The Phrase

Posted on March 25, 2005 by Professor Booty

“5 Jump Chump” cannot be used to describe our good man Dogtulosba any longer.

Not that we’d have called him that in the first place, but you get my drift.

Head on over to Chad’s place to read the stats and congratulate him.

Posted in Kewel! | Comments Off on The Phrase

The Weight

Posted on March 25, 2005 by Professor Booty

Pat Kern passes time in an Oakville duplex by scanning the newspaper, flipping channels on her television and spoiling rotten a dog named Cuddles.

Durand used to do more. But in August, Metro cut off Kern’s access to Call-A-Ride Plus, the agency’s door-to-door bus service for the disabled.

Kern is fat. She’ll say it openly. At a combined 640 pounds, she and her wheelchair weigh 40 pounds more than Metro’s limit.

“I think this is discrimination, and I think it’s because I’m fat,” Kern said.

I think you’re right, lady. I’ve seen your picture.

All joking aside, before I started working in ‘the trash industry’ I worked in ‘the white trash industry’. I mapped, scheduled and dispatched rides for a local charity that had the county contract for both the Americans With Disabilities rides and the Dept of Social and Health Services.

More than likely, her county’s metro contract vans have a weight limit on their wheelchair lifts. Most of ours were 800lbs, but depending on the manufacturer 600lbs sounds like it could be a reasonable limit.

If this broad would lose 40 pounds she could get her rides back. That is not even 10% of her total weight. But nooooo, it isn’t her fault, its the county’s fault.

What a lazy wench. And no, I don’t care if she has a ‘medical circumstance’ and you think I’m being mean. I have a medical condition called “Anti-Bullshititis” and things like this are the reason I went back to private industry.

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | Comments Off on The Weight

The Soundboard: Super Bad Edition

Posted on March 24, 2005 by Professor Booty

I never thought a 16 hour work day could be so fun.

Actually, the first 12 were kind of boring and sucked a tad, but the the last 4 made my week.

For those still not in the know, I work in the ‘Sanitation Engineer’ field (I work for the garbage collection company).

And if you’ll excuse me for a few paragraphs, I am going to brag before getting to my tale of what happened this morning.

Five years ago I started out doing their map work. I do map work because I am very good with geography. When the wife wanted to visit San Francisco in 2000, I studied a map of the city on the two hour flight down and never had to refer to it or ask for directions during the week we were there. I remember everywhere I have ever driven and could go to a city I visited once for one day over 10 years earlier and still know my way around to this day.

Needless to say, I know my home city of Seattle and its surrounding burbs very well. This is an asset in this company when they moved me to work within their dispatch office. I immediately changed a couple small procedures and their productivity immediately increased.

This made my boss very happy.

My work ethics are as follows: ‘No One Will Do My Job Better Than Me’ and ‘I get paid to make my boss look good to his boss’.

They have never failed me and my pay increases reflect this.

I work with Teamsters. They are the drivers who pick up the loads I assign to them and they are very protective of their ‘Brotherhood’. But my style not only made me popular with my boss, it made me popular with them. In fact, I was the first non-Teamster at this facility to get an invite to one of their private ‘at-home’ retirement parties. No small feat seeing as how I am considered management to them (even though I am not in a management position).

A little over two years ago I received an offer to switch to nights by the actual management to see what I could do the drivers on that crew to make them more productive. The day crew of drivers was not happy with this but has put up with the string of replacements that have followed me leaving my previous shift. I think they actually enjoy tormenting them, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, my switching to leading the night crew was such a resounding success that I am still here and still kicking ass.

Over the few years I have built up a reputation outside the company that I also enjoy thoroughly.

Another philosophy of mine is that I demand three things. Love, Respect and Fear.

Love, from my drivers and customers
Respect, from my boss
Fear, from my competition

I have these three things. My vehicle is known by my competition and I get waves from the drivers of those companies when they see me out and about. I will snag an account out from under my competition even though my company’s prices are higher simply because I have built up a solid customer base that knows if I tell them something, it is going to happen.

I have been involved in the construction of just about every major project in the city in the last five years with this reputation, from the new football stadium to the largest bio-engineering lab in the country to the new city hall and police headquarters.

But enough braggadocio, to the story.

I have been hollering for an increase in the amount of work my crew gets and an increase in the size of my crew for a while now. I have these guys working at such a level that they’re able to do twenty percent more work than they were when I started this shift.

Monday, I was notified that my attendance was mandatory at a meeting between the day drivers and the latest installment of the dispatch crew. I arrived early (as usual) and just sort of took my casual spot in the corner (also as usual) and waited for the fur to fly.

And it did.

My mere presence seems to have been enough to get the drivers all riled up and telling stories of miracles I pulled out of the Analog Hat to save the day “way back when�. This made the day dispatch crew pissed, as it would me, but I wanted to see how this turned out, so I played it cool and just sat back.

But that was not to last. Shortly after the managers got the two parties to settle down they called on me for suggestions and my cover was blown. I ever so gently pointed out errors in procedures that the day-crew were making and remedies for how to deal with long winded and demanding customers that someone who has never done this particular job could not have told them. I then ever so smoothly transitioned my speech into what I wanted, stating that if this division wanted to stop barely staying in the black that I would need to get more work and more drivers on my crew.

This didn’t go over very well with anyone in the room until I whipped up some figures I had been working on in my head.

Basically, the hours wasted on the day shift with work that we can do at night, figured conservatively to be one hour per driver per day, the company is losing $1800 a month worth of truck running cost and driver hourly wage.

This opened the manager’s eyes once they figured that they have a minimum of a dozen drivers working on the day shift. 12 x $1800 per month folks, do the math.

I walked out of that meeting with a promise to have our scheduled customer base analyzed to see what more could be shifted to nights and a promise to give me the drivers I need to get that workload done.

I should have been a pimp.

Add to that the fact that I came home and find that Kim du Toit has linked to my post featuring pics of my Boomershoot rifle and I am nearly too happy to go to sleep so that I can wake up and try to do this all over again.

Since I don’t really have time to post much else than this I am going to hook you all up with some more music. This time, something from Soul Brother #1, James Brown.

This track is taken from the Love Power Peace live album, recorded at the Olympia Theater in Paris on March 8th, 1971 (9 months before I was born).

Here you go,

Super Bad –James Brown and the JB’s

Yesterday’s song will be kept available until 12AM Friday morning.

Posted in Kewel! | 1 Comment

The Soundboard: Humpday Return

Posted on March 23, 2005 by Professor Booty

For the newer visitors of RNS, I used to do a weekly music post called The Soundboard. I had to stop when we started running short of memory and then just got lazy and have kept putting off and otherwise procrastinating on starting it back up.

The procrastination is over.

You see, work was just a royal bitch last night and I haven’t looked at the web for nearly 14 hours, which might as well be a lifetime as addicted to it as I am.

So I have nothing with which to write about.

Unless you want to hear about the excellent news from the ‘Guessers in Long White Coats’ (aka doctors) or the kewl news from the guy who built my Boomershoot rifle.

OK, but just the gunsmith stuff. You don’t want to know what I went through yesterday at the hospital.

I have found a deal on actual M14 receivers and my gunsmith and I have made a deal that will get me one when I return from Boomershoot. Unfortunately, he will not be the one assembling the rifle for me, at least not initially. He has a decent amount of knowledge of M14’s, but being mainly a bolt action guy and not having much call for custom built M1A’s, none of the tools for assembly. So unless I want to buy the tools for him, he can’t put it together. But he will point me to someone else who can. He says he can and will do the final tightening up work of accurizing and bedding, but headspacing and the other critical stuff will have to be done by someone else.

No worries. If Mike says this guy is good, I’ll trust Mike’s word.

The actual good news is that while I was there, Mike asked if I had decided on the caliber of my next bolt action rifle yet. I said that I had decided on building a .338 Lapua after finishing my M1A and he said that he was quite glad I had decided on that caliber and proceeded to show me why.

He knelt down below his work bench and pulled out three expertly wrapped bundles and proceeded to unwrap one. When he was finished unwrapping I wished I had brought my camera.

He held in his hand, a brand new, unbarrelled CZ550 Magnum action with set triggers.

He had a customer request one and he had ordered three extras for future use. The one he had opened and handed to me was built for the .375 H&H cartridge and Mike said that he could easily make it work with a Lapua.

Way Kewl!

It is mine.

Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah, music.

After yesterday morning, this is how I felt

Canned Heat – Jamiroquai

Some of you folks will recognize this tune from the movie Napoleon Dynamite

And if the beat to that one is too slow for some of you, try this.

If you get there quickly, you’ll be able to link into a rave happening live in Tokyo.

Posted in Kewel! | Comments Off on The Soundboard: Humpday Return

My $0.02

Posted on March 22, 2005 by Professor Booty

Since everyone on the blogosphere is talking about it, I suppose I should put my opinion down on the Shaivo case.

I consider myself a supporter of what has been labeled the ‘Death With Dignity’ crowd. I certainly don’t want to be hanging around after I should be gone like an unwanted party guest. Having machines breath and pump for me sounds like I wouldn’t be able to make it to the pistol range very often.

I also support assisted suicide. If you are suffering under an unreasonable amount of pain and there is no hope of recovery or relief without having narcotics-on-demand administered to you, take off dude (or dudette, as the case may be).

Now that we have those two things out of the way, here is my main gripe and why I support what her parents are doing:

I DO NOT BELIEVE OR TRUST HER HUSBAND.

He has no evidence that she was a “Hemlocker� type, so I don’t believe him.

He has let her condition decline to the point where she HAS to be fed by a tube that can be disconnected, so I don’t trust him any further than I can piss.

He stands to gain a substantial amount of money after her death, he refuses to divorce her so that his current family can be whole, he is suspected to have put her in this current state and she is the only witness who can make the affirmation or refutation of his culpability.

He has motives that could be considered ulterior and he actually creeps me out with his grieving husband dog and pony show. Why any judge with an ounce of sanity hasn’t taken control over Shaivo away from him and put it in the hands of an impartial guardian pending investigation is beyond me.

Do I agree with the federal government stepping in on this?

No.

But neither do I agree with the Florida judge holding Congress in contempt under their previous attempt to put a stop to this with the subpoena.

He has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution and part of that means he is accountable to the higher houses of government to explain himself.

Of course, I only consider that Congress and the President are doing this in a half-ass fashion, as government does all things. If they really cared, the Congressional Sergeant-at-Arms would have been sent along with Federal Marshals to block the doctors from approaching Shaivo’s bedside and prevent the tube from being removed.

The optimum outcome, in my opinion: The judge whom is now currently reviewing this case would wrest control over Shaivo from the husband and give it to an unbiased party, most likely a social worker, pending a review and all relevant tests to determine Shaivo’s real status.

This will reveal the husband’s reckless disregard for Shaivo’s condition and letting her wither further down the vine than she would have if he had not refused all therapy and rehabilitative treatment for the last 15 years. Control will then go to the parents who will actually care for Shaivo, even if it is too much too late, and we can all go back to getting fed misinformation on the fight in Iraq, Michael Jackson’s impending suicide and rising gas prices.

If you read only one more thing on Shaivo’s situation, make it this. It is an account of Shaivo’s condition in 1996 by the nurse in charge of her care.

This woman put her professional nursing career on the line by putting this sworn deposition out. Take some time to read some truth instead of the crap the husband puts out or ABC’s push poll.

Also, ignore the left wing’s attempt to point to hypocrisy on the part of Bush. The bill he signed while Governor of Texas focuses on the availability of funding for long term care of a terminally ill patient and has nothing to do to with Shaivo’s case as she is not terminally ill and has no shortage of money.

Think more about the hypocrisy of the left: A man can rape, torture and murder multiple women and they would demand that he be imprisoned for the rest of his life on the taxpayers dime instead of being put to death.

But put a woman whose husband neglects her until she needs to be fed through a tube in front of them and their attitude is ‘Let the bitch die’.

But remember, they care.

Posted in Order of the imperial upraised middle finger. | 3 Comments

People Who Don’t Know Their History

Posted on March 22, 2005 by Professor Booty

Kos did a link dump of his favorite recent posts late last week, one of them was a piece of hysterical garbage by a member of the Klueless Kos Klan who writes under the name ‘grannyhelen’.

Grannyhelen was trying to equate the Bush Administration, once again, to the Nazi Party by claiming that because gays in the US don’t have the ability to get married and the Nazi’s killed gays in concentration camps, the two are the same.

What a loon.

There are a good number of facts that grannyhelen includes in her speil along with some outrageous exaggerations, but one of the things she fails to even mention, either through ignorance or because it didn’t fit her point is that there were prominent homosexuals within the Nazi Party.

Like Ernst Roehm, Leader of the Sturmabteilung (abbreviated as SA). In fact, it is known that Roehm is the man who invited Adolf Hitler INTO the Nazi Party he would one day lead.

Adolf Hitler in a letter to Roehm, 1934

“I thank you my dearest Ernst Roehm, for the services which you have given to the National Socialist Movement and the German people, and to assure you how very grateful I am that I am able to call such men as you my friends and fellow fighters.”

Roehm was murdered by Himmler’s SS troops during the Night of the Long Knives purge of dozens of SA organization members, but not because he was gay.

Hitler was jealous of Rohem’s power within the organization and was afraid that Roehm would separate the SA from the rest of the Nazi Party, so Hitler had the leaders of the SA killed and made the underlings swear an oath of allegiance to him or they too would be killed.

So poor grannyhelen is wrong on two points; The Nazi’s didn’t always have it in for homosexuals and there is no comparison between Bush and Hitler.

Although I am sure the left will keep trying to find something.

Posted in Useful Idiots | Comments Off on People Who Don’t Know Their History

Thank goodness for small miracles

Posted on March 22, 2005 by Professor Booty

Agence France Presse (AFP) is suing Google News and are refusing Google the ability to link to any of their articles.

Happy time for me here. I don’t know about you.

Found at the Interested Participant

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Thank goodness for small miracles

Old Europe

Posted on March 22, 2005 by Professor Booty

Up to their same old trick of ‘For Thee, But Not For Me’ (remember, in Old Europe, they do things backwards).

European finance ministers agreed late on Sunday to ease the Growth and Stability Pact rules which eurozone members must abide by.

The new rules will make it easier for eurozone countries to keep their deficits within 3% of national income.

European ministers now have more flexibility over the costs they can exclude when adding up their deficits.

Under the deal, Germany can exclude its reunification costs and France will leave out military and aid spending.

How cute. The two countries that helped start the game are losing and now they want the rules changed. I remember this tactic from my 4th grade dodgeball sessions. I didn’t let them pull it them either.

I am still giving the Euro less than 5 years before it becomes the new Peso.

Dound at the CQ via the Dane

Posted in Freaks, Mutants, and Morons | Comments Off on Old Europe

The Wonders of Socialized Medicine: Part 342

Posted on March 22, 2005 by Professor Booty

Canada never ceases to amaze me.

A letter from the Moncton Hospital to a New Brunswick heart patient in need of an electrocardiogram said the appointment would be in three months. It added: “If the person named on this computer-generated letter is deceased, please accept our sincere apologies.”

In other words, ‘We’re sorry you may have died and been buried without us noticing due to our sloth caused by our crappy, but supposedly free, medical system, but if you can still breath, your appointment will be so far off from the current caledar date that you WILL probably be dead by the then. Have nice day, eh.�

And I can guarantee you that right now, a liberal blogger, somewhere in America, is writing up a post wondering why we haven’t instituted a medical system just like Cananda’s.

Idiots.

Found via Drumwaster’s

Posted in The Left is Never Right | 1 Comment

“A big menace to law and order”

Posted on March 22, 2005 by Phil Kadath

It’s not who “you might think.”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=NXEQ43OWFPOJJQFIQMFSM5OAVCBQ0JVC?xml=/news/2005/03/22/nbates22.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/03/22/ixportaltop.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=17147

Registration required for the whole story, so here’s just a bit to whet your appetite.

bq. _The husband of a woman who was shot dead during a raid on their jewellery shop yesterday condemned a police chief who admitted that his force was unable to cope with growing violent crime._

bq. _Victor Bates, 66, accused Steve Green, the Nottinghamshire chief constable, of being a “menace to law and order” and making Nottingham “lawless” by removing front-line officers from the streets to do desk jobs._

bq. _Last week Mr Green said in The Telegraph that the situation had become so bad that he was having to call in other forces to help with murder inquiries._

But don’t worry – the police will protect you, right?

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | Comments Off on “A big menace to law and order”