Oct 25th, 2003 – Norfolk, West Virgina:
A novelty toy dog which breaks wind sparked a major security alert at an American airport.
Page designer Dave Rogerson’s life-size mechanical terrier set off a security detector at Norfolk Airport in Virginia.
Armed security staff were alerted when the toy’s wind-breaking mechanism registered as a high explosive on sensitive monitoring equipment.
Mr Rogerson, 31, from Thorner, Leeds, was questioned by FBI agents and looked on in amazement as they took a series of swabs from the mechanical toy’s rear end.
The toy animal was eventually returned to him, but he was not allowed to take his planned flight and had to take an alternative route to North Carolina.
Mr Rogerson said: “There’s no humour at American check-ins and for about 20 minutes I was quite scared.
“They told me it is the highest reading they had for explosives and they took it very seriously.
“They were very jumpy and convinced there was something explosive in the dog.”
Eventually the FBI experts decided the toy was harmless and returned it to him.
He has now named the toy dog Norfolk after the airport. — BBC News

Front of new $20 dollar bill

Back of new $20 dollar bill

Kinda kewl..more info can be found here on the new bills coming out.

Well, today marks the first day in Helsinki that we have officially started the snow season and winter is finally here. Oct 24th @ 09:10 in the morning..the snow has hit us. (and probably wont leave us until some time in late April, early May of 2004. I better start diggin in now, it might be a serious dumping today, tomorrow and Sunday. Who knows, it may just keep snowing till next year…non-stop. 8)

more to come and maybe some pics of the snow too….

Well, the trip to Salo was both impressive and productive. Learned some new things in the training course I attended and also got a chance to take a look at the assembly line manufacturing mobile phones. Very kewl to see in action. So organized and large scale. =)

Wow… I cannot believe that starting from tomorrow, it will be exactly 2 month more and its Christmas. I will have to start looking for stuff to send back to the states for everyone there and find a few things here for the other half of the family. Hmm…what to get…..we shall see.

more to come…