I began my travails in the dusty bowels of Gummint yesterday -- a huge series of converted hangars down on the Pacific Highway, where the Atlas missile used to be built, cavernous four-story high ceilings, steel girders as wide as your back and gigantic steel rolling doors about twenty feet high to let the giant carriages carrying the Atlas out. But now, it is all a cubicle farm with endless miles of Ethernet cabling and the air filled with a sort of machine-like process-talk which typifies middle management in large bureaucracies. It is not a bad place, really, but it is redolent with the sort of lifeless exhalations of people who have had too much administration, and sold their souls for it. I am joining them for a month or two. I must be careful not to laugh, or stand out too much. I need to practice my carefully intelligent but content face.

Sigh....

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