Found out yesterday that I have to go to a National Instruments symposium in
balmy Minneapolis, Minnesota next week Wednesday.  Seeing as how my company is
a bunch of cheapass bastards, myself and 3 other engineers get to drive 5
hours on our "own personal time" to attend after work on Tuesday.  We get to
share 1 rental car and put up in a 55 dollar hotel room.  Following day, we
get to drive back home during rush hour for 5 more hours on our personal time
again so we can be at work on Thursday.  So, I can only charge 8 hours to
training, but I'll be spending over 24 hours for company related business. 
Nice.  Did I mention Minneapolis got over a foot of snow yesterday?  If this
were held in Las Vegas, the managers would have never sent us, but seeing as
how it is a shitty place to go, they force we scum to go.  Not all that
enthused about the whole deal.  

On the good news side, the project I was working on last few weeks has been
postponed until January due to schedule slippage.  So, I get a chance to
breathe a little and get another side project done in its place.  I still have
to work over my X-mas holiday break for the side project.  Personal morale is
getting pretty low at the moment.  Still winning the "my job is worse than
your job" debates amongst my friends here at work.  Oh well, I can always look
forward to going home to a cold, empty bed at the end of the day.  Shoutout to
Aelynn. II  **

*s