Bad Penmanship Foils Holdup OCEAN SPRINGS, Miss. (AP) — It might have been the third bank holdup this month in Ocean Springs, Miss., if the would-be robber had had better handwriting. Police say an attempted robbery was foiled yesterday when a bank teller couldn't decipher the writing on a holdup note. When the man handed the teller the note, she told him she couldn't read it. The man ran.

Check out the story of Ozzy the cat, who racked up 63,000 frequent flyer miles after stowing away on a British Airways plane.

Turns out Tennessee gets back $1.20 for every tax dollar it sends to the federal government, at least according to the Tax Foundation. Sucks to live New Jersey -- they only get 67 cents.

Well, my mom just left town on Saturday after spending 5 days here in town. Among our exciting activities: shopping for new cell phones for her and Dad. Apparently the fact that I deal with computers for a living somehow makes me more qualified to decipher the intracacies of daytime minutes, nighttime minutes, and service contracts. She decided to switch from Sprint to Verizon, but apparently they can only activate phones locally. So for the moment both of my parents have Nashville cell phone numbers. Supposedly they can get them switched easily, though.
We also went and saw "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," which was pretty funny. But it's one of those "lonely 20/30 something finally stumbles across the right person and lives happily ever after" flicks. <sigh> I'm still waiting...

The Washington Post had a great article about Pierre L'Enfant's original plan for Washington, DC, and how it survives today.

Google! DayPop! This is my blogchalk: English, United States, Nashville, East Nashville, Male, 26-30!

See the BlogChalking page for more on this idea.

I just realized that the Starr Report (detailing Bill Clinton's alleged dillydallying with interns and cigars) was released to the public on September 11, 1998, exactly three years before the terrorist attacks. It kind of makes you long for a time when the most pressing issues facing our nation revolved around the president's sex life.

Worst Response To A Crisis, 1985:

From a readers' Q and A column in TV GUIDE: "If we get involved in a nuclear war, would the electromagnetic pulses from exploding bombs damage my videotapes?"

As quoted by Wanda the GNOME Fish

Too much Disney is bad for you. Need proof?

TOWNSEND, Tenn. (AP) -- Bears sometimes attack deer -- it's what bears do.

But a Florida tourist apparently could not accept that, rangers say, and he took nature into his own hands by kicking and slamming a young black bear that had pounced on a fawn in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

“He probably thought he was saving Bambi,” park spokeswoman Nancy Gray said yesterday.

Michael Shaw, 38, of Grand Ridge, Fla., was charged with disturbing wildlife and disorderly conduct — federal offenses carrying up to $5,000 in fines and six months in jail.

“He seemed to be quite put out that we were charging him,” ranger Kent Looney said. “He thought he was doing the right thing.”

According to a ranger's report, Shaw and other visitors became distraught when they saw a 45-pound yearling bear jump on the young deer in Cades Cove on June 28.

Shaw ran toward the animals and began kicking the bear. When it refused to let go of the deer, Shaw picked up the bear and threw it down, the report said.

The bear released its grip and ran back into the woods, “probably pretty confused,” Gray said. The injured deer was euthanized.

But park officials said Shaw interrupted nature.

“The bear was doing what it was supposed to be doing,” Looney said. “Many of the people who gave me statements about the incident were incensed. ... If they had gotten hold of him, we might have had to save him.”

Ok, since you asked, here's how I spent my fourth of July in DC:

•  Family tradition: Attended Takoma Park Independence Day Parade with entire family, including a brother home from college and another brother visiting from out of state.

•  Took metro to Union Station to meet visiting friend. He had been bumped from his flight the night before, but got a sweet settlement from the airline.

•  Walked from station to look for other friends. Stood in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue yelling into cell phone trying to figure out where they were.

•  Got searched (several times, actually) by dutiful police officers manning security checkpoints around the Mall.

•  Availed ourselves of free free food from the rather large Hare Krishna encampment on the Mall. Listened to repetitive chanting for about 20 minutes. Worried mildly about possible sedatives in the lemonade.

•  Visited the Silk Road-themed Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Were soon deterred by near 100 degree heat, so escaped to the (air conditioned!) Natural History Museum to look at Mammoths, Mastadons, and bugs.

•  Went and got less holistic food at the Old Post Office Pavillion. I remembered this place from school field trips, but apparently no one else did, since it was nearly deserted. We had to go through a metal detector and have our bags x-rayed to get in.

•  Hopped on Metro and, after some confusion over the bizarre holiday routing changes, took it to Arlington Cemetary. Then hiked a ways looking for the Iwo Jima memorial. (Turns out it's closer to the Roslyn stop.) Eventually found another friend, and decided to stay there to watch the fireworks. This picture is almost exactly the view we had. It's a pretty great place to watch from, although you don't get as much booming as you do right on the Mall.

•  Followed throngs of people to Metro, and went our seperate ways to retrieve cars and luggage. Then met back up on the Maryland side of town and headed to the Route 1 IHOP. Returned home sometime after midnight.

That's it for now -- more later...

I haven't dropped off the face of the earth -- just got back from spending Independence Day weekend in Washington, DC. More later...

As you may know, government in the great state of Tennessee has come to a grinding halt due to an impasse over the state budget. Around 9:00 this evening, I drove home from work past the Tennessee state capitol. There were a fair number of people protesting and waving signs on both sides of the issue, but it wasn't exactly an out-of-control riot scene. I continued home, and about an hour later turned on the 10:00 news. They're doing live shots from in front of the capitol, and there are people coming out of the woodwork, cars stopped blocking the street, and plenty of other assorted mayhem.

Sort of makes you wonder if a lot of people are showing up just in time to protest their way onto the evening news. (I'm not the only one with this idea -- Danielle over at Missives Anonymous hatched a plot to head over there with signs promoting the band she works for! )

Oh, and as she very accurately points out, it's hot here!

Wow, I've been Instapundited!

Lest we forget...

I stumbled across a link somewhere and clicked it. My browser responded by calling up a large image of a woman falling through space, one of the towers of the World Trade Center, blurred, in the background. iTunes was churning out music in a major key. I was in mid sip of a diet Coke. It was like running across a pleasant meadow, then falling into a deep, hidden well. The Coke in my mouth drained down my lips back into the glass. I didn't want to see this image, yet there it was. The light was so warm, falling on her falling body. I could see her black shoes and her beige skirt, the warmth of a sunlit arm. I felt seized with one wish: that I could reach out, reach through the screen, through the browser window, through the pixels and the 9 months and 18 days, through all the screens and space and days that separated us. I wanted to reach out with huge arms and catch her and bring her to my chest and tell her that she was all right, that everything was all right and she was safe.

(From The Publick Journal of Evan Izer.)

Had to share my favorite message so far today from our tech support voice mail line:

We just discovered this amazing property on our intranet, where if you click a button on how to contact the fire departent, it actually links you to a site on how to find pornography! We just thought you might want to come see it...

Hmmm. We just assumed "redhotfirefighters.com" was the fire department's web page! (Actually, it appears that www.nashtnfiredept.org got hijacked by a porn baron. Don't go there, though, since it tries to install all sorts of spyware on your computer.)

Check out InPassing.org, a compendium of things overheard on the street in Berkeley, CA. A sample:

"...A really nice guy, and he just loves AC Transit. He's got a picture of every bus -- he even drove down to Freemont to take pictures of the busses there. If you're ever trying to convince him to go somewhere, all you have to say is, 'But think, you could look at the busses while you're there...'

"He better not be taking pictures of my bus."

--A passenger and the driver on an AC Transit bus

All very amusing. (Link via Laura at My Side of Things.)

Sorry for the reduced number of posts lately. My project management class has kicked into high gear, so I'm spending most of my available time doing readin', writin' and 'rithmatic. Only a few more weeks of this torture, though!

How 'bout this. Seems violence against computers is now a misdemeanor! (Link via Macintouch.)

Here at Newton's Kumquat, we work tirelessly to bring you the latest and greatest advances in journalism. That's why we're proud to tell you about the Ticked Off column in the Orlando Sentinel. Finally, a place in print for all those anonymous curmudgeons and complainers. (Alas, we couldn't find a web version.) Basically, readers are invited to leave a voicemails or e-mails, and then the complaints are transcribed and printed in the newspaper. Sample content:

I'm ticked off at a tow-truck driver who showed up to tow the car -- then said he didn't want to get his feet wet so he couldn't tow the car out of the puddle. This is after I waited for him for three hours. If he can't tow the car, he should get out of the business.

To the person who said that trailer park people actually have money: Why do you live in trailers and not in a house like the rest of us? It seems to me you're lying.

Since nobody else wants to say it, I guess it's got to be me. You know what really ticks me off? All these guys walking around with their pants almost to their kneecaps. Heck, I've even seen a few girls doing it. You know what? You look like clowns! And I thought bell-bottoms looked stupid in the '70s. Boy, was I wrong.

You get the idea. What makes these people think that a bunch of strangers are going to want to read their ranting and complaining on a daily basis? Hmm. Come to think of it, I guess it's sort of like blogging...

Don't know if you've been following the National Public Radio deep linking flap, but take that NPR! (And you can learn something about the tragic loss of the Wye Oak while you're stickin' it to The Man.)