WINS OHIO

DAMN WINS TEXAS

This is one cool commercial -- Obama's working for the party

Link...

Any predictions for today's primaries?

One observation is that everyone seems to be focused on winning states v. winning delegates. States don't matter. Delegates do. As I understand it, someone could "win" Texas by one or two points but still end up with fewer delegates because of their goofy primary plus caucus system.

I predict there will be a relatively close split of delegates in Texas and Ohio, Clinton will not pull ahead, Obama cannot mathematically win enough to put it away, so the campaigns reset for Pennsylvania tomorrow and we have six more weeks of dreary primary winter.

On the other hand, there are about 330 delegates at stake in Texas and Ohio. On the outside chance that Obama takes them two to one, I believe that would put him approx. 300 delegates ahead of Clinton and it's hard to see where she makes that up in the remaining races so she would have a tough decision to make.

KNS reports that U.T. has a new interim Chief Information Officer, Jesse Poore. He sounds like a smart and accomplished guy. With a background in scientific and engineering computing, though, I'm not sure he's the kind of person they need.

It reminds me of back when the industry was desperate for programmers trained in business, accounting, and COBOL, and U.T. only taught FORTRAN.

A major IT department is a huge and complicated business within a business, especially at a university where it's hard to imagine a more diverse set of applications and users. Running it has to be one of the toughest corporate type jobs there is, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

From a systems management standpoint, the scientific and engineering applications seem like only a small part, used mostly by uber-geeks who do their own thing but probably can't balance their own checkbook much less put out a payroll for ten thousand employees every two weeks.

And somebody has to deal with the thousands of mortals trying to install the latest virus protection updates on their bloated and broken Windows boxes lest the latest round of infected "ten reasons dogs are better companions than men" email forwards crash The Matrix. Come to think of it, that might actually be a bigger challenge than aiming a neutron beam at a specific electron and hitting it or whatever it is those uber-geeks do.

Anyway, see the previous discussion with a lot of free advice here.

WATE has been following the story of a woman whose dog died under mysterious circumstances at a pet groomer. There was speculation that the death was due to overheating in a dryer cage.

As we mentioned here previously, there is proposed legislation in Massachusetts and New York to regulate pet groomers and to ban dryer cages.

WATE reported last week that State Sen. Tim Burchett (R-Knoxville) is proposing the same for Tennessee:

"We've got to regulate the grooming industry and if we don't, we end with people losing their animals and no animal deserves to die like that," Burchett says.

The senator wants cage dryers banned and he also wants licensing for groomers.

The report quotes a state groomer's association spokesperson as saying they oppose such regulation.

Last night there was a meeting of area groomers to discuss the issues. The woman whose pet died at a local groomer confronted the owner at the meeting. The owner publicly admitted what happened for the first time:

"The timer on the dryer cage got stuck and it was extremely hot and I got rid of the dryer and fired the employee," says Happy Tails owner Erik Webb.

According to the report, he apologized to "all the pet owners who lost animals at his facility."

As I said previously, it sounds to me like dryer cages should be outlawed. There should be other regulation, too, about the use of sedatives and making sure groomers are at least minimally qualified and are familiar with various breed standards for grooming.

Since this is National Girl Scout Month, we thought this was a good story to share with everyone. There is a real Knoxville connection. "Izzie" was Elizabeth Ijams the daughter of Mr. And Mrs. Harry Ijams. She was a member of Mohican Troop 8 by 1923. There were one-day camps weekly at the Bird Preserve at the Harry Ijams house. This became Ijams Nature Center. Mrs. Harry Ijams joined the first Girl Scout Council in Knoxville in 1923. In Jan. 1930 Elizabeth Ijams, daughter of Mr.and Mrs. Harry Ijams, was hired as director of Knoxville council and later director in Nashville and then on to National. Mrs. W.E. Ijams was very active in GS, Her father, Col. Townsend, donated property of a GS camp in the Smokeys. After the gov. wanted the land for the national park, this camp became Camp Tremont.