Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/120823
NEWS OF THE WEIRD by CHUCK SHEPPARD In March, Microsoft was fined 561 million euros (about $725 million) by the European Commission after, apparently, a programmer carelessly left out just one line of code in Microsoft's Service Pack 1 of European versions of Windows 7. That one line would have triggered the system to offer web browsers other than Microsoft's own Internet Explorer, which Microsoft had agreed to include to settle charges that it was monopolizing the webbrowser business. (Also in March, the government of Denmark said that Microsoft owed it about a billion dollars in unpaid taxes when it took over a Danish company and tried to route its taxes through notorious tax havens such as Bermuda. According to a March Reuters report, Denmark is among the first European countries to challenge such U.S.-standard tax shenanigans and is expecting payment in full.) [The Guardian (London), 3-62013] [Reuters, 3-42013] Recurring Themes Being identified with the number 666 (the "mark of the beast" in the Bible's Book of Revelation) Chuck Sheppard continues to trouble the righteous. Walter Slonopas, 52, felt required to resign as a maintenance worker for Contech Casting in Clarksville, Tenn., in February after receiving his W-2 form, which he noted was the 666th mailed out by Contech this year. (However, perhaps Slonopas is not so innocent. He had been working for Contech for less than two years, yet had already been "assigned" the number 666 twice — on the company's payroll books and the company's time-clock system.) [USA Today, 2-7-2013] The Iconic Phantom Black/Hispanic Perpetrator: In February, victims of crimes in San Antonio, Texas, and Terrebonne Parish, La., complained to police that they had been assaulted by, respectively, a "Hispanic male" and an "unknown black man" — whom the victims admitted later did not exist. San Antonio police learned that their victim had been accidentally, embarrassingly, shot by a friend mishandling his gun. Louisiana authorities found that their victim had not been abducted and raped (and had her baby stolen). Rather, she had wanted to hide her miscarriage from family and friends and invented a phantom attack as more acceptable. [KENS-TV (San Antonio), 2-6-2013] [WWL-TV (New Orleans), 2-28-2013] WEEKLY HOROSCOPES BY HOLIDAY For the Week of April 14, 2013 ARIES (March 21-April 19) It's not a good week for making small judgments and addressing fine details. Though it would seem that if you were to consider each element fairly and act accordingly, you would get a good result on the whole, there are hidden factors involved. Start with your big picture. LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23) Everyone knows that weight loss is a matter of burning more calories than you consume. But like so many other things in life, it's the application of the principle that's tricky. That's why you appreciate people who actually do what they set out to do. TAURUS (April 20-May 20) Television makes you believe that someone somewhere has it all figured out. This couldn't be farther from the truth. Believe in yourself, and give more credence to your own experiences. SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21) It is said that ignorance is bliss, but ignorance is an extremely difficult state to achieve for one as psychically attuned as you, dear Scorpio. You're aware of your environment to the extreme, and once you know, you can't un-know. GEMINI (May 21-June 21) Sometimes the one who is best for a job is not very much fun but is more capable, trustworthy and qualified than other candidates. It will be up to you to decide whether you are you running a meritocracy or using some other criteria to choose your teammates for the job at hand. SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) Feelings are like colors. You will sample from many colors on life's palette of emotional tones this week. Colors you don't like will be represented, too. You may find it interesting how a shade you don't enjoy on its own can be necessary to make what you do like stand out. CANCER (June 22-July 22) People want to know more about you this week. You are somehow able to share an exciting part of you without answering the dull questions at hand. Skills like this are what make you so charming. CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) There's nothing wrong with wanting a little credit for your work, even if it's the kind of work people don't usually notice or applaud. They would notice if it weren't done. If you have to actually tell people to thank you, do so. LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) When you feel yourself caring too much about success, do everything in your power to go the opposite direction. Attachment to an outcome can only make you feel uptight and desperate, repelling the very thing you want to bring closer to you. VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) Joy is not like ice cream or any lovely thing that will give you a bellyache if you have too much of it. Whatever joy you experience, you could benefit from having more. You're right to devote more energy to the things that make you smile. AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) Research can be somewhat of a compulsion for you. It's because you are invested in making the right decision. You feel it's your duty to do so. This week you can just sense the right decision, and it won't take extensive research. All you have to do is trust yourself. PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) You don't find it difficult to be nice to everyone you come in contact with, so it's hard for you to understand why some find this challenging. Lead the way, and you'll be surprised how quickly your prickly counterparts catch on. It's just one of the many ways in which you rule your world this week. By Holiday Mathis ADVICE GODDESS When You Wish Upon a Sleaze I was seeing a guy for four months — a guy I liked better than I've ever liked anyone. Two months in, he was calling me his girlfriend, putting me on the phone with his mom, and saying that I shouldn't look to be dating other people. Yet, I noticed that he remained on the dating website we met on and was checking in there daily. I asked him whether he was seeing other girls on the site, and he said, "Only a friend I work with and she is older anyway." When I'd ask whether he was sleeping with other girls, he'd always say no. Well, he left his email open on my computer, and I searched it and discovered he'd been contacting several women daily on the dating site and sleeping with at least one other woman. I contacted her and told her he's contacting numerous other women so she'd know he's a sociopath, a sex addict, a liar and a cheat. Now I'm thinking about warning other women he's contacted. Is that crazy? — Badly Betrayed Amy Alkon A guy isn't logging in at a dating site daily because his mouse gets lost on the way to the sports scores. Eventually, Reality popped up to ask you, "Am I really going to have to bite you?" So, you asked the guy whether he was seeing anybody from the site, and he said, "Only a friend I work with." Note that this was not a no. To a woman seeking the truth, it sounds like what it was — a truth-flavored lie. But you cut up all the red flags and did a remarkable job repurposing them into throw pillows. The fact that your suspicions finally got too big to ignore didn't give you the right to plow through the guy's email. People are entitled to privacy. Even scummy people. Even scummy people who are sleeping with you. If a guy's level of sharing doesn't match your need to know, find the door — not an opportune moment to go all Nancy Drew on his Gmail. Railing about what a bad guy your ex is and contacting every woman he ever said "'sup?" to on some dating site is a great idea, as it will keep you far too busy to admit that you made it possible for him to skeeve you. (Your not wanting to know coincided rather neatly with his wanting to keep his options open.) You can't control whether somebody lies to you. You can only control whether you do — and whether you treat reality like the 50-foot brick wall it is or pretend, for as long as you can, that it comes with an elastic waistband like fat men's pants Amy Alkon all rights reserved. COPYRIGHT 2011 CHUCK SHEPHERD WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM APRIL 10-16, 2013 UCW 27