Our political leaders like to brag about protecting us from terrorists, yet yesterday an actual terrorist walked away a free man yet again. Luis Posada Carriles, who carried out multiple bombings through his past work as a CIA agent, was acquitted of immigration fraud in court yesterday.
The feds have no trouble locking up people who pose no threat to anyone, like Bradley Manning, but can’t seem to keep the cuffs on actual terrorists like Carriles, a man who boasts about the blood on his hands.
Like many folks, I’ve gotten emails from many companies I do business with online letting me know that their email databases have been compromised by hackers. The breach took place at an email marketing company called Epsilon. Here’s one notification I received from Marriott:
April 4, 2011
Dear Marriott Customer,
We were recently notified by Epsilon, a marketing vendor used by Marriott International, Inc. to manage customer emails, that an unauthorized third party gained access to a number of Epsilon’s accounts including Marriott’s email list.
In all likelihood, this will not impact you. However, we recommend that you continue to be on the alert for spam emails requesting personal or sensitive information. Please understand and be assured that Marriott does not send emails requesting customers to verify personal information.
We take your privacy very seriously. Marriott has a long-standing commitment to protecting the privacy of the personal information that our guests entrust to us. We regret this has taken place and apologize for any inconvenience.
Please visit our FAQ to learn more.
Sincerely,
Marriott International, Inc.
I also received one from Hilton and saw an online notice on the Chase website. Most of these notices state that there has been no direct leak of account information, only email addresses. That may be true, but early this morning someone tried to close a Paypal account linked with my email address and then open a new one ten minutes later:
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The Republican party motto: We want government out
of our lives … and into everyone else’s!
A bill being discussed in the House could require applicants for unemployment benefits to submit to periodic drug testing.
HB 735 requires “periodic drug testing” for unemployment benefit applicants “to ensure that recipients are able and available to work.”
If the applicant’s former employer agrees to pay for the drug testing, the bill says, “Upon the initial filing of a claim for unemployment benefits, the individual must submit to and pass a drug test to establish that the individual is able and available for work.”
via Bill would require unemployment benefit applicants to submit to drug testing | NBC17.com.
I was not a fan of the City of Raleigh’s move to remove free on-street parking from downtown streets. The move was designed to boost revenue for the parking decks downtown, but now a city report says that parking revenue is down and officials are looking again for ways to boost revenue.
One way being considered is to make the parking decks into paid spaces 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This has drawn the ire of some downtown businesses which depend on convenient parking for their customers.
I’ve considered affordable parking to be a key to Raleigh’s downtown renaissance. Should the city press too hard in its money collection, it risks putting the brakes on downtown redevelopment. I hope officials will instead wait until the economic fortunes improve before making any move to squeeze our more parking revenue.
During my talk the other night to the kids in the Digital Connectors group, I was asked if any celebrities had interacted with my blog. Remembering the dust-up that took place on my blog from the ex-Squirrel Nut Zippers, I asked them if they’d ever heard of the influential Chapel Hill band.
Not one of them had. Boy, did I feel old!
Yesterday I passed through security at RDU Airport. There were two lines to screen passengers and I was in one with the metal detector. Though there was a crowd of people in the other line, waiting their “turn” to pass through the porno scanner, I was made to wait at the entrance of the metal detector though no one was in front of me. Only once another TSA agent saw that the porno scanner wouldn’t be empty any time soon did I get waved through the metal detector.
This is in contrast to my last visit to the airport, where the metal detector crowd was unimpeded. I don’t know if yesterday’s behavior is the norm now but it certainly seemed unusual.
God, I miss my civil liberties.
I’m finishing up my first 24 hours in St. Charles. Been a day of sales training, though this time around I haven’t been the one doing the training. That may change tomorrow, though.
Things are starting to get exciting with work. I may be busy very soon now with that, and that’s a good thing. I’m enjoying my job and chances are I will enjoy it even more in the near future.
I took the day off Friday thinking I would be going to the Rush concert with my brother. Once the date was moved, I opted to take the family to the North Carolina Zoo instead. Before I left, though, I welcomed two new neighbors to the neighborhood.
We made it to the zoo around lunchtime. After buying our season membership, the first thing we did was eat our lunch on the member deck. It was fun remembering the last time we had all eaten there: strollers were involved!
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After spending lots of time lately wiping our dog’s muddy paws, I discovered a good way to keep the dirt out. I had been thinking that some kind of socks or dog shoes would be a good way to keep mud out of the house but I found a way that’s even better.
It seems the mud tends to stick not on our dog’s pads but inside the claws themselves. I figure some kind of treatment (like glue, perhaps) that could fill in the gaps inside the claws would go a long way in keeping the hard-to-reach dirt out of our dog’s paws.
Now, do I feel brave enough to try it?
I have often taken issue with his political views, but I was sorry to hear Tom Fetzer is fighting cancer.
From an idiot blogger: get well soon, Tom.
Tom Fetzer, the well-known North Carolina Republican and former mayor of Raleigh, is fighting cancer.
Fetzer, who will turn 56 this month, said Friday that he began feeling sick and run down about six weeks ago. After a CT scan found a mass in his abdomen, he was diagnosed two weeks ago with a form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
He recently began chemotherapy treatments at Rex Cancer Center.
“Cancer is a random and unpredictable monster,” he said. “My doctors have given me great confidence I will be able to overcome this. They tell me this form of cancer responds well to chemotherapy.&”
via Former Raleigh mayor Fetzer is fighting cancer – State – NewsObserver.com.
