With the war ongoing, I've cut back on the blog. One comment for today though. Earlier, some journalists reported that our president wasn't watching the war coverage. Maybe I'm wrong here, but if I were president I'd have Tenet on my right side and Rice on my left and the Don on the videophone. 24-7. I'd want to know the collateral damage each hour, how many innocent Iraqis had been killed, the total number of our men and women injured, etc. The other night when CNN announced at 10:00pm that the "president and the first lady are retiring" I thought to myself, "why would he go to bed early?" This is a war. People are dying. Yet he can't even be bothered to pay attention? Of course, this is the same guy who went AWOL from National Guard duty. Maybe 43 just really dislikes combat and has a weird pyschological transference thing going on, where he can only stand to send people into battle, but never see the battle itself. Weird.

So we're at war. For a live stream of quality news, check out BBC's live feed in realaudio format. If CNN had one I'd go them, but the BBC is a good second option. ABC News has one but it costs money. No dice.

I ordered a switch for work on Monday and received it today! Score! 24 ports of 10/100 plus 2 additional gig ports all for the low price of $220, including shipping. It's difficult to imagine a better deal, anywhere. Now all I'm waiting for are some monitors and computers. But things are progressing.

My indoor soccer team lost last night. More annoying still was that my mild knee injury was trumped by Brad who had to be carried off the field after he injured his knee. So now, here I am, still limping around the office three weeks after my first game, but devoid of any sympathy points. All I need to do is to start smelling like garlic and people could mistake me for the devil.

I just read this. A great take on the situation, along the lines of something I mentioned last night: how can we be fighting the evils of terrorism when it's so appalling easy to shut down our city? From the piece:

I hate to be giving advice to Saddam Hussein at this moment, but clearly, the most effective path for any enemy of America is to put on a helmet that makes him look like Franz Liebkind, the unreconstructed Nazi in Mel Brooks' "The Producers," get himself a John Deere tractor and drive it into a shallow decorative pond. That'll shut down any American city but good.

Well put. What if this guy was parked outside the White House? Or the Capitol? What if there were four guys, around multiple buildings? What would our response be? Shut down all the roads? What if there were five guys, with one below my building here at Metro Center? Would we shut down the entire transit system?

Someone should've thought of this. The startling news last week that Washington couldn't evacuate, regardless of the threat, was bad enough. We were told to just sit and wait. (Sound advice, notwithstanding: panic is far worse than simply staying put.) Now, though, we can't even go about our daily lives because of this nut. You really have the read the entire article...

Readers may notice that the main page symbol is now different: it's the Hebrew symbol "Alef". I'm still trying to figure out whether I spell it with an "f" or "ph". Why the change? Well, I've always liked the concept of infinity and this symbol reflects that. Plus, it looks cooler than the generic black star. The logo contest be damned!

Odd.

I just sneezed, and for a good thirty seconds afterward saw sparkles out of my right eye. I've always been intrigued by floaters, the tiny bits of gunk floating around the back of your eye that you can see when you stare at a uniform white surface, like a cloudy sky. These things were like floaters but very small, turning on and off at random, but with very bright colors. Although it was cool to see them, I'm glad they went away. My sense of sight is one of the few things I really couldn't stand to lose. There are just too many interesting things to see and appreciate. Sound and smell don't come close, although I'm glad I have all my senses.

For the past several days, I've noticed that traffic in DC around the time I walk to and from work is ridiculous. The new convention center has closed down parts of New York/Mass. Ave. near Mt. Vernon square, which contributes to it. But throw in a crazy tractor driver who managed to shut down several streets and today was absolute madness. Things were backed up up to Rhode Island and R St. which says a great deal.

In other news, I'll take down the shamrock shortly. It was fun while it lasted, though!

No, it's not a celebration of the earth: it's St. Patrick's Day! That glorious day where we're all Irish, almost everyone wears green and even more people fall off the wagon for good. Obviously, the site looks a mite different, as it should. Unlike on v-day, the site will hopefully revert quicker, this being a weekday. Last time I got lazy and left it up the entire weekend.

Some choice soul has been playing the bagpipes for hours outside my office, which raises the questino: aren't bagpipes Scottish? Perhaps I'm mistaken on this...

Forget all that boring other stuff: the big news this week is that at my beloved workplace I received my frickin' huge monitor and set it up. It's gigantic! Colossal! Incredible! Words don't fail me, but as soon as we get our new computers in, I'll be able to punch up the resolution to a cool 1920x1440 at 75Hz. Now I just need to sneak in a copy of good ole' quake III and start using the bfg in the dredwerkz, like days of yore.