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Random thoughts for today:

• There's a woot-off going on.  I'm addicted – I don't buy anything (usually) but I can't stop looking to see what they have for sale.  And when the current product is about to sell out, I can't stop refreshing to see what the next one will be.
• Today is the last day of the work week for me this week.  I'm traveling up to Pennsylvania tomorrow to participate in my brother's wedding.  Or do you call it something else when you get married by the civil servants and then hold your ceremony later?  My brother and his wife got married last December before they went to India for a few months.  He's Jewish and she's of Indian descent via life in Trinidad, so the ceremony is a mix of the two cultures.  I get to read an invocation and a prayer in Hebrew…woohoo!
• Miss USA fell down and went boom in the Miss Universe pageant.  No, I didn't watch, but someone here at work did and pointed me to the youtube clip.  It's not all that interesting, so I won't post it here.  But now you know, and knowing is half the battle!
• Vanguard won't let me create a rollover IRA for my wife.  She has to be the one to do it.  And since she's resistant to talking to strangers on the phone, I've got to print out the paperwork, have her sign, and mail it in.  THEN once the account is made, I have to get her to sign another paper giving me access to it, so I can manage it and call in to them in the future if there are problems.  I can understand trying to be cautious about identity theft…but shouldn't there be an easy way to prove you're married to someone to get past this crap?
• Fisher Space Pens rock.  I've got two now – the Futura model in gun-metal finish with black ink and the black-grid shuttle astronaut pen with green ink that I use for marking up drawings at work.
• I seem to be more productive at work when I can prop up my feet and take my shoes off. 
• I have a big-ass inbox sitting on my desk and it's empty.  Hooray!
• There's a small chance I will have to go to the UK in the middle of June for an inspection for one of our pieces of equipment.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed, as I've never been and even though I won't be able to play the tourist, I'd still like to go and see what I can see.  Plus the business-class flight from Charlotte to London is supposed to be top-of-the-line, and I DO like flying in luxury!

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Note: I was going to post this in the comments of my QotD entry on the topic, but it turned into enough of an entry that I figured I'd put it in its own post.

Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies….but ask me to tell a lie and I'll tell a half-truth…

    – I once ran a four-and-a-half-minute mile
TRUE – Back in high school, I was quite the runner.  My freshman year I ran a 4:50 mile.  My junior year, I was down to 4:30.  My senior year, I ran a 4:20 mile to win the regional championship and was seeded first for the state track meet.  The guy I beat in the regional meet ended up winning the state's mile competition.  I came in middle of the pack, definitely not my best race (story behind that some other time), but I'll always have my 4:20 mile to remember as I get more and more out of shape with the years :-)

    – I once broke both of my front teeth while sailing…on the 4th of July
FALSE – This is the half-truth.  It was actually MY BROTHER who did this.  He was out on the Chesapeake Bay taking part in a sailing class one summer, and he didn't duck when the boom suddenly (and surprisingly) reversed direction on a tack.  I was supposed to be there that day but I was sick.  He broke both of his front teeth, exposing the nerve on one of them.  If that wasn't bad enough, can you imagine how hard it is to find a dentist who is working on the 4th of July?!?!

    – I once drove a US Navy nuclear submarine
TRUE – My father was a captain in the Navy before he retired, and he happened to be the captain of a submarine at points in his career, too.  On a dependents' cruise, I got to sit in the Officer of the Deck's (OOD's) chair and steer, and on the Captain's orders of "Surface, Surface, Surface", I pulled back on the wheel and surfaced the boat from (I think) a few hundred feet underwater to the ocean's surface.  Pretty cool experience, and something I'll always remember.  It's not every day you're in control of a half a billion dollars worth of machinery!

Congrats to LaLatte for guessing correctly!!!!

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    Tell us two truths and a lie about yourself.

Your turn to guess which is which!  I'll post the answer and explanations in the comments tomorrow.

- I once ran a four-and-a-half-minute mile
- I once broke both of my front teeth while sailing…on the 4th of July
- I once drove a US Navy nuclear submarine

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Keeping the war titles going in the Calliope No. 8 chain…here's the Kleptones War of Confusion.  For those of you unfamiliar with the Kleptones work, they've got some excellent mashup albums available for free download at The Kleptones website here.  I really recommend the "A Night at the Hip-Hopera" album, but this one happens to be from the "24 Hours" album…

15-The Kleptones-1800 War of Confusion

The Kleptones

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I've moved!

One of the things that has kept me busy this week is my move from an annoyingly un-private desk in a 4-person cubicle to a single-person desk in my own cubicle with a window!

Old and Busted

If you can't tell, I sat in the seat on the right.  There is someone sitting in the seat to the left, and I'm essentially sitting on someone's desk to take this picture, with the 4th person just off-camera to the right.  There's a walkway running down the center of the cube and people cut through it all day long to get to the printer.

The New Hotness

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Can you identify the drivers for all these vehicles?

NASCAR Race Against Traffic

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