I fought through some of the Black Friday crowds to score a few deals, like an 80GB hard drive for $40 after rebate (already in the mail) and a $29.77 DVD player. I've got a rough outline of what I'm going to get for most of the people on my list, now it's just a matter of execution. I also stuck up our Christmas Wish-Lists, which gets easier every year, since Amazon carries almost everything now.
Must......resist.....temptation....to....buy....this.....laptop.... $599 for a laptop, even a somewhat bulky and underpowered one by hardcore computer guy standards, is a great deal. And given that I mostly would use it for e-mail & WWW access, and the occasional game of Civilization 3, it would be fine for me.
Now here's someone I don't feel sorry for:
Participant at KKK initiation wounded after shots fired into sky JOHNSON CITY, Tennessee (AP) -- A bullet fired in the air during a Ku Klux Klan initiation ceremony came down and struck a participant in the head, critically injuring him, authorities said.
Gregory Allen Freeman, 45, was charged with aggravated assault and reckless endangerment in the Saturday night incident that wounded Jeffery S. Murr, 24.
About 10 people, including two children, had gathered for the ceremony. The man who was being initiated was blindfolded, tied with a noose to a tree and shot with paintball guns as Freeman fired a pistol in the air to provide the sound of real gunfire, Sheriff Fred Phillips said.
A bullet struck Murr on the top of the head and exited at the bottom of his skull, authorities said.
Freeman fled the ceremony but was arrested near his home, authorities said. He was released on $7,500 bail.
With guys like these in charge, the South is in no danger of Rising Again.
CNN is running a story about the first documented case of "Spam Rage", in which a spammee, fed up with the crap in his inbox, started making threats at the company he thought was responsible for them. If I was on the jury, I'd probably vote "not guilty" in this case, and I think a reasonably competent lawyer can make a strong case that he was being harassed. In any case, what I really want to know, is how a reporter chose this quote with a straight face, the emphasis is mine:
The object of the Californian's anger was Douglas Mackay, president of DM Contact Management, which works for Albion Medical, a firm advertising the "Only Reliable, Medically Approved Penis Enhancement."
"This went for a long, long time. He seemed really dedicated to this," Mackay said from Victoria, British Columbia in Canada. "He seemed like a guy just crazy enough with nothing to lose that might actually do something."
He said his firm does not send spam but blamed a rival firm which he said routes much of their unsolicited bulk e-mail through Russia and eastern Europe. Mackay said such firms gave a bad name to the penis enhancement business.
Because the rest of them are fine, upstanding members of their local Better Business Bureaus, I'm sure...
Starting today, my workload should be back to normal, and I can start posting again. Things also tend to be pretty dead on a University campus this week, the students only have class today and tomorrow, and the faculty/staff only work until Wednesday. The tape library that I manage ran out of tape this weekend, so the first thing on my agenda is to go and feed the robot this morning. At $100/each, I don't want to load in tapes we don't need, but due to some scheduling changes I've made in the backup system, we've gotten double copies of several servers around campus, and that's eating up tape.
