I monitor the web and new for information about people named “Huggins”. It is one of my many curiosities.

As a result of that monitoring, this news story, with a “Frank Huggins”, showed up in my inbox today.

Dogs Put To Sleep While Owner In Hospital
Man Plans Many Lawsuits

May 18, 2007

FORSYTH COUNTY, Ga. — A Georgia man said he is suing the Forsyth County’s animal control for killing his two dogs while he was in the hospital.

Mitchell Greenway’s dogs, Misti and Dakota, were euthanized in January when Greenway was in a hospital after having a heart attack.

He said he could only now bring himself to talk about it. Greenway also said he is lost without his beloved dogs.

“This is the first time I’ve been able to talk about it without tearing up,” Greenway said. “I just want to make sure this never happens to another individual.”

He admitted he signed a release that handed the dogs over to animal control but said in his condition, he didn’t realize what he was doing.

“I should have never been asked to sign a legal document in the condition I was in,” he said.

The release for Forsyth County Animal Control clearly stated the dogs might be euthanized if they could not be adopted or if the shelter was lacking space. After four days, that’s just what happened. Both Misti and Dakota were put to sleep.

“I basically didn’t want to live anymore because I didn’t have my dogs. And I just don’t know how to put it. I felt so alone without my dogs,” said Greenway.

Forsyth County Animal Control and the sheriff’s office, which supervises animal control, said they made every effort to find another solution.

“He said he had no relatives to take care of the dogs, no neighbors, no one to take care of the dogs,” said Capt. Frank Huggins.

But Greenway’s neighbor, Doug Green, said he told animal control he would help and said the woman at the shelter made him a promise that they would be loved and well fed.

Animal control said it is sorry.

“We’re sorry it happened, but it happened and we can’t reverse that now,” said Huggins.

Greenway said he not only plans to sue animal control and the sheriff’s department but also the hospital. He said the doctors and nurses pressured him to sign the release to animal control.

There are stories that travel the net in emails. This is one of them. I don’t know the original author. But my mother liked it, and I thought I’d share … 

No, that’s not my personal philosophy.

It is (was) the text on a large outdoor sign put up in Chicago by lawyers Corri Fetman and Kelly Garland.

According to the AP (Toronto Sun) the sign came down, not because it caused an uproar (which it did) but for technical reasons.

Apparently they didn’t have a permit.

Imagine that. Lawyers failing to get a permit.

Apparently it worked, though. “Since it went up last week, the two lawyers said calls to their law firm have gone up dramatically.”

A few days ago I posted about a technique to put the File/Edit/View menu bar of IE7 where it is supposed to go (ok … I’m biased).

I just found another way to do this, and a bit more as well. It is a free, downloadable tool that will let you tweak IE7.

It lets you move the menu bar, enable/disable Clear Type and set a default location for saving pages. It also has a repair function that can repair uninstall problems.

The day after the Republican “presidential debate” — and I use the term loosely because I don’t consider the network-controlled, rights-restricted, not-on-the-internet, sound-bite-interviews to be anything close to a “debate” — but the day after, the Democratic promoting blog Blue Tide Rising had a post about a question to Mitt Romney: “What do you like least about America?”

The blogger was not impressed with Romney’s answer: “I’m at a loss for words.”

As the post asked, if we can’t identify the problems, how can we reasonably expect them to solve them?

The post suggested these possibilities:

• Today 45 million Americans began their day without Health Insurance.
• 1 in 5 children in America live in Poverty.
• Women in America earn 25% less than men performing the same jobs.
• 1 in 4 of America’s homeless are Veterans of Foreign Wars.
• Nearly 1/3 of American High School student never graduate.
• 1 in 6 American children are obese.

What do you like least about America?

The New York Times ran an article yesterday about pennies. Seems that a Chinese Restaurant refused to let Wayne Jones pay the $2.75 for his four fried chicken wings to-go, because he wanted to use 10 pennies: two $1 bills, two quarters, one dime, one nickel — and 10 pennies.

Every penny counts. But 10 of them didn’t one recent night in the Bronx, and that’s how the trouble started.

It was about 11:30 p.m. on April 23 when Wayne Jones stopped at the Great Wall Chinese Restaurant in the Soundview section. Mr. Jones, 47, a lieutenant with the Fire Department’s Emergency Medical Service, ordered four fried chicken wings to go. The total was $2.75.

Mr. Jones placed his money on the counter: two $1 bills, two quarters, one dime, one nickel — and 10 pennies.

“The lady behind the counter started yelling, ‘No pennies, no pennies,’ ” Mr. Jones said. The woman told him she would take 3 or 4 pennies, he said, but not 10.

Mr. Jones was upset enough about this that he emailed people (including elected officials) to complain. He felt that this attitude discouraged the poor and the homeless. That bit of drama, coupled with the power of the internet, created a “sidewalk circus”.

The tale of the 10 pennies unfolded yesterday in a sort of sidewalk circus. It was a melodrama of pocket-change proportions, part political stagecraft, part whodunit and, perhaps, part slow news day.

Reporters descended upon the cramped, seatless lobby of Great Wall as customers elbowed their way inside to order food. A Bronx lawmaker stood outside alongside Mr. Jones, vowing to take up the issue in Albany….

… reporters pestered her with questions and a crowd, including a number of ministers, gathered on the sidewalk …

Rubén Díaz Sr., a state senator whose district includes the restaurant on Watson Avenue, called the news conference outside Great Wall. His staff members handed out a draft of a bill Mr. Díaz plans to introduce in the Senate, requiring retail establishments to accept all forms and denominations of legal tender, with violations punishable by a fine of up to $500 or 30 days in jail, or both….

That night, [Mr. Jones] said, he had a lot of change in his pocket that he was eager to get rid of. “I could have very easily pulled out another form of currency and paid her in it,” he said. “But it was the principle of the thing. I could’ve been anyone. I could’ve been somebody off the street who had no other means of currency.”

After most of the reporters and Mr. Díaz had left, Mr. Jones went inside Great Wall and spoke briefly with Ms. Lin. “She did apologize,” Mr. Jones said later. “We shook hands. And then I placed an order.”

He asked for four chicken wings. He paid the $2.75 with two $1 bills, two quarters, one dime, one nickel — and 10 pennies.

This Wall Street Journal article tells the story of the massive TJX information theft which may have compromised as many as 200 million credit card numbers.

How did it happen? TJX did not have basic wireless security installed to protect the wireless data they were sending between hand-held price-checking devices, cash registers and the store’s computers.

The $17.4-billion retailer’s [Marshall's] wireless network had less security than many people have on their home networks, and for 18 months the company — which also owns T.J. Maxx, Home Goods and A.J. Wright — had no idea what was going on.

investigators now believe, hackers pointed a telescope-shaped antenna toward the store and used a laptop computer to decode data streaming through the air

Seth Godin reports that “Chris [sent] a Powerpoint made by his daughter.” It attempts to persuade parents. I wonder if it worked.

Web Host Industry News has reported that Project Honey Pot has filed a lawsuit … a 1 Billion Dollar lawsuit … against spammers.

After reading about this, I’ve visited Project Honey Pot, signed up for an account, and added a honey pot page to my website.

According to reports released late last week, a Utah-based anti-spam group called Project Honey Pot (projecthoneypot.org) has filed suit in the Eastern District of Virginia, seeking damages for email harvesting and spam on behalf of its project members.

The lawsuit reportedly marks the first time the CAN-SPAM Act has been used to single out the practice of email harvesting, in which algorithms are used to crawl the internet looking for email addresses to target with spam.

The lawsuit was filed against the universe of John Doe defendants represented by the more than 2.5 million IP addresses captured by Project Honey Pot over the past two years, and could represent more than $1 billion in statutory damages under CAN-SPAM and Virginia’s anti-spam laws.

Project Honey Pot says it has identified more than 15,000 email harvesters and 668 comment spammers that target forums and blogs. The project has thousands of members contributing from around the world.

I headed out of Dallas early this morning for one of my regular drives down to Houston. My mother lives in Houston and I get down there a couple times a month.

Normally, I take my cat, Spot, but this time she is not with me. That is because on the last trip, she stayed in Houston to keep mother company for a while. Mother and I share joint custody.

I enjoy these drives. I get a chance to listen to NPR for a couple hours till it fades out.

(Dallas’ public radio, which operates independently, airs NPR and PRI around the clock. Houston’s public radio, which is affiliated with the University of Houston, only airs NPR for a couple hours in the morning and a couple hours in the evening and broadcasts classical music the rest of the time.)

Today, the Texas Highway Patrol was out in force checking on the traffic. I had a chance to check out a couple sports cars twice! … Once as they sped past me, and a second time a couple miles down the road as I cruised by them while they conversed with the polite officer.

Except for the occasional maniac (and the Houston traffic), the drive provides a quiet time to think while looking out at some green space. It is a pleasant contrast to the hubub of everyday.