+ Something New Every Few Months is More Accurate Lately, But Doesn't Have the Same Ring to It + Something New Every Day Blog
 
Archive For The Month: January, 2011


A teacher who advises colleagues on how to avoid affairs with students was caught having sex with a teenager in the back of her car.

Courtney Bowles was found by a police officer naked lying on top of the boy, who was also completely naked, from her school in Colorado.

A partly consumed bottle of vodka was also found in the car with the couple.

Ed. Note: Sometimes, you just can’t improve on a story’s headline.



MOSCOW (Reuters) – A wounded fox shot its would be killer in Belarus by pulling the trigger on the hunter’s gun as the pair scuffled after the man tried to finish the animal off with the butt of the rifle, media said Thursday.

The unnamed hunter, who had approached the fox after wounding it from a distance, was in hospital with a leg wound, while the fox made its escape, media said, citing prosecutors from the Grodno region.

“The animal fiercely resisted and in the struggle accidentally pulled the trigger with its paw,” one prosecutor was quoted as saying.



Every modern typographer agrees on the one-space rule. It’s one of the canonical rules of the profession, in the same way that waiters know that the salad fork goes to the left of the dinner fork and fashion designers know to put men’s shirt buttons on the right and women’s on the left. Every major style guide—including the Modern Language Association Style Manual and the Chicago Manual of Style—prescribes a single space after a period. (The Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association, used widely in the social sciences, allows for two spaces in draft manuscripts but recommends one space in published work.) Most ordinary people would know the one-space rule, too, if it weren’t for a quirk of history. In the middle of the last century, a now-outmoded technology—the manual typewriter—invaded the American workplace. To accommodate that machine’s shortcomings, everyone began to type wrong. And even though we no longer use typewriters, we all still type like we do. (Also see the persistence of the dreaded Caps Lock key.)



The bullet went through the right side of his head, behind his eye socket and lodged in his nasal passage but miraculously did no serious damage.

Bleeding heavily, he was taken to hospital in an ambulance shortly after midnight, but while waiting to be seen by doctors he sneezed and the bullet shot out of his right nostril.



A “Black Widow” suicide bomber planned a terrorist attack in central Moscow on New Year’s Eve but was killed when an unexpected text message set off her bomb too early, according to Russian security sources.

The unnamed woman, who is thought to be part of the same group that struck Moscow’s Domodedovo airport on Monday, intended to detonate a suicide belt near Red Square on New Year’s Eve in an attack that could have killed hundreds.

Security sources believe a message from her mobile phone operator wishing her a happy new year received just hours before the planned attack triggered her suicide belt, killing her at a safe house.



Satellite Internet services are much more expensive than wired Internet access.

But fixed telephone lines, which reportedly remain largely operational, aren’t. With the help of an old 28K or 56K modem they can be used to communicate with a dial up Internet service provider outside of Egypt’s jurisdiction.

“It would cost them a long distance phone call,” Webber said.

Based on countless messages sent over Twitter it appears that’s exactly what’s happening.

“Egypt can use this number for dial up: +33172890150 (login ‘toto’ password ‘toto’) – thanks to a French ISP (FDN) #egypt #jan25,” one message read.



MANILA, Philippines — Philippine police investigating the New Year’s Eve shooting death of a local councilman did not have to look further than the last photograph the victim took. That photo led to the arrest of two suspects.

The picture, taken outside the councilman’s house in metropolitan Manila, clearly shows a man aiming his gun from behind the victim’s smiling three-member family, seconds before he was shot.



It’s been a whilessince I’ve had a good Comcast bashing post.  Here we go again.

Over the past few days my XFINITY(!!!!) digital voice service has been routinely dropping calls.  It starts with the person on the other end of the phone unable to hear me, then a few seconds later the call is dropped totally.  Eventually I was sitting next to the modem when this happened, and saw that it was rebooting after the calls were dropped.

Last night, after it happened several more times, I called Comcast’s customer support line.  The guy on the other end of the phone did some useless troubleshooting which was unrelated to my issue, then told (rudely, of course) me “there’s only so much he can do over the phone” and that he’d have to send a tech out.  He started the scheduling process.

(As a quick aside, I love instructing support techs on how to do their jobs.  He asks me “when was the last time this happened?”  I replied “doesn’t your system log that type of activity?”  “No. I can see your modem uptime though.”  “Why don’t you look at that then?” “Oh, it looks like the modem rebooted itself about 9 minutes ago.”  “That would be your answer.”)

Then, predictably, the phone went dead, and the modem rebooted itself.

After waiting about 20 minutes, thinking the tech would be smart enough to call me back since he had my info pulled up, I called back.  I explained what happened, and we got to go through a different set of phone troubleshooting that was unrelated to my issue.  To her credit, though, the second woman (at my prompting, naturally) did take herself out of the call queue so that she could call me back in the inevitable situation that the phone disconnected.  The phone held though, and she scheduled me an appointment for today (yesterday’s tomorrow) between 3 and 5 PM.

So of course today, I get an automated phone call reminding me of my appointment tomorrow between 3 and 5.  (I guess she got the time right, but not the date, so half credit, I suppose.)  That message said if there was any issue with my appointment time, I was to call back a different Comcast call center.  I did.

I told the guy who answered the phone my appointment was for today, not tomorrow.  He proceeded to ask me a bunch of questions, in yet another unsuccessful attempt to troubleshoot by phone.  Eventually he got around to telling me that he didn’t have access to change the appointment, so I needed to call 1-800-COMCAST again and ask to speak to the local dispatch office.

So I called 1-800-COMCAST again, and ended up in IVR hell, as I tried to explain to the automated voice lady that I needed to speak to the local dispatch office.  “I didn’t get that.  Please repeat your request again.”

Eventually I got to a live person, who confirmed my Friday appointment (grrrr…) and then told me that they didn’t have the authority to contact dispatch, so they’d have to call me back after speaking to their supervisor.

About 15 minutes another guy called me back and said the tech will be at my home between now and 5 PM today.  But give him until 5:15 before you call back to complain.

He has 3 hours and 7 minutes to show up.  We’ll see.



PITTSBURGH — Police have arrested a Pennsylvania man who they say stole two hand-held video game systems and three games from the casket of a teen who was killed in a Christmas Day SUV crash.

State police say they got an anonymous tip that enabled them to arrest 37-year-old Jody Lynn Bennett, of Mentcle, on Wednesday. He was unable to post $15,000 bond and was jailed after his arraignment on charges including theft, abuse of a corpse, and intentional desecration of a venerated object.

Police say Bennett grabbed a Game Boy, a Game Boy Light and three games from the casket of 17-year-old Bradley McCombs during a viewing Monday night at a funeral home in Montgomery Township, about 65 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.

Bennett’s mother, Sharon, says her son has a drug problem. She apologized for his actions.