Kerry was pushing something the last week or so of his campaign -- something along the lines of...  "Bla bla bla bla... and the President can't appologize for something or other bla bla bla."

Quite a bold statement for a man who said he and other Veterans, "...raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam..."

Where's his apology?  Don't expect one...  Anyhow, I kept my vote a secret from the wife -- thank god she'll never found out that I wrote in Andy Reid -- GO IGLES!  I just hope she doesn't read this journal... Phew!

In anycase, the mandolin learning is coming along quite swimmingly -- I've developed good sized calouses on my index and middle finger of the left hand, and a little one on the ring finger... still working on the pinky.  I was at concert band rehearsal last night a a guy there told me about a place that did a shanty sing once a month.  Really does sound like fun; the music is kinda enjoyable when you sit back and listen to it -- even more fun to bring an instrument and pick along.

Ah well, been doing a lot of additions to my work order system -- it's really come into it's own and I'm starting to plan some revisions that will let me create a standard to add on related web applications that I develop.  That was the plan all along if it wasn't rushed, but hey -- gotta work with deadlines, right?

*grumble* Time to wrap up class and get ready to leave -- foooood.

Well, the poor kid had to get three shots today to get her up to date, and guess who had to hold her down...  I really hate that part, but the nice thing was as soon as I put her back in the car, she zonked right out.  21lbs 13ozs (50th percentile) and 31 1/2" (75%) percentile -- so, I'm looking at Daddy's Little NBA Star right now; yes, my 401K plans are coming together nicely. :)

Went to the PA Renn Faire last Saturday -- I played with a group call Fieldstone... they had 9 gigs in the shire that day and I played 7 of them.  Mostly bodhran (the thing I'm playing in my picture here), along with a little bit of whistle and whatnot.  Very cool group -- three others, a whistle player/singer, a bouzouki and accoustic guitar player, and a fiddle/viola/mandolin player.  Now, he had this /sick/ looking viola -- it had *14* strings... 7 across the bridge, and 7 that ran underneath for sympathetic vibration.  Sounded pretty damned sweet.

With that, I've also ordered my own mandolin -- a Trinity College Octave Mandolin... List price is about $600.  There are intro models at $80, but they truely play like an $80 instrument...  Having been a musician as long as I have, I can accurately say that learning this instrument won't be a passing thing, so I was willing to make an investment in getting something that's going to carry me through my beginner and intermediate stages.

It's A-style or celtic teardrop style (as opposed to F-style bluegrass mandos) and has double the range of a standard mandolin.  It has eight strings which, when you first hear, makes it sound more complicated than a 6-string accoustic; however, they're run in 4 courses.  That is, broken down into 4 sets of two strings.  Each pair of strings in a course is tuned to the same note... with the full length bouzouki's, some of them are done octaves apart, but for this type, they're generally the same note in the same octave...  Anyhow, the two strings is what gives the mandolin it's unique sound.  So, technically you're only working with a 4-stringed instrument. That's 32% easier than learning an accoustic 6-string! ;p

Let's see...  Released my first major project at work... a PHP/MySQL based work order system that spans accross multiple campuses...  User and admin interface, comments, statistical analysis, order transfers and Sat Rating tracking.  All in all a very cool system for one that was:

• Conceived completely and wholey by me, from concept to database schema to logic flow.
• Coded completely by me first to last line, including all of the database crap and uses PAM authentication
• On a 6 month deadline, was released 2 1/2 months early so our CTO wouldn't be able to put the kabosh on it.

So far, only one bug report that I promptly fixed, and the rest is aesthetic crap that can be done when I'm bored.  I'm adding some tools to track some of the technician stuff...  when they last logged into the system, their average completion time for a ticket, etc.

Got caught up on the new series "Lost" kinda freaky, but it's pretty interesting so far...  I highly reccomend it for some unique viewing.  Ummm... With the kid and everything going on, I've had almost no time for MMORPG's lately -- Ren Season is wrapping up so hopefully I'll have more time to get back into a thing here or there.  DR is looking pretty sweet these days, and I've been able to stop in there on occasion to have a bit of fun.

Ahh well, that's it for now.