Archive for March, 2006
Friday, March 31st, 2006
Hoekay, So this is the picture I have been seeking for a while. Although this is not a very good image. I had found the image on the VT imagebase, but I lost it somehow. Special thanks to Gavin Miller of Troutville Fire for delivering this CD with very important images to me. I am indebted. There are definitely some great images on this CD. We have a lot of them, but there are some that fill in
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off
Friday, March 31st, 2006
Only a few short months after Kilgore's loss his ideas have resurfaced as the possible compromise that will help end the budget stalemate in the General Assembly.
Senator eyes key to roads solutionWho doesn't recall the debates last fall surrounding Kilgore's plans of creating the very same regional transportation authorities that
Senator Hanger, R-Mount Solon, is now considering? And who do we see falling into line with him? None other than
Senator Creigh Deeds, D-Bath County, preparing for another statewide race in 2009... Jerry lives on...
Aside from that,
Extra Innings, had a post up about the "Magnificent 11" who are currently hammering out the budget in the General Assembly
Sen. John Chichester, R-Stafford CountySen. William Wampler, R-BristolSen. Walter Stosch, R-Henrico CountySen. Charles Colgan, D-Prince William CountySen. Edd Houck, D-Spotsylvania CountyDel. Vince Callahan, R-Fairfax CountyDel. Lacey Putney, I-Bedford CountyDel. Phil Hamilton, R-Newport NewsDel. Kirk Cox, R-Colonial HeightsDel. Leo Wardrup, R-Virginia BeachDel. Johnny Joannou, D-PortsmouthSeems like Southwest VA got the shaft from both houses.... If nothing else, we can hope that
Sen. Wampler can fend for himself amidst the ravenous wolves. That's all for now, but look for more
Webb vs. Miller coverage over the weekend...
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Friday, March 31st, 2006
I just secured a contract on a very reasonably priced home for a buyer of mine the other day. The house is in Raleigh Court on Brandon Avenue and is listed at $94,950. These very well-priced gems are hard to find and when they come along you have to act quickly. This house is a 3BR, 1BA two-story in really great shape. It needs a couple coats of paint in two or three rooms, some landscaping and that’s it.
Give me a call if you’re looking for some great deals anywhere in the Roanoke Valley. I know how to find them and there are several out there right now waiting on the right buyer.
Posted in Roanoke City Real Estate Listings | Comments Off
Friday, March 31st, 2006
I came in to find that Chatty had awarded this to one of my posts via Lucinda's! I was so excited I had to show Toonces. Thank you so much....that just made my whole weekend! This was the post.
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Friday, March 31st, 2006
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Springtime in Cancun
may be some folks idea of a picnic, but not mine. I'd rather be back home
clearing brush. |
Of course, Vicente was
there to meet me at the airport, but he had this new squirrelly looking
fellow with him. |
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His name is Steve,
and he's the president of Canada. Looks kinda like an Aussie, I think. He's
the only one who didn't wear a white shirt. |
Steve had this crazy
idea about visiting the pyramids. "Vincent," I said, "tell our new friend
that we've got a summit to do. We can't go off gallivanting to Egypt." |
Seems like Mexico has
built some pyramids of their own. They look pretty small from here, but
looks can be deceiving. |
Get a little closer and
they grow on you. Those little black thing are people. Oops. I meant to say
little brown things. |
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I have
to admit it was pretty big as pyramids go.
It has
about a million steps and these nutballs wanted to walk all of them.
At this
point I started to realize that I was not going to get to ride my bike
today. |
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Round and round we
went, walking on those damn stairs. I didn't even mention my sore knee. |
And the
sad thing is, this looks like fun compared to what we have lined up for
tomorow. |
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Friday, March 31st, 2006
You guys have overwhelmed me with great comments on my ability to test your attention to detail. Check out this test off of break.com and let me know how long it took you to find the differences in the two photos. I have to admit, it took me several minutes. The bad thing is that it is so very obvious once you figure it out.
Check out the puzzle here
Then let me know how you did.
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Friday, March 31st, 2006
He'll Do For Us What He's Done to the Federal Budget
With red ink as far as the eye can see, Josh Bolten has helped Bush destroy the federal budget. But, as MediaMatters.org notes, CBS allows Bush administration spinners to perpetuate the myth of Bolton's "accomplishments." As director of OMB, Bolten has helped create the largest budget deficit in US history. But the media let's Bush get away with hardly a mention of Bolten's (and Bush's) budget failures.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200603310004
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Friday, March 31st, 2006
Yadda Yadda Yadda
Some things never change. Thanks to the Senate, we Americans are condemned to more lobbyist hell. Over at
TomPaine.com, David Donnelly wrote:
On Wednesday, a federal judge in Miami sentenced disgraced and convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff to 70 months in prison. Within a few hours, some 900 miles away, the U.S. Senate passed a lobbying “reform†bill that sentenced America to ongoing scandal.
Donnelly goes on to say:
Meanwhile, back in Washington, senators passed a lobbying “reform†bill that would do almost nothing to reel in the next Jack Abramoff or, for that matter, themselves:
Read more
here and
here.
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Friday, March 31st, 2006
A new Swedish study, via the Drudge Report, says that cellphones appear to raise the risk of brain tumors. People who appear to be at risk are those who have used cellphones for more than 2000 hours in their life, so the risk accumulates the longer that you use a cellphone. The researchers recommended hands-free use of cellphones to get them away from the head.
Cellphones use gigahertz radio frequencies that are also used in microwave ovens. Bluetooth wireless headsets also use gigahertz frequencies, so only wired headsets provide any protection.
Posted in Policy and regulation | Comments Off
Friday, March 31st, 2006
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When the Levee Breaks...
Bush administration officials
revealed today that the cost of re-building the New Orleans levees
would not be 3.5 billion, as previously was announced, but would be more in
the neighborhood of 9.5 billion, give or take a few bucks. "Whoa,"
said Donald Powell, the administrations rebuilding guru, "Looks like we sure
pulled a boner on this one. Guess I just better tender my resignation."
Powell grinned before adding, "Or look for a place to hold my promotion
party".
"Good lord," said NO mayor Ray Nagin, "that's a
lot of money for a levee. How much can I get for three and a half billion."
Nagin was told that he could get an entire levee, but that it would probably
fall down. After unleashing a string of obscenities, the mayor noted that he
might not be running for another term.
"This monumental miscalculation is an outrage,"
Gov. Blanco sighed. "This means that, just two months before hurricane
season, the Corps of Engineers informs us they cannot ensure even the
minimum safety of southeastern Louisiana. This is totally unacceptable. I
don't think I'm going to run for another term."
"Oh, it's not so bad," said Powell, retuning
with his spin cap on. "The Governor and the Mayor are just over-reacting,
like they've done so many times before. It's really a matter of insurable
verses safe, and the government is not in the insurance business. Oh, we
are? Okay, but we're getting out of it real soon. It's got an atrocious
bottom line. Honest to goodness, all we are saying is that if a big storm
like Katrina were to hit New Orleans again, there would be manageable
flooding. Not catastrophic flooding. Well, certainly no flooding of biblical
proportions." |
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Friday, March 31st, 2006
Will Al Run?
On Looking Beyond Favorite Sons
Howard Dean has taken himself out of the running for 2008. Russell Feingold is just about the only "alternative," to the same old names who brought us a rousing me-too to Bush's every Constitution and international lawbreaking whim. Despite his morale-deadening me-too-ism, Mark Warner has roused a substantial bandwagon effect among the state's party
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Friday, March 31st, 2006
The Numbers GameThanks to
Raising Kaine for it's blog article (
read it here) on the latest
Zogby Poll numbers for Congressional races this fall. RK notes a 7 point spread between Allen and Webb. But notice the trajectory. Allen's numbers are falling, while Webb's are rising.
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-flash06.html?project=elections06-ft&h=495&w=778&hasAd=1&mod=blogs
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Friday, March 31st, 2006
David St. Lawrence's gathering of area bloggers appears a success as a number showed up and exchanged lots of thoughts and ideas.
David (standing in photo), who is an evangelist when it comes to the joys of blogging, led some of the novices in the group through the byzantine world of blogging with detailed explanations of trackbacks, pings, permalinks and the like.
Others talked technical details and still others discussed reasons for blogging or not blogging or just talked about why they moved to the area.
According to Technorati, there are now more than 30 million blogs out there and the list grows by thousands upon thousands daily.
A lot of people, it seems, have a lot to say. Which begs the question: With so many saying, is there anyone left to listen?
Posted in General | Comments Off
Friday, March 31st, 2006
I may just post an American Hero story every day. There are so many of them and yet so few - for some reason - make the nightly news.
Here's a wonderful story about a devoted mother whose son was killed in action in Iraq. She honors his memory in a special way, and asks that the USA honor him and his fallen comrades as well:
MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (March 2, 2006) -- Karla Comfort received a lot of looks and even some salutes from people when she drove from Benton, Ark., to Camp Pendleton, Calif., in her newly-painted, custom Hummer H3 March 2. The vehicle is adorned with the likeness of her son, 20-year-old Lance Cpl. John M. Holmason, and nine other Marines with F Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division who where all killed by the same improvised explosive device blast in Fallujah, Iraq, in December.
For Comfort, having the vehicle air brushed with the image of the 10 Marines was a way to pay homage to her hero and his fellow comrades who fell on Iraq’s urban battlefield.
“I wanted to let people know (Marines) are doing their jobs honorably, and some of them die,†said the 39-year-old from Portland, Ore. “I don’t want people to forget the sacrifices that my son and the other Marines made.†(
link
)
Read the whole story. And check out the beautiful tribute.
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Friday, March 31st, 2006
You don't have to be a manager very long to figure out that there are a couple of types of managerial behaviors out there, that can have a huge impact on the culture of companies. The one I hate most...
Posted in Work | Comments Off
Friday, March 31st, 2006
Kilo
brings us a funny story about the AFL-CIO crossing a picket line. (
here
)
As a former probationary pipefitters apprentice and faux member of Plumbers and Steamfitters local 157 (I got a 3-month job digging ditches one summer on an oil pipeline project in my undergraduate years through the local trade union but was never issued a union card ...somehow), I feel I have earned the right to comment:
The story is a reflection of the elitism that I remember existed long ago. Some things never change.
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off
Friday, March 31st, 2006
A handful of tottering old people on the Massachusetts Supreme Court decided that, after the state constitution meant one thing for over 200 years, it really meant something else - all along. Homosexuals suddenly had a right to marry each other. The intent of the esteemed jurists was to make the citizenry "inclusive" - whether the citizenry wanted to be or not.
Well, not all that inclusive as it so happens. The state constitution's meaning has changed again.
It now turns out that the commonwealth of Massachusetts will only be inclusive if the gay people who seek protection under this new reading of the constitution are citizens of the state. Visitors, foreigners, and passers-through are still considered degenerates apparently.
At least for today.
The latest from la la land:
Non-state gays cannot 'marry'
By Cheryl Wetzstein, The Washington Times
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court yesterday upheld a 1913 state law that blocks out-of-state homosexual couples from legally "marrying" there.
"[T]he laws of this Commonwealth have not endowed nonresidents with an unfettered right to marry," Justice Francis X. Spina wrote for the 6-1 majority. (
link
)
Only resident homosexuals are protected by the constitution.
Only in Massachusetts...
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Friday, March 31st, 2006
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Friday, March 31st, 2006
All you folks out there who travel a lot and spend your lives in hotels can relate to this. The rest of you will have to use your imagination.
You know how, when you check into a room, the hotel often provides you with all those little one ounce bottles of shampoo and conditioner and mouthwash and lotion and the like? (I'll not get into the ones that give you ear plugs, body spray, and a blindfold; what goes on in those rooms? I'm expecting handcuffs to be included soon).
Anyway, do you have as much trouble as I do reading the labeling on those little tiny bottles? In Microsoft Word terms, the font size is less than 1. It's about 0.3.
So I'm in the shower yesterday morning trying to squeeze the shampoo out of the tiny bottle - not having much luck - but, after a herculean effort, finally succeeding. I then proceeded to smear the goo in my hair and realized this glob of stuff was not shampoo.
After trying to wash the hand lotion from my eyes, I squinted at the bottle and, after trying to focus for what seemed like forever, realized that I had mistaken a bottle of the aforementioned for shampoo - because no human being alive today could read the microscopic print on that tiny bottle without a magnifying glass - an item I don't routinely carry with me in my travels but may have to in the future if my favorite hotel doesn't stop shrinking the lettering on the shampoo bottle (and hand lotion bottle).
Is there such a thing as shower rage?
The worse part of this story is that I carry my own brand of shampoo with me. I just like the free stuff. Lesson learned.
To make a long story short, I went through the entire day feeling like Cameran Diaz' character in "There's Something About Mary." If you catch my drift.
What a day.
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Friday, March 31st, 2006
Sorry I'm late getting here. Had to do a computer overhaul that's taken me hours.
Ugh.
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