Kay -N- Kay

In the middle of an IM conversation we were having about my efforts to finalize the purchase of a new house…

Molly: ick!
Molly: OMG!! I totally just ripped one!
Molly: hahaha
Molly: good thing it waited until Scott was out of my cube!
Molly:
Kyle: I hope your co-workers heard you
Molly: um…yeah, I meant to type that in another window and tell someone other than you…nice…

US low score on world motherhood rankings

To be more specific, USA ranked #28 on the Save the Children Organization 2010 annual report on the best and worst places in which to be a new mother.

Countries are ranked on mother related data:  such as the risk of maternal death (1 in 4,800 for the USA, compared to 1 in 47,600 in Ireland); Female life expectancy (A pretty good 82 for the USA); female schooling; and maternity leave benefits (USA ranks dead last out of 43 developed countries).

And countries are also ranked on children related data:  such as under 5 mortality rate (8 in 1,000 kids die before their 5th birthday in the USA, compared to 3 in 1,000 for several nations such as Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Luxemborg, and even Macendonia); and schooling for children (only 61% on kids in the USA get enrolled in pre-school, compared to 100% in many places)

If only we could figure out just what those other countries are doing so well…

Other countries where fewer kids die before age 5 compared to the USA:

Developed Countries:  Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estoria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Luxemborg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom.

Less Developed Countries:  Brunei Darussalam, Cuba, Cyprus, Israel, Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore

At work, we use intra-office IM a lot.  It’s available both in the office and over the Internet and has it’s own dedicated server running the program.  You see, communication is important in any corporate setting.  Without the proper and immediate exchange of key points, your business is dead in the water.

Like a well oiled machine.

I’ve been an avid computer user for pretty much my entire life.  I mean, when I was around 12, along with playing “Adventure” on my Atari 2600, I was writing BASIC code to make funny little graphics of an airplane dropping a parachutist who would inexplicably splatter into a red mist when he reached the ground.  Yeah… I know.  I’m not proud of it… well, actually I was, heh.  But the point is, in all this time, from early in the 1980’s until today, I’ve only really gotten a single computer virus.

Back around when Al Gore invented the Internet, I got my first taste where so many others started, from America Online. (AOL)  Back then, it was all the rage.  Key words, chat rooms, all at a blazing 9600 baud speed!!!!  Being new and completely naive, when a stranger offered to give me a totally rad new program to haxor the bajesus out of AOL, I jumped on that opportunity of a lifetime!  I was going to be 1337!  I was going to be a terror of the chat rooms!  I was going to be a virtual babe magnet!

After installing The Program of Awesome and dutifully rebooting, I was staring at a black screen proclaiming “Operating System Not Found” and wondering what happened.

Since that valuable lesson, I have been virus free.  Well… I mean as much so as anyone can truly be.  I pick up tracking cookies every 5 minutes, Adware may creep in here in there, and I’ve caught viruses trying to install themselves, but nothing truly destructive.  No key stroke hacks, robot spammers, redirectors, or backdoor trojans. (Yeah, I giggle too every time I here that, too, hee hee)  It’s not that I have security ratcheted up to Fort Knox levels, I just… I don’t know… I’m observant.  When Facebook emails me about an update, my spidey sense tingles and you know… I just don’t click.  When Bill Gates emailed me Windows patches back in ’95, I kind of wondered how he got my address.  As a result, my computers have been blissfully virus free.

And then my wife discovered teh intrawebs.

Kristin picks up viruses like kids eats candy.

Each week, she’s cussing at her computer until I drop everything (read: stop playing WoW) to come over to see what is vexing her.  To my horror she’s got her home page redirected to www.mega-virus-download.com, the computer is streaming our passwords to China, her email is cranking out spam to our friends and family, I mean the PC is completely hi-jacked.

Ok, I may be exaggerating for effect, but the point is that her computer gets viruses and mine doesn’t.

Last night, Bran comes in while I’m playing WoW to tell me that Mommy wants me.  I’m only half listening, because there’s a raid boss I’ve only killed 80 times before and I don’t want to get caught standing in the fire.  Then I hear him saying something about a virus.

/sigh

I walk in to discover she has managed to download the grand daddy of all viruses.  Shit is popping up everywhere, pretending to be Windows Security alerts.  It’s saying I have a virus and just need to activate this, download “Anti-Virus Pro”, click on yes to proceed, scan my hard drive, continue on by clicking yes, all all manner of tempting boxes, buttons, and links promising salvation.  Meanwhile, it’s merrily downloading the entire seedy back alleys of the Internet, changing my icons into pretty little pictures of genitalia and redirecting them to such innocuous sites as www.porn-queen.com.  It was searching out other computers on the network, finding cable modems and routers, leaching memory and sealing itself into BIOS chips.  Email addresses were devoured, spam was spurting forth like the the pictures of my new icons, friends lists broadcast, IM programs sprang up and web pages were duped.  The TV was reprogrammed, all the digital clocks reset, the dog was impregnated, IT WAS PANDELERIUM!!!!

I spent a while trying to rescue the poor soul, but in the end it was a total wash.  Everything had to be wiped clean and just reinstalled.  Unfortunately, such is the way with viruses.  Anti-virus software does a good job of keeping you protected, but once you actually HAVE a virus, all to often it just can’t effectively remove the infection.

So let this be a lesson to all of you… www.porn-queen.com looks pretty damn cool!

The 2009 Legatum Prosperity Index was released today.

Yeah, I never heard of it either, but evidently it’s a fairly legit operation.  And by legit, I mean neither the Democrats nor the Republicans hired them to prove how evil the other party is.

The index is based on a definition of prosperity that combines economic growth with the level of personal freedoms and democracy in a country as well as measures of happiness and quality of life.

The 2009 Legatum Prosperity Index, published on Tuesday and compiled by the Legatum Institute, an independent policy, advocacy and advisory organization, ranked 104 countries which are home to 90 percent of the world’s population.

So, obviously USA is #1, right?

No… that’d be Finland.

O.o

Finland?  You mean… the people of Finland are more prosperous than Americans?  Come on.  Really?

Well, maybe Finland is really cool and all.  So cool that they and USA were close enough that some rounding errors pushed them over the USA in a fluke runoff tie breaker or something?  Probably something like that.

Except that #2 is Switzerland, not the USA.  Friends and countrymen, we are not even in the top 5!  I’m afraid, when the next Olympics roll around, we’re all going to have to chant, “We’re number 9!  We’re number 9!”  I don’t even want to think what the giant foam hand things will look like that we’ll need to raise up in the air from the stands.  By the way, if you’ve been disconcerted lately with thoughts that perhaps Canada isn’t such a bad place after all, well chances are that you aren’t alone… they came in ranked #7 overall.

Here are the categories of the index, ordered by where the USA was ranked in each:

#1 – Entrepreneurship and Innovation
#2 – Democratic Institutions
#7 – Education
#7 – Social Capital
#8 – Personal Freedom
#14 – Economic Fundamentals
#16 – Governance
#19 – Safety and Security
#27 – Health

So um… health care.  Yeah… that old thorn in our side.  You suppose we should do something about it?

Let’s take a look at some of the countries that have better health care than the USA.  #1 is Austria.  The rest of the top 5 are Ireland, Switzerland, Singapore, and Belgium.  Hmm… what do all of these places have in common?  If you guessed “public health care”, you win the Kewpie doll!!  It’s not just the top 5, either.  The list is long and rather unvaried in terms of countries ranked higher than the USA and whether or not they provide government run health care as an option to all of their citizens.

Smarten up people.  If you want your country to one day over take such health care juggernauts as Hong Kong (#18), New Zealand (#19), Slovenia (#24), and Taiwan (#26)… maybe even one day measure up to our wacky Canadian (#22) neighbors, eh?  Then call your congressmen and let them know that you support government run, public health care options.

Or else next year, we may slip further down, past Uruguay (#28), United Arab Emirates (#29), and Hungary. (#30)

Oh wow, this is a whole heck of a lot of Michigan-Go-Blue FAIL.

See?!?!?!  OSU was just trying to do Michigan a favor when they tore down that banner back in ’73.

Towards the end of a fairly busy day at work, I got this voicemail from my 7 year old son:

Bran – Pixie Sticks

The best part of it is the very end when he drops the “I’m-leaving-a-very-official-message” voice and transitions into something more natural.  Clearly he hasn’t quite perfected that concept that even though you are done with what you WANT the other person to hear, they aren’t done hearing it until you actually hang up the phone.  😀

Today is 09/09/09 which is really something.  Or so we’re told.  I mean, yeah… you have to ignore the fact that it’s not really the year 09, but that’s normal.  It’s not like it’s really 09/09/2009, or 9/9/09, or something else less special.  This is really and actually a significant moment in history, folks!

I guess this isn’t going to happen again for over 100 years or maybe even a thousand!

Next year, when 10/10/10 rolls around, it’s totally not going to be nearly as meaningful.  Not as much so as 9/9/2009… er, I mean 09/09/09.  And what about 11/11/11?  Forget about it, THIS… THIS moment in history, this 09/09/09 isn’t coming around again EVER IN OUR LIFETIMES FOLKS!!!!

It’s the last time in the next 100 years that we’ll have the a set of repeating, single-digit dates.  And since single-digit dates are clearly more special that double-digit dates… or at least single digits where we arbitrarily tack on leading zeros for days and months, but lop off those annoying preceding millennium and century numbers from the year.

It’s special, damnit… no really, it is.  :-/

Other things that are as special and unique as 09/09/09:

• Snow Flakes – Yeah, there may be a bazillion of them on your driveway, but under a microscope each and every one is unique.
• Your Kids – Afterall, everyone knows you sired the next Joe Namath, Michael Jordan, Albert Einstein, Mozart, and Picasso all in one.  No really, we all believe it just as much as you do.
• Eclipses – Because there’ll never be another 57%, lower quadrant, 100 lumines, lunar, not solar, in the Northern hemisphere bordering Indiana AND Ohio during the evening hours of 11:30 to 11:35 pm not obscured by the clouds ever again in our lifetimes.

Some of you may know that I play World of Warcraft occasionally.  (Those of you who know me well can stop laughing)

Blizzard announced their next expansion today with all of the major features that will be included.

• Two new races to play!
  • Same old classes for players to level up through the same content they’ve had for years now.

• Level cap raised to 85!
  • Half the increase of any other expansion.

• New race and class combinations!
  
  • For everyone just itching to level up their 4th Warrior, this time as a Blood Elf!

• More raid content than ever before!
  
  • Because having Normal and Hard modes of both 10 and 25 man instances count as 4 new raids, amiright?

• Classic zones remade!
  
  • Everyone’s just DYING to replay the Barrens, this time divided in two.  Let me guess… for twice the content?

The Smoking Gun reported a story about a bad decision by some Texas cops.  Evidently, they couldn’t resist getting some pictures of a local waitress with big guns.  Meaning, they gave her a big gun… not like her OWN guns were all that big.  They may have been… not that she even owns any guns.

Whatever.

Judging from the picture, I can’t really fault their judgment:

Look closely at the name tag