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From an email today where I was trying to explain the contortions I went through getting the latest RAM upgrade to fully recognize in my work computer.

Vacation was relaxing. It didn't start out that way, but things got better. On the flight out, I was in a window seat with no window, which robbed me of six inches of critical shoulder room. As the flight attendant announced that there was one seat available for upgrade in first class, I rang the buzzer and waved.

The lead fight attendant came down and was starting to process me when a guy in the back started throwing a fit that he was "on the list" for the upgrade and demanding that he get it.

I spun around and said, "I'll give you a hundred dollars to sit down and shut up."

Asshat McGee refused, and I was about to wish him a lethal case of bowel cancer when I happened to look down at the guy who was sitting in the aisle seat of my row. The United State Marshal Service-embossed notepad that he was writing on served to push my retort back down my throat, so as not to get me tasered. I made one last weak attempt to explain that I was in physical pain, but it didn't help.

I did wish him a good case of bowel cancer when I walked past him leaving the airport.

The rest of the weekend was relaxing. I bought someone the most expensive gift I've ever purchased, and I saw Crank, which left me in a bemused stupor. I didn't actually think that a movie could be faster and less coherent than Running Scared, but Hollywood likes to outdo my expectations. Reading a review of the movie just now, I come to wonder how it is that white critics always manage to spot and be appalled by "cavalier racism" while reviewers of non-white persuasions miss it. How the fuck else do you get street gangs, syndicates, and drugs in a movie about modern day Los Angeles without having blacks, Chinese, and South American cocaine cowboys?

Tuesday morning, I got my upgrade...and was seated next to my nemesis from Thursday night. I should have known better. Then he started chewing tobacco and spitting into a bottle. While I was pleased that he'd likely need a prosthetic jaw eventually, I wanted to beat the shit out of him on general principle.

I listened to Radiohead, read Count Zero, and tried to keep from killing this guy. I also waxed poetical about my trip and what this entry might look like. Unsurprisingly, my prose here became much less purple and much more stark. Such is the way.

Late yesterday, we started patent proceedings on a piece of software that I whipped out in three feverish days back in July. I despise software patents, but the company is determined. It's kind of odd that I go to meetings to patent things I've created in a polo shirt, cargo shorts, and flip flops so old that you can see the creases on my feet through the soles. I always thought that dudes who got patents were like scientists or uptight engineers or something. Not people like me, but this isn't the first time--it's just the first time I can't stop it.

My life always has a sort of cartoon logic to it, but I suspect that much like my explanation about getting more RAM today, many people kind of regard that logic as a super-weird something they can hardly imagine.