Uh huh - there's a Dog Island and if I send Fido there he will live happily ever after chasing bunnies and grasshoppers. Then, when it rains, Fido will rest in a cave on the seashore and wash the waves....
This makes me wish i still taught web development/use courses. What a great example of a hoax!
It is worth noting that there is a place called Dog Island and it is close to Tallahassee. Though, apparently there are no dogs - there are apparently shipwrecks, though.
Fall has sprung, apparently. I know this because I am a HUGE sufferer of fall allergies. This week's outbreak is rivaling the one when they decided powerwashing the outside of the building I work in was a good idea. ICK! So, after a trip to the doctor yesterday, i am on a double dose of asthma medecine, 3 antihistimine variants, a nasal spray and occassionally albuterol. Yep - I am the poster child for better living through chemistry.
After only about half an hour, a judge told FOX that Al Franken is within his rights to be fair and balanced. So, I suppose we are now all legally fair and balanced AND our legal system can turn its attention to issues that matter instead of making corporate lawyers feel important.
Yep - that was my day - oh and wait, wait, wait..... while all the virtual places I needed to be were creeping along thanks to someone who gets their ya-yas from cracking into Microsoft's abyssmal security. Okay - self-propogating worms are not interesting. They are not new. It apparently is not difficult to break into the Microsoft mail programs and get worms to spread. So WHY do we keep getting hit with these things?? (It's kind of the same thing I asked about the bright person who decided to set the UGA library on fire. Was it a challenge because paper is so hard to get to burn???) All I can say is that after deleting more emails today than I care to count, I sure hope the friendly worm writer had a nice full inbox (though I know he/she likely protected themself). I also hope that the email admin folks get this straightened out so I can actually get my work done at a reasonable rate tomorrow...
Okay, so the news is reporting that the power outage in the northeast is a national crisis - it's The Big Blackout. Our government is calling for updates to the national power grid (One politican even had the nerve to call it a 3rd world power grid - HELLO! The third world would love to have the stability in the grid that we generally enjoy!). I agree that the blackout is bad - I'm not denying that the restaurants and grocery stores are going to lose money and that people had a miserable night sleeping on the street in Times Square. But a crisis?
I did a search at dictionary.com for "crisis" and, among the several definitions it provided, the only one that came close to describing the power outage was:
crisis n 1: an unstable situation of extreme danger or difficulty; "they went bankrupt during the economic crisis" 2: a crucial stage or turning point in the course of something; "after the crisis the patient either dies or gets better" Source: WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton University
Even with that definition, it was only a crisis for those poor folks stuck in the mine in Canada and the people stuck on the subways. For the rest of the folks, it seems to me, it was a huge inconvenience, but not a crisis. To put it in perspective, isn't lack of power the problem the Iraqis have been SO upset about that our government tells them to just have patience about? Why is it a crisis here, but something that will be fixed with time there?
Methinks the media might select words for impact rather than meaning.
On the subject of balanced....my new bow arrived. It feels a lot different from the old one - much nicer parts for one thing. It totally changes the sound of the bass, though. I suppose this makes sense, but I wasn't expecting it. The old, bad bow provided a much brighter sound than the new bow does. We'll have to see how the adjustment period goes.
Thought of the day from one of my colleagues (talking about the goat out in his research barn): you gotta wonder what it would be like if you got up in the morning and you knew the only thing you were gonna say all day was "baa"!
So yesterday I bought a bass. This is a BIG commitment - at 6'2" and a little over $2k - there is nothing to call it but big. Having played on a decent rental and tried out a few other low-end basses, I can say this one is great. It plays really easily, both bowed and plucked. (Even with the AWFUL bow I have - while I bought a much better one yesterday, I have to wait for it to come in.) There is a bit of occassional buzz on the G string, which sits really close to the finger board - but I want to have a chance to play on it more before I get concerned about that. All of that TalkBass urging of Newbies to only buy from a Luthier paid off for me. I paid no more than I would have elsewhere (less than my poorly set-up rental would have cost to purchase) and got a great product ready to go from Ronald Sachs. Pictures will come soon.
The floor tiling project is off to a SLOW start. We thought it would take about 5 hours - after 5 hours, we had only laid the cement board underlayment and found out that it needed to be partially taken up to be evened out. ARGH! We have put the tiling itself on hold for a few days. Hopefully it will go smoothly now that the floor is ready.
Cats. Poor Zoey is banshed to tile floors from now until she relearns what litterboxes are for. She also gets to take antibiotics (just in case) and will be getting some phermones to help her be mroe attracted to the litterbox. She has already started trying to make the upstairs carpet the same mess she made the downstairs carpet. Maybe the urinalysis will uncover something easier to treat than a behavior problem (seems unlikely though as she has always been weird with litterboxes.)
Slept in!!
I finished Harry Potter last night. It was another good one - I hope we don't have to wait as long for the next book. I figured out who was going to die early on, but Rowling did a good job of having enough twists in there that I thought I might have been wrong right up until it happened. Next on the list is Stupid White Men by Michael Moore. Lee gave it to me for my birthday - I am excited to read it, but it will be a big contrast to Harry Potter.