Brain Lint

To make a long story short, I’m on hold with Intuit (turbotax) support. I would have used their instant message support, but apparently their idea of 24 hours a day, monday - sunday is different than most people’s, because its closed.

I’m using support because I’m trying to get started with my taxes, but I can’t get into turbotax online because I’m unable to reset my password. Their process ends with mailing a link AFTER you’ve already chosen a new password to confirm it was you. The email has a link to a form where I can enter my new password again- only every time I do this it says my time has expired (you only get 28 hours to confirm).

Kristi gave me Edward Tufte’s latest book for Christmas, Beautiful Evidence. It was quite good as usual, but probably not as good as the previous three, which were all excellent. A lot of examples are repeats from previous book, like the excellent infographic describing Napoleon’s march on Moscow- it would have been nice to see some new artifacts.

The ending of the book is strange; there are several pages of Tufte’s outdoor scupltures, apropos of nothing and without introduction. I guess you can do that when you are your own publisher!

I finally got my hands on a Nintento Wii! While I haven’t been trying nearly as hard as many, Ive had a couple of frustrating close calls until now. I was in New York city so on the way to my hotel I stopped in to Toys R Us in Time’s Square, and there they were! They were being handed out at the register one by one, so I got to wait in a long long line without knowing if there would be any left when I got to the front. I lucked out and there was (only 10ish at that point, if I’d been much later I would have missed out). Apparently they sold about 200 in an hour or so that day. There were about 20 ps3s there, but there didn’t seem to be any takers; there were a few sitting there still hours later when I stopped in to look for an extra nunchuk attachment.

Wii Sports is really fun.