I'm back in business. Still going through standard setup procedures, but overall everything checks out. More later...

What is up with all these wacky kids in the White House press briefings? Here's today's twelve year old:

Maybe it's some sort of strange exchange program. Or the fountain of eternal youth is located in the West Wing.

My computer just arrived. I'm so excited I can barely wait three hours to go home and set it up. Yay! No more posting until tonight...

Helena, Michael Savage is a bad, bad man, who is actually named Michael Weiner.

Brad, I'm getting a 64 bit beast. I'll fill you in on the details when it (hopefully) arrives today. I can't wait to finally be able to get online from home for the first time in two weeks.

A quick and dirty credibility gap from my walk to work this morning. I passed by the post and saw that our idiot president had waffled on land-mines. Why a credibility gap, you ask? And isn't Bush's stance pragmatic? Like every other wacky position he's taken, of course not! Put simply, we don't need land mines anymore for anti-personnel work. Rig up a few dozen pods, point them at a field, and you've got instant protection. The technology exists now and if the Australians have it then we should be moving in that direction as well. Mines are an obsolete technology...that we unwittingly spread around the world. We have an obligation to help clean up our mess, instead of punting...

On a positive note, it was nice to come in this morning and find cool posts from both Brad and Helena, with a little west coast and northeastern action to spread around.

Watch the bad-ass trailer right here. It's in Windows Media format.

Or hit the site itself. Ignore the fashion spread shoot look. The movie looks like it will rock, far more so than anything save Troy (still on top for biggest baddest movie) this season.

This girl. She's from up north.

Connected thourgh my friend down under and this kid in the hall. Wacky, eh?

I'm still hoping I can snag my new computer tomorrow. My monitor showed up yesterday but they didn't leave it there...so I have to jet out early to beat it home. Hence the light posting. If Brad or Helena want to weigh in...please do.

I missed yesterday...and the events of this morning killed me for most of the day. But I'd like to point readers to this White House page which is used to ask questions on a regular basis of White House administration people. So who's the latest guy to answer questions? Perhaps someone from the OMB, or Treasury, or the USDA? Nope, it's Michael Waltrip, a NASCAR driver.

The reason this contributed to the credibility gap is that it is so blatantly political. Instead of concentrating on real questions we're forced to see idiotic ones like the very first question asked:

I'm glad to know Michael's palms sweat when playing EA Sport NASCAR Thunder. What the hell this has to do with the White House is beyond me...oh, wait. It's politics, pure and simple. That's where the credibility is called into question, because all the sleight-of-hand won't distract Americans from the real problems facing us. Like jobs.

I've been here before. Total time working on problem was a couple hours. Total outage time was four hours. The processor burned up. Thank god I planned for this...but now we're running on one processor so it absolutely, cannot, happen again. At least until I buy another processor.

A very bad morning, overall.

I could go into the incredibly boring minutiae of why my computer is still sitting in California. But between the guys who are putting it together (yay!) and me, I'm sure we'll solve the thorny problem that just came up.

Instead, let me point you to this delicious letter in .pdf format that explains Congressman's Dingell's reaction to the news that the administration is trying to classify fast-food jobs as manufacturing jobs in a clear effort to escape blame for the dying industrial sector. Here's the great letter:

It's no joke. He's even put it on his own website. Three cheers for Congressman Dingell!

You know what's also fun? Burning several hours of one's weekend cleaning up your yard outside, only to finish, only to find a cheetos wrapper on your steps when you step back out again half an hour later. Sometimes I wonder why I even try to battle the kipple.

Did I mention lately that I love my job?

I do. And thanks to Nicole, I got hooked up with some serious governor love this weekend, resulting in tons of fun.

Friday evening I helped welcome Gwyn back to the human race (although I suspect she'll be leaving again soon) and also met two of my oldest friends from my hometown. In between I met some chafee people who seemed nice, including an attractive woman with an odd boyfriend who kept joking he was "her brother", eliciting an icy look of death to rival Helena's. (Can anyone say salt rivers?) I also managed to tick off a pair of Louisiana & North Carolinian Republicans, who seemed to be somewhat confused about their civil war history. For the record, people from Texas, Florida and Louisiana do not count as southerners. South Carolinians clearly do, as do Virginians, Georgians, 'bamas, folk from Mississippi and Tennessee. North Carolina counts as much as Kentucky, both of which count less than Maryland. (Still south of the Mason-Dixon line, though!)

Since Virginia originally chose to stay with the Union, and then voted (by a few votes) to secede only after a GOP President chose to draft Virginians to go to South Carolina, I'm comfortable saying two things:

1. Every vote matters. Two-three votes could've turned a huge war with catastrophic losses (as many people died in the civil war than in every other war America has ever fought in combined...around 620-650 thousand men died) into a regional six month contest with little hope for the South. Virginia provided the Confederacy's capital, as well as most of its experienced generals, and a major food supply source (the Shenandoah Valley). Without these three advantages, the South would've been in a desperate situation from the very beginning of the war.
2. The South's loss ended the debate between federal and state power for several years. After reconstruction, the "state's rights" argument was used to codify racism, and only quite recently has it been used to support anti-progressive taxation.

In short, as I claimed then, all good Southerners are Democrats. The original reason was racist, but now, economic populism combined with individual freedom all point to the South being predisposed towards Democratic ideals. Besides, as the Virginia House just showed, we're somewhat anti-authoritarian. This is exactly what got us into trouble with the second vote to secede, but the contrarian streak remains alive even today. New Hampshire may have "live free or die" but we've got a goddess with attitude who's just defeated a tyrant and has her foot on him.

So anyway, these pseudo-southern GOopers get annoyed at me. Good riddance. I ended up having a blast anyway.

Saturday Nicole hooked me up with a party invite (mardi-gras themed) and a free food/drink opportunity courtesy the governors again. I met some cool people there (some of whom I'd met before...) and saved a huge bundle of cash. So far, my weekend was unbelievably fun, yet my wallet was still intact. Fast forward to Sunday, when I scored an invite (again...Nicole rocks!) to Abe Pollin's box suite at the MCI Center to watch the Wizards play the Bucks. The Wizards got killed, but the free food and drink and great seats were to die for. I was amazed...I really will never view another game at MCI the same way. It was disgusting lavish, including a late game dessert spred that seemed almost Roman in its level of decadence.

And tonight I get to do it all over again, at a DGA event. I'm lovin' it! Nicole rocks! My job rocks! I rock!

Monday's credibility gap: an administration failure, not a personal 43 error, but still...Rod Paige, the Secretary of Education, just called the NEA a "terrorist organization"...damn, that's not a smart move. Guess after the whole "miracle in Houston" evaporated they don't have much to run on anymore.

You're either with the administration, or against them. Which means you're a terrorist. Riiiight.

The lack of a computer at home is killing me. And the new one still hasn't arrived. And work is busy. More later this afternoon about my super-cheap, super-fun weekend.