Okay: the way I configured Outlook Express, the damn thing should work. Everything is configured the way that SBC's web site said to configure it, yet it doesn't work: it rejects his username and password.
*sigh*
Anyway, so we had a chance to chat about my FOID card and the studend loan mess, and I am much reassured that at least the Department of Education SWAT team probably will not no-knock me and then auction off my cats and computer.
And I may actually stand a reasonable chance of getting my FOID card back this year. Here's hoping.
Anyway, I rode the motorcycle over there, and enjoyed it; and if I hadn't needed to call my sister about my other sister's funeral and such, I would probably still be out riding. I came home long enough to check mail and messages, and had to call my sister, and that pretty much did for that.
It's supposed to be warmer tomorrow, anyway.
On the plus side: I have learned that I will not be required to fly, drive, or hitchhike to Maine, at least not this weekend. Maybe sometime in the future, but not this month, which--believe me--is music to my ears. It's $600 I don't have to spend on airfare plus-plus-plus.
We're going to have a memorial service here in town; one of my tasks is to contact the church and find out about availability. My thinking is to have my pastor do the service, but there is some other thought to the effect that we should have the guy who did Mom's and Dad's services do it.
Hmm...
...anyway, so that's where things are. I can stay home and clean house with the expectation that I'll have company next week. Nothing like having advance warning! The only rooms that really need it are the kitchen and bathroom; the rest is just basic tidying, which shouldn't be too hard. Run the vacuum, dust a bit, no worries.
* * *
This would be very, very nice for me. That pesky student loan issue which still plagues me would just magically go away.
...to be perfectly honest, though, I would be perfectly fine with it if I could just declare bankruptcy and discharge the debt that way; but because a few unscrupulous law students did that, all student loans are now 100% exempted from bankruptcy. That's why you have so many lenders who are eager to loan money to college students: they are guaranteed to get that money back with interest. Who doesn't like a sure thing?
* * *
Also from Karl Denninger: Energy independence. I liked this bit:
...we should be looking at using thorium as a nuclear fuel, liquid-salt reactors to obtain high temperature process heat, and then converting coal to synfuel with the primary process heat along with co-generation of electricity with the remaining BTU content from the thorium reaction.We don't even need to switch to thorium, for crying out loud. Just being able to build a shitton of conventional light-water reactors would itself do the trick; ending our use of fuel oil for generating electricity would--by itself!--put a serious dent in the sum OPEC gets from us every month.
We can replace all of the imported fuel we use for transportation without increasing our coal consumption at all over present levels. Best of all not only do we have lots of thorium that we've "thrown away" in the ash pile of existing coal plants coal itself contains enough thorium to self-fuel the reactors on a forward-going basis as well!
...and gas prices would plummet.
* * *
I did not sleep much today. I won't last long tonight.