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January 28, 2002 - 2:41 p.m.

Funny how we all seem to have comfort foods and strong emotions attached to foods in general. Today I went out to lunch (Indian food) with a former boss. After hitting the buffet we decided to continue to chat over good hot Indian tea. You know the kind strong chi, with heavy cream, and a dash of sugar. CIVILIZED. That is what it brought back for me. The world can operate at a civilized pace and none of us the worse for it.

Many of you may have noticed the startling lack of updates from me for quite some time. This period has been filled with much ainxt and hate for the job. Somewhere over the weekend it all seemed to crystallize. My department is dysfunctional, and that is not likely to change in the near future. There is a basic lack of trust between the management team and the VP, not good. None of this is a good thing, but looking at it and recognizing it for what it is makes it all better somehow. I am still looking to get out of here, but I know that the better job will show up eventually. Eventually.

So on to more basic things, like what did Kyna do last weekend? Well it all started innocently enough with a request from Chuck to please buy a DVD cleaner. I came home with surround sound - a "home theatre system." Now two points in my defense 1) this is something we have been threatening to do for quite some time now and 2) by definition the new DVD player is cleaner than the old one, so I really did do what he asked me to do if in a slightly warped fashion.

Then the wiring nightmare began. Mind you last time I bought components I was 14. And since then I have been blissfully ignorant. We have had the really simple setup that requires 2 coax cables and the ability to parse IN and OUT. Now, I think you need to have a degree in this stuff. Thank you Matt (the one that is saint-like and takes care of the cats) for being an audiophile and knowing how to navigate this stuff. Things I learned:

- There are HOW many types of cable? And I am going to pay $20 for WHAT? Cool fiber optics in my basement. Did you know some of these have directions - you know like little arrows along the side of them saying signal flows this way. Anal really, really anal. Note that for the record mine are all going the correct direction, and are coiled, and labeled. You can take the geek out of the network, but you can't take the network out of the geek ...

- HDTV is confusing. HDTV ready, HDTV monitor, digital, analog ... ick. But flat screen TV's look pretty. 32" is really quite large. It doesn't sound big, and doesn't necessarily look very big in the store (sandwiched between two larger TV's) But in my basement this thing is HUGE. Even more huge as Chuck and Mel (who had the vested interest of watching the Steelers game on said TV) moved it downstairs. Thank you guys.

- I now have more remotes than any human should have to suffer. Thankfully most of these consolidate. I only have to care about 2 of them.

- My cats are over the moon at the introduction of approximately 1 billion twist ties and new cardboard boxes to play with.

- Unfortunately ... the Steelers lost anyway. But we do have a ROCKIN setup in the basement.

- Just because you fill all the hours of a weekend pretending to be busy with useful things (like running cable, positioning speakers and figuring out what component video mean) does not mean that the laundry will magically disappear. *sigh*

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