Hot DAMN. I thought so, but I wanted to be sure.

Thanks, Jessica.

I'm now leaning towards Word Wrangler.

Your site will be erin-----.com. WP.org is just a piece of software that you install on your site, and has nothing at all to do with the name of the site. Just like your written work isn't automatically titled "microsoft word" (that's one of the key differences between it and wp.com) (the other is that I make hella better money with wp.org)

Guys, this is exactly why I've been looking forward to break -- so I could sit down and get some serious work done on getting this thing set up.

(that's one of the key differences between it and wp.com) (the other is that I make hella better money with wp.org)

amych, this interests me. My personal blog is wp.com, but that's pseud and not going to be connected with my business, except I might take blog posts and expand them for possible essays.

Can you tell me more about how wp.org has made you more money?

(You can tell me to bite myself, or take it to email, whatever, and reply when you have time, if you want to reply at all.)

I don't want to be a bitca who hogs the thread.

My dad is doing better, so he's in a nursing home now to recover from surgery. They expect him to be there a week. The stomach scope was negative, so apparently the blood pukies was just a side-effect of the surgery. They finally gave him some anti-nausea meds, which helped stop the pukies.

My mom said over the weekend he was in good spirits and was teasing the nurses. So yay for that.

ION, anyone heard about this?

State Dept. wants to make it harder to get a passport

The U.S. Department of State is proposing a new Biographical Questionnaire for some passport applicants: The proposed new Form DS-5513 asks for all addresses since birth; lifetime employment history including employers’ and supervisors names, addresses, and telephone numbers; personal details of all siblings; mother’s address one year prior to your birth; any “religious ceremony” around the time of birth; and a variety of other information. According to the proposed form, “failure to provide the information requested may result in … the denial of your U.S. passport application.”

The State Department estimated that the average respondent would be able to compile all this information in just 45 minutes, which is obviously absurd given the amount of research that is likely to be required to even attempt to complete the form.

It seems likely that only some, not all, applicants will be required to fill out the new questionnaire, but no criteria have been made public for determining who will be subjected to these additional new written interrogatories. So if the passport examiner wants to deny your application, all they will have to do is give you the impossible new form to complete.

It’s not clear from the supporting statement, statement of legal authorities, or regulatory assessment submitted by the State Department to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) why declining to discuss one’s siblings or to provide the phone number of your first supervisor when you were a teenager working at McDonalds would be a legitimate basis for denial of a passport to a U.S. citizen.

...

Extra points to the person who gives the best answer in the comments to the question on the proposed form, “Please describe the circumstances of your birth including the names (as well as address and phone number, if available) of persons present or in attendance at your birth.”

Yeah, like I'm gonna be able to find that. Fuck you, State Department.

oh goodness.

time for Beau to get a passport.

Wtf? Tommyrot that's crazy!! I lived in the same place from 7-18 and still can't do that. God forbid your parents moved a lot with, say, the military or something.

Can you tell me more about how wp.org has made you more money?

Short answer, because I'm a web designer/developer -- so that was just a kind of throwaway comment that I'm now thinking probably only made sense to me... Most of my projects are built using WP because it's a really good mix of flexibility for me as a designer, and ease of use for my clients to go on and do their own updates without me.

I don't really blog (well, only very occasionally, and in a really scattered way). I know people who do well with both WP installed on their own sites, and with a blog hosted somewhere like WP.com. But I have no earthly clue how to monetize blogging, I'm afraid.

Wow, that passport thing is crazy. I can barely come up with all of my past supervisors' names, much less the rest of it!