I am up early today. It is 9am and the sun is out. I am going for a long walk before the clouds roll-in. The day is a rebuke to all weather forecasters who presume to know what will happen more than 24 hours ahead of time. They had gloomily forecasted drenching rains, and they have been wrong. Let's hope their errors contunue through the weekend.

It has been a furious week of jobhunting for me. Hah. I just thought I'd type that sentence to see how it looked. Actually, I did comply with the DET's insistence that I actually perform jobseeking tasks to earn the weekly check. Mostly web based research. But I did actually go to Boston yesterday to attend the CRM show at the Heinz. In past times at these events, I can usually find one or two old cronies who are working the exhibit floor. If I don't get a job lead, at least I end up with a free logoed tee shirt.

Yesterday, the exhibit floor was sparsely attended. A sign of the economic times perhaps that many company budgets for new (and perhaps unecessary) software products are still unthawed. The booth people eyed each passing attendee as a vulture looks at an injured wildebeast. It was an uneasy feeling. The more I looked at the various products, the more convinced I was at their tedious sameness. All the booth people were eager young marketers, utterly convinced that their solution was perfect for me. I dealt with the most persistent of them cruelly. "I don't really need this crap, my Rolodex works fine and I never turn on my PC." or I pretend that my Cell phone is ringing and walk away from them, saying "I need to take this call." Little do they suspect that The phone is merely a prop; I cancelled the Cingular account last month.

Today I am struck with a profound sadness that I did not won the Mass Millions Lottery last night, and I resolved to buy a ticket to tonight's $175M Mega Millions drawing. Hope, you are my raft in this roiling sea of uncertainty.