What's the big deal?

I recently watched the new BattleStar Galactica series. A friend of mine had the first 3 seasons on DVD and allowed me to watch them, and I watched the rest through Netflix.

Overall, I'd give the series an A. It was engrossing, interesting, and fun to watch. Yes, it got a bit melodramatic at times, but it didn't make up for that with a lot of gratuitous explosions and such.

I was told when I started watching to be prepared to be disappointed in the end of the series.

I was actually happy with the way the series ended. Do I think it's plausible that 10's of thousands of people would give up all of their worldly possessions to live as subsistence farmers and gatherers after 4+ years locked in a tin can? I'd certainly go for it if the alternative was to live as a fugitive until I either starved to death or the ship quit working. That ending was better than a Gotterdammerung of a fight to the death with the Cylons.

Anyway, I enjoyed the series from start to finish. I've put "Caprica", the pilot for the prequel series in my Netflix queue, and "The Plan", which comes out later this month, is supposed to explain the series from the standpoint of the Cylons. I'll see if these other two are worth the watching.

Results, Week 5

Well, not too bad. Not very good, but not too bad.

I was 7 and 9 this week, which brings me to 42 and 38 for the season so far.

I would have been 8 and 8, but the Dolphins made a go of it in the 4th quarter and pulled it out at the last 20 seconds. I hate to be wrong on a game, but that was a great game to watch.

Today's German Phrase of the Day

Here is your German Phrase of the Day:

Deine Katze ist gebrennt.

Deine Katze ist gebrennt.

That's "Your cat is on fire". Your German Phrase of the Day.

Evening Snack

OK, tonights evening snack was leftover beef Stroganoff and a bologna and pickle sandwich.

Either I'm pregnant or someone put THC in my Diet Coke.

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.