Berger pleading guilty

Stealing classified documents is only a misdemeanor? Hell, no wonder Sandy Berger couldn't keep his hands out of his pants.

Ice Rocket

There is a new (at least new to me) search engine out there call Ice Rocket. I hadn't heard of it until Sandi from Vista on Current Events mentioned it in the comments section earlier this week. I meant to try it out right away, but work intervened. Well, this afternoon I received an email from Blake Rhodes at Ice Rocket, letting me know that this site is represented in Ice Rocket's blog search. It was a personal email, not a form email, so I made it a priority to check it. At first blush, I like it, particularly the blog search function. I haven't had time to dig real deep into it, so all I'm going to do right now is pass the word and let all of you come to your own conclusions.

As an aside, on Sunday I commented on the fact that Yahoo seemed to do a better job finding this site than Google. Then I received a small flurry of Google searches, and I joked that the Google servers must be self aware and out to prove me wrong. I'm not jocular about that statement anymore. I'm pretty much positive the Google machines have become self aware. This week has seen a healthy increase in the number of people coming here via Google.

Terri Schiavo, 1963-2005

Here, freed from pain, secure from misery, lies
A child, the darling of her parents' eyes:
A gentler Lamb ne'er sported on the plain,
A fairer flower will never bloom again:
Few were the days allotted to her breath;
Now let her sleep in peace her night of death.

by Thomas Gray (1716-1771) (with slight edit)

May God bring solace to the Schindler family, and also be with the Schiavos and the Greers.

A couple of tardy thank yous

I've been on the road for almost the entire day, so this will be a short post. I'll be back to posting tomorrow, though.

I have a couple of thank yous to give out. The first is to Owen at Boots & Sabers. I have a lot of respect for what you're doing over at Boots & Sabers, especially your tendency to break news. I'm rather honored that you make Jiblog a regular read, and thanks for the mention and the addition to the blogroll.

The second is to SI's Josh Elliott. A few weeks ago, I wrote this post in which I disagreed with Elliott's analysis of the Packers' near term future. Today he left a comment on the post which left me taken aback by his graciousness. Josh, thanks for stopping by and reading the post, and I think that your graciousness just made me a new fan of yours, even if I disagree with your Packer analysis. :-)

Terri Schiavo

She is still alive after 13 days without food or water. This is one strong and resilient woman. One might even say she has a pretty strong will to live.

Lovers leaving their initials

In his Tuesday Quick Hits, Kevin at Lakeshore Laments points out a story from the OpinionJournal Political Diary. It seems Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis left their initials in a slab of concrete at a home that they shared 50 years ago. The real estate consultant who found it donated it to the Reagan Presidential library.

That story brought back a memory for me. In my hometown there is a large park. Deep in that park is an old bridge that locals call the Rumbly Bidge. It has been closed to traffic for as long as I can remember, but for years young couples have been carving their initials into the paint on the railings. There are thousands of initials on this bridge. When I was in college, I had what I thought was a great idea: To photograph these initials, track down down the people who carved them, and convey their stories in a book. Alas, I never followed through (lack of time, funds, etc.), but my and Mrs. Jib's initials are on that bridge. I even proposed to her in front of them.

Now, if I can just defy the odds and became President...

There ain't no pleasin' me

Some of you will remember how much I whined about the weather when I was in California for the mudslide season. Well, I'm going to wine about the tranquil weather here in Minnesota now.

Ya see, somewhere around my 16th birthday, I became a bit of junky for severe weather. I'm not total weather geek about it, but I do get out my cameras and try to get in a good spot to view it. I've had lightening strike the road near my car while I was driving. I once was waiting to pick up the lovely Mrs. Jib from work, lightning striking trees all around, when I noticed a wall cloud with rotation uncomfortably nearby (another sign I'm not a weather geek-I got scared and ran inside her place of employment for cover). In other words, I'm a damn idiot.

How does that relate to the tranquil weather here in Minnesota? Well, I head back to Wisconsin tomorrow. I probably won't get home until well after midnight. What are they forecasting for Southern Wisconsin tomorrow afternoon, before I get back? Thunderstorms, possibly severe.

I'm a weather flip flopper.

I'm a great big sucker

This morning I was early for an appointment, so I parked in a Target parking lot near my appointment and read the paper while I waited. About five minutes before I had to get going, there was a knock on my window. I rolled it down to a nervous woman in her late 20's-early 30's. She told me that she had driven her husband to work and left her wallet at home, and her truck was on empty. She asked if I could help her with gas money (there was a gas station across the street), and if I could, she'd mail me the money back. So I did, and I gave her my business card. After that, she thanked me, saying that she was originally from Canada, and amazed at how nice Americans really were.

I told the lovely Mrs. Jib. If she could have slapped my head over the phone, she would have.

Time will tell. I'll let you know next week whether I was a nice guy who helped out another person in a jam, or if I'm just a dup. I'm leaning toward dup.

In a similar vein, I'm a sucker for a left of center site that blogrolls this well to the right of center web site. Tonight, I'm a sucker for The Vast Dairy State Conspiracy. It is now on my blogroll.

Bravo Jesse Jackson

This is the first time this headline has ever appeared at Jiblog. I'm willing to set aside the past and just say that Jesse, you are on the right side of this issue.

Naked man killed in Kenosha after endangering child

HT The American Mind. This story is messed up and disturbing. Unlike Shawn, I fully support the use of deadly force. The guy put a knife to one of the childrens' necks tried to break another's neck. Would it have been best if the stun gun had been used? Probably, but these things happen so quickly that it is difficult to fault an officer in that position. Deadly force is justified in this scenario.

Very quick hits

-I saw 5 continuous minutes of American Idol tonight (a first, btw). Carrie Underwood sang Martina McBride's "Independence Day," and she nailed it. I'm now a Carrie Underwood fan.
-From the "too much time behind the wheel" department: Why do we hear about cancers of all parts of the body, except the heart? Nobody ever dies from a case of heart cancer.

Hannity & Colmes

Heh. They had on a couple of Michael Schiavo supporters tonight. One wore a communist revolution t-shirt. They were a couple of marks for Hannity, no doubt about it. And I like Hannity.

RIP Johnny Cochrane

"If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit." Say what you will about the man, he did his job. Johnny Cochrane, RIP.

JIblog travel update

Sorry for not posting yesterday. After a 6 hour drive and a late afternoon meeting, I was pretty whipped. The weather is great here in Minneapolis, but I'll be driving into rain later today as I head west into a storm system, so consider my jinx partially broken.

I am about to head out to start a full day of appointments, but I'll be staying in a pretty small town tonight. If I'm not exhausted, I hope to be posting this evening. Until then, check out the blogs in the side bar. A lot of them had some great stuff over the past 24 hours.

Mr. Peanut

I just saw a Mr. Peanut commercial. I've been noticing for a few years that Mr. Peanut is getting a little bit more flamboyant. I'm patiently awaiting the day that Planters allows this FDR wannabe to finally come out of the closet. Rumor is that he's been carrying on a torrid affair with Mr. Potato Head, who is currently pre-op.

Oh yeah, and you don't need to shed a tear for Mrs. Potato Head. She left Mr. Potato Head a few years ago for Larry the Cucumber from Veggie Tales.

(Good night all. I know, I'm getting goofy-weird with this post. Blame it on the silliness that sometimes accompanies sleepiness. Ugh, and I can only imagine the search hits I'm going to get now.)

Jiblog on the road

I'll be blogging from the road this week. The first stop will be Minnesota, the land of 10,000 lakes. After a brief pit stop at home, it will then be on to the Big Apple. There will be new posts this week, but they may be of a more sporadic nature.

And by the way, the weather looks good so far. Hopefully that bad weather jinx of mine will be broken and all of you won't have to dread me coming to your town in the future.

Give Michael Schiavo this...

...after much stubborness, he finally allowed Terri to be given communion.

Great Season, Bucky

It was a heck of a year and a heck of game. Thanks for a great season, Bucky.

Google and blogs, politics

This'll be a two part post, so bear with me.

First, Captain's Quarters comments on the drop that his large blog has seen in search results on Google. My impression of Google is that it is not nearly as blog friendly as Yahoo is. I speak from a limited point of view, namely my own site stats, but Yahoo searches find Jiblog much, much more often than Google-unless the search is a dirty search. Then Google finds Jiblog, even though the words in the search term aren't found together on this site. I find this trend a little strange given that Google owns Blogger. Logic would say that Yahoo shouldn't be as blog friendly, and Google should be very blog friendly.

Second, there has been some talk around the blogosphere about Google's corporate politics showing through. This has generally revolved around who Google does and does not allow as a source in Google News, but it also shows itself in the fact that Google has chosen not to recognize Easter today with one of their stylized logos at the top of their search page, but they did choose to recognize World Water Day earlier this week. Google has every right to recognize whatever special day they choose, but I have one word of advice for them. As a business, they have a mass market. When you have a mass market, don't wear your corporate politics on your sleave. Only companies with niche markets can get away with that without losing customers. I'm sure Google feels invincible right now, but I've already started to turn away from Google a bit and back to Yahoo. It is possible that many others are as well.

Update
Well there have been a couple of interesting developments on point one. First, Captain's Quarters had been yanked from Google's listings because a sponsor of his site was link farming (See here for more if you host ads). As for Jiblog, there have been a flurry of Google search hits since I originally posted this. Which leads me to only one possible conclusion-Google's machines are self aware and out to make me look like a fool. :-).

Bird flu in North Korea

This is scary. The way North Korea doles out internal information, there could be 20,000 dead of the bird flu and we wouldn't know it until the flu was a pandemic.