War. Great.

~ m ~ Leave a comment

News sources you can actually get to:

— BBC RealOne video feed
— Effnet IRC channel #cnn-live

Some info from other than typical news sites…
(from slashdot…)

— Debka (Middle East News) [debka.com]
— Official Iraqi News [uruklink.net]
— Where is Read? – Iraqi Blog [blogspot.com]
— Kuwait Blog [qhate.com]
— Back to Iraq Blog [back-to-iraq.com]
— Iraq today [einnews.com]
— Warblogs.cc [warblogs.cc]
— Kevin Sites [kevinsites.net]
— Sky.com [sky.com]
— BCC News Live Feed [bbc.co.uk]
— Agonist [agonist.org]

CBSnews also has a beautiful high detail webcam without all the crap on the bottom of the screen.

Update: If ya are getting the feeling that you should maybe voice your protest, but you’re not sure where to start, try MoveOn‘s “virtual march”. Here’s the statement I submitted:

I originally approached the subject of the threat of Iraq and its leader with an attitude of “the Bush administration has more information than me, and should know best.” But before beginning war and escalating the situation to its current state, the administration had a responsibility to PROVE its case with overwhelming evidence, e.g. providing concrete evidence of the existance of WMD’s, first. The arrogance of the administration, both in not disclosing more information (if it exists), and in its acts of aggression, is intolerable. You have sent the country into WAR, it should be justified, even if that means disclosing information you would rather keep secret. *You*, the administration, represent *us*, the American people. Now we have no choice left but to question your motivation. Hopefully it is not too late for some rectification, but it will be a matter of getting the genie back in the bottle, this late in the game.

Return to the Homeland

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The family and I had a great time in sunny Florida seeing all the Miller relatives. Saturday was beach day. I swam with 5 or 6 dolphins off the coast of Sanibel Island’s Lighthouse beach – that alone was worth the trip! Lily, our youngest pup, decided to take a swim or two as well – she was great fun to have along.

That night, we set off to Macaroni Grill to celebrate Pappa’s birthday.

The girls have been (re-)bonding every day with their cousin Bailey, and loving every minute of all the attention from not one but two grandmas. We took them to the tennis court at Grammie’s condo, and Andrea and I ended up playing a rowdy set or two – she can really hit the ball! – while the girls chased lizards with Gram. We played until we nearly had heat-stroke.

My brother and I got some much-needed hang-out time late Saturday night, getting a Redhat 8 box up and running from scraps in his garage. Corey was along for the ride as well, VNC’ing to the box as soon as we had it up and running. We have moved his HighTechGeek site over from Windows and it is humming now instead of crashing every day (his Windows machine has an overclocked AMD chip, which does not do well in the Florida heat in his garage :> ). We also hooked up with John Carpenter, who served us up some amazing home brews, which we drank while discussing the status of our never-ending side projects. It was good to catch up with him.

The rest of the family is doing great, and we were long overdue for hanging out with them. Sunday was great, with Mum doing her thing serving a spontaneous 15-course lunch. I don’t think we stopped eating all day, going from there to Dan and Val’s for Val’s famous tofu pot pie. Tammy and Diane joined in to make it a fairly complete family reunion.

We finished up on Monday with another great session with Poppa reading excerpts from “Riding the Rails”, the novel he has been working on throughout 2002. It’s been great fun for all of us to share in his obsession. He hopes to have it published this year. Dan and Corey worked on a great birthday present – a mockup of the first release of the book.

How did I fit that all in a weekend!? Can’t wait for the next get-together!

A project gone SO wrong

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Found on the web…

Don’t you just love it when teachers’ good intentions go a muck?

An elementary school class started a class project to make a planter
to take home to their parents. They wanted to have a plant in it;
that was easy to take care of, so they decided to use cactus plants. The students were given greenware pottery planters in the shape of a clown, which they painted with glaze. The clown planters were professionally fired at a class outing so they could see the process. It was great fun.

They planted cactus seeds in the finished planters and they grew
nicely… but unfortunately the children were not allowed to take them home…

Which is worse?

~ m ~ Leave a comment

Mr. Smith goes to the doctor’s office to collect his wife’s test results.

Receptionist: “I’m sorry, sir, but there has been a bit of a mix-up and we have a problem. When we sent the samples from your wife to the lab, the samples from another Mrs. Smith were sent as well and we are now uncertain which one is your wife’s. Frankly, that’s either bad or terrible.”

Mr. Smith: “What do you mean?”

Receptionist: “Well, one Mrs. Smith has tested positive for Alzheimer disease and the other for AIDS. We can’t tell which is your wife.”

Mr. Smith: “That’s terrible! Can we do the test over?”

Receptionist: “Normally, yes. But you have an HMO, and they won’t pay for these expensive tests more than once.”

Mr. Smith: “Well, what am I supposed to do now?”

Receptionist: “The doctor recommends that you drop your wife off in the middle of town. If she finds her way home, don’t sleep with her.”

Knock knock…

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Knock Knock…

The new pastor was visiting in the homes of his parishioners. At one house it seemed obvious that someone was at home, but no answer came to his repeated knocks at the door. He took out a card, wrote “Revelation 3:20” on the back and stuck it in the door.

When the offering was processed the following Sunday, he found that his card had been returned. Added to it was this cryptic message, “Genesis 3:10.”

Reaching for his Bible to check out the citation, he broke up in gales of laughter. Revelation 3:20 begins “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” Genesis 3:10 reads, “I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid for I was naked.”

Here kitty kitty…

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Via email…

A colleague’s niece is from the south. She routinely took her cat in for a line cut, which means the groomer cuts off fur below the tummy where it can get matted and dirty. She moved to Chicago and took the cat to the groomer and asked for a line cut, but with her accent, the groomer heard, “lion cut.” This is how the cat came back. I think the look on its face just says it all (look at both pics).