I have a bit of a head cold this week, which is far less disruptive and annoying than the belly flu I had a couple of weeks ago. It does mean that I’ve been hitting The Green Death every night for most of a week, though. This can do weird things to your dreams. Luckily, while I know that last night’s dreams were strange, I can’t remember anything else about them.

So far I haven’t gone near any stores during this post-holiday, pre-holiday weekend. There’s a good chance I’ll hit the grocery store at some point but that’s all of my shopping plans. Folks, I can’t afford to buy presents this year. I’m not entirely out from under the debt I incurred when unemployed, and that takes priority over trinkets and baubles. In what could be called a gesture in karma’s direction, I’m not going to update my Amazon wishlist this year. Yes, there are new DVDs and CDs and books that I’d like, but since I’m not buying stuff for other people, people certainly don’t need to be buying stuff for me.

This NaBloPoMo experience has been good for me. It forces me to think about what’s going on in my life, and to document what I can of it as I go. It also reminds me that sometimes I need to cut loose and have fun, as in last night’s entry. While the “flake rate” feature of the previous journal software is long gone, maybe I’ll set myself a posting goal for 2007. The heavens know that I’ve let this place go to seed for long stretches of this year. Oi.

My current plans for the day include doing dishes, visiting with my rugrats and going out on a date. Tomorrow I suspect I’ll be doing laundry, playing games, and welcoming back a weekend traveler. Since the weather forecasts no longer indicate snow quite as strongly, I probably don’t have to worry about trying to work from home on Monday, for which I’m grateful. (Yes, Mari, I know you wanted snow. I’m sorry. Hey, I could be wrong. I’m often wrong.)

Oh, right. It’s still NaBloPoMo. My obligation thereto is not yet met. (“Hello, obligation, pleased to meet you.”) I’m sitting here randomly websurfing, listening to music I’ve not heard before (my “Incoming” directory is a thing of boundless horror beauty) and finishing off my dinner (consisting of leftover stew, with crackers), washed down with delicious Thomas Kemper black cherry soda.

That’s right, folks. I’m living the good life. Be jealous. Or envious, whichever. (One of these days I’ll fully grasp the difference. Yes, there is a difference to be grasped.)

No, I’m not on drugs. To the best of my knowledge I’ve never been on drugs, and only once was I ever drunk. (My best friend and I beat the stuffing out of his little brother for spiking the apple juice, once we could think coherently again. We had to get a lot of laughing at stupid random things out of the way first, though. Like, you know, houseflies. Apparently, when you’re drunk, houseflies are comedy gold.) I do like parentheses, though. I suspect you noticed that. And, I’m being silly, because I can, and because it amuses me. If I’m lucky it’ll amuse you. See, I like putting smiles on faces. I’m not above painting them on with a Sharpie pen, either. So, laugh, dammit.

Hmm. Needs more random. There, much better. Good night, everybody!

We had turkey for dinner today, and as part of our meal we made fun of another turkey. As I was flipping through the free selection of “On Demand” movies, I spotted “Krull” and groaned. Those of us in the room old enough to remember that particular turkey chimed in, and my daughter (bless her heart) immediately insisted on seeing it. Well, hey, who are we to turn down a good chance to riff on a bad movie?

Notable moments included the following:

• At least Qui-Gon Jinn got a more dignified death scene here than he did in “Phantom Menace.” (I totally failed to make any Darkman jokes during the entire movie. Silly me.)
• Hagrid looks really weird without his beard.
• Thufir Hawat was in love with Lady Jessica. Who knew?
• “Ouch! I’ve gotta stop doing that!” (When the glaive’s blades come out, our hero is almost always holding it in the worst possible position.)
• The Budweiser Clydesdales have flaming hooves. Who knew?
• Gandalf the Green is nowhere near as cool as Gandalf the Grey. In fact, he’s kind of useless.
• You know, if any of those guys knew anything about anatomy, they’d have been able to flee the evil fortress in no time. That’s what they get for not paying attention in Health class!
• A little Tinactin could’ve helped our hero’s little “burning” problem. Where’s John Madden when you need him?
• That cyclops sure had good aim over distance for a critter with no depth perception.

There was more, of course, but I’ll spare you. Suffice to say we shared a lot of laughs while we stuffed ourselves on turkey, potatoes, stuffing, gravy, pasta-and-cheese and dinner rolls. Oh, and pumpkin pie. Yum.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

It’s almost Thanksgiving, so let’s get some giving of thanks out of the way.

I may occasionally seem unhappy with my job, and it’s true. Of course, if it was fun all the time they wouldn’t call it Work, would they? But let’s be clear about one thing: I’m very, very thankful to have this job. Mind you, I’m thankful to have any job, but things worked out better than I could have expected.

For years I complained that rarely did anyone in authority come to me for advice about technical things before implementing something new and potentially disastrous. One of the things I wanted most was to be asked for my input. Well, my new boss seems to be thoroughly serious about soliciting my viewpoint on things, from how the business should present itself to which service offerings we should provide in the future. I was a bit late getting out the door this evening at the end of my workday because we were discussing anti-spam platforms.

Feeling like I have some say in things, even as I recognize that the boss’ decision is final (as it should be!), goes a long way toward making me feel like I’m in a healthy, positive environment. Sure, I’m surrounded by triple threats (guys with certifications, years of experience and hefty brains), but maybe I can hold my own after all. And even if this turns out not to be “the job for me,” at least in the meantime I’m in a fairly good spot.

For which I’m intensely thankful.

Failing better inspiration, I’ll fill today’s posting requirement by reminding the world that I, yes I, have the best children ever.

That will be all. Thank you.

The Internet has been almost unavailable at our house all day today. The firewall’s been flaky (to put it nicely) and, at the moment, only wireless devices can get online. I don’t have a laptop anymore, but the roomie has two at his disposal so he’s more-or-less set up okay at the moment.

My brilliant idea to get at least one of my machines online again involved plugging in one of those old Orinoco wireless cards through an add-on PCMCIA slot. Well, the idea was good but SonicWALL doesn’t like those cards. (Nobody really does, so this isn’t as surprising as you might think. The cards are crap.) My next idea was to borrow the roomie’s LinkSys PCMCIA card out of the laptop he’s not currently using, but that’s a CardBus device and my add-on slot adapters don’t “do” CardBus. You can’t even plug a CardBus card into said adapter, as they’re “keyed” to prevent that sort of thing.

But wait! I bought an actual PCI 802.11g card for the downstairs anime computer a while back, and since that computer is now at the kids’ place (and wired into their network directly), the card has been sitting in a drawer. Huzzah! A bit of screwdriver work, a software install, a reboot and some swift kicks to the configuration software and…

…I’m able to write this post. Go, me! (And I’m in slightly less danger of failing NaBloPoMo, to boot. Whew.)