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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Dave the Inverted's LiveJournal:
- In 2006, bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton released Micah, which contained this contender for Worst Sex Scene In Commercially Published Fiction.
Plot, what plot? - Word is the latest video game to be getting the big screen treatment is...Asteroids.
Ludicrous doesn't go far enough - ASCAP has decided that if your cell phone has a copyrighted song as a ringtone, that your phone ringing qualifies as a public performance of that song, and is suing AT&T for royalties.
- Who knew that back in 2003, when a bunch of THEM started playing around with the idea of redneck sushi, we were (in our own twisted, tangential way) presaging a small part of the current revolution in American sushi.
An important article - This article from the New Yorker, is one of the things currently driving the debate on health care reform and how it might be made to work.
On a lighter note... - The same sort of wheeled trash and recycle bins that are ubiquitous here are apparently something of a blot on the landscape over in the UK.
- "Culture, in the part of the world in which I've been, and, for all I know, in other parts as well to which I cannot speak, has two rough parts: the Mainland and the Isles.
The Mainland is what calls itself the "mainstream" or "normal" culture.
You know... Mundania.
The Isles are everything else. Everything that's not "mainstream" is an island."
Dorky song, nice idea - I don't know what to call it...sort of a filk-with-storyboard doing new Trek to a song by The Lonely Island. It's rather cool, though. (Audio and visual cussing. NSFW.)
About as accurate as you'd expect - For the December 1900 issue of Ladies' Home Journal, the author of this piece went to "...the wisest and most careful men in our greatest institutions of science and learning...asking each in his turn to forecast for me what, in his opinion, will have been wrought in his own field of investigatin before the dawn of 2001...." Some of it's dead on. Some of it...isn't.
- For high schools willing to push the envelope some, there's Rent: School Edition. One song ("Contact") goes away and there are "minimal changes to language"....
I see London, I see...wait, where'd France go? - Beer tycoon Freddy Heineken, in the year before he died, proposed breaking up all of the EU member countries into a total of 74 states, each with a population of 5-10 million.
Speaking of France, I thought they had better labor laws than that... - So an employee of French broadcaster TF1 wrote his MP [congresscritter], from home, using his own time and resources, expressing opposition to a position that his employer favored. His MP passed it on to the Ministry of Culture, which passed it on to TF1, which fired him.
- In response to comments, I agree that Swoopo is completely and utterly open about what they're doing. It's a legitimate business that isn't being at all sneaky or underhanded about their business model. I also agree that I wish I'd thought of it...because *wow* are they making money.
- That laptop I mentioned in my previous post ended up going for $129.90. The person who won it used 225 bids ($168.75) to do so, so total cost was $298.65, which is, in fact, an absolute steal. (Of course, those 12,990 total bids mean the site collected somewhere around $9742 in bid fees, resulting in at least $8400 in gross profit on that one item.)
- Sometimes, even the winner loses. Another auction (15-cent increment) I watched last night was for a PS3 bundled with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Stated retail value was $499.99. The winning bid was $346.65...and the winner used 243 bids ($182.25) to get there...so she spent $528.90 for a $500 item. (Meanwhile, the 2311 total bids on it means the site collected $1733 in bid fees....)
- From a moneymaking perspective, I think the best deals of all for the site are bid packs. Last night, a pack of 300 bids went in a penny auction for $6.24. *Amazing* bargain for the winner...but note how that works. The site collected 624 bids from the users, turned around and handed 300 *of those bids* to the winner, and got to remove 324 bids ($243) from the economy without ever having an actual physical product to purchase or deal with.
- Especially in the wake of Bilski, I predict copycat sites with smaller bid fees.
- National Geographic has this on The Real Price of Gold, both human and environmental.
The American Dream - Vanity Fair weighs in with Rethinking the American Dream, discussing how in recent years it's gone from being "enough" to "more more more."
The world's largest banana republic - And Atlantic talks with a former chief economist for the IMF about The Quiet Coup, how an oligarchy of bankers more-or-less took control of US national fiscal and regulatory policy, with currently-visible disastrous consequences.
This entry was originally posted at http://davetheinverted.dreamwidth.org/535.html. Please comment there using OpenID. - The twisted minds at Cracked.com give us this list of 10 Great Books for (Traumatizing) Children. We disagree with their #2 book on the grounds that Edward Gorey's stuff isn't actually *for* children, but the rest...wow.
Movies! - Den of Geek gives us their Top 10 kids' films that traumatize small children. We're not *as* sure about this list...I suppose it depends on what sort of small child you were.
Ads! - Returning to Cracked.com (which, I will note, can be an *astonishing* time sink), we get 10 Awesome Ads (For Traumatizing Children). I'm not sure the trauma is properly limited to just kids here...some of these are just plain Not Right.
- Fuse, the "other" music channel, is running their own bracket right now. They're putting 32 acts already in the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame against 32 acts that might or might not eventually be there in a 64-act single-elimination tournament. Go, make your choices. (Me, I ended up with the Beatles edging out Queen in the final. YMMV.)
Not your standard vacation: - So there's a company out there that offers one and two-week stormchasing vacations. Yes, for around two grand, you too can ride around in a van for a week, looking at the weather and probably seeing a tornado. I'm...nonplussed?
And it apparently didn't win? - So Cadbury had a contest a few years back to come up with the most inventive way to "cream" one of their Creme Eggs. This was one of the results, and it may be the coolest thing I've seen along this line since Cog.
- Epic Fail The First: The bank teller, presented with a debit card that linked to a specific checking account, ignored that account and instead gave me the account number from a completely unrelated account I am a signer on. Consensus here is that somebody's in for some retraining and maybe a formal reprimand.
- Epic Fail The Second: Something like three years after severing all ties with CASFS, I am apparently still a signer on one of their accounts. (Either that or Chase's computer system is screwed up in a way that would expose them to rather significant liability, which strikes me as Highly Unlikely.) I admit to a certain morbid curiosity as to who else might still unexpectedly be signers on various CASFS accounts, and whether the people who should in fact currently be secondary signers in fact are...but it's really Not My Problem anymore.
In any event, Teresa and the branch manager transferred $3600 from our account to the CASFS account in question, and the branch manager assures us that there will be no fees or charges associated with this error on their part.
So yeah...not often we encounter quite so much concentrated Fail. Definitely had to share. - It makes turning left at the end of the go-straight cycle safer, as you don't get stuck out in the middle of the intersection with cross-traffic about to start up.
- In heavy traffic, it makes it easier to get *to* the left turn lane because a backup of going-straight traffic is less likely to keep you away.
- It discourages speeding. Going to work in the morning, I make the left turn from westbound Broadway to southbound Stapley. Because it's a leading left, just after the Stapley traffic has its green, I'm *behind* the pack of southbound traffic. If I'm the first car to turn and I run about 10mph over the limit, I can just barely catch up and make the light at Southern on the yellow. If it were a trailing left, I'd be turning *ahead* of the southbound pack, which would encourage me to go the speed limit or even slower to let that traffic catch up with me and still easily make the light at Southern.
- It also discourages speeding. Coming home from work, I travel north on Gilbert. If I'm the first or second car in line at Southern and I run about 10mph over the limit, I can just *barely* get to the left turn on to Broadway in time to make it. If that were a trailing left, I'd have no trouble making it there even if I were buried deep in the pack and traveling under the speed limit (which is what usually happens because Mesa drivers as a group are afraid of speed limits).
I'm sure there are other reasons, but these are the ones that resonate for me. - It ain't the lizard in the fight, it's the fight in the lizard.
I wouldn't have eaten it either... - So this guy's flying on Virgin Atlantic and the meal he gets is about as bad as the letter he consequently writes is brilliant.
I'm doubly boggled... - First, I'm boggled that this thing even exists. Second, "mouse pad" is not necessarily what I think of first when I read how the Features are phrased.
| Friday, July 3rd, 2009 | ||||
| 5:25 pm | Linkmania -- things that boggle me I don't think anybody talks like that.... | |||
| Sunday, June 21st, 2009 | ||||
| 1:40 am | [meta] Quick question Should I enable comments on that last post, or would that be not a good idea? | |||
| 1:10 am | A bit of life update When I was very much younger (and shorter) than I am now, I had issues with emotional control. Nothing particularly over the top, but some definite issues. So, somewhere in early adolesence, I learned how to suppress my emotions, and I learned the fine art of lying to myself about how I felt about things. I told myself I was okay with a lot of how my high school experience went, and I told myself that I didn't want certain things. But I wasn't, and I did. I figured this out around 19-20, and over the next few years, got back in touch with my emotions. I nurtured them and explored them and gloried in having them. I swore that I would never try to suppress, control, or dictate what I felt, because it Didn't Work and I was never going back to not feeling again. While I might not choose to act on what I felt or what I wanted, I felt what I felt and I wanted what I wanted, and that was that. Coming out of my first marriage, I similarly swore I was going to be Me, and that was it. I was not going to be what or who anybody else wanted me to be, because if it wasn't what I wanted, it just led to me getting all twisted up inside. So last week, when I was told that mastery of emotions is not only possible, but desirable, I was...bewildered. That I could consciously decide to feel or not feel a specific emotion about a specific person, thing, or circumstance and have this actually happen struck me as akin to consciously deciding to start floating six inches above the ground by the power of my mind and have that actually happen. I was also profoundly disturbed by it. Emotions should be what they are, not something subject to will and intellect. Apparently, I've been doing it wrong. Not sure where I missed the memo, but I'm told that mastery of emotions is one of those essential elements of true maturity. That deciding what you're going to feel, and then genuinely feeling it is one of those things that adults just...do. (As an aside for the Christian among you, it's also something we're commanded to do.) And that my inability to master my emotions is all of a piece with my lifelong inability to reliably Get Shit Done. (Important side note: this is not to say that if you've been suppressing or denying your emotions, you shouldn't work to cultivate them and bring them out and be honest about them...it's that once you've got a good, healthy, and comprehensible emotional flow going, that you need to move on to the next step, which is gaining mastery of them.) I've spent the last week not dealing with this particularly well. First, of course, is the deep-seated belief that conscious control of emotions is Wrong. I'm coming to accept that I'm going to have to change my thinking on this, but it's not going to happen today or even next week. Second, I have to deal with the idea that, if in fact I am stronger than my emotions and I should be able to master them and thus master my behavior, that my history of failure after failure after failure was not inevitable, but instead completely unnecessary. I have wasted my entire adult life. (So far, anyway...we'll see what happens moving forward.) Not in the sense of not getting anything done, but in the sense of operating at maybe 30% of my actual capacity. Dealing with the idea that the last twenty-plus years have been feckless fuckuppery, without spending too much time in an emo daze has been...challenging. And third, there's dealing with the internal changes that are going to have to happen and what effect they will have on me. Taking responsibility for all my choices (not just a willingness to accept the consequences of my failures, but owning them as something I did), and recognizing that everything (no really...everything) is a choice...these are not small things. We're talking a complete rewrite of the inside of my head. And while I can intellectually accept that the end result is likely to be a happier, healthier, more functional Dave, I remain scared shitless that the result is, in some fashion, not going to be me anymore. And while I'm painfully aware of my own shortcomings, being Dave is something I often enjoy, and from what I can tell, it's something that a fair number of you out there like me being. And...I don't want to give that up. But the upshot of all this is that I, at age 38, apparently have to finish growing up. (And no, I'm not dealing with *that* particularly well, either.) So yeah...this is going to be an interesting summer. Current Mood: numb | |||
| Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 | ||||
| 11:25 pm | Linkmania -- another mixed bag Ahead of our time... | |||
| Thursday, June 11th, 2009 | ||||
| 10:16 pm | Tires! So one of the issues with the car I bought back in February was that the right-side tires were in pretty lousy condition. (The left-side tires were in decent shape, but matched neither each other nor the right-side rubber.) Thus, it wasn't exactly a *surprise* when the right rear tire ate itself last Friday as I left the shop's parts supplier. I pulled into a nearby parking lot, unloaded the three complete systems worth of parts from the back of the car, pulled out the jack and the mini-spare, and changed the tire. (Digression for those who have never changed a tire: nearly all passenger cars anymore don't come with a full-sized spare tire. It's simply not a good investment of space for something that gets used very rarely. Instead, you get a mini-spare (aka donut spare), which is generally about as big around as the regular tires, but less than half as wide. Donut spares shouldn't be used for long distances or at high speeds, and they're generally inflated to 60-90 PSI, while normal tires are inflated to 26-35 PSI.) Now since no mini-spare is going to stay fully inflated riding around in your car for years on end, I carry with me an inexpensive electric tire inflator that runs off the cigarette lighter. (Something like this one, just a generation older. BTW, if you own a car, I recommend carrying something like this around with you. It's saved me a call to AAA a time or three.) So, feeling pretty good about being Actually Prepared, I plugged it in and turned it on. It was then that I discovered that the cigarette lighter in my car does not, in fact, work. Well, shit. Okay, loaded the computer parts back into the car, moved the front passenger seat all the way forward, put the dead tire in the rear passenger footwell, wiped my hands on the old clothes I've been meaning to drop off at Goodwill for at least two years now, and limped my way on back streets to a nearby QT. (One of the things I like about QT is that they have free air.) That got me from 28 PSI to...29 PSI? Yay broken compressor. I then limped my way down the road to a nearby Shell station. Their compressor was working fine, but the actual nozzle had a leak in it that meant I couldn't get my pressure higher than about 45 PSI. I was, as you might expect, starting to get a tad grumpy. But I did manage to get myself a further two miles down the road to a Chevron, where I was finally able to get the donut fully up to pressure. And since I still had time left on the compressor, I wandered up to see if my right front tire needed air. It didn't...but it was also starting to experience tread separation. (This is when the part of the tire with the tread on it starts to separate from the inner air-holding carcass of the tire.) Frabjous. Just...frabjous. I drove to work, and spent much of that day and the next deciding what to do. I've been a loyal Discount Tire customer for years, but I'd recently discovered the coolness that is Tire Rack. (Let me say this: Discount Tire has good-quality tires for reasonable prices, and if you're looking to just drive into a tire shop and leave a few hours later with new tires, then I don't know of anybody better.) Tire Rack is a web-based company with an interesting business model. They sell tires (and wheels, and other things), which you can have shipped to yourself or to any one of thousands of shops that work with them. Said shop will then install the tires for a fee *that you can see on Tire Rack's website* before you choose that shop. They have an *enormous* selection of tires, and they have both objective test results and customer survey results. So if I went with Tire Rack, I'd get exactly the tires I wanted, and I'd probably save a bit of money. I'd just have to wait for them to arrive from Tire Rack's ginormous warehouse facility in Reno. By UPS Ground. Or I could go to Discount, get marginally less-good tires for marginally more money, but do so on Monday. Decisions, decisions. In the end, I gambled that if I drove as little as possible and stayed at or under 40 mph as much as I could, that I'd be OK. I ordered a set of General Altimax HP tires. This was purely a result of the online research; General was not a brand I would have even considered before. But scores between 8.6 and 9.1 in every non-snow category in the customer surveys, and a base price of $60 a tire convinced me. So. Sixty bucks a tire...plus seven bucks a tire for the road hazard guarantee, plus $48 shipping added up to $316 for the tires themselves. (Note that since Tire Rack does not have a physical presence in Arizona, there's no sales tax on that purchase.) I had them shipped to the Goodyear tire/service/whatever place on the NE corner of Ray and Cooper. They arrived there yesterday, and I went in for the installation today. They were reasonably fast, and charged me a grand total of $75 for installation, spin balancing, and disposing of my old tires. (And because that was all labor, no sales tax there either.) Grand total, $391 and change. Based on past experience, I'd expect to have paid about $40-50 more going through Discount. Now it's time to worry about new struts.... | |||
| Sunday, June 7th, 2009 | ||||
| 5:06 pm | Linkmania -- things people have linked me to A useful conceit... | |||
| Monday, June 1st, 2009 | ||||
| 9:31 pm | Linkmania -- Themeless clearing of tabs I'm kinda amazed this exists | |||
| Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 | ||||
| 11:14 pm | Writer's Block: Places to Lay Your Head Ocean City, MD Age 0-2 Ellicott City, MD 2-5 Greenbelt, MD 5-7 2x Fullerton, CA 7-14, 8-14 split 2x Reston, VA 14-15, 15-18 Pittsburgh, PA dorm, 18 Chandler, AZ 18-24 Tempe, AZ 24-25 Mesa, AZ 25 Phoenix, AZ 25-26 Mesa, AZ 26-28 2x Tempe, AZ 28-32, 32-37 Mesa, AZ 37-present Not even gonna try on the favorite and least favorite...do I judge by architecture, neighborhood, or events that happened while living there? | |||
| Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 | ||||
| 7:36 pm | Dickensian restaurant experiences So twice in the past few weeks, we've had the occasion to try two new Asian restaurants...with *vastly* different results. A few Saturdays ago, Teresa and I headed over to the new Mekong Plaza Asian marketplace to try one of the Vietnamese restaurants there. The one we chose was BoCa 7, and wow are we glad we did. We were first favorably impressed with the look of the place. The signage had clearly been designed by a pro, and the decor also showed every sign of professional involvement: it was simple, smart, and attractive. (As a bonus, the menu had been proofread by someone who spoke fluent English.) The menu featured a wide range of entrees, most ranging from $7-13, but some costing considerably more. We eventually went with the Fish Seven Ways, which at $30 for the both of us, was not cheap, but eminently workable as a meal for two. It's unfortunately been long enough that I no longer remember what everything was (and I never *did* know what everything was called)...rather than try to describe everything I'll just say that it was all uniformly excellent, except when it was even better. Tasty, non-greasy, interesting...it was just a *treat*. They're also used to handling large groups, so it's likely we'll try to drag THEM that way at some point. For all that we did have Issues with the previous ConHQ, our nearest Chinese restaurant was Wong's, which is as good as it gets. Here, our nearest is Big Bowl, which is sufficiently awful that Teresa won't eat there. (She has traumatic high school memories of it.) So when the sign went up for Yami Asian Kitchen on Broadway just east of Lazona, we were quite hopeful. We got takeout there last night...and well, ow. Nick hadn't thought it *possible* to ruin broccoli beef...but using inferior cuts of beef and cutting them too thick went a long way towards doing so. "Greasy" and "chewy" are not words that should be applied to that dish, but they were. By the same token, "bland" and "flavorless" (which are different things) are not words you want to see applied to Teresa's marked-as-spicy-hot shrimp with garlic sauce. Nothing in it tasted like, well, *anything*, and I (with the wimpiest palate in the household) was only barely able to *detect* the presence of spice-heat. The shrimp in my sweet and sour shrimp were overcooked and overwhelmed by their heavy batter, and the sauce was...just *bad*. It was more acrid than sour, with little countervailing sweetness, and almost nothing in the way of Stuff in it. I'm used to sweet and sour sauce that's at least half onions, carrots, peppers, and pineapple. This had three strips of onion and two pieces of (lousy) pineapple. We also had some shared items. The spicy combo sushi was uninspiring taste-wise and featured a binding agent that neither Teresa nor I could identify...and we're both pretty sure we're happier that way. The gyoza were surprisingly decent, but even this glimmer of hope was dashed once Teresa identified them as the pre-packaged CostCo variety. And the hot and sour soup was simply inedible. We won't be going back, and are instead somewhat curious to know what sort of restaurant will *next* occupy that space. | |||
| Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 | ||||
| 7:19 pm | Followup on Swoopo | |||
| Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 | ||||
| 9:44 pm | A license to print money So there's a new player in the auction site game: swoopo.com. Unlike eBay, everything they sell is new, and is sold by the site itself, rather than by users. The prices things go for are frankly insane; as I'm typing this, I'm watching an auction that's got a $1,400 laptop going for about $80. And that's actually kinda high; the same model recently went for $37.53. Here's the deal: the bidding starts at one cent, and each bid increases the bid by one cent...and each bid costs 75 cents to make. So that laptop I'm looking at right now? If the auction ended right this second, the site would collect $80.72 as the winning bid...and $6054 in bid fees. Now to be fair, most of their auctions increment by 15 cents per bid instead of just one cent...but even that can get pretty wild. Yesterday, I watched an Xbox 360 go for just under $200. $200 in 15-cent increments is 1333 bids, at 75 cents each is $1000 in bid fees. Plus they got the $200 winning bid, so they took in $1200 on a console that retails for...about $200? Somebody's getting *very* rich, *very* quickly here. | |||
| 8:19 pm | Enough already? So tonight is the Kings Of Leon concert...I really hope that this means it will once again be possible for me to listen to the Edge for more than 20 minutes without hearing one of their songs. (This has literally been the case the past two weeks...*every* time I have put the Edge on, within 20 minutes they've played something by Kings of Leon.) | |||
| Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 | ||||
| 8:11 pm | Linkmania -- depressing magazine articles Gold | |||
| Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 | ||||
| 9:59 pm | I want to be a Republican I want to be a Republican. I used to be one. Always have been one, really. I remember as a boy of 10 celebrating Ronald Reagan's election, and proudly stepping into the voting booth for the first time at 18 to vote for Bush the Elder. Technically, I suppose I'm still registered as one, but I can't really call myself one anymore. I'm not sure when it happened. Certainly some time since 2000. I wasn't *happy* with W as a candidate, but he seemed more in touch with what I believed (and still believe) about government and policy issues than did Gore. Then...things started to change. The distinct lack of WMDs in Iraq. John Ashcroft. Katrina. Guantanamo Bay. Dick Cheney. Alberto Gonzales. The delightful way the party moved away from being the party of fiscal responsibility, limited government, and leaving people the fuck alone to the party of wild spending, expanding government power, and a belief that government should be able to know my most intimate secrets without having to bother with anything as pedestrian as a warrant...or a reason. The net result was I stopped believing. I stayed around, in the vague hope that at some point, the party would get its collective head out of its ass and start moving back towards where it had been. But it hasn't happened. I subscribe to the RNC's general "support us and our people" email list, so I get regular missives indicating what the party is thinking. And even after the waffle-stomping the party took in the 2006 and 2008 elections, there's been precisely zero indication that there's anything at all wrong with the party's direction, or philosophy, or...really anything. As far as the Republican party is concerned, McCain lost to Obama solely because Obama had better fundraising and the media liked him better. It had nothing to do with the disaster that the W presidency was, or Sarah Palin, or the Iraq war, or anything that might possibly be the fault of the party or its standard-bearers. The final straw was RNC Chairman Michael Steele's email about Sen. Arlen Specter's party change. He as much calls Specter a liar and suggests that the move is completely unprincipled and solely for political advantage. Mr. Steele: you just lost a senator. And not just *any* senator, you lost the senator that now gives the Democrats a filibuster-proof supermajority. In the past three years, you've lost the House, the Senate, the Presidency, and now your final ability to have *any* meaningful impact on national policy. Maybe, just maybe, instead of lashing out with the personal attacks, you should consider the faint possibility that you're doing it wrong. That maybe turning your back on the party's core principles and making it unwelcome for moderates (like the 200,000 Pennsylvania Republicans who have changed registration to Democrat in the past few years) is a bad thing, and that maybe you should, y'know...stop. So I'm done. This is not my party anymore. It hasn't been for some time, and it's showing no interest in becoming my party again. Sometime in the near future, I'm going to go down to the library, get the form, and change my registration to independent. I want to be a Republican. Maybe someday the party will be something that I can join again. But...not now. | |||
| Sunday, April 26th, 2009 | ||||
| 3:03 pm | Linkmania -- Messing with your kids Entries all contain NSFW language. Books! | |||
| Sunday, April 12th, 2009 | ||||
| 8:48 am | Voice Post
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| Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 | ||||
| 12:50 am | Linkmania -- time to clear some tabs Some *interesting* choices there... | |||
| Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 | ||||
| 10:46 pm | I haven't the words... As some of you are aware, I bought another car last Friday. (2005 Ford Focus station wagon, restored salvage title, it has issues but it's not bloody falling apart.) I bought it private sale, and as many private sellers prefer, I paid cash. This meant I had to go to the bank and pull $3600 in cash out of the joint checking account I share with Teresa. So, Friday morning, I marched into a conveniently located branch of Chase Bank to do this. As I have not memorized the relevant account number (Teresa handles the finances for the most part), I handed the teller my personal debit card and asked for a withdrawal on the associated checking account. She handed me a withdrawal slip and dictated an account number to me. I filled out the the rest of the slip and signed it, and she handed me thirty-six $100 bills. Sounds reasonable, right? Certainly, I thought so. (It's worth noting here that she did not hand me a receipt, nor did I, focusing on what was to come, think to ask for one. This, as far as anyone can tell, was my one actual misstep in this whole process.) To Teresa's surprise, the transaction had not posted by that evening...or by Saturday evening...or even by Monday evening. (As we had no receipt, we could not cross-check the account number.) By now Deeply Concerned, she went to the same branch this morning and made inquiries. The money had in fact been drawn from another account...the fascinating part is which account this was. As some of you are aware, I spent a dozen years heavily involved in running science-fiction conventions. I eventually rose to become Chairman of the Board of Directors of CASFS, the local group responsible for CopperCon and HexaCon. (It's truly amazing what an open personality, vague competence, and dogged persistence can accomplish.) In that position, I was a signer on one of the group's bank accounts. For reasons not relevant to this discussion, I left the group in...either 2005 or 2006. You can see where this is going. | |||
| Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 | ||||
| 10:29 pm | Trailing lefts So lately I've come to think that trailing left turn arrows (i.e. having the left turn arrow at the *end* of the associated "going straight" cycle rather than at the beginning) really does make a lot more sense. | |||
| Saturday, January 31st, 2009 | ||||
| 5:51 pm | Linkmania -- things I found amusing Gecko 1, Human 0 | |||
