Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.
At this moment, what is your favorite…
1. …song?
Man in Motion by John Parr
2. …food?
Cold smoked salmon
3. …tv show?
Stargate SG1
4. …scent?
Chocolate
5. …quote?
The one in my email sig,
“For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me.” Winnie the Pooh
Over at Dive into Mark, he talks about RSS Feed validating, and how even with feed validating services, there are still plenty of RSS feeds with badly formed XML. So there’s this nifty feed validator that’s simple to use, and offers suggestions to fix your bad feeds. Very neat. Worth checking out.
Had a delightful Chinese New Year celebration at my wife’s boss’s house. Mostly people from the lab she works in, lots of good food. It’s become a pretty multi-cultural lab since my wife started working there. Where else can you go to celebrate Chinese New Year, and have a conga line and salsa dancing break out? A good time was had by all I think. It was a good start to the new year.
Found my W-2 on my desk today. That means it’s the start of that dreaded tax season. But, since I don’t own a house, or have any investments outside my 401K, taxes for me are pretty simple. And I use TurboTax and E-file my return, so about all I have to do is enter numbers and see how much more I owe, or how much I get back. Pretty simple if all you need to do is fill out the 1040 or 1040EZ. And if you’re expecting a refund back, it shows up in your bank account automagically in just a couple of weeks! It’s the way to go.
The winners of the 2003 Stella Awards have just been announced! This is the real thing now, not the fake ones that have been making the rounds.
And the winner is…
The City of Madera, Calif. Madera police officer Marcy Noriega had the suspect from a minor disturbance handcuffed in the back of her patrol car. When the suspect started to kick at the car’s windows, Officer Noriega decided to subdue him with her Taser. Incredibly, instead of pulling her stun gun from her belt, she pulled her service sidearm and shot the man in the chest, killing him instantly. The city, however, says the killing is not the officer’s fault; it argues that “any reasonable police officer” could “mistakenly draw and fire a handgun instead of the Taser device” and has filed suit against Taser, arguing the company should pay for any award from the wrongful death lawsuit the man’s family has filed. What a slur against every professionally trained police officer who knows the difference between a real gun and a stun gun! And what a cowardly attempt to escape responsibility for the actions of its own under-trained officer.