remember the dreaded tps reports from the classic film, office space? well, i'm currently engaged in the same sort of mind-numbing drivel that would be better performed by trained monkeys. unlike tps reports, the report i have to fill out is only due each month, yet to brutally paraphrase scrooge mcduck, it's a poor excuse to pick a man's pocket every fifth of the month! these reports consist of a few numbers per server: the amount of available memory, how full the hard drives are, etc. etc. taken as a whole, the report is completely indecipherable, because unless there's a red flag (cpu processor average over 80%) there's no way to know if things are getting better or worse. worst of all, each number has to be manually divined from several different sources, resulting in a process that takes a few hours yet yields very little. i don't even think anyone reads the damn thing! certainly i've never heard of any person making a recommendation based upon the evidence found in the monthly server reports...hearsay is a bigger impetus down here, as in "i heard that people over at XYZ agency have this, so we should too!"

yes, it was a hot fourth of july here in uncle's sam's beach house. (not to be confused with the home of uncle sam, otherwise known as troy. i'm sure after a morning of surfing i'll have plenty to echo, but for now, it can all be summed up by this piece about the fifth of july. read it!

the party animals website is now up and running...allowing us to visit all the party animals in the district. i love the party animals, but you've got to wonder why it was easier to spread thousands of pounds of easily destroyable art through the streets than to get voting representation.

damn! couldn't have said this better myself. any consequences eh?

remember those heady days of meaningless news? well, they're back, if this article is the canary in the coal mine. maybe its the heat here in dc that's simply causing useful stories to melt...on the other hand, with thoughtful editorials like this, perhaps a rogue features editor merely lobbied the online folks to elevate the fish story. in other middle of the road news...my vbone idea received a serious boost in potential when motorola announced a new series of products called canopy enabling wirless access at 10mbs over a five mile range. here's the scoop. now i just need 30 grand and i'm in business!

first of all, let me once again strike out against the bizarre server maintenance that my hosting provider continues to perform. this time, they enabled the mindless frontpage server extensions, which conveniently broke php and the website along with it. grr. if it wasn't so cheap, i'd actually consider moving...

second, i did have the unusual experience of seeing a high-speed chase involving a minivan last night on the streets of the district. as i was walking along, a minivan passed me going about sixty miles an hour (on a residential steet), slammed on the brakes and pulled a hard right onto a one-way street, tires squealing the whole way. meanwhile, sirens started to blare and soon two police cars rolled by...i tried to point them towards the one-way street but they were going too fast to notice. next, a cop on a bicycle came by and i asked if he was looking for a minivan: he said he was. i told him which direction it had gone and he took off down the one-way street...a few seconds later multiple police cars came flying back down the street towards where the van had gone. the bike cop must have radioed them in. odd to see so many vehicles after a minivan.

after a busy weekend of doing nothing (including watching the very boring world cup finale), i returned to work to find the usual american shenanigans taking place. it seems like every day there's a new way we figure we can stick it to those dreaded europeans. at the same time, our own politicians are busy killing legislation they sponsor in an obvious manner. what i don't understand is why we can't simply tell things like they are: in the latter example, why not say, 'yeah, i'm holding up the legislation because d'amato ticked me off!' instead of couching it in obscure rules? it's much like the whole watchdog debate...even daily show host jon stewart riffed that (much like TPm did here) it would be nice if there was some sort of government agency designed to ensure corporate accountability, a commission of some sort relating to securities and exchange. and yet, even as the sec's toothless industry-loving head declares that only congress can do something to fix the markets, other conservatives are lining up to blame president clinton for the whole mess. now, i would agree that perhaps, the sec should have done a better job earlier...except for the now belabored point that the former head was actually doing his job while in office, fighting against the industries he was regulating. the current head has actually tried to roll back several regulations, and if not for enron et al. might have let even more craziness take place. somehow, though, i fail to see the connection between monica lewinsky and tight accounting procedures. the same folks who blame clinton's moral excesses for enron and worldcom are also the ones who offer up illogical arguments in an attempt to rewrite history to fit their preconceived notions. at some point, someone has to say: this doesn't make any sense. just like chewey on endor, the pledge was modified to please religious conservatives, and the current sec was modifed to please big business. you must acquit!