My boss, Chris, posted a web-log entry that had me laughing out loud, so I thought I'd share. Check his site for “Thank you for calling the United States Army,” the official (not) voice mail message of the US Army.

• If your crisis is small, and close to the sea, press 1 for the United States Marine Corps.
• If your concern is distant, with a temperate climate and good hotels, and can be solved by one or two low risk, high altitude bombing runs, please press 2 for the United States Air Force.  Please note this service is not available after 1630 hours, or on weekends.

Read the whole thing here.

Don't know why for sure, but I've been on this random kick recently about The Ultimate Answer and all that. Of course, we all know the answer, and how it was discovered:

 ultimate_answer_t deep_thought(void)
{
        sleep(years2secs(7500000));
return 42;
}

The real question is, what was the question?

And that's the hard part.

“I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is.”

If it takes seven and a half million years of Deep Thought to answer the question, but we don't know the question, then what do we do next?

It's all quite mind-boggling. Certainly does not invoke a feeling of infinite majesty and calm.

Who am I? What is my purpose in life? Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don't get up and go to work?

Is that the question??? What is the question?

"Exactly! So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means."

ARGH!

In reality, I have been doing a bit of deep thought of my own, trying to decide what I am meant to do, what it is I am supposed to be doing with my life (assuming I am supposed to be doing anything). Through a series of trials, successes, tribulations and challenges - some random and some not - I've ended up in a place in life that I never would have predicted. I'm not complaining, mind you, just wondering what's in store, what's next, why, stuff like that. Seems like something's missing, and while I have guesses about what that “something” might be, it's hard to put my finger on it for certain.

Maybe I need to play a long game of Scrabble.

Makes you wonder about which industry should be considering an IPO...

According to Hitwise, during the week of May 29th, 18.8% of U.S. Web visits were to 'adult' sites and 5.5% were to top search engines. Says CNN-Money: “Porn 3X more popular than searches.”

This could mean a lot of different things, but one thing's for sure: There's apparently a lot of people out there that I don't really understand. That, and excepting the fact that I have a soul and I value it greatly, it's obvious I am in the wrong business. :-P

I've been installing and testing builds of Windows XP SP2 for a while now, and while I should and will not go into any real detail about that here, let's just say I had a need to use a command-line switch on the installer for the latest version yesterday, but it didn't quite do what I needed/expected.

I mentioned that fact to my friend Travis, who came up with some ideas for command line switches that he says should be applied to all products.

Checking in on the industry between calls, found this news item from yesterday, related to Microsoft's security “tour” program they running right now:

Discussing how some have tried to position security efforts as potentially beneficial to the bottom line, Microsoft chief security officer Scott Charney admitted he was cynical. "Security is a cost center. If there were no attacks, no one would bother," he told a few hundred IT professionals at the event.

So true. Sure, beefing up security is important, required, beneficial and prudent in this day and age. But the fact of the manner is if there was no pain, we would not be spending big bucks in this area.

It's also worth noting that - in reality - a relatively small amount of preventative planning in this area today can save huge numbers of reactive dollars tomorrow and after. Security budgets are important. They may look expensive to some, but when you consider the potential costs on not preventing problems, the downside could be very costly, indeed.

< Cue cheesy commercial music >

This dad did it on eBay.
(PDF available for when the original exprires).

I had to laugh at this one when I saw it, but at the same time I was rooting this guy on and mentally wishing him the best from afar. I know this dad is dealing with something serious.

“SO CHILDREN LISTEN UP DO NOT DISRESPECT YOUR PARENTS YOUR FRIENDS OR YOURSELF BECAUSE US PARENTS ARE SMARTER THAN YOU AND WE WILL FIND OUT ABOUT ANY AND ALL THINGS YOU TRY TO HIDE.”

Heheh... He's certainly being creative and making what sounds like a serious point. At least one father out there who's willing to punish his 13-year-old son for misbehavior that matters (a lot) in the kid's present and future life. Hopefully this is just the beginning of the additional parental attention for that kid.

Father's Day season doesn't always need to be happy - it does needs to be real.

Thanks to Dave for the link.