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.

It was a chilly weekend, but a nice one. And things are supposed to warm up this week, which will be good. Unfortunately, it’s Monday, and that sucks. It’s a short week though, ‘cuz I took Friday off so I could take Fritz in for his rabies vaccination. I’m not really looking forward to it. He’s pretty good, but I don’t like to see him get stuck with needles and whatnot. I’m sure they’ll want to do the Lyme/Heartworm test. That’s worse than a shot (which dogs don’t really seem to feel when it’s just under the skin – which is good, considering how they bit the crap out of each other when they play), because they need to get blood. Siggy did not like that needle in his leg one bit, but Fritz was OK with it last time. Oh, well, I guess I’ll just have to worry about it after I get the next four days over with.

As you probably heard, President Obama has been squandering tax dollars by traveling to college campuses and giving speeches to enthusiastic young folks (much to the chagrin of Jon Boehner, who says this is just plain terrible – and certainly unprecedented).  BTW, that link is to the Christian Science Monitor. I’ve always wondered, is that something that monitors Christian Science? Or a science monitor that happens to be Christian? Either way, there would seem to be an contradiction in terms, there. Anyhow, not to be outdone, Mitt Romney did his college tour this week as well, rousing the kids with tales of such exciting things as, um, well, office supplies.

The central theme Romney drove home was the fact that “sometimes appearances do not conform with the facts or reality,” and he applied it to such topics as the office supply industry, the intricacies of tax filing law and Dodd-Frank financial legislation.

“I have several examples of disparity between appearance and reality,” Romney said, launching into a lengthy monologue about his time as a private equity investor, when he discovered — to his critics’ chagrin! —that potential annual savings on office supplies were significant enough to justify an investment in bigger stores that could make their profits on higher sales volume rather than bigger mark-ups.

“What we found was they were spending a lot more than that I thought on copy paper and toner and supplies and software and so forth….

As you can imagine,  that really got the kids fired up.

I saw a headline in the paper that read, “Get Ready for Wider Swings in CNY,” and I figured it was a story about how our kids are getting so much fatter that we had to put in wider swings.  Turns out, it was about swings in the weather.  Snow, rain, drought, temperature.  They’re all varying widely, and that variation has increased steadily over the past 50 years.  Since that’s about how long I’ve been around, I figure it must be me.

I hope the temperature varies widely today.  Especially the temperature, ‘cuz right now it’s like 25 out.  It appears to be sunny, though, which is good.  Haven’t seen a whole lot of sunshine this week. 

Oh well, I guess I better go find something to do.

A rather annoying, sleepless night last night. That seems to have become the norm for me these days. And my days are spent sitting in a chair that’s trying to kill me. By the end of Monday, my back is a little sore. Tuesday, it starts hurting pretty bad around lunchtime. Wednesday, I’m in pain from about the first half hour on. So things are aching pretty bad right now, and tomorrow will be a real killer. Kinda sucks.

Speaking of things that suck, I see a new poll out there that has Romney leading Obama with independents (whatever the hell they are) by 12%. Early, I know, but that doesn’t seem like a good thing. I mean, if indies are already behind Team Romney – before he’s barely had a chance to shake his Etch-A-Sketch, they’ll have totally forgotten what he’s all about by the time November gets here. Especially with a compliant new media and a shit-load of PAC money waiting to be spent.

I don’t know what to expect from Romney, since he seems to say or do whatever he thinks will please the audience du jour, but I think he’ll go with whatever the Republicans in Congress come up with. And there are an awful lot of scary Republicans out there. Especially in the House.

So I talked with my mom in Anchorage, and she says that someone broke into her apartment and took her computer charger again. That’s right, again. Now, if you steal from a woman who is over ten grand in debt, has a car from the 80s, and can barely hold a steady job because of her health, I’d want to kill you if you did it a third time.

When I lived in Seattle, someone came into the house I was staying in and turned on the stove. It was left red hot the entire day. I told the people I was living with that it wasn’t me and of course they didn’t believe me. Missing telescope equipment, not me. When I lived North of Seattle someone managed to disengage my car’s parking brake and the damn thing rolled down the driveway and smashed into the neighbor’s tree. It caused the car’s window to shatter. The neighbors assumed it was me, but I said it wasn’t. Guess what, they didn’t believe me. When I said that someone drugged me at a coffee shop and I started acting weird and yelling in the U-District, no one believed me. (So, what the fuck if I dropout of school and toss change around UW. Fuck you people.) When my mom says that her computer’s charger and her bedroom clock radio was unplugged next to her window, I’m assuming that that is the absolute truth.

Tuesday! Oh shit, you know what that means. It’s time for everyone’s favorite show The Deadliest Catch. Now, I wasn’t always a fan of this show, but I really needed an excuse to excessively drink on a Tuesday night. Albeit alone, but another reason to be drunk as a skunk none-the-less.

I’m headed to everyone’s favorite state tomorrow. I wasn’t always a fan of Alaska, but when I turned twenty-one here in the lower 48, I learned that being a chain-smoking alcoholic was cool– and if you worked on a crab or a dredge boat you were even cooler. Don’t worry about me, I’ll try not to blend in with the fishes too much. Wouldn’t want to be floating in a river by the end of the summer.

Sucks to be you if you’re a disc golf fan in Anchorage today because that shit just got shutdown like a mother fucker. Too many drunks smoking pot playing frisbee is a big fucking deal, I guess. Don’t worry about elections that the ACLU or NAACP or NCAA or NBA or whoever-the-fuck thinks isn’t legit. Oh, and the 17 year veteran of the JPD who shot off 70 to 100 rounds after a night of drinking isn’t a big deal either, I think that’s just typical Alaska spirit right there.

Where was I? Oh, O Canada! Our home and native land!…

Well, we didn’t get the heavy rain they said we would last night. Instead, we got a few inches of snow. It was a regular winter wonderland out at my house – and just a bit of a hassle getting out of the driveway, now that the snow tires are off. No snow in Syracuse, though. Just rain and wet and cold. Supposed to be like that all week, I guess. Good thing I managed to get the grass cut yesterday. But it was pretty cold out there on the tractor. It was OK for a while, but it takes me about an hour and a half, and by the time I was done, I was chilled to the bone. I even had to light the pellet stoves, and I thought I was done with that. I’m starting to think the year without a winter is about to be followed by a year without a summer. Of course, it’s only April. Worse, it’s only Monday. There’s a long way to go yet.