INFINITY Welcomes Careful Drivers

Holy crap! Olbermann is fired up more than I have ever seen before. I'd vote for this guy...

What the Holy Hell??? Some number of years ago, I first stumbled across Chuck Palahniuk's short story Guts, in which he details a first hand experience of a guy who has his intestines sucked out of his ass in a swimming pool. Of all the Palahniuk stories I have ever read (or anything I have ever read for that matter) this is one of the top 3 stories that really had me twitchy. It appears, however, that this really does happen in real life. Sadly, a 6 year old girl died from it. The following story is from KETV in Omaha Nebraska  read more »

Remember the most quotable movie to come from the 80s? The movie that gave us a young Val Kilmer wearing a toy on his head, because if he wore it anywhere else, it would chafe? The same movie that taught Kent to "Stop Touching Yourself?"

So it went from God to Jerry to Kent to the Military, apparently. After all, what do you think a Phase Conjugate Tracking system is for, anyway?

It is, of course, for this:

A megawatt class chemical oxygen iodine laser mounted on the nose of a 747. And just like the Crossbow in the movie "Real Genius", it does hit it's targets. There have been at least 70 tests so far, but funding is starting to dry up and there is political unrest over the future of the proposed fleet of these $1.5 billion dollar aircraft.  read more »

UPDATE: It appears that the asshats at WBC intend to protest funerals of Tech students. When I find a date for this, I am probably going to take a day and return home and join others who will stand against them and the hate they spew.

First of all, I am sorry if I seem to ramble. Yesterday I was in full on Analytical Mode and was busy digesting all the data I could find relating to the shootings at Tech. This morning, the emotional stuff hit me hard, so I have been having a rough day of it. Thankfully, everyone I know was either off campus or on a different part of campus. I don't think I know of anyone who would have been in the buildings that the murders occured, but I won't know for sure until they release the names of the victims publically.

I noticed today that I have had several unique visitors to my site, 100% of which got here because they were searching google for some combination of Westboro Baptist Church and Virginia Tech. WTF people? Why would you even make the connection? Well, admittedly, it is unfair of me to even ask that, because one of the first things that occured to me yesterday is that Fred Phelps and his inbred wacko family would turn this into some sort of hate filled theological message. I was right in that assumption, as the search strings seem to indicate.  read more »

It's 9:30 or so. I am starving. It's been a long day. A very long day. Starting this morning, a guy with at least two guns (the rumor I got this afternoon from someone on campus was that he had two semi-auto pistols) killed a girl and a guy in a dorm on campus. Two hours later, he killed at least 29 more people and wounded others. The death toll may still rise depending on the wounded and what happens to them over the next few days.

I am sick. This, for me, is Sept. 11 all over again. On that day, in addition to watching firefighters lose their lives doing what they do best, I sat all day worried about friends I had in New York. Some of those just lived there, others were there for a work project and were supposed to be in the trade center.

Today, I ended up doing pretty much the same thing, trying to find out if anyone close to me was on campus this morning, or worse, if they were in the Engineering building where so many were killed by this guy. My mind is just spinning right now, and this has no real purpose other than to let me get a bit off my mind, even if only for a short while.

THis one hits especially close to my heart, though. I grew up not very far from Blacksburg. I know a good bit of that campus well, and have spent many days and nights there at parties, football games, graduations, friend's apartments and dorms. I've eaten in cafeterias there, toured buildings, and spent wonderful days walking around what I think is one of the most beautiful campuses around.

Virginia Tech, while not my alma mater, is still MY school, in my heart. It's home of the Hokies. Home of some awesome research. It's the single biggest thing in Blacksburg and the surrounding area. It's just grand. And now, that grandness is tarnished by blood and gunpowder. I am sad today. I am very very sad.

I am also rather angry after listening to the talking heads on CNN, Fox News and various talk radio shows. It's horrendous what they are saying and how easily they come to comclusions based on spotty information. Armchair Generals have no business claiming some sort of expertise in the fields on which they are comentating on. They really dont. And the idiots that have been calling in to radio show after radio show just floor me. How can they so easily claim to know what went wrong when they have no idea what Tech is like, nor what being in that sort of situation is like. Hell, I've never been in anything similar, and hopefully I never will. Which is why I dont care to say anything much about it.

Here are some facts for the talking heads that can't understand why the campus wasn't immediately locked down or evacuated:

Virginia Tech's campus is roughly 2600 acres.
That is roughly 4 Square Miles.
There are over 100 seperate buildings on campus
There are normally over 30,000 people on campus on a given day.
The first shooting occured as people were starting to roll onto campus from apartments and homes.

It is simply not physically possible for the Virginia Tech Police and the school administration to quickly evacuate a campus that big. Nor is it simple for them to just lock it down. We aren't talking about a high school with one or two buildings and 1000 students. We are talking about shutting down what amounts to a good sized town. 100+ buildings, 4 square miles and 30,000+ people walking on and off campus from many entrance roads and connecting streets, trails and so on.

I just don't want to think about it. I don't want to dwell on it, but this hits close to home. Luckily, no one I know was injured. The friends and families of 32 other people so far are not so lucky.  read more »

Just to be fair, Muslim extremisim does not corner the market on insanity. Christians have their own as well:

This is part of a BBC documentary posetd on YouTube about the members of the Westboro Baptist Church and the Phelps family.  read more »

ESPN has an update on the story about the High School senior who got 10 years in prison for getting a blow job. The article is very well written and honestly, this idiocy in Georgia makes my blood boil.

For history, the kid was a 17 year old senior in high school. He was a football player AND had a reported 3.2GPA. He was being recruited by a lot of schools and would have had a chance to make a good life for himself. His only mistake was getting oral sex from a 15 year old girl at a New Years party.

The sad part of this story is that if he had had full on sex with the 15 year old girl, he would have only been charged with a misdemeanor offense, gotten off and gone on with his life. However, since he had ORAL sex, he got charged with a felony.  read more »

This article appears on Snopes at this address:

http://www.snopes.com/business/taxes/excise.asp

and was written by Barbara Mikkelson.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

SPECIAL ONE TIME TAX CREDIT ON YOUR 2006 TAX RETURN

When it comes time to prepare and file your 2006 tax return, make sure you don't overlook the "federal excise tax refund credit." You claim the credit on line 71 of your form 1040. A similar line will be available if you file the short form 1040A. If you have family or friends who no longer file a tax return AND they have their own land phone in their home and have been paying a phone bill for years, make sure they know about this form 1040EZ-T.  read more »

All I can say is What The Fuck:

From the Gwinnette Daily Post in Georgia

ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia Supreme Court has turned down an appeal from a teen who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for having sex with a 15-year-old.
In a ruling released Friday, the court denied a motion for reconsideration filed by lawyers for Genarlow Wilson, who was 17 when he and the 15-year-old engaged in consensual oral sex. He was sentenced for aggravated child molestation.  read more »

What would I do if I were James Kim? That question has been in my mind a lot lately, starting with the announcement that he had gone missing, building with the news that his wife and two small children had been found and exploding now with the news that he had been found.

For the record, James Kim was a senior editor for C|Net and was well known in the technical world. He disappeared, along with his wife and two children, recently as they were driving back from Oregon. On the way back, they apparently got lost in the Oregon wilderness, and their car became stuck in the snow. They ran their car until it was out of gasoline to keep warm, then burnt tires for heat and as a signal fire.  read more »