Pawprints From Space

Okay, I am confused. As we all know whenever the "n" word is used to refer to a person of African American persuasion all hell breaks loose. There is outrage, general pandemonium in the press and assorted brawling. And frankly I do not blame anyone for getting upset. The word long ago (say around the early 1800s) lost any claim to its original dictionary definition of any lazy person and became the premiere derogatory term for the African American population. So why is it that while Christmas shopping while standing in the shoe department I heard someone on the phone use the word? Not just anyone mind you but a tall, good-looking African American man all decked out in expensive faux ghetto wear (you know the over priced leather jacket with major brand logos on it, the $200 sneakers, jeans that were impeccable, a microseude shirt and a leather ballcap turned backwards of course). He was speaking into a high-tech cell phone and was apparently discussing his Christmas shopping m...

Recently our local paper had a funny bit on new business terms. Apparently the writer had spent some time online and came across some great new words. Of course he had the time to spend online while at work because he is also the paper's editor. Be that as it may - and it does conjure up some interesting arguments over why the boss gets to surf while at work and the staff doesn't these are pretty darned good. To whit: Blamestorming - a meeting to discuss failures and find a scapegoat Assmosia - the apparent absorption of success that comes from sucking up (aka kissing a**) Deja moo - (my personal favorite) the feeling that you've heard this bunch of bull before Mouse potato - a close cousin to the coach potato this is a person who spends hours and hours in front of a computer Percussive maintenance - the common practice of 'fixing' something by banging on it repeatedly Photox - improving the look of one's face in a photo through the use of graphic software Dope-...

Ah ha! I thought so. Your local government could be the cause of your high cable bill. Cities control the rights of cable franchises within their communities. They determine if a company can have a franchise there and charge customers fees etc and the company has to go to the city for permission to increase their fees. This is all old news to anyone who was in class with me in grad school in the communications department at Illinois State in the 1980s. Today though I see that the FCC is finally realizing that some communities are actually blocking competition in the cable arena. For example, in my community there is no competition unless you get satellite service for which you need a city permit to even put a mini Dish Network dish on your house. The "other" cable company only supplies service to those outside the city limits and then only if you don't live near a copse of trees which can block the signal. But if you live in a town a more 20 minutes down the highway where...

As of the end of business on Monday I will be on vacation. For two weeks. Until next year (January 2nd to be exact). I have no clue what to do. I haven't had two weeks together for about 10 years (at least as best I can recall). This is going to be weird. Of course there is plenty that can be done from cleaning (ick), to getting a jump on the next semester (yuk), from painting the bedroom (smelly) to getting a root canal - oh wait that I have to do. Could catch up on CNN. Could catch up on sleep. Could do both at the same time if Wolf Blitzer didn't yell so much. Well the holiday baking won't be so rushed at least. Stay tuned, two weeks without structure in my life could get very strange indeed. I sense a Monty Python marathon coming on...

It is December. We are in that limbo between the holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas (or whatever winter festival your particular belief system recognizes) where people are expected to be cheerful and generous. They are neither. Traffic is awful and people have no patience when trying to navigate it. The rudeness is something to behold. A traffic cop could make a fortune in one afternoon. In the stores the holiday music is mostly ignored and rather serves to irritate rather than inspire goodwill. Patrons are shoved, pushed out of the way at sale racks, salesclerks are subject to all sorts of verbal abuse - the list is endless. Even shoplifting increases this time of year, as do home break-ins, car break-ins and purse snatching. One assumes the folks engaging in these latter activities are doing so to provide a nice holiday for their own loved ones which warps the whole spirit of the season even more. It becomes clear when you witness this behavior that the reason for the season has ...

Is it just me? I mean, has this occured to anyone else? The recent death of the Ex-KGB guy Litinenko in England from poisoning via Polonium 210 and all the news coverage of his ordeal while awful and horrific sparked a weird little giggle in the back of my head. I am a fan of the Looney Tunes character Marvin the Martian and I am sorry but the isotope Polonium 210 sounds WAY too much like Marvin's coveted Illudium Q-36. As in the power behind the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator (with which he was going ot blow up the Earth because it blocked his view of Venus) and the focus of the race between Marvin and Duck Dodgers to Planet X the last known source of Illudium. This weird little giggle is either a case of too much caffeine or not enough.

I am about ready to throw the printer through the window. I have cleaned the print heads, I have aligned and I have even cleaned the rollers and installed new cartridges. All to no avail. I have ink blots the size of dimes on my printouts. These are papers that I have to turn in for grades you see so I am not happy. Not one little tiny bit. The printer is not old. It has not been used and abused. On the advice of trusted geeks and the paperwork that came with the thing I do not shut it off (ever) as the ink can get "cold" and be useless. Wonderful way to screw up a Sunday. Oh yeah.

Yes indeed as we all now know the Democrats have control of Congress and George Bush is eating a bit of crow these days. As the new Senator Brown from Ohio put it though (to paraphrase) if the Democrats go in seeking revenge they will lose. In my opinion, the country has asked for change. The Democrats have a mandate from the people to enact change. They can not afford to screw it up by throwing subpoenas at everything that moves and generally acting like the sheriff in a bad western seeking to gun down the bad guys and clean up the town at the point of his gun. You got elected. You have the power. Now play nice. And while you are at it get a dictionary that contains the word bipartisan.

Gotta love politics, it is just too funny. And you gotta love the folks in Tennessee for trying to have fun with it. Apparently there is this Senate race over there wherein the guys running the campaign are trying to be funny. And they are succeeding and of course the other party is extremely annoyed by this. The guy running is a Democrat currently serving in the House named Harold Ford Jr. Those "bad" Republicans have been running an ad featuring mock voters giving silly reasons to vote for him. Including such things as he "looks nice... isn't that enough?", "so he took money from porn movie producers... who hasn't" and closing with a pretty blonde who says she met him at a party and the Playboy mansion whereupon she winks at the camera and gushes "Harold, call me". C'mon guys isn't this more fun than the usual mud slinging? Sure it is a little muddy but instead of the sweet old lady saying how she doesn't trust Senator What...

With apologies to the Pop Tart whose song title I just paraphrased, the original Material Girl is back in the news: she did it again - she got a bunch of attention. Even my fave editorial guy is commenting. And he has a point (doesn't he always?). The woman went to Africa was moved by what she saw (you'd have to be frozen not to be) and is trying to adopt a child as a result. At least she is doing something. Never mind that adopting third world kids now seems to be a fashion statement, just ask Ms. Joile. This is one child who will get a chance to grow up. The rest of the world - the developed world - is pretty much ignoring the situation in various parts of Africa. It is a big continent ignoring it will not make it go away. Darfor isn't going to heal itself. The Sudan isn't going to heal itself. The desert is going to keep expanding (they have a tendency to do that). The snows on Killaminjaro are melting. And here we site, in the wealthiest nation on Earth. Pretty much...

Found this on the Web: In El Paso, Texas, two Border Patrol agents who shot a fleeing drug courier in the buttocks were found guilty March 9 of assault, weapons crimes, tampering with evidence, and deprivation of civil rights. Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean face at least 10 years in federal prison for shooting Osvaldo Andrade Davila, a Mexican citizen, as he fled back across the border when they interrupted his effort to carry a package of drugs into the US. Ramos and Compean also conspired to cover up the shooting by removing spent shell casings from the scene. The pair turned down a plea bargain for 18-month sentences. They have been suspended with pay since the February 2005 incident, and Border Patrol officials said they will now consider firing them. They shot him in the butt. Hardly a life threatening injury. Funny yes, life threatening no. As I understand it "policing your brass" that is cleaning up the spent shell casings is normal practice, hardly cover...

Don't have all the details yet, plan to do the research. Apparently two border patrol guys have been sentenced to 11 years in prison for - get this - doing their jobs. Seems they stopped an illegal guy running drugs in a van. Guy takes off running for the border to get back to Mexico (makes sense since once across they can't touch him). So in typical cop style one of them shoots at the guy. Wings him. Didn't think he'd actually hit the drug runner since he kept... running. The drug guy ends up pressing charges and our border patrol guys are tried and convicted (not sure of what, again gotta do the research) and have been sentenced to 11 years in jail. So? What is this? You can patrol the border but you can't actually shoot someone you catch with drugs? A van full of drugs mind you. We hear all this talk about border security. Apparently that is even more of a joke than we thought. Apparently the only news person talking about this is Lou Dobbs on CNN. Why isn't ...

Not too cold today but dark and rainy. Made for a depressing mess. Would much rather stay in bed on a day like this one. So would the cats apparently. There are two black cats in the household. Neither apparently understand that this is October. A month wherein they are to slink and skulk and otherwise make silly people nervous. Instead they snore and purr and look at you funny when you get up to start the day. What is wrong with you, human? Their gold-green eyes say. They know full when that when it is still dark one should not get up. Breakfast be damned. The bed is warm the comforter soft and they ain't budging. The long-haired calico on the other hand wants her breakfast, though it might have something to do with the fact that the human moved her head from the pillow and said calico was using the top of said head as her pillow. Nah, probably not.

I never thought of myself as a city girl. Being a nature nut I figured I was best cut out for the smaller towns - lots of trees, birds etc. Apparently not. After nearly 13 years in a town the size of less than 40,000 I find that I am fed up with small minds, closed minds and those who seem to have no mind at all. Of course you can find these people anywhere in the world but they tend to stand out in the smaller communities when you are not of a ... like mind. Take the issue of smoking for example. Several nonprofits in Ohio have banned together to gather signatures and get an initiative on the ballot to make the state smoke free. Never mind the smoker's rights cries I'm sure everyone expected that. It is the ranting and raving claiming that there is no link between smoking (and second hand smoke) and several kinds of cancer and heart disease - funny there is a ton of research to the contrary. Several claim that going smoke free as a state is just like stealing the property - no...

Ever notice how when the national evening news casts are crowing that gas prices have dropped and that this coming winter looks like it won't be as expensive for the average folk WHAM!! the prices at the gas pumps spike. You bet. NBC/CBS/ABC were all saying that hey gas prices were below $2 all over the country and within hours the price at the corner station went from $2.05 to $2.25. Wrong direction people! So today when the paper tells me that those of us who heat our homes with natural gas will see bills of around $119 or 12.5% less this winter, forgive me if I don't believe a word of it. They also say that the winter will be milder than average (more mild?). Uh-huh but didn't I also read today that the fields in Alaska are down again due to weather? OPEC wants to cut back on production 'cuz they aren't getting as much per barrel as they were last week etc, etc, etc. Oh yeah, I believe that my home heating costs will be better this year... sure I do. It is very i...

Okay gotta comment. Can't take it any more. While I am glad that the idiot resigned, glad that his transgressions have come to light I am annoyed that Congress can not punish him in any way. Because he resigned. He's out of office so they can't do anything. Nope, punishment is up to the civilian authorities. Really? Let's double check and make sure that the resignation also removed his right to the government health plan for the rest of his life, as well as any pension plan that they enjoy. I'll bet it doesn't. I'll bet he gets to keep that. If so, there is your punishment people - take those privileges away from him. Is it irony to discover that he is guilty of this kind of behavior when he served on the Congressional committee tasked with protecting children from online predators - people just like him? Or is it merely that he saw it as the ultimate cover? No one would suspect him because of his standing with that committee. Interesting, no? It is akin to ...

Remember that line from the movie Wall Street "Greed is good, greed works"? Yeah well Time Warner Cable must have made that the company motto. Here in Nowhere Ohio we do not have any competition to speak of for cable service. Not in the city limits at least. Outside the city there is another provider but they are pseudo satellite since no one has run coax cable out that far yet. Consequently Time Warner can do whatever the heck they want. To whit: recently the CW Network hit the air as a merger between UPN and the WB. Both of those stations were carried on our basic cable service. Not so the new CW. Nope. If you want the CW then you have to have digital cable. This means a digital capable TV set (or you can rent the adaptor from Time Warner of course) plus a higher cable bill. That is crap. That is the big bad cable company forcing the viewers to upgrade so that they can make more money. The local NBC affiliate owns the broadcast rights to the WB locally and thus when the CW ...

It is supposed to be nice this weekend and despite the fact that I haven't opened a textbook all week I intend to be outside working on what is left of the flowerbeds. Those poor, neglected weed-infested things. Good thing I have not only a green thumb but actually ten green fingers or else there would have been no flowers this year. It has truly been survival of the fittest out in the yard and sad to say most of the "fittest" have been the weeds. I have to do some clean up. There are 50 tulip bulbs to be planted. Typically Columbus Day weekend is the time when the tree colors are at their peak. They have barely gotten started around here. Those that have went straight passed red and gold and slammed into brown. Other domestic duties of the weekend include the annual airing of the rugs, hanging of the heavy drapes and generally getting ready for cooler weather. This is guaranteed to keep the warm weather around for at least a few more weeks.

The news programs are buzzing, Fox can hardly stand it, CNN can't shut up about it. Yes ladies and gentlemen Bill Clinton has a temper and some smarmy little news guy from Fox News (a network not known for fair play or even solid journalism) made him lose it. Slightly. I watched the interview. I didn't think it was that big of a deal. Parameters had been set before hand as is normal and then the news guy goes off script and hits ole Bill with the Osama bin Laden question. First if I were Clinton's press secretary I'd be upset that the weasel went off script. Second I thought Bill handled it pretty well all things considered. It is about time that someone stood up to these idiots and slammed them back. I feel the same way when a actor punches out a paparatzi for jumping outta the bushes and snapping shots of the wife and kids. Little suckers had it coming. So Bill Clinton has a temper. Fox News has no class. Get over it.

There are days when I actually wonder if I am too old for homework. Today is one of those days. Not that I am having trouble reading, or even that I find the material blah although it is economics so I'd have a legitimate excuse. Rather it is that I can't seem to focus. I simply do not care. And I'd much rather be catching up on all the sleep I am losing from having a very sick kitty who gets me up every couple of hours for one thing or another. I'm thinking most of the problem is related to the sleep issue. So no, maybe I'm not too old for homework but merely too tired to care. At least I do not have a paper due this week.

I have a laptop computer that runs Windows 98se. It has a kick-butt processor, maxed out memory and works just fine. Microsoft is no longer supporting Windows 98se so I thought okay maybe I can upgrade to XP, its only $100 for the upgrade version. So I just ran the "Upgrade Advisor" and oh yeah, the processor can handle it but half the software I have won't work with it. My Palm Pilot, my scanner, the external zip drive, the printer, the jump drive, and so on and so on. Basically the thing is telling me that I have to buy a whole new computer or buy all new other stuff - the computer would be cheaper I'm thinking. That is complete crap. Forcing people to upgrade and/or buying new hardware is merely a ploy to make more $$ at the expense of the consumer and classic monopoly behavior. Our cable company here is trying to pull the same stunt. This only proves my point that Microsoft is evil and Bill Gates ought to be ashamed of himself. No wonder he's giving huge amoun...

Today marks the end of Summer and the beginning of Fall. Which if you like football games is probably okay. However if the rest of this dying season is as wet as the last few days it is not going to be fun at all. Don't get me wrong I love the colors of Fall. The crisp air is not the best for asthma but it smells clean and woodsy. Walking through the woods is nice, the rustle of the leaves and the way the cooler light filters through. But it is Fall and it is the season of dying, of settling down to sleep. Plants die or settle into sleep depending on whether or not they are an annual. Animals scurry collecting winter stores of food and birds gather together to fly south. But have you noticed that thanks to mild Winters and weird weather patterns some birds never leave? It was mild enough last year that robins never left. That can't be good. I recently bought Al Gore's book An Inconvenient Truth. Haven't started it yet. There's no doubt in my mind that Global Warming...

Washington DC - The Capitol at Sunset 

Time to get political again. An editorial in the paper today made me think. I don't normally like this guy - he's ultra conservative and just a plain pain in the butt but today... he had a point. I've been reminded that while campaigning for office our President opposed the McCain-Feingold Bill saying that it violated the Constitution and restricted free speech. Once elected though he signed it into law. He didn't have to, he could have vetoed the thing but nope, he signed it. So if he believed the bill would make a law that was unconstitutional didn't he violate his oath of office to uphold the Constitution? Kinda looks that way folks. And for the literalists out there he did violate his oath. Mr. Protector of Free Speech has created "free speech zones" where protestors have to stand anytime the Prez appears anywhere so that they aren't interfering with his public appearance - translation so they are out of view of the media. Oh yeah and if you compla...

In news of the cool.... Yesterday the ISS (international space station for you non-space people) unfurled its new solar wings for the first time. These wings are able to move with the sun to maximize power generation. Naturally there was a glitch in the software that held the occasion up by a few hours but as usual NASA got the bug worked out and voila! 240 wings in space (okay Earth orbit). Thoughts on the last weekend of Summer.... Fall officially starts next week with the Autumn Equinox on Saturday the 23rd (as does Rosh Hashanah, Ramadan and the celebration of Mabon - gee, are the Christians the only ones without a holiday?) and so Summer leaves us. Well in the Midwest it feels as though Summer left us about a month ago with below normal temps and bunches of rain. It is supposed to be sunny and 78 today but so far when I look out yon window all I see is fog and mist. And yup, it is that kind of chill that settles deep. For Pete's Sake if I wanted this kind of weather for weeks ...

Cute and fuzzy? Not for long if he keeps eating the flowers! 

When you are working on stuff around the house or in the garage and you drop a screw or a nut you can usually pick it up without too much trouble. Drop something during a space walk and it might end up tangled up in something important and screw everything up big time. Also on the where did that go front... so where is the install guy? I bought this door it is going to be tricky to install so I figured I had better pay the extra $$ and let the store's install guy do it. So yesterday he calls and I'm in meetings all day so I tell him today is better and that I'd be available after 2:00. It is now 4:45 and no sign of him and he is not answering his phone. Tomorrow is not an option and I am booked solid and/or traveling all of next week. This does not bode well. Trying to figure out how I got stuck with scheduling a meeting on a Saturday afternoon with a volunteer to talk about work. Oh but you HAVE to work on the volunteer's schedule. Apparently somewhere in the paperwor...

I heard a bit on NPR yesterday about this guy who has a blog on the Vatican. He doesn't work at the Vatican, doesn't even live in Rome (or any other part of Italy) and he isn't a member of any religious order. But he has a blog and he has sources and various folks who do belong to religious orders and who do work/live in Rome take what he says pretty seriously. Apparently this guy has some really good sources. Anyway I have been browsing his blog today and find it interesting. If you're curious check it out at: http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com It is worth a look. On a regular basis even.

There is nothing quite like the smells coming from the kitchen on a Sunday evening. The Sunday Dinner. I don't cook very often, too busy and all that, but Sunday I do. And I've been surprised to discover that I actually enjoy it. Granted my most domestic quality remains the fact that I actually live in a house but a once a week meal I can handle. Most of the time. A way to recharge and face the week ahead fortified with homey goodness.... and a few glasses of whatever wine in the rack goes with the food in the oven.

You know the feeling, you are searching for that perfect pair of shoes. The kind that will go with 99% of what you have in the closet. It takes months, it takes research and then... there they are. You aren't sure of the size (these things vary from brand to brand and style to style) so you try them on. And guess what? Neither of the two sizes you've requested fit properly you need a 1/2 size smaller. So you ask the girl, she checks the back. THEY DO NOT HAVE YOUR SIZE Disappointed you try the other stores in the mall, you're flexible something will work. You won't find the same shoe because it is a house brand but maybe you can get close. Which is silly because you've been looking for months but hey, the new fall stuff is in you could get lucky. But Nooooooo... No one else even remotely has the right color let alone the right look. Okay the store has a web site, you can shop online. But Noooooo... that particular style isn't on the web site. So after Googling a...

Okay need to rant.... (yeah what else is new?) It is Friday night and though I am taking the night off from MBA Marketing hoo-ha homework, I remain annoyed at a do-nothing Friday. Single people do not have it easy. Single people of une certain age especially do not have it easy - in fact, it is downright pathetic. When you're 20-something going to a bar might be okay, you probably have a pack of single friends to go out and party with even. But one by one they all marry off and you are stuck over 30, heck over 40, and going to a bar is not only an exercise in stupidity (not yours, the other people at the bar whom you no longer have the patience to tolerate) it is very, very sad. I don't care how good you look. You can even be one of those people who still get carded from time to time it is still sad. But what other choices are there in rural America? None. Zero. Zippidity-doo-da nothing. And then the SciFi Channel goes and cancels your favorite show. Yup. You are not only singl...

On August 31st NASA selected Lockheed Martin as the lead contractor for the next generation of space exploration vehicles (manned that is). The project is called Orion. If you recall your mythology Orion is a hunter. Space explorers are hunters of a sort - they hunt for new information, for signs of life and that sort of thing so I think it fits. It fits a wee bit better than calling the project Apollo who is a sun god and yet the Apollo missions were to the moon. I guess it was more macho than naming them after the moon goddess. Gosh can't have any feminine references now can we? Anyway the news release is in NASA's archive now so it is a little difficult to find. The link is: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/aug/HQ_06305_Orion_contract.html In short the craft will be able to transport four people to the moon and will later support transfers to Mars. The timetable sucks The first human launch date isn't until 2014 and the first manned moon landing isn't until 2020....

Lucky gets a quiet moment in the sun There aren't too many quiet moments for Lucky with Honey around. That long fluffy tail is too good to pass up for the kitten. Lucky isn't too thrilled with being chased or having her tail considered a toy and no amount of growling or smacking has put a stop to it. Progress is slowly being made as they will now at least share a bed... for a few hours anyway. Oh well.

Honey the Porch Princess at rest (a rarity!) It isn't often that Honey slows down long enough for a nap but when she does it is on the screened porch where she can watch the birds and ground squirrels as soon as she wakes up.

Honey (left) & Bonsai (right) Tail to Tail Recently added an all black kitten to the mix. She is now six months old and her best buddy is Bonsai (who it is hard to believe is now 9 years old - son of Baby who died earlier this year). Not sure how Bon feels about it but he does play with her so I guess he figures she's okay.

Okay, so I did it. I admit it. It was with a great deal of teeth gnashing but I did it. I started a MySpace page. http://www.myspace.com/smartycat7 This all came about because my niece has a MySpace page and I was looking at it and wanted to send her a message. You can't do that unless you are also a member. So I signed up. ARGH! They have a blog feature, but I like this one better. Although over there you can use those cute little animated emotion graphics (emoticons?) in the blog. They do not have templates for backgrounds though so unless you know html forget having anything spiffy. I won't be using that one much. It's hard enough to keep up with this one given my insane life. Did I say ARGH! already?

And now a word about gardening.... Unless you are willing to battle an aggressive foe, fight for domination of your yard and flowerbeds and generally drive yourself nuts or have lots of room that you really don't care about letting go "wild" whatever you do DO NOT plant something called (get this) Obedient Plant. Because it is not. Obedient that is. This invasive little sucker takes over in about one growing season. Oh yes it is tall and pretty and looks very nice at the back of the border. But it doesn't stay there. It crowds out everyone else in no time the little scene stealer. Little? Nope it is about 5 feet tall. It self seeds like crazy and I would be willing to bet that runners are also involved in its sinister plot to take over well, the plot. Of course not knowing this, seeing it on some gardening show and in a few magazines where they forgot to mention its invasive properties the thing looked like the solution to a difficult spot in the yard. I have heavy cl...

On the eve of a holiday weekend regardless of whether or not a person has to work at least part of the darned thing we cast our eyes to the sky and plead: Rain, rain go away come again some other day. Yes the parched ground needs it. Yes, the lawn is crispy, the crops are thirsty and the well is a little low.... But for pity's sake! There is work to be done outside in the yard, windows and a garage door to be painted. Heck, a lawn to mow (okay the weeds grow without water, grass apparently does not). If nothing else there are fading summer tans to perk up. I wanna be outside. Not inside. Hey, couldn't have the silly hurricane Ernesto fizzled out a little more completely so that we wouldn't have this much rain? This is OHIO for cryin' out loud. Damn it, this means I have to read those five chapters and write that paper you know. Rain, rain go away.....

I was thinking this morning that it was not fair that I had to work on Labor Day. My co-workers do not after all but I have an event to promote at a certain function held on Labor Day so for 4 hours I have to work. Then I really got to thinking. Who else will be working? People with dead-end jobs, thankless jobs, lousy jobs: the hotel cleaning crews, the restaurant workers, the retail workers - those folks who are all but invisible to the rest of us. People we do not tip well even though we can afford it and they are barely scraping by. The unseen, underappreciated, hard-working folks will all be out there Labor Day is just another Monday for them. The lucky ones will get "holiday pay" but most won't. If Labor Day is to honor the Working Man, an acknowledgement to those who toil and sweat and who "made this country what it is today" why are we asking those who today toil and sweat and get sworn at to work on a day that should be honoring them? Why would they hav...

Okay it is official. Pluto is no longer a planet. Personally I think this is a cop out since if the international astronomers kept it as a planet they would then have to agree that three other recently found objects were also planets (especially since "Xena" is larger than Pluto and its orbit is occasionally closer to the sun than Pluto's). They are now calling our friendly neighborhood ice ball a "dwarf planet". Hello? Do you not see the word planet in the name? White dwarfs and brown dwarfs are still types of starts are they not? Why then wouldn't a dwarf planet still be a type of planet and therefore (ta da) a planet???? According to the story on the Reuters by Alan Crosby web site the newly standardized definition of a planet is: "... to be called a planet, a celestial body must be in orbit around a star while not itself being a star. It must be large enough in mass for its own gravity to pull it into a nearly spherical shape and have cleared the ne...

The privatization of the space "industry" has officially begun. Yup. NASA has picked two companies to take over supplying the International Space Station (ISS) once the shuttle "fleet" (can you really call so few craft a fleet?) retires in 2010. Not too shabby that the companies will share a $500 million contract over five years as "seed money" for their troubles. Oh yeah and a new acronym has joined the ranks of the oh-so-many out there: COTS. Stands for Commercial Orbital Transporation Services. Which apparently is a program now. In phase one of the COTS program the companies have to demonstrate four capabilities: unpressurized cargo delivery; pressurized cargo delivery; internal cargo delivery and return and an option for crew transportation (well, gee that would be helpful - hard to run the ISS without a crew after all). The contract is to develop a cargo ship to serve the ISS and went to Space Exploration Technologies Corp (also known as SpaceX) and R...

Okay, this is annoying. I'm watching the Sci Fi Channel enjoying Stargate: Atlantis and they have this new "code" thing where you go to the Sci Fi Channel Web site and enter this code. I have been trying to get online for the last half hour. Most of the time I can't even get to the homepage. On the rare occasions that I do, the screen stalls when it reaches for the page in question and BAM locked out. So I say: if the server can't handle the traffic then you have no business putting these codes etc out there. I also have not been able to log in for the annual Get in the Gate sweepstakes. It'll let you set up a new membership account but not log in and yet you have to log in as a member in order to enter the sweepstakes. So you end up going in circles with screens stalling as they try to load and "page not found" error messages etc. You'd think that Web site for the Sci Fi Channel (or any channel for that reason) would be able to handle the traffi...

Israel's Prime Minister is endorsing a U.N. plan - a mere six hours after he broadened the ground offensive. That has got to confuse the guys on the front lines. "Hey sir, do we go? Stay? Go? Stay?" Cha Cha Cha Of course the cabinet has to approve the thing in their weekly meeting on Sunday. That meeting ought to be loud and interesting. Our local paper's version of the Associated Press story says " Olmert also feared that accepting a deal that does not rein in the guerrillas could lead to another war down the road and hurt him politically." There's the key phrase right there: could hurt him politically. Uh-huh over 800 people dead, Lebanon's infrastructure in tatters, most of the world pissed off at your country and you Mr Prime Minister are most concerned about being hurt politically. Yeah that career is WAY more important than lives. After all, they aren't Israeli lives are they? Well for the most part. No biggie, they'll shoot anything th...

Remember a few years ago IBM had a great B2B commercial with Avery Brooks yelling "Where are the flying cars?" Recalling the heyday of the space program when we all thought that by the year 2000 we'd have flying cars, be living on the moon and all sorts of other great stuff. What do we have? War in the Middle East (pretty much a constant there, been that way since the beginning of time); idiots in Congress; a shaky economy(I don't care what they tell you retails jobs are not true growth) and no one paying much attention to anything let alone the space program. So anyway, Genesis 1 launched last month. It is an inflatable module design for a crew habitat on the international space station. NASA dropped the project and Bigelow Aerospace picked it up. The project's backers are hoping that this mission is a first step for a "futuristic space station that could be fully operational within the next decade". There's a web site for Genesis 1 sightings and ev...

Oh boy. Explosive shampoo? Corrosive cough syrup? Plastic explosives masquerading as toothpaste? Apparently there was quite the to-do at airports today when a terrorist plot was foiled and 24 people arrested before they could blow up 10 planes heading to the US. Apparently the plan was to disguise explosives as ordinary beverages. So now our security folks are not letting any one carry liquids onto planes. And some are banning carry-on luggage. Boy I'm glad I am not flying anywhere this year. Years ago I was going somewhere and had a soda from a snack cart of something. The guard made me drink some to prove it was drinkable. Another guard once asked me to eat one of the cookies I was bringing. I gave him one too. These are simple foils for such things. No panic caused. Oh wait. This is the government saying that they foiled a terrorist plot on the scale of 9/11.... how are we to know this is any more real than those weapons of mass destruction that Iraq was supposed to have? I tell...

Yup. The boys in uniform (and the CIA, oh and the diplomatic corps) have confirmed what the National Intelligence Council said oh... two years ago: civil war in Iraq is possible, even highly likely if all this sectarian violence doesn't stop. The administration Poo-poohed the prediction then they been pretty quiet so far on this commentary. Well gee, imagine that. Leonard Pitts Jr the Miami Herald editoral (and syndicated columinist) had a great "told you so" commentary in today's paper. Gotta love this guy! Check him out at http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/leonard_pitts/ if your local paper doesn't carry his wonderful turns of phrase. I find myself inclined to agree with Anti War.com ( http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=3120 ) when they say "silly people there already is a civil war going on in Iraq". I mean, what else would you call it? Various factions of Iraq's population are killing each other in serious numbers. Oh su...

Okay I've been lazy. I admit it. It's been quite a while since last I pondered life, the universe and everything on this site. But sheesh! It is too flippin' hot to think, let alone write coherently! And yeah, well work is kinda nuts. Although that might be changing in the next few months. Got a lead, need to cultivate it, could take a while. Keep ya posted. Back to this heat thing. Today in Hartford CT (used to live there, liked it) they expect to break a record, think it'll hit 105. Okay New England is not supposed to get that hot ever. I can just hear the mold jumping for joy as the humidity climbs. People do not have air conditioning in the older homes because they don't need it. It's gonna get nasty. See previous rant on Global Warming. In the Midwest we're supposed to get a break after the "cold front" moves through late tonight. Uh-huh. A "cold front", supposed to break the heatwave and be lots cooler. What part of 85 degrees is so...

I was in the bank the other day and the next window over is a well-known area doctor. He was dressed very casual, apparently it was his day off. This was not the least bit odd or anything. But the story he was relating to the teller just made me angry. This gentleman is from India so he is fairly dark skinned and has a thick accent. It is quite cultured and very musical and you can tell from his speech that is he a well educate person. You can also tell from the accent that he isn't any other race than what he is, the tones are very distinct. Oh yeah, he drives a silver Jaguar. Got all that? Well here's what made me angry (on his behalf). He had been driving on a state route a few miles north of our area (and south of Detroit). He admits that he was speeding so when the state trooper pulled him over he figured he deserved a ticket. But that's when it went wrong. The trooper did not just give him a ticket for speeding. Oh no! The trooper did not believe our good doctor that ...

Did you catch the Discover Channel via NBC report on global warming on Sunday? Makes you think, assuming that you can think and don't have ears full of sand from sticking your head in it. So of course I spent time online looking up more info. I have recently come across a Cornell University news release from 2001 that says it takes more energy to produce ethanol from grain that the process yields ( http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Aug01/corn-basedethanol.hrs.html ). Not only does the process eat up energy (something we are short on to begin with) but get this: "Corn production in the U.S. erodes soil about 12 times faster than the soil can be reformed, and irrigating corn mines groundwater 25 percent faster than the natural recharge rate of ground water. The environmental system in which corn is being produced is being rapidly degraded. Corn should not be considered a renewable resource for ethanol energy production, especially when human food is being converted into ethan...

I wish I could go on and on about the space shuttle and how great it has been to have a successful mission thus far. But I can't. The hoo-ha in the Middle East is really pissing me off so I have to go on about that. Okay I understand that Israel is upset over the abduction of two of their guys. But really this happens all the time and they ought to have a coping system in place. A system that does not include bombing the Palestinian Ministry and beating the heck outta Lebanon. This whole mine's bigger than yours so I'm going to kick your ass across the desert thing has got to stop. I know that Hezbollah long ago declared it their mission to wipe Israel off the planet but guys... people have been trying to do that for centuries, millennia even, it ain't happening. And really, since members of Hamas (which a lot of folks put in the same basket as Hezbollah) have been elected to the leadership in Palestine we really need to find a way to work together for peace. And I do n...

So I found an old issue of Vanity Fair (from May which in magazine age is pretty old) they were billing as "The Green Issue" so I bought it. Just a sucker for environmental slants I guess. Well in case you missed it Al Gore is back. Not as a candidate (yet and he shouldn't go that far in my opinion) but as a powerful voice for the environment. The man has been on talk shows, was the darling of Sundance with the documentary An Inconvenient Truth by David Guggenheim and I don't think he's finished just yet. Way back in 1992 he wrote this book called Earth In The Balance which did read a bit like a PhD dissertation but nonetheless sounded a mass marketed call about the future of the environment (or the lack thereof). Republicans jumped all over him calling him an extremist and so forth. Current Prez Bush even went so far as to ridicule Al in the 200 campaign over hybrids. Guess who is laughing now Mr-tax-cut-for-buying-a-hybrid-we've-got-to-end-the-US-dependenc...

Trying something new. At this moment (while I type, not while you read... I hope) I am sitting in the local coffee shop utilizing their free wireless Internet connection. I've met with a few volunteers, had a wonderful Berry Blast Smoothie (no I do not drink coffee, I just like the place) and am enjoying the atmosphere. Having a friend who works here is pretty nice too since I never see her otherwise. This place is my new "office" of sorts. Heck the shop's owner seemed kinda happy to have me hang out here and was real chatty when I asked him what the password was to log in here. Too bad he's married, he's pretty cute. The local theatre/media personality is in the booth behind me. He's okay in a pompous self-important sort of way. He's always amusing to talk to at least. The affectation of always wearing black is a little much but hey... everybody's got their quirks. Looking at a four day weekend thanks to the floating holiday being tagged onto the ...

My boss gave me a small miracle today. An answered prayer. But since he couldn't look me in the eye when he told me and seemed startled that I thanked him, I have to suppose he was doing so for the wrong reasons. You see, there's this project that has caused me pain for four years. It caused the people who had it before me pain. It has been a pain for 12 years altogether. So when he told me that he was taking it away as part of the reorganization shuffle I was relieved. I had been hoping he'd do that. Of course I feel sorry for the nice lady who is getting it but hey, all I can do is warn her of the pitfalls. I think he was taking it away because of a certain person who I have discovered has been bad-mouthing me all over the county. See the poor thing can't understand that there are rules as a nonprofit we have to abide by and she does not think such rules should apply to her so we have never seen eye to eye. Part of my job in taking this project was to clean it up. So ...

Okay, who names a phone company something that sounds as though it ought to be a travel agency? Apparently the folks at what-used-to-be-known-as-Sprint do. I never completely understood why they chose Sprint but when Ma Bell got chopped up and the Sprint name became the local phone service I was too young to care or think too much about it. But c'mon now? Embarq? Embark means to put or go onboard a ship at the start of a journey or to begin an undertaking. Changing the 'k' to a 'q' just makes it look funny. Okay so the phone can take us (or our voices at least) to other parts of the world but for what they charge for long distance calling I don't think too many people will be doing that. And I'm sorry but not enough of the cable here is fiber optic so there's no way that the speed of the DSL is going to be that great. Heck my faxes don't go anywhere near as fast as the modem allows 'cuz the phone lines can only handle an embarrassingly low bps of...

Well it is about friggin' time! Finally! We have a launch date. Okay we've had a few before that kept getting scrubbed but hey at least we have a date! July 1st Discovery is set to head back into orbit and visit the International Space Station. For flight details visit www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html And then there is the Constellation Program. Or as those of us old enough to remember the first steps on the moon: the return-to-the-moon-and-on-to-Mars program. Again, it is about time! Sheesh! Okay so Prez Bush is no Jack Kennedy and there's no space race any more but for cryin' out loud when Kennedy made his speech about landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth "in this decade" by golly within a decade it got done. Okay so maybe his getting killed might have spurred the whole thing on a little bit as a tribute to his vision but ... Bush made his speech about going back to the moon and on to Mars how many years ago now? ...

With the collapse of the Soviet Union the rest of the world breathed a collective sigh of relief. The race for nuclear arms and who can blow us all up more times than the other guy was over. No one paid too much attention to India and Pakistan and Company as they became nuclear powers. I guess we all figured they had enough sense not to blow up the planet. But here we go again. Iran is saber rattling to gain nuclear power and we're all assuming they want weapons, not just power plants. And maybe that is the case but while the whole world is watching them and contemplating this and that sanction North Korea is testing missiles. Yup. We seem to have another arms race going on. Smaller true, but no less deadly. Have you noticed though that over the last few years the minute we're busy dealing with something else North Korea acts up? Seriously, think about it. In the years since September 11th whenever North Korea does something to get the world's attention it has been when eve...

Okay, so I finally have time to work in the yard this weekend. In fact tonight I intend to mow the lawn. Wouldn't you know it? It is almost 90 degrees out there. The schedule couldn't possibly work out so that the mowing could happen when it was in the mid-to-high 70s. Oh no! So I get to look forward to an evening of bugs, heat rash, asthma and hay fever (from the cut grass which is worse when it is muggy). Betcha I'm nearly out of gas too. A friend of mine who has had a tough couple of years finally started to have things turn around. The deadbeat ex-hubby finally has to pay the back child support and maintenance that he avoided by changing jobs and neglecting to notify the new employer of the court order to garnish the wages, she got a decent job (not great but solid), school is going well, the daughter has graduated from high school and the bills were slowly getting caught up. Heck, she was so caught up that she is now only $100 behind in the rent. Wouldn't you know ...

I don't know if you listen to NPR but I can't start the day without it. Yup, I am a public radio junky. Last week Ted Koppel had an interesting commentary on Somalia. Check our www.npr.org , it commentary aired on the 7th, it should be archived on the site by now. Anyway, our boy Ted reminded us what a mess Somalia is and has been for quite some time how it is a "case study of unintended consequences". Something the first President Bush learned that Junior is only now figuring out. Imagine that. But I digress... Remember the blackhawk that was shot down? Remember Mogadishu? Remember how we were going to control those nasty warlords? Well in 1994 we finally figured out that wasn't going to work and got out. Guess what? according to Ted "it appears that the United States has been supporting the militias it once tried to eradicate, to the tune of more than $100,000 a month." Yup, those very same warlords who attacked our troops back in 1994, the ones that t...

It's tough to be feline, at least in this house. The newest member of the household (she's only been here for two days) went to the vet today. She got poked and prodded, had a shot, some other medication in a tube, had blood drawn and had her ears cleaned with a LOT of swabs. She took it all pretty well but then... tonight she had a bath. Fleas, you know plus various dirt from formerly being allowed to play outside. Well since she is no longer going outside she needed to get cleaned up. It is amazing what a good sport she was through the whole thing. Of course being only 15 weeks old there isn't that much damage she could do to me but I was able to hold her in one hand, suds her up and rinse her off. She really is a little Honey, which just happens to be the name she came to us with.

What is it with the world today? You work your butt off, give way more than 100% to your job because you are that kind of dedicated person (ie: nuts) and what do you get? Not a pat on the back, a smile, a thank you, or even a good job. Nope. You get snarled at that if things do not improve there will be layoffs so get busy and do more than you're presently doing, do it faster and you will like it or you can leave. We employees do not need much really when we like the work we do. But we do need positive reinforcement every so often to keep us going. Not veiled threats. And thinly veiled at that. Take this example, a person works for months running flat out pulling six days a week at more than 10 hours a day and pulls together a huge project with outrageous goals and comes in at 3% less than the powers that be wanted. Never mind that the increase over the previous year for this same project was 90%. Nope that does not matter. All the powers that be can focus on is that missing 3%. Th...

Okay so I work with volunteers. Some of them are fabulous but they are the rare ones. The ones who put in countless hours and work their butts off. Those people are great. And then there are the ones who do not listen, the ones who think rules - even laws do not apply to them, the ones who are volunteering because it looks good on the resume which means they don't do squat, the ones who are completely inept.... the ones who make you go ARGH! It is after 11:30 p.m. and I have been running full out since 7:00 a.m. - doing work that if the volunteers took their job descriptions seriously they would be doing. Hence tonight's rant? Or is it this morning's? I keep telling myself ... I love my job, I love my job, I love my job...

No offense to the retailers, the restaurant folk and others who regularly work on the weekends as part of their regular routine. You knew what you were doing when you took the job and some of you even enjoy it, you get your weekends when the rest of us don't and I'll bet there are advantages (shorter lines at the grocery for example, movie theatres almost to yourselves, that sort of thing). But I gotta tell ya.. for the rest of us who already work 40+ hours per week when you pile another 20+ hours (straight through mind you) on top of that it hurts. A lot. So when do I get to go to the grocery? When do the household chores get accomplished? When will that garden - which by the way is my joy in life - get the attention it deserves (we have 4 foot high thistles in some places - note to self do not put the thistle feeder for the goldfinch back out this year)? You see, when you a salaried employee there is no overtime pay, in most cases there is no "comp time" or anything...

I admit I am an artsy person, no a real one. I paint, I write, I dance, I sing I have even been known to build sets and appear on stage. So I can call myself not only a patron of the arts but a participant. So you'd think it would be okay for me and another fabulous lady (all the way from England) who is also both patron and participant to co-chair a task force charged with looking at the arts today in our community and coming up with recommendations for where we want to be in the year 2020. Nope. It seems there are "powers that be" behind the scenes who want to run this group but who don't actually want to do the work. So they pressure the chair of the oversight committee who in turns dumps all over us and meddles and pushes and so forth. We have had to back-track so many times because these "others" have changed their minds about what we should be doing that we have decided we've had enough. Neither of us are quitters but today we decided to quit. We s...

Okay, I gotta ask it and I know I am generalizing and being stereotypical but really... why do folks in small towns in rural areas have to be so damned petty and back-stabbing? I for one am sick and tired to being reduced to tears by a certain bunch of people that I have to work with, I have no choice... they are volunteers, they can't be fired but I can. This is SO not worth the damage it is doing to my nerves and mental health. I almost quit today. I did march myself down to the local office of MET Housing and put in an application for the Asst. Director job. I know, I know I've been promising to get the hell outta Dodge after getting the MBA but I honestly do not think I can last another year and a half because even though the MBA will be over next year at this time I'd still have to keep this job until the end of October in order to be vested in the pension plan (which is the plan you know). What the hell the MET Housing job has a retirement plan, government benefits an...

Okay, so we have to have a high speed connection to work from home. That's cool. Makes perfect sense. There is one tiny problem though... My personal computer will not "talk to" the ISP. Nope. One long headache of "Page Not Found" or even "Server Not Found". So I contact tech support, after all the salesfolk told me that my little ole Dell running Windows 98SE would be fine. Nope. The lovely tech twits tell me that there is obviously something wrong with my network card. Now this is the same network card that has worked perfectly for years. Oh yeah and I need to upgrade my operating system. Hello! Your literate says Windows 98SE is compatible. Guess what kids, the company is not going to reimburse me for any of that nonsense. And why should they? This is my PERSONAL computer we are talking about. So hey I can understand their perspective. However.... I wouldn't have upgraded to a cable ISP if I didn't have to for the job. Those crooks already g...

Yipes! It has gone from raining and unseasonably (10 degrees below normal on a good day) to flirting with 90 degrees. Now I like warm weather, I adore sunshine and I seem to have a decent tolerance for hot weather. But this sudden shift? Nuts! Can't work in the yard in this heat, not without a nasty heat rash at the minimum. So thought I'd work inside the house and finish setting up the "home office". Nope. When you buy one of those metal storage shelves and the holes to put the bolts through do not under threat or pleading line up you are pretty much s.o.l. This sucks. The whole move to a remote worker status thing sounds fairly good on the surface until you have to make the thing work. I'm just glad I have a house with a basement if I were still living in an apartment there is no way this would be feasible. Work on that paper? Maybe. Right now I am too pissed off at the way the rest of the day has gone to be able to focus much on that. Do not want to come across...

A lot can happen in a month. And yet not much can change... The company reorganization has moved forward a lot faster than anticipated and I am now working out of boxes. The house resembles the sort of scene you see in movies when the fly-by-night company sets up shop in a location and you just know they can be outta there in a heartbeat. It is beyond annoying. Of course once I get a filing cabinet moved in here (oh the joys of being female with a small car, one is dependent upon the schedules of others) and assemble a couple of shelves in the basement it might look better around here. Of course this requires time. In other news the last month saw the loss of the man who, though he was my uncle, was a father to me. If I had had time to grieve I might feel a little better. School is winding down. I have a 12 page paper to put together somehow in the next few days although with a presentation on the thing. It really isn't due for another week but since I have to work next weekend gue...

Okay so last week and even yesterday we had really nice weather and today we actually had sleet. This is typical Ohio spring confusion and it is beyond annoying. Especially since the spring festivals and events are starting and no one wants to freeze their fanny off no matter what the good cause might be. So, is it May yet? Another "fun" sign of spring is primary season. Oh yes, the airwaves are resplendent with political ads as the primary date approaches. Never mind that most people do not vote in the primaries and I don't think this one will be any exception. The usual suspects are out there: state officials slugging it out to be the next governor - despite the fact that it is a scandal ridden administration so who would want to vote any of these nuts into a higher office. But as I've said people don't vote in the primary. State legislative races are just as messed up thanks to term limits, Republicans with bunches of money and Democrats who can't figure ou...