It's semi-official. I have strep throat. I say semi-official, because the throat swab was negative. As the 3rd yr. med student who first examined me carefully explained. And then proceeded to tell me that my excruciatingly sore throat was due to sinus drainage....but he'd check with his supervising doctor.
I smiled and said "Ok" all the time thinking ok, me laddie. That's going to be an interesting conversation you'll have there.
And so it was. The real doctor swept in, and briskly said in her charming, slight (Aussie?) accent, "Right. Let's have a look at you then." She poked round in my throat for about 15 seconds and declared "I don't care wot the test said. You have strep." And she bluntly explained to the med student what he'd missed....the bloody obvious fact that I'd had a sore throat for over 6 days and it was getting worse.
I almost felt sorry for the little guy. Almost.
Anyway, she prescribed Clindamyacin which, as my regular readers may remember, works really well but makes me a little.....cranky. And weird. I just can't wait for the auditory hallucinations I always have with it....music playing in my head 24/7. Which is infinitely better than if I thought the dogs were telling me to kill someone, but still rather annoying.
It will still be better than every swallow feeling as if it contained hydrochloric acid-coated glass shards.
More details have been discovered about the 5 cattle rustlers recently arrested locally, and it's becoming clearer that them boys ain't too bright. (Registration req'd, use bugmenot, bugmenot. Or whatever.)
According to Boone County investigators, two men in a truck without tags delivered five head of 500-600 pound cattle in a horse trailer to a Washington County sale barn very early one morning in late October. The cattle had blood dripping from their ears, which made stockyard workers suspect identification tags had been ripped from their ears.
The men apparently used fictitious names and addresses, and stammered and hesitated when asked for that information. Those traits made stockyard workers suspicious, and they recorded the tag number from the horse trailer and gave it to police, investigators said.
After their arrests, the suspects revealed even more stupidity.
After authorities rounded up the suspects, some of them started talking about a couple of saddles that were reported stolen from a roping event in San Angelo, Texas, and that one of the saddkes [sic] could be found at a saddle shop at Clifty in Madison County, Boyd said.
One saddle was recovered from Clifty, Arkansas, the other one was found in Missouri. Since they were stolen in Texas, and each saddle was worth more than $4000.....that's federal time, baby.
You know, if they'd expended half as much energy doing honest work, they wouldn't be in that mess.
Criminals never understand that.
Have you heard about the new driving game called "Car Balloons"? Looks like just the thing for rush hour traffic.
Heh.
--Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We liked ours so much we had two.....kids' work schedules didn't allow everyone to get together at once. But we all enjoyed ourselves anyway.
--Thanksgiving is a really sucky time to have a horrifically sore throat, BTW. There are no doctors' offices open. At all. My son the Navy corpsman said I have strep. Even if I believed his on-line, IM across thousands of mile diagnosis, there wasn't much I could do about it.
--WildChild got to spend Wednesday & Thursday with us....and the disruption of his normal routine meant he was as wild as a March hare. I swear the child did not stop chattering the whole time he was here, except when he fell asleep. One highlight: On the way back from his mom's, he was talking to my daughter on my cell phone....and 'reading' a book to her. It must've been a bad connection, because she apparently was having problems understanding him. I heard him repeat "No, them!" several times until frustrated, he yelled into the phone "No No! I mean them! Them! These! Those!" His first conjugation. I was so proud. Before you become overwhelmed by his brilliance, let me remind you that he still doesn't understand that the person to whom he is talking cannot actually see the pages of the book he is 'reading' to them, no matter how many times he holds the phone up to the book and yells "See! Look!"
--Instead of starting our Christmas shopping Friday, I spent most of the day with my daughter house-hunting. We found one that was a definite maybe, and she & the SIL are going with their realtor to look at it more closely on Wednesday. Looks like a good fit for them, nice neighborhood of primarily young families like them, house is the right size, and there's even a fenced back yard for their goofy-ass retriever mix dog.
--I also noticed, while helping her search online for houses, that our little farm is still on the market. So we're once again thinking somewhat seriously about doing a Green Acres move. It would be nice to have fresh eggs and a decent garden spot, doncha think? And there's a pond which I assume we could stock so WildChild could go fishing anytime he wanted.
I think we're going to have to start playing the Lotto again.
No snow yet, but it's on its way. Right now the temp's dropped to 33 degrees, and with a northwest wind of 20 mph, that gives a wind chill of let's see....REALLY FREAKING COLD. Makes me really glad I got the last of the Christmas lights up yesterday, that's for sure.
Though I did have to go out this morning and run a couple of extension cords to finish hooking everything up. Something about being up on a metal ladder outside yesterday & hearing thunder convinced me that I might want to put off finishing up until today.
Ya know what I mean?
But now everything's wired & ready to go....except Sniper Santa keeps getting blown off the porch by the strong winds. What's Sniper Santa you ask? Well.
See, we bought this big plastic Santa, you know, that has the light inside and you set them out on your lawn? And I had put it out on our front porch to get it out of the way until I was ready to decorate. Mike & one of his 'brudders', as WildChild called him, decided to set it up on this table we have on the porch. They put him behind some vines I'd trained up one of the porch supports, and dubbed him 'Sniper Santa'. I wanted to put WildChild's pop gun out there with him, but Mike said the neighbors would call a SWAT team in on us.
He said that just like it was a bad thing.
Sheesh.
What's the frequency now, Kenneth?
Several years ago, a man moved into my hometown area and began publishing a delightful little newspaper called "The Bee". My sis would send me copies from time to time, because The Bee was always full of whatever stories or rumors or goings-on were the hot coffeeshop topic of the week. There were no sacred cows for The Bee, so it was either loved or hated depending on whether or not one was featured in its pages. Kinduva Peyton Place gossip rag, you might say.
The Bee went under eventually, and its publisher more or less dropped from sight. So you can imagine my surprise when I saw this on Yahoo News:
Terry Wade Presnell, 43, is charged with felony theft by deception and failure to appear in court in Harrison. The Searcy County man was arrested Nov. 6 and released from the Boone County Jail on a $2,500 bond, but failed to appear in court as ordered Nov. 12.
Presnell, a former publisher of The Bee newspaper in Marshall, allegedly sent a phony death certificate to a printing business owned by the Harrison Daily Times, to which he owed $1,857. The document stated Presnell had died in a traffic crash in Chihuahua, Mexico, on Feb. 11, 2003. The forged death certificate was purported to be from Presnell's brother, Ronald Presnell, who police said did not exist.
It even made FoxNews' Out There column. (Scroll down to "Missing Man Still Not Dead")
Heh.
You just can't buy publicity like that, can you?
Smaller, more powerful microprocessors are causing big advances in sensory substitution technology.
Using novel electronic aids, vision can be represented on the skin, tongue or through the ears. If the sense of touch is gone from one part of the body, it can be routed to an area where touch sensations are intact. Pilots confused by foggy conditions, in which the horizon disappears, can right their aircraft by monitoring sensations on the tongue or trunk. Surgeons can feel on their tongues the tip of a probe inside a patient's body, enabling precise movements.
Fascinating technology.
I haven't been hunting in several years***, but this is almost enough to change my mind.
Kylan McCutcheon, 16, of Parthenon recently harvested one of the largest whitetail deer on record in the state of Arkansas, according to Arkansas Game & Fish wildlife biologist Mark Baron. McCutcheon shot the 25-point buck last Sunday morning in Newton County with a 30-06 rifle at a distance of 150 yards.
That should make it easier to roll out of bed before daylight, right Jennifer?
***I pretty much stopped hunting when we moved to Fayetteville. Since this is a college town, there's way too many 'hunters' in the woods who have no idea how to safely handle a gun.
WildChild is finally old enough to start understanding Christmas....and he's quite excited about the whole Santa thing. On the drive back from his mom's Friday afternoon, he decided, after much discussion, that he wanted a Santa suit for himself and reindeer antlers for Sollie. (Yes, we've seen "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" several times.....'several' as in a kajillion.) It took some searching, but here's the result.
Last night we took him to the annual Christmas lighting ceremony & parade in downtown Fayetteville. He loved the parade, especially the last entry which is always Santa riding a firetruck. He was squealing "Santa WAVED at me! Santa WAVED at me!" the whole time as the firetruck slowly passed us. Then it was "Let's go Ma! Chase Santa! Catch him!"
We headed up to the downtown square to see all the decorations, so he got to see Santa pass several more times. But alas, Santa left when the parade ended, which resulted in WildChild (who was riding on my shoulders by then) starting to jump up & down, and yell "Ma! Get Santa! He went that way! Go get him! Get him!" over and over and over.
We finally managed to convince him that Santa had to go home & finish making all the toys before Christmas came. He wasn't very happy about it, but we managed to avoid nuclear toddler meltdown.
Santa, he said later, is his new best friend.
UPDATE: Our good friend Bob tells me in the comments that right-click is no longer disabled at the NYPost website. It was giving a copyright notice when I right-clicked. Now it is working correctly.
For several years now, the NYPost has been the first newspaper I read when I got up. Not any more. Why?
Go right-click on any page at the NYPost website.
Cute, innit?
I won't be back.
Bambi beware.
The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has approved a rule that will allow military personnel on leave from overseas duty to hunt and fish without licenses.....The rule change is effective immediately.
You won't need to buy a license, but you'll still need to carry your leave papers & military ID to prove your status.
One of the nicer things the Game & Fish has done lately.
Found in an ad on my college's student jobs website:
"JOB QUALIFICATIONS
You got to be out going energetic, dependable, Sharp,"
Grammar & punctuation skills are apparently optional.
This is just stupid. (Link via Fark)
In today’s world, there is no excuse for outfitting children with realistic toy weapons designed to produce dangerous and unnecessary thrills.
Toy weapons don't kill people.
Stupidity kills people.
Don't you just hate it when:
Yeah.
ME TOO.
The Bubba-fest has begun.
"A glorified house trailer," former President Bill Clinton joked at a luncheon here yesterday to kick off the dedication of the William J. Clinton Presidential Library. "That's me. I'm a little red and a little blue."
As you can see from this photo, it's also parked next to a railroad trestle spanning the Arkansas River. A single-wide on the wrong side of the tracks. Could it be more appropriate?
'Course they've cleaned up a little for the big party.
And what better site to store his legacy — tarnished or not — than a scruffy, previously decrepit part of town which, like the boy from Hope, shined up like a new penny. In fact, the whole town smells like fresh mulch.
The trash has been picked up. The lights down Main Street (mostly, like a lot of Main Streets, boarded up) are twinkling. The city picked itself up and began moving west, up the Arkansas River, several years ago.
Not to mention clearing out the homeless tent city that had been in the area for years. But then they've been working on cleaning up downtown for a while now......even as early as 1996, when I was there taking the bar exam, it was reasonably safe to walk around the riverfront area unarmed during daylight hours. Which was not always the case, believe me.
The Clinton library, supporters say, could draw up to 300,000 tourists a year to Little Rock, generating an estimated $17.5 million in sales. But not everyone in town is convinced that the rest of America wants to pore over Mr. Clinton's papers while on vacation.
"I don't see people saying, 'Let's not go to Fort Lauderdale. Let's go to Little Rock instead,' " says 29-year-old Allen Pennington, tending bar at Brave New Restaurant across town. "It's not going to happen."
I don't see it either, but then I've never understood the Clinton attraction. If you do go there, I highly recommend stopping in at Doe's Eats (killer steaks) and a little bar & grill called UFO's (best sammichs in the state and more kinds of beer than you can imagine). We haven't been there in years, but I reckon it's still there.
And I doubt we'll be going anytime soon. Funny, after all those years of sending me crap asking for donations to build the Clinton library, they forgot to send me an invitation to the grand opening.
What do you mean I had to contribute to get an invitation?
Not bloody likely.
I've made some progress on a veritable mountain of homework, caught up in two classes and temporarily stumped on another. I think that calls for....a short nap.
Ah, to sleep, perchance to dream....of dynamically-allocated arrays.
Maybe the C++ fairies will stop by and finish writing my card shuffling & dealing program while I'm asleep.
As if.
I'm still elbow-deep in homework, but I did manage to stumble onto a great little website jam-packed with photos from all around Arkansas. Most of the places shown aren't more than an hour or so drive from here.
Go enjoy.
Check out his links while you're there....and don't miss out on "Ar-bonics".
Unconfirmed reports from Fallujah say that Marines and Iraqi forces have found a briefcase containing "4 packets with 10 vials each" of sarin gas in a captured truck full of weapons. (Link via Instapundit)
Hey, if it's on NPR it's got to be true, right?
Acting on a tip, the Benton Co. drug task force found something they'd never seen before.
Investigators, acting on an informant's tip, searched the home of Rodney Luper, 19, and Barbara Henderson, 38, at 310 S. Zion Road Tuesday with Henderson's permission. Their search uncovered an apparatus that created anhydrous ammonia by mixing a drain cleaner and chemical fertilizer.
Tweakers making homemade ammonia.
That sounds like a recipe for disaster, doesn't it?
Schrodinger's terrorist is officially dead.
Well I'll be damned. Ashcroft has resigned. All together now.
"Meet me in St. Louis, Louis,
Meet me at the fair,
Don't tell me the lights are shining
any place but there;
We will dance the Hoochee Koochee,
I will be your tootsie wootsie,
If you will meet in St. Louis, Louis,
Meet me at the fair."
Somehow Ashcroft and Hoochee Koochee just don't sound right together.
I noticed, via the Corner's Jonah Goldberg, that someone named Katha Pollit mentioned that the Left wants to "banish John Ashcroft to a cabin in the Ozarks." Excuse me, but no thanks. It was bad enough when he was AG and then Governor of Missouri. (BTW, only a very small portion of the Ozarks is in Missouri. And just look what they did with it.)
I don't have much of a problem with replacing him, but someone best meet him in St. Louis, Louie.
Ashcroft's about the last person we need down here.
Schrodinger's terrorist is almost officially dead now. (Name inspired by this great post)
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat is dead, senior Palestinian political sources said on Tuesday.
The information from sources close to Arafat could not immediately be confirmed.
May he receive the afterlife that he so richly deserves.
Except for that pot smoking thing.
I'm agin that.
Our Reverend Gov. is in the national news again.
Gov. Mike Huckabee and his wife plan to convert their nuptial vows into a covenant marriage during a mass ceremony on Valentine's Day, giving a public push to the movement that seeks to strengthen marital ties and make it harder to get divorced.
Thanks, Gov! I tell you, we can't get too much publicity like this, can we?
In case you've never heard of it (and there's no reason why you should've), covenant marriage was created by our Legislature in 2001. (See A.C.A. 9-11-801 et seq) It's mostly designed to make it extremely difficult to get divorced, no matter what the circumstances are. It was enacted because we have a fairly high divorce rate.
Arkansas' marriage rate is nearly double the national average - 15.1 per 1,000 population compared to the national rate of 8.3, but the state's divorce rate is among the highest in the nation at 6.5 per 1,000 population, according to the governor's office. The national average is 4.2.
Here's how it works.
Basically, you can only get a divorce based on proof of the following:
(1) The other spouse has committed adultery;
(2) The other spouse has committed a felony or other infamous crime;
(3) The other spouse has physically or sexually abused the spouse seeking the divorce or a child of one (1) of the spouses;
(4) The spouses have been living separate and apart continuously without reconciliation for a period of two (2) years; or
(5)(A) The spouses have been living separate and apart continuously without reconciliation for a period of two (2) years from the date the judgment of judicial separation was signed; or
(B)(i) If there is a minor child or children of the marriage, the spouses have been living separate and apart continuously without reconciliation for a period of two (2) years and six (6) months from the date the judgment of judicial separation was signed.
(ii) However, if abuse of a child of the marriage or a child of one (1) of the spouses is the basis for which the judgment of judicial separation was obtained, then a judgment of divorce may be obtained if the spouses have been living separate and apart continuously without reconciliation for a period of one (1) year from the date the judgment of judicial separation was signed. (A.C.A. 9-11-808)
And to get a judicial separation, you must unsuccessfully participate in marital counseling AND prove one of the following:
(1) The other spouse has committed adultery;
(2) The other spouse has committed a felony and has been sentenced to death or imprisonment;
(3) The other spouse has physically or sexually abused the spouse seeking the legal separation or divorce or a child of one (1) of the spouses;
(4) The spouses have been living separate and apart continuously without reconciliation for a period of two (2) years; or
(5) The other spouse shall:
(A) Be addicted to habitual drunkenness for one (1) year;
(B) Be guilty of such cruel and barbarous treatment as to endanger the life of the other; or
(C) Offer such indignities to the person of the other as shall render his or her condition intolerable. (A.C.A. 9-11-808)
Side note, the last one there is know in the biz as 'general indignities', and is the grounds for most regular divorces here because you don't have to have corroborating evidence if the divorce is uncontested....just one party's testimony. Basically, they have to testify that they are purer than the driven snow, and the other party's a big jerk that they just can't live with anymore. The testimony can sometimes be......interesting, as you can imagine.
Now to get a covenant marriage, you must participate in pre-marital counseling (which is not a bad thing), and sign a affidavit that says you agree to try to stay married. It hasn't been very popular, there's been about 600 or so since the legislation was enacted in 2001. Apparently people are a little gunshy about being super-duper-ultra-married.
Imagine that.
One of our discussion topics during my recent visit to my alma mater was the general lack of good grammar and proofreading these days....especially from people who are being paid to do better. Like a news reporter I heard on one of the local Little Rock stations Thursday night. She was reporting on the delays in completing the much hyped Clinton library and said "Well, I've been watching them work through the windows, and I can tell you...."
I remarked to Mike that there's the real cause of the delays. They could get done much faster if they were allowed to work from inside the building instead of reaching in through the windows. Sheesh.
Then there's this current employment ad posted yesterday for a metal fabricator.
MUST HAVE METAL FABRICATION EXP.OR DO NOT REFER. WILL BE CUTTING, DEBURING,[sic] ETC. WILL WORK 7AM TO 3:30 PM. HEAVY LIFTING 70LBS. ABLE TO OPERATE SHOP EQUIP. APPLICANT CALL FOR APPOINTMENT.
Sounds like a tough job, eh? Look at the pay. That's right. It pays a whopping $8 per year.
Reckon they've had many applicants?
Spent part of the day yesterday visiting the campus of my undergrad alma mater....hadn't been there in 8-10 yrs. and I was amazed at all the changes. Though some things haven't changed, it took me 15-20 minutes to find a parking space.
I also dropped by for a visit with everyone in the Honors College, which was great. I've kept in touch with them sporadically by e-mail, but there's nothing like sitting down for a face-to-face catch-up on what everyone's been doing, is there? Unfortunately I missed Norb, who was away attending a seminar. But Rick was there, and as always Glenda, who really runs the place.
They've a great, well-rounded Ivy League level liberal arts program that I'd highly recommend BTW. Even if they are a bit on the leftish-liberal side, they're great people. They were very, very good to me. And I owe them big.
They help make me what I am today. So you can thank 'em or partially blame 'em, whichever the case may be.
It was great to see them again.
Cool! I'm RWN's website of the day. Thanks, John! I'm honored.
Makes me feel like I should've dressed up more today.
Mike & I are in not-so-beautiful downtown Conway, Arkansas....Mike's proctoring a CISSP exam today. I'm checking out the hotel's high speed wireless connection. Not too shabby.
We had dinner with one of the other proctors last night....an interesting guy whom Mike said invented satellite encryption. (I suspect he also invented the word 'geek'.) He entertained us with declassified tales of the beginning of satellite photography, and we talked about various & sundry things such as volcanos/calderas, earthquakes, the best way to light a grill (insert lit match into stack of charcoal and throw liquid oxygen on it) and how to clean a floor with liquid nitrogen. In other words, a delightfully fascinating, hard core old school geek whose breadth of knowledge was exceeded only by the depth.
It was worth the 2 1/2 drive just to talk with him.
A proposed Amendment 59 lawsuit settlement in Benton County was modified by an alert judge, who is nobody's fool. First, some background. The lawsuit was a result of the county's overcollection of taxes, due to a misinterpretation of a statute if I remember correctly. (There was a similar settlement in Washington County a few years ago.) The county and the suing parties reached a settlement agreement in which the county agreed to repay $2.3 million to taxpayers who opted into the settlement. Sounds pretty standard, right?
Not so much.
The settlement has been presented to the public with the implication that if one opted in, one would be taking money away from the county budget....money that could be spent on other worthwhile projects. That was not entirely accurate.
The settlement calls for attorneys to receive $575,000 and for proven costs not to exceed $20,000, which will be deducted from the $2.3 million. Also, the cost of mailing the notices and administrative costs of refunding the money will be deducted.
The remainder was to be divided among taxpayers who did not return the opt-out white form.
Enter Judge Keith.
After listening to testimony concerning attorney fees, Keith maintained his stance that he could not accept the settlement unless it was modified so all taxpayers would receive a refund.
Keith said he believes each taxpayer should have the opportunity to cash, return or tear up the refund checks. "I’m satisfied the confusion was such that many people sent this (white) form in to give up their interest to county government," Keith said.
The checks will be mailed in April to every taxpayer.
Now that's the way a judge should act.
I had hoped that the Democratic party would get a clue after the election results became clear, but I guess not.
"It's not about soul-searching," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat. "It may be about how we can educate the American people more clearly on the difference between Democrats and Republicans.
Hate to pee in your Wheaties Nancy, but that's not the problem. We rubes in flyover country understand the difference all too well. We disagree, that's the real problem.
Some, however, do appear to get it.
Republicans "were actually winning in areas that were historically Democratic areas," [Senator] Dodd said. Democrats have to realize that they didn't connect with voters on values, he said, and that they cannot concede that ground and win.
As usual, Zell Miller put it best.
"When will national Democrats sober up and admit that that dog won't hunt?" he asked. "Secular socialism, heavy taxes, big spending, weak defense, limitless lawsuits and heavy regulation — that pack of beagles hasn't caught a rabbit in the South or Midwest in years."
(To digress for a moment, I've seen a lot of questioning around about why Arkansas went for Bush, since the Dems had both Edwards & Clinton campaigning here. I'll tell you why. There are few things more loathed in Arkansas than a trial lawyer, no matter where he's from. Edwards was a liability here. And Clinton doesn't have that kind of power here anymore. There were too many people glad to get rid of him, for one. For another, he's a former president. He has little quo to exchange for qid pro, you might say.)
Another important factor in this election was the persistent stonewalling of judicial candidates. I think a lot of people from both parties saw that as unreasonable, that the Democrats were wrongly blocking qualified candidates solely because they were proposed by Bush.
Several Democrats said they won't forgo legislative tactics to block Republican initiatives, including the filibuster in the Senate. Republicans are counting on their expanded majority to make Democrats "think twice."
They better think twice. If they persist with those filibusters, they are going to lose even more congressional seats in the next election.
The biggest Democrat problem is that they've moved farther to the left while the majority of the country has moved to the right....part of the inevitable continual pendulum swing of majority values. We swung slightly to the left in the 60's, back to the center in the 80's, and continued slightly to the right in the 90's. At some point, it will start swinging the other way. It's the nature of the beast.
Which is why the party closest to the center and on the majority side of the pendulum swing has always had the majority of the vote. And why the Democrats got smacked down in this election. They've moved too far away from the center. They must understand that this is what this election really meant.
It's essential for the survival of their party.
Now I see why Washington County took so long to release last night's results.
More than 64,000 votes were cast, as county election commissioners did not finish tabulating the results until 12:30 Wednesday morning.
64,000 out of 88,000 registered voters is what, about a 73% voter turnout.
Wow.
That's freaking amazing.
In case you were thinking of installing the new, handy-dandy Google Desktop Search, here's what I just got from US-CERT:
A remote malicious user can create a specially crafted URL that, when loaded by a target user that has Google Desktop Search installed, will cause arbitrary scripting code to be executed by the target user's browser. The code will originate from the Google site and will run in the security context of that site.
No workaround or patch available at time of publishing.
A Proof of Concept exploit has been published.
Translation: you could go to the wrong URL and it could download some code that would allow someone access to everything on your computer....which my non-techie aunt says is the equivalent of having a stranger rummaging around in your underwear drawer.
I think she understands computers much better than she lets on.
Fox just said that according to the AP Wire reports, Kerry has called Bush and conceded.
4 More Years!
Speaking of schadenfreude, Mike called on his way to work this morning to tell me that he was laughing & pointing at every car with a Kerry/Edwards bumpersticker.
I might be guilty of feeling a bit of that myself, though mine is directed more towards OBL et al.
We gotcha jihad right here, video boy.
Fox News is currently reporting that the Kerry camp is say it isn't going to make a statement until at least 10 am today....but Fox is speculating that Kerry will concede the election at that time.
Just speculation at this point, remember.
UPDATE: I just heard on Fox that the guy in charge of Ohio count has said that the total provisional ballot count is less than the number of votes needed by Kerry to win Ohio. In other words, if Kerry won 100% of the uncounted provisional ballots, he'd still lose Ohio.
Everyone's still waiting to see what Kerry's going to do.
To be a d*ck, or not to be a d*ck. That is the question.
Cattle rustling prolly isn't the first thing you think of about NW Arkansas, but actually it's a problem.
Three arrests -- made by the Madison County Sheriff's Office, the Washington County Sheriff's Office and the Springdale Police Department -- led to other suspects in a large-scale cattle-rustling operation, according to a news release from the Madison County Sheriff's Office.
The suspects are allegedly involved in multiple cattle rustling cases in NW Arkansas and other states. They're also reportedly connected to the local rodeo circuit.
Cattle prices weren't all that good last time I checked. But when you eliminate the feed and vet bills, I guess you could make pretty good money.
Get along to the state pen, little dogies.
No big surprise, the presidential election isn't over....though it appears the fat lady is warming up in the wings. I went to sleep last night when it became apparent that several states were going to be too close to call....including Ohio, which will likely decide the outcome. Bush is leading in the popular & electoral vote, but there's still a slim-to-none chance Kerry might get Ohio. Theoretically possible, but unlikely from the numbers I'm seeing this morning. So Kerry's not conceding yet. Can't say I'd do any differently if I was in his shoes.
In the local & state races, my choices pretty much bombed. Mayor Dan won, my city council rep lost, my choice for the Ark. Supremes lost. The state bond amendment, which I opposed b/c it was so badly written, passed. We may live to regret that one. The Marriage amendment passed, which was stupid & unnecessary b/c we already had an applicable statute.
We're sending Blanche "Hillary is my role model" Lincoln back to Washington, but Boozman's going back also....so that one's a wash. I was really surprised by one election result: Farmington's local option to remain dry (banning the sale of alcohol) didn't pass....surprising b/c Farmington is a pretty conservative little town. Guess that local ordinance they passed illegally to ban alchohol a few years back really didn't reflect the wishes of the city residents. Snark. CORRECTION: The newpaper was wrong. Farmington DID NOT pass the ordinance to allow the sale of alcohol.
All in all though, results I can live with.
So far.
Today Lileks took me back to those hideously long childhood days of sharing a room with my older sister....who insisted on painting the walls purple and installing a hot pink shag carpet.
It clashed so badly with the curtain made of beer tabs I hung in place of the door we didn't have.
Heh.
Thanks, James!
It's pretty close so far, innit? Fox has Bush leading 197-133 right now. California, Ohio & Florida are still too close to call. CNN has Bush leading 197-188.
Not many local precincts in yet, but so far it looks like Washington County is going Democrat. Yet another reason to move the hell somewhere else.
Looks like I'm going to have to go to the tv for the city results.
Bah!
Alright. Who broke the internet? Lots of sites are having problems due to very high traffic, as is Hosting Matters. So please be patient.
Just a reminder, I plan to be around after class tonight (9:30-ish), and if this site goes down, I'll be at the backup....or maybe not, as it appears to be down at the moment. But if you can't get here, try there next.
Sheesh, looks like I need to tell Mike to reboot the internet again.
Everyone seems to be getting too stressed out, so here's a funny from today's Harrison, Arkansas police report:
A woman on South Oak called the HPD about 7:20 a.m. Saturday to report a shiny, non-moving object in the sky southeast of her house. A responding officer advised the object was the moon.
D'oh.
The actual number of local early voters is reportedly 15,345....up from 5,968 in the 2000 election. That's a helluva increase. Plus, election officials are expecting at least an estimated 60,000 total turnout out of the more than 80,000 registered voters in our county. If that holds, that's an unbelievably high turnout for any election.
I say all bets are off. Anyone who correctly predicts the outcome of this election just made a lucky guess.
I just hope the results aren't as close as the pre-election polls show.
A study of the effects of early voting would be interesting, since the percentage of early voters has risen enough to affect the election. For this election nationwide, one poll showed about 11% of registered voters who had already voted early, and another 11% planned to vote before Election Day. There were similar percentages locally, Washington County had around 14,000 out of 88,000 voters voted early, which is roughly 16%.
If these figures are any indication, early voting is bringing out at least some voters who likely wouldn't have voted at all. Which is why I think all the 'reliable' indicators of which candidate will win are out the door. (You know, the ones that say things like 'no incumbant has ever won a race after my cat has refused to use the litter box on the 32nd day before the election'.)
Early voting is more convenient since it spreads voting out over a couple of weeks. And since it's spread out, it also should lessen the effects of such things as weather, last-minute scandals and/or concentrated campaign pushes.
I'm really curious to see how this will affect this year's election.
Will no one rid me of this troublesome pre-election hoopla? Both sides are getting so hysterical that I'm sick of them all. I just want it to be over. The wait is killing me. Like Mike said, it's not that the future of the human race depends on it, it just seems that way.
The only bright point so far is my daughter did get to vote today....after an hour or so wait. 24 yrs. old and her first time voting. And she waited in line to do it even after working a 12 hr. night shift at the hospital too. That's my girl. As stubborn as the day is long once she makes up her mind to do something.
I can't imagine from whom she inherited that trait.
*whistles innocently*
WildChild is very interested in musical instruments, which we try to encourage, so we'd bought him a cheap keyboard. He was plunking around on it yesterday, so I had the bright idea of getting one of my piano books to start teaching him how to read music. Disclaimer: I play piano like I sing....very badly but with great enthusiasm. As you will see.
He was pretty interested as I showed him how he should place his hands on the keyboard and as I played some simple scales. So I played a super-simple little song to show him how it all fit together.
"Ma!" he said scornfully. "You're just making noise. Stop it."
Out of the mouths of babes.