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Unwanted passenger
Police look at a large moose that landed in the front seat of a car late Thursday in Leominster, Mass. Emergency crews had to remove the roof to extricate the moose, which had to be euthanized because of severe injuries.
(Telegram & Gazette photo by Claire Freda)
Mar. 17, 2006
Mar 17, 7:21 AM EST
Kangaroo Leads Austrian Cops on Snow Chase
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- A kangaroo led police in southern Austria on a snow chase Thursday after it jumped the fence of its cage and decided to explore its wintry surroundings.
The marsupial - discovered on a country road about 3 miles outside the town of St. Veit in the province of Carinthia - kept hopping away from perplexed police trying to rein it in, local police officer Joerg Fortin said.
In the end, a local veterinarian helped capture the animal using a stun gun.
The kangaroo, which belongs to a breeder in Tirol, was in southern Austria for treatment by Georg Rainer, another local veterinarian.
In a phone interview, Rainer said he was also temporarily looking after a second kangaroo for about two to three weeks. He was not immediately able to provide details about the breeder.
The year-old kangaroo that briefly escaped was being treated for minor injuries, he added.
Tourists who visit the alpine country can buy T-shirts with the slogan "There are no kangaroos in Austria" because this European country is sometimes confused with Australia, where the marsupials are native. Some tourists in Austria have been known to ask where kangaroos can be found.
Cops catch wily coyote
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 22, 2006, 12:56 PM EST
A wily coyote led sharpshooters armed with tranquilizer guns on a wild chase through Central Park before being captured Wednesday.
The coyote proved to be quite adept at avoiding capture, jumping into the water, ducking under a bridge, and scampering through the grounds of an ice skating rink after authorities thought they had the varmint cornered Wednesday morning.
The coyote, a male believed to be about a year old, was caught near Belvedere Castle, close to 79th Street and Central Park West, around 10 a.m. All the while, news helicopters hovering overhead tracked every turn in the chase, and it was broadcast around the country.
Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe said a NYPD police officer shot the coyote with a tranquilizer gun at close range.
The hunt began Tuesday afternoon when Benepe, among others, spotted the animal in the southeast corner of Central Park, not far from the tony Upper East Side before he leaped over a fence and disappeared.
It's unclear when the coyote, nicknamed Hal by parks workers, first arrived in the big city, but the first sightings of the animal came early Sunday.
Hal is only the second coyote ever to be spotted in Central Park, Benepe said, the last being seven years ago.
Interestingly, Benepe said both coyotes strayed into the same area, the Hallett Wildlife Sanctuary.
"It's an area closed to people and dogs, so it's a good place for a coyote to hunt for birds," he said.
While coyotes don't usually present a threat to people, Benepe had warned that park visitors should keep their dogs leashed to protect the pets.
Officials said one of their tranquilizers had managed to hit the coyote Tuesday, but that it appeared to have no effect.
The coyote may have wandered into the city from Westchester County, or perhaps swimming across the Hudson River from New Jersey, Benepe said.
Asked to speculate why a coyote would venture into Central Park, Benepe said, "It's an immature young coyote ... at that age they're frisky and curious to explore the turf." "It takes quite an adventurous coyote," Benepe said. "You either have to swim or cross a railroad trestle used by Metro-North and Amtrak that runs along the Hudson under the George Washington Bridge and then goes through a very wooded area." "They are very good swimmers," he added.
"He's recovering," said Benepe, who visited the coyote after his capture. He said the animal would be taken to an upstate wildlife facility "as soon as he is ready to be transferred." Coyote sightings in urban areas are nothing new, but the critters rarely venture into the concrete jungle of New York City.
The coyote that found its way to Central Park in 1999 is now kept in the Queens Zoo.
"It's very unusual to have them in Manhattan," Benepe said.
"They have to be particularly adventurous." In Westchester County, coyote sightings have increased rapidly since the 1970s.
In 1997, 15 sightings were noted, but many encounters are no longer even reported -- unless they involve the loss of a pet. The animals generally shy away from people and no attacks on humans have been recorded, but several pet dogs have been snatched from back yards by the predators.
Officials fear that as the coyotes settle into a suburban existence they may lose some fear of people. The state and Cornell University are planning a five-year study that will include attempts to trap and tranquilize coyotes in four Westchester towns.
"We used to say, 'No, you don't have to be worried.' We're not saying that anymore," said Gordon Batcheller, a biologist with the sate Department of Environmental Conservation.
Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.
It's pink!
Chicago's the city of broad shoulders. A town full of Ditka-loving Grabowskis. So, of course, when the CTA sought a color for the new `L' line, only one hue would do.
By Virginia Groark
Tribune staff reporter
March 31, 2006
In a city known for its deep-dish pizza and Chicago Bear-loving beer guzzlers, associating Chicago with pink is as strange as spotting a flamingo in Grant Park.
But on Thursday, the Chicago Transit Authority shunned conventional wisdom and picked pink to name a branch of a Chicago icon, the "L."
Starting in June, the Blue Line's 54/Cermak branch will take a new route and a new name: the Pink Line.
Yes pink, as in bubble gum, cotton candy and the favorite color of little girls across the country.
The CTA board picked pink from among the top three choices of more than 600 Chicago-area students who entered an agency contest to name the line. While the board chose pink over silver and gold, it wasn't necessarily the favorite of people who ride the line.
"I don't think so," said Joseph Santoyo, 18, as he stood at the entrance of the Cermak branch's California stop on the border of Little Village and Lawndale. "Let's take the Pink Line? No."
"They should rename it somewhere else," he added, saying the neighborhood is too tough to have a Pink Line running through it. "I don't think the neighborhood will like it."
But, noted one 8th grader who nominated pink, the color isn't just for girls any more.
"Pink is a really pretty bright color and when people hear the color pink they probably think it is a girly color," wrote Jeanine Zarate, a student at Graham Elementary School in Chicago. "Today, a lot of people including boys like pink."
Several other pink supporters said the color could help raise awareness of breast cancer, which has long been symbolized by pink.
"Having people think more about breast cancer could not be a bad thing in our society," wrote Mary Elizabeth Buttitta, an 8th grader at Northside Catholic Academy.
Indeed, even male CTA board members embraced the color, though unlike their female counterparts they did not wear pink to the meeting.
Board member Charles Robinson revealed that he lives in a pink house. And board member Alejandro Silva, a Mexican-American, said the color is a popular one in his culture.
Even CTA President Frank Kruesi, whose staff had unofficially dubbed the new route the Silver Line, seemed to get on board.
"I think it's got a lot of charm to it," he said.
"It brings a smile to people's faces," he added. "That's not bad as a start for someone hopping on a train."
Thursday's vote stems from a CTA contest launched in February after the board voted to reroute the Cermak branch for a 180-day trial period as part of its service improvements to the West Side and western suburbs. The board has not chosen the winning essay from among the students who nominated pink. The winner will receive a $1,000 savings bond in the coming weeks.
Starting June 25, Cermak trains will no longer join the Forest Park branch at the Eisenhower Expressway and run through the Loop via the subway. Instead, they will head north along the Paulina Connector and join the Green Line, running east into the Loop on elevated tracks. Some rush-hour trains, however, will continue on the old route.
The plan has drawn criticism from some who argue that it will nearly eliminate direct access to the University of Illinois at Chicago and O'Hare International Airport. But CTA staff members say the plan will increase frequency of service on the Cermak and Forest Park branches. Though Pink Line riders will have to switch trains at the Clark/Lake stop to get to O'Hare, they will get to that Loop station 10 minutes faster than they did on the old route, CTA officials said.
To launch the new route, the CTA wanted a new color. CTA Chairwoman Carole Brown suggested the agency hold a contest for kindergarten through 8th-grade students throughout the Chicago area. Contestants were told to submit a 200-word essay nominating a color and their reason for choosing it.
The entries poured in, generating a few smiles and chuckles at CTA headquarters.
Pink received the most nominations, but some students favored hues that aren't even found in a 64-pack of Crayola crayons.
The suggestions included everything from electric lime and Chicago sunset to twinkle, a sparkly silver. Indeed, if some had their way, the line would have been renamed buttercup, shamrock, teal wheel, or, as one suggested, reddish afternoon.
Such selections were more creative than the seven colors now used in the "L" system, efforts to give the CTA a little razzle-dazzle, one 8th grader wrote.
"What's wrong with the colors orange, brown, blue, green, purple and red?" wrote one 6th grader, a pink supporter, ticking off six of the seven colors on the system (the seventh is yellow). "Well, I know. Where's the pizzazz? ... It's all about pizzazz."
Just how much pizzazz the CTA will add is unclear. The shade of pink, be it babby or hot, has not been chosen and could depend on what the agency's printing company is able to produce, the CTA staff said.
Leatrice Eiseman, author of "More Alive with Color (Capital Books, 2006), said the CTA should choose hot pink, because it's more vibrant and attention-getting than the color's softer, more complacent shades.
"That's going to make all the difference in the world," she said.
Indeed, the vibrancy of such shades of pink has made the color appealing to both men and women, Eiseman said. Designs on some snowboards and skateboards now include pink. Pink also is the name of a men's clothing store chain that started in the United Kingdom, selling pink shirts, among other things.
"And it's not only in the younger age groups," Eiseman said of men donning pink. "Donald Trump has taken to wearing pink ties."
Still, Susie Espinosa, 40, who lives in the Pilsen neighborhood, was taken aback when told of the CTA board's pick. After thinking about it for a few seconds, however, she endorsed the plan.
"It's an unusual color," she said, standing a block away from the 18th Street stop on the Cermak branch. "I like it."
Across 18th Street, Gus Alvarado, 44, shook his head in disbelief.
"Why would they choose pink?" he asked, chuckling.
"As long as it doesn't affect service, I don't care," added Alvarado who hopes the new route will get him to O'Hare more quickly. "It could be called chartreuse."
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vgroark@tribune.com
Copyright ? 2006, Chicago Tribune
I think I'm officially weirded out.Microsoft starts supporting, er, Linux
Forms gang with open source chum
By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View
Published Monday 3rd April 2006 19:11 GMT
Microsoft today lobbed three massive bombs into the server virtualization market. First off, it will now support - wait for it - Linux, when the OS is running on top of its Virtual Server product. Secondly, Microsoft has made Virtual Server free. And, in a move few thought possible, Microsoft has teamed with the developers of the open source Xen product to gang up on server slicing leader VMware.
Given these moves, we're reminded of the scene from Spaceballs when Lord Helemt orders an underling to thrust his ship from light speed to ludicrous speed. "Prepare ship, prepare ship for ludicrous speed. Fasten all seat belts, seal all entrances and exits, close all shops in the mall, cancel the 3-ring circus, secure all animals in the zoo..." shouts the underling.
Up until now, you've been able to run Linux on top of Vitural Server, but Microsoft refused to help out with any problems a customer might have with the combination. Not anymore.
Microsoft will offer 24-hour support to customers running enterprise and standard versions of Red Hat and Novell Linux in conjunction with Virtual Server 2005 R2. Beyond that, Microsoft plans to distribute "virtual machine add-ins" that make Linux guest operating systems work better with its product. The add-ins will help out with mouse and display driver functions, SCSI disk emulation and guest and host synchronization.
Microsoft will release even more add-ins with an update to Virtual Server 2005 R2 due out early next year.
"Customers who have questions regarding the interoperability with Linux guest operating systems and the virtual machine add-ins will be able to access the standard Microsoft support process," Microsoft said.
Now to the pricing front.
Above, we mentioned the upcoming update to Virtual Server. Microsoft had hoped to bring out this update in 2006 but, like all of its products of late, let it slip to next year. That's a particularly damaging delay given that it means Microsoft will fall behind rivals VMware and XenSource with regard to tapping into new virtualization-friendly hardware in server chips from Intel and AMD. The chips deliver serious performance and management gains by making it easier to set up virtual operating systems.
Microsoft's second product delivery problem comes in the form of its next-generation server virtualization software. Microsoft is the only major player not to use a hypervisor that sits directly on the server hardware at this point, preferring instead to run Virtual Server on top of Windows. That changes in 2008 or 2009 when Microsoft will bundle a hypervisor into "Longhorn" Server via a service pack.
Up to this point, Microsoft sold Virtual Server for $100 or $200, depending on the number of processors in a server. Now, it's throwing out the price, preparing for the bundling scenario a bit early. Customers can pick up Virtual Server 2005 R2 as a free download. Microsoft product marketing man Zane Adam made it rather clear that this move was intended as a blow against VMware.
"In light of this and other market trends, I believe customers will think twice before spending thousands of dollars for other virtualization products that very well could be at no charge in a couple of years," he said.
One thing to keep in mind is that Microsoft does not really have an answer to VMware's high-end ESX Server product at this time. It won't until the hypervisor-based product comes out near the end of the decade. So, er, VMware has a big cushion.
However, Microsoft's moves and the increasing traction of the free, open source Xen hypervisor are going to make life more difficult on VMware, particularly in the large Windows market.
"With so many free, near-free, and built-in product out there, it's going to be increasingly tough for a standalone virtualization company to make money - especially if you look out 18 months or so," Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff told us.
And that brings us to the third bit of the puzzle.
Microsoft uses something called the Virtual Hard Disk file format to capture virtual server images and pass them around physical boxes. It happens to have licensed this technology to open source specialist XenSource - the leading user of Xen.
Microsoft has not granted a similar license to VMware for rather obvious reasons, and VMware is not too happy with the direction things are taking.
So, VMware announced today that it has opened up its own virtual machine disk format and made it free of charge. "The virtual machine disk format specification describes and documents the virtual machine environment and how it is stored," the company said. "Patch, provisioning, security, management, backup and other infrastructure solutions for virtual machine environments all heavily depend on the virtual machine disk format. Based on this dependency, having an open and unrestricted virtual machine disk format is critical to the broad-based development of new solutions and value-add for virtual environments."
VMware's chief Diane Greene went so far as to start a new blog just to have a go at Microsoft's maneuvering on the file format front.
Today's moves show quite clearly that Microsoft knows it has an inferior product at the moment and needs to stop customers from defecting to VMware and Xen and to stop potential customers from experimenting with the rival virtualization packages. Without a hypervisor-based product, Microsoft can't come close to matching Xen on performance and it's years behind VMware from a product maturity standpoint. Microsoft can really only cater to mid-market customers, which happens to be a huge market in the Windows arena.
With all the delays around its server virtualization products, Microsoft had to do something drastic. And, in fact, its move to free is the biggest blow against VMware's lucrative model to date - at least from a marketing standpoint.
VMware, however, still brings in more than $100m per quarter from its products, while Microsoft and XenSource bring in a few bucks here and there.
You can tell that VMware has become a major target for Microsoft and Xen and one that they're willing to go after together.
If you weren't paying attention to server virtualization, today's announcements should wake you up. Another battle for your operating system is on in a massive, massive way. And it's getting ugly quick.
You can find out more about Microsoft's moves from the Beast itself over here.
Iowa flag waves over state building in Illinois
Associated Press
Apr. 3, 2006 08:30 AM
DAVENPORT, Iowa - Some University of Iowa alums elected to show school pride in an odd way two weeks ago, hanging an Iowa flag atop a state building - in Illinois.
A construction crew in Springfield, Ill., apparently raised the University of Iowa's Hawkeyes emblem while working on a historic building last week, unaware that only U.S. and state flags are typically allowed to fly atop state buildings.
The rules apply to state buildings that are under construction as well, so state officials in Illinois ordered the university flag taken down last weekend.
"Had we known their plan we could have told them before it happened," said David Blanchette, spokesman for the Illinois Capital Development Board.
Several workers for the project's general contractor, Halverson Construction Co., attended the University of Iowa and apparently wanted to show pride in their alma mater.
The building in question is a train station that construction crews are converting into a visitors center for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, a popular attraction.
That's the same station I use in the mornings . . . missed me this time, though.CTA escalator mishap injures commuters
Tribune staff report
Published April 7, 2006, 9:56 AM CDT
At least three people were hurt in an escalator accident at the Chicago Transit Authority's Blue Line station at Jackson and Dearborn Streets in the Loop, authorities said.
Chicago Fire Department spokesman Will Knight said the up escalator suddenly reversed direction, causing some commuters riding on it to fall down. He said they suffered minor injuries and were taken to area hospitals.
No rail service was affected by the accident, CTA spokeswoman Kim Myles said. But four northbound CTA bus routes were temporarily rerouted due to the emergency response to the accident: the No. 22 Clark Street bus, the No. 36 Broadway bus, the No. 24 Wentworth Avenue bus and the No. 62 Archer Avenue bus. As of mid-morning, they had resumed their normal routes, the CTA said.
Pete Scales, a spokesman for the city's Buildings Department, said it appears the brakes on the escalator gave out, causing it to slide backwards. He did not know whether the escalator had experienced previous problems.
CTA escalators are inspected once a year, according to Scales. After the CTA finishes repairing the Blue Line escalator, workers from the Buildings Department will inspect it, he said.
The station's entrance at Adams and Dearborn Streets, where the faulty escalator is located, was temporarily closed and customers were asked to enter the station at Van Buren and Dearborn Streets, Myles said.
Truck spills dirt on Kennedy
By Dan P. Blake
Tribune staff reporter
Published April 7, 2006, 6:27 AM CDT
A semi-trailer truck overturned on the Kennedy Expressway this morning, sending its load of topsoil onto the road and briefly closing all southbound lanes.
The truck overturned around 4:30 a.m. at Addison Street, closing all southbound lanes of the expressway for about 20 minutes while officials picked up the dirt, an Illinois State Police sergeant said.
Enough topsoil covered the roadway that a bulldozer was called to the scene along with Illinois Department of Transportation cleanup crews.
No other vehicles were involved in the accident, and the truck's driver did not suffer serious injuries.
At least two lanes of the expressway were open as of 6 a.m. but traffic was moving slowly, the sergeant said.
Alaska Pizza Delivery Does Brisk Business
By JEANNETTE J. LEE
Associated Press Writer
Published April 9, 2006, 12:23 PM CDT
NOME, Alaska -- Last Christmas, residents of the Yupik Eskimo village of Savoonga added a special dish to their everyday fare of whale, walrus, reindeer and berries -- fresh pizza flown in from Nome, 170 miles away.
A tiny delivery joint, Airport Pizza, had opened several months earlier just steps from Nome's busy runways, and many of Savoonga's 700 residents were eager to try more than conventional pepperoni and plain cheese.
Nome's first and only pizza delivery service does a robust business in the western Alaska town of 3,500. But it really stands out for its free deliveries via commuter plane to more than a dozen other remote subarctic villages spread over a region about the size of Washington state.
The village council in Savoonga, on St. Lawrence Island in the icy Bering Sea, wanted a special holiday treat for young families in the village. It ordered 50 pizzas, half topped with chicken and ranch dressing and the other half with Canadian bacon and pineapple.
Julia Noongwook, 41, swapped some of her bacon and pineapple for a slice of chicken ranch from a relative. Noongwook said it was the first time she had tasted the popular chicken ranch pie, which also comes with bacon, red onions, tomatoes and mozzarella and cheddar cheeses.
"It was good," she said. "I like chicken."
Frontier Flying Service, an intrastate airline, volunteered last year to fly the pizzas at no charge to every village on its regular flight schedule out of Nome, a Bering Sea town settled in 1899 during a massive gold rush.
Craig Kenmonth, general manager of Frontier, said the free delivery service helps the carrier market itself in a way that benefits customers in the largely Yupik and Inupiat Eskimo villages.
"Our success is directly tied to the success of the communities we serve," Kenmonth said. "And it's a fun thing to do."
The savings can be enormous for Nome's largely impoverished satellite communities, which pay some of the highest fuel prices in the nation. In White Mountain, gas cost $3.39 a gallon at the beginning of April, according to Dorothy Barr, travel coordinator for the village.
Delivery of three or four pizzas would normally cost a village about $25, said Matt Tomter, who manages Airport Pizza. Tomter's wife, Jeri Ann, owns the business. Freight is charged 40 to 60 cents per pound, depending on the village's distance from Nome, with a $10 minimum.
"They fly the pizzas for nothing, which is huge for people out in the villages," said Tomter, who quit his job as a pilot at Frontier to run the thriving pizza joint.
The Christmas pizza order cost Savoonga anyway after a snowstorm grounded Frontier, said Noongwook, who handled the order as the city's gaming manager.
Only 25 of the pizzas made it out on Frontier before the weather closed in. The council wanted to make sure no one felt left out by getting late pizzas on the holiday, so it paid freight charges of almost $100 to have another airline fly them in when the weather cleared later in the day.
About 40 percent of Airport Pizza's business comes from villages that get their supplies by plane through Nome, the region's hub city, Tomter said.
The Savoonga order was one of Airport Pizza's largest, but it isn't rare to get calls for bundles of 10 or 20 pizzas from villages nearly 200 miles away. Tomter said an order for six reindeer sausage pizzas once came in from the Arctic Ocean town of Barrow, the northernmost community in the U.S., 500 miles to the northeast.
"Anytime they bring a lot of people into the village it's an easy way to feed everybody," Tomter said. Most big orders have come from Native organizations or schools hosting regional basketball tournaments.
High shipping costs into Nome already push Airport Pizza's prices above those charged by pizzerias in less remote spots. They range from $16 for a 15-inch cheese pizza to $32 for a 19-inch specialty pie, such as chicken Rockefeller or gyro.
Meat-lovers, pepperoni, bacon-pineapple and chicken-ranch are among the most popular flavors, said Jeri Ann Tomter, who is Inupiat.
The pizzas are assembled and baked in a former airport terminal where the Tomters first laid eyes on each other. Jeri Ann was a customer service agent and Matt was a pilot for Cape Smythe Air Service, which Frontier bought in August.
"We met right here, where we're making the pizzas," Matt Tomter said.
The one-room business is all kitchen, with a 2,500-pound dough mixer salvaged from a bakery that went out of business, and a cavernous hand-me-down oven from a pizzeria turned Chinese restaurant.
Along a spotless steel counter sit about two dozen small bins filled with colorful ingredients that are rare in this faraway region -- garlic, red and green peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, feta cheese and chorizo.
Five staffers show up each day to make more than 30 types of pizzas, including Polynesian barbeque chicken, Mexican enchilada, and Mediterranean.
"We tried pizzas from all over, in Washington and Anchorage, and found some we liked, and made some up ourselves," Tomter said.
After wrapping the pizzas in foil and securing the boxes with tape, an employee carries them about 80 feet to Frontier's terminal.
Nearly all the 11,000 village residents in Airport Pizza's service area consume Alaska Native subsistence foods, such as whale, walrus, seal and caribou, but laws bar Airport Pizza from using those meats on its pizzas, and there doesn't seem to be much demand.
"I think that would be a little strange," said Savoonga Mayor Jane Kava.
Reindeer sausage is legal because the animals are raised domestically.
The Tomters wouldn't disclose numbers, but said Airport Pizza has been profitable since it opened in August.
"We're not going away," Matt Tomter said. "I think we're just going to keep growing."
He can count on more orders from Savoonga.
"I was thinking of doing it for Mother's Day refreshments," Noongwook said. "I'll probably look through the menu and try to taste different flavors."
* __
On the Net:
Airport Pizza: http://www.airportpizza.com
Frontier Flying Service: http://www.frontierflying.com/
Century-old tree falls on group of deaf tourists; 1 man dead
Items compiled from Tribune news services
Published April 10, 2006
ROME, ITALY -- A century-old tree fell on a group of deaf tourists in central Italy on Sunday, killing a man and injuring seven people who were unable to hear a bus driver's shout of alarm, police said.
The Italian tourists had finished a day of sightseeing and were about to board a bus in a square outside the L'Aquila train station to return to their homes near Rome, police said.
"The bus driver shouted to warn them, but they couldn't hear," said Angelo Cardelli, an official at police headquarters.
A 47-year-old man from Valmontone, a suburb of Rome, was killed instantly when struck by the horse chestnut tree, police said.
Computers Hijack Wash. Quarter Design Vote
Apr 11, 8:38 PM (ET)
By CURT WOODWARD
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - Talk about your two-bit schemes.
Robotic computer programs stuffed the online ballot boxes in a contest for Washington's official state quarter design, forcing technicians to suspend voting.
State officials overseeing the balloting realized something was fishy when the contest, launched last Thursday, swelled to more than 1 million votes over the weekend. They stopped Web-based voting Monday so technicians could retool it.
The opinion poll reappeared Tuesday afternoon, but the earlier results and an up-to-the-minute vote tally were abandoned. Computer users attempting to cast a second vote were greeted with a message thanking them for their earlier participation.
The State Quarter Advisory Commission assumes some technical minds will figure out ways around the new setup, but they'll be watching for chunks of votes from similar Internet addresses, spokesman Mark Gerth said.
"We'll be doing a number of different things to make sure the automated voting isn't counted in this next tally," he said Tuesday.
The quarter commission initially allowed an unlimited number of votes from a single Internet address so family members sharing a computer could each make a pick, Gerth said.
But that philosophy was abandoned after the weekend's voting, which showed some computers casting repeated choices for a quarter design faster than humanly possible.
"You could sit there and watch 200 votes appear over the course of a couple of minutes, obviously going a little too fast," Gerth said.
"We hadn't counted on, I guess, the over-enthusiasm of people," Gerth said.
Stefan Sharkansky, a computer software consultant and conservative blogger, noted the online vote's susceptibility Sunday after getting tips from readers.
The three quarter designs featured on the Web site are finalists to grace the back of Washington's official quarter, which the U.S. Mint expects to release next March.
The choices are:
_A leaping salmon breaching the water in front of a conifer-trimmed Mount Rainier.
_An American Indian-style drawing of a playful killer whale, spouting water and raising its tail flukes.
_A salmon, apples and Mount Rainier within an outline of the state.
The advisory commission plans to consider the online vote when it submits a design recommendation to Gov. Chris Gregoire, who has the final say.
The orca design was winning before officials pulled the plug on the balloting, and technicians searched unsuccessfully for ways to purge only the clearly invalid votes from the totals before resuming.
Earlier votes sent by traditional mail will still be counted in the final tally, Gerth said.
"Mrs Noisy" gets year in prison
Fri Apr 21, 9:08 AM ET
TOKYO (Reuters) - A woman who made herself a minor celebrity in Japan by constantly screaming insults at passers-by and blaring out music while beating bedding on her balcony, was sentenced to a year in jail Friday for causing physical harm.
Miyoko Kawahara, 59, kept up the assault on her neighbors' eardrums daily over a period of two and a half years, forcing at least one nearby resident to seek treatment for insomnia and headaches.
A court in the western Japanese city of Nara sentenced the woman who became known nationally as "Mrs Noisy" to a year in prison, saying she had shown no repentance for her actions, domestic media said.
Kawahara is likely to be released in about three months, after consideration for time already served.
"I am worried about what will happen when she comes back," one neighbor told reporters outside the court.
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Good heavens. It's not often one sees a moooooooooose in a car like that.
