Land of Oz

'bout time - eh?

DERBY LINE, Vermont (Reuters) - The United States has tightened security with Canada in its northeast corner to the dismay of businesses and residents accustomed to crossing the world's longest undefended border with little more than a wave of a hand or a flash of a driver's license.

Since last week, most travelers from Canada are being required to show identification and submit to background checks at U.S. border posts in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, said Ted Woo, U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman in Boston.

And not a moment too soon either. I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of all those Canadians sneaking into the USofA and watching real NFL football, drinking Budweiser and otherwise taking advantage of all our great stuff. Why, I've heard they're even shopping in our outlet malls buying up all the discontinued Eddie Bauer polypropylene underwear and L.L.Bean rubber moccasins. Next thing you know, they'll be getting fat and unhealthy just like us real Americans. Frankly, I think we ought to build a thirty foot log (out of good old American softwood too) fence to keep them pesky Canadians and their dangerous ideas of world culture out of here.

Hot

All right, I hope all you summer wishers are happy with this Memorial Day weekend's weather. I'm not. It was pushing 97°F on my thermometer today and that was in the shade of my porch! It's now 8pm and it's still over 90°F. At best, I'm not too crazy of temperatures that rise past the 60s. I can put up with 70s, but 90s are way too much. You also have to remember that last week we had frost warnings!!

I'm also much happier shoveling snow than I am mowing the lawn. In the last couple of weeks, I've had to mow 3 or 4 times because of all the rain we've having. So naturally, now that a nice cold rain would be welcome, it's hot and dry. Hopefully, in about four months most people will be griping about the cold and really hopefully, but really unlikely, snow again.

There's one big thing about cold versus hot. If it's cold, I can always put on a coat, a hat and long underwear. Sleeping is great. When it's under 60 in the bedroom, you just have to toss on another feather comforter and all is well. Summer, you're stuck. You can only get down to shorts and a T-shirt and you're not going to get any cooler. And let's face it, most people really need to keep their clothes on. Right now if I risk my sight and look outside the window I can see my neighbors mowing their lawn in shorts and too tight tops. An believe me when I tell you that you really don't want to see those neighbors in their shorts and especially those tops.

Seat Belts

I don't know is this going on all over, but here in Michigan it's "Click it or ticket" time. What this means is that the police are putting extra effort into catching folks who don't buckleup. If you get caught unbelted, they'll belt you with a $65 fine.

That's all good and well I guess. In some ways, I can see spending time and money to make sure idiots don't exit their vehicle through the front window. In other ways, I find it a huge waste of money. While the police were busting Darwin-disadvantaged drivers, there were some kids exercising their right to bear arms with a drive-by taking out some other kid over on the "bad side" of town.

But you know what? I'm not too upset over that either. The problem is when some actual innocent bystander gets ventilated. As long as the dealers and users want to thin their ranks, who am I to object. Today's local news had a video interview with a couple of kids dealing who were bragging about the bucks they made. They carried pieces and wore kevlar while walking along the street. The sad part is that they don't expect to live too long. That's where society is blowing it. When you got kids who don't expect to make it past their teens, that the problem. It's not seat belts or smoking in a bar - it's kids at 14 writing off their life.

Fentanyl

The new boogie man of drugs. This is from an article in the Detroit Free Press: Now, the body count of people suspected of overdosing on a mix of heroin and fentanyl is rising -- and an urgent search is on.

It seems a mom of one of the victims is blaming the police for letting more druggies die since they didn't go after the dealers etal fast enough after her kid ODed. Why blame the police? Why did you let your kid do the drugs in the first place? Was it like, "oh, heroin by itself is OK, but adding fentanyl - how could they?" What level would you like the police to escalate to?

This reminds of a few years ago, some Hollywood big wig's kid died from an overdose or something drug related and the celeb was righteously furious with the police for letting this happen. The parent knew of his kid doing drugs before the OD. It seems that then, like now, the parents should be taking the responsibility not the police. In my opinion, the user is the one responsible. Not the local police, not the dealer, not the Afghan government, not the Border Patrol, not the maker of some chemical five steps removed from the street drug. Right next to the user themselves is the user's parents - yeah, the parents. They brought the kid into the world, how about taking some responsibility over him. It's not like the kid hired a stork to drop him off at 123 Blameless Lane. The parents got together and made the kid. If you don't care enough about your kid using drugs to stop them, don't bitch about others not stopping them either.

The story also says: Workers are distributing flyers in areas known to be frequented by drug users that warn of the dangers of using heroin or cocaine laced with fentanyl, which they might not be aware they are buying.

So basically it seems that many people think using heroin or cocaine isn't that big a deal after all. Kind of like eating Flintstone's Vitamins. It's a lot like how many look at drunk driving. It's bad, but not that bad - unless you wrap your car around some innocent bystander - then all of a sudden it's real bad.

Spam Again

I have both a hotmail and yahoo mail account. They have both been around for quite awhile. For whatever reason, the hotmail gets virtually no spam and the yahoo account averages one or two hundred messages a day. I will admit that the yahoo spam filters catch all but much less than 1% of the spam. A message will sneak past the filters perhaps once a week of so. I have no idea how many, if any, legit messages get trapped as spam. Ever so often I'll go through the spam headers and see if I can spot any legit messages. Right now I have 554 messages sitting in the bulk folder - and they get dumped once a week. While I understand the economics behind spam, I really don't understand the idiots who reply and make it worth the spammers effort. Are people really that stupid that they'd believe in some offer from an entity who can't spell or write and offers them something for nothing?? And these emails purportedly come from addresses like: CYCOAAQpUnjhjnU@qful.com, tMvGYjWASGltdj@bvxn.com and Shante@ondvdnw.com?

In Looking at the first batch or so of spammed offers, I find I can get for free: Sony VAIO laptop, New Care, Golf Clubs, Samsung 42 HDTV, Sex, Apple Mac, Nintendo Game Console, Sharp Aquos LCD TV, designer purse and wallet, Wal-Mart Gift Card, Compaq Presario Computer, Sony PS#, Apple Powerbook, Auto Loan, Mortgage, OxiClean Detergent, Cascade Dishwasher Detergent, Free tickets, HP Pavilion Media Center Laptop, Motorola Black Razor, Sony Cybershot Digital Camera, and of course, sex. And that's just the first 50 messages.

The problem is that as long as there are idiots out there who believe in this stuff, the spam will keep coming.

Costs

In case you haven't noticed, gas prices have gone up and down, but mostly up lately. And there's all kinds of folks raising holy hell about that. I can't help but wonder however, why is it that gas in particular gives such heartburn.

Look at water for example. For a month's worth of water that I use to clean, cook and bathe in, I - and most others around here - pay roughly $5-10 a month to the city government. And while I honestly have no idea how it's billed, that seems to be for roughly 1000-2000 gallons of clean, clear and cold water. Every so often, when I'm driving, I'll stop and get some bottle water to drink. It costs about $1.20 for a bottle -- a bottle that contains about 1/2 litre. That works out roughly to $7 for a gallon of water - basically the same water that we pay $5 for a thousand gallons. I know there's some overhead for the bottle and other packaging but you have to admit, that's a pretty steep markup.

Crude oil is going for about $70 a barrel (as of writing this) or around $1.70 a gallon. By the way, if you don't know, a barrel of crude is 42 gallons. Not that most crude ever sees the inside of a barrel, but that's how it's measured. That standard is based on blue-colored barrels (hence the bbl abbreviation for barrel - blue barrel) once used by Standard Oil way back when.

So, seeing that oil is marked up from $1.70 to $3 and raises the ire of all those people driving 4x4 SUVs and pickups and hemi-powered station wagons, why don't they blink when paying $1.20 for a 1/6 gallon bottle of water that they can get for 1/2 a cent a gallon?

TV Finales

Have you noticed it TV finals weeks? No, not tests, but the last episode before a long summer of reruns. I tend to watch mostly crime shows of one sort or another, but still, it's amazing how many of these shows have to shoot one of their own in the final episode.

NCIS killed off one last year with a bullet in her forehead and this year the bossman called it quits. Last night Law & Order killed off one of their stars (which did surprise me) permanently (probably). Another thing about television - or any media for that matter - is that dead isn't always dead. And then McCoy gets fired at the end from a case.

Right now I'm checking out CSI and the main cop gets shot right from the git-go. It's still 15 minutes from the end, so his status is up in the air. This is probably one of those where Brass hangs until next season. OK - it's 10pm and Brass pulled through. That's a bit of a surprise. However what was a BIG surprise was seeing Griss and Sara hanging together in a bedroom - and it wasn't a crime scene.

That leaves L&O SVU. I don't think the finale has been on yet. I'm guessing Stabler will be the one on the bubble this time. Personally, I find his angst-ridden character getting a bit old. Hmmm, I'm wrong on this one. I just checked out SVU's site and found out I watched the finale a couple of nights ago. Cool. They didn't feel the need to stretch out some crap over the summer.

Which brings me to my problem. Why leave cliff-hangers? Does anyone really expect a fan to stay on the edge of her seat all summer biting their nails wondering what's going to happen to the show? Does it really matter who gets killed or quits or comes back from the dead do to some plot-contrived gimmick. If you got a good show, just continue with what made it good all season. Like SVU just did. A good show, no real cliff-hanger and I still intend to watch it next season.

Da Vinci Code

Yep, I'm going to add to all the free hype of this movie/book. As if Dan Brown could've bought this kind of publicity if he tried. Here's some bits from a recent BBC article:

Its release in India is likely to be delayed after a furore that has seen Islamic clerics in Mumbai (Bombay) back a call by Catholics for a boycott.

South Korea's Christian Council has unsuccessfully tried to ban the film.

And [Buddhist] Thai censors want to cut the last 10 minutes, having been persuaded by critics that they are "blasphemous".

In the UK, leading Catholics also demanded a "health warning"... [about the movie].

I guess I'm one of the few remaining people in the world who hasn't read the book. I did try a couple of times, but just couldn't finish it. And it's not like I'm not a reader - I usually average a couple of novels a week along with a passle of magazines, newspapers, and backs of cereal boxes. I really didn't think it was that good.

However, I was aware that it was fiction. And unlike seemingly every religious person in the world, I happen to know that fiction means "not true." That's why books like the "Outlaw of Gor", "Pieces of Modesty", "The Saint and Mr. Teal", and "Green Eggs and Ham" are all likewise deemed fiction and carried in the fiction section of libraries and book stores. For all that, I'm not going to demand the bible be placed in the fiction section - it does have one or two inconsistencies after all. It can be kept where it is. The same as I don't demand that the Koran, Buddhist sutras or the Mormon's gold paged story be kept in the fiction center. I'm perfectly content that they - unlike "The Da Vinci Code" - are stored in the religion section of the library.

Basically, what this rambling mass of almost unconnected crap means is that I'm really sick and tired of religious people telling me what I can and can't read or see and what I can and can't believe in. The fact that you think your god is losing sleep over what some idiot is reading as opposed to what the world is doing to itself, tells me your god has way too much time on his/her hands.

Political Crap

Did you see that strange story about Laura Bush in the papers the other day? She said she didn't believe any of the polls about her husband's popularity being so low. She mentioned that wherever she went people had nothing but good to say about the president. You don't suppose this is because whenever the president or his people go somewhere, the Secret Service makes sure there are no Bush naysayers around? Talk about the Emperor's clothes!

Other suitably stupid politics lately concerns a $100 windfall to offset the cost of gasoline! Now that's certainly going to turn my life around - I drive a VW Beetle and $100 would just about cover three fill-ups. Illegal aliens - oops, undocumented immigrants - are no problem and should be offered amnesty, however in the meantime, let's put 6,000 National Guard troops on the border - in between the time they spend getting shot and blown up in Iraq.

And while the government isn't data-mining or listening to your innocent phone calls, they have been tracking who, when and for how long you've been talking on the phone for the past five years. I've heard they haven't been tracking names - only phone numbers. That's comforting. It's not like anyone could figure who I was from my phone number!

And thank goodness that hydrogen fuel will take care of our energy needs when driving our 6,000 pound SUVs to and from the 7/11. I will admit I'm not too clear on where the hydrogen comes from. I know we can make it pretty cleanly using electricity - but I'm a little unclear on how we make the clean electricity. Oh well, I guess we can use hydrogen to generate clean electricity.

Oh yeah, and just to show that RHIP doesn't always apply, I've heard the National Guard - you know, the guys who will now be protecting our border in addition to Iraq - isn't allowing some officers to leave the military after their time of service is up. This is in addition to the Stop Loss program for the enlisted swine. I think, though can't be sure, that around 400 officers are involved in this at present. That means that you can now have non-volunteer officers leading non-volunteer enlisted troops in a war - which I'm sure makes for high motivation.

* For those not familiar with the terms, RHIP stands for Rank Has Its Privileges and Stop Loss is a program the military uses to keep folks from leaving the military until the military wants them too - regardless of when the folks should be leaving.

added later:
And from the how dumb do they take us to be section of the government:
"Finally, we hope that this video [a recently Pentagon released 9/11 video] will put to rest the conspiracy theories involving American Airlines Flight 77."

Now, I can't say before this that I put a great deal of faith in all the conspiracy theories about 9/11. I've always just taken it to be an exceptionally well-planned act of terror. However, if the government has had its hands on a chunk of video for five years, do they really expect us to buy the fact that it doesn't show exactly what they want it to show us? Let's face it, your 13 year old Nintendo playing nephew with a Macintosh and a couple free weekends can make a video clip that is going to show whatever he'd like it to show. Does the government really expect us to believe that after 5 years, it couldn't doctor up a video to show us what it wants?

Buicks

update on an earlier post:
You might have read one of my comments a few days ago about cars in general and Buicks specifically. I'd mentioned that I wondered if they were allowed to sell Buicks to people who didn't have gray hair.

In today's automotive section, they were talking about the fact that Buick has the oldest demographic of any other brand - 69!! That means that you do in fact have to have gray hair.

Personal Responsibility

Here's another unique idea from those folks up north. A person's responsible for their own actions:

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Hosts cannot be liable if their drunk guests get into a driving accident and kill or injure someone on the way home from a party, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Friday.

This was the result of some guy drinking too much at a party and then having an accident where he killed others. Instead of taking responsibility for drinking too much, they tried to blame the hosts of a party for serving too much. Can you see something like this being passed in the USofA?

That would mean that people are responsible for her own actions. They can't blame her own idiocy on somebody else. Man, this could change society - just think about it. You could no longer blame Macdonalds because you eat too much nor could you blame Philip Morris because you smoke too much.

Next thing you know we'll be blaming violent criminals for crime and greedy businessmen for graft. Who knows where this could all end. Lawyers might have to start looking for another profession - nah, I doubt that. I'm sure another lawyer someplace will sue somebody and get that decision overturned. After all, it's not easy blaming yourself - I know I don't like to do it.

Voting

I went to vote in a local election today. At first thought, it's not a big thing - however when you think about it, it's pretty cool. I have a chance to let the government know what I want. It doesn't mean they'll listen, but I get the chance. However, while there, I had a couple of thoughts.

The first thing is that the power to vote isn't the power. It's who counts the votes that has the power. After all, all you know for sure how anyone voted is yourself. If "they" tell you that 3,452 voted for something and 12,893 voted against, how do you know? It's not like they're going to let you look at all the ballots. In fact, now a days, you're lucky if there's even ballots to look at. It's kind of hard to verify bits in a database.

The second thing is about the voters. In our decrepit city, there's isn't a lot of action for most votes. Today, for a pretty hot topic, there were 11,175 votes - from a city of 62,000 (42,000 over 18). Anyway, there were about 6 people in front of me voting. I didn't pay too much attention to the first ones, but out of the three in front of me, two needed help voting. Now that is scary. This isn't something complicated. There was one item to be voted on - yes or no. To vote, you make a line with a pencil through the arrow pointing to yes or no and then slide the ballot into an electronic reader slot. That's it - and two people needed help to do it. They seemed normal people, no obvious handicaps, but they needed help. One didn't know how to mark the ballot and the other couldn't figure out how to slide the paper into the slot. And those are the kind of people deciding my future.

Projects

Have you ever been doing a project that refuses to come together? One of my hobbies is woodworking and I'm working on a fairly simple project - a kitchen drawer divider. It's made of mostly 1/4" thick pine that I resawed from 1x4s. You can buy a plastic one for a couple of bucks and even a wooden one won't cost much more than $10 or so. But this one has a couple of features that aren't normal for dividers - like an extra long section for cooking length chop sticks. You know what - when I said this, I had an oh crap moment about the chop sticks. A quick run downstairs to double-check and with all the resizing because of mistakes, naturally enough, it's now about 1/2" too short for the chop sticks that I was designing it for.

Here's what's gone wrong so far - not counting the above. I started with a box joint for the corners, but I ended up making them way too sloppy and gave up on that. Today I decided to use 3/4" stock for the ends and make dadoes to hold the ends. I have a bunch of dadoes to hold the various dividers. Naturally, the first time I glued the outsides together, one side had one of its dadoes on the wrong end. So time to take it apart - again. A light tap and two of the ends break off. What I'll end up doing is to trim off the ends to make a smooth side instead of the inset ends.

So now my too short and too narrow box with thicker than planned ends is sitting in the basement held with a few clamps while the glue dries. Tomorrow, there's five more dividers to glue into their respective dadoes. And eventually, a 1/4" plywood bottom will be cut to fit - I hope.

So far, I figure counting my labor at minimum wage, and all the hours for material preparation and repair and replacements of parts, this silly drawer divider is probably worth about $50.