If you have an e-mail account with Hotmail, MSN, Live, or any other Micro$oft entity, change your password immediately.

Of course, if someone else has seen the list and already visited the control panel and changed the password, you are SOL. Your friends will hate you when they start receiving spam under your e-mail address.

If you use the same name and passwords for other things, change those too, because too many people only use only one user name and password for everything.

There is sad, if not unexpected, news for Stella and Steve.

Julie Creswell of The New York Times covers the autopsy: Buyout firms profit as Simmons sinks.

This is what Reagan and Rand are all about. This is why the US economic system is so screwed up.

In this case it was a stable, profitable manufacturing company, but they have done the same thing to newspapers, timber companies, food companies, … every type of industry in the US.

They look for companies that have very low debt and constant but unexciting profits. They borrow all the money they can, so their personal risk is minimal, and buy the company. They then sell off anything they think they can make a quick buck on, and mortgage everything else, using the proceeds to cover their initial investment, and leave the company unable to remain profitable because of the huge debt load.

This is all part of the same thinking that resulted in the ubiquitous HELOC [Home Equity Line Of Credit]. In this view of the world the only purpose of assets is to back debt, because you are stupid to own your home. You need to get that money out and gamble in the stock market or support an absurd lifestyle.

Position: 49.7 N 13.4 W [10 PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: North-Northeast [025°] near 26 mph [43 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 50 mph [80 kph].
Wind Gusts: 60 mph [95 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 85 miles [140 km].
Minimum central pressure: 986 mb.

It is 210 miles [335 km] Southwest of Cork, Ireland.

Grace has been absorbed by a frontal system and is dissipating. This is the final advisory.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]