negative airways

Today traveling home from WVA I had two really strange experiences...

The first was when I was sitting in a people mover at Dulles waiting to be taken to my gate. It had 5 minutes to go until it left so I pulled out a book I'm reading about blackwater. Two soldiers got on the people mover and sat across from me. One was obviously a seasoned soldier and the other was a new soldier who had apparently never been on a commercial airplane before. The seasoned guy was explaining to the other guy how the airport worked.

He then noticed the book I was reading. The people mover started filling up. He felt the need to start expounding on americans who don't appreciate the war in Iraq and how they are just stupid liberals who don't know shit about shit, and how it should be illegal for someone to even publish such a book. At first I was going to just ignore him, but then I started getting mad. I put my book mark in my book and looked right at the soldier. I could tell the other people in the people mover were worried there was going to be a fight.

I looked at the soldier and I said "Are you talking about me?" He looked unsure as to how to proceed, and then he said "Yes". I said "You are offended by the fact I'm reading this book?" Again, he said yes. "Do you know me, know anything about me, or know anything about this book?" I asked him. He sat there and didn't say anything . So I said "Does it bother you when people see you in uniform and react negatively to that?" He answered in the affirmative. I said "So why would you do the same thing to me that you hate other people doing to you?"

I then explained to him that the most important point being made in the blackwater book is that the company has defrauded the tax payers out of a lot of money, for example, by bringing in people who aren't as trained as a soldier, to do the work of a soldier, and that those people make at least 4 times what a soldier makes. I offered to read to him sections of the book I had marked where high ranking soldiers complained that blackwater was shooting people and ramming cars for no reason, and how retaliation was usually directed at soldiers and that it unstabilized regions that had been stable. And that blackwater had bought so much equipment for their guys that the Army and Marines were unable to give all of their soldiers bullet proof vests and armoured cars.

"Does that bother you?" I asked him. He said "Yes." I told him I would mail him the book when I was finished with it, if he wanted to read it too, or at least the sections I had described since I had them tabbed. He said "Ma'am, you don't have to do that, I'll buy a copy". I then said that one of the things we are supposedly doing in Iraq is allowing the Iraqi people the freedom to read a book that may say negative things about their government, and that his comment about not publishing books like the one I was reading, or imposing negative consequences for people who read those books, was exactly against everything that americans are supposed to believe.

There was dead silence on the people mover for the rest of the ride. As we got to the gate I wished the soldiers good luck. I think the thing that most pissed me off about the whole encounter is that I've worked with special forces and the marines my whole career, doing things to support them above what I was required to do. Last summer after I worked with the Navy SEALs the captain who hired me walked me to my car the last day of my engagement and said "I just wanted to thank you for your support to the war effort. We get thanked because we're in uniform, and people like you are usually forgotten."

And, I just spent the past week working 14 - 16 hour days to support another military organization. I don't have to do that. I do it because I know if I don't do the work it won't get done, and I'm not okay with that. I'm sure in his head that soldier was thinking "fuck you" but maybe he really will buy a copy of the book.

Then, I got on my plane. There was a couple sitting next to me with a little girl who was around 3. They seemed happy enough. The wife was very attractive and she and her husband kept talking about her mom, whom they were going to visit.

The steward brought us drinks, and the husband asked for a straw. The steward gave him one of those straws that you use to stir coffee. The husband looked at it, obviously pissed. So I leaned over the aisle and said "I have some real straws if you want one". I have a hard time drinking out of a normal glass since I have limited feeling in my lower lip due to a bike accident so I always travel with straws. The guy said "That would be really great!"

I pulled out my straws and asked if the kid had a particular color in mind. The husband laughed and said "anything is fine". So I chose a pink one for her. He thanked me again.

A few minutes later I was reading my book and I accidentally knocked over into the aisle this little trash pile that had accumulated on the edge of my tray. The husband immediately leaned over to pick it up at the same time I did and we knocked heads. We both kind of laughed, and then he picked up the trash and handed it to me. I put it back on my tray, closed my book, and decided to try to get some sleep.

The next thing I know the couple is in this huge fight about me. The wife was asking what had happened when we knocked heads and why he was leaning over. She accused him of flirting with me. She said a bunch of other stuff I couldn't hear because he told her to lower her voice. I did hear her say some thing about him helping me pick up my trash being disrespectful to her. It was kind of insane. Then I heard her say "No, what happened was you put your dick in her mouth". I guess the guy had recently had an affair or something. I heard the word "attorney".

The fight lasted for the next two hours, and then the wife put on her headphones and ignored the husband for the rest of the flight. While I feel for her having to deal with her husband's infidelity, I was only trying to help by offering a straw. I would have done the same thing if she had been sitting on the aisle seat. I felt bad that an innocuous kindness had caused a big fight.

When we landed I saw them again at the baggage claim. The wife was sitting on the floor by herself sulking. The husband was walking around with the kid. I decided to wait outside until the bags came to avoid having contact with either of them.

And of course the baggage loader had a problem so it took 45 minutes for my luggage to come out...but I decided to not be unhappy about that. There are enough unhappy people in the world I think.

floods, bugs, emotional hugs

Early this morning I was at my customer site, and I went into the mess to get some hot water for my tea. The water thing was out of water, so I decided I would change the barrel thing by myself.

I removed the empty barrel, ripped the seal off of a new barrel, picked it up, and started walking towards the water thing. I had somehow failed to notice there was a power cord coming out of the water thing (presumably to make the water hot). Anyway, I tripped over the cord right as I was aiming the barrel downward to put it on the water thing, lost my balance and accidentally dropped the water barrel.

Five gallons of water spewed all over the floor. It was A LOT of water. I was like fuck fuck fuck. Then I realized, hey, it's 630 in the morning, no one is in yet, so I left the mess in the mess, and went back to my cube, where I kept laughing hysterically every time I thought about tripping (I would pay so much money to have the whole incident on tape). I am kind of embarrassed I did that, and I would have cleaned up the mess but there aren't even paper towels in the mess.

Luckily, when my customer got in, he immediately wanted to go over to a conference room in the other building. We were there all day, and when we got back to my cube it was 530 in the evening and the flood in the mess was gone.

Then, I realized I had caused yet another problem. I'm working in a SCIF, and no one told me we had to pack out our own trash. I ate two bananas, an apple, and two clementines on monday. I threw the peels and core away in the trash can under a desk in an empty cube. The trash was never taken out so I guess the peels and core started rotting or something. Plus, it's been raining like crazy here. Anyway, there is now an infestation of what the customer called "stink bugs" in the SCIF. They were literally jumping off the wall onto my keyboard when I was trying to go through my email and crawling on the cube walls. And they've even crawled into the honey comb space in the blinds, so all the blinds have dead stink bugs in them.

I don't think anyone has figured out the peels and core were mine. Or maybe my customer knows and he's being polite.

Because, he's really a great customer. Every night when I leave he says "thanks for everything you did today". I've never had a customer do that and it's like getting a little emotional hug at the end of every day. He also is getting really excited about all the architecture products we're creating. And the other day, when I pissed off a commander by saying, in response to a stupid comment, meant to suggest the stuff I was working on had no value, "That would be a great idea if you were presenting it in an insane asylum" (the commander ripped my head off), my customer told the commander "She knows what she's talking about. And if you don't get it, you're fucking stupid". The comment was a suggestion that, rather than research interfaces to a system that's going to be replaced, we just "unplug it and see what happens".

BTW, to get that commander back for being a dick, I devised a bunch of SQL queries to show, on a daily basis, how much work his team is getting done (next to nothing the past few days) vs. how much work my team is getting done (a lot!). The suck thing about that is our stuff is relying on theirs, and the longer they take, the less time we have to get our stuff done. When I showed the program manager what I did he got a smile the size of Texas on his face. He's going to present the reports at the next technical interchange meeting.

As for me, I am going to try to get through tomorrow without fucking anything else up in the office.

feral climbers, crazy catholics, and a barfing barry

In the past few days I've had 3 really bad dreams.

The first, on Sunday, was a dream about an ex-boyfriend of mine. I was in Yosemite with him (for the record, I've never climbed there) and he was leading a 5.8 pitch. I was standing on the ground in this kind of sandy area. He was mouthing off about how hard the climb was (in real life, that was kind of his climbing MO when I climbed with him). Suddenly, he fell. As he hit the ground I realized he had been 20 feet up with no pro in.

Then, all these, I guess I should call them feral climbers appeared out of crevices in the rock. They started mocking my ex. He was laying on the ground. There was blood all over the sand. Then one of the feral climbers threw a rock down and hit him right in the middle of his head (he's almost completely bald). I was like oh my god because a bunch of blood shot out of his head. Then two climbers threw another rock down on him, and it landed on his leg, and the bottom part of his leg shot off and landed about 5 feet away from his body. I kept thinking I should move his body but I was afraid the feral climbers were going to start throwing rocks at me, and I was tied in to an anchor.

They threw more rocks and my ex's body was just getting pulverized. One said "Ha! He'll never be able to get his leg attached!" and another said "It doesn't matter because he's dead". And then I woke up.

Monday night I had a dream that I took my dad, my mom, and my grandmother to some remote area of Colorado. We were following Jeffy, who was on a snow mobile, in my subaru (I was driving). Jeffy started going up this really steep hill that was covered in snow drifts that were really high, and I tried to follow him, but my subaru kept sliding back. My dad was yelling at me so I hit the gas, and this time when we slid back my subaru went off the road and ended up in a ditch. Then these people from what I initially thought was an abandoned mining town appeared. They took us inside a house. I was really worried because my grandmother is old and she was really cold.

They bundled my parents and my grandmother up in these blankets that were magic blankets. Once you put them on they locked you up in this blanket cocoon. My grandmother and mom didn't notice, but my dad did and he was like "Franki, you have to go find Jeffy! We've been captured by crazy catholics!" Then one of the townspeople stood up and started doing this mass thing. I didn't want to leave my family but my dad kept telling me to run. So I ran out in the snow and started running up the hill where I had last seen Jeffy on his snow mobile. I was running as fast as I could and I was having problems breathing and I thought I was going to pass out and then my family would die. And then I woke up.

Last night I had a dream about my old boss Barry. In real life, Barry drinks a lot. Anyway, I was at a bar with my friends Neil, Jamesy, and some other old work colleagues. Barry was really wasted, more so than I've ever seen him. We were sitting outside at a long table at Nottingham's. Barry suddenly lowered his head and puked up this huge stream of fluid. I was like gross, he is so drunk! Neil asked me to help move Barry outside the bar in case he puked again but I didn't want to touch him. So Neil moved him alone (entirely possible, as Neil is about 6'4" and built like a brick shit house, and Barry is 5'5" and maybe 90 lbs soaking wet).

After Barry puked I wasn't having fun anymore so I told everyone I was leaving. Neil said I should bring Barry home with me. I didn't want to because I was afraid he would puke in my car. Neil said if I didn't bring him home he might die, but I left without him.

Then I got back to my parents' house, which was actually my grandmother's house (but my parents were living there), and I told them I wanted to sleep at their house because I was too tired to drive all the way back to my house. My mom was like "you can't stay here, there's someone in your room" and I went upstairs to look in my room, and there was Barry, passed out in my bed. I was really, really mad, so I went downstairs and was like "what the FUCK is he doing sleeping in MY bed?" and my parents said "he got here first". So then they pulled out this mattress from a sofa and told me I could sleep on that, but it was the wrong size, and way too short, so every time I fell asleep I would fall out of it. Then I suddenly realized Barry had died in my room. And Neil came over to see how Barry was and I was afraid for him to go see Barry dead because then Neil would think I was the worst friend ever.

Then I woke up. And, kind of funny, I had fallen out of bed. Which seems like it should be hard to do since I'm sleeping in a king sized bed. For whatever reason, I start sleeping right in the middle of the bed, and wake up in the morning right on the very edge. Or else I end up sideways. This happens even when I build a pillow blockade around myself before I go to sleep. I used to do that when I was a kid, and, hell, I seriously have about 10 pillows on my bed, so why not build a wall with them?

orange you glad it isn't Monday anymore?

I'm always bitching about my clients, so I thought I might mention that I am working with a client this week who, though the project is a shit show and there isn't enough time on the engagement to get things done, showed me two very thoughtful kindnesses today.

First, we were meeting with a team with whom my client has to coordinate. My client brought in doughnuts and bagels, and when I walked into the conference room where our meeting was to be held I saw he also brought in a huge bag of clementines. Last time I was with this client I ate 8 clementines over the course of 6 hours. He remembered. Not only that, he remembered I don't eat doughnuts and that I won't eat bagels unless they are toasted first.

The second thing he did, after I talked the group into having a working lunch instead of breaking, is, when we were ordering pizzas, he asked me what I wanted since he knows I'm picky. Everyone called that pizza the Franki pizza. One of the guys, who is an admiral, made fun of my pizza and then ate two pieces of it. "The Franki pizza wasn't so bad, was it?" I asked him, and he said "Yeah, I feel healthier already", then he rolled his eyes.

Which brings up a funny side note...since I'm in the middle of nowhere WVA there's very few places to eat. So last night I went to the restaurant where we ordered pizza from today to get dinner. I had called ahead, but when I showed up at the restaurant they didn't have my order. The guy finally figured out I called another restaurant with the same name, but that restaurant was located about 70 miles away. He called them and cancelled my order for me. Anyway, he's the one that brought the pizzas today, and as soon as he saw me he was like "Franki! You called the right restaurant this time!"

I refused to explain to everyone why he said that because I knew I would get teased for the rest of my life about it.

downward dog

Tonight as I was exiting the room that comprises the hotel gym, or should I say "gym", after doing my cardio I ran into Bones. He was sitting outside the gym door, perhaps I flatter myself, waiting for me. I'm not sure how he escaped the evil clutches of the cheerleaders but he did.

I was telling him about my cardio routine and he followed me right into my room. I told him he could hang out but that I had to finish my work out. I got into downward dog position, and told Bones he might want to try yoga since he's still young and limber. But he seemed to think I was making some kind of human dog house, because he crawled underneath me and laid down. Then I went into plank and tried to tell him that my next move was into cobra, and that he was going to have to move. But instead of moving he rolled over on his back and was like scratch my belly.

I told him that I would pet him as soon as I finished my workout but he wasn't listening. I decided to fore go cobra and just get my bicycle crunches done. It was hard though because Bones thought I was playing some kind of game with him. Every time I would extend my foot out he would try to smack it down with his paw. And when I was doing my 100s he kept trying to grab my hands with his mouth, and when I told him to stop he decided to stand next to my head and lick my ear.

So I said that I was going to do some crunches and then end my workout. While I was doing crunches Bones decided that he should jump on my bed. Then he ran around and made the pillows all messed up. I was like you are totally not allowed to jump on the bed and he said that he was allowed because he's a puppy.

After my crunches I showed Bones a you tube vid of a shark getting attacked by an octopus. I think he liked it because he was wagging his tail and trying to put his paws on my keyboard. Then we laid down on the bed and watched a show called modern marvels. Eventually the manager came to collect him. I was reminding Bones to brush his teeth before bed and he sneezed and blew dog snot all over the bottom of my yoga pants.

I talked to the manager for a few more minutes, and Bones fell asleep in the hallway. The manager had to pick him up and carry him out to the car.

when things go bad, make someone else the victim

So today we had a rough start in class again. There were a bunch of weird bugs in the software tool, and none of the exercises were working very well. People were getting frustrated. One of the students finally 'confessed that they knew next to nothing about the tool and that they didn't understand things that I assumed they knew.

There's one student in particular, I'll call him P, who kept asking the same question like a million billion times. So, I decided to put him center stage, thinking that might help turn things around.

I stopped the exercises we were working on and decided to go to ground zero. I said to the class "do you know what today is? today is P's lucky day". P, unsuspecting, smiled. Suddenly, everyone was interested. "Why don't you come up to the front of the class and see how lucky you are?" I said. P came to the front of the class and I told him to sit at my laptop.

Now, suspecting shenanigans, P said "Uh, I have swine flu. Are you sure you want me to touch your laptop?" Hopefully he was joking. I walked him through doing some basic stuff with the software tool. Then I started asking him "How would I do (some function)?" If P couldn't figure it out the class helped him. Then I had P walk the class through the exercises they were struggling with. By the end of the day everyone seemed to be doing much better. And I promised P that tomorrow he can select the next person who's going to sit up at my laptop and get picked on.

We also started talking about the practical uses of enterprise architecture. When I presented the class with some business questions and asked how they would answer them given the diagrams we created I could see about 90% of the class was finally getting it. That's always exciting. Two of the guys went back to their offices right after class (impressive considering we worked from 6 am to 330 with only an hour break) to generate some reports to show their customer.

And, it didn't matter that I got back to my hotel later than usual, because Bones is still ensconced with the cheerleaders. I got him a kong so he will hopefully not chew up any more of their bedspreads (they said, anyway, that Bones did it). They are brushing his hair and teeth as promised. He looked happy, though I worry about the music he's been listening to. And god knows what he sees on their TV at night. I hope they aren't exposing him to sit coms.

bad art, good love

Jamesy got my painting yesterday. I was a little hesitant to send it to him because I didn't know what he would think. Here's what he sent me today in response to the painting (it's also posted on his facebook page for those of you who might have already read it):

I LOVE YOU FRANKI

when i look around and see my friends, i see a small cadre of people. SHort, tall, old , young, male and female, black, white Hispanic, phillipino, Haitian, Belgian, British... I see an eclectic group of individuals all tied to me based on two principles : We love each other and my appreciation for each one is different...

None of your friendships is the same, because you are friends with folks for different reasons. Each friend represents a point in your life where you either had to lean on someone, or someone came into your life and has remained.

One such friend of mine recently sent me a painting she had done of yours truly. Granted it was not a Phyllis Marie Carter original (which by the way are the BOMB) or a James Palmiotti caricature, but her heart was in it and it made my 6yo smile and me cry. It was an early birthday present, from a person whom i know and consider a friend but never knew exactly how much she appreciated my worth to her.. "Jamesy I want you to know how much i appreciate our friendship and how much I miss you.. You have got to be the most positive person i have ever met" Franki Flowers....

i paraphrased but Ms Franki who is a Cancer survivor considers me "the most positive" person she has met.. WOW.. I am still flabbergasted...I bring a positive vibe and cheerful disposition in all ways of my life to hers, and that is my worth to her.. consequently, I see her as a person with whom i am most comfortable with and at peace...we can talk about everything and anything and usually do. We get mad at each other and still manage to remember how much we both mean to each others lives.. Friends have that affect on you..I have said it many a time, men and women "FRIENDSHIPS" are often challenged by sex and intimacy...as depicted in the ladder theory...yet i believe they can happen as long as you both know where you are...Im no damn fool, i would tap that in a HEART BEAT.. but thats not what we are about and coming to that empirical acknowledgment is HALF the BATTLE..

So yes i have female "friends" and they are friends in every sense of the word. These are not casual relationships based on the fact that we dated and it didnt work out so now we are friends.. HELL NO!! I have these relationships because I CAN COUNT on these people to be there for me as i will be there for them.. TO cry with me, and to laugh out loud.. to Dance with me even though no music is playing.. yep these relationships are what we want from either gender but most of all we want them for ourselves.... How do you love and appreciate your friends??

"True friendship comes whenthe silence between two people is comfortable."
David Tyson Gentry

"Friendship is a treasured gift, and every time I talk with you I feel as if I'm getting richer and richer."
Friendship Saying

"I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you."

"A friend is like father who scolds you,
like mother who caress you,
like sister who teases you,
like brother who fights you,
in short combine all worldly relations
you will have a friend and
that's what makes a friend above all relations "
Dr. Amanullah

"Daddy, why are you crying and laughing at the same time?"
"Baby, thats what you do when a friend touches your heart" James N

we can talk about robots, just don't write it down

I'm teaching class at a military base. I was told by the woman who purchased the class "Most of the students are experts in DoDAF (the theory I teach) and your software tool. This is kind of a check the box class we need for the customer, to show we've had formal training." She then went on to say that I could breeze over the theory part so the students didn't get bored.

Right. Well, there are a few problems with that statement. The first being that none of the students understand DoDAF. Oh sure, they all claim to have been doing it for years, but it's obvious from their questions they really don't have a clue, like when one woman asked me why an out of the box report contained the data it contained. I was like "uh, that's the standard information that goes in that report". She then went on to tell me that I was wrong and that this other tool she uses produces a different report.

I was like "well, does that tool support DoDAF?" No answer. "Have you double checked the content of that report against the DoDAF standard to make sure the content is in line with the standard?" No answer. Then a few minutes later, when I was on another topic, she blurted out "Well, this is what the customer wants." Okaaaaaaay, do what you like.

Then, there is a guy who sits in the front row who apparently doesn't realize my jokes are jokes. I showed the class, as part of an exercise, how I could hide data in the software tool so that it looks like it's gone, but it's really still there. I then suggested "so the day before a big deliverable, you can hide the data, and when your program manager has a heart attack, you can say 'I'll bring the data back if you give me one million dollars". No one laughed. The guy actually wrote down "hide data, one million dollars" in his student guide. When I made a joke saying "One of the mechanisms that could perform this activity is a team of killer robots, if you happen to be designing an army of killer robots". He wrote down "robots", circled it, and made an arrow pointing back to the example diagram.

I wonder what he's going to think when he goes back in 4 weeks to review his notes. I'll no doubt get an email asking about the significance of "robots".

Another guy in the class asked me if my hopkins degree was accredited. I was like "um, yes, hopkins is an accredited school". He then said all sarcastically "Ohhh, I bet everyone is so impressed when you tell them you have a degree from there". For the record, I didn't bring it up, my customer did, when she introduced me. I couldn't help but think dude, do you think people would be impressed if I made a fucking imprint of my engineering ring on your forehead?

Finally, there's Kermit. Yes. Kermit. He runs the lab where I'm teaching. He does not allow food or drink in the class room. How I am expected to talk for hours without having even water to drink, I don't know. My voice was almost gone by the end of today. People are falling asleep because they can't drink caffeine (and because the material is a little boring, not my fault, you try to make the equivalent of differential equations exciting on no caffeine).

The room where I'm teaching is under 24 video surveillance. I got in at 6 am to make sure the class was set up and ready to go with my lap top, which we couldn't test yesterday. Within 5 minutes of me pulling out my tea mug some guy came into the class and tried to confiscate it. Even though I pointed out to him it was empty he insisted I take it out of the class room IMMEDIATELY because, and I quote "people might see it and suspect there is liquid in it, and no liquid is allowed in this classroom". I would have mentioned that the human body is composed primarily of liquid, but he probably wouldn't have gotten the joke.

At one point I suggested to the class that we all act like we'd fallen asleep to see how long it would take security to respond. No one laughed. They looked at me, puzzled. The guy in the front wrote down "sleep - security responds" in his student guide.

Oh well, tomorrow's another day.

cheerleaders take bones

So I rushed home right after class to go see Puppy. Since I had to leave the hotel at 530 this am I left before he got there.

It turns out, Puppy has a new name. And no, it isn't Dogdaf, but it's not Buddy either. His name is Bones because he's so skinny. Here's a picture of Bones eating a pretzel. I tried to take a good picture of him but he won't sit still. This other picture is Bones with the manager holding him. Isn't he just so cute?

And that's apparently what the billion million high school cheerleaders who descended on my hotel today for reasons yet to be ascertained thought as well. They came running into the lobby, carrying a radio (seriously, who carries radios anymore?), listening to Michael Jackson's "I'm Bad".

"Ohhhhh!" they squealed "A PUPPY!" The manager looked at me and said "Can you make that noise stop?" The answer was no. They skipped over en masse, sending Bones to cower under a chair. I was like "Do you want me to take him to my room?" I was thinking Bones could eat more

pretzels while I did yoga and then we could go for a walk.

But, the manager is weak. One look at the cheerleader skirts and suddenly THEY were the ones who got to take Bones to their rooms. I obviously don't want to fight with some teenagers over a dog I won't ever see again after Saturday morning. I decided to go for a run instead, and felt much better afterwards.

And I couldn't have taken Bones running with me because he doesn't want to wear a collar.

I wonder what they're doing to Bones right now. I hope they aren't dressing him up. I hope they remember to brush his teeth.

Dogdaf

I got done with my customer early today, and went to check into my hotel out here at Ft. Huachuca. Inside the lobby was a great thing, that great thing being a german shepard puppy. He's about four months old, dark brown with black spots and really nice eyes.

The manager of the hotel found him abandoned on the side of the road this morning going into work. He brought him to the hotel and was debating whether or not he was going to take him to the pound. "You're going to take this great dog to the pound?" I asked. He said he wasn't sure if he could keep him or not. I was petting Puppy while I was waiting for them to check and see if my room was ready. Then when I started down the hall to my room Puppy followed me. The manager said "I think he likes you" and asked if I wanted him. Of course I want him, but I can't keep a dog with my travel schedule.

I went to the store (I had to anyway, because I forgot to bring tea) and got Puppy some bowls, a collar, a toothbrush, a hair brush, some vitamins, food, a stuffed bear, and a leash. When I got back to the hotel Puppy was waiting for me in the lobby. I showed him the collar, but I think he thought it was kind of gay and he didn't want to wear it. He liked the toothbrush and the stuffed bear. I gave him some vitamins and he decided he wanted to hang out with me. So the manager said he could hang out in my room until the manager had to go home (he has decided to keep Puppy, at least for now).

Puppy wanted more vitamins (they are wrapped in fake bacon) so I gave him some. Then he said he wanted a piece of the butterscotch candy they gave me, for unknown reasons, when I checked in. I said "Are you sure you like this candy? Because I don't think dogs eat butterscotch." Puppy told me that he did really, really like butterscotch. He put the eyes on me until I gave him a piece.

It turns out, I was right. Puppy licked the butterscotch for a minute or two, while I was working on email, and then he dropped it on the leg of my yoga pants, covered in spit. I was like dude, and he was like oh I'm sorry, I'm just a puppy.

He wanted me to brush his hair but after a few minutes I told him I had work to do and that he should play with his bear. I thought he was doing that but then I looked over at him and saw he was biting a chair. I told him if he mauled any more furniture I was going to make him go back to the lobby, because I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a job and isn't going to pay for that chair he bit (the manager said Puppy also bit a sofa in the lobby, and he isn't going to charge me for the chair).

We decided to sit on the bed while I tweaked a few things for my class, also giving me the advantage of being able to see what he was chewing on. I was explaining to him how the software I consult on works, and how it has cool reporting features that I ran for him, but he fell asleep. Then he pretended to be in such a deep puppy sleep that when I told him we had to go back to the lobby so he could go home with the manager he wouldn't wake up. I knew he was faking it because I saw him open his eyes when he thought I wasn't looking.

I put the vitamins and brushes back into the bag and then, when he saw I was going to leave with the vitamins, he miraculously was awake. I noticed he drooled on the two good pillows instead of the manky foam ones.

I dropped him off with the manager and said that I would take him for a walk or something tomorrow if he brought Puppy in to work. The manager said he would think about it. He also was trying to come up with a name for Puppy. I suggested Galapagos, Euclid, or Dogdaf (a play on the architecture framework that I teach, DoDAF).

He said he might call him Buddy. I hope he brings Puppy back tomorrow.

Dr. Jay saves the day

Yesterday I was doing some work, wondering if I was going to get to go out for sushi with my friends Becky, Craig, and Peter, when I got a text from Becky. Her husband Callum owns the wee garage, and he's the one that fixed my headlights. On Friday he accidentally hit himself in the eye with a pair of vice grips.

Worse, it was the same eye he had injured two years before, when a hot shard of metal penetrated it. Callum woke up yesterday with a painful eyeball, that was full of blood and swollen. Becky text said that Callum didn't want to go to the hospital but that she was worried about him, and that she probably wouldn't be able to go for sushi.

Seconds later, I got a text from my climbing partner Dr. Jay. Suddenly the little hamsters in my brain got back on the wheel. Wait a minute, I thought. Dr. Jay is...an eye doctor! And, he was at work, in an office really close to Callum's garage.

Dr. Jay agreed to see Callum and get his eye straight. Luckily the damage wasn't too bad and all Dr. Jay had to do was write Callum a prescription for some steroids. So, sushi was back on, though Callum decided not to go since his eye is looking pretty disgusting.

Everyone came over to my house, except for Peter, who couldn't come. We killed a bottle of wine, everyone made fun of my yard (I think my favorite comment was Craig's "Next time you buy rose bushes, pay the extra $2 and get ones that are alive"), and then we walked to Sushi Han, where another bottle of wine was procured and subsequently demolished. Much sushi was consumed.

Then everyone came back to my house and we drank 2 more bottles of wine. Becky and Jay didn't leave until almost 4 in the morning. We had interesting discussions about fake tits, torture, crazy drunken friends we've had, skiing, mormons, the intell community, how cats can spray things out of glands in their asses, and robot uprisings. Craig finally figured out that my phobia of midgets must come from trauma as a child watching the movie "the wizard of oz".

After everyone left I sent some drunken emails to the overlord of enterprise architecture for my company, who lives in UK and happened to be waking up right as the last bottle of wine was being consumed. I was supposed to send him a slide yesterday and didn't because it wasn't done. A short discussion ensued with the overlord where I (hee) accused him of being a robot. I don't know why I did that, except that I was drunk and thinking of robot uprisings. Then I sent him an email saying I was going to give him a turin test, realized my mistake, and then sent another email saying that I meant turing and that turin was a small town in Italy. To which he responded "And didn't Jesus get some of his clothes there too?"

So I guess I won't be fired, at least not this week. The slide still isn't done. And my head hurts.

a million little pieces...of a puzzle

I was really burned out after I returned to the states after working overseas. I was put on this horrible project. I hated going to work every day, so I decided to leave the gov and go work for a commercial company.


I went to work for a company that made ERP software. I was responsible for coordinating our software with Oracle, the database the ERP software was based on. Idiotically, unbeknown to my company, Oracle was creating a duplicate of our software with the intention to compete head on with us when they got it done.


Anyway, the company, we'll just call it ERP, was really cool. Every day at 3 PM they would bring a snack cart around to our offices and we would get free snacks. They also had parties all of the time.


I had been working there for almost 6 months when the biggest party happened. It was to celebrate our year end (in June). The president of the company was going to be there and everything. People were excited because at the party they always gave out great schwag. The year before everyone had gotten clocks from Tiffany's. I love Tiffany's.


The day before the party mysterious white boxes, the size of a smaller Tiffany clock, were placed on everyone's desks. We were told not to open the boxes until the party the next day because it was going to be a great surprise. I did not get a box, as I had just been moved to the headquarters building and mine was apparently lost in the mail.

I was bitter. The morning of the party, I arrived at 630 am to get some work done, and decided I was going to open my manager's box. I was sure it was going to be a great present from Tiffany's. Instead, it was three stupid puzzle pieces. I was like, what the hell is this? I closed the box and went back to my office, where I spied a large container of now stale animal crackers. Hm, I thought.

I went back to my manager's office, took the puzzle pieces out of the box, and filled it with animal crackers. Then, in what would prove to be a poor decision, I decided to replace all the puzzle pieces of every box on my floor with animal crackers.

Fast forward to the party. Everyone is sitting in a conference room. There were 600 people local, and then another 1,400 people on video monitors from Australia and Europe. The president walked in and said "We've had a hard year this year. We need to work as a team. Everyone open your boxes." The Van Halen song "Right Now" was cranked up over the speakers. People opened their boxes. I snickered in anticipation.

"So, to emphasize how we need to work as a team, everyone has been given three puzzle pieces. We'll use that to build a puzzle (it was the company logo). When your name is called, please bring your pieces up here." Uh oh, I thought to myself.

The first few people were called and had puzzle pieces. Then an engineer from my floor was called and showed up with his animal crackers. The president of the company glared at the VP of Marketing and said "What are these cookies doing in this box?"

Pandemonium ensued. The president asked "who got cookies in their boxes?" One of the engineers from my floor stood up and said "I got cookies AND they're stale". The VP of Marketing was in tears and saying over and over "I don't know HOW this could have happened". I was trying not to laugh, when suddenly my manager looked over at me. Busted.

The team building exercise came to an abrupt halt. I admitted I had the puzzle pieces in my desk, but I didn't know what pieces came from what box. The VP of Marketing said there was no way they could put the puzzle together and that I had ruined the party. Apparently they spent about $500K putting together the whole puzzle thing. She told me I was going to be fired.

But, I wasn't. The president, in the end, thought what I did was funny, especially after I explained that I hadn't gotten a box. The VP of engineering was a woman who really liked me, so she spoke on my behalf. Though I was called into her office and yelled at for over an hour, and only at the end did she start laughing.

From that point forward, the marketing and sales people HATED me. They would go out of their way to avoid me. To the engineers, though, I was a hero. Someone took the puzzle pieces I had stolen and glued them as a border around my door frame. Software engineers would randomly stop by my office to congratulate me.

In the end, the company went bankrupt because Oracle released their software the same time we released ours. Oracle fired the entire product development team at ERP except for me; I was supposed to go work for them. Instead, my old gov manager called me and asked if I could be ready to leave for Greece in two weeks to take a 3 year assignment. I took it.

trash with cash

I thought about this story last night because I was watching the Chappelle DVD and he did this skit called "the niggers", about a white family. He said that he thought it was funny until white people came up to him and started saying racist stuff, figuring it was okay because he had done that skit.

I dated this guy for a while in Colorado, I'll call him A. He had a "best friend", I'll call her R, who had inherited a bunch of money when her father was killed in an elevator accident. She personified the term "trash with cash", having horrible manners on top of being pretty stupid (she completely destroyed her house by turning off the power but not the water one winter while she was out of town; then she lied to the insurance company about what happened so they would rebuild her house).

A left his wife and went on a road trip with R about a year before I met him. There were questions about whether or not he left his wife for R. He was in love with R even though he refused to admit it.

I'd always found R to be an asshole. She treated A like shit, only spending time with him when she needed something. She always complained about money, even though she was rich. If there's anything I truly despise, it's rich people who lack generosity.

R ended up getting married to a guy named Paul, an obnoxious New Zealander who drank a lot. In October of what ever year it was, they were flying to NZ, and asked to stay at my house. I agreed to let them come, thinking if I spent some time with R I might like her better. Paul wanted to go see some DJ playing in downtown dinner, so we planned for them to come to my house, go out to see the DJ, and the next morning they would leave for the airport.

They showed up at my house with a bunch of alcohol. That's strange, I thought. They were drinking in the guest room, I guess because they didn't want to share, although I had no interest in getting trashed drinking the shit vodka they had. Then Paul decided to build a fire in my fire place while I was in the shower, even though I had told him numerous times it didn't work. I got out of the shower when the fire alarm went off and we had to open all the doors to air my place out.

Paul also decided to crank up my stereo to an ear splitting level, pissing off my neighbors. I finally took the batteries out of the remote so he couldn't turn it on since every time I turned the stereo down he would turn it back up. We ordered dinner, and when it came they didn't give me any money for it. I thought that was shit manners, but not unexpected. And, I usually pay for dinner when I have guests; it just pissed me off they didn't even offer to pay.

Fast forward to us arriving at the club. Paul was seriously intoxicated and kept trying to climb into the DJ booth. R was no where to be found. I ended up on the dance floor by myself, and ran into some guys who, oddly enough, had just been transferred out to Denver by my old 3 letter employer. We had friends in common so we talked for a while.

I then went outside to smoke and ran into this guy M. M had just told this girl to fuck off. I looked at him and said "you're a dick". We ended up hanging out the rest of the night. He was a climber and we made plans to climb together since I didn't know any climbers in Denver.

While I was hanging out with M, R came down and told me that Paul was getting kicked out of the club. Her reasoning is that he hadn't bought any drinks. I was like uh huh, it has NOTHING to do with the fact that he's totally drunk and annoying the FUCK out of everyone.

M went with R and I up to the bar where Paul was arguing with the bouncer trying to throw him out. Paul was so out of control they got this huge african american bouncer to help get him out of the club. That's when the horrible thing happened.

Paul called the bouncer a nigger. I was appalled. Having many african american friends, and seeing what they go through on an almost daily basis because of prejudice, I wanted to say something. I wanted to kick Paul in the balls. But I did nothing.

The white bouncer was going to have Paul arrested but M stepped in and stopped them from doing that. As we walked out of the club, Paul called the bouncer a nigger again. I didn't do anything except apologize to the bouncer. The bouncer said "you know, it happens, it's okay". But, it wasn't okay, and isn't okay. Had it been anyone else I would have done something. But I was afraid to cause a conflict since R and A were "best friends". I to this day regret not saying something.

We got home and Paul broke a dish, lost his balance, fell backwards on the floor and hit his head. That's how drunk he was. Then he took my phone and called the club about 14 times cursing and swearing at them for kicking him out. I ended up going to bed because I couldn't take being around Paul and R any more.

The next morning they didn't apologize for the way they acted. They packed up their alcohol and shit and went to the airport. I called A and told him what happened. A said he was going to confront R, and I told him not to bother because it would just cause problems.

But A wanted to confront R because he was jealous of Paul. So when R got back from NZ A told her that I had said that Paul called someone a nigger. She TOTALLY denied it and said I had lied about the whole evening. Even when I got M to send A an email verifying that everything I had said was true, A still accused me of lying. His reasoning: "I've known R for 6 years. I haven't known you that long".

I should have broken up with A then, but I didn't. We went on a break and then got back together. But, since A and R live in a small town, everyone was gossiping about what happened, and I was made out to be the bad guy. I sometimes wished that M had just let them arrest Paul. By trying to protect people that weren't even my friends I had inadvertently fucked myself.

After that, I decided I will never again date a guy like A. I can't deal with people who lack integrity and who have shitty friends. And I will never again stand idly by and let someone call any minority a derogatory name.

they were surprised to discover, among them, a dancing ant

I wanted to paint a picture for my nephew, so I painted this. I was walking around downtown tonight when I got the idea for the painting. He's only 5, so I think he'll like it.

all the other flowers were embarrassed when the tulip showed up drunk again without her stem

This is the painting that some of my friends said looked like a floating clit. I started it on Sunday, and added some stuff to it to try to make it look better.

It's a throw away, but at least I got some practice painting flowers.

I was painting it for my friends Eva and Dan, but I'm too embarrassed to give it to them (they own 2 Peter Maxx paintings). I'm going to paint something else for them.

pails

This is a painting I was going to give to my mom for mother's day. It turned out kind of suck so I might repaint it, or just get her something from Tiffany's like I usually do.

The painting was based on this photo of me and my sister playing on the beach at Martha's Vineyard. I'm sitting down and my sister is standing up. The picture was taken right before she dumped her pail of sand on my head.

The figures turned out suck, the beach was the wrong color, the rocks look like turds, and when I initially painted it the water was way too big. But, I think I'll try to paint it again.

trimming the bushes

Now that it's getting nice outside I took a look at my yard. It's a disaster. All of my rose bushes look like they're dead.

So, after I whacked all the weeds in my yard, I decided I should trim the bushes. I later found out from Jeffy I was supposed to do that in the fall. Oops. Fuck me.

I started out just dead heading the bushes. But that was boring and tedious. So then I decided to just cut off the dead stalks. Things went south pretty quickly. It's kind of like when you go to get waxed and you ask for the tiffany. Then the waxer keeps waxing until finally you hear an "oops!" and you look down and see that now you have a brazilian. And then the waxer says "well, I'll just charge you for a clean up". And you start thinking "my chop chop is going to be soooo cold if I'm wearing a skirt and there's a breeze".

Why do I even have a yard at all? I need to get some rocks.

Speaking of rocks, yesterday when I was on a bike ride, it suddenly occurred to me that the stamp logic puzzle has to have a pretty simple solution. I can sort of formulate what the solution is but haven't had a chance to write it down. That's the nice thing about logic puzzles. They give your mind something calming to chew on instead of worrying about, say, the decimation of the shark population.

would you get to drive the porsche?

Back in the day, after 9/11, I moved from San Fran to DC to help out this 3 letter collective on a project.

I didn't do a good job of ingratiating myself with the team. They were trying to foist a bunch of bullshit work off on me. I was not having it. Then I stood up in a meeting and told a bunch of contractors they were all terrorists because they were more concerned with how much they would get paid for their work than actually doing their work. I was summarily fired and then before that could actually happen rehired because the head gov guy liked that I did that.

I was put in the architecture group, working for a guy named Barry. Barry looks like yoda, if yoda only weighed 70 lbs. We made sure that, for every award he won, they spelled his name "Berry" on the certificate or plaque. He never noticed.

Barry wanted less than nothing to do with me. So he tried to annoy the ever loving shit out of me every day to get me to quit. I finally decided a detente at the local watering hole was in order.

As we sat there with our beers (back when I could drink beer), Barry asked me if I liked logic puzzles. I had never given them much thought. He gave me a simple puzzle (the old "cannibal which village do you go to") and I solved it pretty quickly. We then moved on to the bags of marbles, candle fuses, etc. Before I knew it, it was really late and Barry was running out of puzzles. I discovered then that I love logic puzzles, and that being good at solving them raised my street cred with Barry.

Next happy hour, Barry told me that he was going to give me a really hard puzzle. It had taken him 4 years to solve. He wondered if I could solve it faster. I countered with an incentive to solving the puzzle faster. I said that if I could solve it in less than 4 years Barry would have to let me drive his Porsche. It was a beauty, fuck me red, 1,500 miles on it, and just screaming for action.

I solved the puzzle in 4 weeks. Barry had to let me drive his car. Barry thought I was going to take a lap around the parking lot with it. Instead I drove it to Annapolis (about 40 miles from our office). I got it up to 120 MPH on a lesser highway in Maryland, in the rain, while Barry kept commenting, in a high pitched voice "Uh, you can see how fast you're going because there's a digital display of the speedometer on the windshield".

So here's the puzzle. I figured out the crux of the question you have to ask within a minute of getting the puzzle, but it took me a while, and many truth tables, to figure out how to formulate the question.

If you want to solve it, you have to do it without cheating and looking the answer up on the net or in a book.

You are in a room with a knight, a liar, and a knave. For those unfamiliar with logic puzzles, a knight always tells the truth, the knave can lie or tell the truth, and the liar always lies. In three questions you have to correctly identify who is who. The puzzle solution is the three questions.

If you solve the puzzle, I will paint a picture of what ever you want me to paint. You've seen my skills at painting. So yeah, it's kind of a shit reward. But, you will get to tell all your friends why you have such a crap painting hanging in your bedroom. Or where ever you put it.

Game on.

bitch, you just got served

I just spent the past hour at small claims court filing a suit against the stupid fucking bitch who hit my car.

I'm not, by nature, a vindictive person. I tend to get mad at people when they try to fuck me over, and then I usually let the matter go after talking to them. I can't help having a strong sense of justice. I am, after all, a gemini.

And I would be less pissed at that stupid bitch right now if she hadn't been such a shit head. I had to get a copy of the accident report to get her (hopefully) correct information since everything she gave me was wrong. I tried to call the number listed on the accident report to talk things out with her before taking her to court. It was apparently the wrong number. I am hoping the address on the accident report isn't fake too. I was also REALLY PISSED to discover she had not been charged for driving without insurance because she gave the cop the same fake shit card she gave me.

After I filed my papers at small claims court (which was really easy, thank allah) I went over to the sheriff's department. The guy there was super nice. I told him what happened and he said "what a bitch". They're going to try to serve her with papers three times. I'm so glad she's going to have a sheriff showing up at her house. I want her neighbors to know what a fucking cunt she is.

Then the sheriff told me that if they can't find her because she gave me a fake address, I can use the VIN number to track down who ever owns the car she was driving. He thinks I'll have a good chance of finding her. I hope he is right.

The sad thing is, I would have just asked for the money that I spent fixing Jake. But now she's going to owe $105 more because of court costs. Also, I technically could charge her interest for not paying me immediately after she received my car bill. I could charge her for the time I've spent dealing with this bullshit. But I decided not to do that.

All I can say is, she better pay up. I'm going to donate the money to a women's homeless shelter that just lost their building (they used to be right down the street from me but they can't afford their place anymore so they're moving).

My court date is 1 June. And I'm pretty sure if she doesn't show up, they are going to arrest her bitch ass.

Joe makes me cry, Gadd makes me laugh

I am SO mad a Joe right now.

The reason, you might inquire? Well, a few weeks ago he sent me a link to this vid that he heard about somewhere, called sharkwater. I procured it immediately (http://www.sharkwater.com/). Then I watched the trailer for it, which showed this guy swimming around with sharks having fun and stuff. I thought it was going to be the best shark vid ever.

I didn't get the vid until yesterday. I had told Joe that I would try to wait until he was visiting or I was visiting him to watch it. But, having the will power of a 4 year old, I ripped off the cellophane and stuck it in the DVD player the second it got dark enough outside to watch it. Then I sent Joe a text saying I was watching it so I would feel less guilty.

The beginnings of the vid are great. This kid goes off swimming with sharks and even some whales. He holds the sharks like cats and pets them. He even swims right up to a great white who just ignores him. It was really cool. It made me want to go swim with sharks this weekend (hard to believe, my last shark encounter was way back in 2004).

But then, the vid went horribly, horribly wrong. The guy in the vid went to cocos island in costa rica and noticed there were no sharks where there should have been a ton since it's a marine sanctuary. Then he found this boat that had strung out all this fishing line to randomly catch shit in the sanctuary! Which is TOTALLY illegal! And the equivalent of randomly shooting up the woods to see what you can kill, and then leaving 90% of what you killed to rot in the sun.

So the guy tried to tell the fishing boat they couldn't fish there and to take in their lines and go away. They refused. So then he called the authorities, who told him to bring the ship in. The ship refused. So the guy started firing water cannons at the illegal fishing boats. Do you know what those mother fuckers did? They started pulling up every shark that was alive on the fishing line and cutting its fins off and leaving the shark to die. They said they were going to keep killing sharks until they were left to go back to fishing. Mother fuckers.

The vid footage just got worse and worse. I guess for the non-sharky types out there, imagine this: a vid of a little cute tiger playing in the grass. Suddenly, some fucking fuck of a fucker comes up to it and sticks a huge hook in its mouth and starts dragging it along the grass while blood gushes out. Then the fucking fucker cuts the little tiger's paws all off, and leaves it in the grass to die. The equivalent was going on in this vid, but with sharks instead of tigers.

I started crying because I was so horrified and angry. I wanted to join this guy's boat and become a pirate and seriously fuck up those fishermen. I wouldn't kill them. I would just cut off a few of their limbs and let them go the same way they definned sharks.

Then Joe called. I tried to pretend I was not crying but then he was like "dude, are you crying?" I was trying to tell him about the vid and he said "yeah, I started thinking, after you told me you were going to watch it, that maybe there would be some bad stuff in it, and that's why I called you". I was like FUCKER, why didn't you call me earlier BEFORE I started watching the vid to tell me that???? And he said "oh, because I had some people over for a barbecue and they didn't leave until just now".

Gee. Thanks. Fucker.

So now I've been a little bit bummed out all day about the stuff I saw in that vid. I didn't even finish watching it because it was too sad.

But luckily, Gadd sent me a very funny link so reading through it has cheered me up. One of my faves:

http://xkcd.com/253/

Though, I am a little insulted because he called me a nerd, and said:

I was laughing away at that site even though I only get about 75 percent of the nerd jokes. I thought, "Who do I know who could possibly relate to and enjoy this more than me?" Your name topped a list with one name on it.

Fucking smart ass. If he thinks I'm going to explain the jokes he doesn't get (probably the ones relating to Perl), he's wrong.