A journey does not end until you’ve washed the clothes that you wore on it.

Smitty kept us up all night last night with her continual jumping on the bed. We don’t normally let her sleep there, but made a BAD decision when we got back to let her up for one night when we got back into town. Ever since, she’s tried to stake out a place on our crowded bed, only to get booted.

Well, last night she didn’t get the message and kept getting booted. And WE didn’t get the message and thus kept booting her, rather than putting her up somewhere and getting some sleep.

We won’t make the same mistake tonight, though. See y’all in the morning!

The Earth is getting pummeled today by a giant solar storm, the third-largest ever recorded. If this blog ceases to be updated for the rest of the day, you’ll know why.

Maybe some day we’ll find a way to harness this incredible electromagnetic energy that’s now considered a nusiance. But enough about my weblog…

I was looking at the page source for the website of They Might Be Giants. Here are the Meta tags which describe their site:

meta NAME=”description” content=”They Might be Giants are a band of rockers responsible for creating numerous songs about dead presidents and disembodied heads… but in a nice way. Both band leader’s names are JOHN and everyone else is named DAN.”

meta NAME=”keywords” content=”rock, rockers, malcolm in the middle, birdhouse in your soul, tmbg, they might be giants, monkeys, president heads, mink car, factory showroom, flood, ana ng, free mp3, mp3, download mp3, download, porn stars, anti-gravity boots, guitar, guitars, johns, flansburgh, linnell, band of dans, shooting gallery, taft, roosevelt, nixon, accordian, ecards, e-cards, streaming music, music, radio, modern rock, pop music, pop stars, eclectic music, alternative music, hornblow, hornblow group, chopping block”

There’s no limit to what you can do if you don’t mind looking like an idiot.

My buddy Weave has called it quits on his weblog. It’s a shame, too, since he is a good writer and usually posted something interesting to read every day or so. I hope it was the whiskey talking and not his true desire to stop writing.

Weblogs are such personal things. In D.C. this weekend, Kelly saw a friend with whom she goes WAY back. Though she and Kelly haven’t spoken regularly in years, this friend seemed to know everything about us, thanks to reading our blogs (this one and Hallie’s).

This phenomenon of people knowing things about you that you didn’t directly tell them is unique to weblogs. It’s weird trying to strike up conversation about some topic, only to have your audience tell you “oh, yeah. I already know that.” If I feel somewhat creative today, maybe I can come up with a name for it.

Anyway, weblogs are a window on the lives of my friends, family and associates. When their blogs are left to rot, or disabled entirely, I feel some sort of connection has been lost.

It’s a lonely web out there. Let’s stick together!

I received my first Internet call from the UK this morning. I found of a service which gives out UK phone numbers to Free World Dialup customers for free. Calls to the UK number get billed at the UK national rate, not the outrageous overseas rates normally paid for US calls.

The sound quality report was mixed. I heard my UK counterpart superbly – better than any landline phone. However, he said I was breaking up, with lots of echo and other odd effects. I blamed that on the Asante firewall router my in-laws have. It seems to drop and/or mangle packets from time to time.

Anyhow, its a promising start. I’ll try another call from the corporate network this week to see if the quality improves.

I’m cooling my heels here in Reston, as we’re still around from a weekend visit. I was supposed to have a sales visit this morning, but it got pushed back until tomorrow around noon. This is aggrevating to me, but I’m becoming used to having to change plans at the last second in this job.

I’m spending way too much time away from home, and the homelife is beginning to suffer as a result. There is a pile of leaves in the yard that needs to be cleaned up. And I haven’t had time to plan anything for Halloween, as Kelly keeps reminding me (though I can do that here).

I’m just hoping we don’t wear out our welcome with Kelly’s parents, who have graciously accepted us for this weekend-plus trip.
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At home last night, I spent most of my waking time (and some of my sleeping time) configuring my Asterisk PBX server. The stuff is addictive! Major geek points for having a home PBX.

I now have six or seven “extensions” at home, ringing my Zaurus, two Windows desktops running X-Ten lite, and a cordless analog phone, among others.

I can also dial out from my PC. I even configured it to automatically dial our calling-card number for long-distance calls. (Eventually, I’ll replace that with one of the many VoIP services for free calling). It’s truly amazing what can be done now with SIP-based telephony.

With a little more work, I’ll have the ability to place calls through my home phone from anywhere on the Internet. THAT’S the reason why I’m canceling my Packet 8 account, only a few months into having it. Why pay $20 a month for service you don’t need?

This should make for a killer presentation to the local Linux group. It could also turn into a great consulting offering, with any luck.