Heh. Saturday tried its best not to be a very good day for me The karaoke show went reasonably well (this was true for both days, with Sunday being a good deal smoother (and busier) than Saturday, but with no real major goofs or problems), though as expected more adults turned out to sing than kids (which made me a bit sad — lots of kids were there and they looked like they wanted to sing, but they were too shy to approach us and their parents said “no” when we invited most of them).

The day began on a very sour note, though, with the truck deciding it wasn’t interested in playing that whole “starting and running” game anymore. We got a lift from the owner of Starshine Karaoke (who was sponsoring the show) and kicked off the show, and came back to diagnose the truck. As we were looking under the hood to see what might be going wrong, a damned wasp stung my back (little bastard). Read the full story...

Our continued march towards a police state is picking up steam, with our modern, highly-trained law enforcement officers stepping up their efforts to protect the teeming masses from the newest terrorism menace: the handicapped.

That’s right — the world’s a “safer place” now after an unarmed, 17-year-old handicapped man, in a wheelchair, died from repeated hits from a taser, courtesy of his local constabulary.

Are the police sympathizers ready to start conceding defeat yet? Maybe I should start quoting the article, and offer clever retorts, just for “fun.” Keep in mind as you read these blurbs that the kid was unarmed and in a wheelchair. He was also not actually committing a crime, either, but these days that doesn’t seem to matter much. Read the full story...

Go watch this recording of a police officer openly threatening to ruin a driver’s career and entire life. Then … I guess come up with your own conclusion. I’m honestly speechless on this one. This man has no business wearing a badge or carrying a gun.

Update: The officer in question has been suspended, without pay, pending investigation. The officer had previously plead guilty to assault and petitioned a judge to “expunge” the record, which was making it difficult for him to get work as a cop. The police chief responsible for this suspension, himself the target of accusations of inappropriate conduct (soliciting a 17-year-old girl for sex), seems to agree that this officer’s behavior was inappropriate, but also stands behind the behavior of his officers. Read the full story...

Bluetooth is fucking simple: each device (whether it’s a phone, a headset, your computer, etc.) has a unique number assigned to it. Call it an ID.

“Pairing” is just a matter of two devices catching wind of each other (i.e. they get within range of each other), one getting provoked (usually by its owner — that’d be you) into saying to the other “hey, uh, wanna chat? My super-sekrit code is 1234!” (You also end up specifying that super-sekrit code) The other says “well, my super-sekrit code is also 1234, so sure! We can talk!” They scribble each other’s unique IDs down on their little notepads and all is well.

The rest of the stuff Bluetooth offers is dead simple — networking (TCP/IP cheerfully runs on Bluetooth connections, so no extra cruft there), data syncing, file transfers, etc.

How did Vista’s Bluetooth stack get this fucked up? It’s stripped entirely of everything except limited file transfer, keyboards & mice. No cell phone internet. No Windows Mobile device syncing. How? Who the fuck decided “hey, that works great, so let’s strip all that shit out and break it?” Read the full story...

Fire them all. Every last damned one of them. Not one of these "police officers" deserves a badge.

The ones pushing the kid around (pushing hard to get him to fight back), the ones standing there backing them up, and the ones standing there not saying "Bob, stop it, now."

Every last one of these bastards needs a different line of work. There is no existing set of circumstances that can justify this behavior.

An amusing article is “making the rounds” on assorted “amusing links” web sites (like Fark, Reddit, i-am-bored, etc.). In it, a family tries to avoid buying any products made in China for a week. The very first two paragraphs of the article are laughably biased, making this Associated Press piece less than entirely trustworthy:

SIOUX FALLS, S.D.- Poisoned pet food. Seafood laced with potentially dangerous antibiotics. Toothpaste tainted with an ingredient in antifreeze. Tires missing a key safety component.

Yeah … because all the fine foods and other products we distribute in the United States are flawless, shining beacons serving as the best examples, world-wide, of how to produce safe, reliable products.

Read the full story...

I’m done — I’ve absolutely had it with the United States Postal Service. No, I’m not bitching about the stupid $0.02 postage stamp cost increase. I’m not bitching about their non-existent “customer service.”

I’m bitching that it takes their “Priority Mail” service seven calendar days (so far — the item I sent on the morning of June 1, 2007 for $4.60 still hasn’t gotten there) to deliver an envelope containing two sheets of paper, weighing a whopping 0.90 ounces, to another part of the same damned state. 140 miles. Orlando, Florida to Jacksonville, Florida.

I can drive there in three hours. Read the full story...

They pay reasonably well for paid posts, but as my updates to this recent post demonstrate, “negative” posts seem to be frowned upon, too (even when an “opportunity” says “+/-” or “neutral”).

Quoting another site in a limited fashion constitutes fair use, and that linked post contains predominantly original content (with only two short paragraphs quoted). Want me to shill about everything all happy & bouncy? Pay me a living wage, then we’ll talk

(FYI, yes, the paid posts will continue, but I’m not going to bother with the kind of effort I put into that one)

It’s nights like these that make me suspect the universe itself — the very fabric of existence — has a seriously warped sense of humor. I can’t help but chuckle at it myself; hopefully, I’m not the only one laughing.

I realized tonight was going to be one of those “might need a sleep aid to get to bed at a decent hour” nights (dammit — I loathe sleep sometimes and I think it can tell ). At half an hour after midnight I decided to head to Walmart to snag some (since I don’t use it often, but had burned through the final dose last week).

Upon my arrival, I switched off the truck’s engine, got out, put my keys in my pocket, locked the door, and closed it. I heard a hissing sound. Read the full story...

No, I don’t mean the Internet itself is a scourge; I’m referring to silent killer that lurks on millions of computers around the world, doing its dirty work in the background, working hard to completely wreck the “web browsing” experience for everyone who has the misfortune of using it.

Yes, I’m referring to Internet Explorer.

This single piece of software has made life a living hell for countless web developers and programmers. Its inconsistent handling of CSS (each and every version of IE has different, equally painful and amazingly stupid issues/problems with CSS rendering) combined with its unbelievably stupid “security” model (yes, Microsoft singlehandedly brought us the amazing innovation of “web pages that can actually fuck up your computer” with IE’s embarrassingly wimpy “security” — earlier versions of IE would cheerfully run software from other web sites, not only without asking you, but without even telling you, and that software could do anything it wanted to/with your computer) has made it the world’s worst web browser. Read the full story...