It is a very good thing today is my day off.

Because I got maybe a half-hour of good sleep last night. I've finally got the cold that's been running around, and my sinuses are blocked. So all night, I'd move slightly, they'd drain, and I'd drift off to sleep.. only to be woken up when my next attempt at breathing was foiled by re-clogged nasal passages.

Made for a long night. A few times I almost gave in and just got up for a marathon Nethack session (I seem to breath easier sitting up.)

So today I'm doing the sick thing. Soup, blankets, and (when the mail gets here) Iron Maiden's Rock in Rio DVD.

Because I do everything katster tells me...

Post a political poem in your LJ when you see this.

( Tommy )

Hey, we have a new commercial!

Fathouse

At the end, you actually see the pod being lifted by Podzilla.

What Hath God Wrought?

STOP: Western Union Scraps Telegrams After 155 Years

Feb. 1 (Bloomberg) -- STOP: After 155 years in the telegraph business, Western Union has cabled its final dispatch.
The service that in the mid-1800s displaced pony-borne messengers has itself been supplanted over the last half-century by cheap long-distance telephone service, faxes and e-mail. In a final bit of irony, Western Union informed customers last week in a message on its Web site.

``Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services,'' said the notice. ``We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage.''

The terse notice, confirmed today by Victor Chayet, a spokesman for the Greenwood Village, Colorado, unit of First DataCorp., was in keeping with telegraphese, the language customers devised to hold down costs. Sentences were separated by ``STOP,''which was cheaper to send than a period, Chayet said.

I kn ow that telegrams are a buggy-whip technology, but a piece of American history has just vanished.

Bet you didn't know that a warning from Washington to Pearl Harbor to expect an imminent attack was sent by Western Union. And the person who sent it didn't bother to pay for rush delivery. So the message was delivered three hours after the attack. History doesn't report on the tip the delivery boy got.