If you ever do, let me know. I'd consider your birthday a holiday. Seriously.

Just for the record: Internet access in Wisconsin does not compare well to Internet access in Switzerland.

I had forgotten about DNS's that can't find anything.

This fraking thing can't find Google, fer crissakes.

An article about how the rest of the world sees the growing politicization of science in the US: [link]

...Politics in America, they say, have inappropriately influenced not only stem cell research and cloning science, but also reports on climate change, endangered species policies, fisheries energy and many others.

"In the scientific community in other countries we are ridiculed," said Kurt Gottfried, chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, in an interview. "It has certainly lowered our prestige across the world."

...

The United States is becoming notorious in the eyes of other countries, Gottfried said, as a nation that has allowed ideology to become a premise for science. That perception is sure to have harmful repercussions on the American science community, he said. Scientists are already leaving the country and graduate students are less uninterested in studying in the United States, he said.

eta: "less uninterested"? Must be a typo/misquote.

People really do see Americans as a common unit, outside the States. How weird is that?

I'm currently wearing a "I ♥ NY" shirt, though right now it looks like the heart is bleeding, since I'm making chili and I spilled a can of tomato sauce. It looks sort of cool, though.

Especially weird now, Gus.

In work we've been writing down random phrases that we think would make cool t-shirts, then before the site finishes, we're going to get them printed and give an appropriate one to everyone. We pick the phrases out of conversations we have, and looking at them now, they really do not reflect very well on us. The ones I can remember off the top of my head are

I haven't said no yet.

You can't fuck Jesus!

I'd fuck Skeletor.

Every time someone feltches, the baby Jebus cries.

You can't say no when you're unconscious.

It's not love if you don't bleed.

My favourite t-shirt is beige with green bean on it and "May Salad" is written underneath it. Five years and still going strong.

Random verbal spanking telephone conversation has been juxtaposed neatly with random phone chat with some Australians who mistook me for a British guy in Chicago.

It's like Thespis decided this is my special day.

Is Mercury in retrograde?

I am going home. This is not because I am done with my work, but rather it is because the person preparing the documents I needed to review and send out today decided that S0000071519 was the number immediately before S0000715202, and labeled several hundred pages accordingly, and I would like to not be in jail.

I would like to not be in jail.

Makes sense.

Me, I just looked at one apartment and I hate the hunting already. I hope my building managers agree to fix the cabling.