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Me 1, Deer 0, Cop 4?

So I'm driving home from work last night taking the route I've driven hundreds of times and out of nowhere comes a deer from the right side of the road. I hit its head with the corner of my Blazer. It happened so fast that there was no time to react.

Oddly, (at least to me) it's in a residential area. Woodsy, yes, but still residential. There is a forest preserve of some sort with deer warning signs a couple of miles up the road but according to the newspaper this morning, it's mating season and this happens all the time.

Anyway...

I continued to drive to the next street and pulled over to see the damage.

There wasn't that much... overall I considered myself lucky. I texted (that a word?) my wife at work telling her "I hit a deer!"

For a second I considered just continuing the remaining 15 minute drive home but I wanted to see if the deer was still there. I decided to turn around and go back the few hundred feet to see the aftermath (if any).

I flipped another u-turn so I was basically in the same place I hit the deer and pulled off into the grass on the side of the road with the deer right in front of me...

I pulled up on the deer and noticed it was still breathing. As this this was a new experience to me I didn't know what to do so I called my Dad. He suggested I call the police so at the very least I get a police report. I called 911.

"911 Emergency"

"Yeah Hi, I just hit a deer and having never done this before I'm not sure what the protocol is."

"Are you injured, do you need an ambulance?"

"No, I'm fine but the deer is not"

[personal info & location given]

"An officer is on the way to take the report"

"Thank you"

I sat there for about 5 minutes on the side of the road with my hazard lights on watching the deer on the ground breath in and out. I called home to let my kids know I'd be a bit late.

Soon a Lake County Sheriff pulled up behind me with his lights on. He got out of his squad car and walked up to my blazer. He asked me if I was okay. I explained that I was fine but the deer was hit by my blazer directly in the head at 30 something miles per hour and he was still alive.

"Looks like a young buck.", he said.

Then I must describe the following as surreal as it gets...

Without warning, the cop walked in front my car, pulled his .40 S&W Sig Sauer out of his duty rig and shot the deer right in front of me!

He came back to the car and said... "Not anymore."

I'm not sure what I expected. Maybe I expected he'd call animal control and they'd dart him or something, I don't know... but he did it in such a nonchalant way I was in a bit of shock. Not in shock as some may be at the firing of a gun 10 feet in front of your car with no warning... Hell I'm a NRA Certified Pistol Instructor, I'm on the instructor team at my gun club and have fired 100,000+ round in my day... I've got NO fear of guns. Perhaps I was expecting a "You might want to look away." or "You might want to cover your ears." or "I'm going to put it out of its misery." or something.

I didn't get that.

The officer went back to his vehicle to write up a report. I stayed in my car for a few minutes before I got out to see if the light was better to assess the damage to the blazer. It was when I got out of the car that I shot the picture above with my iPhone. Click it to see a larger version and you will see a white circular spot on his backside/hip area. That is where it was shot. When I was looking at the damage on the passenger side door the officer called to me on his intercom system. I walked back to his car.

He asked me to describe what exactly happened. I did. He asked me how much I'd estimate the damage as. I said I couldn't really see and was going to ask him to borrow a flashlight to see the side of my car. He handed me a flashlight and I headed back to my car to help illuminate the side. The damage concerned me mainly for 2 reasons. 1. We just switched our insurance last week to Liability only (the Blazer is a 1999) and 2. If I had to pump any real money into a repair I could kiss the new TV I've been planning to buy goodbye.

There's a dent in the corner of the hood and a dent in the corner of the passenger quarter panel. There are also some antler scrapes on the quarter panel, the passenger side front and rear doors. With another small dent where those doors meet. I'm sure over $1000 worth of damage but all cosmetic. Not a big deal for a car I'd like to get rid of next year anyway... (good gas mileage, here I come!)

I headed back to his car and we talked for a few minutes... apparently a lady just 2 days prior hit a deer in the SAME spot with a BRAND NEW CAR that was 3 days old. It rolled up her hood and smashed her windshield. I was lucky by comparison.

I asked him what happens to the deer. He asked me if I wanted it. What the hell would I do with the deer? Shocked at the offer, I said NO but I will take another picture of it before I leave. He then stated that he would make a phone call and it would be picked up and disposed of.

He explained the police report to me and explained what I had to send the Secretary of State (for statistical purposes).

I thanked him for the report and started walking back up towards the deer to take one last pic before I left. He got out of his squad and followed. Very much to my surprise, the deer was still breathing.

Let me also note that if I ever wished that the iPhone could record video, this would have been the time!

"Looks like I got it in the hip, I need to get it in the chest area." he said.

Standing less than 10 feet away from me, again with no real warning, he pulled out his service pistol and shot the deer a second time. Very surprising to me, it started moving and flailing. My mind was blown! He stopped traffic on the road by holding his hand out and waving his flashlight... then he shot it again! THEN IT GOT UP!!! I could NOT believe what I was seeing! It was standing again!! And he shot it for a FOURTH TIME!!!!!

I couldn't believe my fucking eyes! As you can tell... I'm NOT a hunter and have NEVER hunted... perhaps this happens all the time.. but there was no fucking way in hell that I would have EVER expected the buck to actually stand up and try to run away!!!

I snapped this image right after the 4th shot and the deer stopped running. (but continued to stand)... zoom in and look to the right of the sign... also note the stopped traffic.
Then this surreal experience kicked into overdrive while minute after minute ticked by and the deer still stood it's ground. Not just on display for the cop and I but to every car stopped in traffic!

With the lighting I was able to see saliva/blood leak from it's mouth and after about minute #4 I watched as it urinated. Shortly thereafter its legs buckled and it fell on its side. It turned its head looking back (towards me) was gasping for air for about 20 seconds and finally went limp. The deer was dead.

The officer got the traffic moving again and walked back towards me. I was again, in shock.

"Holy Shit!" I exclaimed! I asked him if he's ever seen that before. (Deer getting back up after a car hitting it and after getting shot. He said yes... sometimes it can take over 20 minutes for a deer to bleed out and die.

Throughly shocked from the entire experience it was time for me to leave. Part of me wanted to walk up to the deer and take a few close up pictures... but I guess the more sane (less sick) part of me decided against that and drove home.

After telling this story several times already my mom brought up an interesting question. What would have happened if I had my kids in the car? Would the cop have still have done the same thing?

According to our local newspaper...

Last year deer-vehicle collisions accounted for more than 1.5 million accidents nationwide, with the Illinois Department of Transportation reporting 25,491 incidents. Collisions resulted in thousands of injuries, hundreds of millions of dollars in insurance claims and about 150 fatalities, one in Illinois.

I guess it's a larger problem than I ever thought!

A Blessing in Disguise?

As some of you know... my PowerBook's hard drive died back in late July.

Let me back up a bit... Last October the original 40GB drive began to fail. Thankfully, I was able to retrieve ALL of the info on the drive by using some strange rhythmic light banging on the powerbook while copying the files to an external drive. Not sure how it worked but it stopped the driving from slipping and I was able to save all of my data!

I sent my powerbook to iResQ to pop in a new 80GB drive and to swap out the combo drive with a super drive. The powerbook worked like new.

Fast forward to July. Hard drive died again. No warning. There were important files on that drive. I didn't know how much of it was not backed up but at the very least there were files on it that would take many Many MANY hours to reconstruct (iView data file, iPhoto data files, iTunes data files, etc.) and a bunch that could not be recreated ever. (pics, a years worth of e-mail, raw life poster files, etc.)

I procrastinated on getting it dealt with but after getting my iPhone the urgency to get a working Mac again surfaced. I sent the powerbook to iResQ again. A few days later they told me my hard drive was dead and gave me 2 choices...

1. Replace it under warranty but the dead drive would have to go back to the manufacturer to make it work.

2. Buy a new drive (at the slightly reduced price of $175) and they would send the dead drive back with the powerbook so if I want to send it to a data recovery company, I could.

Since I lost a bunch of data, I obviously chose #2.

A few days later I e-mailed to get a tracking number... a couple of hours later, I got this reply...

Craig,

Sorry for the delay, but it seems there are other issues going on
with the machine. Your hard drive and data are actually fine;
however, the ATA controller on the main logic board has failed,
making it impossible to read a hard drive. If you want to replace the
board, I can do so for just the cost of the part and drop the labor
charge, but it will still be $549.99. This should also resolve the
Bluetooth issue. If you would prefer, I can also return the machine
with the hard drive removed so you can get the data that is on it.
Sorry to have to bear the bad news- let me know how you'd like to
proceed. Thanks.

Eric
Apple Certified Portable Technician

There's no way I could justify spending $549.99 on fixing my almost 5 year old G4 Powerbook. So... my Powerbook is officially dead... yet I'm actually rejoiced by the fact that I didn't lose any data!

So they refunded my $175 and for a reasonable fee, they sent me back the laptop with the hard drive taken out and put into an external case.

What am I going to do with out a laptop? I don't know yet... I'm not even sure I'd buy another Mac Laptop... but I've had a laptop for over 10 years and I've gotten used to owning one. And with Dell's deals I could easily buy a brand new one for the price of the would be $549.99 repair.

A Dell while certainly not as stylish or as thin as an Apple, in the event I want to add more memory, a new hard drive or swap out a dead one, I could do it myself and not have to send it away.

The Golden Compass

I got a 'forwarded' e-mail from an acquaintance the other day...

Dear Friends, (PASS THIS ALONG TO EVEN GRANDPARENTS AND THOSE WHO DON'T HAVE KIDS!!! LET'S PULL TOGETHER AND PRAY GOD GETS THE GLORY THROUGH THIS EVIL ACT!! Satan will use your children to do evil in this world. Pray for them!!! DAILY!!!

You may already know about the kids movie coming out in December starring Nicole Kidman. It's called The Golden Compass, and while it will be a watered down version, it is based on a series of children's books about killing God. (It is the anti-Narnia.) Please follow this link and t hen pass it on. From what I understand, the hope is to get a lot of kids to see the movie - which won't seem too bad - and then get the parents to buy the books for their kids for Christmas. The quotes from the author sum it all up. I hope it totally bombs because we were all paying attention!

i checked out the snopes site, and it confirmed the facts in the email below.

PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW AND READ THE ARTICLE....IF YOU HAVE A HEART FOR GOD YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO IGNORE THIS EMAIL.
I read the snopes article and this is definitely worth passing around. It’s very disturbing. I think it is well worth spreading. Read the link below
http://snopes.com/politics/religion/compass.asp

Fuck those fucking fuckers! :)

Anyone who really knows me knows that I'm of the mind... "If it pisses off the Church, I've gotta check it out!"

I loved Dogma, I love Harry Potter and I love South Park... the three most recent things that pissed off the church that come to my mind without having to do any research to find more.

It was inevitable that I was going to give "The Golden Compass" a try. I purchased this book from audible.com today and I'm a 1/2 hour into it. (I didn't buy books 2 & 3 till I see if I like book 1.) I'll be sure to let you know what I think of it.

In the meantime, I went to the movies website and answered the 20 questions honestly and this is what it came up with...

Third Party Applications on the iPhone Coming Soon!!

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/

Third Party Applications on the iPhone

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.

We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.

Steve

P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch. [Oct 17, 2007]

This is GREAT news... but only time will tell how "open" it will be and how Apple will support installing the apps on the phone. Will all software be forced to be distributed via iTunes? Will Apple charge developers a fee to have their software "approved" for iPhone use? How will free software be affected?

Again, time will tell but it certainly seems to be a step in the right direction!

4th wave of HD on DirecTV...

6 more national channels, plus 4 RSNs and 6 PPV channels added!

* Cartoon Network (Channel 296)
* Fox Business (Channel 359) (Also now available in SD)
* Fuel TV (Channel 612)
* FX (Channel 248)
* HGTV (Channel 229-1)
* Speed (Channel 607)

Regional Sports Networks:

* FSN Detroit (Channel 636)
* FSN Southwest (Channel 643)
* FSN West (Channel 652)
* FSN Prime Ticket (Channel 653)

Plus six PPV Channels: 135, 136, 137, 145, 146, 147

I can't wait to watch the upcoming season of Nip/Tuck in HD!!!

Keep 'em coming DirecTV!!!

DirecTV launches yet another 5 HD channels

1. Food Network (Channel 231-1)
2. MGM (Channel 255)
3. National Geographic (Channel 276)
4. CNBC (Channel 355)
5. MHD (Channel 332)

That brings the total of Nationals (not including the sportsnet crap) to 41 I think.

Link here.

We're still pretty far from the "Up To 100" by the end of the year but if they include the sports crap (which I'm sure they will) it looks like it may be possible.

DirecTV adds 11 more HD Channels...

Cinemax East (Channel 512)
Cinemax West (Channel 514)
HBO West (Channel 504)
Bravo (Channel 273)
SciFi Channel (Channel 244)
USA Network (Channel 242)

Plus 5 Sports channels I will never watch...

Comcast SportsNet Chicago HD (Channel 640)
Comcast SportsNet Mid-Atlantic HD (Channel 629)
New England Sports Network/NESN HD(Channel 623)
SportsNet New York HD (Channel 625)
YES HD (Channel 622)

That brings the total of Nationals (not including the sportsnet crap) to 36 I think.

Bravo & Sci-Fi will be nice but I'm still looking forward to National Geographic and FX

iPhone Update...

As some of you already know, I bought an iPhone after the price drop to $399. I had originally planned on buying the AppleTV this month since I had to use a $50 certificate that I received from the iPod Battery Issue Class Action from a couple of years ago by October 7th or it would expire.

Once Steve made the announcement that the price was dropping $200 after only 2 months since its debut, after being absolutely shocked for a while, I knew this was a sign so I decided to use my $50 cert on the iPhone instead. We were already AT&T customers so replacing my Motorola L2 with the iPhone couldn't have been easier.

The iPhone absolutely kicks ass but is by no means a perfect device. It IS better than anything else I've used, including the the Palms & the Blackberry Curve.

I've compiled a list of improvements I (and MANY other iPhone owners) want... All of the following can be improved via a firmware update or support from other software companies... (In a loose order of importance to me)

• Open up the system so users can use their OWN ringtones (from MP3, CDs they own etc.)
• Safari needs to run FLASH and JAVA
• 3rd Party App Support
• Gmail Push
• .Mac Push (why this wasn't already included in the first place, I will never understand)
• SlingBox app
• COPY/CUT/PASTE
• "Reply to" in e-mail so I can reply to a pushed yahoo message and reply with a gmail reply address
• Sync "Notes" back to iTunes or something to save them off phone (cause it's completely worthless to me otherwise)
• Ability to "Mark all as read" in E-Mail
• Ability to "Delete All" in E-Mail
• Turn keyboard sideways in any mode that requires a lot of typing... (E-MAIL)
• Ability to save pics in e-mail to my "Photos"
• MMS messages
• Ability to change the "alert" sounds for incoming E-Mail
• Ability to place a point anywhere on the google maps
• "Attach" option in the New Message window
• Ability to send pics from camera at FULL res!
• Ability to tether as a modem via bluetooth and/or USB
• PDF viewer needs bookmarks + searching
• Contacts to use "Categories" in Outlook 2003
• Keyboard search in contacts
• IM Clients (iChat?)
• Mail count indicator for multiple email accounts
• Voice dialing
• To Do list/task display
• Added after 1.1.1 update: Allow iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store use via EDGE

And a couple of things for version 2 of the iPhone...

• LARGER STORAGE
• 3G support
• Memory card support (SD?)
• User-replaceable battery
• Video recording (I don't know if this can be done via firmware update)

Right after buying it, thanks to many of the hackers out there, I found a hack (not really a hack at all) that allowed me to trick iTunes into thinking that any ringtone I wanted to add was a "purchased ringtone" so I had over 30 extra ringtones added to my phone. I'm a big fan of custom ringtones for individual contacts. When I updated to the new firmware yesterday I lost that "loophole" and the ability to add all of my custom ringtones.

There is good with the bad though... Not that I've had a lot of time to test it in the last 20 hours but Safari & Google Maps haven't crashed on me once and the Wi-Fi Music store is cool and super easy to use.

In closing... after 12 days of use... I gotta say that this phone absolutely kicks ass! This is the product I've been waiting for for years! This is coming from someone who paid $399 for the Palm i705 + $36 a month for the data connectivity to be able to e-mail and surf the WAP 4-5 years ago. While this is my first "Smart Phone" it's my 4th "PDA". Even after I lost my ringtones (I'm confident a hack will be available at some point) it's still a $349 well spent.

Come on Apple... get working on my wish list!

And So It Begins...

DirecTV FINALLY launched some more HD! We've got 21 more to choose from...

1. A&E (Channel 265)
2. Animal Planet (Channel 282)
3. Big Ten Network (Channel 220)
4. CNN (Channel 202)
5. The Discovery Channel (Channel 278)
6. The History Channel (Channel 269)
7. The Movie Channel East (Channel 544)
8. NFL Network (Channel 212)
9. Showtime West (Channel 540)
10. Showtime too (Channel 538)
11. The Smithsonian Channel (Channel 267)
12. The Science Channel (Channel 284)
13. Starz Comedy (Channel 519)
14. Starz East (Channel 522)
15. Starz West (Channel 540)
16. Starz Edge (Channel 520)
17. Starz Kids and Family (Channel 518)
18. TBS (Channel 247)
19. TLC (Channel 280)
20. Versus / The Golf Channel (Channel 604)
21. The Weather Channel (Channel 362)

Though I was really hoping for National Geographic HD, this is an excellent start and according to DirecTV we should have about 70 HD Channels to choose from by the end of October and up to 100 by the end of the year!

I think we had around 9 HD Nationals before so that brings the total to 30. That doesn't include my locals in HD.