Up North Mommy

Please join me at the New and Improved Up North Mommy!

Hey, if you're here, you're in the wrong place!

But don't worry, you can find me at the New and Vastly Improved Up North Mommy.

Come on by!  Mimosas and breakfast goodies on the house!

I'm trying Flock for the first time

Wow. I'm kind of overwhelmed by this new Flock thing. One of my friends on Twitter raved about it, so I downloaded it. OMG, it's amazing. It's designed exactly for a blogger, a flickr person, a Twitterer, and a Facebooker like me. And I had previously had my gmail accounts sent through Thunderbird so that I could check them both at the same time. With Flock, I don't have to do that anymore because I can have both accounts connected through my browser.  Man, I love this thing.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: Flock, browser, web

Woman who drove teenage girl to suicide indicted

Lori Drew is a sick, sick woman.  I mean, there is something seriously wrong with her.  At 49 years old, she took on the persona of a 16 year old boy she named Josh Evans. She created a My Space page in his name for the purpose of tormenting Megan Meier, a 13 year old girl who had a falling out with her own daughter. Lori got Megan to fall for the nonexistent "Josh" and then cut off the relationship with Megan after she had become emotionally attached to him. After the breakup, "Josh" told Megan the world would be better off without her.  Shortly thereafter, Megan hanged herself in her closet.  Here's the story from Reuters:

A 49-year-old Missouri woman accused of pretending to be a love-struck teenage boy on MySpace and driving a 13-year-old girl to suicide with cruel messages was indicted on Thursday on federal charges.

Prosecutors say Lori Drew and others created the fake MySpace persona of a 16-year-old boy to woo neighbor Megan Meier for several weeks, then abruptly ended the relationship and said the world would be better off without her.

Meier's 2006 suicide by hanging, just hours after she read those final messages, made worldwide headlines and prompted calls for social networking sites like MySpace to crack down on cyber-bullying.

"This adult woman allegedly used the Internet to target a young teenage girl, with horrendous ramifications," U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Brien said in announcing the indictment in Los Angeles, where MySpace is based.

"Any adult who uses the Internet or a social gathering Web site to bully or harass another person, particularly a young teenage girl, needs to realize that their actions can have serious consequences," O'Brien said.

As far as I'm concerned Lori Drew should not be able live a peaceful or anonymous life ever again. She should be reminded of what she did every single day for the rest of her life: she tormented an innocent teenage girl so badly that she drove her to suicide just because of a spat she had with her daughter.  I sincerely hope she gets the maximum time in prison for this, not just because it's an adequate punishment for her actions, but because this woman is obviously so disturbed that she's a menace and needs to be separated from society.  What kind of an adult (and a parent for God's sake!) actually says to her kid when she has a falling out with her friend, "Hey, I have an idea..." and then proceeds to torment this innocent young girl? 

So who is this Lori Drew? Here's a picture:

And how did Lori react when she found out Megan killed herself because of what she did? Again from Reuters:

The indictment charges that after Meier killed herself, Drew had the phony MySpace account deleted and warned a girl who knew about it that she should "keep her mouth shut."

You stay classy, Lori Drew.  I'd say the world would be better off without the likes of her.

Cross-posted at Wizbang.

I'm a Labrador Retriever

I was bored so I took this dog breed quiz and found out I'm a Labrador Retriever

Yeah, I'd say that's about right. I'm very friendly and outgoing. 

What's up with Google Reader?

I've been trying to access my Google Reader, but I'm getting nothing.  When I click on it, it looks like it's loading but then doesn't load anything. It's just a blank screen with words Google Reader in the upper left hand corner.  It did the same thing all day yesterday until later in the afternoon when it finally loaded. What's up with that?

Update: Well, wouldn't you know it.  When I tried to access it immediately after writing this post, it worked.

Update II: It's doing it again. Come on, Google. Get on the stick and make your product work.