The picture below is of

The picture below is of one of my high school friends, Brian Dockwell-Thoe. His Iowa National Guard unit has been activated, and he's being shipped out to an unknown destination, though you don't have to be a military genius to figure out that it's probably Iraq. His picture was in the area paper for North Iowa.

North Iowans say farewell, Godspeed to 1133rd Transportation Company

MASON CITY - Hundreds of North Iowans wept, waved American flags and hugged their loved ones this morning in an emotional send-off to 170 members of the 1133rd Transportation Company of the Iowa National Guard. The guard unit, called up for active duty last week, left in a convoy for Fort McCoy, Wis., its mobilization station, where they will await their next assignment.

A formal farewell ceremony was held inside the armory, but many residents braved bone-chilling weather as they lined the streets to say their good-byes with a shout or a wave.

Brrrrrrr. As you can see

Brrrrrrr. As you can see from the screenshot I captured below, it's frickin' cold here this morning. Maybe I'll just live in my office, so I don't have to endure the frigid trek back to my car in the distant parking lot.

Now I'm depressed, Virginia Heinlein,

Now I'm depressed, Virginia Heinlein, wife of the late Science Fiction Grand Master Robert A. Henlein, died in her sleep on Saturday. RAH is my personal favorite writer of all time, and I know from his writings what a fantastic woman she was, and how much of an inspiration, and a companion, she was to him during their marriage, and his numerous health difficulties. Robert died back in 1988, but Virginia gladly adopted his fan base, and would write letters back to many of RAH's fans, long after his death. [Found via Al] I'd always meant to get around to writing her a letter, telling her how much I enjoyed her husband's work, and now I can't. :(

Though it's not in print anymore, track down a copy of Tramp Royale, for some wonderful insight into their relationship. And no, you can't borrow my copy.

Ginny, like Robert, will be greatly missed, now that they've both Sailed Beyond The Sunset.

I just got off the

I just got off the phone with Anne Kapler, a reporter from the Courier, who interviewed me about weblogging, of all things! The story will run some time next week, and of course I'll link to it, as long as I don't seem like an idiot in the interview (just kidding). I tried to be as honest as possible with her, and she was very nice, though she asked some hard questions. For instance, who is the target audience of my weblog? That's a great question, I wish I had a great answer for it, but the real answer is "I don't know". Sure, some of my family and friends read the site, but I don't even pretend that they're interested in many of the computer things I write about, so they're certainly not my target audience. Then again, I don't hold my weblog up as some great example of what weblogs could be, it's merely an average weblog at best. She also wanted to know what my opinions about what the future held for weblogs, and more about their nature and the philosophy behind them. Let me make my disclaimer right here, I'm not offering myself up as a self-proclaimed expert on weblogs, my opinions are my own, and they may very well be assinine, but if you don't like them, write your own weblog!

I'd write more about what I said, but I'll wait for the article to come out first, in the hopes that a professional writer can make me seem more coherent and less rambling than I really am. :)

Since I work for a

Since I work for a state university, I got today off from work. I've spent much of the day running errands, did a little shopping, and cleaning around the house. I've also filled out a lot of mail-in rebates today, if that isn't an exercise in patience, I don't know what is. Fortunately, many of them can at least be filled out on the computer, then printed out now, so you don't need to fill in the tiny little forums with your illegible chicken scratches. I bought my tax software for the year too, choosing TaxCut over the TurboTax I've used in the past. This year, Quicken (who makes TurboTax) decided to implement a product-activation scheme in their Tax software, to prevent people from installing it more than once. I'm protesting via my wallet on this one by purchasing the competing product, TaxCut, which is just as good, and doesn't have the lame protection scheme. I generally do my taxes early, and after having filed, I uninstall the software, and give it to a friend or family member to file their taxes. There's nothing on the box that says "Good for one tax return only", and if I'm not using it anymore, I'm not violating the copyright, so Quicken can kiss my business goodbye.

Of course, if you get TaxCut Deluxe, then you get a form for a $5 rebate, a free (after rebate) copy of TaxCut State, a free (after rebate) electronic filing, and a free (after rebate) copy of Microsoft Money 2003, which gives you some more software, at a low cost, assuming you've got the gumption to fill out all those rebate forms, which is what I'm going to spend the next hour doing.