SACRAMENTO, California (AP) — A woman who competed in a radio station’s contest to see how much water she could drink without going to the bathroom died of water intoxication, the coroner’s office said Saturday.

Jennifer Strange, 28, was found dead Friday in her suburban Rancho Cordova home hours after taking part in the “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest in which KDND 107.9 promised a Nintendo Wii video game system for the winner.

I know, I’m going to hell…

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/01/13/water.intox.ap/index.html

THE Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, is dead.

He was killed in a freak accident in Cairns, police sources said today.

It is understood he was killed by a stingray barb that went through his chest.

He was swimming off the Low Isles at Port Douglas filming an underwater documentary when the tragedy occured.

Ambulance officers confirmed they attended a reef fatality this morning at Batt Reef off Port Douglas.

Irwin’s body is being flown to Cairns.

It is believed his American-born wife Terri is trekking on Cradle Mountain in Tasmania and is yet to be told of her husband’s death.

Irwin - known worldwide as the Crocodile Hunter - is famous for his enthusiasm for wildlife and his catchcry “Crikey!”.

The father of two’s Crocodile Hunter program was first broadcast in 1992 and has been shown around the world on cable network Discovery.

He has also starred in movies and has developed the Australia Zoo wildlife park, north of Brisbane, which was started by his parents Bob and Lyn Irwin.

Tributes have already started pouring in for the larger-than-life character.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who used a photograph of his family at Australia Zoo for his official Christmas card last year, hailed Mr Irwin for his work in promoting Australia.

Irwin was heavily involved in last year’s “G’Day LA” campaign.

“The minister knew him, was fond of him and was very, very appreciative of all the work he’d done to promote Australia overseas,” a spokesman said.

A Tourism Queensland spokeswoman said the death was shocking and paid tribute to Irwin’s “enormous contribution” to his adopted state.

Louise Yates said it was impossible to quantify how much Mr Irwin had meant to the Queensland tourism industry.

“I don’t think we could even estimate how much he brought us through his personality and his profile and his enthusiasm about Queensland,” she said.

“It would be difficult to estimate how much he was worth. And it would be difficult to underestimate.”

She said Irwin had been a larger-than-life ambassador.

“It’s not just what he brought but what he took with him when he travelled, his passion.”

Australia Zoo, on southeast Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, employs more than 500 people and attracts thousands of visitors every day.

But Ms Yates said it would be “unfair and unjust” to put a dollar value on Irwin’s worth to the state, because of how much he had given.

Source: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20349888-2,00.html

You can check out the official post announcing version 2.0.2 on the WordPress Development Blog.

Oh, and don’t forget to backup!! You don’t wanna be like me, do you? ;)

You made us all laugh with your great comedic skills. You will be missed. :(

(For those that didn’t hear, he died on Saturday of pulmonary and respiratory complications. He was 81.)

Update 2/12: Turns out it may have been a hoax. Makes sense since I can’t pin down an official story from anywhere. That should been a big clue to me, but of course gullible me ignored the warning signs. Oh well…

For those who have no clue what the ORLY? owl is, check out Wikipedia.

Today, well yesterday now, was a sad day — the ORLY? owl died. :(

Thursday, February 9th, 2006 Posted: 10:07 AM EST (1507 GMT)

SanDiego, California (AP) — Jonathan, the Snowy Owl made famous as the “ORLY” owl, has died in captivity in the San Diego Zoo.

The owl, which was 17 years old, died Tuesday afternoon after the sudden onset of pneumonia. He was young for an owl in captivity, however wild owlsonly live an average of 15 years.

David Phillips, executivedirector of the San Diego Zoo, said Jonathan had been in good healthbut started showing signs of lethargy and loss of appetite on Monday.

“This is a long sad day for us,” Phillips said.

One of his handlers, Dale Richards, also said Jonathan died quickly. “We checked his respiration rate and it was a little irregular … he wasn’t doing too well,” Richards told The Associated Press. “Early in the evening, he passed away.”

The textual phrase “o rly?” wasfirst popularized on the SomethingAwful forums. The phrase wasinitially one of many used during the FYAD sub forum’s fad ofcompressing words by removing unnecessary letters. While “O RLY?” issimply shorthand for “Oh, Really?”, the most common image macro comesfrom 4chan, where for a short while, the word “repost” was wordfiltered to “owl”. The Image macro and its attached phrase then spreadrapidly throughout the Internet.

Copied from http://i-muad-dib.livejournal.com/125903.html (couldn’t find original AP article)

Read more about it here: http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=1248975

You can read the official press released right here.

Anyway, the point of this post is I thought I’d share some interesting links. The first is a blog run by a system admin. It used to be his personal and such blog, but now it’s turned into a blog about the whole ordeal. He’s in downtown New Orleans with a diesel generator powering his building, webcam, etc. You can find it here: http://mgno.com/ (see also: http://www.nola-intel.org/)

The other interesting link is an audio stream of a scanner down there. Interesting to hear all of the military and such talk. For a list of repeaters, go here: http://wiki.nola-intel.org/index.php/Radio_Info

And on a closing note, seriously, WHAT THE FUCK at the people who are shooting at the police, hospital employees, etc. It’s not their fault you didn’t get your dumb ass out of the city 5 days ago when the evacuation order was given. They are just trying to do their job and save people. New Orleans has turning into a warzone, I swear.

Oh, and Foamy owns you.

More details here if you hadn’t heard: http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=1015438