The time it takes to find a job in this economy averages three months, but it’s more like four months here in the Bay Area. I am happy to have a job in this economic climate, even if the raise was less than spectacular this year.

Another NBA season is starting in 15 days. After much speculation, Michael Jordan will return to the Wizards, the Rockets scored what they think is a Shaq Killer, and (according to Shaq) the Kings are still the “queens” of the league. After talking all kinds of smack last year and saying I would never do it again–I broke down and signed up for Fantasy Hoops again this year. Looking forward to a Lakers four-peat.

Melissa and I saw the Blue Angels yesterday as part of fleet week. If you’ve never seen them before, it is a sight to be seen. I found a picture of what they looked like, but there is no way I could describe the sounds the engines made as they flew overhead. Awesome.

Huge car bomb explodes on Bali and kills 182 people. I had heard from friends earlier that the count was in the eighties, but this is far worse than I thought. The consensus is that terrorists are involved.

They found an old Roman tablet with London’s ancient name inscribed on it, “Londiniensium.” Pretty cool, they even have a picture of it.

I am off to the airport to go back home, finally. The four days seemed like forever. I think it’s official, I hate to travel for work. Well, at least there’s a light at the end of the tunnel since I may be able to snowboard on the last weekend here.

The sniper that’s been picking people off in Washington D.C. suburbs taunted police by leaving behing a “death” tarot card with the message, “Dear Policeman, I am God.” I don’t know about all that, but he’s definitely a candidate for meeting God. I hope they catch him.

Upside magazine closed its doors today and Red Herring reorganized to get out of their sweet SOMA office space into cheaper offices in nearby China Basin (near PacBell Park). Damn, I remember going to this kick-ass party hosted by The Industry Standard back “in the dizay”. It was a dot-com era extravaganza where the magazine thought it was a dot-com too. As we all know, The Standard is also “adios amigos”. Those were the days.

Over 8,000 protesters packed Union Square in San Francisco on Sunday to rally against U.S. military action againd Iraq. I think this event overshadowed the Reggae in the Park event which was happening at Golden Gate Park at the same time.

My brother’s wife’s dad crashed into a Publix grocery store and made the news. The story claims he blacked out, but I know the truth. His accelerator stuck in reverse. Amazingly, nobody got hurt.

I am off to Denver to do a SAS70 for the Visa Debit Processing Service data center. I will be traveling to Denver Sunday through Thursday for the next five to six weeks.

We finally got a chance to see Barbershop. Although this movie was not as funny as the Friday series, if you like the same type of comedy you’d probably enjoy this film. Cedric the Entertainer stole the show as a crabby old barber.

Police have not caught the shooter responsible for five random killings in Maryland in the past few days. However, they now know that the victims were all killed with a hunting rifle. Not cool.

In a scene reminiscent of the movie, a white truck has been driving through Maryland shooting people on the street. The shootings started last night and continue through this morning. Just went you thought that Al Qaeda was all you’d have to worry about. (Also see CNN).

MTV is going to make a movie about the life of Shawn Fanning, founder of Napster. It may be pretty interesting to hear the story from the horse’s mouth, since Fanning may star in the movie as himself.

Andrew Fastow, ex-Enron CFO, turned himself in to the FBI today in Houston. He and his wife have over $23MM in frozen accounts. Maybe he just got hungry. What’s the point of living in a $2.6MM home if you can’t go to the ATM to get money for food?

In the last year, there are a lot of Oakland workers that made over $100K in overtime. Although most of these are firefighters, there is one plans inspector that made almost $300K in total compensation and his boss didn’t even know.