Many many MANY thanks to Pastilla for the sesame and seaweed rice chips. They were so delicious that when I opened the bag for a taste, somehow I slipped into a delicious-induced coma and woke from it with about a quarter of the bag left. Lucky for me, they sell them at my local MOM, so I’ll definitely be buying more of those. The green tea mousse pocky was absolutely divine as well; I’m going to try and find more at Otakon this year, which is-by the way-only 38 days away.

So yesterday Arif Martin, producer of hits across the ages from Good Lovin (The Rascals) to pop hits today like Come Away With Me (Nora Jones) and worked with artists from Aretha Franklin to Phil Collins to Nora Jones to the Bee Gees, finally succumbed to pancreatic cancer yesterday. He’ll be sorely missed. That man knew how to produce music; everything he touched was amazing, the kinds of songs that defined generations and resonate today.

Some days I feel like what I’m looking for is just beyond my reach. I was sitting in a user’s office today and glanced out the window to the rich deep colors of the trees and the pavement, soaked through and through with the massive rain that’s been falling in the area the past few days. It’s sad, every time I’m in a user’s office doing something that takes time, I stare out the window to the world outside, the world I feel is completely passing me by, every day. I know, I’ve been down this road before. But I keep thinking about upcoming milestones and migrations at my job here; changes that are being made to the network here or there, eventual deployments and changes that will take place over the next several months or even years, and I dread the notion that I’ll have to be supporting people through those changes, educatnig people, and helping them through it. Any novelty I had subscribed to about how nice it might be to actually help people and help them work towards their mission at the government agency that I work for has long since dissipated into a jaded dispassion, and has been as such when I realized that “helping with the mission” really means “help me look at this funny forward” and “increase my network storage so I can download from iTunes” and “where do I download smileys?” So much for the mission.

Other topics. On the other side of the technology fence, that Comcast technician that fell asleep on his customer’s couch and got videotaped has been fired. Seems like that video was from around here, too. Sad though-I’d like to see the Comcast phone monkey that kept the poor guy on hold for over an hour get his ass fired too. That company is just a trainwreck of service, knowledge, and technical moronity. I mean, if it were any one aspect I might be able to deal, but man; not only do they provide poor service, good luck finding someone at Comcast who a: deals with the public and b: is knowledgable about technology. I haven’t met one yet.

Anyway. Moving on.