Friday, April 28, 2006

Meemie-whats?

From the always ludicrous BD2x4:

5 Things in my fridge:

a) beer mustard
b) diet coke
c) beer
d) orange juice
e) what's left of a round of Brie cheese

5 Things in my closet:

a) Christmas ornaments
b) an insane amount of old baseball cards
c) NY Mets jerseys (2, although I'm wearing my home white one today)
d) clothes
e) suit

5 Things in my car:

a) KYB GR-2 struts
b) 200 horsies ("This is the ranch...its where I keep my 200 horsies" - Conan O'Brien)
c) XM receiver
d) tons of LEDs
e) cd with a video on LM's Deepwater program

5 People to inflict this pain upon:

I, uhh, don't have any regulars...so, no one is getting this. If you happen to stumble on my blog and want to post this in yours, please make a post in the comments section, and I'll check out what you have in your fridge, closet, and car!

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Individual rights being stolen down under...

Go ahead, read the article.

Yes, the blokes down there are going to make people carry around a national ID card. It stores your personal information, and can be accessed by "government officials" only. Right...

Anyone who knows anything about technology is that no matter how good the security experts get, there's always people on the other side who are a few steps ahead. Imagine that a person could walk down the street in Syndey, with some sort of RFID system, and read all the information on those cards. The article said that people could store additional information on the cards, if they wanted to. So, if someone has their SSN (AU equivalent), credit card numbers, address, etc on that card, this person walking down the block has it all, and you wouldn't know until you'd been hit. This is besides the fact that the central government is now requiring people to carry these. Could a police officer driving down the road have a scanner set up that warns him when a person driving next to them has a spotty driving record, automatically? Would that person then be scrutinized more than the other people on the road? I think so...

Peter Hendy, in the article, states that the card will help to crack down on welfare fraud. Sorry buddy, but the only way to crack down on welfare fraud is to get rid of welfare. Period. People will always find a way to get free money. Hell, imagine when someone does figure out how to access the card and change the data...could they continuously change the name and identity on the card, allowing them to access other people's social security, pension, or welfare payments?

I can just imagine the Democrats in this country calling for a national ID system...how terrible would that be? I'm all for improving identification technology, and making it harder to forge. The newer New Jersey driver's licenses are pretty damn cool. NJ used to just have paper licenses that were laminated, with no seals or official imprints. The new cards are plastic and much harder to forge. I didn't know it until last week, but they actually have a blacklight refective hologram on the upper right corner. That is the kind of stuff the governments should be doing to stop fraud (besides the aforementioned abolition of welfare and government payouts), not requiring national ID cards. But, I digress...

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

When did this crowded room get so lonely?

Man, no one posts in my comments section. I don't think I've had a comment since the first week I had this thing up...is anybody reading this?

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Leftists scumbags.

Remember Ward Churchill, the left wing college professor from Colorado, who compared the victims of 9/11 to Adolf Eichmann (Obersturmbannfuhrer in the Nazi regime, often referred to as "Chief Executioner" of the Third Reich for his role in the extermination of the Jews)?

Churchill wrote that the people in the WTC were:

... too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it (Wikipedia)
Churchill, while he was recognized as a villain by normal Americans, the left embraced him and pushed him further. He is still a tenured professor at UC Boulder, and although an investigation has been opened regarding allegations of plagiarism, research fabrication, as well as intimidating his colleagues, it'll never see the light of day. The liberals control too much money for Churchill, a despicable man, to get fired.

Anyway, to my topic...a right wing (read, normal American) professor, Indrek Wichman, at Michigan State University wrote an email, directed at that school's Muslim Students Association. The main contents were this:
...that he was protesting their protest and said he was not offended by cartoons but rather Muslims who commit suicide bombings, behead civilians, attack public buildings, burn Christian churches, kill Catholic priests in Turkey, rape Scandinavian girls and riot in France (Foxnews).
Now, I'm not condoning what the guy did, but Lord knows, I agree with him. I know many Muslims...I've been going to school with them since I was very young. I have no problems with the Muslims that want nothing more than to live and serve Allah. What I hate are the same things that Wichman hates, but that's not the point here.

The point is that while Churchill will walk away from the investigation and enjoy his tenure, then later write a book that will pander to the left-wing looneys out there, detailing the neo-McCarthyism he had to endure, Wichman is going to get screwed. I mean, Wichman said something true (all his statements were things that have happened before, and many happen on a daily basis). But, because it offends a group of people that no one wants to offend, he'll get the shaft...big time. He'll be hung out to dry by the university, and forever labeled a racist, because he was exercising his "right to free speech". If one of those Muslims wrote a commentary for the school newspaper, exercising his "right to free speech," detailing the same things, true or not, about Americans, would it be seen in the same light, or would he be applauded for speaking out against a tyrannical regime? I think you know exactly what would happen, and its very sad. Present an anti-establishment, left wing view, and everybody loves you. Present an opposing opinion, and you're a racist, a bigot, a Nazi!!!

When will the lunacy end?

Monday, April 17, 2006

So you're a cutter, huh?

Goth Youths Prone to Suicide Attempts and Self-Mutilation...

I mean, they just figured this out? When I was in high school, I was deep into the punk and ska scenes in central Jersey, and all the goths I knew were into cutting themselves. One or two of them actually committed or attempted to commit suicide.

What I don't get is that they needed a study to figure this out. Of course, the correlating data, presented as odds ratios with confidence intervals, makes the study seem very reliable and worthwhile. The scientists have presented their data well. But, for those of us with an ounce of common sense, talking to one of these bundles of sunshine immediately lets you know, "Hey, this kid ain't right." Many of the goth kids I knew were deeply troubled, and they turned to pain to make them feel better. I've seen it personally with a few people I was close with.

Before you start thinking that I believe that all goths are self-mutilators and headcases, I do believe that there are some people that are just deeply influenced by certain things, gothic music and dress being two of them. With that, they feel they need to play "dress-up" so that they're accepted by the goth community. There's a portion of these goth kids that are really normal, if not a little eccentric. They want to fit in with a group of people outside the mainstream, but their lives are not so bad that they want to cut themselves with barbed wire. I knew many of these people in high school and college, and although their appearance might throw you off, they're really genuinely nice people.

It's the others that scare kitty...

Speeding sucks...if you get pulled over, that is.

Man, I got pulled over on Saturday afternoon. I had just finished up with about 14 hours worth of work on my car, spread over two days, and was driving my car from Lakehurst, where my fiancee's dad lives to my apartment. Instead of taking New Freedom Road through Medford, I decided to take Route 70...bad idea.

As I approached Red Top Market on Route 70, the truck in front of me proceeded to stop on the highway. Yes, that's correct...stop. I then just hit the gas once he got out from in front of me. My car, being the highway monster that it is, is slow to accelerate from 0-30, but once I hit 30, the car takes off like a rocket. All of a sudden I was going 70 mph, and all of a sudden, there was a state trooper in the other lane.

Anyway, he pulled me over a bit down the road, and told me I was going a little fast (gave no number). He asked how my driving record was, and I told him it was flawless, so he went and ran my info. A few minutes later, he came back and wrote me a ticket for "Driving as to possibly cause an accident", NJ statute 39:4-56. When I googled the statute, I saw that it was listed as "Delaying Traffic", and it carried a $47 fine, but more importantly, no points. My prayers were certainly answered after this one! He definitely didn't get me on radar, because if he did, I'd have been rung up for reckless driving, which carries 6 points! I'm just going to shut my mouth and pay the fine...of course, in the future, I'll make sure I'm going a little slower through that area.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Get fired up.

I was all kinds of fired up yesterday morning. When I was eating my bowl of Special K, I was watching the previous night's O'Reilly Factor on Foxnews (4 AM re-run). He had NYC councilmen Charles Barron (a former Black Panther in Harlem) on, talking about voting reform in NYC and immigration in the US. This is the exerpt from billoreilly.com:

In New York City there are currently about 1.4 million non-citizens of voting age living within the city limits, if you can believe it. These people are not illegal aliens. They are here on legitimate visas. In 1804, New York City ruled that only U.S. citizens could locally vote, but now there's a move to change that. The Factor asked the man leading the charge, New York City councilman Charles Barron, if he understands why people might be upset about this, "When the immigration complexion was white, when Irish came, when Poland came, when Italians, when Germans came, and Jewish came. They came in at the bottom; they worked their way up. It was easy to become citizens. They took jobs from other people. No one complained." The Factor interjected, "I got your point. Did you ever hear or see a picture, 'Irish need not apply'?" Barron countered, "Come on, did they ever say that they should be a felony for those whites who came in here undocumented? Never." The Factor then asked, "Do you believe in an open border? Do you believe anybody from the Caribbean or from Central America should be able to walk into this country?" Barron reasserted his position, "Whatever they did when the immigration was white, they should continue to do it now. The rules have changed." Barron went on to say that illegal immigrants in the United States shouldn't be made felons, that the southern border
does not need a wall and that this is all a result of bad American policy and NAFTA. The Factor stated, "Mexico wanted NAFTA."


I couldn't believe my ears when I heard this guy race baiting O'Reilly. The entire crux of his arguement, which was weak to begin with, was that when it was white Europeans that wanted in this country, they were welcomed with open arms and that there were no problems for them. Further, people who tried to sneak in didn't face repercussions. Now, anyone who knows the history of Ellis Island knows that was not the case. People got into this country because they immigrated, legally, and intended to stay here. They intended to assimilate into American culture and become Americans, not Italian-Americans, Polish-Americans, or Irish-Americans. As Abraham Lincoln said in 1858, "...a house divided against itself cannot stand..." People coming from Europe became Americans. They learned English (if necessary) and accepted American cultural standards and norms. Lincoln was right. We run into division in every aspect
of American life, and now the hot button is immigration. The biggest problem with these people immigrating is not that we can't support them or that they can't support themselves; it's not overpopulation, if the fact that they do not want to assimilate. They do not want to come here legally, because they want to have the ability to move freely between Mexico and the US; to come and go as they please, pay no taxes in either state, and have no responsibilities to anyone other than their families.

Whites weren't just welcomed into this country. My fiancee's family is totally Irish on one side and totally German on the other. The Irish side faced problem in the early 1900s in Jersey City and Hoboken. Many couldn't get jobs because they were Irish. Her father's family came here from Heidelberg, Germany in 1941. Her grandfather was conscripted into the Nazi army and defected. People in the US didn't see that...they saw a man that spoke German, and he faced his own problems with people discriminating against him; saying he was a Nazi, when in reality, he didn't support their cause, and left Nazi Germany. Her last name is Donnheimer, shortened from Von Donnheimer. Having that last name caused her to deal with stuff herself, from being called a Nazi while she was in Catholic elementary school to having swastikas painted on the sidewalk in front of her house. The paternal side of my family has been here since sometime in 1700s, as far as we can tell. As for my maternal side, they're Polish and Ukranian, and immigrated during the early 1900s. They faced similar problems to Meghan's Irish ancestors, yet don't speak of it often.

Everyone knows that the life of an immigrant isn't easy. We all know of people who immigrated here with nothing but the clothes on their backs and $5 in their pockets, if that. Today, many of them have made themselves into respectable businessmen, whether it be blue or white collar. These people don't want that. They don't want to be made into respectable people. While they want their kids to go to American schools and receive American medical care, both for free, they want to exist themselves on the fringe of society.

Barron's statement that "Whatever they did when the immigration was white, they should continue to do it now. The rules have changed." is completely erroneous and misleading. Yes, they are continuing to do what it was they did when immigration was white. They are screening and processing people when they come into this country. Just as the government keeps tabs on you based on your social security number, they keep tabs on immigrants based on their Visas. The immigration bills being discussed now have nothing to do with what the immigration laws addressed in the early 1900s, as illegal immigration was not a problem then. Even so, when the majority of immigrants were white Europeans, the Chinese, Japanese, and Philipino immigrants came here legally and were processed. They faced the same challenges that the whites faced. No one is saying that the people shouldn't be able to come here at one point or another (when WE have space). What we're saying is that you better come here LEGALLY, and you better be documented.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Yesterday was a looooong day.

Got up at 0415 to get to work by 0500, and worked my little tuchas off until 1300. Then, I went home, got changed, and headed to my future father-in-law's place to work on my car. I originally intended to work until about 1800, but 6 turned into 2030. By the time I grabbed a sub at Wawa, drove the 45 minutes from Lakehurst to Mount Laurel, took a shower and was ready to lay down, it was almost 10:30. Today, of course, I woke up at 0415 again. Tomorrow, I have to be at work from 0400 - 1500. Long day tomorrow. Thank God it's almost Friday. The reason for the hours tomorrow is that we have three people that are on vacation tomorrow, so there are only two of us to cover from 0500 - 0000. Of course, there's a DEMO going on tomorrow, and they need me in at 0400. When will I sleep???

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Maybe you shouldn't have used steroids, asshole!

So Je$$e Jack$on thinks that Barry Bonds needs special security?

You've got to be kidding me, folks. Barry Bonds needs special security because why? He's black? No...Barry Bonds needs special security because we in the United States don't take too kindly to cheaters. We know he's cheated. His average number of homeruns per year, from his debut in 1986, through 1999 (14 seasons) is just over 31. Now, from year 2000, through 2004 (2005 doesn't count, since he only played in 14 games, yet he hit 5 homeruns), he hit 258 homeruns, averaging 51.6 each year. In 2000, Bonds was 36 years old.

I won't dispute the fact that he's one of the best hitters in baseball history. He's also a prolific base stealer, with a career 506 stolen bases. The man has incredible hand-eye coordination, which allows him to hit for high average and high slugging percentage. Because so many pitchers and coaches are afraid to pitch to him, he walks significantly more than anyone else in the game. This gives him an astronomical on base percentage (OBP). But, how did he go from a 31 homer/year hitter to increasing that by 61%?

I'll answer for you...Steroids. He's the most accused player in baseball history, when it comes to steroid use, at least. He's been accused of taking human growth hormone and several other illegal substances, and each time the heat has been turned up, he suddenly has an injury that just won't rehab, like his numerous surgeries last year, which kept him from playing most of the season. The man is a cheater, has been implicated in grand jury testimony, while witnesses were under oath. So, which one is lying? I'd place my bet on Bonds.

Now, on to Je$$e Jack$on...he's saying that because Bonds is black, he's been unfairly subjected to discrimination and false accusations when it comes to this steroids issue. It doesn't have anything to do with the facts in the case, just that he's black. Jackson thinks that Bonds deserves additional security because Bonds had a syringe thrown at him. He cites Hank Aaron's struggles with race during his time in baseball, when he was threatened as he approached Babe Ruth's homerun record. This is all well and good...I'm sure that Aaron did have problems as he got up there. There are people in this country that don't want a black man to be ahead of any white man. Of course, they make up about 1% of the total white population of the US, but Mr. Jackson ignores that, he wants to go for the shock value. Maybe Bonds is paying him to make the remarks...I don't know.

But, do Carlos Delgado, David Ortiz, and Vladimir Guerrero need additional security because they're also black? Do Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, and Livan Hernandez need it because they're hispanic? How about Derek Jeter? He's mulatto...Must be a ton of people out there that want to hurt him!

What I do know is that Jackson will say just about anything, to anyone for one of two reasons:
1- To race bait and try to trap someone, so that they will donate money to one of his "causes".
2- To make money for himself.

So, does Bonds deserve more security simply because he's black? No. Does Bonds deserve more security because he's approaching Babe Ruth's homerun record (714)? No. Why does he? Because Jesse Jackson wants to make a quick buck somehow...That's why.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Have you no decency?

Check out this article, on Air Marshals being charged with smuggling...

So these two guys just plead guilty to conspiracy to smuggle drugs...and they're federal Air Marshals! They accepted $15,000 from someone, in exchange for smuggling 15 pounds of cocaine through airport security. Of course, they are air marshals, so they wouldn't need to go through the TSA like the rest of us do...should have been a cake-walk for them, but they got busted.

Frankly, I think these two guys deserve a pretty lengthy prison stay, although I can't say they deserve the life in prison that they are eligible for on the smuggling charge. I mean, we're supposed to trust these guys. We shouldn't have to question their integrity or wonder if they're doing the right things while they're aboard passenger jets. I do think that having federal Air Marshals on planes, armed, of course, is a great idea. The additional security they provide is well worth their cost. On the other hand, are they really providing us with security when they do this type of stuff? Or, are they circumventing the law, simply because they can? Of course, these two guys are certainly the exception and not the norm, but it begs the question of whether or not these guys are really on our side...

If presented with a hostile situation about a passenger jet, would they act in the best interest of the people aboard or in their best interest? I'd like to think that they'd do their jobs and try what they could to defuse the situation (using any means necessary), but stuff like this makes me think otherwise.

So, in case you're keeping track, we can't trust the air marshals because they're corrupt. We can't trust the pilots because they're drunk. We can't trust the taxi drivers because they're foreign (and possibly a terrorist...that was a joke, ACLU). We can't trust the politicians because they're liars. We can't trust the unions because they're only in it for themselves and will screw anyone (including the company they work for) if they don't get their 15 minute breaks every half hour. We can't trust the news media because its biased. We can't trust our eyes, because they can be deceived. We can't trust our friends because they're just in it for themselves. Hell, we can't even trust our cars because Firestone makes bad tires...What to do, what to do?

"Nothing can go wrong on Rex Manning Day" - Empire Records

Today is my first official day on the morning shift. I used to work from 1630 - 0030 (4:30p - 12:30a for you non-military types), which I did for two months. Before that, it was 1330 - 2130, which I did for like four months. Now, I work 0500 - 1330. Let me tell you, it's tough. I woke up this morning at 4:15...The last time I was awake that early was when Meghan and I went on our cruise back in December (2:30 AM).

There's a stress test going on at my site today for the lead baseline, and thankfully, system initialization went very smoothly, for the most part. That started around 0600, and was finally finished around 0730. Today is also new password day for all the classified systems, so we've had every Tom, Dick, and Harry down here in my office to get their new password (I'm one of the classified password admins). This has also gone pretty smoothly, but of course, with everything, there are hitches.

Besides that, I ended up having trouble with my SUN workstation today, while I was trying to give people passwords, so I had to troubleshoot that and change my .cshrc file before I could do anything. Of course, one of the problems I was having was with vi, and it was caused by my .cshrc file, so I couldn't change it. The only thing I could do was ftp another .cshrc file from another system and use that. Again, thank God I was able to get that working, or I'd be up shit's creek...

Anyway, yesterday was the real opening day for Major League Baseball. After working overnight on Sunday night (2000 SUN - 0900 MON), I grabbed some sleep and got up at about 1:30 PM to catch the New York Mets game against the Washington Nationals. I know, I know, baseball is boring, right? Well, I'll watch a three hour game for the three or four truly good plays. Yesterday, the Mets new 2nd basemen, Anderson Hernandez made a great play, running to his glove side, almost all the way behind second base, then jumping and making a spinning throw to first to throw out the baserunner. Awesome play. In the 7th inning, Jose Reyes threw out Alfonso Soriano at the plate, and in the top of the 9th, Carlos Beltran threw out Jose Vidro at second to end the game. Mets 3, Nationals 2.

On to some other news, this time not about me.

Tom DeLay has announced that he will resign from the House of Representatives, and obviously, will not be running for re-election. On one hand, I'm upset by this, as I really liked DeLay, and I think it's going to hurt Republicans in the House and Senate, come election time. The dems will be able to say "oh, look at these Republicans, rank with corruption...hell, their leader resigned amidst scandal". On the other hand, I think that this is just what the Republicans need, a good kick in the ass. For the past few years, they've become the new tax and spend politicians, just without the taxes. President Bush hasn't vetoed a single spending bill that's come across his desk, and the Republicans and Democrats alike just keep spending and spending and spending.

Some of the spending can truthfully be attributed to 9/11, and the cleanup and security increases that followed. Much of it, though, is nothing more than pork-barrel legislation at its worst. When will the conservatives in Congress stand up and say "ENOUGH!"? Our debt is huge, and our dollar is still falling. Inflation fears are worsening, as the fed just raised short term interest rates to 4.75%. I paid $2.41 for gas yesterday. When are we going to open up ANWAR? When are we going to tell Saudi Arabia, et al what we're going to pay for gas, take it or leave it. I'm definitely not going over to the dark side, but I becoming more and more disgusted with the Republicans...so called "Conservatives". While they might be conservative in their personal lives, they certainly aren't when it comes to expanding the federal government and spending taxpayer money. What happened to good old fiscal conservatives? Did they disappear? Am I the only one that prays that the federal government shrinks by 50%, that a flat tax is implemented across the board (no more free ride for the lower 80% of taxpayers).

Eh...It'll never happen.

"Fallen, fallen, is Babylon the great. It has become a dwelling place of demons." Revelation 18.