March 2008

Just a Quitter…

Normally I’m the only one up on a Saturday morning this early. I have to start getting ready for work shortly myself, but the wife and girls are driving back to Hilton Head for the weekend to see our friend Niqui. This may be the last chance they have to go visit before she moves. Of course if there is time at the end of the school year I’m sure they will go visit then but I think she plans on moving as soon as the year is up.

It’s some pretty cruddy weather out to drive in, that’s for sure. I grilled out last night and it was in the mid to high sixties. Now it’s raining and in the mid thirties. I love the spring time but the part I don’t like is when you are still at that stage where it’s too cold out in the morning. I still haven’t put my plants outside. I pulled them out of the basement too early last year and almost killed several of them due to a late freeze and I don’t want that to happen this year.

Speaking of grilling out, we had a couple of dinner guests last night. Supergurl stopped in on her way to Atlanta and a friend of the wife’s from work came over. I managed to get out of working last night when my boss and all of the other district managers were working 5-9p. Unfortunately I will have to make up the time and work this evening.

I am still having a hard time not smoking. I’m down to anywhere from one to five cigarettes a day and just cannot seem to get over that hump. I need to call our friend Michelle up. She was taking Chantix and didn’t like it, so I need to buy hers. I only have five days left. Man, time flies when you’re having fun. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this has got to be the hardest thing I have ever done. If I could only go through addiction treatment for it or something and get the initial few weeks over with without being exposed I am sure I could get past it. Unfortunately although my health insurance company frowns upon my smoking and jacks up my rates because of it, they wouldn’t dream of actually paying for any type of smoking cessation program even if it would save them millions of dollars a year. They aren’t in the market to save money, they are in the market to charge exorbitant rates to unhealthy people.

That’s about it for this morning. I’m just sitting here sipping my morning cup of coffee and balancing the checkbook before I go to work. That’s something that seems to have lessened as well. I don’t seem to be drinking quite as much coffee since I have cut my nicotine intake either.

Tripp Isenhour Kicks Ass!

So apparently an animal rights group wants the PGA Tour to take some kind of punitive action against golfer Tripp Isenhour. He’s facing charges for hitting a hawk with a golf shot because it was making noise as he videotaped a TV show.


He hit a frigging hawk? Dude, I can’t even hit the fucking windmill when I’m playing, much less get the thing in the hole. Shit, that’s some amazing accuracy. I can think of several people I’d like to bean in the forehead with a well-placed golf ball. I wonder if the guy is available for lessons…

New Evidence in the Briana Denison Case

Police are reporting that a second pair of panties found with Brianna Denison’s body had DNA belonging to her, the man who killed her and a woman who lived at the house where Denison was abducted.



This was news because if you remember, originally they were saying that there was ONE pair of panties found near the body. Reno police have identified the second pair as belonging to one of the students that lived in the house Briana was abducted from on January 20th.
Police are reporting that they didn’t immediately release the details about the second pair of panties because more investigation was needed and that it’s pretty typical for investigators to not release information right away.
The City of Reno and America’s Most Wanted teamed up and have released a video on the Reno web site with pertinant facts in the investigation.

If for some reason the video doesn’t show up properly you can also try to view it at the City of Reno Briana Denison Investigation web page.
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Woman last seen at O'Hare says she's safe

Leslie left a comment yesterday on my short post on Sumei Hu pointing me to an article in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune.
According to the Chicago PD Sumei Hu has contacted her family. Her sister-in-law told the Tribune that Hu had contacted the family on the phone Wednesday and told them that she was in the Chicago area and was safe. Sharon Romenesko (the sister-in-law) said it was unclear what she had been doing for the last week.
?
As Leslie said, very fishy.
Either there is a bit more than meets the eye here or this is just a matter of someone leaving their husband and it should be a case of ‘media butt out’.

Thursday Thong – NSFW

This week’s Thursday Thongs is definitely not safe for work.

(more…)

Check Out New ‘Indiana Jones’ Trailer

I love the Indiana Jones movies and although Harrison Ford is getting pretty long in the tooth I’ve been looking forward to the new Indiana Jones movie due out in May of this year. If you haven’t seen any of the previews yet, this might interest you.


I’m looking forward to the movie. This may be one of the only ones that I will actually go to the theater to see. I much prefer to wait for DVDs so as to avoid the cost and the crowds but if this is any good it will be well worth it.

Wednesday Hero

Chief Warrant Officer Mark O'SteenChief Warrant Officer Thomas GibbonsStaff Sgt. Daniel L. Kisling Jr.SSgt. Gregory M. Frampton

Pictured Left to Right
Chief Warrant Officer Mark O’Steen, 43 years old from Ozark, Alabama
Chief Warrant Officer Thomas Gibbons, 31 years old from Prince Frederick, Maryland
Staff Sgt. Daniel L. Kisling Jr., 31 years old from Neosho, Missouri
SSgt. Gregory M. Frampton, 37 years old from Fresno, California
1st Battalion, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regimen
January 30, 2003

“They succeeded where lesser men failed,” said Chaplain Robert Glazener. “They proved themselves in ways that men out there who never served, never volunteered, never sacrificed, would never understand. They sought neither glory nor special recognition, but they gained both by their actions. They are the true American heroes today and deserve more honor than we can humbly bestow on them.”
The helicopter carrying the men went down seven miles east of the Bagram Air Base while on a training mission.

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</font SIZE></font COLOR>
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Sumei Hu Missing

Steven Frasch went to pick his wife up from Chicago’s O’Hare airport last week and she wasn’t there. The problem lies in that she did fly to Chicago and customs video shows that she got off the aircraft as well. So what happened after that?



Police are assuming that Sumei Hu has left of her own accord and say that they can’t rule out the fact that she might have gotten on another plane. They also say that they aren’t sure who paid for her trip to China to visit her family family either. According to Steven Frasch it was a female friend in Sheboygan Wisconsin, but he couldn’t remember her name.
Frasch and Hu met through an Internet dating service and have been married since 2005. According to her husband Sumei has no credit cards and little English. It seems to me that if she had been in the U.S. since at least 2005 she would have at the very least a basic understanding of the language and maybe a couple of credit cards.
Sumei had gone home to Guangzhou China in September to visit her family including her teenage daughter from a previous marriage. The last time that Frasch spoke with his wife was five days prior to her disappearance. She was planning on leaving her cell phone with her daughter so that she could call her from the U.S.
The whole thing just smells funny to me. I can’t really put down a concrete reason why but the facts and suppositions in the whole story just seem hokey as hell.
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Seattle Eco-Terrorism Investigation

Received this news headline from the FBI earlier this afternoon and thought I would share it.

03/04/08

Early Monday morning, three luxury show homes in a northeast Seattle suburb were destroyed by fire in an apparent arson and a possible act of domestic terrorism.

Two more houses were targeted, one of which was damaged. Each of the homes–models for a massive luxury development called the “Seattle Street of Dreams” northeast of the city–was vacant. No one was hurt in the blazes.

Our Seattle Joint Terrorism Task Force–one of more than 100 around the country–responded to the scene and launched an investigation in concert with local county fire crews and investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. 

A large banner signed by the eco-terrorist group ELF, or Earth Liberation Front, was left at the scene on a nearby fence. The sign read: “Built Green? Nope Black! McMansions + RCDs r not green ELF.” “RCD” is apparently a reference to rural cluster developments. 

The attack is the first linked to ELF in the Seattle area since January 2006, says Dave Gomez, the FBI Seattle Assistant Special Agent in Charge responsible for counterterrorism. Nationwide, radical environmentalists have threatened lives and caused more than $200 million in damages in recent years, targeting businesses, universities, researchers, and others it believes are harming the environment. Some victims have been attacked by mistake. ELF radicals typically work in autonomous cells, much like many international terrorist operatives. 

If you have any information concerning the fires, please contact the Seattle Joint Terrorism Task Force at (206) 622-0460.

For more information:
Wanted Domestic Terrorists
Operation Backfire
The Case of the Calculating Eco-Terrorist
To receive breaking news from the FBI, sign up for e-mail alerts by clicking on the red envelopes throughout the website.

According to the AP the feds don’t have any leads in the investigation. Speaking of the video, why the heck is the ATF involved anyway?



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Lousy Rain…

So I just made reservations for lunch at the Rainforest Cafe at Disney World on the last full day of our vacation. Most of the dining choices are actually owned by Disney and the wife made reservations for quite a few of our meals last night, but the Rainforest Cafe is separate and although they have a couple of locations at Disney, you have to call them directly.

We are all looking forward to the trip. It seems like lately all I do is whine about work, whine about not smoking, or talk about my next vacation. Hey, nothing wrong with that I suppose.

I also need to set a date for our trip to the Ren Fest again this year. Zonker met us there last year and I’m hoping to get some other bloggers to attend as well. Hey, you can’t go wrong. Alcohol and funny people to look at!

I had mentioned a few weeks ago that I had thought about going to the Midwest for vacation this summer, but I decided that although it will make things tight this month (and next) I wanted to go ahead and take the girls to Florida. I guess visiting some Branson property will have to wait until next time.

Just got home a little while ago. RePete was feeling a bit under the weather today so I picked her up from school early and then we took a drive so that I could drive through puddles. It has been raining pretty hard most of the day and now that it has stopped the wind is still blowing pretty hard.

I was hoping for a bit of nice weather on my one day off but it doesn’t appear that we are going to get it this week.