Solar Flares?

I'm wondering whether there's some strange atmospheric anomaly going on that someone knows about. Today I started the process of trying to recover the data from a fourth failed or failing hard drive this week. What's the deal?

Mother's Wisdom

My mother used to make anise mints for weddings. Once, when I watched her making a batch, I noted that there were only two colors of mint. When I inquired as to why she only made two colors instead of three or four, her response was "Because people take one of each color, even though they all taste the same. If I made three or four colors, that would just mean I'd need to make more mints."

I thought of this today when trying to decide which and how many of the about seven different types of candy to take from the dish in the Development Office.

Huh? Wha?

Update 2009-02-10: seems I'm repeating myself. Since one of my first posts was titled "Huh?" I am retitling this one.

According to TurboTax™, I can "...deduct the loss of property resulting from a theft. To qualify, the theft must be illegal and must be done with criminal intent" (emphasis theirs).

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but this indicates that theft, in certain circumstances, might be legal. What would those circumstances be? Is this just some TurboTax™ employee being a little cheeky about the role of the IRS?

Unknown and Related

Two back-to-back Facebook status updates today from two of my friends who don't know each other:

JM [w]onder[s] if I will someday tell my grandchildren, proudly, that I resisted the "25 Things" meme on Facebook.

TVB admits it. He likes the "25 things" meme and says keep it coming. If you don't like it, don't read em. Like anything else on the Web.

Awesome.

A Memory Stirs

The door to the computer lab at Mount Pleasant (IA) middle school was inset from the wall by a couple of feet. Once, when in seventh (eighth?) grade, I was in a hurry to leave the computer lab, and, though I knew the door was inset, I made a hard right immediately after clearing the threshold. The impact knocked my glasses off and gave me a small bump on my head. I think of this because today in the seminary dining hall I saw someone leave the kitchen and run headlong into a support beam. And I discovered that such collisions are funnier when they aren't you.