Wow.

January is seventy-five percent gone, and I still have a job. I supposed that’s a good thing. If I had a job that I enjoyed, it’d be a better thing; beggars can’t be choosers. So what’s been going on in my little life since I last got bored enough to post an entry to this thing? Not a great deal. With a title like, “Stuff Nobody Reads,” that’s pretty much a given for this blog; but I probably should try to think of something. I mean, I’m assuming that this thing will be a vital tool for the hordes of biographers who are certain to be researching my life in 10 years or so – after I’m rich and famous.

Beats the hell out of having to read the backs of envelopes to find, say, The Gettysburg Address, or trying to interpret really poorly-drawn paintings of stickmen killing stickbison on some cave wall in France in order to establish that “Bob Neanderthal was here.” Biographers and historians of the future probably will have no idea how easy they’ve got it.

But I digress.

Last Friday we had a conference call during which we were informed that we’re basically working for no reason. Can’t say much about it (with my luck, the entire legal staff of every telecommunications company in the world reads this daily in order to see if I divulge any proprietary information), but it boils down to this: we can continue our market trial for the next year or so, but our product will never actually go on the market. Begs a couple of questions, right? Like, “Why?” and “Come again?” And the ever-popular, “What the hell am I doing here?” Eh bien. Having spent the last 16 years of my life navigating fairly stormy corporate waters, I guess I can sit back and wait for the maelstrom to start up again later this year. What else would a gadabout like me do for fun?

I had a concert with the Georgia Brass Band last night at a church in Lawrenceville. It was the 4th or 5th time we’ve played there. Always a good crowd (in terms of quantity and appreciation), so it was fun. There was a minor downside to it: I had a solo. Actually, it was a duet between me and a baritone, but it was still far too exposed for me. Made my way through the first half of it somewhat shakily and only cracked one note on the back half. I got a bit of a pick-me-up after the concert when our lead cornet player admitted to me that he gets extremely nervous when playing solos (not that you can tell when he plays). I realized that I don’t really get jittery playing in front of crowds anymore. My nervousness when playing exposed passages with the GBB is due to the fact that I realize that everyone else in the group is better than I am. It’s one thing to play for 1000 people who wouldn’t know if you played a wrong note or had thin tone. It’s quite another to play in front of 27 instrumentalists who know exactly how badly you suck.

But they were all nice about it and I enjoyed the concert. Our encore was from the William Tell Overture and the folks in the church really got into it.

Don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before or not, but my roommate is most definitely being deployed to Iraq at the end of March. She is understandably somewhat nervous about the situation. She’s also looking forward to the extra bucks she’ll get. Her orders, received a couple of weeks ago, imply that she’ll be in country for 18 months; but thanks to a recent rules change, there’s really not a limit on how long she’ll have to stay. As she put it, “Great. I’m being sent to work with a bunch of disgruntled soldiers.” Still, she’s taking everything in stride and doing a great job of getting organized (packing her storage building up to be put in Army storage, arranging for the care and upkeep of her houses in PA and TX, spending time with her kids….updating her will). Her boyfriend, currently in Pennsylvania, isn’t faring so well. After two tours in Kuwait himself (at least one of which left him with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), he is quite upset with the whole situation – which isn’t really helping her nerves.

I’ve been spending a lot of time recently recreating my flagship website. This time, I’m putting it on a Linux server (have never done anything other than Windows) and basing it in PHP (have never done anything other than ASP). It seems to be going rather well, and I’ve got about 30 folks testing it out for me. Hopefully I’ll be able to launch it for real in about a month. Until that time, I’ve got a really steep learning curve to deal with. PHP absolutely baffles me. So does MySQL (the database that runs the site – I’ve never used anything other than Microsoft Access). Fortunately, there’s a host of online support forums and prepackaged code out there, so I should be able to get some sort of product working before I really need to start customizing it for my own purposes. And the experience will certainly help me should I decide to start looking for new employment in the IT field.

My XM radio continues to be a wonderful little thing for my nerves. I find myself spending most of my in-car time switching between the 70’s station and the Broadway station. Don’t know if that means I’m a disco freak or gay; it does make the traffic jams seem a trifle less aggravating.

It has been quite chilly in Duluth for the last several days. Chilly for the deep south, at least. The nights have been in the high twenties and we’re getting afternoon highs in the high thirties to low forties. Last night we had a fantastic amount of wind. Naturally, I had to open my bedroom window when that started up (I love wind), but was forced to close it after about 5 minutes, when the thermostatically-controlled space heater in my room started having convulsions. I toyed with the idea of just shutting it off, wrapping myself in a blanket and sleeping with the window open; but nixed that idea because 1)I’m sure my furnace would’ve had to kick on if I left it open (furnace is currently set to 57 degrees), and 2)I figured my roommate would freeze (she’s in a separate room, people. Enough already!). Anyway, it was nice to listen to it through the window.

That’s about all I can think of at this point. Taxes are coming due so that’ll be fun. And my bonus this year (the last one I’ll get, probably) is going to be the highest ever awarded in the history of BellSouth. Maybe I’ll write something after I get it. Like, “Hey. I need a new job.”

TWD

It is now 2007.

I became acutely aware of this at midnight last night, in spite of the fact that I went to bed at 10:30. I learned it in much the same way that I have for the last 8 years: the people who live in the house behind mine fired off enough explosives to destroy South Dakota.

After the bombardment subsided (approximately 15 minutes – and this is in a state where fireworks are illegal), I reassured myself that my house was not on fire and tried to go back to sleep. I’d almost managed to do that when my cell phone rang.

By the time I’d managed to locate it and answer it, the caller had hung up. It turned out to be my roommate, who I’m sure was calling to say, “Happy New Year.” I did not attempt to call back; but at 2:45, said roommate sent me a text message: Happy New Year and Happy Birthday. I did respond to that – then went back to sleep. People my age need their rest.

For those of you keeping track: 41. Isn’t that the answer to everything?

My trip north was quite enjoyable, in spite of the fact that Vermont had no snow and the temperature seemed to approach tropical numbers. It was still nice to be home, and I made a pretty decent haul from under the tree. Cy surprised me with a Danske kettle that I’ve coveted for several years, and that was sandwiched among t-shirts, socks, chocolate, books, and a varied assortment of other cool stuff.

Cy, “T,” and I were entertained by “T’s” sons, Chris and Jamie, on the 25th and 26th. After Chris departed, Jamie pulled out the poker chips and the four of us (joined on the 28th by Karl and Diane Neuse) spent every evening attempting to recreate the World Series of Poker in front of a roaring fire. I also got to visit quite a few towns in Vermont – Middlebury, Brandon, Whitehall, Leicster, Rutland, Ferrisburgh, Shoreham, Vergennes…to name a few.

On the way to Vermont, and also on the way back from same, I stopped in Lansdale, PA, to visit with a friend. We managed to take in a nice Chinese dinner, play some pool in a tiny little bar in North Wales, PA, act as chaperones (or so it seemed) at a club which catered to the fake ID crowd, watch some television and just catch up on each other. Good times.

It was actually while we were at the pool pub that I received word that the AT&T/BellSouth merger was approved. Let the countdown begin. Reading a follow-up story yesterday, I learned that 10,000 jobs will be lost over the next three years due to the merger.

I just hope I get a decent severance package. Let me get out of debt and I’m moving north, dammit.

Greg and Lisa and their angry pack of children are expected to arrive at my house late this morning in anticipation of a visit to the Titanic exhibit in downtown Atlanta. Should be fun, but I have no idea where everyone is going to sleep tonight. My roommate and her boyfriend are also expected by this evening. It’ll be Thanskgiving all over!

Rehearsals with the GBB kick off again tomorrow night, and we’re into our NABBA schedule. 31 rehearsals between tomorrow and the end of March. That’s basically every Tuesday, every Thursday, and a few weekends.

More than likely, I’ll also have some Wednesday night sessions with a brass quintet and I’ve pretty much promised the church that hires me a few times every year that I’ll start playing with them on Sundays. I’ll be playing more than I did in college.

Maybe when AT&T drops the hammer I’ll finally be able to live out my dream of gigging for a living.

The weather right now is a rather balmy 50 degrees and clear – quite a change from yesterday’s offering of 40’s with anything from drizzles to downpours. I have no idea what the forecast is, but I’ll roll with it.

Kind of like the year in general. Here’s hoping it’s good for everyone who reads this – and for the guy who wrote it.

TWD

No really. It is. NABBA Night.

I’m willing to bet that you all have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, so I’ll explain. NABBA is the North American Brass Band Association; and the GBB (Georgia Brass Band), of which I am a member, is a member in NABBA. As such, the band will compete in the NABBA Championships next April; performing, among other selections, a rather dull and stupidly-difficult piece entitled, “The King of Elfland’s Daughter.”

Why it wasn’t called “Elfland’s Princess,” I do not know. But it wasn’t.

In any case, the GBB has completed its Fall concert schedule, and so tonight is the first night that we’ll look at the Elfland piece and begin preparing for the competition. Instead of practicing for two hours or so each week, our rehearsal schedule will probably swell to at least twice a week and closer to three hours each time. Sectionals will be in order. Personal practice time will be expected. And until April, we’ll be focusing on that insidiously boring song.

Oh joy.

I should mention that the band actually WON the competition last year (without me, damn them) in their innaugural entry. Well, they won their “section” anyway. The competition is broken into 5 different levels: Explorer, Youth, Challenge, Honors, and Championship. The GBB, having no idea how good they were last year, opted to enter the “Challenge” section, two flights below the big boys of brass banding.

They were the last of 8 bands to compete in that section, and they so completely humiliated the other 7 (winning by nearly 30 points), that they were told that they could only enter this year’s competition in the Honors or Championship sections.

Honors it is. The main competition will probably be the New England Brass Band, which won the honors section last year.

By the way, you can read all about NABBA and the competition at www.nabba.org

On to other things. I bought a satellite radio today. I hated to do it – paying for radio just seems wrong, somehow – but I finally got so sick and tired of commercials that I decided it was worth it. I just kept thinking to myself, “You’re driving to Vermont and back in a couple of weeks, you go to Canada every year….hell, you’ve put nearly 120,000 miles on the car in three years. Get the damned satellite.”

So I did. 170 commercial-free stations, about 30-40 of which I think I’ll enjoy. Finally I can get the CBC in Atlanta. That’s worth the price of admission right there.

On the social front – there’s not one. I have, however, been spending a lot of time with a friend (a male friend) who likes to play pinball as much as I do. And we’ve discovered that we both REALLY like playing this thing called, “Big Buck Hunter,” which is a video game that lets you kill animals for points. Not a completely sick concept – I mean, some people kill real animals for trophies. We kill fake animals for nothing.

There is one facet of the game that I don’t really understand. It seems that you can kill a fully-grown bull moose with a single shotgun blast to the head – but that same gun must shoot a frog FOUR TIMES before it dies. Does that seem just a tad illogical to you (assuming you can get your head around the idea that you’re moose hunting with a pump-action shotgun, that is)?

Don’t know if I’ve mentioned previously that I’m now running Windows Vista on my laptop. Seems to be a really nice OS – an improvement over XP Pro, which I didn’t think was possible. I have found a couple of quirks and there are some hardware drivers that need to be updated, but overall I give it an A-.

That ought to have everyone all caught up. I’ll probably be a year older before I update this again (unless something really cool happens at Christmas), so everyone have happy holidays and hoist a pint to me on New Year’s Eve.

Taking the day off today at the request of my boss.

Well, she didn’t actually request it. No. What really happened is that our president sent out a memo a couple of weeks ago telling us that we had to use all of our vacation before the end of the year. No carry-over to 2007.

At the time, I had about 10 days left. Therefore, I’m pretty much working short weeks for the rest of the year, plus taking off a week and a half around Christmas to see how cold it can get in Vermont. So I’ve got today off. And next Friday. And next Monday. And last Friday. And that week around Christmas. And I think some other time that I’m forgetting.

This does not mean that I can just RELAX: work gave me a Blackberry a couple of weeks ago, and it never stops going off. I was up at around 6:30 this morning talking to a guy at work because someone else had paged me about a server problem.

Gotta love technology.

After fixing the server, I spent some quality time taking about about 4 billion bags of trash, which were generated last Wednesday, Thursday (Thanksgiving) and Friday. Those were the days during which my roomate and I hosted her son, daugther, boyfriend, brother, friend and friend’s son at the house for two-and-a-half days of non-stop eating. We had turkey, ham, squash, apple pie, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, potatoes, stuffing, gravy, beer, wine, rum, cranberry sauce, broccoli, asparagus, salsa, chips, cheese, pickled okra, coke, and pizza. And seconds.

And that was just Thursday.

Friday, I took off to spend some long-overdue time in the woods where I hurt myself (more on that shortly), while the others – except for the son – prepared to make tamales; but they ended up making menudo (some sort of weird Mexican chitlins concoction that I have yet to try). The refrigerator is currently completely full, there are still about 4 bottles of wine and a case of beer on the deck; and, as I said, I got rid of LOTS of trash this morning.

I also said that I took off on Friday to go camping. Hooked up with a couple of friends of mine who work at the CDC (always a good thing to bring with you when you camp, right?) and we headed up to the Sylco wilderness area in the mountains of Tennessee.

More specifically, we hooked up when we all got there. I got there first and managed to set up my 800,000 square-foot tent by myself (always wondered if I could do that) before either of them showed up. Okay….in reality, the tent is just over 200 square feet. Since it was supposed to drop down into the 30s each night, the plan was to put a heater in the tent; and, since three or four guys would be sleeping in it, it would stay warm. Bad plan, as it turned out. One guy slept in his truck and I never did get the heater set up. But hey…MY sleeping bag was nice and toasty. I can’t help it if the other two guys don’t understand cold-weather camping and spent the whole weekend crying about how cold it was.

At any rate, after everyone had arrived Friday evening, we set about collecting firewood. While breaking a decent-sized stick in half by jumping on it, I managed to really screw up my left knee, which I believe houses a chronic bowling injury (no joke), so I spent the rest of the night supervising the other two guys and drinking bourbon.

Saturday, while limping around, I managed to fall over and wrench my right elbow and left wrist. So I spent most of the day drinking bourbon and supervising.

Oh – and occassionally playing with my chainsaw (maybe I should have used that instead of my knee on Friday night….).

The three of us ate pretty well, although an early attempt at chili never did pan out, in spite of our best efforts to “rescue” it over the course of the weekend by pouring more and more stuff into it, heating it, tasting it, and saying, “Nope. Still sucks.”

Yesterday morning, we packed up the cars, made sure the campsite was in better shape than when we’d found it, and made the two-hour trip back to Atlanta.

Back at my house, my roommate had scoured my kitchen floor, cleaned stuff that I didn’t realize could be cleaned, and successfully kept my cats alive; so I thanked her by taking a bunch of leftovers from my camping trip and from thanksgiving and making two FANTASTIC Shepherd’s Pies (made with ground beef and venison sausage if you’re interested – and what a great combination for a Shepherd’s Pie).

We demolished one of the two last night, and I fully intend to take care of at least half of the other one today. Also need to do some laundry. But it’s only noon. I don’t want to strain myself.

All in all, the Thanksgiving weekend was a real treat and I hope everyone reading this had as nice a time as I did.

You’ll be hard-pressed to top it at Christmas, Cy; but I’m sure you will somehow. 🙂

TWD

My my my.

It has been quite a while since I decided to put anything in this spot, and I sincerely apologize to those of you who throng eagerly to your computers each day in order to drink at the fountain of wisdom that is this blog.

I must particularly apologize to those of you who were waiting for the second installment of the great American novel. Maybe later.

I’m technically in training this week, but needed to actually get some work done today, so I cut class and stayed home. Makes a lot of sense, huh? Actually, it does. I can get more work done from home than I can at the office.

Not that I’ve actually DONE that today. I’ve spent most of the day watching election analysis, reading newspapers online, and doing laundry….although I did check my email.

In order to tick my mother off, I must now reveal that I didn’t vote yesterday. This does not mean that I don’t get to whine about politicians. To the contrary, it means that I take my politics seriously enough to realize that I’m so independent that I border on being an anarchist. I didn’t care who won yesterday. Seriously. I fully expect the outgoing bunch of incompetent crooks to be replaced with a new bunch of incompetent crooks who color their states with a different color.

I could, of course, have voted Libertarian; but I’ve been told by Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, my mom, etc., that a vote for a Libertarian is a wasted vote. Since I don’t like to be wasteful…

Anyway, what’s seriously going to change? Well, Rumsfeld finally got the boot. It took W getting kicked in the gut to figure it out, but it’s a start. I have a military friend who is currently quietly celebrating.

Bill Clinton probably had the best line yesterday. “Republicans will have you believe that Democrats will tax you into the poor house and that you’ll meet a terrorist around every corner and trip over an illegal immigrant on the way there.”

That’s not too far off base. How long will it be before someone says, “Man, the Democrats have only been in power for a week and they’ve already gotten us stuck in an unwinable war?”

Changing subjects abruptly, it’s a beautiful day in Duluth right now. The sun is out, there’s a great breeze blowing, temperature is hovering right around 60. If there was a football game going on in my back yard, I’d be in heaven. As it is, there’s a bunch of leaves that need to be raked in my back yard and the football game isn’t until Saturday. In Greenville. Fortunately, it’s the last one (of the regular season), and I won’t be obligated to go to any more after it.

I still MIGHT. I just won’t be obligated.

Last week was the fourth time this season that I had to leave very early and got home very late because of games. I’ve had to drive to Chapel Hill, NC (U. of North Carolina), Boone, NC (Appalachian State U.), Myrtle Beach, SC (Coast Carolina U.) and Elon, NC (Elon College). Elon was the easiest – I got home at around midnight. App State was around 2 am. UNC and CCU were both close to 6 am – and I had to play at church on the Sundays after each of those games. Color me sick of football season.

Today I discovered a plethora of little tiny ants trooping around on my kitchen counters. I have no idea where they came from or what they’re after, but I cleaned the living crap out of the counters and they’re still not gone. Anybody got any advice on that one? I put out a couple of ant traps, but they seem to have done nothing.

Last night, I made Banana bread. I’m told it was good – I haven’t actually had any yet. I’m assuming that it and the ants are not related.

A couple of months ago, I got a new self-cleaning litterbox for my cats. It works wonderfully. Problem is that they’re both scared of it. Boo (the female) will use it if I pick her up and put her in it. Bo (the male – and the one more likely to use anything that has litter in it) will have nothing to do with it. Sigh.

And that’s all for now. Hope everybody likes the new look of the blog.

TWD

“It was a dark and stormy night,” he penned, knowing that it was a monstrous cliché and a guaranteed way to stop any potential readers from continuing; but he had to start somewhere, and the night before had indeed been stormy – and dark, for that matter. His two cats, Bo and Boo (named more for alliterative purposes than anything else) had been restless all of the previous day. When the storm actually hit, threatening to down trees and tear off shingles, they’d gone berzerk, tearing around the house like banshees of old and creating for him a sort of moving obstacle course when the power invariably failed and he was forced to navigate his way to bed by the glow off the screen of his PDA. Ever-prepared (he’d been a Boy Scout, after all), he’d spent nearly $200 on groceries and supplies earlier in the week, but had neglected to pick up a couple of flashlight batteries.

It seemed, therefore, pre-ordained that he’d trip over one of the animals (it turned out to be Boo) while making his ascent to the second-floor bedroom. The last thing he remembered before waking up at the base of the stairs the next morning was the eerie arch of light that his PDA made as it flew over the bannister and crashed on the hall floor, some eight feet below.

When he regained consciousness, however, he felt better than he had in months. He was ready to do something with his life. Something that would make him famous and rich, but something that (at least he believed this at the time) would require very little effort on his part.

He was going to write the next great novel.

Well, I haven’t even looked in here for 6 weeks or more. Seems I’m not alone! I spent June in a whirlwind. Our MMI organization put on a 3-day Worship Conference in Nashville. Kind of last minute for a $100k budget…but, we pulled it off and didn’t lose our shirt financially. After that week, I had to go to Redding, CA for another week (for another Worship Conference – I should be an expert on the subject). It was quite HOT out there. Came back to Nashville and have had a few quick little trips but, nothing major.

We had a good 4th of July hanging out at a “block party” on our cul-de-sac. I was able to watch middle class rednecks drink beer and set off fireworks (no one was injured). There were so many fireworks going off around our house we didn’t feel the need to go see the big fancy ones in town. I more felt the need to stay home and protect the property from incoming mortar rounds. Boys had a great time…lying on their backs with about 10 other kids…with their heads on the curb…legs in the road…watching the fireworks fly. Hotdogs, potato salad, hamburgers, coleslaw, and every other bad-for-you American dish was present.

Adam wanted to turn 11 on July 12th but, we felt like holding him back a year. He insisted so, our 11 year old sixth Grader (who is 5’3″) is officially not 10 any more. Adam took a “summer camp” day class for a week. It was at the Viking Culinary Institute. He paid for half of it by mowing three lawns – which I have mentioned in previous posts. He had a great time! Theoretically, he will be cooking those 5 meals for us soon.

Following close behind him, Samuel turns 8 tomorrow…he’s 4’3″ (we measured last night). When I told him straight faced that we weren’t going to let him turn 8 until next year…he started to cry. So, much for dead-pan humor. (I have a way with children). He’ll probably need counseling for that one.

Our church continues to grow. After 16 months of Sunday morning meetings we have about 275 regular attendees and growing steadily. Yesterday I cut a check as a deposit on a potential land aquisition for the church -$535k for 10 acres which is a steal around these parts – but a darn lot of money nonetheless. We have 120 days of due diligence ahead of us to figure out if we really want that spot of land or not.

Marilyn is spending time gearing up for the upcoming Home School year. She’s reading all manner of curriculum, been to curriculum fairs, buying stuff off of Ebay, and in general cramming all manner of info together to make some purchasing decisions for school. We’ll be working on a “self-teaching” approach which focuses in on teaching the boys how to teach themselves…or at least to begin to foster and encourage that mindset. Of course, we will have all manner of Internet, CDROM, Book, Parental, and Fieldtrip teaching to do it….but, there will be an underlying push to get them to teach themselves. Should be interesting. Note: These are some really sharp boys! Marilyn has done a great job.

That’s all I have time for right now. We have NOT been able to get a vacation in and it’s too darn hot anyways…so, we’re hoping maybe this fall.

Larry

Cy….you’re sweating in that photo. I thought women only glistened. Great to hear that you’re really really really good at this tennis stuff, though, because I plan to bring my racket (that’s racquet for the Nova Scotia people) and attempt to thrash you before I have a stroke and fall down.

Anyway, I’ve finally pretty much finalized my vacation plans for the summer, so I’ll put them here. If I disappear during the first week of July, please call the RCMP.

I’ll be leaving Duluth sometime on Friday the 30th and taking the short route to Canada (up 75, crossing at Detroit). Will probably stop somewhere around Toledo on Friday night and either camp or hit a hotel. On Saturday, I’ll continue northeast and hope to his Oshawa, Ontario, sometime Saturday afternoon, where I’m hoping to grab lunch or dinner with Bill Doten, with whom I’ve been exchanging emails for the last several months. I haven’t seen Bill probably since we were both about 10, so it should be fun – with any luck, we can start a grass fire with smoke bombs (not that we EVER did that in North Reading, mind you).

After Oshawa, I’m heading north to Algonquin Provincial Park, which I believe is Canada’s largest national park. I have a campsite reserved at Pog Lake in the park from Sunday the 2nd until Saturday the 7th and I’m really looking forward to spending the week looking at moose, swimming, wearing lots of Deet, drinking Canadian beer, and taking my blood pressure every hour just so I can watch it decline.

I’m sure that doesn’t sound overly exciting to most of you, but I’m REALLY pumped about it. If all goes as well as I expect it to go, I may talk a friend of mine into trying out the park’s interior this winter – snowshoeing and all that good stuff. The two of us have been camping three times so far this year (last weekend we canoed down the Chatooga River – where Deliverance was filmed), and we have a great time being mountain men.

On the 7th, I’ll make the relatively short trip over to Magnetawan to join Cy, T, Karl & Dianne (Neuse) and I’m anticipating having yet another excellent week there….I *think* this is my 14th year there. Is that right, Cy? Cy and T have informed me that the perfect woman that they’d lined up for me will not be in attendance, but T has promised to be on the lookout for a suitable replacement.

Probably sometime on the 14th – possibly early on the 15th – I’ll head south via the eastern route through Kingston, crossing near Niagra Falls and heading back to Atlanta through Pittsburgh. Audrey will be moving to Philly next week, so she and I may try to hook up somewhere in PA (possibly Gettysburgh) before I make a mad dash for home, arriving sometime on Sunday the 16th.

By the time I get home, I *might* have a housemate – none of that’s really been finalized yet (as far as the dates go). Her name is Maria Garza, she’s a career Army major stationed at Fort MacPherson, and she promises me that she’s an excellent cook and I will be *expected* to partake in her Mexican dishes (she’s Mexican, if the name didn’t clue you in to that). In case any of you are wondering, Maria is in her mid-late 40’s, has two grown children and a boyfriend, and this cohabitation is strictly economically-driven. She’s getting a place to stay for cheaper than she could ever find with an apartment and I’m getting a pretty nice chunk of change every month. Her plan is to leave Atlanta in the next 6 months or so, at which point I’ll probably start looking for another tenant.

Work continues to be incredibly boring – most of my projects were cancelled when AT&T announced their intention to buy us – and I really don’t see how I’ll manage to stay with the company if the merger actually goes through. Yet another reason I’m thrilled to have that extra income for the time being. If any of you know of job openings in your area – not necessarily computer-related, but I’ll consider that if the money is right – please let me know.

Larry and Mar – Jenny and I are coming to Nashville on August 11th and 12th to see some sort of Egyptian (?) thing at a museum there. If you’re going to be around, we’d really like to do dinner on the night of the 11th – call it a birthday present. I’ll be in touch with you in early August to nail down the details.

And that’s pretty much all the news that’s fit to print on my life at this point. Hope everyone is well and happy.

I just wanted to see if Greg was wrong. Been trying to figure out how to do this stuff on my website anyway.

Yup. He was wrong. Greggy, you need to embed the video in an HTML object and point back to the source. Sort of like:

<OBJECT ID="MediaPlayer" WIDTH="192" HEIGHT="190" CLASSID="CLSID:22D6F312-B0F6-11D0-94AB-0080C74C7E95"

STANDBY="Loading Windows Media Player components…" TYPE="application/x-oleobject">

<PARAM NAME="FileName" VALUE="http://www.theuffp.com/superfirepittest.wmv">

<PARAM name="ShowControls" VALUE="true">

<PARAM name="KIOSKMODE" VALUE="true">

<param name="ShowStatusBar" value="false">

<PARAM name="ShowDisplay" VALUE="false">

<PARAM name="autostart" VALUE="false">

<EMBED TYPE="application/x-mplayer2" SRC="http://www.theuffp.com/superfirepittest.wmv"
NAME="MediaPlayer"

ShowControls="1" ShowStatusBar="0" ShowDisplay="0" KIOSKMODE=TRUE autostart="0">
</EMBED>

</OBJECT>