Bernard Hughes has died at 90.

No freaking way, those puppies are TOO CUTE. Are you certain they're not CGI?

Well, by that logic, you would be CGI, too, Rio.

And you are, quite obviously, a robot.

BEEP.

So, maybe they are robot dogs.

I'll be seeing them at Thanksgiving, so I'll have photos of the puppy-cute to verify their reality.

I especially love the brown one (Pixel), with his little tongue sticking out--too adorable!!

ETA to say that if they are robot dogs, then Pixel is the perfect name for one of them.

Hee--I'm not always the biggest fan of Rep. Rahm Emanuel, but I do love this comment he made:

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the President said we continue to be wise about how we spend the people's money.

Then why are we paying over $100,000 for a 'White House Director of Lessons Learned'?

Maybe I can save the taxpayers $100,000 by running through a few of the lessons this White House should have learned by now.

"Lesson 1: When the Army Chief of Staff and the Secretary of State say you are going to war without enough troops, you're going to war without enough troops.

"Lesson 2: When 8.8 billion dollars of reconstruction funding disappears from Iraq, and 2 billion dollars disappears from Katrina relief, it's time to demand a little accountability.

"Lesson 3: When you've 'turned the corner' in Iraq more times than Danica Patrick at the Indy 500, it means you are going in circles.

"Lesson 4: When the national weather service tells you a category 5 hurricane is heading for New Orleans, a category 5 hurricane is heading to New Orleans.

I would also ask the President why we're paying for two 'Ethics Advisors' and a 'Director of Fact Checking.' They must be the only people in Washington who get more vacation time than the President.

Maybe the White House could consolidate these positions into a Director of Irony.

HALLO AIMEE

Oh, Kathy, that's magnificent.

Hey, it's the prettiest Rio!

And the ever lovely, Fiona.

My sister and her fiance are getting puppies! Meet Pixel and Ergo.

Those are exactly the kind of puppies Emmett wants.

Brief comment by Emmett last night indicating that he is better versed in baseball history than electrical engineering or chemistry: "Hey! They named a battery after Al Kaline!"

Huh. An anti-abortion website complains about a pro-abortion article in The Onion.

[link]

When referring to the killing of her child she said:

"I am totally psyched for this abortion!"

...

"I just know it's going to be the best non-anesthetized invasive uterine surgery ever!"

No, she he didn't get the joke....

eta to fix gender - he used the picture of the female "author" from The Onion....

That's awesome, Kathy.

ION, why must both the responsible person for a system/service and their backup both always go on vacation at the same time? Half the department is out on vacation or in training or is otherwise unreachable, and they're all backups for each other. The users are getting pissed and those of us on the helpdesk are getting frustrated. And the sad thing is, this isn't the first time it's happened. It happens constantly, and I've brought it up multiple times in department meetings, but nothing is ever done about it.

So we can leave a system without support for a week, but heaven forbid (back when we were all field techs, instead of split up into help desk and tech like we are now) that two out of three field techs happen to have a single day of vacation that coincided. ARGH!

Time for me to pointlessly try to get ahold of someone at their vacation location again...