"Stupid bug! You go squish now!"
    Homer Simpson

I've got my computer at work playing that sound whenever someone assigns me a bug. Its like a bandaide on a severed leg.

Anyway, this past sunday I saw what I hope to god is NOT my future. Lisa and I met up with some friends at The Mountineers for a "Seattle Swing Club" dance. I was surprised it took me over a year to learn that such a thing existed. I quickly discovered why. The crowd at The Century is a younger crowd. Twenties and Thirties mostly. The Seattle Swindance Club was forties and fifties, and their primary dance is West Coast Swing. (The same stuff the 40-50somethings were all dancing at the Liederkranz(sp?)).

It was surreal... there were a lot of really great dancers there, but there were also a lot of... characters. Please god don't let me turn into a creepy middle-aged guy who reaks of self confidence and shows enough chest hair to knit a sweater.

On a lighter note Carl has a blog now. I've always thought he was a funny guy, but I never realized how much smack he talks about me. Stupid first ammendment.

"And just like that.... He's gone."
    Verbal Kint, The Usual Suspects

Weekend continued:

Friday I went to one of those strange little trendy beer-and-wine only bars up on Captiol Hill with Lisa and some dancing friends. There was this band playing that we like (Pearl Django), and the idea was that we'd go dance. Thing is there was no dance floor. However, some of these people are real dancing die hards and just wove there way between the people. Crazy.

Saturday Matt, Dave and I took our signifigant others to see David Copperfield at The Paramount. That was an incredible show. The illusions are so unbelievably good it blows your mind. He disappears while out on a crane suspended over the audience, teleports a duck (and underwear), and does a truly amazing trick involving a lottery and a 1948 Lincoln convertable.

So some of the tricks Dave just came out into the audience and picked volunteers (usually really cute girls). A little suspicious in the "maybe they're in on it" sense. However, for a lot of his tricks he would just throw a frisbee out into the audience and whoever caught it was in the trick.

The finale was the most fun. He sent these thirteen beach balls out into the audience and had us all just bash them around. When the music stopped whoever was holding the balls came up one stage, sat them on this raised platform, and made them disappear. Matt was actually one of the 13 and we had to sit around while he got to go backstage and meet Dave. He told us what happened from his perspective (even though Dave asked them not to), but the cool part is we're still not sure how the trick was done. That Copperfield guy knows his illusions.

"Life is a rock,
 But the radio rolled me
 At the end of my rainbow
 Lies a Golden Oldie"
    Reunion, Life is a Rock

Now that was a fabulous weekend.

It started Thursday. I was playing pool downtown with friends. A woman comes up to me with a computer around her neck:

• Me: What's that for?
• Her: I'm taking a survey for Marlboro
• Me: Oh
• Her: Do you smoke?
• Me: No.
• Her: Sorry, its only for smokers
• Me: Oh

• Me: What's that for?
• Her: I'm taking a survey for Marlboro. Do you smoke?
• Me: Yes
• Her: Are you 21?
• Me: Yes
• Her: How long have you been smoking?
• Me: Five years
• Her: What brand of cigarettes do you smoke
• Me: Uh... Salem
• Her: Do you have ID
• Me: Sure (produce drivers license
• Her: Thanks. (Procedes to put my ID in the little computer thingy. A few seconds later a digital picture of my ID appears on the screent
• Me: (Uh-Oh)
• Her: Is this your address?
• Me: Uh, yep
• Her: What's your phone number
• Me: (I give her a disconnected number)
• Her: Great, sign here.
• Me: (Reading: I, the undersigned, do hereby authorize Marlboro to send me junk mail for the rest of my natural life, which will likely be shortened by the cigarettes that I am authorizing Marlboro to stick up my nose Uh, sure.
• Her: Thanks! Would you like a fanny pack or a mini-MagLight?
• Me: The MagLight, please
• Her: Ok I just need to stamp your hand.
• Me: (Hmmm... this stamp wipes right off...)

"The sun may rise in the East at least
 it settles in the final location "
    The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Californication

One final note on my trip to Hollywood: flying home I saw the sun setting over the Pacific for the first time in my life.

I'd say it inspired me, but I'd be lying. You see I've seen the sun riseing over the Atlantic on more than one occasion, and the Pacific sunset it was basically just like the Atlantic sunrise played backwards :-)

"Free your mind and your ass will follow."
    George Clinton and The Parliment Funkcadelic

Ah The Funk...

I suppose there comes a point in everyone's life, or actually several points, where you have to ask yourself if you have The Funk.

One such moment for Yours Truly came Saturday night when I went with Lisa and some friends to see The P-Funk in concert. The plan was to meet up at Jen & Vic's at 7:00pm so we could be at the venue by 7:30pm when the doors opened (with the understanding that the show began and 8:00pm). Lisa and I were in a huge rush, but in the end we managed to meet up with everyone and at 7:25pm we were in line to get into the show.

Well the doors didn't actually open until 8:00pm. No problem. We get in and check the place. Its an old movie theater that's been converted to a concert hall with a bar up on the balocny. We get some drinks, wander around, and wait... and wait.... and wait until 9:30pm when the opening band came out. Now The Funk is basically feel-good fun music. However, the opening band was a 'F*** The Man' rap group from Washington DC called "The THC* Mercinaries". (* apparently The Funk is about 4:20). Anyway, we were all wound up so we got into it and had a good time during their set. They played till a little after 10:00pm, and then we wandered around, went to the bathroom, watied... and waited... and waited until a little after 11:00pm when the P-Funk began to take the stage.

Now I don't know anything about P-Funk shows, but I guess there's a lot of ritual involved with brining out the 20+ members of the Band. Anyway, at this point I'm tired and the only thing that's going to get me back into things is if they start pumping out some Serious Funk. Do they do this? No... they start playing this weird trip-hop sounding mood music while a guy in a diaper tells us to relax. I look at Lisa and tell her that I'm asleep on my feet and ask if she would mind leaving. She gives me a huge grin and says she's been ready to leave for a half-hour, but didn't want to be a party pooper.

So we said out goodbies to the folks we came with and headed out. I admit that I felt a little old leaving a concert at 11:00pm because I was tired, but its hard for me to keep my enthusiasm for ANYTHING if I have to just stand around for four hours before hand.

So back to the original questions: do I have The Funk? In fact I do. However, there is a time and place for everything. Saturday night I didn't need The Funk. What I needed was The Sleep.

"I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round
 I really love to watch them roll..."
    John Lennon

So the first three days of this week I did nothing but work twleve+ hours per day, eat, and sleep. Last night we hit our bug goal at about midnight and then we all sat down for an hour or two to celebrate in the traditional manner: beer and ice cream.

While this was going on Matt and I decided to celebrate the (very stupid) approval of the plan to extend the Seattle monorail up north to Ballard by watching the monorail Simpsons episode.

Later my dev lead randomly started telling us stories about dumb stuff he did when he was younger. Apparently "the thing" to do was to steal fire extinguishers and blast people. Old people are strange.

This afternoon a few of us went out for a sushi lunch. We wanted to go to 'I Love Sushi' (Sushi restaraunts around here have the best names), but upon discover that was closed we opted for 'Sushiland'. This was the most bizzare place. You all sit at this big rectangular bar while sushi on different colored plates goes by you on a conveyer. You just take what you want and then when you're done you get billed by the number of colored plates you have. Random.

I'm going to the (think the Cal Ripken-looking father from Billy Elliot here) ballet (balleh!) for the first time in my life tonight. Lisa got some free tickets to see the Bolshoi Ballet. I have no idea what this means, but I ran the idea past one of my dance instructors who has done ballet for many years and she got very jealous. Apparently they're very good. We shall see.

OK three more hours of work and then I'm out like a fat kid in dodge-ball.

"I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates who said, 'I drank WHAT?'"
    Chris Knight, Real Genius

So I screwed up pretty bad at work on Monday... like preventing other devs from getting any work done because I broke their shit bad. That would have been OK if that were the extent of it, but I also somehow missed the fact that I had done this until today when I started getting hate mail from a few devs. That was bad. The mail was also sent to my Dev Lead, My Manager, My preschool teacher, Equifax, and the IRS. That was worse.

The truly shitty part is that I deserve it. I got mail from them yesterday asking me to look into something and I got side tracked with other work. Ugh... the mail all came pretty late tonight so most of the 'interested parties' won't read it till tomorrow. That's going to be fun.

Hope your week is going better than mine.

"Its not whether you win or lose that matters. Its whether I win or lose."

Judge Kollar-Kotelly is going to issue an opinion on the Microsoft antitrust cases today at 1:30pm PCT. It feels like we're waiting to hear how we did on a final for some strange reason.