Well, it’s Monday again. And not only the first Monday I’ve had to work since back in June, but also the start of a week of “support” duty for me. Normally this would be pretty depressing (and I’m not particularly thrilled about it), but this is a better Monday than most, since this is the start of the last week of my current life. So, hell, what’s one lousy week to get through?

Still, I’m quite exhausted today. But them I’m exhausted pretty much every day, because I don’t sleep for shit at night. And of course we all know that a study a few years back linked lack of sleep to an “early death.” There’s a thought that’ll keep you awake at night.

And now today there’s another study that says if you have a purpose in life, you’ll live longer.

In fact, people with a sense of purpose had a 15 percent lower risk of death, compared with those who said they were more or less aimless.

Not exactly good news for those of us wandering aimlessly through life because we can’t sleep. Oh well, as long as they don’t come out with a study that guys with a big beer belly and chronically high blood pressure are more likely to have a stroke or a heart attack.

Since the Ebola’s coming to get us all, I guess it doesn’t really matter.

Every evening when I get home from work, I hang my backpack up on the wall of the garage and take out the various containers (for breakfast, lunch, and water) and electronic equipment (mp3 player, phone, other phone) that I carry with me for a day at the salt mines.

Every morning, I prepare all my stuff for the day, load it into my backpack, and then throw the backpack into my car. I did all of that this morning as usual. Or so I thought. When I got to work and grabbed my backpack from the seat next to me, all I grabbed was a handful of air.

Shit.

No breakfast, no lunch, no water, no mp3 player, no work phone. I’ve got my personal phone, thankfully, but that’s about it. Oh, and my wallet, which I reckon I’ll be needing if I want lunch.

It’s gonna be a long day.

I wrote up a very fine post this morning, and then I hit publish and got ready for work. Sadly, it appears to not have actually been published. It was a good one, too. Witty, charming, insightful…. Lost in the ether, now. Oh well, maybe tomorrow.

I had to shut off the CNN video I was just watching. They were interviewing some freelance journalist who’s over in the Ukraine and witnessed the missile strike on the Malaysia airline flight. When he said there were body parts raining down from the sky and you had to be careful where you stepped so you didn’t step on human organs, I decided I’d had enough. So, was it the Russkies? Or the Russky-lovers? Either way, it’s Obama’s fault for not going to the border to look at Guatemalan child refugees. Or something.

Speaking of Obama and the Refugees (good name for a boy-band), the mayor of Syracuse wrote him a letter to tell him we’ve got room and would be happy to take some of them in. I have no doubt that this story engendered lots of vicious responses from Republicans and Teabaggers (the mayor being both a woman and a Democrat – oh, the horror!), but I didn’t read the comments. I’ve become pretty good and not scrolling to the comment section, though I wish they’d make you have to click a link to read them. I find that if I read the ones form the idiots it only serves to piss me off and then I start to reply and then I just don’t bother because trying to reason with these people is like trying to reason with a cat.

Speaking of cats, I think I mentioned that we had one that was gone for 3 or 4 weeks who I’d pretty much given up on until she wandered back in one day, and there was much rejoicing.

I’ve always been nice to her since I’m nice in general (or so I’d like to think) and I like critters (even cats, though truth be told, they aren’t my favorites). But I’ve tried to be especially nice to her lately to kind of encourage her to stick around because my wife worries about her. So two night ago I was in the process of being nice to her and she started to nibble on my finger (which she does) and then she proceeded to chomp down and sink her fucking teeth into my thumb she actually punctured it in the meaty part and through the nail (right at the bottom of the little half-moon part – aptly called the lunula).

This hurt. Alot.

“Gosh,” I said. “Why ever did you do that, you silly cat you?” I’m paraphrasing there.

By yesterday, my thumb was all kinds of swollen and my whole forearm was sore (with a red streak running from my thumb to my elbow). This kind of worried me, so I came home and had a beer or two. This seemed to help, in that I stopped worrying. Then I opened the bit up with my trusty exacto knife and applied alcohol from the outside. I’ve also been taking massive doses of oil of oregano and turmeric (on the orders of the boss) and rubbing tea tree oil on the afflicted area. Still hurts, but it seems better, and hopefully it’ll clear up because I really don’t want to have to go to the urgent care and tell them my goddamn cat my wife’s goddamn cat bit me, and to have them tell me my blood pressure is high.

Just give me some Amoxicillin. And, yeah, I have a primary care physician. I went to him once back in 2004 or so – I think his name is Seth, though I always think of him as Skippy. He seemed like a nice enough kid and he even offered to stick his finger up my ass, but as I was only looking for a referral to a Chiropractor, I declined.

Needless to say, I am no longer going out of my way to be nice to the cat. I’m actually going out of my way to avoid her, because when I look at her I have the urge to either strangle her or hit her with a 4-pound sledge hammer (which I keep handy on the kitchen table, so it’s pretty tempting to go send her to visit Boomer).

As I’m sure you know, the World Lacrosse Championship semifinals were last night, and the godless Canadians knocked the hometown Iroquois team out of the tourney with a 12-6 win while Team USA beat the Aussies 22-3. The Championship game is Saturday (but you already knew that).

Oh well, time to make some coffee. We were up late last night, and I’ve gotten off to a slow start. Good thing it’s Friday.

A quick glance at the sports page this morning tells me that the MLB All-Star game was last night. This means that summer is now half over (maybe even a little more than half). This sucks. There’s already about a half hour less daylight than there was a month ago, and as much as I’m looking forward to football season (at least until it turns out SU sucks again this year), I’d like to hold on to summer and daylight a bit longer.

I don’t really pay attention to baseball (other than to continue to be amazed that people are willing to get steroids and HGH and god knows what else shot into their asses, though that’s not strictly a baseball thing, of course) but like most of you, I have been following the world championships. No, that that soccer shit – the true American sport: lacrosse.

Yes, the FIL World Lacrosse Championships are currently being held in Denver in front of tens of fans. I watched team USA crush the Brits, 20-1, on Monday and was eagerly awaiting the game between my team – the Iroquois Nationals (including four brothers – the Thompsons – from the Onondaga Nation) – and the USA last night. Alas, they’re apparently having a series of godless killer thunderstorms out in Denver and the game was delayed until way past my bedtime.

Just as well, as the USA crushed the Iroquois 18-5. I blame on the late start (another t-storm delay) of last night’s win against Australia (which followed a one-goal loss to Canada the day before). Oh well, much like the soccer World Cup, and professional baseball, hockey and basketball seasons, these things go on for a long time.

I’m now a “dead man walking” in my group at work, as I’m ready to move on but am supposed to finish up a bunch of shit and teach the rest of the kids (or at least one lucky designee) everything I know (there just aint enough time for that). For this reason, my work from home privileges are being revoked starting next week as I was informed that it would be “easier” if I was in the office.

In other words, we no longer feel a need to keep you happy and are inclined to punish you for leaving.

Leaving but staying in the same organization (in the same building) and having to work with the same people is awkward. I’d prefer to just go and get on with my new life but I can’t. If I was going to a different company, it would be a lot easier.

Oh well, it’s my late day today but I guess I’ll go in earlier than usual so I can get a start on clearing my plate and getting on with the new era.

Today is my anniversary. As it happens, it’s my wife’s anniversary as well (I think she wanted to make it a date that was easy to remember). We’ve now been married for 16 years, which I think means she’s been married to me longer than all her other husbands combined. One thing’s for sure, we’ve left a long line of dead critters (and one mother) in our wake (cats, mostly – a couple of which I actually liked). At my current age and physical condition, it’s probably a toss-up as to whether I’ll croak before another animal goes.

I think I’ve got at least one more set of dogs in me physically, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to handle another round emotionally. I can’t imagine a life without varmints running around trying to trip me or expelling bodily fluids, solids, and other waste material for me to step in, but I hate it when they die, and they hardly ever have the decency to just wake up dead one day (which is what I hope to do – though not before I use up all my vacation time).

The wife is going to celebrate the occasion by working this weekend, while I’ll be celebrating by taking Monday off (I’m really not into this whole working on Mondays thing – especially in the summer).

Speaking of work, it appears that I’ll be changing jobs (though not companies or locations). All the official paperwork has yet to be signed (mostly because I don’t know when they’ll let me go, as this move leaves my already insufficiently staffed group even more short-handed and I think they may exepct me to finish up a few things which could be tough since my motivation has suddenly dissipated to near-zero), but it looks like I’ll be leaving the world of web application development and entering the world of database administration.

This means lots of on-call, nights and weekends, and…. And what the hell am I thinking? Oh well, I’m not afraid of hard work. I don’t fucking like it, but I’m not scared of it. I’d say I’m not scared of change (over the past 25 years, I’ve gone from Projectionist>Maintenance Helper>Refrigeration Mechanic>HVAC Mechanic>Web Administrator>Computer Consultant>Information System Assistant>Senior Programmer/Analyst and now DBA – and finished my BS and picked up an MS along the way. And I did a few different things in my first 28 years, too – most of which I’m a little vague on), but the truth is I hate change.

The only thing I hate more than change is standing still (at least work-wise – I’m pretty sedentary once I get home). So, hi-ho, we’ll see if this one carries me to retirement or not. I’m kind of running out of places to go.

Meanwhile, it looks like we’re in store for another beautiful day, weather-wise. The nice thing about all the nasty weather that came through the other day is that it put an end to the nauseatingly humid weather we’ve been having (at least for a while). It’s OK if all you have to do is sit outside, read, and jump in the pool when you feel warm, but any activity beyond that is just miserable.

I guess you get used to it if you live where it’s hot and humid all the time. You probably never get used to tornadoes, though, and I’m thankful they’re a rare occurrence around here (as I’ve said probably too many times before, I’ll happily take dealing with snow for four months a year over the threat of having my home pulverized by, as Les Nessman once said, “the godless tornadoes”).

In other news, debate is once again heating up as to what to do with the aging viaduct that splits the city of Syracuse in half. It’s a timeless tradition around here. Back in the early 1800s, they split it in half when they ran the Erie Canal through the middle. Though there wasn’t a hell of a lot to split up back then. It’s really more like they put the canal in and then people built shit on either side of it.

Then the railroads came, and they rain the tracks right through the streets. I used to do a lot of looking at microfilm of the old newspapers from the 19th century, and it seems the two most common ways to die of other than natural causes back then were to either get drunk and fall in one of the canals (besides the Erie, there was the Oswego which ran down from the port on Lake Ontario) or to get drunk and get hit by a train.

But then of course big government took over and created the nanny state and started regulating everything and putting a burden on corporations and they didn’t let the trains run down the street and they kind of filled in the canals.

Anyhow, back when I was a kid they decided to run Interstate 81 right through the middle of Syracuse – primarily through some of the poorest neighborhoods. Apparently it seemed like a good idea at the time, though nobody bothered to ask the people that lived there what they thought. Seeing as they were poor and, um, you know, “them people” I don’t think anybody cared.

So now, something like 45 years later, the sucker’s falling apart and they say they really need to do something about it. Like, soon. This time around, they’re asking what we the people think (before they go ahead and do whatever they want to do anyway). Proposals include a tunnel, an “urban boulevard” with through-traffic diverted around the city, and of course rebuilding the viaduct, which is too narrow and too curvy to meet modern safety standards.

A tunnel would be nifty, but would also cost a couple billion dollars (and they’d also need to dig a bigass trench to bury it in). My guess is they’ll just rebuild. They shouldn’t have put it where it is, but, hey it’s there now. It doesn’t help that there’s basically one exit in either direction that people use to go to work (seeing as the only jobs around here anymore are at SU or one of the three hospitals that are all more or less in the same place).

Whatever they do, it’ll be a mess for years, I predict. A mess that will no doubt coincide with the rumored move of my work location from the pastoral suburban office park we’re at now (with plenty of free parking, I might add) to a downtown location right in the middle (or slightly to the west) of all this mess (with zero free parking).

This is the point where I’ll be utilizing mass transit. It would be a hassle to get to where I work now, or I’d be doing it already. Once they move me downtown I’m all set. There’s free municipal parking down in the Village, and I can hop on a bus more or less across the street and let somebody else deal with traffic and snow and school buses while I read my Kindle until they drop me off a couple of blocks from work. And at $3 a day, it’s cheaper than gas (and way, way cheaper than monthly parking).

Of course, in the past five years, we were slated to move about five different times, so I’ll believe it when I see it.

Just ignore most of the lyrics on this one….

I awoke yesterday morning with a drippy nose and I’ve been sneezing. Got a headache and the hint of a sore throat, too. I’m not sure if it’s allergies (which have been nasty-bad this year – something about the late start to spring got the flora out there all riled up – it’s astounding how the weeds started growing the past three weeks or so). This sucks – I hope it goes away – but at least I’m off today and can work from home tomorrow. Since I got all the requisite chores done over the weekend, all I really need to do today is laundry. Good thing, ‘cuz after a rather bright sunny weekend, it’s looking dark out there right now and they say we could have some heavy rain and t-storms moving in. So I guess I’ll be spending some time with a dog panting hot wet dog breath all over me. I Maybe it’s like this every year, I dunno. Perhaps winter gives me amnesia.

Some good news over the weekend. We’ve been down a cat for several weeks now, and I was frankly beginning to suspect that she’d found a better place to live (or, as my mother-in-law so reassuringly suggested, “maybe she was eaten by wild animals”). She’s been gone for several days before, and she developed an infatuation with one of the nieghbor cats and was hangin out over there for while last year, but she’d never been gone this long before. I thought maybe she’d gone to hang out with Boomer. But then she showed up on Friday night looking kinda bony but otherwise no worse for wear. She’s mostly been lying around, plotting her next big adventure.

So last week I got my new iPhone from work, and I’ve had a chance to play around with it, add a solid glass screen protector and a Spigen case for it (I get a kick out of the way that all the iPhone cases have a cutout for no useful purpose other than to display the silly little Apple logo on the back – I guess it’s not about the phone, it’s about the branding).

Anyhow, there are things I like about it, things I don’t like, and things I feel decidedly “meh” about.

So what do I like? I like the fingerprint scanner to unlock the phone. It seems to work really well, and I can push the button with my thumb and just leave it there until the phone unlocks. It’s pretty sweet. Not that entering a PIN is all that difficult. I also like the camera.

The phone is slightly taller than the 4s, slightly thinner, and slightly lighter. I only wish I could get taller, thinner, and lighter as I get older.

It has the “lightning” connector, meaning all the old 30-pin stuff I had (dock, charger) went to the wife for her work iPhone. I mean, it’s nice that it’s reversible and all that, but I can get a micro USB cable for next to nothing (not that I need one, because I have a shitload of them). The EU is enacting legislation that says all chargers for phones and tablets have to be standard – micro USB – by three years from now. It would be nice if the US would do the same thing.

I mean, imagine if every manufacturer of electric devices had proprietary connectors. So if you buy an LG refrigerator or an LG teevee, you need to install an LG outlet. And maybe the LG outlet is nice because you can plug it in upside down or rightside up or whatever.

But you decide to switch to a Samsung when it’s time to replace that fridge ‘cuz costs less and has more features (plus a microSD card slot). Or maybe you decide to stick with LG, but guess what? Their latest generation of appliances use a different kind of plug. So you either have to change the outlet or buy an adapter (which you have to pay out the ass for, because anybody who produces it has to license it from LG).

I’d take fiddling around to plug the cord in a certain way over having to get new cord every time I change devices.

I also don’t like the fact that I can’t change the default keyboard (or browser, for that matter) on the iPhone. I’ve become a big fan of Swiftkey, and even the Google keyboard is better than the Apple one. Supposedly that will change with iOS 8.

Most everything else with the phone is “meh.” Basically the same as it ever was. I can’t change the launcher (can I?) and I can’t just tap it twice to get to the lock screen or use any other gestures that I’ve started to get used to on the other phone. I can’t flip to mute it, I can’t just pick it up and put it to my ear to answer it, and I can’t just pick it up in landscape mode with the volume buttons on top and have the camera turn on.

No major gripes, really, and now that I have another phone, I haven’t bothered to set up all the stuff I used to have. Except for Evernote, and maybe LastPass, but I really don’t intend to use it for more than looking at my work e-mail and answering work-related calls. And it’s certainly good enough for that.

Ah, here comes the rain….

Back when I was a kid, this was definitely my favorite holiday that wasn’t Christmas. Why? One word – fireworks! Back then we’d go to the local baseball park and listen to the stylings of the Stan Colella Orchestra (which is still going strong, though Stan croaked about a year ago) before it finally got dark enough for the fireworks to begin. It was my dad, my sister, and me – my mother was absolutely terrified of loud noises, including thunder, balloons popping, and of course fireworks so she stayed home and my brothers were either out and about whooping it up somewhere or my brother Tim was enjoying his own fireworks display in Vietnam.

Of course the biggest July 4th was that one in 1976. It’s hard to believe that it was 40 years ago today that the first “Bicentennial Minute” aired on CBS. If you were around back then, you certainly recall those historical tidbits (sponsored by Shell Oil) broadcast nightly beginning a little more than a month before Richard Nixon resigned in shame, running strong through the death of Elvis in the summer of ’77, and soldiering on to the final broadcast narrated by soon-to-be ex-President Gerald Ford on December 31, 1976.

The July 3rd minute was narrated by then-VP Nelson Rockefeller, who was the only NY Governor I ever had until he resigned at the end of 1973 for some reason or other that I can’t recall. But he answered Ford’s call and became the second un-elected VP in a row (you may recall that Tricky Dicky’s original VP – a real sweetheart by the name of Spiro Agnew – had to resign in disgrace as well).

I shudder to think what the Teabaggers would have done to Rocky, who, despite his rather appalling drug laws and his actions that led up to the Attica prison riot, was considered a “liberal.” In fact, he was so liberal that, try as he might, he never could win the Republican presidential nomination (and this was back before Republicans went totally insane).

Of course the July 4, 1976 Bicentennial Minute was narrated by Betty Ford, who I believe urged everybody to get out there a have a few cocktails to celebrate our founding fathers.

But, alas, I’m 40 years older now. The one dog inherited the fear of loud noises from the other dog who is no longer with us (well, actually, he’s actually in a tin can on a shelf behind me as I write this), who I can only assume inherited his fear of loud noises from my mother (who is not in a tin can on a shelf), so I don’t get to enjoy fireworks (or thunderstorms, which I always loved as a lid) and instead now dread them if they’re close by.

And whatever patriotism I ever felt is jaded by the likes of Richard Nixon, Dubya, the NSA, and, sadly, our current president who I had such hopes for, once upon a time (by the way, did you see that a Quinnipiac poll found that 33% of voters think Obama is the worst president since WWII? Really? Only 28% said Dubya, which just goes to show that it’s not the person who makes the mess that gets the blame, it’s the person who steps in it and tracks it all over the house).

So I’m happy to have the day off (we will get Friday off next year when it’s on Saturday, right?), but it’s not the big event it used to be. For me, anyway. Hopefully it is for you all, and I hope you enjoy whatever it is you do (or don’t do) today and for the rest of this holiday weekend.

‘Cuz it’s been my experience that once the Fourth is over, Labor Day gets here awful quick.

The invasion of the nauseatingly hot weather has arrived (I know it’s worse in other places, but relative to what we’re used to around here, this is icky). Yesterday was definitely pool weather – up around 90° and humid, and today is supposed to be even hotter. It’s already about 75° out there. Yesterday I could at least stay near the pool and hop in every ten minutes or so, but today I’m ostensibly working (albeit from home) so I won’t be able to do that (as much).

Plus my home office is hotter than hell. It faces due west and in the afternoon it gets pretty miserable. Too goddamn many computers, I think. Plus the little fridge. I’m still trying to find a way to add a/c, ‘cuz the ceiling fan just doesn’t cut it. Right now, my little wall thermometer says it’s 84° in here with a relative humidity of 85%. That’s a heat index of 96°.

I guess I could try putting together a homemade swamp cooler (basically get a tub-o-water, stick one end of a towel in it, and drape the rest of the towel over a fan). This is how Thomas Alva Edison saved the life of a neighbor child with a high fever, if the play I saw about him in sixth grade can be believed – though I don’t recall them mentioning that Edison executed Topsy the elephant because he was pissed that Tesla and Westinghouse’s AC beat out Edison’s DC.

Asshole.

Anyhow, so, yeah, it’s gonna be hot today.

So, are you a woman of childbearing age who doesn’t really want a kid right now but would still kinda like to get laid once in a while? Or maybe a woman who has a medical condition that would make it appropriate for you to take birth control pills? Or maybe a guy who knows (in the biblical sense) a woman but neither of you are really into having kids – at least not at the present time?

Bummer for you.

Well, bummer for you if work for one of the 82 or so “closely held companies” that are now planning to remove birth control from your health insurance plan, thanks to yesterday’s SCOTUS ruling.

I don’t think I’ll be patronizing Hobby Lobby anytime soon. Not much of a threat, I know, as I don’t tend to frequent “craft” stores. But if I ever need some styrofoam or a picture frame or some dried leaves or glitter or shit, I’ll be going to Michaels. Mostly ‘cuz they just closed and gutted the AC Moore by where I work.

Not that will exactly help any women who can’t afford birth control and work at Hobby Lobby. If anything, it would be to make things worse for them, really.

So I’m calling on all Hobby Lobby employees who are denied contraception and therefore get abortions to mail those aborted fetuses to:

Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.
7707 S.W. 44th Street
Oklahoma City, OK 73179

Alternatively, you can send them to:

John Roberts c/o
The United States Supreme Court
1 First St NE
Washington, DC 20543

Of course, if it turns out that sending aborted fetuses via the US mail is illegal (say, it falls under the definition of medical waste or something), then you should not do that. Please check all applicable federal, state, and local regulations before sending anything via the USPS or across state lines.

Better yet, take a selfie with your aborted fetus, and e-mail or tweet it to Hobby Lobby, HL’s CEO and Founder, David Green, and/or SCOTUS. #ThanksHobbyLobby

And then post your pictures here (as long as they’re not too gross, please).

Of course if you don’t really care about the right to contraception, perhaps you care about the right to organize with your colleagues and form a union? Well, sucks to be you, too. Our activist Supreme Court also voted to allow scabs to opt out of paying union dues (or shop fees if they don’t want to join a union). So they can reap all the benefits that come from banding together and being able to negotiate from at least a slightly stronger position than would otherwise be possible without having to support the process. So they can save a few bucks today and the cost of major bucks (and decent working conditions) tomorrow.

I’d say people aren’t stupid and short-sighted enough to fall for that, but, well, I’ve seen the people out there and it aint a pretty picture.

I just thank goodness I live in NY and not, say, Arkansas or Mississippi or Texas something (I’d throw OK in there, too, but you already have Hobby Lobby and the likes of Tom Coburn and James Inhofe on your hands, and I don’t want to pile on).

Oh well, time to make the coffee, I guess. It’s almost time to get to work.