Daily Dose - 020413 - Texas women, Rotten News, personal ad, DDL, Hey Martha
An Acquaintance of mine whose daughter was about to be married decided to give her a diamond ring that had been in the family for several generations. The stone had never been appraised, so the father asked a gemologist friend if she would take a look at it. She agreed, but said that instead of a fee she'd accept lunch at one of Houston's finer restaurants.
A few days later, as he and the gem expert sat sipping a glass of Chablis, he showed her the ring. She took out her jeweler's loupe, examined the diamond carefully and handed it back.
"Wow," said a diner who had been watching from the next table. "These Texas women are tough!"
[Borrowed from Reader's Digest.]
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Rotten News.... (true)
Flasher escapes after being caught in his own zipper
By CINDY CLAYTON, The Virginian-Pilot
© April 4, 2002
VIRGINIA BEACH -- A 12-year-old girl confronted by a flasher in an elevator Monday night reacted quickly: She grabbed his zipper and yanked it up.
The two were in an elevator at the Suburban Lodge in the 400 block of South Independence Boulevard at 7:50 p.m., said police spokesman Mike Carey.
The man was injured, and the girl ran out of the elevator and found her stepfather to tell him what happened, Carey said. The stepfather found the suspect running from the building, and the two men fought. The suspect broke free and ran away.
Because he suffered blood loss, the man probably suffered injuries significant enough for him to seek medical treatment, Carey said. Investigators have been checking for him at area hospitals.
The suspect is described as 5 feet 7 inches tall with a medium build and dark, curly hair. He was wearing a black T-shirt and tan vest. He may have fled in a purple Ford Ranger pickup truck with four-wheel drive.
The man faces a felony charge of taking indecent liberties with a minor. The case is being investigated by Detective Mark Vidrine of the police department's Special Victims Unit.
Police said the girl was unharmed.
Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Solvers at 1-888-LOCK-U-UP.
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DWI on lawn mower a felony
March 29, 2002
By Jon Hand
Staff writer
Michael P. Kocur has likely learned an important lesson from his most recent criminal conviction: Friends don't let friends drink and "mow."
The Port Byron man pleaded guilty Thursday in Cayuga County Court to felony driving while intoxicated and aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle.
The motor vehicle was Kocur's red riding lawn mower and attached wagon, which he was driving July 1 on Centerport Road in Mentz.
Kocur, 39, told Judge Peter E. Corning that he was driving the mower, a friend was riding in the wagon, and the pair was picking up trash along the side of the road.
"Which goes to prove ...," the judge told Kocur, "... that no good deed goes unpunished."
Cayuga County Sheriff's Deputy Michael Lupo ordered the mower to the side of the road and eventually arrested Kocur for what would become his fifth driving-while-intoxicated conviction.
When Corning asked Kocur if he had a drivers license when he was arrested, Kocur said: "I didn't think I needed one to ride a riding lawn mower."
He is scheduled to be sentenced May 9.
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High-profile anti-Unix site runs Unix
By Mike Ricciuti
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
April 1, 2002, 6:10 AM PT
A Web site sponsored by Microsoft and Unisys as a way to steer big companies away from the Unix operating system is itself powered by Unix software.
The site, dubbed "We have the way out," runs on Web servers powered by FreeBSD, an open-source version of Unix, along with the Unix-based Web server Apache, according to Netcraft, which tracks Web site information. Both pieces of software compete with Microsoft's Windows operating system. The Microsoft/Unisys site solicits names and contact information in exchange for research reports on data center trends.
Representatives at Unisys and Microsoft weren't immediately available for comment.
The marketing site's use of Unix comes as Microsoft works to get a greater foothold for its Windows operating system in the enterprise computing market, where Unix is well entrenched. Unisys partnered with Microsoft to co-market its large server hardware running Windows as a Unix alternative.
The Web site is just part of Microsoft's renewed marketing and advertising campaign to undermine Unix, the operating system at the heart of powerful server lines from rivals Sun Microsystems, IBM and Hewlett-Packard.
Unisys is spending $25 million on the campaign. Microsoft is adding funding of its own but has declined to say how much.
The "We have the way out" campaign describes Unix as an expensive trap. One ad reads: "No wonder Unix makes you feel boxed in. It ties you to an inflexible system. It requires you to pay for expensive experts. It makes you struggle daily with a server environment that's more complex than ever."
The same ad depicts a scene in which a computer user has painted himself into a corner with purple paint. Sun's servers are manufactured in a shade of purple similar to that in the ad.
The 18-month project will include advertisements, technical sales efforts and other marketing work plugging Unisys' high-end server and Microsoft's top-end version of Windows--two products that so far have made only their first steps into the data centers where high-end servers often reside.
The Unisys ES7000 server can accommodate as many as 32 Intel processors and can be divided into independent "partitions," each with its own operating system. The Datacenter version of Windows 2000 can run on machines with as many as 32 processors. These top-end configurations are rare, Unisys has said, with eight-, 12- or 16-processor partitions more common.
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The following ad appeared in a newspaper.
SBF Seeks Male companionship, ethnicity unimportant. I'm a svelte good looking girl who LOVES to play. I love long walks in the woods. Riding in your pickup truck. Hunting Camping Fishing trips. Cozy winter nights spent lying by the fire. Candlelight dinners will have me eating out of your hand. Rub me the right way and watch me respond. I'll be at the front door when you get home from work, wearing only what nature gave me. Kiss me and I'm yours. Call 555-XXXX and ask for Daisy.
(The phone number was the Humane Society and Daisy was an eight week old black Labrador Retriever.)
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DDL
There once was a disc jockey named Louise
Who's box had a sucking disease
One night it got wet;
I lost a cassette
An eight-track and twenty CD's
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"Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves."
- Albert Einstein
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"A Canadian psychologist is selling a video that teaches you how to test your dog's IQ. Here's how it works: if you spend $12.99 for the video, your dog is smarter than you."
-Jay Leno
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Im Outta Here
Mexican Prisoner Juan Lopez escaped from jail January 1996 after using acidic salsa sauce from six years of jailhouse dinners to dissolve the bars on his cell window.
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Hey Martha (true)
Wednesday March 20, 2002
Musk ox flavoured condoms hit of Arctic Games
Also flavoured with char and caribou
IQALUIT, Nunavut (CP) -- Free condoms supposedly flavoured with traditional foods such as caribou, musk ox and arctic char have become the favourite collectible from this year's Arctic Winter Games in Iqaluit.
"It really started pretty much as a joke," said Todd Armstrong, HIV adviser for Pauktuutit, an Inuit women's organization.
"Often when I'm giving talks up North kids are fascinated by the fact there are cherry- or root-beer-flavoured condoms. We started saying we could have traditional-flavoured condoms."
Although the packages claim the contents are flavoured, the condoms don't really taste like muktuk, or whale skin. It's just a way to draw attention, said Armstrong.
It worked.
The first 2,500 condoms, given away at five locations in Iqaluit along with an information package, disappeared almost immediately after the Games opened last weekend.
By Wednesday, officials had given away more than 15,000 of the condoms, which are brightly packaged with pictures of five different northern animals.
Iqaluit is a city of 6,200 with 900 visiting athletes.
"It's proven to be a remarkable success, not only at providing information to people, but getting really talking about the issues," said Armstrong.
Sexually transmitted diseases are a problem in Nunavut. The territory's rate of chlamydia is about 15 times higher than that in the rest of Canada.
As well, Nunavut's high teen pregnancy rate is an indication that unprotected sex is relatively common.
The condoms aren't being distributed at official venues for the Games, which bring together athletes from throughout the circumpolar world for traditional arctic sports. Games officials were nervous about how they would be received, said Armstrong.
Kids under 11 years of age don't get the condoms, just the wrappers.
But support from businesses and politicians has been strong.
Nunavut Health Minister Ed Picco even dressed up in a big pink condom suit and distributed the condoms on Iqaluit's streets and at a hockey game, Armstrong said.
The reference to tradititional foods also makes sense when you think about it, he added.
"The animals that we highlighted were keys to survival in the past. Condoms are survival tools in our present life.
"By combining the past and the present, we were in fact protecting the future."