By now everybody’s heard the sad news (I guess it’s sad news – I know good Americans weren’t supposed to like him, but I always got a kick out of the guy) that Hugo Chavez has croaked. It’s doubly devastating for me, as I had him going all the way in my Pope Pool. I think he’d have looked pretty snazzy in the Pope dress and red shoes – and he was one of very few people who had a head that could handle the Turkey Butt hat. Viaje seguro, Hugo. And I hope you’re not smelling sulfur wherever you are.

This is stupid meeting week, and today’s the day. There’s a chance the stupid meeting will be cancelled, because we have yet another mandatory (and stupid) “lunch” meeting with the two other groups in our division (our whatever it is we call it). It was ostensibly about “what’s new” with us, though the intent was just to have a little get together catered by a nearby “Southwest Grill” (which I would have dutifully blown off, because, Wednesday being my late day, I typically use my lunch time to head out to the grocery store for my midweek food and beverage resupply). Sadly, it was hijacked by the director-level person (the one who insists on these meetings in the first place, and typically starts them out by saying “I don’t have anything”), who has now made it a mandatory meeting with presentations required of the team leaders. Great, I get to sit around and watch PowerPoint slides of shit I really don’t care about and don’t need to do my job (which I don’t actually need to be in the office to do). I guess this is what Marissa Mayer would consider “valuable collaboration.”

It appears that another big snow storm is headed our way, though it’s up in the air (so to speak) as to whether or not we’ll get hit with anything. The storm is actually supposed to be to the south of us, but there’s another system up in Canada that’s supposed to come down over the Great Lakes and into our area, then suck all the moisture out of the first storm and dump it on us Thursday night and Friday. It’s looking like it could be a lot of snow, and I’d just as soon it pass us by. When it gets into March, you really don’t want to have to hassle with this stuff. We’ve had some pretty nasty March storms (one back in ’93 or so stands out – we got about four feet of snow in a day or so), and I’m just not into it right now. Just in case, I guess I need to fix the chains on my tractor tire – one keeps sliding over sideways. What a pain. I was hoping I could just take them off soon.

More hassles with the stupid iPhone. For some reason, it has trouble connecting with my home wireless network. Oh, it connected fine the first time, and for the first couple of days. But since then, it tells me it “can’t join the network” even though there’s no reason it shouldn’t. It sees the network and the signal is strong. Oh, it connects occasionally, but more often than not, it keeps annoying me with the stupid message. Never a problem with my Android tablet, ‘Droid phone, two Kindles, several laptops, Internet radio, and it was never an issue with the BlackBerry. I even went through the hassle of resetting my network settings. Not only did this not work, but instead of just being annoyed by the “can’t join” message, I had to keep putting in the damn key (which is pretty long and a real pain to enter w/o a keyboard) until it finally decided to connect for a while yesterday afternoon. This morning? We’re back to not connecting.

It looks nice, though. And it’s reporting that I’m getting 4G out here (though I think that’s fake ATT 4G, ‘cuz from what I understand, the 4S isn’t capable of “true” 4G).

Oh well, time to go into the basement and check my traps, and then figure out what else to do to kill time before I leave for work.