Here’s a cause that’s near and dear to my heart: editorial cartooning. Chris Lamb writes in the Editor and Publisher magazine about how editorial cartoonists are being killed by meek newspaper editors.

Editorial cartooning is an art form. I have long admired how a stroke of a pen can cut through columns of newsprint to the essense of an issue. That little box can pack quite a wallop. Its strength comes from expressing an opinion: something that is verboten in the rest of journalism.

My high school heroes were Jeff MacNelly, Bill Watterson, Gary Larson, and Mike Peters. Once I stalked MacNelly around the store where I worked until I got the nerve to get his autograph (he graciously complied). In an alternate universe, I still draw cartoons. So it makes me mad to read how cartoonists are left with no choice but to quit over the silly concessions they are asked to make.

Maybe I will dust off my drawing skills, before the great drawings that made people care about the news are only a distant memory.

We’ve got a few mice who’ve decided to move in with us. Over the past few months, we’ve heard them scratching around in the attic. One woke us up this morning, having parked himself on the ceiling right above our bedroom.

I was poking around the garage the other night when I saw a mouse-sized hole chewed in a bag of sunflower seeds. Apparently, I found their pantry. I think they got in the garage and found a hole from there into the crawlspace.

The same night I discovered the sunflower seed thief, I discovered an even larger varmit. A fat opossum got startled when I walked from the garage to the shed. It may have been hanging around our garbage can, since our motion light was on, though the lid was still firmly attached. I thought for a moment of chasing it but then figured there were a million other things I’d rather do than get rabies shots. Fortunately, he made an escape some time afterward and hasn’t been seen since.

Some of my day off today will be spent plugging those gaps in the house and setting varmit traps in the crawlspace. If that doesn’t work, we’ll have to start charging rent.

I detected a hint of summer during this morning’s walk to get the paper. Don’t know where that came from, since my feet were cold when I got back inside. Must be all the moisture in the air today. And my wanting to get out of these winter blahs.

The forecast calls for snow tonight, with possibly 4 to 6 inches accumulation. I’ve got the day off Monday, but Tuesday is going to be my busiest yet of the quarter: three demos.

We’re heading out for a walk to the park while we still can. Why are you still reading this? You should be out, too!

Helen Thomas is up to her old tricks again: keeping the heat on politicians. Check out the the grilling she gave White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan this morning.

I wish we had more journalists like Helen. She doesn’t let anyone off the hook!

Great article about Burt Rutan, the aviation (and soon to be space) pioneer. Man, I’d love to be doing what he’s doing.

A new test can tell when you’ve been drinking by the chemicals in your hair:

Scientists have developed a range of hair, blood and urine tests which can show how much someone has drunk over the past days, weeks or even months.

Alcohol disappears from the body within hours, but drinking produces chemicals which stay in the body much longer.

…used together, researchers say the new tests could give a complete picture of a person’s drinking habits, showing when someone had last been drinking and whether they are heavy or light drinkers.

This is another solution looking for a problem. Do we really need twelve different ways to tell if someone’s drunk?

And what about personal benefits? Will I grow more hair if I drink more?

I’ve got lots of friends on my blogroll, but no dogs. Thus, I’ve added a link to my favorite Bloggie Doggie, Brooke! Stop and visit Bea. And bring cookies!

Well, I’ve now got my DTA310 answering calls from Asterisk! Sounds works well, too, once the firewall rules were adjusted on the client. 🙂 The volume controls on the client also need to be tweaked a bit.

The only hurdle remaining is to get the DTA310 to properly authenticate to Asterisk for INVITE requests. If I can do that, I can dial out from the DTA310, meaning I can make all calls to and from the Internet using SIP. Way cool.
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I read from Jeff Pulver‘s blog that the FCC granted his petition to declare FWD an information service. This is great news for the budding VoIP industry, though it still leaves questions unanswered.
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