Commute

Hour and a half today spent commuting to work. People seriously think I must live in Rhode Island, there's such a long interval between my "on my way in" email and my arrival. No, I'm actually just coming from across the river, but (to paraphrase Neal Stephenson in Zodiac) cities warp space, making a little bit of land take a frustratingly long time to maneuver through. Especially when it's snowing really hard, and you're an absent-minded goof who frequently boards the wrong train. (Even when it's not and I don't, it still takes an hour to get here.) Rrr. I shall invoke the shade of Mr. Estes the high school geometry teacher to say This shit's gotta stop.

My travel time today will not be spent in vain, for I will talk to my boss about making a regular habit out of working from home; I wouldn't feel half as frustrated if I actually needed to be here most days. Most of my work is on my laptop, and everything else is on Internet-accessible machines. Facetime with orkers is good, but I don't need to do that every day, and usually I feel nuisanced by all the office noise. Meh meh meh.

Puffery

Oh, my puff piece went up yesterday. A bit of down-scrolling will reveal how I chose to have some fun with it. Once I got over the blahs of retreading old turf it really wasn't that bad.

Generally, I like writing short technical columns a lot, and am lucky to have a receptive outlet like the O'Reilly Network that appreciates and encourages my natural writing style. I ought to consider taking a pass on the book and pumping out more of these instead. Maybe. Hmmf.

(no subject)

Interesting article speculating on Dick Cheney's motivations, from a former insider.

While the title, "Sympathy for the devil", is a cliché, it still resonates with me regarding this whole business. I continually seek viewpoints to sanely balance the extreme anti-war and generally anti-Bush stance that the local geopolitical tub has me soaking in. (I'm quite sure I'd feel and act inversely if I lived and worked in a conservative climate.) Today an orker asked me if I was anti-war, and I had to say "My feelings on this topic are subtle and complex." In truth, my internal parliament of demons has a solid anti-war majority -- I can tell because that's the current state of my gut feeling -- but had I just said "yes", the vocal minority would have been bawling within my head for the rest of the day. It's all about tact.