Man. I have parts arriving today & tomorrow from two different sources. My new helmet is due in some time this week. According to FedEx, my shipment of circuit boards is in town, so I should see them today. It’s like freakin’ Christmas morning here!   🙂
Public Pulse
Had a letter to the Public Pulse published a week or so ago. I had emailed them two; one on the DC V. Heller case, the other a response to yet another person whining about how Nebraska doesn’t allow casinos, which would of course solve ALL our problems. Yeah, like they have for Iowa.
Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m no opposed to gambling on a moral basis or anything. It’s a decision a responsible adult should be able to make on their own. I’m just saying that overall, I don’t think the casino business is all that good for a state. Jobs are created – but they’re mostly subsistence wage jobs. There is money brought in from outlying areas, but it’s a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the money flowing out to the casino’s parent corporation. The casinos, of course, take no responsibility for addressing the increase in crime, job loss, divorce, bankruptcy and other problems associated with gambling by those who get in over their heads. There are those who remain convinced that the casinos have been a major boost for Iowa’s economy and quality of life –just as there are those who can plainly see that it’s just not the case.
Riding weather is back!
Well, so far we’ve been out on the bike once, and I’ve even had the Vespa out for a ride around the neighborhood. It’s supposed to hit 70 outside today, so it’s time to open up the windows and saddle up. I got the battery charged after finding it stone dead last night — that happens when you forget to turn off the ignition after you park it, duh. Seems to be OK, so we’ll see how that goes.
So, now it’s off to see how the roads are!
DC vs Heller
Today I was reading the latest news in the DC vs. Heller case, which promises to be one of the more eagerly anticipated and discussed Supreme Court opinions of the decade. DC vs Heller is a suit brought by a group of District of Columbia residents in an effort to overturn a set of laws that outright bans the ownership or possession of all handguns,and very severely limits the ability to own and use long guns as well. In one of the news articles linked from Wikipedia, I read the following quote:
“If the Supreme Court lifts the gun ban, you are going to have a serious war,†[Smith] says. “Everybody will think they can defend themselves. There will be more shootings, more killings.â€
Oh, my. Now, here I am, forty-something years old, and all this time I have labored under the misconception that an individual has the right to defend himself (or herself), and that said right predated the US Constitution by, well, as long as there have been living creatures on the Earth. Apparently, though, plenty of people feel that you and I — meaning normal, law-abiding citizens attempting to live our lives in peace — have no right to defend ourselves, our families or our property, even though all will readily admit that there is no shortage of armed criminals intent on robbery, rape, murder and various other forms of mayhem.
Some people just plain befuddle me. It seems that many of those most in favor of gun bans and confiscation are those who would most immediately and directly benefit from an increase in the number of armed, law abiding citizens in close proximity. I’ll be the first to say that the chances of my house getting robbed, or of me getting mugged, are far lower than those of someone living in a rough part of town. It’s not directly related to the fact that I am able to defend myself and my home; it’s more because we’re simply out of harm’s way for the most part. It takes effort to come out to this end of town to rob and kill, and criminals are inherently lazy to begin with. But there’s also the fact that out here, people will watch out for their neighbors; they will get involved; they will get descriptions of cars and people; they will talk to and cooperate with police. That fact that they may also shoot back is secondary.
Imagine the impact on the crime rate in some of the rough neighborhoods of (for example) the District of Columbia if the criminals knew there was a good chance their next intended victim might well be armed and ready to (gasp) defend themselves. It doesn’t take a lot of deep thinking to figure it out. Ms. Smith might possibly be right about one thing; there might be a very short-term increase in the number of shootings, but the majority of those shot would be the ones who, as they say, need shootin’.
Don’t buy oil from Joe’s!
I got an email forwarded to me today suggesting that we all quit buying gas from Exxon Mobil in an attempt to “show them that the consumer sets the price, not the seller” and get the price of gas back down to $2 a gallon. Of course the way to this Nirvana is, as always, to forward the email to everyone you know… sigh.
Let’s assume for a moment that for some reason a few million people decide they will no longer buy gas from Exxon or Mobil (though it’s really not likely to begin with). That means they’re all buying from, say, BP or Phillips or wherever. Great, so their stations now either run out of gasoline and diesel, or Continue reading “Don’t buy oil from Joe’s!”
My latest rental car
Avis was nice enough to give me a 2008 Mustang coupe with less than 3 miles on the odometer. Nice car. My last Mustang was a 1998 V6 5-speed coupe with a few very minor modifications to the intake & exhaust. Ten years later the parts of the car that needed refinement have been refined, and the parts that could use some “de-refining” have been addressed (for the most part) as well. Continue reading “My latest rental car”
Review: American Gangster
Wow, what more could you ask? The kid from a poor family makes it big, family values prevail (at least until everyone goes to prison), a brother stands up to The Man, good guys win in the end.
OK, I liked the movie. I really did. The only thing that kept running through my mind, though, was part of an interview with the real Frank Lucas, in which he said that most of the movie was complete fabrication. Oh well. Still a good cops-and-drug dealers movie, not too violent but not for the kiddies either. Solid 3, maybe 3-1/2 on a 1 to 5 scale.
Review: Michael Clayton
We rented Michael Clayton the week before we left on vacation. This movie is a little tough to categorize; it’s somewhere between “drama” and “thriller”. If you’re looking for a lot of action, this movie probably isn’t for you. There’s only one explosion, little or no fighting and no big car chase scenes. On the other hand, it’s not exactly courtroom drama, either. If you tend to believe that there is a seamy, grungy underbelly to corporate law, you’ll love this flick. Continue reading “Review: Michael Clayton”
Back to the cold
Well, last week was fun. A nice relaxing cruise around the Caribbean is a great way to break up what is feeling like a long winter.
Tech “support” can be SO annoying.
So yesterday, for the second day in a row, our Cox internet connection goes away. Poof… the network is still there, but there’s no DHCP server responding, so the router is off line, for all practical purposes. Connected the incoming cable to the Linux box and I can see traffic with tcpdump; mostly ARP requests from other systems. I reset the interface for DHCP and could see my own DHCP requests going out, but nothing coming back from Cox.
So, time to call and let them know they’ve screwed the pooch again. Tech support droid wants me to reboot my Linux machine to pick up a new IP address… this despite the fact that he knows absolutely nothing about Linux, specifically that the networking actually works, and can be restarted without rebooting the box. Sigh. Why do they hire these morons, and then KEEP them stupid and completely in the dark? God only knows.
Apparently they lost their DHCP server, or it had some severe screwup, since we now have a new IP address for the first time since we connected here in 2001.