I go back to work in a few days. ARGH.

August does make me sad for my teacher friends having to go back to work.

Actually, this is the third August in a row where I'll be working All The Time. I'm excited for September to get here so I can have my vacation time. (Pacific Northwest WOOT!)

I need to get on a different project next year where the big requirements deadline isn't the beginning of September.

Somehow, oops, my payment to my car insurance company bounced when I was on vacation, and I didn't see it. Two weeks ago, and I just today got a notice about it from Allstate. Good for me that I saw it when I came home and paid it immediately, so I wasn't not-covered during the time it took them to notify me.

Bad for me, they've informed me that since this has happened twice now (in four years), from now on they will only accept payments as money orders or cashier's checks.

Oh. So to make sure you get paid, now I have to go to the bank or post office and then either drive it to your office or put it in an envelope with a stamp. Perhaps you don't understand why I use online bill pay. If that's the only way you'll let me pay you, then pretty soon you're not getting paid, because I WILL FORGET.

So, Allstate, because you have a hard-line no-tolerance no-resubmit-for-payment policy for denied payments (totally your right, of course), I now have to switch to a different insurance carrier. I've been with Allstate for 17 years. Knowing what a flake I am, I cannot believe this has never happened before. Thus, I suspect this policy is not Allstate's, but your office's. So I'm calling Geico in the morning. I don't want to, but I will never be able to remember to make physical payments to your office on time.

Okay, I'm done. I needed to bitch about that.

Jesus Zen.

Can't you do an automatic payment from your checking account?

I was just reading a page of people complaining about a UK ban on driving while operating Google Glass. It's an abuse, they say, to prevent you from doing this while driving. Especially since there are so many other distracting things tou can do while driving.

I really really don't see that argument. I'm not saying there are none to be made. Just that that first paragraph isn't how you do it.

The American was a really dumb movie. I kept wondering what it would be like if it was as poignant as [insert key conceit here] and when hat turned out to be the conceit, well, it failed to match the poignancy I though came for free with it.

Darren Criss just walked on stage to be greeted by Conan O'Brien, Rebecca Romijn, and Andy Richter, and he literally looks like a hobbit in comparison.

he literally looks like a hobbit in comparison.

They all have really small feet?

This page [link] is golden, wherein they discuss pros and cons of tattooing with magnetic ink and making their bodies circuit boards. These are absolutely not the cutting edge of body hacking in an ultra Gibsonian way, these are people intent on removing themselves from the gene pool, one limb at a time. Reading a couple pages, if you'd pressed a tattoo gun into all their hands, they sound like they'd prefer to live-test (on their off arm, or legs) their hypotheses rather than reread them.

wherein they discuss pros and cons of tattooing with magnetic ink and making their bodies circuit boards.

Good lord, those people are idiots. Not in the least because they keep talking about homemade tattoo guns.

It's probably not the best time for me to do this considering that I just started a new job today, but I feel like I've been letting my brain atrophy. I signed up for two intro classes this fall:

Dino 101 at Coursera: [link]

Science and Cooking at edX: [link]

Dino 101 at Coursera:

This is a thing?!

...I've heard of the guy running it! He's an expert on feathered dinosaurs, done a fair bit of work in China.

You may have just gained a classmate.

Sorry your Allstate office are idiots. In terms of eggs, I'm with the egg lovers. I love poached and soft boiled which are the two eggiest eggs you can have. But I love highly spiced eggs too - omelettes or scambled with super hot hot sauce or curry powder. And in between like, omelettess with mild herbs and cheese. And all the other variations - you can pretty much assume that if eggs are the main ingredient, I like it.