Huzzah.

Monday. 1st of the Month so rent is due. Left my Blackberry on all day so the battery died. Flat tire on the beltway on the way home. Huzzah.

This trip...

Has been unnecessarily rough. I had hoped to make it out to the Cahokia Mounds today, as my flight doesn't leave until the afternoon, but the weather has turned bad.

As it happens, I had hoped I could be going on a Hawaii trip the next couple of weeks, but that got pushed off. I'm going to be going to some of the Garden Spots of the American Southeast instead.

Idiots in security.

I was listening to this week's NPR Technology podcast and the first story was about passwords. Specifically, about idiots who had trouble with their passwords. There was a montage of idiots telling their stories about what idiots they were with passwords.

One gem came from a guy who said "I had to throw away my laptop. I couldn't figure out my password, my company couldn't help me, Apple couldn't help me."

That right there is a good example of the difference between Apple users and PC users. First off, PCs have a much higher "support" industry than Apple does, so someone somewhere could have resolved the issue, even if it came down to moving a jumper on a motherboard or enclosing the HDD and pulling the information off that way. Or they could have formatted the HDD and reload the OS. Certainly there was no reason to throw away a laptop because of password difficulties.

The guys tone also really pissed me off, as if he thought it was funny. Hell, I wish I had enough cash to throw away a Apple Laptop after some password problems!

I might be a little narrowminded in this case, as I've spent such a long time in government(either as a sailor or a contractor) that I'm used to keeping track of multiple passwords...but man, seriously? I honestly think this is not that hard.

Emotional Investment in your pet.

My cat Willy had a stroke Monday morning. He was throwing up something fierce, and stumbling around like he had no control of his hind legs. I took him to the vet who, among other things, determined that he had an enlarged heart that was probably the root cause of this problem.

I was pretty tore up about it, and as I was sitting in the waiting room at the Vet clinic I mostly stared at the floor trying not to cry. One of the things that came through my mind was how much more emotional distress Willy's condition was causing me than dealing with the '04 Tsunami cleanup during my deployment. The most emotion response that work created within me nausea and a little fear during certain events. But that fear passed rapidly and didn't really cause me distress. How is it that I'm emphasizing more with my cat than other human beings?

As of today(Thursday) Willy has recovered quite a bit, he's returned to jumping up on furniture and many of his previous mannerisms. That cat has already gone through like 8 of his lives, and it's frankly amazing this 14 year old animal has made such a recovery. He's still stumbling around a bit, and I wonder if that stumble will ever go away, but the worse appears to be over. I don't know what I would have done if the Vet had started to say stuff like "he's in a lot of pain". Probably would have done what was best for Willy, but it would have killed me a little inside.

Fearing and loathing(mostly loathing) in Central Texas

When one says "we need you to go off to support a exercise" I envision it being out in the woods somewhere, not in a parking lot with a cargo container encircled with concertina wire and sandbags to simulate "field conditions". At least the pattering of the rain on the metal keeps one focused as he fights the 39 degree weather. I can honestly say I didn't think Central Texas would be like this in March.

Oh well, at least I have a fun-fun ride on a piece of fine Eye-talian craftsmanship tomorrow, so I can return to DC extremely late early Saturday. Weee!

By the way, if you're ever in Killeen try Rosa's Tortilla factory...it ain't half bad.

Medical Professionals

Not having anything better to do, my company instituted a company-wide drug test. Paperwork was sent to you in the mail, and you had to go to a lab near you to pee in a cup.

Peeing in a cup is old news for me, we did it often enough in the Navy. I dutifully looked up the closest location for the lab for me, and went. Apparently my company chose the cheapest(I doubt their rates were cheap, but Goddamn did the place look cheap), undermanned, anti-customer company out there. When I called for a appointment, all I got was a recorded message informing me of operating hours for drug screenings.

So, this morning I promptly drank a pot of coffee, a can of "Coke Zero", and a plastic bottle of Crystal Light(tm) so I wouldn't have to play the waiting game. I showed up when the drug screen started at 0800, promptly signed in(# 6 on sign in sheet, and I was the only one who checked the drug-screening test box). They didn't call me until 0930 and as I handed them my Driver's License and paperwork I was told "I would be called shortly". By then I was already sweating bullets and doing the dance.

1020 rolls around and the one person at the front desk starts turning people away because they will be breaking for 2 hours at 1100 for lunch(yup...). I walk up and ask if, by chance, my name was called and I missed it. The medical professional at the desk gives me the stink eye and says "you're next". Another 20 minutes pass, my name is finally called, it takes a mighty 5 minutes for the entire thing to get done, and I head off to work.

I wonder what bizarre triage system they had going, if any at all.

Celebrating Rascism and Treason

A black South Carolina State Senator is proposing to cut off state funding for towns that do not celebrate the Confederate cause. That he's even making this proposal makes me think:

• Doesn't even know the stated reasons of South Carolina's secession, and so has bought into the the confederate revisionism of ACW history


• Or that he's setting himself up to make the proposal as some kind of political deal

In the United States, especially the Southern parts(or even the rural areas that were never Confederate states) there's a belief that the "Lost Cause" was something of a grand thing. Claims of slavery being the cause are brushed away by pointing at blacks who served in the Confederate army(minuscule to the hundreds of thousands of Southern Blacks who joined the Northern Army), that some slave states remained with the Union(the ones with the lowest percentage of slaves in it, and no Free states joined the Confederate Cause) or by cherry picking quotes from Northern politicians(while ignoring Southern ones).

Confederate Revisionism continues to be a major cultural problem in this country. People like Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee are lionized while Generals like Grant and Sherman are reviled. Students are taught the fiction that the war was "States' Rights" without getting into the specifics of what those alleged rights are. This South Carolinian senator is showing how even today slavocrats continued to be worshiped in this country, and how politically dangerous it is to call a cigar a cigar.