Bill Roper's Journal

My just-graduated-from-high-school niece was vacationing in the Cayman Islands and managed to get her picture taken with Dirk Nowitzki on the beach there. (The things you find out on Facebook...)

I feel old. :)

A good time was had by all at last night's Bulls game, a Bulls win being helpful in all that.

The number of compile errors in my port is down to about 30 from the 500+ that I started with.

And there are days that I find myself seriously questioning whether helping run conventions is worthwhile. But that would be another story altogether...

Our development group is off on an outing to tonight's Bulls game as a reward for making our delivery date for the most recent version. I haven't been to a Bulls game in a long time. This should be interesting.

So I was talking to my brother -- who works in the oil and gas industry -- today about some family matters and the discussion veered from the price of oil to the upcoming Presidential election. My brother, shooting from the hip -- once again appropriate, since he's down in Texas -- said that he thought that if Kerry were elected oil might hit $100 / barrel, because Kerry would empty the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in a futile effort to drive down prices, after which we would be over a barrel, so to speak. (I'd be surprised if oil got that high, but I'm surprised that it's this high, so what do I know?)

He also noted that they can't get a firm quote on pipe for a pipeline, because the suppliers won't give you a quote valid past now because steel prices are up by about 50% and no one wants to get stuck with expensive inventory in case steel prices retreat to a more normal level. If you want to buy it today, they'll give you a price and if you say yes, they'll buy the steel to make the pipe.

Meanwhile, on a completely non-political subject, I went down to Hot Dog Island for lunch today and found myself sitting one table away from Jerry Krause, the former general manager of the Chicago Bulls.