People ask me how I got into tech support, if I have computer degrees or something. I tell them that most of my jobs came from a really good business typing course in high school, when typing was still mostly something women who were going to be secretaries needed to learn. (I dreaded shorthand, thank god that went away.) The computer bit came most from poking around the various screens I had access to, asking questions, and having a very linear brain that could appreciate a computer's desire to go from point A to Point D only by going through B and C first, no matter how much you cursed at it and thumped the buttons that made sense to you. My only formal training in computers was from a college freshman course in BASIC programming back in 1979.

Sunk costs you can't afford are still as much debt as an investment unreturned on, though. How much can you afford to spend on...whatever, and what are your plans for being able to pay back? I don't know if I'd recommend people not consider this.

Yeah, the concept of sunk costs doesn't really work for future spending, only what you've already spent. Unless you embrace determinism thoroughly, I suppose.

I don't think I was all that rational about it when I was deciding to go back to school, and I certainly wasn't as an undergrad (or the first, uh, two tries at graduate school). I was all about some idealized ivory tower pure learning experience. Well, not for the MBA, but that was kind of a move of desperate hope more than anything else.

I don't recommend anyone follow my example.

Well, the ideal gas law, I remember the hell out of that.

PV=nRT forever!!! I actually have used that...

I've had to do the multifactor shit with a potential loan app. Not amused. I know WF has its detractors, but they've been good to me. They get iffy about me logging in from work and home, I often have to supply the security answers.

And then panic because I wouldn't know what to do after that but clearly I can't trust the internet and that shuts an awful lot of doors.

Which is why I want our process to say "IF YOU DON'T SEE THEM, CALL SUPPORT". Clearly that's maybe not on the fake, but if you've read it enough times, maybe you'll remember. For every "Check this!" I think we need to tell them what to do now that they've checked.

I think I have a barber now. The place doesn't let you pick who gives you a buzz cut. You can just jump ahead in line if you call 30 minutes before, but that's all the appointment you can get. When I got there today, he picked me, and we chatted happily about migraines, trans* surprises, getting cut mostly out of movies and other less than earthshaking things and then I got a free headwash. He's my new bimonthly (or whatevs) best friend.

Feel with 100% certainty that if Sergeant Hathaway were real, I would be married to him.

Yep. My Hathaway feelings, they are strong and complex.

including registering your computer as allowed to access the account) authentication the first time some site sent you an authorisation code

I know it drives me nuts that I have to get an access code all the effing time after doing crazy things like restarting my computer.

And that I can't even access my Ing account at all since the change to CapitalOne when it went from username/registered computer/image/PIN to log in to username/registered computer/image/longer and more complicated PIN that I now can't remember.

Should I go out and walk another two miles tonight, or stay in and read fanfic?

Also, when my former students tell me they are going to be an English major I sort of cringe. Which is wrong. There are plenty of English majors with real jobs.

What frustrates me about a lot of the "pick a major that leads to a job" advice is that the thinking (and often the data) is so linear, in a way that really distorts things.

Unless you go into academia, liberal arts degrees rarely work that way. You can tally up 100 chemical engineering majors/75 employed as chemical engineers. If you try to do the same thing in humanities, well. There are limited history majors working as historians. Most poli-sci majors do not have a job with "political scientist" in the title. Most English majors presumably have jobs in english, but not English.

But a ton of them are working in business, in consulting, at think tanks or newspapers or journals, in sales or business development, in finance, in marketing, etc. Or like Drew they've turned it into something on their own. And their degrees gave them the tools and quals to do that.

It's not a linear path from degree title to job title. And for kids like Kat's students who may be living close to the edge and with little slack it may not be the right path. But it's very rarely reflected in the discussion.

I'm gonna vote for my pillow--either reading another art book, or...fic. My pairing is really slacking off these days. Disappoint.

Should I go out and walk another two miles tonight, or stay in and read fanfic?

Walk! Or walk one mile and read fanfic ;)