January 2006 Archives

The Associated Press -

FINDLAY, Ohio -- A woman who died Nov. 9 at age 98 has bequeathed her $1.1 million estate to the federal government and requested that it be used to help pay down the $8.1 trillion national debt.

Attorney Tom Drake, the executor of Margaret Elizabeth Taylor's estate, said his client made it "very clear" what her fortune was to be used for. Her will was filed recently in Hancock County Probate Court.

Taylor, of Findlay, was a staunch Democrat who believed the national debt should be paid off and she wanted to do her part, Drake said.

"It's not what I would have advised her to do with it, but she really wasn't interested in my opinion," he said. "In the end, an attorney has to listen to their client. That's what I did."

Taylor had no living siblings or children, and her husband died in 1977.

"She had told me once that she wasn't planning on leaving anything to family," cousin Maxine Magoon said. "She didn't tell me exactly what she was going to do with it, but said that a lot of people would benefit."

Treasury Department officials couldn't remember a larger gift, spokesman Stephen Meyerhardt said Thursday.

"It's the biggest in at least the last 15 years, and most likely the largest one ever," he said. "Needless to say, most donations are much, much smaller."

Bureau of the Public Debt records show that U.S. citizens donated a total of $1.5 million toward debt reduction last year.

Taylor was known in her northwest Ohio community for giving to charity, her church and friends. "She was also very involved with her stocks," Magoon said.

Google Inc. said Thursday it will fight an attempt by the Bush administration to force the company to turn over to the Justice Department information about what its users are searching for on the Internet.

Read the rest of the story here: Google refuses to turn over search data to DOJ

edit: Guess I'm not using Yahoo AOLSearch or MSN anymore.

I need to find me an online game to waste my days at. *sigh*

Just took a look at the stats for phpSuperMarketTycoon. It got downloaded a dozen times so far this morning. I do hope that the downloaders note that it's a pre-Alpha release and not completely finished. I'm hoping to finish up later today on it. I have a few support tickets to deal with this morning.

Something strange though. When I type in phpSuperMarketTycoon into Google, I always get a bunch of Japanese websites that deal with linux. I never get the Home Page nor the Sourceforge page for it. Even though I've gone ahead and submitted those pages to Google a couple of times now. Heck, Google still doesn't see this blog. Maybe with a few more links.

edit: Just checked Google yet again. Neither this blog nor the phpSuperMarketTycoon sites are listed still. *sigh* The good news though is the project jumped from a 52k-th listing all the way up to a 764th place listing. That's neat. Guess I have a reason to work on the project now. Those 14 downloaders are now counting on me. :)

It appears that Medium Large has fixed it's issues with Blogger. It's now been updated and is back up and running. He pretty well summed it up here.

-drmike

For PPMB. A thread on how the characters from the Daria show spend their summer breaks.

Brittany stood there twirling her hair, dressed as a young maiden.

"Um, but what's my motivation?"

Mel Brooks stood there and tried not to wring his hands. "It's just a quick scene, Brittany dear. Gene's going to lift you from the carriage. I'll point to you. You'll turn your head and give your line. It's nice and easy and simple. Even you could do it."

"Um ok. Will this require any extra lessons? The last director I made a movie with gave me extra lessons in his dressing room."

"No, I think you'll be fine."

"He called them deep breathing exercises."

Mel looks very uncomfortable. He wants to but knows he can't. "Maybe you should get ready for your scene, Brittany dear." He pauses to look down for a second, blows out a heavy breath, and runs away as quickly as he can. Brittany twirls her hair for a few more seconds, shrugs, and makes he way to the shot.

Mel runs for the comfort of his director's chair. He sits down in it, puts a copy of the script over his lap, bits the palm of his hand a few times, and takes a deep breath.

Mel Brooks: (Looking around making sure everyone is ready.) Everyone set? (Getting nods, he turns to teh actors.) And... Action!

Gene Wilder starts to lift Brittany out of the carriage. The sound of large door knocking banging from out of the shot is heard. Brittany turns her head towards the sound. This leaves Gene faced to face with them, well, you know.

Doctor Frankenstein: "What knockers!"

Inga (Brittany): "Oh, huh, thank you Doctor."

Doctor Frankenstein: (He's in near shock.) "No, I mean those are some..."

Mel Brooks throws his script into the air. "Take five people!" he yells as he leaves the sound stage.

...standing on a bread line Saturday morning.

She's homeless.

And what's left of her family has blown her off.

For those who don't remember, Angie is my ex who left me late 1999.

I still love her and she's refusing to let me help her in any way.

I'm not doing too well knowing what her current situation is especially since I have to be at work and have only seen her once since then. I have her email address now but she hasn't written back yet.

I am not handling this very well.

Please keep her in your prayers.

-drmike

Found this paper on the net: Web Sites Sharing IP Addresses: Prevalence and Significance. It's an interesting read as I've always thought that blocking via just IP addresses would never work.

It's also cool to note that the number one IP address with the most websites hosted is 209.67.50.203, a Register.com "Holding the domain name for future use" site.

Abstract: More than 87% of active domain names are found to share their IP addresses (i.e. their web servers) with one or more additional domains, and more than two third of active domain names share their addresses with fifty or more additional domains. While this IP sharing is typically transparent to ordinary users, it causes complications for those who seek to filter the Internet, restrict users' ability to access certain controversial content on the basis of the IP address used to host that content. With so many sites sharing IP addresses, IP-based filtering efforts are bound to produce "overblocking" -- accidental and often unanticipated denial of access to web sites that abide by the stated filtering rules.

Granted it's out of date having been written in 2002 but it's an interesting read.

It's almost 11AM and I've yet to pull out my to-do list yet from my bag.

-drmike