Looks like Rivrdog is some kind of sewer of food and drink.
Observe the new state of the art tsunami detector.
Ron sent me this evaluation form.
This form indicates individual performance in the position currently held.
Knowledge
[ ] The son of a bitch really knows his stuff
[ ] Knows just enough to be dangerous
[ ] Only half a brain and is dangerous
[ ] Fucking brain damaged, his coffee cup has a higher IQ
Accuracy
[ ] Does excellent work if not preoccupied with pussy
[ ] Pretty good, only occasionally blows it out his ass
[ ] Has to take off his shoes to count to ten
[ ] Couldn't count his balls and get the same number twice
Attitude
[ ] Extremely cooperative if you kiss his ass frequently
[ ] Brown nose in good standing
[ ] Often pisses off co-workers, thinks it's his shop
[ ] Doesn't give a shit, never did and never will
Reliability
[ ] A really dependable little cocksucker
[ ] You can rely on him at evaluation time
[ ] Can rely on him to be the first one out the fucking door
[ ] Totally fucking useless/worthless
Appearance
[ ] Extremely neat, even combs his pubic hair
[ ] Looks great at evaluation time
[ ] Flies abandon fresh dog shit to follow him around
[ ] Dirty, filthy, rotten son of a bitch
Performance
[ ] Works like a son of a bitch, if there's money in it for him
[ ] Does all kinds of good shit at evaluation time
[ ] Works only if kicked in the ass every 2 minutes
[ ] Couldn't do less work if he were in a fucking coma
WTF is going on? My posting has been very light but my hits have been going up? My posting has been light because of my ongoing computer problems which I will be addressing next week and because I've been real busy.
I went to South Carolina earlier in the week. Wednesday morning when I got up to drive home, I noticed that the strap on my left brace had come off. The rivet that fastened it had broken. I was able to walk to my car and drive home OK.
Thursday, I had to go down to the brace place and get it repaired. They did it for free. I had to do some other errands after that.
Last night, I had to go out to eat at La Grotta at Ravinia, a nice Italian restaurant across the street from Perimeter Mall (for all you Atlanta people.) As vice-president of the Sommelier Guild of Atlanta I was responsible for finding a restaurant for our annual banquet.
We have two major events each year: Champagne tasting in December and the annual banquet in May or June. The Sommelier Guild Board goes out to eat (at the Guild's expense) at the restaurants we choose for the Champagne tasting and the banquet to decide on the menu. That's what I had to do last night. Like I say, it's a rough job, but someone has to do it.
My friend Michael couldn't make it because Cindy was sick and he had to stay home with her (altho' she told him he could go.). He was nice enough to drop off a bottle of wine. Did I forget to mention that each of us brings at least one bottle of wine to these previews?
Another member of the board, who shall remain nameless, was an hour late. He wouldn't tell us why. Then to top it off, the two bottles of wine he brought were both corked! Arrrrgggghhhhh! On the upside, that means we didn't drink as much as we normally do at these things.
What we normally do at these previews is order a lot of items off the menu and then share them amongst ourselves. Then we can decide the menu. Then we schedule the event and pick the wines to drink with each course.
Needless to say, I had a real good time last night. The food was delicious and the wines, with the exception of the two corked ones, were excellent.
Update: For those who don't know, when a wine is said to be "corked" it means that the cork was bad and it contaminated the wine. It is estimated that between 3 and 5 percent of wines sold have bad corks.
I drove up to Lake Carolina on Tuesday to have dinner with Addison. It rained all the way through Georgia. I even had to slow down to 50 MPH at one point it was raining so hard. Bummer!
I got to my sister's house around 4:30. I pounded on her back door. I honked my horn. I was even gonna use my cellphone, but I didn't get a signal. I need to find out what service the Mummy uses on 24. His phone works everywhere. This week it worked in a sewer. I expect to see the Verizon guy pop up and say, "Can you hear me now?"
Speaking of 24, I was really pissed about last week's episode. They rode an elevator down to the secret bunker under the White House and after getting off the elevator had to walk down steps. Where's the diversity awareness? The bunker is not handicap accessable. Haven't these dudes heard of the Americans With Disabilities Act?
Was that Terror Dad that I saw on Alias?
But I digress.
I finally had to give up and walk around to the front of the house and walk up those steps and ring the doorbell.
My sister let me in. I had a beer and took some drugs. Legal prescription type drugs.
I had some Stoly on the rocks before dinner. Addison showed up and told us about his new job and then we ate. I drank some wine. We finished dinner. I drank some Limoncello. I got hammered. I also had to ralph once. That was a surprise. I drink more than that on a Saturday night and I don't get sick then. I hope my sister didn't think that was a reflection on her dinner. It was a very good dinner.
I slept well. Got up the next morning, had a banana, drank a cup of coffee, drank a bottle of water, and hit the road.
Got back to GOC Central at 1:30. Read the paper. Took a nap. I don't feel like I got hammered. My feet don't hurt real bad like they normally do the next day.
It was nice seeing Addison again.
OK. I lied about not posting until Wednesday. Here's the new three dollar bill.
From Catfish.
I'm driving up to Columbia tomorrow (or today, if you're reading this on Tuesday). My sister is having commenter extraordinaire Addison over for dinner so I'm driving up to get a free meal and to see him. I don't plan on posting anything until Wednesday. Yeah. Yeah. I'm getting lazy. I'm still bummed from the computer problems.
As part of my recent troubles, I am unable to access my archived mail which is where I kept all of my puns. Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!
Also, I didn't post anything last night because I went to a wine tasting and was in no condition to write when I got home.
Just 'cause I'm having computer problems doesn't mean I'm gonna skip Saturday Boobage.
Here's a Texas joke from Airboss who claims this is a true story.
Recently a routine police patrol parked outside a bar in Bandera, Texas. After last call the officer noticed a man leaving the bar so intoxicated that he could barely walk. The man stumbled around the parking lot for a few minutes, with the officer quietly observing. After what seemed an eternity and trying his keys on five different vehicles, the man managed to find his car which he fell into. -- -- He sat there for a few minutes as a number of other patrons left the bar and drove off.
Finally he started the car, switched the wipers on and off (it was a fine, dry summer night) -- -- flicked the blinkers on, then off a couple of times, honked the horn and then switched on the lights. -- He moved the vehicle forward a few inches, reversed a little and then remained still for a few more minutes as some more of the other patron vehicles left. At last, the parking lot empty, he pulled out of the parking lot and started to drive slowly down the road.
The police officer, having patiently waited all this time, now started up the patrol car, put on the flashing lights, and promptly pulled the man over and carried out a breathalyzer test. To his amazement the breathalyzer indicated no evidence of the man having consumed any alcohol at all! Dumbfounded, the officer said, "I'll have to ask you to accompany me to the police station. This breathalyzer equipment must be broken."
"I doubt it," said the truly proud Texan. "Tonight I'm the designated decoy."
Y'know, this is just what I needed. Everything has been going just too well for me. Retirement is great! My financials are looking good. Fortunately, I don't have to rely on IBM stock. Ever since I outed TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name) as IBM, the stock has gone into the shitter. See assholes, you shouldn't have paid me to leave early.
Paul wrote in the comments that he couldn't understand how I allowed my PC to get trashed. I mean, here I am, someone who was once a highly paid, highly trained, and highly motivated I/T professional and I allowed my PC to get trashed. How did that happen? Here's how. I was spoiled.
I used to work on real computers with real operating systems. Yep! I was a mainframe systems programmer. We had an acronym for our hardware and software: RAS. RAS stood for Reliability, Availability, and Servicability. MVS runs 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
Both my sister and I were programmers. She was an applications programmer who actually had to write code. I was a systems programmer who just had to make code work. I didn't write code other than JCL (Job Control Language). I knew enough Assembler to do debug when assembles failed. I did reverse engineer enough Assembler code to build logon screens, but once I had the template, I was able to go from there. I kept telling my friends Richard and Mike (who actually could write code) that I wasn't as smart as they thought I was but they never believed me. Same with my sister.
Speaking of my sister, she was a programmer, but it is her husband who does all the PC work in their household. Just because we used to be programmers doesn't mean that we are good with PC's. Like I said, we worked with real computers that ran solid dependable software, not shit like Windoze and Internet Explorer.
I really got pissed off at IBM in the early 90's. OS/2 blew the doors off Windoze. It was a multitasking operating system that came out five years before Windoze 95. But, since no one used it, no one wrote applications for it. Since no one wrote applications for it (other than Lotus), no one used it. They had a superior product with a five year head start and they blew it. IBM still uses OS/2 internally for service processors on their mainframes but runs Windoze on all their employees' PC's.
I consider my PC as an appliance like a stove or refrigerator. I expect to turn it on and have it work just like my television. It is inexcusable to have an operating system and applications with abysmal security like Microsoft products. Bill Gates should be ashamed of himself for selling shitty products, but he's laughing all the way to the bank.
So now I've been forced into learning more about PC's than I want to. I'm almost back to normal. I've installed multiple security products and have removed most of the adware and spyware off of my computer. All that's left is the stuff that I will have to remove manually. That means I'm gonna have to go and edit my Registry. Like I really want to do that.
I'm too old to learn this shit. Rachel Lucas installed Movable Type for me. I paid someone to install MT Blacklist for me. Jesse installed MT Approval and finally fixed my comment spam problems. I don't want to have to be a programmer anymore. I'm retired, dammit!
It's amazing that the American public tolerates crap like Microsoft writes, but when Microsoft is a virtual monopoly what options are there? An operating system should not allow anyone to write anything on a user's PC without permission of the user. That means permission should be granted before cookies or any other crap can be written on a computer. That should be minimum standards. That should also be a law. Any violations should be punished by hefty fines. If Microsoft didn't write crap, we wouldn't have these problems.
If posting continues to be light it is because I'm going through the books and learning more than I want to know. My Earthlink Mail is trashed (But I do have Webmail so anything sent to me in the past three days I can access.) and I will probably have to reinstall that to recover all my old mail.
Maybe this is what I needed to piss me off so I can start writing good stuff again.
Isn't the protection racket illegal? You know, where thugs go into a business and tell the owner that for a percentage of his income they'll "protect" his business. If he doesn't pay them, bad things seem to happen. That's extortion and that is illegal.
Why isn't the computer protection racket illegal?
You've seen it, the little box that pops up and says "Your computer is infected with spyware."
Yeah. You put it there you farking asshole.
Then, the program offers you the opportunity to remove the spyware or adware that it installed if you buy their product. This should be illegal. It should be illegal for anyone to install stuff on your computer that you haven't requested.
It's always gotta be a few people who screw things up for the rest of us. It's times like these that I wish I weren't an atheist and that there were a hell. There would be a special place just for telemarketeers, spammers, comment spammers, virus writers, adware writers and popup writers. They're all scum!
What I would like to see is some young hero coders take on some of these buttwipes. Write some code that would attack the servers of the companies that write adware programs. Give these bastards a taste of their own medicine.
Extortion is illegal and computer extortion should be illegal also.
The GOCputer is semihosed. Some Trojan programs got on my hard drive and my performance has gone down the shitter. I got most of them off and I'm doing some housekeeping (defragging my hard drive, updating my Earthlink code to add spyware protection) but it looks like it might be a while until I'm back to normal, so posting may be light for the next few days.
Arrrggghhhh! What we need to do is pay hackers to go after companies responsible for adware. spam, and popups. Assholes!
Click on picture for a larger view.
Sent to me by my friend Richard. If anyone knows who created this let me know so I can give that person credit.
Update: It's over already? No fair!
Bill sent me an email asking me what I thought of Time Magazine naming Atlanta's mayor, Shirley Franklin, as one of the top five mayors in the country. Hmmm. Let me see. Compared to Bill Campbell, our last mayor, who was incredibly corrupt (Of course me saying Bill Campbell was corrupt is racist. That's his defense. The people out to get him are all racists.) and who left the city treasury in a terrible shape, even Cynthia McCommie would look good. She's an idiot. She's not a crook like Bill Campbell.
I will hand it to Shirley. She has done more good than bad. She was left with a large deficit by the above mentioned Bill Campbell. She was forced to raise taxes. She did cut the city budget but not enough.
She was the first mayor to finally address Atlanta's sewer system. All the other previous mayors, Maynard Jackson, Andrew Young, Maynard again, and Bill Campbell let the problem fester. The gummint was fining the city on a daily basis for dumping so much untreated sewage into the Chattahoochee River.
Set the Wayback Machine Sherman. Way back when, a solution was proposed to drill a tunnel to transfer waste from one end of Atlanta to a treatment center on the other end. There was just one thing wrong. It was a racist tunnel. It was going to be underneath black neighborhoods. That's why it was never built. Remember, in Atlanta, all politics is racial.
They have finally started drilling a politically correct tunnel. It is running under white neighborhoods. Taxes have been raised to support the project. It could have been done a lot cheaper 20 years ago. Shirley is trying to get the state to pay for part of it.
I really only have two things to say against Shirley. She is trying to mandate a $10.50 per hour minimum wage for companies wanting city contracts. The other thing is the suit the city filed against Druid Hills Country Club because they will not allow club privileges to gay partners.
Shirley is doing a pretty fair job as mayor. She's a damn site better than Bill Campbell.
I've decided to end my retirement. I'm going back to work and have purchased a Mammogram franchise from the guy in the picture.
Thanks to Charlieb.
Today's Monday Pun is from Toren Smith. I wish he would start blogging again.
Butch the Rooster
John the farmer was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young hens called pullets and eight or ten roosters, whose job was to fertilize the eggs.
The farmer kept records and any rooster that didn't perform went into the soup pot and was replaced. That took an awful lot of his time so he bought a set of tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone so John could tell from a distance, which rooster was performing. Now he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report simply by listening to the bells.
The farmers favorite rooster was old Butch, a very fine specimen he was too. But on this particular morning John noticed old Butch's bell hadn't rung at all! John went to investigate. The other roosters were chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing. The pullets, hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover.
But, to Farmer John's amazement, Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring. He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one. John was so proud of Butch, he entered him in the county fair and Butch became an overnight sensation among the judges.
The result...
The judges not only awarded Butch the "No Bell Piece Prize" but they also awarded him the "Pulletsurprise" as well.
Clearly Butch was a Politician in the making. Who else could figure out how to win two of the most highly coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when
they weren't paying attention?
Unlike Blogtoberfest I lasted the entire weekend this time.
It was colder at Jekyll Island than it was in Atlanta. All I took were short sleeve t-shirts. Fortunately, Friday and Saturday nights we gathered in Pumpman's room. We did a lot of pickin', grinnin', and singing. I had a surprise in store for everyone. I sang Rocky Racoon and during the part of the song when Paul would go doo doo doodoo doo doo doo, I whipped out my handy dandy kazoo and played it. I also used it when Jim played Del Shannon's Runaway. The nice thing about Jim coming to these gatherings is that it insures that I won't be the oldest codger there. He's got me beat by one year.
Eric asked me to play some Bach on my guitar, but I hadn't had enough to drink warmed up yet and I hadn't played it in a while so I blew it. Next meetup I'll get it back and hopefully, I'll have relearned the Bouree.
Saturday, we sat outside behind our rooms and drank. We were joined by some college kids for a while and then they went off to the beach.
The lovely Georgia had shoveled the trash out of Pumpman's room so it would be ready to get trashed again Saturday night.
Kim set this all up. We were originally going to have a conference room to party in but they said no drinking and smoking was allowed. That's why we used Pumpman's room.
I was very happy to see Key again. I hadn't seen her since the first blogger meetup in Dahlonaga. That was right before she started her blog. I hadn't seen Kelley since the Atlanta meetup year before last.
I met some new people at this meetup:
Yeah, I met more, but at my advanced age these are the only ones I can put faces to.
Every blog meetup I go to, I always miss out on actually spending some time with a few new faces. It's like I can only meet four or five new people at every meetup. I have the same problem with the Sommelier Guild. I've been a member for four years and I only know about 2/3 of the members.
It was good seeing all the regulars that I do know. Catfish was Catfish. He's an original. He reminds me of my buddy Wahoo who also grew up in South Carolina.
On Saturday Catfish, Eric, and Kim played half rubber and the argument broke out as to whether it was invented in South Carolina or Georgia. At least there were no cars to hit like when they played in Helen.
Pictures were taken and are being posted as I write. For example, a picture of me with a guitar in my hand is here
I was much better behaved on this trip. I was able to party both nights and best of all I didn't wake up either morning in bed with Dax like I did at Helen.
Since I will be at the Wrecklyll In Jekyll Georgia Writers Workshop on Saturday, I'll post Saturday Boobage today. You're welcome.
In honor of April 15, I'm posting a joke my sis' former neighbor sent me.
The Internal Revenue sent one of their auditors to a synagogue. The auditor is doing all the checks and then turns to the Rabbi, and says, "I noticed that you buy a lot of candles."
"Yes," answered the Rabbi.
Well, Rabbi, what do you do with the candle drippings?" he asked.
"A good question," noted the Rabbi. "We actually save them up and when we have enough, we send them back to the candle maker and every now and then, they send us a free box of candles."
"Oh," replied the auditor somewhat disappointed that his unusual question actually had a practical answer. So he thought he'd go on, in his obnoxious way... "Rabbi, what about all these matzo purchases? What do you do with the crumbs from the matzo?"
"Ah, yes," replied the Rabbi calmly, "we actually collect up all the crumbs from the matzo and when we have enough, we send them in a box back to the manufacturer and every now and then, they send a box of matzo balls."
"Oh," replied the auditor, thinking hard how to fluster the Rabbi. "Well, Rabbi," he went on, "what do you do with all the foreskins from the circumcisions?"
"Yes, here too, we do not waste," answered the Rabbi. "What we do is save up all the foreskins, and when we have enough we actually send them to the Internal Revenue Service."
"The IRS????" questioned the auditor in disbelief.
"Ah, yes," replied the Rabbi, ...and about once a year, they send us a little prick like you"
I filed my taxes on Tuesday. I'm getting $6 back from the Feds. Pretty good planning on my part. I hate to loan the gummint money interest free. That's what overwithholding does. I owe Georgia money. I always do.
I know how to straighten out the tax code real quick. Move election day to April 16. Tell the politicians to simplify the code or they won't get reelected. I would love to see a bunch of politicians lose their jobs over our Byzantine tax code. Hell, even the IRS doesn't understand half of it. Shall I retell my audit story?
I invested in a dubious tax shelter about 20 some odd years ago. One of the investors got audited and the IRS gave him numbers that they approved. I filed an amended return using those numbers. I got audited. When I informed the auditor that the numbers I was using had been OK'ed by the IRS he told me that it was a different office that did that. The rules change from office to office? Evidently so. He told me I could pay up or take them to court. Paying was cheaper.
The liberals at the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation have their panties in a wad again. Y'see, the "working poor" who take loans against their refunds to get the money sooner are being exploited by having to pay exorbitant interest rates. This is just wrong to take advantage of these poor people.
Cry me a farking river! They can't wait another two weeks for their refund? That's about what it takes with e-file. And a lot of these poor exploited people don't even pay taxes. Thanks to the Earned Income Tax Credit, the gummint gives them money. What's wrong? Can't wait two more weeks for the handout? Gotta buy the beer, cigarettes, and lottery tickets.
Yeah. I'm a heartless bastard. I get that way every year about this time. I love sending money to Washington for politicians to throw it away on stuff that must have the Founding Fathers spinning in their graves.
Just when was it that the Republicans decided that they could outspend the Dimocrats? They've always been willing to outspend them on defense, but at least they would try to starve widows and orphans to save money. Whatever happened to making old folks eat dog food so they could afford prescription drugs? Whatever happened to declaring catsup a vegetable? That's the Republican Party I want to see.
I pay my taxes to support the military industrial complex. All this goody goody social safety net crap has got to go. I want to see poor people suffering dammit!
I pay taxes. Give me my money's worth.
My sister hates it when I do stuff about 24 since she doesn't watch it so she doesn't know what I'm writing about. I'll admit I got hooked on it this season, but I had to quit taking it seriously after Jack faked the store holdup to slow the terrorist down long enough for Potato Face to get a satellite into position. I'm also not doing any more updates other than pointing out some amazing things in the plot, like the Mummy's ability to walk right past CTU folks and travel faster than airplanes. TWoP does a much better job than I could ever do. I love the nicknames. Potato Face, Bitchelle, Soul Patch, Lispy Skip, et. al.
I see they also do Alias. Alas no good nicknames. Why not CL (Collagen Lips) for Sydney?
Watching 24 takes me back to my last six years at IBM. I see so many similarities between CTU and I/T Support for IBM I/T Education Services. I think it's still I/T Education Services. They change the name every other year or so. I worked in IBM education in the same building for 19 years and had about six different job titles working for about eight different divisions but only performed two jobs: Technical Instructor and Systems Programmer. Reorganization is one of IBM's core functions.
At the start of this season, CTU had Driscoll, a CDSMŽ (Clueless Dipshit Manager). I worked for a CDSMŽ for six years.
Potato Face is the best worker they have but is somewhat temperamental. I can relate to that. She used initiative to help Jack and left management out of the loop. Yep. I can relate to that too. She did the right thing and that made Driscoll look like an idiot. Yep. Been there, done that. Then what did Driscoll do? She shitcanned her most talented employee. I wasn't the most talented employee anymore. My CDSMŽ took care of that about three years after I started working for him.
Driscoll gave Potato Face a deal. IBM gave me a package. Let me say I'm not bitter about leaving. I had informed management that I was gonna retire at the end of 2004. They let me leave in October and gave me three months pay as a going away present. Had I not tipped my hand, I might have been able to get six months pay.
I've been waiting for a Diversity Meeting to break out at CTU but then, they have a female manager, a black guy, and a black chick (a temp, who dies, but that counts). With the return of Soul Patch they have an Hispanic. They need a gay and a crip and they'd be all set. Maybe Lispy Skip is gay.
Driscoll didn't listen to Curtis when he warned her about the black chick. Driscoll wouldn't listen to Jack. My CDSMŽ wouldn't listen to my team lead or me when we tried to tell him shit.
With all the meetings CTU has it's amazing they get anything done. In one episode they must have had five different meetings. The Mummy calls up one of his minions and tells him to take care of shit. Driscoll calls a meeting. We did the same thing at IBM.
We had a Project Manager in my department that I named the PMICOUM (Project Manager In Charge Of Useless Meetings). Whenever a problem came up he would say, "We will have to hold a meeting on this." and did we ever hold some meetings. There wasn't a problem that he couldn't try to meeting to death. Sometimes the people bitching about problems got tired of all the meetings and shut up and went away. Hey. Whatever works. PMICOUM would fit in real well at CTU.
Train wreck. "We will have to hold a meeting on this."
SecDef kidnapped. "We will have to hold a meeting on this."
Nuke plant meltdowns. "We will have to hold a meeting on this."
Relating CTU to IBM makes a lot more of the plot clear. My department went through considerable downsizing my last three years there. In fact, in a discussion on staffing a potential project, when my team lead said that CDSMŽ was planning on understaffing it, CDSMŽ said, "They told me I couldn't cut 50% of my staff and still produce, but I did."
My team lead wouldn't say shit if he had a mouthful, but this was the only time I ever saw him pissed off. I was on the phone so I didn't rise up out of my chair and try to choke CDSMŽ.
So that explains Potato Face getting canned. Driscoll was supposed to cut head count. Bitchell had to fire Special Agent Breck to create a space to bring Potato Face back. And now I understand another way CTU downsizing works. All they have to do is send an agent out with Jack, and he's dead. Instant downsizing. (It's kinda like watching Star Trek reruns. The dude you've never seen before, in the red top, is the guy who's gonna die. I think they had one spare uniform and they gave it to the soon to be dead guy.)It all makes perfect sense now. They have IBM managers helping them write the scripts.
So next week the terrorists are gonna steal a nuke. They have the section of the playbook with the activation codes. Whatever is CTU gonna do?
PMICOUM knows what to do.
"We will have to hold a meeting on this."
Flipper's at it again. He's performing his Algore sore loser imitation and is claiming voter fraud and intimidation.
''Last year too many people were denied their right to vote, too many who tried to vote were intimidated,'' the Massachusetts senator said at an event sponsored by the state League of Women Voters.
Of course he has no proof of this but he's a liberal. He don't need no steeeenking proof!
Kerry backers have said voting irregularities in largely Democratic areas made it difficult for voters to cast ballots in the November election.
Lemme get this straight. Since these were "largely Demcratic areas" they would be Dimocrat precincts. Who runs the polls in Dimocrat precincts? That's like Florida. The people who had the most trouble with the ballot (designed by a Dimocrat, by the way) were Dimocrats.
Kerry also cited examples Sunday of how people were duped into not voting.''Leaflets are handed out saying Democrats vote on Wednesday, Republicans vote on Tuesday. People are told in telephone calls that if you've ever had a parking ticket, you're not allowed to vote,'' he said.
What Kerry didn't say is that the people dumb enough to fall for these ploys tend to vote for Dimocrats, which doesn't say to much for your average Dimocrat. I wonder if we could get some Cynthia McCommie voters to believe this shit? (Actually Neal Boortz got into trouble a few elections back for announcing different voting dates for Dimocrats and Republicans. The powers that be were afraid that too many Dimocrat voters would actually believe it.) Anyone dumb enough to believe this stuff is too stupid to vote.
And speaking of someone too stupid to vote, I cite an example from Sunday's Atlanta Urinal and Constipation. In the letters section, Kriste Kline, of Lawrenceville Georgia wrote about the bill requiring Georgia voters to produce a Photo ID to vote. An excerpt:
Like Reed, I do not see this as being about race, but rather power. Oddly, I recall no outcry from the Georgia lawmakers who now claim to be concerned about fraud regarding the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands in Ohio last November.
Probably because it didn't happen. And even Michael Moore didn't say "hundreds of thousands". Kriste, I want you to remember that in the next election Republicans will vote on Tuesday and Dimocrats will vote on Wednesday and if you've ever had a parking ticket, you can't vote.
It's right there in the Constitution. Somewhere.
Only two things:
1. The Mummy is brilliant! He knew where the football was gonna be because he was within driving distance. He only had a one hour headstart on the CTU helicopter but still beat it by twenty minutes.
2. The quickest way to death on this show is to accompany Jack on any mission.
Now go over here and read the good updates.
Another one from Richard.
Joe was convicted of attempted murder. He trained a talking bird to drive his wife to suicide. The bird would constantly repeat, "End it all" and "Life is not worth living." Joe was found guilty after the bird performed in court. The bird was not convicted because ...
it was a mynah.
One of my commenters, who obviously works for IBM, asked me to do some more IBM posts. Looking back at my 31.5 years at IBM, I can recall a lot of lunacy. I've written about quality programs at IBM before. This post was about sumpin' we had at IBM called Market Driven Quality. I couldn't identify the name then because I was still working at IBM and didn't want to mention the name.
Market Driven Quality occurred near the end of John Akers' disasterous reign as IBM's CEO. It went along with Six Sigma and sumpin' called the 5 Ups. I never could figger out 5 Ups. I just called them Stand up, Fuck Up, Throw Up, STFU, and Give Up.
Market Driven Quality was announced at town hall meetings throughout the country. We had one here in Atlanta. We spent a day in an auditoriom listening to speakers talk about Six Sigma and the Malcolm Baldridge Award. They scheduled the most boring speaker right after lunch so we could sleep through his presentation which we did.
Unfortunately, the people who put on this dog and pony show had no conception of adult learning principles. There was only one break before lunch and only one break in the afternoon. So, we had to listen to two hours of bullshit before we could have a break. The attention span of an adult is between 45 minutes and an hour. When I was an instructor, I never went more than an hour between breaks. The upshot of this is half of what they told us was missed by over 50% of the audience and was thus a waste of time.
I wrote a Speakup and said that if we were really gonna bet our company on this we should have done it right, i. e. a break every hour. If that made it last two days, so be it.
The answer was that they couldn't afford to do two days of it. In other words, they told me that they weren't really serious about this and it was just another FQP (Quality Program).
But we still had to waste time going to Green Hat School where we walked a carpet and tied knots in a rope while standing up blindfolded. I documented this bullshit in the post referenced above.
We also were gonna shoot for Six Sigma in everything we did. For those who don't know, Six Sigma is three defects per one million. Now, I was an instructor/programmer at this time. What did we do that had defects that we could correct? Never fear! IBM management may be incompetent but it can be creative. There were things we could fix.
To achieve Six Sigma we needed to perform a procedure called Scoping A Process. This was an end to end look at a process. You are supposed to be able to scope any process. We even had an instructor who worked overtime to put together a four hour class on Scoping A Process.
I am not making this up. The process we scoped was making sure there were enough pencils in the class opening package. The class opening package usually consisted of a tent card (for the student's name), a tablet of writing paper, emergency location form, an information packet, and a pencil for each student. We were gonna track the class opening package for every class we taught and make sure that the package had a pencil for each student. If not, we would provide feedback to the administrative people who put together the class opening package.
I don't know if we ever reached Six Sigma on the pencils in the packet. About two months later we stopped tracking pencils and they laid off the instructor who taught us how to scope the process. I guess they figgered if she had enough time to learn how to scope a process she wasn't doing her regular job.
It wasn't too long after that that Akers decided to break IBM up into little companies that Scott Adams would call Battling Business Units. My division became Skill Dynamics, but that's another story.
Like I said, in 31.5 years I witnessed a lot of incompetence and lunacy.
I did a Priceless series last year. A.O. sent me two more pictures to post.
I think I know one of those girls. Next time I see her I'm gonna ask her what sorority she was in.
I'm thinking of selling my house and joining a biker gang.
Nancy sent me this.
I started to do a post about how the Dims in Georgia have their panties in a wad about the Republicans passing a law stating that you had to show a photo id in order to vote. After all, in Atlanta all politics is racial and requiring prople to actually prove that they are who they say they are in order to vote is racist. There's no voter fraud in Georgia, the Dims say, so this law obviously is racist.
You would think that I could do a full bore rant on this topic and I tried, but the post sucked. Y'see, I got more important stuff on my mind.
Next weekend is the Wrekyll in Jekyll Georgia Writers Workshop and I've been doing some guitar work.
This is about the time my sister starts saying what a blah post this is. She hates my 24 posts since she doesn't watch 24 and doesn't have a clue as to what I'm writing about.
What she doesn't understand is that I'm not writing this blog for her but for myself.
I read sumpin' the other day that some Lamestream Media guy said that we bloggers were a bunch of people who used to write letters to the editor but now blog. Bingo! That's why I started blogging. The Atlanta Urinal and Constipation wouldn't publish every letter I sent (My acceptance rate was actually 30%) so they obviously didn't recognize perceptive writing when they read it. Fuck 'em! I'll blog and everything I write will be published.
Do I care if I get readership? Of course I do. Anyone who says differently is lying. I know one blogger who says he doesn't give a crap, but he has Sitemeter installed and he keeps track of his hits.
As I said, I have more important stuff on my mind.
I impressed a few people last year in Helen with my guitar playing. Pumpman thinks that I have a rather unique finger picking style. Many guitarists use a thumb and two finger picking style. I use a thumb and three finger picking style that also works with classical (I can do a little of that). Last year I played some Bach and was thinking of relearning another Bach piece but have been too lazy to sit down and do it. Instead, yesterday, I started trying to figger out Can't Find My Way Home written by Steve Winwood when he was with Blind Faith. That song works with my picking style.
I didn't know all the words and I don't happen to have the album so it was off to the Internet. I found some good sites and even found one that had the sheet music. It had all the chords for the verses but I would have to pay extra for the refrain. It turns out that this music was almost exactly what I had figgered out by ear.
I do this little rundown off a D chord for some songs I have written that seemed to work with this song. It turns out that this is actually a variation on a G chord with a bass rundown on the A string. My picking style is perfect. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not Eric clapton. Blind Faith did a guitar overdub anyway.
So now I have the verses. Practice. Practice. Practice. I have said before: I am a lazy slob, but when it comes to music I will practice until my fingers fall off.
I'm having problems with the refrain. I can do a simple version, but that doesn't sound right with the chords and picking I do on the verses. Also, I haven't heard this song in a while and I'm not completely sure if I'm singing the refrain properly.
I guess it would help if I actually read music. I found a site that has the tab for it and it says the first chord is a D7sus which appears to be identical with the Gsus/C I see in the sheet music I got from another site. Arrrgggghhhh! I wish I knew some pickers in Atlanta to play with.
So, as you can see, I have more important things on my mind than politics. Hopefully, I'll have this song figgered out before the Georgia Writers Workshop.
It really doesn't matter. Everyone will be too drunk anyway.
Sent to me by Chum731. The story:
This is a $375,000 Fountain powerboat that was only 1 week old. The owner was going 80 MPH when he made a sharp turn. It threw him and his passenger out of the boat. He didn't have the kill switch on so the boat kept going until a tree stopped it. Expensive lesson in safety features....
This happened on Lake Hartwell in Georgia. We don't just drive fast on our freeways. We do it on our lakes also.
There are days when I have multiple subjects to write about and then there are days like today. One of the bad things about retiring from IBM is losing the great material my job gave me.
I could talk about CLAIM (I called it SHTS - Stupid Hourly Tracking System), a bogus time tracking system we used and how I made up most of my numbers. When I built a system it would be used by multiple curicula so I had to figger out how many hours to charge against each department. Every Friday I spent about 20 minutes entering bogus numbers. It was fun!
There was always sumpin' to write about my CDSMŽ (Clueless Dipshit Manager). He hired me for my technical expertise but refused to listen to me when I told him why a particular project wouldn't work because the decision had to be made many levels of management above me. I still had to attend useless weekly conference calls talking to the Germans about naming standards. I came in hungover one Friday morning and went off on a rant during the call about how this was a waste of time, we did things the easy way because we were capitalists, and they did things the hard way because they were socialists. We supported the same number of classes with 1/3 of the manpower. I hung up and did some productive work instead. The project, which I named Death Spiral, went on for another year. Nothing was accomplished except wasting time on conference calls.
I could also write about the mandatory diversity classes we had to attend every year. One year, one of our project managers volunteered to run the annual meeting. He informed us that he was gay (like we didn't already know?) and played a video about a 99 year old black lesbian. Very uplifting! Yeah. Sure.
It was around this time that my friends, Michael and Cindy, and I saw a special on MSNBC about transgenders and transvestites. One of the cross dressers worked for IBM. I was proud to admit that at IBM we valued diversity.
Cindy came up with a delicious idea but I knew that I would never be able to pull it off. She wanted me to get a copy of this program from MSNBC. Then I would volunteer to do the next diversity meeting. I would introduce the video saying that this was sumpin' very important to me. Everyone would think that I was gonna have a video about disabled people. After the video I would say that yes, I was a cross dresser and finding braces that would work with high heels was a real pain in the ass. Like I said, I knew I would not be able to keep a straight face and pull this off.
Do I miss my job? Nope! I miss some of my coworkers. I sometimes miss the work itself. Building systems from scratch was fun and I was good at it. I got pretty good at SNA networking and TCPIP. I was awesome at hardware configuration, but then, I wrote the class to teach it to customers. I don't miss all of the bureaucratic bullshit and incompetent management I had to deal with and at IBM there was a lot of both.
I finally achieved my major goal in life and that was to be a lazy slob, which is what I am now.
So, I'm really in a lazy mood tonight and I don't really have anything to write about. I'll have to see if I can find sumpin' to piss me off tomorrow.
I didn't do a 24 update last night because there was just too much bullshit!
Jack's talking to Chloe. "Hey, you're back!"
No thanks to you asshole! You got her fired. When you got back to CTU you could have asked Driscoll where she was and then jumped in her shit because she fired Chloe for helping you. Dipshit!
The babe who was balling the Air Force dude got killed. I didn't think we'd see her again. What's with the FBI only sending one special agent to the apartment? Don't FBI people travel in pairs?
Whatever happened to the SecDef's son? Is he still in sensory deprivation?
Yhey figgered out that an F117 is after Air Force One. How come the Air Force didn't immediately scramble fighters to protect Air Force One?
Also, at this time, the pilots on Air Force One are not gonna listen to the President. They're gonna reverse course and take evasive action.
How the fark did the Mummy escape?
The fact that there was a missing family of an Air Force pilot slipped throught CTU because Edgar was too busy. If the stupid bitch hadn't fired Sarah that wouldn't have happened. She's as incompetent as Driscoll. She's younger and has better tits but she's still in a job beyond her abilities. Now we find out she's been balling the guy from Division.
There was some interchange between Chloe and Edgar but I missed it because there was an Amber Alert and rather than putting it on the crawl the local Fox affiliate decided to do an audio so I didn't have a clue as to what Chloe and Edgar were talking about. It was probably bureaucratic bullshit. The longer I watch 24 and see CTU in action the more I am reminded of IBM.
Doesn't CTU have a 2nd and 3rd shift or are all of these people expected to work 24 hours a day 7 days a week?
And now we come to the piece de resistance.
Paul has just gone through traumatic surgery. He has a bullet that has nicked his spinal cord and he is paralyzed from the waist down. This dude would not be sitting up in bed and be lucid. He would be in spinal shock. Any triage nurse, ICU nurse, or any nurse familiar with spinal cord injuries would have been calling bullshit on this episode.
First off, Paul would still be under sedation. He would have IV's in both arms. He would probably have gastro problems. He would have a catheter in his dick. He would have fluid around the heart. He would have circulation problems below his level of spinal cord injury. He would be on all sorts of monitors. He would have a morphine pump with a button that he could push every time he felt pain, which I can guarantee was continuously. I can also tell you that he would not have even recognized Audrey. Been there. Done that. What do you want to bet that at the end of the season he rolls out in a wheelchair? Bull! Shit!
And more bullshit: They can perform major surgery on a dude, but they cannot sedate a mental patient and put her in a straitjacket?
I like this program, but it just keeps making me do a willing suspension of disbelief.
Or, it makes me feel like I'm back working at IBM.
I can not farking believe it! The Photoshop pro, Matt, at Starktruth.com did it again. If only the Blogosphere existed back in the 60's and 70's.
Neal Boortz has an online poll on today's Nealz Nuze as to whether the Washed Up Treasonous Skanky Slut should appear on his program. I was torn between the "Yes, but only if she wears the Barbarella outfit" (until I visualized what that would look like on her today - eeeeewwwww!) and the "Yes, and then Neal can take call after call from Vietnam Vets. They probably have a few things to say to her." I decided I'd really like to hear her have to answer to a bunch of 'Nam vets. Ain't gonna happen, but I can dream.
So Jane Fonda is out hawking her new book. What's its title? I Am A Washed Up Treasonous Skanky Slut? That's what the title should be.
I've despised Jane Fonda ever since she went to North Viet Nam and betrayed her country. As far as I'm concerned, when she returned to the United States she should have been given a fair trial, convicted of treason, and strapped into Ol' Sparky.
Why did this not happen? She aided and abetted the enemy. She made propaganda broadcasts from Hanoi. She had the picture of herself on the anti-airraft gun. That sure fits the definition of treason to me.
I don't even think she's a very good actress, but then, I've only seen two of her movies, both pre-treason. One was Cat Balou and the other was Barbarella. In both of those pictures she played someone smarter than she was, altho' Cat and Barbarella were both airheads. Says a lot about Hanoi Jane's intelligence.
I have refused to watch any Jane Fonda movie since I got out of the service. OK, I take it back, I did watch Barbarella once.
She was oh so upset about the "poor North Vietnamese" and how evil our war was. After the war, when the "poor North Vietnamese" were killing South Vietnamese or rounding them up to be sent to re-education centers she was strangely silent.
When Joan Baez, who said she may have been wrong about Viet Nam and communism in light of the killing fields of Cambodia, called up Jane and asked her to get involved she told her that she didn't have the time. She had to flit off to one of her other liberal causes.
Fonda is a one of those typical Hollywood liberals (She has moved to Atlanta and now we're stuck with the bitch) who think communists can do no wrong. She is among the group of Hollywood liberals that Victor Davis Hanson described when he wrote:
Ignorance and arrogance are a lethal combination. Nowhere do we see that more clearly among writers and performers who pontificate as historians when they know nothing about history.
I wish I had written that.
One of my commenters wrote to me that Roger Vadim said that when he was living with Jane Fonda it was like babysitting Lenin. I wonder if Lenin ever indulged in three ways?
I never have understood why all these rich East and West Coast liberals are so in love with socialism. Don't they realize that under true socialism they would lose all their wealth and privilege? Obviously not.
I have been to Russia and I saw first hand what socialism did to that country. The old USSR had massive national resources. It should have been a rich country. Socialism prevented that.
I took a riverboat trip from Moscow to St. Petersberg. We would stop at various towns and take tours. The buses were all beat to crap relics. Many of the people were beggars. What a waste!
But Fonda and her ilk think that socialism could succeed here as long as the right people are in charge.
Just imagine Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, and Jane Fonda running the country.
And as long as we're on the subject of clueless liberals, Peter Yarrow (of Peter Paul and Mary, or as I like to call them, Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest) thinks we should help the poor Vietnamese. Fuck 'em! What about the poor Cambodians Pete? What about them, you liberal dipshit?
So, no, I won't be buying a copy of Jane Fonda's book. The only thing I would buy Jane Fonda would be a ticket to ride Ol' Sparky.
Is there a statue of limitations on treason?
For today's Monday Pun I have gone way back into the archives to select this one from Richard.
The golfing world is celebrating a new invention that promises to revolutionize the sport. The new device that is receiving so much attention is called the "bee nut." It is a fastening attachment that allows players to adjust the heads on their clubs to any angle, saving
the need to carry a bagful of clubs. Thus, for xample, a player can use the same club to putt or get out of a sand trap. Golf clubs with this modification are selling quickly, and players are taking golfing picnics ...,
so they can try their new "bee-nut putter sand-wedge."
Long time readers know that I am an atheist but I am not anti-religion. I envy the people who can have faith in a divine being. I also respect most religions even though I may have disagreements with their philosophies. Currently, I don't have much respect for Muslims and their religion, mainly for their intolerance of other religions, how they treat their women and their belief in jihad.
I admired the Pope. I disagreed with him on contraception and celibacy for priests but overall, I think he was a very good Pope. He apologized for many of the excesses of the Catholic Church. Remember the Inquisition? He visited mosques and synagogues. He met with the Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Gorbachev gave him a lot of credit for the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.
This Pope was like a rock star. I was in Washington D.C attending a computer class when the Pope visited. The people lined the streets to wave to him as he went by. I climbed up on a light pole so I could take a picture of him as he passed. This was before the Popemobile. I walked down to the Mall and observed the Mass on the Mall.
My first trip to Rome included a Papal Audience. The Vatican has a huge auditorium where this occurred. The Pope entered from the rear and walked down the center aisle. Every twenty feet or so he would stop and get up on a step stool and bless the people. This counted as blessing religious paraphanalia people might have like crucifixes and rosaries.
When the Pope reached the stage and sat down various priests would rise and list the attendees. A German prist would announce the groups from Germany. The Pope would then address those groups in German. A Spanish priest would announce the groups from Spain and Latin America and the Pope would address them in Spanish. I believe it was a British and not an American priest who introduced us.
I saw the Pope one other time and that was on a Sunday in St. Peter's Square. The Square was packed with people. Of course, someone had a guitar and was playing it while others were singing to the Pope. He eventually appeared at his window and the crowd cheered. They really loved this Pope. He made a speech in Italian and blessed the crowd.
For many people, this is the only Pope they have known. He was the third longest reigning Pope. I was raised Catholic and there have been five Popes in my lifetime: Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II.
There is currently a movement to canonize Pius XII. John Paul II was a better Pope.
RIP Giovanni Paolo II
Here's a French joke that John sent me.
An American is having breakfast one morning (coffee, croissants, bread, butter and jam) when a Frenchman, chewing bubble-gum, sits down next to him. The American ignores the Frenchman who, nevertheless, starts a conversation.
Frenchman: "You American folk eat the whole bread??"
American (in a bad mood): "Of course."
Frenchman: (after blowing a huge bubble) "We don't. In France, we only eat what's inside. The crusts we collect in a container, recycle it, transform them into croissants and sell them to the states." The Frenchman has a smirk on his face.
The American listens in silence.
The Frenchman persists: "Do you eat jelly with the bread??"
American: "Of Course."
Frenchman: (cracking his bubble-gum between his teeth and chuckling).
"We don't. In France we eat fresh fruit for breakfast, then we put all the peels, seeds, and leftovers in containers, recycle them, transform them into jam and sell the jam to the states."
After a moment of silence, The American then asks: "Do you have sex in France?"
Frenchman: "Why of course we do", he says with a big smirk.
American: "And what do you do with the condoms once you've used them?"
Frenchman: "We throw them away, of course."
American: "We don't. In America, we put them in a container, recycle them, melt them down into bubble-gum and sell them to France."
Today's Saturday Boobage has a patriotic theme. It was sent to me by Ron and it is the proper way to unfold the flag.
HOW TO UNFOLD THE FLAG
OK, listen up, we always hear about how to fold a flag properly...
But, did anyone ever show you how to unfold a flag properly???
Luckily enough, I'm here to save the day!!!
Make sure you take the proper steps in the proper order, otherwise things won't come out right!!!
First: You have to Locate Your Flag.
Second: Firmly Grasp the Edges.... and Pull, Slightly....
Lastly. Observe..In Quiet Reverence....
End of Lesson....
GOD BLESS AMERICA!
And the owners of its BIG, BOLD, Fine Boobage!
Arentcha getting tired of people looking to be offended? I sure am. There was a black woman in Georgia earlier this year who accused a police officer of being racist because he was eating a banana. And of course there were the two black ladies who got offended by a flight attended saying, "Eenie meenie miney moe, get a seat it's time to go."
The
All I can say is GMAFB! We have people in this country who get up in the morning and look to be offended. I am getting sick of it. To all of those people I have this to say, "Get a farking life! Quit being so freaking sensitive! Develop a sense of humor."
Or, just GFY!
Leslie sent me the following letter and told me it would probably give Pumpman heart failure. It could actually be worse for me since he has threatened to have me shot and I'll see him at the
"Georgia Writers' Workshop later this month.
To all my friends,
I need some help.
My friend's cousin's cat had kittens and he was able to give away all but 3 of them. I told him I would help him find homes for the last 3.
I can't take one because of the dogs but if three of you could take just one it would be such a help and the kittens could have a nice home.
Since her cousin lives up by the Lake Robinson Nuclear Power Plant, she'll go pick them up for you.
I've attached pictures of the last 3 kittens.
Will you help?
C'mon Pumpman. You can take one of these cuties cantcha?
