Nothing gets the heart pumping like a letter in your mailbox from the IRS. In this case, it was nothing serious, just a notice telling me that I forgot to file my "Form 8453-OL" when I did my taxes last spring. It's just a form for filing online, and they were even thoughtful enough to include one with the letter...
Things are getting tense up in orbit. There's one last chance today to bring the shuttle Discovery home. If they can't land, they'll have to wait until Wednesday to try again. After Wednesday, they won't have any power left in the shuttle. Hopefully, they'll be fine, and will get home tonight, but what if they can't land tonight or wednesday? Well, I'd head over to the newly finished space station, if it was me. I'm not sure where they are in orbit in relation to each other, but I'm sure they're close, having just worked on it. Since the crew is scheduled to arrive next week, for a four month stay, I'm guessing it could keep the Discovery crew alive for a month or two while a rescue mission was mounted. Then again, I'm no rocket scientist...
I knew I hated coach for a reason... Al pointed to this story about death from flying coach. I'm only six feet, one inch tall, and a bit under 250 pounds, and I'm miserable when I fly coach these days. I can't imagine how those taller or wider than myself cope...
Update: Rebekah from blorg wrote:
[by the way, the whole 'economy class syndrome' moniker is a misnomer -- they say the likelihood of suffering it is the same in all parts of the plane because it's caused by not moving, not by the cramped conditions in economy class. but i'm ALL FOR this bad publicity forcing the airlines to improve the conditions and comfort in coach.]
The Washington Post is running this piece, about how far PR people will go to promote their product. It's pretty funny, a columnist offered to promote their products in his column if they'd allow him to publish something humiliating about them with it, it's amazing how many of them agreed to it...
Tom Coyne, 31, of Coyne Public Relations in Fairfield, N.J., was representing Nabisco recently at a publicity event to introduce Mini Oreos. He had rented a 70,000-pound cement mixer to dump Mini Oreos into a minivan through the sunroof. (Don't ask.)
Tom explains: "So, anyway, I'm a pretty big guy . . ."
He is on speakerphone. A co-worker yells: "Portly!"
"I'd classify myself as husky, not portly," humphs Tom.
"Anyway. My pants are a little snug, and I jump off the back of the cement mixer and I completely blow out my pants. My backside is exposed. Tighty whities. I immediately go into my 'Hey, I blew out my pants,' walk, trying to hide it. But there are 50 little boys who we brought there to eat cookies and milk, and they all start pointing and laughing."
Job Hunting? "UNI" has an opening for a Meteorological Decision Support Specialist. Don't let the job title scare you off, this is mostly a computer job, all you need is a "basic understanding" of weather. You'd have to work with me from time to time, though...
Don't know who to vote for? This web page will ask you about all of your positions, then compare them to the candidates running for President. I most closely matched with Bill Bradley, but he's withdrawn (he and McCain, etc. are still on the site). Second was Al Gore, and Harry Browne came in third. The site also classified me as a "Moderate Liberal Populist", which is fairly accurate, in my opinion... Who does it say you should vote for?
Should e-mail be hypenated? I personally think that it should, but I'm always confused. I know the e is supposed to be lower case, but what if I start a sentence with the word e-mail, does it remain small? Without a hyphen, it becomes "em-ale" phonetically, which is just wrong...
