expect the unexpected

I'm not much of a believer in Intelligent Design (well, there's an understatement, but we'll just move on for now), but sometimes I think that there was a reason why some things were created. Case in point: relationships. Who was the first person to say, "I want to give up my freedom in order to make another person happy?" We may never know (and please, if you even so much as thought "Adam", hit yourself over the head with a Bible until you lose consciousness).

However, what we do know is the end result. Relationships continue to exist for one reason and one reason only: people need to keep their lives interesting by sharing them with somebody who will continuously surprise them by saying/doing exactly the opposite of what you expect.

Now, a brief example: Sue and I are at the mall, waiting in line to get our portion of teriyaki chicken. I am looking at a row of empty food containers, Susan is pouting over a whole series of unfortunate events starting and ending with an unexpected torrential downpour.

Me: Do you know which container is ours?
Sue: Probably the crappy one.
Me: Well, aren't you always the optimist…
Sue: I have to be, 'cause I'm with you.

That had me laugh-crying for a couple of minutes, and even made the trip back from the mall a little bit more enjoyable... even despite the fact that we nearly drowned in my car.

when others fail...

Today, my coworker was going through her files, and found a document that was written before she started at the company (and she's been working for a while now). The paper was dated October 1996, and titled "Intranet Standards".

Ironically enough, over a decade later, we're still trying to push through something that teams of capable people have failed to implement.

Good luck to us.

dream up for sale

My precious baby is up on eBay. May the bidding gods be merciful.

why I should be on the supreme court

Everybody in New England heard this story a million times. A four-year-old ticketed for littering after throwing toys out of a moving car. The mother, driving the minivan, is blissfully unaware of what her daughter is doing. Now, everybody is all upset.

How about this hypothetical scenario: Stan is nominated to the Supreme Court (hey, better than Bush's bible thumpers), and the case happens to work its way through the justice system. What would Honorable Stan do?

Would he revoke driving privileges from all soccer moms? No, now's not the time to do this, although his Honor will sprinkle subtle hints while writing his opinion that will ultimately guide legislators to ban all slow and incompetent drivers from public highways.

So, what is the solution for the case at hand? Direct and just, the way Stan likes it. The four-year-old will serve on the highway clean-up crew for a period of no less than six months. Orange uniform mandatory, security blanket is not an option. Case closed.

konfabulous!

Once in a while, some little thingy comes across my desk/screen/path of travel, and I just say to myself, “Wow, NEAT!” Well, the Konfabulator is definitely one of those thingies. This program, now free, lets you install lightweight widgets directly onto your desktop to display all kinds of useful stuff, from traffic to weather. Niiiice.