American recently let me check a bag for free. They would have let me check two bags for free. I'm not sure if it's because I finally hit some magic rewards number or if American's gone all kooky.

Yeah, I'm weirdly annoyed about Casco.

Casco should be Massachusetts Bay, since that is what it was when Maine was part of MA originally. But I can see how they wanted to avoid using any of the old state names.

I would be in Yerba Buena, which is okay. But I don't get how Hawaii gets to be part of Shasta, which is pretty far away.

Casco should be Massachusetts Bay, since that is what it was when Maine was part of MA originally. But I can see how they wanted to avoid using any of the old state names.

Yes and yes. But come on! Any state that is MA + ME should be called Massachusetts, olde-schoole stylee.

I would be in Mendocino, apparently, which just doesn't seem right.

I missed something, what are we all talking about?

The art project electoral college map - linked 2 pages ago.

linked 2 pages ago.

Thanks

Huh, I'd still be in New York, I think. Is there a way to zoom in? The Northeast is pretty crowded.

I kind of love that map. (Link, for those who missed it: [link] ) I currently live in Mammoth, named for the cave up in Kentucky, presumably, and previously lived in either Willimantic or Adirondack, I can't quite tell. Adirondack feels more right to me. Though I totally share Jesse's annoyance about Casco -- seems like that area should have a much more olde-tymey feel. Plymouth, maybe?

So I came in this morning to discover that a surprising number of my coworkers (257 and counting) do not understand why you don't REPLY ALL to an unsolicited email from a list you didn't know you were on.

If there are 40,000 people in my organization, and 257 people hit Reply All to the original TEST MESSAGE (which did in fact say, DO NOT REPLY)-- wait, no, another one just arrived, 259, that's well over a million emails clogging up our network.

To cap it off, my boss drafted a satirical email, masquerading as an organization-wide statement from HR. He has not sent it out to the entire agency, though he's sorely tempted. To wit:

SUBJ: RESULTS OF THE DARWIN SELF SELECTION FURLOUGH PROGRAM 1. This ALDORPNOTE is to announce the results of the [Agency's] newest human resources and cost saving tool known as the Darwin Self Selection Furlough Program. The program was initiated to identify a set of candidates which the service could furlough with absolutely zero loss in productivity should the ongoing budget crisis requires immediate cost saving.

The results of this first ever run of the self selection program were an astounding 251 people who self-selected by virtue of spamming the entire [Agency]. More self selectors are expected and will be announced in an ALDORPNOTE supplemental message. As an aside, we do expect this ALDORPNOTE to educate all, well perhaps some, [Agency] members of the existence of these self-selection tools so more innovative measures may be required to entice future rounds of self-selectors to show their qualifications for furloughing.