I just got back from a short trip to Milwaukee. I spent less than forty eight hours on the ground there, for a long term customer problem. I had vague hopes of Wisconsin being in the championship game so I could watch it in Milwaukee, and then watch the rioting. No luck, perhaps my Buffalo kharma infected the Badgers.

I also had high hopes for good beer at the complimentary Happy Hour at the hotel. No luck there, it was Miller Lite. I finished my glass and went off to a mediocre steak house, the only place in walking distance of the airport/industrial area.

We finished up early enough Tuesday so I could take a trip to the Harley-Davidson museum, it was Ten Dollar Tuesday. I liked it, if you like Harley's you'd probably really like it a lot. The Hells Angels were only alluded to, I had hoped to see a real chopped hog.

I'm back, and exhausted.

We watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind the other night, one thing I like about Spielberg is that he shows real, cluttered, middle class homes from the 1970's. I enjoyed seeing the old cars, fashiosn, boxes of Kentucky Fried, computers, and TV cameras that used film. Future generations will wonder why old movie cameras had mouse ears.

A few nights later was American Graffiti, from the library, which was great up until 20 minutes before the end when seventeen_year_old asked me to fix her laptop, from a yahoo redirect virus in Chrome. I warned my kids to never get good at computers, because you'll never have private time. Assholes will always want to interrupt you to fix their computers.

Yeah, it pissed me off and put a huge damper on the evening.

In other seventeen_year_old news, she didn't get into SUNY-Binghamton.

She and Mrs. Ha went to a new student orientation at RIT, they liked it. They have a program for people who don't know what they want to do. It's an intense dorm where they expose you to lots of different things. She likes that. Apparently there is only one other program like that in the US.

Somehow, making microwave mac and cheese without enough water smells like pot, at least that's what the dorm guide said.

Mrs. Ha thinks it would be good for seventeen_year_old, she was aimless and directionless in high school too. She thinks the reason the seventeen_year_old has mediocre grades is she has no goal, excellence for it's own reason is not enough.

We'll meet up a financial aid rep and see what else they can provide.

I did a quick look at the new non-fiction rack at the library and found Atkinson's Guns at Last Light , so of course I took it with me. I used to feel funny about taking library books on trips, but I've been wanting to finish the trilogy to see how it turns out. The Good Guys Won.