Not even a REAL rejection letter, University of Illinois? :-(

You had to do it by e-mail, huh. Is postage that expensive??

Thought for the day.

This courtesy of Megan McArdle over at The Atlantic.  Regarding the dubious executive compensation over at AIG:

I'm not angry and bitter; I'm about as mad as I am at the prospect of people who bought homes they can't really afford getting a bailout while I continue renting--which is to say, not very.  Life is rather too short to spend it getting angry at remote strangers.

The "self"-checkout at Dillons is very misleading.

During my last several treks to Dillons, I bought lots of fresh (unpackaged) produce, none of which had barcodes.  I don't even know how to check out barcode-less produce at the self-checkout station thing, so I got in a regular checkout line (with a human cashier).  But as soon as I got in line, a cashier standing a few feet behind all of the registers said, "Sir, if you'd like I can help you check out at the self-checkout."  So she took my stuff and punched in a whole bunch of numbers (with blinding speed) for the produce I had, and that was that.

The point of this story is that I don't think Dillons should be allowed to have those big signs above the self-checkout machines that say "self-checkout," because that's not what they are anymore.  I don't remember this phenomenon during our myriad trips to Dillons when I was younger, so this must be a recent development.

University of Oklahoma, you're pretty cool :-D

I got in! With a fellowship to boot! Now I just kinda (really) hope everybody else says no so I don't have to make a tough decision :-P

"Common Sense" quote of the day

Tom Paine is the most quotable man who ever lived, with the possible exception of Jack Handey. Whether you believe what Mr. Paine said or not, it's really hard to argue with him.

Government, like, dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistably obeyed, man would need no other law-giver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least.

Hilarious things that people do.

And I don't mean that in a derisive or patronizing way at all. People are so funny.

Exhibit A: During my first semester of college, I asked a girl in my honors English class to go to a play with me. A date, in theory. She said yes, but asked me if she could bring her roommate. In my mind I said, "Absolutely not." But in my mouth I said, "Sure, that's cool." The play was really good (it was Steel Magnolias), but the whole experience was a little bit awkward because I ended up sitting next to the girl's roommate (who, incidentally, is a very neat person as well) instead of next to the girl herself. So that was my inaugural foray into the world of college dating. Awesome.

Fast forward to today. One of my housemates spent the last week at the Oklahoma Scholar-Leadership Enrichment Program (OSLEP). The girl I asked out was also there. When my housemate came back today he said, "Oh yeah, [this girl] wanted me to tell you that she's really sorry about freshman year, because she didn't know if it was a date or not, and she's felt bad about it ever since."

... I thought I was the only person in the world who felt really guilty about completely inconsequential things like that. But apparently not! So that made me laugh a lot.