It is done, done, done. I finally finished reading Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. All 536 pages of difficult language and mystifying symbolism. I'll never do it again. It was a great book, but it was a brain buster.

Today I read that police shot a man who was fleeing with his daughter. The daughter was only two years old. She saw her father shot by police. She was in the back seat, he was in the front seat ~ The father didn’t have legal custody of the girl, and he DID tie up the mother and beat her before abducting the girl. But did they really have to shoot him? Oh yeah, he was also brandishing a cocked, loaded handgun. Okay, they had to shoot him.

The President of the United States of America uttered this phrase the other day: “I am the decider.” I’m sure there are kids in second grade who have uttered similar phrases. The President is retarded. ~ I understand he’s not the most eloquent speaker in the world. I’m not that fluent in the English language myself. But this asshole started a unneeded war, either by accident or by lying. He started it in a region of the world that supplies a lot of our fuel. Not only has he killed thousands of people for no reason, I paid 59 dollars to fill up our minivan the other day.

ZDNet - Despair Videos - Addressing Employee Complaints

Management theories. pretty funny.

1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
6. INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. MODERATION. Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.
11.TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
13. HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

SketchUp - Home

i thought my laptop crashed this morning. first i had some panic, :( then i was glad, because i thought i'd reformat, put just the minimum of programs and files back, and have a fast, sleek, uncluttered laptop. :D ~ and then it started back up, :( and it's working fine. i might reformat it anyway, just for the hell of it.

okay, i'm rounding down here, so the number should be higher, but the number is big enough.

You know how we're borrowing money from China to pay for the stupid war? Well, I looked it up, and

1. there were about 131 million individual tax returns filed in the 2003. I'm sure their are a few more tax payers, but lets use that number.

2. The war is costing us 12 billion every month.

3. If we weren't borrowing from the Chinese, we'd all have to stroke a check for $91.60 every friggin month to pay for the war.

4. But since we're putting it on our US platinum card from the bank of China, you, me and everybody else is charging $91.60 a month on our credit card every month to pay for this stupid war.

But since we're CHARGING it, and there's no draft, nobody gives a shit. Enjoy.

Bush hired a stooge from FOX NEWS to be his spokesman. It's getting so bad, I can't put scorn into words anymore. It is beyond my vocabulary.

spent way too much time screwing around with my website. read a sf story in amazing journeys magazine. Cut up more firewood, stacked some quarters looking for state quarters to put in my pathetic states quarters book. And now I'm going to sleep. Night All!

free firewood project, 2006
Originally uploaded by danmanning2001.

My neighbor dropped off a truckload of wood yesterday. And now the fun begins. After failing with a conventional chainsaw (i took it back) I bought an electric one, and it sliced through the wood like hot knife through butter.

wanna get depressed about china-u.s. trade deficit? watch this.

I cannot start a chainsaw. My last chainsaw died when I was trying to start it, couldn't, and threw it against a wall.

Yesterday my neigbor who clears trees for a living hooked me up with a huge pile of free firewood. But it was uncut.

So I bought a chainsaw at Lowes. It worked for about an hour. And then it wouldn't start. I didn't throw a tantrum this time.

I took it back and got an electric one. Tune in to see how this goes.

Lacrosse, to me at least, looks like a sport for rich, white assholes. I'm not surprised they raped (or got accused of raping) a stripper. No matter what these guys do, I don't care about lacrosse, nor do I care what lacross players do in their spare time.

Saddam didn't have any WMDs. We do, and we have a madman with his hand on the switch. I've been seeing some stuff about Saddam's torture tactics, and also some creepy stuff about what his son did to soccer players that lost. Saddam and Friends were horrible, evil people, and what we did in Abu Grab (whatever, i'm not looking up the spelling) wasn't as bad as what he did, not by a long shot.

However: Just because Saddam had no compassion for prisoners, that doesn't mean we had to stoop lower than the level of humanity we used to have.

I don't know who to blame for the Iraqi f#ck-up, but the entire thing has been handled like one big f#ck up. I hope to God these Republicans pay for it at the polls this year, like they should have two years ago.

Please don't screw up again America. Thank you.

dan_pinewood
Originally uploaded by danmanning2001.

i made it to the winner's bracket, which was a surprise, because there were a lot of great cars, and I barely spent any time at all on mine.

my day so far: set up a scanner / .pdf writing software for law office. watched the daily show. played World of Warcraft. rented a hot tub with Deb. wrote this blog entry.

hi everybody. gas is expensive again. record heat in texas. the war is costing 12 billion a month, or some crazy number like that. gw talks like a second grader: "I am the decider!"

i knew better than to install that SCSI card. i replaced office with open office. i played world of warcraft. i bought root beer candy, oranges, mouthwash, and a toothbrush.

i got a haircut. the lady cutting my hair would not shut up. i could have got the barber that looked like julia roberts, but i got the one that looked like earnest borgnine. she would not shut up, and when she blabbed on and on, she stopped cutting my hair. she would just hold the scissors and comb in the air and spew banalities. i pretended to fall asleep so she would shut up and cut my friggin' hair.

we will be greeted as liberators.

i got nuthin! but i'm working, thanks to my phone ringing. I'm writing like it's nobody's business. and it's not. unless i sell it, then it will be some kind of business. it's going to be nice out today, so i golf may happen.

I got calls today! two of them. They involved Anti-virus programs and IP addressing! Hurray for the Windows Operating system and its unending quirks and imperfections.

And now I write.

no calls today. cleaned the girls' rooms, took some crap to goodwill. played World of Warcraft. Wrote a couple of pages.

Yesterday we drove to Grandma's house for Easter. Joanne had another great Polish dinner for us, Easter eggs were lost and found, naps were taken, and we came back home. I got a call from a frantic customer trying to e-file. Comcast had come and disconnected their router, not bothering to re-connect same. Of course, in the end, I saved the day.

Easter doesn't make any sense. A guy in the Mediterranean gets killed over two thousand years ago, and in North America, kids search out food-colored eggs.

pinewood1
Originally uploaded by danmanning2001.

This is my Pinewood Derby car for the Hideout Brewing Company pinewood derby. It is as ugly in person as it is in this picture.

I also golfed today at Grand Island Golf Course.

Today I tranfered files to a new laptop for a customer, fixed activesync to bluetooth phone, but otherwise just goofed off around the house.

It rained today. I delivered pc to Dorr. Accidently went North on 131 before I went South. I delivered a 486 machine with DOS 6.22 loaded on it for a customer who needed it to do, of all things, CAD drawings. Don't ask, i don't even know. I just fixed the machine and dropped it off.

I had to call Dell for another customer. Their CDRW-DVD player was on the fritz, but the machine was under warrantee, and Dell was doing the Phone-Inda Marathon of Fruitless Troubleshooting, probably trying to wear them down. Dell kept telling them it was a SOFTWARE problem. (didn't DELL load the software when they shipped it?) The trouble was, if I opened the case, even to patch in another CD player to check it, I would void the
Warrantee. How to prove my case? Suddenly, I leapt to the Ford Taurus of Technology, grabbed my trusty +5 External CDRW of Truth, and hooked it to the USB port. The external CD player read all CDs, commercial or otherwise. Armed with this, I called "Lisa" in India and COMMANDED them to send a technician to the house to replace the CDRW, in accordance with the Warrantee.

Thus, I defeated the Corporate Overlords and their Deceptive Practices of Bad Tech Support.

Nice thing about it, I met John, my customer, at the Hideout Brewing Company, and he's a home brewer. He showed me his home brewing operation, and he had a wall full of blue ribbons for brewing competitions he'd won. He hooked me up with a six-pack sampler of hsi home brew.

And it is delicious. I only had one.

Hello folks. It's a new and special day here at danmanning.com. Golf season has officially started with nine holes and an all new golf scores page. Let all people's rejoice. I wrapped up work early today. Dropped some NoWaterBall golfballs off at the local golf store, and then headed out to Grand Island GC for a quick nine.

I shot a 47, but that's not important. Sure, it's Monday, but I GOLFED.

bla bla bla

not much to report. Too much World of Warcraft. Fixed IP addressing twice this weekend for clients. we got some pizza and watched a movie. business is good. world coming to end, but otherwise, everything is going just fine.

here's a joke someone sent me:

Two Afghani men are pals and decide to move to the US.
They further make a bet about who will be more American after a year in the US.
The meet up after a year. First guys says “Ha! I am more American than you. My wife is
a member of the PTA, my son is a Boy Scout, my daughter is on the school soccer
team, and I am a life member of the NRA.
Other guy says “Fuck you, rag head.”

what to report? reformatted a laptop, cleaned out a 72 piece spyware infestation, and replaced a modem so that AOL could be achieved. I have spread technology far and wide. I went to the bank. I got coffee at Denny's.

somebody sent me this email:

On Wednesday, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.

That won't ever happen again.

I sent this back:

(actually, it will, in the year 3006)

Howdy Pardners!

• Friday: Played too much World of Warcraft. Did manage to hit some golf-balls. Also, I did get a call or two.
• Saturday: Took the kids to see the Egyptian exhibit at the Public Museum of Grand Rapids. It wasn't all that, but it was friggin' expensive. Played too much World of Warcraft.
• Sunday: Played too much World of Warcraft. Fought urge to play even more, got back to writing International Bestseller.

help me. World of Warcraft is taking over my every waking moment. help me!