Jackpot on school reassignments

Kelly and I danced with glee when we discovered this morning that Wake County School System’s proposed reassignment will have the kids going to nearby Enloe High School rather than across town to Leesville High. Its nothing against Leesville itself, of course. Its just that the distance to travel to and from Leeesville would cut considerably into the kids’ free time.

Enloe is an award-winning high school roughly a mile away. It is ranked by Newsweek as one of the top 100 high schools in the country. And Ligon Middle School is a fantastic school as well. We’re all very excited about the proposed changes.

If all that wasn’t enough to cheer about, the reassignment webserver runs Linux! Too cool.

Aches and pains

I think an appropriate gift for my upcoming 40th birthday is a bulk supply of ibuprofen. Trying to leash-train a two-year-old Labrador is quite a workout.

Steven Sabock

I’ve watched the videos of Cherry Hospital staffers ignoring mental patient Steven Sabock for 22 hours and there’s one thing I want to know: who was this poor man? How did he wind up at the mental hospital? Did he have any family or friends? Its infuriating that the staff would treat Sabock like furniture for 22 hours, but its also sad that the only thing we know about him is that he’s the victim.

We all know how this poor man died. How did he live?
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Six days

I’m drooling at the idea that telemarketers will soon start paying me. That’s right, in six days our home numbers will be listed for the magical 31 days.

Says the N.C. Do Not Call page:

Q: Can I enforce my rights myself?

A: Yes. Individuals can also bring their own enforcement actions under either state law or the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act. If you have received more than one telephone call by or on behalf of the same entity that is in violation of the Do Not Call law, you may go to state court to stop the entity from continuing to call you and to recover up to $500 for the first violation, $1,000 for the second, and $5,000 for the third and subsequent violations.

Now the state Do Not Call list says the number has to be listed for 3 months, while the federal page says 31 days. And the federal page doesn’t say what can be collected from the jerks.

So I suppose in actuality I’ve got two more months to wait before I can sue them for violations. At any rate, it can’t come too soon! This is a case where my Asterisk server will start paying its way around here.

Mail

Wow. I just saw the mailman actually delivering mail to us at 1 PM. Something must be wrong: the mail has always come after 6 PM at this house. I mean always.

I wonder if we finally picked up a regular letter carrier, rather than being stuck with whomever was available that day.

Desktop space heater

Since my laptop went on the blink I’d been using the Mac Mini that was our MythTV frontend as my primary computer. Making out the text from the couch wasn’t all that easy (or convenient, as odd as it might sound). I decided to revive my old desktop PC so I could work from upstairs.

Problem was, the desktop PC had a bum power supply. I picked up another one yesterday from Intrex and popped it into the desktop. I was quite pleased to hear the fans start whirring and the hard drive spin up after almost a year of silence.Unfortunately, that was all I got from it. It never got to the POST stage.

I’ll clean it off and reseat all of the components as some may have jiggled loose during our March move. Its doubtful I’ll sink much work into it, though, with twice-as-fast barebones systems being sold by TigerDirect for $150 (yeah, I say that as if that’s a bargain for a PC – and it normally would be if one has a job!).

For now, the Mac Mini has become my primary computer, which is fine for now as MythTV isn’t quite healthy yet, either.