Well, there’s a first time for everything. I was driving south on Wadsworth past 1st Ave just now in the #1 lane and a lady in a plateless blue Caravan just changed into my lane. Not ahead of me, not behind me, right next to me! I couldn’t tell if she signaled or not (because she was right next to me, hence I couldn’t see her signals), all I know is that she crossed over the line (like so many folks do with narrow lanes) so I drifted left a little bit, but instead of correcting herself—and greatly to my surprise—she kept going!

Part of me is glad that the bailout bill didn’t pass the House today. I think it’s ridiculous that the government (the taxpayers: me) should have to pay for the corrupt and poorly-managed financial fiascoes of large corporations. I don’t live in the Conglomerated States of America or USA, Inc. At least not yet. People need to be held accountable for their actions. That goes for companies, too. I don’t claim to have a good understanding of the whole situation. I’m sure it’s complicated. But could it possibly stem from the irresponsible financial behavior of the American consumer?

What do I do in my spare time, you may ask? Some people knit or build model airplanes. I tinker. And fix things. I build custom phone systems out of scratch and make them do things that in the wrong hands could be used for nefarious purposes. I build strobe power supplies from scratch and connect them to iPods in order to change traffic lights from red to green. I talk to folks in Australia on a handheld two-way radio from my back porch. I turn broken laptop computers into functioning laptop computers, occasionally disassembling them completely in the process.

It appears I have occasionally more than one reader. And in the interest of making the internet and the real world a more livable place (at least for me) I offer the following: If you recall my earlier post about the Charlie Brown auditions, I mentioned the girl who plays Lucy is cute. I neglected to mention that the girl who plays Sally is cute too. In fact she’s more than cute. She’s smokin’ hot. She’s an irresistable, alluring, voluptuous seductress who would make Helen of Troy look like the product of seven generations of sibling inbreeding by comparison.

And let me tell you why. I go to someone’s house, I fix their computer. Anything that could possibly go wrong in the next 24 hours does and then I’m automatically to blame. Windows XP sucks. Windows Vista REALLY sucks. Why do people continue to buy crappy Microsoft products? As soon as possible I’m getting out of the PC tech business. I’ll still fix computers for friends and previous customers, but even if the work didn’t suck so much, it would be too boring to want to continue. Plus that and I’m getting shafted out of all the money I make for another company that hires me as an independent contractor, anyway.

Today I spent about 8 1/2 hours at the Denver Combined Communications Center, or Denver 911 for short. This is the building where all 911 and non-emergency calls (720-913-2000) for the City and County of Denver are answered. In the radio room they have the phone operators and dispatchers for Denver Police, Denver Fire, and Denver Health. I’d post pictures if this cool location but I’m afraid that would probably be a breach of security. I can tell you that they use scramble pads to enter the door access codes, so don’t bother looking over anyone’s shoulder.