Might as well lay out my election predictions before I hit the hay. I predict Biden will win by a decent margin, maybe 340 electoral votes. Rump will fight some court battles, but the judges will start throwing the cases out of court because, with Biden clearly past 270 EV, the cases will have become moot.

Rump will never give a concession speech, ( Read more... )

So, we've had a weekend with Halloween, the end of Daylight Saving Time (which will start again in about 137 days...), and a blue moon. Seems appropriately scary, given what this country is about to go through.

I finished writing the article a bit late and have not heard back from my editor since. I guess he is keeping me waiting the way I kept him ( Read more... )

Well, I take too *many* breaks. I have a feature-article deadline on Monday. I hate having untreated and exacerbated ADHD, inattentive type.

Just wanted to let you all know that I still exist.

I have received my notice that on Election Day I will be a same-day-registration judge at the local high school. But it didn't say who the chief judges will be ( Read more... )

1. I am still rocking the two-monitor setup on my desk. The fact that it's an older monitor, with an aspect ratio slightly less "widescreen," actually helps with displaying documents. And when I want to bring the laptop into the living room, it's easy enough to unplug the second monitor. More cheap tech goodness: a few days ago, I scored a free 500 ( Read more... )

Yesterday the 18-year-old thermostat broke when we were switching off the A/C so we could open the windows for a bit (due to the nice fall weather). Of course, the A/C doesn't work at all without some sort of controller, and it gets stuffy in here at night with the windows closed. So today we went to Lowe's and got a new thermostat, a basic $20 ( Read more... )

WTF, indeed.

I have been something of a political junkie since ... oh, about 1972. Between reading political news in print media, reading books about Watergate and presidential campaigns, consuming lots of TV news and everything else ... yeah, I have a pretty strong interest in politics.

But last night, I just couldn't deal with the shitshow.

I kept ( Read more... )

Friday night, shortly after I ate dinner, R. called for his usual "midnight bark." R. goes on and on about all the details of his life and his memories that his life triggers and the geeky bits of linguistics that are triggered by his memories, so I half-listened to the stories I've heard a zillion times before and I half-heartedly scrolled through ( Read more... )

Oh, personally I had a good day today. I interviewed a solar physicist who turned out to be a pleasant chap, even though we had trouble connecting via Zoom and end up switching to Skype. I'm registering for classes at Saturday's Virtual University of Atlantia (tomorrow is the deadline).

But I'm furious.

HE KNEW. AND HE LIED ABOUT IT. TO US.

Ever since ( Read more... )

In fact, today is the 40th birthday of my cousin Tim's daughter! Tim and his wife have been parents for four decades!

Monday night I went for election judge training. I had waffled on whether to sign up, because of the pandemic, but ultimately I came down on the side of wanting to help a fair election take place. This is truly something that's ( Read more... )

Some days are more productive than others. Yesterday I made progress on my next feature article, watched a session of the Toastmasters International virtual convention (the one that was supposed to be in Paris), and attended my friend's Zoom-based Zumba class (yay for exercise in a pandemic). Today I went to the store to pick up a few things, but ( Read more... )