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It’s National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week Nov. 2-8. The Humane Society of the United States gave this year’s celebration the theme “Shelters Rock”. “G By Guess” has a line of “Shelters Rock” themed shirts & bags, and The Humane Society (etc., etc.) has page with suggestions on how you can get involved & help the cause.

Cat Guardians’ last bake sale of the year is this Saturday, November 8th.  Please consider stopping by, picking up some treats, and visiting my furry little buddies.

Mom’s in the hospital with a broken hip, and I’m worried about her. It’s 7:00pm on the dot, and her surgery should be starting any minute now.  Hopefully I’ll get a chance to visit her before I leave town.

We’ve been talking about moving to Seattle after Amy finishes school. If only we were there already! Babeland (a Seattle sex shop) says to bring your “voter registration card, ballot stub or your word of honor” tomorrow and they’ll give you a free sex toy. Oh well, at least I can still get a free coffee at Starbucks — maybe.

I don’t want anyone getting the impression I’m jumping ship, but I think these articles from Bruce Webster are important for IT managers & leads to understand: How to Retain IT Talent with Goal Alignment and How to Retain and Improve Your IT Staff Simultaneously.

I’ve been meaning to write a blurb about Warp 11, a Star Trek band. They do a variety of rock styles, with lyrics that sound like a cross between Gene Roddenberry and Lords of Acid.  You know, songs like “Boldly Go Down on Me” and “She Make it So“.  If you’re a Trek geek, go buy one of their albums now.  I came across The Vulcan Freedom Fighters thanks to a Reddit posting last night, and they’re pretty good too.

I listed some interesting Commodore items on eBay last night: a Turbo-232 high speed serial interface and a commemorative t-shirt from World of Commodore 1988.

Tomorrow’s the big election. After two years of campaigning, it’s almost over. This will be the first presidential election where I’m not voting Libertarian. I can’t lend my support to Bob Barr after all he did in his legislative career, and this is one election where I don’t think it’s in my best interests to “vote my conscience”. I don’t want another eight years of the current regime, I certainly don’t want Sarah Palin in national office, and I think this country really needs a charismatic, positive person in the White House who can actually string together a complete sentence.

This must have been a great evening, and I wish I could’ve been there.  Jean Bartik took a job with the US Army’s Ballistics Research Labs in 1945 as a “computer”.  She was one of the original ENIAC programmers, and later worked on Binac and Univac.  Watch the video for some great stories and advice from a pioneer in the computing field.

My big project for the weekend was to clean all the leaves out of our gutters.  Along the way, I discovered at least 5 years of crap in our back downspout, clogging it completely.  I was covered in gunk — icky, smelly gunk.

Man, I’ve gotta hire a handyman next year.

Still decompressing from two days of intense sessions. A few thoughts:

• I need to get more involved with the Drupal community.  Dare I go back to hanging out in IRC channels all night?  What’s a good IRC client for the Mac?
• For $20 I got Drupal training, four meals, soda, wifi, and two t-shirts.  That’s a great deal.
• Google Docs is handy.  I was able to take notes during a session and share them with my co-workers with just a few clicks.
• I borrowed my 15″ Dell laptop back from Amy.  It was so nice to have a full-sized screen & keyboard for typing 9 hours straight over two days.
• I’ll probably clean up my notes this week and post them here.  They’re going to make videos available, but who knows how long that’ll take?