Blog Master G

Yesterday was an exciting and exhausting day for everyone. Bobby has officially been renamed Happy Dingo McGee and he’s quickly settling in and getting used to living here. Stella has had her bitchy moments, of course, but she’s getting better. She’s still guarding all her stuff, but hopefully that will fade with time.

Today is a big day for me, Jen, and Stella Brie. We all just returned from the Marin Humane Society where we spent some time with Stella’s future brother, Split. He’s a spunky little border collie mix whose name will be changed to Bobby McGee. He and Stella got along excellently and had a great time running around. Passing the Stella test is no easy task. All three of us adore Bobby. He’ll be coming home with us later this afternoon, after Jen and I get back from her coworker Jane’s party in Montclair.

I first saw Bobby yesterday afternoon after Karen and I had lunch together and visited the Humane Society. I saw Bobby and immediately knew that he was the two-dog we’ve been searching for for so long. Two people had him on hold before I added my name when I returned after work yesterday (which I’m glad I did), but as of about 10 this morning we were first on the list (got a call from the Humane Society).

Welcome to the family, Bobby McGee!

The Iraqevite is hilarious! So is this sponsored war image.

Vassar pulls in right around its usual spot (number 15 this year) in the annual U.S. News & World Report college rankings (in the liberal arts category, of course). And, in a “duh” move, the IRS is now spending more time investigating people with lots of money rather than people without a lot of money.

Grrr….stupid Blogger is having problems right now. Sometimes all my archives (or, in this case, June, July, and August) will simply disappear from my archive list. I guess there’s something going on with technology today. I also typed this long-winded suggestion to Dreamhost about offering an interim hosting plan that would be about 15 bucks per month and offer more disk space. I made the mistake of typing it directly in a Web form and not pasting it somewhere else, too. Of course, when I sent to submit it, their database was having problems so it looks like I’ve lost all that. If there’s one thing I hate losing, it’s my writing. In the case of Blogger, at least everything is still there; it’s just that their software isn’t seeing it.

Last night was a lot of fun. Met up with the FF crew at the bar that’s connected to Foreign Cinema. From there we went to this kick-ass burrito joint near 24th and Mission or so. I had a big-ass chicken super burrito and actually ate the whole thing. Next, we went to this other bar and played some shuffleboard. It was fun.

I woke up this morning with very sore legs (from the running yesterday), but I did some stretches and they feel better now.

Today at lunchtime I went running for the first time in as long as I can remember. And it was an actual, sweaty run. I went with a couple co-workers. We ran 2.5 miles in about 23.5 minutes. A slow pace, for sure, but not too shabby seeing as I haven’t run in ages. My knee didn’t and doesn’t hurt. This is a good thing. The physical therapy has been great. I always forget how invigorating exercise is. I’m glad I’m back into it. Now I just have to keep it up. It’s good to have people to motivate you to run.

Yesterday was certainly a somber day. Jen and I managed to make it through most of the day without watching any of the 9/11 coverage. After watching the intense, lesbian-thieves-meet-Mafia thriller Bound, we tuned into the CBS special called 9/11, also an intense thriller (of the more serious kind with no lesbian sex).

The documentary was incredible. As Jen said, “I wish we could tell them to get out [of the WTC tower that was about to collapse].” It was eye-opening and intensely sad to see the terrorist attacks unfold from the perspective of someone who was there on the ground — and to have that feeling of being right there as it all happened. The hardest part must’ve been seeing those people who had jumped from the towers land on the ground below. Just hearing the distinctive thud with each body was hard enough in the documentary. One of the firefighters said something to the effect of, “It makes you wonder how bad it must’ve been up there if the better choice was jumping to your death.”

I’m excited and proud of myself for having created a great database-driven application for the forthcoming wedding Web site. It’s a wedding guestbook — nothing fancy but quite functional (and no design as of yet). But I built it all myself and that’s a good feeling. My dad was the first to post to it. One of the advantages of building and hosting it myself is that we never have to worry about its going away; it will always be there for years to come. Hopefully it will become a great place for our friends and family to post memories.

Karen’s on her sabattical, but swung by the office to say hi today. It was good to see her. We’re going to meet up for lunch tomorrow.

Tonight it’s off with Jen and the FF kids to a bar in the Mission called Laszlo.

I like what Yahoo! has done to its home page today in honor of the first 9-11 memorial. Yahoo! has also put together a nice tribute page for victims of the attacks.

It’s hard to believe a full year has already gone by since that tragic day that the face of America was changed forever. As someone pointed out on NPR this morning, the mood of the country seems to be more somber than anger. 365 days ago, as Americans and citizens of the world watched in horror as the Twin Towers collapsed, there was confusion, sadness, shock, horror, anger. Jen, Mollie, and I all stayed home from work that day, mostly watching the horrific images on TV played over and over again, and waiting for more information about how many lives were lost. At one count, it was believed that as many as 30,000 lives were lost. Thankfully, the actual number was closer to 3,000.

I only sent 7 emails that day. Here’s the first one that I sent just after 8am PT on 9/11/01.

Rob Morse has an excellent column about Top 10 better things to do today.

In memory of those who were lost one year ago, and to those families, friends, and individuals afflicted by and still suffering from the attacks on America, here’s to you.

As I stood this morning in the Network Operations Center (NOC) of Autodesk’s Data Center, which felt more like the bridge of the Enterprise than the 24/7 worldwide monitoring station for all Autodesk servers, I glanced at the silent TV screen tuned to the FOX news network (“so that we can monitor world events [that may impact the data center],” I was told) and saw that America’s Homeland Security Advisory System had reached the second-highest level: orange (just below severe/red). I seemed to be the only one of the group who was at all concerned and realized how appropriate my locale was for watching this bit of news. I was in a highly secure building surrounded by folks trained in disaster recovery. Of course, they’re folks who are good with software, hardware, and data, not terrorist attacks, but it somehow felt appropriate.

Then I got to thinking about the fact that tomorrow is the first anniversary of 9-11. We’re all on our toes. How could we not be? For anyone who was old enough to remember that terrible morning, it is a day we’ll never forget. And our enemies, the faceless and cowardly terrorists, know that, too. Even if there really is no repeat attack planned for tomorrow, lest we forget that important lesson of one year ago: the root of the word “terrorist” is “terror.” The primary objective of terrorists is to instill fear. And if we let that get the best of us, as so many writers wrote during the past year, then the terrorists have won. I’m sure that they’re taking advantage of the heightened state of alert and are using that to spook us as much as possible.

I do feel safe knowing that America will be on her toes tomorrow. But just in case, I’m going to avoid national landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge.

On a much lighter and somewhat related note, yesterday I ordered my first-ever vanity plate for the WRX — with the new “We Will Never Forget” license plates.

Today I blocked two sets of 12 rooms at both the Courtyard Marriott and Holiday Inn Express in Poughkeepsie for the wedding. The rates seemed a bit high, so I’m also going to look into the Poughkeepsie Grand, where I’d like for Jen and me to stay in one of their 2- or 3-bedroom jacuzzi suites.

Cool integration of the day: I just successfully added my work Exchange server to my Pine config settings, so now I can seamlessly drag and drop emails or files between an Exchange-based directory and access it via Pine from anywhere. Technology is cool.

My weekend was really good, though I’m a bit tired today. I picked up Jen from airport at 1230 last night. I had some peeps (James, Enoch, Ben, Kat) over Saturday for drinks and movie (Ghost Dog), finished unpacking office, went looking for a second dog (but haven’t yet found one), and even started on wedding Web site. Wow. I really did do most of what I set out to do.

I’m happy to have Jen back in town.

I think Nellie is a really cute rescue German Shepherd. I’d like to adopt her. Stella would, too.