Got cold enough overnight that the frost might have finally killed the plants still growing outside. But today’s supposed to be warmer, and the big wind that started Tuesday night has blown itself out. Seems like a perfect couple days to wrap up the last of the outside work around the house.
Yesterday, in a prep-run for National Ammo Day, I made a run up to Cabela’s in Rogers. Man. That’s a huge store. No, really. Huge! Their prices were pretty good, too. I got about half of my needs for my winter target-shooting out of the way, and I’ll probably find a friend who wants to head up there on the 19th (mark your calendar, Bill). Last year, National Ammo Day meant about ten million rounds of ammuntion bought around the country.
On the way home, I drove back on the “old highway” which took me through Brooklyn Center, where I went to elementary school. The old school is still there, but the playground that had the spaceship/slide that I dug as a kid is gone. Bummage. Both of the apartments my mom & I lived in during those years are still there, but the shopping center across the street from the first one (where I bought my first model planes and cars and the glue that would get you high if you forgot to open the window and they made you bring a parent the first time you bought it) has been levelled recently. The construction equipment was out pushing around dirt. The doctor’s office (where I got my allergy shots every two weeks) just up the block from that first apartment is now a Baptist Church. And there’s a “new” Korean church right next to the elementary school. I was surprised when I saw the Hangul lettering, since I didn’t know that there were that many Koreans here in the Twin Cities.
- Kelly’s posted about E-Blitz for Bravo Company (Bravo Company, 2-136 Combined Arms Battalion (CAB) of the 1 BCT, 34th ID (Minnesota National Guard)). The deal is, the soldiers will get leave to come home from Mississippi (where they’re currently training before deployment to Iraq) for a few days in late December if they arrange their own transportation. Since many are financially strapped while they’re deployed, a group of families is asking for donations for bus tickets. They’d like to get donations by tomorrow so they can buy tickets for the guys soon. Donate at the Bravo Company Family Readiness page.
- Apparently there’s a Huge House Vote Today on the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. This is stuff our elected representatives should have settled months ago, but they’ve been too busy spending more money to deal with cutting spending. [instapundit]
- This infoworld article says we’re in a constant state of insecurity. And yeah, there are a lot of passwords flying around
out there
in the clear. But as it pointed out in the comments on Schneier’s post about it, the guy writing the article is a journalist, not a security professional (anymore), who weakens his own case by saying things likeThe vast majority, 41 percent … followed by … 40 percent
. 41 percent is no majority at all, and it’s hardly vast if second place is a statistically insignificant amount behind it. Yeah, it’s nitpicking, but InfoWorld is supposed to be professional, and if their editors can’t catch a simple mistake like that, what else has slipped past them? [schneier] - Simson Garfinkel rounds up History’s Worst Software Bugs, with fatalities counting in a fair number of them. [boing boing]
- Warren takes a look at Airlines and Credit Cards and notices that many airlines make more off credit cards than they do moving people around the country. Hey, cheap travel is cool, but I’m not so sure that “business model” is sustainable. [coyote blog]