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Public service announcement: My ex-landlords are complete fucking idiots.

I'm tired today. I had a fabulous weekend despite going into it feeling ill. People walking around the office this morning look like they are navigating a mine field... every step quiet and calculated. No one is social and the air is as heavy as every. The only thing the survivors know is that they didn't get voted off the island during Friday's tribal council bloodbath. I really appreciate all the feedback on the few pics I posted. I wish more of them had turned out.

I'm down with homeboy speaking out. It's about time. This whole deal is getting ridiculous. Has SCO forgotten that not so long ago they were a linux distributor named Caldera? Idiots. If they released source under GPL then they forfeited their right to bitch about the use of that source?

So, the house I own in Virginia Beach is freshly painted and now the tenants want to buy it. They also want a lab puppy to chew the house up. Decisions, decisions.

Speaking of decisions... sheeeeeeeite. Buttah.

This ends my random post-lunch hoo-ha. I need to go home and take a nap.

It was worse than I had feared. I took about 97 photos this morning and less than 10 are even worth keeping. Some of the ones that I really liked in my mind turned out like complete ass on the CCD. Oh well... here are a few that survived the delete key. I'd really appreciate your comments... good or bad. Thanks.

It's a beautiful day. I set the alarm for too-early-for-a-Saturday and got to the Mercer Arboretum when it opened. Many thanks to Michael for letting me borrow a Nikkor 50mm lens to place on the macro coupling ring I purchased last week. His lens is an f1.4 so it's quite fast and made things a bit easier in the low light levels before the sun got high in the sky. Lens reversal improves working distance a little bit over stacking diopters, but the DOF goes to shit because of the magnification. It is extremely hard to get a shot just right on the focal plane when working camera in hand. Also, I need a lot of light to shoot at any reasonable shutter speed with the smallest aperture setting (needed at macro). The answer is a rack mount external flash and some diffusers. I don't have any. The morning hours were wonderful. I had the whole place to myself it seemed. I mean, there were a few people there, but they were quiet and appreciative. By 9:30, the walkways and paths were filled with kids and families and professional photographers shooting wedding and engagement hoo-ha. It was time for me to leave. I haven't looked through any of the pics yet, but I'm sure about 95% of them turned out poorly. It was my first attempt at lens reversal for macro. I'm sure that over time I'll get better at it... especially DOF management. I'll post a few later.

The sun is out and shining bright... definitely not like the ride in this morning.






Maybe change for the better extends beyond that? For now, I'm T-minus 60 minutes to beer and my wife-to-be.

Amen.

This shit better work.

Ahhh. The wake of the storm. Things are quiet... really, really quiet. After the big layoff spree, there were a series of meetings. The first of which was our Director and VP addressing the changes that happened. The next was my group specifically trying to figure out how the fuck we were going to do everything now with a skeleton crew. I found my name associated with all kinds of shit that can only spell one thing: suck. I'm thankful to have my job though, so excruciatingly painful work is better than no work at all... or more specifically, no income at all. Heh. Anyhoo, one of the guys that got the axe this morning has been with the company for almost 30 years. He's made a lot of friends and will be sorely missed. Some of us are getting together at Flying Saucer for a send off happy hour later. I'm not quite sure why we all just don't leave to go over there now. There isn't much work being done downtown today. I had a nice (albeit late) lunch with Bob, Joe, and Sam at Mai's. Two thumbs up for bar-b-q pork spring rolls (#6)! The only thing keeping me here this afternoon is a cheesy meeting that I was volunteered to attend. I hate meetings. Damn, what a fucked up day. Oh, I forgot to mention that 4 of the 8 folks left in my group are NCC operators and not network engineers... and 2 of the 4 remaining are not LAN/WAN engineers. That being said, after this morning's bloodbath, there are two motherfuckers left to run the corporate wide network from a top tier capacity: me and Joe. Welcome to my world.

Check it:

My department just got reduced from 150 people to 37 and my specific group went from 32 to 8.

Get some of that action.

I survived, but quality of life around here is probably going to be significantly depreciated. I didn't think that was possible, but hey... sometimes you just never know. Now the big talk is outsourcing what's left of us. Oh... and they also said there were more layoffs coming as further assets were sold. You can't let anyone relax and feel secure in their job, can you? Noooo....

Layoffs in progress!

Sadly, Stanley Smith suffered acute kidney failure a few weeks ago. Stanley left the hospital last week after a two week stay and he still needs dialysis every few days. Stanley will not play most of the shows this summer. He will be at the Saxon Pub shows in Austin on July 12 as well as all the Texas shows in September, up to his last show with the Spankers on October 3 at Poor David's in Dallas. Stanley had no health insurance, meaning he is now in a financial bind. The July 12 shows will be benefits for him and there are several other benefits planned around Austin in the coming weeks. If you would like to pitch in more directly, you can send contributions payable to Stanley Smith to:

Asylum Street Spankers
PO Box 49799
Austin, TX
78765

If you have money burning a hole in your pocket, please help.

As I was walking out of the office, the secuirty guard my company pays to watch the driveway of the corporate office was sitting on a make-shift chair and smoking a cigarette while reading this. I wonder if it's helping.

It's good to finally be home.

Damn traffic ahead... that's what I'm looking at in a matter of minutes. I'm going to have to make some mix CD's for the commute. Speaking of music, EL and I are trying to compile a list of good tunes to paly at the wedding reception. We want to keep things warm and relaxed... chillin' with friends on the lake kinda thing... more Norah Jones and Marvin Gaye and less Chicken Dance and Macarena if you know what I mean. Any recommendations from the peanut gallery?

I guess a little pokin' in the pooter isn't illegal anymore in Texas. I never understood that law anyway.

I was reading some kookportal and ran across a link to this article about the Psychic Readers Network. They have this list of published dos and don'ts for wannabe Miss Cleo's out there... this is my favorite one:

This line is NOT to be used for promoting evil.

Priceless. Anyhoo, work is better now that it doesn't feel like my head is going to snap off my body. Some OTC drugs and a few conference attendances to meetings that would otherwise have been in person and I'm good as new. Almost. The cleaning lady dusted the shelf above my freshly poured cup of coffee and all kinds of goobers fell out of her dust brush into my coffee. Never fuck with a man's coffee. I hope she recovers soon.

What's up with the world today?

Afternoon rain. Sporadic. Unannounced. Torrential, if only for a moment. Gone. I went to the farewell lunch for my booted-out-the-door colleague and found myself preoccupied with thoughts of unfinished work. I was hurting and unusually cold... uncomfortable. He would have been better served if we coordinated something for after work, but a social meeting in the middle of the day is like the instant you sneeze unexpectedly. I had a small cup of tortilla soup and left them to their hoo-ha as I walked back alone. I caught this shot as I was dodging rain and with no flash, so it's rushed and grainy, but I love the composition. This guy begs around that corner a lot. I see him all the time. My well paid, fat, gluttonous, American ass never noticed the sign before today. Have you ever thought about what it would be like if YOU were hungry. I mean really, really hungry? I doubt many people here in the fattest city in the nation for going on four years running actually know someone personally that has ever been in danger of starving to death or falling seriously ill due to malnourishment. Life's a bitch, ain't it? I'm wishing I had some mad scientist camera rig with a spot-a-Martian's-bunghole-from-earth type telephoto lens on it so I could have got a better shot. This shot speaks to me.

I am in serious disrepair. I woke up this morning and couldn't move my head... almost. I had a splitting headache that was dwarfed in painal comparison to my neck and back ache. There was no way I could make it to work on time. I lethargically crippled my way to the computer and shot my boss an email stating my tardiness was inevitable and managed to slink into the kitchen and munch on more pain killer than I probably should have before starting the triple-S ritual. Man... pain. I finally left around 8:30. A major accident on I-45 had all lanes at a stand-still for a while, but shortly after 9:00, my mug showed in the workplace. I still hurt... immensely. Last night was coolio. EL picked me up from Blanco's after work because she was still framing one of the rooms in the house (which looks awesome btw) and needed some time. We headed over to The Laff Stop for Dane Cook's gig. There was the traditional host bit... which was funny... and then there was the opener... which was hilarious... then Dane... 90% new material, 10% old faithful... good stuff. The opener was extremely good. He should be headlining his own shows. I can't remember his name. Damn. The office is eerie this morning. Some guys are taking personal days and some are out on locations doing design implementation, so it's a skeleton crew here. One of the guys that has already been told the axe hit him came by my desk to shake my hand and tell me it was a pleasure working with me. He looked like he was tearing up. I'm not feeling well enough for emotional trauma today. A few of us are going to take him to lunch and see him off. He is a great guy and a fantastic employee that's been with the company over 25 years. I don't get how that layoff decision was made, but then again, I don't understand a lot of things that go on here. I don't really have much to say this morning.

Well, maybe "ouch".