Blogger is working this noon

At least, Blogger is working today. That has enabled me to write, instead of having to wait until evening, as has been the case, recently. Blogger is really a great service from Google, but when Blogger is not working, the impact is great, and on many people. I have been a user for almost three years.

Heather Mills has lot the PR war

When Heather Mills acused Paul McCartney of abusing his late wife Linda, Heather Mills blew whatever good will there was left towards her. PlayLouder is just one of many places covering the latest anti-Heather rant on TV.

I voted early today

I did early voting today, and the process went fast. As the Republican position in the polls has worsened, by resolve has grown stronger. I voted a straight party ticket, as befits a good red-stater.

The appeal of Baywatch can be readily explained: girls in bathing suits

I never watched Baywatch, although I did watch the spoof, softporn version on television in Memphis, back in 1997 or early 1998. Someone has a representative pic of girls posing in the trademark red swimsuits.

The 1960's and 1970's were quite different from now: there was more freedom

I was at our pastor's retirement ceremony, and speakers talked about things that they did in the 1960's and 1970's. The world was really different from now. This was before Government passed laws governing many things that were either not in place, or were not enforced. They were talking about driving down the highway in the pastor's GTO at 120 mph. I could remember driving from Kalamazoo to Ann Arbor at a 100 mph in a Corvair Corsa, no more than a year old (so much for "unsafe at any speed"). Young men and women all read Playboy, and looked forward with great anticipation to seeing the cartoons. Playboy published "literature", such things as Nicholas Meyer's "Seven Percent Solution".

Admittedly, things were pretty weird, because there such things a platform shoes for men, plaid suits, and bell-bottoms. Not so weird were "hip-huggers" for girls. Larry Flynt, in Hustler, published pictures of a half-naked 15-year old girl. It wasn't illegal, and the only complaints were that he ought to be showing mature women, instead. Now, he would go to jail, and they would throw the key away. We are so aggressive at suppressing things we don't like, that it doesn't matter that no child was molested, and someone who looked at the pics was not a child molester. Now, that is "prohibited material", and you will be sent to our equivalent of a Gulag for a long time.

Up through the early 1980's at least, at Wild Lake High School, in Columbia, Maryland, they had a smoking room for students (it was a very progressive place). Writers in the local paper would reminisce about buying LSD at the edge of the playground at an older high school, in the early 1970's. I am not saying it was better, but we still had a lot of freedoms, even in the early 1980's. Now that is all changed, and for the worse. Smokers are being abused, because they are a favorite target of demagogues, as are people who consume "adult beverages". The team of leftists and trial lawyers are to blame for much of it, along with the combination of leftist politicians and our Southern Baptist friends.

Duane Patterson, at Radio Blogger, says that Hillary's shrill voice is back

Duane Patterson, Hugh Hewitt's producer, writing at Radio Blogger, says that Hillary has a problem with men, in that her "shrill voice" "is back":

I have mentioned on this blog for a very long time that I think this country may be about ready for a woman to serve as president, but Hillary isn't going to be that woman. She'll get the nod from the Democrats. Don't get me wrong. It will be actually a lot of fun to watch the Clinton machine batter and bruise people like John Kerry, Al Gore, and anybody else that gets in her way to the nomination.

But there's something about Hillary that is an immediate disqualifier with millions and millions of voters, mostly male.

That voice. That shrill campaign voice. It returned Saturday morning. If you missed it, I have preserved the quality of the audio to near-CD quality. It should be played far and wide for the next two years.

Ohio is crucial for Hillary to get to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. If you look at a red state/blue state electoral map, if you are a Democrat, you can't get to 271 electoral votes without picking up a state like Ohio, with 20 EV's. So Hillary is more than happy to stump for candidates here. She will spend lots of time in the Buckeye State. This won't help.

Razib has linked to a new pic about black and white twins

Razib, writing at Gene Expression has posted a new pic showing "black and white" twins. They are not really "black", but brown, with dark hair, possibly African-like.

Paris Hilton is not afraid to "show off"

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Isaac Schrodinger on Islam and Sex

"Isaac Schroëdinger" points out an article about Iran executing two teenage boys who were homosexuals. He also comments on Islam and sex.

Weight Watchers Status

Today, I weighed in, after two weeks, and was down 3.8 lbs for a total of 42.6 lbs. I have been following the Weight Watchers diet for 36 weeks, as of today.

Yesterday was one of the worst days for Blogger in a long time

Yesterday, Blogger was either not working well or was actually not in service. There was a scheduled outage, but the time extended well beyond what they had planned. The outage affected posting of new content, and seems to have extended to blogs, as well, given the abnormally low SiteMeter readings for the day, at least for this blog. Blogger is this free service now owned by Google, and when Blogger is working, is easy to use and reliable. Reliability and usability has greatly improved over the last two years, with some horrible outages along the way.

Part of why Ford is cratering

Glenn Reynold pointed out this Tech Central Station piece about the Taurus going out of production. Frankly, I had not realized that the Taurus was STILL in production, but it was. Ralph Kinney Bennett writes about the Taurus and Ford's wrong-mindedness. I put Bill Ford, Jr. as the culprit. I am glad he stepped back. We can only hope that the company can be saved, as I am a longtime Ford customer. In Dallas, Ford trucks dominate, as well, especially the F150.

If the Democrats don't take the House and Senate, they will freak

There are many indications that the Democrats are not such a lock on taking both the House and Senate. They may not even take one of them. John Hinderacker points out the Michael Barone piece on the subject.

Nice Britney Spears pics

There are actually some very "nice", real Britney Spears pics. Some are from Rolling Stone. There is a cover shot of her holding a towel, from the side. Another is straight on, with her pulling her drawers down. This is from a nice Elle cover. This is one from the side, with her wearing many beads, and pulling her drawers down. These are all from ElliotBack.com.

Site Traffic Tracking Tools

I use three website traffic tracking tools: Sitemeter, IndexTools, and Google Analytics. I depend on SiteMeter as my main source, but I find that Google Analytics' pie chart view of the traffic sources, by volume is a very good summary. With recent bump-up in traffic for Former Naval Person, I have been able to readily see the sources for that big increase. IndexTools is what my former employer used for monitering traffic, and there are premium add-ons to the service that are quite useful, for tracking things such as downloads, by document. I do not have that, and in any case, I only have moderate use for that feature, as downloads are not the main focus of any of my blogs and website.

Sawfnews has a pic of Peaches and Pixie, "out for a night on the town"

Sawfnews has a pic of Peaches and Pixie Geldof. They obviously wanted to show lots of leg. The pic is flattering enough. This is a recent pic, from 19 October 2006, and it shows that Peaches has apparently not pudged up, after all.

Maxwell Edison's blog has a piece about Heather Mills claims

Heather Mills' claims that Paul McCartney had not only beat her, but had beaten his first wife Linda are so over-the-top, that they threaten to drive off those who have been supporting Heather in her divorce action. Maxwell Edison's blog has a piece with the nasty details.

Heather Mills is putting the squeeze on Paul McCartney

Paul McCartney is apparently a drug using lefty, who thought that Heather Mills, also a lefty, and pretty enough, would be a good match. However, she is only out for Heather, and apparently was so obviously a gold-digger and using Paul to gain prominence, that he dumped her. Now, she is apparently threatening to tell all sorts of dirt, unless he pays her £100 million. The Sun has the story.

Ned Lamont and buddies

Rich Lowery posted a good pic of Ned Lamont and his buddies, the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jessie Jackson, on The Corner, at The National Review Online.

Lots of Mariah Carey nipple

There are quite a few Mariah Carey nipple shots. One is with a tight top. Another is a "nipple slip" from the side. This is a related pic from the same occasion. This is a nice pic of her. Here is one more from NipSlips.com.

A nice Britney Spears fake

I am not sure how much it looks like her, but Starophile has a nice Britney Spears pic, although it is a fake. Still, it is very nicely done. It may look better than she actually is.

Things get even weirder: Heather Mills

Because Paul McCartney wanted to have Beatrice, their daughter live with him, Heather Mills retaliated with a claim that Paul had been physically abusive to her during their marriage. FemaleFirst.co.uk has the story. This was where she had claimed that Paul had "stabbed her with a broken wine glass".

Today is an extraordinary day, due to Google Image Search

This blog has had a huge spike in traffic due to Google Image Search. The spike or bump started late yesterday, and has continued without letup. What is happening is not based on anything posted in the last day or two, but for whatever reason, Google Image Search is serving up pages with links to images from the last 6 months, or more. Nothing has changed but Google Image Search, so this blog is being served up for searches. We will be interested to see the trajectory of the bump, and how long it persists. My practice has been to both link to the page that something is in, and to the image with a popup. I would rather not, as a practice, link so that a picture is visible on entering a page, as that costs someone bandwidth. If a reader clicks the link, that will cost, as well, but it is not automatic.

Steve Silver has the video of Dennis Green melting down after the loss against the Bears

Anyone who followed Dennis Green at Minnesota wouldn't be surprised at the "meltdown" (as Roger Emerick put it, this morning on KRLD) after the loss to the Chicago Bears. Steve Silver has the video.

Heather Mills trainer is filling multiple roles

Heather Mills travels with her personal trainer, who doubles as a "minder", besides, apparently, providing intimate services to her. WalrusGumBoot has a piece about the latest scoop. I follow this because of Heather's entertainment factor being high. She is clearly embarrassed by much of the publicity about her past and her current arrangements, but not so much as to stop doing what she wants to do.

Michael Barone says that we are not going to see a political realignment in 2006

Michael Barone has a commentary at RealClearPolitics.com, where he says that 2006 will not be a realignment like we saw in 1994. I believe that is caused by the Democrats that we have. If we had some "other" Democrats, who were appealing and had ideas, they might well sweep the board. At best, the Democrats might win narrow control of the House and Senate. That is not even a given, and could still not happen. For whatever reason, Carl Rove is said to be "optimistic" about the 2006 election, although we have yet to see why that is.

Fred, at Goodsh*t, links to the Alison Krauss video on YouTube

I watched the video for "Alison Krauss - The Lonesome Sound - Live" at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXyRQFvPm54 This link should work, but it has been causing me trouble, at least in FireFox, since. Fred, at the blog "GoodSh*t" posts a lot of stuff, mostly nude pics of women, but other stuff, as well. We saw Alison Krauss live at Poor David's in Dallas, about 1993.

English Ranter says that Heather Mills plans to sue over prostitution story

The English Ranter has a comment about Heather Mills suing over the story about her providing sex to wealthy Arabs when she was young. He makes the point, without saying it explicitly, that is one way to characterize her relationship with Paul McCartney. He shows the pic on the cover of the Sun.

Walking in Memphis: the song brought back fond memories

I had liked Marc Cohn's song, Walking in Memphis, before I ever spent any time there. In fact, I was working in Memphis for 2-1/2 years, and developed some strong ties. I heard the song, today, in Steak and Ale, while we were celebrating our anniversary. I was immediately bombarded with the memories and emotions, while listening. Memphis is very much in the South, and the people reflect that. They are very friendly and polite, and it cuts across racial and ethnic lines. It is quite a different atmosphere from Minneapolis, although I like Minneapolis for different reasons.

Glenn Reynolds can go ahead and vote Democratic, if he wants

Glenn Reynolds is really negative about the Bush administration and the Republican party. If he wants to go ahead and vote Democratic, he is welcome to do so. I happen to like my Texas Republican candidates and will vote for them. The problem people in the Republican party are from places like the Upper Midwest and East, but people who live their elected these people, for whatever reason. I would not have voted for them, but I never had the chance.

Unleaded regular is now below $2/gallon at many stations

I saw at least four gas stations that had unleaded regular gas for under $2.00 per gallon. The Tom Thumb gas station, with the discounted price of $1.969/gallon was the lowest that I saw. Even one Exxon station had it for $1.999/gallon. This is in Mesquite, Texas, on the southeast side.

Air America has filed for bankruptcy

Yahoo Finance has the news that Air America has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This has seemed inevitable for a long time, as the business practices of the liberal network seemed likely to doom the network. Only shady deals kept the network afloat this long. Brian Maloney has the longer story on recent developments.

Oprah's show, tonight, was a "donation in kind" to the Democrats

My wife watched Oprah's show, tonight, with Frank Rich. Somehow, it ought to count against Democratic campaign spending limits, as it was 100% a "donation in kind". No money changed hands, but the entire message was anti-Bush, anti-Republican, anti-war, and pro-Democrat.

Yes, Heather Mills and Elizabeth Mitchell look alike

Heather Mills and Lost's Elizabeth Mitchell really do resemble each other. "No Blasters" shows the two, so you can judge for yourself: "Separated at Birth".

More on the impending end of Tower Records

There is an AP piece that tells the story of Tower Records and its ignomius end. They had gone into bankruptcy, and now they have been bought by a liquidator. Some had hope to keep a few stores open, but now, that is not a possibility.

Ed Morrissey says that France has a big problem with Muslims

Ed Morrissey, writing at Captain's Quarters, says that Muslims in France are waging a war against police within the mostly Muslim housing projects:

The French have a real problem on their hands in the projects. Where radical Muslims gain ground, a rejection of state authority follows, and the French resistance to assimilation has allowed radical Islam to fester in these areas. It should surprise few now that the isolation of the Muslims in France has resulted in violence and a de facto intifada, and the problem will not get better by appeasing the rioters and allowing them to drive the police out of the projects.

Le Intifada should serve as a warning to Europe and the West, and not just in terms of immigration policy. Radical Islamism threatens the basis of the nation-state, and once it gains a toehold, it becomes difficult to roll back. That's why we have to push back against it whenever and wherever it appears and convince moderates and fence-sitters that theocratic rule is not inevitable.

Perhaps "Framing" is a dead concept

Steve Silver says that they may have finally gotten the light that "Framing", as espoused by George Lakoff, is not the way to win elections:

Want an indication that the Democrats might actually win in November? They seem to have broken with adviser/linguist Goerge Lakoff, according to this column.

Steve Silver says that Tower Records is going out of business

Steve Silver has a post about what he says is the impending demise of Tower Records:

The venerable record store chain will go out of business later this fall, a casualty of the iTunes era. I stopped in the one on Broad Street today, and it felt like a funeral or something.

My favorite, small software company has dropped Axis 2 for webservices

I have had a relationship, at various times, with a small software company for almost two years. Earlier this year, I had tried to integrate the Apache Axis 2 product, an open-source Java webservices framework, with a new product. I struggled with Axis 2 for a long time, and wrote a bunch of code to use the web services generator. There were continual problems, and I heard this morning that they finally switched to another framework, Codehaus XFire. XFire seems to work well and required less code to use.

Gene Expression on national personality types

I have long been interested in the personality type thing (since I first found out about it in 1987). Agnostic, writing at Gene Expression has a post about national personality types. I found it interesting how they reinforce the stereotypes about countries.

The system works

I have a great deal of confidence in our system of government and elections, in particular. The system is very messy, but I would say that "we get what we need" at any particular date. We apparently "needed" eight years of President Clinton. Admittedly, people are heavily influenced by the mainstream media, which is overwhelmingly biased to the left and for the Democrats. Fox is the only big counterforce, and they are hated by the left. I discount that influence, because even when it succeeds, "ordinary people" look at what is happening and decide if they like it or not. They may elect a set of bozos, but that is for either four or eight years, and then the "problem is solved".

Heather Mills and her trainer

The Daily Mail has an article and pics of Heather Mills and her personal trainer. He is apparently do more for her than just giving her instruction on "working out".

A year ago, Peaches was slender

I suspect that she is not now, but a year ago, Peaches Geldof was slender. She might not have been as slender as "Fifi Trix Belle" (I kid you not), her sister. The Geldof girls were cursed with a mother (the late Paula Yates) who liked goofy names. I think that she thought that rock star daughters needed to have appropriate names (what I think are goofy). The Sydney Morning Herald had a story, about a year-and-a-half ago with a pic that showed Bob with two of his daughters. He also adopted Paula's daughter by the INXS guy, an Australian.

Apparently, the goal is to show a lot of cleavage (mission accomplished)

Kevin Aylward's photo for this week's weekend caption contest at Wizbang! is apparently trying to show a lot cleavage, in which it is successful.

Another old Heather Mills pic

I had not seen this pic of Heather Mills, "back when", showing off her nipples. The pics just keep surfacing. When will we get to see the PETA calendar? (This pic looks vaguely familiar, but how can we go wrong?)

Was Peaches shoplifting?

I don't understand why Peaches Geldof would shoplift, but that is the claim. Digital Spy says that she was questioned about stealing a coat at Urban Outfitters, when she set off an alarm on leaving the store.

The Yahoo Mail Beta seems to be doing better

For better or worse, I am trying the Yahoo Mail Beta, again. I switched back to the classic version, last time, because of performance issues. At its best, performance has been much better. I am seeing signs, though, that mail is starting to slow, again. Still, they must have added server capacity since I last tried the Beta.

The American Thinker explains why everything is not so bad (but nobody is listening)

At the American Thinker, we find that the Mark Foley scandal is not what is being hyped. The page was not underage when the IMs happened. However, the MSM has been hyping this, and the firestorm is raging out of control. MSNBC is doing their part, and even the conservative bloggers are on board.

Rather mercifully, the Texas Rangers finally fired Buck Showalter

Except for the owner, most people have recognized that Buck Showalter had not worked out as manager for the Texas Rangers. Their young GM had put together a super team for this last season, but they misfired and didn't even play .500 ball. I cannot really tell how much of that was caused by the quality of guidance Showalter was giving players. What has been clear is that Showalter's game decision-making has been sub-par for the Rangers. Well, now he is gone. I am hoping that the GM will be able to find suitable candidates who might actually be interested in the job. The Dallas Morning News has a story on the subject.

Feasibility studies

The nasty thing about modern society, with the 7X24 news coverage is that what would otherwise be isolated events turn out to be feasibility studies for a particular type of crime. The was true for the original school shootings, such as Columbine, and we found out that the attack at the high school in Colorado proved the concept of a sexually-motivated attack at a vulnerable school. That spawned the crime at the Amish school in Pennsylvania. I still am in favor of full reporting, because parents and authorities need to know the truth, so that they can arrange protection and be alert. I think that the attempts by the local media in the Dallas area to suppress information about crime victims who are children are mistaken. Parents need to know if a predator is targetting boys or girls, for example.

$2.009/per gallon of unleaded regular gas

Tonight, on the way home, I saw that the price of gas at the Tom Thumb (Safeway) gas station had fallen by two cents a gallon since I bought gas, this morning. The discounted price for unleaded regular gas is $2.009/gallon. Considering what is happening to the price of oil, we must be headed for even lower gasoline prices.

Concussion grenades, gas, smoke, and assault rifles

My opinion is that the way to stop further copycat attacks against young girls in the school setting by these guys is to blast into the room with concussion grenades, use gas and smoke, and go in with flak jackets, helmets, goggles, and gas masks, and with assault rifles blazing. Quite possibly, more of these young Amish girls might have survived. These guys look for soft targets, with young girls, and bank on authorities being timid in their response.

The attack on the Amish schoolhouse sounds like a copycat by this guy (UPDATE)

The more I hear about the circumstances surrounding the attack on the Amish schoolhouse, and the taking and killing of the girls, they seem to resemble the attack in Colorado. We may not know all the circumstances, as they are probably pretty bad, but if we do, it seems likely to have similar motives, except against younger girls. This is a CBC story on the subject. UPDATE I seem to be right about this guy's motives. MSNBC says that he had molested relatives 20 years ago and fantasized about doing it again. The Amish schoolhouse was just an easy target.

More Peaches Geldof, a more flattering pic

She may have pudged up since this shot, but Peaches Geldof shows up in a more flattering pic than the more recent ones that I have seen. This pic, from The Shallow End, is when she was 16.

Someone needed to take this guy out, quickly

Once this started, it seems that it has brought all the copycats out of the woodwork. This guy had a grudge and decided that the way to settle it was to slaughter little girls. My take was that the authorities needed to react faster and with more violence, and they might have saved some little Amish girls. It could hardly have turned out worse. Maybe next time (we can hope that there is not a "next time", but I do not have much hope), authorities will be quicker to attack the hostage taker, to see if they can free some of the hostages. MSNBC has the story.

So, Heather Mills is having a "close personal relationship" with her trainer?

Heather Mills continues to have a bit of entertainment value. Now we are burdened with hearing about her "close personal relationship with her trainer", Ben Amigoni. "No Rock and Roll Fun" has the story.

Weight Watchers status

This week, I lost 1.6 pounds for a total of 39.2 pounds in 32 weeks. Of course, in about 26 weeks, in the last half of 1999, I lost fifty pounds with a low-card diet. The problem is that once you stop eating exclusively low-carb, the weight comes back, and fast, and you end up at a higher weight then when you started the low-carb diet. Everyone I have spoken with who had tried low-carb found the same thing. I still recommend low-carb for fast weight loss, but once you get down, you need to follow some plan like the Weight Watcher maintenance diet, where you can eat carbs and not gain weight.

Gasoline prices

My mother tells me that there is a gas station in Kalamazoo, where they are selling unleaded regular at $1.999/gallon. Our local Tom Thumb station has it for $2.029/gal, which I had thought was low. That is the discounted price, not what is posted, which is 3 cents a gallon higher. Barring the threatened al Qaeda strike in the US, we are headed for sub-two dollar gas as the typical price.

A nuclear attack during Ramadan?

Kim Priestrap writes about a Pakistani journalist with al Qaeda contacts:

...he was asked why Mohammad Atta's martyrdom video would suddenly surface now. He said it could be a warning to other al Qaeda operatives of an impending attack. Scary considering Hamid Mir also reported of a possible nuclear attack inside the US during Ramadan

The answer is that I will not get the existing app going on UltiDev Cassini easily

I had hoped that I might be able to get an existing app running with UltiDev Cassini, but I was skeptical, due to the fact that the app is database-driven and user-configurable. The app, for casual running, uses an Access database to hold the app data. I Windows XP Home, there is no way that I know of to give executable privileges to a user. On the other hand, I have not had to do such things, previously.

UltiDev Cassini for .NET 1.1

We are about to see if someone who "just walked in off the street" (admittedly, a programmer and consultant) can make someone else's ASP .NET 1.1 app work in UltiDev Cassini for .NET 1.1 without a lot of hassle.