How not to start your week

Monday Morning

Do you think Bo Schembechler timed his death to inspire Michigan in what was most likely their biggest game of the season? I admit that would be a bit drastic, especially given the fact it didn't work. But those football guys have a different mentality. I wouldn't put it past him.


It is finally starting to act like winter here. It got down to the 30's and we got a light, very light dusting over night. It was still coming down when I went to work this morning. When it snows outside, it snows inside the Toyota too. The gap between the hard top and the top of the windshield isn't sealed so the air that blows through pulls in the snow flakes as well. I suppose if the conditions were right, given enough time I could actually have a snowball fight inside my car.


Turns out I won't be home for Thanksgiving and CNN's world famous "meat festival." I don't know if CNN's roomy Jen is participating in that festival, but if she is, I'll be sorry to miss it - I like redheads.

Still that's good news for a mid-December get together, right around...say...Saturday the 16th. It will coincide nicely with my birthday. See you then.

The latest and not so greatest

Seems I've been away from Blogger for a couple of weeks now and I have to admit the last 4-5 weeks have really flown by. This despite the fact I'm not all that thrilled at work at the moment...more on that later.

Upon logging in this morning I see Blogger is really pushing it's new BETA version. Personally I think I will hold out as long as possible, give them a chance to work out all the bugs they haven't even found yet.

Ski season was scheduled to kick off this weekend in Stowe. Given the fact it's been in the 50's lately that won't happen. If it was colder, all the rain we've been getting would have produced a whole lot of snow! Instead, it looks like mud-season is here early.

Work. It came to me last week that my company is a perfect example of the "Peter Principle." If you aren't familiar with it, you can Google. Needless to say, we take dysfunction to a whole new level here. Do I stay and see if I can make a difference? Why not. What else am I going to do? I don't ski and there is no snow anyway.

Chuckster out.


PS - I think I will be in Media Thanksgiving weekend. Sligo's Friday night?

Morning bread crumbs

So CNN (the station, not the girl) has been "newsing" about these 10,000+ fugitives that have been rounded up these past couple of days. Operation Falcon 3! I wonder what happened with Operations Falcon 1 and Falcon 2? Anywho....

Vermont it seems, is too far off the beaten path. Besides, all my crimes are international in nature. If you see any Interpol snooping around Media and asking questions, dont' talk to them.

Anyway, CNN (the station, not the girl) mentioned that there are still 1,000,000 fugitives out there. Now any day, the population will hit 300,000,000. Let me see...basic math....scratch off the zero's on the end and you are left with 1 in 300.

1 in 300 doesn't seem like that big of a number to me? I mean, I might joke about it, but I'm seriously wondering which one or two (three?) of my friends is the fugitive and more importantly, what kind of reward can I get if I rat them out?

Up, up and away!

Earlier this week I got to go on a little adventure through work, to the top of Ricker's mountain. There is a radio antenna up there that also holds a couple of our wireless access points.

After a Quad ride to the top with the boss, we hiked across the ridge line, maybe 3/4 of a mile. Most of it was up hill and across snow drifts. On a couple of occasions I broke through the snow up to my thigh and on one occasion, broke through right into a bog, where my boot got stuck in the mud on the bottom. Luckily it came home with me....

Now you can't see it in this picture but the antenna is on top of the peak you are looking at. This was on the way back down.

That's Joe on the ground making a call to Mike asking if he's ready on the other end. Our plan was to readjust a couple of our AP's to see if we could get a stronger signal down in Stowe.

This is the view from where I am, looking up. The strap with the yellow tags on it on the right side of the picture is what is keeping me from going kerplunk.

Here's a self portrait of a guy with a hat, hanging off some tower on a mountain in Vermont.

Over the weekend when there were the high winds, one of the other antennas on the tower actually snapped off and got tangled in the tower and a local radio stations antenna's.

Not exactly as high off the ground as those two guys you may have seen atop the Empire State Building, but high enough for me, and cool to be able to say I did it at least once.