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| Holmes and Moriarty fighting over the Reichenbach Falls, by Sidney Paget. |
I’ve generally followed that advice when it’s been too long between posts, but this most recent absence has been a bit unreasonable.
It’s been over a year since my last post, and three months before the post prior to that.
My excuse for my blogging absence, which the aforementioned article suggested not going into, was working full-time (yeah!) having a second job for a few months (yeah!) and two people at home who I very much enjoy spending time with.
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| You owe me one. |
I assume (well, actually, hope with fingers crossed) that's it's someone ready to offer me a full-time job so I can pay off some of the creditors who are also calling.
[Hire me, I'll fix your Internet presence for food. (I mean cash, I'll fix your online presence for cash. {Cash which I can use to buy food!}{I miss food.})]
So, I answer the phone and Bonita tells me I've been selected to receive a Disney vacation including:
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| Speaking of crazy... |
Anyhoo, the this email was appropriately caught in my spam filter which I have to check periodically because there is the remote possibility someone will have offered me a job in my field of training paying well enough to pay off my training.
(Will write words, make video or take pictures for food.)
Attn: This is to inform you that we the fbi have a warrant to arrest you if we dont hear from you immediately,this is the final warning you are going to receive from the fbi office do you get me? I hope youre understand how many times this message has been sent to you. We have warned you so many times and you have decided to ignore our e-mails we have been instructed to get you arrested immediately, and today if you fail to respond back to us with the payment then, we will close your bank account and jail you and all your properties will be confiscated by the fbi.Robert Mueller, III FB I DirectorA few things to take note of in this email,
I, like most people, have to check my spam box occasionally to make sure I don't miss critical (hire me!) emails.
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My wife and child have been moved to a safe location in anticipation (you know how to say it) of the fall out from this scathing, extremely well researched and sourced (shut up) blog post.
Yes, after years of exploitation I'm uncovering the truth of Big Bay Leaf and the way they've attempted to control our lives.
How much money have you spent on bay leaves in the past year? StatsCanada data show it is as much as tens of dollars per household annually! [It's from an obscure report you'll never find. Trust me, don't bother with an FOI.]
Besides being my Mother's birthday, today is also Buy Nothing Day in North America, in other parts of the world, tomorrow (Sat, Nov 29) is Buy Noting Day.The annual shopping frenzy at Wal-Mart exists because journalists will show up to cover it, thus creating free advertising for the discount chainTension grew as the 5 a.m. opening neared. By 4:55, with no police officers in sight, the crowd of more than 2,000 had become a rabble, and could be held back no longer. Fists banged and shoulders pressed on the sliding-glass double doors, which bowed in with the weight of the assault.
Witnesses and the police said the doors shattered, and the shrieking mob surged through in a rush for holiday bargains. One worker, Jdimytai Damour, 34, of Queens, was thrown back onto the black linoleum tiles and trampled in the stampede that streamed over and around him.
Some workers fought their way through the surge to get to Damour, but he had been fatally injured, police said. Damour, a temporary worker hired for the holiday season, was pronounced dead an hour later at Franklin Hospital Medical Center in Valley Stream.
Four other people, including a 28-year-old woman described as eight months pregnant, were treated at the hospital for minor injuries.
I hope the wealthiest family in Bentonville, Arkansas sleeps well this Christmas."They have problems with crowds every year, and inevitability, people get hurt," said David Nassar of Wal-Mart Watch, a union-financed group. "They should expect to plan properly for this kind of a problem and have adequate security in place, and they don't."
Wal-Mart officials said the safety of customers and workers was their "top priority" and the company's "thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those impacted."
Uh, this is going to sound a little weird, but the 1977 movie Smokey and the Bandit was highly influential for me.
If you are "of a certain age" you may remember when "crossover" wasn't the marketing department's description of a station wagon with a tall body. Or a pickup truck with a weird amount of seats.
This has to be the weirdest Wikipedia entry ever. Not so much for the content, but who would have thought of creating a list of fictional ducks?
Tue May 22, 1:27 PM
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) - Michael Lusher apparently is a sound sleeper. A small-caliber bullet struck the 37-year-old Altizer man in the head as he slept Sunday morning, but he didn't realize it until he awoke nearly four hours later and noticed blood coming from his head, said Cpl. R.H. McQuaid of the Cabell County Sheriff's Department.
The bullet that struck him was one of five that someone sprayed across his mobile home and truck at about 4:20 a.m. Sunday, McQuaid said. The one the struck Lusher apparently lost velocity as it traveled through two walls.
"We're just glad he didn't suffer any life-threatening injuries with a head wound," he said.
Lusher came home from a night on the town about an hour before he was shot while lying in bed, McQuaid said.
He remained hospitalized at St. Mary's Medical Center on Monday. His condition was not immediately available.
Mystery revealed: Canada's harmless poppy quarter led to U.S. spy warnings
Mon May 7, 2:21 AM
By Ted Bridis
WASHINGTON (AP) - The surprise explanation behind the U.S. government's sensational but false warnings about mysterious Canadian spy coins is the harmless poppy quarter, the world's first colourized coin.
The were so unfamiliar to suspicious U.S. army contractors travelling in Canada that they filed confidential espionage accounts about them.
The worried contractors described the coins as "anomalous" and "filled with something man-made that looked like nano-technology," said once-classified U.S. government reports and e-mails.
The 25-cent piece features the red image of a poppy inlaid over a maple leaf. The quarter is identical to the coins pictured and described as suspicious in the contractors' accounts.
The supposed nano-technology actually was a conventional protective coating the Royal Canadian Mint applied to prevent the poppy's red colour from rubbing off. The mint produced nearly 30 million such quarters in 2004 commemorating Canada's 117,000 war dead.
"It did not appear to be electronic (analog) in nature or have a power source," wrote one U.S. contractor, who discovered the coin in the cup holder of a rental car.
"Under high-power microscope, it appeared to be complex consisting of several layers of clear but different material, with a wire like mesh suspended on top."
The confidential accounts led to a sensational warning from the U.S. Defence Security Service, an agency of the Defence Department, that mysterious coins with radio frequency transmitters were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors travelled through Canada.
One contractor believed someone had placed two of the quarters in an outer coat pocket after the contractor had emptied the pocket hours earlier.
"Coat pockets were empty that morning and I was keeping all of my coins in a plastic bag in my inner coat pocket," the contractor wrote.
Meanwhile, in Canada, senior intelligence officials expressed annoyance with the U.S. spy-coin warnings as they tried to learn more about the oddball claims.
"That story about Canadians planting coins in the pockets of defence contractors will not go away," Luc Portelance, now deputy director for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, wrote in a January e-mail to a subordinate.
"Could someone tell me more? Where do we stand and what's the story on this?"
Others in Canada's spy service also were searching for answers. "We would be very interested in any more detail you may have on the validity of the comment related to the use of Canadian coins in this manner," another intelligence official wrote in an e-mail.
"If it is accurate, are they talking industrial or state espionage? If the latter, who?" The identity of the e-mail's recipient was censored.
Intelligence and technology experts were flabbergasted by the warning when it was first publicized earlier this year. The warning suggested such transmitters could be used surreptitiously to track the movements of people carrying the coins.
"I thought the whole thing was preposterous, to think you could tag an individual with a coin and think they wouldn't give it away or spend it," said H. Keith Melton, a leading intelligence historian.
But Melton said the army contractors properly reported their suspicions.
"You want contractors or any government personnel to report anything suspicious," he said.
"You can't have the potential target evaluating whether this was an organized attack or a fluke."
The Defence Security Service disavowed its warning about spy coins after an international furore but until now it has never disclosed the details behind the embarrassing episode. The United States said it never substantiated the contractors' claims and performed an internal review to determine how the false information was included in a 29-page published report about espionage concerns.
The Defence Security Service never examined the suspicious coins, spokeswoman Cindy McGovern said.
"We know where we made the mistake," she said.
"The information wasn't properly vetted. While these coins aroused suspicion, there ultimately was nothing there."
Numismatist Dennis Pike, of Canadian Coin & Currency near Toronto, quickly matched a grainy image and physical descriptions of the suspect coins in the contractors' confidential accounts to the 25-cent poppy piece.
"It's not uncommon at all," Pike said.
He added the coin's protective coating glows peculiarly under ultraviolet light.
"That may have been a little bit suspicious," he said.
Some of the U.S. documents the AP obtained were classified "Secret/Noforn," meaning they were never supposed to be viewed by foreigners, even the closest U.S. allies. The government censored parts of the files, citing national security reasons, before turning over copies under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.
Nothing in the documents - except the reference to nanotechnology - explained how the contractors' accounts evolved into a full-blown warning about spy coins with radio frequency transmitters. Many passages were censored, including the names of contractors and details about where they worked and their projects.
But there were indications the accounts should have been taken lightly.
Next to one blacked-out sentence was this warning: "This has not been confirmed as of yet."
The Canadian intelligence documents, which also were censored, were turned over for $5 under the Access to Information Act. Canada cited rules for protecting against subversive or hostile activities to explain why it censored the papers.
The first of February 2007: Participate in the biggest mobilization of Citizens Against Global Warming! The Alliance for the Planet [a group of environmental associations] is calling on all citizens to create 5 minutes of electrical rest for the planet.
People all over the world should turn off their lights and electrical appliances on the first of February 2007,
between 10.55 and 11 am in British Columbia,
1.55 pm and 2.00 pm in New York,
18.55 for London, and
19.55 for Paris, Bruxelles, and Italy.
