Crap. Winter decided to come back this morning. It’s not a ton of snow, but it’s cold (17 at my house when I got up) and windy. This is when winter becomes a pain in the ass: you get a taste of warm weather and you start thinking about all the things you should be doing outside, and then, bam! It gets cold again. At least at this time of year you know it won’t last long.

With my mind definitely turning to thoughts of warmer weather, I got bearings and a seal to rebuild my pool pump, which was getting awfully loud by the end of the season last year. I’d hoped to get a new solar cover since the one I have is getting kind of ratty, but we’ll have to see about that. Money is getting ever scarcer, and I need to blow a bunch of it to contain the varmints in the back yard, now that they snow the old wooden snow fence is more or less useless.

You may have heard there’s a bit of a standoff in nearby Herkimer, NY (it’s about an hour or so east of Syracuse). Some bozo has shot 6 people so far, and four of them are dead. Now he’s holed up in an abandoned building. The paper reports that this has brought “downtown” Herkimer to a standstill, which, if you’ve ever been to Herkimer (which you probably haven’t) is kinda funny, ‘cuz I’m kinda wondering how you could tell the difference.

They have pictures of people that look like military, but I assume are some kinda cops, hanging out with serious looking weapons. The odd thing it, they’re wearing camouflage uniforms. I mean, Herkimer is small, but there are building and shit. I don’t think the camo is fooling anybody.

Governor Snotball was on the scene for who knows what purpose, other than to get his face on the teevee. I’m glad he got an opportunity to knock the Pope out of the news for a few minutes.

Oh well, back to work.

I was watching a teevee show last night, and they kept coming back from commercial with a notice that “viewer discretion is advised.” As opposed to “American Idol” or “Survivor” or “Dancing with the Stars,” where viewer discretion is most certainly discouraged.

So, more black smoke up the old chimney this morning. I know this because they felt compelled to tell me on NPR during my ride in to work. Now I guess I know how sports atheists feel during March Madness or the Super Bowl. It’s all anybody seems to be talking about, and yet I really don’t give a shit.

I only hope they get it over with quickly.

Boy howdy, today’s a big day. The boys in their funny dresses are all locked in the Sistine Chapel (I think – try as I might to ignore this stuff, it’s near impossible to keep some of the trivia from leaking in) ready to start voting on a new pope. They say they’ll probably even be a vote today, so maybe we’ll see some white smoke up the old chimney. I’m sure that would disappoint Cokie Roberts, though, who seems to have become NPR’s Vatican Reporter. If I must hear about this nonsense, I’d much rather listen to Sylvia Poggioli, but I assume that beat is a bit below a reporter of her stature. Ah and as soon as I say that, there she is. Too bad.

Otherwise, there’s not much new going on out there in the world. Paul Ryan is still trying to screw over the poor and the old (good Catholic that he is), 11 people were shot in a drive-by shooting in DC (see, gun laws don’t work), Bretibart published a story about Paul Krugman going bankrupt that was based on a fake news story in the Currant, and Ashley Judd needs to hurry up and move to Kentucky if she wants to run against Mitch McConnell. Personally, I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. She’s a little too much of a UK hoops fan, in my opinion. Plus, I’ve never been all that crazy about “celebrities” becoming politicians. I guess it can work out occasionally (seems Al Franken is doing a pretty good job, but for every Al there’s a Ronnie Raygun).

At least she’s not a former pro athlete. I mean, Heath Shuler, Jim Bunning, and Stever Largent? No thanks (though I suppose Bill Bradley was OK).

Oh well, back to work.

Another Monday, another thrilling report from Cokie Roberts on all the excitement going on at the Vatican to see who gets to wear the white dress and red shoes on Easter Sunday. I have no idea why anybody cares about this shit. Kookie says it’s like the Olympics, where we Americans are “pulling” for the American Cardinals.

Um, no. I’m at least marginally interested in the Olympics, but really don’t care who gets picked to be pope. I guess if they pick a black guy, that would be kind of interesting. Or at least different. Or maybe an unabashed member of NAMBLA or something.

I, of course, don’t have a vote. But if I did, I’d vote for Cardinal Glick.

Time to play that semi-annual game of “how many goddamn clocks do we have in this house, anyway?” Soon to be followed by a round of “how to I change the clock on the car stereo?” I think I’ve managed to catch almost all of them – especially the ones that matter – the thermostats, water heater timer and coffee maker. I need my fake coffee and hot water in the morning. I don’t seem to be suffering any ill effects from the time change, though I did stay in bed until much later than usual (not that I wasn’t awake; my brain was making too much noise and I had to put the ear buds in and listen to some Pumpkin Radio). Now I’m trying to muster up the ambition to head out to Pixley for the weekly supplies.

I wish I could sit down and explain things to animals. Like, I’d like to talk to the mice and tell them to just stay away from the house so I don’t have to kill them. I mean, I wouldn’t really even mind them just staying in the basement if they’d just go outside to shit and piss. It’s kind of icky to find mouse turds floating in the cobwebs down there. I’d also like to explain to my dog why it isn’t a good idea to come in and lay down directly behind my office chair, because I really don’t want to roll over him (also, if you see me coming, either get up before I have to step over you, or after I’ve gone by, but please don’t get up while I stepping over you). And if I could explain to the cats that the dogs won’t chase them if they just wouldn’t run, they’d be much happier. Since they chase each other around, I don’t know why they seem to get so bent out of shape when the dogs chase them.

Oh well, time to get going. There’s an hour less of the weekend to get in before the dreaded arrival of Monday morning.

I’d say you should remember to “spring ahead” tonight, except it’s actually still winter. Whatever you call it, we’ll be getting an “extra” hour of daylight in the evening at the expense of an extra hour of darkness in the morning. I know this causes a great deal of consternation for some folks, but I’m down with it 100%. I really don’t care if it’s dark when I’m going to work in the morning. I get up so damn early, it’s always dark. No, I’m more concerned with it staying light out later – and, come Sunday, it should be light out well past seven o’clock. If I actually slept at night, I might be concerned with losing an hour of sleep, but all I’m losing is an hour of staring at my clock radio, waiting for it to get late enough so that the water heater has kicked in and I can take a shower.

After upgrading the firmware on my wireless router and access point, I now seem to be able to get the iPhone to connect consistently. So that’s a good thing (though I don’t know why every other device in the house had no problem). Now I’d just like to be able to set Chrome as the default browser on the damn thing. But, no, that’s not possible without jailbreaking the phone and installing a hack. As it’s a work phone, I don’t think they’d appreciate me doing that. If it wasn’t a work phone, well, then it would be an Android device, and I could set whatever browser I wanted as the default. Not that there’s anything wrong with Safari, but when I use Chrome I get all my bookmarks and settings and search history and whatnot. But Apple knows best, I guess (and it’s only an issue if I click on an e-mail link or something).

Oh well, time to go watch last night’s Bill Maher.

Once again, the weather gods have decided to miss us. We got a dusting of snow last night, and it was snowing lightly for a while this morning, but things are brightening up out there now, and it’s supposed to be kinda warm this weekend. That’s a good thing, because the St. Patrick’s Day Parade is Saturday. Why is it on Saturday March 9th? I have no idea. I mean, this year, SPD is on a Sunday (not even this Sunday), so there’s no reason not to have it on the actual day. Kinda dumb. Even dumber, they’ve scheduled the parade for the exact time that the final regular season Big East meeting between SU and Georgetown (noon tomorrow, for the vast majority of you who didn’t know – or care).

Speaking of SU/Georgetown, the Washington Post has a nice piece on the history of the rivalry (with video and pictures) for anybody who’s interested. If you’re not interested, there’s no reason to mention that you’re not interested, because I already know you’re not (which reminds me of WKRP when Herb accidentally spray painted his daughter’s frog – named Green Peace – pink, and while trying to get some help from his co-workers he kept telling everybody before he showed them that they didn’t have to tell him the frog was pink because he was telling them ahead of time that he was pink, and of course the first ting they said was, “he’s pink,” except for Andy who said, “shoulda named him Pink Peace”).

But anyway….

Speaking of stupid, Governor Snotball is looking to cut $120 million in aid for the disabled – a 6% cut in reimbursement rates for non-profits that provide services including a local organization named Enable, which has had an incredible affect on the life of my stepson. Thanks to them, he’s got a job and his own place to live. It’s gonna be OK, though, ‘cuz the Governor has a plan:

“So we’re going to tighten our belt, but we’re still going to get our job done.”

Well alrighty, then.

Oh well, back to work.

So I heard on the news this morning that they’re trying to ship nuclear waste from Washington State to New Mexico. And I thought, why limit it to nuclear waste? I mean, let’s pick a state (it doesn’t have to be New Mexico) and just declare it the garbage dump for the entire country. Then instead of trying not to create garbage and nuclear and other toxic waste or worrying about treating sewage and whatnot, we just haul all our shit to the designated state and dump it there.

Ideally it’d be a state that isn’t densely populated where people would be less likely to fall into the bigass holes in the ground we’d be digging, and it should probably be a poor state that we can bribe into doing it by paying them off (the money could go to shell corporations run by people who live someplace nice and don’t pay taxes, and we could make a big show of buying iPhones – which will only intermittently connect to WiFi – for Miss Clancy’s fourth-grade class).

Mexico would be ideal, but I can’t see shipping any more jobs out of the country, so we should keep it in-house. Somewhere in the southwest would probably be ideal – the dry air would quickly desiccate all stinky stuff and hopefully it wouldn’t smell so bad. Plus sand would be easier to dig up and bury shit in (ever see what cats do to a sandbox?).

Since New Mexico apparently has a nuke waste facility in place already, they’d have to be in the running (plus they have a lot of indigenous people out there, and we wouldn’t have to worry what they think about it), but I think Arizona and Texas should be given the opportunity to bid as well. I suppose Mississippi and Alabama would probably want in on the action, too.

Then there’s Wyoming, Utah, the Dakotas…. Lots of empty space in that area. And since they seem to be big proponents of fracking for oil and natural gas, I can’t see a little radioactive waste or human sludge bothering them much.

The main thing is that we shouldn’t stop doing all the stuff we do that creates toxic waste that will never degrade in a hundred lifetimes. We should just find a place to dump it.

By now everybody’s heard the sad news (I guess it’s sad news – I know good Americans weren’t supposed to like him, but I always got a kick out of the guy) that Hugo Chavez has croaked. It’s doubly devastating for me, as I had him going all the way in my Pope Pool. I think he’d have looked pretty snazzy in the Pope dress and red shoes – and he was one of very few people who had a head that could handle the Turkey Butt hat. Viaje seguro, Hugo. And I hope you’re not smelling sulfur wherever you are.

This is stupid meeting week, and today’s the day. There’s a chance the stupid meeting will be cancelled, because we have yet another mandatory (and stupid) “lunch” meeting with the two other groups in our division (our whatever it is we call it). It was ostensibly about “what’s new” with us, though the intent was just to have a little get together catered by a nearby “Southwest Grill” (which I would have dutifully blown off, because, Wednesday being my late day, I typically use my lunch time to head out to the grocery store for my midweek food and beverage resupply). Sadly, it was hijacked by the director-level person (the one who insists on these meetings in the first place, and typically starts them out by saying “I don’t have anything”), who has now made it a mandatory meeting with presentations required of the team leaders. Great, I get to sit around and watch PowerPoint slides of shit I really don’t care about and don’t need to do my job (which I don’t actually need to be in the office to do). I guess this is what Marissa Mayer would consider “valuable collaboration.”

It appears that another big snow storm is headed our way, though it’s up in the air (so to speak) as to whether or not we’ll get hit with anything. The storm is actually supposed to be to the south of us, but there’s another system up in Canada that’s supposed to come down over the Great Lakes and into our area, then suck all the moisture out of the first storm and dump it on us Thursday night and Friday. It’s looking like it could be a lot of snow, and I’d just as soon it pass us by. When it gets into March, you really don’t want to have to hassle with this stuff. We’ve had some pretty nasty March storms (one back in ’93 or so stands out – we got about four feet of snow in a day or so), and I’m just not into it right now. Just in case, I guess I need to fix the chains on my tractor tire – one keeps sliding over sideways. What a pain. I was hoping I could just take them off soon.

More hassles with the stupid iPhone. For some reason, it has trouble connecting with my home wireless network. Oh, it connected fine the first time, and for the first couple of days. But since then, it tells me it “can’t join the network” even though there’s no reason it shouldn’t. It sees the network and the signal is strong. Oh, it connects occasionally, but more often than not, it keeps annoying me with the stupid message. Never a problem with my Android tablet, ‘Droid phone, two Kindles, several laptops, Internet radio, and it was never an issue with the BlackBerry. I even went through the hassle of resetting my network settings. Not only did this not work, but instead of just being annoyed by the “can’t join” message, I had to keep putting in the damn key (which is pretty long and a real pain to enter w/o a keyboard) until it finally decided to connect for a while yesterday afternoon. This morning? We’re back to not connecting.

It looks nice, though. And it’s reporting that I’m getting 4G out here (though I think that’s fake ATT 4G, ‘cuz from what I understand, the 4S isn’t capable of “true” 4G).

Oh well, time to go into the basement and check my traps, and then figure out what else to do to kill time before I leave for work.

I really don’t get this whole pope thing. I mean, why it’s getting so much attention and why I’m supposed to give a shit (this isn’t unusual for me – I don’t give a shit about Justin Bieber’s “worst birthday ever” or whether some inbred Brit got his wife knocked up, or even if the Queen has a tummy ache). As Art mentioned yesterday Kookie Roberts was slobbering over the pope’s return to the “little people” with all its spectacle and pageantry. Seriously. He’s the former head of a creepy cult who helped protect pedophile priests for his apparently not as wonderful as he was made out to be predecessor, and quit before his term (life) was up.

The only interesting part of the whole thing was when a “fake” cardinal joined in yesterday and didn’t get noticed for quite a while (despite wearing a Jack Abramoff hat instead of the red Yarmulke the rest of them wear, and a big purple scarf as a sash). Best thing since Fr. Guido Sarducci told me to “finda da popes inna da pizza.”

In other news, Paul Ryan is back with his plan to screw me (personally) over. He now wants to change Medicare to a voucher program for anybody under 56 (previously it was 55 – I guess he just wants to make certain I get screwed, in case it takes a couple of years to pass). And I heard Jeb Bush (why are we paying attention to him now?) on NPR saying Obama should be a man like his daddy and brother and Ronnie Raygun and raise the Social Security age.

I’m too damn close to retirement to have them changing the rules on me now.

Speaking of people who should STFU, Mitt Romney has been flapping his gums lately? Doesn’t he realize that he lost by about as much as you can lose a presidential election by these days? Even Republicans don’t like him, so why doesn’t he just go off and be rich somewhere. Doesn’t he have a mansion to knock down and rebuild or something.

Of well, back to work. Gotta earn my $14.50