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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Albatross' Blurty:
| Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 | |
| 9:52 am | Homework? Oh, blogging! You can tell Ihave homework to do when alluvasudden I start blogging. Today I have a homework assignment to complete, then I have to start working, hard, on next week's huge 30-point homework project (the final is worth 20 points). Also I have my Mitlanyal paper that I should be much farther along on. So of course I'm blogging. Sitting here at the Brueggers in Eagan where I go with Theresa on Wednesday mornings. She goes off to a class at the Aslan Institute and I sit here and try to make myself work on homework. And end up browsing Facebook and blogging! Had a job interview yesterday that went quite well, and moments ago got a call regarding negotiating rates. If I get the rate proposed I will be quite happy, and starting Monday-after-next. I will begin griping about my job around three days later, because that's just the kind of whiny shmuck I am. That of course will add urgency to the use of my time for scholastic purposes. I was ALREADY panicking over the next six weeks of schoolwork, hopefully I'll have the chance to completely freak out when work is added to the mix. Crossing fingers, waiting for the trigger to be pulled, etc. Okay, okay, enough procrastinating, enough speculation about the downside of really good news, off to work on homework!! SRIOUSLY! |
| Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 | |
| 4:56 pm | Oh, Hai!
Still unemployed on this the eight-weekly-versary of losing my prior abysmal contract (and that one at half time for the final three weeks). I'd better enjoy myself, because I'm going to soon be spending what little retirement money I have. September, which is normally the time when contracts are coming in best, was absolutely dead. One of my job websites posts a "previous month" summary, and September showed three opportunities, none of them for security architecture. October has been better, I've actually had three interviews, one in person. And I have an in-person interview scheduled for next week. Unfortunately the role is for a software architect, and I'm a network architect, so there's a good chance they won't pick me. Also I strike a lot of people as "too senior," meaning that they think their little job isn't interesting to me and that I'll leave for a better place at the first opportunity. "No!" I say, "No, your little job is VERY interesting to me, particularly as this one is scheduled to go two years." Two years is a wonderful length for a contract, my max has been 15 months so far. So I wouldn't mind taking the job. ( Read more... ) |
| Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 | |
| 10:30 pm | Writing Exercise
For those of you who don't know, and why should you, my wife (the actual writer in the family) made three big piles of cards: Characters, Places, and Stories. The exercise is to pick one card at random from each pile and write whatever story comes to mind inside of half an hour. Tonight I got "The Belle of the Ball," "A Phone Booth," and "Food Fight." Anyway, the story is after the jump, which when you click "Continue reading 'Writing Exercise'" means you agree to follow copyright law and conventions and not to copy or transmit my story anyplace in any form, but you're welcome to link people here... ( Read more... ) |
| Monday, September 21st, 2009 | |
| 9:20 pm | Inside the Mind? of Newt Gingrich
"Newt Gingrich: Alzheimer's: The fight that matters. Subheading: We could save -- lives and money -- by funding brain science research." I mean, don't get me wrong - yes, let's fund Alzheimer's research and find a cure! But as the Republicans have been standing four-square against any kind of health care reform, Gingrich's comments and justifications are weirdly at odds with his party's platform. His call for Alzheimer's research dollars contrasts with his party's long-standing opposition to stem cell research, which many predict will yield advances in that field. While you plan for retirement, checking your 401(k)s, do you consider the costs of long-term care? With Alzheimer's, the cost of life is staggering. In 2008, the economic value of the care provided by family and other unpaid caregivers of people with Alzheimer's and other dementias was roughly 9.9 million people at a cost of $94 billion -- not to mention the devastating emotional impact. While curing Alzheimer's disease will be a wonder when it happens, the approved course of treatment will follow years of clinical studies following the discovery of a cure. Between then and now, how are we supposed to survive unless we have - what do they call it? - health care insurance? Imagine the savings to you, your family, and quite frankly the entire country, if we could slow the rate of Alzheimer's. Uh, okay, now let's generalize that... Imagine the savings to you, your family, and quite frankly the entire country, if we could slow the rate of all diseases. I'm sorry, is it just me, or does this sound a LOT like a call for universal health insurance coverage, so that EVERYBODY can see a doctor and EVERYBODY can get healthier? ( Read more... ) |
| Saturday, September 12th, 2009 | |
| 11:26 pm | Voices from the Past Yesterday was even more tiring than those preceding it. In part that was my own fault. I hadn't gotten to the gym on Thursday, so on Friday I thought I'd bike to a distant cafe and do some work there, with the bike ride serving as exercise. I rode to my destination, and was typing merrily away on my laptop when my phone rang and my wife informed me I had forgotten something. I forgot I had promised to help my mother pull up the carpeting in her bedroom. Whee. Since I had biked about 1/3rd of the way to her house, I called her and had her just pick me up at the cafe, and left my bike locked to a pole. I moved furniture, took apart her headboard, tore up carpeting and padding, and levered up all the stupid carpet-strips around the border of the room. While I was doing that, I also booted her computer and applied all the patches and updates it was clamoring for, then ran a virus scan. Hours later she dropped me off, and I still had to complete my bike ride home. So I got in my exercise yesterday. Today I went over Bob and Debbie's and set up their computers, wiring up their network and wireless hubs and configuring her SSID to be unannounced and connecting her laptop with WPA2 and TKIP. I also updated his virus scanner and applied patches, etc and got his e-mail working. I got home pretty tired (especially having been kept up til 4:00 am with insomnia over joblessness), but I received a very nice treat when I read my e-mail.... Hello, It was nice to see this in your post. It is from my mother's grave. My sister found it on Google and sent me the link. I had no idea what these comments posted to my blog meant, but they were in reference to entry #34, and this my dear friends is entry #654. Whose grave? What was being commented? Only a blog entry from the year 2000... Go read the post and the comments... What a blast from the past, eh? I thought their comments were very kind and much more thoughtful than I deserve. I of course remember NOTHING described in the blog entry. I have a terrible memory. But it was wild to read about those ancient days of wandering around a cemetary with the kids. And it was also amazing to me, as I dug around the archives, to realize that in a few short months this blog will celebrate its tenth anniversary. Wow... Tonight we went to Movie Night, which featured a documentary by a fellow named Barry Kimm (who was in attendance) describing how his three siblings tried to salvage belongings and memories from the abandoned Iowa farmhouse where they had been raised. It was quite moving and very well done. Hopefully he'll put it on the Internet sometime. |
| Thursday, September 10th, 2009 | |
| 2:28 pm | Apheresis Again
Last week was busy. No, it was really a circus. It began on August 29th, when we moved The Young Man into his dorm in Wisconsin. It was a big day for him, and when it came time for us to go, I could tell he was torn between not wanting us to leave, and wanting us to leave. We had spent the morning moving him in (a nice second-story dorm) and wandering the campus and the nearby town, and finally we were out of stalling tactics and it was time to go. I really couldn't believe we were there, playing out a middle-class ritual that I had never experienced, Dropping Off at the Dorm. I had my own car when I moved out, so I don't remember such an event in my life. Although honestly my memory is so poor and i was so young and self-centered it may have happened and I don't remember! But it was good and sad and exciting and dreadful and everything one must expect from the timely departure of one's beloved son from the nest. I wouldn't change anything, but I wouldn't mind another five or ten years of my kids being this age, living at home, either. It struck me a few years ago that I was living through some of the happiest days of my life, and I'm not looking forward to four years from now when The Boy (title held now my youngest) moves out. ( Read more... ) |
| Monday, August 17th, 2009 | |
| 7:45 pm | Health Care Reform Screed
Economic nationalism and bigotry are being used by American corporate media in their all-out propaganda offensive to prevent any reform to health insurance in the United States. In such an environment, complaints that the British Health Service is being slandered will never be aired, much less elicit any empathy. While more than two-thirds of Americans desire such reform, much more than two thirds of our Congress has been bribed, I'm sorry, "lobbied" by the health care industry to ensure no such thing occurs. The population knows it. We know that the supposedly brilliant Obama has somehow managed to repeat the first term gaffes of the Clinton administration by recklessly and naively attempting to tackle the health care industry without laying sufficient Congressional groundwork. In other words, we're quite aware that we are being lied to and that our representatives have been bought, so your average American is rather more concerned about how to pay their medical bills (and, incidentally, the destruction of our representative democracy) than about the hurt feelings of our British and Canadian neighbors. ( Read more... ) |
| Sunday, August 16th, 2009 | |
| 10:36 pm | Weekend trip Drove down to visit my sister Heidi in Davenport over the weekend. I've wanted to make one of these spontaneous trips for a while, to see what such a trip would be like and for the visit's sake itself. I'd wanted to go visit Karen this way last holiday season, but unfortunately I didn't make it. So that just increased my determination to do this now. I drove down off the freeways - I heard a rumor that I35W was a mess of road construction down by Faribault, so I decided to take smaller roads starting with highway 52 out of St. Paul. It was a good choice. The weather was magnificent, and eventually I even figured out how to set the vents in the car so I didn't need the air conditioning (despite the southerly sun pouring in on my lap). I left late at about 11:00 a.m. and reached Davenport after about six hours of driving. Heidi and I grabbed some Mexican food at a nice place, and went to see "District 9," which turned out to be excellent. After the movie we went through some of Karen's hooked artwork, and she let me bring a few home that she didn't have room to display. Theresa was thrilled to see them when I got them home. We had a great visit, catching up and reminiscing about Karen. The next morning we grabbed breakfast, then I headed back. I noticed that Highway 61 ran through the center of Davenport, and I remembered that it's the same Highway 61 that runs through St. Paul, so I decided to come home on 61 alone. It was a very scenic drive and once again the weather was gorgeous, turning just a little gray as I reached St. Paul. I slept well on Saturday night, more tired by 11 hours behind the wheel than I would have suspected. Over the weekend I received word from a consulting firm that they wanted to line up a Monday morning interview, so if I'm lucky I'll pick up another job, albeit at a much lower rate, without a complete gap in earnings. Maintaining cashflow is the important point right now, I can keep looking for an appropriate rate once I make sure I've got any money coming in at all. So off to bed, to get ready for my interview in the morning! |
| Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 | |
| 10:18 pm | Feeling Better Feeling a little bit better today. The first day after a contract goes south is always toughest. Sat down with Theresa tonight, figured out our budget. Playing it safe, we should have enough to get through October itself, so that's not too bad. In a normal year I wouldn't worry at all, but this year it would be reckless to start feeling cocky about any employment situation. Still, I also made some calls and sent some e-mails today, and got enough of a response to be mildly encouraged. The real test will be a month from now: September is a big month for contract hiring. Everybody's back from summer vacation, and there's all of autumn stretched out ahead for being productive. If I'm unemployed without a full calendar of interviews a month from now, I'm going to be in a world of serious pain. Not like I'm going to sit on my hands between then and now, either. Managed to get to the gym today. Hopefully again tomorrow, and really indefinitely, particularly when I'm underemployed. I realize I'm 47 and mortal, but I'm not happy being overweight. I'd LOVE to be able to get off the god-damned blood pressure pills, but for now I'd settle for not looking like I'm 20 weeks pregnant. |
| Monday, August 10th, 2009 | |
| 11:41 pm | Happy 47th Birthday to Me
I turned 47 today, and lost my job. I came back from two weeks of vacation ready to hit the ground running, refreshed and renewed, and halfway through the day I was told that I'd been removed from my primary project, and placed on half-time on my secondary project. And that the secondary project would only carry me for three weeks. Really, what it comes down to is that the project management group that hired me never did figure out what the hell they were doing with me. I TOLD them when I started that I wasn't a project manager, they said they didn't want me to be a project manager, and then they proceeded to expect me to be a project manager. And when I didn't and couldn't behave as a project manager, they got frustrated with me, and so now I'm out. Sigh. And the twins start college in three weeks. So my birthday has been a mixed bag. We had a nice gift exchange. Since the twins' birthday was a week ago while we were on vacation, so we had gifts to give them back at home. Leo got a TI-83 calculator, Gennie got a nice big digital drawing tablet. The most expensive item of the the two cost $25. I've been trying to save money this summer. A lot has changed this summer. On our vacation we held a little ceremony to mark my birthmother's passing, and that was hard and sad and wonderful. My friend Rachel is moving to New York, meaning I lose my exercise buddy - yeah, now my exercise is all my own personal responsiblity. Great. I guess I'll be about a zillion pounds by next summer. And my twins are going off to college in three weeks. And I guess I'm changing jobs, or, embracing unemployment. A lot of stuff is changing. I guess it's a little ironic that I lost my job on mybirthday, and on the first day back from a two week vacation. But on the other hand I guess it's just as well, because the vacation was priceless and if I'd known I was losing myu job I wouldn't have been able to take the vacation. So better to learn after the vacation than before. And while I'm good at finding work, the current job environment certainly makes it a challenge. I'm tempted to not even BOTHER looking, there are no jobs in August usually, and THIS August it's completely ridiculous. But I have three weeks at half pay and I've got to take advantage of them - if I could start a job September 1st then my financial world may not collapse and my kids might even be able to go to college. So I think you're seeing the result here - I'm supposed to be having a nice birthday, but instead I'm fretting over unemployment in one of the worst economic periods in a century. Anyway, this being my birthday,one of my resolutions is to return to writing, and certainly now I'll have the time. My other resolution is exercise. We'll see how that goes... Ah well, time for bed. A great time to lie awake and stare at the ceiling, fretting. |
| Monday, April 20th, 2009 | |
| 10:20 am | Schneier Movie-Plot Threat Contest
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| Saturday, February 21st, 2009 | |
| 6:13 pm | Another Strib Letter
So I turned to a letter to the editor, in order that maybe one comment, somewhere, might be permitted. We'll see if they publish it. Yet another letter describing Obama as a "socialist" might sell more ad space. ( Read more... ) |
| Sunday, January 4th, 2009 | |
| 4:51 pm | Cinema Golddew
Three of her assignments were to make videos of various types: a flip-book animation, a stop-motion animation, and a kind of an art movie. Now that class is over, they're posted on the net. Here they are: |
| Friday, November 28th, 2008 | |
| 3:07 pm | Why I Came To Work Today
Murphy's Law being what it is, of course my presence here was almost entirely unnecessary, except I suppose for a little paperwork that I have processed. Then I happened to glance at my webcam from Svalbard, a An aurora borealis. I can't imagine any other situations other than sitting at work with my webcams running that would have led me to observe this celestial phenomenon. Therefore, I consider this ample evidence that the whole reason I came in to work today was so that I could be reminded of how lucky I am sometimes. |
| Friday, November 7th, 2008 | |
| 10:27 am | President-Elect Obama I went to a Catholic high school in Queens through third grade, so I was raised with black and white friends all around. Two of my third grade friends were Steven Black and Kenneth Brown. Then we moved to a white suburb in New Jersey, mostly because my brother was special needs and Queens had no resources for him. The nuns told my parents to move to a wealthy suburb where he could get the attention he needed. After four years in New Jersey my paternal grandmother died, and my mother wanted to return home to her native Minnesota. So we packed up for the trip, and for old times sake we went on one last visit to Queens. ( Read more... ) |
| Friday, September 26th, 2008 | |
| 4:52 pm | Why Congress is stalled on the 'bail out' As you know, the Democrats have committee controls, but don't have enough votes to overcome a filibuster. So if the Republicans don't like it, it won't happen, so it can't be "rammed through." And remember, even a good solution can get scuttled because it makes the Democrats look too sensible or intelligent to suit Republican tastes. The Democrats are less organized that the Republicans, who have hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate-funded "think tanks" coordinating their efforts, and a corporate propaganda empire (Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC) for communications. Remember during the six years that the Republicans controlled Congress, the way any Democratic resistance was met with a propaganda blizzard about how every bill deserved an "up 'r down vote." The corporate propaganda machine shamed Democrats from exercising their filibuster powers. The Democrats have no similar propaganda machine with which to shame Republicans, because the same corporations that control the media and fund the think-tanks also control the Republicans. And a lot of the Democrats. So the filibuster, which they once decried as an anti-democratic anti-American tool of troop haters, is now such a central plank of Republican strategy that they don't have to use it: just the threat of the filibuster scuttles Democratic legislation. ( Read more... ) |
| Thursday, September 11th, 2008 | |
| 10:11 am | Morpheus
The sad case of Sneha Philip has reached a final conclusion. Typically, my appearance-driven assumptions about who Philip was and how her destiny played out were wrong, too simple, and changed across time. From a beautiful young woman with an unlimited future who suffered a tragic fate she went through many transformations. The first tale was the unknown: on the night of September 10th, Sneha did not return to her apartment, nor call her husband, Ron Liebermann. When shortly after daybreak the towers next to their apartment building were attacked and collapsed, Ron realized that the police were going to have no time to spare looking for a missing person. So Sneha underwent her first transformation, from unknown disappearance, to 9/11 victim. Ron told police that witnesses had seen Sneha, a medical practicioner, rushing to help victims of the Twin Towers. However the story did not hold up, and a year later I discovered that her husband had made up the story. Sneha was back to being a mysterious disappearance, but now with a sinister twist. Any student of crime or crime dramas knows that when someone is murdered their spouse is always a suspect. Why had LIeberman lied about his wife? Was it truly for the reasons stated? Why did he and the family hold to the lie for so long, even attending memorials for 9/11 victims until 2003? Given the tragedy I didn't want to compound it with speculation, but her husband's initial lie made that hard to maintain. ( Read more... ) |
| Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 | |
| 9:53 am | Everything breaks
It started when my spouse opened a spam e-mail and infected her computer with a virus. I extracted the virus, but the process damaged the operating system and I can't find my OS disk to fix it. Every fifteen minutes or so it BSOD's and continues cycling through BSOD screens and back to the O/S until it's shut down. Then her Flash audio driver failed, so she can't watch YouTube with Internet Explorer or Firefox. Interestingly, she can still do so using Safari. In the midst of that, the XBox 360 started displaying the fatal Red Ring of Death, meaning that despite drastic efforts to prevent overheating the CPU chip finally developed a microscopic crack in one of its input lines. Yesterday was pretty sucky. There were a couple of positive notes. I did GO on the bike ride, so I got some exercise even if I was in a blue funk. I managed to visit the doctor for a cholesterol test and pick up my cholesterol pills at the pharmacy just as I ran out at home. That was a tricky logistical stunt to pull off, but I managed it. I also, finally, at about 10:30 p.m., got a minute or two to play with my new digital photo frame, and that was really exciting. Very rarely does one come across a device that does exactly what you'd want it to do if you thought about it. So as I wondered about the features of the new picture frame, they emerged on display: clock and calendar function, music and video functions, and integrated musical slideshow. I loaded it up with some recent trip photos and my best-of gallery and brought it to work today. I even managed to bore a hole in its stand and connect a security cable, so it won't walk off from my desk! So yesterday was sucky, but today, today I have hopes for. And my spouse's computer? I decided to just buy a cheap replacement through a discount program at my workplace. I could spend days fixing her old computer, or put in a few extra hours at work and cover the expense that way. Next... purchasing a digital camera! Stay tuned... |
| Monday, August 4th, 2008 | |
| 8:04 am | Seventeen
Oh my. Where the hell did the time go? Last night as a pre-birthday-present torture we forced the twins (Dante scarpered to the basement) to view their ultrasound videos which continue along through the fourth month after their birth. They were appalled and very deliberately bored, but it was amazing for me. Not because of my skinny, bushy-bearded appearance, or the fact that my wife's parents were practically the same age then as I am now. No, it was just that I have no idea where the time went. It feels like no time - and yet it feels like forever. ( Read more... ) |
| Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 | |
| 4:44 pm | CBS News Standards
However, these bloggers with complaints are referencing an out-of-date set of standards. Since I has mad investigative skillz, I have unearthed a copy of the current journalistic standards that CBS employs. It is clear upon reviewing these standards that CBS did nothing wrong whatsoever. ( Read more... ) |
How's it going? So it's been a while, but I figure if I ever want 
Did a writing exercise tonight, the first free writing I've done despite being out of work for a month. You'd think I could get more done, but classwork and job hunting eat up my time.
I read the headline of Gingrich's commentary with profound confusion, that only intensified when I continued into the article. 
April is the month for 
Truly dedicated readers will remember that every couple of years on 9/11 I look back on the case of Sneha Philip. Out of the 2,750 other victims of 9/11, I happened to take a rain-draggled copy of HER "missing" poster as a memento of my visit to Manhattan on Sept. 16, 2001 (for a pre-scheduled training class).
