apologies for the downtime yesterday and the previous evening. a month-ish ago i made a conscious choice to pay zero dollars for hosting; occasionally you will get what i paid for. … actually, technically, it was charter's fault for making bits of the internet go dark yesterday. blame an isp, you know, on general principle.

(it's all academic, dear reader. you weren't even aware of it. save us both some time and admit the fact.)

frakkin executives. sometimes i'd swear they think they run the place.

DID I MENTION THE DAY WAS LONG

i bet even you know the old saying about how when you reach the end of your life, you'll look back on it and not think, 'man, i wish i had spent more time at work.'

in my future i see data mining and analyses and reports, a dancelike feedback loop of things happening, to data, to knowledge, to other things happening. and i'm good at it, dig? so obviously it's what i want to do forever, right?

we come to the point. i tend to do this thing when i encounter something i like: i binge on it, totally saturate myself with it, eventually get turned off, stop liking it. it's an extremely male-brained thing to do. i do it all the time in many and varied parts of my life, but so far, not in any of the really important parts. my fear is that i'll inexorably work my way through all my dream jobs, all those things i'd do for free if i had nothing else to do, in exactly this manner—loved intensely, but shortly, and discarded.

i like my job. i really do. it gives me little fixes of certain things i like (including, not least of which, money). i want to continue liking my job. but the first six weeks of the year are my hell weeks, and i'm definitely smelling the brimstone; i hope this is not the year i discover i forgot to pack my asbestos armor. or my boots of +5 fire resist.

i wonder how long i could string this metaphor along. if i really tried.

fun fact: the waiting list for denver broncos season tickets is ridiculous, so my apologies to the wife but it looks like your birthday/x-mas presents for at least the next decade will continue not to jump the shark. unless we get in on a wild card berth! which doesn't actually exist, so there we are.

of course, this year's were not so bad, but not so good as to leave no room for improvement.

also! three cheers and a tally-ho for friends' free hot tub! ask him (or his personal financial assistant) how much this 'free' actually costs. go on, i dare you.

when i unzip a particular pair of my dress pants, the sound is that of the intro to 'feel good inc' by the gorillaz.

do you understand what i'm saying? do you really?

EVERY TIME I DROP MY PANTS, SOMEONE LAUGHS AT ME

COUNTRY FIRST
TRUTH SECOND
WAIT WAIT DRILLING SECOND
TRUTH THIRD

(the truth is a completely inadequate vehicle for our strategic policy needs)


factcheck.org should be your homepage for the next two months, bitches.

twelve gallons in an eleven gallon tank. miracle, or lazy department of measurement standards employee? perhaps we will never know.