Blog of Billy

November has roller-bladed in with all the grace and gentle maneuver of an epileptic hippopotamus. The drama that has taken place in just the first two days makes me want to nap past Thanksgiving. How has the month been treating me? Open book time.

1. I'm sick again. My throat is all sore, my muscles achey. Hertz/Postal Tim is similarly afflicted, as is Denise, which makes me think it's an actual plague as well all got sick immediately on the first. Oh well.
2. Work is being annoying. There is no direct, approachable way to do the things I need to do. Specifically, the XSL-FO spec by design has no provision for blocks that span a number of columns smaller than the total number of columns on the page, but larger than one. So, I have to write insanity using third-party extensions to XSL-FO. Usually I would be energized by such a challenge, but the tools that I have to work with limit the number of ways that I can describe that insanity. I'm a huge fan of TIMTOWTDI, and XML is based around a single "right" coding strategy that covers 80% of what I want to do, but leaves the non-trivial 20% as a sacrifice so that implementations take off. This is what happened with "span." It's hard to make blocks span arbitrary numbers of columns, and the XML group wants the FO standard (and XML) in general to be implemented widely so that the terror of SGML doesn't happen again. Their response is to nerf the standard so anyone (except apparently the Apache group) The problem is that an almost-completely-useful standard is also almost-completely-frustrating. Oh well.
3. New relationship drama. Though it seems to have cleared itself, there were some awkward conversations and non-discussions. I'm concerned, but have no basis for how to change behavior or conversation patterns. On the one hand, this is frustrating. On the other hand, I'm having a hard time feeling guilty without knowing the cause. Oh well.
4. Old relationship drama. Being nice to exes causes problems. Being civil to exes causes problems. Being a jerk to exes causes problems. Ignoring exes causes problems, and is impractical. I'll just have to cause problems being nice as that's the way I deal with the world, regardless of complexities or weird coincidences. Oh well.
5. No good way to deal with the above. My better conscience has me at a debate tournament helping out Blake this weekend, so Tulsa is out. Boston is like a million miles away, so queso is out. There go my two best support structures for a few days. Oh well.

My congressman won't let me give my brother a clean syringe.
If he should get AIDS and die, that's just too bad.