The Time Sink

Briefly, as I may have more to add later... I'm home from work today, trying to get enough rest to get back to work. Several nights of constantly interrupted sleep (and Shelley's insistance) finally drove me to call the doc and get something for the cough. Hopefully, if I can sleep, my body can kick this thing.

I'm going to hit the job site today. Enough is enough and there are simply things that have to happen if we're going to have a Merry Christmas in the land of the sirens and red lights. WT? Remember: paper makes it all work and I suspect I need another Costco run to tide us over until the first of the year. ...but remember Purchasing Rule #1? "No Outside Shopping the Week Before Christmas"? Yeah, I may have blown it big time...

...and then there's the early-week stuff I need to get a handle on because next week will be a tough week for anyone relying on shipping and receiving. Heh. Like Monday's going to be much of a day. ..and I suspect I'll miss Wednesday since we will be traveling Christmas Day. ..and one or two supply houses may just declare the week a loss and shut down. As a matter of fact, I think our tech chief does that also.

So I get into the office and find a Christmas gift from one of our vendors with a packing slip and a note from Janeen saying that it would remind me of my favorite lawyer joke. WT???

Okay, we'll use that joke as the setup for the punchine...

Favorite Lawyer Joke:

This lawyer's in a bar looking morose as heck... His buddy says, "Hey Fred, what's going on? I thought you just won that important case for your biggest client?"

Lawyer says, "Oh, yeah, we won all right; but I lost the client..."

Buddy says, "WT???"; lawyer says, "Yeah, they were so happy they sent me a huge gift box!"

Buddy says, "You didn't?"; lawyer says, "Yeah...
...
...
...

I billed them for opening the gift box."

So, here's this nice little box from our vendor. ...with a packing slip attached. Slip reads: "Quantity one, Christmas Present."

...a little further down, it says: "Invoice sent separately."

Merry Christmas! Yeah, I'm a little early. ...or late depending on how you figure things. Just work with me on this...

Interlude: Hey Dave, SWBell is holding your email hostage again!

Why the happiness? Well, it turns out Janeen is going to get that camera I mentioned last week. A little lobbying from both of us worked well enough to get her the right tool for the job. Now she's counting the days...

...as are the boys. ...and since I put up our official Christmas picture on Shelley's site, I feel obligated to provide my usual warped perspective on things; herewith, The Story behind the Picture.

Yeah, it's a repeat; and yeah, it's a day early... But with the way the last week has gone for some people, a little more humor might be in order...

The story began last Christmas when we'd bought the kids a new computer (Office Depot cut me a deal on a machine like you couldn't believe). I was adding memory and a NIC at the kitchen table and trying to figure out if I had enough bench room to hook it up to the network and move some files across... One of those files was the theme from the Adam 12 television show: Daniel liked the show so much that I'd taped all forty-eight hours of a TVLand marathon for one of his presents. I figured I'd add the theme in as the start-up sound...

Well, the bench deal didn't look promising (one of the reasons I was working on the kitchen table), but I had a roll of Cat5 in the garage and I went to work. ...after all, it was late at night and the cats are used to jumping over cables strung from the kitchen to the 'library'.

As I was crimping a connector on one end of the cable, the words "crimp away, crimp away, crimp away all" popped into my head and I was doomed.. I finished up the computer and spent the rest of the night working on:

Yep, a late night update for a change... Following the advice of my esteemed colleague, Dr. JHR (Ph.D. from the School of Hard Knocks), I'm taking active control of not doing anything when the opportunity presents itself. Yesterday, I declared myself off the schedule until Monday and proceeded to hit the sack before midnight. ...and not get up until nearly 1000 this morning. That may or not be a new record, but it seemed to help this cold/sinus deal I have going on.

After confirming I was indeed alive, we loaded the boys and presents up and wandered over to one of Shelley's and my old haunts from the ambulance days, an area of town where the livin' is not so easy...

Our church assists one of the local prison ministries by providing gifts for kids whose parents won't be sitting down at the Christmas dinner table with them. Shelley usually volunteers our services for the areas of town best described as 'inner city'. ...old news to us; a fresh perspective for the boys.

This year we doubled up on the deliveries and doubled up on the enjoyment of seeing young faces light up to see what may be the only presents they'll get this year. Joshua might have been the best one though; we didn't have an apartment number for him at a complex where we made three drops; but a gentleman at the second apartment said he knew of a Joshua and led us to that part of the complex. Usually, the family knows we're coming; but at this apartment, we were a total surprise. ...especially since Joshua was one of the group of kids we traded jibes with on the way in to the complex. I think he really thought it was a okay thing that his dad had hooked up with some people to get a few gifts to him for Christmas...

I think I've had enough football for a while. ...at least until Christmas day. Sheesh, I think I've seen more pro games this weekend than I've seen all season. Then again, there's something to be said for late season games; some of them were darn good.

Short shrift here around the season. ...just the usual on the geek front: Microsoft is an exploit wrapped by an unstable OS; I still haven't started on the system for work (yeah, but football is such a good TimeSink); I've forgotten when the last time I rebooted the Linux box I'm typing on (that doesn't mean I haven't hosed the occasional ap; but just that ap); and the partridge is getting testy 'cause he know it's almost Christmas day...