Off to work this morning due to the unexpected cancellation of an out-of-office assignment downtown. Maybe I’ll actually get a chance to get caught up on reporting all the work I’ve been doing. Slim chance, but a chance none-the-less.

Not sure how to characterize the fact that the cubemobile has picked up a screw in the tire and thus won’t be carrying me to the cube today? Calling-in because of excessive screwing? Taking the day due to low pressure?

Whatever – just thankful I ignored the people who thought I should have sold Nissantruck when I started working at the cube. Nice to have a spare.

Taking time out from the upgrades to point out a great post by Kip over at A Stitch in Haste on a quirk in German unemployment law.

Woohoo. Tests seem to be working. Please leave some comments (people only – die spambots die!!!!).

Dropping Moveable Type in favor of WordPress. Still working out the templates, and archive permalinks will be changing, though I see no problem leaving the old MT posts where they are. There just won’t be any comments over there. The 1000 Words section will be changing too, probably pretty drastically. Sorry if things look ugly for a while.

On the plus side, this will bring back comments, hopefully with some managable filters. I love the user interface and the import feature was incredibly easy to use.

The sad reality though is that I’m probably just doing this as an excuse to avoid doing many other things I should be working on.

Even though I’m working hard, churning out those billable hours, I’m away from the office and loving it. Less drama, less heartache, less noise from the obnoxious telephone. Good but short lunch, nice and long swim, now focusing on what has to be done for tomorrow. What has to be done, not what some people think should be done.

Pongo loves me when I smell of chlorine. It’s nice to be loved.

With apologies in advance to those of you enduring Blizzard ’05, some shots of our San Diego winter for y’all.

Still adjusting to the new camera’s feel, particularly the longer lag-time between pressing the shutter release and image capture. Missed at least a couple of action shots because I forgot to account for the extra time the autofocus requires. Going to need lots of practice. But it will be worth it.

Not certain if the insomnia ruining this last week is caused by a bad mix of meds or if the stress of the cubes is finally getting to me. I went cold turkey on substances, including caffeine, this morning, and I’m ignoring some not-too-subtle hints that I catch up on cube backlog this weekend, mostly because I just don’t care about the stinking cube at the moment. Going into the week some of the stress was no doubt being caused by that annoying delay between lab tests and lab results. It was great to hear that everything’s going well, but I still get wound up during that two-window every few months. Maybe too wound-up. I’d hate to think the solution is more meds.

So this is a Pongo weekend. Also some time to play with last weekend’s self-indulgent toy, a new camera. A Canon PowerShot S1 IS. My first foray into digital photography, aside from a junky little office camera. I love it, but the handling is certainly a big change from the Minolta XG-M film camera I’ve been using since about 1980. Lots of habits to be unlearned and relearned. For better or worse, this will probably mean more photography here.

I was going to say more, but Pongo demands my attention.

Yep, BorgHealth is back in my life. Blood was drawn a couple of weeks ago, and today the doc and I went over the results. Best I can tell, I’m still alive, and the various cells that the radiation was supposed to kill are showing no signs of life. Three cheers for dead cells! Three more cheers for very low (and stable) PSA levels!

It feels nice to eliminate one source of stress from my life for a while.

It is a feat that, as Dr. David Southwood, the space agency’s director of science programs, said, is “not likely to be repeated in the lifetime of anyone alive today – so this is a really historic event.”

The U.S. and Europe land a spacecraft on a moon of Saturn. No amount of Wows can do it justice. Simply amazing.

Dr. Southwood’s comments just kill it though. Not because he’s being a pessimist, but because he’s right.

Absent finding an al Qaida cell hidden in the rings of Saturn, our President seems intent on sticking to his challenge (made one year ago) to return the U.S. space program to where it was in 1969 by 2015. Made personal, with sufficient resources and dedication we can return to where we were when I was five years old by the time I’m in my early 50s.

Wow. It’s nice to have goals to strive for.

Or more accurately, thank god for the private sector. Maybe if we want to return to space (and get back to where we were when I was a kid), the correct model isn’t altruistic government starships conducting scientific missions of peaceful exploration but people who’s livelihoods are on the line fighting to be fastest, first or most cost-effective at delivering goods or services.

I’d be yelling a big TGIF, but it seems irrelevant. Mismanagement has resulted in a situation where days off are illusory and weekends just mean ‘no receptionist to handle the phones.’ Career options are becoming more and more of an obsession, but I think I’m probably past considering this option seriously.