Medary.com

Is this for real? From USA Today:

Qatar to use robots as camel riders.

Stumbled across this via Free Republic:
Wall Street speculates on General Motors bankruptcy .

The adjustments that the company has made to its production schedule in the first two quarters of 2005, and the warnings from credit rating agencies that the company’s huge debt faces downgrading to junk bond status has focused America's financial markets on the problems of the world's largest carmaker.

Pope Benedict XVI.

Cell transplant from mother to daughter cures Type 1 diabetes in daughter.

Hope for rural Internet users (Hi, Betty! Hi, Brenda!) Wi-Max is coming. Long-range (up to 30 miles), wireless networking. As mentioned in a previous Whip, Intel is moving forward with a chip implementation of Wi-Max.

"One Size Doesn't Fit All." With those profound words, the Government tries again with their Food Pyramid. Is the USDA still pushing carbs? You betcha!

Division I athletics finally come to South Dakota, as the U. of Minnesota visits South Dakota State in Sioux Falls. To understand what a big deal this is, realize that South Dakota was the very last of all the states to field a "big-time" college athletic program.

Tech question of the day: How do you syslog?

Your tax dollars at work. The Feds are trying again with a new, improved, we really mean it this time, this will work fer shur Food Pyramid.
People have steadily grown fatter since the food pyramid debuted in 1992. A report last month in The New England Journal of Medicine contended that obesity, particularly in children, was fueling a reversal in life expectancy, shaving four to nine months off the average life span.
Keep up the good work, USDA.

Fox News Channel: Now available on your Sprint PCS Phone. Now, the Fox News Alert "BONG" can follow you wherever you go!

Monday Night Football is moving to ESPN. NBC picks up Sunday Night Football.

Lance Armstrong to retire after this year's Tour de France.

The Papal Conclave starts today. German Cardinal Ratzinger is the front-runner.

India and Pakistan are making nice.

Bad week for cruise ships. First bedbugs, now a giant wave damages a ship.

South Dakota is giving away an official Governor's Mansion. Get yours today!

Is too much Vitamin E bad for you?

Wi-Max gets closer. Intel announces a chipset.

Firefox releases an update.

I haven't posted any stories in the Technology section yet (until this one). While this might be due to my slow recovery from a career as a network engineer and network security guy, it's probably due more to the fact that it's been a whirlwind of activity since I left corporate America at the end of March.

There are a couple of new computers (one desktop, one notebook) sitting in their boxes at the top of the stairs, waiting for me to do some pre-configuring before taking them over to my in-law's to 1) replace the father-in-law's sluggish, elderly Gateway, and 2) get my mother-in-law into the wireless/laptop generation. That should be entertaining, and I'll be posting that saga here.

Also on the Ideas list for articles is a review of my 2005 Acura RL. In short, a very nice car.

Elsewhere, I got my own notebook back from the fine folks at LinuxCertified. My motherboard fried itself earlier this year. I took it to the local MicroCenter, who tried their best, identified the motherboard itself as the toasted component, but couldn't locate a replacement. Fortunately, LinuxCertified (who I originally bought the laptop from) came through. Happy customer here.

Other topics which may find their way here may include:
Network management,
Network security,
Satellite TV,
Mobile computing,
Home automation,
and anything else which catches my fancy.

We picked up a 12-pack of the new Pepsi One last week in South Dakota, and as much as I'm a Coke guy, I have to say the Splenda and acesulfame-potassium-sweetened Pepsi product is pretty good. It had the usual yucky Pepsi Cola aftertaste, with very little artificial sweetener taste. Overall, it was very much like "real" Pepsi, in fact.

Now, I can't wait for Coca-Cola Zero to come out in June. It's supposed to taste a lot like Coke Classic. They're also planning to roll out a Splenda-sweetened Diet Coke, but retaining DC's unique taste which has legions of fans (including my very own Snookums).

It looks like it will be a tasty summer 2005 for cola lovers.

Snookums and I took a day off yesterday, going to a baseball game and fininshing off with our 6 month anniversary dinner at The Melting Pot.

Playing SimCity for real: Fire department response in most of metro Kansas City is longer than the national target of six minute response 90% of the time.

The Chinese really don't like the Japanese very much.

Biosafe cat litter? Isn't that a contradiction?

Drunk Monkeys Brawl with Humans.
BHUBANESWAR: A group of monkeys descended on an Orissa village, quaffed down pots of an intoxicating brew lying in the open and then set upon the villagers, injuring three of them.

Couple gets cruise line apology for bed bug infestation.

RV Capital of the U.S.?
Yesterday's Whip stated that two of the top five fastest growing counties in the US were in suburban Sioux Falls, SD. Not quite true. Hanson County is one county over from the Sioux Falls MSA which now includes Minnehaha, Lincoln, Turner, and McCook counties. The reason for the big percentage growth in Hanson County's population is that nomadic RV owners have to list somewhere as their residence, and use a Hanson County company to do that.

Tech News: IBM revenue and profits rise, but the company misses its targets.

Cisco buys Topspin, a "grid computing" company which makes products to cluster servers.

Is it possible to drink too much water? Well, yeah. Keep those electrolytes up, y'all.

"You're not going to file this, are you?" Listed under Things you don't want to hear from an accountant. Snookums and I got our draft tax return back from a Major Tax Return Preparation Service, and shipped it over to Snookums' sister, who works in the tax division of a Major Accounting Firm. Snookums' sister, um, recommended we file an extension. Enough said.

Hyping the number of people with diseases. Objective scientists would never do this. Would they?

UN Oil-For-Food scandal indictments. A Texas oilman, David Chalmers, a British citizen, John Irving, and a Bulgarian associate Ludmil Dionissiev are named in the just-opened indictment in New York. The first of many, we hope.

Florida is still growin' like a weed with 14 of the fastest-growing 100 counties in the U.S. Suburban Sioux Falls, S.D. has two counties in the top five - - but when one of them only has 3,700 residents, one big Catholic family moving in will skew the stats a bit.

The RIAA is going after the research/academic Internet 2 network users.