My wife is due January 28th with our third child. But, her doctor has scheduled her induction to begin on the evening of the 26th. So, unless she goes real short or real long, the baby and I will share a birthday.

I don't know if I should be excited or dissapointed about it. I'm leaning toward excited because I'll never forget the kid's birthday and I can stop having them and getting older. But, losing that bit of B-day attention I usually get every year will be a bit sad. Oh, well...

-Rusty

So it looks like I'm going to have to move.

We just moved into this house a little over a yea ago. We had it custom built with nearly every feature we wanted. Our lot backs up to a retention pond with low-tension power lines running behind that. The builder promised us that nothing would ever be built behind us. There is an elementary school half a block down that our kids would walk to. We thought we had the perfect home.

Then bits of reality started to set in. The builder had not put the necessary aerators in the pond making it a bug haven. The power lines are going to be buried underground and a four lane through street is going to be rerouted along their old route right behind our house. And, finally, ComEd is going to build a coal processing plant within half a mile connected to the new through street and a previously light traffic rail line. Trucks and train will be rumbling through our back yard at all hours. Not to mention the potential hazordous materials a coal processing plant will belch into the air (and water) so near to our home.

That means we're going to have to move before our property value drops through the floor. Most likely we'll have to move twice if we want to be accomodating to anyone buying our house. And, we'll probably end up losing a lot of money on closing and moving for the thrid time in four years.

All I can say is... "Why me AGAIN?!?!?!"
-Rusty

It's after 7:30 on a wednesday ngiht and I'm still at work. I'll probably get to leave about 9:15PM. Major suckage.

I can't wait for this project to be over and my life to possibly return to a semi-normal state. Oh, and sleep, gawd I miss sleep.

So, anyone need an excellent Unix admin that wants to talk to me? I'm VERY close to actively trying to find a new gig. (Who am I kidding, no one reads this anyhow...)

The last express train into the city leaves at 8:12AM. It takes 41 minutes and gets me to work just before 9AM. All trains into the city after that arrive about 1/2 past the hour and take about 1 hour 15 minutes to get downtown.

My freakin pager went off at 8:07AM. I was only 10 minutes from home and could be online fixing the problem within 15 minutes via dialup. They only page for production emergencies, right? So I call in to find out what is going on and get told to "hold on a second". The train pulls into the station and I make the executive decision to not board it. The train pulls away and the ops guy comes back on the phone. "Oh, it was a rulebase distribution problem. Harry, Rob and Dennis are fixing it, sorry about that." he says.

After hanging up the phone and swearing loudly for about 20 seconds I give in to the reality that I will be 45 minutes late to work. I power up my TiBook, resume my compile of QT and start back in on the PHP page I was working on yesterday. At least I got some coding done on the long ass train ride...

Why do I get paged in the middle of the friggin night because "they" can't keep track of the passwords they use infrequently? How is it my responsibility to babysit the disorganized?

This morning I ran for the last express train. It meant the difference between getting to work by 9AM and 9:45AM. I was the last one to board a 7 car train, the conductor was very nice to hold the doors for me...

But, now I pay for it. I got a bad case of phlegm build up in my lungs and throat induced by the 2 block run from my car to the train. So, I wonder if making it to work 45 minutes earlier and not getting in trouble for being late was worth the pain and hacking cough I'll suffer through for the rest of the day?

Sitting here eating a couple of died Easter eggs I wonder if they truely are easier to crack and shell than non-died eggs. Does that tad bit of vinegar in the dye water significantly soften the shell or is it my imagination? Oh well, they taste good.