Somebody named Juliana Smoot keeps writing to me. She seems to think I would find it totally awesome to have my name on a stock car called “Powered by the American People.” So awesome that I’d pay $5 for the honor. It’s something to do with “Charlotte in 2012,” which I’m guess is the Democratic convention. Today is my “last chance,” so hopefully she’ll leave me alone now.

So, you’ve probably heard of Steve Rothstein, who bought a “golden ticket” from American Airlines in 1987 that gave him unlimited air mileage. He spent $250,000 for it, and another $150,000 for a “companion” ticket (‘cuz who wants to fly alone?). Well, it appears that it wasn’t actually “unlimited” after all, and AA has cut him off (accusing him of “fraud” for booking companion seats in fake names when he wasn’t yet certain who his companion would be – which sounds like bullshit to me).

This reminds me of a trip to NYC I took once, where we went to a Brew-n-Burger. They had a deal, where you could get a burger and all-you-can drink pitcher of beer. Turns out, it was only all you can drink if you could only drink two pitchers. I felt rather robbed on that one. Plus the burger sucked.

This was a terribly short weekend. Nice weather, at least, but two days just aren’t enough. I need a nap.

Finally, it’s Friday. And the shitty weather of the past few days appears to be taking a turn for better. It’s actually supposed to be sunny and warm today. I had to come in rather early this morning because we were implementing a major change to one of our systems that had the potential to be a real nightmare if something went wrong (which would have been a bummer, since it’s me who wrote it). Fortunately, there were only a couple of minor glitches (so far, anyway – knock on wood), and it looks as though my early day can be parlayed into an early release for the weekend.

How ’bout that John Travolta, huh? Now he’s got a third dude saying he was sexually harassed by Vinnie Barbarino. I would suggest that Johnny get some psychiatric help, but, them people don’t believe in all that. But I think a few extra auditing sessions are called for, at the least.

So, have you seen this new Time Magazine cover? Of course you have – it’s big huge news (for some reason). I have to admit, it seems a bit odd to me to nurse your kid until he or she is, like, 4 or 5 years old. But, hey, what do I know. We didn’t have those newfangled breast thingies back in my day. All we had were bottles (and rubber nipples).

So, Mitt the bully prankster doesn’t remember being an asshole, but he clearly remembers that, if he was an asshole, it wasn’t because the kid he doesn’t remember assaulting being an asshole to was gay.

Sounds reasonable.

So, President Obama has finally realized that gay people have as much right to get married as anybody else does. Well good for him, though he should have done it sooner. Not in the sense that it was the morally correct thing to do (though there’s that, too), but in the sense that it would have been politically more expedient to come out (so to speak) and say it a lot sooner. Whether this will help, hurt, or have no affect (I’m betting on either no affect – as Barney Frank said – or maybe some slight help; homophobes weren’t gonna vote for him anyway) on his reelection remains to be seen, but it must be heartening to those who support marriage equality after the horrid North Carolina thing. Now if Barry would just quit it already with his obsession of keeping pot illegal.

We’d get no help on the pot front from a President Romney (who is – or at least was, back in his all-boys prep school days – apparently a bit of a dick), either. He says pot is a “gateway drug.” But then he’s Mormon, so he’d probably want to make beer illegal (which, if I had a Super PAC, is a rumor I’d be starting: Mitt Romney wants to take you beer away!).

Funny how these hypocrites always talk about “big government” and the “nanny state” and how the government should keep its nose out of our business, but only when it comes to universal health care or taxing rich people or regulating the dumping of shit in the water and stuff like that.

Big government seems to be fine when it comes to telling you who should sleep with or what substances you can ingest when you wanna take the edge off a little bit.

Bastards.

This is turning out to be a difficult week to get through. All I wanna do is sit on my deck and read (and maybe whack down the dandelions, which seem to have achieved a record height this year – at least in my lawn), but, no, I have to keep limping my way into work every morning. This sucks. My latest physical ailment is my foot, and it hurts like hell. Enough to keep me awake most of last night. I believe it is the beginnings of a bunion, though not as severe as some of the pictures I’ve been looking at (which are pretty damn creepy). Of course, it may not be a bunion at all, as my toe doesn’t seem to be pointing in all that much of a direction. It could also be arthritis, or something. Whatever it is, I’m very much hoping it goes away.

Someone who will be going away is Dick Lugar, the soon to be former Senator from Indiana. I’m kinda glad to see him go. Not because I want the teabagger nutcase who defeated him in the Republican primary to win, but because I’m tired of these Republicans who talk all moderate and sane, and then go and vote the way they’re told anyway (yeah, looking at you Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe).

Anyway, the Democrats could use that Senate seat, ‘cuz Jim Tester isn’t looking too good for reelection. It would be nice if that underwear model in MA would go down (in defeat, that is), too.

When the snow starts to fly and it gets cold around here, I try and remind myself why I’m really glad I don’t live in Florida or North Carolina, or pretty much anywhere south of PA.

Oh well, time to get back to work I guess.

Well, the sun is setting on my nice little four-day weekend (not really; sunset isn’t for a couple of hours yet, and anyway it’s turned cloudy and drizzly). It rather depressing, but much was accomplished this weekend. Shed roof replaced, new 12×16 foot deck built (and christened with a nice fire last night), a whole bunch if painting today, and my last load of laundry (well, that I’m actually gonna do) is in the dryer. I’m beat, and wish I had a few more days off to recuperate. But, I don’t And it will be back in the windowless office in the morning. Oh well, time to get my laundry out of the dryer.

You learn a lot when you deal with people. Mostly, you learn that people are really stupid. At least those people commonly known as “users.” No, not druggies. Most of them are OK (except the meth heads, who are kind of toothless and stupid and scary), but the people who use the systems that I program for. You know, the ones who generate the 1D10T and/or PEBKAC errors. The inherent stupidity that exists in a typical user necessitates that I spend hours upon hours idiot-proofing the things I write.

For instance, I got an e-mail with a screenshot from one user who was getting an error. To make a long story short, it was because there is a certain field on a form for contact phone number and extension. The phone number is masked, so that you have to enter it in the format, (999)999-9999. Then there’s a box for extension. Typically, an extension is about 4 numbers, so I gave them one that would hold 10.

This intrepid user, however, decided the extension should be “Dr R’s Cell Phone” – which is not only not a number, but it’s also 17 characters. I mean, c’mon.

Oh well, since I have tomorrow off, today is kinda like my Friday, and I’m really itching to get it the hell over with. Plus I made an executive decision to take Monday off, too.

Tomorrow is a big day, as Fritz gets to go to the vet (oh boy). He’ll be pretty excited, until he realizes he’s not going to visit his cousins. Then, in the afternoon, $700 worth of Home Depot stuff is being delivered. So I can fix my leaky shed roof, repair my existing deck, and add a 12×16 foot one. Probably not all tomorrow, of course.

Oh well, back to idiot-proofing.

I didn’t watch the Prez’s speech last night, but I gather he announced that we were getting out of Afghanistan by not actually getting out of Afghanistan. Or something. So if you were planning on holding your wedding reception somewhere outside Kabul, I advise you postpone your plans until 2024 or something.

Congratulations to working people in this country. According to this chart, productivity per hour has increased about 150% since 1970. And as a reward for all that hard work, compensation per hour has risen, well, pretty much not at all.

The Supreme Court has its lowest ever favorability rating, coming in at 52%. I’m surprised it’s that high. Of course, since they’re appointed for life, they really don’t give a shit. Especially Fat Tony and Clarence the Clown.

Oh well, time to try and make it through another day.