the 13th...

So far today scrapeth mightily... the meeting with CSC and the FAA folks led to them talking past each other... we will have to rein in CSC or possibly not exercise their contract option. The CSC lead guy figuratively walked over the FAA lead (the end customer!) in a discussion before lunch. And Pat and a friend got involved in a (probably avoidable) flamefest with each other. And neither of us looked at our checking account last night, it went negative by $100, and now we're facing $420 in wasted overdraft charges (14 small items, mostly point-of-sale... our bank (Wells Fargo) puts though all debits nightly in descending order, so as to generate the greatest amount of fees). So the cost of various toys, groceries, and airline tickets to Georgia just effectively went up. We've paid over $1K in overdraft charges this year alone, all coming from small overages... sigh.

On a cheerier note...

The MGS folks have found a sedimentary fan -- a delta -- extending into a Martian crater. See http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/11/13/
. (note: contains four images)