Should have been wearing Off

OK, so a trucker is tooling down the road near Minot Air Force Base, carrying unspecified parts to an ICBM. A "large bug" lands on his back, and in his panic to get the thing off of him, rolls the truck over.

Sounds silly, but I grew up near there. Have you ever seen the bugs in North Dakota? We had to post sky guards around the kindergartens, for pity's sake. Give the guy a break. One mosquito up there can make a man lightheaded.

H/T to Danger Room for the linked article.

call center script

while true
do
     read $input
     if $input
     then
          (light(blinky) = true)
               call(SYSAD)
               ;;
          (database(crash) = true)
               call(DBA)
               ;;
          (application(slow) = true)
               call(application developer)
               open(conference call)
               ;;
          (user(squawk) = true)
               call(someone who cares)
               ;;
          (server(smoke) = true)
               leave(building)
               ;;
          *)
               call(supervisor)
               supervisor(decide)
               follow(decision)
               ;;
          esac
          $input = “”
     fi
     sleep 30 or die “Can’t sleep on duty”
done

Plans Made, Plans Changed

Here's how I expected my weekend to go:

Friday - Go to Fort Knox at lunch to sign out an area for the weekend. Spend the evening getting me and Girlie Bear ready for our weekend bow hunt at Fort Knox

Saturday - Get up early, head down to Radcliff, and spend the day bow hunting with Girlie Bear. Maybe knock off early and take the family to the Louisville Zoo for their Halloween party.

Sunday - Hunt in the morning and early afternoon. Spend the early evening dialed in to support some network testing. Watch football that was recorded earlier that day.

Here's how it went:

Thursday - Junior Bear has a very severe teenager meltdown. Up until the wee hours of the morning dealing with that

Friday - Have to take the day off work to deal with the aftermath of Thursday evening. Do not go to Fort Knox, do not collect $200. When I drop Baby Bear off at day care, the !@#$!@!@#$! van won't start, again.

Saturday - Can't go hunting because it would be irresponsible to be out of contact for 12 hours when the family is having a dramatic episode. Spend the day doing house work and playing with Girlie Bear and Baby Bear. Take Girlie Bear out for a treat to try to make up a little for not going hunting. Go to dinner at a friend's house instead of the zoo.

Sunday - Go grocery shopping because Old Mother Hubbard had moved into our kitchen. Take myself up to the day care center and fix the van. It wasn't Chrysler's fault. When I "fixed" it last weekend, I had put the bolts that hold the starter on the block improperly, and the starter was coming off of the block when I tried to start it. That only took about 2 hours to diagnose and other hour to fix. Luckily, I didn't ruin either the flywheel or the starter. Watched a little football, then dialed in to support that network testing. After the baby went to bed, played Yahtzee and drank Mexican Coca-Cola with Girlie Bear and Irish Woman. We lit the first fire of the year, and it's a good relaxing way to end the weekend.

So, even though my plans for the weekend were totally dashed before the weekend even got started, it's been OK. Got a lot done, still spent time with Girlie Bear, and I even got to watch some football.

We'll go to the zoo next weekend. Hopefully the weather will be nice.

Picks for Week 5

OK, here we go. Here's hoping I can repeat my success of last weekend.

Cinci at Baltimore - Baltimore
Washington at Carolina - Carolina
Cleveland at Buffalo - Cleveland
Pittsburg at Detroit - Steelers
Dallas at Kansas City - Kansas City
Minnesota at Saint Louis - Minnesota. Go Vikings!
Oakland at New York Giants - Oakland RAIDERS!!!!!!
Tampa Bay at Philadelphia - Tampa Bay
Atlanta at San Fransisco - Atlanta
Houston at Arizona - Houston
New England at Denver - Denver
Jacksonville at Seattle - Jacksonville
Indianapolis at Tennessee - Indi
New York Jets at Miami - Jets

False Alarm

A few weeks ago, I reported that the firearms manufacturer Izmash might be going bankrupt.

For shooters, this would have been remarkable and troubling.

Turns out, it was a false alarm. A court in Russia has found that the company is indeed not going out of business.

Good to hear. I've been eyeing one of their products for a while.

A Sad Day to be Norwegian

OK, my ancestors conquered Britain, forced the king of France to give away almost half of their country, and settled lands as far west as Canada. My grandfather left a hard life in Norway to come to an even harder life in North Dakota.

Scandinavians are known to be practical, hard-nosed individuals. I certainly work to be that person.

Then why did a group of Norwegians award the Nobel Peace Prize to Barak Obama?

OK, he's a historical figure. He's the president, for one. He's also the first "minority" president.

But other than that, what has he done?

He's failed to get just about any major legislative initiatives through Congress. He's wasted his time trying to get Chicago a nod for host of the 2016 Olympics.

He hasn't done anything remarkable in the foreign policy realm. Heck, at least Clinton had the Dayton Accords to point at.

Now, if he does something remarkable over the rest of his term, I'll be the first one to applaud when he gets it. I'm not saying that he shouldn't ever get this honor, but he hasn't earned it.

If they're using this major award to encourage him to do good, then maybe they need to look at the charter for the award. It's not for what you might do, it's for what you have done.

Question

Last night I drove through Starbucks and ordered a decaf nonfat no-whip pumpkin spice latte.

Question:

Did I pay $4.00 for a cup of hot flavored milk?

Career Hint

When you are in a meeting or on a conference call and your immediate response to a question is "Are you deaf or just stupid", you need to leave the meeting. Your job is not worth it.

Results Week 4

Hey, I was 12 and 4 this weekend! Now I wish I was putting money on these things.

For the season, I'm up to 35 and 29. Getting better.

Scary Development

Over at Pepper Spray Me, a tale is told of how a bunch of gang-banger knuckleheads decided to target a police precinct for retribution. I imagine they felt the good men and women who served there were doing their job too well, and wanted to send a message ala Mogadishu or Sicily.

The police apparently were able to recognize what was going on and take appropriate action to discourage these wayward young men from carrying out their nefarious plans. But what if the first sign that there was a problem was several officers in the hospital or the morgue?

If street gangs, even in what we would consider bad neighborhoods of big cities, feel they have a shot at taking on the police in gangster style hit and run tactics, then we have a bigger problem than we thought. The fear of the consequences of personally attacking an officer of the law just for being an officer of the law is a big thing to lose.

If thugs like this feel they can take on the defenders of our day to day world, then the rest of us need to watch our backs as much as the police do. If they think they can attack the police, they won't think twice in attacking those of us who don't wear a badge and have a group of armed and trained friends to back us up.

Let's face it, even in suburbia there are gangs now. Our neighbor's oldest decided to go out of town for college rather than stay around when he ran afoul of the local gang of morons. If this can happen anywhere, it can happen everywhere.

Scum like that need to have their heads cracked, figuratively and literally, and the lesson that messing with the police and our society in general has dire consequences.

In Louisville, the police are attacked every time they give a gang member a traffic ticket, much less arrest them for warrants or whatever. If something happened here, would the police feel justified in taking similar measures to protect themselves and the community?

Life's Little Lessons

OK, people two things I need to make sure everyone understands here:

1. Animals that are normally considered "wild" should not be taken in as pets, and should always be treated as if they will attack. Last year, a woman was attacked and killed by a chimpanzee that her friend had raised as a human child. Recently, a woman was killed by a black bear that her husband was keeping in some kind of personal menagerie, which also included lions, tigers, and bears. Oh my, what a dunce.

Wild animals, especially carnivores or omnivores, should be considered dangerous, left along in the woods or the zoo, and never be taken in as pets.

The following sets of animals should never be kept as pets: snakes that can grow larger than your thumb in width or longer than your arm in length, canines that are closer to wolves than you are to chimpanzees, felines that you might see being used to adorn some 3rd world dictator's outfit, primates of any kind unless you or someone in your species birthed them, lizards that are bigger than the space between the base of your thumb and your elbow, things that are considered predators of humans, and anything with hands.

That means no monkeys, no chimps, no bears, no leopards, and especially no raccoons.

Which leads us to

2. Wild animals, no matter how cute or anthropomorphized by Walt Disney should be treated as dangerous. Dangerous animals should be dealt with with nothing lighter than a stout broom handle. Firearms are preferred. Do not try to shoo away a pack of raccoons you see in your yard. Thanks to 80 years of propaganda that makes woodland creatures seem to be harmless and cute, someone's grandmother is in the hospital, covered in stitches and staples.

Come on people, we're smarter than this.

Fixed the van

Well, I guess practice makes perfect, or at least sort of.

Last time I swapped out the starter on the minivan, it took a day to get it out and another to get it back in.

This time it took less than 90 minutes from start to finish.

While I had the beast up in the air on jack stands, I changed the oil.

It's running OK now, or at least as OK as it ever does.

When the Irish Woman picked up the part from the dealership this week, the parts clerk mentioned that it had a one year warrantee. I still have the receipt from last year, so I'm going to mosey out there and see if I can get at least part of my money back.

What's the over and under on how long this son of a gun goes without needing another major repair?

Football Picks - Week 4

OK, here we go. This week, I try to regain .500.

Detroit at Chicago - Da Bears
Seattle at Indi - Indi
Tennessee at Jacksonville - Tennessee
New York Giants at Kansas City - New York
Tampa Bay at Washington - Washington
Baltimore at New England - Baltimore. Tom Brady sucks
Oakland at Houston - Raiders, of course
Cinci at Cleveland - Cinci
Buffalo at Miami - Miami
New York Jets at New Orleans - J E T S Jets Jets Jets!
Dallas at Denver - Denver
Saint Louis at San Fransisco - San Fransisco
San Diego at Pittsburg - Pittsburg
Green Bay at Minnesota - Got to love this game. This is the matchup that I absolutely have to watch every year. I'm a fan of both teams, so this is a tough one. I'll go with the Vikings on this one, just because they're the home team. I think the teams are pretty even at the moment. It all depends on whether or not Favre can keep up.

So, any predictions on how I'll do this week?

HeeHeeHee

Now my day is complete.

I'm glad that Rio got the Olympics. It's time the 3rd world learned what a pain in the butt things like this are.

The President Schilling for Chicago

OK, you all should know how I feel about the Olympics.

I won't bore you by re-hashing what a waste of time, money, and effort they are.

I have another problem now: The President of the United States is in a foreign country, on the taxpayer dime, campaigning for his home town to get the 2016 Olympics.

I've read the Constitution several times, and I never saw anything that said it was the President's job to pressure international organizations to hold sporting events in his political backyard.

I'm pretty sure his job is to govern the country, make sure the laws are enforced, and to command the armed forces.

So now the prestige of his office, and through him the rest of the country, is riding on the decision of a wholly corrupt body. And he's making a fool of himself and the country by wasting time and money on this.

I hope that Chicago doesn't get it. I hope they don't even come close. Maybe then Obama will learn to stay in Washington and do the job he's getting paid to do.