Got back from Pisgah Forest yesterday. What an excellent weekend - visited a couple of accounts, rocked a 28-mile 5-hour mountain bike ride on Saturday, had dinner at Barley's (one bigass beefalo & feta calzone)... would that all weekends could be that much fun. Spent too much money, but Wednesday will see another piddly direct deposit to checking.

Craft pretty much shot down any of my employment hopes. Overqualified for the position; they said they wouldn't be able to pay me enough even before I shared salary requirements (requirements: rent/util/broadband for an efficiency apartment within five miles of the office, car payments on a Hyunda Elantra, and an additional $600/mo for food, insurance, gas, and savings. Is that so much?). Oh well. Still have an outstanding letter in to a company on Long Island, but I'm not holding out much hope there. Lunch break over. No more slashdot posting for another day. Thank goodness for inbound call volume on Mondays to deaden the pain until I can go home.

Well, Bush just got elected. Can't really say re-elected, because it's not trendy among the circles with which I hang to believe that he was ever elected back in 2000. I've gotta admit, the guy sure does talk purdy; in his first couple of speeches, he's all "reaching out" this and "no president should ever try to impose religion on our society" that... I think that won't hold up for much longer, given that it was the religious who got him into office in the first place. I've no desire to emmigrate, though. I just realized this. I love my country, even the dumbass bits of it who voted for this monkey-boy does-no-wrong lives-of-others-wielding semi-dictator of ours. The democratic party needs to reorganize and step up to the plate in '08 with a candidate who it's tough to hate (wow, that rhymed well), to meld into some sort of centrist John McCain/Mark Warner hybrid that can appeal to everyone with truthful, honest, insightful, and effective rhetoric and actions.

I am ready to give up on the folks who voted to ban gay marriage, though. "Protecting marriage" should involve a cap of three kids max (and requirements of at least $10k annually per kid of family income beyond $30k annually for the parents alone), mandatory sterilizations as a precursor to a successful first divorce (if you fail, then you ought not bring future innocent children into your failed world), and exposure to more than just the religion in which the parents were brought up; that way we'd get a balanced, thoughtful, responsibile citizenry after only one generation. You would accuse me of moral relativism, of attempting to rework the nation into my particular sense of discipline and propriety... but isn't that what 51% of America did just two days ago? The difference is my ideas would work, and discriminate against nobody who has not proven through bigotry or irresponsibility that they merit said discrimination.

Inbound!
Small six-person call center, inside sales goons taking orders for bicycle parts. Heard from bike shop buyers across the country: "Sorry, I don't have part numbers." "Well, just send me one of every style, and we'll eat the 10% restock fee if we have to." "This is Adam at Hutchinson Tires; you guys need to get a PO in if you want product for 2005." "Sounds like a fill rate of under 50%, but then that's not your problem, it's mine." Sorry, buddy, but if the boss authorized spending more money on bread-and-butter $4/cost parts and less on funky European carbon fiber road frames that we'll have to closeout this time next year anyway, maybe we'd have stuff in stock. And price increases suck for everyone, it's not like we're making any more margin on the stuff... tell ya what, you elect a non-oil-grubbing world-conscious president next week, and we'll see what we can do about high gas prices and how much the dollar sucks against the euro. That way maybe the next three containers from Italy won't rape us, and I won't feel the need to move to frickin' Vancouver to keep myself sane.

obligatory rave to go along with the rant: central South Carolina in the fall is gorgeous. I spent Saturday walking along the river, with my out-of-town girlfriend who'd flown in for the weekend, and it was 70 degrees and wonderful. It makes up for the oppressive summers and the snow-free winters. All my friends back home in DC are pissed at the 50 degree damp weather, and I'm taking walks in the sun on my lunch break. rock.

obligatory tech item, because this is slashdot, after all: I need a new cell phone. I'd like to stick with Sprint, because they've done me well for the past three years. I don't give a damn about camera capability, I carry a little DSC-U30 with me for that. I could do without a color screen. Battery life is important. Also, I require a flip-style phone. Someone tell me what to buy, because I am not a phone geek, and cnet & sprintpcs.com are no help.