September 2006 Archives

I just read about the death of the suspected killer of a Polk County deputy.  SWAT team members shot him numerous times.  That's not surprising, given that he killed two of their own (yes, I count the dog as a police officer).  Also, I don't have a problem with this ending.  The man demonstrated his danger to the community.  He chose to create this mess.  Now a wife and three children will never see Deputy Matt Williams again.

We still don't know what this man feared from being arrested.  He was pulled over for speeding.  He asked the deputy if he would be arrested, and the deputy told him he didn't know.  At that point, the deputy probably didn't have enough information.

Even now, it's unclear what was his true name.  We've read reports of multiple aliases during this ordeal.  Was he from Miami?  Was he an illegal alien? 

Maybe we'll learn more.  At least now, the police community and family can start grieving.

There are apparently two deputies named "Matt Williams" on the Polk County Sheriff's office. It was K-9 Deputy Vernon "Matt" Williams who lost his life today, along with his canine Diogi, during a firefight in the woods in Lakeland. He leaves behind three children and a wife.

WESH News just showed exclusive video of police capturing the suspect in today's shooting of two Polk County deputies and a police dog. The suspect, a black male with dreadlocks, raised his hands, lowered to his knees, and laid down on the ground. Five law enforcement personnel surrounded him with weapons drawn (big, nasty looking weapons). He was cuffed, placed in a car, and that's the last I saw of him.

UPDATE: 6:00pm

Police now say they caught the wrong man. They're letting him go while still on the scene.

The Orlando Sentinel reports two Polk County Deputies were shot on duty this morning during a traffic stop. Deputy Vernon Mathew (Matt) Williams, 39, and his police dog, Diogi, were both killed. Deputy Doug Speirs, 39, was shot in the leg and survived. There is also a report at The Ledger, a newspaper from Lakeland, FL.

All of this took place this morning near Kathleen High School. As noted on the Sentinel's Crime Blog, the national media is playing up this shooting quite a bit, perhaps because it comes a day after a high profile shooting in Colorado. Police from all over the region are coming to Lakeland to assist in the manhunt.

I'm more concerned about shootings here in Central Florida. This morning, WESH News reported incidents of apartment robbers on a crime spree in the MetroWest area last night. As deputies were investigating the first crime, the robbers moved on to attack other apartments. They pistol-whipped one victim and shot another in the back. There's no link between these two crimes at this time, but I wouldn't be surprised if the man who shot the deputies was also involved in last night's attacks.

Orlando Style Magazine is holding it's annual Face of Orlando model competition. One of my friends, Allegra, is in the competition. She's working hard to get word out for votes, so I thought I'd help by posting the link here.

Allegra is model #3, the lovely redhead on the top right corner. As I write this, she's in second place. I'm hoping we can push her over the top.

It's up to you if you choose to vote. I don't have any idea who the other ladies are, but Allegra is one of the nicest people you could ever wish to meet.

Apparently, this contest had its rules developed in Chicago. You can vote as many times as you like.

All over the place, I see cars with a lot of smudges on their windshields. The Love Bugs are back in season. Twice a year, spring and autumn, these little buggers rise from the earth to mate all over the place. It seems their traditional mating place is hovering a few feet above each road, because they splatter all over your bumper, grille, hood, and windshield.

That's annoying enough, but they have some kind of juicy center that eats through paint. If you don't clean them off within a day, your car has a permanent monument to the exact spot where the pair of mating bugs sacrificed their lives while promulgating their species.

My luck is no different. Just last night, I took my truck through the car wash to remove the offenders. It mostly worked, but I still have to get out there and scrub the remaining body parts off by hand. These bugs get dried out and stick fiercely to your car after an hour or two.

If you think it's bad in a car, try getting pelted by these things on a motorcycle. It amazes me that I still see bikers out there with no helmet. You know they're swallowing a gallon of these bugs flying down the highway; particularly bridges over lakes or down back roads.

Love bugs are just part of life in Florida. They come and go within a couple of weeks twice a year, but everyone knows when they're here.

Today is a good day to be born. First, I got the news that my friends Niki & Zoli welcomed their new son, Cole, this morning at 10:07 am.

The nice folks over at Sea World have a new baby on their hands, a 7-foot-long, 350-pound calf born at 3:23 pm today.

If you believe in Astrology, I guess this makes them both a Virgo. So what else happened on this date in history?

• 1709 - The creator of the first dictionary of the English language, Samuel Johnson, was born in England.
• 1763 - It was reported by the Boston Gazette that the first piano had been built in the United States. The instrument, named the spinet, was made by John Harris.
• 1793 - U.S. President George Washington laid the actual cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol.
• 1851 - The first issue of "The New York Times" was published.
  1947 - The U.S. Air Force was established as a separate military branch by the National Security Act.
• 1955 - The "Ed Sullivan Show" began on CBS-TV. The show had been "The Toast of the Town" since 1948.
• 1965 - The first episode of "I Dream of Jeannie" was shown on NBC-TV. The last show was televised on September 1, 1970.
• 1981 - A museum honoring former President Ford was dedicated in Grand Rapids, MI.
• 1991 - U.S. President Bush said that he would send warplanes to escort U.N. helicopters that were searching for hidden Iraqi weapons if it became necessary.
• 1998 - The U.S. House Judiciary Committee voted to release the videotape of President Clinton's grand jury testimony from August 17th.
• 1998 - The FDA approved a once-a-day easier-to-swallow medication for AIDS patients.
• 2003 - Robert Duvall received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
  
Welcome to the world, Cole. Stay around a long time.

If you're going to live in Central Florida, the thunderstorm capital of America, you need to know how to drive in the rain. We had a pretty good soaker today at the usual time, which is whenever I'm driving home from work.

The common wisdom is that you should slow down when it starts raining. The roads are slick, so you need more time to brake and react. Unfortunately, some people take this wisdom to the extreme, thereby committing stupidity. If you're driving too slow for traffic, then traffic bunches up behind you. Instead of increasing reaction time, you've actually decreased the reaction time of the person behind you.

I drove home behind a few of these extremists tonight, and it seems like the slowest ones were in the left lane. Congratulations! That really makes my day. Not only are you driving 35 mph in a 65 mph speed limit zone, but you're also keeping sane folks from passing you.

Driving too fast in a heavy downpour causes different problems. For example, the white pickup I saw speeding along the 408 today managed to cause the rest of us to slow down. That's because he lost traction on a gentle curve. He had a nice hydroplane going as his pickup truck managed to plow into a tall streetlight post and knock it over. At least he didn't knock the pole over onto other traffic, and he didn't seem injured from his unique brand of stupidity. Some poor county worker now has to come out and fix the damage. I doubt the traffic ticket he receives will cover the cost of replacing that streetlight, so expect to take a hit on your tax dollars if you live in Orange county.

Rain. It's just another opportunity to demonstrate the ill effects of extremism.

About 11:00 ET this morning, I'm sitting in my home office chair surfing the web. Something strange happens. The chair starts a very gentle wobble. The desk does the same thing. In fact, so does the whole house. It's very slight, but also very real.

It turns out there was a 6.0 earthquake in the the Gulf of Mexico. The Orlando Sentinel reports people as far away as North Carolina felt the aftershock.

Ok, now this is where I draw the line. We have hurricanes and tourists. There's no damn way we need more threats in Florida. Keep your damned earthquakes in California. I prefer natural disasters that we can see coming for days. Home Depot probably bases its third quarter earnings projections upon the number of hurricanes predicted every year.

This page shows a map of people who reported feeling some effect os the earthquake. It includes a link if you want to add your own experience.

5,593. That's how many lightning strikes we've had in Central Florida in the past four hours, according to WESH's Ivan Cabrerra. That's why Central Florida is the Lightning capital of America.

In Florida, you get used to seeing water everywhere. We have beaches on three sides, and the inland is nearly flooded with lakes, ponds, rivers, and streams. Despite all of that, we're technically in a drought. The nice weather folks on TV still talk about being 8 inches low on rainfall every month. I try to remember that during our thunderstorms every afternoon.

Even though we're starting to get our afternoon thunderstorms, people still like to water their lawns. Actually, it's not so much people as organizations. Every day, every night, you see sprinklers running. Technically, the St. Johns River Water Management District only allows you to water your lawn two days a week. They even have an advertising campaign to remind us, It Takes Two.

So what did I see today that's like most every day? Sprinklers running during a downpour. We're getting drenched from the sky, but automatic sprinklers keep running. Not only do the sprinklers run, they often miss the grass. When I went to SunTrust today in Heathrow, the sprinkler was aimed at the parking lot instead of the grass.

Of course, there's another problem with this picture. It's stupid to water in the rain, but what if the system is on a timer? A schedule doesn't know when it's going to rain, so the timer just turns the sprinklers on and off - right? Well, it's not supposed to work that way. Florida law requires rain sensor devices on automatic lawn sprinkler systems.

Florida Statutes, Part VI, Chapter 373.62: Water Conservation; automatic sprinkler systems. -- Any person who purchases and installs an automatic lawn sprinkler system after May 1, 1991, shall install, and must maintain and operate, a rain sensor device or switch that will override the irrigation cycle of the sprinkler system when adequate rainfall has occurred.

This particular SunTrust was just built last year. So why the hell doesn't it use a rain sensor? It's not just SunTrust, though. I saw the same thing in the City of Lake Mary and the Heathrow International Business Park. Why the hell can't they obey the same rules as the rest of us?

It's the day after Primary Elections in Florida, and now we have results. In some cases, things didn't work out quite the way the experts predicted, but I'm OK with that. Most notably, Katherine Harris won the Republican primary for Senate. That means she goes head to head this November against the incumbent, Bill Nelson. You may recall that Katherine Harris now has her own definition in the Urban Dictionary. For his part, Bill Nelson has no relation to Major Tony Nelson from I Dream of Jeannie .

Now I have to come clean. As a Republican, I actually voted for Katherine Harris in the primary. Yes, she's nuts. I honestly wouldn't be proud to tell people she's my Senator, either. However, I don't believe she's going to beat Bill Nelson for the Senate. Bill, despite being a Democrat, just hasn't done anything stupid enough to warrant getting fired. Let's face it, there's a lot of power to being the incumbent in a political race.

So why did I vote for Crazy Katherine? Purely for entertainment value. The other contenders in the Republican primary also had no chance of beating Bill Nelson. Hell, I wouldn't vote for any of them for a county office. If one of them actually won the primary, we'd be in for a boring election season. That's not so with Katherine Harris in the race. I firmly believe that she's committed to our entertainment value, just as she's demonstrated in the race up to date.

What happens if she actually wins? Although that's a scary thought, I still think it provides entertainment value. Florida is not without its share of crazy politicians. Just look at Corrine Brown or even Katherine Harris. Both serve in the House of Representatives . They come from different parties, but both are just as wacky as a pair of raccoons breaking into a trash can. They make noise, they make a mess, and you get mad when they run off with something you didn't even want.

She probably won't win. If she does, I'll cringe to think that I was a part of the reason for her election. Then, I'll think, this is just what the Republicans need to stick it to the Democrats. The Republicans aren't offering her any support, so she's the perfect weapon when logic just doesn't prevail. As we all know, that's politics.

That's right, I placed my vote in Seminole County. Interestingly enough, I had the option to place two votes. It seems the volunteer clerk who checked my ID and made sure everything was proper...didn't make sure to only hand me one ballot sheet. Actually, I didn't even notice until I finished my ballot. Then I realized there was a second ballot sheet to fill out.

That seems odd. The mailer I received from the Seminole County Supervisor of Elections only listed one sample ballot. Upon review, I noticed it was the same ballot.

That's when the old Boy Scout in me took over. Before I considered the evil possibilities, I told the desk clerks that I received two ballots. That definitely got the attention of one volunteer, but not the lady who passed the ballots to me. They started checking records to see which one she recorded, but that didn't matter. It seems these ballots aren't numbered. I passed the blank one back and left them in their frenzy while I walked over to insert my ballot in the voting machine.

The guy stationed by the machine asked what was the issue. When I told them that I received two ballots, he just said "Don't matter. No big deal." I guess they didn't have much of a turnout, so why not double-up on the ballots for each voter?

As much as I like the idea that my vote counts more than others, I don't need to cheat. With the low voter turnout, my vote really does count more than those who never bothered to vote.

All that's left now is the waiting.