it was a fun
weekend. got off
work late on
friday, head down to
virginia to see the man. it's been a long week so we decide to have a quiet evening at
home. we go to the grocery store and grab some veggies and
meat to
grill, get some
wine, grab some movies and head back to the homefront. the man cooks for me.
:) i love it. mostly it's because i am a desperately horrible
cook, though.
saturday we slept until two, then headed out towards a local battlefield and wandered around for several hours. at the top of this hill there was the remnants of a stone foundation. a sign informed us that this was the home and land of a freed
slave. when the
confederate soldiers passed through his property on their way to fight the north, they left the home untouched. the home was ransacked and destroyed by the nothern soldiers when they came through after the
battle. that must have been a big bummer. the land was gorgeous, great views of beautiful farmland on all sides. the
house (well the foundation that was left of it anyway) was tucked in among a few
trees. to have been freed from a life time of
slavery and to have managed to own such
property... it was his
home, his hard earned
home. earned in a way that no one today can possibly relate to. and to have it destroyed... by the side supposedly fighting FOR you.
damn.
the battlefield kinda creeped me out. the
cannons are there... several lines facing each other (interestingly, most of the cannons in the southern line were manufactured in
boston in
1861). this is where the southern troops rallied behind
Stonewall Jackson. the battle of first manassas.
warfare like that is
dead, and it is unfortunate. when combat is man on man... your
enemy less than a mile from you... you must truly believe in your cause in order to fight for it. today's
warfare, accomplished from afar, takes all emotion away from the act of killing. you don't see the enemy when you fire a guided
missile at him from many hundreds of miles away. there isn't any question as to "do i believe in this cause enough to
kill the man standing over there?" there isn't such a sense of personal
danger which would lead a man to question his feelings about the cause. today, we fight the wars we are told to
fight and are absolved from personal
guilt by never having to make eye contact with those we are trying to
kill.
but anyway. enough of that. we wandered for quite a time. the day was absolutely
gorgeous. that evening we (he) cooked up a huge pot of
chili. yum.
sunday afternoon i headed back to my place and cleaned.
now it's
monday morning and i'm back at work.
more later...
long day at work. another round of the new developers playing the
blame-peg-game. i don't know if it's because i am a
girl or if they view me as a newcomer to the department (though i've been developing for almost two years and at the company for four). since i've taken over the process of compiling and building the
software, anytime there is a problem with the final product their first instinct is to say i did the build
wrong. they don't seem to understand that i can look at every piece of code they checked in. i can see when and what. but each time i do a build i brace myself for the
inevitable. i am confident of my abilities, so it doesn't bother me too much. and i like the title my boss has given me.
source code bitch. i like the fact that my boss is congratulating me for being
assertive in showing the developers that the issue is within their
code and not within my build process. i was initially worried i was going to get my ass chewed by the big-boss-man for talking back to his staff. things are
cool, though.