Silly Copper!

I sat down at my console here a few minutes ago to write a long-winded rant about programming pet peeves (not mine, but a response to someone else’s that I thought seemed pretty silly). My kitten Monty is curled up in my lap, scooping up all the attention I’ll give him (he’s looking better, too, btw — we’re finally winning the “flea” battle). I’ve got my blinds raised and windows open to air out the apartment a bit, since I’m drying some clothes on the line and fresh (dry) air helps things run a bit quicker.

It’s about 3:00am, and just as I was getting into the bulk of the entry I was going to post, I noticed a police car drive past my apartment, stop, then back up slowly, shining its spotlight towards my building (and into my window briefly). The car parked (right behind my truck), and out came a beefy-looking, buzz-cut-styled cop brandishing a flashlight and looking quite serious. He walked by my window, glancing in briefly before moving on.

What’s interesting me about this exploration of his is just how inefficiently he’s doing it. It’s obvious that he’s not interested in me — I’ve got my living room light on (and it’s a bright sucker) and the blinds are open, so it has to be painfully clear I’m up and available for conversation if he really wanted one with me. He’s clearly looking around just these four buildings for someone or something. But what I don’t quite get is why he’s been circling so many times — he’s unlikely to find any things of interest in the dark like this by just waddling around with a flashlight. A person could so easily hide on this property (including by walking/running to another part of the complex, or walking out the back (where there’s no fence)) that it seems utterly ridiculous to just be searching a tiny little square (there’s over twenty buildings here — why just focus on four?).

It’s possible he’s just looking for a specific apartment (the unit numbers are hard to spot at night, I’ll give him that) but you’d think after four “orbits” of this area he’d have found what he was after by now.

After sitting here nearly 20 minutes, he finally got back in his car and drove off. To my amusement, immediately following him was another police car … whatever they were looking for, it took two of them working feverishly to, um, not find it.

Heh. Wonder how many of my tax dollars just got pissed away before my eyes?

“Are You Asleep?”

I’ve ranted about this before, but it deserves another mention. I can’t be the only person left with any manners on this planet, but I’m beginning to wonder where the others are.

Sit down at a table at a bar where a friend of yours has rested her head, eyes closed, relaxing or sleeping. Doesn’t really matter. What should you do? Leave her alone and let her rest? Or start bugging her (patting her back, asking her obnoxious questions, like the dumbass question “are you asleep?”)?

Naturally I saw this happen tonight or else I likely wouldn’t have written about it right now, but that specific act has always seriously annoyed me: what is it about a person, sleeping, or otherwise at rest in their own world for awhile, that compels the average human to just fuck with them? Why do herds always single out and mess with the one sitting off on his/her own when there are other, much more entertaining alternatives?

Now tonight I heard someone ask S “are you asleep?” as she rested, eyes closed, on the table — and he asked the question with dead honesty, actually hoping for an answer, and honestly figuring that either answer was a possibility.

Think about that for a second: what answer can you possibly expect to the question “are you asleep?” Okay, fine, I always answer “yes” when someone asks me that because it’s a seriously stupid question, but the only honest answers possible are “no” and “…[silence]…” — a sleeping person can’t actually even answer the damned inquiry in the first place.

Why exactly do people just have to disturb someone who’s resting? Does it not occur to the average person that waking someone up to comment on how they’re sleeping … kinda wrecks the sleep process? Do they not realize that can cause even more fatigue for the person trying to rest?

I’ve never gotten that … I’ve also never felt a burning urge to wake someone up who was resting just to ask them if they were sleeping… grrrr.

Suck It, SCO!

SCO are an evil company — they’ve waged, for many years now, a silly, wasteful legal battle over their supposed ownership of patents and copyrights related to Unix. They’ve insisted that all users of Linux somehow owe them lots of money because of patents they own, they’ve sued IBM (and Novell, and others) over utterly silly things, and have generally made complete asses of themselves.

I’m pleased to report SCO’s shares are trading below one dollar as of this writing. They’ve lost their lawsuits, their investors are bailing, and they will soon (hopefully) be nothing but a stupid memory.

Serves them right. Read this for more details about these scumbags.

Usually, when a lot of men get together, it’s called a war.
— Mel Brooks, “The Listener”