The Garden

On Tuesday night Joe, Jr and I will be driving down Interstate-85 to the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, NC as the Canadian power-trio Rush pulls into the Old North State for a stop on their “Clockwork Angels Tour”. The band has been a large part of my life since the age of 18 and has provided the proverbial soundtrack for so many of those moments (both good and bad) that one piles up after half-a-century on this rock.  I can imagine what you are thinking: A socially-challenged engineer who can’t get with the whole religion program is a Rush Fan – you must be joking! What do they say about the kernel of truth that resides in almost every stereotype? The Imaginative Conservative does an almost perfect job of capturing what drew so many of us to the band in the first place and what has kept us there over all these years (as well as providing a delicious review of the current disc.)

Cold Cocked

Bizarre day last Saturday at the Duke-Carolina game. I already posted about the episode where the Parking Attendant, upon entry to the lot, referred to son Chris as a Sheila. But that was just the start of things. While I was tending to the grill during the tailgate, we were treated to an appearance by this creepy middle-aged lady dressed up as a clown who was parading through the parking lot creating balloon structures, all the while never saying a word to anybody.  (Billy Crystal in Spinal Tap: Hurry Up, Mime is Money!). She snuck right up beside me at the grill and crouched down, staring up at me while creating her balloon art. I paid her no attention and was focused on the grub – take your crazy somewhere else please - while everybody else (thanks Lora!) conveniently did the SplitsVille routine and left me on the island with her. Weird. She eventually moved on, but Lord, that was awkward.

It’s Not That Long, Is It?

It is about 2:50 PM on Saturday October 20th and I am pulling my Civic into the Chemistry Lot on the campus of Duke University where we will conduct our tailgating festivities before the epic Duke-Carolina game at Wallace Wade that evening. In the Civic I am joined by “Big Bro” Rich and sister-in-law Lora who came down for the weekend from Manassas, VA. Behind me are my three sons driven by youngest son Chris in his 1995 Toyota Corolla.

Styling and Profiling

Over the weekend, I revisited my copy of The End of Faith, a 2004 book from one of those “angry” New Atheists, Sam Harris. As an aside, you ever consider how almost universally the adjective angry is nowadays applied to discredit an idea or a person or a movement and paint a narrative? As if the emotion used to convey an idea somehow alters that idea’s merit. The OWS protesters are angry. The Tea Party is angry. The Angry Left. The Angry Right. Hell, frequently it is applied to people, like Harris, that aren’t angry at all, but rather simply speak forcefully. From what I can tell of his exchanges and debates on the ‘Net, the dude is about as laid back as they come. My dive back into Harris’ bestseller was triggered by two events at different ends of the spectrum;

1. The wave of yet more Islamic murderers killing in support of their “Religion of Peace” in Benghazi and throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
2. A despicable “Vote for Obama, Go to Hell” video and column from Springfield, IL Catholic Bishop John Paprocki.(Much more on this in the next few days.)

Stress Test

So I was sitting in a conference room with colleagues today waiting for a meeting to begin, when the message (highlighted in red below) popped into my In-box. (The Mothership internally uses Lotus Domino-based Mail Servers and most employees still use Notes Mail Clients – we all have our crosses to bear in this world.) Now one gets so many emails during the course of a day, that filtering is applied immediately to decide if you even have to open it up, whether it needs immediate attention, or can be moved to the back-burner and processed later. We get a bunch of emails from the Mgrinfo alias – these are non-project-related and provide updates on various IBM HR and site issues. Generally, I’ll not even open those up, just register the subject in my memory and hope the recall works OK later when or if I need that info.