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.