Sutton Fire Cause undetermined

I'm starting to think I should do a fire blog. MetroNews reports the cause fire in Sutton that took a large part of downtown a week ago is still "undetermined."

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West Virginia, WV

The No Slaw Zone

The WV Hot Dog Blog points out the Northern Panhandle is a no slaw zone. The no slaw line use to be about Clarksburg, unless they have joined the rest of the state. Of course I grew up in a town that would put slaw on about everything, including pizza.

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Charleston Area Bloggers, West Virginia, Blogs, Bloggers, WV, Charleston, WV

Moved

Holywriter reminds us that he has moved.

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West Virginia, Blogs, Bloggers, WV

Another GAZZ blogger retires

CrankyArtist has left the building.

Update: This happened back on January 12, but I just found the post in my Bloglines feeds today.

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West Virginia, WV, Charleston, WV

Parting shots

Primalscreamx fires a couple of parting shots over at Grossly Underpaid. One is pictures of Charleston streets, the other is a dispatch from a bus.

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West Virginia, WV, Charleston, WV

CAB4

CAB4 is at Rick Lee's studio at noon on April 7th. I might not make it, but I will try.

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Charleston Area Bloggers, Charleston, WV

Fires

This has been a bad week for fires. I personally know two people affected by the Aracoma apartment building fire. I work with one. The other is an old college friend. Both have been displaced but were not hurt.

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West Virginia, WV, Charleston, WV

GrosslyUnderpaid signs off the GAZZ blogs

Bill Lynch, AKA Primalscreamx and GrosslyUnderpaid, signs off the GAZZ blogs, but not without first making a fine post about the Transit Mall.

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West Virginia, WV, Charleston, WV

Liquid Diamonds, WV Tea

The Pentagon is a Friend of Coal.

The Pentagon is trying to persuade investors and the energy industry to embrace an 80-year-old technology to turn coal into liquid fuel to power planes, tanks and other battlefield vehicles.

Don't get your hopes of filling up the car with liquid coal just yet.

There are roadblocks. Building coal- to-fuel plants is expensive - possibly up to US$5 billion (HK$39 billion). Investors worry that their money could go up in smoke if the global price of oil drops, budding government subsidies dry up, or tougher environmental rules are put into place, said Kevin Book, a senior analyst for Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co.

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West Virginia, WV

On Public Art and the Yellow Clothesline

Amy Williams, the artist behind the he Yellow Clothesline public art display outside of Taylor Books, has written a piece on public art on the GAZZ blog LocalArt. She also recounts how the pieces of the installation art piece were recovered and put back into place outside Taylor Books.

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West Virginia, WV, Taylor Books, Charleston, WV

Another MU landmark bites the dust

The Huntington Herald-Dispatch reports the Mycroft's building is being torn down. The back of the build was also home to a rave/house music club, 42 Grove, when I attended graduate school. Mycroft's was the gathering point for all my friends during football season. It closed a couple of years ago. The owners said the county smoking ban put them out of business.

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West Virginia, WV, Huntington, WV

Torn down public art display returns

The gazz editor notes, "The Yellow Clothesline public art display outside of Taylor Books, is back up."

I noticed its return at lunch time. The new version looks smaller.

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West Virginia, WV, Taylor Books, Charleston, WV

Delish might have to close

It looks like Delish might have to close after the fire yesterday might have made the building unsafe. City engineers are assessing the building.

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West Virginia, WV, Charleston, WV

More Fire Pictures

Here's another example of how blogs makes us all reporters. Bob Coffield happened to be downtown with this family today, when the big fire broke out around noon in the building next to Delish. Bob got some great pictures.

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West Virginia, WV, Charleston, WV

Rick Lee Fire Pictures

Rick has pictures of a large fire that broke out in downtown Charleston today. At one point I heard it might be the Charleston Newspapers building, but it turns out the fire was down the street in the building next to Delish.

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West Virginia, WV, Charleston, WV

"Airborne target of interest" crashes near Charleston

This is a weird story to wake up to on a Saturday morning:

A multi-engine airplane being tracked across the country by U.S. Air Force F-16s crashed and burned several miles northwest of Charleston on Friday night, federal officials said.

The plane, a Beech Baron 56TC, was labeled “an airborne target of interest" by the Department of Homeland Security. The plane crashed around 10:30 p.m. Local officials got conflicting reports about whether one of the F-16s fired on the plane.

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West Virginia, WV, Security, Charleston, WV

A new memeorandum site

From the makers of memeorandum and tech.memeorandum comes a new site called WeSmirch: Automatic Dirt Digger, which is a fine addition to the memorandum family.

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Web. 2.0

A Directory of Famous West Virginians

AOL user jeff560 has a site devoted to Famous West Virginians. The site has been around for years. It includes not only famous people who were born in the state, but also famous people who lived in the state.

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Yellow Art Comes Down

Photo by Blair Gardner

Last night saw an unplanned end to the yellow art installation out side Taylor Books the GAZZ editor reports.

Taylor's staff arrived at 7 a.m. today to find that in the night someone had torn down and destroyed most of the art installation. You have to wonder at the worldview of some streetcrawler seeing such a thing and thinking, hey, man, I can trash that. Climbing the trees in the night, cutting or pulling it down and then runnning. Bold move, you knaves, what a powerful statement of personal ninnyhood you accomplished!

I noticed it was gone when I walked to work this morning, but I didn't know it was an act of vandalism.

Technorati Tags: West Virginia, WV, Taylor Books, Charleston, WV

Second Criminal Conviction Under HIPAA

Bob Coffield at Health Care Law Blog reports the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas has announced a conviction under HIPAA the disclosure of confidential medical record information.

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Blawgs, HIPAA

Randal McCloy and Sago Mine update

International Coal Group said Tuesday it believes a lightning strike sparked the Jan. 2 explosion that killed 12 workers at the Sago Mine.

The news comes as survivor Randal McCloy made his first visit home since the disaster.

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West Virginia, WV

Back on the Undernet

Back in the day, circa 1996, I used to spend a lot of time on IRC. We had quite a group that hung out on the old #west_virgina channel on the undernet. We had a reunion of sorts a few days ago. Using AIM, Yahoo, and LiveJournal the word spread like wildfire that some of the old regulars where in the channel. We had about 20 people at one time. It was like a time machine. I chatted with people I hadn't seen in six years.

A few diehards have kept the channel open, and it looks like we are headed for a small revival. If you read this and used to hang around #west_virgina on us.undernet.org, please drop by.

If you are new to IRC please download a client and check it out.

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West Virginia, WV, IRC

Richwood sites

I spent the day traveling to Richwood for my niece's eighth birthday. There are a couple of great Richwood websites: www.richwoodwv.com and www.richwooders.com. The second site has a number of pictures taken by my father, who name is also Bill Gardner.

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West Virginia, WV

MU movie site

Marshall has set up an official site for the forthcoming movie about the greatest air tragedy in the history of collegiate sports.

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West Virginia, WV, Marshall Football Movie

The great Lyric Theatre of 1975

This afternoon I went looking for some of the large photographs that hang in my building's newly remodeled lobby and found fellow blogger Bill Reed. Bill is a journalist with WV roots, who covers show business, the arts, and popular music. He wrote about the great Lyric Theatre fire of 1975 in his memoir Early Plastics.

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West Virginia, Blogs, Bloggers, WV

Taylor Books on to be on C-SPAN BookTV again

C-SPAN BookTV will be at Taylor Books this morning to shoot a half-hour documentary on the bookstore. Owner Ann Saville said they like the look of the place when they were in town for the talk by Craig Crawford on his book “Attack the Messenger.”

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West Virginia, WV

Legislature passes WV Health Care network bill

The Huntington Herald-Dispatch: Manchin's health network bill clears Legislature.

The public-private network would enable prescription drug tracking and electronic transmission of drug interaction and allergy alerts; results of laboratory, X-ray, or other diagnostic examinations and medical records to other providers with the patient's consent.

It also would allow secure electronic consultations between doctors and patients and electronic health care claims submission and processing.

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West Virginia, WV

Leaked talking points memo

Will Stewart has the details of a “talking points memo” from Governor Manchin to Senate Democrats regarding Logan's Law. Will says the document was inadvertently left by the Democrats after they caucused Wednesday afternoon.

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West Virginia, WV

Live Nude Women

There was a nude woman today at the Town Center Mall, Court Street entrance, but I missed it. And no this doesn't have anything to do with raging red's post today.

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West Virginia, WV

Third House Picture

Here is photographic evidence that Third House happened last night. Included in the picture is Doc Searls' cousin Tom Searls.

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West Virginia, WV

Randal McCloy update

I just learned via the ARRL website that Randy McCloy is not only a mining disaster survivor, but is also an an amateur radio technician class licensee. His call sign is KC8VKZ. Apparently there has been an outpouring of good wishes from the Amateur Radio community.

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West Virginia, WV, Amateur Radio

CAB4

Rick Lee has proposed a date for CAB4. Rick's pictures from CAB3 are here.

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Charleston Area Bloggers, West Virginia, Blogs, Bloggers

Mashed Pennies

Blair and I saw a machine that made a souvenir by mashing a penny at the Newport Aquarium. While it might be cool for the kids, I found it to be something you would find in a tourist trap. Now there is one in the Clay Center. I guess I won't have to travel to Cincinnati the next time I want to mangle a penny.

Here's a great shot of me standing in front of the Cincinnati skyline on our visit to the Newport Aquarium. It would be a great picture, but I have my eyes closed.

Third House

Looks like Third House is tonight. Guess I won't be attending this year. Because of the short notice, I have no tickets. It looks like a bunch of journalist could do a better job publicizing the event so friends or former students of the MU journalism school could attend.

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West Virginia, WV

Yet another West Virginia blogger

The newest addition to the blogroll, Lee at Learning and Technology, points out yet another West Virginia blogger, Jim at Meads Family Habitat. Jim is a retired Biology professor.

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West Virginia, Blogs, Bloggers, WV

A new day, a new hamster

After Marley passed away last night Blair and I had a hamster-shaped hole in our hearts. We really debated getting another one, but it seems so empty with Marley.

This afternoon Bart the hamster came to live with us. He's very small and still very young, but he is as mischievous as his name-sake.

Pick a name already

Locally we used to have AT&T Wireless phones. Then they are purchased by BellSouth. Now it's known as Cingular. According to CNN the sell of BellSouth to AT&T will mean another name change.

Under the deal, the Cingular brand will be phased out in favor of the AT&T brand. The name will be familiar to wireless customers: AT&T Wireless Inc., a spin-off of AT&T, was acquired by Cingular in October 2004.

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Cell Phones

The First Web Browser

Screenshot of the first web browser. Looks like it's running on a NeXt box.

read more | digg story

Even Another Passing

Marley the hamster has died. He was four months old. Marley began life in a pet store and came to live with us in October. His favorite activities were running the his hamster wheel and spending time in his hamster ball. He will be sorely missed.

Another passing

There has been another pass of note in my personal life. One of my professors from graduate school has died. The man who taught me how to write obits appeared to write his own obit. The first two lines read, "February 26, 2006 Dwight William Jensen, 71, of Cazenovia, kicked the bucket February 26, 2006, following a long illness. He expected to die sooner or later, but always hoped it would be later."

He was quite a character. When a student once asked him how long his paper for class should be, Jensen said, "About as long as a piece of string."

The MU student newspaper, the very newspaper his help save, has a nice piece on Jensen.

CAB3 Pictures

Rick Lee has pictures from this morning's Charleston Area Bloggers gathering. And yes, a girl finally attended.

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Blogging, Charleston Area Bloggers, West Virginia, Blogs, Bloggers, WV

Even more Dave Chappelle drama

Seems all Dave Chappelle does anymore is sit on his farm in Yellow Springs, OH and poke Comedy Central management in the eye. The latest is Dave's statement that if Comedy Central aires the show they have in the can for he walked out the door last May, he won't return for further production of his hit "Chappelle Show".

I feel like it's kind of a bully move," Chappelle told the Dayton Daily News on Wednesday. "That's just how I feel about it. I don't know if that's the case. But if people don't watch it, then I'd be more than happy."

Dave has a new movie called "Block Party". The trailer looks funny but not funny enough to pay to see it in the theater.

In recent weeks Chappelle returned to television with appearances on "Inside the Actor's Studio" and "Oprah".

Another WV Blogger

Bob Coffield emailed me this evening to point out another another West Virginia blogger. Welcome to the blogroll Lee. Lee blogs about learning and technology.

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West Virginia, Blogs, WV