Last night, a Republican won the Senate seat from Massachusetts.  That hasn’t happened since I was a baby.  The election of Scott Brown will throw sand into the gears of most of the Obama administration’s attempts to push through left of center agenda.  This will either cause paralysis in Washington or drive the president to the center in order to get some of what he wants.

A Republican Senator from the Bay State?  What’s next?  Dogs and cats living together?  Coal becoming scarce in Newcastle?  Cars that run on water and have perfume as exhaust?

Last night Junior Bear and I went to another informational session at the college he’s chosen.  We’re having to accelerate the normal process of paperwork and orientations because he wants to start in the summer instead of the fall. 

Luckily, he chose a school that isn’t too horribly outrageous to pay for.  Tuition and books will be less than $10K per year, and that’s pretty good.  The other ones he was looking at were at least almost double that per year.

He’s slowly working his way towards the edge of the nest.  He discovered that a boy he knows is also going to that particular university, and I think they’re going to try to be roommates in the dorm.  He’s putting together lists of things he’ll need to buy for his dorm room, and is looking over course catalogs.

One down, three to go.

3 bad kicks in one game?  Dude, did they do the Heimlich on you after you choked that bad?

Hat Tip to Very Demotivational: Demotivational Posters That Demotivate

OK, I went 2 and 2 on Wild Card Weekend.

For Divisional Playoffs, here are my picks:

Baltimore and Indy – Indy
New York Jets and San Diego – San Diego
Dallas and Minnesota – Minnesota
Arizona and New Orleans – Tossup.  I’ll go with Arizona.

Dear Lady on the Sidewalk,

This morning, I was about 10 meters behind you on the walk into the office.  Even with a slight breeze to my back and a stuffed up nose, I could distinctly make out the perfume you were wearing.

I realize that after a few seconds you can’t smell your own body scents, and this can make it hard to know when you’ve used too much, but please try to better regulate the amount you use. 

Here are some guidelines:

If after dousing your carcass, you can tell a difference in the amount of perfume left in the bottle from before you marinated yourself in it, you might be using a tad too much.

If your family pet won’t come to you because it’s too busy snuffling up water from its dish to get the pain out of its nose, then maybe you should cut back.

If birds drop dead as you pass under trees, then maybe you need a perfume sponsor to help you put on the appropriate amount.

Thanks much for your consideration,

DB

A woman in Washington has been charged with assault for switching the wires in her husband’s saw because she was angry with him.

Reminds me of why I don’t work on electricity with Irish Woman around.

A few years ago, our dishwasher died.  We went to the store and bought a new one.  Delivery was free, but the salesman wanted $150 to install it.  Being a manly man (read moron), I decided that I could install it myself.

The new dishwasher was going to be delivered sometime on Saturday, so I wanted to disconnect the old one after work on Friday.  It took me about an hour to get all of the molding and cabinetry out from around the dishwasher.  After I had gotten the thing pulled a few inches out from under the counter, I saw that the power line was soldered in.  I would have to cut the line and run a new one.  No big deal.  While I found my wire cutters in the toolbox, I sent Irish Woman down to the basement to hit the breaker.  After a few minutes, the lights in the kitchen went out.

I shouted downstairs “Is that the right breaker?”
She heard “Did you hit the breaker?”, and of course answered “Yes!”.

I took hold of the power line, and cut through it.

POW!

Next thing I knew, I was across the room, smacked up against the refrigerator.  All of the lights in the house are out.  I had not only blown the breaker for the dishwasher, but had also blown the house main.

From the basement, as I did a quick inventory of all my parts and pieces, I heard:

“Honey?….. Sweetheart?……”

About a minute later, I heard her coming up the stairs, slowly.

I growled “Do not come back up here right now”.  I then heard her head back to the dark basement.

I collected myself, found a flashlight, and headed down to the basement to hit the house main breaker.

Luckily I was not hurt.  I learned two things that day:

1.  Switch off your own breakers.  What happened was my fault, not hers.
2.  The Irish Woman is a jinx, and I will never do anything remotely dangerous around her.

That’s my philosophy, and it’s worked well so far.

In other news, the body politic is shocked, shocked I say, to find that over 20 Congresscritters spent our hard earned tax dollars to attend the failed Copenhagen conference.  And of course, Madam Speaker Pelosi (D – Xanadu) was one of them and won’t offer an accounting of the money spent until all of the paperwork is in.  Which will probably be sometime during the 2015 to 2016 time frame.

This is nothing new.  When I was stationed in Germany, we always knew we would have congressional delegations come through just prior to Octoberfest.  And wouldn’t you know, Mrs. Congresscritter would come along to see how the military families were holding up in our harsh Bavarian outpost.  And we were never surprised to learn how many congressional staffers would show up to watch a technology demonstration in the Mojave desert and have to fly in and out of Las Vegas, with a quick stay in Sin City to prepare for and recuperate from their trip to the desert wastes.

What strikes me about this one is the scale and absolute arrogance of those who went along.  And this one isn’t on one particular party.  Both parties were dirty on this one.

Look, politicians have been taking advantage of their positions since the first cave people decided that Og the Magnificent could be the head of the hunters.  But in this day and age, they should know better than to think it will happen without someone noticing and raising a stink.  One would think that a sense of shame would stop them from doing something this stupid.  But then again, that would presuppose the existence of a sense of shame and duty.

I attended a project planning meeting this morning with one of my customer groups.  We spent the time going over what they wanted to do over the next year or so.  It’s going to be busy. 

We went over how much effort my work would be, and then the DBA gave her two cents.  We were able to estimate that it would take about half of our time for the first quarter, and then only support time after that.

Then we got to the programmer.  This was the guy who drove the conversation for the most part, and had listed out all of their requirements.  When asked how much of his and other programmers’ time would be necessary to get to the high heights they want to go to, he started tapdancing.

Nothing like watching someone who wants you to work hard for him squirm when asked to quantify how much work he is willing to do to get to his destination.  My day was complete.

We took BooBoo out to play in the snow yesterday.  He wasn’t too sure about it at first, but got into it once Girlie Bear and I started pulling him around on the sled.

I think I’ve hatched another snow gopher.