There's this spider that's living in my side view mirror on my pickup truck. At first, I was annoyed by the web between the mirror and side of my truck every morning, now I've grown attached to the spider in a weird way. Insects in general are mindless machines, but still, I admire their tenacity at times. When I went to work out this evening, she was sitting in the middle of her web (instead of hiding in the mirror like she usually does) and she had to hang on for dear life when I started driving. I got up to 45 mph and the wind was too much for her, she fell... or so I thought. Apparently, she had only slipped some and held onto the door where I couldn't see her, because when I got to the stoplight she climbed back up. I'll pull the web off my truck again tomorrow morning, but again she'll come back out tomorrow night and rebuild it. Life's a bitch ain't it?

A friend sent me the text to this today:He is an INFANTRYMAN! I liked it, thought I would share.

You know how little children start repeating everyone when they learn to talk? And how you've got to watch what you do around children because they'll start doing the same things, or acting the same way? Well, I thought of that when I read about North Korea and India in the news today. What's frightening is that, unlike Iraq, all the nations involved in these localized disputes are nuclear capable.

Wait, war can be exhausting, people can die, and the enemy can't be trusted!?! *GASP* Who would've thunk it? We'd better rethink this whole thing, oh, but wait, we can't step off now because we already have troops over there (as Blair stated, I can't find a link). OK folks, wake up! War isn't pretty, it isn't easy, and it never goes as planned. Borrowing a phrase similar to a marketing campaign from the past, "This is not your father's war!"... or maybe it is.

Anyway, is anyone else's large multi-national company as dumb as mine? Every time they send out an email to the entire company, some idiot manager or local person has to forward it to everyone again because they think it's their job. When we receive a terror threat warning (our company is closely involved in some defense contracts and government contracts) we get at least one copy of it 10 minutes later from our local security director. Whenever we get a company-wide HR email, we get another copy within minutes from our division's HR manager. It reminds me of a quote I saw on the net once:
"Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence." - Laurence J Peter
I equate "their level of incompetence" with "gained the title of manager".

Al Gore is joining the board of Apple Computers, and there's a grassroots effort to get him to run for president in 2004. This is the same man who falsely stated that he "took the initiative in creating the Internet." Then again, Apple does have a pretty good sense of humor. Those people heading up the effort to get him elected have no excuse.

Every month at work we get a newsletter which has a mind bender or puzzle in it for us to complete. I enjoyed this month's and thought I would share it. I think it's just simple enough that most everyone could do it, but just hard enough that it's a pleasurable experience.
Audrey has put some letter blocks together to make the following sum:
ONE + TWELVE = THIRTEEN
Nicola uses all these blocks but rearranges some of them to get a different sum, which is also correct. Then Claire replaces the I with an E and inserts another + block. She then rearranges the blocks again to get a different equation which is also correct. Can you find the two new versions?

Well, things are getting worse. Syria (who already opposes the war) got upset because a bus of Syrian civilians was hit by a missile. They stated this was a violation of the Geneva Convention, and was a "terrible aggression." Also, the Turkish government plans to go ahead with it's desires to move troops into northern Iraq. Turkey is considered friendly in this war, however this points to a growing tension in the region that is very similar to the events surrounding Israel's creation before all hell broke loose in 1948 upon the creation of the state of Israel. Also, the U.S. is getting angry over Russian arms dealers selling weapons and other equipment to the Iraqi army. I pray that we aren't in the final days before the start of World War III.

On a lighter note, I love how reports sometimes write the obvious in the article. In case you've been asleep for the past month, or have just been rescued from being stranded in a cave or on an island somewhere, here's the obvious from a recent Reuters article:
U.S. and British forces are fighting Iraq in an effort to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and to find and destroy Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction. Iraq has denied it has such weapons.

Apparently, Iraqi troops are masquerading as civilians and pretending to surrender in order to take some of our troops by surprise: news. Is anyone particularly surprised? I was somewhat worried about this the other day when I read that an entire Iraqi division had surrendered. I worried about the number of troops needed to guard this many prisoners of war, and also what if they changed their mind. Sure, a lot of the Iraqis would die, but that many POWs could overpower guards and then be in position to flank our troops. I fear things are going to get worse.

I just read this article... quite enlightening. Telegraph | Opinion | I was a naive fool to be a human shield for Saddam