The (power) lights were on, but no one was home.

I tried rebooting, and nothing happened - no POST, nothing.

I pulled the cover, rotated the memory, reseated all the cards, tried again - nothing.

It occurred to me that the lack of even a POST might indicate a video failure. I pulled the video card and sure enough - I could see three blown capacitors.

Fortunately, being the pack rat that I am, I had a spare video card. When the cooling fan on the old card went bad, I bought a better, faster card, but kept the old card - just because that's the way I am. At some point, I ended up buying and installing a replacement fan for the old car, thus giving me a spare.

After popping in the spare card, I was able to boot up and get back in business.

Now, I just have to figure out exactly what the specifications are on the blow caps, and order three new ones from my friends at Mouser Electronics. Hopefully, that will allow me to put this card back in service and allow me to return the other card back to the spares pool.

This was another book I rented from JiggerBug. JiggerBug has an interesting concept. They offer audio books for rent - both on CD like the NetFlix model, and as time-limited downloads using Microsoft DRM.

The book was enjoyable. The description of the book made it obvious that it was a suspense novel, but JiggerBug had it classified as a romance. At first, I couldn't understand the classification, but as the story unfolded, I came to see why. The first hint was the attraction of what would turn out to be the two main characters. The second was the graphic sex! What more could one ask for - a plot with interesting twists and turns, and hot sex. Now I understand the attraction of these romance novels!

I liked the story. I thought the characters were well developed, and the plot was interesting. There were definitely a couple of twists I didn't expect, and I really did find myself holding my breath at the end.

The performance was top notch. Both of the readers did a great job with the accents of the various American and European characters, and deftly balanced the amount of "acting" they injected into the narration.

This is the first Linda Howard book I've listened to, and though I'll probably have to be careful to steer clear of the pure romance novels, I'll definitely sign up for another one of her cross-over books.

I've also heard it said as "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity..."

Anyway,

Today was the American Red Cross' lucky day.

As I've commented on previously, when I moved to Florida, my ability to continue my regular blood donations to the American Red Cross (ARC) was seriously impaired.

Even though I felt somewhat traitorous, I decided to start donating to the Florida Georgia Blood Alliance (FGBA).

Well, I've been working so much, that I just haven't had the opportunity to run over to the FGBA to make a donation, even though I've been eligible for a few weeks now.

As luck would have it, IBM sponsored a blood drive today here in the Atlanta office I've been working in lately, so, I took an hour out of my schedule to donate a pint.

I still miss donating with my blood buddies, but it did provide a bright spot for me today nonetheless. Plus, I got a really cool American Red Cross baseball cap as a "Thank You." What more could you ask for... get to feel good about doing something that will help up to three other people, do something that's good for your health, get to lay around for an hour on company time, and get schwag.

and now I can't get off.

The train I'm referring to is my career.

I had a few opportunities to switch trains along the way, but I choose to stay on board that first train for way too long, for all the wrong reasons.

Actually, I guess it wasn't the first train, but now that I think of it, I made the mistake of staying on that first train (as a shipping clerk for a small manufacturing company) rather than switching to another (an apprentice welder) way back when.

I did finally jump from that shipping clerk train to the "drop zone bum" train which I thoroughly enjoyed riding for almost two years. Hobo life has its rewards...

Then I made the smart move (?) of jumping that train to finish college.

Then I got on the DataFlow train.

I could have jumped that train for the air traffic controller train, but I allowed myself to be convinced that I was on the right train and should ride it a while. And ride it a while I did - a long while - too long a while. By the time I finally got off that train, I was so far down the tracks that there was no turning back. There was supposed to be a pot of gold at the end of those tracks, and there was for some, but all I got was a handful of coins.

Why didn't I jump that train sooner? Dumb reasons....

Visions of glory...

Fear...

Doing the wrong things for the right reasons...

Trains...

When I was a little kid, my father gave me a wonderful train set. One night while I was away, my mother destroyed it.

Trains...

...looks like I'm about out of steam for today...

Trains...

maybe there's still a switch that can be thrown somewhere just around the bend...

There have been two things that have bugged me (well, actually there's lots more - but there were two things I addressed today) about the blog...

The first was that the "display recent comments" didn't properly display the date the comment was actually posted, but rather the date of the entry for which the comment was made. I found the solution here at Rogers Cadenhead's wonderfully informative site.

The second was that it was really hard to tell from looking at the calendar which dates had entries. I knew that the solution revolved around customizing the way links were displayed, but I had been unable on a few previous attempts to figure out how to customize the links just for the calendar, while leaving the format of the links for the rest of the page alone.

I had to reference a number of pages found from Google searches to put it all together in my mind. The most helpful pages were a "CSS Link Styles" tutorial from projectseven.com and especially the sample style sheet provided on the last page of the tutorial.

I also ended up having the change the character in front of the "calendar" style section in my style sheet from a # (pound sign) to a . (period)

It took a bit more searching to make the last adjustment I was seeking - to display the dates with entries in "reverse text" but this page from htmlite.com gave me just the information I needed.

One final change was to change the class entries in the Main Index for the days of the week from class="calendar" to class="calendarhead" to use the formatting for the calendar head for the day names (which looks better to me than using the formatting for the calendar entries).

My new css section for the calendar looks like this:

.calendar {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
color:#666;
font-size:10px;
font-weight:normal;
background:#EEE;
line-height:14px;
align:center;
padding:1px;
text-decoration: none;
}

.calendar a:link {
background-color: #336699;
color: #99CCFF;
text-decoration: none;
}
.calendar a:visited {
background-color: #336699;
color: #EEE;
text-decoration: none;
}
.calendar a:hover {
color: #99CC66;
text-decoration: none;
}
.calendar a:active {
color: #FFFFFF;
text-decoration: none;
}

.calendarhead {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
color:#003366;
font-size:10px;
font-weight:bold;
background:#EEE;
line-height:14px;
align:center;
padding:1px;
}

While I was in the blog, I also removed the last month's worth of comment and trackback spam, and manually added two comments that had been emailed to me because the commenter couldn't enter the comment directly due to my previous disabling of comments for old entries. One of these days I'll implement a new comment module that strikes a better balance between the current pretty much "closed down" approach and the previous "wide open" approach.

There's just not enough of either.

I think, were there enough of the later, there might be enough of the former.

I think...

I think this because it seems that I spend so much of the former, trying to make the later. Therefore, had I enough of the later, I would not have to squander the former, pursuing the later.

Maybe I should be more precise in my whining.

Technically, I have just as many seconds each day (86,400) as any other person on the planet. What I don't seem to have enough of is time to do what I want to do.

I want to have more time to write entries for my blog. I want to have more time to spend with Jeanie. I want to have more time to fly. I want to have more good time - time not darkened by concerns over work, or money, or whatever. I want to have time to enjoy life, not to just trudge through it.

Lately, it seems that all I do is work. I get up early Monday morning, I work, I eat a hurriedly grabbed meal or two, I walk for an hour, I sleep for six or so hours, and start the cycle again on Tuesday. By Friday night, I'm exhausted - physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually - I feel like an empty ghost of a man. A good portion of most Saturdays are spent asleep. I get a few hours with Jeanie on Saturday between naps, and a few hours on Sunday between taking Mom out to dinner, trying to keep the bills caught up, and preparing for the following week's work.

The sad thing is that I know how fortunate I am. I realize that most of the world's population would kill to be in my shoes.

It just always seems like that brass ring is just beyond the tip of my outstretched fingers.

I keep thinking, "just hang on for a few more years, just tough it out till the finish line." Sometimes, I worry that I'll drop dead before I ever see it, much less cross it. Or that if I do manage to cross it, I'll be too drained to enjoy what's left of my time here, or that we won't have enough to live comfortably.

I feel like screaming for someone to stop the bus, because I want to get off. But, I don't know which bus to get on instead.

I was scheduled to depart Atlanta at 8:40 PM. We ended up departing some time after 9:00 PM. Okay, stuff happens...

As the crew was getting ready to button up the hatch, I called Jeanie to let her know the flight would be late arriving, so she wouldn't end up having to sit at the airport waiting to pick me up - little did we know...

The flight to Jacksonville was bumpy - enough to prevent in-flight beverage service - but not so bad as to be scary. At least, not until we started our descent into JAX.

The first bit of excitement was the simultaneous occurrence of a bright flash outside the aircraft accompanied by a loud cracking noise.

What appeared to be a lightning strike we later learned was a static discharge.

The approach was quite bumpy. After a while, you get kind of used to the various sensations and noises that seem "normal" when taking off or landing. Everything seemed normal for a while, but all of a sudden, it appeared that the pilot had applied full power, and aborted the approach. Turns out, he did.

We were informed that due to weather, we were going to stay clear of the airport for a while, and wait for the nastiness to clear. So, we climbed back up to ten thousand feet or so, and circled.

After a while, the pilot informed us that it appeared that the weather had eased up, and we would once again begin our approach.

One again, we started our descent, once again we rocked and rolled, and this time, after some really nasty bouncing about, the pilot once again put the coals to the fire and aborted the approach.

This time, however, he informed us that he was giving up on Jacksonville, and heading back to Atlanta. Normally, the actual flying time is around forty-eight minutes. I don't know for sure, but I'd almost swear that we were back in Atlanta in twenty minutes. My guess is we were close to sucking fumes, and he got clearance to make a bee-line back to HotLanta.

As soon as I heard that we were headed back to Atlanta, I did something I have never done in all of my years of travelling - I picked up the inflight telephone to place a call to my honey. Unfortunately, I guess every other person on the plane decided to do the same thing, as after dialing, I got a nice little message informing me that all lines were in use. We were most of the way to Atlanta before I finally got through to Jeanie to tell her that I was okay, but that she should go home as I had no idea when I'd be arriving.

After landing in Atlanta, we were informed that we would be placed on another 767 and sent back to Jacksonville. Since it was the same model and configuration as our initial flight, we would just keep our boarding passes and sit in the same seat on this new airplane.

The good news was that I wouldn't have to spend the night in Atlanta. The bad news was that I had no way home. After pondering on my predicament for a few moments, I decided to call Hertz to reserve a car. Sure, it would be late when I arrived, and I had already worked a long day, but, given the lack of cabs in Jacksonville - in the middle of the day, much less in the middle of the night - I figured that would be a better bet. Unfortunately, it turned out that the Hertz counter in Jacksonville only stayed open until 1:00 AM, and our flight was scheduled to arrive after that, so Hertz wouldn't make a reservation for me. Oh well I thought, I'd figure out some way to get home after I was actually in Jacksonville - one problem at a time, and all that....

Unfortunately, it turned out that while the Pilot and First Officer were legal to fly the "2nd try," not all of the cabin crew were. Unfortunately, there was a problem with one of the replacement flight attendants, so we ended up having to wait for quite a while for another to be located.

Finally, we boarded the new plane and headed back to JAX. This flight was also bumpy, but not as bad as the first try. The approach was once again bumpy, but the pilot managed to get us on the ground in one piece around 2:30 AM.

As I walked to the area where the taxis wait - which happens to require walking past the car rental counters - I noticed that there were still agents at Hertz. Intrigued, I walked up to the counter and inquired as to whether I could rent a car. The two agents were extremely friendly, and informed me that they would be happy to rent me a car - except for the small problem that their computer system stopped working at 1:00 AM. They were just about to start writing a contract by hand when we (I can't remember who exactly) had the bright idea to call Hertz reservations and make the reservation that way. Unfortunately, the Hertz telephone reservations person was adamant that she couldn't make a reservation for me because the Jacksonville location was closed. Fortunately, Joe, one of the two agents was able to convince her that no, they weren't in fact closed, and didn't close until the last flight arrived. Unfortunately, open or not, the telephone reservation person still couldn't make a reservation for me since her computer insisted that the location was not open at 3:00 AM and therefore wouldn't accept a reservation. Fortunately, Joe had the bright idea to have her make the reservation for 5:30 AM, when they were scheduled to open, and then just have me pick up the car "early."

That done, Joe was able to provide me with the keys and contract, and I was able to head home, finally arriving at 3:30 AM - only 5 hours or so late.

While the trip involved some inconvenience, all things considered, I felt that in the end, I had received good service - both from Delta, who decided that the safety of their passengers was more important than the potential cost and passenger ire, and Hertz, whose local agents demonstrated dedication and creativity.