The Bosque

...she called me at 6:45 this morning...and didn't even mean to.

I woke up this morning, and looked at my cell phone to see what time it was. It was noontime, and the missed call notification was on my phone.

It was Wolf...at 6:45 this morning. What the hell?!

And there was a voice mail...so I listened to it.

It was Wolf, alright...she sounded like she was talking to someone. Not to me, though. Once I knew what the call was about, I deleted the message.

It's all good...I do the same shit to April occasionally.

I noticed that the Manifestos have gotten quite a few hits recently:



So, I looked at Urchin (a stats program) to see what was up:



I have no idea where it's coming from, though...I can't figure it out. I know we've been getting some spam users recently, but I get rid of them right away.

As long as my server bill doesn't go through the roof...*shrugs*

From MSNBC: Rush Limbaugh and prosecutors in the long-running painkiller fraud case against him have reached a deal calling for the only charge against the conservative commentator to be dropped if he continues treatment, his attorney said Friday.

...

"Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. ... And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up," Limbaugh said on his short-lived television show on Oct. 5, 1995.

This is why a) I'm generally very careful about what I say about other's faults, and/or b) I admit my faults.

Shit like this both irritates and humors me. Conservatives have tried to claim the moral high ground for a while now. Then you have folks like Rush and Bill Bennett, not to mention some members of Congress. I'm sure that many conservatives practice what they preach, but when you're a public figure, you're just asking for it when you play the self-righteous card.

Finished my 3rd class tonight. The final wasn't bad...probably got a B or an A. Same thing with my team paper. Overall, I think I got anywhere from a B+ to an A.

Now...on to a more exciting class...Accounting. :P

Tomorrow night, I have my first real final. While this is my 3rd class, the previous 2 finals have been open book, and were super easy. This class has been difficult. I had a horrible time writing my part of the group paper and editing the entire paper. And the class has just been a fucking snoozefest. I like the subject matter, and our instructor is not a bad guy, but the class is conducted like high school. And the instructor just doesn't make the class interesting.

I don't know how our paper is going to turn out. I asked Wolf to tear it the fuck up, and she did. It definitely made the paper tighter. Perhaps I'm just being overly hard on myself and my team...I dunno.

Back to studying...at least I think I'll do fine on the final.

From BBC: A Venezuelan team says fermenting beans with certain friendly bacteria can cut the amount of wind-causing compounds, and boost beans' nutritional value.

...walked right in front of me.

I decided to do a quick lap around Francis Park after I picked up some prescriptions tonight. As I started walking, something caught my eye just off to the right.

It looked like a dog, but the face was narrow. And the tail...big and bushy, like it didn't match the body.

I am pretty sure that what I saw was indeed a fox. I can't recall ever seeing one in person, so I could be wrong. But the event was pretty fucking cool.

I swear...I'm not on any drugs. Well, I'm on prescription meds, but nothing that would make me hallucinate.

Guess who have the awesome Hello Kitty baskets for next Easter?

Guess whose is whose.

I like a nice clean car. But sadly, I don't clean it often enough. Before tonight, it had been a couple of months.

It has been bothering me all week, and on my way home from dinner, I decided that it was the right time to clean it. It was 9:30pm, but that's why they make 24-hour self-serve car washes. I don't generally like them because I'm just not good at washing my car at them. I'll think that I cleaned my car really well, but when the car dries, a lot of the dirt is still there. But I really wanted it clean now, and I thought I could do a better job this time. So...

I vacuumed first (75 cents), then headed into the bay. I kept it very simple--wash, then rinse. No extra quarters beyond the $1.50 I put into the machine. This time, though, I decided to at least partially dry my car. I didn't have any towels with me, so I spent $2.25 on three large shammies. I did an alright job drying it...not as well as I could have, but it wasn't bad.

15 minutes and $4.50 later, I had a clean(er) car. It'll work for at least a few weeks...and I saved $13 over what I normally pay.

There used to be a car wash up the street from my apartment in Germantown that was run by Africans. They did a hell of a job for $10 (including tip).

From MSNBC: Showing yet another side in a long career, Bob Dylan is playing disc jockey, spinning smooth patter along with records ranging from Muddy Waters to Frank Sinatra as XM Radio enlists more star power in the U.S. satellite radio war.

April’s sister May turned 17 today. And she’s off school for Spring Break, so she can go out and celebrate like a rock star.

Happy birthday, kiddo! Hope it’s a good one! And no, I will not teach you how to drive in my car. :)

From the BBC: American secret service agents have been in the South Korean capital, Seoul, on the trail of the famed "supernotes" - expertly forged hundred dollar bills that the US says are made by the North Korean government.

More supernotes have been turning up in South Korea and the quality is getting better all the time - a recent report for the US Congress estimated that $45m of the notes are in circulation worldwide.

From CBC: A Nova Scotia man suspected of killing two registered sex offenders in Maine before taking his own life had looked up details about the men on the state's online sex offender registry, police say.

Stephen Marshall, who shot himself in the head with a .45-calibre handgun when police stopped the bus in which he was riding, had logged on to 34 individual names on the registry, police said.

From the BBC: Canadian authorities have confirmed a new case of mad cow disease - in the western province of British Columbia.

It is the country's fifth native-born case and the second this year.

From CNN/AP: Less than a month after retiring on his 100th birthday, longtime Los Angeles County transit employee Arthur Winston died in his sleep, his family said Friday.

The man co-workers celebrated as Mr. Reliable had recently been admitted to a hospital for exhaustion and dehydration, but returned to his home April 6. He died Thursday evening.

There's been a sizable outbreak of mumps in the Midwest over the past few weeks. It's reached epidemic proportions in Iowa (story).

Mumps was pretty much DOA when I was a kid...you heard about it, but rarely did anyone get it. The worst thing you'd get as a kid was chicken pox or the flu. You'd have to go back to Wolf or Bruce's days to see big-time mumps outbreaks. There was this one time about 20 years ago when my doctor and my parents thought I had it--the glands on the left side of my face were swollen, and I had a huge lump near my ear. Fortunately, it was not mumps, but that shit sucked. I was so miserable.

In the article, they mention that most of the cases in Iowa are at colleges. That reminds me of a meningitis outbreak that hit Principia College in nearby Elsah, IL several years ago. And last year, one of my boss's sons got meningitis...IIRC, he lived in the dorms at Brown (in Providence, RI). That's scary. And it's another concern that kids (and parents) should probably factor in when choosing living accommodations at school. Fortunately, I only got sick a couple of times during my year-and-a-half in the dorms at SEMO--a couple of severe colds. But I don't think my parents and I ever worried about me catching any severe illnesses...and I doubt that any of my friends and their parents did either.

Okay...so how many of you wondered whether this mumps outbreak was terror-related? It crossed my mind, though from a humorous standpoint.

From NewsChannel 5, St. Louis: 12 employees of the Missouri Department of Social Services in St. Louis are $224.2 million richer, after winning the Powerball jackpot. The employees in the Child Support Enforcement division work near the place where the ticket was sold, and were apparently consulting with each other and an attorney before turning the ticket in. A co-worker says they all showed up for work Thursday.

The $224.2 million jackpot is the 7th largest in Powerball history.

The winning ticket was bought at the QuikTrip at 2791 Dunn Road in St. Louis. The six winning numbers are: 16, 26, 34, 35, 41 and the Powerball number was 24.

The things I could have done with that money...

Last night, I was working on my term paper, which is due in 2 weeks. It's a group paper, so I have my part to do, plus I'll be proofreading the rough drafts once we put the whole thing together.

I was just about done with my part...I had maybe a couple of paragraphs left. But apparently, I saved over the most current copy with an earlier version of it last night...and I can't find a more current copy...and my system hasn't backed up in 2 days.

This has been a tough paper to do. The subject matter is not hard, and I have plenty of motivation. I dunno...I just haven't been feeling it. Maybe it's been because I've been under the weather for the past couple of months, or because this class is such a snoozer.

There is a silver lining, though...I'm more determined than ever to get this done, and to do it well. I should have my part done tomorrow or Friday.

So, now that Iran says they’ve "joined the club of nuclear countries," (source), what kinds of perks come with that? Do they get some sort of membership packet? A cool membership certificate to hang on the wall and show all their friends? Maybe a tie clasp or even a baseball hat? When you're a third-world country spending money on nuclear technology and giving the rest of the world the finger, you oughta get something big for that.

Do you think that the US government is actually worried about Iran’s government being toppled, instead of being hopeful? After all, look at the mess in Iraq. And Palestine.

This is easily one of the greatest days in St. Louis sports history.

Welcome, Busch 3!



(Image courtesy of KMOV-TV and the St. Louis Cardinals)

Tim originally posted this a short time ago, but I decided to use it as Monday's Manifesto.

Spotted This On My Way Home From Work



Interesting. Even more interesting is the one April and I saw this afternoon:

I was in Walgreens this afternoon, when I noticed a product by the register called Chicken Poop. It is apparently a lip balm made with soy. I only know this because I went to their website:

http://ilovechickenpoop.com

The box I saw it in had a saying on it that said something like, "If you've got chapped lips, put some chicken poop on them and you won't lick them."

And no, the product contains no chicken poop.

I wonder if the shit works...

The Cardinals started their season by whooping the Phillies' asses like a bunch of silly bitches...bahahahaha!

(You Philly folks know that I love you all, and that I still have soft spots for the sports teams. But when they play St. Louis teams, those soft spots disappear.)

Anyway, during the series, Cardinals pitcher Jeff Suppan did a segment for Fox Sports Midwest (the Cardinals' primary TV broadcaster) about cheesesteaks...in particular, Pat's and Geno's.

(For you non-Philly folks, Pat's and Geno's are probably the best-known cheesesteak places in Philadelphia. They are basically across the street from each other, at 9th and Passyunk in South Philadelphia.)

So, Suppan did this segment...I didn't see it all, but it looked like he talked to some folks at both places, got some history about them, talked to some locals, and tasted the goods. It was cool.

My stepdad alerted me to it the second time. And my friend Tracy asked me about it the following day. Both of them asked me about the places in question...and so, I briefly educated them about cheesesteaks.

I told them that Pat's and Geno's both suck, and are mainly for tourists and retarded South Philadelphians. Maybe I missed something, but I thought they were way overrated.

I then told them about my favorite places--Philip's in South Philly and Chubby's in Roxborough. Sadly, I only became familiar with Chubby's during my last 6 months in Philly, but I really liked them. And they served beer. I don't remember my last cheesesteak, but I remember one of the last ones. My friend Sean and I had been at an S3P meeting at Kelly Erb's law office. Her office was right by Chubby's, so we stopped in there after the meeting. I had a chicken cheesesteak with mayo and ketchup and a couple of Yuenglings...ahhh...good times! I took my mom there for her first cheesesteak when she came to Philly last year...she liked it a lot.

If you all can figure out how to send one out here relatively intact, please let me know. Unfortunately, April and I will probably not be out east until the fall at the earliest.

Griff wanted to share a story from his job, and he thought the Manifestos were a good place to put it. I agree.

A really neat thing happened at work over the last month. This lil kid with echolalia who never said anything appropriate said and signed "bubbles" after one of the grad students signed and said bubbles to him while holding a bubble wand. From there, I've started pairing everything with sign. He is counting, spontaneously asking for crackers, play breaks, and has quite a list of animals he can sign and say. It is unbelievable. People get all misty eyed when we go through his words, because nobody saw this coming. Autism is really really strange sometimes. That is all. I figured I'd post this somewhere it wouldn't get buried.

As you might have read, last Wednesday, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, D-GA, got into a scuffle with US Capitol Police. According to MSNBC:

In this case, she entered a House office building without passing through the metal detector that screens visitors. Members of Congress are permitted to bypass the machines, but she was not wearing the pin that identified her as a House member at the time.

The officer, whose name has not been made public, has said he asked McKinney three times to stop. She did not.

Terrance Gainer, outgoing chief of the Capitol Police, has said the officer placed a hand on her and she responded by hitting him. He said McKinney’s race was not a factor.

Later that night, she made the following statement (from MSNBC):

"I know that Capitol Hill Police are securing our safety, and I appreciate the work that they do. I have demonstrated my support for them in the past and I continue to support them now," she said.

Then, there were her comments yesterday (from the first cited article):

What McKinney called a "misunderstanding" on Thursday she had labeled "racial profiling" and "inappropriate touching" a day earlier. For nearly a week, she and her lawyers had insisted that she had been assaulted and had done nothing wrong.

Today, she apologized...from the same article:

"I am sorry that this misunderstanding happened at all, and I regret its escalation and I apologize," McKinney, D-Ga., said during a brief appearance on the House floor. "There should not have been any physical contact in this incident."

She was apparently pressured by the Congressional Black Caucus, and rightly so, IMO. Part of me thinks that they should have came out publicly against her, but letting her hang herself worked pretty well.

(And no, I did not just pull a Dave Lenihan.)

I understand that many minorities are very sensitive to racism. And I understand that security is a very sensitive issue right now--especially in Washington. But based on my understanding of the situation, McKinney made herself look stoopid, and can blame no one but herself for what happened. After all, she didn't wear the pin that identifies her as a House member.

And let's put this on a general level...why would ANY Congressman running for re-election put themselves in a situation like this? McKinney still has to win a primary in July...and she lost one in 2002.

Hopefully, this was just a speed bump for the Dems...

It took almost a month, but the board is back, I’m back and all is right with the world.

The problem was figuring out how my new server handles sql databases. Once I figured that out, I put a new version of the board up, got a new configuration file, uploaded the sql database, tweaked out the errors…and voila!

I’m proud that I figured most of it out by myself. I will certainly give Jag and the folks at MediaTemple their props because they pointed me in the right direction. But I had to do the hard work…and I’m glad I did. And now I know that I can truly run a phpBB board on my own, and transfer it from one server to another.

I will probably put the month’s worth of Manifestos from the blog up there over the next week. I have a break week from school next week…whoohoo!

It’s good to be back. Writing my Manifestos is fun, but I enjoy the interaction that results from posting them on the forum.

There's been talk of it for months, but it became official today: Katie Couric will become the new anchor of the CBS Evening News.

Call me hokey, but I like Katie. "Today" requires someone that can be serious one minute and willing to make an ass of themselves the next...and for 15 years, Katie did that well. And the few times I've seen her anchor NBC Nightly News, she did well. I won't watch her much on CBS (when I do watch the evening news, I watch Brian Williams on NBC), but I think she'll do a great job. And she has some big shoes to fill. Say what you want about Dan Rather, but for the most part, he was a hell of a journalist.

And whoever replaces Katie at "Today" (the front-runner is apparently Meredith Vieira of ABC's "The View") also has big shoes to fill. Katie had to live up to Jane Pauley and did so, leaving her own unique mark on the show. And "Today" has been #1 in the morning for 15 years.

Perhaps NBC could make a reality show out of this to boost its sagging ratings...

Caruthersville, MO is a small town about 200 miles south of St. Louis, across the Mississippi River from Tennessee. I was there once in 1995...what a hellhole. It's the county seat of the poorest county in the state (Pemiscot County). The only thing it really had going for it was Casino Aztar, a casino riverboat that arrived in the early 90s.

Sunday, it was struck by an F3 tornado that damaged half the town. Here are some photos taken by Diane L. Wilson of the Southeast Missourian. Amazingly, no one died, though 23 were killed in western TN.

I haven't seen this much destruction in quite some time...did I mention that it's only the beginning of the tornado season?

From MSNBC: Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a firebrand Texan tainted by a lobbying scandal that ensnared some of his former top aides and cost the congressman his leadership post, told MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Monday night that he won't seek relection to Congress.

About 4:30 this afternoon, severe thunderstorms started rolling through the St. Louis area. 2 people died: one in a park in the western suburbs, another when the roof of a K&G store in the Illinois suburbs collapsed. Winds hit 60-70 mph in some spots. Several tornadoes may have touched down, including 2 in the St. Louis area. Funnel clouds were spotted, including a couple in my area. I didn't see too much damage in the neighborhood when I was driving around after the storms...mostly broken tree limbs.

And it's only April 2nd...tornado season has just begun...

From today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch: A St. Louis-area UPS driver with almost 44 years and 4 million miles in his rearview mirror retired Friday with a flawless driving record.

Jim Broyles, 65, has driven for UPS since 1962, delivering packages and steering big rigs across the Midwest.

Supervisors and co-workers on Friday honored the Florissant resident at a retirement party at UPS's distribution center in Earth City.

And from Fox 2 St. Louis: