CNN.com is carrying an AP story reporting that the US Army is preparing to recall several thousand retired or discharged soldiers to active duty. These people are members of the Individual Ready Reserve, a classification that applies to soldiers who have completed the active and reserve components of their service but not the full eight-year enlistment period. Note that different rules apply to commissioned officers; I’m only talking about enlistees here.

How this applies to me, as a former Army member: It does not. I completed my full eight-year enlistment period in August of 1997. I am no longer part of the IRR and am not subject to recall, involuntary or otherwise. Note that this paragraph in the AP article is not quite correct:

Any former enlisted soldier who did not serve at least eight years on active duty is in the Individual Ready Reserve pool, as are all officers who have not resigned their commission.

It’s not eight years active, it’s eight years active plus reserve plus IRR.

So don’t worry about me! Instead, worry about 5,600 other citizen-soldiers who thought they’d completed their voluntary service and are now going to be sucked in to this awful situation.

The Register reports CERT recommends anything but IE to avoid the new round of security vulnerabilities for which no patch exists, or will exist any time soon due to the inherent weaknesses in IE’s design.

A statement on the CERT site said: “There are a number of significant vulnerabilities in technologies relating to the IE domain/zone security model, the DHTML object model, MIME type determination, and ActiveX. It is possible to reduce exposure to these vulnerabilities by using a different web browser, especially when browsing untrusted sites.”

If you’re thinking of switching, I highly recommend Opera.

Gandalf: “JOO SHALL NOT PASS!”

Suggestion: Don’t read while drinking anything, for the sake of your keyboard.

You’d think that with both Gmail and Orkut owned by Google, with whom I have a complex multifaceted relationship consisting of mail, adverts on this page, Blogger, and inline search, that somehow one or another of these elements would translate into an Orkut invite directly–just as the Blogger account led to the initial Gmail invite. Alas, it does not appear to be so.

Was that sentence long and confusing enough?

To summarize, I will trade my last remaining Gmail invitation for an Orkut invitation. Please use the email form found in the bottom right corner of this page as I don’t always see post comments right away.

From the “what were they thinking?!” department comes (via MSNBC/AP) this latest brilliant idea from Sacramento:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to repeal a state law that requires animal shelters to hold stray dogs and cats for up to six days before killing them.

Instead, there would be a three-day requirement for strays. Other animals, including birds, hamsters, potbellied pigs, rabbits, snakes and turtles, could be killed immediately.

Didn’t he learn when he tried to cut benefits to disabled senior citizens last year and had to back down almost immediately? The only way to successfully cut budgets is in areas where people don’t have emotional attachments–and telling shelters to kill defenseless and highly adoptable strays is definitely the wrong angle to take.
I’ll update this post when I can find a link to organized resistance to the proposal.

Update:

Saying he made a mistake months ago that would have made it easier for shelters to kill stray dogs and cats, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Friday he has reinstated the state’s six-day waiting period before lost animals could be killed.

I don’t believe the “months ago” comment for a second, but at least he changed his mind.

(Links fixed)