Waukesha Carnival 02/08/2009

Welcome to this week’s edition. It’s gettin’ late and I have to work tomorrow, so let’s get to it.

First sad news, Darryl Enriquez at Waukesha FYI tells us about the Waukesha Freeman layoffs. One of those laid off was photographer and Waukesha blogger Byron Houlgrave, who shared the last picture he clicked for the Freeman.

Continuing in Waukesha city, Jeff reviews the fish fry at Michael’s Italian America Restaurant at Five Points Blog.

James Wigderson went to the Waukesha Common Council meeting and shares his thoughts with us at Wigderson Library & Pub.

Spiralling out a little, Linda Richter at Inside New Berlin finds the security cameras in schools unsettling and it’s not just the price tag.

At peterepublic, Pete Fanning drops by to remind us he’s still alive, just very, very very busy.

Kyle Prast at Practically Speaking reminds us that US Rep. Sensenbrenner and state Rep. Leah Vukmir will have several town halls. One is past, two are upcoming.

In posts about state news, Wisconsin Sen. Mary Lazich (chief aide Kevin Fischer?) points out at Conservatively Speaking that the Wisconsin Covenant program could be costly.

In a couple of miscellaneous posts, Curt Otto gives us the question to last week’s answer, or something like that. Any way it’s all over at Maple & Main.

Meanwhile, over at the Spring City Chronicle, Michael Phelps gets the Bonehead of the Week award. Pretty much a unanimous vote, I would say.

Then in posts on national issues, MommaBlogger takes time out to rant over that Florida case of the botched abortion at Homemakers Guide to the Galaxy.

Dan Deibert shows us how fast government can move when they want to, with pictures at The D Spot.

Alex has some thoughts about Republican votes and raises at A Little off Main.

At The Other Side of  My Mouth, Tim Rock has some thoughts on the Republican vote on the stimulus package.

Silent e tells us why Democrats are unpatriotic at silent e speaks.

Cindy Kilkenny has a two-parter over at Fairly Conservative on building our own stimulus package.

Dad29 points out that the American people seem to be understanding the ramifications of the stimulus package.

Whew, that’s it for another long one. As usual, if you have one you liked add the link in the comments below or e-mail me at thoughtfulconservative [at] yahoo [dot] com. Same for posts you’d like to nominate for next week’s carnival. It doesn’t have to be one of your own. Links to our archives and future editions can be found here.

Computer heist puts voter IDs in danger

From Saturday’s Nashville paper the Tennessean

The names, addresses and complete Social Security numbers of more than 337,000 Davidson County voters may be in the hands of thieves, Metro election officials said Friday.The information could be used by identity thieves. County election officials are warning the public to monitor their credit accounts for any suspicious activity.

Election officials had said earlier in the week that the computers stolen over the Christmas holiday from the Metro Election Commission offices at Howard School Building, 800 Second Ave. S., contained voters’ partial Social Security numbers, along with other personal information.

The Election Commission will send a written notice to all voters in Davidson County, alerting them to the potential danger of identity theft, within the next week.

The theft should not cause any problems for Nashvillians casting ballots in the upcoming presidential primary. Early voting begins Jan. 16.

Think your Mac makes you immune?

Learn the lesson Scott Feldstein learned.

So I’m thinking to myself, hey, I’m a Mac user. Both my laptop and my web server are running Mac OS X. There aren’t any malicious botnet-style malware for us.. is there? Then I start to think maybe the email itself is a scam. So I call the number in the message.

Turns out it’s for reals. I talk to a security guy and he confirms: spam email has been coming from my connection. I say I think that’s pretty unlikely because I’m a (smug) Mac user. He agrees that it would in fact be odd. Then he asks me the million dollar question: do I have a wireless network at home?

Someone as paranoid as I am

Sandi  at Vista On Current Events talks about a “free” traffic generating service.

This morning I got an email from blogrush.com telling me about their free traffic generating service. Well, when someone wants to give me something for free I rarely bite. In the rare occasion that I do I check them out pretty thoroughly first. Ok, I was curious so I visited their site, but not by using their “invitation link” of http://www.blogrush.com/i11840573. I dropped off the i11840573 which is probably just a tracking check to see how effective their email campaign is. Yes I know they probably sent me a tracking cookie anyway but, I deleted cookies after I left their site. [emphasis mine]

Actually, being the lazy type, I probably wouldn’t have done that. But maybe I’ll start doing it a little more often.