Abandon ship!

Damn, I was wrong. Rice isn't the next to jump ship, it's Tony Snow. A few brief thoughts:

1. He "ran out of money"? He makes $160,000 a year. Sure he was sick but if you try to tell me that a really high-ranking republican who makes that much money doesn't have stellar health insurance, I'm going to throw a pie at you.

2. I admit his job did probably suck. Who wants to be the mouthpiece for such a dip as we currently have in office?

Fun with money!

To my complete surprise, everything about my flights back to Santa Fe went smoothly. There was a real short line to check my bag in Philly, there was absolutely no problem going through security, and my plane was off the ground on time. I got to Atlanta, and barring a well-announced gate change, everything continued to go smoothly. The one problem was the lack of food. I had some hash browns and coffee in Philly. Delta gave me a little bag of chips on the plane. By Atlanta I was hungry but there wasn't anything palatable (ie, vegetarian and more substantial than ice cream) in the terminal I was in, so I bought a bag of trail mix at one of the little shops. En route to Albuquerque they gave me a granola bar. When I got to Albuquerque I scarfed down almost the entire bag of trail mix while waiting for the shuttle.

Things did not go quite as smoothly when I got back to campus. Something stupid I blame myself for is that I failed to prop open the door of my little fridge, and there was still some moisture in there, so...ew. Also, new policy apparently is to fill out a form declaring that you don't have a car, please don't give me a parking permit, which is a bit pointless. But no, the real fun was when I was doing the registration whatnot. I had to stop by career services and the treasurer's office before I could get my schedule. No idea why I had to check in about work-study; they just handed me a bit of paper saying I could get a job. Then I went to the treasurer's office, where they told me I owed the college $7,000 some dollars.

Uh. What? I do? I'm pretty certain I shouldn't, and that's quite a large sum of money.

So I call the parent types, as they deal with the large sums of money. They look at some scary financial records and discover that the college only sees one of my two loans. Guess how much it's for? Yup. Apparently, the bank sent a form to the financial aid office to verify that I was eligible for a student loan. Financial aid was then supposed to send it back to the loan company saying "Yes, she is a student here", and then the loan company would send the college about $7,000. Guess what financial aid failed to do?

So they told me it would be taken care of. I stop by work on Wednesday morning and say I still have some registration stuff to work out, hopefully I'd be back soon as I was hoping to avoid the lines of freshman.

"Okay, the second loan is showing up, but you still owe us two hundred dollars."

Argh. Another phone call to the parents. Easiest resolution at that point is for me to just write the college a check, after again standing in line. Finally, they gave me my schedule (which then raised other issues, but I've decided to let it be).

And that is that. Most of my room is still in boxes, because I've been tired/trying to convince the college I don't really owe them that much money/catching up with people/working. This weekend I hope to get everything straightened out.

Back again

I'm back in merry old New Mexico. Seminar starts tomorrow, tutorials on Monday. I have an absolutely brutal Monday - class from 9-12, then 1:30-4:30, then seminar from 7:30-9:30. On the upside, that leaves me with big honking blocks of free time in the rest of the week, which is convenient for both work and study.

Unpacking is going slowly because even in just two or so weeks in storage things get dusty. Cough cough.

Goodbye, Gonzales

Alberto Gonzales has resigned. Impressive action, as opposed to just being unable to recall his job, because I gather he's unable to recall a lot of stuff.

Who's next, Cheney or Rice? (My money's on Rice, I think Cheney's just too evil to ever bow out.)

Worst _______ Ever

Last night I dreamed up the worst consumer service ever. It was very clear in my demented little dream world that this was being touted as a luxury service, and people fully knew the details before signing up.

Here's how it would work: you would sign up daily wake-up calls. Tell them that you need to be up at 8 on Monday, and then they'd call you on Monday and tell you to get up. Like a hotel, only without the actual hotel bit.

The catch was that you had to, by the time you hung up the phone, sound perfectly awake and polite to the caller waking you up. Why? Hell if I know. If you weren't, they'd call again in five minutes. If you still were groggy or grumpy, they'd call a third time, again after five minutes. If you still weren't chipper at that point, they would call the police, who would possibly but not definitely come to your house and take you away to a "social reprogramming facility".

I also know I dreamed about ballet dancers in big foam dinosaur costumes, and flatbed trucks carrying loads of thousands of balloons. Both of these were either just outside or upstairs from* a public library that I belonged to in London. I don't know if these were connected to the wakeup call/secret police service.

*Which is not possible, as the library took up all three floors of the building, but I think that's kind of a minor point, really.

Today's insanity

Brought to you by the city of Philadelphia.

Someone created an anti-gun/murder ad to put on bus shelters in Philadelphia. Which is good, because Philadelphia has a whole lot of gun murders. One of the highest rates in the US, in fact.

But the police don't like this poster. Why? Well amongst other things, the poster is red.

"It's not a peaceful color," the police official said.

Yeah.

Wheee!

Endeavour is back on the ground, safe and sound in Florida. My inner space geek* is deeply pleased with remembering it was today and being able to watch it online.

*Which is rather over-developed for a liberal-arts type such as myself. But considering that one of my parents used to build satellites and stuff and my sister now does build rockets and stuff, and knew she wanted to do so since she was born, it's kind of inevitable that I feel a certain amount of glee at space-program stuff.

Captain Planet fights the Nazis

Beware of Hitler's mind-power and atomic bombs!

Petitions, protests, and political positioning

I just had an honest-to-god "kids these days" moment. Which is odd, considering that I don't actually have any frame of reference for how kids in days gone by were, only what I read in books and the admittedly-biased tales of my parents possibly-but-probably-not-misspent youth.

There's currently a lawsuit brewing around Facebook, because someone who is not the creator claims the original idea was his. Whether or not the suit has any merit is still kind of up in the air. That's not my issue, though.

In response to this lawsuit, someone started a Facebook group trying to "save Facebook". I've only seen one, but I have no doubt that there are others. Join and show your support for Facebook, sign the petition, etc.

Of course, this will have absolutely no effect whatsoever on the lawsuit. Or perhaps it might, but it shouldn't. If the judge is out there looking at Facebook groups as part of his deliberation, then there's a big problem with how that judge does his job. And if not, then no one's going to see the groups who has any effect, which is the way it should be. Whether or not something is popular doesn't mean it is or isn't in violation of the law.

My main qualm isn't that it's irrelevant, it's that so many people seem not to realize it's irrelevancy. Social activism is great, I'm all for it, but in order to actually do it, you need to have a basic understanding of how the issues work. If music and intellectual rights are your 'thing', as is a popular cause to take up with my age group, great. Can you tell me what exactly the issues in the RIAA lawsuits are? Can you explain what judicial precedent there is for the various suits? Do you know what the strengths and weaknesses of both sides' arguments are? If not, you should go and do some heavy reading before deciding to affiliate yourself with a cause. When people don't, when people mindlessly take up a cause and start chanting slogans without actually knowing the history and facts, it works against your cause, because it makes you look like a bunch of stupid kids.

Home again

Home cooking, free laundry, speedy-fast internet, and best of all, a dear old dog. She's definitely old, but still my pup.

New Jersey is unpleasantly hot and humid. And lacking a bicycle I feel rather stuck at home, but I've got some books to read and time to read them in. So it's all good.

Airportin'

I'm right now sitting in the Albuquerque airport. Waiting. I have not yet checked my suitcase, because I can't. Delta has flights leaving in the afternoon, then a big gap, then a flight to Atlanta which leaves at 12:55 AM, which I am on. So apparently no one will be available to take my suitcase off my hands until 10 PM. Until then, I'm camped out on a seat across from the Delta counter.

The good thing about the Albuquerque airport is it's relatively quiet, and had relatively comfortable seats. Also, obviously, free WiFi, which is spiffy.

How not to drive

Yesterday, I had to run into town just to do one or two little things. Being rather inclined to laziness, I took the bus back. As we headed out of the Plaza, I could hear the chatter on their radio system - one of the drivers came on and said that he was on Cerrillos, and needed the dispatcher to call 911 because someone was driving absolutely insanely and had already hit a number of cars.

Turns out it was this guy, who ended up killing one person and putting at least one other in the hospital. Apparently he'd been arrested for kidnapping and domestic violence a month ago, and has a prior DUI charge. The police don't think he was drunk at the time, though this morning's headlines said that they were "investigating". (Dude drives like he's absolutely batshit crazy in Northern New Mexico? It's more likely he's drunk, but possible he's both drunk and crazy.)

Scary as hell. Things like this are one of the reasons why I get so twitchy on my bike here.

I'm glad we got that cleared up

People have sex because it feels good.

Someone got funding to do a study to prove this. Ye gods.