Since it's public knowledge, I can state that work has been interesting lately (in the Chinese curse kind of way) due to this requirement that no employee can insert a jump drive into one of our computers. It's not a hardware problem; it's a security problem.

And now we're working on procedures to transfer data without using jump drives.

Hint: If you're looking for a stock investment, maybe a company that sells blank CDs and DVDs would be a good investment.

My standard rant, for the 1,483,384,391,384th time:

Folks! Is it really a good idea to move all our manufacturing overseas and then buy jump drives made in China? Ones that have "security software that launches automatically". Do you really know where that software has been and what it's going to do to you?

I still envison a day when we will all be driving foreign cars and they will suddenly initiate the auto-leming programing so that all cars drive off the nearest cliff. Only owners of American made cars will survive... all five of them.

But I disgress. Or whatever.

Tonight was open fencing and Thanksgiving will soon be upon us. Every year the office adopts a family and buys Christmas for them and every year I intend to participate and... don't. This year, I got the e-mail and noticed the youngest kid was 5. Hey! I can do this! I have an A08 in shopping for children's clothing. Oh, wait. The 5-year-old is wearing 8-10 clothing. Well... I can still do this. I'll buy shirts.

So I visit Mother after work (it's Momsday) and realize (1) she didn't know the election is over; (2) she didn't know there was an election; (3) she still doesn't now a bi-racial man was elected; (4) she doesn't care that a woman was a VP candidate and (1) she doesn't know the election is over.

Sigh! Yes, I intended to loop that.

Next, I go to Macy's, where I know they have a 75% off rack for boy's clothing. It took some time, but I did find some shirts in the right size. I overdid it slightly but I figure I owe extra for all the times I skipped out on this. My biggest score of the night was a long sleeve IZOD shirt. Yes, I bought an IZOD shirt for an impoverished family. It was $9.00. I also got a green dress shirt with tie (I hope this family attends church) for $5, marked down from about $35.

If only I had the same skills in fencing that I have for finding the sale items at Macy's!

Tonight was open fencing because... as I said... Thursday is Thanksgiving. The JCC will be closed Wed. I did badly against the guys, sometimes managing to parry but not to riposte as they're simply too darn good and fast for me. Drat it all! I did get a chance to fence A and it was a joy. She's still well ahead of me skillwise but if feels like women's veteran fencing and I need much more of this between now and the NAC-C.