Got a bit ill on Monday.  The familiar feeling of a head cold.  By lunchtime I was hacking and coughing enough that my co-workers were coming over to check on me.  Called my doctor to see if she could fit me in that afternoon.  When she heard my symptoms, she said I had another sinus infection and she would just call in prescriptions for antibiotics and steroids.  Saved me a trip to her office, so I can’t complain there.

Yesterday was just a blah day.  The cold was going a bit better, but the steroids gave me a case of the fidgets and the munchies.  Meetings all day, with not a lot of actual technical work.  When I picked up Junior Bear, he was hot to the touch, and complained of feeling awful.  Put him to bed with Tylenol and Nyquil.  I, on the other hand, was up until 2 AM with steroid induced insomnia.  How do athletes take these things and still function?

This morning, I checked on Junior, and he still felt pretty low.  Emailed my boss to tell him I’d be dialing in from home, and then tried to fire up the work laptop.  It came up OK, but the display is very dark and I can’t get it to lighten.  I could recognize the login screen, but the desktop was unusable.  So I had to email my boss again to say I was just taking a sick day instead.  Tomorrow, I’ll get with the PC techs at work and have them look at the laptop.  Hopefully they can either fix it or replace it. 

I hope the second half of the week turns out a bit better. 

President Obama is working towards getting rid of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  For those of you outside of the US, DADT is the Clinton era policy that kept the American military from persecuting homosexual service members so long as they didn’t come out of the closet.  Basically, if a gay soldier doesn’t come right out and say he or she is gay, or isn’t seen at a club making out with someone with the same naughty parts, their command can’t try to get them kicked out of the service for being gay.  Prior to this, if a commander suspected that someone was gay, they could open a criminal investigation and kick them out of the service without any admission or physical evidence.

He’s going slow, but doesn’t need to.  He’s trying to get laws changed, but could change the policy just by signing an Executive Order.  The military would immediately be forced to stop persecuting openly gay soldiers.  The thousands of currently serving gay servicemen and women could stop living in the shadows.  

I served in the Army just prior to and immediately after DADT went into force.  There were people in all of my units that were probably gay, but it wasn’t any of my business.  I had enough dealing with my other soldiers who were getting DUI’s, beating their spouses, or being beaten by their spouses to care what someone did in their bedroom that didn’t interfere with them doing their job.  Since we all had some form of security clearance, homosexuality was considered a bad thing because of the possibility of blackmail by the bad guys.  I guess that could have been true.  But to be perfectly honest, all of my chains of command, prior to and after the advent of DADT, didn’t go after anyone for it, even when presented with pretty good evidence.  They had better things to worry about.

Two weeks after I left the Army, I had lunch with a former subordinate who was also considering leaving the service.  She wanted to know how I liked my new job, and whether or not she should apply with the same company.  As we ate, she looked me in the eye and came out of the closet.  I looked her in the eye and told her that I had been pretty sure she liked girls for a few years, and it never entered my mind to say anything about it.  It was none of my business.  I’d lived in close quarters with her in a variety of environments, and who she slept with when she’d gone less than a week since her last shower didn’t even enter my thought process.

And I hope that my attitude was the predominant attitude among leaders in the service.   Sure there are bigots in the Army who have a hangup about gay people, but there are still bigots who don’t like black people, hispanics, or women in the uniform.  There are idiots in any environment, and they are the ones that need to leave the service if they can’t control themselves.

LabRat over at Atomic Nerds has a really good post about this.   Check it out.  Someday I hope to be as eloquent as he is.

A co-worker forwarded this to me.

Here’s the write-up from his email:

Here is a photo of a cougar killed 5 miles west of Rogers City, Mi.The guy who shot it is 6 foot tall and weighs about 220 lbs.  He was in a deer stand and saw the cat pass him downwind. He then saw it pass him upwind..  When the cat passed him again (closer this time) downwind, he knew that it was hunting him.  So, boom. 

Just for the record, Kentucky Fish and Wildlife maintains that there is no natural population of large cats in the Commonwealth, but apparently there is in Michigan. 

I go to the woods feeling pretty secure that the only other predator I have to worry about is Billy Joe Jim Bob, not Casey the Cougar.  Not sure how I would react if I saw such a large predator tracking me while I was up in a tree.  Probably not as coolly as this hombre did.

Irish Woman:  “Oh, by the way, I noticed today that Walmart had plastic rakes, shovels, and hoes.”
Daddy Bear :  “Sweetheart, Walmart always has plastic ho’s.”

 This reminds me of how things have been with Junior Bear.  He’s so close to “freedom” that he does just enough to keep the vein in my forehead from throbbing, and no more.  Add to that the wiseass sense of humor he got from me, and it’s an interesting relationship.

For my brother and sister geeks out there, here is a great new blog to follow Command Line Kung Fu.

I have had training from Hal on the blog, and he has walked the earth with the Great Old Ones.

It’s good to see how those flags and tags that we talked about in Intro to Operating Systems put to good use.  I’ll definitely put this one on my read-every-day list.

PETA, in its infinite wisdom and instinctual need for publicity, is suggesting that Puxatawny Phil, the groundhog that has his own holiday, should be replaced by a robot.  Apparently, the attention, lights, and crowds aren’t good for a rodent that lives better than about 3/4 of the humans on the planet.

Since they’re trying to save animals in the public spotlight, here are a few suggestions:

1. The Budweiser Clydesdales – these majestic draft horses are being used to sell a mild metabolic poison, and are known mostly from their Superbowl commercials, a game played with, shockingly, a pigskin.  These magnificent animals should be let loose to roam free in the grasslands, and the beer should be carried around in the back of Toyota Prius’s (or is that Priui?).
2. The Presidential Thanksgiving Turkeys – These poor fowl are raised for food, but at the last minute, just as they are preparing for execution, they are paraded in front of cameras and given a reprieve.  Imagine the stress of being ready for death, and then being given a pardon in front of the news media.  These unfortunate poultry are then taken to California to have a grand parade, and then spend the rest of their life in confinement.  Wouldn’t it be better if these wonderful cream colored birds were let loose in the wild to live their lives out in freedom?  At least until their lack of camouflage and survival instincts turned them in to coyote chow.  The President should be eating tofurkey for Thanksgiving anyhow.
3. And finally, we come to the California Cows.  These “happy” bovine are not only exploited in commercials, but are used to sell milk, a product that is ripped from their very udders twice a day!  These cows will be truly happy when they are let loose on the open prairie to mingle with bulls of their own choosing.  There should be a new advertising campaign starring the San Diego Soybeans! Mmmm, soymilk!

So there, you are.  Hope this is helpful to our friends at PETA.

or if you’re watching Fox, it’s “When Morons Slide”.

As I mentioned before, we got some snow last night.  We got about 3/4 of an inch here at Case de Oso.

Under that snow was 1/4 of an inch of ice.

Girlie Bear got on her bus at 6:15 this morning, but as I was helping load BooBoo into Irish Woman’s car, I watched Junior Bear’s bus roll away.  At that exact moment, Junior Bear came out of the house. 

So he got a ride to school this morning.  It was very slow going, but traffic was still light and we made it there without taking the truck out of 2nd gear.  Guess who’s being woken up by his father half an hour early tomorrow to make sure he gets out on time?

I went back to the house and was getting ready for work when Girlie Bear called me.  Her bus had gone off the road and into a ditch.   No-one was hurt, but the bus driver was asking that all parents who could to come get their kids and drive them to school.

So I got back in the truck, and drove the two miles to the narrow, icy, hilly, and curvy country road that she was on.  It took half an hour to go half a mile once I left the main road.  I retrieved Girlie Bear and we made our way back up the hill.  It only took two attempts in low gear to get to the crest and get  back on the main road.  Since traffic back towards Louisville was at a standstill due to multiple accidents, I decided to go in the opposite direction and get on the interstate.  It was a longer trip, but I thought it would be faster than waiting for traffic to clear on the direct route.

I was wrong.

Half a mile later, I was at a standstill about halfway up a hill.  The cars in front of me were stuck because they couldn’t get up the incline, and I was blocked in by cars to my side and rear.

We all pretty much just sat there until the sun came out and gave enough heat to the road surface to turn the ice to slush.  While we waited, we were entertained by the people who tried to use the median as a lane and were doing car gymnastics.  Before this morning I did not realize that a Kia could do a 360 degree slide inside of two car lengths.  Who knew?

We creeped along at 5 miles an hour to the turnoff to the interstate, and then even slower as we all plodded along behind the nice old man I had so graciously let out of his subdivision.  He decided it was safe to go 3 miles an hour on the wet roads.  Let me repeat:  The roads at that point were wet, not icy.  It was the nice old man, followed by me and Girlie Bear, followed by about 50 of our closest friends.  To all of those who were behind me after I let him in front of me, I am truly sorry.

Once I got to the highway, we went along at a good clip, and I got Girlie Bear to school.  I got the call that her bus was stuck at about 7:30, and I got her to her school at 11:10.  There were so many kids late due to road conditions that the principal had decided that there would be no tardy’s today.

I made my way home, and called my boss again to let him know I was going to get some breakfast and a shower and then I’d be on my way to work.  Since he’s a good guy and didn’t want me to waste my time driving across town, he told me to just dial in for the day.  So now I’m installing Oracle remotely.

We’re supposed to start getting more snow later this week.  Hopefully it won’t cause as much panic and distress as our little dusting did today.

From Dr. Grumpy:

Dr. Grumpy: “You look kind of unsteady today.”

Mr. Woodstock: “Yeah, I smoked a few joints out in my car before coming up here.”

Dr. Grumpy: “Why did you do that?”

Mr. Woodstock: “I was really nervous about coming in today.”

Dr. Grumpy: “Why were you nervous? You’ve been here before.”

Mr. Woodstock: “Oh, not about that. I’ve been drinking scotch all morning, and didn’t want you to notice I was drunk when I came in. I’ve never been drunk to a doctor visit before, so I smoked some weed to calm down, because I didn’t want you to think I’d been drinking.”

I’ve had conversations at work remarkably like that.  Just goes to show that stupid isn’t limited by profession.

Just wait 20 minutes.

2 weeks ago, it was 18 degrees out with snow on the ground.  The surface of our pond was frozen to a depth of several inches.

Last week, it was in the high forties/low fifties.

This weekend, it was raining like a cow peeing on a flat rock, with thick fog between downpours.

Today it was snowing, and it is getting colder by the minute.

Not sure if the next wave will be locusts or frogs, but it wouldn’t surprise me.  Kentucky has the most bipolar weather I’ve ever seen.  At least in North Dakota it got cold and stayed cold.