Year: 2005

O Joyous Day!

Webster’s recently decided to add a new word to the dictionary:

wedgie: noun. a prank in which the victim’s undershorts are jerked upward so as to become wedged between the buttocks.

Oh, what a crazy world in which we live. In Vancouver, the police and government have decided to give away heroin. From a Fox News story:

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Just over the United States northwest border, addicts will soon be able to get their fix from the Canadian government in the form of free heroin administered by nurses and doctors on the taxpayer’s dime. “They’re using heroin. They’ll continue to use heroin. What we’re trying to do is prevent them from getting something irreversible like HIV, hepatitis C and overdose death,” said Dr. Martin Schechter, the director of the heroin program.

Wow. Will Vancouver see a surge in deadbeat population? Steve’s commentary on this:

Nice!  First it was free condoms to high school and junior high students, then it was free needles to junkies, now free heroin to junkies.  What’s next?  

Free hookers to high schoolers?
“Well, they’re gonna have sex anyway.  This will keep the teenage pregnancy rate down by giving them our state employed hookers who have been AIDS tested and are assured to be on the pill”

Free guns to gang-bangers?
“Well, they’re gonna get and use their guns anyway.  This will reduce gun-stealing and weapons-dealing.  Also, the guns we give will be checked out to make sure that they are not going to backfire on the user.”

Free bombs to terrorists?
“Well, they’re gonna bomb anyway.  Why don’t we get rid of the risky bomb transporting market and arms dealers.  This would also remove much of the border skirmish issues and allow us to make sure that the terrorists know what they are doing.  A terrorist who doesn’t have adequate training on bomb handling and care could have a bad accident and cause problems for the surrounding neighbors, etc.”

Sheesh.

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.”

— Ernest Benn

Tonight Zack conked out around 6:30 (he was sooo tired) and after dinner the rest of us decided to play some games. Laralee and Kyra played The Magnificent Race while Alex and I sat down for some Stratego.

It was a lot of fun for everyone, and as we were packing up the games I noticed the amazing 1950’s-era artwork on the Stratego box. Ahh, those memorable days of yore when dad always wore a suit, mom wore a skirt, and little Billy had enough grease in his hair to affect global petroleum prices…

Well, it’s the end of the first week working with Craig. Despite a rather tight fit in the ol’ basement office (see photo) things seem to be going really well. He’s picking up the code very quickly (no surprise there) and has already been a huge help. Plus, he’s fun to have around and even tolerates my eclectic tastes in music.

(I have to say nice things about him, since he occasionally takes a gander at this journal…)

Yesterday I cleaned out my office in preparation for shuffling the furniture to make room for my first real employee. In the process I was sorting through an entire bookshelf of old manuals and such, and came across…

the manual for my very first PC — a 386-33 beast!

That’s right, fifteen years ago I bought a $2,000+ system for college, and thank heavens I still had the manual for how to operate the motherboard. Hoo boy, that sure came in handy over the years.

In the end, I filled an entire trash can with stuff like that, including the definitive guide to Microsoft Access version 2 (!) and the first version of Quattro Pro (that’s right, the text-based DOS version).

As I prepare to expand the ol’ business and hire a full-time employee (he starts Monday, woo hoo!) I have to figure out how to arrange my office. Rather than renting space downtown like I did a year or so ago, I decided to just work in the basement for a while and save some expense.

Of course, my office is really only big enough for one, so it’s going to be a trick to get two desks in there. Luckily, Laralee has experience arranging things like this– she creates little graph-paper scale models and slides them around until they fit. Using this advanced scientific approach, she figured out a way to make it work. I guess I’ll find out Saturday when I reassemble the desks…

“The best way to have a good idea… is to have lots of ideas.”

— Linus Pauling

The other night I was goofing around with a new address book system, and I noticed a place where you can upload a picture for a contact person. Just for kicks I dug up a couple of mug shots and added them to some random contacts. Nothing really exciting seemed to happen so I forgot about it.

But then I was using my e-mail and noticed those pictures suddenly started appearing in mail from those people. Hilarious. Now I get a smiling face from the people in my address book…

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”

— Mohandas Gandhi