Midwinter blahhhs...

"And I ain't seen the the sunshine since...I don't know when"

Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison Blues.

Blaaaah.

We haven't had a sunny day up here since January 8. I feel like I'm in Seattle or London or someplace where the darkness lasts for six months. This is starting to accent my normally dour disposition.

A bit of blah at work, with some peaks and valleys in using Pro/E. It seems like at times the program fights what the user wants to do. The other fellow in the design lair has been a big help in my learning, but he's been using it for 8 years and he reckons he knows about 5% of its capabilities. One suspects the other 95% we need to learn would make the 5% we use much easier. There aren't a lot of classes in Pro out here at the local colleges. Looks like we learn by doing. I've been taking a lot of notes, though. Perhaps 'Pro/E for Dummies' might be in the works when all this is said and done. Rather a shame Big Green uses Pro for its modeling and design work. SolidWorks is a much easier program to use and has a better layout.

I'm nearly ready to get paper and pencil out and start drawing in the old-school, Master FKN Havock style-by hand (and he does good work on his sketches, if you saw them in his blog posts-trust me on this).

We have three elderly relatives in various stages of decrepitude that we're dealing with, which has consumed most of the last few weekends. After performing tasks for them on weekends and off-work time, we haven't got a lot of time for anything else. I dunno how people with a brace of children take care of everything!

Ah, well. Favre's not going to the Super Bowl, and pitchers and catchers report to spring training in about three weeks. So life ain't all bad, I reckon.

Hope the Oz readers are having a fair Australia Day. It sounds from some of your comments like there is a certain segment of the population there that considers wearing the Southern Cross and bashing anyone not of their color a good way to celebrate the day.

Now I know that type-substitute the Stars and Bars for the Cross and we have many of their relatives here. Generally they provide a bit of humor but often as not they're a collective embarrassment.

Perhaps you might use the weapon we use here. Poorly-made Chinese fireworks. People like that are attracted to fireworks like flies to a steaming pile of cow crap. Just relax your laws on fireworks possession and use for one day. They'll be too busy blowing off their spare digits-looking at you, there, Stumpy Bogan and Three-Fingers Munter-to be a pain to anyone else.

There. A plan of such lethal cunning and elegant simplicity that I'm surprised some of you didn't think of it earlier.

Let me look at the list. Went to work. Cussed out Pro. Bitched about the crap weather. Checked Twitter to see that none of you are doing any better. Laughed at, and not with, Favre. Fixed Australia Day.

Yep. Covered everything that needed done today. Such a deal!

yankeedog out.