Rainy Wednesday

[annathepiper]

HAH. I love the Onion. I love it so. Today's reason for my Onion love: U.S. Troops Draw Up Own Exit Strategy.

And on a less frivolous note, I scarfed the link for the PDF file of the decision in the Intelligent Design case in Dover off of Neil Gaiman's blog. He highly encourages the read, so I'll pass the good word. Be warned that it's long, but here's what Neil has to say about it:

The "why this is not an activist decision by an activist judge" bit on page 137 is terrific, although you're best off getting there the hard way, starting at page 1, including slogging through the appalling behaviour of the people on the School Board who started it, who, despite feeling it was important to expell Darwin (and Darwin's finches) and get the Old Testament God back in the classroom, had somehow managed to fail to realise that any of that stuff in the Bible about bearing false witness applied to them.

In other news, I got in to work this morning to discover that my badge is broken. WTF? This makes the second thing I've been carrying around in my messenger bag that's up and died. I'll have to go have them look at it and try to figure out what's wrong with it in a bit.

Wednesday morning miles: 1.6
Miles out of Hobbiton: 554.8
Miles out of Rivendell: 96.8
Miles to Lothlórien: 367.2

Comments

[starfallz.livejournal.com]

Maybe you got some funny magnet stuff going on? The stuff with your CC sounds like it got demagnetized at some point.

[annathepiper]

The weird thing is that I've been carrying the credit card and my badge in the same messenger bag with my debit card. The credit and debit cards were both in my wallet, and as of the last attempt to use it (i.e., yesterday morning when I got cash out of an ATM), my debit card was functioning. Also, as of Friday morning of last week, my badge was confirmed as functional.

So I am kind of scratching my head about what I might have done to demagnetize both my credit card and my badge, but NOT my debit card. About the only thing I can think of that might have done anything of the sort was running my messenger bag through security at the airport on Sunday evening. But I would think that if that would have been enough to take out the credit card and the badge both, the debit card would have been hosed as well. Yet I was able to use my debit card Sunday night when I checked into the hotel in San Jose.

I'm confused. It's official!

[cafiorello.livejournal.com]

But what order were they in in your wallet? Maybe the debit card was buried between the other two, and the nasty rays hit the outside ones and couldn't penetrate all the way to the center?

Or, you know, random weirdness. ;)

Cathy

[annathepiper]

I have one of those wallets with some slots for the cards or ID you use the most, and my debit card was in one of those... whereas my credit card was stuffed into the pocket beneath that. So I guess it would depend on what angle any demagnetizing influences might have hit stuff, I suppose.

I also wonder if it was indeed the airport security; I don't know whether those machines are dangerous to things magnetic or not.

[shikyrie.livejournal.com]

badge, as in 'keycard' badge? I lost mine yesterday, and found it in the snow when I got home- luckily, it still worked this morning.

[annathepiper]

Yeah, my keycard badge for getting into the building on my new job at Real.

[shikyrie.livejournal.com]

I was lucky in that people know me at work, so they let me in, and I was able to borrow one for the day. At VZ you need one to get into the building, and one to get onto each floor as the doors on each floor are keycard activated.

[annathepiper]

Well, if all else fails I would hope that you'd have been able to have the front desk call your manager to let you in. That's usually how this happens at Microsoft if you forget your badge; you have the receptionists call or email your manager or someone else on the team, they come let you in, you're good.

Something similar to your situation would frequently happen on my team during my last two Microsoft contracts, since I worked in a computer lab that also required badge access, on top of the badge access necessary for getting into the building in general.

Glad to hear you got in okay, anyway!

[kissare.livejournal.com]

I went to the bank and asked for a couple of their little CC protector sleeves. I keep my credit card and debit card in those. They still fit into the little pockets in my wallet, and they don't demagnetize anymore. No clue about the keycard, though! I don't sleeve that!

[annathepiper]

The credit card being demagnetized is less annoying to me than the badge; I mean, I use my credit card for online transactions way more than I use it for face to face ones. But the badge I need to get into my workplace, so that's a bit more of an immediate impact. ;)

The sleeves thing sounds useful, though.