A Portrait of the Dumbass as an Old Man

Where was I?

Well, June wasn't quite as bad as May. Only 240 hours of work as opposed to 270. I pretty much worked all last weekend. We had 8 people in at 1am Sunday morning. I left at 2:15, a couple worked until 6 am. Still, had our 1st install of our new product, of which I was one of the principal designers, on Monday, at an 800 pound gorilla financial services corp, and it seems to be going OK. I have worked a full day Saturday 90% of the weekends for the last two years -- I'm trying to quit that. I hate working Sunday too. When you don't take at least one day off on the weekend, you spend the next week with no sense of what day it is. They all kind of seem like Friday. Luckily, things look good enough that everyone can enjoy this 3 day weekend.

I got the new Radiohead CD, "Hail to the Thief". They continue their journey from being a standard grunge band to painting on a blank canvas and doing whatever they feel like. "OK Computer" is still my favorite (duh). Driving to New York, we listened to "Pablo Honey" and "The Bends", their 1st two. The jump from there to "OK Computer" is unbelievable.

Other CDs I got for my birthday from my oldest daughter:

• Day One, "Ordinary Man". I think I like this one the best. Tasty urban lyrics, popish background.
• The Incredible Doctor Cyclops, "Invasion". Tres bizarre. Speed ska spy movie themes? Totally campy lead singer? Erica's friend Kelly, who graduated from Dunbar the year before her, is the trumpet player.
• Chemical Brothers, "Surrender". The 1st Chemical Brothers CD I have, very tasty, great aural textures.
• Rjd2, "Deadringer". This one isn't clicking much, I need to listen to it a few more times.

My youngest daughter gave me a copy of Outloud Dreamer, "Drink the Sky". Nice tunes, good chick lead singer.

I finished the 3rd George R. R. Martin, "A Storm of Swords" and passed on to my son. I was wondering when he would find time to read it and then I remembered: he reads 300-400 pages an hour, with good retention. So, he can consume this 1100 page time in 4 hours or so. These books are definitely well done -- you can never guess who he's going to kill off next.