Friday morning: A couple of quick hits

1. Welcome aboard to runeseer, and svan_1004.

2. Alethea_eastrid was to be on a local radio station this morning. I did not get a chance to listen. I don't know if it makes it down this far. She also has a regular newspaper column.

3. This is a rant: At Pennsic, several people told me that someone I thought was pretty fricking cool was, in fact, a dickhead. My friends were ever so right.

4. I am loving this: "Why I live you" meme. We are using the Internet for good.

5. I wrote Dan Shaughnessy, the Boston Globe columnist, a note this morning giving him a hard time about his column, and he replied almost immediate, ribbing me bac.

Friday afternoon: Quick hits

1. Raw, Fall day here in the North Country, but I have been inside all day, doing important Intrawebs stuff and cleaning the house. There is a curry chicken crockpot cooking. I have, however, not put pants on all day.

2. alethea_eastrid loves me! She had to come back to Salem for a few minutes this morning after going to be on the radio in Poultney, Vt. Didn't she pick me up a Boston Globe (available only in Vermont) and bring it home for me?

3. Oh, I have two, likely three, job interviews next week. Yay! And I have the fresh 19 or so resumes I have sent out in the last week. (I think two of those interviews came from that set).

4. We can all haz Dork Tower!.

Friday night . . .

1. I was not sure if today was the first anniversary of our garden wedding, so I went to wikipedia to look up the Battle of Hastings. It's Sunday, and alethea_eastrid's birthday is Tuesday.

2. We're what, a week into the hockey season and a Philadelphia's Jesse Boulerice is suspended for 25 games without pat. (Yay for the NHL!). By the way, he's from Northern Outpost (well, he grew up in Plattsburg. No SCA connection I know of). Anyway, here is some video. You have to watch 45 seconds or a minute into it to actually see the hit.

3. The first Medal of Honor in Afghanistan:

A Pearl Harbor-based Navy SEAL who was killed deep behind enemy lines in Afghanistan in 2005 — sacrificing his life while radioing for help for fellow commandos — will be the first U.S. service member to receive a Medal of Honor in the six-year-old war, the Navy said yesterday.

U.S. Navy SEAL Lt. Michael P. Murphy will be recognized posthumously Oct. 22 at the White House, where President Bush will present the medal to Murphy's parents, Dan and Maureen.

The Medal of Honor is the nation's highest military award for valor in action against an enemy force that can be bestowed upon an individual serving in the U.S. armed forces.

Murphy is the fourth Navy SEAL in history to earn the highly respected award, and the first since Vietnam. Only two of the medals have been presented, both posthumously, for valor in the Iraq War.

A little more background:

Only one of the SEALs on the team survived. Eight other SEALs and eight soldiers aboard a MH-47 Chinook helicopter sent to rescue Murphy's teamalso were killed when the craft was brought down by a rocket-propelledgrenade

4. Sometimes newspaper stories make my blood pressure go up:

ALBANY -- A 385-pound man who raped and impregnated a blind, mentally retarded, quadriplegic woman last year was sentenced to 18 years in prison today, but not before he asked the judge if his mother could adopt the baby.

"Does she have a right to do that?" inquired Dalo Richard, standing before Judge Thomas Breslin in a yellow jail outfit. "I'm just curious about that."

The bespectacled Richard also denied giving the woman a sexually transmitted disease, saying, "I don't know how that happened."

Wasting little time, Breslin lambasted the 30-year-old Albany man, calling his words self-absorbed and his apology to the victim hollow.

"Upon reflection, I wish the plea bargain were different," Breslin said, his voice rising, "because you don't get it."