My boss insisted that I take a cab home from work today and put it on my expense account. After a cursory search for cab companies on Google, I randomly selected Newton Taxi of Newton Centre, MA. (617-244-2404). I was picked up at precisely the appointed time by Roger, an amiable sixty-something fellow with fine taste in music: AM 740, which played everything from big band to Simon and Garfunkel during my short ride -- and art: the falling colored oil in suspension knicknack resting upon the dashboard. He made a point of turning over the toy during long waits in traffic, as if to observe the other vehicles through the surreal haze of swirling, immiscible fluids.

He urged me to call again for my future taxi needs. I will.

Biking behind all the poorly-maintained buses and trucks in Boston got me thinking about combustion. Then I discovered this handy guide to diesel smoke, by color.

And speaking of combustion, I should be working on design parameters for my Ethanol-and-LOX rocket engine. Guess that will have to wait until Thanksgiving.

Worked until 1:30 AM. On a Saturday. The old pretend-you-didn't-have-to-come-in-on-Saturday trick was quite successful until my boss called me at home.

Hello, world.
This concludes the obligatory November 21 space-filling entry.

Hats off: today's CNN... SUX! is hilarious.

Some questions.

• Why would my right-handed cycling glove be missing, when my left-handed glove was precisely where it should be?
• Why would my other pair of [off-season] cycling gloves be simultaneously missing its right-hand glove?
• Why was the surface of Brookline Avenue ground up into rubble, like the surface of the moon, two weeks ago, and never re-paved?
• Why, when for safety reasons I choose to bike on the sidewalk of Brookline Avenue rather than the road, would a painter step right out in front of me, causing both of us to get hurt?
• Why, when I get to work, has my computer tower been pulled out to the middle of the floor under my desk? So I can kick it?
• Why has my chair been switched with a more broken one?
• Why have boxes of junk that were neatly placed against the back wall been re-located to my desktop? And bubble wrap placed on my floor?
• Why has my shipment of personal photographic supplies been opened by my boss, who claims he thought it might have been a Digi-Key order? Surely because "B&H Photo, New York, NY" is readily confused with "Digi-Key Corp, Thief River Falls, MN."
• Why did FedEx ship a box of components I positively needed in my office today to Warwick, Rhode Island by mistake? After the package was processed in Boston just this morning? "Yes, we realize there was a sorting error," an operator reassured me on the phone.
• Why did I switch to FedEx? Because UPS was too unreliable: my UPS driver had been delivering two of every three packages addressed to me to a company across the street.
• I figured out why my computer was pulled out into the middle of the floor. My speakers are gone.

In an unbelievably illogical example of what MBTA [subway] officials call an "appropriate response to security concerns after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks," the MBTA is banning subway performers from using any non-acoustic instruments, as well as microphones, saxophones, trumpets, and horns of any kind.

Okay MBTA: Now please explain how this will make me safe from Bin Laden. Surely you know best.

In better news, another thought from Paul Goldberger:

Today's offices are messier of course... The most up-to-date office of the 1950s had an electric typewriter; even the photocopier was not yet commonplace. Now there are copying machines and faxes and scanners and printers as well as computers, and none of these machines save paper as they were supposed to -- they generate more of it. Everybody gets a copy of everything. E-mails save paper until they are printed out. The easier it is to make copies, the more copies are made, and the more paper there is. Technology has not ended the spread of paper, but has increased it.

-- Paul Goldberger, "The Indomitable Work Space," Metropolis Magazine, December 2003.

Some comments about Amtrak Acela Express equipment and service are forthcoming.

In an unusual fit of careless uncoordination, I spilled half a bottle of Loctite 7452 Cyanoacrylate Accelerator all over myself today. Now I smell terrible, and I have a weird burning sensation all over my right leg. Sigh.

Amrys has informed me that it is time to "blog." I still don't like that word. But I do enjoy writing in this space, and being reminded to do so when I start to neglect it. She has a blog of her own now.