Yahoo Speaks!

"Hello Bob,
Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Web Hosting. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to assist you.

I understand that the blog installed in your account is unable to connect to the MySQL database.

Thank you for reporting us the problem you have encountered and I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused you.

We have been just informed by our engineers that there is some problem with our MySQL servers and you may encounter one or more of the following problems with the MySQL server:

* Unable to connect to the database
* Can't connect to MySQL server on 'mysql' (61) [Using hostname - mysql]
* The system is either busy or unavailable Please try again later
* #2003 - The server is not responding error message.
* Error connecting to the blog
* Error making database connection

Our Engineers are looking into any difficulties you reported and I again apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced.

Currently there is no time frame for this problem but I am sure that we will come out with a resolution very soon. Once this problem is resolved you will be notified.

Should you wish to contact us regarding this issue, please refer to case number: 675556

Our engineering team is working on this issue and soon you will be able to access the database.

I appreciate your patience in this regard.

Please do not hesitate to reply if you need further assistance.

Regards,

Flavio
Yahoo! Customer Care"

Yahoo is worthless

Yes...back here again. The reason is below (posted to the WordPress Forum).

Forgive my venting...

I'm getting the infamous "Error establishing a database connection" with my Yahoo-based WP blog. I made no changes. Zip. Zero.

I called Yahoo TS, wandered through some phone menu choices, and was told to call somewhere else. (I could barely hear her because Yahoo uses voice over IP. (hellloooo, India :-))

OK, my bad. I called the wrong tech support. I tried again. I navigated through the menus and got a human who told me Yahoo does not support this third-party software.

This is the second time Yahoo TS has misbehaved for me. This first time happened when I asked them how to change domains and, following their advice, lost two months worth of work.

I must have been very bad in a former life. :-)

I gotta say this again: I changed nothing. I am about done with Yahoo services and need to find another host.

Many Censored Thoughts

Yes...I'm back here again.

I'll get into the long woeful discussion on what happened to my site and the 60+ blog entries when I get in a better mood.

For now, bear with me until things get back to normal....


....whatever the hell that is.

100 Years Ago Was a Minute Ago

In geologic terms, anyway. We’re approaching to the 100 anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. My great-grandmother was finishing her senior year at Stanford University when the quake struck. They canceled finals, sent the students home, and eventually mailed the diplomas to the graduates.

The U.S. Geological Survey has a bunch of interesting links about the earthquake, including the printout of the earthquake from the pendulum seismograph in beautiful Cartoon City. (Warning: You’ll need high-speed internet and Google Earth.)

Company Policy

[An oldie from the internet]

Start with a large cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it.

Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with ice cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result; all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water.

Soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth.

Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked. When all of the original monkeys have been replaced none of them have ever been doused with cold water. Consequently, none of the monkeys know why they are beating the newcomer or why they are not permitted to climb the stairs.

Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because, as far as they know that’s the way it’s always been done around here.

And that, my friends, is how a company policy begins.

Oh, this is just peachy

I wanted to move my blog to a subdomain so I could use the main domain as a real website. I emailed Tech Support, followed their instructions precisely and, despite best efforts otherwise, cannot display two months of entries.

Everything is there on the server. I will email them again and see if they can recover the files or restructure the WordPress MySQL database.

In the meantime:
- Classes are done for this week and all tests have been given. Less that half of the students in my Thursday night class did not show. Curious.
- Voices are whispering again that my new job is moving to Reno. I would lose the raise in salary just in refilling the truck if gas prices go up to $3+ a gallon, which media experts say is a sure thing.
- It’s beautiful out there and I’m thinking of riding the bike to work tomorrow. Oh wait. Thunderstorms are forecast for the morning. I may do it, anyway.

The Announcement

This blog is no more.

If you wish to view my new blogspace, drop me an email at bobmoore5 at msn.com

Thank you for reading this most self-involved piece of cyberspace.

Go In Peace. Go In Love. Take of You.

Insert a Meaningful Life Here

The Bride is sick and hacking up a lung. She has no sick leave left, so she is forced by her office to either go to work or take leave without pay (even though she has annual available and FMLA). I suspect she has broncitis because her boss had it and the symptoms she's described to me and the sound of the cough. Eldest was sick earlier this week but is looking much better and she went back to work on Friday. (And I didn't have the flu, as misreported earlier. It was probably something I ate the previous night.)

The Bride and I had good interviews on Friday. She met with the folks at the Nevada Department of Transportation and, across the parking lot a couple hours later, I interviewed for a Management Analyst position with DMV's Research and Development Division. We were both met by nice people and we agreed that if offered, it'd be hard to turn down the positions.

If you're looking for my old website, don't bother. bobmoore.org is gone. I shut it down today because it had served its purpose well for the time I needed it. I was always a tad uncomfortable with the domain name because, technically, an ".org" extention is reserved for non-profit organizations (charities). I'm far happier with my current site and will be working on it this weekend. Stay tuned for a special announcement sometime this year. :-)

Got up this morning and did school stuff first-thing so I could go riding. What a day! High sixties and low seventies for the entire trip with no wind. Did the Three Albertsons and felt good about my pacing, though the lack of outside riding caught up with me afterwards. Looking at my three other Albertsons' ride from last year, I'm a little miffed that I haven't improved in speed/time since last year, but I am eight pounds lighter since my first one at the end of September, which means I didn't gain too much weight over the off-season. Feeling a little leaden right now but that will pass and I'll burst with squirrel-like energy very soon.

Are the Olympics over yet?

The demented people I work with are always dropping video links on the office. These three are good and they are work-safe. WARNING: not for dial-up.

- Get the feeling Big Brother is watching? The ACLU is worried about your privacy and sponsored this page to wake you up. Don't take it seriously.

- If you want to be a commissioned officer in the greatest military force in the history of history, you gotta learn to dance.

- Yes, there are love songs about computer geeks not making love.

This is the coolest web site I've seen in a while. I freely admit I'm a techno-geek and love electronic toys. You are reading the blog of a dude who once owned (and they're still in the house somewhere) the original blueprints of the Constitution-class U.S.S. Enterprise, NCC-1701. I'm too embarrassed to admit here how many hours I spent drooling over those blueprints and, now, this website.

So it'll be no surprise to you that I support this ticket in the upcoming presidental election.

I'm going to miss Don Knotts, the bumbler with the heart of gold. Take a minute to whistle The Andy Griffith Show theme song, would ya?

Distance: 14.4 miles
Time: 1 hour 12:37 minutes
644 calories burned

Al Gore Is Right

I am not a "green," but I was in elementary school when the state of the ecology was a daily topic. Whenever I get gas for the truck or make paper copies for class, I privately wonder how long these resources will be easily available.

And what of the planet itself? It seems every couple of years now, the world's population hits a new record. A record seven billion people are not that far away and we'll easily surpass ten billion in my lifetime. At what point will the mass of humanity overwhelm the cradle in which we live?

The below editorial from Fortune magazine is worth the read:

Owning Up To Global Warming
It's time for Americans to face reality about climate change.
By David Kirkpatrick, FORTUNE senior editor

How can anyone living through today's bizarre and mutable weather not be concerned about global warming?

This winter, New York had its largest snowfall in history on a Sunday, followed by a 60-degree day Thursday. A week later, I sat in the audience at the TED conference in Monterrey hearing Al Gore enumerate fact after fact that underscored the gravity of the changes in global weather.

The 1100 attendees -- including many of the world's leading technologists -- listened raptly as Gore presented his nonpartisan and well-researched speech outlining the scientific evidence that there is a dire and unprecedented change in earth's climate underway, seriously aggravated by human activity.

It's a speech Gore has been giving regularly. But this could be the year when a national uproar finally causes the nation's leaders to pay attention. A movie based on the speech comes out this summer. Meanwhile, Gore says that he is working with "all of the major environmental groups in the United States" on a new consortium that will enable them to band together on a "campaign of public persuasion" about global warming and its consequences.

The techies who were in attendance are on board. Says Google (Research) co-founder Sergey Brin, who has heard Gore give versions of the speech for several years: "The data coming in is just very compelling. The speech has consistently improved as the data has gotten worse. It's remarkable just if you look at the rise in global surface temperatures."

Bill Joy, longtime Sun Microsystems chief scientist turned venture capitalist, says his only complaint about the speech was that Gore left out some of the most powerful data -- about how melting arctic tundra in Siberia is allowing vast quantities of methane to escape into the atmosphere. That adds to the concentration of atmospheric CO2 and further worsens the problem.

One after another I heard people say they found the talk convincing and compelling. Says Kim Polese, CEO of open-source software company SpikeSource: "I just don't understand why it's still a debatable topic. The evidence is just overwhelming."

As I spoke to Polese, George Dyson walked up. He's a historian of science and also son of famed physicist Freeman Dyson, who has argued that global warming does no harm. But even George was wowed. "I question some of the evidence, but Gore made a convincing case," he said.

Gore's speech enumerates well-documented scientific evidence that the global climate is changing significantly -- and fast. Here are a few data points:

- Global CO2 levels are way outside what have been historical norms over several hundred thousand years.

- All ten of the hottest years on record, globally, have occurred in the last 15 years.

- Last summer, all-time heat records were set in both the U.S. West and East.

- Global ocean temperatures are far outside of historical norms.

- Even after last year's devastating Hurricane Katrina, the subsequent Hurricane Wilma was briefly the most severe hurricane ever recorded.

- Last year Japan hit an all-time record for typhoons: 10. The previous record was 7.

- The largest downpour ever seen occurred last summer in India.

Thirty-five years ago there were an average of 225 days when Alaska's tundra was frozen enough for trucks to drive. Today there are only 75.

Gore presented his data in elegant charts and graphs. The series of before-and-after photos of glaciers that have receded in recent decades -- from Latin and North America, Asia, Europe, and Africa -- was one of the most vivid and shocking moments in his talk.

Then there is what's happening in Antarctica and Greenland -- land masses topped with huge melting ice sheets. If these start falling in quantity into the sea -- and Gore's data suggests it's quite possible -- global ocean levels will rise appreciably. Vast coastal areas could be inundated -- areas where 20 million live around Beijing, 60 million around Calcutta, and even large portions of Manhattan.

Gore claims that none of the peer-reviewed scientific articles published in recent decades have disputed that the earth's temperature is rising, even as more than half of all articles in the US press over the same period have. We journalists, in the search for "balance," may have contributed to a national complacency.

The movie based on Gore's presentation, called The Inconvenient Truth, will be released in late May by Paramount Classics. I sat across the table briefly from Gore at a dinner after his talk, and he was effusing about what a great job the filmmakers have done.

The movie is more than just a record of the speech. "It's Al Gore's personal journey and how he got to this conclusion," producer Lawrence Bender says.

Some will object to this movie for obvious political reasons, but it is likely to catalyze a national debate we desperately need. And the world needs to be awakened if his facts are right. Bender says religious and political leaders who have seen the film -- including many supporters of the Bush administration -- have been highly supportive.

My biggest complaint about Gore's talk is that despite the overwhelming evidence he marshals of dire climate change, he ends with an upbeat promise that it's not too late to do something about it. But there's no question we have to face reality -- we're hurting ourselves by hurting the climate. Thank you, Al Gore, for saying it bluntly.

Blah

I am not a nice person when sick (and less snarky than when healthy, but only those who know me can tell the difference). Woke up this morning fairly certain I caught the flu from The Bride, who got it from Eldest, who probably got it at her new job. Canceled my interview today, but went to work where I have the dubious pleasure of infecting the information technology unit for the Nevada Division of Child and Family Services.

(Hmmm. When I think of it that way, maybe this ain't so bad.)

The yuckiness I woke up with, though, is fading away. It could have been from something I ate last night.

(Darn.)

The semester is livable so far and far superior to last semester. Can't believe tonight is the end of the third week of classes. Already scheduled the first test and have repeated this phrase at least five times:

"Do not be lulled into a false sense of security because this is an open book and open note test. You should read the material before you come to class or you will be shocked by the test."

Yes, open book tests are generally harder, I don't give hard tests, but the rules still apply: you will suffer if you don't prepare. And there's always a handful of students who don't prepare.

It'll be in the upper 50s this weekend. Dollar and me are hitting the road!

"Do You Believe in Miracles? Yes!"

I used to be a die-hard Olympics fan, but I don't watch them at all now (summer or winter). The below from History.com brought back some fond memories, which I'll get around to posting eventually.


"THE MIRACLE ON ICE:
February 22, 1980

In one of the most dramatic upsets in Olympic history, the underdog U.S. hockey team, made up of college players, defeats the four-time defending gold-medal winning Soviet team at the XIII Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York. The Soviet squad, previously regarded as the finest in the world, fell to the youthful American team 4-3 before a frenzied crowd of 10,000 spectators. Two days later, the Americans defeated Finland 4-2 to clinch the hockey gold.

The Soviet team had captured the previous four Olympic hockey golds, going back to 1964, and had not lost an Olympic hockey game since 1968. Three days before the Lake Placid Games began, the Soviets routed the U.S. team 10-3 in an exhibition game at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The Americans looked scrappy, but few blamed them for it--their average age, after all, was only 22, and their team captain, Mike Eruzione, was recruited from the obscurity of the Toledo Blades of the International League.

Few had high hopes for the seventh-seeded U.S. team entering the Olympic tournament, but the team soon silenced its detractors, making it through the opening round of play undefeated, with four victories and one tie, thus advancing to the four-team medal round. The Soviets, however, were seeded No. 1 and as expected went undefeated, with five victories in the first round.

On Friday afternoon, February 22, the American amateurs and the Soviet dream team met before a sold-out crowd at Lake Placid. The Soviets broke through first, with its new young star, Valery Krotov, deflecting a slap shot beyond American goalie Jim Craig's reach in the first period. Midway through the period, Buzz Schneider, the only American who had previously been an Olympian, answered the Soviet goal with a high shot over the shoulder of Vladislav Tretiak, the Soviet goalie.

The relentless Soviet attack continued as the period progressed, with Sergei Makarov giving his team a 2-1 lead. With just a few seconds left in the first period, American Ken Morrow shot the puck down the ice in desperation. Mark Johnson picked it up and sent it into the Soviet goal with one second remaining. After a brief Soviet protest, the goal was deemed good, and the game was tied.

In the second period, the irritated Soviets came out with a new goalie, Vladimir Myshkin, and turned up the attack. The Soviets dominated play in the second period, outshooting the United States 12-2, and taking a 3-2 lead with a goal by Alesandr Maltsev just over two minutes into the period. If not for several remarkable saves by Jim Craig, the Soviet lead would surely have been higher than 3-2 as the third and final 20-minute period began.

Nearly nine minutes into the period, Johnson took advantage of a Soviet penalty and knocked home a wild shot by David Silk to tie the contest again at 3-3. About a minute and a half later, Mike Eruzione, whose last name means "eruption" in Italian, picked up a loose puck in the Soviet zone and slammed it past Myshkin with a 25-foot wrist shot. For the first time in the game, the Americans had the lead, and the crowd erupted in celebration.

There were still 10 minutes of play to go, but the Americans held on, with Craig making a few more fabulous saves. With five seconds remaining, the Americans finally managed to get the puck out of their zone, and the crowd began counting down the final seconds. When the final horn sounded, the players, coaches, and team officials poured onto the ice in raucous celebration. The Soviet players, as awestruck as everyone else, waited patiently to shake their opponents' hands.

The so-called Miracle on Ice was more than just an Olympic upset; to many Americans, it was an ideological victory in the Cold War as meaningful as the Berlin Airlift or the Apollo moon landing. The upset came at an auspicious time: President Jimmy Carter had just announced that the United States was going to boycott the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Americans, faced with a major recession and the Iran hostage crisis, were in dire need of something to celebrate. After the game, President Carter called the players to congratulate them, and millions of Americans spent that Friday night in revelry over the triumph of "our boys" over the Russian pros.

As the U.S. team demonstrated in their victory over Finland two days later, it was disparaging to call the U.S. team amateurs. Three-quarters of the squad were top college players who were on their way to the National Hockey League (NHL), and coach Herb Brooks had trained the team long and hard in a manner that would have made the most authoritative Soviet coach proud. The 1980 U.S. hockey team was probably the best-conditioned American Olympic hockey team of all time--the result of countless hours running skating exercises in preparation for Lake Placid. In their play, the U.S. players adopted passing techniques developed by the Soviets for the larger international hockey rinks, while preserving the rough checking style that was known to throw the Soviets off-guard. It was these factors, combined with an exceptional afternoon of play by Craig, Johnson, Eruzione, and others, that resulted in the miracle at Lake Placid.

This improbable victory was later memorialized in a 2004 film, Miracle, starring Kurt Russell."

Brain is tarred

You ever get wore out to the point where syllables just sorta run together? I'm feeling a little of that right now after a crap day at work and a tiny little bike ride on the stationary, then some time walking concrete floors at the prison. If I keep doing this behind-bars teaching thing, I'm gonna have to spend some real pesos on boots made for concrete.

There ain't much going on besides my belly-aching. The temps are slowly moving up and maybe there will be outside riding this weekend. Lawd, that'd be something. So far in 2006, I've ridden about 169 miles at the gym and outdoors. That puts me in the top 2000 riders for the year in terms bike miles traveled, per the ol' bike journal. The top rider of the year has more than enough miles to cross the Lower 48, no matter what direction you choose (3700+ miles), and this person lives in Kansas! Do you know what Midwestern winters are like? Holy cow.

Anyhow, gonna drag this carcass into the bedroom. Y'all be happy now, ye hear?

Distance: 4.38 miles
Time: 15:00 minutes
328 calories burned

Dedicated to Aunt Lily

For no particular reason other than she’s in my thoughts today as she continues to recuperate from a lifestyle-related accident. (Doesn’t that sound sexier than what really happened? ;-))

Two new locker room etiquette rules:
1. When naked, ALWAYS squat. Never bend over. Thanks a lot, sir, for the surprise lifetime memory.
2. If you’re going to leave your cell phone in your locker, set it to silent mode. We do not want to hear your perky Caribbean drum song nor is there any chance we’re going to do the Bossa Nova. Sheesh.

Enjoying the last state three-day weekend until Memorial Day. Spent a lot of time this week grading papers and setting up my classes for the rest of the semester. Also spent a little time in search of my favorite blood chemical, the definition of which is courtesy of Wikipedia:

Endorphins are endogenous opioid biochemical compounds. They are peptides produced by the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus in vertebrates, and they resemble the opiates in their abilities to produce analgesia and a sense of well-being. In other words, they might work as "natural pain killers." (emphasis added)

This is one reason I believe in God. There is probably more than one evolutionary anthropologist who can easily explain why our bodies developed such a yummy reason to exercise, no doubt along the lines of need to curb pain in order to survive extended hunting periods. I think it’s simpler than that. God wants us to stay in shape over long periods of time and rewards us when we hit a certain point in our exercise program. For those folks who’ve experienced the feeling naturally, we know it’s almost a spiritual event. (By the way, "endorphin" is a contraction of the phrase "endogenous morphine".)

I used to be on the outside, looking in at people who search of the natural endorphin. More accurately, I was looking down at them, wondering why the hell they put themselves in such pain. But you know, now that I’ve been on the path, there is sometime to the feeling of delicious agony that cannot be found anywhere else in the human experience.

If you ain't done it, then I'm not going to try to describe color to the blind, but listen: put down the éclair and Starbucks. Put on some shoes and go outside. If you’ve never been there, you’re missing a whole world of ecstasy and yummyness that can’t be found in a Crispy Crème shop or under the Golden Arches. If you have been there and have lost the way, we’ll slow down and wait for you. Endorphins are best when they’re shared.

Today’s chemical rush was unplanned, especially in light of my last two biking sessions at the gym, which I was forced into because of snow throughout the weekend. I got up early on Saturday and went to work to grade papers, then headed over to the gym, but didn’t eat or drink anything before I went. I was wasted after a relatively short time, but was heartened (will never use that word, again) by my pace. If I had kept going, I would have been close to setting a personal best: 9 miles in 30 minutes.

Saturday:
Distance: 6.05 miles
Time: 20:00 minutes
455 calories burned

I had to go back to work on Sunday because I forgot to bring the teacher stuff I needed to grade papers. After that, it was back to the gym to try again, but my mistake that time was pushing myself too fast, too early. I’d forgotten that biking is a marathon, not a sprint, and whatever energy reserves I had were gone far too quickly. It was the shortest time I’d been on the bike in a while, but the pace was still on track for the 9 miler:

Sunday:
Distance: 4.50 miles
Time: 15:00 minutes
399 calories burned

I started today with two pieces of toast, then it was off to the gym and the bike. I started off good, keeping speedometer rolling along between 18 and 19 miles per hour, listening the Rolling Stones and Prince, but I started to wilt at the 13 minute point, so I dialed down the bike and chose to be happy with another eight-mile day. I wasn’t going slow (16-17 mph), but it wasn’t going to happen today.

At the 20-minute mark, I clicked over to distance readout and was pleasantly surprised to still be within reach of six miles. I figured I could withstand the pain for ten minutes, so I dialed the bike back up and tried to stay as close to 19 mph by using my thighs to push the pedals as much as possible. But it wasn’t working. I kept dropping below 18 mph. I wasn’t horribly behind the pace, but lord, it was frustrating not being able to keep a steady rhythm.

But my frustration was for naught, it turned out. At about the 28.5 minute mark, the odometer read around 8.5 miles, which meant I had 90 seconds to get that last stinking 2600 feet. Quit or die? Easy choice. I dialed up the bike and rode like a sumbitch. When the odometer clicked over before the timer ran out, I shot my arms up like I’d just won the gold:

Distance: 9.02 miles
Time: 30:00 minutes
676 calories burned

As I sat there, bent over the handle bars, with my head on my crossed arms, the rush hit me and it was good. From this point forward, whenever I’m down on myself, I will remember today’s race against myself and how I beat more that just a personal record.

Four Green Fields

The subject of grief and mourning have been floating in the debris lately. Walking through Raley’s the other day in search of warmed-over Chinese cuisine when a thin old lady with curled grey hair entered my peripheral vision. I caught my breath but motored on, knowing intellectually it was nobody I knew. Middle Daughter (affectionately known as PBJ because she’s stuck between two pieces of white bread) is still dealing with the passing of her namesake, her great-grandmother. Aunt Lily recently wrote of her mother’s passing. In the seven months since it’s happened, it’s safe to say all three of us are missing Grama.

Cultures handle the aftermath of death in the way that suits them best. Asian cultures balance spirituality and realism during their funeral services; they know death is a part of the wheel of time, accept it, and move on. At the other end of the scale are the Scots and Irish, my antecedents, who hold drunken celebrations of life and get every feeling and memory out into the open. Nothing is sacred, least of all the recently deceased, and an emotional purge of grief and happiness help cleanse the souls of loved ones left behind.

Grama’s memorial was perfect for her. It was tearful, solemn, and respectful of a woman who did so much for her family, but while it was appropriate for her, I’m wondering if it helped us move on. Maybe we need to have a good old-fashioned Irish wake with plenty of booze, music, and bad behavior.

And we should make it just loud enough for Grama to wonder what the hell we’re doing down here. :-)

--------------------------------------

The title of this blog is from an old Irish tune whose lyrics go something like this:

What did I have, said the fine old woman
What did I have, this proud old woman did say
I had four green fields, each one was a jewel
But strangers came and tried to take them from me
I had fine strong sons, who fought to save my jewels
They fought and they died, and that was my grief said she

Long time ago, said the fine old woman
Long time ago, this proud old woman did say
There was war and death, plundering and pillage
My children starved, by mountain, valley and sea
And their wailing cries, they shook the very heavens
My four green fields ran red with their blood, said she

What have I now, said the fine old woman
What have I now, this proud old woman did say
I have four green fields, one of them's in bondage
In stranger's hands, that tried to take it from me
But my sons had sons, as brave as were their fathers
My fourth green field will bloom once again said she

No one can do sadness and depression like the Irish.

--------------------------------------

Along those lines, Craig Ferguson is a late-night talk show host whose father recently passed away. Here is his public tribute to his dad from Craig’s TV show. It’s worth fifteen minutes of your life.

Review: "Hitchhiker's Guide"

Needs more dancing and singing dolphins and a lot more Severus Snape. Less Guy Fleegman would help, too.

Review: "Wedding Crashers"

Like vanilla cake with a chocolate pudding center: it's bad but it's gooood.

It's a little bit funny

First off, Happy Valentine's Day, with the following conditions found on the internet:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit best wishes for a socially-responsible, non-sexual harassing, non-gender biased, sexually-safe, Valentine's Day, based upon the generally accepted traditional expressions of affection commonly associated with February 14, but not without due respect for other non-traditional expressions of affection, and further, with respect for the expressions of affection of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great, (not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country or is the only "AMERICA" in the western hemisphere), and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform, or sexual preference of the greetee.

(By accepting this VALENTINES DAY greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the greeter to actually implement happiness for her/himself or others, is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the greeter. This greeting is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of a VALENTINES DAY greeting for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this greeting or issuance of a new greeting at the sole discretion of the greeter.)

Welcome to the world of litigation.

----------------------

With that behind us...

On Sunday, I told The Bride we were going to get good news this week. There was nothing behind that statement other than a feeling of certainty. Well, we didn't have wait long. This all happened yesterday (Monday) and all of this is OUTSTANDING! news. The Bride and I are very proud.

- Danielle found out that she's going to be published in a short story anthology. This one is devoted to tales of horror, 2000 words or less, and her story is something she wrote when she was fifteen. More details to come down the road.

- Lara did something awesome, too. Western Nevada Community College named 192 students to the fall 2005 Dean's Listin in an article in the Nevada Appeal. Eligible students completed at least 12 credits for the semester with a 3.5 or higher grade point average. One of those fine people is named (*TA DA*) Lara Moore.

- Trina got a job at a local automotive company out on Highway 50. A good friend and former Port of Subs co-worker has been out there for a few months, already got promoted to a new job, and fenagled Trina into her old job. It's full-time and above minimum wage. This was on top of the sales bonuses her boss handed her yesterday.

- The Bride has yet another job interview today, this time with the Nevada Department of Taxation. She's getting a lot of practice, at the very least.

- Edit: I have a job interview with DMV next week in their research department. This could be good.

----------------------

A quick thing about VP Cheney and the shooting incident, and this is aimed (pun intended) at the media: get off their back.

It was a simple accident that happens hundreds of times a year during hunting season and Dick Cheney is probably feeling pretty bad about it. Yes, he broke a hunting rule and he didn't have a $7 hunting stamp. The media, still suffering under the legitimate criticism that they screwed up the WMD and Iraqi war investigations, have jumped all over this like it's Watergate.

Yes, it took over 20 hours before the story on the shooting was released. Big deal. They wanted the victim to get treatment and they want to get their facts straight. Get a grip, ladies and gentlemen of the media. We people out here in the "real" world probably have the right perspective on this and, if anything, the accident makes the VP look more human. You people are going to look like idiots if you keep going this way. Let's focus on important stories, guys.

----------------------

Aunt Lily is in our thoughts this morning as she goes see a medical minion today.

Sailing Takes Me Away

"Real" bike riding is superior to gym riding. Biking outdoors on city streets is a full body workout, with constant twisting and turning of all the major muscle groups as you speed through stop signs and navigate traffic, whereas stationary riding focuses mostly on calves and thighes. Each has their place in a fitness routine. Around here, you have to exercise inside during the winter to keep in shape and to keep sane, but given a choice, I'll take the sun and fresh air.

There's a cold front moving in later this week. With that in mind, I ran out of work tonight to take advantage of what sunlight there was at the end of a warm winter day (in the 60s, per the bike computer). From home to the library via Washington, then up Carson to the north Albertsons, then down Carson to visit Trina, then down Mountain to back home. When the sun dropped behind the hills, it got cold fast and the sweat on my back began to chill as I pulled into the garage. Though the below stats may not reflect my efforts, I really booked tonight to get out and get back before it got too dark and too nippy to be on a bike.

Update: There are now two students who've dropped my class. *mumble mumble*

Lastly, I hear there's an opening in Dick Cheney's hunting party. Applicants advised to bring their own bulletproof vest. (Yes, I am one of millions that will never, ever forget that.)

Yesterday's stats:
Distance: 6.30 miles
Time: 34.57 minutes
320 calories burned

Today:
Distance: 5.70 miles
Time: 29.05 minutes
324 calories burned

Plan A

Not a perfect child of God here. Not even close. Started the day with the absolute promise to myself to do school work first thing. Had a veggie omelet with The Bride, then got situated, got organized...then looked outside. Oh my. Lots of sun and no clouds and no wind. Sadly, I thought to myself, I have to work. Hands on the keyboard. Another look. Then realized I needed an new semester binder to organize the papers and syllabi for my three classes, but The Bride had the truck...

So much for Plan A.

It was very nice out there (68 degrees per the biking computer). Avoiding the frozen mistakes of yesterday, started off in fleece and insulated biking gloves, but got rid of those soon enough. Went south on King and Curry to Office Depot, then north on Carson to Safeway, then south on the main drag (sidewalk) and Curry to Fifth Street. Up the hill, then home. Riding on sidewalks is a mortal biking sin, but Carson is too narrow for cars and bikes and, besides, it's fast and fun.

By the by, The Bride and I've been married way too long. She must have known I was going to play hookey because check out the DVD she bought me this morning.

Edit: Actually doing class work and found one of my students has withdrawn after one class. AARRGGHH! WNCC has an open-drop policy that basically states students can walk away at any time, but it's only been one frickin' class! *insert deep, cleansing breaths here*

First One Outside

Feeling off at the moment and got no words for it, so not doing any serious blogging right now. Went on the first outside ride of the year and probably burned more calories keeping warm than actually riding. It wasn't exactly cold, but some fleece would have done a world of good. Down King towards Curry and around Dead Man's Curve. Stopped at the south Albertson's then down Carson to work. From work to Roop to Stewart, across the Legislative Plaza, then up Telegraph to home. The time in the gym has helped because my legs don't feel nearly as leaden as they did last year.

There's no snow on the ground. That picture is how my legs are feeling. Hot shower, here I come!


Distance: 7.30 miles
Time: 39.42 minutes
370 calories burned

UNR

Didn't get the job and I believe it's for the best, aside from the tiny bit of disappointment I'm feeling. I'll work that out of my system tonight at the gym.

Blog Lite

Been slow on the upload because of first week of classes. Will get some stuff up here tonight. :-)

Interview Canx

Spoke to the personnel person (again) at the Nevada Division of Cultural Affairs and she finally said that they needed a money person that needs to hit the ground running, so I cancelled the interview. (By the by, I asked her the same questions the first two times we talked and she wouldn't say then that they needed a financial person. Did she assume I was a money person just because I was on the list or were they so desperate for interviewees? I did tell her I'd come in for the interview if they needed to fill a quota.)

The first two classes have been fairly uneventful so far, except I couldn't take the books into the Tuesday night class, but I was prepared for that. Tonight should be the interesting class, in light of recent events.

One Sentence

Another crap day, another quick workout, and it's time to get set-up for the second class of the week, this time at Northern Nevada Correctional Center.


Distance: 5.86 miles
Time: 20:00 minutes
441 calories burned

Two Sentences

Crap day at work and a short workout that was barely worth the effort of logging into the journal, but it got work out of my aura, at least. Tonight is my first class of the semester.

Distance: 5.68 miles
Time: 20:00 minutes
420 calories burned

40 things you would love to say at work

1. I can see your point, but I still think you're full of shit.

2. I don't know what your problem is, but I'll bet it's hard to pronounce.

3. How about never? Is never good for you?

4. I see you've set aside this special time to humiliate yourself in public.

5. I'm really easy to get along with once you people learn to see it my way.

6. I'll try being nicer if you'll try being smarter.

7. I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message.

8. I don't work here. I'm a consultant.

9. It sounds like English, but I can't understand a damn word you're saying.

10. Ahhh...I see the screw-up fairy has visited us again.

11. I like you. You remind me of myself when I was young and stupid.

12. You are validating my inherent mistrust of strangers.

13. I have plenty of talent and vision; I just don't give a damn.

14. I'm already visualizing the duct tape over your mouth.

15. I will always cherish the initial misconceptions I had about you.

16. Thank you. We're all refreshed and challenged by your unique point of view.

17. The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist.

18. Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.

19. What am I? Flypaper for freaks!?

20. I'm not being rude. You're just insignificant.

21. It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off.

22. Yes, I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.

23. And your crybaby whiny-assed opinion would be...?

24. Do I look like a people person?

25. This isn't an office. It's Hell with fluorescent lighting.

26. I started out with nothing & still have most of it left.

27. Sarcasm is just one more service we offer.

28. If I throw a stick, will you leave?

29. Errors have been made. Others will be blamed.

30. Whatever kind of look you were going for, you missed.

31. I'm trying to imagine you with a personality.

32. A cubicle is just a padded cell without a door.

33. Can I trade this job for what's behind door #1?

34. Too many freaks, not enough circuses.

35. Nice perfume. Must you marinate in it?

36. Chaos, panic, & disorder-my work here is done.

37. How do I set a laser printer to stun?

38. I thought I wanted a career; turns out I just wanted a salary.

39. Who lit the fuse on your tampon?

40. Oh I get it... like humor... but different

There Is Good News Everywhere

Stayed home because of my back. No exercise or work today. Back to everything manana, including the first class of the semester tomorrow night.

Looked up an old blog about a cancer patient and this sentence is in the most recent entry:

"My *December CT shows no evidence of disease." Hallelueh.

The medical bills for the daughters' December experiences are starting to roll in. As you may recall, Lara had emergency surgery to remove her gall bladder and appendix, and Danielle had preapproved surgery to remove "just" her gall bladder. I'll tally up the figures later but I am now a BIG fan of medical insurance. That is, once you convince the keyboard-punchers at the hospital and HMO that they need to reconsider some of their financial decisions. So far, I'm batting 1.000.

The Bride came home from a job interview with State Personnel and she's feels really good about her chances, and she has an interview at Lowe's tomorrow so we'll have another check coming in the house. I have a job interview for an Administrative Services Officer position at the Nevada Department of Cultural Affairs on Thursday. There is no way I'm qualified for the position, but what the heck.

Last Super Bowl related entry (maybe). From David Letterman, these are the viewer-submitted:

Top Ten Cool Things About Having The Super Bowl In Detroit

10. No need for Homeland Security as entire audience is armed to the teeth
Heidi H., Sault, Ste.

9. Every place you go are plaques stating "Madonna Slept Here"
Bob T., Westminster, MD

8. Commemorative bullet proof vests for all fans
David B., Brick, NJ

7. Finally, a chance for Lions fans to watch a professional football team
Peter O., Ames, IA

6. Burning cars in the street make it feel like Miami
Jim D., Sparta Twp., MI

5. Sounds of heckling fans drowned out by gunfire
Marty S., Oak Hill, VA

4. 30,000 Ford pink slips can be reused as confetti
Mike S., Spokane, WA

3. According to James Frey, "It's great to have the Super Bowl return to the Motor City where I quarterbacked the New Orlean Saints to their first World Championship in 1973."
Nick Y., Waynesboro, PA

2. Sudden death a real possibility
Dan L., Superior

1. Buy two hotdogs, get a free Ford Focus
Pat P., Fairmont, WV

Going through my blog and reading the old bike-riding entries. Looking out the window, the sky is so blue and clear out there. Dollar is calling and we want to hit the road, but no. Not today but soon...

Btw, the best commercial was...

The only guy on the planet who can use a "Little Tree" car freshener to cut one-inch rope and a turkey baster to blow up a terrorist hideaway. Need we mention the multiple uses one can find in a single gym sock?

And exactly how many razor blades do we need on a single razor? The latest number is six, apparently. Is the twenty-three blade razor very far behind?

Pittsburgh Wins

- Great gadget play, perfectly played from Ben blocking the defender to Hines pulling it in. Pretty obvious Mr. Randel El was a college QB.

- Where did Mike Holgrem disappear to at the end of the game and where was the traditional interview from the losing locker room? Message to the Seahawks: blaming the refs is the last refuge for the incompetents.

- The Bus has stopped here. Thanks for a great run, Jerome.

- A very ordinary game that didn't come close to living up to the hype. But they hardly ever do, do they?

Congrats to the Pittsburgh Steelers, winners of Super Bowl XL.

Halftime Observations - Quick

- Seattle should have had that touchdown. He did not push off on the defender.

- Taking the shoe of Shaun Alexander was a good defensive play.

- Ben did not cross the goalline with the football. Another bad call and it should have been overturned.

- Both teams are sucking on offense. The second half should see the teams adjusting to each other and there will be points.

- The commercials are okay. The car commericials suck without end, but the booze commercials are evening it out. The razor commercial was absolutely stupid.

Yakked It Again

Ah, the semi-annual back spasms. Beginning to believe it occurs during times of high stress, which means I need a lot more alcohol and reality-altering substances in my life. I wish.

The Bride found this web site. The above picture is from that site and was taken in 1873. The St. Charles hotel is the tall building down the street on the right and it still stands today. The wooden fence surrounds the capital building, and the buildings and wooden tower on the left are on what is now the Legislative Pavilion. If you look closely at those buildings, you can see one of them is a saloon. Make your own political jokes here.

One of Eldest's friends was over last night and she brought her son, and he may be the cutest non-Moore in existence. Matthew is a toddler and a ball of energy, and he has all the womenfolk wrapped around his tiny little finger. The dude will go far with the fairer gender.

Finished my class prep, then went to the gym to hit the recumbent bike because it can't make my back hurt worst and I needed the endorphin buzz. Again, SO darn close to the 9 mile mark. I'll get it next time...unless I don't.

A quick review of locker room etiquette:

1. When looking for an empty locker, check for locks. If you put your stuff next to a locked locker, odds are you will dressing and undressing very close to another dude. While that may blow your dress up, it ain't Brokeback Gym. Find another stinking place to put your gym clothes.

2. Sir, thank you for being part of the Greatest Generation that saved Western Civilization from the Huns and Nazis. But take your frickin' bull session someplace else...and we hope that place requires clothes. All of them.

3. Do not leave bandaids in the shower. DUH!

4. And shower before you get into the co-ed spa. Chlorine can do only so much.

5. Sir, bringing your ten-year-old son to the gym is a great bonding experience, but he does not need to see any of the above during his formative years. In fact, he should not be exposed to it until he's older than me. A lot older.

Super Bowl is about to start and the house is overflowing with food and munchies, a Moore tradition. It'll take the rest of February to burn off what I will eat today. Pittsburgh, baby!

Distance: 8.78 miles
Time: 30:00 minutes
661 calories burned

Sweating to Surgery

Finished about 90% of my class prep today, so it was off to the gym. The quiet gym that was nearly empty. Very nice.

Since Nevada Fitness became a Gold's Gym franchise, they've been slowly replacing the equipment and rearranging the first floor to pack as many machines in there as possible. There a palate's workout center upstairs (for an extra fee) and they introduced some spinning classes. Spinners are nuts. And there are not nearly enough recumbent bikes to go around for the normal people and folks like me.

Important workout tip: if you choose a machine in front of the TV, check the channel before getting comfortable or you may got exposed to the joys of lasik surgery...on certain feminine parts. Ew! Followed by liposuction. EW EW EW! Way too much reality television.

Almost hit 9 miles in thirty minutes today. So close.

Edit: Send your name to space. Like there's not enough crap out there already. :-)

Distance: 8.89 miles
Time: 30:00 minutes
669 calories burned

And the results are in:

The Football Hall of Fame class of 2006 are Troy Aikman, Harry Carson, John Madden, Warren Moon, Reggie White, and Rayfield Wright.

My final four got in with a couple of other class acts.

Congrats to all.

Good Feelings for Your Cup

Doing class prep at the moment and this is my Spring training: getting things organized for the big season that will run from the winter cold to June fever. In my mind, every student is ready for class and they're eager to learn. This feeling passes after about five seconds into the class, but for now, this is a perfect semester.

When I am president...king...okay, DEMI-GOD...I will decree that every day begin with a good omen. Your coffee will be extra smooth and won't burn. You'll get a couple extra miles out of that $3 gallon of gas. You'll always have twenty boxes of cereal in your cabinet to choose from (note to Aunt Lily: you guys are so damn cute - never change). You'll wake up to two rainbows and a warm rainshower. That last one actually happened in Carson this morning.

Guess I'm feeling the emotional letdown after days of building up to the interview and, in retrospect, I completely overstressed on the entire issue. The upside is I was as prepared as anyone can be for an interview (except for a possibly fatal error...which I'll discuss down the road). The people there at EXS are friendly and I gave them a great presentation. Man, I was relaxed and hitting on all cylinders. The absolute best thing about the whole experience is the last time I left UNR, I had a bad taste in my mouth that lasted for years. If yesterday was my last interview and last "behind the counter" day at The School on the Hill, then all is good and that bad taste is totally washed away.

Super Bowl prediction: Pittsburgh 31, Seattle 24

And the final Football HOF will be out later today. My prediction from an earlier entry: Aikman, Madden, Moon, and White.

If it were up to me, though:
1. Troy Aikman
2. Harry Carson
3. L.C. Greenwood
4. Warren Moon
5. Thurman Thomas
6. Reggie White

That would be an awesome freshman class.

And why the picture? Because the second decree I would issue as a DEMI-GOD would declare all blogs must have at least one very cool picture of Red Skelton. Reason, you ask? Just because.

Rant Cut Off

Had this big honking rant about Republicans. Here's the picture instead of the thousand words.

Done!

The interview is done! Yay! I'll post details about it when I hear the results. If ya wants to know soona, emailz me.

Blogger is being a dog today. The west coast blogs I usually read are down.

Slow Deep Breaths

Just chilling right now, brain fully occupied with the interview on Friday.

What I've done...
- Read through the UNR Extended Studies Strategic Plan 2003-2007
- Puttered around their web site. They got their fingers in everything.
- Analyzed their enrollment and graduation figures, which will be here tomorrow.
- Read some newspapers articles.
- Ask for and received some good advice ("Relax and be yourself.")

Need to do...
- Finalize and practice my presentation
- Read through some interview questions and answers
- Get a belt and white t-shirts
- Pick up my cleaning!

Time for more reading.

Distance: 8.81 miles
Time: 30:00 minutes
663 calories burned

No Trouble..........

Just spoke to UNR Extended Studies. They're going forward with the interviews. Guess I should get ready. ;-)

Uh Oh...Trouble At UNR

From the Reno Gazette-Journal:

UNR halting new state-funded hires

Faced with a projected $2.1 million shortfall partly caused by soaring utility costs, the University of Nevada, Reno has implemented an immediate hiring freeze on state-funded teaching and staff positions.

"Just as our own personal utility bills have escalated, the university's utility bills have skyrocketed - in our case, more than $650,000 to date - beyond what we initially had anticipated," UNR's Provost and Executive Vice President John Frederick wrote in a campuswide e-mail Monday.

"In addition, our need to meet growing enrollment demands, and the legislative mandate to refund about $1.8 million in salary savings this fiscal year, has placed us on a path leading to an unacceptable year-end budget deficit.

Federick said the university is expected to be more than $2 million in the red by June 30, the end of this fiscal year.

"To avoid this, we need to place an immediate freeze on hiring for state positions funded through the state instructional appropriation (1101 funds)," Frederick said.

I'll be making a phone call in the morning...

I Ain't Lance. I'm Bob

Whenever I set a personal best, the first words out of The Bride's mouth are, invariably, "Don't you think you're doing too much?" (She stopped saying that recently, but only with great willpower.)

My response: "What is the point of having limits if you don't keep pushing them?"

The United States Marine Corps says it better: "Pain is weakness leaving the body." Booyah, Baby!

You know where this is going and I must beg your forgiveness, but I'm burning on an endorphine high as I write this. In January, I've done eight 30-minute rides so far (and four 20-minute rides). These are the distances in miles. If you want to know my average speed on these rides, simply double the distances:

Jan. 09: 7.15 (14.3 mph average)
Jan. 10: 7.70
Jan. 17: 8.25
Jan. 20: 7.11
Jan. 26: 8.18
Jan. 27: 7.80
Jan. 28: 8.30
Today : 8.80 (17.6 mph average)

That's 7.9 average with a 23% increase in distance from the first ride to the last. According to bikejournal.com, I've burned 5,600 calories this month when including the 20-minute rides. I'm aiming to complete ten miles in 30 minutes.

In the grand scheme of things, especially in the world of bicycling, these numbers are nothing, but like all things relative, they mean something to me and all of this would have been totally unthinkable a few short years ago. I'm a techie by trade, and daily exercise is pushing a mouse and a good diet means not supersizing.

But then my personal fitness hero, Aunt Lily, re-entered my life and she's a marathoner (!!!). A close relation of mine is physically fit? Get out of town on the horse you rode in on. And so is her significant other, the Zinger, someone for whom I have an infinite world of respect. They have this incredible love for life. Amazing.

My catchy line at this point is usually, "When I grow up, I want to be just like them." The fact is I am grown up, so no more excuses and no fear. I can't run like them, but I can fly on a bike.

Speaking of which, I rode to Dayton last October and I coasted down the big hill at about 41 mph. Reading the current issue of Bicycling magazine and found a blurb about Alpine bikers who regularly descend mountain roads at an average speed in the 50s. Holy cow. Think how fast I would have gone if I'd had a street bike instead of a mountain bike. (grin)

By the by, Aunt Lily is training again so check out her blog, dudes.


Distance: 8.80 miles
Time: 30:00 minutes
657 calories burned

We Go From Narnia To The Vatican To Sins to Vulcan

Took the day off from the gym to give my legs and knees a break. Will probably work on class stuff and other crap.

If you haven't seen the SNL Narnia video, please come out into the sunlight. The world is pretty and we miss you. Here's the West Coast response for you.

Bumped in an old high school teacher at the gym yesterday, but I doubt he remembered me. It's funny how people can be a large influence in your life for a chunk of time. This particular one dominated every room he was in and had little to no patience with hyper-hormonal teenagers...and our bunch were the ones who behaved ourselves at Cartoon High. Today, he's in his seventies and has shrunk to half of what he was. It was kind of a spooky encounter.

In the category of getting your knees cut off: President Bush among many others advocated "intelligent design" (ID) as an alternative method of introducing creationism into K-12 education. It's a nice catchphrase to rally around and gives credence to the faith-based belief that a Great One (no, not him or him) developed a universe from a cosmic blueprint.

It sounds good, except for teeny-tiny, oh so little insignificant detail: somebody forgot to check with headquarters. A scholar published in the Vatican newspaper wrote that ID was ideology and not proven science, and that biological evolution "represents the interpretative key of the history of life on Earth."

"This isn't how science is done. If the model proposed by Darwin is deemed insufficient, one should look for another, but it's not correct from a methodological point of view to take oneself away from the scientific field pretending to do science."

Here's a summary of the article. Memo to creationists: back to the drawing board. Pun intended.

I don't have a problem letting kids learn about ID in public high school as long as it's taught as an alternate method. I suspect it'd be a waste of time because kids today are so much more worldly that they were fifty years ago. They cut their teeth on the scientific method, for the most part.

Dropped in this blog somewhere the mention of Barry Bonds quitting the World Baseball Classic because he wants to be healthy for the upcoming season. ESPN reports the athletes participating in the WBC will have to undergo Olympic-style drug testing for all performance enhancing supplements, hormones, and condiments (like sweet mustard - it's a dog). It will not be the cursory examinations previously mandated by Major League Baseball. Coincidence, Mr. Bonds?

We all have our addictions but methamphetamine users are in a special hell of their own doing. Check out these pictures.

Did the bills and found we don't got the capital to cover our debits (surprise), so I gave up on My Ultimate IPod Dream and bought one of the cheaper models. Now the bills are a little happier and my conscious is not so angry.

And now after playing with the darn thing, I'm having that "having is not nearly as satisfying as wanting" feeling. There's a reason Greed is a Deadly Sin.

(That aside, please feed my hungry little IPod. :))

omg omg omg omg (repeat until numb)

The fun never stops. After setting a new distance record on the stationary this morning, came home and found the interview package from UNR Extended Studies (EXS) (verbatim below). The butterflies in my stomach have turned into Boeing 747s with firewalled engines.

----------------------------

Interview schedule for Robert Moore

Friday, February 3

8:15-8:30
Review interview questions

8:30-9:30
Meet with committee, conference room

9:30-9:35
Short break for candidate

9:40-9:55
Presentation and Q&As with EXS staff, Room 109

9:55-10:10
Meet with Associate Vice Provost, Dee Henderson

Presentation Information
Our staff would like to get to know you! In order for this to happen, please be prepared to deliver an informal ten (10) minute presentation to the entire Extended Studies staff regarding your motivation in applying for this position.

We'd like you to tell us why you feel this position meets your career goals and why you want to working in Extended Studies. We'd like you to address the following items, but you are certainly not limited to these, if time allows!

- What skills will you bring to this position?

- What motivates you in the workplace?

- What is your management/training style?

- What is your preferred/strongest communication style?

- How do you function in a constant multitasking environment?

- What expectations do you have of your direct reports and consequently what expectations should they have of you?

- What expectations do you have of Extended Studies and what expectations should the organization have of you?

----------------------------

Distance: 8.30 miles
Time: 30:00 minutes
609 calories burned

Not A Happy Post

Things are quiet around the Moore house these days. The Bride is going through some work stuff and she's looking forward to her interview next week (big jump in responsibilities; unequal pay raise). Eldest is at work, biding her time until potential employers start calling. Middle started the semester in her usual fashion and going to school about eight hours a week. Youngest has been pissed at me for a solid month now. Sins of the father here: I treated my parental units exactly the same. Doesn't help much that I've had to insert fiscal responsibility into recent discussions. The daughter and I are so much alike, it's freaky.

Here's a notice: I do not like snow anymore. I miss the drought. I want to live in a place where I can bike outside year-round and not have to use a stationary next to Sam the Free-Flying Sweathog (literally). Yes, I'm retaining water, my ankles feel fat, and I'm craving chocolate. Do these jeans make my butt look fat?

The good news of the day is UNR returned my messages and I will be rocking/rolling with them next Friday. Trying not to set myself up for disappointment here, but I'm one charged-up dude for that interview.

The other bit of good news is I will buy my IPod sometime in February. I've been saving a little cash here and there since last year to (a) see if I can do it and (b) reward myself for working three jobs for much of 2005. It's been a long, frustrating exercise in fiscal patience.

Speaking of which: Look at this bills! Oy!!!! I gotta find a weekend job.

But at least I finally satisfied my avacado craving.

(And I recognize the paradox: not being able to pay all of the bills, yet having the moola for an IPod. I've been working like a dog at extra jobs to support the family, and whatever $$$ is used for the toy would hold back the tidal wave of debt for only a day or two. Might as well be listening to cool tunes as they repossess the truck/van, and we live in a cardboard box. :))


Distance: 7.80 miles
Time: 30:00 minutes
547 calories burned

Tonight, Hell Froze Over

Went to my favorite sandwich place after the gym to satisfy my avacado craving. They had none. Grr! Annoyed, I stepped out of the store and saw my daughter's place of employment across the parking lot (you remember, of course, where she works). Mulled for five whole seconds and decided to stop by. She seemed glad for the visit because it looked like another quiet night. I'm fairly certain I blushed the entire time I was there.

The word is all three of my Spring classes are going to fly. This semester, I have one class at each of the three prisons in Carson City, instead of all three at one prison or two at one prison and another at a second, as in the past. I checked if anyone else is doing that and out of 354 professors/instructors scheduled to teach Spring 2006, only three (<1%) are scheduled to teach at three or more campuses (discounting video and web classes). All three are Prison instructors and the other two guys are teaching studs. It's cool to be even distantly associated with them, so I'm gonna suck it up and teach like a sumbiatch.

(And how do I know all that? I did college enrollment stats for a long time. It ain't hard...after years of learning. :))


Distance: 8.18 miles
Time: 30:00 minutes
578 calories burned

Random Blahs

The Bush administration came out swinging against critics of the domestic spying issue, with the President, Karl Rove, and the Attorney General speaking publicly on the issue. Bad idea, gentlemen. Don't give the opposition more ammunition to use against you in the press and the impending congressional hearings. If you're silent and take the high road, you might have a chance. Btw, please grasp the idea that Karl Rove is a symbol, good or bad, for everything that's gone wrong since G.W.'s election so many years ago.

Speaking of symbols, Washington Post reporters, among others, were denied access by the current administration to old photos of President Bush meeting with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff because they were "not pertinent" to the scandal investigation. Watch this story gather steam and energy faster than shit through a goose. Yes, it is possible for a picture like that to put a Democrat in the White House in 2008. It only took 18 minutes of silence to make a president resign from office.

Carson City officials discovered a horrific episode of child abuse recently. Commenters on the Nevada Appeal web site were understandably outraged, and some suggested extreme measures for future abusers, including sterilization of repeat offenders. There's a chance in a million that those comments will be taken seriously, but what's scary is Nazis used sterilization techniques on Jews and other non-Aryan minorities during the Holocaust in the 1940s. Do we really want to discuss something that puts us in the same breath as them, even remotely?

And yes, I do have an idea (surprise!). Instead of the numerous reactive ideas proposed, including stiffer prison sentences and permanent separation of the children from the abusive parents (which in some cases should absolutely happen), how about we as a country and society develop proactive family-friendly social programs that include free parenting and nutrition classes, and a child welfare program that's isn't buried in red tape? Of course, there's no profit in that, other than our next generation of leaders, workers, taxpayers, and, oh yeah, inmates.

This morning's Chronicle had an article about the importance of team chemistry, something the employees of the San Francisco Giants feel is absolutely essential to their success in the NL West in 2006. On the exact same page in the Sports section, there was another article on how Barry Bonds was complaining about being forced to bat second for the American team at the World Baseball Classic. He resigned from the team some time later for "health" reasons.

There's a reason why Dusty Baker's not managing on the west side of the Bay, but I can't decide if it's because Dusty is smarter than the Giants management or because ol' B.B. forced him out (wanna put money on it?). IMO, there's a sorrier bunch of fans than the Cubbie Bleacher Bums and they're called Barry Bonds' Apologists. When Barry pulls the team down yet again with his usual "me first" antics, it will be the Giants fans that suffer the most. When he breaks Babe Ruth's home run record, will anybody really care in a positive way?

Cruised through some blogs and haven't found a single non-American blog in support of the current administration. When President Bush is mentioned, it's always negative. Mull on that for a moment, please.

United States Supreme Court justice-nominee Samuel Alito will be confirmed by the Senate. Get used to the idea. Also get used to the idea this is the first time in American history that five Roman Catholics have sat on the bench at the same time. Roe v. Wade supporters: start to feel nervous.

Speaking of which, the famous or infamous RvW decision was not so much a decision supporting the right to abortion. It was more about the right to have a say over your body and your overall right to privacy. If you believe in those issues, especially with the administration's recent actions and beliefs on domestic spying, you should really be nervous now.

A Florida man was released from jail after DNA tests confirmed he was innocent. The man spent 24 years in jail for his crime and he's only 45 years old. Some folks are proposing there be time limits placed on the DNA testing of criminal evidence. How would those people feel if they had a loved one behind bars or on Death Row for crimes they did not commit? A majority of Death Row inmates are non-whites. Would folks make the same suggestions if every single inmate was white? Time limits on DNA testing is stupid, cruel, and inhumane.

In fact, when are people going to learn that anything that hinders our evolution as a society is stupid, cruel, and inhumane? Here's a short list: torture, child abuse, hate crimes, death penalty.

Here's the test: if it's an action or law that we'll be ashamed of in about 100 to 150 years, let's not do it today. After all, we freed the slaves, gave women the vote, and released children from dangerous working conditions in that time period. What are we not grasping here, people?

(And this was going to be a nice quiet entry, too...)

Distance: 3.24 miles
Time: 20:00 minutes
146 calories burned

Review of "Underworld: Evolution"

Haven't seen it. Jeannette Catsoulis of the New York Times in her review summarizes the problem with current Hollywood filmmaking:

"Maybe one day, Hollywood will figure out that pouring acting-challenged starlets into black neoprene and sticking them in front of a blue screen do not a movie make."

Did a quick scan of the movies to be released in the first part of 2006. Ain't rushing out the door for any of them.

Got the Interview

Will be interviewing at UNR a week from Friday. Haven't been this excited about an interview in a long time. Got some things to do, got some things to prove. :-)

If this website is to be believed, I burn 3162 calories a day (77 inches/250 pounds/44 yrs/lightly active), so why the hell ain't the pounds falling off? Grr!

Have other things to blab about, but I nuked myself at the gym tonight and feeling very low/slow right now, especially in the arms and neck. I stubbed my foot last night and keep waking up to the throb, so sleeping tonight is not going to be a problem.

100 stomach crunches
Distance: 5.08 miles
Time: 20:00 minutes
346 calories burned

WWCND?

From the Random Chuck Norris Fact Page.

- Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.

- Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.

- The Dinosaurs looked at Chuck Norris the wrong way once. ONCE.

- Chuck Norris does not hunt because the word hunting infers the probability of failure. Chuck Norris goes killing.

- Chuck Norris counted to infinity - twice.

- Chuck Norris sold his soul to the devil for his rugged good looks and unparalleled martial arts ability. Shortly after the transaction was finalized, Chuck roundhouse kicked the devil in the face and took his soul back. The devil, who appreciates irony, couldn't stay mad and admitted he should have seen it coming. They now play poker every second Wednesday of the month.

- When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.

- If you can see Chuck Norris, he can see you. If you can't see Chuck Norris you may be only seconds away from death.

- Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs.

- The chief export of Chuck Norris is pain.

- Chuck Norris has already been to Mars; that's why there are no signs of life there.

- When Chuck Norris sends in his taxes, he sends blank forms and includes only a picture of himself, crouched and ready to attack. Chuck Norris has not had to pay taxes ever.

- Chuck Norris sleeps with a night light. Not because Chuck Norris is afraid of the dark, but the dark is afraid of Chuck Norris.

- As a teen Chuck Norris impregnated every nun in a convent tucked away in the hills of Tuscany. Nine months later the nuns gave birth to the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the only undefeated and untied team in professional football history.

- A blind man once stepped on Chuck Norris' shoe. Chuck replied, "Don't you know who I am? I'm Chuck Norris!" The mere mention of his name cured this man blindness. Sadly the first, last, and only thing this man ever saw, was a fatal roundhouse delivered by Chuck Norris.

Yawner

The Pittsburgh/Denver game was over by the time Deacon Jones was done threatening us at the beginning of the broadcast ("Watch the game or else."). The Steelers played flawless football and the two key interceptions by "Jake The Snake" Plummer (or as they foreshadowed in the pregame, "No Mistake Jake") sealed the deal.

Started to watch the Carolina/Seattle team and realized I didn't care who won. Maybe it's their butt-ugly uniforms that turned me off. Teal should be outlawed as a color.

You watch what happens. Pittsburgh is doing the Blues Brothers thing: they're on a mission from God to Get One for the Thumb. They will beat the NFC representative in Super Bowl XL in Detroit in two weeks.

By the way, Deacon Jones is 67 years old. He looks like he could still strap on pads and break a QB into tiny little pieces, so let's not bring up his inglorious guest starring roles in The Brady Bunch and Wonder Woman. He might eat us. Alive. He could, ya know.

This weekend...

I am a Steelers fan.

I'm not a fan of a particular football team. Baseball is another story (Cubs, A's, then everyone else). That was not always the case because I was trying to figure out who I liked way back in the 1970's. After jumping from bandwagon to bandwagon (Steelers to Raiders to Redskins to 49ers), I just got tired of the whole mess and decided it was too much emotional exercise and that I'll just sit back and enjoy the games for themselves.

But this weekend is different. I will be a Pittsburgh fan. I like their heart and the class and history of the franchise, and I want Jerome Bettis to get his ring as he rides off into the sunset of his professional playing career. There were many times last weekend the Steelers could have folded over and died, especially after the ill-fated fumble, but they kept it together and played as a team. So I'm rooting for them tomorrow.

(Hell, I even like Bill Cowher's chin. Have you seen that thing? It sticks out into the playing field when he stands on the sideline.)

If you watched last weekend's game, did you see how Jerome's sideline reacted to his fumble? Often, teammates are treated like outcasts during game-changing incidents like that, but everyone in the gold and black were going to the man and showing their love and respect. That's how you play the game

Go Steelers!

Distance: 5.05 miles
Time: 20:00 minutes
342 calories burned

Prison vs. Work

IN PRISON: You spend the majority of your time in an 8X10 cell.
AT WORK: You spend the majority of your time in a 6X8 cubicle.

IN PRISON: You get three meals a day.
AT WORK: You only get a break for one meal and you pay for it.

IN PRISON: You get time off for good behavior.
AT WORK: You get more work for good behavior.

IN PRISON: The guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you.
AT WORK: You must remember to carry around a security card and open all the doors yourself.

IN PRISON: You can watch TV and play games.
AT WORK: You can get fired for watching TV and playing games.

IN PRISON: You get your own toilet.
AT WORK: You have to share with a bunch of idiots who pee on the seats.

IN PRISON: They allow your family and friends to visit. (Sometimes conjugal!)
AT WORK: Personal calls/visits are frowned upon.

IN PRISON: The taxpayers pay all expenses with no work required.
AT WORK: You get to pay all the expenses to go to work and then they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners.

IN PRISON: You spend most of your life inside bars wanting to get out.
AT WORK: You spend most of your time wanting to get out and go inside bars.

IN PRISON: You must deal with sadistic wardens.
AT WORK: They are called managers.


Distance: 7.11 miles
Time: 30:00 minutes
457 calories burned
248.5 pounds

Lordy, Lordy

Look who's 20 today?

Love ya, Luv!

January 19th

Thinking of you guys today.

The Dance

Lookin' back on the memory of
the dance we shared
beneath the stars above.
For a moment, all the world was right.
How could I have known
that you'd ever say 'good bye?'

And now, I'm glad I didn't know
the way it all would end
the way it all would go.
Our lives are better left to chance.
I could have missed the pain,
but I'd've had to miss the dance.

Holdin' you, I've held everything.
For a moment, wasn't I the king?
But if I'd only known
how the king would fall,
Hey, who's to say,
you know I might have changed it all.

And now, I'm glad I didn't know
the way it all would end
the way it all would go.
Our lives are better left to chance.
I could have missed the pain,
but I'd've had to miss the dance.

Yes, my life, it's better left to chance.
I could have missed the pain,
but I'd've had to miss the dance.

Limited Brain Cells

As a child of the Sixties and having been born during the Age of Camelot, the time of my upbringing was an era when social mores and practices from the Greatest Generation were giving way to the Hippies. My single mother, whose divorced status was still a cultural stigma at the time, believed that drugs were everywhere and easily accessible to everyone, including a certain underweight, asthmatic second grader. One of the ploys she used to "guide" me was to tell me that we're born with a finite number of brain cells and the use of drugs/alcohol destroys those brain cells. Whether she was right or wrong at the time, I was seven freaking years old. What did I know?

As I got older, those clichés and others from my mother fell into doubt, as those things tend to do when you become a teenager. Then I started spawning little Moores of my own and found the truth: kids can kill your brain cells faster than pure Everclear. I know I was a helluva lot smarter when I was younger, but today...not so much. Specifically today, in fact, because I know I had more brain cells when I woke up than I will have when I go to sleep tonight.

The day started good. I read the San Francisco Chronicle when I can because I like investigative reporting and so there's something to counter the right-leaning media messages that we're bombarded with on a daily basis (were you really surprised there were no WMDs?). Reporter C.W. Nevius made a minor mistake in this morning's column about there being no judge school, which, of course, there is. We had a quick little email chat and he was a nice guy about it.

Was at work for a while when The Bride called to tell me one of our angels got a job, which always good news. And it’s the local sex shop, specializing in lingerie, instruction manuals, adult DVDs, and all sorts of little toys. As God as my witness, I felt a string of atoms implode behind my left ear. And my right. It's not something you expect to hear, especially thinking back to the days when I stood over her crib just to watch her breathe. She's of age and she has a job, and Lord knows it'll be educational. And did I mention it’s a paying job?

I emailed a relation about the daughter's new job and her reply included the words, "sex toys." It brought back the feeling I had when my grandmother used the "f" word. A thousand more brain cells. Poof. Gone forever.

And everybody in the office had a really good laugh about the whole thing. Who could blame them?

(The daughter, who spent two months in the Navy, just told her mother that she had to "use the head" (sailor slang for the bathroom). Methinks someone should tell her not to use that phrase at her new job.)

Then at the end of the workday, I got a call from a mother whose children were removed from her home by Child Protective Services for whatever reason. I tried to explain she'd called an information technology help desk, not unlike calling Gateway or Dell, but she was pretty upset, in full vent mode, and not listening to anyone but herself. Twenty minutes later, I promised to forward her complaints to the appropriate folks, which I did. Because of the nature of the CPS business, there was absolutely nothing else I could do for her.

(BTW, if you want to read about the things that people do to kids, even in the Greatest Country in the History of History, here's something from the Best of Craig's List. Admittedly, it lists some extreme examples of abuse but, sadly, people really do this stupid shit to defenseless children. Not for reading at work, and not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.)

After work, my guts were full of this phone call and the helpless feeling that came with it, so I went to the gym, got on a recumbent bike and punished it. Hard. It was the longest and hardest that I've ridden one of those things and I was merciless. And my nasty mood was not helped by the person in the bike next to me, yapping on her cell phone, totally oblivious to the angry glances from others at the gym who were actually there to work out. She finally got the hint and hung up. A few minutes later, I got off the bike and was too wasted to feel nasty anymore.

So here I am, dumber and wiser at the same time, reminded of the phrase: "The more I learn, the less I know." It's appropriate for today in some strange way. If someone can figure out how, please drop me a line.

Hey, I have a fan! Cool! Check out Pearl Fang when you get a sec!

Getting back to the brain cell thing for a sec, Aunt Lily might be interested to hear that running increases the number of brain cells. She is pretty smart, but I attributed that to heredity. Whoda thunk?


Distance: 8.25 miles
Time: 30:00 minutes
623 calories burned