I’m headed north tomorrow courtesy of Amtrak, to rejoin my family at Kelly’s parents’ house. The last time I rode the train was December 2001, if I recall correctly. The ride should make for good blogging material.
Y’all have a happy Fourth of July!
Pew!
Who would’ve guessed it? Those mice under the house are still dead.
China Suppressed Smog Report Findings
The Beeb is reporting that the Chinese government suppressed a World Bank report’s findings that smog causes hundreds of thousands of premature deaths:
The move followed pressure from Beijing, which believes the material is too sensitive and could lead to social unrest, said the UK’s Financial Times.
The Financial Times said the Bank report, entitled ‘Cost of Pollution in China’, found up to 760,000 people die prematurely each year in China because of air and water pollution.
High levels of air pollution in China’s cities leads to 350,000-400,000 premature deaths, it said. Another 300,000 die because of poor-quality air indoors
Chinese officials feared this news would cause social unrest, and rightly so. Why, the Chinese people would take to the streets if it wasn’t so dangerous to breathe outside.
Kicking Things
Kicking Things
Baby Chaos
Head bangs the walls until it’s bleeding or you don’t recall the reason
When the season gets me down I feel like kicking things around
Tear out your hair until you have no feeling where it hurt you
When there’s no reason to be found I feel like kicking things around
I’m not going to cry ‘cause that’s for girls
I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore than you should take this
Use frustration scream the words at this sick nation
When the season gets me down I feel like kicking things around
I’m not going to cry save that for films
The Pool Is Open
I’ve been enjoying the constant stream of birds who’ve visited the makeshift birdbath on our back porch. Usually squirrels are its main visitors. I suppose the drought conditions have made the birds a little thirstier than usual.
My favorite guests have been the Carolina Wrens. These birds are so frenetic! Watching one take a bath was like watching a blender! I was cracking up.
On a related note, why is the state bird of North Carolina the Northern Cardinal? Why not the Carolina Wren? Cardinals are fine birds and all, but they’re found all over, while Carolina Wrens stay close to NC. They’re also more fun to watch.
Zzzz
Note to self: now that I’m working again, maybe it isn’t such a good idea to stay up until 1 AM the night before a workday.
Water Restrictions
Raleigh’s water restrictions go into effect today. If you’ve got an odd-numbered address you can water Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. If you’re even, you water Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. Monday is the day of waterly rest.
Seeing how these restrictions apply to all the other municipalities that are on Raleigh’s water system, I’ve often wondered how enforcement works. Continue reading
The Revenge Of The Dead Mice
No, I’m not talking about the bizarre “martyred” Palestinian TV show mouse, but the mice in my garage. You see, for a long while now we’ve had mice living in our garage. I think it corresponds to the time I first put up a bird feeder in the backyard.
Continue reading
bplog to WordPress SQL Script
Okay, calling it a script is a bit of a stretch. Just one SQL statement, really. 🙂
Bplog is a bare-bones blog app. There are only three tables in its database, so migrating it was relatively simple.
I used the following INSERT statement to move values from one to the other. The nested REPLACE statements are ugly, yes. If I was more enterprising, I’d trade them for multiple UPDATE … REPLACE statements at the bottom of a SQL script. I just went with what I could get working the quickest.
Continue reading
Complete MT.Net Posts
Through the magic of SQL and lot of “bachelor time” this weekend, I managed to import all my ancient posts from their bplog database into WordPress. That means that every post I’ve ever written is now in one place, for the first time ever. I also fixed a lot of broken permalinks which didn’t transfer cleanly from Drupal. Now the “404” errors should be largely gone.
I’ve paused at times tonight to wade through a few of my early posts. There are some real gems here (and also some turkeys). I chuckled at this apt description of contracting I wrote when I was a contractor at Glaxo. I also looked back in fondness at my post about Hallie’s first ultrasound, back when Hallie was just an ‘it.’
Being able to relive events like these is one of the main reasons why I blog. Its nice to share it with y’all, too. Thanks for five years of being my audience.