in an old carpetbag.

The Miami Herald writes that a South Florida Republican to seek Orlando House seat

Republicans eager to unseat a brash Orlando Democrat who said their party’s healthcare plan amounts to hoping people “die quickly” have so far been unsuccessful in finding a candidate.

But now comes a willing Republican — all the way from South Florida.

Armando Gutierrez Jr., son of one of Miami’s best-known political consultants and a member of local civic boards, voted in the city of Coral Gables as recently as April.

But he says he’s the right person to take on Rep. Alan Grayson, who likes to call Republicans “knuckle-dragging Neanderthals” and has become one of the party’s top targets in 2010.

Gutierrez, a 28-year-old real estate developer and Republican Party fundraiser, said he has already lined up endorsements from three Central Florida Republicans: U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis and state Reps. Chris Dorworth and Bryan Nelson.

Well, like the other “Republicans” who have announced they are running, Gutierrez is not now, nor has he ever been an elected official. He is an unknown in the district running against a now nationally known incumbent who has been raking in money to supplement his own considerable personal wealth.

There are already wealthy local Republicans running. I can’t imagine what anyone believes that Gutierrez adds to the race that would make him any more likely to unseat Grayson. I don’t care, but it looks like a political money pit to me.

The BBC reports that Microsoft recovers Sidekick data

Microsoft says it has now recovered the personal data lost when its Sidekick servers suffered an outage on 13 October.

The online service backs up contacts, photos, calendar appointments and other personal data stored on the mobile phones of Sidekick T Mobile customers.

Microsoft Corporate Vice President Roz Ho says that all data will be restored, beginning with personal contacts.

She believes that only a minority of Sidekick users are still affected.

“The outage was caused by a system failure that created data loss in the core database and the back up,” she wrote in an open letter to customers.

My guess is that they rebuilt the data base, which is often successful if the structure was designed in accordance with industry standards. As the original was not designed by Microsoft it is possible that most people will be able to access their data. A minority of users is one less than half, so any number below a half million is a minority, but it is probably a group in the thousands, and not tens of thousands if the rebuild was successful. My guess is based on the amount of time involved. If they had found a valid backup, they would have been running in a day.

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The ABC reports that Crews battle blazes across 3 states:

New South Wales

Fire crews are working throughout the night to bring large blazes across three states under control.

About 150 volunteer firefighters and national parks officers are fighting three blazes that are still burning in the Clarence Valley on the New South Wales north coast.

Queensland

More than 30 teams of firefighters are working desperately to bring a large bushfire under control at Mount Archer, east of Rockhampton.

Western Australia

Meanwhile fire crews will continue to monitor flare-ups near the North Cable Beach area in Broome.

Firefighters have contained a fire at Coconut Well, which was threatening homes, and have established containment lines near the Crab Creek Road area.

These are all on the coast. The first two on the East Coast, and the third on the West Coast. In Australia the average temperature increases as you go North. The peak of their fire season is normally the first months of the year.

[For more information go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Fires” for all of the posts related to wildfires on this site.]

Today is White Cane Safety Day.

For your safety, if you see a guy about 6-foot tall, 250 pounds, carrying a white cane, don’t stop suddenly in front of him, for you will surely be knocked down and trampled because he can’t see you. Trust me on this, I have seen it happen too many times.

The individual is a relative, and he sincerely feels bad about knocking you into next Tuesday, but there really is a reason he waves that white cane in his path – he’s legally blind.

CBS has an article up that apparently ran on their nightly news that asks the question: Was Massive L.A.-Area Blaze Mismanaged?

The basis for questioning the response to the Station Fire:

• There was a memo sent to Forest Service offices to watch their budgets, especially overtime, about three weeks before the fire.
• People who lost property to the fire didn’t think the response was adequate.
• At one point early in the fire, the resources used for the fire were reduced.

First off, the Federal fiscal year ends on September 30. In August of every year I was in the Air Force there was a commander’s call about watching expenditures, and I assume that the same thing happened in every Federal agency. When I worked for the state and for corporations the year usually ended June 30, and the memo was sent in May.

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