Homeward bound...

It's a quarter to six in the morning as I write this. Boarding for my flight isn't for another hour. The airport is dead, although you can see individual workers scuttling about inside their stores, getting ready for the day. I really would like a cup of coffee.

The banquet last night was nice, but not memorable. I sat at the same table with Nora Favorov, whose status as the Administrator of the Slavic Language Division had been confirmed earlier in the day at the ATA board meeting, and with Jost Z., whom I had met at the first evening's reception (the Déjà Vu advocate). The dinner was okay - typical hotel food complete with a shapeless chicken entree - and it was served in a thoroughly professional manner.

The "presentation" was elegant and, I'm sure, the food was nutritious, but I was a bit surprised by the the baby carrots, which were served with the green part still attached, and by the bottom end of a yellow squash served so as to accentuate the nipple-like structure at the end of the fruit. Ah, well, I suppose I'm a country bumpkin as far as the chef is concerned.

The training of the waitstaff was evident in their skilled service. All of the plates were served properly and gracefully with the ladies served before the gentlemen. Watching the waitstaff exit the kitchen (under a rotating red light) was an impressive sight. Everyone moved with military precision; I doubt that a trained SEAL team could move better.

Our waitress, however, did not seem happy in her work. By her expression, it was clear she was there last night under duress, or some similar circumstance. The expression on her face - noticed by several of us - was austere to say the least. I'm sure each of us thought she'd go postal on someone at the table, so requests were relayed to her in a very polite tone of voice.

Unlike other closing banquets I've attended, here, the dance floor was situated in a neighboring hall. I stopped by for a few minutes, to listen to the hired talent - a swing band - and watch some of the action. Since I was looking at a really early wake-up, I retired early.

So here I am. The airport version of CNN just came on, and Al Gore is screaming bloody murder about "Big Oil" and telling folks how he'll protect 'em. Yeah, right. What's interesting, though, is that though Bush and Cheney clearly have oil company ties - all the major networks have been on the ball in this department - so does Gore. I tend to doubt, however, that any major news organization is going to go to any particular trouble to report this, seeing how they clearly favor Gore.

Gore's old man, if I recall, was on the board of Occidental Petroleum after he retired from the Senate, and Gore himself has a huge interest in the company via inheritance. Occidental, by the way, has pissed off a lot of people in Columbia, if memory serves, where its operations threaten the local ecology and at least one indigenous tribe. So much for a "Mr. Environment" who is not beholden to Big Oil.

The Republicans and Democrats make me sick. Permit me a short digression:

Throw the bums out! Vote Libertarian!

There. I feel better.

Anyway, the ticket agents are here to do their thing. While I was able to check in electronically downstairs, I still have to show the agent here a photo ID. And judging from all the folks here, it's going to be a pretty crowded flight. Yikes.

Cheers...

Back in the saddle...

The plane landed around 8:30, over across town at IAH. I slept most of the way from Florida, or tried to. Sleeping while sitting up straight in an airline seat is not my most favorite mode of relaxation. I nodded off just after the plane was pushed back from the terminal, and came to again somewhere around 31,000 feet, as the stews were distributing breakfast.

Galina hired a small crew to paint the house, and they did a pretty good job. What might've turned out to be a three-weekend job, complete with every sort of complication, was taken care of basically in one afternoon. I napped through part of the procedure, which involved some industrial-strength paint sprayers and compressors.

The Linux server had been down for a couple of days; I suspect the unit got hit with a power outage that outlasted the UPS it's plugged into. Why it did not restore its nominal state was a point of concern for me, especially on the heels of having its predecessor system rooted. I found out on the way back from the airport that it had not been deliberately shut off. When I finally saw the unit, it turned out that the routines I wrote to bring the pppd daemon on and off line were flawed. Once online, the system would not automatically establish (or reestablish) a ppp connection. That also means that the machine had been connected to my ISP for about 3-4 days straight, before it went offline. I wonder if they noticed.

A review of the hotel bill shows a disturbing trend. Apparently, if you stay on line for more than 30 minutes to an 800 number, the hotel starts to charge 10 cents a minute starting with minute 31 and onward. Fortunately, the longest I went at any one time was 36 minutes, and I only exceeded the 30-minute limit about three times. What particularly amused me was the $8.50 charge for a two minute phone call I made home when I got there on Tuesday afternoon. Had I used my phone card, the call would have run less than 25 cents.

What I find disturbing about all this is that, for all they charge (about $160 a night), they seem to have no problem at all nickel and diming you for every little thing. What's next, a coin-operated soap dispenser in the bathroom? Anyway, I'm home now, and the hotel bill is not really my worry. I'm just going to be a bit more careful in the future when it comes to scoping out hotel accommodations.

I did a fairly good job of staying off the computer today once I got the Linux server back online. I noodled around a bit and caught up on e-mail while Galina went to talk to a client in the mid-afternoon, but once she got home, I pretty much stuck like glue to her side. We had a light dinner and watched L.A. Confidential. It's a pretty good movie, but the book is better. Hell, if you want the truth, the book is a completely different animal that shares only some superficial similarity to the movie. In his fiction, Ellroy writes of a completely pathological world gone mad, in its own peculiar way. Everyone in the book has a secret, or a secret desire, or a secret perversion, and none of it is pretty. That's Ellroy for you. The movie is actually a lot less 'dark' than the book.

Back to work tomorrow. I suppose I should show up refreshed and full of new ideas. (Actually, I have some of those, they're just not mature or mentionable at this point.) Paraphrasing Jerry Garcia, it's clear that something has to be done; it's pathetic that I'm the one to do it.

Cheers...