This Blog Is Full Of Crap

Last night, I saw a turtle walking along the fence.

It was as big as a canned ham.

I knew something was out there, because Nardo was in Defender Mode and raising a ruckus, so I peeked out the fence.

Usually, I expect to see another cat.

But this time, it was a turtle.

I watched it for a while.

We gave it a pottery base full of water and some shredded lettuce.

It didn't stay. The next time I looked, it was gone.

I wonder where it went.

It's been two years since I got the last Ziggy, so the New Every Two plan is kicking in.

Time for a new phone.

Now, it's not going to be a freebie new phone, since those tend to be cheap and bereft of the functions I want.

I want a keyboard for texting.

I want a decent-sized screen.

I want the ability to check email. And maybe web-browsing now and then.

But that's pretty much it. I don't need music, games, camera, or any other garbage on it.

My iPod does nicely for that stuff, thank you.

The basic Palm Centro looked ok. The ENV is a bit overkill, but it would work. (The Voyager is serious overkill.)

We'll see what Verizon has.

And, perhaps, a new Ziggy will rise.

An off-duty soldier killed an on-duty terrorist:

Three people were killed and 44 were wounded - one seriously, one moderately and 42 lightly - on Wednesday afternoon when a bulldozer driver went on a rampage in downtown Jerusalem.

Police said that the driver plowed his vehicle into two public buses, toppling them over, and slammed into several cars.

An off-duty soldier took the gun from an elite policeman at the scene and shot the terrorist dead. The soldier, Moshe Klessner, 18, is the brother-in-law of IDF officer David Shapira, who killed the terrorist in the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva attack on March 6.

Klessner was assisted in neutralizing the attacker by another elite policeman.

You do not arrest enemy combatants out of uniform.

You shoot them.

If you capture them alive, you follow the Geneva Conventions - try them in the field, and when you find them guilty, execute them.

The whole mess in Guantanamo could have been avoided if procedure had been followed.

J.R. Towles coming back from Round Rock isn't the final nail in the coffin of the Astros' 2008 season.

It's pissing & shitting on its grave.

Towles to Cooper and Wade is like Jason Lane to Garner and Purpura.

The UK bands the military wing of Hezbollah?

Britain's Home Office banned the entire military wing of Hizbullah on Wednesday in a rebuke over the Lebanese Shi'ite group's alleged role supporting militants in Iraq.

Strange. Why was this not already in place?

Tony Blair, why wasn't the military wing of Hezbollah previously banned under your administration?

Oh. Right. Tony Blair's minions tended not to think that Muslim attacks on Jews were terrorism.

Never mind that Hezbollah carried out the attack on the Marines in Lebanon in 1983, of course. When British soldiers are being killed by thugs trained by Hezbollah, well, that's worth a ban over.

Makes you wonder about the former lap-poodle man who's making frequent trips to the region, pretending to be some kind of peacemaker.

I have a few questions regarding this incident:

At the start of the event Tuesday morning, City Council President Michael Hancock introduced singer Rene Marie to perform the national anthem.

Instead, she performed the song "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing," which is also known as the "black national anthem."

When she finished, the audience responded with mild applause. The national anthem was never performed.

Marie told 9NEWS she kept her plans to switch songs quiet until the very last moment. She says only she, her husband and a friend knew she was going to sing something other than the "Star-Spangled Banner."

Was she paid to sing?

Was she paid in advance?

Was she paid to sing a particular song?

Forget all the ruckus and roaring going on. It sounds like a simple breach of contract issue to me.

The cable box is broken.

It lost the channel list and now it can't see the channels on the wire.

The DVD is still working fine, though. We've got plenty of those.

The techs can't get out until Saturday.

Well, unless I bail on work early and call them.

But bailing on work early today and taking tomorrow off is a bit much.

Because if I bail early, I might just start walking toward Minutemaid and catch the daygame against the Dodgers.

You'd think they could just get permission to enter the place like they were supposed to do when it was install time.

Nope. Doesn't work that way. Once you're on the hook, you are on their terms.

Support is never at the same aggressiveness level as sales.

Teach your kids that. Get them used to the way things are.

I keep a Jerk List at work.

It's a list of customers who are, without a doubt, jerks.

A jerk is someone who doesn't know what they're doing, they respond to questions with vicious outbursts instead of helpful answers, blame technicians for mistakes they made themselves, demand refunds for even the smallest spelling error in a ticket response, and they do everything in their power to ensnare the technicians into administrative tasks.

If you ran a store and had to deal with one of these jerks, you'd hand them their money back and tell them "You're trespassing. Get off of my property. Now."

Their names are pretty well known, because techs will say their name, and others will sigh or groan or laugh and mutter something.

Me, I mutter "Jerk."

Every so often, I wander through the Jerk List to see if any have canceled.

When one cancels, I breathe a sigh of relief. I also ping the main domain to see who they're being a jerk to now.

When one appears to have added a sub-account for an administrator they've hired, I smile. The jerk can be a jerk to the admin, and the admin can come to us with legitimate issues.

When one starts entering more tickets because they've bought more servers they have no idea how to run, that's when I die a little inside.

I'm looking at this Jerk Ticket right now.

He needs something. And, oddly enough, it's not something that involves doing his work for him.

But he hasn't given me enough to act on.

I ask him a question as plain as I can make it.

Sure enough, responds in a tone that cannot be read in any way but nasty.

*sigh*

I completely agree with Crawford Boxes. There's something seriously wrong about Michael Bourn leading off.

As for Richard Justice (aka "Flip Floppy Dick"):

Maybe all that's keeping Bourn in the big leagues is the fact that Ed Wade staked so much of his off-season overhaul on his belief that Bourn can play. All he did was trade the National League's best reliever for him. At the moment, that trade is about as lopsided as a trade gets.

Jason Lane 2.0, Morgan Ensberg 2.0, Preston Wilson 2.0...

Oh, and once again, I'm proven right about Valverde. Lidge 2.0 strikes again.

With one true All Star and two pity picks, the Astros have raced to the basement in splendid form.

Let's see if they stay there.

Spam has better subject lines these days.

Lots of sensational news headlines in there, and I'm not talking about some celebrity's cooch or rack getting spotted in some random place in the world.

The names are normal-sounding, but they're not random enough. So I'll get 5 or 6 from some John Smith and toss 'em all easily.

If they just settled on CNN Breaking News or Washington Post or New York Times they'd catch a lot more people with their spam scams.

The bank scams have gotten boring. I don't even blink with those anymore.

I do get a laugh from the pornified movie titles. "Legend Of Bagger's Pants" and "Good Will Humping" were pretty clever. I keep waiting for more of those gags.

Yankee Stadium is playing host to seven Boston All-Stars. More Sox than Yanks. Priceless!

(If A-Rod gets injured, does Madonna have Morgan Ensberg on her speed-dial?)

As for the runner-up ballot, I voted for Corey Hart and not Carlos Lee.

When Lee runs out a grounder or chases a carom off the Crawford scoreboard like Two Tons Of Fun Fielder in Milwaukee, I'll vote for him as an All-Star.

Berkman's earned his spot. Not sure why Tejada's there.

Glad to see that Valverde's bloody saves haven't earned him a trip to New York.

Lidge and Wagner are the two former Astros I spot on the rosters. Wagner, we miss. Lidge, on the other hand, was a head-case and never would have been cured down here in Houston.

Did I miss any others?

Okay, so a while back, Sales was actually taken to task for cooking up insane and deranged configurations for customers, slapping a price on them, and then dumping them off on Technical Support to clean up their mess, all the while screaming that they'll lose their commission on these mechanical abortions if we didn't make them hum happily.

Fuck. Them.

This wasn't a problem when we only had so many options on the menu. Everything was up on the racks and if it wasn't there, it wasn't for sale.

Kinda like McDonalds. Just point and order, and it's ready in a minute.

Problem is, we started selling burritos. And Kobe Beef Burgers. And salads. And sweet potato fries. And having custom toppings.

The cash registers got upgraded to handle the orders. But while some of the kitchen behind the counter got remodeled to handle that, a lot didn't.

And when it comes to ordering ingredients to cook this stuff up, well, it's one thing to sell a Wangdoodle 3000, but it's another to actually keep Wangs and Doodles and Wang-to-Doodle connectors in stock. (and the right model number of each... 3000, if I recall)

So many things to sell, so many things that can be dreamed up.

But to make them work... ah, there's the challenge!

The answer was to create a group of Sales Engineers. These guys were supposed to listen to what the customer was asking for, come up with a reasonable and stable solution that would require a minimum of support, and then hand it to Sales to price it.

And if a Salesperson had a total fever-dream, coming up with a computational chimera with 12 hit dice and an armor class of 10, triple damage when breathed on, the Sales Engineers were supposed to step in and wrestle that maniac to the ground before they ran the credit card.

Hah. Hah hah. Hah hah hah.

Most of the guys have snap. They know they stuff.

Others, well, the only snap they have is on a foosball table... SCORE!

These guys are supposed to cook up stable arrangements that provide us with a customer for many years to come, a good hardware platform that they can manage, we can stick into the racks and forget about, and collect lots and lots of happy green slips of paper for.

Instead, some of the Sales Engineers have managed to cook up even more crazy and elaborate arrangements that would have Rube Goldberg pissing his pants in fright, slamming fleas over the heads with sledgehammers and dumping their shit on both the main technical support and the paid technical support groups.

The green slips of paper tend to go toward the overtime necessary to handle all the issues we should be doing instead of cleaning up these crash and burns.

The good news is that we bought a managed services company a while back. Since what they do overlaps with the paid technical support group, the paid technical support group currently on the bench is being shifted to assist the Sales Engineers with scoping out projects.

You know, because they're the ones who end up getting asked to fix these messes in the end. And usually for free, too.

"I paid umpteen thousand bucks for this system YOU came up with and I expect YOU to make it work! For free!"

Sorry. Reading from the playbook again.

Where was I?

We'll see if that helps avoid the dump-and-run catastrophes that land in our laps every so often. Or if those end up with the paid group saying "Well, we put it together... the JV squad should be able to handle this one, so leave us alone"on these.

Oh well. It'll all work out in the end.

Looking at a ticket where we sold a license to something we don't support, and sure enough, the customer screams YOU SOLD IT TO ME SO YOU SHOULD SUPPORT IT!

Straight out of the playbook, folks.

1) Customer wants X.
2) We tell customer that we sell X but with no support. Go to X's developer for support
3) Customer agrees to arrangement as part of purchase
4) We give them X license.
5) Customer borks the install of X
6) X's developer points, laughs.

This is the critical stage of the play. This is when the developer says "It's not our flawed product. It's the server you bought from those hosting people."

It doesn't matter if the control panel manufacturer says "X doesn't work with our software and it invalidates your license with us" or the operating system release notes say "Oh, and don't use X. It sucks. Use Y."

This situation always ends up our fault somehow.

7) Customer comes to us, screaming our stuff doesn't work, fix it.
8) We tell customer that they agreed to the arrangement that we don't support X. Go hire an admin. Good luck.
9) Customer screams more.
10) Repeat step 9 until someone blinks in management or they cancel.

Oh, and at no time, do we stop selling licenses to X.

The Astros hit bottom last night against the pathetic, miserable Pirates.

Despite beating the crap out of Dumatrait, including a hit by Towles (Towles got a fucking HIT? Man, you must suck!), the Pirates rocked Runelvys Hern�ndez in a way that made me wonder if Jose Lima had gotten plastic surgery and was in the Witness Protection Program as an Astros starter.

I mean, let's face it... nobody would ever think Jose would be back at the Astros. It's the perfect hiding place.

Too bad he blew his cover and Coop was afraid to call the bullpen.

What? You lost their number or something? Did they file a restraining order?

As for Runelvys, well, we now have ourselves A Curse on our team.

Just as there's the Bambino Curse and the Goat Curse, there's now The Qualls Curse.

Any pitcher who wears Big Fifty will be condemned to failure and misery on the mound.

Shunning greatness is often its own punishment, but sometimes the Baseball Gods aren't content to see you floundering in the dirt. They lift up their foot, bring it down on your back, and they grind you with their heel.

To answer Dicky J's wonderment at what Uncle Drayton and the team will do, well, here's my prediction:

• Raise the price of beer.
• Raise the price of tickets.
• Bitch at the city for improvements to the stadium.
• Raise the price of beer.
• Hire another incompetent GM/Manager pair, give them "votes of confidence" with multi-year contracts, and then fire them after a season for wrecking things.
• Add more unhealthy food options around the food court.
• Raise the price of beer.
• Stop putting names on the backs of the jerseys so it's cheaper and quicker to bring up Round Rock scrubs.
• More commercials and sponsors in between innings.
• Raise the price of beer.

Maybe the new thing that Drayton will do to shake things up is... raise the price of bottled water?

It's no surprise that less and less people say that Congress is doing a good or excellent job.

More people say they're doing a shitty job.

So, if you or I had such rotten performance ratings, we'd get fired.

But these folks, well, most of them will be sent back to do a lousy job for another two years.

99% of those people, you didn't choose. Someone else did.

And rare are the opportunities to knock a Congressperson from another district of of office. (Queen of the Idiots Cynthia McKinney getting wiped out by Hank Johnson is a rare grassroots example)

So, with that in mind, did Todd Beamer and the airborne heroes of 9/11 really do the country any favors by preventing Flight 11 from performing Boeing-based term limits on Congress?

The company's raising money for the American Heart Association by selling hot dogs and hamburgers in a Friday cookoff.

The irony is killing me.

I have solved the problem with the Houston Astros: Indians.

The Atlanta Braves and the Cleveland Indians don't take it far enough, I think. A mascot just doesn't cut it for my plan.

No, you've got to dump the entire Astros roster and hire a tribe of Indians.

Now, when I say Indians, I mean Native Americans. Because hiring Indians kinda doesn't work in this case.

Ever tried to have a remote computer jockey lay down a bunt?

Doesn't happen.

And forget about any No Trade restrictions. The moment Roy or Lance or Carlos hear that Drayton's dumping the rest of the team for a bunch of Indians, they'll run for the hills. (Okay, so JR Towles might try to pull a Ward Churchill to stay on the team since there's no other team in the league stupid enough to think he's ready for the bigs.)

But if you had 25 Indians (plus some Indian managers and coaches and trainers) you could have them do a rain dance and delay every game for the rest of the season.

No more losses.

Furthermore, Drayton could get them to declare Minutemaid Park some kind of tribal ground. Then he could build a casino for them and rake in huge bucks.

Casinos comp the drinks, you know. As opposed to making you pay $7.25 (plus tip) for a bottle of beer. (Domestic, even!)

Sure, the roof could be closed, but then Drayton could always claim that the roof of broken.

After all, the team's broken because of his management staff's incompetence. Why not the roof, too?

Worried about City Council or Harris County balking over this? Bah. They're shameless whores when it comes to stadium building and giving these local billionaires a healthy dose of free rides, tax incentives, and bond issues.

They'll not only love the idea, but they'll get VIP passes for the casino. Maybe even gamble with their campaign funds, since it's okay to use them for bringing people to the ballgames behind home plate, right?

So there's my solution: Indians.

Multiple times a day, I see a ticket or an email from a customer with old hardware that is complaining because they're paying a higher rate for their server than someone who signs up for that level of server today.

They don't want to go through the hassle of moving to faster hardware that's at the same price as they're at now, since that involves DNS changes, moving data, testing, worrying about a dud server, etc.

Okay, so I can understand wanting to sit on your box that works and just ask to pay less per month. Fine.

If we apply the same principle to cars, this is like seeing your model of car out on the used car lot for a fourth of what you paid with smaller monthly payments at a better interest rate, so the financing company should drop your rate instead of having to trade in and buy a new model car at the price you're paying now.

I'm not sure what the response should be, because keeping the rate as-is provides incentive for people to get off of antiquated, unsupported software and hardware to move to newer operating systems and hardware. Also, the labor needed to support older hardware is usually more than supporting the newer, since it breaks down more often... if you run that box for long enough, the drives will go bad, etc. More incentive to move off the box to allow it to be broken up into spare parts (which is kinda weird, since they will have age on them that makes them just as close to the next MTBF as their sister boxes)

I dunno what the answer is. "Keep the customer happy without starting a riot" might make the most sense, but in Web 2.0 you have to assume that doing a favor for one person means very quickly it will have everyone demand that favor.

Maybe the answer is just to take a walk around the block with a nice cup of coffee.

The Pirates aren't just looking to sweep, but they're looking to sweep by scraping the bottom of the barrel and throwing it at the Astros:

Van Benschoten (1-2, 10.64 ERA) owns the worst career ERA (9.04) in baseball history among pitchers with at least 75 innings of work. The right-hander, a first-round draft pick in 2001, is 1-10 with an 8.82 ERA in 16 career starts, with the lone win coming at home against Houston on Sept. 10, 2004.

It's going to be interesting to see what scrubs will be throwing at the Astros over the next few months in the season.

Hey, who wound up with Jason Lane?

Garner and Hickey were always giving him time in the bullpen and excusing his lousy performance at the plate with the fact he was an emergency pitcher.

BRING OUT JASON LANE!

...

Martin Luther King's family is wrestling over selling his legacy to the highest bidder.

Jesse Jackson is still making threats and empty apologies.

Al Sharpton is... well, as much a prick as he's always been.

Obama isn't all he's being marketed as being, sure, but at least he's providing this generation with an opportunity to dump the glory-seeking, greedy camerawhore parasites of the backwards-marching greed factory of the second generation of the civil rights movement.

Maybe he'll rise to the occasion and create a new wave, rolling forward together where the last one was rolling back into the sea with as much sand as it could erode for itself.

But I'm not holding my breath.

When asked for their password, a customer said he'd need to look it up.

Look up the password, then our phone number, jackass.

The next customer said he was away from his desk.

Keep a notecard in your wallet with vital information, jackass.

If you don't want to keep the raw password, cipher it or leetspeak it or add in a fnord character or two at either end.

Amazing how these folks will put support on speed-dial, but don't have any vital information handy when they call it.

"If you're gonna take a shit, take your pants down first," says Uncle Guido.

Has there been any turnover in the Astros training staff since they got lied to by Morgan Ensberg and blew the evaluation of Jason Jennings?

Last night's game against the Washington Nationals sent an injured Roy Oswalt out to pitch, and he only lasted one inning before making his injury worse.

I'd like to hear what the trainers have to say for themselves. Did they give bad reports to management, did management ignore their reports, or are players back to bullshitting everyone to get back in the game?

And how much of this has to do with Jeff Bagwell trying to tough it out to collect the final two years of his massive contract, even if at the expense of the team's ability to pay it through the insurance policy they took out on him?

Surgical pioneer Michael DeBakey died today.

Newsman Tony Snow died today.

Which do you think the press will fall over themselves reporting, heaping praise and condolences upon his "legacy" ?

Probably Tony Snow.

Know what?

Fuck Tony Snow. Not just a circus clown, but a circus clown looking for the highest bidder.

Dedicated public servant, my ass. Man took the political hack job, made his connections, and bolted when the bidding got high enough to bolt.

DeBakey changed all of our lives for the better, laid the foundations for modern cardiovascular treatment, trained thoughts of surgeons, reshaped the field of medicine, helped establish the greatest medical center of the world...

And fuck the media that can't tell the difference between an innovator and a parasite with a nice voice and pretty hair.

The broadcast spectrum is Occupied Territory, stolen from the people it was meat to serve and kept by force.

The time to take it back is coming.

The handpicked unelected President of Lebanon has signed Lebanon's death warrant:

Should diplomacy fail to return "Israeli-occupied land" to Lebanon, the Lebanese army (LAF) will take it by force, Lebanese President Gen. Michel Sueleiman said on Sunday.

Suleiman was speaking at a press conference after meeting Syrian President Bashar Assad on the sidelines of the Mediterranean conference in Paris. The Lebanese president stressed, however, that the military option was the last resort.

The territory was taken from Syria.

Syria, Lebanon, and the United Nations have conspired to relabel it as Lebanese territory as part of their continued endless campaign to destroy Israel.

All three of those entities will ultimately regret their decision, and I look forward to the video of UNIFIL troops returning to their home countries in coffins for their complicity in this disgusting lead-up to genocide.

Looking at the "Update Without Activation" fiasco this weekend for Apple, AT&T and the iPhone reminded me of the occasional incidents I've had to clean up where a customer would get their server reimaged as part of an upgrade, but someone would forget to apply a license.

It used to happen more often than not, but the incidents of forgotten relicenses dropped considerably since the change in management and ownership.

Yeah, I bitch a lot. I guess I should be thankful for that which is being fixed.

I miss the crazy little fuffball.

After all this time, these people still amaze me.

THEM: "Since we rebooted, the application on our server stopped running. Help!"

US: "What application is not running?"

THEM: "The application we run on our server. Help! Hurry!"

*sigh*

See that white round thing with red stripes we keep throwing at you?

Quit thrashing around like a screaming banshee and grab it.

How much you want to bet it's an illegal copy of the application?

It took three years to produce this threat of inaction:

ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has asked the court to issue an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, but a decision on this might not be made for some months.

Sudan is not a party to the ICC, and al-Bashir has said he's going to ignore it.

The UN Security Council has Libya holding it hostage on behalf of the Arab League and China hungry for any source of oil it can find, primary for fueling its economic boom and secondarily for driving up commodity prices to slow down rival Western economies, so don't expect anything out of them any time soon.

Darfurese will continue suffer and die by the thousands.

Wags blows a lead. Lidge blows the game.

Richard Justice should be particularly bizarre this morning.

In case you forgot, here's a reminder of the hypocrisy in Jesse Jackson's recent attack on Obama:

But it was Jackson himself who was out front in the movement for a voluntary ban on the N-word that took flight nearly two years ago after a racial rant by comedian Michael Richards.

Richards, who played the wacky neighbor on the popular Seinfeld show, was captured on a video cell phone using the N-word after two African Americans heckled him during his comedy routine.

After that incident, Jackson said, "We will challenge and urge all artists and comics to stop using this word. … What other group is subjected to such a degrading terminology?"

Al Sharpton is soft-condemning the incident, wrapping it in praise of Jackson with "I think this certainly does not reflect the Reverend Jackson that we all know and love."

Keep in mind that both Sharpton and Jackson ran for the presidency.

Says a lot about the sorry state of this country, eh?

It fucking snows there.

Will someone explain to me why we're sinking what amounts to 1.3 billion public dollars into George Steinbrenner's pockets for a new Yankee Stadium when we can't get our shit straight after 7 years for the World trade Center location?

No. Really. There's a perfectly good stadium there.

What's the freaking deal?

Well, the Astros are starting things back up again at Minutemaid tonight.

They're up against the team with the best record in baseball.

This should be amusing.

So, is anybody actually going to the game, or is it pretty much a Batman weekend for everyone?

I may just go see Hellboy 2 and then shout NICHOLSON WAS SO MUCH BETTER! when I pass by the lobby on the way out.

I shit you not, Dicky J is back at it:

Ten days from now, they could be right back in the race and shopping for that one final piece.

Do they drug test at the Chronicle, or is the consumption of mind-altering substances mandatory?

Phill Gramm gets the axe from the McCain campaign:

“It is clear to me that Democrats want to attack me rather than debate Sen. McCain on important economic issues facing the country,” Gramm said.

The former senator had been criticized for a remark in which he said that the economic slowdown was a “mental recession,” and that the U.S. was a nation of “whiners.” The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) had seized on the remark and used it for a barrage of attacks on Gramm and McCain.

I'm still not convinced that his wife's hands were ever clean in the Enron collapse.

And when he went to UBS, I figured it was as a reward for doing their bidding in helping legislation along that made it easier to offshore billionaire and billionaire accounts to dodge taxes. Then, USB shitcanned the Houston office in the middle of the 9/11 and tech Bubble downturns.

Oh well. He's toxic now.

I'm hoping the less heard from him, the better, but that just means he'll crawl deeper into the shadows.

It's been a while since I've read LGF, but Soccerdad's post got me to wander back one last time to spot what should be the next revolting figure of the past generation to join Dan Rather in the dustbin of history:

The families of the kidnapped Israel Defense Forces soldiers met with Reverend Jesse Jackson Wednesday at the Ben Gurion Airport and heard from him information he obtained from sources in Lebanon, that Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were alive. Jackson said he could not go into details of the conversations, but that he heard optimism on the condition of the soldiers being held captive. The families of the soldiers sought more solid and based information. Jackson said he met the Hizbullah leadership in Lebanon, and that the soldiers were not killed in the (kidnapping) operation. He said he committed himself to not going into details of the conversation.

There is nothing to revere about Jesse Jackson, tool of evil and parasite of the hopes and dreams of the disenfranchised.

if you call him a reverend, then call me the fucking Pope.

Didn't go to hang out with Garf.

Didn't head to technology Bytes shindig.

Not going to a reunion kinda lunch thing.

Obviously, not going to church.

I think I'll go to the movies today.

I may even catch a double feature. Hellboy 2 and Heath Ledger Croaks 1

I'm glad I haven't had popcorn for 2 days, because I'm sure going to have a hell of a lot of it today.

Should I go see one and then sneak into the next theater for the second film?

It's been a while since I've done that. Heck, college, right?

I've noticed a pattern among the Brazilian customers.

They'll ask about something technical. Some information about a drive or a system or an odd behavior.

They'll get an answer.

They say "Thank you" and nothing else for an hour.

Then... the same question, rephrased slightly.

But, pretty much, the same exact question.

Like we're playing some kind of government spokesperson vs. CNN kind of game, trying to beat down the spokesperson until they give what they think ought to be the answer.

Or provoke a meltdown for the cameras.

Weird.

The National Hurricane Center has issued a Hurricane Watch for South Texas and Northern Mexico.

The National Bullshit Center has issued a Weathermen Freaking Out About Something That Won't Affect Us, Showing Lots Of Charts With A .001% Chance Of The Storm Hooking This Way And Strengthening To Category Five And Killing Us All (And More Information Right After This Commercial Break) Warning for Houston.

You are advised to get your weather information from people who don't beat the drums of panic and doom and to seek out higher, more level-headed ground.

Oh, and if you haven't bought batteries, a radio, a flashlight, snacks and packet meals for a few days, a first aid kit, and bottled water by now, WHAT THE FLYING FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?

You should have that shit around already.

If you're rushing to the store at the last minute to get that shit, just do everyone a favor and sit in your car with the garage down door closed for a few hours.

The word for the day is: plan.

If John McCain wins, here's hoping the New York Times reporter in the White House Press Corps experiences a hell worse than anything John McCain experienced as a POW.

Hold on. I take that back.

Make it the entire editorial board of the NYT.

A friend is about to have surgery today.

Much more important than work, and I have PTO accumulated. I need to head down there with flowers.

I think out my route to the hospital.

9 to Kroger, get flowers and a takeaway breakfast, maybe a book. (Looks around at all the books on the shelves) Or maybe not a book.

Back to the 9 to Downtown Transit Center.

DTC to Hermann Hospital.

Bring the wife's laptop? You'd think they'd have wifi there, but then, you'd think they'd have enough pillows and blankets, too, and hospitals sometimes don't.

I called into work and told them.

"I'll say you needed to drive your friend to the hospital..."

Um.. I don't own a car.

*sheesh*

While everybody's being forced to cut down on travel because of rising fuel costs...

A Continental Airlines flight carrying seven members of Congress from Houston to Washington was forced to make an emergency landing after it lost cabin pressure Tuesday afternoon.

Flight 458 was bound for Reagan National Airport, but was diverted and landed safely in New Orleans, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Ted Poe told 11 News.

Poe and fellow Texas Congressmen Nick Lampson, Ron Paul, John Carter, Ciro Rodriguez, Solomon Ortiz and Henry Cuellar were aboard the flight, said Poe's press secretary DeeAnn Thigpen.

Ironically, the seven congressmen were trying to get back in time for a Tuesday night vote on an aviation safety bill, a spokesman for one of the representatives said.

It's 2008. Why can't they do this shit remotely?

Valverde comes apart in the ninth once again, this time in a way that costs the team the game.

Six blown saves. Impressive. Does he get an incentive bonus for that?

Jack Cassel demonstrates that the farm system talent is as deep as a rain puddle these days.

And then Ed Wade picks up a washed-up Randy Wolf for two and a half months so the Astros can act as a rehab assignment before Wolf returns to the Padres.

So, when's Drayton raising the price of beer again?

While I was away from work yesterday, I had the feeling I'd return to a completely fucked situation.

Sure enough, it's fucked.

The ticket queue system has been changed so that it's impossible to quickly triage tickets.

What tickets I get to, another technician appears to be shadowing me and sniping them out from under me.

Too late. Already handled.

Oh well.

On top of that, nobody's checking the mail queue for issues that customers are too lazy or stupid to submit tickets for or contact the correct department.

The website has a general support address dumping to the techs, even though 99% of the queries are billing issues or just customers bitching in general.

If I start ignoring the queue, I'll get yelled at eventually when some customer screams they wrote the mailbox for an urgent issue.

Never mind they wrote their note during another shift when it was ignored. It'll be my fault for not catching it during my shift.

Do I get credit for handling these issues?

Nope. Not covered by the metrics. Ten minutes untangling a screwup by another department that a customer wrote an email about don't count. It's as if they never happened.

Fucked.

Then there's this email sent out about a new backup arrangement. They've changed the location where a bunch of people are backing things up, and things are screwing up on a bunch of people.

No warning. No notice. No information.

I've checked my Heads Up folder twice. Nothing.

Fucked.

Sure, it's been fucked for a while, but this is a whole new level of fucked.

I used to think that IT and application development was about developing tools to leverage the talents of the works to make them more productive, but here it's the opposite. It's to provide increasingly dysfunctional and complex systems to impede a worker's ability to get things done and to turn a cooperative team effort into competition for survival.

I could take a step back and think up a way to solve this problem.

Or not.

This is not one that I particularly want to think through and come up with a solution so that I can have to deal with another fucking up of the fucked situation.

So, I figure my numbers will go down, my rating will tank, and there will be warning after warning until it's time to go.

This time around, I'll be sure to collect unemployment. The last time, well, that wasn't so fun. Especially when Congress kept extending unemployment benefits post-9/11 and I wasn't getting any of that action.

You know, I had such a good feeling when I heard of the opening in Training.

And such a lousy one when I heard an hour later that the training opening was weeks old, and was being filled.

Another wonderful rollercoaster crash, courtesy of the people who screw up the internal web applications here at the office.

The biggest liar in Texas is the person who used this as the subject line for the latest astros.com Spam:

Trade increases Astros' playoff hopes

No. Really. Quit bullshitting us.

The team is fucked.

Trading for Randy Wolf, who's coming apart quicker than a Cuban cigar in a steam room, is not going to do jack shit.

Just shut up and raise the price of beer a few more times, okay?

Charles Rangel calls for an investigation of... himself?

Is this some kind of gambit to tie up the committee so it can't investigate others who are even more corrupt than him, but don't have the time to cover their tracks as effectively?

Okay, so when I make LNBA jokes, nobody notices.

When Chris Baker makes them, um...

Chris Baker of 100.3 KTLK was criticizing the women's pro basketball league yesterday when he stepped way over the line, saying: "You know what (the WBNA) is? That's a place for lesbians to make out when they score."

ABC's Channel 5 in Minneapolis said KTLK didn't respond to questions about Baker, and the Minnesota Lynx of the WNBA extended an invitation to Baker to attend a game.

The last time I went to an LNBA game, a referee collapsed and had to be shocked with a defibrillator.

That's right - it was so boring, the official had to be medically revived to watch the game.

(Oh, and the stands were packed with lesbians)

I really want to know what these people we're thinking.

Federal officials said they netted 43 illegal aliens in an immigration raid on O`ahu.

U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Officers executed search warrants over the weekend at the Oasis Apartments complex in Waipahu.

Agents said the aliens were employed by a company called The Farms which does agricultural work. The 43 men were all citizens of Mexico.

"We've been swimming for MILES, Paco! You said the river was just a trickle in this area during the summer."
"Shut up!"
"Not even a Coast Guard boat or La Raza to meet us."
"Shut up!"
"Are you sure we're going North?"
"Shut up!"

DSL was out for a while tonight.

The ETA for resolving it was 11:30PM, but it was up by 9 or so.

Cool.

I was very nice with the phonedrone.

Wasn't his fault somebody boofed some major Texas-wide system.

And it wasn't his fault that the advanced robotic phonemail routine program didn't have programmed into it the ability to alert people of major problems before they hopped through all the steps to get to a human.

I've recorded my thoughts on utterz.com about it.

If Zogby's polls in 2004 are any indicator of performance, McCain should be smiling at this news:

UTICA, New York - Four states have changed color on the Zogby Electoral College map at www.zogby.com, as presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama battle for the upper hand. Obama maintains his substantial lead over McCain in the Electoral College race, the latest map shows, as he remains at 273 votes, but McCain loses 14 votes.

The latest calculations represented by the map are the result of analysis by Pollster John Zogby, based on Zogby and industry polling, as well as other factors.

"Other Factors" meaning Zogby's own bias.

Terror-Mom and Hamas Cheerleader Miriam Farhat is dying:

Miriam Farhat, the Palestinian mother who became famous in 2002 when she appeared in a video encouraging her son to attack a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip, was reported Thursday to be in critical condition after suffering a massive heart attack.

"When I see all the Jews in Palestine killed, that will be enough for me," she said on camera. "I wish he will kill as many as he can, so they will be scared."

...

"The Mother of Martyrs is dying and the Arab world does not seem to care," a Hamas representative told The Jerusalem Post.

No, I think the Arab World is quite concerned whether a berserk advocate of mass murder lives or dies.

They just think she's more useful dead than alive. Another manufactured death for the cameras like the Al-Douri kid, who was killed by... oh, right... Arabs,

And "Martyred Mother Of Martyrs" makes such a devilish tongue-twister, don't you think?

Sitting on the side table...

There's all sorts of sites out there for cat photos on Friday.

Maybe you've heard of them?

Fateh is burning ammo on Hamas:

Hamas security arrested at least 120 of supporters of the rival Fatah group early Saturday, Fatah said, following a mysterious beachside blast that killed five Hamas members and a 6-year-old girl.

Think there's going to be apologies, regrets, investigations inside Fateh over that kid?

Nope.

It's further proof that Palestinians don't give a rat's ass about the "civilian" casualties they cause when conducting their terrorist attacks.

The cause of the blast remained unclear, though the circumstances suggested it was not set off inadvertently by militants mishandling explosives.

"Work accident" is the term. It means some Palestinian was preparing explosives meant to kill someone (not "send a message") and they went off before they could kill someone.

The explosion went off late Friday in a car parked near a crowded Gaza City beach. Hamas said that at the time, a group of Hamas men was picnicking on the beach.

I wonder if they like mayo or mustard potato salad.

Three Hamas members, including a field commander, and the girl were killed immediately. Hospital officials said two more Hamas activists died of injuries Saturday. At least twenty people were wounded, Army Radio reported. A member of Izzadin Kassam, a group linked to the kidnapping of IDF Cpl. Gilad Schalit more than two years ago, was also killed.

Here's hoping that what they learn from this bombing increases their efficiency against Hamas... and cannot be applied to when they turn their attentions to their other favorite target.

I was at Kroger last night and there were no jalapenos to core, stuff, and grill.

This appears to be the reason why.

Mexican officials blasted the announcement as premature, saying the fact that no additional salmonella was found in the Texas warehouse doesn't eliminate that site as a suspect.

Great. More stuff flowing North that's bad for the country.

I guess I have to hit Central Market and Whole Foods to see if they have the American ones.

The sham of the cease-fire may be over soon:

Hamas announced that it plans to avenge Sunday morning's IDF operation in Hebron, in which Shihab Na'atasha - responsible for planning February's suicide bombing in Dimona - was killed.

The terror organization released a statement stating that its reaction would be both "swift and painful."

Hopefully that refers to suddenly looking up, screaming, and dying by the dozens when drones and F-16s unleash airstrikes against their leadership and operations centers in Gaza.

Might as well have been, because the Palestinians are screaming over yet another kid used as a human shield for terrorist snipers to fire from behind got killed.

In an escalation in anti-security barrier violence Tuesday, a 10-year-old Palestinian boy was killed during a protest in the village of Na'alin, near Ramallah.

But this time, the bullshit is getting stopped before it catches on:

According to an initial inquiry by Border Police, Israeli security forces were not behind the shooting, although Palestinian medics said that the boy, Ahmed Moussa, was shot in the head by IDF troops.

The IDF said it would investigate the incident further and that it was examining the possibility that the boy was hit by Palestinian fire.

Civil Administration head Brig.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai received permission from Palestinian Authority Civil Affairs Minister Hussein al-Sheikh to have a military doctor inspect the body to try and determine the circumstances of his death.

The ISM and countless other NGO's and foreign governments will refuse to acknowledge the truth, and even if forced to admit it, will place it in the false context that it was a result of Israel's occupation, Israel's existence, or the mere fact that Jews exist in the world to begin with.

We'll see how quickly this time around this kid's mug winds up as a fashion statement and which European media chooses to betrays civilization, the truth, and journalistic principles.

A long time ago, I was forced to do a senior project in a homeless shelter instead of doing one at a world-class science facility.

I wish I could remember why.

The place was called Friends of the Homeless, but I thought of it as Homes of the Friendless.

Every so often, I get a Friend request in Facebook.

I wiped out my Facebook friends list a few weeks back, and I'm just letting them pile up at this point.

They make a nice stack. Like pancakes.

Syrup, anyone?

I've seen news articles saying all sorts of things.

One extreme has him retiring from politics entirely. As we've seen with Shimon Peres and Jimmy Carter, only the good die young.

The other extreme has him just stepping down from the premiership and not making himself available as a candidate for the premiership.

I don't think either is right. If I read what he's said correctly, he's said he's not going to be a candidate within Kadima's primaries.

The corrupt elements within Kadima will find a way or loophole to get him back in the fold somehow, just as Labor has kept incompetents like Fuad Ben Elizer around.

I agree with the folks at Meryl's blog. Olmert has been bad for the country, and this is long overdue.

If only Ariel Sharon had fallen on Ehud, right?

I guess you can't print "shitty" in Big League Stew:

However, I don't think it's too early to crown a winner for Silliest Trade of the Season and that one goes to Houston Astros GM Ed Wade and Co., who traded 22-year-old prospect Matt Cusick for 35-year-old middle reliever LaTroy Hawkins on Wednesday, so that his team might compete better for the NL Central title.

Did I mention the 'Stros are 13.5 games behind the Cubs?

And that Hawkins had already been DFAed by the Yanks?

And that they already pointlessly added Randy Wolf?

Hey, they haven't called Woody Williams and demanded that he suit up and earn his 6 million.

Maybe Tillman told Drayton that he couldn't afford all the free dinners he'd have to give away from the shelling the Crawfords would get with even a single inning of Woody.