Hmm. I wonder what this is all about.

The temperature in Hartford is 1 below zero right now, according to weather.com. The dew point is minus-22. The wind chill? A balmy 25 below.

It’s also -1 degrees — and snowing — in Buffalo.

Here in Mesa, AZ, according to the digital thermometer that Becky got me for Christmas, it’s 58. Above zero. :)

UPDATE: It’s now just after 11:00 PM Eastern time, and the temperature in Hartford is 3 below zero. The official forecast low is -5; seems like it might get even a bit lower than that.

Still -1 in Buffalo. Lame. Hartford is way cooler. So to speak. :)

Carol Moseley Braun dropped out of the race for president today, and asked her supporters to “stand instead for Howard Dean.” Instant polling suggested that at least six of Braun’s seven supporters nationwide will, in fact, vote for Dean. :)

UPDATE: ScrappleFace: “Braun Drops Out, Helps Dean Find Blacks for Cabinet.”

Today’s lunch-break blog update deals not with affairs of state, but with news from the heavens: the Mars rover Spirit is officially roving!

Space.com reports:

PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Spirit Mars rover has wheeled itself onto martian landscape, leaving its stationary lander that served as the robot’s home base for 12 days on the red planet.

The Mars Exploration Rover was commanded by the click of a mouse button to exit down a lander petal at 12:21:30 a.m. Pacific Standard Time (PST). It was ordered to head in a north-northwest direction. The six-wheeled robot is now resting in the stark, rock strewn and geologically rich landscape that is Gusev Crater.

According to NASA, “Jet Propulsion Lab engineers played Baha Men’s ‘Who Let the Dogs Out’ in the control room as they watched new images confirming that the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit successfully rolled off its lander platform early Thursday morning.” Heh. Them nerds is silly.

Anyway, the rover sent back a picture (seen near the top of this post) of its forward-looking view of the Martian surface, and also this picture looking back at the lander and at its own tracks in the soil:

Pretty neat! You can get more, of course, on the official NASA site for the Mars mission, including the complete collection of raw images from Spirit. A few selected cool shots:

(Is that a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup on Mars? :)

UPDATE:
…It was oh, such a treat
When she moved several feet
And they call her the Martian Rover! :)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Google is celebrating the rover’s accomplishment with a new logo at the top of their homepage:

Hee hee hee.

Well, this is good.

This Dean supporter says John Edwards is gaining momentum, and this blogger thinks it will continue. Interesting.

Meanwhile, here in Arizona, it’s a two-man race between Dean and Clark, according to the latest polls. That’s no surprise; both have been advertising on TV heavily. Of course, so has Lieberman, and it hasn’t helped him much. (sigh)

But I guess Lieberman’s TV campaign here has just started, whereas the other two have been fighting an “air war” for a while now. So, according to the article, Joe’s people hope his distant third-place standing will improve between now and Feb. 3. Well, like Aragorn says, “There is always hope.” (Note that he was saying this before the utterly hopeless battle of Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers. The moral of the story? Joe Lieberman can win, provided he is rescued at the last minute by the unexpected arrivals of 1) a bunch of Elves, 2) a recently resurrected wizard, 3) an army of several hundred horsemen charging down a hill with a 70-degree incline, and 4) a forest of deadly talking trees. :)

Anyway, the key for Dean may be turnout among people my age. The under-35 age group is where Dean’s strongest support comes from, but it also happens to be the most fickle. Indeed, Dean leads Clark 29% to 26% among all Democrats in Arizona, but Clark leads 34% to 26% among likely voters.

Check out my iPhoto gallery of the beautiful sunset I saw during the bus ride home yesterday:

Note the plane taking off from Sky Harbor airport. Also, there’s a picture in there of my laptop on (appropriately enough) my lap, as I listen to iTunes and do some web design.

Breaking news from Manhattan, courtesy of an e-mail from my dad: “Mom has rescued an injured Seagull, now ensconced in the…bathroom [of our 190th Street apartment]. I am on phone with her now. Broken wing. The bird, not Mom.” Heh.

UPDATE: My dad adds detail in a second e-mail: “This Seagull was rescued in the parking lot at NEWARK, & transported therefrom to [Manhattan].” (My mom works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art store at Newark Airport.) “She has given the bird Water & Crumbled Cookies.” She says she will take a digital picture later.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Many more details, including an update from the Seagull Rescuer herself — and even a budding animal-rights debate — can be found in comments.

Tim’s latest Complaint asks whether reasoned political discourse is dead… and uses me as a prime example. The worst part is, he makes some good points. Bastard. :)

Well, I’ve been working on site design using BBEdit during my bus rides to and from work this week, and I have a very preliminary product to share with y’all. Please don’t judge it too harshly, as it is very much a work in progress. And yes, Dane, it will eventually look less like a ripoff of the Command Post and more like a unique Brendan Loy creation. I just needed a starting point so I could learn some CSS by doing. :)

Anyway, although the design will no doubt change beyond recognition before it ever sees the light of day, this will give you a decent idea of some of the concepts, at least, that I’m toying with. Keep in mind, this is only the homepage. Each blog, including mine, will have its own separate front page (which I haven’t even begun to start redesigning yet).

Feedback is welcome… and slightly dreaded. :)

UPDATE: A couple of additional notes: the photos in the upper left and right corners are not designed to be permanent, but rather, would be just two of several dozen photos that would rotate randomly using some sort of script. Basically, you’d have a different set of photos each time you load the page. Also, keep in mind that a lot of the links are broken, and some of the photos will probably change. And… well, I could list about 1,000 other ways in which it’s incomplete or likely to change, but you get the idea. As I said, it’s a work in progress. If this were software development, we wouldn’t even be at the alpha-release stage yet. :)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hmm… www.irishtrojan.com is available. I may register it. I liked the sound of that appellation as soon I thought of it (before I wrote the song; the song was an outgrowth of the concept, not vice versa), and I like the idea of “branding” my blog. (Hey, Adrienne! A marketing term! :) So perhaps I’ll have www.irishtrojan.com redirect to my main blog page, which will actually be located at www.brendanloy.com/irishtrojan/ … but I’m still thinking about it. (”Brendan’s not in the habit / Of closing the book / On his options when they’re still alive” :)

The Connecticut state legislature has formed a bipartisan committee to investigate the possibility of impeaching Governor John Rowland. The Connecticut Political Watch blog has this story covered (although, alas, their permalinks don’t work).

Meanwhile, the New York Times today called for Rowland’s resignation.

UPDATE: A remedial math course for our dear governor: there are 36 members of the State Senate (which would eventually vote on whether to convict Rowland if he is impeached; a two-thirds majority would be needed). Of those 36 senators, 15 are, like Rowland, Republicans. That would be enough to keep the governor in office, if they vote as a bloc — but 11 of the 15 have already publicly called on Rowland to resign.

That’s right, nevermind two-thirds of the whote Senate, more than two-thirds of his presumptive supporters in the Senate want him gone.

If we assume that the 21 Senate Democrats are also not exactly big fans of the corrupt bully who has been sneering at them for the last nine years, it turns out that Rowland has exactly 4 supporters out of 36 in the chamber that will decide his fate.

Four. Out of thirty-six. Got that?

Even if the constitutional requirement for removal from office was an eight-ninths majority instead of two-thirds, Rowland would still probably lose!!!

Like I said a couple of days ago… it’s time to go, governor.

Here, by the way, is an article on Connecticut impeachment procedures. Here’s a major difference from the federal version:

Rowland would be removed from office temporarily if the House voted impeachment and sent his case to the Senate for a trial. If he were convicted in the Senate, he would be removed permanently.

Lunch-time blog break: The Newington High girls basketball team lost its first game of the season, to Bulkeley in overtime last night. The Herald reports:

Bulkeley 55, Newington 45, OT: Newington rallied from an 11-point halftime deficit to force overtime before suffering its first loss of the season at Bulkeley on Tuesday night.

Kelly McVey had 13 points and Yasmin Ithier-Vicenty 12 for Newington, which hosts Bristol Eastern on Friday night.

Hmm… the Hartford Courant reported the final score as 56-45, not 55-45. I wonder which it really was.

It appears that comment-spammers have somehow gained access to my blog and replaced at least one post with comment-spam crap. I don’t know when or how this happened. I just changed my password, but clearly that’s not getting to the root of the problem. Later, when I have more time, I will have to investigate this further, assess the damage, and come up with some sort of plan of action.

UPDATE: I’m still not sure when this security breach happened, but it was sometime after Google’s most recent cache of the post in question.

The Daily Trojan’s first issue of the spring semester is out today, which means we can finally read the DT’s take on the three national championships won by Trojan teams while the official student newspaper of USC was settling down for a long winter’s nap.

Well, we can if we want to. Frankly, I’m not all that interested anymore. I guess that’s why they call it “old news.” I suppose I’ll read the articles eventually, at least Arash’s columns. But not right now. Somehow, Jan. 1’s news just isn’t that compelling on Jan. 13.

I am, however, extremely interested in, and amused by, the fact that the Daily Trojan made a typo on its own name in an online teaser: “The Daily Trojans looks back at the top films from last year.” Daily Trojans, plural? Heh.

Anyway… here’s the front page:

They had two weeks to think about it, and the best headline they could come up with was “Bowl victory smells like Roses”? Lame.

New photo galleries online…

Our trip to L.A.

Sightseeing in D.C.

The parakeets!

Speaking of the parakeets, the cat blog has returned, with Sasha’s bird-obsessed thoughts and Butter’s confused frustration about the long furry thing that keeps following her around, which may or may not be a part of her anatomy.

In other blog-child news, Becky has a lengthy post on Saddam Hussein’s “creation”… my dad is griping about the weather… and we all eagerly await Tim Stevens’s promised Tuesday complaint. :)