This weekend I went to see one of my high school chums get married. It was a nice wedding and I got to visit with some friends that I haven't really stayed in touch with. On the way out of the church I saw John. Any time we see each other, even if it's been months or years, we always have a great time. We sat with John and his dad at the reception and chatted. He's been working on some Democratic campaigns, so we talked a lot about politics.

I haven't been posting much. I've been helping with the podcast, reading lots of stuff in Bloglines and sulking about the election. If you want to see links that I find interesting, you can take a look at my Bloglines clipblog, The Frying Pan. It's nothing but links that I pull out of my feeds so I can revisit them later. Some of it I blog about here, some I just come back and read later, and some of it is crap. You can also subscribe to the rss feed here.

I'm having a hard time with words right now, so please forgive my uninspired post. After my adolescent ramblings Tuesday night (of which your comments were thoughtful and appreciated), I had a much worse Wednesday. My friend's husband was killed in an automobile accident Wednesday night, and we have all been trying to take care of her as best we can. Dennis McCullough was a thoughtful, kind and intelligent man with a great faith that inspired many. Their only daughter, Erin, will be heading back to college next week and both she and Donna's lives will be forever changed. I wish I could make their lives easier right now, but I know this is something they will have to work through together. Please keep Donna and Erin in your thoughts and prayers. I hope I can keep my own issues in perspective from now on.

If you've been wondering why Cole hasn't been posting much, it may be because he now has a Xanga blog: thecoletrain's Xanga Site. I won't say anything about Xanga, since I can't say much that's nice. There is an RSS feed, if you want it.

Can I get a little more cowbell?

I've always wanted to be somebody. As the great Mr. T once said so eloquently, "Be somebody, or be somebody's fool". And who can argue with that logic? Right now I feel like I am living the latter half of his treatise on life. I wake up every morning (and sometimes go to bed at night) thinking about the monotony, the tantrum-avoiding, the failed potty-training attempts, the general lack of enthusiasm that awaits me. On good days, I can overlook this negative deliberation; on bad days it feeds on my general state of pessimism and becomes a death sentence.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not denying myself the pleasures of being a mother. When I see Emma learning to play with other children, or learning what letters and sounds begin words, or just being generally happy and content, I feel pride in knowing I am at least partially responsible for these occurrences. She's my little girl and, although I am sometimes so angry with her that we can't be in the same room, my love for her grows every day.

The thing is, Mr. T keeps talking to me. Figuratively, of course. I've always wanted to excel at something important, and, in doing so, to make a difference in the lives of others in a unique way. So I try to make a list of my achievements and talents to create a means for these dreams to become a reality. So far, I am in the 'poor-to-mediocre' category on everything. Not necessarily a bad place to be, but then why do I have these grandiose intentions? If I am fated to be mediocre, if I am truly simple in nature, then why do I never seem content with that fact? Is it because I am arrogant and want to believe something that is not there actually is? Is it because I want to achieve a superior status in the eyes of others?

I can't help thinking (and maybe this is the arrogance talking here) that what I'm currently doing is not enough. Even though I have never once truly excelled (okay, so I was valedictorian; but in a class of 28 people, where's the glory in that?) at anything, I would like to. I think, "I was a journalism major, I always wanted to be a journalist, I always thought I could write, just do it already." My current part-time job has me writing and publishing a church newsletter, but it is still mediocre. No ground-breaking stuff there. Even if the subject matter is a little progressive, my lack of writing style makes a much deeper imprint (especially on me).

So what do I do? Do I continue pretending that I can write; that I can make a difference in that way? Do I start over and find something else I can do (which, admittedly, would be nearly impossible given my current caretaker status)? Or do I just give in to the mediocrity and pretend that it is not, in fact, just ordinary? In other words, I may want to be somebody, but am I really called to be?

I'm not necessarily looking for answers here, mostly because I don't want you all to feel obligated to make me feel better. Truth be told, I don't feel bad, or depressed, or even in need of help outside myself. I think it's just something I have to figure out on my own. If you have made it this far in my rambling, thanks for listening. In spite of my internal struggles, I am certain that I am very blessed to know all of you.

I knew it would happen someday, but I didn't think she would become famous at 2 years old. Go to live.curry.com, and listen to the latest Daily Source Code podcast. The little girl who says "I listen to the Daily Souce Code every day." Is our very own chatterbox, Emma. Catch the next RadioBrendoman.com podcast to hear the whole clip.

I've been working on a web site tonight. It's the first site that I'm building for hire. A few people have seen it, and I'm very excited about it. I plan on meeting with the client this week and then I hope to make it (semi-) public.

Tonight I also talked with Gringo. He played me a segment he recorded for the next podcast. I was cracking up. If you haven't heard a podcast yet, head on over to RadioBrendoman.com and download one. Brendan has recorded 5 episodes now, and I appear in 3 of them.

Good night, friends. Have a great week.

Here's a couple of programs that I've found to solve problems at work:

Some of the bank officers were getting tons of spam (about 500 a day). Of course, they use Outlook, so I went to the Microsoft site to read up on how to turn on and strengthen Outlook's spam filter. The site basically said that I need to get a 3rd party solution(!) So folks pay money for Outlook, and then MS tells them, "Good luck with the spam, I think there are some apps you can download." I didn't think our users were ready for Thunderbird, so I went looking for an Outlook plugin. SpamBayes fits the bill. It's everything a spam filter should be. It learns, makes it easy to correct false positives and false negatives, and it's free and open source. Best of all, it works great. So if you're stuck with Outlook, check it out.

Yesterday a user had some mission critical files that were stored on a floppy disk only. The floppy went bad, as they often do, and I was given the task of trying to save the files so they could be sent off later that day to meet a deadline. I tried the disk in about 5 computers, then finally found a little program called BadCopy. It scans the disk, even when Windows won't admit there's a disk in the drive. It recovered the files. They were still pretty mangled and wouldn't open in Word, but I was able to open them in Wordpad, wade through all the special characters and still salvage about half of what we needed. So, it saved a lot of typing and helped us meet the deadline. The program costs $40, but when you need it, you really need it, so that's a reasonable price. Needless to say, the user will be saving to the hard drive first from now on.

I'll take nerdy odds and ends for $800, Alex . . .

The INDUCE Act, which in its earlier forms would have made iPods, TiVo, and probably any computer illegal, appears to be dead for the moment. The act is designed to protect copyright holders, but by most accounts it goes way too far. John McCain has been one of the senators to help keep crazy stuff like this from becoming law. You can keep track of INDUCE over on the INDUCE Blog.

I needed some filler text to test a printer at work today, so I reached for the old standard, "Lorem ipsum . . ." Then I started wondering what the Latin text meant. To find out, click here. The printer seems to be fine, by the way.

Das ist ien funnen Bordgamen! My friend Matt introduced me to a wonderful thing: Geman board games. We played some Settlers of Catan last weekend. He also loaned me Lost Cities and Carcassonne. Fun stuff. The Germans take their board games very seriously. Read more at Wikipedia, GermanGames.com and RioGrandeGames.com.

If you're still reading this, then you must be a geek. So, you may enjoy these last two items.

Click here to learn how to completely uninstall MSN Messenger from your computer. I've been using this at work. There's a nasty little worm affecting MSN Messenger, so removing it may not be a bad idea. If you need to chat, consider GAIM (it works with your MSN account).

I had a laptop that needed different IP settings depending on where it was plugged in. So I wrote a batch script to make the change easier for the user. I got the info from this article.