Okie dokie… morning chores are done, with an hour to spare. That gives me time to put camera batteries in the charger, and play with Newtie!
Cool T-shirt seen today – “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”
Capper image will be 700 wide, and no more than 300 tall.
Toybox – shared white board, chat area, bbs?
Guess who can’t sleep. Brain tired, body wide awake.
“CAMDEN, New Jersey (AP) — There’s something strange underfoot in Camden. Black blobs polka-dotting the streets and sidewalks of the Waterfront South area have some residents fearful for their health and worried the blobs might signal the end of their neighborhood.”
Well, now we know how many blobs it takes to fill the Albert Hall.
Notice the incredible power of denial when faced with the inexplicable:
“Some neighbors tell Sanders she’s paranoid, that there’s a simple explanation for the stuff. Perhaps, they say, it was just chewing gum. “
Uh huh. Chewing gum that starts out oily and 6 inches across before drying into smaller waxy spots about the size of a half-dollar. That doesn’t sound like Juicy Fruit.
And where is the other standard feature of the Fortean occurrence?
“Bob Lentine, assistant commissioner of the county health department, said he thinks the stuff might be industrial pollutants or fuel discharge from the jets that fly directly overhead from nearby Philadelphia. In any case, it’s probably nothing to worry about, he said.”
Yessiree, we don’t know what the heck it is, but it’s probably harmless.
Nothing to see here, everyone go home.
Ahhh… lovely fortune cookie today.
“Your lover will never wish to leave.”
lucky numbers 12,14,16,23,25,31
Learn Chinese – Happy Birthday = Shreng-ri kuai-le
Pet psychic was adorable tonight… pug, llama, kitties, parrot…a load of AwwWw!
Holy moley! That’s keen! A real walker, with actual industrial use! I want one to cruise around town in!
Man found dead, confirmed by family, calls home next day.
Monks physically fighting over the placement of a chair.
Been reading about Liver Eatin’ Johnson…Standing 6’2″ in his stocking feet and weighing nearly 250 pounds, he was a mountain man among mountain men, one of the toughest customers on the western frontier. One morning in 1847, he returned to his Rocky Mountain trapper’s cabin to find the remains of his Indian wife and her unborn child, who had been killed by Crow Indians. The discovery made Johnson vow vengeance on the entire Crow nation, and tracking its warriors singly and in groups, he killed 300 of them, scalped them, and ate their livers. Much of the world now knows mountain man John Johnson as Robert Redford in the movie Jeremiah Johnson. The real Johnson was a far cry from the Redford version, but an amazing person.
GRASP is short for Gravity Research for Advanced Space Propulsion. A Russian scientist has apparently managed to create an anti-gravity device. Potentially, this could be used to create a weapon that could vaporize objects hundreds of kilometers away with a beam of 1000 g’s of force. It sounds pretty far out to me, but for some reason, both NASA and Boeing are taking it seriously.
NASA’s attempts to replicate the research have so far failed because they lacked his “unique formula.”
Who was the MJ-12 researcher who squished himself with symbols he carved after researching the Roswell craft?
A map plotting the HQs of 676 active hate groups in the US. You can click on a state and get a detailed run-down of what groups are in each city.
Wednesday night, plan on going out for Chinese, Thai, or Italian with mom and the bro.
It’ll have to be sometime after 8pm, because I have to work until then. Either they can meet me at work, or wait an additional hour for me to get home.
Jenjen’s getting married? last I’d heard, she wasn’t even dating anyone. I’ve got to get the skinny on *that* tidbit. John? sakes.
Boy’s Penis Stitched Back After Donkey Bite
MAP did not say how the donkey managed to bite off the boy’s penis.
But the rest of us can speculate, can’t we?
Rebel Blockade Runner Available on E-Bay
A 35ft long replica of the Tantive IV, also known as the Rebel Blockade Runner, built 1:1 scale to Hasbro’s 3-3/4 inch action figures. She’s big enough for you, old man.
Ex-Dictator Broke, Living With Mom
Valentine Strasser became the world’s youngest head of state when he seized power in 1992 at the age of 25. But the limelight didn’t last…four years later, he was ousted in another coup.
“I’m basically living off my mother now. She’s been very supportive,” the 35-year-old said at a neighborhood bar on the outskirts of Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital.
It’s an online archive of Krazy Kat comic strips!
The Death of Bin Laden
This article in Saudi Arabia’s Arab News Daily argues that Bin Laden is dead politically and explains why. Very interesting reading.
The moon is full tonight and very nice lookin’!
We will also be able to see the International Space Station with the naked eye between now and mid-August. Neat.
Oh, the humanity… bear-lynching… there ought to be a law, I say!
From Yahoo! News:
Blind German psychic Ulf Buck feels the buttocks of a client during a session in his study room in the northern German village of Meldorf near Hamburg July 15, 2002. Clairvoyant Buck claims that people’s backsides display lines like those on the palm of the hand, which can be read to reveal much about their character and destiny.
No. Really. There’s a picture and everything. I’m surprised it’s not in the “most viewed” yet, but it will be. It is number one in most emailed.
Q: How much is pirate corn?
A: A buccaneer.
Pirate cardiac arrest: “Arrrr! Me hearty!”
Nighty night, dear journal
Going to the lab this morning at 7:30…
I think that afterwards, I’m going back home to lie down! Sakes… I’m going to be fried about 2pm, otherwise.
Hey, look! It’s the Joy Machine! I want one for under my house!
Actually, I’m already pretty beat. *creeeak* Fresh from the shower, steam knocked me out.
Hmm… angry corn ghosts burning police cars... There’s a story there, somewhere.
Two Sheriffs Deputies park their cruisers and enter a cornfield looking for marijuana plants. They find some, then notice some smoke rising in the distance. When they investigate the smoke, they find their cruisers engulfed in flames.
Since they came to a cornfield on a dirt road, they looked for a dust cloud to see if anyone had recently driven by. There wasn’t one.
That can surely be spun off into something.
punquin just found this post… it’s only well over two years old. 🙂 I think it was one of the first “get to know me” memes to circulate around the LJs. It’s interesting… not all of those items are true anymore, but *most* are.
Newt’s taken to curling up in the bathroom sink…it’s just the right depth and radius to hold him in a little bowl-hug. The downside is that he’s such a sweetie that it’s difficult for me to kick him out of there, should I decide to brush my teeth or shave. The solution? Do dental prep, first. as soon as I open the toothpaste tube, he’s pretty much awake and in my face, looking for mint, so then I can turn on the water without over-moistening the little boy.
It’s nice to have my brother so nearby.
Thinking about the late 90’s… 99? the scent of old cigarettes on my shirt… spilled beer. I’m glad I don’t work at SG anymore. I think it’s officially closed down now, since last summer. I remember when they lost their liquor license, but continued to be open, with a “BYOB” policy, and just served soft drinks.
Only real test there was the test of will to get a better job, instead of staying someplace where it was easy to slack off.
Just got an email from a menstrualhut member who was upset about being chewed out by another user for posting an off-topic request for a lj-code. I let her know that I was sorry she was disrespected, but to please keep the posts on-topic. it got pretty ugly… folks calling one another “idiot”, “bitch”, “cunt” and “rag-whore” before I could get on top of it. I may need to make a general post to the community, and request that people keep a little respect for one another. I’m still pleased that I only have to deal with that sort of nonsense once in a blue moon.
I’m way behind on reading my fellow-journalists. either that, or I miss seeing some posts when they happen. Lately a few entries have slipped past, and I’ve only seen them when they’ve been referred to elsewhere.
Meeting with Bonbon today to establish exactly why she’s *still* abandoned the log program in favor of paper routines. She’s given different excuses to me and to Kev.
To me… “If I can’t run it on all the machines, I’ll just use the paper logs.” (One of the machines is stand-alone, and won’t support outside software on it.. it’s been installed on three other workstations throughout the room. she can take literally four steps to the other machine and enter her log from there. Even if that was the case, it doesn’t explain why she doesn’t use it on the other machines… and the software is in place to keep track of inventory, so we know how much has been printed, what to charge our client, and when to order more supplies.
To Kevin “It doesn’t do everything I want it to do” (Claiming it doesn’t have features she needs) If that’s the case, why did she tell me, the guy who *asked* every day as I was writing it “What features would you like? Any Reports you want to see? Any special things you’d like on the layout?” and then went on to cite examples and offer suggestions.
So, today, we’re both going to sit down with her and find out what we can do to make her use the program, and if it requires more features. I think that she’s going to putt some features out of her backside, wait the day or whatever for me to implement them, and then continue to ignore any new software that comes her way. If (when) that happens, she’s going to be in a world of trouble with Kev, and I’ll be annoyed because that’ll be my time that’s been wasted. We need to ask her directly and together why she’s not using it, and tell her that the paper logs will be *gone* either Today (if no upgrades are needed) or a week from the final program launch (to allow for bug-killing and education of the staff). The paper logs should never return.
She’s setting up a power vacuum over there… Has both of her sons working in the room with her. She thinks that if she leaves, she’ll take her boys with her and hose the company, or worse, leave her boys there, and hose the company from the inside.
That won’t happen… We’ll just pay the other folks overtime until we get good replacements for them all… we have decent redundant systems in place. I’m glad that I’m not her immediate supervisor… she answers pretty directly to Big Bird. If BB can’t handle it, Kevin will deal with things properly.
I’m not looking forward to the meeting, but I’ll be happy once a resolution is in place. Internal support can sometimes be more difficult than writing software for an outside client.
A wave of husband killings.
Iranian women are becoming increasingly sick of the male-dominated Islamic nightmare land in which they live. Divorce is not an option.
While Iranian men can divorce almost at will, a woman who wants a divorce must go through a legal battle that can take up to 20 years, said lawyer Sara Irani. Even then, she said, it might end with the woman failing to dissolve the marriage.
Women are basically property. Slaves, by any other name. What a sad waste. This is why Islamic societies are failing.
Under Iran’s Islamic laws, a man is allowed to keep four wives at one time, a right not granted to women.
Even if a husband is having an affair, he can claim to have undertaken a “sigheh,” or temporary marriage. It’s a contract allowed under Iranian law that allows a man and woman to be “married” for any length of time they choose. Critics call it a form of legalized prostitution.
Nor does a wife trapped in a violent marriage have much recourse against her husband.
“A woman has to bring four men witnesses confirming violence against her by her husband,” Irani said. “How is a woman in Iran expected to keep four men in her bedroom to witness her husband beating her?”
And this relentless oppression is resulting in an unprecedented wave of husband killings. Root causes, anyone?
“During 30 years of matrimonial life, Hedayat always beat me. He was a doubter and skeptical of everything and didn’t trust me. He had made the life hell for me,” Ferdows told authorities, who have identified her only by her first name.
Ferdows paid a man the equivalent of $3,750 to stab her husband to death three years ago, prosecutors said. The crime wasn’t exposed until this February, when police found her husband’s remains in an abandoned building. She had told people her husband abandoned her.
Odd how nobody’s doing any follow-ups on “no terrorist attacks happened yesterday”.
The fifth Harry Potter book is out! Well, in China, anyway.
If I were J. K. Rowling, I don’t know if I’d be enraged or incredibly amused. The writing is so…absurd…it’s hard to really be offended by the violation. It’s like some pop dada prank.
Goodbye, June. I’m glad yer gone. You’ve been a meanie month to me these last few years. Cut that nonsense out, and I’ll let you come by in another 11 months.
Huh huh. Huh huh. You said ‘wood’.
From http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/26/health/26ARSE.html
“HERNANDO, Miss., June 19 – It took six hospitalizations and a number of misdiagnoses before Lynn Milam learned what was causing the vomiting and diarrhea that almost killed her in 1999. The arsenic levels in her body, her doctor said, were about 100 times what they should have been.
Ms. Milam was relieved to have a diagnosis, however terrifying. That relief vanished when the police arrived. “They said someone was trying to kill me, and they were almost 100 percent sure it was Tom,” her husband, Ms. Milam said.
But she refused to believe it. “I know the man,” she said. “If he were going to kill me, he’d just shoot me.””
Well, it turns out that after testing the husband that he had even more arsenic in his system than she did. They had been doing some home improvements with treated wood.
“Vicki S. Wood, one of the Milams’ lawyers, said the couple were victims of chromated copper arsenate, or C.C.A., the predominant wood preservative in the United States and the subject of an emerging body of product liability lawsuits around the country. Some of the lumber for the Milams’ two-story cabin frame had been treated with C.C.A., which prevents decay and repels termites. It also contains arsenic.”
There is a whole lovely story about product liability and industry and so on and so forth. You know the drill. The industry sort of crossed the Ts and dotted the Is by putting the responsibility for handing out the warnings on the lumberyards, but:
“Mel Pine, a spokesman for the trade association, said that the industry had fulfilled its obligation to inform the public about the dangers of treated wood but that until recently, “at the retail stores the compliance was less than perfect.””
Been there, seen that every few months. The product is being phased-out with a replacement that doesn’t include arsenic.
“Mr. Brugge said the decision was based on “changes in perception, changes in the marketplace” and a new generation of preservatives without arsenic.”
(How much do you want to bet that the “new generation” of preservatives were around before, but were not as cheap as arsenic?)
No, what is interesting about the story is that attempted murder was suspected and a case was being prepared.
“The police here worked the case hard. They questioned the Milams repeatedly and always separately. They advised Ms. Milam, a 50-year-old computer programmer, to leave her husband, 46, or at least prepare her own food. They sought help from the F.B.I., and the district attorney went to a grand jury to have it consider a charge of attempted murder.
I felt like the Hernando Police Department came into it predetermined like it was attempted murder, and they had a pretty good little case,” Ms. Milam said. “It was really big for them.”
“Mr. Artis, the F.B.I. spokesman, said the case was dubious from the start, because it lacked a motive. “She was the breadwinner,” he said. “There’s no big insurance policy. There’s no girlfriend.””
So, without any of the tried-and-true motives present, why did the D.A. continue with the attempted murder scenario?
“He recalled being convinced by an F.B.I. analysis implicating the treated wood. On the other hand, a member of his staff had consulted the industry. “One of my investigators kept telling me that lumber companies had told him that this couldn’t be,” he said, meaning that the F.B.I. was wrong.”
Who says experts don’t lie? Calling for an unbiased opinion these days is more tricky than ever, I imagine.
Perhaps I’ve read far too many Agatha Christie mystery novels as a kid, but I need to research and see if it is true that ingesting small doses of arsenic over time lead to an immunity from the poison. This came up in a few novels I recall reading (Lord Nannybone of Soddom-on-Gamhora takes small doses of arsenic to build up an immunity, then he and his wife eat from the same hors de vour tray… intrepid detective outwits police by finding arsenic bottle under bush, etc. etc.).
The article makes me think no, but perhaps those dosages were too large… I was also under the impression that repeated arsenic ingestion leads to thickening nails, change in skin tone and other symptoms. Perhaps skin absorption is different.
I guess that the real problem is that they had not received any of the warnings that were supposed to go with purchasing the treated wood. I suppose big red and yellow stickers saying “DANGER. TOXIC WOOD!!!!” would have made for a lousy store display. I know that I would tend to promote the termite repelling qualities and downplay the HAZMAT aspects of putting in a new deck.