Land of Oz

Immigration

I've talked about immigration here before. I'm for legal immigration. I've been involved in it, and while it's a pain in the ass to do, it is doable. It takes some time and some money, but the legal process is in place. I keep reading and hearing about how the current mass of illegal immigrants - no, not undocumented, but illegal immigrants just want to take part of the American way of life. Here's how they plan on doing it:

"There will be 2 to 3 million people hitting the streets in Los Angeles alone. We're going to close down Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Tucson, Phoenix, Fresno," said Jorge Rodriguez, a union official who helped organize earlier rallies credited with rattling Congress as it debates the issue.

Now does anyone still think there's no problem with illegal immigrants?

Thought Crimes

The following should scare the hell out of you. And I'm not talking about the fact that there are terrorists planning attacks. What should scare you is the fact that you don't have to plan an attach, you just have to have "a jihadi heart and a jihadi mind." Prosecutors in this case had "no evidence that such attacks were imminent or planned."

Think about thinking about this the next time you think to yourself that you'd like to shoot that idiot with the blaring car stereo that just drove by at three in the morning or that you'd wish your neighbor's barking dog would choke. You could be the next to be pre-empted.


After a nine-week trial, jurors on Tuesday convicted Hayat of supporting terrorists by attending the training camp three years ago. Defense attorneys argued that the government had no clear evidence that Hayat had attended a camp, but prosecutors characterized their case as pre-emptive.

"Our mission in the post-9/11 context is to prevent that crime from ever happening," U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said at a news conference after the verdicts were read.

Prosecutors described Hamid Hayat as having "a jihadi heart and a jihadi mind." They presented no evidence that such attacks were imminent or planned.

Defense lawyers said the confessions were made under duress, after the men had been questioned for hours in the middle of the night. The father and son eventually told the agents merely what they thought they wanted to hear, without realizing the legal consequences, their lawyers argued.

George O - I hear you man...

Police Squad

If you've never seen it, you're missing some good humor. There were only six episodes made, but they were full of dialogue like that below. Leslie Nielson was the star, Frank Drebin and Jay North was Ed, his boss.

Ed: Attempted hold-up, Frank. Cashier is the only witness. According to her, the gunman shot the teller, she grabbed the gun and shot the hold-up man.
Frank: It's the same m.o. as the others.
Ed: Could be, but this one has an interesting wrinkle. The gunman, Twice, is a good family man with no prior record.
Frank: Can I talk to her?
Ed: Sure.
Ed: This is Sally Decker, Frank.
Frank: Hello Ms Decker.
Sally: Hello.
Frank: I am Captain Frank Drebin. I understand you had a pretty rough time.
Sally: Yeah, it was pretty bad.
Frank: Cigarette? (offers her a cigarette)
Sally: Yes, I know.
Frank: Well. Do you feel up to any questions?
Sally: I'll try.
Frank: Where were you when all this happened?
Sally: I was right here at my desk, working.
Frank: And when was the first time you noticed something was wrong?
Sally: Well, when I first heard the shot, and as I turned, Jim fell.
Ed: He is the teller, Frank.
Frank: Jim Fell is the teller?
Sally: No, Jim Johnson.
Frank: Who's Jim Fell?
Ed: He is the owner, Frank.
Sally: He had the flu so Jim filled in.
Frank: Phil who?
Ed: Phil Dinn, he's the night watchman.
Sally: If only Phil had been here.
Frank: Now wait a minute, let me get this straight. Twice came in and shot the teller and Jim Fell.
Sally: No he only shot the teller, Jim Johnson. Fell is ill.
Frank: Okay, then after he shot the teller you shot Twice.
Sally: No, I only shot once.
Ed: Twice is the hold-up man.
Sally: Then I guess I did shoot Twice.
Frank: Well, so now you are changing your story.
Sally: No I shot Twice after Jim fell.
Frank: You shot Twice and Jim Fell.
Sally: No, Jim fell first and then I shot Twice once.
Frank: Who fired twice?
Sally: Once!
Ed: He is the owner of the tire company, Frank.
Frank: Okay, now, Once is the owner of the tire company and he fired twice. Then Twice shot the teller once.
Sally: Twice.
Frank: And Jim Fell and then you fired Twice.
Sally: Once.
Frank: Okay, all right, that will be all for now, Ms Decker.
Ed: We will need you to make a formal statement down at the station.
Sally: Oh, of course.
Frank: You have been very helpful. We think we know how he did it.
Sally: Oh, Howie couldn't have done it, he hasn't been in for weeks.
Frank: Well. Thank you again, Ms Decker.
Frank: Weeks?
Ed: Saul Weeks. He is the controller, Frank.

Customer Service

OK - I do work in customer service, so I know it's often not easy working with irate customers. However, here's an excerpt from the end of a recent online chat I had with HP customer support. When I turn my home computer off, I get an error message saying something to effect that "base2paneform" won't shut down. I googled it and it seemed the answer was that a HP program was causing it. Before following the googled advice, I decided to ask HP directly and basically it boiled down to the below before I gave up on them:

Sebastian: Jim, have you tried for Image Zone.
Jim Kajpust: Have I tried what for Image Zone?
Sebastian: Yes Jim.
Jim Kajpust: I don't understand - you asked "tried for Image Zone" and I asked tried what and you say "Yes"?
Sebastian: Jim, could you please give me the exact error message?

BTW, the googled advice was to "disable HP Image Zone Fast Start (hpqthb08.exe) in your startup folder." I'll try it later and see if it works.

Cops

The other day someone called 911 and reported a guy walking around neighborhood with a gun. The police responded. It seems some 13 year old kid was holding a semi-auto handgun and waving it around. When one of the police tried to disarm the kid, he tried to point the gun at the cop and shoot her. While they were wrestling another cop turned up at the scene and after trying to talk the kid into dropping the gun ended up shooting the kid.

Any way the kid turns out to be on suspension from school and had a court date for some other crime. Of course that night they showed the mom on the news wailing about how her little boy wouldn't do anything like that. Before being released on bond, the kid said how he'd find another gun and finish the job he started. Amazingly enough after hearing that the judge raised the kid's bond and kept him in jail.

The biggest thing that pisses me off about this is that at the arraignment hearing the defense attorney had the temerity to ask the cop why he didn't hit the kid with his baton instead of shooting him. You could tell it wasn't the defense attorney who had the gun to his head.

Oh yeah, I guess I'm supposed to say all this was alleged.

Horseless Carriages

Here's some random thoughts about cars that came up while I should have been paying attention to the road. Oh, I also finally got around to updating the Parking Hall of Frame Page.

Buicks
Will Buick sell you a car if you don't have gray hair and similarly, does Buick have some type of mechanism that keeps their cars from going faster than five miles under the speed limit?

SUVs
Why are those hulking off-road SUVs with big tires and high ground clearance so rarely dirty?

Minivans
Why are soccer moms in such a hurry? I've always thought it was the macho male kid who tended to speed, but next time in your in suburban area and some van comes flying up behind you -- it's more than likely some middle-aged female with no one in the van.

Rusty Beaters
My second vehicle is an old beat up rusty pickup (1991 Ford F-150) I got cheap. It's a hanger queen that I occasionally use to spend money with at Lowes or Home Depot. Just about every time I slam the door, small pieces of it fall off. One of the gas tanks leaks like a sieve if I put gas in it. The hood was literally paint free when I got it - a nice rusty brown. Half the paint on the what isn't rusted out on the bed is peeling off and the inside has more rattles than a half-empty jar of dried beans. Ford hadn't a better idea with this thing - a memorial to why Detroit iron is having so many problems today.

For all of that, it does have a few advantages over my VW Beetle. Parking carts are now merely a no-need to avoid distraction. The other day the wind blew a cart into the side of my truck and I just ran it over :-). And it's nice to just toss stuff in the back without worrying about what might get scratched. Having a beater also makes you much less worried in a parking lot. Heavy real steel bumpers and beyond saving fenders make those parking lot encounters with doors much less of a problem - to me. And there is something to be said for the roar of an old fashioned cast iron V-8 under acceleration - even if it does have a hard time passing a gas station.

Condoleezza Rice

"This could have gone that way, or that could have gone this way," said Ms Rice, adding that the US-led invasion was "the right strategic decision".

"I know we've made tactical errors - thousands of them, I'm sure," Ms Rice said in a session of questions after her speech, organised by BBC Radio 4's Today programme and Chatham House international affairs institution.

[Rice said] the US had no desire "to be the world's jailer", and that Washington wanted "the terrorists that we capture to stand trial"

Well, it's nice to know Ms Rice has such a high regard for our military. Tactics are decided on by the military - at least they're supposed to. And that's where she claims we've made all our boo-boos. Going into Iraq - despite all the misstatements and other shaky basics we counted on, was fine.

And I do believe that we are also in fact "the world's jailer" or at least one of the world's best.

Da Vinci Code

Once again, the local newspaper has a letter written by a rabid christian up in arms about Dan Brown's gospel. I'll bet they'll be happy if the christian taliban equivalent was running things and they could have old Dan stoned to death. I wrote a rebuttal letter to the paper, but since I just had one published not too long ago, I doubt this one will be put into print - so, I'll post it here for you guys:

Editor, The News

This is to all those Christians who are so up in arms about Dan Brown's book, "The Da Vinci Code." You obviously haven't read the book (neither have I, actually) since if you tried to find it in the library, you'd have to look for it in the FICTION section under Br, near books like "Help wanted-Angel!" and "Harvard's Education," both, not surprisingly, also fiction, regardless of the titles.

The reason books like that and books like "Green Eggs and Ham" are in the fiction section is because they are fiction - made up stories. Just like Orcs in Middle Earth, muggles in London and talking scarecrows in Oz, they are fiction -- made up stories to entertain readers and help pass the time. Now excuse me while I read about James Bond saving the world.

Toilet Paper

I was planning on writing about the Catholic church excommunicating a priest for allowing women to celebrate mass, or perhaps the USofA nuking Iran, or maybe $4 a gallon gasoline, or even thirteen year-old kids trying to shoot cops, but instead decided to write about something more important.

Toilet paper is something you don't give much thought to unless you don't have it when you need it. You ever go to a restaurant and the potty had no paper? You ever discover that after you went? Why is the stuff so difficult to use? Some places use rolls that are about three feet in diameter and locked into some huge paper holder (which as often as not, is broke and won't close). You have to reach inside to find the end and when you pull, it just breaks off after about three inches. You end up with a pile of confetti on the floor instead of a some usable paper in your hand. However, once you do get it moving, then the momentum keeps the wheel spinning and you end up with about eight feet of paper sitting on the floor - and stuff sitting on the floor in a public restroom isn't something you'd want to touch your - well, you know.

I read last night in the paper another column similar to this about how to figure out what is the best buy in toilet paper in the store. Is it the 36, 12 or 6 pack roll, of single or double thickness, with or without quilts, fragrance or colors? Is the package of 476.3 sq ft that you need to triple fold a better buy than the package of 351 sq ft that absorbs twice as much? Is there really much difference in that soft roll that feels like a pillow compared to the other roll that feels like it's made of wood? Personally, I like basic toilet paper - no quilts, no fragrances, no colors, no fancy packages, no ultra fluffy rolls. Just something that will get the job done.

And speaking of types. I recently was in Taiwan where the toilet paper comes in packages similar to the packages of tissue you normally use for your nose. Single sheets in a pop up dispenser. I haven't run across them for awhile, but the USofA also uses teeny-tiny sheets of toilet paper in some of its bathrooms - man, I dislike them. British Rail (at least when I was there in eighties) was know for it's toilet paper being practically non-absorbent. It was closer to wax paper than to a paper towel. Have you ever noticed you shouldn't use tissues (Why is toilet paper, toilet paper and tissues, tissues. Why not nose paper?) in the toilet? You see, while toilet paper is designed to dissolve in water, tissues aren't. Which is why sometimes you have to get more toilet paper for your fingers after the toilet paper you just used dissolved a little to soon. My parent's bathroom had a picture of corn cobs on the wall - just in case and for old times sake. And of course we've all heard of the camper who mistook poison ivy for plain green leaves when doing their thing in the woods. Now excuse me while I go to partake of some toilet paper...

Remotes!

What is it with remote control for audio-visual (AV) equipment designers? Do they have no brains what-so-ever? Every remote I have - and I have a bunch have a completely different layout of buttons. A big bunch of busy buttons. There is absolutely no method to the arrangement of those buttons. I have buttons for functions so esoteric I can't even find them in the manual that are right next to buttons I use every time I watch a DVD. Why not put the most common functions on big buttons up towards the top of the remote and leave the least used ones at the bottom. Or how about grouping them by function? Why not put audio channels and subtitles together? And label them so you can read them. It's usually dark in most AV rooms and all the remotes have this teeny-tiny low contrast labeling that can hardly be read in full daylight.

And the remotes themselves - why black and dark grey??? It's hard enough to find a remote when you need it even if it was glowing - but black? They fall on the floor or among the cushions and they're lost forever. I've added some reflective tape to mine that helps a little, but not too much. I really would love to see some dayglow orange remotes that I could find. And why make the buttons light up when you still can't read the labels. How many people take the time to memorize the buttons' functions?

And would it kill you manufacturers to come up with some standards for control codes? Even though all of my remotes seem to have multiple buttons for TV, VCR, DVD, etc. none will work with any others. I have a "universal" TV remote with a VCR, DVD and Audio toggle on it, but not one of the codes they give you to "program" the extras seems to work. Why not make them the same? It's not like I'm going to buy a TV and ask for a refund for the remote because my DVD player already has one. What would it hurt if Sony, Panasonic, Samsung and Pioneer all used the same basic signals for her remotes? I don't know of anyone who has less than three remotes available on their table when they want to watch some TV.

Here's my ideal remote: dayglow orange or yellow with a beeper that goes off when you press the "Where's the hell my remote" button on your TV/VCR/DVD/Stereo. The face will have a backlight that lights up what the buttons do. The most common functions are towards the top and grouped by function. And one remote will handle ALL the various gadgets in my house. Yep - I know, I'll be able to get bacon from my second story window, before a manufacturer would makes something this user-friendly.

Wood

Wood is interesting. It's all around - at least up here in Michigan it is. But go to a lumber yard and look out. You can go to one of the mainstream stores like Lowes or Home Depot and buy wood. You can get a pretty nice piece of pine, say 1 x 4 x 96 inches and pay under US$3. It'll have some knots and maybe a split or two, but if you look carefully, you can get some pretty attractive stuff. I've made furniture, boxes and toys out of the stuff. It's not the fancy pants oak or maple furniture that you see for thousand$ of dollars in some furniture stores, but the light finish and scattered knots in a TV stand or blanket chest have an attraction that I like.

Which brings me to a couple of things about wood. You'll see I mentioned a 1 x 4 x 96 inch piece of wood above. It's not really that. If you're lucky it'll be 3/4 x 3 1/2 by 96 inches. That works out to 252 cubic inches versus the 384 cubic inches as advertised, or 66% of what you're told. This is supposedly because they measure the wood before they finish it. Think about this for a minute. What if you bought a litre of Diet Pepsi and it only contained 670 ml, or how about buying a 5 pound box of sugar that only had 3.3 pounds of the sweet stuff in it. And it keeps getting smaller - take plywood for example. A 3/4 inch thick piece of plywood doesn't need finishing. It's made that size. However it's actually 23/32 of an inch thick, only 96% of what you'd expect.

Now a bit about prices. If you know nothing about wood, and even if you know a little, it's kind of hard to understand that while a pine board, 1 x 4 x 96 can be bought for US$3, you can move to the next set of bins and find another pine board the same size for maybe US$8. And if you move a couple more bins over you can get a nice oak board the same size for around $US15. These prices are approximate by the way. Outside of the BORGs^* like Lowes, most wood is sold by board foot. What this means is that the price is for a piece of wood that is 144 cubic inches (12" x 12" x 1"). If it's only 4" wide and 1" thick then a board foot would be 36" long.

So, I went crazy this last weekend. You know how they say not to go grocery shopping on an empty stomach? Well, don't go lumber shopping on an empty bandsaw. I went to a local specialty lumberyard near here - Barndoor Lumber. I wandered around their bins of woods and saw some light colored wood that caught me eye - birds eye maple. sigh... I ended up leaving the place with wood that could easily be carried in one arm and bill that couldn't. The bill came to US$70 - almost half of which went to a board about 4 foot long, 1 inch thick and 8 inches wide - with the little eye markings of birds eye maple. 2.5 board feet at US$15 per. Oh well, it's only money.

*BORG - Big Orange Retail Giant (mostly applies to Home Depot (orange) but used for Lowes as well) - also as in "resistance is futile" when applied to local hardware stores.