Day: June 19, 2003

A Great Deal on a Great Bag

Over the past couple months I’ve become addicted to one of the many Internet obsessions that I had until this year managed to avoid — EBay. Anyway, on the off chance that there is anybody reading this site who is as big of a gadget bag freak as I am, I just wanted to mention an excellent deal I ran across on EBay the other day.

For about six months now I’ve been lusting after this RoadWired bag. This is the best laptop bag I’ve ever seen. But its $179.95, and frankly even with my penchant for collecting laptop bags (I’ve got about 12 bags from different manufacturers), that is a lot of money to pay for a ballistic nylon laptop bag.

But Len’s Discount Photo is selling several of these bags for $99.99 + $15/shipping on EBay. Mine arrived on my doorstep less than 48 hours after I paid for it, and everything was exactly as advertised.

And yes, the bag is a gadget geek’s dream. Now I’ve got room for my laptop, digital camera, PDA, cell phone, external HD, batteries, power cables, USB/Firewire cables, security cable, battery chargers, track ball, several PMCIA cards, and important paper files all in one bag. Very cool.

What the Hell Is Wrong With the Catholic Church?

The Catholic Church really needs to hire some corporate crisis consultants to help it overcome its continuing inability to come to terms with its sex scandals.

It is shocking that on the one hand Frank Keating could not remain in his post on a sexual abuse oversight panel because he actually wanted to hold Bishops accountable and dared to compare uncooperative Bishops to the Mafia, but on the other hand Bishop Thomas O’Brien had to cover up molestation charges and leave the scene of a fatal traffic accident before the pressure finally got to him to step down.

That is just not the behavior of an organization whose internal culture is genuinely buying into the need to change.

Who Is Next, Syria? — Anti-War Protest Photos

These are some pictures I snapped at an anti-war protest held outside
a federal building here in Kalamazoo, MI, back on May 25, 2003 (you can click on
any of these pictures for bigger versions).

This is just a basic crowd shot to give an idea of the size — I would say there
were 60 to 80 people present (there are some people off to the far right that
are not visible in this picture)

You cannot make out what this sign says in the small version, but it has a picture
of an Arab woman and the text above her reads “Are you willing to kill
her?” and below “STOP THE WAR ON IRAQ.” Given all of
the evidence of mass graves, torture, etc. found in Iraq after the war, an equally
suitable caption might have been “Are you willing to stand by while Saddam
Hussein kills her?”

This guy’s sign took the prize. Are people on the Left losing
sleep over the thought that another brutal dictatorship in the Middle East might
be overthrown? What I would like to do is buy this guy a plane ticket to
Syria and ask him to parade around for 15 minutes on a public street corner
there with a sign reading, “Who is next, Lebanon?”

If you could not afford to bring your own sign, there were dozens conveniently
laid out on a shrubbery. Apparently “Drop Bush Not Bombs” was not
as sexy as “Who is next, Syria?”

And then you get signs that just do not make sense. War is bad for my mental
health? I just have no idea what this person is getting at.

Again, pointless bland slogan that looks like it could have been lifted from
America First propaganda — how can we go off and fight fascist Germany,
Italy and Japan when we have not even perfected democracy here?

That just formed a mental image I could have done without.

No tax cuts for the rich — but do not threaten those wealthy dictatorial oligarchs
in the Middle East, nosiree.

Note: As a public service, I’ve included all of the photographs I took of the protests on May 25, 2003 here. These are free to use for any purpose provided you credit me, Brian Carnell, as the photographer. Take them, edit them, republish them, whatever.

Emma With Long Hair

My daughter has had very short hair for most of her 6 and a half years. On the one hand, she was born without hair and it took forever for her hair to grow to any length. On the other hand, once she was old enough to figure out how to do so, she’d sneak off with some swiped scissors and cut her hair (she also trimmed the hair an a couple of our cats one night). Those episodes prompted several visits to the salon for corrective hair enhancement to make the patches she cut less obvious, and meant even more months of short hair.

Anyway her hair as finally grown out enough (and she’s stopped sneaking off to cut it) to do things like this,