Last one to comment is a rotten egg.

Well, the 27th is.  This year we get paid 27 times instead of 26 because there are 3 months where we are paid 3 times.  How lovely for us hour jockeys!

And many thanks to Hank for restoring a working password to me.

Nice to see my friends Manish's and BlaiseP's travel diaries, which always make me wish I could meet them on one of their stops.

Surprised to see anyone here still having the will to talk about politics. You Democrats embarrassed yet? Or is that an oxymoron? ;)

Saw an article in the Post about a new political party that I'm actually tempted to join: the "Modern Whigs".

Hope all of you have had a much better summer than I've had!

LEave anything below of course, but as a convo starter, I'd be curious to hear explanations for the following:

Aggregate polling from Pollster.com as of today -

National Approval Barack Obama:
Disapprove: 51%
Approve: 44.5%
==

State of Country:
Wrong track: 58.5%
Right track: 31.6%
==

National Congressional Ballot
Republican: 46.8%
Democrat: 40.9%

You can see the polls aggregated here: http://www.pollster.com/ (apologies to those who had to put up with a slow page load earlier when the data was embedded.)

I've been watching DS9 from the beginning over the past few weeks before I go to bed.  I know all the TNG episodes inside and out, but not the DS9s.

We all have heard the Kirk v. Picard arguments.  How about Picard v. Sisko?  Now there's one I don't hear too often.  And before anyone starts complaining, yes Sisko wasn't a captain when the series started.  I know this.

I was planning a trip for the extended Labor Day weekend.  As is my strategy, I take a day off work to make 3-day weekends into 4-day weekends.  The original plan was to head on down to San Juan, but the budget put a kink in that.  It's a good thing that the old lady was kind enough to agree upon Chicago as our late summer getaway.  Any Forvmites live in the area or recommend any places to go?

I'm opening up this thread to get some ideas on rule changes.  Apparently, hit-and-run diaries are frowned upon, so we might think about banning users who do that often (statusquobuster).

What else might we want to change?  Should we clarify what constitutes a personal attack?  The floor is open for nominations.  We'll have a vote later on any good ideas floated and add them to the rule list by majority vote.

I'll consider hit-and-run diaries already moved and will wait for a second.  Have at.

Last year I made a bet with Model 62 on the number of warm days Ann Arbor would experience in a year. He would get a quarter for every day the temperature was above average. After a warm spring and, by my standards, an uncomfortably hot summer I lost to the tune of $31. So I’m here to pay up. Model gets to choose a book in that price range and I’ll buy it through one of our links. I’m sure he’d appreciate some suggestions (and if he doesn’t then I would, might as well make it a sizable order).

Or is it  Thread Open Friday? Friday Thread Open?

This thread's about to go hyperpythonic.