Ladewig.com

I’m making a few changes to the site style, but need to break for the Academy Awards. If some pages look odd, check back later. Hopefully I’ll have things working normally by then.

The White House announced the passing of Spot today. Spot “Spotty” Fetcher was the daughter of Millie and was born at the White House in 1989. She was put to sleep today after suffering a series of strokes.

I’m not a fan of the President, but it is terrible when someone loses a pet. My heart goes out to the Bush family. I sent them an e-mail (I know they probably won’t ever see it, but it seemed like the right thing to do) expressing our condolences and asked them to give Barney an extra hug for us. I’m sure he misses Spot too.

I grew up in Wisconsin without realizing that we have an accent. I honestly thought everyone else sounded different. Take the Yankee or Dixie? quiz to see who else talks like you do. I scored 30% (A definitive Yankee). How about you?

Pop or Soda? [KC on Exchange and Outlook]

I normally avoid these quizzes, but this one was actually interesting because it tells you the regions that use certain phrases/pronunciation, and I’ve long found linguistics interesting:

http://www.moline1968.com/dixie.htm

OK… now I’m starting to get angry. Last year UPN cancels Buffy. This year XM cancels Special X. Now WB announces that they are canceling Angel. I’m convinced that the media companies are all trying to tick me off. Well, they’ve succeeded.

Angel’s ratings are up over 30% this year. You’d think the execs at WB would be turning somersaults with that kind of improvement. I doubt we can change their minds, but there is a petition over at PetitionOnline. I doubt the WB will reverse its decision, but it doesn’t hurt to try. Head over and sign up!

Joss posted his thoughts over on The Bronze Beta. I especially liked his closing comment:

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled by and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN’ SHOW. I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damn."

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics reports that the galaxy’s largest diamond was discovered 50 light-years away. De Beers has to hope we never figure out how to bring one of these back to Earth.

This Valentine’s Day, Give The Woman Who Has Everything The Galaxy’s Largest Diamond [CFA Press Release]

The newly discovered cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallized carbon 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus. (A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, or about 6 trillion miles.) It is 2,500 miles across and weighs 5 million trillion trillion pounds, which translates to approximately 10 billion trillion trillion carats, or a one followed by 34 zeros.

“It’s the mother of all diamonds!” says Metcalfe. “Some people refer to it as ‘Lucy’ in a tribute to the Beatles song ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.’”