May he rest in peace.

If, however, your social security card was, say, stolen out of your wallet along with your driver's license when you were but 19 and in college, and you have never needed it again until now, you can go into the local social security office, present (you guessed it) your Passport (to, you know, prove that you are who you say you are), and be mailed a new social security card in 7-10 days.

So, to sum up: A passport is required as ID to obtain a social security card. A social security card is required (as ID?) to obtain a driver's license. But a passport cannot be used as ID to obtain a driver's license. I think there should be a parallel formula here, something basic like if a > b and b > c then a > c, except that in this case it is not true.

Are governments creating these regulations just to make people crazy?

Say it with me: supply and demand. (Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post.)

I know that gas prices are high; they are just now getting to the point where I am contemplating things like carpooling to the office or working from home for reasons other than the ability to spend all day working in sweats and a t-shirt. But the answer is not to lower gas prices...it strikes me that the best thing we can do to combat this crisis (real or imagined) is to change our behavior in a way that lessens its impact. It'll take more for some people and less for others, but gas prices rising to around $3 a gallon will start to change behavior, and I've seen nothing to convince me this is a bad thing.

This is all very well and good and rather boring, but I have discovered something odd and I cannot figure it out. I tend to compose blog posts in notepad, to avoid the autoformatting I have configured in Word for longer client documents. I use the same keystrokes in notepad, but have noticed that sometimes when I go to select text using Ctrl+Shift+[Right Arrow] or [Left Arrow], the entire body of text in the notepad window becomes right-aligned. To date, I had been unable to recreate this behavior intentionally. More interestingly, after this happens, pressing the right arrow moves the cursor to the LEFT, and pressing the left arrow moves the cursor to the RIGHT. No keypad combination seems to change things back to normal, and I end up copying the entire body of text and pasting it into a new notepad window to return the world to its senses.

Today--just twenty minutes ago, in fact--I have discovered what causes the problem. To see it for yourself:

Go to Start|Run, type notepad, and press Enter.
Type a few words.
Press Ctrl down and then press Shift. (Interestingly, the behavior does not appear if you press Shift and then Ctrl.)

Ta da! Experiment with moving the cursor by clicking the left and right arrow keys. Weird, isn't it? Frustrating is a better word, to be honest. It is as if my notepad window has been transported into an alternate dimension where everything is just backwards.

The point of this post is really to publish a plea. If anything out there can explain why this happens and, more importantly, how I can pull the notepad window back into my dimension rather than moving the text, I would be very appreciative.

For my old readers in DC, if you are still getting feeds from this site, I'm back in town for the week. Perhaps I'll be inspired to start writing again...the cab ride from National to Foggy Bottom felt very much like home and I can feel the energy of this city already.

Even things as prosaic as business meetings have been nudged in the direction of simplicity: The company now forbids more than 10 slides in any PowerPoint presentation. Just enough, they decided, was more.

The article begins with a profile of Marissa Mayer, dubbed the "high priestess of simplicity" at Google, who is responsible for the uncluttered look of Google's homepage. (Thanks Marissa!) The article also lists TiVo, Apple's iPod, Skype, and Blackberry by RIM as examples of simplicity.

The what? my coworker asked, looking at me with an astounded look on her face.

The Cubs game. You know, the World Series, big baseball game, fireworks, the whole works...

Jen. It's the White Sox. Get it straight.

Oops. It wasn't intentional (at least not the first time I slipped up.) Chicago is definitely home now, but I have yet to develop the one key Chicagoan characteristic that will mark me as someone who truly belongs. I have yet to develop a runs-in-my-blood loyalty to either of my city's two baseball teams.

Maybe next year. In the meantime...Go Sox!

One finishes this book persuaded by Mr Gallagher's thesis: that he is surrounded by idiots. That would certainly explain why he was unable to do any research.

It was not.

The online renewal form wanted my subscription ID, but it only showed me that information as it would appear on the magazine shipping label. Privacy nut that I am, the first thing I do with magazines is tear off the mailing label and shred it. (I know.) I managed to figure out, through trial and error, which series of numbers from the hard-copy renewal request would bring up my subscription.

I renewed the subscription for three years...as Nick Gillespie's (I type that as if I know him in person, although I do not believe I have ever met the man) cheery letter with the renewal form in the mail told me, it's like getting 7 issues FREE!

Except, not really, because the confirmation e-mail I received after renewing the subscription told me that, by paying online, I paid $2.44 more that what Mr. Gillespie's (so to speak) letter quoted. Not a big deal, of course, as I am quite capable of eating that $2.44, but it irks me just the same.

It made me wonder, though; how much does it cost Major League Baseball to cancel or postpone a game for rain?

Thanks to beSpacific for the reference.

Hey now. All of the letters of the alphabet were there in the research notes; she just rearranged them so that they made sense.

heh.

Heaven in a single square inch.