Back in Pittsburgh.

Holy cow... have you played with Google Maps? It's a lot closer to what I've wanted in an interactive map. You can pan by dragging the mouse on the map, and it loads the new pieces right on the map -- no clicking on directional arrows to go to a new page.

They suggest trying searches like "Hotels near San Francisco." Here's the result for Brothels near Essex Junction, VT.

On a whim, I decided to buy two computers today.

Yes. Let's have an hour-long meeting first thing in the morning and agree to do nothing.

RAGE.

Ah, you must visit zug.com.

These pranksters sign their credit card receipts with interesting names. They leave IOUs to the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority from Mariah Carey. They got U.S. Senators to send jokes to them.

You could easily kill a couple hours at work on this site.

The corporate online directory is not the way one should find out that he reports to a different manager.

There's a piano in my living room now. Weird.

Drunk birds crash into building's glass
Forget Amazing Grace and Ave Maria. I want John Deere tractor noises at my wake.

Grr. ETrade won't let you transfer funds from one account to another without jumping through some hoops and waiting n days. I somehow have two accounts -- one is in my name only for the Cadence employee stock purchase plan, the other is a joint account.

I am hoping to buy a share of Berkshire Hathaway class B stock. I'd prefer to get a class A share, but at $90,900 per share I can't exactly afford it. :-\ (Heck, class B shares -- the "inexpensive" shares -- are at $3,033 today.)

The price is so high because Warren Buffet refuses to allow a stock split. I agree with his philosophy behind this, but the impracticality behind it is a pain.

Carly's reign of terror has come to an end.

Oof. Authored an eight page spec today from scratch, ideas and all. That meant I was pretty much cranking away at the keyboard for nine hours straight. I was amazingly productive, though, and it felt good to get so many words and diagrams onto paper (err... well, onto electrons and then magnetic domains, at least), even if it's just a draft.

I'm especially happy because it's eight pages of meat. I blatantly disregard our formal spec templates because they're full of verbiage that nobody reads and simply distracts from what's real.

The main reason I cranked out so much so quickly, though, was that the presention of this was suddenly moved to tomorrow morning (from Friday). Or so I thought. Only after I had gotten it out and sent it for review did I find out that the meeting is a week from tomorrow. Oops. Still, though, it's a good feeling to know that I still have what it takes to grind this stuff out.

Watching people go into the VP's office, coming out, and then cleaning out their desks.

Some folks have inexplicably bizarre fetishes.

Verily, I am enjoying my time off. I don't know if I can go back to work (well, at least at Cadence, anyway) at this rate.

Today, I paid various bills and taxes, had Chinese food from the real Chinese menu at the Lucky Chinese restaurant (a favorite haunt of my Chinese coworkers -- and now I understand why), and cleaned my office (at home) a bit.

Tomorrow, I'm going to start on my taxes, though I don't expect to finish; I'm going to have to review the finer points of capital gains tax laws. Ugh. (I'd feel less bleh if the capital gains were actually anything substantial, but it's just the Neolinear stock I bought back in 2000.)

I can't deal with work anymore. I'm taking tomorrow, Monday, and Tuesday off.

I'm also trying to use up my three floating holidays because they don't pay those out if you quit or are laid off. The latter is a real possibility -- basically, the animosity between myself an my manager was reflected in my performance review. (This actually pleases me in a sick way... I'm hoping to get laid off so I can get the severance package.)

Can anyone make heads or tails of the Levitra couches?

Stuck in Chicago. My 2:30 flight was canceled, rebooked on a flight at 10:20 tomorrow morning.

My cats are going to be pissed.

Thanks for all the well-wishes and condolances. It means a lot to me. My grandmother's wake is set for Thursday, funeral and burial on Friday. I'm flying out on Thursday, returning on Saturday.

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In lighter news, I thought I'd share an exchange at work outside my cube:

Coworker 1: Did you see that e-mail I sent?
Coworker 2: I don't check my e-mail every five minutes. I have work to do.
Coworker 3: Not for long!

(Yes, it was intended as humorous, not malicious.)

My grandmother passed away at 6:30 this morning.

I find it incredibly amusing that "god uses emacs" and "god uses vi" both produce exactly one hit.

(No, not a Googlewhack, because I used quotes and three words.)

How spooks saved Ukraine

The New York Times has an excellent article on how Ukraine's spy agency averted a civil war [6 pages] in the recent election.

If this weren't in the NYT, I'd swear it were an excerpt from some fictional Tom Clancy work. I also can't believe that they were able to get this information.