Schedule Whip-saw

My darling younger has come down with something which makes her cough as if all of her innards are rattling in sympathy. As of yesterday afternoon, we (tamidon and I) thought I'd have to work from home to take care of her today. However, schedules changed, and I'm at the office and she's home with the ill one.

Several people had gotten my "I'll be working from home" email yesterday, and were thus surprised to see me here today.

But not as surprised as I was to find that the Microsoft internal network was refusing to acknowledge my existence. That's the kind of thing which prompts Massively Paranoid Thoughts. Which were all false, and it proved to be some kind of internal authentication error.

Meanwhile, I'm still having trouble focusing on my computer monitor with these new glasses. I may have to go in for another eye appointment to fine-tune this.

The Controversial Survey

1. Do you have the guts to answer these questions and re-post as The Controversial Survey?
Yes ( , but I won't fill my friends' friends pages with it. )

I have seen a couple of results to this "controversial survey" whose answers didn't match mine, but these differences were minor (e.g. swatting a child who is actively reaching for a hot stove). So this meme was likely generated outside of my tribe, and my tribe is of one mind on these ostensibly cutting-edge questions.

Given the national news (I don't know of the current national polling on these issues), I don't think these questions are cherry-picked for uniformity. The last electoral poll I saw had Obama with 286 and McCain with 252 (for example), so uniformity on the candidate question is definitely a sampling error.

I think what this does show is how voluntary communities self-organize based on point-of-view. This has its own hazards, most notably convincing members of the tribe that "everyone thinks like I do".