• I desperately want an Obama victory…but at what cost?

    12 Sep 2008 » 1 min read

    I just got a call from the Obama for America campaign.  They were looking for donations for their Get Out the Vote effort.  I gave money during the primary, and today, I gave money to the campaign itself.  I was happy to do so. However, I’ve got to say that I was rather surprised by how the phone person…

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  • Schmap photo was accepted!

    12 Sep 2008 » 1 min read

    It’s official: my photo of Harry’s Bar in Venice, Italy was accepted by Schmap and is now part of their website. The backstory. For those who want to see it, you can find the photo (along with attribution) here. Those of you with an iPhone or an iPod Touch might try the special iPhone version…

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  • Wake, part 1

    11 Sep 2008 » 1 min read about Reading & Books

    I just finished reading part one of Robert J. Sawyer’s serialized novel Wake.  As usual with Rob’s stuff, it’s outstanding.  It pulls you in, and keeps hold of you, and entertains you and makes you think, and makes you crazy for the fact that you have to wait nearly a month before part 2 comes out!…

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  • American Express annoyances

    11 Sep 2008 » 3 min read

    Yesterday, I got a call on the new home phone line from American Express, offering me, an excellent customer and small business owner, a pre-approved Small Business Owners American Express Card. First, I have no idea how they got the phone number.  I added it to the Do Not Call registry less than five minutes after I was…

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  • Nine-Eleven

    11 Sep 2008 » 1 min read

    It’s that time again, Patriot’s Day, according to my calendar.  Right across the street from my office is the unveiling of the new 9/11 garden at the Pentagon, so there were all kinds of road closures this morning, none affecting us however. The police were out in force, giving people tickets who were making illegal…

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  • Rainbows End

    11 Sep 2008 » 1 min read about Reading & Books

     I finally finished Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge yesterday.  I struggled through the book.  It was so different from what I was used to.  But I kept pressing on because there seemed to be some kind of significant mystery unfolding and I wanted to know what it was.  Alas, by the time I got to the end of the book,…

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  • It’s all a matter of taste

    11 Sep 2008 » 2 min read

     Productive day at work, mostly working on data migration scripts.  I listed to three full Metallica albums in the morning, first time I’ve done that in a while.  (And because strausmouse  will ask which ones:  Master of Puppets, And Justice for All, and The Black Album.)  We had our "end of summer" BBQ lunch today and that was nice.…

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  • Grow old along with me

    10 Sep 2008 » 1 min read about Writing & Publishing

    We overslept today.  It was almost 7 AM before we finally crawled out of bed.   Once again, I had a pretty rotten night’s sleep.  The first half wasn’t so bad, but then, sometime in the middle of the night, an alarm clock went off that shouldn’t have gone off and that got us both restless for…

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  • I want candy

    09 Sep 2008 » 1 min read about Reading & Books

    I wasn’t as successful completing my list as I had hoped to be today.  I did produce my massive list of reports, I took my suits to the cleaners, I picked up Kelly’s stuff from the cleaners, and we worked on narrowing down our First Dance list.  I didn’t complete anything else on the list, although I made progress reading…

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  • Roll out the barrel

    08 Sep 2008 » 1 min read

    What’s on tap today: Produce massive list of reports for 3 PM meeting Adding logging to the Visitor application Try, try try to finish up Rainbows End Read part one of Rob Sawyer’s "Wake" in ANALOG Read Paul Levinson’s story in ANALOG Begin work on week 4 assignment for the writer’s workshop Take suits to…

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