i L i n d . n e t

The kitten is slowly getting accustomed to life out of the wild. The first 12 hours were a bit rough, but by last night it was starting to drink/eat out of a low dish, at least with a bit of human encouragement. We’ve concluded that he’s a few days younger than Oreo was when found, as he is still a bit unsteady on his feet. Which of course means that I had to be up even earlier than normal to try a morning feeding. I can attest, by the way, that this kitten has great lungs, as evidenced by its ability to generate a very loud cry.

Congratulations to Cousin Leslie for being awarded a “Rockin’ Girl Blogger” award! An honor! Do check out her Clutter Museum, which is always a good read.

An email yesterday brought a description of the situation in Zimbabwe via a Lind family there, which arrived via Colin Lind, who lives in New Zealand’s South Island:

I have forwarded this message from the Lind family of Zimbabwe for your information. They are not related to either of us as far as I know.

Regards from New Zealand .. I read your pages most days … keep up the good work.

Colin

From: “The Linds”

To: “Odette Lind” Subject: Zimbabwe as it is
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 11:41:49 +0200 Hello. Thought I better fill you in on the situation here.Adrian and I went down to SA at the end of June as Alexander was taking up an appointment at the University of South Africa as a junior lecturer. All went well and he is happy in his job and enjoying life.We came back to chaos! Very little food on the supermarket shelves, virtually no petrol and prices sky high despite the fact that they were supposed to be cut by a gov directive! Luckily we have some stocks to last us over the immediate problems!Then the power cuts started - 36 hours the first time and then for the last week 18 hours out of 24 - the remaining six hours power being on in the middle of the night! Now we have power but no e-mail so I hope this gets to you.

Otherwise - we are well - the weather is warming up and we live much as ever.

Lots of love from us all to you all
Odette and Adrian

Lots of love to you all.

I guess that puts our periodic Kaaawa power outages into perspective!

A story in the Oregonian newspaper describes a case which has posed the question: When is student horseplay a crime? The case involves two 13-year olds who were caught running down a school hallway slapping other kids on the rear end. But instead of treating this as typical misbehavior, authorities ended up charging them with a series of sex crimes (after dropping the original felony charges). But both now face trial in what could leave them branded as sex offenders and listed as such in a public registry for the rest of their lives.

The outlines of the case have been known. But confidential police reports and juvenile court records shed new light on the context of the boys’ actions. The records show that other students, boys and girls, were slapping one another’s bottoms. Two of the girls identified as victims have recanted, saying they felt pressured and gave false statements to interrogators.

The documents also show that the boys face 10 misdemeanor charges — five sex abuse counts, five harassment counts — reduced from initial charges of felony sex abuse. The boys are scheduled to go on trial Aug. 20.

A leading expert called the case a “travesty of justice” that is part of a growing trend in which children as young as 8 are being labeled sexual predators in juvenile court, where documents and proceedings are often secret.

USA Today reports on the similar issue of laws criminalizing consensual sex among teens when one is legally under age.

I’ve spent several frustrating days climbing the Microsoft Access learning curve but, finally, am beginning to enjoy a bit of success. I haven’t had satisfactory data software since Microsoft dropped its Macintosh version of FoxPro. The popular Mac program, Filemaker, just doesn’t make the cut, in my view at least. But when I shifted to this Intel MacBook Pro, it meant that I could also run PC programs like Access. Unfortunately, this has involved installing and getting to know the XP world and then installing and trying to learn both the ins-and-outs of Access, as well as the problem of importing data first processed and cleaned up on the Mac side of things.

I thought this would be simple. Grab Mayor Hannemann’s campaign reports from the Campaign Spending Commission web site, download the contribution data, and put it together in order to get a good look at where the mayor’s big money comes from. Easier said than done. I quickly discovered that the Campaign Spending Commission has changed the data they deliver to the public. The change is probably for the better, since it means more information is now available than previously. But the change in format adds a significant layer of processing in order to allow tracking contributions over time. I found, through trial and error, that after downloading the numbers, I then had to make sure the types of information were the same (for example, some time periods reported by the date of the contribution and the date the check was deposited, while at other times only the receipt date was reported). Then there were little format changes that caused major hiccups for Access (example–in the newest spending report, there are commas between the last names and first names of contributors which, for whatever reason, caused errors when read).

In any case, by last night I finally had learned enough about the program and cleaned the data enough to be able to look at where Mufi’s money has come from since his unsuccessful 2000 mayoral campaign.

I’ll take a stab at reporting some of that here tomorrow.