I’ve got this wanderlust again.

Thing is, it involves completely leaving Huntsville.

I won’t, for a variety of reasons … at least not right away.

But talking to Chris just reaffirms that thought that’s been in my mind since offhandedly voicing it to Dad this weekend: “Colorado wouldn’t be bad. I could see myself living there.”

The next move I make is totally and utterly of my own volition. All the other ones, I was just along for the ride. Now that is scary.

In it, the AOL logo was running across the field, appearing to “draw” the ubiquitous yellow “first down line” onto the field as he ran across the football field. When he finished, he made an advertisement for AOL’s new version.

Hold me, Jesus.

… and through the woods.

Literally.

I’ll cross the Tennesssee River and then drive through the woods of NW Alabama to get to my grandmother’s house.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

I’m a big guy. However, all my life [even back in my skinny days], I’ve always been a very hot-natured individual. Earlier this week when it was 28F outside, I was wearing sandals. I really just love the cold.

That said, the heat is blasting into my office. Most folks estimate that it’s about 78F in here.

The Director of Manufacturing simply walked by my office door today, felt the heat, stopped, stuck her head in, and said, “Goodness, how do you stand this?” I replied that I didn’t take it very well, and she told me to complain to Facilities. It seems so petty to complain, but … dang. Conversely, in the DM’s office, it’s around 68F. As I told her, “We could switch offices!” She just laughed.

Ahhh, the life of an office drone.

If you want to have a deeper understanding of baseball statistics but want to start in a familiar format&emdash;something like a baseball card&emdash;check out Baseball Prospectus’s Player Cards.

Click on the column headings to understand the statistics.

I adore BP.

Here’s a probably not exhaustive list of color-selection tools to help you choose complementary colors if, like me, you suck at that.

[via dive into mark's b-links]

There’s a new version of Mulberry out.

I must acquire v3.1 when I get home.

Lawrence Lessig advocates municipalities owning their own networks.

I concur, and here’s why.

Network connectivity is rapidly becoming as important as electricity and phone. While there is a free-market nature in some regards to those industries, many locations still have city-owned services for power generation. Personally, I think it’s great that the city of Huntsville owns Huntsville Utilities. To quote Huntsville Utilities’s about page:

As a “Public Utility” we answer only to the people we serve. Decisions are not influenced by the effects on our stock prices, but are based on what is best for our customers. We do not pay dividends to stockholders, instead we provide lower prices to our customers. Every person associated with Huntsville Utilities is a local resident, including our Board Members. Decisions are not made by some distant corporate board but are made here with only the best interest of your local community at heart. Our employees are your neighbors, your Sunday School teachers, your little league coaches, your community supporters and civic organization’s participants. Our employees have formed a Volunteer Council to select and organize assistance to worthy causes. As a good corporate neighbor Huntsville Utilities actively participates in Gatekeepers, Project Share, Buddy Call, United Way, March of Dimes and Adopt-a-School. In 1996 Huntsville Utilities received a National Community Service Award.

Huntsville is actually the kind of city that could afford to roll something like this out. We’re geeky enough that it could work, and a city-run network would be absolutely awesome. Sure, there would certainly be some opposition to the idea, especially from free marketeers [in this city, namely Comcast, Knology, Mediacom, HiWAAY, and BellSouth] that already provide networking services to consumers and businesses in the area, but in the long run, it would be a net positive&emdash;especially for local businesses that then wanted to turn around and tap their internal networks onto the trunk.

I’d be happy to spend my tax dollars on that.

You know what would be cool for the home?

Take a soda vending machine and stock it with canned beer.

When your friends come over, you have a ready supply of beer that they have to pay for.

Yeah, that would own.

What’s the equation of motivation to go to work as a holiday approaches? I had this discussion with a couple folks yesterday.

Purely theoretical:

m = ct / hf

where:

m=motivation
c= constant desire not to be at work [employee-dependent, empirically evaluated]
t= number of days until the holiday begins
h= number of hours worked in a week
f= magnitude of importance of the holiday to the employee’s family

It may not be linear.

All I know is that I’ve got little motivation to go in today.

I have this customer.

They don’t seem to understand that, without contractual approval of the engineering changes, our subcontractor can’t start cutting metal to make changes.

Our subcontractor shuts down for two weeks at Christmas.

Our customer wants the valves by mid-December.

The modification process, prior to testing, takes about two weeks.

Are my boss and I the only ones that can do the math?

I’m walking from my truck to the building. One of my cow-orkers is outside, smoking a cigarette.

G: “Morning, Ken.”

K: “Morning, Geof.” (pause while he realizes that I’m in short sleeves) “Cold enough for you?”

G: “Oh yeah, man. I love the cold weather.”

K: “Apparently so.”

I mean, heck, it’s only 28F outside. The way people act, you’d think that was cold or something.

I actually had frost on his windshield this morning … what in the world?

Mom and Dad:

You wanted some ideas for Christmas? Here’s my Amazon Wishlist. I’ve been wanting XM for those trips back and forth to your house where there’s no radio to speak of.

I need the main unit before the accessories really work, of course.

Just throwing an idea out there. [And yes, there's a $1000 digital camera on there, and no, I don't expect it.]

There’s also plenty of “little stuff” ideas, too.

Just whatever.

[And if you're not my parents, and you're stupid enough to buy me something, that's cool, too.]

I am, clearly, bored out of my mind.

I’m sitting here, sorting old IJSM entries and categorizing them.

I need help.

Professional, mental, help.

Well, this is not an IJSM site announcement, but I did have a hand …

Todd is back online.

Hide the women and children!

NBC’s Web site is currently sporting a time zone selector.

Being a bum 1) sans cable 2) sans TiVo who 3) doesn’t like TV Guide, I visit the sites of the Big Four to check their lineup. [You'd think I'd have it memorized, with just four channels, but hey ... there's a finite amount of stuff I want to store to long-term memory.] I think that little, tiny features like this&emdash;stuff that’s easy to implement&emdash;are worth pursuing for a site.

It’d be even better, though, if you could set it with a cookie …

So a Mass. court says, “Let Gays Marry”.

Doesn’t bother me any.

As I got to thinking about it more [registration required*] and more yesterday, I really began to ask myself:

Why must the state sanction marriage at all?

Yes, removing marriage-sanctioning from the state would be fraught with peril, but … ideally, why not? No one has given me an argument for state-sanctions of marriage being positive.

My boss is on his second marriage, and as he said this morning, “I told my wife that I wasn’t going to love her any more or any less if we got married.” Ed sees marriage as a contract … because he sees it through the eyes of the law, having been absolutely hosed in the past re: divorce.

I see every reason in the world for a church to sanction marriage. In Christianity, marriage is sacred. [In some denominations, it's a sacrament, on par with the eucharist, baptism, etc.] But I see no absolute need for the state to sanction marriage. As far as I’m concerned, the state should deal with each of its citizens on an individual basis, and we’ve long proven what it takes to be a citizen in this country.

Remove state sanctioning of marriage, and then this issue is null and void.

[*] That’s a link to a post on The Rumor Forum, a/k/a the community message board for [caedmonscall.net] and [derekwebb.net]. That’s on one of the forums that we don’t allow guests to read.

I sat down at our 9:00 meeting and pronounced: “The morning line on tornado warnings for Madison County’s at 2.5. I’m taking the over.”

I should have taken the under … only one for the day.

For now, it’s quiet.

But all of us here in the Tennessee Valley will remember mid-November and the tornadoes that it brings.

Last Saturday was 15 years from the Airport Road tornado. Huntsville remembers.

Let’s see if I can bork this…

IJSM.org has a high PageRank. I’ve not figured out why; it’s not as if there are a ton of people linking to me. I think it has a lot to do with my ultra-weird first name [Geof] and my propensity for posting in lots of places. Those places end up with links back here [and also to gfmorris.com]. But IJSM has been around much longer, and as such, has a sick Page Rank.

The fun side effect of that is what I can do to page search results. tnarg.net, owned by a childhood friend of mine, is listed over in yon sidebar as “Grant Stevens”, because that’s his name. [Don't wear it out.] But if you look on his site, his last name is never mentioned. He IM’d me just now, wondering how Google knew who he was. I took all the blame.

Now, how can I turn this into a cottage industry and retire from my aerospace engineering job?

Hi.

This is me, checking in after shuttering myself for four days.

I just generally decided to be gone, so I was.

Of course, all that ever begets is a backup of things I haven’t yet done, but hey … if I ever finished all my projects, what then?

Todd’s Web site rollout is at the top of the list, though.

If you’ve emailed me and need a reply, gimme a day or so. You’ll get one.

I’m a frequent visitor to my own site, and as such, I only ever have to type “ij” in the address bar to pull it up.

I noticed this morning that, if I don’t have my fingers on the right home-row keys [laterally], doing that shortcut results in “uh” or “ok”.

“Uhhhhhhh, okay?” is probably a common response when reading this site.

… is good.

… because your knees ache like you’ve just run a marathon is not so good.

I have no real reason as to why, but they do.

All I know is that I’ve been awake for a good hour now.

Le sigh.

My friend Scott sent me a link to a wonderful Flash cartoon about the end of the world. There’s lots of little details in it. Tres wonderful.

I was driving home from work today&emdash;actually, I was commuting between the Chinese takeout place and the apartment&emdash;when I heard NPR’s All Things Considered talking up Stew and The Negro Problem’s funktastic “kitchen sink pop approach” to music. It was just off-beat and quirky enough to catch my ear, so I went to NPR’s site when I got home and now have the information I need:

http://stewsongs.com/

I think Stew is going to see a little of my green come Thursday.