On my way to work Thursday morning, I was greeted with a light dust of snow on my car. That’s Thursday morning like Thursday, October 12. I realize that I live in Minnesota now, but come on.

A few fast-melting flakes in Minneapolis were a little out of place for October, but nothing compared to the record-busting blizzard in Buffalo, NY on Thursday and Friday — over 22 and a half inches. The NYT headline: Snowstorm Blankets Buffalo, Killing at Least 3. Now that’s some serious snow.

Trying to read all about it, my . . .

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A couple weeks ago, Duodecad posted a link to a study by researchers at Princeton that demonstrated how easy it is to rig an electronic voting machine, and get away with it.

Here’s an update with some old news, via BoingBoing.net this week: former Yang Enterprises computer programmer Clint Curtis says that, in 2000, Rep. Tom Feeney (R) asked him to do just that — fix voting machines to spit out 51-49 splits in your favor.

Watch video of Curtis’ . . .

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This morning, I’m waiting for my advisor to send me my PhD preliminary exam questions, and as I wait, I thought I’d show

a) 4 ways how taking the preliminary exams is like having sex for the first time:

1. There’s a divide between people who’ve gone through with it and those who haven’t. All the advice that the experienced can give you is to “close your eyes and barrel your way through it.”
2. Before, your entire identity can be summed up as someone hasn’t gone through it. On the other side of the fence, people say it’s now just . . .

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The other day, I accidentally put my boss’ name and a phone-sex phone number on one of our Web sites at work.

This isn’t one of those passive-agressive things, like Oops! I “accidentally” watered all my annoying roomate’s houseplants with beer — this was an honest, if exceedingly unfortunate, mistake.

The Web site read: “For questions, contact [my boss] at 1-800-[number very similar to our 800 number]”.

If you happened to have questions last week, you called and a recording of a woman answered: “For some stim-u-lating conversation, call 1-900-[some sex line].”

My boss is a woman. Like the woman . . .

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I sure didn’t add this to my Netflix queue for its plot. Here’s the synopsis: “While she spends her days filing papers as a harried office temp, Myra returns home each evening to an even more chaotic world, where her eccentric younger brother, Ludlow, staves off manic episodes through his art. But when Myra opens her heart to a shy but endearing co-worker, her love for her brother finds a rival…and Ludlow fights back for her affection.” Meaningless jobs? Shy people with problems? Mental illness? Bonding against all odds? Stinks of Eau d’Generic Indie to me.

No, what drew me . . .

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