Parker Griffith Hits The Big Time

Our local Congressman is Democrat Parker Griffith. He won a squeaker of an election to fill the seat of a surprise retirement. Griffith is considered a "Bluedog" conservative Democrat who has spoken out against both the health care reform bill and the cap-and-trade act. Now in an interview with The Huntsville Times after a town hall on health care he has hit the big time.

One of the criticisms from this fairly conservative district is that while Griffith may be conservative himself he supports the Democratic agenda in Congress generally and voted for Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to be speaker. In the interview Griffith now says that he "...would not vote for her. Someone that divisive and that polarizing cannot bring us together."

That statement has hit the blogosphere and is now all over Memeorandum as it got picked up by US News and World Report and various lefty and right blogs.

It would be good but it is hard to believe that if Griffith is re-elected which is not assured right now that he wouldn't go along with whomever the Democrats run for Speaker.

Army Email Getting More Portable?

I came across this article in Federal Computer Week about how the Army has put out a Request for Information(RFI) to unify its email systems. Right now the Army manages them at various command and installation levels. The RFI would be for an enterprise system to manage all email, calendar and other functions for all those using Army email. One benefit supposedly of this would be to reduce the cost to the Army.

One of the problems that the Army current system has is its security level. To access non-classified email you have to log into a computer with a Common Access Card (CAC) Card and pin. The card stays in the computer in order to utilize it. This means that to get your email away from your work site you use your CAC in a laptop or use a Blackberry.

Personally I think a Blackberry presents a whole host of security issues and in fact this whole idea highlights the major problem with the Army's IT set up: security. It has limited functionality and ads considerable cost. An employee if their manager desires email from home or off site requires a laptop or blackberry as well as whatever system they use at work. This increases the cost to the government to outfit each employee.

The proposed system is required to use a CAC so it will require dedicated machines to support. It would be hard to see how much cost savings could be made by this idea unless it maximizes the use of existing equipment and that owned by the employee.

More to come on this as it fleshes out but security will make this hard to implement.

Just What The Raiders Need

This is not very constructive. Reports: Cable punched Hanson

Worst Lip Sych Evah!!!

It is tough New Wave melody with lots of keyboards and high pitched vocals but the female part of this Peter Schilling appearance on a German TV show has to be about as bad as it can get. Starts around 0:42. Peter doesn't do that great a job either.

Using Posterous

In a desperate search for traffic to my actual real blogs I have set up google reader to allow me to push stuff to Posterous. Then I have Posterous push it to my Twitter feed. We will see what this accomplishes.

Of course it is yet another account to remember.

Arsenal Stuns Everton And Whole Premiership

While Arsenal has had quite an off season they are still one of the top teams in the Premiership. There should really be no doubt that they could beat Everton to start the year even at Everton's stadium. To win, though, 6-1 is just crazy. It gives them a tremendous jump on the rest of the league. For more on this stellar victory which saw Cesc with two goals see the Telegraph.

Newport News Advertising

Since I write for three different blogs now (real ones not vanity sites like this) I spend a great deal of time browsing around at various newspaper and news sites. I also go to many political blogs researching things and getting edumacated. The Newport News bikini ads are everywhere. They must have one heck of a budget or just place them on sites I go to.

Here I am also giving them free advertising just by talking about them.

New Site About Smurfs

If you are interested in the upcoming Smurf movie here is a good site about it: Smurfplanet.com. Yes, they are actually making a live action movie about the Smurfs.

Huntsville Mirrors The U.S. On Housing Sales

This subscriber only article at The Wall Street Journal reports that the recovery to date in the U.S. housing market has been focused on the low end of the market. If you have a high end home it is still hard to sell. This is what was reported in The Huntsville Times as well about the local market. There has been an uptick but it has only been in the low-to-moderate price.

Unfortunately I cannot find the article on their website www.al.com.

It is probably for the reasons that large mortgages are hard to get and people do not want to borrow several hundred thousand dollars anyway with the uncertainty in the job market and economy overall.

Testing Out iCam

I put iCam on my iPhone and got it installed on working on both my PC and a netbook with a built in camera. The result is seeing the beautiful me in stereo on my iPhone. I don't know if I will really use this but the technology is so neat I couldn't help myself.