It's not often that I frequent the ice cream aisle at any store....

When we lived up in Illinois, one of our frequent haunts (especially during the summer) was Whitey's Ice Cream. That's one of a few things I miss about living up there (not enough to ever move back, mind you). Anyway, during some of my most recent forays into the netherworld of Wal-Mart at 4 A.M. I noticed that Ben & Jerry's had little single size servings of several of their most popular flavors. I happened to stop by the local House that Walton Built this morning and my curiosity got the better of me. I must say that I kinda dig these little cups. One 3.6 fluid ounce serving was of course loaded with calories (particularly from fats) but only about as many as you'd find in an average candy bar.

Hey, if you're lookin' for something interesting to do on Sunday night (April 20th this coming weekend), consider checking out the Dixie Derby Girls vs. the Nashville Roller Girls. I think that would be highly entertaining but I'll be working.......

In parting....

I download the Department of Homeland Security's Daily Open Source newsletter. They used to send it via e-mail, but they have since ceased doing so. Now I use a nifty little batch file (that invokes wget for Windows) to download it via Windows Scheduled Tasks. For those who have any interest in that type of thing, here's the batch file that I use:

@echo off
echo %%date%% = %date%

for /f "tokens=1-4 delims=/ " %%i in ("%date%") do (
set dow=%%i
set month=%%j
set day=%%k
set year=%%l
)

wget http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/DHS_Daily_Report_%year%-%month%-%day%.pdf -O dhs/DHS_Daily_Report_%year%-%month%-%day%.pdf


Well, I'd better run along. Time to catch as many ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZs as I can! Peace, y'all!

Woohoo, it's Tax Day......

Speaking for myself, I'm much hipper on THIS IDEA.....

'Twas a VERY slow day off for me. I did get the chance to do my standard early morning run to the local branch of the Bentonville behemoth. Plus, there was a great dinner at Red Lobster (well before Wally-world). Topping it off with the "Warm Chocolate Chip Lava Cookie" made dinner wonderful.....

I just read that one of the bands (backandtotheleft) from the Metropolis Records label called it quits. They were working on a new album prior to dissolving. The songs they had been working on are available for download via their MySpace page....

Speaking of things musical...

The latest issue of Improvijazzation Nation is up in the aether! Check it out!

One nifty thing I found at the Wally-world was Sarah Brightman's latest album Symphony. I looked last week but only skimmed the racks. I looked a little closer this morning and was somewhat surprised to find it....



I have to listen to this CD some more to figure out my faves and such but it seems good so far!

Been off the scope for a while, I guess.........

Around this day last year, I was in roughly the same situation that I'm in now. I was in the middle of training for work and we were in the middle of an outage at my nuclear plant. It's too bad that I didn't have a VNV Nation show to catch in Atlanta this year. That happened on April 7th last year. Just to say it again, that show was excellent. I was completely stoked to have picked up Judgement in support of their tour of the same name! I had new music for the ride home (though I suppose it might have been excessive to have listened to it for the 3-1/2 hour drive). I would have had more of a difficult time making a show like that this year because of the hours. Besides, I had more mundane things to do. I think this was the first time I've ever browned up 10 pounds of meat at 5:30 in the morning. Tomorrow's meal at work will be chili. I'm hoping for a great batch!

Last night was fun! We ate dinner (first time) at P.F. Chang's for a friend's birthday and then visited one of the maternal units. I also got to chat with the daddy-o via webcam. I still think it's cool that I was viewing (and chatting up) a person and a room over 4,000 miles away in near real-time. Thanks for the internets, Al Gore!

All you women out there might find this interesting.....

BTW, my paternal unit pointed out some music of his. Checkit....

Well, you folks have a fine time now! Sleep is calling........

I think that my tenure here yakking about politics and other miscellaneous things is over.....

April Fools'!

Well, week two of our outage at Browns Ferry (as noted by the government info about our 3/18 power reduction here) is done. Always fun....

At least I've been able to hang out with my wife and friends a little bit. I meant to stay up all of this early morning but I didn't. I think my body was telling me that it wanted sleep. I even had a little chance to talk to my daddy-o last night. Speaking of the parentals, check out his latest Improvijazzation Nation. We might even be able to work out a cam chat next week on my day off. That would be pretty cool!

Perusing the news after my grocery run this morning, I was slightly surprised to see that the American Heart Association is making a push for "hands only CPR". The conventional CPR training will still be available but this is for those folks who can not (or might be unwilling to) provide the breaths associated with conventional CPR. Not a bad idea if it can save more lives....

We're up to about 20% of our 1988 grad class over at classreport.org. It'll be interesting to see how many people sign on before the reunion...

Well, I'd better run along. I have to prep for the next six days (technically nights) of work. Peace, y'all!

I just happened to read in one of the local media outlets...

that the local community college right down the road is in the midst of celebrating its 60th anniversary. I just thought it was kind of interesting. I kind of remembered thinking about Calhoun because an old high school teacher of mine (this year marks 20 years of being out for me) is kind of high on their food chain and also the head of the school's Center for the Study of Southern Political Culture. Pretty cool......

It must be nice that the Republicrats (to them at least) have a clear candidate for the general election. Old John McCain can even start in with general election ads....



I myself am partial to the following....



Woohoo, we'll probably get some rain today. In addition to the need for rain and the fact that it will help my yard, I don't even care much that there's a chance that we'll get it over the weekend. Of course, I'm sleeping during the day (like a vamp) anyway and my next day off is Monday. Heck, my only day off is each Monday. That makes for some pretty nice currency.

Kind of switching back to birthdays, ye olde FBI turns 100 this year. I'll bet that someone from the Bureau's early days would be overwhelmed at the changes in the past century. Like....CYBERCRIME!

Well folks, the bed is calling so I must say adieu.....

In the recent months with stories of a slightly floundering net pioneer, one thing has amazed me...

Yahoo! and Google offer a breadth of tools and services in addition to just search. And yet somehow, Yahoo! (even with a slightly longer corporate history than its dominating competitor) just doesn't seem to be kicking it like the old GOOG. The process by which some businesses succeed and dominate (and others don't catch on quite as well) is pretty amazing to watch sometimes.....

Burgerslayer?

Man, all the hubbub......

About Hillary's schedules....and Barack's speech:

As expected....

El Presidenté gave his speech regarding the fifth anniversary of going into Iraq.

As a minor aside and in response to his use of the following sentence:

"Because we acted, Saddam's regime is no longer invading its neighbors or attacking them with chemical weapons and ballistic missiles."

Lest we forget, a look at the era and nature of Hussein's use of chemical weapons in the past leads right back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in some ways.

Greetings, earthlings....

'Twas unhappy news to hear of Arthur C. Clarke's passing.

And....

Lest we forget, today is year five. Here's a song for that....



El Presidenté is supposed to give a speech regarding the anniversary at The Pentagon sometime today. Borrowing from Lil' Cheney and the irreverent romp known as Lil' Bush, "Rah rah rah, WMD, rah rah rah... rah rah rah, freedom is on the march, rah rah rah".

Happy St. Patrick's Day, y'all!

What else does March (that part which hasn't already passed us by) have in store? Well, Wikipedia (as always) has juicy tidbits of info about the day and the month.

Among other things, March is Women's History Month and National Nutrition Month. From a health standpoint, including National Nutrition Month, there are 7 month-long national health observances in March.

I'm sure that it's probably a "week of" many things, but here are a couple of specifics:

National Inhalants and Poisons Awareness Week



National Poison Prevention Week



Sunshine Week - Your right to know

Somewhat along that line of thinking, the FBI Inspector General's most recent reports about the FBI's use of national security letters (for 2006) and Section 215 of the Patriot Act (heavily redacted and also for 2006) were put online recently.

Well, y'all have fun now! I'm out of here.....

T-6 minutes and counting......

Ahhhhhhh, the Huntsville Boatnical Garden...

The annual Galaxy of Lights is widely known for fun times between Thanksgiving and New Years every year. Coming soon (Saturday to be exact):

Dinosaur Uproar (March 15 - July 15)
Southeastern Raptor Center Demonstration (Friday March 21, 2008)
Bunny Bonanza (Saturday March 22, 2008)
American Heart Association Heart Walk (Saturday March 29, 2008, 8 a.m.-1 p.m.)
Spring Festival of Flowers (March 29-April 30, 2008)

I don't remember what reminded me the other day, but....

Another project funded by your tax dollars is the Voice of America news service. There's some interesting content put out for foreign audiences. I was a little surprised to note that VoA didn't have anything for Arabic audiences.....

However, the Broadcasting Board of Governors has that realm of broadcasting covered....

English:

Alhurra - commercial-free Arabic language satellite television network for the Middle East
Radio Sawa - American radio for Arabic speakers

عَرَب

الحرة


Oh, by the way, check out this web-controlled camera. It's kind of fun to play with. If you choose to accept this mission, check out the parent site while you're there.

Wonderful new show on Comedy Central.......

The following link provides some excellent examples

of why Ron Paul is my kind of politician......

Rats!

I almost forgot.....

New episodes are coming out for two great shows from Comedy Central. I'd embed the videos here, but I'll leave it to the reader to decide on the fateful click since these shows often push the envelope....

South Park - new episode 03/12/08
Lil' Bush - new episode 03/13/08

Check out my blog feed.....

via Google Earth. Yes, you must have Google Earth to view the appropriate .kmz file.......

In keeping with one of my standards.....

if the government is going to spend my dough, folks might as well be made aware of the services/info that they are getting for their ca$$$$$h.

To that end (and right up my alley as well), check out these two spots at the EPA:

The EPA's Radiation Protection News Room (I think they need an RSS feed)

RadTown USA - somewhat of a more youth-oriented look into how radioactive material is used in many segments of society

Check out AIRNow from the feds. From the site's "About AIRNow" page:

"The U.S. EPA, NOAA, NPS, tribal, state, and local agencies developed the AIRNow Web site to provide the public with easy access to national air quality information. The Web site offers daily AQI forecasts as well as real-time AQI conditions for over 300 cities across the US, and provides links to more detailed State and local air quality Web sites."

I've seen how air quality affects folks who are susceptible to respiratory problems and that's why I find this site useful....

For folks in my neck of the woods, here's a link that gathers info from Google News about Browns Ferry.

I was watching something like South Park the other night and there was an ad about "Elections '08 On Demand" from Charter. I checked it out (locally, it's buried in the "i Want More On Demand" section of the On Demand channels) for a little while. I think I'd rather check out the candidate web sites/MySpace profiles/YouTube channels and the plethora of other political sites for more current information. Decent idea but not currently the best implementation......

OK.....

Immediate first impression of IE8? It crashes almost constantly under my setup. It has consistently reported the cause of the crash as being the Google Toolbar. When I first installed IE, I had an older version of the Google Toolbar. I disabled it and updated to a new beta version of the Google Toolbar. IE8 worked for a couple of starts and then BAM!, it started to crash again. This has something to do with it...

Changing the home page without opening the browser is easy enough, but if you're set up to use iGoogle (vice the classic Google home page), going to Google will crash the browser. *%$#!@#$%^&**)(