Trying out the sea legs...

Today was the first time since getting sick that a client has called with work. The key, I think, is not going overboard and accepting too much work at this point, especially as things need to be taken care of before traveling down to Houston in the near future.

On the other hand, there are those pesky bill collectors...

However, paraphrasing Johnny Horton's classic lyrics, "there aren't nigh as many as there was a while ago."

I just ordered the payoff of the difference between what we owed to Discover and Citi cards and what we really owed them (which is the interest on the principal owed between when they told me what that number was and when they received that amount), and confirmed that CarMax has indeed sent us the title to the Ford after having received our payoff check one day early.

One last payment must be scheduled for the new BillPay account. Once it goes through, I'll feel confident deleting it and its brothers from the old bank's BillPay roster.

Somebody pinch me.

Cheers...

Say again, please... over!

From The Ann Arbor News:

Instead of increasing rights and benefits for same-sex couples, the state Legislature is considering a proposed constitutional amendment that would designate marriage as only being between a man and a woman if approved by voters.

I had to read this twice, not that I don't believe the world isn't filled with simpletons who wish the State to act as the Defender of The(ir Perceived) Faith, but to make sure voter approval was not required by the proposed amendment for a particular man and woman to get hitched. That would be news.

Cheers...

The stars realign...

Plans for overseas work suddenly took a two-month shift to the right, as they say, which leaves me utterly free to go to Houston with a completely clear mind (some critics might even say: a completely empty mind, but I refuse to base myself to their scurrilous level, and I digress...)

Seriously, a couple of e-mails clarified that situation right up, and I must say I would prefer to be in Moscow (and beyond) in May than in March. However, there is quite a spell of time between now and then, and work to be done.

I got overwhelmed in the work department today. Four new files followed quickly by two small rush jobs to stick in front of the first four. I can't say that I've really felt any strain today, but I don't feel as if I've put in a full day's work, either, and what's more, I don't feel like working tonight.

(My, I can snivel with the best of 'em, no?)

* * *I put my second Wiki formally online today, by informing one of my clients of the availability of an area reserved for them at the site. The strength of WakkaWiki (and the unfortunately named Cyrillic branch that I'm running: WackoWiki) is the ability to control write and read access of specific pages to certain users. Everything is accessed via a set of PHP scripts that deal with a MySQL database, so unlike many other Wiki implementations, pages in the site don't have normal URLs. Instead, a PHP script is called with the appropriate arguments.

* * *AMC redeemed my DirecTV subscription today. Around one-ish, they broadcast one of my all-time favorite movies, My Favorite Year. Then in the late afternoon, they compounded their good deed by showing Three Days of the Condor. In neither case, of course, was I able to let the vagaries of everyday life go long enough to watch the whole of either movie. Then again, I notice a lot of that going on nowadays: televised entertainment just doesn't hold my attention much.

Commercials do, kind of. Has anyone else been mesmerized by the earnest bumpkin shilling something called CortiSlim (which, he says, isn't for "casual" dieters trying to lose a mere 10-15 pounds). He goes on to sing the praises of his colleague, who apparently developed the formula and who must be even more inept in front of the camera (or whose pride is a limiting factor), by citing his buddy's published research in such bastions of rigorous scientific thought as Ladies Home Journal, Psychology Today, and Redbook. Criminy, I figure the only way they might be able to say they publish peer-reviewed stuff is if they run it by Sarah Ferguson first.

I tell you, Crichton was right: you start with something innocuous like UFOs, and the next thing you know, they're hawking nuclear winter, global warming, and stuff like CortiSlim on every available street corner, all under the name of science.

* * *Brahms' 4th symphony is marvelous. I'm surprised it took me this long to discover it.

Cheers...