Yeah, I'm back. DC was good. It's an interesting town, lots of construction going on there. Boomtown. Things to report but not quite reportable yet, so I'll talk about something else...

Rolling back up I finally got a chance to listen to Blue Language in its entirety. There are a lot of old favorites from these quirky and intelligent songwriting friends of mine, but I was surprised at how well the more "sincere" songs came through. My favorite track is JH's The Confusion and Rebirth of my Soul, which is completely devoid of irony or even cleverness.

You can buy the whole double-CD for $14, which is a steal of a deal, considering you get that heartfelt wailing, plus anthems like Vagina Town, Schmemily (A Song That's Obviously Not About Emily) and the Burn the Town Down Blues.

So I'm back in action, drinking coffee and putting one foot in front of the other. More soon.

Day got away from me. Happens to the best of us. Still, feel like I got a lot done.

The three most wonderful things about snow days in NYC: the already-beautiful topography looks even more interesting dusted with snow; the flakes absorb sound and keep a lot of cars off the road, making the city quiet; you can't see any garbage.

I'm going to stay in and relax, maybe make a run for coffee provisions, work on my new site a bit. Last night was a late one. I'd planned to just rest and relax but then I got the word that it was my friend Jay's birthday, and I hadn't seen him since last may in Washington DC. Going out with Jay generally means being in for the long haul, so I consider myself lucky to have gotten home at 5:30.

This morning Murph texted me, "Do you hate 'telling it like it is?'" in response to a post-Superbowl barroom chat we had last night. I responded, yes, because more often than not, I don't agree that that is, in fact, how it is. Almost universally. Now, of course, some things are irrefutably "like it is." The sun rises in the East. That's just how it is. Johnny Damon has signed with the Yankees. That's just how it is. I am underpaid and undervalued at my dead-end job. That's just how it is. Usually, though, folks who invoke the "like it is" clause are apt to be qualifying one of their paranoid, uninformed conjectures that usually features some degree of bigotry and, often as not, outright violence. You know who I mean.

Jeremy Slusarz is a great writing talent. Someone give him a job doing that please.

You always think that there might be some way that the hot waitress or bartender girl will really be the one -- ha ha -- and rock youtr world and/or bloe your mind. Never happens. As much a team as nipple play, as fot ronus

So it looks like there's momentum for an increasing level of organization within the drupal community. That's a good thing.

And Dries just said that if someone will work out a way for him to pick up an honorary PhD, he'll go to work for them. So there you go, vendors.

I wish JetBlue had taken over the old TWA/Idlewild terminal at JFK. They have the best service in terms of food and free wifi, but that building is an architectural classic. Too bad no one is using it.

GM is making a big push for Ethanol in ads run during the super bowl. Making this from corn is not a great long-run solution (Bush's notion of wood chips and grasses is actually much more viable), but if automakers begin making engines with the necessary modifications to run on Ethanol, that's a net winner for people in the long run. It's not appreciably more expensive to do so, and it opens up possibilities, so that a Good Thing.

Personally I lean more towards diesel hybrids, which I will be able to drive on Algae, or maybe old grease. But if GM really did start making it's engines Ethanol-ready, it would be a good move.

Well, I take the day off from work and stay home for my appointment (noon to 6pm window) and no one shows up. Call the helpdesk and there's no record of anything happening, no record of an appointment, nothing. The account is still under the wrong name. It's like dealing with a fucking robot. The people who I talk to are not empowered to actually do anything to deal with my problem; they're stuck with the same broken database that's causing the issue in the first place.

The glaring truth is that Time Warner (along with a lot of other large businesses) have automated their institutional knowledge, and have done so in a way that creats errors and which prevents their human customer service agents from correcting problems. They've done this primarily to reduce costs.

They have a monopoly so I cannot take my business elsewhere, but as a consumer I really want to punish this business for being so thoroughly incompetent. It's what the market would want me to do.

Anyone have any ideas?

The Skinny on Human-Animal Hybrids, from PZ Meyers:

[Bush]'s trusting that everyone will think he is banning monstrous crimes against nature, but what he's really doing is targeting the weak and the ill, blocking useful avenues of research that are specifically designed to help us understand human afflictions. His message isn't "We aren't going to let the mad scientists make monsters!", it's "We aren't going to let the doctors help those 'retards.'"

That's certainly a little bit of a downer, though not exactly surprising for Mr. Bush.