Jim Rittenhouse's semidaily journal of news, commentary and reports
If I’ve been quiet again, it’s because my main PC in my office downstairs (where I’m exiled to pending the doc saying I can go up and down stairs again) has been zapped by a nasty virus. It got past my Trend Micro antivirus, and started disconnecting various things on my PC (including the virus [...]
The latest on all of the medical stuff is that I haven’t healed enough on the bottom of my foot for the Doc to be able to let me really walk on it again, so he has basically told me that I will be off my feet until my next visit with him next Monday [...]
See http://www.epa.gov/bpspill/ I know that the Administrator was down these in the last couple of days, and that there’s a huge gearing up on this issue.
I’ve been asked to speak at a Wright State University forum; their Honors Institute is having a symposium on Chinese-American relations called “Connecting With China”, and I’m to talk on “Exploring Issues in Cross-Cultural Adoptions” from 2-4 pm, February 17th. The event is free to the public, but you have to register in advance to [...]
As some of you may have sussed out, since November of 2007, I’ve been working 99% of the time out of my basement office…with a huge long line of doctor’s excuses, bases on either my non-healing foot wound, or my weak response to infections casing raging problems on and off. The office finally said that [...]
Back home last night; feeling logy and icky today and sleeping most of the day. Meredith seems to be getting out from under the strep throat, Susan seems to be coming down with it, and Connie’s leaving today for out of town till Saturday or so (long-expected absence, but a horrible time for it). I [...]
Part one of ‘why I weren’t posting none’ is that the internet connection here at The Marmotage has been deadly sucky at best. Details on the tech wrangle are after the cut.
I really hate it when I’ve been out of the ‘office’ for a while for whatever reason, and especially if it’s for two weeks; all sorts of OMG WTF BBQ emergencies that have happened in my absence that I could have taken care of in 15 minutes are common. In this case, I was out [...]
I don’t take my Kindle everywhere, but it has gotten a lot of use, especially when i know I’m going to have to sit and wait somewhere. (Like at the hospital.) Susan and Meredith have used it a little, as has my niece Kay and my mother-in-law, and it looks like we’re getting another Kindle [...]
The workmen are out in the back of the house, digging the French Drain thing for the drainage project; I hear a steady thonk-thonk-thonk (there seems to be a total of two guys to do the digging and all, and man, that’s got to be killer work by hand) and will have to go off [...]
Website for the remains of the old GM that they’re liquidating. Wanna buy a golf course or a Superfund site? At the first day of hearings on GM’s proposed asset sale restructuring chief Albert Koch estimated on June 30 that the company’s environmental liabilities for all sites are $530 million. Chief Executive Officer Fritz Henderson [...]
The Federal Protective Service, tasked to provide security to US government office buildings (like the one that Susan and I work out of in downtown Chicago) is in trouble; the Government Accountability Office ran teams through and past the security at several such buildings, bringing in bomb materials. Numerous US government web sites were downed [...]
Due to overload on the family (and that I’m unable to handle the mower at present) we depend on a mowing service to come over and do the lawn – a very nice operation, really, and we recommend them to any locals that might need it. But the dogs have been plagued recently with some [...]
Risk map setup from air toxics risks on causing cancer in the USA via the EPA: Parts of Los Angeles, Calif., and Madison County, Ill., had the highest cancer risks in the nation — 1200 in 1 million and 1100 in 1 million, according to the EPA data. They were followed by two neighborhoods in [...]
…of too much to do and too little time to do it in. Jumping back into work on Wednesday, I found that our phone and internet was intermittently out, and we found and fixed the culprit. That sort of thing, when you’re working from home, really strangles you, and both Susan and I were doing [...]