All the other divisions of our company have today off, except for Atlanta. And there’s not a lot of folks here.

And yet, my boss (who is technically off today) is still responding to emails in realtime.

This is the guy who called me from the line leading to Space Mountain to check on stuff. I mean, I guess that’s not too bad… the line is long, and what else are you going to do? Talk to your family? Right.

My extended family is in town, so I’m going to cut out early. steakums‘s sister Rene, her husband Frankie, son Jovanni, daughter Devyn and new daughter Julia (6 months) stopped by on their way from New Jersey to Louisianna (where half of Frankie’s family lives). We watched Cheaper by the Dozen last night, which had a funny bit or two, but otherwise blah.

It’s steakums‘s b-day today! She’s turning 43! She’ll try to tell you she’s turning 35, but that’s just vanity. Don’t listen to her.

Last night, Jovanni, Devyn and I walked down to the creek behind our house. Our conversation the whole way there and back was centered around the identification of “poison ivy”. Is that poison ivy? No. Is that? No, that’s a tree. Is that? No. Is that? Yes. AAAAH!

I’m going to mail in my taxes now.

One note on that point… The Fool discussion that started with the Net Worth table I presented in an earlier post ended up as an exchange of stories of the financially-unastute. There were a lot of folks who had gotten frustrated trying to argue with people who felt if they got money back on their taxes, then they “hadn’t paid any taxes”. When the Fools asked these folks about all the money that had disappeared from their paychecks all year long, the folks just looked blankly at them and showed them the refund check.

A few people said we should just get all of our paycheck all year long, and get a bill at the end of the year. I wonder what that world would be like? Undoubtedly, the taxes would have to be lowered just to quell the screaming somewhat so we could get some sleep.

The water is, indeed, on. So kudos to the water gods.

I sat in on a web teleconference today. Altera was giving an overview of a new line of CPLDs called MAX II due out this year.

The technology worked really well, nice full streaming video that was well produced in a studio. A button you could click to type a question. And a window that had a powerpoint presentation controlled by the presenter.

There was a moderator from the webcast company, and a presenter from Altera. They were both women, and the odd thing was, they were both wearing neck scarves. I had trouble concentrating on what they were saying because I kept thinking, “who wears neck scarves? and why? and how is it that TWO women who happen to wear neck scarves are giving this presentation?”

Is there a neck scarf trend that I’m missing? The teleconference was in the Pacific time zone, so perhaps this is a California trend that will eventually make it’s way here.

I hope not.

The other thing I kept thinking is, it figures a tech company would hire a hot vaguely-asian woman to be their spokesperson. The attendees were undoubtedly mostly male, geek males at that, as evidenced by the ratio of men-to-women asking questions. (about 30 to 1).

A depressing point today: Netflix, a company I had looked into investing in over a year ago (at $10/share) and rejected because I felt it overvalued is now sitting at $35/share. *sigh* There was an article on the Fool today about it, and why they felt it was STILL undervalued. It was a pretty good arguement, perhaps I’ll look into it.

I came in early today, so I’m leaving early too. Tah!

Creating Bills of Materials (aka Parts Lists) is the absolute, hands down, most tedious, boring part of being an engineer.

That is what I have done for the past two days. I am now done. That makes me so happy I am going to go home early.

I just wanted to post this because I never have an entry for the “Current Music” slot. But since I’m at home and not in a cube, I can play music.

When did I say “electricrocket1”? That’s my IM… Hmmm…

I’m a lying liar. Someone needs to take a fair and balanced look at me.

I got tied up in traffic and tried to go around it and ended up at home, then I looked at traffic on www.georgia-navigator.com and figure out it was going to take me 2 hours to get out of town, and then another 7-8 to get to Lynchburg, and it was already 6:30pm.

So I called my brother and rescheduled for April 16, when I can plan to take a day off or at least a half day.

*sigh*

When I talked to my brother, we realized we were completely disorganized and didn’t have our act together enough to try the concrete countertops this weekend anyway. So he’s going to do some experiments with small 12″ x 12″ slabs and some red dye to see what he can do.

He doesn’t have cabinets to put the countertops on anyway. He’s got to rip up the flooring and put down tile, new appliances, cabinets… so we weren’t going to have working countertops any way you sliced it.

So, we’ll do something else in April.

Maybe shoot pool.

I’m off to Lynchburg, Virginia to help my brother with his $20,000 house.

Will report my adventures on Monday… have a good weekend all!