People need some fucking manners. Here are some workplace stories about when they don't have them.

I've been begged by this guy before. He's usually after fifty cents or a couple of bucks. Fairly friendly. I wonder why I can remember people who beg from me three times in a year, but I can't remember to take out the garbage on Thursdays. Tonight, he wanted a ride to Tom drive. It was real close, so what the heck.

My own quote file was once one of my favorite pages on the site. I've shamefully neglected it while bringing up other content. It's one of the few pages that still has very sloppy formatting, and it even got accidentally omitted from the menu on the left when I rewrote that code. I just added a new quote, but that's the first one in a while.

And now that the obligatory seasonal good cheer is out of the way, let's continue to make fun of my coworkers. Oh yes, it didn't take long after my last post to get an email with the other groups who had to take those photos. I was too just busy cooking and herding people through my house to cut out images and make up captions. Let us proceed....

In the interest of job security, I don't normally use this forum to make fun of my employer too much. But once in a while, the satire gods throw you such a beautiful opportunity, you can't pass it up. You see, some genius at work had the bright idea for each different team to take a picture, to format that into some sort of Christmas greeting PDF file, and to send those out to the clients that this particular team supports. As my emailed response to these put it, "let the ridicule begin..."

I woke up yesterday morning at around 5:00. I'm not sure why I was up so early, but I was fresh and ready to start the day. I went out to the living room where the gas fire still warmed the air. I watched most of Sports Center and a little bit of the news on CNN. Then I took a shower and went to work early. It was a normal start to a day that would end very abnormally.

Sometimes, when I have half a thought but not a full one, I'll jot down a little note. Sometimes they turn in to a real idea. Once in a while, I start writing about it, and the idea flows into a whole post. On the other hand, I have a whole page of half-thoughts that went nowhere. Here is a collection of some half-thoughts that have no chance of becoming a whole post on their own merit.

When I decided that I wanted to write a web log, it was just the because I wanted to write. Sure, I could have kept a private journal, and I even tried to do that a time or two. But as much as I like to read, I don't really like to read my own writing. I know that doesn't make much sense, but that's the way it is. The idea of writing pages of stuff into a journal that no one would ever read seemed rather silly to me.

Shelly Williams may have the foulest mouth that I know, but she can do research. Last time I saw her, she gave me a pack of dice and a laminated copy of the official Three Man rules (so spilled drinks don't ruin the page). I hereby reprint those rules for posterity.

I only know of one place in Baton Rouge where you can get biegnets and cafe au lait, and of course, you can't get much more than that. The place is called Coffee Call, and I would give you a link to their web site if I knew of one for them. I'm not really here to advertise anyway.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm tired of hearing people complain about how LSU did this season. There are two reasons that these complaints are annoying. First, we **just won the doggone national championship!** And in fact, we are still the national champions for another month. (Read that bold part again, and just try not to smile.) More importantly, LSU had a good season this year. Keep reading, and I'll back that up.

At first, I thought it was my lucky day. I was about to board a three and a half hour flight, and I just found out that I had been granted an unrequested first-class upgrade. I'm not sure why; I'm just barely to the "silver" level of Delta's rank and grade system, but I guess that combined with low demand for those seats combined with having purchased a ticket that any sane person would laugh at got me through.