January 2008

Service Held for Meredith Emerson

rmiles7721January 27, 2008Site News

Earlier this month Meredith Emerson’s family and friends held a memorial service in Athens, Georgia where she attended college. It gave her friends the chance to say goodbye and offer a bit of closure for them.

Yesterday her family and two hundred of her friends held a memorial service in Boulder Colorado where they recalled her as a "beautiful, witty, clever woman with a contagious laugh".

As I posted in several other entries Emerson was kidnapped on New Years day in Vogel State park while she was hiking Blood Mountain. Police found her seven days later with the help of Gary Michael Hilton, who has been charged with her beating and decapitation.

Hilton could also face charges in the death of Cheryl Hodges Dunlap, who was found dead in a national forest in Florida. The State Attorney, Willie Meggs, says he has enough evidence to pursue charges but has not yet said whether or not they will charge him.

Related Entries on Shadowscope:

 

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No Darn Watch…

rmiles7721January 27, 2008Site News

I really hate the fact that with some of the health codes that went into effect back on the first of December I can no longer wear a watch at work. It seems almost stupid but I am sure there are good reasons. I can understand not wearing jewelry on the hands because washing them might not get all of the bacteria out from under rings and such but my watch in no way comes in contact with any type of ready-to-eat food.

I like wearing watches and just got a brand new one last fall that I can no longer wear, at least while on the job. It’s put up in me desk along with a couple of others that I have retired. I really like some of the newer luxury watches I have seen but have pretty much decided against spending any kind of money on them now.

Beyond the Realms of Death…

rmiles7721January 27, 200818Entertainment

Denny surprisingly posted an entry entitled Sunday Metal today and of course the band of choice is Priest. I don’t know why it surprised me because these guys are truly good musicians and it takes one to really appreciate another.

I have probably even posted this video before and maybe the mp3 as well, but this has to be one of my all-time favorite Judas Priest songs. I have seen them in concert several times over the years and for some reason this just never got played until the late nineties on the painkiller tour. Not that they don’t play it live in concert, it just wasn’t part of the set list any of the times that I went to the darned show.

Beyond the Realms of Death is off of an album called Stained Class which in my opinion is one of their top three albums which include Sin After Sin and Sad Wings of Destiny.

This one was recorded a couple of years ago and although they are getting older, they still rock. Halford can’t hit some of those higher notes anymore but rather than sounding crappy trying to hit them he’s toned it down on the scale a bit.

Almost Valentine’s Day…

rmiles7721January 27, 20082Parenting/Family

Valentine’s day is a darned joke.

Up until he late sixties the Catholic Church recognized almost a dozen different Valentine’s Days, named so after Christian martyrs. Our current Valentine’s Day comes from two of them named Valentine and is supposed to be a saints day commemorating Saint Valentine.

During the time of that dirty old man Geoffrey Chaucer the day became associated wit romantic love.

During the 1800s handwritten notes to our ‘valentine’ started giving way to mass produced greeting cards. The commercialization of Valentine’s Day led the way to the further commercialization of holidays. It’s the time to buy greeting cards, red lingerie such as bustiers and tons of flowers.

Not that I am a complete Scrooge about the holidays or anything, but personally I would prefer the wife to just write me a note or something rather than go out an buy junk that will just get stuck in a drawer somewhere.

This year is a bit different though. I start my vacation on Valentine’s Day. Since I don’t know what things are going to be like in June as far as extra money goes, or my work hours, we are celebrating our 20th anniversary a bit early and going to the Bahamas on the 15th. I would have gotten tickets a day earlier but it would have been much more difficult for her to take an extra day off work, not to mention the fact that we had to find childcare for the girls as well.

Going Out

rmiles7721January 26, 20085Blogging, Parenting/Family

I got an email from a friend the other day. Seems that a few bloggers are getting together for dinner tonight in Atlanta. I lucked out on that one. One of my manager’s is supposed to be off this weekend but he is wanting to go skiing the weekend prior to my vacation with some buddies and wanted to know if I would trade days off with him.

I thought that was a pretty good idea. My weekend off wasn’t supposed to roll around until that weekend four days before I start my vacation and I am pretty sure I would have lost at least one of those days off once my boss looked at the schedules. This way I still go on vacation in three weeks AND get THIS weekend off. Sweet. We even found a babysitter for the girls for tonight, so the wife and I will both get to go. She’s made it to a couple of blogmeets with me but not had the opportunity to just go hang out with them.

Today is the boy’s birthday but I will post about that later today. It’s kind of sad because this is the first time he has never been with us on his birthday. I think I will call him shortly and see if he’s awake. He has a pretty bad cold in addition to being miserable because he has no clothing to speak of. Maybe I can send him some Sports Authority coupons 🙂

Actually he already has received his birthday present. He wanted the Orange Box version of Half-Life 2 and since he lost the password for one of my Steam accounts and can’t seem to get it reset, that was perfect.

Flock

rmiles7721January 26, 2008Technology

I started my browser up the other morning and realized that Flock had been updated again. I think I am currently running version 1.07. I am really starting to like Flock. I don’t really use the Media bar but it does support all of the Firefox plugins, or the ones I use anyway. It also seems to use less memory than Firefox and while I realize that the memory leaks in Firefox are mostly caused by 3rd party plugins, Flock doesn’t seem to have as many problems with it. It does use more and more memory than FF but I seem to be able to use it at least two or three times longer than Firefox. Pretty big difference, particularly when I am blogging.

I probably use about 10-15 different plugins on a regular basis including toolbars and a popup blocker, as well as a few others that just make it easier for me when I am surfing the web.

No Leads in Brianna Denison's Disappearance

rmiles7721January 25, 2008Site News

Updated – Brianna Denison’s Body Found!

It’s got to be pretty frustrating for everyone concerned out in Reno right now. Brianna Denison disappeared five days ago and right now they have very little evidence and few leads as to her whereabouts.


Police did say yesterday that they planned to interview about 100 registered sex offenders that live within a mile of the home where she vanished on Sunday as a routine part of the investigation.

Police are also saying that the two attacks late in the year on University of Nevada at Reno students don’t appear to be related to Denison’s disappearance but they are not ruling out the possibility.

 

Zemanta Pixie

Toddler Found Alone With Dead Mom

rmiles7721January 24, 2008Site News

Stuff like this just makes my heart wrench just thinking about the little kid hanging out with her dead mom for three days.

 

According to Hammett Shanta had been struggling with Nausea and had been to her clinic in St. Paul and to the emergency room as well. They had given her medication for vomiting because she was not able to keep anything down. She had also been on the phone with telling a nurse that she had been throwing up blood.

When the girls was found she was covered with her mother’s blood where she had been lying with her mother sleeping.

Her home phone was out of service and apparently the only other option was her cell phone, which was out of minutes. Don’t people know that cell phones will dial 911 whether you have minutes or not? The cell providers are obligated to put calls through to 911.

 

Breezes Bahamas

rmiles7721January 24, 20082Travel

So I’ve booked the hotel for next month. I got one of those all-inclusive packages because, well, alcohol can get mighty expensive and it’s included as well. Not that I am a lush or anything, that’s only when I am on vacation.

Oh, wait, that is my vacation. I have permission to be a lush then.

The Breezes is on Cable Beach on the main island rather than Paradise Island but it is also several hundred bucks cheaper than Atlantis or Paradise Island Resorts. Except for the whiners most of the reviews I read have been pretty decent and there are even a couple of video reviews on youtube. It looks more like a resort where old people and middle class people that can’t afford Atlantis stay, so I should fit in quite nicely.

Bon Voyage et al.

Wednesday Hero

rmiles7721January 23, 2008Site News

Capt. Lyle L. Gordon

Airmen from the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron at an air base in Southwest Asia prepare a C-17 Globemaster III for an airdrop mission Jan. 14 to deliver humanitarian supplies to coalition forces in Afghanistan

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero. We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

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