Res Ipsa Loquitur

Another Hack Attack?

There's been a sudden increase in hacker chatter & scanning activity, possibly signaling an upcoming hacker attack.

The Homeland Security Department warned it has detected an increase in hackers scanning the Internet to find vulnerable computers.

"That's a sure sign the intruder community is actively interested in finding out who they can exploit," said Jeffrey Havrilla, an Internet security analyst at the government's CERT Coordination Center, which monitors computer security.

Mike, who monitors our home network very closely as you might imagine, noticed a huge increase in just such activity last night.....but unfortunately for the little hacker feller, all his clever little probes fell into a black hole of death. Awww.

Anyway, patch 'em if you got 'em, circle the wagons and keep your eyes open. The little bastards appear to be 'bout ready to run amok again.

Sick & Twisted

This is just too funny....and really sick.

I like it!

Thanks Again

Thanks, Shelley, for the book suggestion for my daughter. I got her Fannie Flagg's Standing In the Rainbow, and she told me yesterday that she was really enjoying it. Good call!

And, following Adam's suggestion, I got Grisham's Painted House the other day for reading once this semester's over next week.

It'll be a nice change to read something that doesn't start with "Open Windows XP and...."

GPS PDA

Now here's a PDA I might actually use....the iQue PDA 3600.

Garmin's new iQue 3600 is the first palmtop that is also a G.P.S. receiver - a remarkable feat, considering that it's no larger than a typical Palm organizer. It runs on the Palm 5.2.1 operating system, meaning that it synchronizes its calendar, address book and to-do list with a Windows PC and can run any of thousands of add-on programs. It comes with both a voice recorder and Documents to Go, a program that lets you view and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files when you're on the move.

The iQue's bright color screen (320 by 480 pixels) covers the entire face of the device. This setup lets you hide the Graffiti handwriting area when you've got more important things to look at, like maps. It also shows the letter shapes you're making as you write, as though your inkless stylus actually had ink, which makes it easier to master the Palm alphabet.

It also can give you turn-by-turn directions to businesses or people you've listed in your address book.

That would be as handy as pockets on a shirt.

Moving On Up

I am now a Flappy Bird. Sweet!

Thanks y'all!

No Kidding

News flash! National forests are being used for hidden drug operations like growing pot and meth labs.

Well duh. That's only been happening on a large-scale since, I dunno, the early 1980's.

Then I Ain't A-Goin'

You Know?

I may be a little overly sensitive, but I really resent being called an idiot.

With all due respect sir, you can kiss my hillbilly ass.

Terror Futures Market Update

The terror future market is no more. It will now exist only as a shining example of the foolishness of a group of ivory-tower eggheads who were allowed to run amok. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea on paper, and like some seemingly similar individuals I've seen around on the Blogosphere, it was wonderfully creative....in theory. But in practical application, it had several problems that no one apparently considered at the time.

First and foremost, there's the morality issue. Should our government set up a website which allows betting on potential terrorist acts? This isn't pork bellies or corn futures....these are potentially people's lives upon which wagers would be placed. I find that morally repugnant.

And at its most basic, that's what the futures market is....a form of legalized gambling. I may be just a little old simple country lawyer, but contrary to some people's opinions, I understand how the futures market works. Traders make money on the ability to predict future prices of pork bellies or whatever. Buy low and sell high. You pays your money and you takes your chances. (Unless you're Hillary, of course.)

But like any good gambler, a futures trader makes money off of his ability to assimilate information, calculate odds and predict future outcomes. (Unless you're Hillary) And therein lies the problem. Presumably these traders would not have access to any type of classified intelligence information, so how could they possibly make even semi-accurate predictions? Access to information is the tool by which future traders make accurate predictions and thereby money. So what would they do, allow traders access to all classified intelligence? Yeah, now that's a good idea. [/sarcasm]

For what's to stop terrorist organizations from using this "creative idea" for their own ends? Even if they limited whom was allowed to trade, what's to stop terrorists from putting their own trader inside? Screening? Yeah, we've all seen how well that works....especially with online transactions. I'm sure they would've made the website unhackable too. Such a system lends itself to all kinds of potential abuses....like manipulation of the market by outside forces. But hey, we all know _that_ never happens, right?

These are just a few of the reasons I think this was an extremely....dare I say...STUPID idea. Looked great on paper, but then so does a Ponzi scheme.

And I recognize one of those when I see it too.

Working Dog

Sollie has apparently decided that it's time for him to start pulling his weight around here and get a job. Not just any job mind you, but one where Mike works. For the last couple of weeks, when Sollie sees Mike getting ready to leave for work, he goes and finds a chew toy, carries it over by the door and sits patiently waiting for Mike....and one of us has to grab him or he'll run out the door heading for the car when Mike starts to leave.

Mike always explains to him that dogs aren't allowed in the workpods....though I don't know why not. He could carry the pager quite well I should think....and he'd be great as first-level tech support.

Silly old pug.

Hill's Angels?

For your morning viewing pleasure, I present to you:

Friends of Hillary (Link via CNN)

A website slavishly devoted to promoting "her work in the Senate" and to raising money for her 2006 re-election campaign.

"While Hillary is fighting for the values and policies we care about, the right wing is waging a personal attack against her. They've already launched their campaign to defeat Hillary in 2006, using the same old politics of personal destruction, sending out hate-filled mail charging she is 'anti-woman, anti-child, anti-family,' " the Web site says, adding that it's critical to "take action now."

I see dumb people.

Extremely Asinine Idea

Have you heard about this?

The latest brainchild of a contentious Pentagon program — an online gambling parlor that allows anonymous investors to make money predicting assassinations and terrorist attacks — is drawing fire from Capitol Hill.

The Terrorist Information Awareness office will open the waging scheme Friday and begin signing up 1,000 traders to deposit funds for transactions. In a report to Congress, TIA said the program will provide the Defense Department "with market-based techniques for avoiding surprise and predicting future events."

Online trading begins Oct. 1, and by Jan. 1, at least 10,000 traders will be able to participate in the Policy Analysis Market.

W.T.F? Whose completely asinine idea is this?

A spokesman for DARPA issued a written statement that the agency has "undertaken this research as part of its effort to investigate the broadest possible set of new ways to prevent terrorist attacks and will continue to reevaluate the technical promise of the program before committing additional funds beyond Fiscal Year 2003."

"Research indicates that markets are extremely efficient, effective and timely aggregators of dispersed and even hidden information. Futures markets have proven themselves to be good at predicting such things as election results; they are often better than expert opinions," the statement said.

Riii-iight. And get this: They've already spent $800,000 of our tax dollars on this little hare-brained scheme....and are asking for 8 million more.

Them boys need to put down their crack pipes and get their damn hands out of our pockets.

Look Who's Back

Adam's had a change of heart and is posting again.

Me & Mike's fixin' up the guestroom for him over at The Blinding White Light, so look for him to post over there too from time to time.

I am a happy camper.

Another Legend Gone

Thanks for the memories.

Too Weird For Words

In another stellar example of "just because you can do something doesn't mean you should", scientists have created a "semi-living artist" from a blob of rat brain cells.

Gripping three coloured markers positioned above a white canvas, a robotic arm churns out drawings akin to that of a three-year-old. Its guidance comes from around 50,000 rat neurons in a petri dish 19,000 kilometres away.

What the hell are you people thinking? Do we really need smarter mutant rats? You've obviously never watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The computer translates any resulting neural activity into robotic arm movement. By closing the loop, the researchers hope that the rat culture will learn something about itself and its environment.

"I would not classify [the cells] as 'an intelligence', though we hope to find ways to allow them to learn and become at least a little intelligent." said Dr Potter.

"It's alive! It's alive!" Well, whoopty-do.

Kill it before it breeds.

Sweet!

I want it! I need it! I have to have it!

Thanks, Jim, for the link!

Army of One

It's clear now that the reports of Pvt. Lynch's heroic last stand were not greatly exaggerated....but it wasn't she that went down guns a-blazing. It was Sgt. Donald Walker.

Last week, with no fanfare, the Army released a detailed report of the incident, which made it clear that a lone American fighter did, indeed, hold out against the Iraqis — but that the soldier was not Pfc. Lynch. It said that following the ambush, Sgt. Walters might have been left behind, hiding beside a disabled tractor-trailer, as Iraqi troops closed in. The report confirmed that he died of wounds identical to those first attributed to Pfc. Lynch.

"There is some information to suggest that a U.S. soldier, that could have been Walters, fought his way south of Highway 16 towards a canal and was killed in action. Sgt. Walters was in fact killed at some point during this portion of the attack. The circumstances of his death cannot be conclusively determined," the report says.

Those on the ground are more certain about what really happened.

Fellow soldiers who witnessed the ambush have been less guarded. "One told me that if I read reports about a brave female soldier fighting, those reports were actually about Don," said Mrs. Walters.

"The information about what had happened had been taken by the military from intercepted Iraqi signals, and the gender had gotten mixed up. He was certain that the early reports had mixed up Jessica and Don."

Sgt. Walters' mom thinks, unlike the Army, that her son deserves more than the Bronze Star he was posthumously awarded....and wants his story given the attention that Pvt. Lynch has received for surviving a truck wreck and subsequent capture by the Iraqis.

Let's all help her out, shall we?

It's In the NYT

Mike & I watched the last part of a delightful old Jimmy Stewart movie yesterday....don't know the name but it was later remade as You've Got Mail. In one scene, Mr. Stewart's character was questioned as to the veracity of a statement and replied "Well, it must be true. It was in the New York Times." My, how things have changed.

The Times announced on July 21 that the Justice Department's inspector general had "received 34 complaints of civil rights violations by department employees that it considered credible." Lest the reader miss the significance of this purported scoop, reporter Philip Shenon editorialized: "The inspector general's report . . . is likely to raise new concern among lawmakers about whether the Justice Department can police itself when its employees are accused of violating the rights of Muslim and Arab immigrants swept up in terrorism investigations under the [USA Patriot Act]."

An "announcement" that is, as Mike is so fond of saying, not entirely accurate.

But the office of the inspector general puts the matter differently. According to its July 17 report, the office received several hundred filings over the last six months that appeared to state a claim within its jurisdiction. Upon closer analysis, however, the vast majority of those several hundred complaints, as written, proved to be unrelated to the Patriot Act. That left 34 that, according to the report, "raised credible Patriot Act violations on their face."

The NYT seems to have conveniently left out that last part there. "On their face" is not, as we all know, the equivalent of credible. When used as it is here to modify credible, it is legalese for "there's something here that should at least be looked into". Credible means "Capable of being believed; plausible. See Synonyms at plausible. Worthy of confidence; reliable." Therefore, the difference between "credible...on their face" and "credible" is a difference that one could drive a truck through.

And in fact, out of the 6 cases that have been investigated so far, 2 have been dismissed, and 2 have been substantiated as "garden-variety prison-abuse" types of cases.

In the first, a prison guard has admitted to verbally abusing a Muslim inmate - the charge against him was that he had ordered the inmate to remove his shirt so he could shine his shoes with it.

In the second, the Bureau of Prisons substantiated the charge that a prison doctor had taunted an inmate. The inmate had claimed that the doctor said during a physical exam: "If I was in charge, I would execute every one of you . . . because of the crimes you all did."

Hardly abuses of the Patriot Act....or even arguably the Civil Rights Act. So much for the "credible" allegations of abuse.

The NYT is gaining the crediblity of a supermarket checkout stand tabloid with its penchant for leaving out inconvenient facts. I expect soon to read a MoDo column about Batboy next.

Just imagine what she'd do with that.

Slow Sunday

For posting anyway....we've been busily trying to finish the rest of the weekend chores since Mike's feeling a little better. We're taking a break right now to have some chicken soup with tons of garlic, and to watch Dr. Strangelove....which I'm embarassed to admit I've never seen.

And still probably won't get to in its entirety, since I have to leave in a bit to shuttle Bubs from my daughter's house back to his mom's.

That's life.

Saturday Stuff

Mike's down sick with something, and I'm busy with Saturday stuff....but I'm taking a break every now & then to check out Michele's Blogathon posts. Her theme this year is the 60's, 70's and 80's...great stuff!

So go take a trip down memory lane and contribute if you can. She and a few others are taking contributions to buy an ambulance for Magen David Odom, a worthy cause indeed.

Me, I've got to get back to figuring out why my bloody desktop suddenly won't play music CD's....just as soon as I find our big hammer.

Smart 'N Crazy

I was poking about this morning reading some of the listings on Jim's blogroll, when I ran across a link to an interesting little personality quiz at Drumwaster. Here's my results:

free enneagram test

Healthy: Observe everything with extraordinary perceptiveness and insight. Most mentally alert, curious, searching intelligence: nothing escapes their notice. Foresight and prediction. Able to concentrate: become engrossed in what has caught their attention. / Attain skillful mastery of whatever interests them. Excited by knowledge: often become expert in some field. Innovative and inventive, producing extremely valuable, original works. Highly independent, idiosyncratic, and whimsical.

Hmmm....reasonably accurate.

Unhealthy: Become reclusive and isolated from reality, eccentric and nihilistic. Highly unstable and fearful of aggressions: they reject and repulse others and all social attachments. / Get obsessed yet frightened by their threatening ideas, becoming horrified, delirious, and prey to gross distortions and phobias. / Seeking oblivion, they may commit suicide or have a psychotic break with reality. Deranged, explosively self-destructive, with schizophrenic overtones. Generally corresponds to the Schizoid Avoidant and Schizotypal personality disorders.

Heh, heh. Smart 'n crazy....a dangerous combination that. Now let's see what famous people I'm supposedly most like.

Examples: Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, Georgia O'Keefe, Stanley Kubrick, John Lennon, Lily Tomlin, Gary Larson, Laurie Anderson, Merce Cunningham, Meredith Monk, James Joyce, Bjšrk, Susan Sontag, Emily Dickenson, Agatha Christie, Ursula K. LeGuin, Jane Goodall, Glenn Gould, John Cage, Bobby Fischer, Tim Burton, David Lynch, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Trent Reznor, Friedrich Nietzsche, Vincent Van Gogh, Kurt Cobain, and "Fox Mulder" (X Files).

Now there's a motley crew isn't it? Could've been worse...my second closest personality type (Type 8) list included Donald Trump, Susan Sarandon & Saddam Hussein.

So I guess I'm in pretty good company....smart 'n crazy instead of smart 'n meglomaniacal control freaks.

Just Like Old Times

My daughter just stopped by on her way to spend part of the weekend with her dad. While she was here, she pigged out on Mike's World's Best Cheesecake, had a big tall glass of my deadly potent sweet tea and took another glass of tea for the road.

As she was leaving, I told her "Wow. This is just like when you were a kid....I fill you up with caffeine & sugar and send you to your dad's."

Revenge is a dish best eaten cold....it's so tasty that way!

Bad Day at Black Rock

First there was this from Miss Vicky....then this today from Adam.

I'll be crying in my beer all weekend....ok so I don't drink, so I'll be crying in my iced tea.

Dammit all to hell.

Reuters Asshats

I've got to run to class in a minute (ok, drive really fast but you know what I meant), but I had to mention this Reuters headline, which beats anything I've ever seen:

U.S. Displays Bodies That Look Like Saddam's Sons

Maybe they "look" like that because, I dunno, they are.

But unlike grisly, blood spattered photographs published by the U.S. military earlier, the faces had been touched up and shaved to make them more closely resemble the brothers in life -- a U.S. official insisted the aim was not to deceive...."The two bodies have undergone facial reconstruction with morticians putty to make them resemble as closely as possible the faces of the brothers when they were alive," a U.S. military official said. He called it standard practice, although such post-mortem work is frowned on by most Muslims.

Hey, how about that for two birds with one stone? More ammunition for the moonbat conspiracy theorists AND an "offense" for the Muslim extremist loonies.

Biased asshats.

But I like this guy:

Businessman Khalil Ali said photographs meant nothing.

"They should have been hung up on poles in a square in Baghdad so all Iraqis could see them," he said. "Then they should have died as people ate them alive."

Indeedy.

Hat?

Bubs is spending the week with my mom & dad....having a grand old time from the sound of things. He & my dad make daily forays through the fields on the four-wheeler with one of my dad's rat terriers riding in a basket on the back....which tickles Bubs to no end. My dad told me a story yesterday that I found hard to believe....Bubs insists on wearing a hat when they go for a ride.

I found that hard to believe because not only has Bubs ALWAYS absolutely refused to wear a hat, he won't even let me wear one. If I even pick one up, he screams "NO! NO HAT! MA! NO!" until I put it down. I have no idea why. But my dad is from a generation in which men wear hats outside, and almost always has some type of hat or cap on....the fact that he's going bald has nothing to do with this I'm sure.

At any rate, my dad said they were getting ready to go for a ride and Bubs pointed to where my dad's old raggedy-ass straw hat complete with a large hole in the crown was hanging and asked "Hat?". My dad of course hands it to him, and Bubs plops it firmly on his own head. Bubs then points to my dad's new hat and says "Hat.", and my dad puts his hat on. Bubs is then ready to go, proudly wearing his hat just like Poppie's. Of course, my dad's hat is just a bit too big for Bubs (my dad wears a size 7 5/8, which is, in case you don't know, incredibly huge) so Bubs has to tilt it back on his head so he can see. He wore it for most of their ride, until he got annoyed with it falling down over his eyes....at which point my dad said Bubs took it off and carefully held it in his lap until they got back to the house. And now he insists on wearing it every time they go riding. I told my dad I guess the reason we'd never been able to get him to wear a hat was that we'd never bought him the right style....which is apparently an oversized beaten-up straw hat with a hole in the crown.

My mom, thank goodness, grabbed the camera and took photos. I hope they turn out well....I'll post one when I get a copy. My dad's not in the habit of fibbing in the least, but I'm gonna have to see proof of this one.

Candidate Poll

Now here's something interesting....Lieberman leads the other Democratic presidential candidates in a just-released national poll.

Lieberman, a Connecticut senator, was at 21 percent and Gephardt, a Missouri representative, was at 16 percent — just within the error margin of plus or minus 5 percentage points in the Quinnipiac University poll.

Kerry, a Massachusetts senator, was at 13 percent and Dean, a former governor of Vermont was at 10 percent. Other candidates in the nine-member field were at 6 percent or lower. More than a fifth, 21 percent, were undecided.

Hardly a decisive lead....and one that drops dramatically if Hillary is included.

But if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York is added to the field, she dominates, taking 48 percent to 11 percent for Lieberman, with others in single digits.

I can't see Hillary jumping in unless Bush takes a major hit from some disaster, she's not the type to get into a fight she doesn't have a snowball's chance of winning. And I'm kinda surprised to see so many Dems anxious to take a bullet for the party....and Lieberman as the front-runner? C'mon, let's get serious. He's unelectable. First, he's tainted with the whole Gore election debacle, in which he came across as a total whiny ass crybaby.

And then there's the whole general wussiness factor. I mean, really, can you see him successfully fighting his way out of a wet paper sack? Mr. Rodgers was a very nice man, but is he the type of person you want as Commander-in-Chief defending our nation?

Not after 9/11. Ain't gonna happen.

It's a crying shame that the Dems are so clueless, and appear likely to remain so. I don't agree with most anything they support, but I do believe that we need a strong two-party system for our government to work as it should. A one-party government is a very dangerous thing.

But they seem intent on self-destruction, and there's no viable political party rising to take their place.

Interesting times in which we're living.

Nothing To Say

I have a little extra time this morning since I'm playing hooky from school today (I have court in Jay after lunch), but haven't found anything interesting about which to write. Most everyone seems to be talking about the Dems, et al, bizarre reactions to the Queasy/Olay thing....but that was hardly surprising given that it doesn't exactly fit into their whole "Bush is inept/Iraq is a quagmire" delusion. And like my momma always said, some people would bitch if they were hung with a new rope.

'Nuff said.

Shot Down In Flames

My great and wonderfully creative idea to do a tribute to Underdog for my class video project has been pretty much shot down....due to time requirements. See, the video has to last between 3-5 minutes, and the Underdog theme song only runs for 1:21. I tried stretching it by including other things, but it's just not as good that way. Matter of fact, it kinda sucks, and it's still too short.

I don't know how she expects an artiste such as myself to work under these conditions. The quality of a work of art is not determined by some arbitrary time limit set by some uncaring unappreciative philistine....would the Mona Lisa be any more of a masterpiece if it was billboard sized? My creative process is being stifled....my artistic statement is being repressed....I can't work under these conditions....I just can't go on...*slaps self*

Whew! That was scary! Now that I'm over myself, I have an alternative idea, but need a little help. What I'm thinking about doing is a video presentation of some of our vacation photos (hopefully not too boring), set to signature song clips that identify each place. You know, things like "Luck Be a Lady" for Vegas, "New York State of Mind" for NYC, etc. But there's a couple of places that have me stumped....San Diego (Goddess any ideas?) and Washington, DC.

How about it? Any suggestions??

Timing

Timing is everything, right Lizard Boy?

"When President Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and declared victory in Iraq, I think he chose the wrong backdrop for his photo-op," Gephardt said in a transcript of the speech released by his campaign. "If you ask me, if he really wanted to show us the state of affairs, he should have landed on a patch of quicksand."

You mean like the patch you just jumped in?

From a political standpoint, Gephardt's speech may have been ill-timed. It came on the same day that Saddam's sons were killed in a firefight with U.S. troops in Iraq, a development that dominated the news and likely provided a boost to the Bush administration.

This candidacy will self-destruct in 15 seconds.....Tick-tock.

Good News From Iraq

US officials have confirmed some good news from Iraq:

Saddam Hussein's sons Odai and Qusai were killed Tuesday when U.S. soldiers stormed a house in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, U.S. military officials said Tuesday.

Now what's with this quagmire thing I've been hearing about?

Revisionist History

I demand to know why there are no hermaphrodites or midgets on this list? Where's Annie Oakley or Tom Thumb? Weren't they important Americans? If you cut them, did they not bleed red, white and blue?

[/tongue in cheek*]

*Blatantly obvious clue included for those who may be clueless about this particular literary device. See, e.g., Mark Twain.

Proof Positive

A fire last year in a California forest proved that Bush's new management policy is correct....selective thinning and controlled burns are the best forest fire prevention tools.

September's blaze was named the Cone Fire, for the hill where it was first thought to have begun. It burned 2,000 acres of Lassen National Forest, and 1,600 of those were in Blacks Mountain Experimental Forest, a 10,000-acre area within Lassen set up in 1934 for ecological study by the Forest Service.

When the Cone Fire swept through these woods it came to a patch of forest that was different from the rest, and stopped dead, like a mime at an invisible wall. What stopped the fire was an experimental plot that had been selectively logged to thin it, and had been burned in controlled fashion. The result was an open forest, much the way it might have been 500 years ago when regular forest fires swept through the high dry country and no one tried to stop them.

You see, that's the way nature really works when there's no tree huggers around to interfer.

Ponderosa pine forests are no strangers to fire. Mr. Skinner has taken samples of trees up to 700 years old to find out their fire history. Most trees showed evidence of some sort of fire about every 7 to 10 years. And big, intense fires occurred every 20 years or so, up until a century ago when the idea of fighting forest fires took hold.

So if you really want to protect our forests, the next time a tree-sitter tries to stop timber management just break out your chainsaws.

The trees will thank you for it.

Handy Info

I found some handy information in today's NYT (I know, amazing isn't it)....a link to a site, Geektools, that has a list of hotels which offer high speed internet access. There's even a form to submit hotels that you've found.

Thanks, guys.

Over The Line

The NYPost reports that certain Web sites have posted personal infomation about the alleged Kobe rape victim.

One Web site carried the full name of the accuser, her home address in Colorado, phone number and e-mail address, and displayed photographs of her in social settings.

The Web site's address is being withheld by The Post.

I am not publishing the link either, though it was fairly easy to track down, bacause I believe that site stepped over the line. It's one thing to publish a name and/or photograph.....though I understand the rationale for withholding even that information. It makes it less likely for legitimate rape victims to report rape due to the fear of publicity.

But publishing someone's home address, phone number and email is going too far. And yes, I know how easy that information is to find once you have a name. But just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

Shame on them.

Well That's Alright Then

CNN reports our embassy in Liberia has been hit with mortar shells and Marines have been sent in to protect the personnel there.

U.S. Democratic presidential hopeful Al Sharpton met Sunday in Ghana with Taylor representatives and members of the main rebel group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy.

Sharpton, a New York civil rights activist, said his meetings with the rebel group would continue Monday morning. Afterward, he said he hopes to go to Monrovia and continue discussions there, possibly with Taylor.

Why send in the Marines when Al's already there?

[/sarcasm]

(BTW, I'm blogging from class....a first)

Advice for Arkansas Officials

As if the swarms of mosquitos that infest my neighborhood (don't want to spray evil pesticides that harm the environment!) and the push to ban smoking in restaurants (it smells bad!) weren't bad enough, now they're trying to ruin my biscuits.

Too many people are too fat — indeed, obese — and risk heart disease, stroke, kidney failure or diabetes unless they change their diet, change their exercise habits and quit smoking, the state Health Department director said.

I just have one thing to say to him: Bugger. Off. I have just about had a gutful of you ignorant people trying to run my life based on junk science....which is no more a legitimate basis for health code regulations than some watery tart is a basis for a system of government. I can use your same faulty reasoning extrapolating from badly flawed studies to reach the opposite conclusion...like this:

My grandfather ate food cooked in lard all his life....hell, he'da probably eaten batter-dipped lard sticks deep-fried in lard if Granny had cooked them. Then the "fat is bad for you" craze hit, and his doctors nagged him until they switched to cooking with corn oil and other "no-fat" delicacies. You ever eat biscuits cooked with corn oil? They're just nasty. And guess what? He died....and even worse, he died eating bad food. It didn't prolong his life, it just made the end of it more miserable. QED: Corn oil fits in that category of stuff I like to call "Shit'llkillya".

Some achievements of the 20 th century including clean water, safe food and universal immunizations added years to the life of the average Arkansan, and government regulation played a significant role in that success. But in the new century, the challenge will be to achieve healthier lifestyles without government regulation, Boozman said. "This is America.... We just aren’t going to have a law that says you can’t have French fries," he said.

Yeah right...because why stop at French fries? I'm thinking there'll also be laws against buying lard, Twinkies and Ding-Dongs and all kinds of good stuff. Why is it you stupid sonsabitches can't do something useful like get the skeeters out of my yard so I can go outside without drenching myself in DEET? I can see the day coming when instead of setting up a still, I'll be sneaking around in the woods rendering lard. And I'll do it too....skeeters or not.

Nobody is messing with my biscuits or fried chicken. Get the hell outta my kitchen....and stay out.

What A Pal!

Lookie what Rodger found just for me.....every smiley known to mankind.

Should we tell 'em the story behind this Rodge or just let 'em wonder?

And A Good Time Was Had By All

We're finally home, full as ticks and worn to a frazzle. It were hot. The food was great. If you're ever driving through Marshall on Tuesday or Thursday, and you see a little roadside stand selling BBQ sandwiches, stop & load up. The cook's a friend of my brother-in-law, and he has the best BBQ this side of Memphis. He does catering too. Wooo-ie, so good it'll make you want to slap your momma.

Me 'n Bubs had a squirt gun fight & chased each other through the sprinkler while the girls cranked the ice cream and Mike took a ba-zillion pictures. My daughter's best friend stopped by with her 2 month old baby. Bubs wasn't too thrilled about the strange "be-be" being there....he doesn't even like to share Ma with Pa, let alone some dumb old baby he's never seen before that everyone's making a big fuss over. He got quiet & looked really sad, so he & I colored in his new coloring book and just ignored that dumb old baby until it left.

Traffic was a bear....lots of tourists from states where the roads apparently have no curves. It's really frustrating to be caught behind someone who drives 30 around the curves and 80+ in the few places one can pass. I call 'em "Bazooka Drivers", cuz they make me wish I had one. Or maybe two.

Anyway, we're exhausted and headed for an early bedtime. Hope y'all had a great weekend too.

Good Times & Good Eats

Tomorrow's the big birthday bash for my daughter at my sister's house in Marshall. My daughter, one of her roommates & Bubs are already down there, we're going down first thing in the morning....which for us means we should be there by lunch.

And oh, what a lunch! Homemade ice cream and birthday cake of course....my brother-in-law is smoking brisket, ribs & chicken...I made coleslaw....there'll be tomatoes & cukes fresh from the garden....my sister's world famous deviled eggs....and all kinds of other goodies.

I'm gaining weight just thinking about it.

Bizarro World

My ex is getting re-married today to his first wife. I wish them both the best, I really do, but it's just....bizarre. They're getting married on their original wedding anniversary, which I can kinda understand...but they've also re-bought & moved into the house they had when they were married.

I just find that, well, kinda creepy.

Don't you?

Good Idea

Fox reports that a military mom has organized a donations drive to ship air conditioners to our troops in Iraq. If you're interested in making a donation, go here.

Another Arkie Blogger!

I've found another Arkie blogger, Miss Wendy of Per Aspera. Miss Wendy is a transplanted Jaw-jan adjusting to life in the flatlands over around Jonesboro....she's teaching at ASU, bless her heart. Girl, iffen you gets homesick, you just remember the hills are just a few hours away here in Fayetteville....'round here is a lot like where you're from, or so I'm told.

Y'all go make her feel welcome.

Evil Jarflies

Thanks to David, I've discovered that jarflies are even more evil than I thought.

At least being female, I don't have to worry about doing that.

Ouch!

Crazy Dave

We're having a birthday party at my sister's house this weekend, which got me to thinking about her neighbor, Crazy Dave. You see, Crazy Dave won't be around this year, he's moved.

And in his departure lies a story.

My sis and brother-in-law had had problems with Crazy Dave ever since he first moved in next door several years ago....problems which have steadily escalated. Crazy Dave, it soon became obvious to everyone, was not right in the head....he had a pigeon coop for starters, with which he was obsessed. Keeping pigeons is a little unusual for a rural northcentral Arkansas town. And he would have a hissy fit about every little noise in the neighborhood because he said it upset his pigeons.

This escalated into an inevitable dispute over the property line between his house and theirs....which my brother-in-law settled by having the line re-surveyed and running a large cable marking the correct line. My brother-in-law didn't help matters because he then build a new driveway along said property line, as well as a garage and basketball court....as close to the pigeon coop as he could get them. Crazy Dave retaliated by installing surveillance cameras under the roof of his house, which he claimed he did to keep an eye on his pigeon coop.

Then a couple of years ago on the Fourth of July, things got worse. My brother-in-law always has a big party and shoots off fireworks for all the kids in the neighborhood. Crazy Dave came unglued and called the police ranting & raving because the noise was upsetting his pigeons. Unfortunately for Crazy Dave, my brother-in-law wasn't shooting off fireworks....it was the mayor, several members of the City Council...you get the picture.

A while later, my sister noticed that one of Crazy Dave's cameras wasn't actually aimed at his pigeon coop....it appeared to be focused directly towards their deck. Which really creeped her out, but she wasn't sure enough to complain. And so things kept getting worse, Crazy Dave kept getting weirder and weirder until about 6 months ago.

My sister & brother-in-law were sitting out on their deck quietly enjoying the evening. Next thing they knew, Crazy Dave stuck a pellet gun out his window and shot at them...one of the pellets hit a post right by my brother-in-law's head. My sis asked me "You know what my crazy husband did then?" I replied, "No, but I know what I would've done. I'd got my gun, gone out to the property line, looked directly into his camera and yelled 'Shoot at me will you you crazy son-of-a-bitch? Stick your head out the window and let's see how you like it' while you called the police." Which is pretty much exactly what happened.

The police while inside Crazy Dave's home investigating, discovered that not only were his cameras aimed directly at my sister's deck as well as the neighbor's yard across the street, Crazy Dave also had quite the arsenal of weapons....and was severely paranoid.

Since the cameras weren't aimed to videotape inside their house, they weren't illegal. But my sister insisted on pressing charges for the pellet gun shots, arguing (correctly IMO) that the next time he would likely not use a pellet gun. Things temporarily got a little better because Crazy Dave became convinced that my sister & brother-in-law were trying to kill him and he was afraid to come out of his house.

But soon things started escalating again....rants about disturbing his pigeons, etc. Crazy Dave's trial date approached, since my sister refused to drop the charges. Someone, tired of listening to Crazy Dave's rants about how they were all out to get him, frustratedly finally told him he was right, they were out to get him and the safest thing for him to do was just move out of the county.

So he did.

At least this year's party should be a lot less stressful...I won't have to worry about Bubs getting shot while running over to look at the pigeons or anything.

And you thought life was so quiet & peaceful in these little rural towns, didn't you?

Slow Morning

'Bout the most exciting thing I've seen this morning is Sollie caught a jarfly...cicada to you non-hillbillies. I guess it crawled in the door when I let the cat out. Sassy's been chasing him all over the house trying to get it away from him. Sollie wasn't quite sure what to do with it....but he had caught it so it was his bug dammit and he wasn't sharing.

Now they've both lost interest in it and gone back to sleep...which probably means I'll have a jarfly crawling up my leg shortly.

I am in no shape to have a screaming runaway fit this morning.

Wow!

Posting about "Hunt for Bambi" sure do set your site meter to spinning, don't it?

It's an ad for hookers people....just ask Spoons.

Strange Days

This has been the strangest week with computers. Monday at school, everytime you would try to change a document in either Word or WordPad, the computer would lock up. Since the entire class was trying to edit a test before turning it in and every computer in the classroom was doing it, that was very annoying. Tuesday, in a different classroom, part of my screen froze while I was working on an Excel spreadsheet. It was lovely working around that, let me tell you.

Here at home, I haven't been able to get to a couple of blogs that I normally visit every day though I asked around and no one else was having that problem....kept getting a "Can't Find Server" error. That's now working today and I haven't changed anything.

Yesterday afternoon, I was trying to use NetDrive to tag into the school's network to download a homework assignment and couldn't get into the correct server where it was located....using my desktop. It worked fine on my laptop, and they're both set up exactly the same way.

And just now, my laptop taskbar just....disappeared. For no reason. I logged out of MT and it came back.

I think it's time to propitiate the computer gods....you know, burn a little incense, make an appropriate sacrifice.

I just need to find the cat.

23 Years Ago

23 years ago yesterday, we were having one of the worst heat waves on record....the temps had been in triple digits every day for over a month. It was miserably hot. We lived in a little 2 bedroom trailer with no air conditioning. My then-husband and I owned and operated an ice plant. It was in a big tin building with only a couple of windows and no air conditioning. It did have a big exhaust fan at one end that was thermostatically controlled. We set that as high as it would go....125 degrees...and the fan still only shut off late at night. It was like an oven in there....and outside.

We spent most of our time there, only going home to sleep a few hours most nights. We had just taken over the business, we were selling ice as fast as we could make it and deliver it...and we desperately needed the income. Hard times indeed. My son was about 19 months old and we were struggling to keep a roof over his head, diapers on his butt and food on the table. I remember distinctly though, taking half a day off 23 years ago yesterday to go home and clean house....something I hadn't had the chance to do for a while. It seemed quite the luxury at the time.

Why, you may be wondering, do I remember something so seemingly unimportant so clearly? Because 23 years ago today, my daughter was born.

Happy birthday sweetie. We've come a long way baby girl.

Great News!

Bubs has been officially declared fully healed from his accident and has been released from his doctor's care. Yay! Just in time to go swimming!

And, in equally good news, his Auntie Em has successfully completed her in-hospital chemo, surgery AND radiation treatments....and is now happily back home. She still has several months of oral chemo ahead of her, but at least she's home and doing very well.

Could there be any better news than babies getting well?

Additions

I'm finally getting around to updating my blogroll again....added All AgitProp, a great Canadian blog and John Lemon's Barrel of Fish. John's a real rarity...an academic with loads of common sense.

Go check 'em out.

The Rest of the Story

Something kept bugging me about all the stories reported about Terry Wallis, the Arkansas guy who awoke from a coma after 19 years....I didn't quite remember his wife being so devoted after his accident, but that happened so long ago, and it's been 10 years since I even lived in the area so I wasn't sure. But now Tim Blair has the rest of the story from his local paper....that I haven't seen reported in any of the US media.

But now the crash victim's family are steeling themselves to break the news that during those lost years his wife had three children by another man.

Then there is the feud between his wife and his parents that will eventually come to court.

His parents, you see, got a guardianship over him after the accident. His wife, after all this time and after he's awakened, wants the guardianship transferred to her. In the interim, she's been busy with, ahem, other things.

Mrs Wallis said she had "an unusual relationship" with the father of her three other children - whom she would only name as Mike.

Mrs Wallis said: "The kids live with Mike and Eleanor and call her Mum. But they call me Mum too. They know I'm their biological mother and we are all good friends and see each other all the time."

Familial relationships in rural Arkansas, you see, can be a bit....flexible. Hell in my own family, one of my ancestors had kids by his wife and her sister...and they all lived in the same house. He was also a Baptist peacher & a bootlegger if memory serves....an interesting combination.

So it appears that at least regarding the wife it isn't a heartwarming tale of love and devotion....as Tim correctly points out, that part more properly belongs on Jerry Springer.

But it is still an amazing example of survival and parental devotion.

More Thanks

Now let's see, where was I?

--Rodger, what can I say? If I had a homeboy, it would be Rodger. Rodger found just for me a copy of Baxter Black's "Vegetarian Nightmare" I'd been looking for years for...AND custom-Photoshopped what he thought I looked like. Always ready to lend a helping hand, Rodger's a great guy. And he makes me laugh. Thanks, cuzz.

--And speaking of making me laugh, a big thanks to Steve, Scott, Bill, Kevin and Frank. You very funny guys! You make me laugh! Ha! Ha!

--To Jim, who not only makes me laugh but also makes me think. Jim is always one of my first reads in the morning....a real treasure he is.

--Huge thanks to Dean, Charles, Susanna, Andrea, John, Tony, and Aaron. Not only do you make me think, you help keep me up on what's really going on in the world. I know I can always find at each subjects on which learned minds can disagree, jump into any conversation and everyone will discuss & disagree without being disagreeable. (Trolls aside of course) I appreciate all your efforts.

--To Keith, thanks for being such a sweetheart....and fellow roller coaster lover. You're a great guy and we hope to get to meet you and Fred someday.

--To Jennifer, thanks for all your beautiful photos of the Arkansas wilds. You help me remember one of the reasons we're going to pack it all in someday and head back to the hills. And won't that make for some interesting posts? Sort of a reverse "Green Acres".

--To Natalie, Patty and Marti, thanks for brightening my day on every visit.

--To The Wench and Scott & Ellen, thanks for being you. Always a special treat to visit.

--To Acidman, whose love of Southern language and passion for doing things right is even greater than my own. We may butt heads on occasion, but I still think you're a pretty good guy.

--Finally, thanks to you, Gentle Readers. Your comments and visits mean a lot to me. That's what it's all about isn't it, the conversation?

The Blogosphere is a lot of things, some not very nice....but at its best, it's truly a 21st century Greek Agora...a marketplace for the exchange of ideas. You all exemplify the best of that ideal. The trolls and the nasty people are just the modern equivalent of the nutcases that wandered around the marketplace, spounting their nonsense and annoying those who wanted to have a meaningful conversation.

I've always wondered if the Greeks didn't band together and just beat the shit out of those people....the Agora was also the center of justice after all.

Perhaps there's another lesson from history for us all.

You've Been Had

Seen the "Hunt for Bambi" thing making the rounds? Mike did a little digging, first here of course....and then he checked out the Hunt for Bambi website and found this.

So all you guys that have been just drooling thinking about this can forget it. It ain't real.

And BTW, I agree with Aaron, all of y'all are just nasty.

Disturbing Trends and Thanks

I've been noticing a disturbing trend in the Blogosphere lately....bloggers being incredibly nasty towards each other, that sometimes even bleeds over into the real world like that whole Moxie thing. And no, I'm not linking to either of them. I was never a reader of either, and quite frankly thought the entire debacle to be unbelievably childish. If you cause someone to lose their job over something so unimportant as a blog, you need to take a good hard look at yourself in the mirror....cuz you've got some serious problems. Get a freaking life for God's sake.

And what's with the whole troll thing? I just don't get it. Does hounding and harassing people for no reason make up for some feeling of inadequacy? Is it a power trip? Does it make them feel superior to "outwit" efforts to make them go away? Well whoopity-do for them. Pure-dee old foolishness if you ask me. It may just be my Southern upbringing, but I detest rudeness. And at their most basic, trolls are just rude people....much like the neighbor who always brings their dog over to shit in your yard.

At any rate, since it's the good people that you never hear much about, I've decided this morning to point out some of the good people I've run across over the last not-quite-yet year that I've been doing this, and send them all a long overdue thanks for just being themselves...the good guys.

---For all their help and encouragement when I was starting out, I want to thank Da Goddess, Miss Rachel, Gary of the now defunct Life After Fifty, Michelle and of course Laurence. They were never too busy to answer whatever stupid question I had, or help out with a problem.

---For all their invaluable help during my recent stupid-page-won't-load-properly episode, I want to thank Scott and Craig. I don't know what I would've done without you guys....but it would've probably involved taking a baseball bat to my laptop. A big thanks to you both.

---To Matt and Miss Vicky, thanks for not only being great bloggers, but also nice neighbors from over the mountain. The flaming carpet New Year's Eve party will always be one of my fondest memories of you guys. Nothing says New Year's Eve quite like spilled Sterno, does it?

---To Adam, for showing me that true Southern gentlemen still exist among today's young men.

To be continued......or I'm going to be late for school. I hate it when that happens.

La Dolce Vita

Mike borrowed a DSL modem from a co-worker, plugged it in and......Presto! Chango! We have DSL access again! Which means our modem is toast, but the co-worker is letting us borrow his modem until we can find a replacement.

Once again, life is good.

And Now For Something Completely Different

While I was getting Bubs ready to go home last night, I was talking to him about did he want to go home & see his mom and his puppy, little brother and so on. I stood him up in my lap so I could finish pulling up his shorts and he threw his arms around my neck & hugged me as tight as his little arms could.

"Bubs wants Ma" he said.

The sun, the moon and the stars baby boy....just let me know when and where you want 'em.

Bad Seed?

The rationale invented by convicted criminals to explain why "I did it but it wasn't my fault" never ceases to amaze me....and here's a new one. Genetic predisposition to violence. The sins of the father visited on the child defense, aka the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree. The most annoying things about cliches is how often they're true. From what I've seen working with juvenile delinquents, while there are a few bad kids born, most of them are made...and they're made by their families.

In an unusual appeal, May's lawyer said experts should have been allowed to testify during his sentencing phase that he was genetically predisposed to violence.

May's father, Freeman May, has been in prison since his son was 6 months old, and on death row since 1995, when he was convicted of the 1982 murder of a Lancaster woman.

Happy little family, wasn't it? And Mr. May carried on the family tradition.

Prosecutors said that on Sept. 6, 2001, May and an accomplice, Michael Bourgeois, broke into the home of Bourgeois' adoptive parents, Lucy and Terry Smith, and spent two hours torturing them to death. May, now 21, was 19 at the time.
The couple suffered nearly 200 wounds from being stabbed, shot and beaten. Mrs. Smith was also sexually assaulted.

Kinda makes you want to run out and volunteer to be a adoptive parent, don't it? And now Mr. May wants us to believe it wasn't his fault. I ain't buying it.

We all make choices in life...and actions have consequences. People like Mr. May have a choice between following in their fathers' footsteps or making a decision that they want to do better. But choosing to be responsible for one's actions and fight a genetic predisposition takes a lot of hard work.

So even if it's true that Mr. May had such a genetic predisposition, he made that choice....wrongly.

Now it's time to face the consequences.

Sorry Suzanne

Suzanne Fields seems to think online dating is a bad thing.

Seeking romance online is today what looking for Mr. Goodbar was in the previous century.

I'm truly sorry Suzanne, but you're wrong. For those of us who work long hours, it's a godsend. How else are you going to meet someone interesting? At a bar? Who wants to get all dolled up after working a 12 hr. day only to sit at a bar & get annoyed by drunks? At work? Perhaps, but I've always been a firm believer that one should not defecate where one eats. Office romance is generally a bad idea. And apparently I'm not the only one who thinks this.

By one estimate, more than 17 million people looked at online personals last year and 2 million of them paid for such ads.

In my experience, you meet about the same amount of weirdos as in a more personal approach, but it's much easier to recognize them by reading their e-mails (ALL CAPS! ALL THE TIME!)....and much easier to make them go away (the Block Domain feature on my email was really sweet). And it's safer too. Most personals sites will allow you to set up a private email on their domain, which makes it more difficult to trace your location. Your correspondants only know the personal information that you give them. Sure a few might have the capabilities to track down from where you are posting, but hey, that doesn't make them bulletproof.

And there's another important bonus. You get a chance to know a little about a person before you meet them....and that's not a bad thing.

Gone is the delicious face-to-face process of discovery. The seductive tentativeness of romance is replaced by the deadly earnestness of seeking a "relationship" — love at the end of a search command.

I'm of the opinion that a person will reveal things in writing online to a complete stranger that they would never say face-to-face. Sure some people lie in personal ads....but these people will also lie in person as well. And you'll usually find that out much faster using personal ads...like when you show up for a lunch date & find they weigh 300 lbs. not 120.

In 1928 a splendid little book, "The Technique of the Love Affair," by "A Gentlewoman," appeared in bookstores. It was both practical and eloquent in its counsel for grace and restraint. "A successful love affair," writes Gentlewoman, "is one which results either in permanent mating or in mutual friendship, and for this nothing is more efficacious than to inspire in your subject an admiration kept so perpetually alert that it almost reaches the high pitch of infatuation, but does not quite."

Can anyone imagine that happening in cyberspace or on campus?

Well yeah, actually I can.

It's how I met Mike.

Welcome Back Kotter

Spoons is back.

And there was great rejoicing.

Shut My Mouth

You know how I was just whining that the weekend couldn't get any worse? We just had one of the worse hailstorms I've seen in several years....started out pea-sized, ended up almost golfball size hail.

And we had the TransAm parked out in the middle of the yard with a "For Sale" sign on it. I'm almost afraid to look. Actually I'm not going to look until the lightning stops.

At least it's still insured.

Oy Vey!

The weekend continues to (mostly) suck. Bubs is here (the part that doesn't suck) and Sollie once again woke him up at 4:30 am. But he went right back to sleep and Sollie is "enjoying" some quality time outside.

It's going to be short-lived though, as the radar is showing another nasty thunderstorm headed this way (no bow echo this time Jim, this one's a supercell).

We still have no DSL....and probably won't for several days. The problem has been narrowed down to either the filter or modem on our line, or a problem at the switching station that got hit by lightning yesterday. Hmmm, I wonder which it'll turn out to be? At any rate, our ISP isn't in much of a hurry to fix it, so we'll be limping along on dial-up for a while.

Finally, just when I thought the weekend couldn't suck any worse, I received an email from my favorite Texas PaPaw letting me know he'd had to shut down his blog, Life After Fifty due to a particularly nasty troll. And may ye burn in hell, ye wee nasty bastard, whomever you are.

It's jerks like that what ruin things for the nice people.

Saturday Sucks

So far Saturday's sucking mightly. It was storming when I got up, our ADSL went down and the dial-up ISP we use for backup on just these occasions is as slow as molasses in February.

Feel my pain.

Racism Victim?

The girlfriend of the Meridian, Miss. plant shooter says he shouldn't be "criticized" because "he's a victim too." I was raised to not speak ill of the dead, but this is ridiculous. Precisely of what was he a victim?

Co-workers said Williams, 48, had run-ins with management and several fellow employees. Williams, who was white, had been frustrated because he thought black people had a leg up in society, co-workers said.

A victim of his own racism perhaps? Boo-fucking-hoo. Pardon me if I don't find that particularly sympathetic.

More like pathetic.

Powerball Winner

1 of the 2 winners of Wednesday's Powerball has come forward to claim their prize.

William Walkenbach, a production supervisor, said he wants to "finally get me a tractor with brakes."

Kindly extravagant if you ask me. And his wife wants something similarly outrageous.

Claudia Walkenbach, a substitute teacher, said she'd buy a new refrigerator to replace the 30-year-old model sitting in their kitchen in Hermann, a town of about 2,600 on the Missouri River.

I love it!

Underdog

I'm working on a video project for school and am trying to find an audio clip of the opening to the Underdog cartoon. You know, "Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird. No, it's a plane. It's a frog! A frog???" I've searched Google and Dogpile....plenty of text files but not what I'm looking for. I did find a audio clip of the theme song that I needed, but not the intro. Anybody got one I could use?

The project is to make a movie using photos and audio clips. I'm casting Sollie as Underdog, Sassy as Sweet Polly Purebred, the damn cat as Simon Bar Sinister, and the squirrels as her evil assistant, whats-his-name.

Just think of it as my slightly twisted homage to one of my favorite cartoons.

Role Models

The femi-nazis are always whining about how little girls don't have strong women as role models. Much like a lot of men I know, they've just been hanging out with the wrong kind of women. My dad told me this morning about an incident that happened to a cousin and his wife that reminded me of exactly what kind of women I grew up around.

Seems our cousin & his wife, let's call 'em George and Sally, had been on a two week vacation in Colorado. They drove straight through on their way home, about a 2 day drive. On the trip home, they stop in a little town not far from home at a WalMart to pick up some things and to meet Sally's sister, who lives not far from there.

George waits in the truck while Sally gets what they need from the store. When she gets back to the truck, her sister's there, so they're standing outside the truck visiting. There's a car parked beside their truck, Sally left the passenger side door open but there's plenty of room between the car and the truck door.

A large man approachs, about 300 lbs. and gets pissed because Sally's left her door open, even though there's plenty of room for him to back his car out. I guess he figured since she was a skinny little ol' thing, he could push her around. He thought wrong.

He tells Sally she needs to get her ass in her truck, shut the door and get the hell out of the parking lot....a real obnoxious asshat. Sally straightens up a bit, looks him dead in the eye and says "Mister, I just drove in from Colorado. I'm tired and plumb wore out. But if you want a fight, I reckon I'm ready." And heads for him.

Asshat takes off a'runnin across the parking lot. Sally's sister grabs her and keeps Sally from chasing him. George gets out of the truck and walks over to ask the asshat what his problem is. Asshat says he doesn't have a problem, he just wants to get in his car and leave. George tells him that'd be a real good idea.

On the way home, George tells Sally he thought about getting out of the truck when all that first started but decided she could whup the guy if she needed to. I believe she could've too....she'da whupped him like a rented mule.

We don' need no stinkin' women's liberation round here.

Hey Look!

Yes, it's 2 am and I'm awake. Seems it's been storming here in Fayettenam and our power's been off for quite a while. The storm didn't wake me, but the insistent beeping of our power backup for the server did. Bloody annoying thing. Power's back on now, but I saw a nasty looking bow echo on the radar headed our way, so I decided to stay up for a bit.

If we're going to do a Dorothy, I want to be awake for the ride, dammit!

UPDATE: Figures, the squall line hit the state line and dissipated. At least we're getting some rain for our tomatoes. I'm going back to bed.

Execution Update

The US Supreme Court denied the request for a stay of execution of convicted murdered Riley Noel last night, 4-3. Governor Huckabee is reviewing his clemency request, and is expected to announce his decision sometime this afternoon.

Bring It On

The army's setting traps for Iraqi ambushers in RPG alley...and they're falling for it.

Just then two of the battalion's M-1 tanks drove past the ambush spot in an attempt to draw fire. Randall spotted two men carrying weapons suddenly standing up on a roof. They crouched down when they saw the American vehicles were near-impenetrable tanks.

The tanks moved into spots where they could observe the ambush site. One of the men reappeared.

Permission was given by their CO, and the tanks opened fire. The next morning, the troops questioned residents and surveyed the results of the ambush.

The suspected assailant on the roof was cut in half, Bailey said.

"He ain't there no more," he said.

To paraphrase one of my favorite cartoons, "There used to be a little sniper, but he don't move no more."

Gift Suggestions Anyone?

My daughter's 23rd birthday is coming up next week, and here's what she said she wanted:

"A book that I'd like to read."

Anything in particular? No. Any author you like? No. Any idea of what kind of book? Just something I'd like, you know.

No, actually I don't. (Sometimes I really pity whomever she marries.) So I'm looking for suggestions. Here's what little I do know. She doesn't like sci-fi or fantasy. She's not interested in philosophy, theory or anything weighty like that....or "romance" novels. A few books I've gotten her in the past that she liked were "The Christmas Box" by Richard Evans, and I think a couple of Nicholas Sparks novels....or what I call "airplane fodder". You know, the ones that are mildly interesting stories, but not so interesting that you mind being continually interrupted while reading.

I haven't had a chance to browse a bookstore in so long I don't know what's out there. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Help me, for the love of God.

Tonight's Execution

Riley Dobi Noel is scheduled to die tonight by lethal injection for the 1995 senseless slaying of 3 children in North Little Rock.

Noel's brother Cornelius "Skeeter" Ganaway, had been gunned down in a drive-by shooting a week earlier and, according to prosecutors, Noel sought revenge on Yashica Young. Noel believed she had set up Ganaway for a gang hit....Police and prosecutors say that, when Noel and his accomplices realized Young wasn't home, they killed her siblings in revenge.

The siblings were 10-17 years old....executed in cold blood, one by one. There's no question that Noel did the killings, an eyewitness escaped, and apparently Noel's not denying the murders. But he is trying to appeal his death sentence....on the grounds that he's mentally disabled.

Noel has asked the [US Supreme] court to consider whether an alleged brain abnormality should prohibit the state from executing him tomorrow night, and Huckabee is considering a request for clemency.

State lawyers say Noel is raising no valid issues in his appeal and the execution should proceed. They say his mental condition has been reviewed by other courts and Noel is presenting no new information.

Fat chance bucky. You knew exactly what you were doing....as evidenced by the way you carried out your plan for "revenge".

And may God show you more mercy than you did your innocent victims.

Or not.

This 'n That

--Bought more Powerball tickets yesterday. Plans have now expanding to include buying all the houses in our neighborhood and turning it into a walled compound complete with guard tower....and a sign on the front gate declaring the area a Hippy-free Smokers Zone.

--Made 70/70 on my Excel homework yesterday and got a sticker on my papers that said "1st Rate!". 42 yrs. old and I'm still getting award stickers on my homework. I'm just cool like that.

--Linguistics seems to be one of the themes this morning:

---Jim has a funny post about "Engrish":

DIDN'T YOU TAKE YOUR TESTICLES ROUGHLY WHEN YOU ENJOYED HOTBATH, SAUNA, HOTSHOWER, FAR-INFRARED RAYS?

--Dean ponders whether there's a male equivalent to spinister.

So far as I know, "confirmed bachelor" really is the only equivalent. There are several reasons that I can think of (and, believe it or not, this is probably worth reading):

--And Tony wonders where redneck sayings come from.

Do they think of this crap, or is it passed down from one generation to another?

And for something completely different:

--Steve's back from his trip to La-la land...and Aaron confirms his tales of hot babes and hotter guns.

--And today is Frank's one year blogiversary. He demands that everyone link to him, so here you go Frank....now stop pouting.

There, that's enough to keep you busy until I eat my breakfast. Who knows, I may even post something with actual content later.

But don't hold your breath.

Making the Rounds

Since road construction has resumed on I-540 between Fayetteville and Bentonville, I have to leave for school earlier than usual now....so not much time for morning posting. Sorry. I've been wishing I had voice recognition software on my laptop so I could blog about all the asshats I see on the road everyday.....yeah go ahead and pass me fool. I obviously know something you don't....the speed limit has been dropped from 70 to 60 and in Arkansas, fines double in work zones. And there's extra state troopers assigned until the construction is finished. So go ahead, ignore all those posted signs and win the "I'm in front of you" sweepstakes. I'll have the last laugh when I cruise by you while you're stopped on the side of the road talking to the nice policeman. Bwahahahaha!

Anyway, here's a few things I noticed while making my blogrounds this morning you might want to check out:

--Craig has a cool video clip of his weekend trip to his parents' in Ennis, Montana....though the song that sprang to mind while I watched it was "Don't Fence Me In". Beautiful Big Sky country.

--Susanna has two great posts on the death penalty and its application. I'll be heading back to put in my two cents' worth on the issues when I get back from class.

--Bigwig continues his moving series of posts on his unpublished Holocaust photos. Very powerful stuff on a subject we should never forget.

Well crap, I'm out of time. Let's make it simple. See that blogroll over there on the right? Go visit 'em all.

Just a Good Ol' Boy

One of the local tv stations has an interview and photo of the young gentleman who foiled the bank robbery over the weekend.

"When I knew he didn't have a gun, he just had that stick and the money, I figured I could take his hands and just make sure I had his hands and he wouldn't pull out a gun and start shooting people."

So he tackled the bank robber and disarmed him. That boy made his momma proud. Reckon what position he played on his high school football team?

More SCO Fallout

Eight major manufacturers have formed the CE Linux Forum, and SCO's trying to prove its case against Linux to them.

Darl McBride, whose company recently launched a legal attack on Linux for alleged patent infringements, will go to Japan this week in an attempt to prove his point with some of the manufacturers that came together last week as the CE Linux Forum (CELF).

McBride, who is fluent in Japanese, will visit with several founding members to show them code samples in which the Linux open-source operating system allegedly violates SCO's Unix patents, said an SCO spokesman. CELF's eight founders are Hitachi, Matsushita, NEC, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba. "Members of that consortium are lining up in droves to view that source code," the spokesman said.

Linux supporters are touting this as a positive sign that Linux will survive the lawsuit unscathed, but others aren't so sure.

"I saw what appeared to be a word-for-word copy of about every third line of code in the central module of the Linux kernel," said Enderle of Giga Information Group, who viewed the alleged code violations two weeks ago. "The lines of code contained typos, misspellings and even copyright disclaimers. It appeared to constitute a violation of the license."

Enderle said the CELF companies are "probably betting that much of this will be resolved before they reach the point where they have to make a huge commitment." But if the legal plot thickens, he said, many large corporations will back away from Linux. "If I'm a manager in a large, branded company, the last thing I want is very visible litigation that puts my company's brand name at risk," he said.

No shit. It's called "due diligence"....aka "doing your job to protect your company's interests".

Laura DiDio, a senior analyst with the Yankee Group, Boston, another industry analyst who has seen samples of the alleged violations, cautioned that product developers shouldn't lose sight of the critical issues amid all the rhetoric. "The real question customers should be asking their software suppliers is, 'Will you indemnify us if SCO prevails?' " said DiDio. "'If you won't, why not? And if you will, to what extent will you indemnify us?'"[Emphasis mine]

Gonna be a lot more of that, asking for indemnification guarantees....or a lot of heads rolling because they didn't.

He Said, She Said

A Ft. Smith man was arrested after his ex-wife alleged that he held her against her will and raped her. I wouldn't want to touch that case with a ten foot pole...as a prosecutor or defense attorney. Besides the obvious difficulties in a "he said, she said" case involving ex-spouses, there's a further complication.

Police responded to 1801 Cavanaugh Road Sunday where they found Lena Milburn in a fetal position on the floor of the trailer. Police say she was heavily intoxicated but said she had been raped by her ex-husband.

Milburn told police she had voluntarily injected methamphetamine with her ex-husband Wednesday at the Westark Inn, but that Thursday he forced her to take the drug and then raped her.

Two tweakers out of their heads on meth. I doubt if they even know for sure what really happened.

What a mess.

Pa's Gone

Buddy Ebsen has passed away. Though probably best known today as Jed Clampitt or Barnaby Jones, Mr. Ebsen was quite the dancer in his early years in film.

Ebsen and his sister Vilma danced through Broadway shows and MGM musicals of the 1930s. When she retired, Ebsen continued on his own, dancing with Shirley Temple and turning dramatic actor.

Except for an allergy to aluminum paint, he would have been one of the Yellow Brick Road quartet in the classic "The Wizard of Oz." After 10 days of filming, Ebsen fell ill because of the aluminum makeup on his skin and was replaced as the Tin Man by Jack Haley.

The documentary I watched yesterday tells a slightly different story. It said they were using aluminum dust in his makeup, which of course got into his lungs and damn near killed him. They used something different on his replacement.

He would've made a great Tin Man.

Local Bank Robber Unsuccessful

A guy tried to rob a bank here in Fayetteville over the weekend, armed with a sledgehammer handle. Some of the bank customers jumped him, took his weapon and kicked his ass....then sat on him until the police could get there.

A bank lobby full of pissed off hillbillies....now that's a tough crowd.

My Presidential Candidate

Following Kate's suggestion, I took the Presidential Candidate Selector quiz. Number one choice with 100%, no big surprise, George W. Bush. Runners up were McCain, Joe Biden, Liberman, John Edwards and Dick Gephardt. Yeah right....I'd vote for any one of them on the same day monkeys fly out of my butt, especially Gephardt. I still remember him from when he was up across the border in Missouri. Little weasel.

But the bottom of the list was much more accurate. Al Sharpton, 0%. Wesley Clark, -6%. Bill Bradley, -6%. Lyndon LaRouche, -8%.

Now _that's_ a fairly accurate estimate.

Gov't Info Source

Here's something that has the potential to become an interesting source for information on governmental officials....Government Information Awareness. Its mission statement says:

To empower citizens by providing a single, comprehensive, easy-to-use repository of information on individuals, organizations, and corporations related to the government of the United States of America.

To allow citizens to submit intelligence about government-related issues, while maintaining their anonymity. To allow members of the government a chance to participate in the process.

According to CNN, it's designed to be the equivalent of Google^TM.

Its creators hope it will become a Google of government, a massive Internet clearinghouse of information to help citizens track their leaders as effectively as their leaders track them.

Could be interesting.

Hack Attack Update

The hacker contest was for real....but so far, no big deal.

Computer hackers vying in a global contest on Sunday defaced a slew of Web sites, but the damage was confined to the Internet's backwater of small, unsecured sites, security officials said.

Pays to be security conscious these days.

Powerball Dreams

Everytime the Powerball jackpot gets pretty big, Mike & I will spend $20 bucks for lottery tickets....because you know, you just never know. This week we won....three whole dollars! Woo-hoo!

It's funny to me though, the things we dream about spending our winnings on, if we hit the big one. We were talking about that just yesterday. Of course, the first things are practical, paying off our debts, buying a house, etc. After that though we dream of a huge shopping spree....new cars? Nah, we like the ones we have. New clothes? Maybe a few. Jewels & furs? Too much trouble.

No, we dream of computers and computer accessories....like that honkin' huge flat plasma screen, 42" high definition, that you can also use as a computer monitor. And new laptops, like that cool new one by Sony that has a LCD flat screen....and one of those little laptops for travelling....and a Tablet PC....and a couple of those high tech cellphones. The list is quite extensive.

I never realized until yesterday what a couple of geeks we are.

Southern Sweet Tea

No self-respecting Southern lady will admit to not knowing how to make sweet tea. Each has her own secret recipe passed down through the generations....a culinary link to the past if you will. My mother taught me, and I'm teaching my daughter. So I thought this morning I'd share my secret recipe with y'all too.

Most people screw it up from the very start. You have to use either ceramic or glass to brew the tea....otherwise it tastes like crap. No metal containers! No metal containers! [Pardon the temporary Joan Crawford manifestation. Ed.] I brew mine in my handy-dandy Mrs. Tea machine; my mother uses a large glass Pyrex pitcher that's safe to use on the stovetop. Some people use suntea jars, though I've never been particularly impressed by their results.

One of the other mistakes many people make is not using enough tea and/or sugar. For a gallon of tea, you should use 12 individual size teabags or 6 large size tea bags. Bring about a pint of water just to the boiling point, drop in the tea bags, turn off the burner and let it steep for quite a while. (Or if you use a Mrs. Tea like I do, brew it in two separate but equal batches.) Remove the tea bags, transfer the resulting infusion to a gallon size tea pitcher. Stir in about 2 cups of sugar and then add enough cold water to fill up the remainder of the pitcher.

Authentic Southern sweet tea should be dark amber in color, and contain enough caffeine and sugar to make an large elephant hyper for several days. Are all you programmers paying attention? Jolt cola is like bottled water compared to this stuff. Mike calls it "liquid crack" and insists that it's illegal in Oklahoma.

Anyhow, brew you up a big pitcher, pour it over a big tall glass of ice, sit back on the porch & watch the world go by. It's summertime and the livin's easy.

Arkansas Mountain Lions

Researchers are starting to figure out what we natives have known for years....there's still a few mountain lions roaming the hills of Arkansas.

The study was headed by David W. Clark, a former graduate student, who concluded, "With the increasing number of mountain lion sightings and accumulation of hard evidence, it appears that free-ranging mountain lions have occasionally appeared in Arkansas."

In addition, the report states, "We have documented a minimum of four mountain lions in Arkansas over a span of five years based on Class I evidence," which includes photographs, scat, tracks and casts of tracks.

Well duh. Welcome to Clueville^tm gentlemen. There's always been a few scattered around here and there....pretty solitary creatures in our neck of the woods unless their food sources get scarce. And there's enough places that are so wild & woolly that they have a fairly decent size range to roam unseen by humans. The state wildlife biologists who have stubbornly said for years that mountain lions didn't live in Arkansas anymore were always a source of great amusement for us.

My mother, who remembers when mountain lions were more plentiful, says that they have a very distinctive sound....like a woman screaming. And she still hears one every now and again when she's out roaming the woods.

But the biologists, much like the Dems on WMD's, insist that if they can't find mountain lions, then they don't exist.

Ain't neither bunch got good sense IMO.

4th Celebration

Much food was consumed, fireworks were exploded, beer was guzzled...ok so Mike & I didn't drink any beer, though I did taste the new Michelob Ultra, which was surprisingly drinkable. Or maybe it was just because it was really cold and the weather was really hot & muggy.

Anyway, a good time was had by all, though the tank fireworks race my daughter & I tried to have didn't work too well. Instead of wheeling down the driveway, our tanks turned and fired at each other....which was fun too. It was a perfect location to watch the fireworks display at the mall, kicked back on the deck....and most of the neighbors were setting off their own as were we. At times it was difficult to see them all since there were so many going off everywhere around us. Great fun!

Hope you all had a safe & happy Fourth too.

P.S.A.

Just so you'll know, there are no "pics of gay men" here "without having to sign up or join". Not only is there no content like that here at all, but if there was, you would not only have to sign up or join, you would also pay a hefty fee for the privilege of doing so.

Also, I know nothing about "David Souter" and "women", and hope to keep it that way.

Jeez, what are you freaks trying to do, make me sick?

No Apology

Berlusconi has made it quite clear....he did not apologize to Germany for his comment about the German lawmaker making a good concentration camp guard.

"It was only supposed to be an ironic comment. I did not make an apology. I spoke of my sadness over a comment that was interpreted badly, but it was only intended as an ironic comment," Berlusconi told a joint news conference, standing alongside European Commission President Romano Prodi.

Berlusconi said that the German lawmaker, Martin Schulz, had provoked him during the heated European Parliament debate.

You know, I'm a little slow on the uptake sometimes, but I just now got his very subtle inference. What he said was that the lawmaker "would be perfect playing a concentration camp guard in a film."

The lawmaker's name is Schulz.

"I see nothing. I hear nothing."

ROTF. Does that mean that Schroeder is Colonel Klink?

Martha's A Blogger?

Martha Stewart has a blog....sorta.

I am very pleased that a trial has now been scheduled for January 12, 2004. It is good to know that I will soon have the opportunity to defend myself. I am looking forward to my day in court -- and to having a jury of my fellow citizens judge for itself the validity of the government's case against me.

I found her site via David Strom on TechWeb...who has his own hilarious take on what she's really posting.

Noon. Well, the court appearance went ok. Don't understand why they want to make me out as a criminal. All I made was one friggin' phone call. Strike that. I just called my broker, just like any other self-respecting citizen with some connections. Strike that. Have my PR people write the memo that will be posted on the site today. They will get the right tone.

I'd comment more, but I can't stop giggling. John's right....Anyone Can Post On The Internet.

Happy Fourth of July!!

Happy Fourth of July!!! This is one of our favorite holidays, seeing as how we really like to blow things up and all. My daughter's invited us over for a cookout/fireworks bash tonight, so we made a mad shopping trip to the fireworks stands yesterday evening. We returned with a huge box full of all kinds of exploding goodness....yes indeedy, we're loaded for bear.

Plus, since my daughter lives pretty close to the local mall, we'll get to watch their big fireworks display as well. We're looking forward to spending the evening watching things explode, eating lots of dead animal, and bugging her and her friends. She says she's planning on introducing us as her insane parents, Rita & Mike. Hard to disagree with the truth, ain't it?

We also made a stop at Sam's to stock up on massive quantities of dead animal, and are planning to run by WalMart on the way over for side dishes....and probably pick up a grill. Yes, my daughter, who's highly intelligent but sometimes quite...goofy....planned a big cookout for weeks then realized yesterday:

They don't have a BBQ grill.

She gets that from her dad's side of the family, you know.

Southern Move

Arkansas' most eligible bachelor, Adam H., has made the move to MT.....after a little gentle nudging from Mike & me last weekend. Go check out his new digs, maybe help him work out a few little bugs, and adjust your blogroll accordingly.

Make him feel welcome now that he's been assimilated.

Bwahahahaha!

I Scream Truck

Growing up in the boonies like I did, I'm not accustomed to hearing an ice cream truck making its rounds through the neighborhood. Guess hours of driving on a dusty dirt road to only sell a popsicle or two cut into the profit margin too much.

But there's one started making the rounds here....and it is totally freaking me out. It plays the strangest music.....supposedly a cheerful children's tune, some type of calliope type music. But it sounds....eerie. Bad sound equipment I suppose, but it sounds like it's being conducted by Mahler....a slightly off key crazily mocking tune that just sounds....evil.

I'm afraid to look too closely at the driver....I half expect to see Pennywise the Clown leering out at me with razor sharp teeth. "Hey Lady! Want a popsicle....c'mon lady....down here we all float...heh heh heh".

Creepy.

Lawn Zen

I mow, therefore I am. There are few household chores I enjoy more than mowing the lawn. When I first moved in with Mike, the lawn, much like the sadly neglected flower beds, was in pretty bad shape....huge bare spots, weeds everywhere. After a summer or two of wading through knee-high grass to get the mail and watching the poor lawn get scalped occasionally by an unreliable push mower run by an underenthusiastic teenager, I asked for and got a riding mower for our first wedding anniversary.

I was in heaven. The neighbors, and my husband I might add, made fun of me for "mowing dirt". (There were, I have to admit, patches of the lawn that were much like that Ace Hardware commercial, rocks & green walnuts zinging everywhere as I chugged along.) But I persevered, and now we have a decent looking lawn....as decent as a lawn can get with no more than a 1/4 inch of topsoil and the remainder red clay anyway.

There's a Zen thing about mowing that I love....my weekly meditation. Or, as my newly found kindred spirit says:

If the sun peeks through, even for an instant, the mind flashes: John Deere, John Deere. One must rush outside to mow--or the moment could be lost.

Therefore there is time to think deep, profound thoughts. As a medieval Buddhist monk once wrote: "Discard the shallow and seek the profound!" Of course, while on the tractor, short of spitting or making faces, there is absolutely nothing else to do.

Helmet?? Earmuffs?? We don' need no stinkin' helmets & earmuffs. Eye protection, now that's necessary.

Now the crux of the enterprise is to mow with the minimum number of circumnavigations of the yard. This is not as easy as it sounds. The concept of diminishing radii comes into play. As the tightening gyre closes upon itself, the question--and I know this to be a question repeated in millions, if not tens of millions, of minds--arises: Is it better to cut across the remaining uncut patch, forming odd squares, trapezoids and multiple islands, rendering the turns less tight? Or does one continue making ever tighter circles?

Oddly, close observation and the repetitive mathematical exercise involved in really good mowing are tonic to the mind.

My deepest thoughts while mowing usually involve things like how close can I mow to this tree root without hitting....shit! Not that close. But when your profession is like mine, using more brain power than body power, there is something quietly satisfying about accomplishing things by doing, not by thinking....a brain break if you will. It's that Yodi School of Lawn Maintenance....there is no think. There is only mow....or not mow.

I think too much, therefore I mow.

Arkansas Miracle

An Arkansas man, Terry Wallis, has awaken from a 19 yr. coma. (Link via Fark)

The young couple was celebrating the birth of their daughter, Amber. Life was good until Friday the 13th, in July of 1984. Terry went for a ride with a friend. The next day, their bodies were found under a bridge. Terry's friend died and Terry’s life would never be the same.

Never to regain consciousness, they didn't think he would speak again. Terry went into a coma and became a quadriplegic.

I used to live in the same area as his family. I knew Terry and his wife...they were sure crazy 'bout each other. But I sure never thought he'd come out of the coma.

Terry spent most of his time at the Stone County Rehab Center and his family took him out on weekends and special occasions. "The doctor said that's why he remembers things, we might have kept his mind going."

"There was just no way I could give up hope on him, I wanted so bad to communicate with him."

His wife stuck by him all that time. His little girl is all grown up. And now he's awake and alert, after 19 years.

Ain't that something.

Hacker Attack

In case you missed the announcement, there's allegedly a mass hacker attack contest planned for Sunday. The "goal" of the "contest" is to hack 6,000 sites in 6 hrs.

They're apparently already showing up on some sites poking around looking for holes, so be extra careful out there with your site security, make sure all your updates are current and so on.

Other than that, all I got to say is this:

You little bastards had better not ruin my three day weekend.

Kollege Kids Is Stupid

I was chatting with my OS instructor after class about whether or not I would attend the lab tomorrow or just do my homework from home (duh, like _that's_ a hard choice), when I mentioned how much I liked the self-directed course I'd taken the last semester. I was totally shocked when she told me that I was one of about 3 people in that class who had turned their homework in on time and actually completed the class.

Yep, there were over 16 people who didn't even finish the class because they wouldn't turn in their work by the deadlines. WTF? It's not like the work was that difficult....it was Intro to Computers for goodness sake. And the instructor had set out very clearly when each assignment was due. How hard could that be? I mean, I could see being a little late if you were sick or something, but 16 people? Jeez.

Maybe I'm just weird, but in my profession, deadlines is deadlines. There ain't none of this "You Honor, my brief is 3 days late because I spent the weekend at the lake with some friends." That will get you at the least a contempt of court fine and a good asschewing....and at the worse, a malpractice suit and disbarrment proceedings.

Them kids is in for a rude awakening when they get out into the real world.

Man's Inhumanity

Bigwig has some sobering reminders of something we should never forget....or let happen again.

World's Biggest Asshat

Mr. Blix certainly has his priorities straight, doesn't he?

"Well, of course I would have been much happier if we had been able to stay, if the Iraqis had cooperated 100 percent, if we had been able to defuse the situation," Mr. Blix said.

"But, it would have required a long-term monitoring mechanism and of course the Saddam regime would have remained. So [continued inspections] would have had some drawbacks as well. But, it is the one I would have preferred," he said.

"Some drawbacks"? Like that torture thing and those children's mass graves? Yeah, I can see how you could overlook those little minor annoyances as long as you had some job security. [/sarcasm] With all the respect I'm sure you're due Mr. Blix, you have got to be the world's biggest asshat.

"I have no regrets. I think now is the right moment to go home."

I couldn't agree more. Shut up and git in the house.

Moron.

Stone Cold Bob?

Jonah Goldberg reports that Baghdad Bob isn't the funny little man that everyone thought.

Last December, [CNN's Eason] Jordan met with al-Sahaf and requested permission to send CNN reporters into northern Iraq to cover the Kurds. Al-Sahaf's answer was bone chilling: "Mr. Jordan, if you send a CNN team there, the severest possible consequences will come to them ... The severest possible consequences." Jordan understood the threat: "It was clear he was talking about assassinating those journalists."

The CNN team went anyway, and Bob followed through on his threat.

On April 11, CNN reported that the Kurdish police had arrested two men in connection with a plot to attack CNN's journalists. The couple's videotaped confessions said it all:

Said the other: "Sabah had a plan to blow up Hawraman Hotel. I asked him, 'What do you have in Hawraman?' as I know there is a staff of CNN satellite TV in Hawraman. He said, 'No, they are from the CIA working under cover of CNN.' He said our plan is to attack them ... to tell the Americans that if they attack Iraq, they will have losses, they should pay for their attack."

According to Kurdish police, these two men were planning to attack the CNN compound with nearly a ton of explosives when they were arrested. Just as al-Sahaf had threatened.

Still think he's just wartime comic relief? Or more likely just another of Saddam's thugs?

Maybe now he has a new career as a gangsta rapper. What would rhyme with "Roast their stomachs in hell"?

Fo' shizzle.

Home Grown Tomatoes

Just had our first ripe tomatoes of the season out of the planters in the front yard....Guy Clark was right, it don't get much better than that.

Home grown tomatoes, home grown tomatoes
What'd life be without home grown tomatoes
There's only two things that money can't buy
That's true love and home grown tomatoes

Put a little basalmic vinegar, olive oil & chopped garlic over the sliced tomaters...now them some good eats boys.

If I'd only remembered to have planted some basil, they would've been perfect.

Stuck Roller Coaster

The "Two Face, Flip Side" roller coaster at the Maryland 6 Flags stuck at the top, leaving riders stranded almost 200 ft. in the air for most of the afternoon. (This article says there were 17 people on board, but MSNBC ran a short story on it earlier this afternoon saying there were 24 riders.)

Man, that had to suck.

Husband Material

I've always said if you want to know what kind of husband material a man is, check out how he treats his mother. And now there's a study to back me up.

The researchers found that, in general, men who said they had moms who "understood their needs" had mates who described them as "affectionate." Men who had a strong love for their mothers also tended to date women who described them as not only their lover, but also "their best friend," the authors report.

Finally, men who said they sought to "make their mother proud" ranked high in terms of their ability to communicate with their female partner.

Can I say "I told you so"?

For the flip side, guys, take your potential bride on a 3 day camping/floating trip. Trust me, she can't fake being nice that long under those conditions.

Then you'll find out what she's really like.

Back To School

Second summer semester starts today, so I'm back to the wonderful world of undergrad. I'm taking an Excel class, which is hilariously listed in the registration catalog as "Spreadsheet Anal"....I'm assuming that's a truncated version of "Spreadsheet Analysis", but maybe not.

And I'm taking Windows OS, which looks to be incredibly boring for the first half of the semester. Chapter 3 for example, explains how to properly shut down your computer. Mike said that was easy, you just hit the power button. Not me, I said. I go flip the circuit breaker at the breaker box so it shuts off all the power all at once.

I think I'll tell the instructor that just to see if she'll do one of those Tex Avery cartoon eye-popping-out things. A-ooo-gah! Heh heh.

An idle mind is truly the devil's workshop.

Not Completely Accurate

I was all ready to rant about how the California Supremes got this case all wrong:

The California Supreme Court ruled yesterday that a former employee of Intel was free to send e-mail messages to current company employees, overturning a lower court's injunction. The court rejected Intel's argument that the messages represented illegal trespassing to its computer systems.

But since it was in the NYT, I figured I should probably go read the actual opinion first. A wise choice, as I found the NYT article to be, as Mike is so fond of saying, not completely accurate.

What the court actually held is that Intel did not meet the requirement of showing actual damage to their computer systems, which is required by the California law of trespass to chattels. (Which is just legalese for "you damaged my property asshat") So while there may have been damages caused by loss of employee productivity (i.e., lost company time reading & discussing the emails), that is not the same as damage to the computer equipment itself (router crashed due to overload)....and that's the type of damage required under the law of trespass to chattels.

After reviewing the decisions analyzing unauthorized electronic contact with computer systems as potential trespasses to chattels, we conclude that under California law the tort does not encompass, and should not be extended to encompass, an electronic communication that neither damages the recipient computer system nor impairs its functioning. Such an electronic communication does not constitute an actionable trespass to personal property, i.e., the computer system, because it does not interfere with the possessor’s use or possession of, or any other legally protected interest in, the personal property itself. (See Zaslow v. Kroenert (1946) 29 Cal.2d 541, 551; Ticketmaster Corp. v. Tickets.com, Inc. (C.D.Cal., Aug. 10, 2000, No. 99CV7654) 2000 WL 1887522, p. *4; Rest.2d Torts, § 218.) The consequential economic damage Intel claims to have suffered, i.e., loss of productivity caused by employees reading and reacting to Hamidi’s messages and company efforts to block the messages, is not an injury to the company’s interest in its computers—which worked as intended and were unharmed by the communications—any more than the personal distress caused by reading an unpleasant letter would be an injury to the recipient’s mailbox, or the loss of privacy caused by an intrusive telephone call would be an injury to the recipient’s telephone equipment.

Not exactly what most people would think of when they read "illegal trespassing to its computer system". Now, you may be thinking this is all interesting, but not very, since the emails, like spam, had nothing to do with legitimate business communications. The guy still used the company's email system without permission, so why didn't they just sue him for regular trespassing?

Because they couldn't. Oh, they initially did, but dropped that part of the suit before it went to trial. Here's why.

Intel Corporation (Intel) maintains an electronic mail system, connected to the Internet, through which messages between employees and those outside the company can be sent and received, and permits its employees to make reasonable nonbusiness use of this system....Hamidi breached no computer security barriers in order to communicate with Intel employees.

If you've got a wide open system, then it's wide open to everyone....much like if you let some of the public take a shortcut across your lawn, then pretty soon everyone can take a shortcut across your lawn. Remember that the next time you bitch about your company's restrictive e-mail & Internet access policy. They're not just being hateful, there's actually several reasons for it....virus email attachments also springs to mind.

And this ruling doesn't mean that spammers can bombard companies with spam and the end of civilization as we know as the NYT article implies.

"Everyone is trying to figure out ways to solve the spam problem, and this ruling doesn't help," said Jeffrey D. Neuburger, a technology lawyer with Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner in New York. "This is going to require lawyers to come up with other ways to deal with the issue."

Like what, come up with a legal theory that, I dunno, actually meets the requirements of the law? Get a grip, Jeffrey. What this case is going to require is that companies get their heads out of their collective asses and deal with their network security issues. Jeez, you'd think a company like Intel would know better.

What a repressive concept....restricting use of a business computer network for business purposes only.

[/sarcasm]