No, it’s not the summer solstice. It’s just that I took last Thursday and Friday off, and here I am back at work after five days off so this day should prove to be excruciatingly long. And even though it’s a Tuesday that feels like a Monday and a four-day week, I guarantee this week will be torturous. I caught a frog in the pool this morning. Thought I was doing him a favor by keeping him from drowning, but when I chucked him over the fence and into the yard. he landed on his back and wasn’t moving. I don’t know if he landed on his head or broke his neck (do frogs have necks?) or what. Then there was a huge dead snake in the driveway (had to be at least 5 or 6 feet long) when I pulled out this morning. I don’t know if these are omens or not but if you’re a reptile or an amphibian, you might wanna steer clear of my place.

According to the BBC, “[h]undreds of millions of hacked account details from social networks MySpace and Tumblr have been advertised for sale online. In both cases, the logins appear to have been stolen several years ago but only recently came to light”. So, if you used to have a MySpace page (and, who didn’t, am I right?), you might want to see if you can remember what your password was. I know that way back in the olden days, I tended to use more or less two passwords – one for sites I didn’t really give a crap about, and another one for more important things. Of course, I quit doing that a long time ago and started using a password manager that creates unique (and impossible to remember) passwords for me and I use two-factor authentication on everything that will let me (even though it’s a bit of a pain in the ass at times).

The issue isn’t so much that somebody might hijack your MySpace page (until this morning, I wasn’t actually sure I even still had one – turns out I do!), but that you might have used the same password for other things (and the username is an e-mail address, so that might follow you around).

Turns out I even have Tumblr login, though I don’t think I’ve ever actually done anything with it.

In other news….

Donald Trump? Really? Are we really gonna have to put up with a Trump presidency? As little faith and respect I have for We the People, I still can’t believe that this mook is being taken seriously and for crissakes really appears to be on the verge of winning. I honestly don’t know what to make of this. I mean, this meat head makes Dubya look like a statesman.

I might have to start drinkin’ the hard stuff.

After a relatively mild (yet persistent) winter, I’m cautiously optimistic that summer is finally here. Or at least that we’re done with frost and snow. Last weekend was slightly on the crappy side, but things have gotten steadily warmer all week and they say it should be in the upper 80s by Friday. A shame that the pool’s not open yet. Even if it was miraculously free of algae when I pull the cover off, it’ll be way too cold to swim in. And there aint much propane in the tanks, so I don’t know if I can get it warmed up by Memorial Day. We’ll see, I guess.

The only drawbacks to the warmer weather are bugs (the black flies seem to be viciously carnivorous this year), lack of time to brew beer (what with all the lawn mowing and whatnot), and of course neighbors.

We happen to have one very lovable but loudmouth dog who barks at pretty much everything – deer, turkeys, foxes, crows, people, trucks – you name it. And while we are mostly free of neighbors, there is one corner of our back yard that’s somewhat adjacent to the neighbors back yard (separated by about 20 feet of woods). So when they go outside, he likes to bark at them.

Normally I keep on him to shut up, but sometimes I’m not home and not everybody is as diligent at keeping an eye on him as I am. So, the neighbor came over and bitched at the wife the other day, which made feel absolutely terrible for a couple of reasons. I hate to bother other people (I mean, even though I’m up before the birds most days, I wait until after 10:00 to do things that make noise, like cutting the grass and swinging a hammer), and I felt really bad that our dog was such a burden to them.

I also felt pretty depressed because the reason I moved almost six years ago was to get away from neighbors, and here I am having to worry about them again.

So we’ve contained the dogs to the front side of the house (which is fine until we want to hang out by the pool) and my wife bought a bark collar, which, frankly, I don’t really approve of (but you can’t fight city hall). We only put it on him when we’re outside and since I’ve made a point to be out with him when I’m home, he doesn’t really get the chance to yap too much. Plus I’m not convinced that it’s actually doing anything, but maybe it’s a deterrent just handing on his neck because he seems to have quieted down quite a bit. It’s supposed to start out with a warning tone. The a longer tone, followed by an even longer tone. Then the zaps start, with increasing frequency.

I of course tried it on my arm (I wouldn’t do anything to him that I’d be unwilling to do to myself), and by about the third zap my arm muscles were twitching like crazy. It’s not excruciating, but it’s no exactly pleasant either. Of course, he’s used to being dragged by his neck off the porch and into the yard by his brother all the time, so I don’t know how touchy he is.

Otherwise, things are going just swimmingly. Trump and Clinton seem to be running neck and neck (except Trump doesn’t actually have a neck), so it should be a thrilling election season. And it looks like pretty much everybody wants to dump Debbie “The Payday Loan Queen” Wasserman Schultz as DNC Chair. Except to replace her before the convention, Obama would have do the dirty work and he’s apparently reluctant to start a war.

So maybe Clinton can get her to resign by promising her a cabinet position.

Personally, I’d just like to get an ambassadorship to some low-key, American-friendly country. Like maybe Sweden or Switzerland (or Grand Fenwick). Someplace warm would be good, but folks in the warmer-weather countries tend to hate us (not that I blame them – I’m not too crazy about us most of the time myself).

But since an ambassadorship doesn’t seem forthcoming, I guess I’d better get back to work.

On the way to work this morning, I was behind a flat bed truck hauling a burial vault. I hope that’s not some kind of omen for the type of day it’s gonna be. Now matter how terrible things get today, at least it’s finally Friday, and what a big week we’ve had.

As everybody surely knows by now, barring some sort of terrible mishap Donny Drumpf is the next Republican nominee for President. Imagine that. The electoral map isn’t looking too good for him right now, but there’s a long way to go until November and I wouldn’t overestimate the intelligence of the ‘merican people. You’ll gradually see all the GOP elites supporting the Don, I guarantee. And as Trump “moderates” himself, Independents and all the “maverick” types will start becoming more enamored of the Don (especially after the Republicans start pulling out some feces to fling at Clinton from their E-mailgate and Benghazi bags of tricks).

Why, Donald even “loves” Hispanics now!

Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics! https://t.co/ufoTeQd8yA pic.twitter.com/k01Mc6CuDI

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 5, 2016

Of course, when he says he loves Hispanics, he means as an ingredient.

It promises to be a busy weekend at my house. First, I have to drag Bud in to the vet for his Lepto/Lyme vaccination (that it really would have been a lot easier for him to get when he was there a couple of weeks ago). And then the grass has grown approximately 2 feet since I cut it last weekend.

Plus I didn’t brew last weekend, so I need to cook up a batch this weekend, lest I fall behind in my quota. And then there’s all the usual trip tp Costco and laundry and all that shit – and then it’ll be Monday again.

Oh, and I’m on call so who knows what fun surprises are in store.

Then Sunday is Mother’s Day, though since I’m an orphan, I guess I’m off the hook for that one.

Today is the start of National Nurse’s Week (ending with the 196th birthday of Florence Nightingale on May 12). They make a big show of it where I work, pretending to value nurses by handing out some useless trinkets to them all.

I’d say that if you know a nurse, to wish her a Happy Nurse’s Day today, but odds are at best all you’ll get is a surly grumble about bullshit and hypocrites, and at worst, well…. If you’re not careful you could get hurt.

There is no such thing as DBA day (let alone week). At least, not one that anybody pays any attention to – especially around here. IT people are basically considered overhead. If we manage to keep things going without any catastrophic failures, then clearly we’re not needed and they’re just wasting money by paying us. And if something goes wrong, then we’re clearly incompetent and useless.

You just can’t win. As we (and by “we” I mean “me”) say around my house, nurses work from sun to sun, but DBA’s job is never done.