Bad: Part of my job entails carrying a phone that receives pages from the web application I support. What’s worse than a person calling you with an urgent Production problem? A machine calling you with an urgent Production problem.

Good: Sometimes my job involves some intricate problem-solving, even creativity (though nothing as wondrous as a Rube Goldberg contraption).

Bad: The “machine” paged me in the wee hours of last night. The last time it paged me, I decided to just get up and come into work.

Good: It was dark as I walked to the train. Now that I don’t live in the middle of Chicago, some stars are visible in the sky (of course, nothing like the stars you’d see in a more rural area — I’m not *that* far from Chicago, after all). I haven’t spent a lot of time looking at stars since we moved out here. After the kids are put to bed my wife and I are usually pretty exhausted, and it’s not a pastime that generally occurs to us. But this morning I saw the comfortingly anthropomorphic constellation Orion in the southwest. To my southeast (I think) I saw Venus.

Bad: The dead eyes of early morning commuters. And I’m sure my eyes were deader than most.

Good: I’m taking a trip soon, so soon, so soon.