A strong earthquake occurred at 19:15:56 (UTC) on Monday, December 22, 2003. The magnitude 6.5 event has been located in CENTRAL CALIFORNIA. The hypocentral depth was estimated to be 8 km ( 5 miles).

[USGS]

If you don't want to do the math, that's 11:15:56 AM PST.

park rangers in San Simeon have ordered evacuation of the Hearst Castle

[CNN]

Anyone know the origin of the term “86ed”?

Here are some thoughts on the subject, but all seem a bit off.

From somewhere inside Microsoft, musings about a possible future interface in Outlook:

Conversation Clues
In a conversation where a message gets multiple replies, a simple chronological view of the messages isn't enough to convey the relationships between the replies. For example, if a message gets two replies, and each of those two got a single reply, your conversation would now have branches. Grand Central handles these relationships by showing lines along the left edges of the messages. You can see at a glance how many branches a conversation has. To help you follow just one person's views - say your boss or the company guru -- Grand Central uses colored lines to connect replies from the same person.

[ComputerZen]

Perhaps this could also end the “quote the entire conversation so far” emails that we all seem to get. And, conversely, end the “what was your terse response in response to” issue as well.

How exciting:

AP - "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," the beloved fantasy novel by C.S. Lewis, will be made into a film in New Zealand, a newspaper reported Friday.

[Yahoo! News - Most Viewed ]

Hopefully they'll avoid the more anti-Islamic books in the series. Mmmmm Turkish Delight.

Five-month-old monkey Chap, dressed in a Santa Claus outfit, welcomes visitors at an amusement park in Tokyo December 19, 2003. According to the Chinese astrological calendar, the upcoming year is the year of monkey. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao

[Yahoo!]

What causes depression? Is there a genetic connection? Join Ira in this hour of Science Friday for a look at the latest in diagnosing and treating depression.

[Science Friday ]

I think the important question is how can you diagnose depression in people who refuse to believe that they could possibly have depression?

AP - Whether it's bumping the wrong button or an ill-timed power outage, I've often wished I could turn back the clock while playing video games. Now comes "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time," possibly the best ever antidote to bad joystick decisions.

[Yahoo! News - Technology ]

My one complaint with this is that when you do run out of the sands of time, and can't rewind for another chance, you don't go back all that far. It makes the game a bit too simple. Sure it's the best looking game I've played since Metroid Prime. And has a similar feel to Tomb Raider, but even better; however I'm sure that it is playing too fast and won't quite satiate my appetite.

Oh, and Farah is a hottie.

Update: This game plays a whole lot faster and easier than Metroid Prime... About 9 hours to complete. And the final battle isn't that hard. But the story is quite original.

I've tweaked the comments page a bit. The uber-ugly email link has been replaced with the trimmed down text [email] and the mailto link has been altered a bit.

The comments box still won't take HTML, and still gives a way-ugly error if you try, but it now allows just over ½ dozen BBCodes.

And my aggregator is now searchable, but that only affects me, so don't worry if you can't find that one.

And even then, I doubt I'll want to use it.

Spain and Morocco say they have agreed to build a 39-kilometre rail tunnel beneath the Mediterranean Sea, to link Europe and Africa.
The Spanish Development Ministry said two adjacent tunnels will run beneath the Straits of Gibraltar to Morocco.

[BBC]

They've both been discussing this forever, it would be great for Morocco, possibly good for Spain (possibly not so good). It'd certainly be cool to take a jaunt, by rail, to Morocco in the midst of a European vacation. Or vice-versa for that matter.

I seriously doubt that this will intensify attacks, and truly believe the opposite. The sort of oppressive hold that Saddam had on his people made them fear him to such a degree that until he was captured, they would fight, so that if and when he returned to power, they wouldn't be punished. Although it's hard to believe that one man could have such an effect on so many people, I believe it to be the truth. I feel that now, and only now, is the war truly over. And only now can the rebuilding begin.

In case you live under a rock, or only get news from my site:

Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is held by US forces after being captured in a cellar in his hometown Tikrit.

[BBC News | World | UK Edition ]

Whether or not you think that Microsoft is serious about security, you can take them up on some free protection for your Microsoft OS based computer. Anything less is madness, and can infect your computer with bizarre homepages and wacked out accessibility settings, not to mention complete denial of service (DOS) of your machine or whole sections of the Internet.

There are three steps you can take to improve your computer's security. You can follow the three steps online, or print them for easy reference.

[Microsoft]+

Update: I recommend, however, that if you have a few bucks to spend, get a hardware firewall.

The Washington Capitals fired coach Bruce Cassidy yesterday three months into his second season in the NHL, citing the team's poor record and performance. The Capitals, with the second-worst record in the league (8-18-1-1) and slim hopes for the playoffs, named assistant coach Glen Hanlon as their new head coach.

[Washington Post]

I'm going to the game tomorrow night, I'm sure that the new coach will have the team turned around by then, and I expect the best game that I've attended since the last game that I attended.

Or, I should say, I've integrated that version into my site, since I do have a somewhat modified version of dasBlog running.

Not a tremendous amount has changed that is noticeable from the public functions of the site. Just a few items admin-wise have changed. The GotDotNet site claims that there are numerous bug fixes, but I didn't notice too many.

I did see that it now supports NewsGator, and categories in the MetaBlog API. And the “shadow boxes” are used in more places in the admin.

It seems that a search has been added, but since I've just integrated the Google API for my searches (which will search my entire site), I'm not using the dasBlog search.

And it appears that the system now differentiates between last updated content and last updated comments, but I'm not sure where that information is published.

There is one bug that I had noticed yesterday, regarding stories missing from the comments page at times, this appears to have gone away with this upgrade, so I won't have to go looking for it. Yea!

All-in-all it was a rather painless process.

Reuters - Almost every second German is cheating on, or has cheated on, their partner, according to a new survey. A November survey of 1,059 men and women aged between 20 and 60 by the Hamburg-based GEWIS research institute for "Stern" magazine showed 51 percent of men and 43 percent of women said they had cheated at least once on their partner.

[Yahoo! News - Oddly Enough ]

Most site porn distributing vicar and frequently naked co-eds as reasons for their behavior.

I glance through my referrers every now and then, as I expect most people do. I find it interesting that, of the hits that leave a referrer, a good majority are from Google followed by other various search engines.

The searches that are topping the list these days are:

• What does GTI in a VW GTI stand for
  (Which I covered)
• McCafe
  (Which I'd love feedback on, but if you're searching for info, you probably haven't been in one)
• GameCube
  (Which I highly recommend purchasing)

This also means that well over 95% of what I rant about, is either not cared about, or no one looks to me for an opinion.

I'm not sure if this is upsetting or comforting.

Following up on comments from last weeks “Killer Saved from Sword by Victim's Family”:

I'm not sure that this is an exorbitant amount. I'm sure that many a business man has a life insurance policy that pays this amount. (Which I believe is not allowed by Islam).

It's not just law in Saudi, but any country or region that claims to live by Islamic Law. And rich people can't get away with it, unless the blood money is accepted by the deceased family.

I think I'll also argue that Reuters would like to be seen as a global news service, as would Yahoo!, and “our” (aka Western) culture shouldn't necessarily be the rule to judge all others by. Though I could just be subscribed the the US edition.

The “women can't drive” thing, however, I think is a good candidate for “odd”, and this fact would likely seem odd to 99% or more of the world (IMHO, no facts to back this one up).

And I'm rather sure that the penalty for breaking a Kosher law, according to the Torah, isn't jail time.

However I can see that I have a different view on this.

I'm sure my concern is more “isn't it rude to point and laugh” than anything else, which I guess I feel is a connotation of “odd”. Differences are a great thing to discuss and try to understand, but it's no wonder that there are so many bullies in the world, when people might be made to feel “odd”.

I really was hoping to get a bit more feedback, not that I expected to be anything but the minority on this one, just curious if anyone else even remotely would take “my side”. Though there is a good chance that the comments here represent 50% of my regular readership...

And one last thing, how is this practice different when countries do it?

Most say they didn't even feel anything, those that did doubted me.

It was an earthquake.