(this post’s title is intended to put a song in your head. bwahaha.)

It’s been a busy week at the office, thanks mostly to budget season, but also to the usual “why did the whole building shut down when i turned off the network hub” questions.

I would like to indicate, however, that if everything goes well on Wednesday, I may be having a change of office scenery (not to mention a notable raise) in the next month or so. In this regard, prayers, chants, positive vibes, spells, and wishes of good luck will be greatly appreciated.

This weekend should be busy as well; between a friend’s birthday observation tonight, an equinox observation tomorrow, and my youngest brother’s birthday observation on Sunday, the schedule is pretty full.

Noticing lots of traffic from the English Planet Wikimedia aggregator when I post in the “Wikipedia” category. Goodness.

Technorati-authority-increasing love to Joe.My.God, who writes one of the best blogs out there, gay or otherwise.

Classes are going a little too well. I’d love for them to be a little more challenging, because then I wouldn’t be trying to use the quadrille paper for crazy graphs instead of notes.

Workouts… um. I’d rather not say.

Rugby? I’m still unsure about whether I should try my hand with an existing, predominantly-straight club, or whether I should start a predominantly-gay club. I already have an e-mail from somebody local who might be interested in helping start a gay club, though, so that’s promising.

It’s late, and budget season is always an extra drain on the energy, and I had a couple drinks at Mike’s thing (happy birthday Mike), so I think I’ll end it here for now.

Yup, it’s another in a long series of quick updates.

• First, the title. For a long time now, I’ve been interested in learning how to play rugby, but have put it off for some silly reason. This past week has had a couple Universal Nudges<tm>, though: a story in the Post-Dispatch about a local club, a post by Jimbo that mentions a recent match of his, and a rummage through the cold-weather clothes that turned up a rugby shirt I like.

  Following up on these, I discovered that the Chicago Dragons are willing to help start an IGRAB-affiliated team in St. Louis. I wrote the current president of the Dragons, and was invited to Chicago this weekend to meet the team (along with the visiting Atlanta Bucks and Madison Minotaurs [please be gentle with the Minotaurs link]) and potentially scrummage with them; though I can’t make it, I’m eager to visit sometime in the near future.

  Building upon this even further, I did a bit more research and learned that the Bombers run their B-side as a developmental squad during the fall. I can’t make practices until this school term is done in mid-October, but as soon as I can I’ll be there trying to extend my rugby-feel from purely intellectual to grittily experiential. (and no, I did not just make that last word up.)

• Chorus rehearsals started Monday with a full house and 5 newbies. Our interim director for this show has a very emphatic, fluid style that I like; it doesn’t hurt that he’s easy on the eyes. That said, I’m sad that a particular song has already been stricken from the program (and no, it wasn’t the crazed medley that kept venturing into 7/8, although that one would have been quite a challenge).
• My traffic has gone upwards lately, and it took me a few minutes to realize why: a feed from the “Wikipedia” category hereupon gets published on Planet Wikimedia, a blog aggregator administered by the Wikimedia Foundation. Since I’ve had two new posts in that category, I’ve had a surge of new visitors for those particular posts.
• Speaking of which: I keep meaning to post a response here to Kelly Martin’s excellent post “On Ignoring All Rules“, about the Wikipedia policy of the same name. It’s on my list, and I have a rough draft saved, but have not yet finished it for regular consumption.
• Did some clean-up on the scrubbook’s hard drive over the weekend. I found ~25GB worth of songs that I NEVER listen to, so *poof* they vanished. That still smarts.
• Also started to tinker with the header images on here. Nothing is ready yet.
• Been having some lingering phone and network issues at work. Yesterday got so bad that, while the network admin and my boss were busy shepherding the telco’s tech from one piece of infrastructure to the next, I was able to re-do most of a major workflow app. (Normally I’d be inundated with calls and e-mails, but when nobody can call or e-mail…)
• The weather is freaking awesome today.
• Classes are OK. My programming logic class is a walk in the park because I already use programming logic nearly every day. My philosophy class, OTOH, is somewhat interesting; it’s a pretty diverse group of students, with pretty diverse views on things, so discussions can get lively when we aren’t watching Woody Allen movies.
• Yeah, definitely loving this new theme so far.
• The inaugural Tour of Missouri is this week, wrapping up with a big finale in STL on Sunday (at the same time as Cardinals-Cubs and Rams-49ers). Apparently things are going well on the Tour as long as they keep armadilloes out of the peloton.
• Wow, somebody had better update the IGRAB page. No new posts in over a year? Seriously?

That’s all for now.

This blog is not closed; it is not closing; it does not anticipate closure anytime in the near future. It’s just sporadic as always. And, as always, there are many things that are the same, and a few things that are different.

Same? I’m still alive; so are Fred and the cats and the fish. I’m still married to Fred, and the state of Missouri and the United States of America still think that it’s a dangerous dangerous thing. My job still sucks, only more emphatically now. My classes are still rolling right along, one term into the next. I still help answer e-mail for the Wikimedia Foundation, and we still get a lot of silly questions like “I found an error, could you get one of your staff to fix it?”. (stock answer: “You can edit that.”) And I still work out and cook and drive a Mini.

Different? Fred’s done with this round of school; he should get his provisional licensure veryverysoon. (The graduation ceremony was a raucous affair; thank goodness we didn’t sit near any screamer-clusters.) Nigel’s driver’s-side window got replaced; next up is his windscreen. The gay men’s chorus’s artistic director resigned; bit of drama there, but I won’t go into it because frankly it’s played out, so instead I’ll just say that I’m eager to see how the interim director does.

There is now a deck off the back of our place. It replaces the quick hack of a railing and gives us a chance to grow our own herbs and tomatoes. Basil and chives apparently love the strawberry jar out there now; rosemary not so much.

And the snail in the aquarium died. Alas, poor Norbert; I knew him.

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Finally getting into my major courses in school, and even then I’m bored silly. Introductory-level courses are aaaaalmost done, though; once I can convince my advisor that my transferred calculus credit should meet the college algebra pre-req for some higher-level courses, then I should finally get to something moderately challenging.

That said, the history class I took in the summer session? Fuckin’ A, that class was awesome. No homework, just quizzes and tests; lots of engaging lectures; got done two hours early every night. Hope I get the same instructor for the other half of history.

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Some days, I’m tempted to learn Lisp, just so I can wax poetic about parentheses.

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Trying to find someplace inexpensive for a vacation. We did Toronto over the winter and loved it; if things work out then we’d love to go back. I’m open to suggestions in the meantime, though.

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I have a couple posts brewing about Wikipedia internal stuff, so non-junkies should brace themselves or skip past them.

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I can’t say that I’ve been good at keeping this place up; when I have the motivation, I don’t have the time, and when I have the time I don’t have the motivation. Sorry. However, I need to remind everyone of the glories of RSS (feed’s on the right side); just subscribe to the feed and your newsreader will catch updates as they are posted.

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Finally: I should take this opportunity to plant songs in people’s heads, because I can and because I’m apparently quite good at it. So only click this link if you want to see what is currently haunting my dreams. (This link haunts my dreams too, though in a strange a capella version [if "a capella" meant "the only instruments are voices and slide whistles" (the second tenors get the kickin' guitar part)]; these songs occasionally make an entrance as well, especially that fourth one on the list.)

Went to Toronto between Christmas and New Year’s. Had a wonderful time in a wonderful city. Saw great things, rode great transit, got great exercise, ate great food, got legally married (which is also great). Didn’t want to leave. Now discussing a move there.

Returned to work with slightly different responsibilities — handling more DB stuff now. Still have some lusers to deal with, though.

New chorus show at the end of March; focuses on showtunes (duh, gay chorus). I’m stoked that I get to sing my FULL range in this one.

School? Yow. Have a paper due tonight that I’m stuck on; prof is a Roman Catholic priest and often jokes about what excites him (proper margins! finding plagiarism!) instead of the usual stuff, so I’m sweating details. After this paper, though, I’m done with that class (w00t).

Wikipedia? Lots and lots and lots of news there, though much of that is in the press. (see post to follow.)

Workout routine is getting pretty challenging, though much of that is because I’ve been doing something different pretty much every time. Midsection work now consists primarily of planks, which are remarkably effective at kicking my ass.

More later on today. Stay tuned.

…like mucus from my nose a river.

(Yeah. Still battling mucus ‘n’ phlegm. A new weapon in my arsenal, though: honkin’ 600mg tablets of guaifenesin, which are breaking up the chest congestion. w00t.)

Yesterday I received two very nice pieces of news:

1. My employer, which can easily be described as “stodgy”, will be offering domestic partner benefits.
2. I got some nice grades from the previous university term, and am rockin’ a 3.5.

Granted, the DP bennies will be expensive — especially since they’re taxable unlike spousal bennies — and my GPA is only that high because SLU doesn’t include transferred grades in their GPA calculations and because one of those classes was eeeeeeeasy. Good news is good news, though, and I’ll take what I can get.

Tomorrow (Saturday) is the HRC Gala. Though I won’t be a table co-captain (thanks a lot, chorus guys), I’m still looking forward to the event.

Sunday we’re singing at a chorus member’s ordination (UCC). It should be a good time.

And next Tuesday… well, I’m not going to hold my breath, but maybe possibly people are going to actually wake the fuck up and realize what the Republican devotion to fear ‘n’ apathy has done to this world of ours. (Reminder: Jim Talent thinks that defending marriage from gay men and lesbians is more important than effective military planning or a balanced budget or the right to habeas corpus. Priorities, kids, priorities.)

(Also: it’s worth noting that no political ad paid for by the Talent campaign uses the word “Republican”, spoken or as on-screen text.)