the new job begins
I've been at my new job for two days now and so far it's been very good. I still feel a little useless, but I'm learning quickly and will soon be able to compile the projects myself. I have my own office, installed the software I wanted on my PC etc. I still have to get my speakers in here though - I'm not at home until my music is playing here :)

The drive in and back home is the biggest difference so far. DSS was only 5-7 minutes away, ScriptRX is about 30 minutes. It's a little strange driving in thick traffic and through downtown which is all one-way streets and construction right now. Driving home last night I totally screwed up and went south out of town instead of north. After about 15 minutes I realized I'd made a mistake and reversed direction, and got on the highway north. I screwed that up too - I was in the wrong lane and had to exit when I actually wanted to stay on, and it took about ten minutes to find a way to turn back around, get on the highway and get home. 45 minutes in all, but hopefully I'll get the journey home right tonight.

Patch is suffering a bit because now I can't pick him up at lunch at take him to work. I'll ask if I can bring him in here occasionally if he's not going to be OK at home.

I made two more good fractal images last night - see the link to "Brian's Fractals" on the right. I'm going to start bringing the camera in to work and take pictures of the new digs and the downtown area - it's quite pretty.

I've made a fractals page to show off what a even a talentless hack like me can do with a good bit of fractal software. I hope you'll give it a try too - there's a good mailing list to support new users too. 

The Wedge available online
My hobbies all seem to have hit me with good progress at the same time. Curt Stewart's short film, The Wedge, is available online for a week or so. I wrote one of the pieces of music in it - it's the part where the girl is introduced. Curt edited it together from stock footage and provided the voiceover - a mini horror story !

My fractal explorations (see below) are rocking along nicely and I'm going to post a page with my best results. Stay tuned !

Deanne is out of town this week, and I've been saying my goodbyes at work. There's been nothing but nice comments and I think I'm having another two farewell lunches ! It's a sad thing to leave a job you love, but I'm really excited about the prospects of the new one.

A picture I made with UltraFractal 3.0. It was only my second or third try, but since then I've improved a little with practice. It's a great program and you can try it free for 30 days.

A'ash al-Iraq !
That means "long live Iraq" and it's a phrase I learned from reading the excellent Iraq The Model website, run by three brothers in Iraq. The news came today that two of them are running for office in the new Iraqi government ! Their accounts of daily life, their observations of politics in the new Iraq are very enlightening and I really recommend you read it and I really hope they do well in the elections this December.

I've also been reading Chrenkoff's blog, especially his Good News From Iraq series. Its a roundup of all the good news stories you might find if you looked hard enough. He castigates the "liberal" media for ignoring the "good news" stories, but I think he's a little unfair here: nobody reports on a daily trickle of good news. Everybody reports the "if it bleeds, it leads" stories about death and destruction. This is the same for any subject, not just Iraq. But whatever his motives it's great to read about steady, unstoppable progress being made on issues like international trade, commerce, security, education etc.

I was especially moved by the work done by Spirit of America who buy what is needed in Iraq and Fedex it out there. Bam ! It's fast and effective and it produces good results, quickly. I donated to the program that supplied good quality tools to a program that teaches Iraqi men about construction and carpentry. I've always thought people donated to children a bit too much, and didn't think about donating to the parents. Yes, the children are the future, but if you help their parents today, the children will be fed, clothed and educated by their own families !

dont' be that guy
The hurricane missed us completely, and thanks to friends and family phoning and writing to see if we're alright. We survived ! Through gusts of up to 15, maybe 16 miles per hour, and enough rain to form small puddles in the driveway, we drank a couple of beers and watched telly, bravely braving braveness bravely :)

It was a total non-event in our corner of Florida, though 13 people died elsewhere, including the man who died when he went OUTSIDE for a ciggy ! Yes, this man was dying for a smoke (I had to say it and I won't be the last) and he did when a palm tree fell on him. How did he light the cigarette ? Who makes a lighter that works in 140 mph winds ? Or who makes a cigarette that can stay alight in a bloody hurricane !?

A word of advice, kids. Don't be that guy who's death is reported in the Odd Spot column of the newspapers. Don't be the guy who's the subject of "Hey, did you hear about the idiot who..." conversations around office watercoolers around the world. Death is coming for all of us one day, but for sooth's sake, don't make it easy for him to find you ! "Hey Death, I'll be outside under that palm tree IN A GODDAMN HURRICANE !"

Financial Analyst's Holiday
Just listening a story on the radio about the toy store Toys 'R Us possibly splitting up and spinning the Babies 'R Us into a seperate business. The Babies stores are doing much better than the others (and having seen the prices, I can see why) because "people buy for babies year round, but only buy for their kids on birthday and during the 4th Quarter Holidays."

The 4th Quarter Holidays ? "Happy 4th quarter, Johnny ! If you've been good, CFO Santa might bring you fiduciary instruments at 1 point above the prime rate !" HAR !

No, I know, he was being a nice guy and including all religions who have a different holiday at that time; but it took me by surprise and sounded utterly heartless, which is how economists sometimes seem.

I've heard back from the president of the company about me leaving - he asked me why I was going, of course, and wished me luck. He was nice enough to say I could come back if it didn't work out, but I told him I was pretty confident that ScriptRX had answered all my questions about stability, future prospects etc. So it's a done deal, and now I wait to say goodbye to the friends I've made over the past two years. I should take some pictures too.

storm's a comin'. Yyyyyup.
I have some news. I've been sitting quietly on this for a while but I sent the fax today and made the phone call, so there's no changing my mind. I've accepted a position at another company, ScriptRX and will be leaving DSS at the end of the month. I've had a great two and a half years here, but ScriptRX have made me a great offer that I simply couldn't refuse.

They have a project they've been working on for a couple of years but recently their development team all left to form their own software development shop. Scriptrx needs someone in-house to oversee the source code, develop and design new features, manage any other programmers brought on board or manage communications with other contractors. They work in downtown West Palm Beach, right on Clematis Street and they've made me a very sweet deal.

Document Storage Systems has been a great company to work for and I'll miss it. I'll miss the respect and friendship I have with everyone, and the excellent feedback I've had about the software I've written there. It's a place that's given me a lot of confidence, and also experience in the medical software field, which while I was in college I swore I'd never do, because bugs in medical software can get people killed ! Well, here I am, moving into medical software for the second company in a row, and it seems like there's a great future in it. Very few hospitals have electronic medical records systems, and what I've seen at the VA, which has the best in the world, will help me greatly at the new position.

It's a pretty wide-open scenario which kind of reminds me of what I walked into when I joined Sausage Software in August 1995. I was the second employee and was hired at the kitchen table of a man who is now worth 70-80 million dollars :) Ah, the Internet boom; wasn't it great !? I got a big ol' house out of it, but I foolishly turned down the opportunity to become project manager of HotDog, our flagship product at Sausage. I figured that I liked software design and programming too much to get involved in management and didn't want to be held responsible for other people's work. I was probably right at the time, but over the past few years I've learned a hell of a lot about software design and become a more confident person.

So I'm stepping off one boat and boarding another train, happily mixing metaphors in the airport of life. Thank you to everyone at DSS, hello to everyone at ScriptRX !

New Stuff
We got a series 2 Tivo and I have it set up to play the music from my main computer. It's really cool to be able to turn on the TV, hit the remote control and choose any piece of music from my huge collection of music. Deanne and I have about 1000 CDs between us, so it'll take a while to rip it all to my computer.

Deanne has been away for a couple of days and I've really missed her - I don't sleep well when she's away...though that might be because I bought a Tivo and spent hours getting it set up, then walked the dog, shot some pool with my friend Scott, and couldn't sleep till 3AM. She's going away again on Sunday, so I'll try and get to bed at a better time...I can only do one five hour sleep per week :) But there's a Farscape marathon, the XGames, West Wing episodes....damn you TV !

tired of news
The news about the execution of the Turkish truck driver really turned my stomach. I've heard about all the others, of course, but this one really hit me, because the poor bastard was shot right after he read a statement urging all other Turkish drivers to stop working in Iraq. Then one of those disgusting thugs walked up and shot him in the head. I hope these animals get run to ground and feel some terror of their own before they're.....do I want them dead ? Do I want to see them erased from the face of the earth, or treated like any other criminal. I honestly don't know. But I do know that I've reached some point where this same thing has happened too many times. Iraqi people, on the whole, want free and happy lives, but a few thousand thugs can threaten that, and it's not fair.

Y'know, I liked most of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, except the part where he tried to paint the Iraqi insurgency as freedom fighters, or some kind of noble movement who are resisting American aggression. It's total crap - they're power hungry control freaks who's Daddy was kicked out of power and they're terrified of having to make decent, civilised lives for themselves and work with other Iraqis instead of being handed everything they want. Moore has this image totally wrong. The war was the right thing to do, and it's wrong that the rest of the world didn't take Saddam's government down a long time ago. Not because of the War on Terror (you can't do with that with guns - you need good schools and tolerant societies), but because he was a brutish dictator who slaughtered his people and kept his country in fear. And shame on the Arab media for filtering all information through a "America Is Bad" filter. I think Mahmood (see a couple of posts down) said it best - I won't even try to match what he said.

Iraq will eventually be a prosperous democracy because that's what the majority of it's people want. If it receives support from the rest of the world, it'll happen, no doubt in my mind.

Looking back to South Florida though, we're still waiting for our fridge to be repaired (3 months now). I got tired of being ignored by Fisher & Paykel's office in Jacksonville, so I called Australia and ordered the new fan and motor myself, and will have a local repair guy try and install it. Apparently I have the only F&P fridge in the whole USA and I totally broke their heads trying to get a part sent over to replace the dud one. They were so paralyzed they couldn't even phone me back...I hope they recover soon so the healing can begin. Bastards.

Curt Stewart told me that my piece of music "A Good Beginning" is the most prominently featured music in his short film, The Wedge, and that he'll try and send me a DVD of it soon.

Mercury Mailroom is nearly done - we need to set up our ordering page, but lots of the other little tasks are done and we'll start our publicity blitz soon !

If any blue men with no faces or legs float up to me, I'm ready to knock 'em down.

My friend Scott took me to a shooting range for my first experience with guns. I've never been a fan of guns, but I think people should be allowed to own them for sporting purposes and self-defense, as long as they make sure their kids can't get to them, and they're prepared to be held responsible for whatever that gun is used for. Semi-automatic and fully automatics seem to have no redeeming use outside of the military: nobody should need one (or more) of those and I agree with Australia's ban on those types of weapons.

Getting off the soapbox now, it was pretty amazing to fire a Magnum .357. It's such a simple device - Scott showed me an automatic pistol in pieces and there were surprisingly few components. You drop six bullets into the chambers, snap it closed, rotate the chambers till it locks...and you're ready. I wondered if the other shooters had ever thought..."what if I just turned around and shot all these people ?" Or maybe that was just me...a weird thought to have, but then I've never held a gun before.

They all seemed to be having a good time - the serious rifle guy next to me was aiming at tiny targets at the furthest extension of the range, about 50 feet, and getting a nice cluster of bullet holes. A tall, balding guy with buck teeth and a tight black tshirt, jeans and big boots fit the stereotype of the gun-totin' redneck perfectly, and was smiling as he fired the loudest damned gun I've ever heard, and picked up the spent shells afterwards. It was a .50 calibre Desert Eagle, I found out later, and Scott said he was surprised the range allowed that size weapon to be fired. Picking up the shells was common practice - you can refill them and fire them again two or three times before they start to warp and become unsafe to fire.

So...I was *really* nervous as Scott showed me how to load and clear the gun. It was heard to hear him because of the earplugs we wore, and every few seconds someone would fire and make me more jumpy...you didn't know when one of the .50 cals would be fired, and you'd feel the air bump against your skin, and resonate in your chest. After a while you get used to it though. Scott loads the gun for me, tells me to keep it pointed downrange always, and I pick it up.

My hands are a bit shaky and I'm sweating a little because the range isn't airconditioned. It's fairly heavy, and cold. I cock it and aim at the blue man target, 15 feet away. I pull the trigger and BLAM ! It kicks back hard and a neat circle appears in the guts of Mr Blue. Wow...I fired a gun :) ! I do this about 87 more times at different ranges...I think all that video game time paid off. The gun cocks easily and each set of six shots goes by too quickly. I get into the rhythm of loading up, firing, and clearing the chamber, and I find my aim tends to be low and quite erratic. But, and this is the important part, I didn't get any power thrills from hefting and firing such a powerful gun. No red mists over the eyes, no visions of soldiering against evil enemies, no defending myself against hideous hordes. It was just an exercise in aiming and firing; a game.

Both of Scott's automatic pistols have problems, so we finish up and leave. I enjoyed the experience, but I'm probably not going to do it again - it's expensive, my hands hurt a little bit for a couple of days afterwards, and I'd rather play my games on the computer. Deanne and another lady at work each took one of my target sheets and stuck them on their office doors as a warning to others :)

everything and nothing
An excellent essay by a man urging his fellow citizens to stop living in the past, open their eyes, and turn the Arab world towards democracy.

I moved the computer out of the laundry and into the office last night...maybe I'll start using it more often instead of the old laptop which isn't good for much more than web-browsing and light development. But I gotta promise Deanne that I won't vanish into the office for hours at a time :)

I had a great experience over the weekend while watching Acoustic Remedy playing at Paddy Mac's . I asked Jason if he knew "Blues Run the Game", a fairly obscure Simon and Garfunkel tune. He said he didn't, but plucked out the first few notes and lyrics and I sang along with him to help jog his memory. The guy sitting next to us turned in surprise and as I stopped singing he said "Hey, don't stop !" which was nice :) I've been told I have a nice voice and with the computer upstairs I may bring the ol' guitar out, get a new microphone (Shure SM57) and see if can record something nice.

More to report later, including my experience firing a Magnum .357 at a gun range !

My friend Chris Duffy was a groomsman at my wedding and is a very funny guy with a very interesting history. He sent me this observation about the USA being admitted to the ranks of cricket playing nations.

I wish I were making this up.

The ICC has admitted the US to the ranks of international cricket. While I am not a fan, apart from the concept of having a game where there can be a difference of hundreds and hundreds of points and still call it a draw, there is something nicely formal about cricket that I can only see this being to the detriment of.

I quite like the idea that the ICC will only allow the US to play if henceforward all coloured maps of the world show the US in pink. :-) Are there persons in the US who aspire to being as good as a Pakistani or West Indian? How will sports commentators cope with the prospect that an innings is when everyone on your team goes in till everyone is out? ("Thats gotta hurt Bob.")

I wonder if the ICC is just making allocation in case India glass hardens Pakistan, or global warming sinks the West Indies. Possibly New Zealand and Australia are planning unification. Surely the ICC is privy to some esoteric information along these lines, its the only thing that makes sense.

The US playing in a world series where other countries are invited? It's just not cricket.

the music, man
Well, this has just been the coolest couple of days...a film maker called Curt Stewart (imdb entry) (no site yet, but maybe soon) has used a piece of music I recorded in his film, "The Wedge" ! The piece he chose is called "A Good Beginning" and it's available on my music page (scroll down about half way). I released that music under a Creative Commons license which allows me to very easily tell the world how much control I want to have over my music - in this case, not much :) If you have anything you want to give to the world without letting others make money off it, use this license to do it. Curt has released his movie under the same type of license.

Here's the information Curt gave me.

The movie was created for the StockStock 2004 film festival (www.stockstock.org). The festival worked like this: every entrant received a tape of stock footage from www.archive.org. Everyone got the exact same footage. We then had to create a movie without adding any additional footage, but we could add music, dialogue, digital effects, etc.

My movie is about a young boy that reflects on his relationship with his best friend. I know it sounds kind of sappy but it turned out funny and bittersweet.

I wanted to use some cool music and, after searching www.opsound.org and www.archive.org I found three great songs by three different artists - one from Florida USA [actually I'm Australian, but live in the USA - Brian], one from Germany and one from Sweden. The internet has made this movie a truly global project!

I'm releasing the project under a Creative Commons license.

The screenings so far:

Aug. 1 Seattle, WA USA: StockStock 2004 screening
Aug. 18 Los Angeles, CA USA: Filmmaker's Alliance DGA Awards Event

About me: I'm a CG lighting artist and I work on animated feature films in Glendale, CA USA. Digital filmmaking is my hobby. I have a modest entry on www.imdb.com.

Go me :) And go Curt too ;) !

frustrated
Damn. DAMN ! I'm so annoyed; all I wanted to do was plug my guitar in and have the laptop record some lame-ass playing. Was that so much to ask? Apparently so.

Here's 90 minutes of my life I won't get back:

1) Spend 30 minutes finding the 1/4" to 1/8" adapter that I *swear* I used to have. (It turned up in the closet, not the "Big Box O' Adapters" that all geeks are required to own.)

2) Wonder why this doesn't work right away....develop ominous feeling of Impending Doom

3) After much cursing and downloading, find that the sound input on the laptop is microphone ONLY - this laptop doesn't "do" line-in. There goes the guitar idea.

4) Plug my two microphones in, yelling "HELLO !" into them, trying to get the audio meter to acknowledge my existence. Immediately follow with "Shut up, Patch !" as the dog thinks I'm greeting a pizza guy, which means he has to bark in order to make Mr Pizza-man drop the food and run away. This gets old quickly.

5) Curse laptop for remaining totally uninterested in my voice unless I twitch the microphone cord by a fraction of a millimeter, which triggers a storm of static and a 100% signal overload situation.

6) Throw microphone in the bin.

7) Curse Microsoft for designing the crappiest volume/record source interface EVER devised by sentient life. Why, pray tell, is the microphone's +20db gain checkbox on the Playback screen? And why do I need to go Options->Properties->Recording->OK to get to the screen that allows me to choose a recording source and volume ? Can't I see playback and record at the same time, or is that too much to expect ? Apparently so. I need to be protected from having two choices at once.

8) Give up on the whole thing, put my beloved guitars away and go do a puzzle in utter silence to calm down.

If you want to hear some music I managed to record 10 years ago, click the "Brian's Music" link on the right. It will not escape my notice that NO computers were involved in recording those tracks :)

Pretty blue lights falling 

We went into sultry downtown West Palm Beach for the holiday fireworks display, called "4th on Flagler". It was a very pretty show with a stunning and LOUD finale! A constant stream of loud bangs, much louder than normal fireworks, exploded in gold down low while high up, the gold trails got bigger and bigger. After a few seconds it got even LOUDER, then finished with the biggest firework I've ever seen...very good show :) The coolest new firework was one which blows up in gold, goes DARK for a few seconds, then relights in gold. It's very trippy to see the second colour appear from nowhere :) It was generally agreed that last year's show was better, but it was worth the trip down all the same.

I really enjoy living in America, despite the backwards, corporation-centered attitude of it's leadership. I think the essential goodness of the majority of the American people is reflected in the general optimisim and progressive, liberal spirit that you see in the culture, especially the movies and television. A good example occurred the other day when I watched a debate about gay marriage on TV. The interviewer quoted a poll that showed around 60% of people were opposed to it, a figure I'd heard before and had had trouble understanding how so many could be opposed.

"That opposition is a mile wide and two inches deep." she replied.

I hadn't thought of it that way before - it always disturbed me that so many people were against this basic human right; to express a commitment to another person and have that respected and legally recognized. It rang true to me that very few of those 60% would hang on to that opposition with any real vigor: I see it as a "I'd rather they didn't, but if the court says its OK, then I'm OK with it" kind of sentiment. The lady of TV was certain it was only a matter of time before it was federally recognized and I agreed with her.

David Brin wrote a good speech which, among other things, pointed out that western society, especially American society is brainwashed into a most suprising condition: permanent rebellion. We are taught by a large fraction of the films and TV programs that we authority is not to be trusted, we should try new things for ourselves and always look for a better way. Governments may come and go, but this message keeps coming, relentlessly. I'm glad it does, because it keeps the public pre-disposed to think in what I consider the Right Way: Never settle for today's answer - look for a better way.

Hmmm...I do ramble a bit, don't I ?

happy 4th of july
And a big welcome back to all the Curly Oxide fans out there...the ways of Google are mysterious and random - I'm the #1 result on the "Curly Oxide" search again! Go me! The links to Mr. Oxide are further down the page, but really you're better off going back to google and trying some of the other hits: I'm just someone who heard the show on the radio, like you did.

But if any of you intelligent and discerning public radio listeners need help answering email, which seems to consist of a thousand people asking the same few questions, My Program Can Help ! We're still building the full website for it, but you can try the first version now. It's all explained in the help file and readme.txt and it's only a wafer-thin download, so please try it.

On to the main point of this blog, which is to let my friends and family know what Deanne and I do to occupy our time - we went to the fourth of july celebrations downtown last night and watched the fireworks. It was hot, humid and uncomfortable, but the sparkly lights were very cool. I took some pictures, which I'll post later on. I also just finished reading Larry Lessig's "The Future of Ideas" and have downloaded his next book, Free Culture, which you can also read for free - he'll explain why.

I'm reliably informed that today is a day of cleaning and Putting Stuff Away...my wife's predictions in this area tend to come true.

fickle google
It seems my brief brush with the heady heights of High Google Ranking are over...not only am I no longer the #1 result for the search "curly oxide"; I ain't even in the list any more. My 15 minutes of fame lasted from Jul 01 2004 2:46:54 pm until Jul 02 2004 3:36:23 am and approximately 50 people came to this blog looking for information about Curly Oxide, the Hasidic Glam Rock star, who also burned briefly and brightly :) You can click the "Sitemeter" link on the right under the links to have a look through the logs...the data will be there for a little while longer. Here's an interesting statistic you might note: only two of those visitors used a search engine other than Google. It's a powerful and effective tool and it's clearly the first place most people go when they think of searching the web.

Did you notice that the companies which dominate various aspects of web life have made up names ? Think about it...auctions are "eBay", books are "Amazon", searching was "Yahoo" and now "Google". Those people who paid millions of dollars for "business.com" and "auctions.com" were wasting their money :) It's better to make a quality web site and teach the surfing public a totally new word that will come to "mean" [auctions|buying books|searching].

quietly sitting on the couch

I'm at home this morning waiting for the insurance inspector guy to come and make sure that my house is my house :) We just switched insurance companies so we have to go through this again...and one of our sliding doors is broken ! It happened while I was painting; I was carrying a huge ladder and let the momentum get out of hand. It's been there for a few days, but the weather has been so nice I haven't felt motivated to fix it ;) Actually the glass held together for a few days and just plopped out yesterday, so I hope it doesn't cause this guy any heartache. I've called a couple of repair places and I'm getting quotes to have it fixed.

Deanne had a root canal done on her bad tooth. It doesn't hurt anywhere near as much as the prevailing myth would have you believe. We're lucky to live in a modern age, especially where pain is concerned. She was in the chair for one and a half hours, then came straight back to work and she felt only low-level pain even after the novocaine wore off. We watched a lot of Star Trek and had takeout Italian though....we haven't cooked a meal for ourselves in ages, you know ? When we do eat at home it's just grazing on random stuff from the pantry. I wonder if our fridge will be fixed soon...yeah, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. I would've cooked six complicated meals a week except my fridge is busticated.

Finishing touches are being put on Mercury MailRoom and we're collecting "ooh gosh, it's fabulous" quotes from our beta testers. I've also thought of a plan where we would let buyers from poorer countries pay less than the $US 99 we're going to charge for it. I don't want it to be out of reach of people that would find it useful.

from the top

Deanne's got a tooth situation that's going to require a root canal on Monday, so she's spending the weekend clutching her jaw and groaning. A dentist was able to see her and put it a temporary filling on Friday, but she's on the pain pills to keep it under control until then. We went out for a little shopping today and while looking at carpets, a weird thing happened. One of the staff approached me and asked if I liked the carpet.

"Sure, it's pretty nice. We're thinking of getting it."
"Do you want it cheaper? I can get you a discount."

Hmmm...strange way to phrase it, I thought, but let's see where it goes.

"How much of a discount ?"
"50% off. Just give me fifty bucks for the rug and a hundred dollar tip and meet me outside. You'll get your rug....but you can't bring it back."
"How is that different from theft ?" I asked.

He backpedalled a little and said he could get me a discount because the rug was damaged while being unpacked etc. but I just thanked him and declined politely. I've heard of employee theft but never actually seen it happen.

Curly Oxide
As we were driving home we listened to This American Life, an excellent radio show. This episode was about Curly Oxide, an Hasidic Jew named Chaim who felt the pull of rock'n'roll and for two years performed as Curly Oxide. He soaked up popular culture like a sponge and leapt right in with both feet, but eventually gave it up for marriage. A great story. And apparently just talking about it has made this blog the #1 hit on Google for this fellow...those of you who are disappointed to find out I'm not him :) will want to read this interview with Vic Thrill, Curly's friend from the radio piece. Vic Thrill also has his own site.

Then we listened to From The Top which featured Peter Schickele, who is better known as the discoverer of P.D.Q Bach. What was unusual was that Deanne didn't ask me to turn the radio over to a regular music channel - she's usually got no patience for NPR, but we listened to two whole hours of it today. I think it's because I was a very compliant shopper and also I'm wearing a stylish baseball shirt that drives her crazy :) She's napping now and around four o'clock we're going to see Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore's new film.