"Like a graveyard...

There is a guy out in front of our building today, protesting. He's across the street, on public sidewalks, so it's absolutely legit, but it's a little strange. He's wearing hunter's camo (i.e. screen printed pictures of trees and leaves, not the pixel camo or the patches camo that actually work), and has a sandwich board and a sign. He's been there all day from 8am, and I'm pretty sure he's still there now.

The front of the sign says "PERJURY", "FELONY", and "FIRE CEO YBERATRE^*" with the famous Obama/Joker picture in the middle. The back of the sign says something along the lines of, "Watch out, Terrorists Ahead!" The front of the sandwich board says "VGG^* DISCRIMINATES AGAINST AMERICANS!" And the back of the board implies our company should "DEPORT" all H-1B visa holders.

The really, really ridiculous thing is that we have no foreign nationals in this building, let alone H-1B holders. We have very particular rules about who is allowed in the building, and when foreign nationals are in, we are all alerted and must not discuss business in hallways, and so forth.

I'm not annoyed by him, as he's providing exactly no nuisance, but I am amused at the lack of research he did, and I wonder what corner he came from. My coworkers theorize he applied for a job here and was turned down. They also joked it was a recently (well, actually about a year ago) laid-off mutual coworker, but it's not.

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^* All identifying marks have been ROT-13 encoded for Google-protection.

I went to Fairway to pick up some of my favorite Ginger Beer, and first, they had nearly none left (certainly none left in their legendary Cold Room), but my long arms were able to fetch me four delicious bottles. Prize (and salt, and peppers, and olives, and Silk®) in hand, I went to the register. A little old lady let me cut in line because I had so few things. The cashier starts to ring me up and stops at the soft drinks. She says something I cannot quite hear because I've got my iPod on (antisocial me, indeed). I take off the other earbud and ask her to repeat herself. "ID." I try to explain its a soft drink with less than 0.5% alcohol per volume, but she just looks at me like I'm either an idiot or trying to get around showing my ID. I display my papers (bitte) and swipe my credit card and continue on my way.

So I found out this afternoon that I've been volunteered to go to Detroit and help with some phone validations. On Monday. Returning Wednesday. This is going to require a lot of plans rearrangement and some kit building for some specific needs. So tomorrow, I get to break out the soldering iron and some more tape or perhaps hot glue. And it needs to be done by the end of tomorrow, as I have other off-site things to do on Friday that doesn't have any hopes of telling me when/if it'll be done.

Oy Vey

I would like to apologize in advance. Dear future bride, I will never be this leet. Sorry.