TV wars glasses unless they are supposed to be 'smart' or something.  I have to remember that all the lights on the sets reap havoc with glasses. It still drives me nuts.
  They put anti-glare coating on glasses, but that coating normally goes on the side closest to the eye to prevent light behind you from reflecting and hindering vision. Handy for police I'm told, what with all the strobes going off all over the place. I'm sure you could get a glasses place to cover the front as well if you slip them a couple bucks, or tell them you are an actor.
  
• I had to go thorough a million steps to download some MS scripting host documents. I couldn't authenticate my windows box without running a program that needed to run as Administrator in order to access whatever it it is that MS has determined makes me legit. I've heard that Vista and up have this authentication thing built in so it will not be as big a hassle. I hate Microsoft. What if I'm surfing the net on a net book and developing on a windows box? They don't care. I hate Microsoft!
• There is now an application on the g1 market place thing that allows me to use my saved Google maps and set pins. Yippee! That is something I really wanted. It makes it so when I go to someone's house or do something cool somewhere else, I can save the location.
• Fixed a mouse keyboard issue when I got home. It was one of those situations where I did the same thing Nat did and it worked for me. It is a timing issue.
  

Time

2009-04-07 (a day in the life of Kelly)

• Got up at 5:30 like I do every day.
• Got to work yesterday at 7:30 after a 1.5 hour commute. Any wonder why I want a phone I can surf the net on?
  
• Left work at 20:00.
• Got home at 21:30 after 1.5 hour commute.
  
• Did the cat box.
• Nat had dinner made. Thank you sweetie.
  
• Got yelled at by Natalie for not paying any attention to the family.
• Elle had a nightmare and I got to hold her for a little bit. I wish it were better circumstances, but I'm glad I got to hold her.
  
• Gut to sleep at 00:00 or so.
• Got up at 05:30 like I do every day and started over again.
  

I didn't mow the yard, do any bills, do dishes, write anything worth reading, put up the beautiful pictures of a sun rise i took the other day, or anything else productive. I ate and went to bed. What else is someone supposed to do with a day like that? I slept well thank God.

It shouldn't be like this for ever. work is just nuts right now. We have a bunch of new stuff hitting the world and a bunch of old stuff that needs to work with the new stuff. Yadda Yadda. It is just an every day thing with the tech industry. Still, I feel like I'm living to work right now. That is a tough sell when my little girl has a nightmare.

I Hate Computers

People are buying 30% fewer computers than last year. The only reason people are still buing computers at all is because of netbooks. They are floating the industry, and there is nearly zero prophet in them. The industry si screaming that the internet needs to be faster and greatly expanded.

Think about how important computers have become to our every day lives. I can't pay some of my bills without getting online. I cannot do my job for sure. Many people cannot do their job without a computer. Some collages now require students to bring their own computer and are closing computer labs. I tis just assumed they have access in many cases.

It took decades for cars to become absolutely necessary for existence. It took centuries for banking and insurance to catch on and become required. It won't be long before you will get arrested if you don't have your phone on you at all times with the GPS turned on. I have a bad feeling it will replace ID at some point.

People would not get a pager because they thought they were leashes for people to get hold of them. I remember car phones and having to switch from that term to cell phone when they got small enough to put a shoulder strap on and carry around. I remember "The Rockford Files" introduced an answering machine at a time when no one had one except professionals.

Some people may have been old enough to comprehend the Right brothers flight and young enough to watch the moon landing. We have a guy at our work who has no phone. He defies society. I envy him sometimes.

There was a list I made up once about the perfect hand held device. It had all kinds of things listed like waterproof, surf the net, GPS, phone, music, video, well, they are getting closer. I had a litmos test once that you had to be able to do your taxes in addition to many other tasks on a device before you could call it a computer. Well, I'm pretty sure the G1 wold do it if someone added the application.

Very Local News

• Elle is undergoing testing at school. I do not know the details. I underwent the same testing. It is intelligence measurement coupled with weeding out potential trouble makers. Our beloved government wants to measure it's subjects as early as possible in a vein attempt to predict the future.
• The more that is on the line, the worse your performance. If you are offered a reasonable bonus for a task, you are more likely to perform highly than if you are offered a huge bonus for the same task.
  If you offer a small bonus, you do not motivate. If you offer a large bonus, you stress people out to the point of poor performance. If you can find that middle ground, you are a magician.
• One in every one hundred searches on Google brings up a fake or mall ware site. Google is not the internet overlord. Last time I did a search, a million results came up.I'm sure one of them was a bad place. Not sure what they mean by one in a hundred. Someone needs to start stringing these assholes up.
  
• The G1 doesn't let me put down pins on Google maps. This is catastrophic in my book. I can't save way points or even email myself a location or get GPS numbers or anything useful. I can save a search for Starbucks or or any other consumer related name. That does me little good when I'm trying to remember where I've been or track my own movements. Bad form G1 Google maps. I bet I can do it on the iPhone.
  
• All this G20 crap and not one cent was traded hands or pledged, except by China. This meeting they had was an enormous non-event. So much to do about jack. Empty pomp. I don't even want to call it a vacuum because that implies it has a name and there for exists.
  All the news seems to be about the protests or the bloggers and new media coverage of the protests.
  
• There was a knock down drag out meeting this morning at work.I'm not going in to details of course, but it was a "look busy" moment for sure.
• One of my tasks today was to bring up some color printers and make sure they worked. I have to say, it was a pleasant change from the last couple weeks.
• Got off on time today. Hit a stopping point and boogied. Got home and mowed. I'm so frigging tired it is not funny. I've eaten three huge bowls of chicken and noodle soup while I watch the last season of Battlestar Galactica. Liking it. Knowing it ended, makes it even better.

Network Issues

Yesterday afternoon we had an issue with the network at work. The number of broken packets went through the roof. The experts started diagnosing the trouble. I started setting up a new machine in case we needed it. They got around to separating rooms off the network and figured out that there was one machine in one of the labs spewing garbage over the network. I mean it looked deliberate.

It turns out to be some messed up hardware. The amount of time lost is staggering. I tried to get some work done. Everything we do requires the network. That is normal. How many software companies out there can stand the network vanishing for three hours. Frankly, I'm surprised it didn't take longer.

The solution was to unplug and dispose of the machine. I don't want to say the name for security reasons, but it was both appropriate and funny.

This is one time I think a baseball bat is called for in fixing the network.

Very Local News

• Our government did a study that found, if you reduce the monthly payments of people who fell behind on their home loan by at least 10 percent, they were fare less likely to fall behind again. Thus, they were far less likely to eventually default. Duh!

• Awesome potato soup from Nat today at lunch. She brought up a huge (new) pot of potato soup to work today because some folks asked for it at the party. Most of whom missed it. Their loss. It was difficult taking the pot up to the sixth floor  Sucker weighed 35 lb. Nat misplaced her new phone case while she was transferring out of the car. Lucky it wasn't her phone I say. Male rats have no nipples.I've never gotten close enough to verify.
• tons of server troubles at work. I asked if I should account this on our time tracking and got an evil eye.

• I sat on the phone with Dell support for an hour this morning waiting for disk errors to arise on a notebook. It did eventually fail on queue. I mist an important meeting. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It is one of those 'at least I had a good reason' things.
  
• There is a book in me I think. Maybe. The itch is growing. It is a hell of a lot of work and my spelling can be overcome.
• Nat called me up at work in the afternoon. There were a couple of cop cars in front of our neighbor's house. If only they were doing something about the noisy freaks behind us.
  I would like it noted for the record that my neighbour, whom I have called a drug dealer in this blog, has been arrested, though I no not for what.

Baking cookies and blogging the Mud Bug party

I'm editing video. My computer sounds like an old RV climbing a hill. I'm sitting next to it and I can feel the heat coming off the CPU in waves. If I'm going ot get in to this video thing, I'll need a far more powerful computer.Fortunately, they are getting cheaper by the minute. Desktops have all but cratered in price. It was not that long ago when video editing was the most stressful thing you could do with your computer.  The Video Toaster came out and made it look easy. Then, they were out done by Macintosh. That is a need for another time.

No sooner do computers get to the point where they can just crank out video with all kinds of cool stuff, then the standard changes out from under them. I welcome HD. I need an HD, night vision kit with amazing wide angle and telephoto capabilities that fits in my pocket, is water proof and sells for under $200. I'll hold my breath. That cuts both ways. There is no way I could get a 10 minute video under 100 megabytes, which was the limit on YouTube until recently when it went to 1 gigabyte. Still ten minutes though. Google still has her eye on the ball.

It is too bad I'm so bad at video editing. I have no idea what is good when it comes to video. I do know what I like. Most of that is geek stuff that would never sell. At the moment, I'm editing a video that is mostly about kids playing with crayfish before they are eaten at a Mud-Bug party. I figure, who would like to watch kids getting pinched by crayfish? It cracks me up how much all the parents let their kids play with the things. I mean, it is not like they will loose a finger. It is funny to watch. I'm proud of the parents in my group. Kids need to be warned, watched, guided, and left to learn.

Elle is a girly girl and never got near the things. As a matter of fact, toward the beginning of the second video, she is scared and runs across the yard. Nat has to coax her back to the pool. Poor thing. I tried to give her a bit of encouragement that if she didn't want to touch one she didn't have too. Not sure she bought my argument. Still, one of the other little girls ran around hitting people telling them not to eat the cute littl bugs. You can hear her say "I hope they don't eat these." toward the end of the second video. We have a little Lisa Simpson in the mix.

The editor I use only kind of works. I have seen the editors for Windows and they make things so easy. The software that came with my Flip Mino HD is supposed to be a piece of cake. I've never seen it. It took me a couple weeks to get the video and audio to line up with the software I use. Real video editing is involved and has a learning curve. Right now, all I do is cut snips out of my videos and stitch a couple different videos together. I have not even added text yet. I'm sure I'll want to eventually. I wish there were a one stop program for all of it on Linux. The saying used to be "If you want to do video on Windows, buy a Mac." Not sure if that still applies. Linux blows for media editing. The way the OS has been dominated by geaks and DIY folks, Linux will always be behind the curve. 

Video 1

Video 2

Please let me know what you think of the content or the crappy quality. I will only learn after scorn and ridicule.

Saturday

I shot some video at the Mud-Bug party. I tried to blog from the party on the phone. The result is kind of difficult to read. I'll need practise with the keyboard and I'll need the little magnifying glass that I ordered yesterday to hurry up and get here. There are some applications that have a spell checker built in for the phone as well. I'll invest in one that works.

The video is copied over to my computer. It would be great if I had the strength to go through it this evening and get it up for consumption, but that is not going to happen. Apologies. I kicked off one of the Battlestar Galactica videos and found out it was one fo the seasons I've alredy seen. That sucks. I was looking forward to watching them. That is all shot to hell. I don't like the way it ended anyway. I really want to watch the episode of Family guy where the Star Trek characters came on. That would be breat, but I cannot find it on hulu or on my favorite pirate sites.

Now I get to listen to boom boom music from next door and assholes race up and down the street in front of our house. Will I get any sleep? I doubt it. It is difficult to respect this neibhborhood and the people in it when I hat what happens around us here. This is just a bad situation.

mud-bug party

The parents are sitting around the living room sorrounded by kids. We are all trying to make as much noise as possible, the piano is a big hit eith the kids. Elle has chicken nuggets. Every adult has some kind of camera. I'm tapping away on yhe new phone.

We had three runs of food. I ate corn and potatoes. The spices kill me as I get older. We are trying to make plans for a D&D game soon. Really looking forward to it. I feel like Nat and I miss out on too much.

Mud-bug

Headed for a mud-bug party this afternoon. It has been a ball in past years. I've gotten good pictures in the past. There is a conflicting baby shower this time so attendance may be light. I imagine a bunch of Chris's collage friends will be there. Several of the single folks from work will turn up. Nat and I will be there. Not sure who else. Still sounds like fun.

I'm not even in to the food. It is the comradeship I like.

Taking the camera, video camera, phone, goodness knows what else. Don't expect any media. I'm far too lazy to perform on demand.

Very Local News

• I give in. I need a loop to read my new phone. I need to find out where to get them. You have seen the ones I'm talking about. They stick to your eye, black.
• I was almost, kinda, sorta, hoping for an easier day than I've had at work recently. Not. It, of course, turned out to be a thrill a minute roller coaster ride through an erupting volcano during a hurricane. SNAFU.
• One of the podcasts today was a fiction story read by someone who spoke both Japanese and English fluently .The story was mostly English. It was about a sumo wrestler far in the future. It is a science fiction podcast.
• "May you never face yourself in battle." This is a saying in Sumo. I remember a game of Dungeons and Dragons where the DM took our characters and made copies and  we had to fight ourselves. Our copies didn't have to worry about conserving ammunition or sparing components for the next day's fight. Even though only half our number was copied, we nearly lost. This is an important lesson in knowing when to be careful and when to go flat out. It all boils down to knowing your enemy ... and yourself.

Hit me

Spoiler Alert!

I watched Fight Club last night. That is, I watched the first half of Fight Club. I really like the movie. It means something to me. It makes me want to be a better man. It reminds me that there is a movement to remove what makes humanity fight to survive and replace it with being a bunch of easily controlled pussies.

Fight Club gets me worked up. I watch the scenes before the key switch and after the key switch and I just want to be part of something larger. I want to do something to make the world better. I want to leave a legacy. I want to make a dent in the planet. I want to make the universe know my name.

The key switch is the line "Hit me." in the movie. The moment that line is both spoken and crossed, the movie takes the turn from mundane human existence to leadership and making a difference.

I have never had a movie affect me like Fight Club. I feel like I'm ready to take on the world after watching it. I sleep like a baby. The darkness seem brighter. The light feels closer. I feel just that little bit alive.

So many movies have a gimmick. I've heard that movie with Bruce Willis and Fight Club mentioned in the same breath a lot as movies with a pivotal moment of realization. Screw that. They both use a similar mechanism. So what! Someone who works on a car and a space station might use the same kind of wrench, but they are not one the same planet.

Fight Club is not my favorite movie because so many people say Fight Club is their favorite movie. Fight club is not the best movie ever made. Fight Club has an affect on me. It has an affect on me that I like very much.

Any one who asks "Why do people kill themselves for a cause?", tell them to watch Fight Club. It is not call to a cause. It is an example of becoming part of something larger than just existing and realizing your priorities have been screwed up your whole life.

Of course, the boring character with all the problem and the interesting character with all the fight in him clash, conflict and eventually work together to effect change. Blah blah blah. I get that. There is more message to the movie than finding one's self. There is more to life than pleasing people around you.

Very Local News

• One of the podcasts I listen to has a note about bloggers and podcasters and the like being vetted and invited to the G20 thing in Europe. It is an effort to look more open by the world leaders. The people going sounded very impressed with the whole balance of things. I feel like it is for show, but then the whole to-do regarding G20 is for show really. Decisions have already been made I'd wager. Still, good to know a couple regular people will be present.
• There was a podcast about the brain and depression. I tried to listen,but it was too depressing. Basically, they know nothing except there are in fact changes in the brain that affect depression. Duh.
  I want a constitutional amendment that says in order to declare war, congress must rais taxes to pay for it. Once the war is over, congress has to declare it over and the taxes have to be rolled back. This will both pay for the war and denture hair trigger reactions. It may make people think before they act. It puts a double edge to the war sword.
• It used to be against the law to curs at a telephone company operator.
• The lab I use for staging and repairing boxes is finally back to normal. I had a rack on wheels in there for a while. It was claustrophobic. I'm almost caught up. Then, I never get caught up. An administrator's work is never done.
• Any one out there know why I like every other Lost? Are they staggered by director, or writers or something?

Very Local News

• Happy April Fool's Day.
• I learned about a new scientific law. The Law of Maximum Inconvenience. That is, you only notice things that piss you off. All the things randomly happening around you that you do not notice are just as unlikely.
  Thank you Dr Karl.
• The car is paid off.
• The credit card is at zero.
• Got out of work today only about half an hour after 'quitting time'. A term by the way that has lost its meaning.
• Natalie nearly killed us all flipping a U-turn in front of the house. I half expect an officer to knock on our door before the evening is done.
• Something happened today that never happened before. I got a call on my mobile from someone at work on a work related subject. It turns out I screwed something up.  I hope it never happens again.