Today they examined the brain of the cow that they thought had mad cow disease. It turns out it didn’t have it. Sven wondered if they returned the brain to the cow. I told him that probably not. Sven was sad. I think the cow was a dumbass for acting crazy when someone was looking.
It’s weird going through my old blog entries and thinking of titles for them. The thoughts from weeks ago are often gone, I’m not really sure of the mood I was in.
I am already missing some features of my old software. WordPress features includes “Instant publishing with no rebuilding,” I’m a little worried if the Pentium II this server is can take regenerating a page ever visit!
I also liked that that my entry systems was not web based, I could easily use spell checkers. Now I’m stuck in this low feature box. My spelling is bad enough as it is.
The thing that really bugs me in the timezone. The goal of my blog software was to make in so you could set the timezone differently for each post. So if I was in San Francisco when I posted I would put PST. Here everything is stuck in eastern time. I never finished that feature, but it still bugs me.
We’ve joined Elana and my blogs together (what no honeymoon?), and Sven’s will soon follow. If you’re getting this via an RSS feed, check the URL. It should now point to
http://www.zen.org/rss.xml
If your aggregator cannot deal with redirects, the “real” URL is
http://www.zen.org/wp-rss2.php
but I like the rss.xml version better, since it makes it easier for us to change our blog software in the future should we choose to.
B
I called our local supermarket to ask about transferring points from an old (lost) card onto one we just got as a replacement. Since the card is in E’s name, she has to do it. The fellow on the phone kept talking about the Data Protection Act, explaining that the rules don’t allow anyone but the registered person to have access to the information in the account. In order to let us both have permission, I have to get a card in my own name and then they can join the two together for mutual access. With both of us physically there. (I’ll recognize that there are reasons this requirement could be a real pain.)
Then I call a US bank to ask a question, and they ask for my mother’s maiden name. That detail happens to be on the public record if you know how to find it (or have read any of 50 books on the topic). A little work would get it for anyone with bad intentions. Luckily we can make the US bank accept anything in response to that question, not the actual maiden name, so we’ve got some level of protection. But our choice is far from common.
Why are companies in the US so much less concerned about the privacy of your information? They claim it’s the cost in maintaining the information. I suspect it’s more a change in standard procedure and the belief that it’s purely inconvenience, for which the customers share as much of the blame as the banks.
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