The Southerner Journal

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - I just finished grading finals.

I got up at 4:30 a.m. to drive 100 miles to Monticello to make sure those grades were submitted by the 10 a.m. deadline. You may wonder why I’d leave so early. It turns out my office computer caught a malware virus last week that kept me from entering grades online as it had to be completely rebuilt. Joy. I digress.

So I arrived at 6:45 a.m. without coffee or breakfast (my stomach’s acting up) to finish adding things up and checking everything twice, which allowed me to submit them by hand just before 10 a.m.

Once that was done, I had to direct maintenance workers to help move my three-room lab into one small room. I thought it might work, maybe, not likely, but I’d gone so far as to diagram the room to indicate table placement: four 8-foot tables, two 5-foot tables and a 4-foot desk. Notice, I’ve given lengths. Unfortunately, the 8-foot tables were so wide, only three would fit.

Considering I wanted to return to North Little Rock to spend some time with my best friend (who just got back from Iraq), I became somewhat flustered, but the cold and blustery day made my face red anyway. (True, but silly; I couldn’t help it.) I invited the dean to take a look. He did and even found some thinner 4-foot tables that we might be able to line the walls with. God bless Dean Spencer.

So I’m thinking my day’s getting better. I grab glass from some folks (as I’m known to occasionally do since we recycle in NLR) and head 100 miles north. It’s cold, dreary, rainy … and I’m happy to be heading back, listening to Widespread Panic, watching for the troopers and the cars sliding off the road, waiting in a traffic jam crossing the river bridge and another on the Levy overpass.

Upon arriving home, I receive a phone call from the mother of one of my students. What?! (you incredulously ask) Her MOM? Seriously. At college? Actually a university. Granted, it’s not the first time I’ve had a parent inappropriately contact me. One man came to the door of my class while I taught to find out if his daughter was making it to class. He wanted her to graduate and was tired of paying for it.

But I can say this is a first. Never before has a parent called me, especially to bitch at me. (That’s why I don’t teach high school.) But here I am, phone stuck to my ear, explaining that I cannot talk to her about her daughter’s grades as it violates federal law (FERPA), explaining I’m taking her call purely as a courtesy, and if the student wants to talk, I needed to speak with her.

“I don’t wanna talk to him!” I hear her screaming in the background, just before the phone clicked. Damn, she even hung up on me.

At first, I got a little peeved. But then I realize this happened two days after I met the mother of a former student, who nearly had tears in her eyes thanking me for helping her son become independent enough to strike out on his own. Maybe it’s karma?

Whatever. After that, I found it easy to get online and read the other complaints about grades. I can cut-and-paste the course requirements right into the e-mails, so it’s easy to explain why things didn’t turn out as planned … without seeing anyone face-to-face or listening to an early 20-something’s mother as she bitches at me over the cellphone. (sigh)

A group known as the YesMen spoofed the New York Times this morning. OK, you may say, putting up this fake Web site could be done by almost anyone. But going to the trouble of making and distributing a print edition to the morning commuters?

That’s genius .

MONTICELLO, Ark. — I received the following warning from our Information Technology team at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. Thought you might want to be cautious:

Original release date: November 6, 2008 at 9:26 am Last revised: November 6, 2008 at 9:26 am

US-CERT (US Computer Emergency Readiness Team) is aware of public reports of email attacks circulating that are related to the recent U.S. presidential election. The email messages appear to be coming from a seemingly legitimate source and contain a message indicating that additional news coverage of the election is available by following a link. The link (see example below) directs users to a website that appears to contain a video of the president elect. The website will instruct the user to update to a new version of Adobe Flash Player in order to view the video. This update is not a legitimate Adobe Flash Player update; it is malicious code. If the user downloads this executable file, malicious code may be installed on the system.

US-CERT encourages users to take the following preventative measures to mitigate the security risks:

  * Install antivirus software, and keep the virus signatures up to date.

  * Do not follow unsolicited links.

  * Use caution when visiting untrusted websites.

  * Use caution when downloading and installing applications.

  * Obtain software applications and updates directly from the  vendor’s website.

Relevant Url:

<http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001530.html>

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — ‘Tis the season of ghosts, werewolves, witches and zombies. Halloween waits at week’s end.

My wife carved the pumpkin at left, took its picture and sent it to me over the cell phone. She claims Halloween as her favorite holiday.

“There’s much less pressure than the other ones,” Tanya says. “It’s pure fun. And I like the origination of the holiday as an opportunity to commune with ones who are gone.”

Unfortunately, some people never know if their loved one is truly gone. They just disappear. From the other side, the system occasionally finds victims of crimes without knowing who the victim was.

For your Halloween treat, examine what happens to the unidentified dead in 21st century Arkansas through an article I wrote earlier this year.

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Tell Me, Who are You?
Tracking the Unidentified Dead
By Ronald Sitton

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Nobody knows the last thought that went through her head, but Little Rock homicide Detective John “J.C.” White knows the last thing was a bullet.

Have You Seen Me? — Little Rock Police still want to know who this woman was. If you have any information, contact Det. John “J.C.” White in homicide at 501-371-4660 or jwhite@littlerock.org.

She wore Arizona-brand carpenter jeans with a black leather belt and a large brown T-shirt. Over this, an extra-extra large dark blue windbreaker and jumpsuit pants while white-and-blue Reeboks clad her feet. A gold-and-silver link bracelet hung from her wrist. Standing between 5’3” and 5’7” with black hair and a nose broken earlier in life, the black woman could have been anywhere between 18 and 40.

On a walk with its owner in August 2002, a dog uncovered her tennis shoes and bones face-down under a pile of pink insulation behind an abandoned-looking house at 2772 Reservoir Road. The first responding officer would have started the investigation by preserving the scene, especially any physical evidence that would lead to identification of the victim or a suspect.

Dr. Cheryl May, a forensic anthropologist from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Criminal Justice Institute, estimated the victim’s body had been there for several months. Inventory of her various clothes would later help with educated guesses of her overall size.  Pictures of the scene show an apparently abandoned house, but crime scene investigators found nothing of evidentiary value like a bullet casing or murder weapon – though they did find more of her teeth.

“Once you’ve exhausted everything on the scene, hopefully by then you’ve got her identified. And we just haven’t even gotten to the point of getting her identified yet,” White says. “We don’t know where to start. We got initial phone calls about what could have happened, this, that and the other, but in following up on that information, we always found out that the person who we thought that might’ve been killed was actually alive. Therefore that lead has been exhausted, so we move on to the next. At this point we just don’t have anything, we don’t have anything whatsoever. It’s frustrating, very frustrating.”

Occasionally White works suicides, accidental deaths and deaths of homeless victims that result in an unidentified body prior to an examination by the Arkansas State Crime Laboratory. But the black female from six years ago represents the only unidentified homicide victim in White’s current caseload.

A walk through claustrophobic hallways occasionally turns passer-bys sideways within the four-story concrete and steel Pulaski County Administration Building. Garland Camper starts his third month on the third floor as full-time Pulaski County Coroner since assuming the post May 9 after nearly 14 years as chief deputy coroner. A grandson of a cemetery caretaker, Camper serves as the state’s only appointed coroner in 75 counties.

Family pictures dot the wall and various other nooks around his office; his Dell computer sits next to a window while current case files cover his desk. He also keeps a framed photo of the 2005 Asian tsunami’s carnage hanging on the wall. The surreal sight shows bodies littering a beach like match boxes emptied in waves over a floor. Read the rest of this entry »

VBS.tv takes a tour of garbage island.

http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1485308505