Last month they were ecstatic in Georgia because 90% of the third graders had passed the reading test and were gonna be able to go on to the fourth grade. Since Georgia ranks 50th in SAT scores this was finally some good news, at least to the Georgia educational establishment. I wrote about it here. I was not very impressed. I didn't think that only nine out of ten students passing the reading test was sumpin' to crow about. We should be able to do better.
After writing that post, I got mail from many of my readers who sent me articles from their states with the same type of results. The 10% failure isssue seemed to be pretty common across the country. Now I find out that it was worse than I thought according to this article in Wednesday's Atlanta Urinal and Constipation.
Georgia third-graders needed to answer correctly fewer than half the questions on the state's reading test to be promoted to fourth grade, educators disclosed Tuesday.The "cut score" — the number of correct responses needed to pass — was 17 of 40 questions, or 42.5 percent.
Huh? WTF? 17 out of 40? 42.5%? That's a passing grade? And still one child out of ten failed the test? What kind of bullshit is that?
Such a cut score is not unusually low for a standardized curriculum test, which measures how well students know the material covered in the classroom. While classroom tests require 70 percent for passing, a cut score between 40 percent and 60 percent is typical on standardized tests.
Yeah but scoring less that 50% is considered passing? Even on a standardized test I think that's bullshit.
The state declined Tuesday to make immediately available information that would show how difficult, or easy, the questions on the third-grade reading test were. Officials said they would provide that data later this week.
Yeah I want to see that. I'll see if my cats can get better than 42.5 fucking percent.
After repeated requests for the information from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the state school board voted Tuesday to release the cut scores. Ashe said the state's initial refusal to release the information had raised questions about the test, which was used for the first time to determine whether students in Georgia got promoted.
Yeah. If I had been the state school board I sure wouldn't want to admit that 42.5% was a passing grade. I also wouldn't want to admit that the schools were so bad that one out of ten students couldn't even get 17 out of 40 questions right.
So how is the cut score determined?
In July 2002, groups of teachers gathered to set cut scores. The teachers took the test and then evaluated each question, estimating how many children would likely get it right. Their responses were used to set cut scores, which varied depending on the test. In fifth-grade social studies, students needed to answer one-third of the 60 questions correctly. Fourth-grade math required 63 percent correct answers.
Whoa! Back up! In fifth grade social studies answering one third of the questions is considered passing? No wonder our population thinks we live in a democracy rather than a constitutional republic. The teachers ain't teaching, the students ain't learning, and the state school board is fixing the test results. Here we see gummint schools and the teachers unions in action. No performance and no accountability. What a disgrace!
How about other states?
Georgia officials attempted to survey the policy of all 50 states and Washington, D.C., on making scores public. Of the 26 states that responded, 14 released cut scores to varying degrees, and 12 kept the cut scores a secret. Texas, often cited as a model for Georgia, makes cut scores public.
And ....
This year, Texas third-graders needed to answer 23 of 36 questions correctly — 64 percent — to be promoted.
64% compared to 42.5%.
Tuesday's vote by the school board authorized the release only of the cut scores for Georgia's curriculum tests, which are given in grades 1 through 8. A school board committee will consider at a meeting July 7 whether to release cut scores for End of Course Tests, given in high school, and the Georgia High School Graduation Test.
I hope they're higher than 42.5% but I'm not holding out much hope.
And John Fonda Kerry just pandered to the National Education Association (Motto: We take education out of the schools) and said no way would he support vouchers.
Most of the kids who passed fifth grade social studies did not have the slightest idea what he was talking about.
I've got a lot on my mind tonight. There's so much for me to bitch about I could probably do a bunch of posts and write all night but I have to go to work tomorrow.
Rachel Lucas
Dammit! Why do you tease us? You come back for a few posts and you're gone again. As Hawkins pointed out, you could probably make a grand a month selling advertising on your site. Michael Moore and Algore are begging for your sarcastic wit. Have at it.
Bush Lied
We turned sovereignty over to the Iraqis two days early. Bush lied! He said we were gonna do it on June 30.
The Dimocrats Are Crybabies.
The Dimocrats have been saying for the last few months that pointing out that John Fonda Kerry has voted against every major weapons system during his 20 years in the Senate is calling Kerry unpatriotic. The Republicans have never said anything about Kerry's patriotism. I have, but that's beside the point. The Dimocrats have been doing their usual projection. Just like accusing Republicans of stealing elections is projection on the Dimocrats' part. No one knows more about stealing elections than the Dimocrats.
Now Kerry is whining (No one whines better than Dimocrats) about the video that the spineless Republicans pulled off the Bush-Cheney site today. It showed videos of the barking moonbats, Howard Dean and Algore, ranting and raving. It also showed excerpts of an ad that came from the Moveon website that equated Bush to Hitler. So let's see. The Republicans point out that the Dimocrats have been calling Bush a Nazi and that pisses them off? WTF? Too bad they pulled the video. It was classic Gore and Dean. It was also classic Dimocrat lies and vitriol.
I stand corrected. The video is still there! Kerry's Coalition of the Wild-eyed.
Taxes (or all your money belongs to the gummint)
Here's an example of the failure of our gummint schools and a mushy empty headed socialist from Lileks Bleat on Monday. He is patiently trying to explain to this empty headed Kerry supporter about how he has used his tax cut to expand the economy and create work for others. Here is the end of the exchange:
“Why should the government have given you the money in the first place?”“They didn’t give it to me. They just took less of my money.”
That was the last straw. Now she was angry. And the truth came out:
“Well, why is it your money? I think it should be their money.”
See. To a socialist, all the money belongs to the gummint.
And if you have any doubt that Senator Hillary Rodent Clinton is a socialist, here is proof straight from the pages of the San Francisco Pravda Chronicle. Thanks to Ralph Gizzip for the link.
"Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you," Sen. Clinton said. "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
Spoken like a true socialist. That's like her husband saying that he could have given us tax cuts but we would not have spent the money properly. Assholes!
From the same article.
Before leaving the forum, Sen. Clinton was asked what she thought of her husband's book. "I loved it," she replied. "You've got to read all of it."
What she left out was that she thought it was some of the best fiction she had ever read.
Hostages and Abu Ghraib
I think we should give the cowardly terrorists who have taken hostages and have threatened to kill them unless we release the prisoners at Abu Ghraib exactly what they want. We should release the prisoners. From a C-130. At 10,000 feet. Are you happy now assholes?
To those of us who are squeamish, like my sweetie, Lady Jessica, let me reiterate that we are at war. This is a war unlike any other that we have fought. This is an enemy who does not believe in the Geneva Convention. This is an enemy who is utterly ruthless and looks upon fairplay on our part as weakness. Yeah, we are trying to be the good guys, but with these assholes we can't play that way. We need to adopt some of the measures Russia did in Lebanon. They snatched a relative of one of the terrorists, killed him, cut off his genitals, stuffed them in his mouth, and dumped him on the street.
But how do the Iraqis feel? Here is an excerpt from article from the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation that shocked the shit out of me.
Lafta was happy to see U.S. troops drive Saddam from power. But he is also frustrated by the persistence of terrorism and crime since then and wants the new Iraqi security forces to be tougher than the Americans.Lafta said only more severe punishments would deter thieves and killers.
''They have to sentence them to death. Hang them in the street in front of everybody. When people want to commit a crime, they will remember and not do it,'' he said.
''It will take only two months, and they will get rid of all of them,'' he said. ''The government will get stronger and stronger, and they will give tough orders to the Iraqi police.''
This sounds a lot worse than panties on the head and a stupid bitch laughing at the size of an Iraqi's dick.
When the Iraqis start torturing prisoners, Bush will still be blamed for it.
Before I go, I'm gonna post a card that a reader from Australia sent me. It is rather crude and tasteless which is why I let my friend Jane post it first. But then I said to myself, "When did you get standards or good taste?"
This is a card that Pumpman should send to Jennifer.
Off to bed!
I had to go into work on Saturday to cut one of our systems over to the new processor and to test out our main VM system. We were all given tasks to perform before we brought the VM system up. For those of you who have been reading me for a while, here's a test question.
Who had not done his assigned tasks?
1. Me
2. My team lead.
3. The new network guy.
4. the VM guy.
5. A user who offered to help us out on testing.
If you guessed the new network guy, you guessed correctly. He had not done any of his assigned tasks. None. Nada. Zilch. So there at the end of our test window, my team lead and I were busy updating TCPIP profiles to see if they would work. The new network guy didn't even start coding the profiles until after we had brought the new system up. Everyone he touched, he fucked up. This was stuff that should have been done on Friday. We did not get enough stuff done as we wanted to because of this. Arrgggghhhh!
I got home about a half hour before my sister and her husband arrived. They brought me down their old cedar chest. Mine was a cheap one I inherited from my mother and the top had broken. So now we had to take mine to the DeKalb County dump. I had a 30 year old television that had given up the ghost so we took that also.
If you live in DeKalb County you can dump for free. Since we were taking their car, I had to have proof of residency so I took a property tax bill with me.
We got to the dump and I presented my bill to the dude. After scanning it for about ten minutes, he gave us the OK to enter. As my sister and her husband were unloading the cedar chest the scavengers descended. Yep. There were dump divers there. They asked if the television worked. It didn't. But that didn't stop them. I knew that the old cedar chest and the television would have a new home by that evening.
Then it was off to Lennox Mall so my sister could get some wine glasses at Williams Sonoma. Then home. Then the grocery store.
When we got home, there was a message on my answering machine from my team lead saying IP didn't work on one of our systems. I figgered it was an easy bug and I'd fix it Monday morning. More on this later.
That night my friends Michael and Cindy had us over so my sister could see the new waterfall they had built by their pool. We had a nice dinner and managed to consume five bottles of wine. I had taken over some fresh tomatoes from my garden.
This is the earliest I have ever gotten tomatoes and I am getting a bumper crop. There were enough for my sister and her husband to have BLT's for lunch on Sunday and still take some back to Columbia with them. They also took a cucumber. I'm starting to get cucumbers and I'll have a bumper crop of them also.
Besides my condom picture and Monday pun, I also wrote a rant about John Lewis' reaction to Zell Miller speaking at the Dimocrat convention. I forgot to publish it. It's up now.
Speaking of that, let's see who's speaking at the Dimocrat convention. There's Howard Dean and Al Gore. That oughta be a lot of fun listening to them rant and rave. There's Al Sharpton. It wouldn't be a proper Dimocrat convention if there weren't at least one RWPP (Race Warlord Poverty Pimp) speaking. There's Ted Kennedy. Wonder if he'll be sober? And for the Dimocrats who long for the halcyon (for the Dimocrats) days of the 90's when they controlled both houses of congress and the White House, there will be Bill Clinton whose speech will probably remind us of the everready bunny since I'm sure he will keep going and going and going like he did at the 1988 Dimocrat convention.
Anyway, I went into work this morning and the day started out with a bang. I slipped and fell on the walkway going from the parking lot to the building. This is going to be a really great day. When I fall I draw people like stink on shit. To their credit, they all want to help me get up and I appreciate it, but usually the best thing to do is give the crip room to get up by himself.
I got to my office and fired up my PC. I noticed IP worked on the system that my team lead had left the message about. He wasn't in our office. When he returned, I asked him about it. He said he had found a circumvention and used the next IP address with the next adaptor address.
He had worked on it on Sunday and woke up at 4:30 AM worrying about it and had come into work. So we fired up the OSASF application and fumbled our way through it. It is not an intuitively obvious application. I looked at the definitions and everything appeared OK. I asked him how he had coded the TCPIP profile and he said he had copied it from another system and had changed the IP address and the adaptor address. I noticed the IP address was on port 0 of the adaptor and the one he had copied was on port 1. I asked him if he had changed the port to 0 in the profile. Whooops! I showed him where that was defined. The nice thing is, when we move to the new system, we don't need OSASF and TCPIP will be easier to code, except for the new network guy. He'll still be asking me how to do it and still fucking it up.
I told him that this was sumpin' the new network guy should have fixed. After having a good laugh at my joke, I told him how unfortunate he was to have an incompetent booger eatin' moh-ron (the new network guy) and a burned out lazy dude (me) working on the team. At least I know sumpin'.
I am way ahead of schedule on my new system install. I updated my IBM rep on my progress on our weekly call. The rest of the day was uneventful.
Had BLT's for supper.
Let's see if I remember to publish this.
Today's groaner is another one from Jeannette.
One day in the jungle a chimpanzee invented some tools to eat his dinner. One
tool was a flat stick sharpened along one edge, this he used to cut his food.
The other was a stick with four smaller sticks attached to the end each
sharpened to a point He used to spear his food and place it in his mouth.
The chimp was very proud of his inventions which he called his one point tool
and his four point tool.
One day he awoke to find that the four point tool was missing. The chimp was
distraught. He ran around the jungle trying to find his precious tool.
First he came upon the lion.
"Lion, Lion!" he cried, "Have you seen my four point tool?"
"No. Replied the lion, I have not seen your four point tool."
Then the chimp came upon the gorilla.
"Gorilla, Gorilla! he cried, Have you seen my four point tool?"
"No, Replied the gorilla, I have not seen your four point tool."
Then the chimp came upon the jaguar.
"Jaguar, Jaguar! he cried, Have you seen my four point tool?"
"Yup!" replied the jaguar, "I have seen your four point tool."
"Well where is it?" inquired the chimp.
"I ate it." Said the jaguar, smugly.
"Why would you do that?" Cried the chimp.
You are really gonna hate me for posting this one.
"Because," replied the big cat, "I am a four point tool eater Jaguar!"
I saw in an article in Saturday's Atlanta Urinal and Constipation that the Republicans want Zell Miller to speak at their convention this year. To show how much Zell has shifted to the right or as Zell contends, the Dimocrats have shifted to the left, only twelve years ago Zell delivered one of the keynote speeches at the 1992 Dimocrat convention when Bill Clinton was nominated.
"It is unbelievable. It is unreal. It is a shame and a disgrace," said Rep. John Lewis, a Democrat and dean of the Georgia congressional delegation. ". . . I do not understand what he is so angry about, but apparently he has lost his way."
No John, let me tell you what a shame and a disgrace is.
That fat bloviating blowhard, Ted Kennedy, who left a woman to drown never served a day in jail and is now revered as an elder statesman of the Dimocrat Party. He is a shame and a disgrace.
I heard a good line the other day. While campaigning, John Fonda Kerry has a man he pulled from the water standing on one side of him. On the other side is Ted Kennedy.
Cynthia McKinney who will probably regain her seat in Congress this year. She is a shame and a disgrace.
You have a Senator, Robert Kleagle Byrd, a former member of the KKK using nigger on national television and getting a pass from you and the Congressional Black Caucus. That's a shame and a disgrace.
Can you imagine the outcry if there were a Congressional White Caucus? The Congressional Black Caucus. That's a shame and a disgrace.
Maxine Waters and Shelia Jackson-Lee. They are a shame and a disgrace.
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. They are a shame and a disgrace.
Bill Clinton, probably the most corrupt president this country has ever seen, and all the Dimocrats who supported him during all of his scandals. That's a shame and a disgrace. At least there were some honorable Republicans who told Nixon to resign for the good of the country. Too bad there were no honorable Dimocrats.
It's just as well in retrospect because then we would have Al Gore who has gone totally off his rocker. He has become a shame and a disgrace.
Hillary Clinton who parlayed victimhood into a Senate seat. That is a shame and a disgrace. Jesus! Having Chuck "the schmuck" Schumer and Hillary Clinton as senators. WTF is wrong with you New Yorkers? That's almost as bad as having Ted Kennedy and John Fonda Kerry as senators.
What the Dimocrats have done to black people, their core constituency. After 40 years of the Great Society we have seen the breakup of the black family and a rise in illegitimate births. That is a shame and a disgrace.
And you John Lewis who keeps supporting the failed policies of the Dimocrats. You think giving money to poor people will solve poverty. It will not. We've been in Iraq for only 15 months and you guys are carping about what a failure the policy is. We've been waiting 40 years for your policies to succeed. That is a shame and a disgrace.
Our gummint schools suck and it's because of stupid liberal feel good solutions and the teachers unions, another core constuency of the Dimcrat Party. That is a shame and a disgrace.
Blacks not doing well in school because doing so gets them labeled as acting white by their peers. That is a shame and a disgrace. You, John Lewis, the Congressional Black Caucus, and every other black leader should be spending time in inner city schools trying to change this perception, but no, it's easier to blame whitey for all the problems.
Michael Moore. There is a real shame and a disgrace.
The fact that in ten minutes, without even trying, I could find many things about the Dimocrat Party much more disgraceful than Zell Miller possibly speaking at the Republican convention.
That is a real shame and a disgrace.
Sent to me by Woody
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, D.C. 20016
Dear Concerned Citizen:
Thank you for your recent letter roundly criticizing our treatment of the Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees currently being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. My administration takes these matters seriously, and your opinion was heard loud and clear here in Washington.
You'll be pleased to learn that, thanks to the concerns of citizens like you, we are creating a new division of the Terrorist Retraining Program, to be called the "Liberals Accept Responsibility for Killers" program, or LARK for short. In accordance with the guidelines of this new program, we have decided to place one terrorist under your personal care.
Your personal detainee has been selected and scheduled for transportation under heavily armed guard to your residence next Monday.
Ali Mohammed Ahmed bin Mahmud (you can just call him Ahmed) is to be cared for pursuant to the standards you personally demanded in your letter of admonishment. It will likely be necessary for you to hire some assistant caretakers. We will conduct weekly inspections to ensure that your standards of care for Ahmed are commensurate with those you so strongly recommended in your letter.
Ahmed's meal requirements are simple, but we strongly suggest serving meals that do not require utensils, particularly knives and forks. Also, these should be "one-handed" foods; Ahmed will not eat with his left hand since he uses it to wipe himself after purging his bowels (which he will do in your yard) - but look on the bright side ... no increase in the toilet paper bill.
He generally bathes quarterly with the change of seasons, assuming that it rains, and he washes his clothes simultaneously. This should help with your water bill. Also, your new friend has a really bad case of body lice that hasn't been completely remedied. Please heed the large orange notice attached to your detainee's cage: "Does not play well with others."
Although Ahmed is sociopathic and extremely violent, we hope that your sensitivity to what you described as his "attitudinal problem" will help him overcome these character flaws.
Perhaps you are correct in describing these problems as mere cultural differences. He will bite you, given the chance, but his rabies test came back negative, so not to worry. We understand that you plan to offer counseling and home schooling. Your adopted terrorist is extremely proficient in hand-to-hand combat and can extinguish human life with such simple items as a pencil or nail clippers.
We do not suggest that you ask him to demonstrate these skills at your next yoga group. He is also expert at making a wide variety of explosive devices from common household products, so you may wish to keep those items locked up, unless (in your opinion) this might offend him.
Ahmed will not wish to interact with your wife or daughters (except sexually) since he views females as a subhuman form of property. However, he will be eager to assist with the education of your sons; have available for their use several copies of the Q'uran.
Oh - and rest assured he absolutely loves animals, especially cats and dogs. He prefers them roasted, but raw is fine, too, if they aren't more than 2 or 3 days dead.
Thanks again for your letter. We truly appreciate it when folks like you, who know so much, keep us informed of the proper way to do our job. We think this watching over each other's shoulder is such a good way for people to interact that we will be sending a team of federal officials with expertise in your line of work to your place of business soon, just to help you do your job better.
Don't be concerned that they have the power to close your business, seize your property, and arrest you for any violation of the 4,850,206 laws, codes, regulations and rules that apply to your profession. They're really there just to make sure you're doing everything the proper way. That is what you wanted, right?
Well, thank you for this opportunity to interact with such a valued member of the citizenry. You take good care of Ahmed - and remember...we'll be watching.
Cordially...Your Buddy, George W. Bush
Damn! Damn! Damn! Gotta get up early and go to work Saturday morning. We're planning on cutting over a system to the new processor and doing a test IPL of our main VM system to see how it works and allow some users to test their systems. It will also give me a chance to see what the new network guy fucked up. All he has to do is the TCPIP stuff. I did the VTAM and NCP stuff (which he should be doing.).
Speaking of the new network guy, my team lead assigned him the task of getting TCPIP working on a system. I was off sick Wednesday, so when I came in Thursday morning, my team lead was trying to make TCPIP work. Yep. After taking the new network guy through the process, he still had to do the work and he couldn't get it working. He and the new network guy worked on it for about three hours on Wednesday. I fixed it in five minutes. It's not that I'm smart, it's that my team lead got so frustrated working with Shit For Brains that he overlooked sumpin' real simple. It's times like these that I point out that I'm not paid for what I do but for what I know.
Madonna is changing her name to Esther? The slut formerly know as Madonna?WTF? Madonna, you're so over. Change your name. Pose nude. It doesn't matter. No one cares anymore. Anyway I always thought your music sucked. I feel the same way about Michael Jackson.
I like heavy metal, acid rock, blue grass, blues, folk, and classical. I like some country as it has really gravitated to middle of the road soft rock.
I never liked the Motown sound. Jesus, listening to Diana Ross' tinny little voice was like fingernails scraping on a chalk board. I never understood the popularity of the Supremes.
Disco sucked.
Hip hop? GMAFB! That ain't music.
Ya know what I hate about rock music today? There aren't any good guitar players. Where are the Claptons? Where are the Johnny Winters? Where are the Eddie Van Halens? At least Pearl Jam has someone who can play lead guitar. I don't mind loud headbanging rock, but anyone can play power chords. Show me some guitar work.
I've already said that Britney Spears will be posing for Playboy in about five years to try and resurrect her career.
I saw the Rolling Stones on cable a while back. I had to turn it off. They were pathetic. Kim du Toit was right when he said they sound like a garage band. Keith Richards never could play quitar very well. Jesus! He had a capo on an electric guitar! Whassa matter Keith? Having trouble playing bar chords? Yeah! Yeah! He's a millionaire so what do I know? He still sucks.
On the other hand, I saw Aerosmith the other night and they rocked! They got two guys in that band who can play lead guitar.
Found in my comments on yesterday's post:
It would be wrong of me to compare Kerry and Cleland to Dr.Evil and Mini-Me. Very, very wrong.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Dick Cheney told Patrick 'Leaky' Leahy to fuck off! Good for him
My sister and her husband are coming down for the weekend. Gotta get a shovel and clean up the house.
Happy weekend!
John Kerry's little mascot Max Cleland is back in the news again. And y'all wonder why I still subscribe to the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation. Where else would I find bullshit like this?
Max Cleland never wanted to come full circle.But for the Vietnam veteran and former U.S. senator from Georgia, his recent visits to see American soldiers wounded in Iraq have the feel of history repeating itself.
Oh crap! I know where this is going.
"This is Vietnam revisited in every way," Cleland, who lost two legs and an arm in a 1968 grenade explosion, said in an interview Wednesday. "I thought I'd never see it again in my lifetime. I thought we'd learned some basic lessons."
Max! Listen up! This is not Viet Fucking Nam. It is not even close. This is one of the reasons we kicked you out of the Senate. You are an idiot! We are patriots down here in Georgia. We do not like traitorous Dimocrats like you and John Fonda Kerry.
The calls of the Dimocrat Asshole Bird:
Squawk! Bush lied!
Squawk! Viet Nam!
Squawk! Halliburton!
Squawk! Quagmire!
Cleland visits troops at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where he recovered more than three decades ago. He calls the soldiers "the young Max Clelands."
Jesus H. Christ! I hope not. Why would you want to insult these brave men? These guys are heroes, Max. They didn't fuck up behind enemy lines with a live hand grenade. And I hope they don't turn out to be liberal Dimocrats like you who put union jobs ahead of the safety of this country.
His interactions with them and the families of those killed form the core of the new documentary film, "Strong at the Broken Places."His story of war, devastating injury, recovery and a life in politics is woven throughout the nearly hourlong film.
Just what we need! Another Dimocrat propaganda film. Maybe they can show this with Farenheit 9/11.
"The human loss of this misguided policy in Iraq is excruciating," said Cleland, who is campaigning for Democratic presidential candidate and fellow Vietnam veteran Sen. John Kerry. "It's the untold message of war, and one of the reasons I wanted to be involved in telling it was to make sure that people understand the costs involved."
Max, we know the costs involved. All we have to do is look at Viet Fucking Nam which your party made sure we lost. We can see all the misery and suffering that occurred after we left. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed by the communists. The boat people. Even Joan Baez, after the deaths in Viet Nam and the killing fields in Cambodia came to the realization that maybe we should have done sumpin' other than cutting and running.
And now we have Max and the Dimocrats who want us to do the same thing in Iraq. They wanted us to lose the Cold War and right off the bat the assholes want us to lose World War IV, which is the war against radical Islam. How can these assholes look at themselves in the mirror, and don't even bring up that fat fuck Ted Kennedy. We are coming up on the 35th anniversary of him leaving Mary Jo Kopechne to drown while he was trying to figger out how to save his political career. Thanks to the Kennedy money and the idiots in Massachusetts, he's still serving in the Senate and is an 'elder statesman' of the Dimocrat Party. He's a fucking murderer. And he's a Dimocrat. How fitting.
But back to Stumpy.
"He's a bridge between Vietnam and Iraq," Mahoney said. "The bridge between getting blown apart and putting your life back together in a totally new way because you've got to."
GMAFB! He's a fucking bridge to nowhere. Once again, Viet Nam and Iraq have nothing to do with one another except they're both wars the Dimocrats were against. They were on the wrong side of history during the Cold War and they are on the wrong side of history in this war.
Cleland also visits the family of Spc. Jamaal Addison, the first soldier from Georgia killed in Iraq."I'm hoping that this film sheds light on the fact that there were a lot of assumptions and misconceptions regarding the war that led us into this hell," said Addison's father, Kevin, a postal employee from Decatur. "It's gotten worse over time, and there's no sign of it getting better."
Way to go assholes! Play on a family's grief to deliver your anti-war, anti-American propaganda.
This is why you didn't get reelected Max. Georgia does not like people who are anti-American and agreeing to do this propaganda film shows the people in Georgia they were right about you.
You are an asshole!
Had to go to the doctor today. When the nurse took me inside she took my temp and weighed me. The bloody scale was broken. No way I weigh that much!
After we got to the exam room she took my blood pressure. 146/92. Whoa! That's high.
The doctor came in and asked about my problem. I told him and I also told him which drug to prescribe, my old friend Cipro. He poked and prodded me, listened to my heart and lungs and rechecked my BP. He got 126/82. He wrote my prescription for me.
I dropped off the prescription at the pharmacy and went down to the lab to make a deposit. I checked in at the lab and the guy asked if I had been there within the last few weeks. I think I had.
Him: They found your credit card.
Me: I didn't lose a credit card.
Him: I think it's around here somewhere.
Me: I didn't lose a credit card.
Him: Now where did that credit card go?
Me: I didn't lose a credit card.
Now he has to ask the girl at X-Ray check in.
Him: Do you know what they did with that credit card they found?
Me: I didn't lose a credit card.
Her: I think they took it upstairs.
Me: I didn't lose a credit card.
Him: Where would they have taken it upstairs?
At that time I decided to look in my wallet just to make sure I didn't lose a credit card. Nope, they're all there.
Me: I just checked. I didn't lose a credit card.
Him: Are you sure?
Me: Yes. I didn't lose a credit card.
By that time the speciman labels had been printed and I was able to go back to the lab without hearing anything else about my "lost" credit card.
I made my deposit and went back up to the pharmacy and picked up my drugs. I'm such a regular there that one of the people actually knows me by name.
I went home and slept all afternoon.
Some bodacious storms rolled through about 6:30 PM. I lost power for about two hours. Took all my night time medication and then the power came back on so I was able to write this and not much else.
Off to bed. My eyelids are getting droopy.
I am attending a Sommelier Guild of Atlanta tasting tonight at Azel restaurant in Alpharetta Georgia so I will not be doing a regular post. Here is the menu and the wines we will be tasting.
First Flight: Tio Pepe Fino Sherry
Miso soup.
Second Flight: Argiolas Vermentino ‘Costamolino’ 2003 R H. Phillips EXP Viogner 2002
Seared Sea Scallops with Sugar Peas and Saffron Crown Creamy Sauce
Third Flight: R. Stuart Big Fire Pinot Gris 2002 Mure Pinot Gris ‘Tradition’ 2003
Buttermilk Marinated Fried Calamari with Thai Cherry Chili Sauce
Fourth Flight: Conundrum 2002 Cloudy Day Chardonnay 2002
Sake-Miso Marinated Sea Bass with Wasabi Mash, Baby Bokchoy and Lemon Butter Sauce
Fifth Flight: Saintsbury Pinot Noir 2001 Babcock Pinot Noir Tri-County 2002
Grilled Atlantic Salmon with Roasted Red Pepper and Spinach.
I love it when Pumpman says nice things about me over the weekend. It pumps up my weekend hits.
Bill Clinton is a scumbag.
I picked my second tomato from my garden and ate it tonight. It was better than the first one.
No, I didn't watch the Dan Blather/Bill Clinton lovefest on 60 Minutes Sunday. The last thing I need to see is Blather giving Bill Clinton a blowjob on national TV.
Speaking of blowjobs I hear that Clinton said the reason he let Monica play tonsil hockey with little willy was because he could. Because he could!?!??
There's a lot of things I could do because I could and a lot of skanky girls I could have nailed, but I appear to have sumpin' that Bill Clinton doesn't: standards.
Here we have the most powerful man on the planet and he couldn't do any better than some fat ditzy intern? His idol JFK nailed Marilyn Monroe. Clinton got blown by Monica. And we're supposed to respect this asshole?
We had some bodacious storms this afternoon. My team lead left early. I think he was expecting a power outage. I left about 10 minutes after he did. Same reason. The sky opened up on my way home. Memo to self: Get new windshield wipers for the truck.
Clinton says he's proud of his impeachment. He doesn't think it's a stain on his presidency. Too bad about the blue dress. After all it was the VRWC that did him in. Keep thinking that Bubba. You have the honor of being the first elected president to have been impeached. You're in the history books.
He also said that after Hillary found out he had to spend the next two months sleeping on the couch. It's a good thing she wasn't really pissed or he would have only had to spend one month sleeping on the couch. So here you are, the most powerful man in the world and you're gonna let your wife make you sleep on the couch. Maybe Hillary does own the balls in that family.
Got a lot accomplished at work today. Heard from my IBM rep. He had to go in the hospital last week. He had a stone in a bile duct. He told me the cleaning people did a real good job on his office. Fortunately, he didn't miss the shit can when he puked. He did say the EMT's made quite a bit of a mess. He had triple bypass surgery a few years back so when he gets chest pains they are taken seriously. He was back at work today.
Clinton said he gave in to his weakness with Monica because he was pissed at Starr. Yeah. That's what I would do. If someone was out to get me I'd look for an airhead to give me a blowjob.
Here's sumpin' interesting. The New York Times didn't roll over and give Bubba's book a good review. I guess the reviewer didn't get the memo.
"The book, which weighs in at more than 950 pages, is sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull --- the sound of one man prattling away, not for the reader, but for himself and some distant recording angel of history," Kakutani wrote.
In other words, bullshit. This is Bill Clinton fer chrissake. Did you expect anything other than bulllshit?
And that's about all I'm writing about tonight.
Tomorrow I have a Sommelier Guild of Atlanta wine tasting. I'll post the menu and the wines tomorrow.
From Jeanette.
It's well known that some species of fish on the coral reef have adapted to be
able to survive the poisonous sea anemone's sting, which gives them a safe
place to hide from predators.
What isn't so well known is the story of the single fish that decided to be
different. One day he swam away from his protective anemone, in search of
some other hiding place.
A first, he swam into a small crevice in the rock, but he very quickly swam
out of there, chased by an eel. Then he decided he could hide inside a shell,
so he found a nice big one that he liked, but had to retreat from the crab
that had got there before him.
Finally, exhausted, he swam into the coral beds, and hid among the brilliant
colored fern-like fronds of the coral.
The next day, when he hadn't come back to the anemone, some of the other fish decided to go out and look for him. The hunted everywhere for him, but they couldn't find him. Eventually, just as they had given up, they heard him
calling to them. They looked around, but they couldn't see him anywhere - he
was perfectly hidden by the coral.
Finally, he showed himself, and they tried to persuade him to come back home,
but he refused - the coral was too good a hiding place to leave.
"After all," he said, "with fronds like these, who needs anemones?"
There have been many debates on this site about the merits of socialism. Before I write any more let me tell you a story.
Most every Saturday, my friend Cindy takes me shopping. Our normal system is my groceries go in the front of the cart, hers go in the back. We have successfully used this system for over a year. This past Saturday, I noticed that she was putting her stuff in the front of the cart. I asked her if she really wanted to do that. She said yes. I didn't say any more because if I pointed out that this was a failed system, she would have told me I was a creature of habit and I was also an uber organized person, like someone else we know.
I noticed that she was inadvertently, out of habit, putting some of her stuff in the back of the cart. I moved her stuff to the front without saying a word.
When we got to the checkout stand, things really went amiss. Normally, since my stuff is in the front of the cart, I go first. This time she had to go first. Some of our groceries were still mixed up. Things did not go smoothly.
She asked me why I didn't say anything earlier. I replied that she would have ridiculed me. She agreed that from now on, we should use the system that worked.
What is my point?
My point is we have empirical data that one system works better than the other. Therefore, we will continue using the system that works and discard the system that fails. If only that approach worked in politics.
Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. - Thomas Sowell
There has been a discussion going on in another thread between Addison (the other one) and Matthew over socialism. Addision (the other one) pointed out that we have empirical data that socialism is an abject failure: the fall of the Soviet Union. Matthew responded that the Soviet Union wasn't really socialism, it was Leninism.
So I guess it then became Stalinism, then Khruschevism, then Brezhnivism, then Gorbachevism. Likewise, Cuba must be Castroism and North Korea is Kim Lil Dongism.
Socialism1. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.
2. The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved.
Sounds like what we had in the USSR, and still have in Cuba and North Korea. By saying that the system that was used behind the Iron Curtain was not socialism is falling back on the old tried and true argument that the only reason socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried is because the right people have not been in charge.
Socialism is doomed to fail because of human nature. Let me use myself as an example. I am near the end of my career and I am on management's shit list. It doesn't matter how much effort I put forth or how hard I work, I know that I am not gonna receive any more pay raises or performance bonuses for the rest of my career. I have two choices: I can take it easy and put forth the effort required to keep my job or I can kill myself by busting my ass knowing that I will not get any more compensation by doing so. Tough choice, huh?
This is the flaw in socialism. Socialism tries to guarentee equal outcomes. Bob who busts his ass will have the same outcome as SFB (Shit For Brains) who sits on his ass and does nothing. Where is the incentive for Bob to bust his ass? There is none. That is exactly what happened in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Collective farms were failures and the Soviet Union had to buy food from us.
We even had a side by side comparison between East and West Germany. East Germany which was socialist was a country that had to have a wall to keep people in. West Germany was a prosperous country. What more proof is necessary as to the failure of socialism?
Western Europe is now embracing socialism lite. As they institute more gummint planning and mandates on industry, they stifle more growth. Is it any wonder that the United States with a much less regulated economy than France or Germany has a much higher growth rate and much lower unemployment? (US unemployment - 5.4% France and Germany - 10%)
Capitalism strives to provide equal opportunity and the person who works hard can get ahead. I am an example of that. Under a previous manager, I busted my ass and was given yearly awards and very good pay raises. I am very well off financially.
I am not advocating unbridled capitalism as we also know that can go wrong. We saw that at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th Century. Steven den Beste wrote an excellent essay on the need for capitalism to have a governor (like a motor) to prevent the excesses.
But what about the poor? Fuck the poor! Not really. Only about 90% of them. Those 90% are poor because they did things that made them poor and they continue to do things that keep them poor. Things like not getting an education or having children too young and out of wedlock.
During the Johnson Administration back in the 60's we decided to wipe out poverty in the United States. After throwing trillions of dollars at it we still have poverty. Why? Because you cannot fix poverty by giving poor people money. You just keep them mired in poverty by rewarding the behavior that made them poor and keeps them poor.
Being poor in the United States is not all that bad. Many poor people have cars Almost all of them have televisions and telephones, even cellphones. But, after 40 years of throwing money at the problem we still have poverty. It's just better poverty.
The only way to eliminate poverty is to teach people not to be poor. My three simple rules:
1. Get an education. Learn how to read and write English. Go to college or technical school. If you cannot afford it, join the military and get an education. I learned electronics in the Navy and went to college on the GI Bill and student loans.
2. Start work at an early age. I worked in the school cafeteria. I raked leaves, cut grass, and shoveled snow. I also babysat.
3. Don't have children you cannot afford.
What about those who are poor due to disease, disablitity or other reasons? That is what the social safety net is for, and despite what the liberal revisionists are saying, Reagan did not try to destroy the social safety net. I realize that there are people who are poor due to catastrophic accidents or illnesses. I have no problem with society taking care of these people. I also think that there are organizations that can do a better job than gummint. That is why I am in favor of gummint assistance to faith based charities (and before you label me a bible thumper, let me say that I am an atheist). Churches have been taking care of poor people for years. They have a better track record than the gummint.
I started out writing about socialism and wound up doing my how to get out of poverty schtick. But to me, poverty and socialism go hand in hand. I've been to Russia and have seen firsthand what socialism did to the country and its people.
Back when I was at Hixson Junior High School in Webster Groves Missouri (That was before the gummint school system became socialist indoctrination centers.)my Civics teacher Mr. Groetch, told us the biggest flaw in socialism was that rather than pull people up to the same level, it pulled people down to the same level.
We have seen that repeated over and over yet there are still people who think that socialism will work.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
I regret to say no one has sent me any hunks to post for the ladies. Tina sent me a picture of Navy Seals, but I already posted that picture here.
I went back through my photo collection and found this picture of two guys on a CSY 37 down in the British Virgin Islands. The guy on the right is my friend Cliff. The guy on the left was our skipper, Denny, long before he became a Grouchy Old Cripple. This was in the middle 80's.
Click on the picture for full screen version.
This is a repost I did last June of a column I had done the previous June to celebrate GLBPTM. I was reminded of GLBPTM when I got an e-mail from the Diversity Council at TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name).
I almost forgot about GLBTPM. How the heck could that have happened? I feel terrible! I mean really terrible! But June is not over yet, so I still have time to celebrate. What is GLBTPM you ask? Well, to explain it here is a post from the archives that I wrote last June when, in the words of Kim du Toit, I only had three readers (and Kim was one of them).
After my dinner with Bryce last night, I had to drive home in the rain. I'm between glasses prescriptions and don't see as well as I should which is another story. Anyway, since my vision is a little off, I missed my turn and had to go home the long way, but due to the fact that part of it was limited access highway it was actually faster. Who cares? This is just fill to make this blog longer. After I got home, the rains really came. We had some bodacious thunder boomers. The nice thing about a really good rain is it cleans up the air of all the smog crud.
This morning dawned bright and clear, I mean crystal clear with temperatures in the lower seventies. What a day to drive the Z3 to work. Right after I got on 285 I ran it up to 80 and cranked up Guns 'n' Roses' Welcome to the Jungle on the Harmen Karden sound system. Yeah, I'm 55 and I listen to Guns 'n, Roses. What's it to ya? It doesn't get much better than this: a fast car, top down, stereo blaring. Why couldn't I have afforded this when I was in my 20's? If I could have, I would have probably wrecked the car and killed myself.
I got to work and in the parking lot, met one of my fellow workers and asked him how he was. 'Still here', he replied. This seems to be the standard answer lately. TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name) was visited by the dreaded Dark Angel of Layoffs last week. Excuse me, the current euphemism is 'skills rebalancing' as in we're skill rebalancing your ass right out the door. (Knock. Knock. Who's there? Not you anymore.) So it's not the optimum work environment. My fellow worker told me to make sure to look at the poster on the bulletin board by the restrooms. He said I'd get a kick out of it.
So on my way to get my first cup of coffee I made sure to pass by said bulletin board. And there was a poster informing me that June is Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Month. (To save space let's just call it GLBTPM) Now if that isn't a mouthful (ooops...no pun intended), I sure don't know what is. Stop the presses! Fire our vice-president in charge of diversity (VPICOD)! Here it is June 5 and this is the first I've heard of this? Where the heck is the company wide memo? But didn't they leave some people out? How about monosexuals? They're the ones who have sex with themselves. How about hermaphrodites? How about cross dressers? Do they fall under transgenders?
So now I'm thinking. This is always a dangerous activity. We have a Black History Month, right? It's February and it only has twenty-eight days and GLBTPM has thirty days. I detect some racism here. Wait a minute! There is Martin Luther King's birthday which is a holiday and since it replaced Washington's birthday and Washington's birthday has been combined with Lincoln's birthday to become Presidents Day, that makes MLK's birthday equal to two days so I guess it all works out. Right?
At the end of the day, I got a call from my friend Gwen. She is a liberal but I don't hold it against her. She has been reading some of my rantings and told me I'm not as bad as Rush Limbaugh and some of the other conservatives. That's because I'm a libertarian. And Gwen has actually been the victim of some political correctness. I keep saying there is hope for her yet. I told her about GLBTPM and she said 'Oh yeah, there are Asian-American and Native-American months.' Once again, our VPICOD is falling down on the job. No one has told me about this. How can I do a good job of Valuing Diversity, if no one tells me what I'm supposed to be valuing that particular month? Why don't they print up Diversity Calendars so we know whose month it is so we can value that particular group?
I had already decided that I was gonna write sumpin' about GLBTPM when I got home, but now I'm thinking some more. Remember that's dangerous for me. I fire up Google and first I start with the hyphens. Let's see what I get when I plug in Asian-American awareness month. Holy fried rice! 394 hits. Their month is May. Didn't get a memo from our VPICOD so I missed it. I apologize to all our fellow citizens with epicanthic folds. (That's for those of you who read) And I really feel bad since my friend Cindy's best friend Carol has adopted a little Chinese girl and I didn't wish Carol Happy Asian-American Awareness Month.
So let's Google our way down the hyphens:
How about sex?
Yeah!
Not that kind, butthead.
March is Women's History Month. Uh, shouldn't that be Women's Herstory Month?
Let's do diseases:
How about disabilities? I'm throwing deaf and blind in here even though miltant deaf folks don't consider that a disability. Maybe the blind don't either. And I don't know about the mutes because they won't talk about it. (Sorry that just slipped out).
I tried hits on paraplegic awareness month, spinal cord injury awareness month, and even cripple awareness month with no success. I need to get Mark Johnson, the professional disablility advocate at Shepherd Center in Atlanta, to work on this and maybe he can chain himself to some buildings until we can get a month. I didn't find any awareness assigned to January, July, August, and December so he can try for those months.
So to summarize:
There is no Grouchy Old Cripple Awareness Month. I want my own month!
Let's start the year off right and make it January.
I know. I should have saved this for Christmas.
Jim and Key are both wanting advice on digital cameras. So go fill up their comments with suggestions. After Jim buys one he said he'll let me know what he got and how he likes it. Then I may finally break down and buy one myself.
One of the nice things about doing this blog is all the really smart people I've met both electronically and in person. Addison has been a long time commenter (Did you know that there is no such word as commenter? So is it spelled commentor as Jessica Harbour spells it or commenter as Steven Den Beste spells it? Jessica is a professional wordsmith but Steven is an amatuer wordsmith who is also exceptionally smart. Hmmm. I'm going with Steven's spelling. He's not as pretty as Jessica, but he is a lot older and has done more writing.) on this site, and a few months back I had the pleasure of meeting him in person. Some of his comments and e-mails have been worthy of posting. It also gives me a night off. Here's an e-mail I received from him today.
Denny,
An interesting piece from the Washington Times.
In summary:
1. Kerry campaign needs advice on religion to combat Kerry's secular image.
2. Hires far, far, far--did I mention far?--far, far-Left woman named Mary Vanderslice.
3. Catholic Church notes she should be "working for Fidel Castro" owing to the fact that is an open socialist.
4. Kerry campaign puts her in the basement and locks the key because she is now a liability.
5. Go back to drawing board and find a way to convince people Kerry is both religious and pro-gay everything and pro-abortion (at any time, under any circumstances).
I found this line particularly illustrative of the Orwellian double-think that finds such an accommodating home on the Left:
"It is extremely unfortunate and regretful that John Kerry's political opponents would attack a person [Miss Vanderslice] of faith in this way," Ms. [Allison] Dobson [Kerry campaign spokeswoman] said."
Replace 'John Kerry' with 'George W. Bush'. George W. Bush and his staff are attacked specifically by the Left because of their religious faith.
It must be fun to be on the Left (I write that in jest as we know they are the most unhappy people on the planet). No need whatever for consistency or intellectual power.
Best Regards,
Addison
Now if could only get my brother-in-law to write more stuff for me. That also goes for Grognard, xCavTrooper, and the other Addison who wrote a nice rebuttal to Matthew's father's comment in my Housekeeping post, if that was indeed Matthew's father. I have a sneaky feeling that person might have been pulling my leg. I did notice that Matthew put forth a little more effort on his last comment, though.
People who advocate Marx and Engels get no respect on this site. Marxism killed more people in the 20th Century than World War II. It is a failed philosophy but there are still incredibly stupid or deluded people who think that maybe if we try just one more time we can make it work.
Give it a fucking rest!
Don't forget that tomorrow is Saturday Boobage.
Ho hum! Cleaned up some comment spam. Gee, it's nice to know that I can have a huge penis that will stay up for 36 hours and I can get aroused by looking at teenage porn sites and after I finish I can smoke cheap cigarettes. What I don't understand is how the spambots can put comments on posts that have comments turned off. No one can see the comments. Can search engines still access them?
Got a little behind on my housekeeeping of the site because I actually put in a full day's work today. Pretty much did the same yesterday.
A few weeks back we moved some systems off an obsolete processor onto our main processor. They were MVS guests running under VM. We moved them to our main VM system and crashed the old systems. I scratched all the volumes and we pushed the box out the door. We got everything working but RSCS. RSCS is a way to transfer files using SNA (Systems Network Architecture). RSCS is the VM program. NJE is the MVS program.
I had been dragging my feet on fixing this problem because we are in the process of having the users move all their stuff off these systems. The VM guy in Dallas has been bugging me to fix it for the last three weeks. This is the job of the new network guy, but he cannot even spell RSCS or NJE, so if we assigned the task to him, he would just call me and I would have to try to talk him through it. Trying to teach this guy stuff is like being a prisoner at Abu Ghraib. During Saddam's regime. With his kids personally supervising. When my phone rings and I answer it and I hear, "Hello Denny, this is the new network guy", I start shaking like Inspector Clouseau's boss in the Pink Panther movies.
Many years ago when I built my first network, I got some IBM Redbooks and an IBM Washington Systems Center book and taught myself RSCS and NJE. When I transferred into the group I work with now, we integrated my network into the network this group uses. The old network guy did most of the work and I forgot a lot of my network knowledge. So, what I eventually wound up doing was looking at my old definitions to see how all this stuff worked. To make a long story short, the old network guy had let the old VM system handle the RSCS routing. The old VM system was scratched. I found the definitions I needed to put in the JES decks of the systems I moved.
HEY YOU! IN THE BACK ROW! WAKE THE FUCK UP! THIS IS IMPORTANT SHIT!
I updated the JES decks, hot started JES on the two MVS systems, started the lines, and everything worked. This took three hours out of my day yesterday.
I then had to do some IMS work for another user. I cannot even spell IMS, but I can do the install and then they do all the customization. Unfortunately, we have a DB2 user who needs to have me build an IMS system for him. Hopefully, I can steal a lot of stuff from the systems the IMS guys use.
I've taught myself most of what I know. Schools cost money after all and TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name) does not like to spend a lot of money on education. Especially if travel is involved.
I finished up the hardware configuration for the new processor. I sent all the OSA adaptor addresses to the new network guy. That meant that he had to call me today and ask a bunch of questions. I spent over an hour on the phone with him telling him that
1. He was responsible for assigning all the adaptor addresses to all the systems.
2. He was asking me about systems that I do not own.
3. As far as OSA Express went, I was pretty much flying by the seat of my pants. He had access to the same documentation that I did (He sent it to me when I asked him to research how to set up QDIO. I wound up having to do it.) and, as he was the network guy, he should be explaining shit to me rather than the other way around.
I've explained in previous posts how we told our then CDSM® (Clueless Dipshit Manager) that the new network guy was not trying to learn all the shit he needed to know to replace the old network guy who was retiring. Our CDSM® finally put the fear of God (or unemployemt) into the new network guy. Unfortunately, this was only three months before the old network guy retired. There was no way that he could get up to speed in that amount of time. A lot of the network stuff has fallen into my lap by default because I'm the only other person on the mainframe team who has any network knowledge. By the way, I have an attitude problem.
As an aside here, I had an asshole comment on my site that he bet that all my coworkers hated my guts. Only the incompetent ones hate me. Some of my users actually worship the ground that I walk on. That's because I get results.
My team lead knows that I am pretty much a burnout and I'm on management's shitlist. He also knows what I am capable of.
It's amazing how much shit incompetent management can destroy. The I/T support group has been cut to the bone. We have gone to a new (No) Help (Whatsoever) Desk which so far has been a total clusterfuck, and our PMICOUM (Project Manager In Charge Of Useless Meetings) is convening useless meetings to try to fix all of the problems many of which are delayed because people are in useless meetings. His response to every problem is, and I am not making this up, "We will have to hold a meeting on this." No goddamit! We will have to fix the fucking problem!
Looks like I'm all caught up. My Early Ship Program system (Beta code for you PC folks) from IBM arrived. Now this is fun stuff! This is stuff I like to do. Unfortunately, I hit the wall right off the bat. After some research I found the problem so I can fix it tomorrow and start the install. I'm hoping to do my first IPL by the end of next week. For z/OS that's good.
Since I've been busy the past few days, I haven't been able to do a lot of site housekeeping from work. I like to let my readers kick the new trolls around a bit. If that doesn't drive them away, I give them the honor of being humiliated on the front page like I did to Brandon and Matthew. If they return after that, I like to play whack a troll. Some trolls never cease to amaze me how they seem to enjoy demonstrating their abject stupidity.
Matthew, a word of advice. If you want to debate the grownups on this site, please have your big sister or your mommy look at your comments and have them fix your atrocious spelling and sentence structure. If you are doing this at school maybe you can have one of your teachers do it for you. I realize you must be a special education student and I am really sorry about your mental problems. I am impressed that, in spite of your learning disabilities, you can access the internet and you can comment. That is a big step and you should be commended for achieving that much. I suggest you work at enhancing your knowledge and then try debating us in another three or four years.
I picked my first tomato Wednesday night and made two BLT's. The tomato was big enough that I only needed one slice per sandwich. They were nice big, thick slices. Yummy!
Hey Pumpman! How's this pussy? Big enough for ya?
Almost as big as this one.
Someone sent me this and I'm posting it for Kim du Toit, also for my sister and her husband who both have concealed carry permits.
PHYSICIANS vs. GUN OWNERS
Physicians:
a. The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000.
b. Accidental deaths caused by Physicians per year are 120,000.
c. Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171.
(Statistics courtesy of U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services)
Now think about this . . .
Guns:
a. The number of gun owners in the U.S. is 80,000,000.
b. The number of accidental gun deaths per year (all age groups) is
1,500.
c. The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is 0.000188.
Statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than
gun owners.
Remember, "Guns don't kill people; doctors do."
FACT: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE
DOCTOR!
And doctors cost a hell of a lot more than guns.
I'm so sad that Ray Charles is gone. What an artist! He is one of those artists who will stand the test of time.
In five years Britney Spears will be washed up and will probably be posing for Playboy to resurrect her career. We'll still be listening to Ray Charles.
Madonna is at the end of her career and in ten years she'll be forgotten. We'll still remember Ray Charles.
Name me one hip hop artist who will still matter in ten years. We'll still remember Ray Charles.
In the summer there is a laser light show at Stone Mountain Park. They change the program every year but there are two songs they never change: a Civil War trilogy by Elvis and Georgia On My Mind by Ray Charles. And when that song starts playing the rebel yells start. The Georgia Legislature made Ray's version the official state song of Georgia.
The first thing I ever heard by Ray Charles was What'd I Say when I was in Hixson Junior High School in Webster Groves Missouri. He followed up with I'm Busted, Hit the Road Jack, I Can't Stop Lving You and many others.
Do you remember the movie In the Heat of the Night with Rod Steiger and Sidney Poitier? Ray Charles did the sound track for it. Awesome!
I'm an atheist so I don't believe in heaven, but if I'm wrong and there is some kind of afterlife, Ray is jamming with Robert Johnson, J. B. Hutto, Muddy Waters, and other blues greats.
Gonna miss you Ray.
Sent to me by Ralph Gizzip. Not exactly cute, but this looks like a cat that Pumpman might own.
Sing me another song Rob. Please?
Ya know, I try. I really try. I do not want to see people making fools of themselves and holding themselves up to public ridicule. On my comments screen it states
If you are a troll you will be humiliated and your comments will be edited. I do not put up with bullshit. You may speak now...
How much more specific can I be? Yet, there are still booger eatin' moh-rons willing to display their abysmal ignorance and stupidity for all the world to see.
Sometimes I am even nice enough to rebut their pitiful arguments in the comments so only the people who read the comments can see how incredibly stupid these trolls can be. (And to Dralon who asked me what a troll was, read on.) Sometimes I do nothing and let my more intelligent readers like Addison, xCavTrooper, Grognard, and lately Paul, take them on.
Sometimes they become so idiotic, that I have no choice but to let my readers who do not peruse the comments see what kind of troll droppings are left there.
<RodSerling>Submitted for your approval, one Brandon, who claims to work for a Fortune 500 company, made some comments on this post and damned if he didn't mention Haliburton. I'm shocked! Shocked, I say. We are about to enter the Idiot Zone</RodSerling>
Isn't Taco Bell owned by PepsiCo which is a Fortune 500 company? Anyway, he also told me to go back to the first grade and find out what a real democracy was. I also pointed out that the United States wasn't a democracy but a constitutional republic. I also told him I probably paid more in taxes than he made because he was such a loser.
By golly, he decided to put me in my place with this comment, which I post unchanged.
Hey Big Denny. I have a college degree but you da man. The only way you express your emotions is by talking about your insecurities and using fowl language. Believe me, no one that is in your so-called tax bracket admits that they're making that. And if your a liberitarian, that means you have a democratic base except you smoke weed too, and believe in a more natural evolution of society. I'm a political science and environemental major. Don't feed me your insecurities Den den. Anyone can talk shit. It's called a stance too, not a talking point. And this is a Democracy, where the people are the government (or are supposed to be). You try history you fuckin Yuppie, braggin about how much you make. Please, you see Ralph Nadar braggin about how much he makes. Please.. Your the definition of arrogance....which doesn't make you any political party....just an asshole. Go discover yourself and come out the closet. Put on your pink shirt and your tassles on and go piss on some pissants pal. Looks like I got somebody pissed, my intentions. thank you.
Brandon violated one of the first rules of trying to make me look stupid. I have covered this many times. If you want to insult my intelligence, please try to spell correctly. The phrase is "foul language" not "fowl language". I realize that you are probably too poor to have access to a dictionary, and if you did, would not know how to use it. Here's a site that can help you out.
You obviously know nothing about Libertarians except that you think they smoke weed. They believe in following the Constitution which unfortunately, neither the Dimocrats nor Republicans seem to want to.
I especially like the part about him being a "political science and environemental major". Brandon, you may want to go hit the dictionary again as that would be "environmental" not "environemental". And if you are a political science major you're not doing too well if you do not know that the United States is not a democracy but a constitutional republic. C'mon, tell us the truth. You're attending one of those schools that advertise on matchbook covers aren't you? You better ask for your money back.
You try history you fuckin Yuppie, braggin about how much you make.
Actually I am very well versed in history. I'll debate you on history anytime you want. Name the time and place. Yep. I make a lot of money. Do you know why? Because I worked hard and learned a lot. No one has ever handed me anything pal. I worked hard to get it. I stated that I probably pay more in taxes than you make to point out what a fucking loser you are and always will be. Taco Bell doesn't really pay that much does it?
Your the definition of arrogance
That would be "you're" the definition of arrogance. You also said "your a liberitarian" which would be "you're a libertarian". Slept through English class I see. Yeah. I'm arrogant. I look down on stupid pissants like you.
Go discover yourself and come out the closet.
Come out the closet? Do you mean "come out of the closet"? What closet is that? The closet that makes me superior to you because I have a brain and know how to use it?
Brandon. Good luck with your life. Keep practicing saying, "Do you want fries with that?"
And that brings us to Matthew Goodsell, which cannot be his real name since anyone who writes (and I use that term loosely) as bad as this dipstick writes couldn't possibly be proud enough to sign his real name. I did not alter these comments.
any levey-headed 5 y/o can see through these arguments: for one, it is conservatism rather than liberalism which ignores facts, steadffastly clinging to its view that america is alwways right byy default, that the book of genesis is true, that poor people are "jjust lazy". I mean, duh!and i suggest you read marx. socialism isn't perfect, but its a damn sight better than this self-centred, pig-ignorant "the arabs are out to get us" bullshit that you pedal as the truith.
I am speechless! Have you ever seen a better example of a self fisking comment? Matthew's spelling and sentence structure make Brandon look like a genius.
How can I possibly point out to this asshole that the Soviet Union collapsed, that North Korea and Cuba are shitholes, and that of all the western industrial nations the one that is least socialist, the United States, has the lowest unemployment and the highest standard of living? But Matthew did get sumpin' right.
I mean, duh!
So Pumpman told me that the Acid Mom likes my site. I wonder if she likes to see her son cat bombed? Courtesy of my sister here are two cute cats for Pumpman.
I was gonna write about this last night, but I wanted to go after Cynthia Tucker before Boortz did. I was really surprised that her column wasn't mentioned. He's usually all over her like stink on shit.
I went into work Saturday morning to do a test IPL of our main MVS system on our new processor.
Not another one of these system programmer stories.
Yep! My team lead asked me to come in and help him. Since I had done all the I/O configuration work and all the network stuff he wanted me in to debug any problems there.
<EsotericSysprogStuff> All we really had to worry about on this system was one NCP and one token ring OSA. I had had Operations run a fiber over to the 9034 converter that the 3745 was cabled to so all we had to do was pull out one fiber and plug the other one in. I had also had them run a token ring cable from the OSA card to one of the token ring hubs.
After doing a nice orderly shutdown, we IPL'ed the system on the new box. IP didn't come up because I had made one little, teeny, tiny error in the TRL QDIO. We fixed it and IP worked. The NCP worked. My part was done.
My team lead brought up the DB2's and found out they all worked except for the ones that he hadn't rolled out with the latest maintenance. All the CICS regions came up clean. Kewl!
We decided to back off the migration until our next maintenance weekend, which is two weeks away. That will give him time to get all the DB2 maintenance rolled out.
Shutdown. Switch the fiber. Don't need to do anything with the token ring cable. IPL on old box and split. It was a very productive 2.5 hours. I may be a lazy bastard with a bad attitude, but this shit is fun!
Next weekend (Holy shit! I'm going in to work on a weekend two weeks in a row!), we're gonna do a test IPL of our main VM system. This is a little more complicated since I have to do a lot more TCPIP work and I have six 3745's to worry about. I got almost all the configuration work done today. Tomorrow I will have Operations run about 6 new fiber cables for me.
Getting close. I already have the VM system I use moved. I finished up the IP work on all the MVS guests today. The network guy should have done this, but he doesn't know how to do QDIO and I did want this shit done this week. Likewise he should be doing all the network stuff for the move, but we want to get it done before the end of this summer. That's why I'm doing it. </EsotericSysprogStuff>
What about the fresh string beans?
My garden is just starting to produce. I'm gonna have a bumper tomato crop this year. I got lots of tomatoes but none of them have ripened yet. I'm hoping sometime this week. I should have my first cucumbers by the weekend. BLT's and tomato and cucumber salads. Yummie!
My string beans are ready. After I went to the store on Saturday I picked a bunch for dinner. It being Saturday night I had my usual dinner of grilled filet mignon, baked potato, and tossed salad. Had a Stoly on the rocks, with two olives, while I grilled the steak. I also had fresh string beans with the meal.
How do you cook them?
After cleaning them and snapping them in two I boil them until just tender. I don't want them raw and I don't want them mushy. Think string bean al dente. When cooked, dump 'em into a colander. Then I slice onion rings and cut em in half. I mince some garlic and slice some mushrooms. I saute the onions, garlic and mushrooms in butter. Then I throw in the beans. Mix 'em up and they're ready to go. My cholesterol was a little high last time it was checked so I may have to start using a butter substitute (Which I did this time) or olive oil. They tasted great!
The wine I drank was a Syrah and Grenache blend from France. I never heard of the winery. It was one of the cheap, but good, table wines my friend Michael sells me.
After cleaning everything up, I poured myself a glass of limoncello on the rocks and sat outside on the Great Patio of Dunwoody and watched all the lightning in the southern sky. It had to be far away since I didn't hear any thunder. This is a great time to sit outside at night since it's very pleasant and there aren't many bugs yet.
Yep! Life is good. While I sat out and watched the sky, I thought of all the poor people that I had oppressed to achieve my lifestyle. All those people starving to death to give me a tax cut. I felt so bad, I had to pour myself another limoncello.
I also felt bad about the Arabs, so in lieu of an apology let me give you a link to a guy who wrote a very sincere apology.
So that was my Saturday: Successful sysprog stuff and the first string beans of the summer.
I hope next Saturday it's tomatoes.
This Monday Pun is from z.
When the driver of a huge trailer lost control of his rig, he plowed into an empty tollbooth and smashed it to pieces. He climbed down from the wreckage and within a matter of minutes, a truck pulled up and discharged a crew of workers.
The men picked up each broken piece of the former tollbooth and spread some kind of creamy substance on it. Then they began fitting the pieces together. In less than a half hour, they had the entire tollbooth reconstructed and looking good as new.
"Astonishing!" the truck driver said to the crew chief. "What was the white stuff you used to get all the pieces together?"
The crew chief said,...
[Are you sure you are ready for this one?]
"Oh, that was tollgate booth paste."
Well that didn't take long. They planted Ronald Reagan on Friday and here comes the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation's resident commie, editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker with a column about how bad the Reagan years, seen through the eyes of a liberal actually are.
Ronald Reagan liked a good story. Indeed, he preferred a good story to dreary facts, details or truths. He often repeated supposedly factual anecdotes -- stories of war heroes or welfare queens -- that were largely fact-free.
What we see here is is what in psychology is called projection: The attribution of one's own attitudes, feelings, or suppositions to others. The irony of a liberal talking about facts is hilarious. Facts are anethema to liberals. The fact that socialism has been an abysmal failure everywhere it has been tried does not stop liberals from trying to implement the same old failing policies over and over again. After all, to a liberal, the only reason that socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried is because the right people have not been in charge.
His was a fairy-tale presidency, dedicated to telling the American people what they wanted to hear. It was just what the voters were looking for after four years of Jimmy Carter, who had an annoying way of reminding Americans that the United States had made mistakes, that citizenship requires sacrifice, that might does not make right.
Jimmah Carter also had an annoying way of fucking everything up. Remember gas lines? Remember the misery index? Inflation? High unemployment? High interest rates? Iranians taking diplomats hostage? (In violation of international law by the way. Where was the worldwide outrage? Thanks for the help international community. And we are supposed to follow international law why?)
Turn down the thermostat? Wear a sweater? The killer rabbit?
Jimmah wasn't a total fuckup. He did broker a peace between Israel and Egypt. It only costs us $5 billion a year to bribe them not to fight each other. He gave away the Panama Canal. Not really sure that's a good thing. The two best things he did was appoint Alfred Kahn to oversee a lot of deregulation and Paul Volker chairman of the Federal Reserve who was finally able to wring inflation out of the economy in the early 80's. Other than that, Jimmah's presidency was pretty much a disaster.
And so the Reagan presidency was a flimsy construction of myths -- a president can cut taxes while increasing spending, with no adverse economic consequences; there is no racism in America; a rising tide lifts all boats.
Huh? By cutting taxes Reagan actually doubled revenues. Unfortunately spending tripled. Was that all Reagan's fault? Every budget he submitted to Congress was in Congress' own words, "Dead on Arrival". Remember it is Congress that appropriates the money and Reagan had to deal with a Dimocrat Congress.
He got his tax cuts through using his bully pulpit and the votes of blue dog Dimocrats. The cuts worked. Unfortunately, to get his military spending through Congress he had to give them social spending. That is why over and over he requested the line item veto.
And a rising tide does lift all votes. The 80's, after we emerged from the recession, were boom times. I did very well. So did blacks. Black owned businesses increased at an amazing rate, something that the RWPP's (Race Warlord Poverty Pimps) don't want anyone to know about. I know liberals like to ignore history to try to denigrate Reagan, but they are the ones not dealing with facts.
George W. Bush is the natural heir to the fairy-tale presidency. Like Reagan, Bush came into office with little grasp of federal policies, little understanding of the wider world and little patience for complexity. Like Reagan, Bush uses charm and a sunny disposition to mask the harshness of his hard-right politics. Like Reagan, Bush holds a handful of core beliefs that are never shaken by adverse evidence
Hard right politics? I wish. Social spending is going out of sight. Compassionate conservatism turns out to be socialism light. A hard right politician initiating steel tariffs? A hard right politician signing that huge farm bill?
And as for foreign policy, it was Clinton and Carter who got snookered by North Korea. It was Clinton who reacted with every terrorist attack by biting his lip, promising to bring the terrorists to justice, and then retreating to the Oval Office for another blowjob. Do we even want to bring up Jimmah Carter's foreign policy fiascos? Oh yeah. I already did. And we didn't start this war. If you kumbaya assholes get your way prepare to start wearing a burka. There is no appeasement other than surrender. They want to kill or convert all of us.
Indeed, Bush holds fast to two of Reagan's most dangerous beliefs -- that the social safety net is dangerous and must be destroyed, and that American exceptionalism gives the United States moral authority to do what it pleases. Over a decade or so, the nation was able to repair much of the damage done by Reagan's adherence to those notions. It may take longer -- much longer -- to undo the damage wrought by Bush.
GMAFB! Bush is not trying to destroy the safety net. Reagan didn't either. Reagan wanted and Bush wants to break the cycle of dependency on gummint. The dependency that the Great fucking Society created and you fucking liberals want to maintain. We have generations of people both black and white whose families have been destroyed by welfare. Keep 'em poor. Keep on the plantation. Keep 'em voting Dimocrat. Bush, like Reagan, believes that people can rise above gummint dependence. Liberals like you believe that people are too fucking stupid to survive without gummint. It's not a safety net. It's a straitjacket.
Fortunately, Bill Clinton pushed tax increases and spending cuts that stemmed the tide of red ink that Reaganomics created and restored fiscal integrity to federal spending. Indeed, the government ran a surplus, guaranteeing the solvency of Social Security and Medicare.
To quote Reagan, "There you go again." First off There was no surplus! None! If Lyndon Johnson had not put Social Security on the budget and left it as a trust fund as FDR promised, the Social Security revenues would not have been able to mask the deficit. Second, spending did not go down until a Republican Congress was elected. They cut spending, or rather decreased the growth in spending and most of it came at the expense of the military which is why it is stretched so thin now. I blame the military cuts on both Clinton and Congress. Peace dividend my ass!
Until Bush came along -- resurrecting the fiscal voodoo of tax cuts and increased spending. There may not be enough time to clean up Bush's deficits before the baby boom generation reaches an elderly critical mass and forces a fiscal crisis.
It was the tax cuts that got us out of the recession. They're already starting to increase revenues. And the fiscal crisis is gonna be in Socail Security which has always been a fiscal time bomb. It's a forkin' ponzi scheme fer chrissake! In the private sector it would be illegal. You wanna cut spending? Give the president a line item veto. Keep Robert KKK Byrd from trying to have the entire state of West Virginia named after him. Eliminate the Department of Education. Go to a consumption tax and eliminate the IRS. Department of Commerce? WTF do they do? Every spending bill that Congress passes has to show where in the Copnstitution that spending is authorized. Make me king for a week and I'll take care of everything.
Reagan's foreign interventions, too, were luckily benign -- at least for the United States. It was his (and our) great good fortune that he pushed against the Soviet Union at a time when it was already a hollow shell, vulnerable after 50 years of bipartisan assault from the West and victimized by its own dismal ideology.
Omigawd! This is the latest liberal bullshit making the rounds. It sure is a shame that we didn't know this in 1980. But by golly we didn't. Even the liberals were afraid of the Soviet Union back then. They were just too powerful. We shouldn't antagonize them. When Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire the liberals cringed. But I read the best response to this bullshit from a James Lileks column
Anything else? Oh, right: He was a warmonger.But please don't suggest all that mongering accomplished anything. No, the Soviet Union was a house of cards. With termite riddled walls. And a foundation of sand. In a typhoon. During an earthquake. It would have gone any day, and if Reagan did anything he just exhaled a small gust of breath that brought the whole rotten thing down.
Even if that were true, and it's not, at least it gives him credit for giving the USSR a nudge. There are always those who see tyrannies and wonder how they might be persuaded to play nice. It's as if there were a bear prowling around, and the villagers decided to stake out a few infants for supper in hopes the beast would go away.
Reagan preferred to shoot the bear. One hopes the verdict of history will be simple: nice aim.
Since the liberals want to take away our guns, we cannot even shoot the bear.
With his certainty that American power proved American righteousness, Reagan backed brutal dictators from Saddam Hussein to Chile's Augusto Pinochet. But he showed a certain pragmatism in choosing his invasions. After all, he did not fear that critics might paint him as insufficiently Reagan-esque. So he virtually ignored the vicious 1983 attack on a U.S. barracks in Lebanon that left 241 Marines dead; he invaded hapless Grenada, which could hardly have fended off the Georgia National Guard.
Yep! Saddam was fighting with Iran. We were pissed at Iran. Keeping Iraq and Iran fighting kept both of them away from annoying other Gulf states. Pinochet might have been a sonuvabitch, but he was our sunuvabitch. It was him or a communist. Did you forget that we were fighting communism. Look at how all you liberals love Castro. Y'all loved a bunch of communist dictators, like Daniel Ortega. If they were commies, you loved 'em.
I'll admit I never forgave Reagan for running from Lebanon. I think we should have given them a going away present like a few cruise missiles up the Bekaa Valley. And what about Clinton turning tail and running in Somalia. That was even worse. Osama bin Laden has been quoted as saying that was when he knew we could be defeated. Clinton invaded hapless Haiti. At least we improved Grenada. Haitis is still a shithole.
Bush has not been so discriminating. His invasion of Iraq has left U.S. soldiers facing a relentless insurgency, stretched the military too thin and provided a handy recruiting tool for al-Qaida. Even the White House has admitted that the torture photos from Abu Ghraib have stirred resentment that will plague Americans for a generation.
"stretched the military too thin". See above about cuts in the military during the Clinton presidency. That is how he "balanced" the budget. Abu Ghraib sucks. The people who did it are being tried and will be punished. This process started back in January, months before you dipsticks started turning it into another Holocaust. A "relentless insurgency". Talk about hyperbole!
So much for Iraqis greeting us as liberators and Iraqi oil funds paying for reconstruction and Ahmad Chalabi as freedom fighter. Like so many of Reagan's tales, those were good stories. Like so many of Reagan's tales, they weren't true.
We have had no problems with the Kurds. The new prime minister of the interim gummint has said nothing but nice things about us. There are many Iraqis who have welcomed us as liberators. Maybe you should start reading some Iraqi bloggers. Or blogs from our soldiers on the ground. They tell a much different story than we get from you hand wringing liberals.
Unfortunately, the liberal media hates Bush so much they won't report any good news. The liberal media hates Bush so much they want to see more soldiers die. They liberal media hates Bush so much they want to see us fail in Iraq.
It's the liberals, like Cynthia Tucker, who live in a fantasy land where both Bill Clinton and Jimmah Carter were wonderful presidents and Ronald Reagan and George Bush are evil ogres. Unfortunately Jimmah and Bubba created problems that had to be solved by people who don't live in a fantasy world.
With Jimmah and Bubba, we didn't live happily ever after.
I don't need any help killing myself. Thanks anyway.
Sorry Pam. It ain't a hunk. It is I, standing in front of Busch Stadium in St. Louis after just finishing a 10 kilometer run. This was taken 23 years ago when I was almost 35. I was not as grouchy. I was not old yet. And I was not a cripple yet either. Yep! I had a full beard back then.
From Woody.
Dear friends and family,
I haven't said anything to anybody about this until now, because I wanted
to wait until everything had been completed.
I purchased a one bedroom home near Ensenada as an investment
property. Escrow finally closed this week and I thought I would let you
know in case you're interested in renting. It's available for weekends or
on a weekly basis. Initially, I will be handling bookings until I can
find an agent in the area to manage the property.
In order to offset the closing costs, weekends will cost approximately
$100 (family and friends' rate) for three nights, and $250 for the
week. But, I can only give out these rates until July 1, 2004. I am
taking reservations as early as next week.
It's a one bedroom, high rise unit that overlooks the ocean, nestled among
lush greens, and has a great ocean view from every window! Attached is a
photo, so let me know if you are interested.
Cristina
Look what Reagan's funeral did. This must be the first time Bill and Hill have slept together in years.
What a class act!
The latest "We're losing the war in Iraq" bullshit from the media is we are gonna torture the crap out of the Iraqis. A memo has been leaked whereas the Bush Administration is looking for an excuse to torture prisoners. This has Sweet Lady Jessica so up in arms that she is gonna vote for, in her words, "Douchebag Kerry". She has challenged me to "persuade me that I wouldn't be re-electing a regime that wants to weasel its way into the ability to torture anyone it wants".
So let's apply the standards that the liberals, and Jessica is not a liberal (Although I do detect the idealism of youth. I had it once to before I became jaded and evolved into a pragmatist. Jessica is intelligent enough that it will happen to her also. She's smarter than I am.), want us to apply to the murderers and general asswipes who want to kill us and rape our women. Let's wait until all the proof is out. Isn't someone innocent until proven guilty? Oh, the media does not apply that rule to Republicans. So far all we have heard of is part of a leaked memo and an ongoing (and over-covered by the media) investigation of abuses at Abu Ghraib.
I don't consider most of what has come out about Abu Ghraib as torture. It was humiliation. And I was outraged until the media continued to beat it into the ground. Now, I'm just as outraged at the media. Give it a fucking rest!
So far all the people that we know about are being tried and punished. The Colonel who fired off a gun by a prisoner's head and by doing so intimidated him into giving out information that saved lives of soldiers was given his walking papers. Once again, I don't consider this torture. The defense establishment did.
Now as for real torture, and I'm talking major Saddam Hussein torture like beatings and electrical shock treatment. That I'm against. That should be investigated and the people responsible punished.
Now remember, so far all we have is some leaked memo looking for justification for torture and some rumors of additional events at Abu Ghraib. Why don't we wait until we get some more information before we jump to conclusions? Just because there is a memo looking for justification does not mean that this is now the official policy.
Have you heard the old joke about the guy asking the girl if she'll hop in the sack with him for a million dollars? When she replies yes he asks her, How about doing it for a dollar?"
"What kind of a girl do you think I am?"
"We've already established that. Now we're just haggling over the price."
Let's apply this to torture. Our cashiered colonel scared the crap out of a scumbag and saved lives. Was this a bad thing?
Howza 'bout if we would have applied some thumbscrews to one of the 19 hijackers and obtained information that would have averted 9/11? Bad or good? Hmmm. This involves nuance. To the liberals nuance is good, right?
Let's up the stakes. Suppose al Qaeda gets a nuke that could kill not three thousand people but millions? What if some selected beating of an al Qaeda asshole could save the lives of millions? Welcome to Slipperyslopeville.
I'm not advocating torture here, I'm just pointing out that the people running this war are trying to keep all of their options open. If we had bin Laden's number two guy (And I think Binny is dead, so this would now be Abu Numero Uno.) would we be against inflicting some pain on him to save perhaps millions of lives?
Many people still do not believe that we are in a real war. This is World War IV. The people who have declared war on us do not want detente. They can not be reasoned with. They can not be appeased. They can not be accommodated. They must be defeated. They must be crushed. Here is an interesting take on that.
War is a dirty business. People get hurt. People die. I am not condoning what went on at Abu Ghraib. I am not condoning torture. We should be better than that.
But to want to vote for someone who will allow France or the United Nations veto power over our foreign policy, to vote for someone who wants to retreat in the War on Terror, to vote for a douche bag, because of chances that we may torture people is just wrong.
And that's what I believe.
Hey Dan, Tom, and Peter:
This one's for you.
I got a dividend check today from one of my investments. Endorse, put it in the envelope and send it off to my credit union. I love being a capitalist! I go to bed at night and dream of all the poor people I'm oppressing. BWAHAAHAHAHAHA!
I checked out the site of a young lady I'm very fond of (Not giving it to you. Last time she got flamed.) and found out that she is gonna vote for John Fonda Kerry. I don't understand it. This is a person who, like me, considers herself a small 'l' libertarian and she is voting for a fucking socialist! Arrrggghhhh! She scored almost as high as I did on this economics quiz. I got a 73 by the way. Believe it or not, I do believe that gummint should have a roll in the economy, albeit minor. Kerry would score a big fat zero. I sent her an e-mail asking if she would share some of her drugs with me.
So now we find out that after whipping the dead horse of Abu Ghraib until all the skin has been flayed off and all we see are bare bones and even they are starting to disintegrate due to the constant whipping, there are some stories thet the liberal press seems to think have gone on too long and have been over-covered,
Dan Blather:
"Even though everybody is respectful and wants to pay homage to the president, life does go on," Rather told the Philadelphia Inquirer."There is other news, like the reality of Iraq," said the CBS Evening News anchor. "It got very short shrift this weekend."
Yeah. We want to go back to beating that dead horse. Let's not cover the good news from Iraq like the new president thanking us for liberating his country. Let's show some retard chick laughing at the size of an Arab's dick. That's a lot more important than honoring a man who ended the Cold War and freed millions of people in Eastern Europe. What's the fucking frequency Kenneth, you asshole?
Brokaw:
"I think just about everything is over-covered these days," said Brokaw, who anchors the NBC Nightly News. "The spectrum is so crowded. With all the cable networks, it begins to have a 'video wall' feeling to it."
Howza 'bout practicing what you preach and let up on Abu Ghraib, which has really been over-covered (Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends - Emerson, Lake and Palmer) and give us some of the good news from Iraq? There's been a lot of it lately but it doesn't fit your fucking liberal agenda. And the Nick Berg beheading sure wasn't over-covered was it Tommy boy?
Jennings:
"I'm more inclined to spare coverage — come on [the air], do something meaningful, then get away," he said.
GMAFB! Peter fucking Jennings doing sumpin' meaningful? That arrogant Canadian bastard? The only thing meaningful he could do would be to retire and go back to Canada.
"The last time I had to do it was with O.J. Simpson [during the 1994 car chase], and I had nothing to say after a certain period of time."
No asshole, the last time you had to do it was the Abu Ghraib story which you've been doing for the last two months and so far you haven't run out of anything to say. You never run out of anything to say as long as it is anti-American.
I confess that I lifted all these quotes off of Kim du Toit's site and he is more articulate putting these clowns in their place. He says we should revoke Peter Jennings' citizenship, but if I'm not mistaken the worthless bastard never became an American citizen in the first place. I don't know what Rather's and Brokaw's excuses are for being anti-American.
Ya see, I cannot understand hating someone so much that you are willing to see your country fail. I despised Bill Clinton, but I did not want to see us fail in Kosovo. I was against sending troops into that shithole Haiti, but after they were there I did not want to see any American die.
Assholes like Jennings, Brokaw, and Rather take pleasure in reporting any bad news that comes out of Iraq. How sick is that? They hate Bush so much that they want to see American soldiers die.
They hate Reagan so much because he is everything that they would like a Dimocrat President to be, but they keep electing incompetents (Jimmy Carter) or immoral assholes (Bill Clinton). Someone said that in the movie the American President, Michael Douglas played the president that Hollywood wished Clinton could have been. Of course, to some dingbats like Barbra Streisand Bill Clinton was that character.
So let's stop all this coverage of Reagan. It's distracting us from trying to make the United States lose the War on Terror. It's distracting us from covering Bill Clinton's upcoming book tour. It's distracting us from trying to elect a traitor, John Fonda Kerry as president.
The Dimocrats are really going downhill. First a draft dodger. Now a traitor.
At least he's not a Republican.
So Billy-boy Clinton is pissed that he is not gonna be allowed to speak at Ronald Reagan's funeral. Can you imagine why Ronald Reagan, who was a great president and an honorable man would want a mediocre president like Clinton tarnishing his memory?
I mean I wouldn't want a draft dodging, coke snorting, philandering, sexual harrassing rapist speaking at my funeral.
I especially wouldn't want someone who fired White House employees and then sicced the FBI on them.
Or sold missile technology to the Chinese for illegal campaign contributions.
Or accumulated one thousand FBI files on political opponents.
Or politicized the IRS and had them go after his enemies with audits.
Or sold pardons right before he left the White House.
Or rented out the Lincoln bedroom for campaign contributions.
I certainly wouldn't want someone who bit his lip and promised to do sumpin' about the embassy bombings and the USS Cole and then went back to the Oval Office and got a blowjob.
I wouldn't want someone who disgraced the office of President of the United States and was the only elected president to ever be impeached.
Bubba bemoans the fact that he wasn't president when 9/11 happened. He wanted sumpin' to test his mettle so he could be a great president. He was part of the reason that 9/11 happened. By making empty threats and doing nothing it only emboldened our enemies. That was Clinton's mettle. Take the easy way out. Clinton has done that his entire life.
Clinton could have never been a great president. A great president has to be a leader. He has to make unpopular decisions and try to sell them to the American people so they will follow him. The only unpopular decision he made was not resigning and saving the country from his depravity.
Bill Clinton is a hollow man. He is the greatest politician of my generation but he has no core beliefs. None. His only belief was that he should have been president. He had no grand plan for the country. He had no vision other than the trappings of power and nailing babes. And even there he was a disappointment. He couldn't do any better than a fat ditzy airhead?
Bill Clinton couldn't be a pimple on Ronald Reagan's ass. Reagan had a vision for this country. Bill Clinton had a vision for Bill Clinton.
Ronald Reagan led. Clinton convened focus groups.
Clinton was a good speaker but does anyone remember anything other than "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms Lewinsky" or "It all depends on what the meaning of 'is' is"?
Reagan will always be remembered for what the press at the time derided as simplistic rhetoric: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" And the wall fell.
The press adored Clinton. They looked down on Reagan. Who turned out to be the giant?
The Dimocrats even now are trying to say that Clinton was more popular than Reagan as if being a good president depends upon how popular one is. But I'll play that game. Clinton got 43% of the vote in 1992 and 49% of the vote in 1996. He never got a majority. Reagan won by two landslides.
Nope, I would not sully the honor of a great president by allowing a moral midget to speak at his funeral.
On the occasion of Ronald Reagan's funeral let us revere greatness.
We don't need to be reminded of mediocrity.
Every Tuesday we have a team conference call to talk about projects and problems. This is the only meeting that I attend that actually is productive. One of the reasons is my team lead, who runs the meeting, sends out an agenda before the meeting. It is a list of problem records, I/T requests, and ongoing projects. The meeting starts on time and we stick to the agenda.
If you have been reading my stuff for the last few weeks, you know that we just got a new processor. It is an IBM z/900. Yeah, I know, for those of you in the know, the latest and the greatest is a z/990, but I'll take what I can get. This allows me to get in the Early Ship Program for z/OS 1.6. Both my IBM rep and myself are happy about that. And for the person who commented last week about not hearing IPL in over 10 years, I still run DITTO.
Last week I ran up against a wall on using token ring OSA (STFU about token ring. We're working on ethernet) that another one of my team members solved. He found the right book to use. Using his samples, I got two of my guest systems working. He called me on Monday and he couldn't get his system working. So, using what I had done on my system, which were his examples, I got his system working. I now know how to set up QDIO. Piece of cake! Slice of pie!
Last Friday, my team lead spent over an hour on the phone trying to talk the new network guy (I've talked about him before. He's a bozo.) through setting up TCPIP on an MVS system from scratch. Lemme tell you how bad this guy is. He thought cut and paste was magic. Really. I'm not making this up. I was listening to my team lead try to explain some of this shit to him and it was all I could do to keep myself from falling out of my chair, falling on the floor and laughing my ass off.
I've moved one of my VM systems to the new processor. I've started to update the TCPIP connections to all the MVS guests on that system. I got a FART (Fast Available Real Time - Similar to AOL IM) from one of my users that she wasn't able to IP into her system. I FART'ed back that I had moved the system and I would fix it but it would take me a few minutes. Just then the phone rang. It was the new network guy.
During the meeting, my team lead told Bozo tha he was gonna have to do all the IP work on most of the guests on my VM system. After the call I looked at him and asked him why was he doing this to me? I was gonna have to try to explain to Bozo how to do all this stuff. Aaarrrggghhh!
Whenever I answer the phone and I hear , "Hello Denny, this is Bozo", I know that I am facing an hour of sheer hell. So, for the next hour, I try to explain to him about the TCPIP profile data set, about how we need three OSA devices, and yes, I will define those devices in the hardware configuration, and, yes, he could see how they were defined if he knew HCD, or I could build an IOCDS input dataset and he could see how they were defined if he knew how to read the source code. So how many of you understood what I just wrote? I know all you Delta folks do. Bozo doesn't have a clue.
My team lead told me that we have to get Bozo up to where he understands what we are talking about. It was funny. When he was talking about how we learned how to do stuff he said, "Here's how Denny learns. he moves along until he runs into a wall. Then he gets out the books, looks at IBMLINK, or calls some other sysprogs. Eventually he gets over the wall and goes along until he runs into the next wall." Sounds good. I got ropes and pitons. Bozo ain't got shit.
We are planning on moving our main MVS system to the new processor this weekend. I did all the planning, updated the IODF, and checked out the NCP's. We should be good to go. This is supposed to be Bozo's job. He doesn't have a clue. He even attended a class on this. It was above his head.
The upside of all this, is it is job security for me. The downside is if the migration goes as smoothly as it has so far (And it has gone even better than I thought it would. We are way ahead of schedule.) management is gonna think they won't need me. The upside is if they do shitcan me, they will have to bring me back as a contractor.
And I will have Bozo to thank for that.
As Pumpman once stated there are three types of bloggers:
1. Linkers - These would be bloggers like Instapundit, Daily Pundit, and Betsy's Page.
2. Thinkers - Steven Den Beste and Bill Whittle.
3. Stinkers - Me, Kim du Toit, Pumpman, Schultzie, and many others.
There are some great writers out in the Blogosphere and some really original and creative people. This is why referral logs are really great. Every now and then I come across someone who has linked to me like Mike King who writes so well and about stuff that interests me that he goes on my blogroll. This is where I violate one of the rules of the Blogosphere. If you really want to get a lot of links, have a large blogroll. I don't. I only link to people that I read on a regular basis. I am adding someone else to my blogroll today. It is Silent Running who is doing an alternate history of how the BBC would be covering WWII if they covered it the way they are covering the war in Iraq. Yeah, I know, other people have done it, but this guy is good!
What is it with the press in this country that they have to come up with a buzzword to put down conservative candidates? Remember four years ago when all we heard was "gravitas" as in, "Does Bush have the gravitas to be president?" Yeah. Like Clinton really had a lot of gravitas didn't he? And it turns out that Algore sure has heck doesn't have any gravitas the way he's been ranting and raving lately. He needs some Prozac real bad. Fortunately, he can get it over the internet that he invented.
Anyway, all the talking heads like Cokie Roberts (With a name like Cokie you're gonna talk about gravitas?) were saying gravitas this and gravitas that. Tell me, does one of these nattering nabobs come up with this buzzword and since they must be liberal robots are they instructed by their masters in the Dimocrat Party to repeat the word over and over again?
It's just like how the liberal press has to get Abu Ghraib in every story. I haven't seen it yet, but I know sometime before the week is out we'll read sumpin' like this:
Ronald Reagan, who suffered from Alzheimers, thankfully was unaware of the atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib.
I know it's coming.
This year the word is nuance as in "Bush is too simplistic and only sees things as black or white. He doesn't have the nuance to see things more realistically like Kerry."
Yeah. Nuance. I really want a leader with nuance. Remember how the press got all over Reagan for being a cowboy and for only seeing things in black and white? He was just too simplistic. No nuance there.
Here's an interesting dichotomy. Liberals like to talk about nuance, but they are the ones who have instituted zero tolerance policies in gummint schools. There they only see things in black and white. How come they don't use nuance there? I read of instances like a student drives a car to school that has a dinner knife on the floor of the back seat and gets a suspension. The knife was left over from a picnic. The student didn't even know it was there. Where's the nuance?
But back to Reagan and his simplistic outlook on the world. He thought we were good and the Soviet Union was evil. The Dimocrats, who were on the wrong side of history then just like they will be on the wrong side of history in the War on Terror, couldn't believe that our president would say sumpin' like that. How simplistic!
Remember Reagan was dumb. He was a cowboy. He didn't know what he was doing. He was gonna start a nuclear war.
And Reagan was not particularly liked by the Euroweenies. Do you remember when we bombed Libya? France and Spain refused to let us overfly their countries. Our planes had to take the long way and fly over the Atlantic because our "friends" the French and the Spanish would not let us fly over their countries. Assholes!
The Euroweenies weren't too happy about the Pershing missiles we deployed in Germany either.
Our real friends back then were the Brits who are still our real friends now.
Reagan will be remembered for telling Gorbachev to "Tear down this wall!"
Bill Clinton will be remembered for "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms Lewinsky." or "It all depends on what the meaning of 'is' is". Clinton was a master of nuance. Reagan was not. Reagan won the Cold War. Clinton was impeached. But he did get a blowjob.
It's funny that now, in the War on Terror we have another dumb cowboy in the White House. He's too simplistic. He has no nuance. He sees us as good and the terrorists as evil. He said, "In the War on Terror, you are either with us or against us." Dumb cowboy. He doesn't have any nuance.
Now I'm not saying that Bush is another Reagan. I'm just pointing out that the press, the Dimocrats, and a lot of our "friends" in Europe are saying the exact same things about him that they said about Reagan and calling him the exact same names that they called Reagan. If he does just half of what the other dumb cowboy accomplished he will be remembered as a good president.
But like Reagan, he has no understanding of nuance.
For that I am grateful.
Y'all get more than one this week. These are all from Ralph Gizzip except for the two I threw in.
1. Two antennas meet on a roof, fall in love and get married. The ceremony
wasn't much, but the reception was excellent.
2. Two hydrogen atoms walk into a bar. One says, "I've lost my electron."
The other says, "Are you sure?" The first replies, "Yes, I'm positive..."
(A neutron walks into a bar. "How much for a beer?", he asked the bartender. The bartender replied, "For you, no charge." - GOC)
3. A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, "I'll serve you,
but don't start anything."
4. Two peanuts walk into a bar, and one was a salted.
5. A dyslexic man walked into a bra.
(Didja hear about the new organization called DAM? Mothers Against Dyslexia. - GOC)
6. A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and says:
"A beer please, and one for the road."
7. Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: "Does this
taste funny to you?"
8. "Doc, I can't stop singing 'The Green, Green Grass of Home.' "That
sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome." "Is it common?" "It's Not Unusual."
9. Two cows standing next to each other in a field, Daisy says to Dolly,
"I was artificially inseminated this morning." "I don't believe you," said
Dolly. "It's true, no bull!" exclaimed Daisy.
10. An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to
look at either.
11. Deja Moo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before.
12. A man takes his Rottweiler to the vet and says, "My dog's cross-eyed,
is there anything you can do for him?" "Well, says the vet, "let's have a
look at him." So he picks the dog up and examines his eyes, then checks his
teeth. Finally, he says, "I'm going to have to put him down." "What?
Because he's cross-eyed?" "No, because he's really heavy."
13. Apparently, one in five people in the world are Chinese. And there are
five people in my family, so it must be one of them. It's either my mom or
my dad, or maybe my older brother Colin or my younger brother Ho-Cha-Chu.
But I'm pretty sure it's Colin.
14. I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn't
find any.
15. I went to the butcher's the other day and I bet him 50 bucks that he
couldn't reach the meat off the top shelf. He said, "No, the steaks are too
high."
16. A man woke up in a hospital after a serious accident. He shouted,
"Doctor, doctor, I can't feel my legs!" The doctor replied, "I know you
can't - I've cut off your arms!"
17. I went to a seafood disco last week... and pulled a mussel.
18. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly; but when they lit a fire
in the craft, it sank, proving that you can't have your kayak and heat it
too.
19. What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.
20. Two termites walk into a bar. One asks, "Is the bar tender here?"
I'm running way behind tonight. I had to set up an address list for the Sommelier Guild so I could do mass e-mailing. I'm setting up this month's function so I had to send out the menu and the wines. I had to enter all the addresses manually and then put them in a mailing list. Grunt Work.
Pamela wants me to start posting pictures of male hunks. She says it's unfair that I post Saturday boobage but I don't have any eye candy for the ladies. Golly. Hunks don't really do anything for me and I don't have any pictures outside of the one of the SEALs that I posted earlier. I do have some bubbas but I don't think that is what you have in mind. If anyone has access to pictures of buff males and will send them to me, and I get enough, I'll start posting 'em once a week. I want to make my female readers happy.
I still have trolls who do not seem to understand how this site works. For some reason they get pissed off that this is not a forum for their bullshit. This site is not a democracy. It is a dictatorship and I am the dictator. I do allow dissenting opinions if they are respectfully given and backed up by facts not slogans. If I want to listen to liberal bullshit I'll turn on NPR or watch ABCCBSNBCCNNPBS and the rest of the liberal media. Or I'll read the letters section in the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation. Some of the yoyos who write in read like the letter writers in the San Francisco Chronicle. If you want to read letters from people who should be medicated (or maybe they are overmedicated), that's the paper to read.
Someone suggested that I quit reading the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation because of its blatant bias. My problem is I like to read a newspaper, even a leftist rag like the AJC. It does get my blood boiling and provides me with excellent blogging fodder. One of the things that pissed me off when the Urinal merged with the Constipation is they dropped Mallard Fillmore which the Urinal used to carry. Now they put the two most blatant liberal comics, Doonesbury and The Boondocks, together on a separate page. They really should be on the editorial page where they belong.
My friend Cindy's daughter is still in the hospital. The first night she was in Cindy slept on the floor in her room. The next day Cindy hunted up a folding bed so she could sleep on it. She's got her appetite back and is not puking, but they still don't know what's wrong with her.
Tomorrow should be a productive day. I got my VM system moved over to the new processor and all the network stuff done so it is accessable via the SAMON screen. Now all I have to do is set up TCPIP on all the guests. The IP addresses will all remain the same, but I have to set up addresses on the OSA attached to that LPAR for all the guest systems.
Huh? WTF? What language is he speaking?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That's why I make the big bucks.
That's a sign I don't want to see when I'm in my wheelchair.
I was going back through my mail box (That's where I store stuff I may want to use at a later date. So, if I haven't posted a cartoon or an interesting tidbit that you sent me it's probably still in my mailbox being saved for a future post.) and came across the following about California that my brother-in-law sent me last year.
GOOD OLE CALIFORNIA
Not to be outdone by all the redneck, hillbilly, & Texan jokes... You
know you're in California when......
1. Your coworker has 8 body piercings and none are visible.
2. You make over $300,000 and still can't afford a house.
3. You take a bus and are shocked at two people carrying on a
conversation in English.
4. Your child's 3rd-grade teacher has purple hair, a nose ring, and is
named Breeze.
5.. You can't remember...is pot illegal?
6. You've been to a baby shower that has two mothers and a sperm
donor.
7. You have a very strong opinion about where your coffee beans are
grown, and you can taste the difference between Sumatran and
Ethiopian.
8. You know which restaurant serves the freshest arugula.
9. You can't remember...is pot illegal?
10. A really great parking space can totally move you to tears.
11. A low speed police pursuit will interrupt ANY TV broadcast.
12. Gas costs $1.00 per gallon more than anywhere else in the US
13. A man gets on the bus in full leather regalia and crotchless
chaps. You don't even notice.
14. Unlike back home, the guy at 8:30am at Starbucks wearing the
baseball cap and sunglasses who looks like George Clooney really IS
George Clooney.
15. Your car insurance costs as much as your house payment.
16. Your hairdresser is straight, your plumber is gay, the woman who
delivers your mail is into S & M, and your Mary Kay rep is a guy in
drag.
17. You can't remember...is pot illegal?
18. Its barely sprinkling rain and there's a report on every news
station: "STORM WATCH 2003."
19. You have to ! leave the big company meeting early because Billy
Banks himself is teaching the 4:00pm Tae Bo class.
20. You pass an elementary school playground and the children are all
busy with their cells or pagers.
21. It's barely sprinkling rain outside, so you leave for work an hour
early to avoid all the weather-related accidents.
22. Hey!!!! Is Pot Illegal????
23. Both you AND your dog have therapists.
24. The Terminator is your new governor.
Here's an interesting tidbit from Thursday's Atlanta Urinal and Constipation.
More than 90 percent of Georgia's third-graders passed a high-stakes reading exam this year, turning out a better-than-expected performance.
Better than expected? One out of every ten kids couldn't read at the third grade level and this is better than expected? WTF? What kind of expectations are these? If maybe it was one out of fifty that would be good news but one out of ten? No wonder Georgia ranks number 50 in SAT scores if this is considered good news.
But thousands of students still failed and could be held back if they don't perform well on a summer retest.
Thousands failed! Thousands!
About 11,000 of the state's estimated 115,000 third-graders failed the reading portion of the Georgia Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, according to preliminary information provided Wednesday by state Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox.
That is alarming! So let's see one out of ten failed and could be held back. That means if one in ten failed in my third grade class of thirty students at Goodall Elementary School in Webster Groves, Missouri, three people would have been held back. That didn't happen. Back then, teachers actually taught. Today, they say thirty students is too much for a teacher. We need smaller class sizes. Somehow, when I went to school they taught with larger class sizes and durned if everyone didn't seem to learn. Of course, we didn't have teachers' unions back then. We also didn't have the huge bureaucracy of the Department of Education. Thanks Jimmah Carter.
Based on previous scores, Cox had predicted that as many as 26,000, or 23 percent, of Georgia third-graders could fail the make-or-break exam this year. She credited the improved performance to teachers' greater emphasis on reading in the early grades, better identification of weak skills through practice testing and extra help for struggling readers.
No wonder they're ecstatic about only one out of ten failing the test. They expected almost one out of four to fail it. Holy shit! Those are really high expectations.
Naturally, some people don't think the test is a good idea.
But educators and researchers have long debated the validity of using a single exam to make such an important decision as which child gets promoted to the next grade. Not all parents agree with the policy, either."I think the classroom teacher knows best about what a student can achieve," said Katie Hasty of Suwanee, whose son Wesley passed the test. "I just feel like if parents are involved and administrators are involved, then teachers will be accountable without a test."
The magic words: If parents are involved. But how many parents want to see their little Justin held back. What people don't seem to understand is if a child cannot read at the third grade level he will start lagging behind in the fourth grade and he will only do worse.
Students who have not passed the reading exam may attend summer school and take a retest. Children who fail the retest must return to third grade, unless a teacher or parent wins an appeal.
So the child can attend summer school and if he/she works hard enough can move on to fourth grade. No matter what liberals say, this is good policy. Dammit! This used to be the policy, except we didn't have the test. Back then we didn't worry about the student's self esteem. If the student could not do the work, the student repeated the grade.
The future of this country lies in an educated populace. The key to education is being able to read. For example, at TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name), the only education I can get is if a particular class is taught in Atlanta. No travel allowed. As a result, I have had to teach myself most of what I know. That means cracking open a book and reading and trying to figger out what the technical writer was trying to say when he wrote it.
I had a friend who was a technical writer and he was told to write it at a tenth grade reading level. They actually have programs that you can run your text through to determine the reading level of your stuff and suggesting simpler words.
As far as I'm concerned this elation about 90% of the third graders passing the test is bullshit. If the number were 98% that would be cause for celebration. But 90% is unacceptable! Especially when we rank 50th on SAT scores.
We can and should do better.
First the good news:
George Tenet resigned! That asshole should have been fired when Bush took office. Good riddance!
I had a problem IPLing VM on our new processor. MVS came up with no sweat. I had been playing with this for over a day. I used to teach a problem determination and recovery class so I dredged up my IPL troubleshooting knowledge. Vary off all channels except one to DASD and one to consoles. VM came up. Now which channel could it be that was eating my lunch?
Noticing that VM appeared to hang rather than drop into a disabled wait state (Ain't this stuff interesting?), it was acting like an open interface which you don't have on ESCON channels. I IPL'd another VM system in another partition from another DASD box and that came up OK so now I know where the problem is. I varied on the rest of the channels to the supect DASD box and got errors that told me I had a mismatched control unit. Don't know why MVS didn't barf on that.
The failing channels went through switches so my team lead and I went upstairs on to the raised floor to look to see if we had cabled wrong. We hadn't. I had messed up the gen. I had genned the paths going through the switch to another DASD box. Dammit! I screwed up! Doesn't happen often. But then, if I were perfect they couldn't afford me.
We also had a clock problem. Fixed that. Put in the new gen. Ipl'd. Everything came up. Another quality fix by a highly trained, highly paid, and highly motivated I/T professional.
Bad news:
My friend Cindy called and her daughter was in the hospital. She has been feeling like crap lately, so she came down from Athens Georgia to Beautiful Dunwoody to stay with her parents until she got better. Cindy is a nurse, after all. She got worse so Cindy took her to the emergency room today and she is septic.
I don't like to be put into the hospital. There are sick people there and hospitals are understaffed. Plus, a lot of the people you think are nurses aren't. If you have one "nurse" taking care of you and another nurse giving you drugs, the first "nurse" isn't a real nurse. Cindy realizes that so when anyone in her family goes into the hospital, she almost lives there. She will be spending much of her time in the next few days almost living in her daughter's room.
That's the worst news. Everything else is minor compared to that.
I moved one of my VM systems to the new processor and now I had to get TCPIP working through an OSA (Open Systems Adapter) card. I had asked the new network guy to do some research on how to do this using OSA Express. He sent me four books. He's the one who is supposed to be doing this bullshit, but he is incompetent, so as the only other person with network knowledge, I'm gonna have to make it work.
<esoteric bullshit> The advantage of OSA Express is that you do not need to set up the OSA Support Facility to define the OSA Address Table. Setting up OSASF is a pain in the ass. Supposedly we should be able to put the TCPIP and adapter address in the TCPIP Profile and everything magically works. No it doesn't. We have to set up QDIO which means some VTAM definitions. We tried to do that, but VTAM did not like the TRL member we built. </esoteric bullshit>
Richard, if you are reading this call me and tell me what I'm doing wrong. We're trying to do token ring through an OSA Express without using OSASF on a z/900.
Meanwhile, all through this I am muttering, "I wish our old network guy was here."
Also, I started feeling bad around 2:00 PM so I came home and went to bed. Cindy called me around 7:00 to tell me about her daughter.
I can only work on the IP problem for four hours on Friday 'cause I have another appointment with the podiatrist about my foot. It's almost healed. I guess that's good news.
Finally, my French trolls Froggy the Troll and Master Bator are back. They are foulmouthed French bastards who post obscene comments on my French bashing posts. Fortunately, not too many people go cruising through my archives so they can't see how these booger eatin' moh-rons make fools of themselves. I've decided to only keep comments active on any given post no longer than three months.
Since I still feel like crap, I'm gonna go to bed early tonight. Better stuff tomorrow.
Have you ever noticed that real war heroes don't run around bragging about what heroes they were? The real war heroes served their time, fought their battles and returned home and resumed their lives. In anecdote after anecdote you will read how people did not know that friends and relatives were heroes because they never talked about it. Their military service was sumpin' they did.
Didja know that George McGovern, who was against the war in Viet Nam, flew 87 combat missions in World War II? I never heard him mention it when he was running for president.
George Bush, the elder was a fighter pilot in World War II. I never heard him mention that. I also never heard him bring up the fact that he was running against a draft dodger.
The same was true with Bob Dole, another war hero. I never heard him accuse Bill Clinton of being a draft dodger or the fact that since he (Dole) was a war hero made him more qualified to be commander-in-chief than President Scumbag.
But it now turns out that John Fonda Kerry has the dubious distinction of being a war hero for both sides. He served four months for the United States and then we have this:
Vietnam veteran Bill Lupetti took this photograph of a display at a Ho Chi Minh City museum honoring war protesters.
The English placard reads: "Mr. Do Muoi, Secretary General of the Vietnamese Communist Party met with Congressman and Veterans Delegation in Vietnam (July 15-18, 1973)."
We were still at war then.
And in his 1985 memoir about the war, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap wrote that if it weren't for organizations like Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Hanoi would have surrendered to the U.S.
So isn't that special. John Fonda Kerry turns out to have been a war hero for the United States before he became a war hero for North Viet Nam. He was a flip-flop specialist back then.
And this is the man the Dimocrats want to be president.
What a far cry from Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Franklyn Roosevelt, and Harry Truman.
Remember when Little Tommy Dasshole uttered the immortal words about how airport screeners should be federal employees? He said, "To professionalize, you must federalize." WTF? Professionalize and federalize in the same sentence? If we had a fair and balanced press Dasshole's statement would have been the laughingstock of the country. But of course, there is not one gummint program, except for the military, that liberals do not adore. Yeah, professional federal airport screeners. That's the ticket.
The reason I bring this up is I heard on the news that the wait to get through security at Hartsfield-Jackson-Young-Campbell-Franklin-McKinney-Lewis Airport this morning was two hours. Two hours? Two fucking hours? Wow! This must really be a professional operation. Just imagine how long it would have been if the gummint hadn't had all those professional screeners.
Unless the airport has changed its procedures since I went through security back in January a third grade pissant could see what the problem is. It is what engineers would call a single point of failure or the rest of us would call a bottleneck.
Before you can go through the metal detectors and the carry on x-ray machine, you need to go through a checkpoint where someone checks your boarding pass and makes sure it matches a picture id. When I went through in January, there was only one checkpoint and they had the dumbest employee they could find manning it. This is a person who wasn't even smart enough to say, "Do you want fries with that?" Also, since she was a federal employee, and since one of the requirements to be a federal employee was lack of people skills, she was also incredibly rude. Stupid and rude. Yeah, Senator Dasshole, that's an example of the professionalism you get when you federalize.
If this person has any kind of a situation that is outside of her intellectual range (And that didn't take too much back in January. It was three little old ladies in wheelchairs.) the whole operation grinds to a halt while the wheels start spinning out of control in her brain (What little brain she has.). At the same time, as in every gummint operation, there are people standing around doing absolutely nothing, some of whom are probably supervisors. Did she get any type of assistance? Are you kidding? This is a professional federalized operation. All she had to fall back on was rudeness as when someone in line asked for her name so he could give glowing praise to the TSA on her performance.
Irate Airline Passenger - What's your name?
Federalized and Professionalized Airport Screener - I ain't giving you my name! You shut up!
I was in a wheelchair so I got to cut in line and missed the rest of this theater of the absurd. Finally a benefit of being a cripple. Heh. Heh. Heh.
Actually there was another time that it came in handy being a crip. In Disney World you (and all the people with you) can go to the front of the line at all the rides if you are a crip. You just go to the medical station and they give you a pass. I'm thinking that when I retire I might move to Orlando and rent myself out. Cut the Lines. Rent a Crip.
People say that the reason the lines are so long at Hartsfield-Jackson-Young-Campbell-Franklin-McKinney-Lewis Airport is because the airport does not have multiple terminals like Dallas so everything feeds through one checkpoint. That is not the problem! Back when everyone could go out to the gates, not just passengers, people moved through the screening area just fine. The problem is the idiot who has to check boarding passes against picture ids.
Put me in charge. First off instead of having just one checkpoint where the boarding pass and picture id is checked, have multiples. Look at where the lines are. Is it that hard to see the problem? Like I said, a third grade pissant could see the problem. Why is it so hard to fix?
Second, instead of having one booger eatin' moh-ron at each checkpoint, have two. That way you can pass twice as many people through each checkpoint. If there is a problem that is beyond the intellectual capacity of one of the screeners (and that doesn't take much), the other screener can check ids while the other one is fucking up.
This is not rocket science. It is common sense. Look at where the holdups are and fix them. If there is a line running outside of the terminal people are not doing their jobs and some heads should roll. This shit in inexcusable!
But they are federalized and professionalized.
Thanks Senator Dasshole!
