Author: cdwan

I try to be a good person, but sometimes my wicked nature wins through. In this case, it was the surge of evil glee with which I watched a woman not make it to the train, as we pulled away. I had seen her coming across the parking lot as the train pulled up, dragging her feet and shaking her expensive coat around her shoulders as through this pitiful stroll were the fastest she could be obliged to move. I had known then that only the pity of the conductors would let her on the train. See, if you’re in the parking lot and you see the train pull up, you run, and even still you only make it if they see you sprinting and have pity. This woman had the haughty foot-scraping shuffle of someone who couldn’t be troubled, and so she was left.

I try to have compassion for all sentient beings, but sometimes nature wins.

In honor of impending spring, I just tried the Navy Seals Workout (NSW) again. I had sort of fallen out of the NSW habit since I achieved my goal weight and picked up karate. Little did I know that I have been slowly weakening without my twice weekly butt kicking. Ouch. The legs section is still okay, as is the pull section. Push? Abs? Bah. Ick. Ouch. Oh, and neck rolls can bite me.

Production has outstripped demand, resulting in surplus. In my basement, as of this afternoon, there are:

– 6 cases (24 bottles each) of 12oz bottles (2 x Imperial Stout, Double IPA, Raspberry Lambic, Barley Wine, and a mixed case of Presidential Election spoils which are still owed to robotify.

– 3 mixed six packs plus two singles of 12oz bottles, mostly double IPA and Barley wine.

– 14 assorted grolsch bottles, mostly double IPA and Lambic.

That’s 162 x 12oz + 14 x 16oz = 2168 oz = 16.93 gallons.

In the fridge are one each of the Wheat, the Triple, and a cider from the Mighty Hammer Brewery of Minnesota

I think that’s probably plenty.

Two more hours with H&R Block and we’re done with the Federal, the RI, and the MA returns. MN has to be sent to someone who is certified to deal with MN taxes, which was not our agent (though she was quite good). They used 3.5″ floppies to send the files. It was so quaint!

This was easily the worst year we’ve ever had for taxes. We owe about $1,000 to the feds, and another $1,400 to MA. My employer and I screwed up by not withholding any MA tax from my earnings this year. Through some serious dark magic (all entirely justifiable, we’re assured) we’re getting a refund from RI, and we have no idea about MN. MN ought to be a small refund, like it has been for the past four years. I need to crank my withholding by dropping my exemptions to zero or something.

Oh yeah, the H&R Block part cost $376, which was worth every penny, because I didn’t have to fill out the 50-odd pages of forms that we mailed in today…set aside filling them in correctly.

Also met with our planning guy who has finally come through with disability and life insurance. More check writing there.

In between, we went to the grocery store for a major replenishment run, and did other assorted errands.

My check-card is tired and scared and refuses to come out of the wallet anymore for the day.

No words are needed.

We spent our first hour of the year at H&R Block last night. That got through the preliminary data entry and the setup. We’re going back on Saturday to finish the job. Even if they don’t save me any money, it’s worth it. four W-2’s (two each from two of us), some random consulting income, student loan interest, tuition payments, selling a house, buying a house, and state income tax from no less than three states. Let somebody else do it. That’s what I say.

Sounds like our various insurances are coming through. After the comedy of errors, I’m glad that they decided to grant us coverage. The final one was the best. Something about a consent form that’s required in MA, but not in RI, but the guy’s office is in MA, but I live in RI, but he mailed it to me to sign in RI, but he had to submit it from MA, … bah. I hate these people.

Plus, the rug arrived. Now we just need to somehow stain-guard it, and perhaps apply cat-repellent.

I am the king of mundanity.

Mainly, I love my job because I never, ever, have to walk up to a car in which someone just killed themselves:

The story

The officer drove by a second time, prompting the man to make a U-turn and attempt to leave the area, Puschnig said. The officer noticed the van had no taillights and pulled it over. As the officer approached the van, a single gunshot was fired, and a bullet exited the driver’s side window close to where the officer was standing, Puschnig said.

I’m going to Ottowa next week to build a Linux cluster. I’m flying Air Canada. And dammit, their stupid web site is telling me that I really ought to be using Internet Explorer (version 6 and above) or Netscape 7.2. How sad, for the web designers to admit on the very front page that they couldn’t make a working web page. They should be fired.

The Onion today:

Bush announces Iraq Exit Strategy: ‘We’ll Go Through Iran’

“The plan also includes a minor stopover for refueling and provisional replenishment in Syria,” Casey said. “But I don’t expect we’ll need more than 50,000 additional troops for that stretch of the Iraq pullout.”

I’ll try to do this story justice. Over dinner, it handily defeated my harrowing tales of version skew between the head and compute nodes on a big cluster.

The story starts off at 6am yesterday, with Jen on the helipad at the hospital waiting for a Coast Guard helicopter to arrive.

Said helicopter bore a woman in preterm labor. Said woman had gone into labor on Block Island at about the 30th week of pregnancy. At the time there was one (1) doctor on the island who had exactly zero of the usual requisites for dealing with ordinary labor, set aside what you might need when birthing a preemie. Mom had gone into preterm labor once before while on the island, and had lost the pregnancy after a speedboat ride to the mainland. The doc was pretty composed, and had her one (1) paramedic run home to get a bunch of plastic wrap to swaddle the kid in case mom delivered in the helicopter. Apparently with preemies you want to make sure that they stay warm, and don’t lose all of their body water through their skin. Something like that.

The doc got a helicopter ride, at least in part, because the coast guard had no interest whatsoever in delivering this kid themselves if there was any chance of having an MD around to do it. Go Coast Guard. I have to say that I would make exactly the same decision, in a similar situation.

Apparently, if the coast guard lands a helicopter in the city, you have to have the fire department around to block traffic. So they had a total of two ambulances, ten firefighters, one OB fellow (Jen), one pediatrics resident, and a variety of police and paramedics hanging around. Freakin’ huge coast guard chopper comes in on tiny little hospital helipad, they load up into the ambulances, and haul ass back to the hospital (the helipad is out in the middle of the parking lots). They got the woman to the hospital without delivering and administered drugs to slow down the labor process. Last we heard of her, she was considerably settled down and not yet delivered.

Once everyone calmed down a little bit, they realized that the coast guard had bailed, taking the block island doctor’s stuff with them. The last we heard of her, she was with the security desk at the hospital, trying to finagle a ride back to the block island ferry.