Somebody needs to give me a guide to not getting shot while in Texas. My roommate pointed out that I have better odds of getting shot where I am now in $SECOND_CITY, but that's nonsense: guns are illegal in the city. Besides, everybody loves my ironic gang signs. In Texas, however, one never knows what to expect. It's the frontier. The stars at night are big and bright.

We watched the Enron movie and discussed ethical issues last night in my accounting class. Holy crap. A lot of that was wild, but one of the wildest scenes was the one where they were meeting with some investment bankers, I think from Merrill Lynch. Enron had a scheme where the CFO was also a general partner in some other firm and the purpose of that firm was to, basically, take losses off the books of Enron. He was pitching the whole thing to Merrill Lynch to get some funding. It was terribly obvious that it was a scam to cover up Enron's losses, that it was not in the best interest of Enron, that it would probably line the CFO's pockets as well, but that Merrill Lynch would be paid handsomely if they just dumped some funds in the whole thing. And they ate it up after one question about whether or not this was a conflict of interest. He said it wasn't. The end. It's one thing when you're mucking up your own company, but getting other companies to throw in on something so obviously fishy? Man.

It's not a death ray or an ice ray, that's so Johnny Snow.

The presentation in class tomorrow will be craptacular. My part should be a little shiny, though. I hope I don't get shot during my presentation. I'm the guy who makes it real.

Love the, uh, air.

I was about to update some report and was thinking, gosh, it's an ugly thing to update this document, it'd be easier to make a whole new one, when my coworker e-mailed me saying, "You know, I have a bunch of new stuff to put in this report..." So I said, "You know, why don't we make this a quarterly thing instead of a twice-a-year thing," and we then lived happily ever after with the resolution to produce the new report next week, because that happens to be exactly one quarter since the last report.

Crud. It's damp out. I was going to go outside and write a letter at lunch today, but moisture makes that tricky. Staying inside makes it hard to remain private. I'd be in the break room and coworkers would say, "Hello! How are you? Mind if I join you? What are you up to?" And I would say, "Hi! You may not join me. I'm writing a letter. See my stationery? Bye." And if I stay at my desk, people might bug me. And I can't do this at my desk. But I have to send it today. That's the way things work. I will make it work. I never come back with a no, I come back with alternative solutions. No excuses and no apologies, either.

Well, I do apologize in social settings. What I mean is, well, MNSian, in a sense, that merely saying one is sorry doesn't fix the fact that one has messed up, failed to deliver, etc. What's worst is an apology (with attendant excuses) that fails to even acknowledge that one has done wrong or failed, which has become increasingly common in these great and final days. Is it so hard to admit that one did things wrong, that one did things that one should not have done? Not things that one would do differently or regret having done, but that they were wrong and should not have been done? A sneeze, uh, doesn't fall anywhere in there unless you did it into my hair.