What kind of special handling do firearms get? That firearms ID tag is supposed to go *inside* the bag, but if you run across a clueless front counter, it may be placed outside the bag. That always just struck me as a giant "Steal Me First!" sign.
But what frosts my butt is that once things *do* end up there, they're unrecoverable. If you lose an incredibly valuable watch, file a police report that it was stolen and have all your documentation in order - it still doesn't matter. You can go to that lost luggage store, find *your* watch, and they won't let you have it. Period. The process of the airline making public notice about the item and selling it to the vendor who operates that store launders the item of all legal claim you may have to it.
That's just wrong. Lost items should be recoverable forever.
The American coverage of the Olympics generally includes little shooting. During the Winter Games, the Biathlon will generally get 5 minutes coverage at 4AM on a weekday and the segment will not be repeated.
At the Summer Games, things are a tad better if we win a medal or two or if one of our shooters is particularly telegenic. Luckily, one or two of our shooters are usually very lovely young ladies.
You want an illustration? I sat next to Ralf Schumann's wife when he won the gold for Rapid Fire Pistol at the Atlanta Games. As soon as the line was clear and people could move, we were surrounded by TV cameras and microphones. I beat a retreat instantly and then looked back. There wasn't a single U.S. news source in that gaggle of reporters.
...people wearing shirts with the silhouette of a modern firearm might just be considered a intimidating...
So, what is it? Are you kidding, stupid, or did you just not read the article?
In this particular case, the tshirt was relevant to the shooting sports. It bore the same type of silhouettes used at the Olympics to denote shooting events. (You are aware, aren't you, that shooting is an Olympic sport, with a number of events?)
In what idiotic alternate universe does wearing a tshirt that promotes legitimate, competitive sports get confused with "...a classmate (acting) as though they might shoot people..." or "...glorify(ing) violence..." or "...intimidating clothing..."?
...in this story to post something new and have it actually be seen, so I'm just doing this for me.
Years ago, when dBaseIV was just about obsolete, I was working a strange little job - some data entry, some user help. Just a sort of little-of-everything tech support job, really, that I'd never had any training for but sort of figured out as I went along.
Boss drops by and tells me to forget everything else and work exclusively on building a database and front-end to control case file inventory. We're talking less than 100K paper file folders spread out among 70 or so employees and a half-dozen storage areas. He handed me a copy of dBase II and said to use it.
My response was "I'm not a programmer. I don't know what this dBase thing is. You're kidding, right?" He said "You'll figure it out. BTW, you're not allowed to ask anyone for help. Don't talk to any of the other employees. Just use your knowledge of the situation to write the thing and install it on 4 shared computers spread around the office. You have 6 weeks."
Amazing. I just sort of sat there, shocked. This dealt with *really* important files. If there was a problem with them getting lost, lots of revenue would be going up in smoke. And he was assigning someone he knew was completely clueless to solve the problem? Well, it didn't take me 6 weeks. To write something pretty and get it installed took about 3 weeks. I'm sure there are plenty of developers on/. who could have done it in two hours. So I show him the prototype and tell him I'm going to install it. He says that the prototype is just dandy, but don't install it until a given date, the last day of the 6 weeks allotted to the project. Fine, I put the computers away. A couple of weeks later, I throw them on desks around the floor and plug them in. No one who works there has any clue what they are, but I just assume they'll get training later because I've used the last two weeks to write up documentation, including a user manual and training course outline.
Here's the kicker -
The day after installation, internal security inspectors from *way* up on the corporate food chain swoop into the office and look over everything. They had been here are few months before and such inspections are normal, though rare and nerve-wracking. I see my boss show my work to the inspectors. The inspectors look at other stuff, then leave.
The next day, boss orders me to remove all the inventory control systems from the floor. It seems that, some months previously, the inspectors had identified weaknesses in case file control and filing and had suggested that we implement some sort of automated tracking. My boss had complied with their request, but now they were gone. So it was time to shut down the system.
I had spent 6 weeks busting my ass just so my boss would have a believable but, in reality, fake demonstration to throw at the inspectors, just so his boss could check off the box marked "Responds to input from Inspection function" on his annual evaluation. (Not exactly, but that's a functionally equivalent description of what happened.) I was, in short, duped into assisting in the commission of a fraud.
I consider the experience highly valuable. That boss taught me to be far more careful as to who I trust in this world.
Texicans? I know you're trying to be funny and I know that the current preferred term is "Texans," but I wonder if you know that "Texican" is, indeed, correct when discussing certain times and places. It was the term used for (usually white) settlers of Texas back when Texas still belonged to Mexico. In more recent years, some folks have tried to give it a pejorative slant by defining it as someone half Texan and half Mexican, but that's simply wrong; people who use the word that way are making a mistake. Nowadays, "Texican," at its best, is a way to refer to Texans that makes an appreciative historical nod to the contributions of Mexico to our culture. I think the word should get more use, actually.
I guess I'm just strange, but fast checkouts are, IMO, one of the good things about Walmart. I almost never wait more than a couple of minutes and usually just walk right up to an empty lane and check out immediately.
YMMV, I guess.
Of course, I suppose it helps that the only time I tend to shop there at 4-5am on Sundays...
Threaten to kill me if I don't change my mind and you've just put me into a position where I have to make damn sure I *don't* change my mind for a while, just to communicate the message that threatening me is not an effective way to get what you want from me.
...and some of the posters here just pull answers out of thin air.
My employer, however, has a long-standing commitment to employing the visually-impaired. We have a large support office dedicated solely to their needs. From the intranet site of that office, let me offer a couple of things.
First, here's the general background paragraphs designed to let managers know what sort of things can be done to assist people with low vision:
The term "low vision" covers a broad range of possible conditions and types of visual impairment. The solutions offered below may be of benefit to some individuals with low vision, but not to everyone. The individual to be accommodated must be included in any product decision since no one else can see the world in exactly the same way they see it through their eyes.
Large Monitor with High Resolution (e.g., a 21 inch SVGA monitor): Increases character size in proportion to monitor dimensions and provides a crisp, sharp image.
Magnified display of computer screen: Software solutions exist to present the images on the computer in a larger format. Character size can be increased from 2 x 16 times.
Magnified display of hardcopy material: Hardware exists that will magnify any item placed under a special camera. Documents, drawings, phone messages, etc. can be seen enlarged on a special monitor.
Keyboard orientation aids: A raised dot can be added to certain keys such as the home row keys or the number five on the numeric keypad to give a tactile orientation to the keyboard to augment visual orientation. Alternately, adhesive backed keycap labels can be purchased and applied to the standard keyboard that have very large, bold letters.
As for specific items available for us to install and use, this is the list for low vision folks. Note that you'll need to Google various terminology to get a look at the actual products. (I apologize for the way the lameness filter has forced me to mangle this list by cramming everything onto one line; I hope it's still reasonably readable.)
Blind/Low Vision
Raised Keyboard Dots, ZoomCaps Large Font Key Caps, Braille Key Labels, Super Disk External Drive, VoiceNote QT, VoiceNote BT, Braille Express 150 High Speed Braille Printer, Clearview 700 CCTV/CCD System, MiniViewer Portable CCTV/CCD, ViewSonic G810 21, ZoomText Xtra Level 2, JAWS Professional Edition for Windows, JAWS Part One Basic Training, JAWS Part Two Advanced Training Session JAWS Scripting, Handi-Cassette II Stereo Tape Recorder/Player with Case, Tutorial: Using Microsoft PowerPoint with JFW, Tutorial: Using Microsoft Internet Explorer with JFW, Tutorial: Using Microsoft Outlook with JFW, Tutorial: Using Microsoft Word with JFW, Tutorial: Using Microsoft Excel with JFW, Duxbury Braille Translator for Windows, DECTalk Express External Speech Synthesizer, Sound Blaster Live Audigy MP3+, Dual Headset model 8050 MPAII Headset Amplifier, Yamaha RH2b Stereo Headphones, Sound Blaster SBS 250 Computer Speakers, Kurzweil 1000 Integrated Optical Character Recognition System, Alva MultiMedia 440 Refreshable Braille Display, Mod 80 Refreshable Braille Display, Juliet Pro 60 Interpoint Braille Printer, Basic Navigating in Windows Using Adaptive Technology, JawBone Software, Optelec Traveller, BrailleStar40 Training Outline, BrailleStar80 Training Outline
Note that that's a long list of equipment and training aids, many of which aren't applicable to your situation. But if you don't get some good ideas from that list, you're just not trying. I work with this equipment all the time and I gotta tell ya, it's truly gratifying to set up a computer so that a blind or nearly-blind person can use it and make a living instead of being dependent on other people. Good luck in your efforts. They will be worth whatever effor they require.
I disagree. I think we're both right. Mostly. Clearly, you know the facts of the case. To wit:
...he was set up by the FBI. They wanted him to reinfiltrate the Aryan Nations...
Yes, the FBI set up Weaver and then tried to blackmail him into working for them. So, in that sense, the FBI set up the situation.
Yes, Weaver then refused to work for the FBI and so they set out to get him on charges that he'd ultimately be cleared of.
Not to distract from the fact that he was completely and totally loco,...
He certainly isn't a guy I'd want for a neighbor. I've never met him, but I've talked to folks who have and I think your characterization is probably more true than not.
...you made an incorrect assumption that the actions taken at Ruby Ridge were the fault of the FBI.
But it's at this point that we part company. I could say that every mistake I've made in life is that fault of my parents because they brought me into the world, setting up the situations where I'd screw up. If I did that, though, I'd be assigning blame to someone who, while in the chain of events that led up to my mistakes, is simply too far removed from the actual mistake to rightfully bear any blame. The same principle applies to Ruby Ridge. Yes, Weaver was at fault for not working through the system, for bunkering down, for forcing a confrontation. (He was also flat stupid to think that if he just went up on his little piece of land and never came down that no one would ever come up there to bother him and his family. Did he think his legal problems would just go away? What *was* he thinking?)
But Weavers decision to bunker down and let himself be laid siege to is way too far removed from the FBIs decision to adopt "shoot on sight" rules of engagement, even for the unarmed. And even that institutional decision is far removed from the sniper's responsibility, his basic charge as a human being, to act within a reasonable moral framework. IOW, it was the snipers fault that he pulled the trigger and killed an unarmed woman. You can't blame that on Weaver.
I only cited the firing of that one shot in my initial post. For that one single act, I believe you are incorrect to assert that I "made an incorrect assumption that the actions taken at Ruby Ridg were the fault of the FBI." I wasn't talking about *all* the actions of the FBI, many of which were simply reasonable responses to the actions of Weaver. I was talking about that one shot.
I'll leave it to others to argue whether that one shot was a murder, but the fact that such an assertion can be reasonably debated, when the actor was a law enforcement officer, is, in itself, highly distressing.
The fact is that the Waco loonies killed themselves, the Ruby Ridge guy was responsible for everything that happened and Elian Gonzalez should be back with his father.
Look, I'm one of the first to be less than sympathetic to some of the folks who've gotten themselves killed in confrontations with feds. Hell, one of the ATF SAs killed at Waco was a casual acquaintance of mine. But your statement above is dangerously oversimplified.
At Waco, yes, technically, it's probably true that they killed themselves. However, that happened after a lengthy siege during which the FBI screwed up just about everything they could screw up. At the heart of it, the FBI didn't have a clue as to the emotional state they were forcing on the people inside that compound. It's like standing outside the monkey cage at the zoo wearing a loud shirt that just drives the monkeys ape-shit (Yes, that was an intentional pun). Theoretically, it's the monkeys that are stupid. Ideally, it's the monkeys that should, of their own volition, calm down. But in the real world it's you, the thinking human being, who has to recognize that your presence is causing a problem and, rightness or wrongness be damned, it's you who should step away from the cage till the monkeys calm down. The FBI should have understood that they were forcing a bad end to that situation and backed the hell off. As we've seen since then, as with the family that's holed up in east Texas right now, it's a lot better to just keep a loose cordon around the site and keep watch; eventually, the situation will resolve itself peacefully.
As for Weaver at Ruby Ridge, you're being way too harsh. Did he set up the situation? Sort of. When the feds obliquely threatened to take from him the only earthly possession he valued, his land, he bunkered down. He probably shouldn't have. But your flat statement that he was responsible for everything simply doesn't hold up. There's no way he was responsible for the sniper's bullet that killed his unarmed wife. That was, pure and simple, a result of the "Nobody disses us! Shoot to kill!" attitude of the feds.
Oh, and btw, you *are* aware that Weaver was found not guilty of all the charges in that case, aren't you?
As for Elian, I agree with you completely and I don't know how the govt could have acted differently. Of course, if it weren't for things like Ruby Ridge and Waco, the general populace would be more likely to cut the feds some slack when they have to bust into a little house and snatch a kid, in the process producing some pictures with far more drama than they needed.
In short, I don't think it was out of line for the grandparent of this post to point out that federal agency civil rights abuses are to be expected, with computer seizures on one end of the range of behavior and worse things on the other. Dismissing those horrific situations as anomalies (or whatever point you were trying to make) does a disservice to everyone who takes seriously their duty to resist the erosion of our liberties.
You'll see them come up to some guy who seems like he's just minding his own business, and they'll totally abuse his rights -- although in their defense, in the end, the guy always ends up being guilty of something.
Oddly, enough, no, they don't. We seem to be willing to allow cops to get away with all kinds of low-level abuse as long as the victims don't have the power to fight back and without regard to whether those victims are ultimately found innocent or guilty.
Especially in the early days, I was always struck with how "Cops" really should have been named "Stupid Cop Tricks" instead. My favorite examples include the guy who gets a dime dropped on him by an ex accusing him of dealing drugs. The cops stop him while he's moving, pull all his household goods out of the rented moving van, and find nothing but some residue from a previously smoked joint in the ashtray. So the cops want to bust the ex for making a false report and they force the boyfriend to make a phone call to his ex to get her to admit what she did while the cops record the call. Every time the guy shows any reticence to take part, they threaten him with arrest for the micrograms of pot in the ashtray. At one point, one cop even lunges at this poor sap as if he's gonna beat the shit out of him for hesitating to help investigate his ex-girlfriend. There were so many injustices in that little segment it'd be tough to count them all.
But the Cops segment that really got me was when the police roll up to a few minority youths on the street, pile out, and put everybody up against a wall. There's no drugs found. There's no articulable reason for the cops to even talk to these kids other than a vague assertion that a group standing around like that must be up to no good. The one thing they do find is a wad of cash on one kid - maybe a couple of hundred dollars in mostly small bills, making a wad that looks more impressive than it really should. So what do these paragons of public service do, right there on camera? THEY TAKE IT FROM HIM!!! They literally took the money, one cop sticks it in his pocket, and they tell the kid that if he wants his money back, he has to bring his parents to the police station to get it back. Later on, hat in hand, mom and dad and son show up and appropriately grovel in front of this piece-o-shit cop, get a talking-to about how their son is headed down a bad path, and are given back the money. Their pitiful protest that their son has a job and had just gotten paid is barely heard on the tape and completely ignored by the big, bad gang of boys in blue who hold court over them.
OK, aside from destroying any respect for the cops that the viewer might have started out with, what did this incident accomplish? It showed that Cops could air proof positive of the most egregious bad behavior by police officers and most people are actually stupid enough to sit back and absorb it all as entertainment, without protest. The term "sheeple" comes to mind.
...theory is the USA is going to break into two countries, along the Mississippi River...
If things got so bad that secession appeared reasonable to a large block of the populace, my guess is that Texas would withdraw from the Union first, forming a passably viable country. Over and above the economic and geographical diversity of the state, Texans cling tenaciously to the theory that they entered the Union retaining a right to secede. That's not true (although Texas does have a right to break itself up into 5 different states) but perception is a powerful reality and I'd expect Texans to boogie outta here long before all the Eastern Seaboard could get together to agree on anything.
Please. A mouse in a bag is just an invitation for it to get lodged over the screen, pushed on from outside the bag, and - Crack! - there goes the LCD screen. I can't keep my people from carrying mice with them, but I sure hate replacing screens a couple of times a year. If you have to have one, get one of the mini models and make sure you put it in the bag beside the laptop, not on top of it.
I hate to be pedantic about it, but I just said that I believed God created everything. That makes me a Creationist. Pretty much all Christians believe the same thing; it just comes with the faith. The Creationists who get on television claiming that the Earth was created on a specific date, that the entire cosmos sprang into being in the space of 7 days (literal days, the way we humans perceive them and mark them off on a calendar) are faintly embarrassing to most of us. We respect their sincerity and deep faith. We accept their presence without correction because we believe judging what's in their souls is God's job, not ours.
But most of us take a different path. We believe God created everything. We don't believe we can know what goes on in His mind or how he perceives time. We don't automatically dismiss the idea that He used the tools that science teaches us about - things like evolution. We accept that the Biblical account of creation, while spiritually true and a reasonable metaphor for actual events, was never meant to replace scientific textbooks.
So I guess my objection to your arguments is that you have assigned to "Creationists" a particular doctrine that not even all creationists share. Maybe that's just a language thing. Maybe, in common usage, the term "creationist" applies only those few (very vocal) people who actually believe the world is about 10,000 years old.
But I find that a tough pill to swallow. It would mean that my beliefs are being co-opted, in the public perception, by people who reject the capacity for rational thought that God has given them. Perhaps if in the future you'd substitute the term "religious loonies," it would be clearer exactly who you mean to identify. It would then be clear that Christians can be religious, Christians can be loony, and Christians can be religious loonies, but those things don't automatically go together.
Then again, I'm sure someone would still object. Ya can't win, can ya?
"Christians... get mad with scientists because there isn't enough of an abundance of evidence for them to accept evolution."
Uh, no, we don't. Not as a group.
It's possible to find people in any identifiable group who get mad over some silly thing, but that doesn't mean the whole group thinks with one mind. There are plenty of Christians who, like me, believe that God created everything and he used whatever tools he pleased to get the job done. Evolution was probably one of those tools. I don't know for sure, though I have a lot of confidence.
Actually, I don't know much of anything for sure. I expect to know right after I'm dead, but in the here and now I'm willing to accept some reasonable things based on what my God-given intellect leads me to believe and I'm willing to accept some seemingly not-so-reasonable things based on faith.
I think that's a reasonable way to live.
Re:Your job shouldn't be your life.
on
Dream Jobs of 2004
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· Score: 4, Funny
I once had a boss that insisted that I send him a status report each week. (I hate paper work). So, I did what I often do in situations like that... I automated it
I once had a boss that insisted that I send him a status report each morning. I don't mind paperwork, so I did what I often do in situations like that... I buried him in what some people call "malicious compliance."
I can write fast and wordy. So every morning, right after my to-do list, I'd write two pages, minimum, listing every single little thing I did the day before. We're talking excruciating detail.
It took less than a month for the guy to tell me that he didn't need daily reports anymore. He wanted a single monthly report, no more than one page, double-spaced.
"...the 40-somethings (WTF are they doing at TG?)"
Uh...playing games?
I don't know what the focus of The Gathering is, but a number of other posters are saying that it has a lot to do with games. So I'm prompted to ask: Was I supposed to automatically lose my desire to play any games other than Monopoly and Whist when I turned 40?
Starting base-level pay, at the GS-5 level (assuming that no special pay rates are in force), is less than USD$24K a year. The jobs you linked require a bachelor's degree in computer science, including a minimum 30 semester hours of math, which must include at least 15 hours in a combination of statistics and mathematics that includes differential calculus. How many really good, insighful, knowledgeable people with those skills would be willing to work in and live around D.C. at that pay level?
I once started to apply for a job at the Smithsonian. I simply couldn't imagine a more stimulating environment to work. Then I saw the salary. No thanks. Government service is a real crap shoot as a career now that the Civil Service Retirement System is almost dead and the Prez is hell-bent on making the job security of the public sector as unreliable as the private. Without at least a darn good starting salary, I can no longer recommend it.
Good point. I've seen the same thing, on a bigger scale, in my home entertainment system. I've got one of those big Pioneer combination CD/DVD/Laserdisc players. (Yeah, I've got shelves full of laser discs and it was a lot cheaper to buy the combi-player than to re-buy them all on DVD.) The only problem is with the occasional DVD or CD that's a tad out of balance. If you make the mistake of leaving it spinning in the drawer for a long time, the unbalanced disc eventually works out of the disc holder mechanism inside the player. It then goes flying somewhere in the machine, usually wedging itself somewhere just about impossible to get out through the front door.
I got pretty good at taking off the cover, removing the jammed disc, and putting the whole thing back together before I decided to get another DVD/CD player and use the combi player for laserdiscs only.
She's in no way hassling him. But the kid was pretending to go to sleep, then getting up and logging on with mom's credit card numbers and surfing porn until just before her alarm clock went off. He was racking up literally thousands of dollars in credit card charges. He wasn't sleeping. He wasn't studying. He was failing school. He was stealing from his mom and lying to cover up his thefts.
The kid had (actually, still has) a major addiction problem. I think his mom is showing remarkable restraint and patience with him.
How is p2p worse for youngsters than thehun.net by the way ?
Odd you should mention that. I have a friend whose 15 year old son was addicted to porn to the extent he was stealing her credit card numbers in order to get to pay sites. It was a serious problem for her, both financially and morally. She has the kid in counseling and they're treating his need for the porn. But like a nicotine addict who needs a patch to taper off, she and the counselor needed some way for him to get an occasional fix without stealing her money.
I showed her thehun (and a couple of other sites). It served the purpose and even provided a mechanism for the counselor to study the browsing habits of the kid. It solved the immediate financial problem while they work on the deeper issues.
This incident counts as one of the weirdest things I've ever done in the realm of computer instruction. I actually felt a little creepy about it, but it was a better alternative than just ignoring the situation.
The point isn't to improve security. The point is to make the public belive that they are secure and the the government is taking action.
My favorite example: As a result of the Oklahoma City bombing (an attack using tons of fertilizer and fuel oil concealed in a truck parked outside the building) all major federal buildings installed metal detectors to screen all foot traffic entering the buildings.
Result? Zillions inconvenienced. Zero potential bombers caught trying to smuggle a ton of fuel oil and fertilizer into a building beneath their overcoat.
Slashdot Mirror
What kind of special handling do firearms get? That firearms ID tag is supposed to go *inside* the bag, but if you run across a clueless front counter, it may be placed outside the bag. That always just struck me as a giant "Steal Me First!" sign.
But what frosts my butt is that once things *do* end up there, they're unrecoverable. If you lose an incredibly valuable watch, file a police report that it was stolen and have all your documentation in order - it still doesn't matter. You can go to that lost luggage store, find *your* watch, and they won't let you have it. Period. The process of the airline making public notice about the item and selling it to the vendor who operates that store launders the item of all legal claim you may have to it.
That's just wrong. Lost items should be recoverable forever.
The American coverage of the Olympics generally includes little shooting. During the Winter Games, the Biathlon will generally get 5 minutes coverage at 4AM on a weekday and the segment will not be repeated.
At the Summer Games, things are a tad better if we win a medal or two or if one of our shooters is particularly telegenic. Luckily, one or two of our shooters are usually very lovely young ladies.
You want an illustration? I sat next to Ralf Schumann's wife when he won the gold for Rapid Fire Pistol at the Atlanta Games. As soon as the line was clear and people could move, we were surrounded by TV cameras and microphones. I beat a retreat instantly and then looked back. There wasn't a single U.S. news source in that gaggle of reporters.
Sad, really.
So, what is it? Are you kidding, stupid, or did you just not read the article?
In this particular case, the tshirt was relevant to the shooting sports. It bore the same type of silhouettes used at the Olympics to denote shooting events. (You are aware, aren't you, that shooting is an Olympic sport, with a number of events?)
In what idiotic alternate universe does wearing a tshirt that promotes legitimate, competitive sports get confused with "...a classmate (acting) as though they might shoot people..." or "...glorify(ing) violence..." or "...intimidating clothing..."?
...in this story to post something new and have it actually be seen, so I'm just doing this for me.
/. who could have done it in two hours. So I show him the prototype and tell him I'm going to install it. He says that the prototype is just dandy, but don't install it until a given date, the last day of the 6 weeks allotted to the project. Fine, I put the computers away. A couple of weeks later, I throw them on desks around the floor and plug them in. No one who works there has any clue what they are, but I just assume they'll get training later because I've used the last two weeks to write up documentation, including a user manual and training course outline.
Years ago, when dBaseIV was just about obsolete, I was working a strange little job - some data entry, some user help. Just a sort of little-of-everything tech support job, really, that I'd never had any training for but sort of figured out as I went along.
Boss drops by and tells me to forget everything else and work exclusively on building a database and front-end to control case file inventory. We're talking less than 100K paper file folders spread out among 70 or so employees and a half-dozen storage areas. He handed me a copy of dBase II and said to use it.
My response was "I'm not a programmer. I don't know what this dBase thing is. You're kidding, right?" He said "You'll figure it out. BTW, you're not allowed to ask anyone for help. Don't talk to any of the other employees. Just use your knowledge of the situation to write the thing and install it on 4 shared computers spread around the office. You have 6 weeks."
Amazing. I just sort of sat there, shocked. This dealt with *really* important files. If there was a problem with them getting lost, lots of revenue would be going up in smoke. And he was assigning someone he knew was completely clueless to solve the problem? Well, it didn't take me 6 weeks. To write something pretty and get it installed took about 3 weeks. I'm sure there are plenty of developers on
Here's the kicker -
The day after installation, internal security inspectors from *way* up on the corporate food chain swoop into the office and look over everything. They had been here are few months before and such inspections are normal, though rare and nerve-wracking. I see my boss show my work to the inspectors. The inspectors look at other stuff, then leave.
The next day, boss orders me to remove all the inventory control systems from the floor. It seems that, some months previously, the inspectors had identified weaknesses in case file control and filing and had suggested that we implement some sort of automated tracking. My boss had complied with their request, but now they were gone. So it was time to shut down the system.
I had spent 6 weeks busting my ass just so my boss would have a believable but, in reality, fake demonstration to throw at the inspectors, just so his boss could check off the box marked "Responds to input from Inspection function" on his annual evaluation. (Not exactly, but that's a functionally equivalent description of what happened.) I was, in short, duped into assisting in the commission of a fraud.
I consider the experience highly valuable. That boss taught me to be far more careful as to who I trust in this world.
If you're reading this, Thanks, Asshole.
Texicans? I know you're trying to be funny and I know that the current preferred term is "Texans," but I wonder if you know that "Texican" is, indeed, correct when discussing certain times and places. It was the term used for (usually white) settlers of Texas back when Texas still belonged to Mexico. In more recent years, some folks have tried to give it a pejorative slant by defining it as someone half Texan and half Mexican, but that's simply wrong; people who use the word that way are making a mistake. Nowadays, "Texican," at its best, is a way to refer to Texans that makes an appreciative historical nod to the contributions of Mexico to our culture. I think the word should get more use, actually.
I guess I'm just strange, but fast checkouts are, IMO, one of the good things about Walmart. I almost never wait more than a couple of minutes and usually just walk right up to an empty lane and check out immediately.
YMMV, I guess.
Of course, I suppose it helps that the only time I tend to shop there at 4-5am on Sundays...
Unless you're a Spanish voter, apparently.
Do a Yahoo search on "site match program" limiting the search to the yahoo.com domain. I just did. The result?
Nothing.
That's just too funny.
...and some of the posters here just pull answers out of thin air.
My employer, however, has a long-standing commitment to employing the visually-impaired. We have a large support office dedicated solely to their needs. From the intranet site of that office, let me offer a couple of things.
First, here's the general background paragraphs designed to let managers know what sort of things can be done to assist people with low vision:
As for specific items available for us to install and use, this is the list for low vision folks. Note that you'll need to Google various terminology to get a look at the actual products. (I apologize for the way the lameness filter has forced me to mangle this list by cramming everything onto one line; I hope it's still reasonably readable.)
Note that that's a long list of equipment and training aids, many of which aren't applicable to your situation. But if you don't get some good ideas from that list, you're just not trying. I work with this equipment all the time and I gotta tell ya, it's truly gratifying to set up a computer so that a blind or nearly-blind person can use it and make a living instead of being dependent on other people. Good luck in your efforts. They will be worth whatever effor they require.
I disagree. I think we're both right. Mostly. Clearly, you know the facts of the case. To wit:
Yes, the FBI set up Weaver and then tried to blackmail him into working for them. So, in that sense, the FBI set up the situation.
Yes, Weaver then refused to work for the FBI and so they set out to get him on charges that he'd ultimately be cleared of.
He certainly isn't a guy I'd want for a neighbor. I've never met him, but I've talked to folks who have and I think your characterization is probably more true than not.
But it's at this point that we part company. I could say that every mistake I've made in life is that fault of my parents because they brought me into the world, setting up the situations where I'd screw up. If I did that, though, I'd be assigning blame to someone who, while in the chain of events that led up to my mistakes, is simply too far removed from the actual mistake to rightfully bear any blame. The same principle applies to Ruby Ridge. Yes, Weaver was at fault for not working through the system, for bunkering down, for forcing a confrontation. (He was also flat stupid to think that if he just went up on his little piece of land and never came down that no one would ever come up there to bother him and his family. Did he think his legal problems would just go away? What *was* he thinking?)
But Weavers decision to bunker down and let himself be laid siege to is way too far removed from the FBIs decision to adopt "shoot on sight" rules of engagement, even for the unarmed. And even that institutional decision is far removed from the sniper's responsibility, his basic charge as a human being, to act within a reasonable moral framework. IOW, it was the snipers fault that he pulled the trigger and killed an unarmed woman. You can't blame that on Weaver.
I only cited the firing of that one shot in my initial post. For that one single act, I believe you are incorrect to assert that I "made an incorrect assumption that the actions taken at Ruby Ridg were the fault of the FBI." I wasn't talking about *all* the actions of the FBI, many of which were simply reasonable responses to the actions of Weaver. I was talking about that one shot.
I'll leave it to others to argue whether that one shot was a murder, but the fact that such an assertion can be reasonably debated, when the actor was a law enforcement officer, is, in itself, highly distressing.
Look, I'm one of the first to be less than sympathetic to some of the folks who've gotten themselves killed in confrontations with feds. Hell, one of the ATF SAs killed at Waco was a casual acquaintance of mine. But your statement above is dangerously oversimplified.
At Waco, yes, technically, it's probably true that they killed themselves. However, that happened after a lengthy siege during which the FBI screwed up just about everything they could screw up. At the heart of it, the FBI didn't have a clue as to the emotional state they were forcing on the people inside that compound. It's like standing outside the monkey cage at the zoo wearing a loud shirt that just drives the monkeys ape-shit (Yes, that was an intentional pun). Theoretically, it's the monkeys that are stupid. Ideally, it's the monkeys that should, of their own volition, calm down. But in the real world it's you, the thinking human being, who has to recognize that your presence is causing a problem and, rightness or wrongness be damned, it's you who should step away from the cage till the monkeys calm down. The FBI should have understood that they were forcing a bad end to that situation and backed the hell off. As we've seen since then, as with the family that's holed up in east Texas right now, it's a lot better to just keep a loose cordon around the site and keep watch; eventually, the situation will resolve itself peacefully.
As for Weaver at Ruby Ridge, you're being way too harsh. Did he set up the situation? Sort of. When the feds obliquely threatened to take from him the only earthly possession he valued, his land, he bunkered down. He probably shouldn't have. But your flat statement that he was responsible for everything simply doesn't hold up. There's no way he was responsible for the sniper's bullet that killed his unarmed wife. That was, pure and simple, a result of the "Nobody disses us! Shoot to kill!" attitude of the feds.
Oh, and btw, you *are* aware that Weaver was found not guilty of all the charges in that case, aren't you?
As for Elian, I agree with you completely and I don't know how the govt could have acted differently. Of course, if it weren't for things like Ruby Ridge and Waco, the general populace would be more likely to cut the feds some slack when they have to bust into a little house and snatch a kid, in the process producing some pictures with far more drama than they needed.
In short, I don't think it was out of line for the grandparent of this post to point out that federal agency civil rights abuses are to be expected, with computer seizures on one end of the range of behavior and worse things on the other. Dismissing those horrific situations as anomalies (or whatever point you were trying to make) does a disservice to everyone who takes seriously their duty to resist the erosion of our liberties.
Oddly, enough, no, they don't. We seem to be willing to allow cops to get away with all kinds of low-level abuse as long as the victims don't have the power to fight back and without regard to whether those victims are ultimately found innocent or guilty.
Especially in the early days, I was always struck with how "Cops" really should have been named "Stupid Cop Tricks" instead. My favorite examples include the guy who gets a dime dropped on him by an ex accusing him of dealing drugs. The cops stop him while he's moving, pull all his household goods out of the rented moving van, and find nothing but some residue from a previously smoked joint in the ashtray. So the cops want to bust the ex for making a false report and they force the boyfriend to make a phone call to his ex to get her to admit what she did while the cops record the call. Every time the guy shows any reticence to take part, they threaten him with arrest for the micrograms of pot in the ashtray. At one point, one cop even lunges at this poor sap as if he's gonna beat the shit out of him for hesitating to help investigate his ex-girlfriend. There were so many injustices in that little segment it'd be tough to count them all.
But the Cops segment that really got me was when the police roll up to a few minority youths on the street, pile out, and put everybody up against a wall. There's no drugs found. There's no articulable reason for the cops to even talk to these kids other than a vague assertion that a group standing around like that must be up to no good. The one thing they do find is a wad of cash on one kid - maybe a couple of hundred dollars in mostly small bills, making a wad that looks more impressive than it really should. So what do these paragons of public service do, right there on camera? THEY TAKE IT FROM HIM!!! They literally took the money, one cop sticks it in his pocket, and they tell the kid that if he wants his money back, he has to bring his parents to the police station to get it back. Later on, hat in hand, mom and dad and son show up and appropriately grovel in front of this piece-o-shit cop, get a talking-to about how their son is headed down a bad path, and are given back the money. Their pitiful protest that their son has a job and had just gotten paid is barely heard on the tape and completely ignored by the big, bad gang of boys in blue who hold court over them.
OK, aside from destroying any respect for the cops that the viewer might have started out with, what did this incident accomplish? It showed that Cops could air proof positive of the most egregious bad behavior by police officers and most people are actually stupid enough to sit back and absorb it all as entertainment, without protest. The term "sheeple" comes to mind.
If things got so bad that secession appeared reasonable to a large block of the populace, my guess is that Texas would withdraw from the Union first, forming a passably viable country. Over and above the economic and geographical diversity of the state, Texans cling tenaciously to the theory that they entered the Union retaining a right to secede. That's not true (although Texas does have a right to break itself up into 5 different states) but perception is a powerful reality and I'd expect Texans to boogie outta here long before all the Eastern Seaboard could get together to agree on anything.
Please. A mouse in a bag is just an invitation for it to get lodged over the screen, pushed on from outside the bag, and - Crack! - there goes the LCD screen. I can't keep my people from carrying mice with them, but I sure hate replacing screens a couple of times a year. If you have to have one, get one of the mini models and make sure you put it in the bag beside the laptop, not on top of it.
I hate to be pedantic about it, but I just said that I believed God created everything. That makes me a Creationist. Pretty much all Christians believe the same thing; it just comes with the faith. The Creationists who get on television claiming that the Earth was created on a specific date, that the entire cosmos sprang into being in the space of 7 days (literal days, the way we humans perceive them and mark them off on a calendar) are faintly embarrassing to most of us. We respect their sincerity and deep faith. We accept their presence without correction because we believe judging what's in their souls is God's job, not ours.
But most of us take a different path. We believe God created everything. We don't believe we can know what goes on in His mind or how he perceives time. We don't automatically dismiss the idea that He used the tools that science teaches us about - things like evolution. We accept that the Biblical account of creation, while spiritually true and a reasonable metaphor for actual events, was never meant to replace scientific textbooks.
So I guess my objection to your arguments is that you have assigned to "Creationists" a particular doctrine that not even all creationists share. Maybe that's just a language thing. Maybe, in common usage, the term "creationist" applies only those few (very vocal) people who actually believe the world is about 10,000 years old.
But I find that a tough pill to swallow. It would mean that my beliefs are being co-opted, in the public perception, by people who reject the capacity for rational thought that God has given them. Perhaps if in the future you'd substitute the term "religious loonies," it would be clearer exactly who you mean to identify. It would then be clear that Christians can be religious, Christians can be loony, and Christians can be religious loonies, but those things don't automatically go together.
Then again, I'm sure someone would still object. Ya can't win, can ya?
Uh, no, we don't. Not as a group.
It's possible to find people in any identifiable group who get mad over some silly thing, but that doesn't mean the whole group thinks with one mind. There are plenty of Christians who, like me, believe that God created everything and he used whatever tools he pleased to get the job done. Evolution was probably one of those tools. I don't know for sure, though I have a lot of confidence.
Actually, I don't know much of anything for sure. I expect to know right after I'm dead, but in the here and now I'm willing to accept some reasonable things based on what my God-given intellect leads me to believe and I'm willing to accept some seemingly not-so-reasonable things based on faith.
I think that's a reasonable way to live.
I once had a boss that insisted that I send him a status report each morning. I don't mind paperwork, so I did what I often do in situations like that ... I buried him in what some people call "malicious compliance."
I can write fast and wordy. So every morning, right after my to-do list, I'd write two pages, minimum, listing every single little thing I did the day before. We're talking excruciating detail.
It took less than a month for the guy to tell me that he didn't need daily reports anymore. He wanted a single monthly report, no more than one page, double-spaced.
Sweeeet. :-)
Uh...playing games?
I don't know what the focus of The Gathering is, but a number of other posters are saying that it has a lot to do with games. So I'm prompted to ask: Was I supposed to automatically lose my desire to play any games other than Monopoly and Whist when I turned 40?
Starting base-level pay, at the GS-5 level (assuming that no special pay rates are in force), is less than USD$24K a year. The jobs you linked require a bachelor's degree in computer science, including a minimum 30 semester hours of math, which must include at least 15 hours in a combination of statistics and mathematics that includes differential calculus. How many really good, insighful, knowledgeable people with those skills would be willing to work in and live around D.C. at that pay level?
I once started to apply for a job at the Smithsonian. I simply couldn't imagine a more stimulating environment to work. Then I saw the salary. No thanks. Government service is a real crap shoot as a career now that the Civil Service Retirement System is almost dead and the Prez is hell-bent on making the job security of the public sector as unreliable as the private. Without at least a darn good starting salary, I can no longer recommend it.
Good point. I've seen the same thing, on a bigger scale, in my home entertainment system. I've got one of those big Pioneer combination CD/DVD/Laserdisc players. (Yeah, I've got shelves full of laser discs and it was a lot cheaper to buy the combi-player than to re-buy them all on DVD.) The only problem is with the occasional DVD or CD that's a tad out of balance. If you make the mistake of leaving it spinning in the drawer for a long time, the unbalanced disc eventually works out of the disc holder mechanism inside the player. It then goes flying somewhere in the machine, usually wedging itself somewhere just about impossible to get out through the front door.
I got pretty good at taking off the cover, removing the jammed disc, and putting the whole thing back together before I decided to get another DVD/CD player and use the combi player for laserdiscs only.
She's in no way hassling him. But the kid was pretending to go to sleep, then getting up and logging on with mom's credit card numbers and surfing porn until just before her alarm clock went off. He was racking up literally thousands of dollars in credit card charges. He wasn't sleeping. He wasn't studying. He was failing school. He was stealing from his mom and lying to cover up his thefts.
The kid had (actually, still has) a major addiction problem. I think his mom is showing remarkable restraint and patience with him.
Odd you should mention that. I have a friend whose 15 year old son was addicted to porn to the extent he was stealing her credit card numbers in order to get to pay sites. It was a serious problem for her, both financially and morally. She has the kid in counseling and they're treating his need for the porn. But like a nicotine addict who needs a patch to taper off, she and the counselor needed some way for him to get an occasional fix without stealing her money.
I showed her thehun (and a couple of other sites). It served the purpose and even provided a mechanism for the counselor to study the browsing habits of the kid. It solved the immediate financial problem while they work on the deeper issues.
This incident counts as one of the weirdest things I've ever done in the realm of computer instruction. I actually felt a little creepy about it, but it was a better alternative than just ignoring the situation.
I can't believe there's not a Tivo commercial already posted in this spot.
My favorite example: As a result of the Oklahoma City bombing (an attack using tons of fertilizer and fuel oil concealed in a truck parked outside the building) all major federal buildings installed metal detectors to screen all foot traffic entering the buildings.
Result? Zillions inconvenienced. Zero potential bombers caught trying to smuggle a ton of fuel oil and fertilizer into a building beneath their overcoat.
Stupid. It's just stupid.