Rensselaer County, N.Y., sent out absentee ballots with a big ol’ mistake.

The absentee ballots sent to voters in Rensselaer County identified the two presidential candidates as “Barack Osama” and “John McCain.” In the United States, the best-known individual named Osama is Osama bin Laden, leader of the al Qaida terrorist group behind the 2001 attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City….

The elections office faxed a statement in which the two commissioners, Democrat Edward McDonough and Republican Larry Bugbee, said they regret the error but never acknowledge what the error was.

In a report in the Times Union, McDonough called the gaffe “an honest mistake.”

Hmm, let’s see… the S and B keys aren’t exactly next to each other on a standard U.S. keyboard layout. “Honest mistake?” Nope, try again!

The Magazine Publishers of America named the finalists for this year’s magazine cover of the year. The bulk of the entries seem to skew heavily to New York City-based publications. The winners will be announced October 6.

My favorite cover of those nominated is pictured in the thumbnail at right. (via Towleroad)

Traveling home from band practice on the Metro a couple of weeks ago, I happened upon some rather large ads with a cow silhouette and bovineunite.com printed on them. At first, I thought it was those wack-a-doos from PETA again, trying to get people to stop eating meat. (Me not eat meat? NEVER!)

Turns out, it was an ad campaign for the Maryland Lottery.

Let’s moove ahead (sorry, couldn’t resist) to New York, where, apparently, the cows are coming tomorrow. Speculation is alive and well on this one. Guesses on what it’s about include a new coffee creamer, a Chik-Fil-A promotion, or the New York Lottery following Maryland’s lead.

Even after being summoned for jury duty on Wednesday (yes, of all days, I was called for September 11, go figure), this shaped up to be a rather odd week. Shall we start at the beginning?

Microsoft (or Microshaft, take your pick) released Service Pack 1 for its XP operating system on Monday. SP1, a whopping 133 MB download, does more to comply with the anti-trust suits against them than to actually improve XP, according to reviews. Further, a particularly hazardous yet unundisclosed bug was quietly fixed with SP1, which can be fixed (scroll down to “Boot Camp tip”) simply by renaming or deleting one file. No download required.

Wednesday night, the numbers 9-1-1 came up in New York’s Pick 3 lottery game. Over 5,000 people picked that number combination. At $500 a win, the New York Lottery will dole out at least $2.5 million.

Last night, a portion of I-75 in Florida was shut down after a woman tipped off police to three men “discussing explosives and saying that Americans would ‘cry on 9/13.’” Enemy thwarted? Maybe; it’s still being looked into.

Getting on the Metro today, I found out that there was a severe delay on the Red line — someone was struck by a train at Union Station this morning. Michael, on his way to work (he catches the train at Union Station daily), arrived just in time to perform last rites with a priest. From a conversation earlier today:

Michael (9:29:17 AM): cool.. that was the WORSE commute ever
Fredo (9:29:23 AM): i heard
F (9:29:30 AM): mine was wonderful
F (9:29:36 AM): i actually got a seat today
M (9:29:43 AM): yea, but you didn’t hear it all
F (9:29:54 AM): yes i did.
M (9:29:59 AM): from who?
M (9:30:03 AM): the town crier
F (9:30:26 AM): no… the loudspeaker in the metro station
M (9:30:45 AM): they broadcast my performance of sacredotal blessing on the loudspeaker?
F (9:31:19 AM): course not… you’re not that important… in terms of daily commutes, that is.
M (9:31:23 AM): lol
M (9:31:57 AM): and then when i did finally get on a train, it got stuck behind one that broke down
F (9:32:30 AM): naturally… see previous im
M (9:32:33 AM): lol
M (9:33:11 AM): i actually knelt next to the train with one of the basilica priests and did last rites and absolution… with 3000 commuters watching

See what I mean? In the voice of Comic Book Guy, “Oddest. Week. Ever!”