The sun is shining and there are pools of warm sunlight in our bedroom.
But where did I find the cats sleeping?
In the bathroom!!

When we
remodeled,
I installed heated floor tiles in the master bedroom bath.
And the cats have found it!!!
They don’t need the sun any more.

I don’t usually blog about
political
or
moral
topics, but recently I’ve run across a few things that
are troubling me and which need a society wide discussion.
But I haven’t seen them anywhere else.

Kuro5hin
as an
article
about the U.S. House of Representatives bill
HR3820
The bill, titled the
“Congressional Accountability for Judicial Activism Act of 2004,”
would grant Congress the right to overturn the decisions
of the U.S. Supreme Court “to the extent that [they concern]
the constitutionality of an Act of Congress.”
A two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress
would be required to overturn such a decision;
this is the same condition applied to overturning
a Presidential veto of legislation.
The bill is currently in committee.

The constitution already stipulates that the congress and the
people can make anything constitutional by passing an amendment.
In the past, the law makers can make anything legal by passing
new laws.
But this changes the rules and makes congress (and it’s controlling
party in the current congressional dynamics) the supreme
power in the land without reqiring the people (us) to vote.

The
New Orleans Channel 6 News
reports
that the
5th Circuit Court of Appeals
as ruled that Louisiana cops don’t need a search or
arrest warrent to conduct a brief seach of your home or
business if the officer “fears for his safety”.

Now, most cops aren’t bad guys, but it’s a tough job out there
and people are shooting at you.
That doesn’t make for the best of situations for making
reasoned and balanced decisions.
And any claim of checks and balances go out the window unless
there is a video camera present.

Enough of my soap box.
The real problem I see is that both of these are serious
changes in the norm or the percieved norm of what we
consider the balance of power and justice.
Why aren’t these being brought up for public discussion?
How can we be an informed populous when things like this
can be proposed and acted on while most people don’t hear
about it.

I am bothered by this.
Earth to Media!!
There’s news happening!!

To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists.

The Misterblue email address has been around for nearly
10 years so it’s on every spam list imaginable — I get
between 100 and 200 pieces of spam a day.
I’ve been using
Spammunition
as my Outlook spam filter.
I’ve really liked it.
It’s a Bayesian filter and one just moves spam into a folder,
add the people you know are good to a ‘white list’
and it trains itself and after that, nearly all spam is
moved into the spam folder as new mail arrives.
There have been very few false positives (I once had a
problem exchanging email with my doctor — we were discussing
my prescriptions and that was too close to spam’ness).

Spammunition is free, but that also means that the developer
can wander off to other projects.
He seems to have done just that after getting married last
year.
It’s now starting to crash every now and then and it’s
beginning to suffer from bit rot.

So, it’s time to get another filter. A quick
Google
shows the following choices:

And I’m sure there are many more.

So, what have you tried?
What works for Outlook (besides throwing it out the window)?

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On the first day of spring, I thought I’d visit our
Japanese Garden
here in Portland, Oregon USA. There wasn’t much in bloom — only the camilias and the cherry trees. But it was a nice day (in the 50s) and a wind through the evergreens drowned the city noise and made the garden a far off land.
More pictures
are online.

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Other parts of the nation are getting snow today, but, here in Oregon,
the cherry trees are in bloom and flowers are sprouting up everywhere.
There aren’t leaves on the trees yet, but the trees are thinking
about it.

I think I’ll go to the
Japanese Garden
this weekend to see the cherry trees in bloom.

There was not much interesting listed under the
“Public Safety” section of our local town paper,
but it looks like the police were called a few
times for very serious occurances.
How do they train for all this stuff?

• A sick raccoon was reported under the porch
  in the 17500 block of Schalit Way.
• A large dead squirrel was removed from the roadway
  on the 1000 block of C Avenue.
• Responding to a report of
  “blood all over the kitchen walls”,
  a police officer found, instead,
  cranberry juice all over the walls.

Since I’ve been back to work, I haven’t been blogging much –
working at my computer after a day of working at a computer
doesn’t have the appeal it used to have.
But I am recovering and, except for various pains in my
rib cage (seems it doesn’t like being ripped open),
I’m pretty much back to normal operation just 8 weeks
after having my

body opened up and
my heart stopped.

I’ve been granted new life.
Outside it’s spring and the birds are singing for new life.
The sun is shining and the plants are starting to bloom.
Looks like today will be the first lawn mowing of the year.

You are Rerun!

Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I always loved Peanuts and I still have a collection of books from
my high school days.
I couldn’t resist this quiz pointed to by
Amy.

Last night this site was offline for about 4 hours.
The family was scattered about the house when the lights
went off at about 6pm.
Soon, we were all together in the kitchen lighting candles and fixing
dinner on the gas stove.
We had dinner by candle light and finished the evening by
playing Uno. (It’s hard to tell the difference between green and
blue with just the light of a few candles.)

The power returned at 10pm after my son took a shower by candle light.
We could now all go off to our separate rooms and finish the
evening by the steady shine of electric light.