We had the ultrasound yesterday. 10 fingers, 10 toes, heart looks good, lungs, et al. - development fine, healthy little baby. Based on the measurements, etc. - it appears that the due date is sometime in the last week of June....or so. The exact science of due dates has still eluded modern medical professionals, so - for all the M.D.s, Ph.D.s, R.N.s, and other assorted acronyms, it's still a guessing game.

"Hmm.....based on the measurements, and the date of the mother's last cycle....let's see....(throws dart) - June 27! That sounds good."

The important thing - to me, anyway, is that the little one is healthy. Everything looks fine - as much as they can tell through the ultrasound, anyway. No major problems.

Prior to starting the ultrasound, we had the 'Are you going to determine gender?" segment of the show, and the RN looked at Doree. Who looked at me. I nodded my head frantically, and off we went. Throughout the ultrasound - as they check head size, heart, and other organs, the nurse keeps remarking that 'the legs are crossed, and it's moving, so I don't know if we'll find out the gender." Doree and I both shrug - if we can't find out, it'll be a surprise, and we're fine with that. After all the measurements, and regular checks, the nurse tries a different angle - and - could it be? Yes, it is. A penis. So - either we're getting a little boy, to share a room with his Big Brother Ben, or the nurse made a mistake.....

Names are already being discussed - and Doree is adamant that the middle name be 'Rodney'. Now - nothing against her dad, or his name - but 'Rodney' is not going to be an easy one to match up. We like 'Brian' - which works well, but we also liked 'Scott' - as an homage to my Grandfather. 'Scott Rodney' is just BEGGING for teasing, later in life. Or....

"Dad, why the HELL did you pick 'Rodney' as my middle name?"
"You're named in honor of your grandfather, Rod - your mother's father. Just like your brother, who's named in honor of my father."
"Yeah, but do you know what they call me at school? Seriously?"
"Yep. I tried, son. Talk to your mother about it."
"Dad - 'Scott Rod'? Really?"
"Talk to Mom about it."
"I hate you, Dad."

I better up my 401(k) contributions to save up for his therapy.....

Windows shmindows.

My wife's cousin is staying with us while she looks for a job - seems a degree in Business Administration and speaking fluent Japanese doesn't get you much in Nebraska - and her laptop has been having 'issues'. She informed me that her friends had worked on it previously - reinstalling Windows, performing sacred Santeria rites to the almighty Gates, and it was 'working', just not well.

So I take a look, being the nice guy I am (and the resident techie). It's a refurbished HP Pavilion, Athlon 2800, running Windows XP.

With 256 mb of RAM. Barely enough to drive a screensaver in XP, much less anything else.

So, my first order of business is to upgrade her RAM. Since my laptop and hers take the same memory, and I just got my 512 stick in the mail from New Egg (I LOVES TEH NEW EGG OMG!!!!11 one), I give her the 256 from mine, upping hers to 512. All is well in the universe.....

....until she boots up her laptop and gets the dreaded 'Blue Screen Of Doom'.

So - her hard drive is shot. Remembering what happened when my hard drive took a dirt nap, I give her the bad news - $300 + a couple'a weeks with the Geek Squad. I start doing a little digging around, though - and find that hard drive replacement is actually pretty easy. Fifteen minutes of hardware swap, and three hours of formatting, loading drivers and OS, and reinstalling her apps. So - in an effort to save her a few bucks, I offer to replace the hard drive and fix it for her.

MISTAKE #1.

From Teh Book of Webguy, ch 42, v. 19-25:
'Woe unto you, Windows.
For thou providest restore disks without drivers
Thy instructions are arcane
And thou dost not number them properly.
Thy onscreen instructions are faulty
And leadeth down the path of confusion."

Anyway...after another visit to New Egg (:wub OMG!!!111 one hundred eleven), I order her a new hard drive for $70, and it arrived yesterday. After supper, I dig into the box, grab the restore disks, and head to the basement, intent on fixing and finishing to be in bed at a reasonable hour.

I plug the hard drive in: detected.
Load the BIOS and drivers: no problem.
Drop in System Restore disk #1, and fire it up. After 15 minutes of 'Initializing......Calculating.......Loading...." - I get the prompt to insert disk #2.

Or.....wha?

"Please insert Windows System Restore Disk."

That's it - no number. Well, I'll just guess that it needs disk #2 - 'cause 2 comes after 1, right?

MISTAKE #2

From Teh Book of Webguy, ch 73, v. 5-11:
"Woe unto you, Windows
For thy arcane file system
Does not follow logic
And is confused
Scattered to the winds across many disks
Like wheat before the storm...
Or something."

So, I drop disk #2 in, and wait. It spins, starts loading drivers, and then tells me that it needs "cshdchinesearcanefilename.qvcsomethingorother". Okay - that must be on disk #3, right? Because I already did disk 1, then 2, and 3 comes after 2, so.....I insert disk 3, and wait. Same error message. I try again - same thing.

The hell?

I spend the next 1/2 hour trying every disk available. I even re-inserted the BIOS disk - just in case - no soap. Since I have my desktop on, with the reference manual up (just in case), I check the troubleshooting guide for reference to the file, or the error. Nothing.

Since I'm reasonably intelligent, I decide to look on all the disks for that particular file - I'll locate it using my desktop, and once I find it, I'll put that disk in the laptop and proceed. This assumes that I'll *find* it, however...

1/2 hour later, I decide to just skip that particular file....the reasonable assumption being that, since I'll have to run the Service Pack updates once the OS is installed, I can have Windows download updated drivers then. Right? RIGHT?

2 hours, 8 disks, 17 reboots, 256 messsages prompting for 'Windows Restore Disk' later, it's running. Still no battery, though. Fine. I'll just use the real-time HP chat to see if updated drivers are available. Since I already looked at the HP site, and nothing was listed, the techs should have an updated driver reference available *somewhere*, right?

Hello? Is this thing on? *tap tap tap*

10 Minutes later, I'm in the middle of a chat session with 'Chandra' at HP. Her first suggestion is to uninstall and then re-install the battery. (derf) After I tell her that I've tried that - TWICE - she then has me go into the Device Manager, and start removing some 'Power Management Services'.

MISTAKE #3

From Teh Book of Webguy, ch 125, v. 3.14:

"Why can't you name drivers logically? Seriously. Asshats."

Since she is a Licensed HP Chat Professional (tm), I do as she says, blithely unconcerned with the results. She's gonna help me fixes it, Precious. Once the device is uninstalled - the laptop starts 'detecting' things. Like the graphics card (which was already installed). The CD/DVD drive (ibid.). The touchpad. And so on. And still - no battery. Then - to make matters worse, it needs to reboot. AND reinstall Windows Service Pack 2.

AAAAGH.

Midnight. I've reinstalled Windows SP 2. I've downloaded all 65 'Critical' updates from Windows. I've rebooted and rebooted and reboooooted. I've even run a virus scan (to get rid of the Annoying 'Your computer may be at risk! Click this balloon to have us nag you about it." pop-up that SP2 now features). I've constructed a fort of Legos in the basement, and am starting to emit a low, rumbling growl. The facial tic I developed somewhere around Restore Disk #Four (I think - 'cause they're not numbered! But they are! Hahahahaha!!!111_) is now affecting the entire right side of my body.

And the battery still. isn't. installed.

As a child, I was fascinated by airplanes. I grew up near the South St. Paul municipal airport, so there were always planes in the sky overhead. Mostly private planes - Cessnas, Beechcraft, etc. The airport - Fleming Field - also happened to be the home of the Confederate Air Force's Minnesota branch. The main plane based there was a Texan - an old T-38, used for pilot training back in WWII. Hearing that Pratt & Whitney growling overhead one day in the summer sun, I became hooked on vintage aircraft. I devoured texts regarding WWII airplanes, scoured the libraries for picture books on all the planes, and spent many a day cleaning Testor's Model Glue off the carpet in the basement. I had a shelf full of models - a B-24J Liberator, B-17G Flying Fortress, and my all-time favorite, the F4-U Corsair - among countless others.

Eventually, my fascination with the airplanes led me to explore much of the history of WWII, and the surrounding era. I became enamored of art deco at an early age, learned about the history of the US and global policies after the Depression, and listened endlessly to big band swing with my grandfather.

One of the things that I found interesting, even at an early age, was America's positions prior to, and during, WWII. In the wake of the Depression, under Roosevelt's 'New Deal', American had become isolationist in many of its' policies and feelings. To paraphrase, 'as long as it didn't happen here' seemed to be the mandate of the masses, and our government as well. If any nastiness started to raise it's ugly head, the government/law officials hopped to in a semi-paranoid frenzy. Union Organization? That could lead to another Bolshevik Revolution. Better squash that - call out the troops. Anarchists protesting failing social policies and bloated, corrupt government? Round 'em up, and get those guys - that one, Sacco, and his friend, Vanzetti - they look like they was gonna bomb something.

Admittedly, the world *was* changing, much more rapidly than society was ready for (in a lot of ways). It's understandable that social policies would be a bit out of step with what was necessary, or *should* be done. But - very few politicians - Founding Fathers excluded (maybe) - have had the foresight to truly craft living legislative policies, or to engineer societal change in an evolutionary way. Most legislation and governmental action is (and should be, in most cases) reactionary.

Anyway....

I read this story in the Strib today:

3 Indicted of planning to attack military

And - at first, I thought it was the normal grist from Baghdad. Until, that is, I read on.....The perps in question are living in Ohio.

Ohio.

For some reason, I immediately flashed back to something I had read, many years ago. It was about the detention camps in the West for the Japanese-Americans during WWII. After Pearl Harbor, the US deemed that these people - citizens, either naturalized, or born here - could potentially be a threat. They rounded them up (nicely - sort of), forced them to sell their homes, businesses and possessions (at pennies on the dollar, in many cases) and herded them to camps in the desert. They had committed no crime (innocent until proven guilty, anyone?), yet they were treated as less than citizens. Some died in the camps - others told tales of brutalities - and yet they tolerated their fate, knowing that, despite their current situation, they were still Americans, and they would not be forgotten. Many of their sons and daughters joined the military, and fought in both theaters, or served as hospital and support staff. Many earned commendations, many were killed. It wasn't until the 1980s when monetary reparations were paid, and an offical apology was issued, condeming the actions of the government against its' citizenry.

What's the point, you ask?

America has been in isolationist mode for many years. It wasn't until the events of September 11 that we realized that radical islam posed as great a threat as it does. Yet - because of the mistakes of the past, we don't want to 'offend' anyone, or be too hasty. We have a huge problem with illegal immegration - and I'm not talking about from Mexico (when was the last time they tried a terrorist act, btw?). We're also forced to worship at the altar of "diversity" and "respect" others beliefs, faiths, etc. - to the point of allowing just about any asshat into our country to do is he/she/it pleases.

I'm not recommending that we start rounding up the muslims. Conversely, I'm not saying we should just close down our borders completely, either. But we need to do something. I'm just not sure *what*.

Someone has a case of the Mondays.....

Monday definitely seems to be the 'black hole' of the week, in terms of job searches. There's the Sunday paper to sift through, updated postings from Friday on all of the job sites, and the 'work' that you have to do at your job that just seems to get in the way of it all. Recruiters rarely call, and seem impossible to get in touch with, and the only time to hear anything on a Monday from a prospective employer is the obligatory letter/call to let you know that "we're evaluating a candidate that better fits our needs...."

To compound things, this semester I have class on Mondays, which means my day is about 18 hours long. Up at 6 am, stumble through a shower (shaving optional) and breakfast, then out the door for the commute. Work work work until 4, then it's over to Midway for my class (which NEVER gets out early) and home at around 10. By the time I catch up on the day and wind down a little, it's 11:30.

So - for all my half-assed, grandiose planning, Mondays just never seem to work out. Which then throws the rest of my week into an anxious state of flux. From now on - I need to resolve that Mondays are going to be the 'do not schedule' day on my calendar.