I always knew that my Weblog would make me famous.

Back in July, Steven Garrity posted a bit about phantom cell phone vibrations. I commented because I have these pretty regularly [a couple times a week, actually].

Today, a reporter for Bloomberg emailed me to ask if I’d be willing to comment on the record. Being an old amateur cub reporter, I easily assented. As Carla Jean says, “[Y]ou and I are the type of people that make for good interviews. We talk too easily.” [She should know; she's interviewed me before.]

Hopefully I’ll get to see the finished article.

From Reuters: NASA admits that they can’t yet do an on-orbit repair of a hole the size of what brought down Columbia.

“We’ve made a lot of progress, but we’ve not been able to come up with an over-wrap in this time frame that would allow us to fix a large hole,” said [Space Shuttle program manager Bill] Parsons. “Our expectation is that we’ll fix the tank and there won’t be anything like that we’ll have to deal with.“

Read: we’ll cross our fingers and pray.

Now, I know that things like this comprise what you might have to consider an acceptable risk.

Too bad that we can’t convince the American public that we’re gods or something. Apollo XIII convinced America that we were able to overcome anything. Sometimes, too much bad shit happens too fast to save these folks.

Not that we shouldn’t try to fix it, though, if we can.

I’ve had an exceedingly wonderful day, so I decided to finish it by having a glass of Crested Ten on the rocks. This delightful bottle of whiskey came to me via Sean and Kat when they picked it up at the Jameson distillery in Dublin. Their goal: find a bottle that wasn’t outrageously expensive yet could not be procured in the States.

They succeeded. This is outstanding stuff. It’s almost as good as Red Breast to my palate, but then I didn’t find out about Red Breast until I went to Arizona.

After we–myself, the Morrills, and Stephen, mostly—had finished sampling this fine whisky back in late ‘03, I decided that I’d put in storage and hold the rest of the bottle until the Morrills’ anniversary. I picked up the bottle earlier today and realized that it was more full than I had remembered, so I decided to pour myself and a roommate a glass of it tonight as we discussed his women trouble. My glass was celebratory; his wasn’t.

“Jameson may stunt your emotional growth … but who cares?” –Geof F. Morris

Tonight, the UAH SGA was to put on a foam party tonight, starting at 2100.

The bottom fell out up here on Monte Sano at 2105.

Sucks to be them.

This is the first year I haven’t helped put on the foam party since we started doing them in 2001. I wonder if they even knew how to do it.

I’ve been thinking about post metadata for a while, and that thinking was further influenced today by Michael Heileman’s musings.

I’m going to start messing with date formats until I find one that I truly like. I’ll also tweak the layout a bit to fit some refined thoughts about semantics here.

Thanks to one of my .net peeps, I caught up with an old friend tonight: John David Hardy. JD and I went to MSMS together way back in the day, but even though he’d gone to Mississippi State, I pretty well lost touch with him.

Through a fun series of coincidences, I got his home number and called him up tonight. It was good to catch up.

Relationships are the really important things in life.

Rick admitted it, and so will I:

I watch Big Brother on CBS.

Yes, sometimes, I hate myself for doing it.

It was funny, though, to find out that some of my closest friends watch it as well. I think we spent half of lunch that day talking about the show, purely because I felt a sense of freedom in admitting that I watched it.

I think I need professional help to get over my TV-watching guilt.

Either that, or I should just post my Season Pass list and get over it.

The following was an exchange this morning between myself and my associate pastor, Chip Vann.

CHV: “Do you know much about computers?”

GFM: “A fair amount.”

CHV: “Do you know about building Web sites and such?”

GFM: “Enough to be dangerous.”

CHV: “You see, the church needs someone to run the Web site. They’ve needed it for a good year now. You’re like me: young, single, and blessed with free time … so let’s see how much more of it we can claim for the church.”

GFM: [bemused smile] “Sounds good to me.”

Wow.

Just … wow.

Caedmon’s Call’s new album, Share The Well, is going to just absolutely rock. Cliff—one of the vocalists, and de facto head of the band—got my boy Bryan some more cuts from the album the other day. The Dalit freedom song is just … haunting. There’s my boy Cliff, a short and skinny white boy from Texas, singing a Dalit freedom song in both English and the vernacular [Hindi? I'm not sure] with a group of Dalits.

I was listening to this on my lunch break, and I just started crying uncontrollably.

Powerful. I want to find a way to tell this to the band, but for once, I’m left without words to express what I’m thinking.

Alex has some cool news: his Tasks Pro was recently reviewed in Linux Magazine!

Your hard work deserves the kudos, Alex.

If someone can tell me what logical argument Jason Whitlock made in saying that rooting against the 2004 U.S. men’s Olympic basketball team makes you a racist, I’d like to know what it is.

For the record, I’m not rooting against them, but I can see why some might want to do so. I hope they overcome their early foibles and play a good team game to the finish.

Yesterday was five years at TBE.

My job description still changes once a month in some small way.

Wahoo.

News on the XM/PARR front b2blog: The RIAA and XM are upset with the maker of TimeTrax, software that seeks to timeshift XM Radio broadcasts. They’re apparently trying to see if any copyrights/user agreements are being broken.

I guess my quest for a PARR will have to wait even longer. :sigh:

For once, the spammers know what I need. I’m getting all sorts of comment spam attempts for fioricet today, and looking it up, I see that it is … headache relief.

Considering that my head’s felt like it’s been in a vise for the last two days, I find this a wee bit amusing—but not too amusing, because laughing makes my head hurt.

Blessedly, some OTC Alavert is helping some today, although I still have the distinct feeling that someone hung me upside down and poured rubber cement down my nostrils.

If I find whoever did that, you’re toast.

Amazingly, I made it through yesterday just fine on only three hours’ sleep [and that wasn't really what I'd call a good three hours]. I stayed up as long as I could last night, which was somewhere close to 1930. I woke up around 2000, got off the couch, and slumped into my bedroom.

Predictably, I was awake at 0440 with a headache. I still have it, too, but oh well.

Even as yesterday was really frustrating at times, I was still relatively relaxed. Sean and Kat did a nice job of forcing me to take a break. [I thought I'd point you at that less verbose recap as I compose my thoughts on the subject.] Thanks, y’all, for the hospitality.

I figure between that and my impending trip to Charlotte to visit the other adopted sister I should be a relatively relaxed dude. I’ll need it given what I know of 4Q2004.

I have longer entries about my trip to Arizona that are forthcoming, but for now, I must say:

I am going to find a place to get Red Breast Whisky, and I’m not above ordering it over the Internet. I thought the Crested Ten Jameson’s Irish whisky that Sean and Kat brought me back from Ireland after their honeymoon was good, but this is even better. [Read: Stephen, when I get a bottle of this, I'm bringing it over to your house for a tasting.]

I had lots of interesting stuff to drink while in the Phoenix area—including visiting Four Peaks Brewery—but this took the cake. Thanks go out to the bartender—whose name I now forget—at Rula Bula who suggested that Sean and I try it.

I told you that I needed to be here today. I think I need a LART, though.

I mean, when I send someone a schedule, and they reply back asking, “Is this correct?”—how would you respond? Me, I flipped my monitor two birds before sweetly replying.

:bangs head on desk:

I am questioning both my sanity and my body’s predilection to working on miniscule amounts of sleep.

I really don’t know why I’m awake after just three hours of sleep and thinking, “Hey, I can go in to work.”

There is some wee part of me that is looking at this disinterestedly and is clucking its tongue…

I’ve just walked into my apartment, sat down at the computer, and at least want to leave an “I made it back alive” entry before I go into my room and fall sound asleep. It’s hard to believe that, six-and-a-half hours ago, I was in Phoenix; three hours ago, when I landed in Nashville, I knew that I was back in a land of humidity from the moment I stepped off of the plane and onto the jetway.

“I’m so tired I can’t think” — Nirvana, “Pennyroyal Tea”, In Utero

Unfortunately, that humidity caused all sorts of lovely fog on the way home. It started around Columbia, but when I reached there, I felt fine. It got worse the closer I got to the state line—Columbia is Exit 46 on I-65, for non-locals’ reference—and so I chose to stay on I-65 than go down the backroads cut through Ardmore—the city that lives in both TN and AL—and cut 20 minutes off of my time. I figured that if the interstate was extremely foggy, it’d be even worse out in the country.

Little was I to know that it’d be really, really bad between the state line and the turnoff for I-565, the interstate spur that goes from I-65 to Huntsville. There was one point where I was going 50 mph, running my low beams, and was just groping for the road. At that point, the fatigue of putting up with the fog—plus the long plane ride that didn’t see me get too much sleep—was starting to take its toll. It was then that I broke out my secret stay-awake weapon: my Nirvana greatest hits CD.

I’m here and I’m fine, and the longer I sit here, the more awake I’m going to get. I’m going to try to go in at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow because I have a gut feeling that I’m going to need to be there. At least I slept until almost noon CDT today … make that yesterday.

Oi.

I figured that people would start to freak out if I didn’t post anywhere soon, so …

I left work around noon on Thursday to drive up to Nashvegas. I’d planned to meet up with Jeremy Casella and talk about the things we have going on in our lives and such. That conversation was so interesting for implications that it has for projects we’re both wanting to pull off—eerily similar, I tell you!—and it was just plain good times.

Before I met up with Jeremy, I drove by the Osengas’ house to see if they were home. I was earlier than I’d told Jeremy I’d be, so I thought I’d stop by and pay my respects to Poopsenga. Turns out that they weren’t home.

After I left JJ’s Market—I’ll be going back there :)—-I drove out to the airport. Traffic was kinda fugly, but I had plenty of time. I got checked in through security and had just picked up my dinner at one of the concourse restaurants when I hear someone say: “Geof Morris.” I turn around and … it’s Andy O. The reason I hadn’t seen the Osengas at home was because they, too, were scrambling to get out of town. What a freaky strange occurrence.

Well, not really; before I’d ducked into the restaurant concourse, I’d had my head on a swivel just in case I saw anyone that I knew. Trey can’t have all the fun for seeing musicians in Nashville! I had a good time shooting the breeze with Andy and Alison. It’s good to know that Share the Well is now finally in the can [as of Tuesday]. Maybe now Cliff will slip us the entire thing. [hint!]

I broke out my CD player to listen to some tunes for the 90-minute wait I had at my gate, but I had no juice. I broke out the battery charger and charged up four AA’s. During the charging time, we were notified that our inbound plane was delayed. I had more charging time, which was good. I sent Sean a text message to let him know about the delay, and then I called once we finally got on the plane–a half-hour late.

As I expected, I crashed pretty darn hard on the plane. I remember seeing the stewardess asking the row in front of me what they wanted to drink, and then the next thing I remember is about two hours later. I’d picked Blues Traveler’s four to rock out to while I slept because I’ve listened to that album so much that I don’t even really think about anything when I listen to it anymore.

Our half-full flight to PHX was a little bumpy, but otherwise it was pretty nice. Predictably, I got put at the farthest gate from where Sean and Kat were waiting. We hugged and then proceeded to try to get lost in PHX. [They always come in on Delta, so Concourse C is unusual to them.] Kat then kept wanting to take wrong turns on the way out here to Maricopa.

As you’ve seen from the photos, they really do have a nice little house here in Maricopa. What’s amusing is that they’re out on the southern fringe of Phoenix; Kat tells me that they’re technically in the metro Tuscon area, but I have a hard time believing that, having just looked at a map. I do know that it was a healthy drive down from the airport. No wonder they car pool.

Friday deserves its own entry …

“I am out of the office from noon on Thursday, August 19th through COB Friday the 20th. If you need me, please call my cell phone: (256) ###-####.”

However, if you’re calling from (256) 726-####, fat chance that I’m going to take your call, unless it’s 5011. [I know where my bread is buttered, folks.]

Time to make sure that I’ve got everything I need out of my office for the weekend—mainly being the digicam I’m not supposed to have in here but do, since I have work purposes for it—and I’m going to get the flock out of here.

Photos, videos, and goofy-ass postings to follow … FROM ARID-freakin’-ZONER!

If you need some great late night, windows down, driving music, let me heartily recommend Patty Griffin’s Impossible Dream. Start on track 9, “Florida”, and throw it on random. Lather, rinse, repeat.

By the way, Impossible Dream is on sale at Paste Music for $10.99.

[I'm taking my CDs to Phoenix, and this will be the first thing I beg Kat to throw in the CD player as we go from PHX to Casa de Morrill.]

Another day, another DLLH plugin: PHPizer. I need this for GFMorris.org somethin’ fierce.

[Hat tip to to Mark Ghosh's Weblog Tools Collection.]

Still wound up!!! I’m completely rudderless this morning, though. I’ve done the one thing I absolutely needed to do—pay the power bill—before I left town. Something else is stuck in my mind as something I really need to do, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what it is! Grrr.

Right now, I feel as if someone looking at me would see a nervous hamster eyeing a room full of hamster wheels, unable to choose the best one merely by visual inspection. Of course, I don’t exactly look like a hamster.

At this rate, I’m pretty darn likely to crash absolutely dead to the world on the plane. When I do that, I have a tendency to snore like there’s no tomorrow. Maybe I should have the stewardess hand out hearing protection to everyone in coach right as we board.

I think I’ll try and catnap while I’m waiting for the last load of laundry to dry. The fitful four hours of sleep I had probably aren’t enough.

Man. I’m twelve hours from leaving for Nashville, probably seven hours from leaving for work in the morning, and less than 24 from actually arriving in Phoenix.

I just started the last bit of laundry that I have to do before I leave, and …

… I don’t think I could go to sleep in the next half-hour if I tried my dead-level best. I’m about as amped up as I was back in my hockey days; I feel like I should be driving through the night to get to Phoenix or something.

I don’t really, as a rule, take vacations; due to a glitch at work, I haven’t been able to for some time, as I went 60 hours in the hole for vacation by unknown means sometime between the end of the 02-03 hockey season—when I was pretty much at zero vacation time, having burned what little I had left after a taking a week to go on a mission trip in our trips around the country following Charger Hockey—and the end of 2003. I can’t get that glitch repaired, either, because we don’t have paper records at all.

I’ve resisted saying anything about it here for a long time because, well, I wouldn’t know what to do on a vacation anyway. I’ve already talked about taking some work with me. I’ve even thought about tying into Friday morning’s 0900 telecon [which would be 0700 Phoenix time], and the more I think about it, the more likely I am to do it. [Must stop thinking about that NOW.]

But right now … I need a vacation. I could just use a good week at home to do next-to-nothing, but three days with beloved friends who split town three months ago will suffice for now, and over Labor Day, I’ll go bother the other adopted sister and her boyfriend.

Good times.

[I'm still scheduling myself for a nervous breakdown next July. I'll be saving up the vacation time, let me tell you.]