No idea why I'm awake...

But I've found a lovely nutcase on Usenet...

( Enjoy the rant! )

Wow.

This is bloody ridiculous.

Last night, at about 0255, the phone rang. Woke us both from a sound sleep. Fearing that it was bad news, Kirsten told me to answer it.

It was bad news.. it was the dimwit SuperShuttle dispatcher!

The dispatcher seemed to be under the illusion that Kirsten was still a driver, and was letting her know that they had several runs in the South Bay. This is BS. From my time as a dispatcher:

1. We never called drivers who had their vans at home unless they were late signing on. They either just signed on to the computer dispatch system, or called us. One driver had a fax machine at home, so we could send him a heads-up on his first run, but that still wouldn't cause a phone to ring!

2. Kiri's start time for almost her entire career at SuperShuttle was 0400. No way in hell would I call a driver one full hour before their assigned start time unless it was a special occasion like the day before Thanksgiving.

3. She hasn't worked for SS since May. I wonder if they still wonder why I don't show up to dispatch?

I just called my old boss at dispatch, and let him know that we were not amused by this. Kirsten has taken her own measures.

Not really a big one...

There have been a series of earthquakes down near Parkfield, a pretty good swarm with two big ones at 5.9 and 5.0 on the Richter Scale.

A 5.9 is fairly big, but not that bad. Things will fall off shelves, car alarms will go off, and if you're driving, you might think you've blown a tire. A 5.9 would barely move me from my couch.

But listening to CNN, we just fell off into the Pacific. Jeez.

A good update site for the Parkfield swarm:

http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Maps/Parkfield.htm

36 quakes in the last hour! Right along the San Andreas! Surf Nevada!

Edit, 1217hrs. Make that 106 quakes in the last few hours. Whole lotta shaking going on...

Too stupid for words.

Carpool Lanes are a Socialist Plot.

Hovannisian is a second-year history and philosophy student.

Gosh, it must be nice to be 20 and know everything.

"Penguin toting a Machinegun"

I swear to god I just saw that on the story crawl on Headline news.

Evidently, hackers hit a site linked to al-Qaeda.

OK, time to get organized.

fimbrethil's recent decision to get her living arraignments organized has inspired me. It's time for us to do the same thing, and I, as always, have a plan.

1. Clean house, in more ways than one. We've accumulated piles of junk, and a lot of it can go away. We need to get things on shelves, stored, given away or sold. Getting the apartment organized and clean will do a great deal for our energy levels and attitudes, I think.

2. Start getting some new furniture. Just about everything we own is hand-me-down or found. It's a jumble, a mess, and at 38 I'm tired of decorating in Early Dorm Room. I have a discount at work, we can make judicious use of it. Along with this, actually decorate in something resembling a style. I don't care if that style is SF Geek, I want people to be able to say "this was planned."

3. Increase our socialization. I'd like to have people over to our place every now and then.

So, we've got some work ahead of us.