I’m flying out to Seattle this weekend to take another step in the probate process after my mother’s death. I’m meeting with lawyers and bankers — can you imagine anything more fun?

I’ve been getting all this paperwork together, going through my mother’s birth certificate, marriage certificate, social security card, death certificate, etc., etc., etc. I’ve also got all the same stuff for my father — they skipped probate at his death, since everything was in both my mother and father’s name at that time, but now all that has caught up to me. It’s depressing to see a whole life reduced to a small pile of papers.

Next week everything gets shut down, her official existence is over, and every penny gets shuffled into an account in my name, before I have to start divvying it up and sending checks to all the heirs…after we sell off the house. Anyone want to buy a 4 bedroom house on the road between Auburn and Lake Tapps? It was good enough for almost 50 years of homey living and 6 kids.

I’d have to agree with the extremes of this entirely subjective and data free map.

I have to disagree with some of the middlin’ state rankings, though. North Dakota is a terrible place, I think it got a higher ranking just for Fargo, which really belongs in Minnesota. I’d rank Wisconsin above Iowa. Texas is ranked way too high.

Yeah, Mississippi is kind of the leaking colon of the country.

About a year and a half ago, I had an absolutely miserable experience. A student and I were going to the American Arachnology Society conference at Cornell University; we paid up the conference fees, made a lovely poster, booked our flights, and traipsed down to the Minneapolis airport…where we sat for two days, watching our flight get delayed and delayed, and eventually, finally, they gave up and told us that our flights were cancelled, we should go home.

That was terrible enough.

All this was paid through university travel funds, and I did all the responsible stuff of getting our registration fees reimbursed (I thought), and while we were miserable and disappointed, we were done. Except…my nightmare had only just begun.

You see, all travel expenses at my university go through some accounting software called Chrome River. We didn’t go? We spent less than we’d told it we were going to? Some of the planned expenses were bouncing back with reimbursements? Total shit fit. I’ve been dealing with its conniptions ever since, getting cryptic demands and threats by email.

What totally threw the software was a) Cornell said we were getting reimbursed, but we didn’t, and I only just got a check for the registration fees this week, and b) the rotten airline did not reimburse us at all, but instead billed the university for $60 for flight cancellation. That’s right, they cancelled the flights, but we got charged extra for the inconvenience.

Chrome River has been dunning me, personally, for the money for the past year. If I didn’t cough up something in the next few days, I was going to be held responsible for spending less money than we had planned, and was going to have to pay up or else. All year long, I’ve been getting these horribly opaque machine-generated emails from some evil accounting software.

Well, I think I’ve finally jumped through all the flaming hoops they’ve demanded of me, getting all the ridiculous paperwork filled out and filed today. I’m done.

Except…I’m told that tomorrow I have to log on to Chrome River and press three buttons to finalize everything. I’m terrified. I’ve seen how Chrome River reacts to tiny deviations from its required protocol. What if I press the wrong button, or press them in the wrong order, or fail to show the proper respect while following its demands? This hell might go on even longer.

I think I might have to retire sooner than expected just to avoid dealing with Chrome River ever again.

Do you want any of this crap? InfoWars is being liquidated, you’ve got to get your bid in by 8 November.

There’s probably some worthwhile electronics in that batch, but I’m not at all interested in picking up their domain names or media rights or backlog of bad videos. I’m just happy to see that morass of lies and misinformation being dissolved.

Do Facebook and Twitter next.

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I was once a tech for some fancy computer gear, a VAX 11/750. It got way too expensive to maintain, but we couldn’t get rid of it — no one wanted it, and it had a university ID tag on it. So we stored it in an old quonset hut that was scheduled for demolition, and whoops, where did it go? There’s a solution for the InfoWars set.

Except that they need to get money for it, to repay all the victims of Jones’ lying depradations.

On Saturday mornings, I try to make a big pot of something that will last a few days, because Mary works such wacky hours and we usually don’t have dinner together. Today I made posole.

(Note: we’re vegetarians, so I didn’t make it with pork, just Impossible Burger. I didn’t add jalapenos, since my wife has a more delicate palate.)

This got me to wondering, though: why do we USAians associate hominy with the South, and why don’t we eat more of it, since we’re swimming in corn in this part of the world? Hominy is just nixtamalized corn, very healthful, since it enables better digestion of tryptophan and assists in the production of niacin, but it’s an Aztec/Mayan food. Are Southerners more obliged to contributions from our Mexican neighbors than is commonly acknowledged?

Also, Minnesotans should be pre-adapted to like hominy — lutefisk is just nixtamalized cod, after all.

Or maybe everyone will shrug and say that this is obviously true.

Elon can console himself with the knowledge that he’s funny-pages famous!

A new iteration!

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