I started slowly this morning – with a case of what I call”Dragon Ass”. I was seriously dragging ass, as it were. I left thehouse a little before 9am, bought overpriced gas and started whatwould be a long, grueling day with a venti vanilla latte from thenew Starbucks Coffee on 53rd Street and Elmore. Ithelped. I see in the news today that Starbucks is laying off (up to) 12,000 employees and closing 600stores. I guesswith $4 gas, not as many people can afford a $4 cup of coffee afterfilling up their SUV.

It was a long day today. We had our antivirus vendor on-site,and spent the day discussing their products and later configuringthe console and discussing deployment plans for later this year. Wedid have one nice break, for lunch we went to Sports Fansin Bettendorf, to enjoy the new Iowa smoking ban that went into effecttoday. Yay,Iowa!! It’s about time the health and well-being of society camebefore supporting a disgusting habit like smoking. This follows onthe heels of the Illinois ban, but allows for more loopholes. Thiswas only day one, we’ll have to see how it is working after a fewmonths. At least it was a nice change of pace, before I finishedmeetings and spent an hour fussing with Jarrett’s bank to get anNSF charge reversed from an unexpected online charge he thought hadbeen cancelled two months ago. GRUNT. I closed out the day bycalling gyms to find out what their fees were, and picking up afrozen pizza from Target for dinner. It was a long day. Did Imention that?