My home base is changing. That would be a wholly unremarkable thing except for the first time in 11 years I won't be based in the city. My whole department is getting bumped all to the offices in West Seneca. I never logged anytime there so that will be different. When I came to this office, I joked that I was trading Shanghai Red's for Chefs. Now, I seem to be trading Chef's for Louie's Texas Red Hots. I'm thinking of taking a journey to see how far it is from the new office to Schwabl's (home of the kick ass Beef on Wick). Same shit, different day, different location.

Off to Manhattan on Thursday to hang with my siblings and to show my lovely eldest daughter NYC. My younger sister was all about the planning of the trip until she announced her wedding. She and her intended are having a thing at some resort outside of Fishkill, NY on Columbus Day. They managed to pick the weekend that West Point, Marist and some other college are all having their homecomings, so finding a place to stay will be interesting and expensive. My mom seems to like the idea of playing travel agent. I'm in the "Okay, I can't afford a vacation now, but it's family so that's what you do." Said younger sister announced that she wanted to have an unconventional ceremony and every step taken is pivoting from right out of Bride magazine. She's 38, but is planning like she is 21. Her day, I guess, but I think the expense involved is one of the reasons my youthfully 70 year old Dad accepted a three week assignment in Philly this month.

I'm a big hockey fan, but part of me wants the Sabres to quit teasing us all and pack it in. It's been a fun ride and seeing the citizens just hi-five one another is nice, but they are in over their heads. Weather wise, and Ottawa being too good wise, it is slowly turning into time to go to a Bisons game, drink a beer or two and people watch, safe in the knowledge that the game is a backdrop for some fun people watching.

Happy Hump Day, ya'all

Because the Versus network is run by Dewey, Cheatum and Howe, I thought for the benefit of tonight's Sabres game I'd offer up the following info. Tonight's Sabres game is on Versus and on Hockey Night in Canada and in HD on a network called MOJO.

Versus shares their HD feed with the party animals at the Golf Channel. If you go to Versus HD expecting to see Hockey, you'll actually be treated to a bunch of guys in Polyester pants -- not unlike clubbing in Lackawanna.

I just thought I'd offer this estrip public service announcement for the common good and in light of the fact that people will be hollering at me tomorrow about "What did you morons do about the HD?" when it wasn't us morons it was the Versus morons.

Non Hockey fans can enjoy the new Grey's Anatomy in its proper HD.

I'm having a hard time letting go of the urge to beat the shit out a music teacher. I'd never thought one would deserve it, but I now know of one who merits such treatment.

My kids school is doing an operetta, school play thingy. There is a district wide organization which helps with arts stuff in the Buffalo schools and they are overseeing this little production. I knew my daughter got involved which was great, but Number One Son tried out. He just turned 9. He and a friend went down to the "auditions." Each was sent to a group of older kids, 11 to 13 years in age. That can be intimidating in and of itself. The advisor who apparently thinks he is at fucking Julliard looked at my son and simply commanded "NEXT", giving him no instruction, no direction, just placed him on the stop. My poor boy got nervous and sort of collapsed into himself and started to cry, given that he was surrounded by no support at all which made that feeling even worse. The older kids mocked that, until my darling daughter appeared and threatened beatings all around. Lovely girl, she is capable of some intense mood swings, but upon hearing of this lioness like response, I immediately upped her allowance.

My son held it together until he got back to class until he got to his teacher and had a good cry. I'm angry because it took a little bit for all of this to get to me, but I also want to slap the shit out of the play director. If the fuckstick doesn't want to help and encourage young kids who have a genuine interest, then what the fuck is he doing working for schools. This jackass set my son and apparently 4 or 5 others kids up to fail simply because he couldn't be bothered to give a shit.

The inherent beauty of all of this is that at a school function from a couple of posts ago this weekend, I was, er, able to voice my displeasure to the school principal who had the miscreant in her office.

I believe I told her something about what kind "of a shell of a man browbeats 8 and 9 year olds for the sake of a school play."

Godfuckingdammit

Well, that was a fun work week. The Big Kahunas decided to institute a entire new billing system first thing last monday. I got to spend last sunday helping prep the damn thing. It is a decent piece of software that will be a great use once everybody gets over the heebie jeebies with it. Trouble is, every department feeds off of it, so one fuckup can reverberate for quite awhile. Then, there was the change of servers for the internet. Sunday was the day to pull the plug on the adelphia server and connect with the Time Warner --- GADS, what a pain in the shorts. The big bosses hit part of the email of adelphia.net account holders without realizing that more than half the folks didn't use that email so they had no idea how stupid we were about to get. Of course, it didn't go smooth. Compounded by the problems with secure sites, that mole hill became in mountain in double time.

Just about everything about it blew. Peeps, if your net connection got fubar'ed last weekend into this week, lemme know. I figured out how to give credit rather quickly (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

Wednesday I headed out to one of the call centers to pitch in with some troubleshooting on the billing system. During the lunch break, I broke bread with some of the folks who work me in Buffalo and we told some war stories of what customers were telling us. The center's manager heard one line from the conversation and immediately thought I was slamming her call center and ran to tell the dude I interviewed with for a job late the week before. What the hell?? Not only was that a little junior high for my tastes, but does the allegedly professional women have such an opinion of me that I am stupid enough to insult an operation while I'm in the middle of that operation. The fact that she said nothing to me left a sour taste in my mouth. If the smell of superstition is going to be stinking up the place, I'm wondering if I should really head over to the new spot.

In my current stead, there is a chance my office might be relocating to the confines of West Seneca in just remote enough to make me underwhelmed at the prospect of going. But alas.

Short vacation coming up, taking the eldest to NYC for her birthday in June. In 11 days, we head off for a long weekend of savoring Manhattan. It's been a little over 1 1/2 years since I've last been and can't' wait.

My younger sister is taking my daughter to see the Color Purple while we are there. She announced that she (the sister) is getting married at a place near WestPoint called the Garrison in October. Never did a solid drive like that on my own before, but first time for everything.

And how was your week?

My kids' school did a neat thing to celebrate the springtime weather. Some parents and kids got together and built a maypole, creating a nice day outside as well as a excuse for a picnic in the sunshine.



The peak of the maypole




Great day to savor the spring weather

Yo Time Warner/adelphia.net subscribing peeps,

It's not an outtage. It's the formal untangling of Adelphia and the restitching of Roadrunner. Sit tight, engineering types should be through messing with us soon. Watch the mail, the shift from adelphia.net to roadrunner.com is up for this week too

Back to your regularly scheduled estrip

Alright, I know I have a few more miles on me than some of you all, but damn, who knew.

Four straight twelve hour days have feeling like the loser in a bar fight. We've been short staffed and the solution seems to be to have me fill in. At 43, I'm not too old for much, but apparently I pay for it the next day. All the final pushing to get shake off the Adelphia and implement the Time Warner (especially all the Road Runner Technical goodies) are getting implimented over the past few days and should finish by the middle of next week. This is a good thing because my supervisor's supervisor is about to explode. Given her turtle like physique & demeanor, that will not be a pretty thing. The result of the changes has had me tossing modems and dvrs every which way. When my muscles stop aching they might be in a little better shape. But what price. I've picked up work tomorrow just early enough to wreck any chance of roller derby tonight and in at 7 on monday (we need your computer skills...bitch, please). They need me to be better caffienated at that hour. Can office coffee successfully run through an IV? I may just find out.

Interviewed for a slighty different position within the company that has my interest. I must have put on a good show since they already called my direct boss. Might be kind of nice to head to the waterfront provided the pay is right.

Anybody up for a matinee on a rainy day? Popcorn for lunch seems like a good thing

Well, his cup anyway. Occasionally work yields some cool things. The network "Versus" (the cable channel broadcasting the Hockey playoffs in the US for you non-fans) threw a private shindig for TW employees during the game last friday. Free food, comped ale and the following souvenir. Couldn't say no especially after the free food part. About nine people took this picture at once and they all pretty much suck, but can't beat the price of the souvenir.

In lieu of dinner tonight, and not really wanting to go home too soon, I grabbed my camera and headed out to the marina for a hike. Got to see a few interesting sites


Iceburgs were migrating south for the summer.



I'll never be a postcard photog

And then again, maybe

Where do the wealthy store their boats until May 1st when the marina opens up anyway?

Saw ducks and seagulls making like the Jets and the Sharks over what food there was in the water. Interesting to watch until somebody did something then the whole scrum headed further out into the water.



Having created the illusion of exercise and free air, I repaired to Spot to put a proper end to the day.

Like most of us here, I like gizmos, but the bluetooth headset wearing fools are grating on me. I used to not really care that our fellow citizens like to walk around looking like Lt. Uhura with metal sticking straight out of their ears. I guess the use of hands free stuff is good for the car drivers and such. The past week and half however, I've been pressed into service at various Time Warner payment centers and these chucklheads are popping up at a high rate of speed. People so abosorbed in a phone call they can't be bothered to pay attention to the person directly in front of them. I used to think that the biggest sin was in being too fucking lazy to reach into your pocket ( or god help us, to your belt clip) and answer the fucking phone. Has it not dawned on us as a people that just because we can take a call anywhere does not mean that we actually have to take the call anywhere.

I set a guy up with internet service without him actually speaking to me. I wandered to the front of the Buffalo Time Warner building the other day and there were no less than four people carrying on intense conversations with people who were not there. Happens all the time on Allen Street, except the people doing the talking there really have blue teeth, if you know what I'm sayin. I mentioned this to my supervisor and we agreed that if we could set em all down, you'd have a helluva round table, prepared to castigate the mayor, tell the Islanders to quit whining that it was a goal and many other issues.

I couldn't resist. As each person got to the counter, none of them got off the phone. Each clerk had to wait for lapses in the conversations or episodes to transact business.

Oy, in other news, I got invited to a short party at Pearl St Brewery tomorrow at the start of the Sabres game, get to have my picture taken with the Stanley Cup. The fact that this is exciting is a tad worrisome to me, but what the hey.

Beta testing for digital phone means I'll have a home phone in the next couple of weeks. TW is going to make a full launch in June. As soon as the prices are determined, I'll say something. Anybody with an adelphia.net email is going to complete the Road Runner change soon.

Lastly, how about that thursday??!?? I only got a little sun at the end of the day, but damn going from Lancaster where I was working to Wegmans on Amherst for foodstuffs was the most fun I had all week. Window down, Ipod cranking some decent driving music, hell, I was giddy just walking to the car.

My firefox weather add on says 68 and Sun tomorrow. People will be hugging spontanously in the streets. Could almost smell (e:joshua)'s grill firing up, as I got closer to down town turned out it was just Cocoa Puff Day at the Cheerios plant.

My Dad stopped by the office to leave me some souvenirs of him and Mom stocking up on Canadian pharmiceuticals. A case of Sleeman's Draught - damn fine beer, yet another reason to believe that the best liquor store around is still the Ft. Erie Duty Free.

Dad needs to stop by work more often.