Back In Black

I am home and on the Internet. After several gruelling hours on the phone with a man in India I finally have a new hard drive installed and Windows XP reinstalled and most of my drivers and core programs installed. Do not know what happened, not a virus, not a worm, just a bad hard drive, sucks. Now I have to bring the old one to the PC store and hope and pray they can strip a few things (favorites, documents some save games and projects) off of it. Keep your fingers crossed.

Tons going on in the world and me without internet (5 whole days!!!!!). The big news was we finally entered the 20th Century and got cell phones. For the price of 1 we got 3 and now me, the wife, and the boy all have a cell phone. We went Verizon and got the unlimited Text and Pix messaging package (an extra $5) and it seems to be worth it. I know where the boy is all summer and it teaches him some responsibility and he knows the first bad grade and bam no phone. We'll see how that works out.

Had an incident over the weekend here in Indy. Some group is opposed to a planned expansion of a highway to go down south, it starts up at I-90/80 on the Great Lakes and goes right through Fort Wayne and then Indy and then a little south and stops, State wants it to go all the way to Kentucky to increase commerce, blah, blah, blah. So several towns and groups oppose it as it will cut through some farmland and increase car pollution and all that. Good for them, have an opinion and speak up, the American Way. So this weekend they stage a protest outside the Capitol Building and a protest for hire group "Roadless Summer" showed up. What happened next was a disgrace to the people opposed to the expansion and to free speech. The protestors proceeded to spray paint inside and out the Capitol Building with slogans and logos against the expansion. 24 people arrested and a beautiful 100 year old building with limestone exterior and oak trim interior vandalized. Makes you wish for the days of Kent State.........

On another front, a man after a high speed chase took up a hostage in a gas stop and held police at bay for 20 hours. In the end while trying to hand off a cell phone to the hostage a rescue attempt was made but the hostage was tied to the criminal. The man took a shot at police and they returned fire, man dead, hostage rescued and police home safe. The family of the criminal is crying that the police murdered him, he would never hurt anyone, just had a problem with cops (already served time for bank robbery and assault) but would never hurt anybody. He was executed. Hostage said he was a nice normal guy except he had a gun to my head. Autopsy revealed cause of death was single gunshot to the head, self-inflicted. He turned on police, received return fire then chickened out and took his own life. I know I would sleep easier in that town at night now.