And here I stand with this sword in my hand

-- Tori Amos, Take to the Sky

Here comes trouble a brewing. Inevitable, I suppose. I'll begin by recounting events since I woke up.

I arose at 1100, and immediately got in the shower. Fast forward 25 minutes.

Feeling refreshed and ready for more festing, a lingering tingle -- presumably from substances ingested during the dark hours -- continued to permeate my nervous system.

Upon reaching my computer in the living room, I was pleasantly greeted by a package. I knew instantly what its contents would be. (Did I mention that last week I used my Christmas money to order a new keyboard? No , I didn't, and indeed I did (respectively).) Eagerly, I opened the box and proceeded to revel in the slick design, the penguin keys, the neat little "clicks" made each time I depressed a key, and the dust cover that doubles as a paper stand. Unfortunately, it had a PS/2 style connector, so I was unable to plug it in and test it immediately.

I noted that no one else appeared to be around. Bouncing's car was gone, but the Toyota was still present. Impatient, I decided to go ahead and run to the store and buy an adapter, and also obtain a few other supplies I've been needing. Wal Mart was close, so I decided to check there first. Alas, the crap clearinghouse had no adapter, but I went ahead and bought other boring things like deodorant and razor blades. (Is that exciting or what?)

I then proceeded to Circut City, a much more likely outlet for what I was looking for. The road and parking lot design surrounding the Boulder branch of that store is absolutely horrendous. I knew from experience gleaned while Christmas shopping not to use the most obvious and direct entrance. That's the Soundtrack parking lot, and they've got signs posted all over. "Soundtrack Parking Only. Violators will be towed.", even though Circut City is just a few meters away, and there's no direct way to get from the Soundtrack parking lot to the Circut City parking lot. So I proceeded to make a left turn at the following stop light, and discovered that even then, the only way to enter the Circut City lot from the east was to make an illegal left across the double yellow divider. I saw no cops, and proceeded to do so. I've always known that Boulder street designers were idiots, but this marks a whole new level of insanity even for them.

Initially, I didn't see the proper adapter, and began to fear that the store was even more dumbed down that I had previously thought. I sought assistance from a nearby employee, and he quickly found me a nice little rack of PS/2 to AT adapters. Stupid I felt for being so blind, but was glad they had what I needed, even though the price was a bit high.

By now, you're probably wondering why in the world I put "Stormy Skies" in the title, since it was warm and sunny as ever outside, despite being January. I'm getting to it momentarily. In fact, I'm getting to it right now. :)

Upon arriving home, I found Bob resting on the couch. I was slightly worried that he would be upset that I had taken the car without prior authorization. He said nothing however, and appeared to be unconcerned.

I plugged in my new keyboard, and it worked (and is working) wonderfully. It feels so good to get tactile and auditory feedback when typing, instead of the typical mushiness found in virtually all the cookie-cutter keyboards sold at retail outlets such as the one I had just visited. I'm still getting used to the slightly repositioned navigation keys above the arrows, and the repeat rate is too slow for my taste, but I'm sure the latter problem can be corrected with some software tweaking. I'll have to use it a bit longer before deciding whether I prefere this, or the traditional positioning of the ins/del/home/end/pgup/pgdown block. Back to our story.

It was then that the small scale blowup eluded to previously began. Bob asked me to print and give him a copy of my resume. This has been a recurring nag for the last several weeks, which I have fended off and avoided with varying degrees of success. I know what he wants to do. He wants me to give it to him so he can submit it to various places of employment. While that sounds alright on the surface, it's not. Maybe I'm overreacting. So be it.

[Swap full. To be continued...]