Nothing like a sick kid to make things hard. Eight year old threw up Thursday night, so I stayed home all day Friday, though I still called into conference calls and checked my email. She was good enough to go trick or treating  (which was awkward), then came home today with a fever. It's Mrs. Ha's turn to watch her.

Halloween was awkward, it's a tradition to go to the Porsche's neighborhood and go in a group. But, a friend of thirteen year old's was having a sleepover birthday party Halloween, complete with trick or treating in that neighborhood. It ended up being a pain, logistically.

In other work news, I was reminded that if the hotline used our hints and tips, or google, our call volume would drop significantly. Case in point, the field dude and hotline dude being flummoxed by a UNIX command of the type "command source destination", they only had "command source" and where wondering why it didn't work. Let's see, man command, google command, I've written a few docs on using that command, naw, just call me direct.

In storm window news, I found my hand drill, apparently plexiglass is tricky to work with, if you use a power tool on too fast a setting, you get stinky melted plexiglass instead of cuts and holes. So glass cutter and hand powered drill it is, at first. The frame is done, painted even.

A few weeks back I found a copy of Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman at a local Goodwill. I had seen it referenced way too many times on slashdot, I was glad to pick it up for a buck or two. I liked it, it made my miss a Jewish pal I haven't seen in years, who has a similar personality to Feynman's. Recommended if you like funny physicist stories, or horndog stories.

I bought my dad a copy of Stanton's horse Soldiers a while back, it's the story of the Special Forces, CIA and Air Force personnel who went into Afghanistan after 9/11 to work with the Northern Alliance to push out the Taliban. Pretty good, but I won't reread it.

In other media news, I got caught up in the hype about Lars Von Trier's Antichrist (he also did Steven Kings Kingdom Hospital), and in reading the background, realized our local library had a copy of Breaking the Waves, which had caught my eyes in the past, but I never picked it up. It's the story of a young Scot woman named Bess (Emily Watson) who is either simple minded and unstable, and or engages in conversations with God (and He answers) in the mid 70's. She marries Jan, a roughneck who works in the North Sea oil fields despite the disaproval of her church and small village, and they have a joyously happy weeklong honeymoon. Then, he flies back to the platform, not before Bess breaks several FAA regulations. He comes home before he's scheduled to, almost completely paralyzed from an accident. At this point there's still about an hour and a half to go in the movie, I didn't realize Dancer in the Dark was short for a Von Triers film. The remaining hour and half is how Bess bargains with God (or her insanity) to save Jan. It's intense, her actions upset her church and the village, she suffers for her actions, and there are many Christ parallels. The videography is odd, the colors are all washed out, save for the brief chapter starts, which are in full color with classic melodic 70's ballads. Haunting and well worth watching.

The other day a white meter reader came by, and our dog didn't freak. He always freaks if they send a black meter reader. It's odd though, he never freaked when our oldest's black schoolfriend came over, or when the black kid up the street visited, or when Mayor Johnson (black) came by for a few minutes, just the black meter readers. Maybe he's really a mixed classist/racist, and doesn't like blue collar blacks.

My favorite radio show is on Wednesday on the alternative station, New Wave Wednesday (I only look like a middle aged greying man, inside I'm still a punk and new wave listening kid). On most of the shows before Halloween, the DJ would play Stan Ridgeway's (Wall of Voodoo) Camouflage, but I missed it this week.

In local news, the Armory at the end of our street was auctioned off for a minivan less than $1.5 million dollars. One of the losing teams had talked about athletic fields and possibly an ice skating rink, which would have been awesomely cool. We'll see what happens, probably houses and offices.

One niggling problem with having a kid attend a flagship charter school is occasional early dismissal when the school is being used for seminars, as is the case Friday. My youngest gets out at 11:30, which isn't quite a half day for me, but I do have conference calls in the afternoon, which makes it a half day, you follow? But then, she threw up Thursday night, so I stayed home the full day.

My stout has been sitting in primary for weeks, I had hoped to rack it off earlier this week, but I was too busy. I hope the taste isn't affected.