Monday, I promised a story about a job my dad was on in 1975.

He's a civil engineer. The first time he was assigned to oversee a crew of sewage pipe-layers, he would, on occasion, need some guidance. The main civil engineer at the company he worked for did a lot of drinking, and the other partner was a mechanical engineer had no advice to offer except "use your best judgment". Fortunately, they didn't have a telephone in the field, so when they needed a call from the engineer, and he didn't know what to do, he'd drive off to a parking lot, sit and think for a while, then drive back and say, "the office said we should do this," presenting his decision as that of someone with more experience.

One day he was eating lunch with the foreman of the crew -- just the two of them. The foreman, who was also fairly green, mentioned that his boss spent most of his time in Mexico. When he had to make a hard decision, he confessed, he would drive to a parking lot, think about the problem for a while, then drive back and say, "the office said we should do this."

I spent the weekend (and a couple of days before) in Iowa with my folks. Not nearly enough time for a decent visit, but I've had quite a bit of classwork to do (some of which I did there).

The anchor of my trip was the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting.

On the way out of Omaha, Dad and I took a quick drive around Carter Lake, Iowa, the only city in Iowa west of the Missouri River.

I saw presidential campaign ads, which we don't get much in Massachusetts. Bush thinks Kerry is weak on defense, and Kerry thinks companies that produce drugs should go out of business (my interpretation). I did see a fluffier Kerry ad that I kind of liked, where he essentially (re)introduced himself and listed a few general priorities.

I was also going to repeat a story my dad told me about a job he had in 1975, but it's getting late, and I have class in the morning, so I'll just leave this teaser and get back to that later.