Friday, December 22, 2006

Teh innernets are back!!!




Yes, that's right. To the literally tens of visitors I get per month, I'm back. My internet connection finally came back up some time this evening. Eight days without teh innernets is enough to drive a man crazy. I have some things to write about regarding our large and relatively up-to-prediction level wind storm. Aside from my relatively short period without electricity (48 hours) and my long-assed time without internet (eight days), my only very close encounter with a near disaster is the little Cedar which came crashing down in my neighbors yard, missing their house and more importantly, my fence by only a few feet.

If you behead your wife...

...it would be nice if you'd kill yourself quietly and discreetly, without ruining any more lives.

Prosecutors alleged Time killed his wife, then tossed her severed head into his Dodge Ram pickup and drove into Boise. There they allege he swerved into oncoming traffic and collided with a sedan, killing a woman and her young daughter. He faces second-degree murder charges in those deaths.

I'd like to post more often, really.

Except that my internet connection has been down for over a week since Seattle Windstorm '06. I'm not sure what's going on with Comcast, but when I call them, they report there is a known outage in my neighborhood, and that there's no reason to stay on the line. A friend of mine who never lost internet also gets the same recording. When I try to stay on the line, Comcast eventually drops my call and politely suggests that I visit their website at www.comcast.com. Kinda hard when you don't have teh innernets.

So I'lll be posting from work (when I'm not working).

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Teachers and alternative schools-- my favorite subject

Looks like the Seattle School District finally nicked a teacher for fraudulently collecting $120,000 in overtime pay. I shudder to think what her regular salary was. Strangely, they don't mention the woman's name. A union thing? That probably greases the wheels for her to be another sought-after teacher in another district.

A routine budget review by the school's new principal this fall turned up time slips on which the teacher claimed more hours than she could possibly have worked, according to a Seattle Police Department incident report.

The woman, who has worked for the district for 32 years, offered to repay the district. She has not been charged.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Here's a situation it seems you'll never see

A man, who was trapped on a snowy peak was able to call a rescuer and read off the following information before the cell phone went dead:

"I am at 46.830134 and -121.669464. Those are my coordinates."

Instead, we just get this:

Searchers thwarted by a storm whose winds were expected to gust from 60 mph to 80 mph today stayed well below the summit area of Mount Hood, where at least one of three missing mountaineers was last heard from.
[...]
Signals from the phone put it about 11,000 feet, just below the summit. Search teams in a statement today said the signals also "suggest that the phone was moved from one point to another. The points are not far from each other."
[...]
Hughes said Tuesday that calls to James' cell had produced "pings" allowing searchers to approximate where he was but that nobody had answered the calls.

Hughes said tracing the pings put James at about the 11,000-foot level.

Yep, a high tech guessing game and a race to save someones life. I'm not even going to start on the whole Kim family tragedy. As long as people make the conscious decisions to continue on a journey which has all the warning signs it will end badly, they should at least have a $150 device in their pocket which will, at minimum, tell them where they are in relation to other known objects... like the highway, or hell, back to their own car if they decide they can't walk out.

To the literally tens of visitors I get per month, I would like to introduce you to a concept called GPS. It may not save your life, but it sure as hell might help someone else save your life, or at least find your body more quickly.

Thank God


It missed the tv.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Rumors of my demise...

...have been exaggerated. I would like to assure the tens of readers I get per month that I'm getting ready to start posting again. The holiday season has been pretty stacked, plus I've been concentrating on other more important endeavors, such as snowboarding and flying a small remote control helicopter.

I've got lots to write about, and I shall be back within a day or so.