Awesome, ita.

I am not quite evil enough to hope Scott Adams gets pulled from a burning car by a female firefighter. But if he ever does get trapped in a burning car, I really hope that a female firefighter rescues him.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I HATE it when I get dragged into a project at the very last minute, and then everyone else assumes that I know more about the project than they do.

Yeah, that sucks.

I am having an aggravating day, too, but it's mostly of my own making. I decided I was having problems with the laser printer because of the drum. But instead of buying the $600 maintenance kit, I bought just the drum itself for $150. I get it, no instructions, fine, I buy a service manual from a slightly skeevy website. Manual's great.

But the process of replacing the drum is way more complicated than I'd planned on, mostly because I am a klutz and spilled toner at pretty much every possible interval. The replacement of the drum does not, in fact, solve the problem. And now I have two additional problems, mostly stemming from me trying to clean up the toner.

I think both problems may be resolvable. But the end result appears to be that the drum was fine, but the surrounding bits needed cleaning. But to get those problems resolved means opening it up again, for the fourth time, and I'm just not up to that right now.

To make matters worse, the SO wanted me to go ahead and print the newsletters before I started all this, and I got all the way to the point where I was ready to do so, but then didn't. Now I may not be able to get it back to the point of slightly messy printing where it was. So I should have done what he wanted to begin with.

Blargh.

I always was worse at the physical tech tasks than the programming ones, but I feel this was within my range. Just...not successful.

-t, how did you find out that your taxes had been rejected? I'm not going to be around this weekend to mail them if I need to, and now I'm getting paranoid.

H&R Block sent me an e-mail. It took less than a day. There should be somewhere you can check on your status, however you filed. In fact, I'm going to check the Franchise Tax Board website and maybe try e-filing again directly.

Eta: ah, can't CalFile for a deceased taxpayer. I suppose I can send another copy certified mail on Monday if I get too nervous about it.

It sucks. But the alternative (giving in) is worse.

Preach.

Thanks!

Unrelated to anything y'all are talking about I'm pretty pleased with my minor repair mojo today. I reinforced the window screen with the catdoor in it and swapped it with the plexiglass model, and remembered how to fix a leaking drip irrigation hose. And some finches showed up on the bird feeder, so yay.

I really didn't mind being called/considered an atheist until Dawkins came along.

My day was super annoying, only partly of my own making. One minor thing: I got a document that I drafted eons ago, which has since gone through various layers of editing in another department. I gave it right back to them today for a final look-over, and it turns out to be full of serial commas, which that department doesn't believe in. So I had to go through and take them out. Dude, none of you people noticed that before? I thought it was the final approved version! @@

Anyway, now I'm home with wine. And a long weekend! WOO HOOOOOO. My first Patriots Day off since high school!

And I keep from going berserk re: sexism by avoiding asshats, which I realize is not much of an activist stance.

that is proof that women have the power in sex relationships.

I can't find where it's described that way. I'm sure it has been by someone, because jerks abound, but I don't see that in Dawkin's post, and the psych study he links to makes the same points you do about possible reasons for the disparity in how men and women view casual sex. In the clarification after the initial dust-up, the women who raised the issue said they weren't objecting to the "challenge" itself or its point; they did have issues with how it was presented. (It looks like all the videos were replaced after thing settled down so I can't trace back to specifics.) Digging into the Krauss thing... I can't find as much, but yes, he does sound like a deluded ass.

And Dawkins can be an ass too. But if I admire a person, that doesn't mean I respect all of their views, and support everything they've done. (Luckily this is not an issue with Scott Adams, who has always been terrible.) Given that I personally tend to admire people on the "outspoken jerk" end of the spectrum, it's pretty likely that they're going to say things even I have problems with.

There's a tipping point where the bad stuff overhwelms the good, but... when you say "revered" I feel like you're taking their status to mean that the attendees and organizers support their opinions on all things. I don't think that's the case, even if the "you must either worship X or loathe it beyond all reason" attitude is something the internet is excellent at fostering. Dawkins gets plenty of criticism from within the skeptic community, and while I'm not familiar with Krauss, I know several other speakers listed have also been polarizing at times.

On the larger question... for me to be enraged about something, I first have to be surprised by it. And I rarely find it surprising when groups of people behave abominably. I don't really recommend sharing that attitude, though.