work

Last day of work this month, Deer Hunting w/Jesus & Robert & Katherine…

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I wore shorts and a t-shirt to work today. Among other things, I created an announcement about my trip to the staff, which is now posted in the Staff News section of the Office of Information Technology home page: OIT staff member talks technical communication in China.

I picked up Katherine Chandler at the airport at around 6:30, and we went to Elmo’s Diner in Durham for dinner. I had quiche and she had a Greek Grilled Cheese sandwich, which she loved.

We met Robert at Manbites Dog Theater to see Deer Hunting with Jesus, which Katja was directing. It was a staged reading of an adaption of Joe Bageant‘s book Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War.

There was a scene about three-quarters of the way through that had the three of us in absolute stitches. We thoroughly enjoyed our evening.

I dropped off Katherine at my house, and ran down to Flex for just a little while. Joe didn’t go out tonight, and I spent most of the time talking with Steve Harris.

I wasn’t there more than an hour, leaving at just a little bit after midnight.

I hate how I’m consistently running about two days behind on my blog now. Gotta remedy that soon.

A Stan-level staff meeting, work turnover meeting, and the State Fair…

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Good week for… Bad week for…
Health-food stores, after Italian researchers isolated an erection-inducing plant compound in a widely sold Chinese herb known as Horny Goat Weed. The compound, icariin, may be as effective as Viagra, researchers said. Biological warfare, after a West Virginia man was charged with battery on a police officer for passing gas in the direction of the cop who had pulled him over for drunken driving. A prosecutor later dropped the battery charge.

—From The Week Magazine 10/10/08—

Our manager worked from home today with a massive head cold, which I appreciated. I truly would not like to be on a plane for 13.5 hours with a cold.

We had a staff meeting today for everyone who works for my boss’s boss—so about three departments of 25 or 30 folks. I volunteered to take the meeting minutes.

In the afternoon, I met with my officemate and teammate, Rhonda, where I filled her in on the work I’ve been doing in case anything comes up while I’m gone that she might need to handle.

Our P2P delegation leader, Linda, asked me to update a table for her with everyone’s areas of expertise and personal goals for the trip, which will be used in our introductions.

After a lot of traffic drama for Joe, he and I took the bus from Hillsborough Street out to the State Fair.

Joe’s work gives their employees two free tickets to the fair each year, so we used those, and went there solely to eat. We did a good job at it, too.

With and alternating salty and sweet agenda, we started off with Polish Sausage gyros with grilled onions and peppers. We got some root beer at the A&W booth. Next was a funnel cake with powdered sugar and glazed apple chunks on it. On to salty—french fries with vinegar.

Our final, sweet, stop was in a tent-like area, where you got a big plastic bowl upon entering and the candy was $2.50 a pound. They had hundreds of tubs with hundreds of kinds of “penny candy,” several of which I haven’t seen since being a kid. We actually didn’t go too wild there, and walked out with just under two pounds worth.

On the way out, we were looking for the place to buy fudge, but we didn’t try real hard, and never found it. Having gotten totally disoriented walking around there and gorging ourselves, we had to ask a cop to direct us to the entrance we had come in through, as we had to return to that particular one to catch the bus back to Hillsborough Street by my work.

Joe came up and saw my office, where I checked the Method Road city bus to see if it was still running. It was about 9:45, and the last run was at 10:13, so I sent him on his way, and caught that one home.

Work stuff, an affirmation from our P2P leader, and a fun night of dancing…

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I attended the OIT Web Team Meeting today, wrote an e-mail to Marc Hoit, our CIO, about his blog, and I responded to a director who is in a workgroup charged with creating “an ideal information technology or information services department at an Asian women’s university.” He wanted some input on what people thought would contribute to such an environment.

I worked on a bunch of Remedy tickets of folks who are participating in Drupal migration projects. I wrote an OIT News article about my China trip.

I provided Jude (my boss) and Stan (her boss) my China trip itinerary, with which they’ll determine how many, if any, days of my trip I can count as work days.

Over the past two days, I’ve created and managed a table to make sure that each day of our China trip is covered by a volunteer blogger. This resulted in an affirmation from our delegation leader:

Thanks so much, John!  You have truly been such a great support to me…  I am appreciative beyond measure…

Linda

Dancing was pretty fun tonight. A cute, fun guy named Tom was there, who turned out to be the partner of this other guy, whose name I don’t know, but who is there a lot with Joe and Jose.

Joe, Jose, and Rob were not in attendance tonight. Carl, Bill, Geromy, Michael, Rick, Rob, and of course, myself, were.

Carl taught Boot Scootin’ Boogie as Tom wanted to take a lesson, as well as this other guy named Scott, who was sitting talking to him most of the night.

Back to work, a class, scripts filled, a run to MBD, and a drink on the lanai…

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I caught the 8:25 bus today, and Barry, one of my neighbors, and this other sort-of regular at our stop had a little chat. The lady works for the federal government, so was off yesterday for Columbus day. Barry works for the university, as do I, so both state employees, who did not have the day off yesterday. I took a sick day for my trip to Rhode Island.

Since today was the last day that I could adjust most of my benefits (tomorrow is 30 days since my start date), I updated my NC Flex benefits, the Health Care Flexible Spending Account to be exact, to defer $200 into it for calendar year 2008, since I paid a $20 co-pay for my Hep A shot visit, and I’m going to get about $185 in prescriptions filled tomorrow.

I was in a Drupal training class from 9:30-11:30. It was taught by Don, and there were about 15 people in it, including my team, and several of the liaisons representing teams who are about to move content into Drupal.

I grabbed two hot dogs for lunch at Coffee Haven. They were okay, but were those red, red hot dogs that “they love down here.” There was a time during which I wouldn’t touch them. Now, I only eat them if they’re the only kind available, or close by when I’m pressed for time, which was the case today.

I worked on the Drupal Inventory Worksheet, reviewed and commented on our CIO’s proposed Strategic Operating Plan.

The 6:00 bus didn’t arrive until 6:15. I was beginning to think I had missed it.

I got a funny birthday card from Suzanne in the mail today. At some point, probably after my China trip now, I’m going to capture all of my cards in an entry. I like doing that.

I checked in with mom and dad to let them know I had received their birthday call, and was in Coventry for Uncle Frank’s funeral. In her classic way, my mother said, “Yeah, I’ve been doing alright, considering my leg (the one she just had replacement surgery on again), and the car accident I was in a couple of weeks ago…”

I filled my car up tonight—making it to 3-weeks with one tank. For posterity, gas was $3.39 a gallon. Which reminds me, I saw it for $2.79 at a gas station in Rhode Island when I was there.

I stopped at K-Mart, where I ended up leaving my prescriptions to be filled over night.

Back at home, I addressed 50 envelopes for Manbites Dog, and then drove out to Durham and put them in the theater’s mailbox out front. I drove by Robert’s as the moon was full and beautiful, and I thought we might have a drink on “the lanai.”

He generously offered me some crackers with a cheddar cheese and roasted red pepper spread that was delicious, and some ginger ale. We sat on his deck long enough to gaze at the moon, have a sip of drink, and say we did.

Back home I tweeted this:

Back. Bonus: Visited Robert, got fed, had a “drink on the lanai under a full moon” and got a kiss goodnight. 🙂 SWEET! 9:54 PM Oct 14th from web

A Hep A shot, an HR meeting, and too late a night out…

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I was up at oh-dark-hundred, and out to my doctor’s office in RTP for a 7:00 appointment with Amy Hird, my GP, who really is a P.A, and whom I absolutely love.

She ordered up my Hep A shot, which was actually administered by her nurse, and she wrote me prescriptions for Cipro, Nexium, and Lisinopril. She explained to me that cipro is not at all effective for your run-of-the-mill stomach virus—cramping, diarrhea, and such as that. It’s for serious bacterial infections—stomach cramping, bloody stools, fever, chills, and so on. I appreciated the distinction.

My blood pressure was most excellent today, 124/78, which was good news, as I haven’t checked it for a while.

I got home in time to catch the 8:25 bus to work, where it was a quiet day. I did get a news item written about yesterday’s expo, and passed it off to Jude for editing and publishing to the OIT website.

I had a 2:00 appointment with Rob Stevenson in benefits, and the fact that only three Wolfline buses were running today due to Fall break only complicated my getting around by a time factor.

I walked over to the Brooks Hall stop, which is over by the Bell Tower. Fortuitously, Holladay Hall is right next door to that, and I took advantage of the opportunity to stop in the Vice Provost of Diversity’s office to give Marcia Gumpertz a copy of my Will & Ned poster.

I had a list of nine questions for Rob, all of which he handled in one way or another. Two of them involved sending notes to other people, which he did on my behalf.

The two most important things covered were:

  1. Clarifying my potential retirement benefits with the State. Using the most conservative estimates in terms of pay increases, he estimated that if I retire in 10 years, at age 60, I will have a pension of about $707 a month and half-price medical benefits for life. That $707 would be enough to cover my mortgage payments, and hopefully the other half of the medical benefits I’d have to pay, depending of course on what kind of incredulous and unpredictable things happen to health care in this country between now and then, as well as how my general health fares.
  2. Clarified how leave accumulates, which was not good news. I was hoping it would be like it was at my previous employer, which was you could use whatever leave you are acquire over the year at any time in the calendar year, even if you haven’t yet earned it. Not so with the state. What’s bad news about that is that it means my planned February trip to visit Kevin and skiing in Whistler is out the window. I’ll only have one day of 2009 vacation earned by then. 🙁

From Rob’s office I walked up the street to catch the city bus back to my office, as it would have taken me right to my building, while with one of the three Wolfline buses that were running, I’d had to have walked a bit of way to get back.

A Wolfline bus came about five minutes after I got to the stop (it’s a shared stop), and I passed on it for the city bus, which I anticipated arriving in about five more minutes. Well about thirty minutes later it hadn’t arrived, and when the Wolfline bus came back around, I hopped on it.

Turns out the city bus switches in the afternoon from every half hour to every hour. Lesson learned.

Back at my office, I updated three Remedy (our customer work request system) tickets, since I’m going to be out on Monday.

I met Joe at Flex at about 9:45, where we played to free, but once again frustrating games of pool due to the crooked table.

We spent most of the night talking with Patrick and a friend of his named Ali who works with him. He’s married and calls himself straight, in spite of the fact that he had recently been [expletive deleted], and is in the process of leaving his second wife. Not to mention the little fact that he’s hanging out in gay bars.

Real fun guy, though, and we had a lot of laughs.

After drinking way too much, Patrick, Joe, and I ended up at Shanghai Express at around 2:00. There’s a Chinese guy that works there (You don’t say!), who’s always there when we come, and when I told him I was going to China in a couple of weeks, he just lit up, and then wouldn’t stop talking about the place. Cute.

Bus scrambling, the OIT Expo, a flu shot, and dinner to get China adapters/converters…

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I had intended to catch the Wolfline bus to the Talley Student Center this morning, but remembered—fortunately before I waited at the bus stop—that it’s fall break and most of the NC State buses were not running today, including the one I would have taken.

The city bus I usually take to work—the Method Road bus—doesn’t go by the Student Center, so I quickly checked another city bus route—the Avent Ferry bus—and found that it had a stop practically at the steps of the student center. Sweet.

Today was the culmination of a lot of work that has been done in the almost month now that I’ve been working at NC State. Our organization is called the Office of Information Technology, and today we held OIT Expo ’08, where we had booths of a bunch of the services that our organization provides to the university, including those for faculty, staff, and students. We had tons of drawings for door prizes—two real nice ones that included a GPS system and a Sony digital camera. Unfortunately, the staff was not eligible to win those nice prizes. 🙁

I spent most of the day taking pictures of the event, and standing at booths whenever the booth owners had to step away, either to attend, or present at, one of the many workshops that went on throughout the day. From 11:30-12:30, I attended the keynote address by Dr. Marc Hoit, the recently hired, and first ever, vice chancellor for information technology and chief information officer.

I attended one workshop in the afternoon. It was on the features of Contribute, Adobe’s Web authoring, reviewing, and publishing tool.

At about 2:30, I slipped over to Campus Recreation, which is just across the street from the student center, and got my free flu shot. 

I met Steve H. at the Borough tonight for dinner and to get his adapters and converters for my China trip. Liz stopped by our alfresco table, and welcomed me back to the Borough and comped my bourbon and diet, which I very much appreciated.

I had their “Which Came First?” salad with balsamic vinegar, which I loved as much as the last time I had it, which was actually the first time I’d had it, too.

Which Came First?    $7.00
Marinated chicken, egg, tomato and red onion over mixed greens, served with a choice of dressing.


After dinner, Dave (singer of “Come Monday” at karaoke) joined us, with a friend of his named John, who was an absolute stitch. He was a real young kid (probably still is, it’s only been a day), and was talking about being in Spain with his parents, while his dad was there on a business trip.

“Yeah, their national team had just one some huge soccer final, and the people were going wild. They were all out in the streets and shit. And talking all that Spain shit. And they knew I was an America right away.”

I retorted, “Yeah, probably because of all of that American shit you were talkin’.”

I updated our People-to-People “Who’s Flying from Where” file, adding folks’ cell phone numbers.

Sympathy cards sent, delighted customers, expo preparations, and dancing…

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On my trek for an $.85 cup of coffee this morning, I swung by the post office, where I mailed two sympathy cards.

Workwise, today I had a flurry of activity regarding last minute updates to three handouts I’d devised for three different groups, all minor changes that I was happy to make to have “delighted customers.”

I also scheduled some time with a benefits expert on Friday, since it’s coming up on my first 30 days of employment, by which time most things have to be decided. I scheduled some time with that guy named Rob Stevenson, who was so excellent at New Employee Orientation.

At about 2:00, I headed over to the Talley Student Center, where our OIT Expo ’08 will be happening all day tomorrow. I helped prepare bags that will be handed out at the registration booth, placing to sheets of paper in about 150 bags.

After that I helped one of my favorite people, Twanda, tape some plastic-type material over a table to act as a table cloth and drapery around the front and sides of the table.

From the bus stop in front of Carmichael, I caught the Wolfline 9 Greek Village bus home.

I took an hour nap before dancing.

Dancing was fun tonight. Bill and Carl were back, and they brought along Sharon (whose name might be Karen), whom we’d met at Carl’s 50th birthday party at their house. It took her way too long to order a drink, and in between her gazillion questions to Kurt, I motioned for him to please pour mine.

She really wanted wine, which they don’t have at Flex—not even that boxed wine that she drinks.

We were not stopped for Sordid Lives tonight, though it was shown. They finally worked out showing it on one side of the bar while letting us to continue dancing on the other side.

Old dogs are the best dogs: slide show. (Note: I had to open this URL in Internet Explorer. It wouldn’t work in Firefox for me.)

Some cards, negative money numbers, a couple brochures, and “bundle packing”…

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First thing this morning, I wrote, by hand (that ancient art) in three greeting cards: a sympathy card, a “just because” card, and a thank you card.

En route to my morning coffee, I dropped them off at the post office that’s two blocks down from my office. Having such things around me is one of my favorite things about working for NCSU.

During lunch, I walked to the State Employees Credit Union, two blocks in the opposite direction of the post office, and I entered into a long line from which I saw two tellers clicking and typing away at stations that have “Please Use Next Window” in front of them. Evidently, they were doing credit union business that was more important than serving customers who were waiting in line. But I digress…

Of the two stations that were open, both had customers doing more than a quick transaction. One of the two tellers of those two stations was having a conversation, loud enough to hear in the line, with a young college kid. It went something like this:

Student: So, can you tell me exactly when I overdrew?

Teller: Well, on October 3rd, you electronically moved $1.83 from checking into savings. And then, you wrote a $3.00 check.

Student (with attitude): So you’re telling me—$1.17—that’s what made me overdraw?

Uh, what part of negative numbers don’t you understand? It’s as negative at -$0.01 as it is at -$2000.01.

To be honest, he lost me at the $1.83 transfer to savings, not to mention the $3.00 check. Get it together. You’re a young adult now.

I had a productive day at work today, finishing up an OIT Expo ’08 handout for Dan and the AVTech/ClassTech teams, and getting halfway through a similar handout for the Security and Compliance team.

I attended a Drupal information architecture-type meeting with Jude, Jen, and Alan (one of our customers), and I got started folding my 100 copies of the OIT Services trifold for the expo on Thursday. I took the rest home with me.

I listened to some NPR podcasts both to and from work today, including one called, “1000 Essential Recordings You Must Hear;” another called, “Covering San Quentin: A Behind-the-Scenes Look” at how, among other things, the gymnsium has become one massive cell; and a gem called, “How to Pack Everything You Own in One Bag.”

Of course, with the one bag, 44-pound limit for luggage on my upcoming China trip, my ears perked right up on this one! After listening to it, I posted this to our delegation Yahoo group:

This investment of 5 minutes and 13 seconds might be the only chance most of will have of even coming close to packing what we need with a 44-pound weight limit.

It’s a podcast, but you can listen to it directly from your laptop or desktop. Doug Dyment, whose Web site onebag.com is devoted to the art of traveling light, is planning an international trip to both India and Russia, two places with very different climates, and he’s doing it all in one CARRY ON bag.

His two biggest tricks: Don’t let any space go unused, and wrap your clothes in bundles. I’d never heard of the bundling technique, and really didn’t get it until I looked at the diagram on the NPR website:

Click on image to enlarge.

Listen to, or read the transcript of, the story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90297199

Best,
John

At home, I had dinner, folded the rest of those trifold brochures, and had instant message conversations with both Robert and Joe.

I got to bed at a decent hour. Yay.

A transgender podcast, cheap coffee, memorial service travel arrangements, and writing an article…

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I listened to a fascinating podcast on the bus on the way in today: Two Families Grapple with Sons’ Gender Preferences. Each family is dealing with the situation in totally opposite ways. Each is working with a professional, each of which has a totally different philosophy about the issue.

Dr. Diane Ehrensaf… Dr. Ken Zucker…
“If we allow people to unfold and give them the freedom to be who they really are, we engender health. And if we try and constrict it, or bend the twig, we engender poor mental health.” “Suppose you were a clinician and a 4-year-old black kid came into your office and said he wanted to be white. Would you go with that? … I don’t think we would.”

The mother and father of the boy being treated by Dr. Ehrensaf now use “she” to refer to their son Jonah, and mom had this to say about that fateful day when they finally allowed Jonah to buy a dress:

“I thought she was gonna hyperventilate and faint because she was so incredibly happy. … Before then, or since then, I don’t think I have seen her so out of her mind happy as that drive to Target that day to pick out her dress.”

It’s a 22-minute podcast, which you can listen to (or read the transcript) here.

Remembering that the coffee in the NCSU library coffee shop was $1.35, as opposed to the $1.60 and $1.70 in the coffee shops on Hillsborough Street, I walked that way this morning after getting off the bus. In order to get to the library entrance where that coffee shop is, you have to pass the student food court area just off the Brickyard. I said to myself, “I wonder if the coffee is the same price in here. If it is, it’s a little bit closer, and will save me some time.”

Ducking in, and helping myself to what I would call a medium size cup of coffee, as opposed to the small I usually get at the other places, imagine the smile on my face when the cashier said, “That’ll be $.85, please.”

Not being a coffee connoisseur, and being the financially savvy guy that I am (sounds so much better than cheap, or even frugal), you know I’m going to be all over a “50% off” deal on coffee whenever I want some.

I spoke with my manager this morning about taking off Monday, October 13th, to attend my uncle’s memorial service in Rhode Island. She assured me that we could work something out—first with potentially taking work to do remotely with me, but later remembering that I could use sick leave for this purpose.

I used my U.S. Airways frequent flyer points to get a $400 ticket for $35 instead. It was supposed to be $50 more due to booking inside of 14 days, but the website hung up while I was making the reservations, and by the time it was all said and done with a representative on the phone, that $50 charge was either missed or waived. Either way, I’m not complaining.

I had lunch at Mitch’s Tavern with a co-worker, Garrison from “the admin team,” my boss, and my boss’s boss. We talked about the potential use of social networking applications, specifically Twitter, in our work.

I had their Super Garden Melt, which consisted of sautéed eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini squash, onions, melted provolone, and served in a large roll. It was most delicious, and came with a side order of potato salad, which was also quite good.

My afternoon was consumed with two “customer” meetings, in which we talked about information architecture with the liaisons of two groups who are going to move their Web content into a new content management system into which our overall organization is migrating.

Late in the day, I got into a services brochure that I’m working on for a booth at the upcoming OIT Expo ’08.

I caught the 7:15 bus home.

At home, I made a run for a number of greeting cards, including three sympathy cards, one birthday card, and one anniversary card.

I also stopped at the Hardee’s nearby to use a “buy an order of our bacon cheese fries, and get a soft drink free” coupon, for which I was promptly told, “We don’t even sell bacon cheese fries any more.”

Back at home, I wrote an article about my upcoming China trip for the October newsletter edition of the NCSU student chapter of the Society for Technical Communication.

LingoLook, class, fake babies, Nathan met me, and 120 Minutes…

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An on-time, uneventful bus ride in this morning.

I did think, as I was listening to music on my iTouch, that I should be using this transit time to learn Chinese, which reminded me of a podcast called LingoLook China, which someone in our delegation had purchased.

This morning, I had a 9:00 class in the library, which is across the street from my building this morning, and on the way in. Since I had some time before heading over there, I searched iTunes for that podcast, and found it that it’s actually an iPhone/Touch app, and not a podcast. I purchased it for $4.99.

At first I found it a little confusing, as I thought it was a repeat and learn type of program, but what I eventually figured out, was that what it actually does is present an index of things, as well as a category view, and then has the thing explained on the left in English and on the right in Chinese. So, basically, if you get stuck, you can point to a picture/item on your PDA and the other person can read what it is in Chinese.

I really enjoyed the class. It was on an application called Remedy, which our organization uses as its problem/call management system. The instructor was excellent. I loved both his teaching style and his sense of humor. Bonus.

He used a phrase for “from beginning to end” that I loved, and can’t believe I’ve never heard before: “From womb to tomb.”

When I returned to the office after class, another person came over and made sure I was cool with how things “went down” yesterday, and later still, a manager in our area did the same thing. Good people.

Nathan e-mailed me to say that we’d missed one form in our haste in getting them all signed when I was there on Tuesday. He drove over to my office, and I walked the short distance to the FedEx/Kinkos on Hillsborough Street, where he parked, to meet him to take care of it.

The good news was that he hadn’t yet invested any of that money I gave him on Tuesday. That’s good news as the market has pretty much only continued to retreat since then.

Someone on Twitter tweeted about this:

Creepy! Fake babies!

I caught the 4:30 city bus to “get out of dodge” before they closed Hillsborough Street down for NC State’s Homecoming Parade.

Regarding that standard deviation from the mean, I nearly missed the bus. When I stepped outside my building, the bus was stopped right in front of me at the traffic light. Fortunately I had time to walk the about 200 feet that the stop is from the front of my building before the light turned green.

I met Joe at Flex at 10:00, where I didn’t realize it was 120 Minutes night. It turned out to be a decent night, though.

My straight neighbor, Jacob, and his wife, Heather were there, as they usually are. It was Jacob’s birthday, and the DJs (whom I think are pretty good friends with Jacob) had made a little mashup video with flashes of Jacob’s name in it along with “Happy Birthday.”

I asked Heather what he was drinking, which turned out to be a Guiness Draught in a bottle. Who knew? Evidently, nitrogen is somehow infused into the bottle.

I bought him a birthday drink.

Red Robin, some work meetings, eat-in lunch, meeting with Katja, and a little shopping…

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I forget to capture this about yesterday: We had a luncheon for a colleague who is getting married in a couple of weeks. It was at Red Robin, a place that I’ve always wondered about, but had never been to. I didn’t realize that it was basically a burger place. Obviously, I’ve never noticed their tag line: “America’s Gourmet Burgers & Spirits.”

I got their “5 Alarm Burger,” the name of which they’ve taken the trouble of trademarking. Too bad they didn’t take as much care with their grammar. There should be a hyphen between the number 5 and the word alarm. But I digress…

Anyway, I loved it. Its description on the menu was as follows: “Crank up the heat with Pepper-Jack cheese, jalapeños, fresh tangy salsa, sliced tomato, crisp lettuce and Chipotle mayo.”

I saw several other things I’d like to try there including their Asian Chicken Salad and their Banzai Burger, which is described as: “Marinated in teriyaki and topped with grilled pineapple, Cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and mayo. Dude, you’ll be like, ready to ride the pipeline on O’ahu’s North Shore after you chomp on this.”

I attended two meetings today, fairly close together with a half hour break between them. The first was the OIT Web Core Team meeting, at which the topic of an—at times heated—discussion was a form that I created to be used in a process that is still being worked out. Lots of frustrations aired, but overall a good hashing and thrashing through issues that must be resolved in order to move forward.

I really appreciated that one person on the team, later in the day, dropped by to make sure that I understood that the discussion wasn’t any reflection on my work on the form. And while, I’m pretty clear on not taking things personally, I very much appreciated the humanity of the gesture.

I had a delicious ham sandwich, made by yours truly, for lunch, with a side order of fresh baby carrots dipped in a thousand island dressing combination of:

½      +     ½

I got to the bus stop at 4:55 to catch the bus that is supposed to stop at 5:00 at the stop two or three stops before my stop. By quarter after five, it still hadn’t come, leading to the conclusion that I must have missed it. It really is going to get annoying if the standard deviation of the bus arrival time is going to be large. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

And with that said, I caught the 5:30 bus instead.

I met with Katja in Durham about my grant writing and investigating work on the board. She is just an incredible person in so many ways, and after each interaction with her I leave feeling valued as a person as well as incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to get to know her a little bit better.

On the way home, I stopped at the outlet mall. It was a quick run in and out, as it was 8:50 and the mall closed at 9:00. That place was absolutely dead, and I made three quick stops:

  1. At the Samsonite Luggage place, where this incredibly helpful and knowledgeable person helped me with an adapter and converter decision for my China trip, and
  2. On a whim, after seeing the “75% Off Everything in the Store” window ad, I dropped into Geoffrey Beane, where I bought two pair of blue dress socks, and a 3-pack of t-shirts—one gray, one white, and one black.
  3. A discount bookstore to see if they had any small books, postcards, or anything else with local topics that I might bring to China as “host gifts.”

Just as I got back to my car to head back to Raleigh, the Vice Presidential debates came on public radio. I listened to the moderator ask the first question of Biden, listened to his two-minute answer, and then Palin’s first 60-seconds of her 90-second allowed response, of which the only thing I remember was, ‘If you were to ask a couple of moms at a soccer game what they think of our economy right now…” Click. Done with it.

According to a lot of the tweets on Twitter, the rest of her responses are pretty much summed up here:

Getting it together, porn moves to 2nd place on the Internet, no Russia for Sarah…

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I managed to bring in a sandwich and some carrots today—slowly getting it all together and formulating a bus “routine.”

I had a meeting in the conference room in which I interviewed for this job on August 15th. Awww.

Blurbs—one funny, the other interesting:

A New York lawyer has failed in his effort to deduct from his taxes the $322,000 he spent on prostitutes, pornography, and sex toys. William Halby, 77, told a state tax court judge that he had used “sex therapy” to help battle depression, osteoarthritis, and erectile dysfunction, and the deductions were therefore legitimate medical expenses.

In his ruling, against Halby, Judge Brian Friedman noted that not only is prostitution in New York not recognized as a medical necessity, it’s a “violation of penal law.”

Halby says he’ll appeal.

“Americans are now more interested in social networks than pornography,” said Robert Cringely in Infoworld. “No, that is not a typo.” For as long as there has been a World Wide Web, eyeballing porn has been far and away the most popular activity on the Internet. No longer.  Read the whole story: Facebook and Twitter: The New Pornography.

—From The Week Magazine 10/03/08—

Speaking of twitter someone pointed to this article yesterday: CNN: Sarah Palin Has Never Seen Russia From Alaska. It seems that there’s only one place in all of Alaska from where you can see Russia, and a man on the 150-people remote island said no governor has ever visted there. LOL!

Dancing pretty much sucked tonight. I’m just going to leave it at that. Neither Carl, Bill, nor Geromy were there. Well, Geromy got there in the middle of Sordid Lives, for which we stopped dancing tonight, and almost everyone left shortly after it was over, at about 10:45.

At the site, Play Palin Bingo, there are some cards to use at your VP Debate Party tomorrow night. I love what they’ve done with the square that would normally be the “Free Space.” LOL!