Hey, so you got a new job, most of you are thinking, but what’s that got to do with me?

I’m glad you asked.

I will no longer work for Large Financial Company in Richmond. Now I’ll be working for Medium Software Company South of Richmond. (Best thing is, commute is less than 15 minutes. More sleep in the morning!) But there are going to be changes, especially in the next three weeks.

Posting is going to be affected by the new job. The project I was hired to work on should have been started five weeks ago, and is due in three weeks. They’re adjusting the schedule so that only a part of the project will be due at the end of the month, but even so, there is a learning curve (ooh, Java! Reach back into brain and remember how to code in Java!), and there will be a lot more uptime and, well, no downtime. I will not be blogging even on my lunch hour, in all likelihood. I may not have much of a lunch hour. This is a very tight deadline. In fact, I may be giving up my soaps, and it’s February sweeps. Explosions! People back from the dead! Murder! Babies! Long-lost children!

Funny how jobs trump even February sweeps.

However — I’ll do what I was doing previously, which is writing posts at night and in the morning before work, and scheduling them to appear throughout the day. But now would be a perfect time for a guest-blogger or two. If you’ve been wanting to try our your blogging chops, send me an email. (Why yes, Drew, I’m thinking heavily in your direction.) It should go without saying that I’m looking for someone with my point of view on the issues I post about. Point-Counterpoint is a fun thing to do, but not on my dime. Anti-Zionists need not apply. On the other hand, I’m not looking for insane rants, either. I’d just like to have someone here to pick up the slack if I find myself with zero free time.

Blog traffic is picking up again, and I don’t want to lose momentum. The only real difference you will see in my posting will be the immediacy. If something happens at 2 p.m., I’m not going to be able to write about it until after six. I plan on writing more essays and fewer news-quoting posts, which is actually a good thing. I was getting too lazy, I think.

Not that I was ever blogging from work before. Right, T*m? (Inside joke; I’m still betting my boss never reads my blog.) They were all scheduled posts. Really. Yes. Uh-huh.

So. Who wants to be a yourish.com correspondent? I’ll open it up to other bloggers of like viewpoints. Too bad Omri already went to Israpundit; he’d have been perfect. By the way, someone who just wants to post Israeli news briefs is as welcome as someone who wants to add his or her viewpoint to a news article.

Hm. Those extra fifteen minutes I was going to use to sleep will likely be used to blog. Oh, well. That’s the price I pay for being hopelessly addicted to this blogging phenomenon. It’ll be five years in April. We must throw a party.

The Jyllands-Posten, the Danish paper that published the Mohammed cartoons, says it will not publish the winners of Iran’s bogus Holocaust cartoon contest. Bravo, sirs, you are making me like you more and more.

Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hizbullah, told President Bush and Condi Rice to shut up about Allah. Yeah, that’s some religion of tolerance. Oh, and once again, the magician is trying to distract you by making it all about Israel.

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said that if the controversy touched on Jews or Israel the West would have reacted differently and quickly.

Uh-huh.

Hamas says they’re going to develop an economy independent from Israel. Hey, good luck with that, guys, but y’know, nail bombs and IED’s have a limited market. And oh, yeah: No negotiation, no recognition, and no peace with Israel. Just in case you were wondering.

In the “Brilliant move, Abu” department, palestinians have kidnapped an Egyptian diplomat. Yeah, that’ll definitely entice Egypt to keep helping the pals. Oh, wait. Egypt has begun withdrawing its forces from Gaza already. This must be the palestinian way to get them back.

I am really liking Tzipi Livni, at least so far. So, apparently, is George W. Bush.

WASHINGTON – Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was in for a surprise during her meeting with National Security Advisor Steve Hadley at the White House Thursday, when U.S. President George W. Bush suddenly entered the room.

[...] Bush and Livni’s meeting lasted about half an hour and was defined by an Israeli source as “excellent.” The two discussed Hamas’ victory in the Palestinian Authority elections and the Iranian nuclear issue.

During the meeting, Livni repeated Israel’s stance that a united front must be formed against Hamas and that the group must be demanded to recognize Israel and the international agreements, as well as disarm its gunmen.

I am, however, taking a wait-and-see attitude on this. Oh, Bush and Condi are talking the talk:

Livni said the same things in her meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She told her counterpart that a Hamas-led Palestinian government could be designated a terrorist state, subject to sanctions, if it does not renounce terrorism and recognize Israel.

“When an entity, a state, is being led by terrorists, the meaning is that this entity, this authority, this state, is going to transfer into a terror state,” Livni said, adding that Israel would not be able to negotiate with such an authority.

Rice, meanwhile, said the optimal solution would be recognition of Israel by any Palestinian government. Israel is a member of the United Nations, Rice said, and stressed Hamas must recognize the Jewish state and renounce terror.

But I’m waiting to see if they walk the walk.

The AP carried a brief note about the terrorist attack on the Erez crossing. Let’s stop and reflect a moment on what the Erez crossing is: Is it a “checkpoint”? Is it a border crossing from a territory filled with terrorists into the state of Israel? Or is it simply some random point between Israel and Gaza?

Well, the AP doesn’t think Israel has a border. So they call it a “checkpoint.”

Palestinians Attack Gaza-Israel Checkpoint
JERUSALEM (AP) - Three armed Palestinians attacked a checkpoint between Israel and Gaza before daybreak Thursday, the military said.

The Palestinians threw hand grenades and opened fire on Israeli forces, and soldiers shot two of the three. Exchanges of fire were continuing with the third, the army said. There were no Israeli casualties.

The Erez checkpoint is the main crossing for thousands of Palestinian workers with jobs in Israel.

Not a whole lot of information, is it? Compare that with the Ynet news article:

Two Palestinian terrorists arrived at the Erez crossing in north Gaza under cover of the night early Thursday and proceeded to open fire and hurl grenades toward the Israeli side of the border. Givati Brigade soldiers manning the crossing killed the terrorists in the ensuing gun battle.

No soldiers were hurt in the incident.

The terrorists, Marwan Amar and Muhammad Ramadan, were both carrying Kalashnikov rifles, and one of them was armed with an explosives belt.

Once again, the AP utterly minimizes palestinian terrorism against Israel. Of course, they always maximize palestinian deaths. Inside an article about international observers being driven from Hebron due to palestinians rioting over the Danish Mohammed cartoons, we get this:

In all, 11 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the weekend, most in response to stepped up Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza. On Wednesday soldiers shot and killed an armed Palestinian as he approached a Gaza-Israel border crossing.

Every one of those dead palestinians was a terrorist, killed in the act of terrorism, or being arrested by the IDF. Not that you’d know that by the lack of context. That paragraph makes it seem like only some of them were terrorists.

Oh, and notice here, the Erez crossing is actually called a crossing. Someone fire that editor. He missed a spot.

Fatah is back openly attacking Israelis, after a long period in which they pretended they weren’t a part of the terrorist infrastructre. The terror war continues, and as I said, is ratcheting up since the Hamas victory.

Two Palestinian terrorists arrived at the Erez crossing in north Gaza under cover of the night early Thursday and proceeded to open fire and hurl grenades toward the Israeli side of the border. Givati Brigade soldiers manning the crossing killed the terrorists in the ensuing gun battle.

No soldiers were hurt in the incident.

The terrorists, Marwan Amar and Muhammad Ramadan, were both carrying Kalashnikov rifles, and one of them was armed with an explosives belt.

“The terrorists carried out the attack with complete disregard for the many Palestinians who were present at the site,” he said, adding that Palestinian police officers manning a station nearby “did nothing to stop them.”

By the way, the palestinian police had advance warning of the attack, and, gee, let it happen. The only shock here is that they weren’t a part of the attack.

Palestinian Authority security forces knew in advance that militants in Gaza were planning an attack at the Erez crossing into Israel, defense establishment officials said on Thursday.

According to the Defense Ministry, the militants managed to come within 20 meters of a PA police post before carrying out the attack, yet Palestinian officers did nothing to stop the attack from occurring.

The attack came as security sources told Haaretz that some elements of the Fatah military wing have recently resumed terror activities following Hamas’s victory in the Palestinian parliamentary election last month.

The Ynet article carries this interesting information:

Lieutenant Colonel (res.) Shlomo Saban, in charge of the Erez crossing on behalf of the security establishment, told Ynet, “until 4 a.m. we let in half the number of Palestinian that enter Israel each morning, numbering some 2,400, then the flow of workers stopped. This seemed odd to us, and we received vague answers from them.

“At precisely 4:32 a.m. the terrorists were identified. Our security guards proceeded to fire at them until the IDF forces joined in,” Saban said, adding that a female security guard was the first to identify the terrorists and directed the forces in their direction.

If I’m reading that information correctly, the palestinian police were stopping civilians from crossing the border at the time of the attack so their boys could have a clear shot at Israelis.

But gee, Israel needs to shore up the palestinian police, help train them and arm them. So they can stop the terrorists. Because really, the palestinians want peace. It’s just a few extremists who want war.

Shyeah.

Just got out of an interview for a tech writing position.

I am feeling very confident and happy.

Oh, and I look really great, too. Pinstriped skirt suit. Fitted jacket. Subtle slit on the right side of the skirt, still proper for work, but shows a little leg.

I have to say, though, getting the body-side steps for the Jeep was the right thing to do. I cannot get into the Jeep in a skirt like this without those steps. Well, I could, but then I’d be showing a lot more than a little leg.

Not my style.

Update: I start Monday.