Miscellaneous

This year’s flu, in spite of the preventative shots, has completed its round through our family.

We plan to have three sources of income when I retire: the IRA we’ve been building for several decades, an old style retirement fund from an employer many years ago, and Social Security.

Introduction

A one-time pad is one of the best ways of making truly secret messages. Created and used correctly, it can be mathematically proven that it cannot be broken. While anyone looking at the ciphertext might easily guess it is a secret message, figuring out exactly what the cleartext says is truly impossible.

Retroproctologist

(I don’t want to know.)

Write the lead last and break all the rules you wish.

A “bid” is an offer to buy something. The operative word here is offer. If you don’t win an auction with that offer, you don’t pay.