Slaughters.com

My father and I flew back to Nebraska last weekend for the marriage of my cousin and his bride. I haven't been back to that part of the country since the marriage of my friend JD several years back in Yankton, South Dakota. That was another trip worth a note in my journal, though I didn't make it.

The wedding was perfect. It took place in a town between Omaha and Lincoln, Ashland. There's no motel in Ashland, so we stayed in a motel off the 80, just between two dirt tracks (which were running full schedules this weekend).

So, blah, blah, wedding stuff and so forth, on Saturday, we got away from the reception in time to catch the last 5 laps of what we believed to be the modifieds. No need to go into detail for my audience here, as you can imagine the frenetic and explosive finish of this un-mufflered dirt-track roster on this mid-western flat track. It was raucous and pleasant. I didn't note the car that won, but I did note that he cut off his follower late into turn four to take his victory.

And after a Sunday afternoon of skeet shooting off my cousin's back porch, we caught the end of another flat track schedule on the other side of the 80. These were late models running balls to the wall to a nearly full crowd on a beautiful Nebraska evening. Again, we caught only the tail end, but it was loud as all hell and beautiful to watch.

And some people got married this weekend too.

That was my brief vacation.

I feel guilty blogging, and I feel guilty not blogging. I don't really have anything to say, yet having access to the web makes me feel obligated to keep some sort of log of something on the web. Then I go and see other blogs and how assuredly dull they are...

Anyway, I've gotten myself employed again. I'm working full-time at Epsilon Systems as a programmer. I've begun the process of selling my house in Pacifica so that I can buy another down here in San Diego. It's a decent enough town. And I'm much more comfortable in a military town near battleships and marines than in a town overrun with whacko liberals who are offended by the American flag and want to "understand" the terrorists.

That's all for now.

Harry

Once again, amongst the ranks of the unemployed. My contract at
SPAWAR Systems Center is coming to a close, and I haven't yet found any new work.

It seems that things are no better than they were 6 months ago in the tech job area.
This is very frustrating for a person who truly enjoys working in this business. I've seen
a lot of folks pack up and move and switch careers entirely. I'm half tempted to take
my remaining dot-com loot and hit the road. But this business is just too much fun
to leave. I don't really enjoy anything else (as far as careers). So I'm committed, at
least right now, to sticking this out.

If you happen to know of any good companies in need of Linux/Perl/Web type geeks,
point them to my resume.
If you help me land a job, I promise you a Slurpee and a pack of candy cigarettes.

Here's a cool picture of a blown head gasket on my recently rebuilt Harley Sportster. A reminder to you all: remember to re-torque those head bolts after getting new cylinders and pistons, regardless of what your mechanic tells you ; )
So I'm now in the process of replacing this gasket and fixing some other things that appear to be, er... mis-done. Though I've never done this before, I'm guessing that I'll do a better job than the local Harley Dealer.
I'll keep you posted. A little value-add supsense for the many readers of my blog (hi mom!).

What's the point? Who cares? If someone happens across your site by some mis-quided search engine, why would you try to scare him off with details about what you saw on TV or how your page is still under construction or how your feuding with some other blogger who stole the name of your blog and why your's is the original?

I've kept a journal since I was 15. I have pages of old homework with ideas scribbled on the backs. I have those flashy multi colored Mead notebooks from the late 80s filled with scribble. I've got napkins from bars in Mexico stained with ink that was ideas I thought were brilliant (when I was drunk in Mexico). I've got a dozen diskettes from one of those Panasonic word processors before PCs became common (finally got my data off there one day when I realized they were simply in DOS-like format). I've got Mac, DOS and UFS disks filled with many hours of writing. In one 3 year period, I wrote as many words as are in Moby Dick (though mine weren't quite as coherent and aren't really considered "classic").

But I never considered subjecting anyone to any of this. Until the Web.

Now I'm in this awkward position of having a blog but not really wanting to post anything to it because I don't know who'll be reading it. You don't really see any honesty in many of these blogs. The best blogs out there are usually humorous but not serious. If a blog is serious, then it's likely not very good.

But I find a lot of this stuff, even some of the bad stuff, very interesting and often entertaining. Check out weblogs.com. It is a list of recently updated blogs and the place I go when I feel like reading blogs. Why I feel compelled to read only the freshest blog entries I do not know.

A good blog should also have links to interesting stories, so check out this breakthrough in quantum computing.