Home sweet home.

Long day of plane rides Friday, followed by a long car ride home from Dulles. I can’t say I accomplished much on Saturday since I was really beat from the traveling. I was happy just to be home with Eleya and the kids!

My mom had made plans to come over and babysit for us today, though — yes, it was actually her idea! — so Eleya and I went to see the phenomenal Brokeback Mountain. A movie about the passionate love between two range-riding Marlboro men, playing in our hometown? We could barely believe it was true, even if the remarkable Ang Lee was behind it.

Brokeback Mountain lived up to all the hype and then some. Spare dialog and lush visuals, emotionally brutal and riveting, and some of the best acting I can remember from any film in recent memory made this a masterpiece. Any sniggering or prurience elicited by the somewhat violent first sexual contact between the two men is quickly wiped away by the overwhelming bond of friendship and love that develops between the two. (Wiped away for everyone, that is, except for the forty-something “Desperate Housewives”-wannabe Oprah-bots who sat near us.)

My bet is on Heath Ledger for a Best Actor Oscar and Ang Lee for Best Director. This movie was devastating, and I for one will gladly buy the DVD when it comes out, so it can proudly join my other favorite romantic dramas on the shelf such as The English Patient and Doctor Zhivago. Now if only the movie could get less press because it’s a gay love story, and more for the fact that it’s an extraordinary film. Highly recommended.

Mr. Toad’s wild ride.

Yet another example of why political toadies inevitably hurt the ones they love. Unfortunately, the political appointees I’ve personally known have, by and large, been people who were more concerned about appearance than substance, to the point of sacrificing personal and professional ethics in a misguided attempt to make their uppers look good. What happens more often is their behavior brings unwanted and unearned shame on those same superiors. If people were simply honest and true to the values we’re (supposed to be) taught as children, these types of situations would be few and far between. I’m constantly amazed at how much moral relativism exists in opposition to this way of living. I suppose people would call me simplistic and naive; I call that preferable to dishonesty and power-mongering.

Another rambling post presented by the letters WTF?

Going for the bone.

I don’t know about you, but I think I smell reunion tour!

Information overload.

Holy moley, the servers at Red Hat are overloaded this evening. Ah, I know! It must be the enormous stampede to read my new article there. Enjoy… eventually!

Touchdown.

After a 5+ hour flight, I was worn out and ragged. So I had only one thing on my mind when I rolled into the hotel — a very comfortable Residence Inn — and got my luggage put up. That’s right: sushi. There was a neat little “Umi Sushi Boat” restaurant just a short walk from the hotel, where I enjoyed a Sapporo, an excellent rainbow roll and a bit of barbecued eel. Yummy!

NM rocks!

Linux has rapidly become as easy to use as (or easier than) any other operating system, even on laptops like my ThinkPad T43. Today my WiFi is working at the snap of my fingers while waiting at the airport gate. “Thank you” to all the NetworkManager contributors for making it so easy. Now, if only the FAA sees its way clear to getting WiFi on flights (and DC power plugs on more aircraft in coach). Of course, they’ll probably charge an arm and a leg for it… But at least before I got off the ground, I was able to commit a couple patches and grab some work from my Subversion server at home.

Idle hands.

Last night we had a superb gig at Andy’s, although it was (as always) a tiring drive from the boondocks. The audience was responsive and attentive, and we got a lot of positive comments, and I think we sold plenty of copies of our new CD, which was just delivered last week from the duplicators. It sounds fantastic and we’re very pleased with it. Work on the “second half” of the 2-EP set has begun already, and I heard a rough cut of “After” last night, which was very cool. There’s some electronica, treated cello, and some typically stupendous and inspired guitar wackiness from Tom.

After getting home at about 3:00 in the morning, today I am flying to San José on business. Although it’s not the primary purpose of my visit, I get to meet up with my fellow Fedora Docs Project contributor Karsten Wade for a tasty $BEVERAGE, since he lives in the area. The weather looks to be beautiful for the next week (wow, a big surprise for the Bay Area) and my main objective for the trip will let me catch up with a number of friends from work whom I haven’t seen in a number of years. It’s always tough leaving my family for a week, but at least it will be a week full of activity, which leaves less time to fret about it.

Never has a remake done so much so well.

Battlestar Galactica, simply one of the best shows I’ve seen on TV, and one of the only ones I watch anymore. Clever, poignant, exciting, dramatic, intelligent, and powerful. Tonight’s episode rocked hard. Can they keep up this dizzy pace of even better shows practically every week?

NIMBY, part deux.

Yesterday I met with the parents of the kids involved in the earlier projectile incident. The mothers of the two boys who admitted to shooting the BB rifle in question were very apologetic. The ladies seemed like genuinely nice people, too, and it was a shame to have met them in this specific situation, since a different one would have been much more conducive to friendship. At least one of the mothers hadn’t known about the incident until a deputy showed up at her house to inform her of the complaint against her son. They agreed without question to cover the damage to the windows and said they would have done the same thing in Eleya’s shoes. I remember an occasion when my brother’s exploits forced my parents into much the same role as these two mothers, which I have to admit softened my mood quite a bit.

Furthermore, the boys attended and apologized not just to me, but also the mothers and boys insisted on going across the street to our house and apologizing to Eleya. Like me, she’s not big on confrontation, but she had a harder time “keeping it together” since, for her, this was a big release of a lot of stress she’d been holding in. She got a little bit misty when she talked to the boys about how she had felt, and that one day they would understand her anxiety when they had kids of their own. She really got through to them, and the mothers of course sympathized too. One of the boys was visibly moved that he had upset her so, and asked if he could give her a hug. It was actually quite a touching denouement and everybody felt better after we had all met and realized that there were no bad feelings harbored.

It’s easy to let anger blind you to the fact that most people, when it comes down to it, are pretty decent folks who, when given the opportunity, will do the right thing. Teenage boys are a little less so, but we’ve all been there, I think. In that vein, I told the mothers that I would reach out for the deputy and, if he would give us any say in the matter, and given the mature and responsible way the boys handled the situation — once they realized it was indeed serious — I would try to get the complaint reduced or waived if possible. I left a message for the deputy yesterday afternoon but haven’t heard back from him yet. If I can’t intervene in the process at this point, I will probably make a point of attending any court hearing I can, to say something positive for the boys.

Danger! Conflict! Redemption! Yup, this blog’s got it all.

NIMBY.

Yesterday, at about 3:30 in the afternoon, Eleya started hearing little pinging impact noises from the front of the house. When she opened up the curtains to see what was going on, she found that our neighbors’ teenage son and an assortment of his acquaintances were shooting a BB gun. AT OUR HOUSE. Obviously she was not pleased and immediately called the county sheriff’s office, who sent not one but two cars to investigate. They rounded up all the involved kids and took down names, addresses, etc. Apparently (we found out later) the kids claimed they were shooting at a trash can.

She called me that evening while I was still at work to tell me about the goings-on, and needless to say, I was not pleased either. Unfortunately I got home very late from an office after-hours function, too late to comfortably contact the neighbors. (Plus I had a beer or two at the function — responsibly of course! — and felt that was not the proper state in which to deal with the afternoon’s events.)

This morning we discovered that at least four separate shots had hit and damaged three different windows on the house — rather more than expected for shooting at something else entirely — including one in the living room. It should be noted that while the living room window lies quite a bit “uphill” from the road due to the way our lot slopes, it’s possible that window’s damage was the result of a ricochet. But the garage windows that were also damaged are on the complete opposite side of the house, and the porch lies somewhat in the way, making the damage there less likely to have resulted from bad aim or bad luck.

Tonight I will be calling the parents and alerting them to what happened, since I have two suspicions — one, given that we have not heard from them, is that their son has not told them of the deputies’ visit. The second is that they also will be less than pleased and will take the appropriate parental action. I’m not sure what the outcome is going to be viz. the sheriff’s office, since firing a projectile weapon at an occupied dwelling is a felony offense. Seeing as how my family was in said dwelling at the time, I can’t say I’m feeling particularly lenient, although I suppose in the event we get an apology from the kids, an offer to pay for the damages, and a promise this won’t happen again, I’ll be satisfied.

I’ll make an update when there’s one to make.