Going South

Posted on October 14, 2005 by Professor Booty

To Oregon! For blogging material.

You may remember earlier this week when I told you about Jerry the Geek having pics up from some recent IPSC matches he participated in.

Well, now he’s got video!

Kewl.

From the ripe breeding grounds of little socialists, the University of Oregon, Sailor tells us about his learning of a new term “Negro-Con� from some of his fellow students at Duckville.

And last, but certainly not least, if you are going to be the only legislator to vote against increasing criminal punishments for crimes involving MethAmphetimine, it is a good idea to NOT be caught in possession of what is suspected to be said illegal substances shortly thereafter.

Posted in Academia and Other Nonsense | Comments Off on Going South

While I pity the guy

Posted on October 14, 2005 by Professor Booty

I still have to laugh.

Overheard by Og the Neanderpundit

“I was driving my wife’s car the other day and saw a little round thing in the cupholder, thought it was a cigarrette lighter. I looked at it, it had a little handle you turn and push down so I thought, yeah, it’s a lighter, I wonder what the wife is doing with this- she don’t smoke. So I pushed the button down to see if it still worked and maced myself. It weren’t any damned fun, I’ll tell you that.”

When life hands you lemons, consider yourself damned lucky it wasn’t mace.

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On open letter

Posted on October 14, 2005 by Professor Booty

To Ford Motor Company

To Whom It May Concern,

My wife owns a 1996 Ford Contour built by your company. It has been a good car for her. It is reliable and has never given her any trouble.

Last week she was informed by Washington State that not only were her license registration tabs were due for renewal but that the license plates for her car were being retired and that she would need to be assigned new ones when she came in and paid for her new tabs.

Everything went well enough with getting the new plates and the tabs, especially with the state’s estimate at her renewal fees being incorrect and her not having to pay a particular tax, saving us to the tune of $40. It was when she got home and it was time to change out the plates that the trouble began, and this is the part where your company is at fault.

It seems that in the designing of the vehicle, your company decided to go with and injection molded plastic panel that fits into the vertical portion of the trunk lid and holds the license plates. Your designers also decided to have, instead of reliable steel screw retainers, four plastic female inserts that are pressed into the plastic panel.

These inserts fail 50% of the time, causing me no amount of headache.

After removing the top two screws holding the plate onto the vehicle, I attempted to remove the bottom two, only to have the inserts strip out and not let the plate screws retract from them.

After giving up on the screwdriver, I switched to a socket and driver to try and back the screws out. When that didn’t work, I switched to a pair of vise grips to try to turn and pull the screws out, but to no avail. Due to the body panel that holds the plates being plastic, I didn’t want to risk cracking or otherwise breaking it by applying levered pressure from my Zytel prybar in an attempt to coerce the screws out.

I ended up having to retrieve my dremel and connect up the cutting bit and cut the heads off of the screws just so that I could remove the old, and now illegal, plate off of the car.

She now has her new plates on her car, along with two headless quarter inch bolts sticking out of her trunk lid as I do not want to risk breaking the plastic panel in any further attempts at removing them.

I would just like to say thanks for the hassle. If you ever feel the wont to do so, please send me the name of both the designer of that particular feature and the executive who OK’d its installation onto the vehicle.

I have two swift kicks in the nuts awaiting delivery and I would hate to have to give them randomly.

Thank you for your time

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | Comments Off on On open letter

RNS Quote of the Day

Posted on October 14, 2005 by Professor Booty

The most profoundly revolutionary achievement of the United States of America was the subordination of society to moral law.

The principle of man’s individual rights represented the extension of morality into the social system – as a limitation on the power of the state, as man’s protection against the brute force of the collective, as the subordination of might to right. The United States was the first moral society in history.

All previous systems had regarded man as a sacrificial means to the ends of others, and society as an end in itself. The United States regarded man as an end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly, voluntary coexistence of individuals. All previous systems had held that man’s life belongs to society, that society can dispose of him in any way it pleases, and that any freedom he enjoys is his only by favor, by the permission of society, which may be revoked at any time. The United States held that man’s life is his by right (which means: by moral principle and by his nature), that a right is the property of an individual, that society as such has no rights, and that the only moral purpose of a government is the protection of individual rights.

Ayn Rand: Man’s Rights 1967

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If I ever tell you that I’m going to Illinois

Posted on October 13, 2005 by Professor Booty

Remind me about this post, please.

Why would I want to avoid that state? Because it seems you can be arrested for something as stupid as the following item I found at The View From North Central Idaho blog,

DISORDERLY CONDUCT: in that Shawn (SIC) Kranish knowingly did an act in such an unreasonable manner as to alarm or disturb Janna L. Shwaiko and provoke a breach of peace to wit Shawn (SIC) Kranish walked into the Presidents (SIC) office and requested from Shwaiko a meeting with the President. Kranish was wearing a blue jacket with the words “I Carry” on the front of the jacket and he was also wearing a black nylon pouch or handgun holster. Shwaiko believed Kranish to be carrying a gun and it alarmed her in violation of 720 ILCS 5/26-1(a) of the Illinois Compiled Statutes.

Officer Edward Crumb, #167
Complainant

She was alarmed by a jacket with writing on it and a fanny pack? Does she need medication? How the hell does she leave the house in the morning?

I want to know who was the last person before Kranish to be charged with this piece of obscura legalese. I would put $20 on that it wasn’t a gangbanger or a wife beater or a well-known-to-the-police felon.

Dig if you will, this picture:

I’m standing in line at the Jack in the Box and some hoplophobe sees my belt-clipped cell phone bulge from under my shirt and gets scared because they think that it might be a firearm. Should I be put in cuffs and sent off to central booking because they have anxiety issues or should they be sent off to see a psychotherapist?

In Illinois, I go to jail and they get to eat their Jumbo Jack.

Again, remind to never go to Illinois.

Posted in Have Gun, Will Travel | 4 Comments

Like Clockwork

Posted on October 13, 2005 by Professor Booty

Well, everything yesterday went pretty well. For the most part.

What went right:

The Teamsters begrudgingly took their given position at the back gate of the facility. They had their chase vehicles at the ready to follow the non-union drivers to the worksites so they could harangue them some more and none of my company’s drivers had to choose between their union and their job.

The owner of the non-union company held an early morning meeting with his drivers and had the union sympathizers make runs that would take them to transfer stations other than ours and only the stalwart anti-union drivers came to our place.

Since the union was at the back gate I didn’t get my opportunity to cross a picket line (though I was tempted to use the back gate).

What went wrong:

The weather was not on the side of the Teamsters. They got to sit through some of the usual Seattle drizzle and abandoned their post earlier than we were told. This in and of itself isn’t what went wrong, but the bums left without telling us, leaving the back gate wide open.

Picture a big ‘Free Trash Disposal’ sign on the side of the fence. We had to chase at least one guy off the property who tried to dump without scaling in.

The Teamsters are talking about showing up again today and maybe into next week. I don’t see how they’re going to be able to keep it secret enough that the owner of the non-union company won’t find out and be able to re-route his guys again, making the union’s attempts at harassment utterly futile.

Once again, The Kid doesn’t get to have any fun.

Posted in Freaks, Mutants, and Morons | 1 Comment

The Soundboard: Dazed and Confused

Posted on October 13, 2005 by Professor Booty

One of the guys who hauls the freight containers full of trash from my transfer station to the rail yard came into the scalehouse while I was revisiting a couple of the older Rush albums earlier this week.

To my surprise, he asked me if I was high. I replied in the negative and ask him why he’d think to ask such a question.

He says that the only time he could listen to Rush was when he was in his late teens and stoned in his friend’s parent’s basement. After he quit doing that he couldn’t listen to them anymore.

We went through some friendly back and forth on that topic and I came to realize that he didn’t know they were still putting out albums or for that matter, even alive.

So, because Tom is a good guy with a long fuse I took the radio out of his truck on my lunch break last night and replaced with a unit that I found in the shop’s junk pile.

It has no radio reception and I disabled the CD eject button.

When he gets on the road tonight he’ll have one Rush mix CD that I made specifically for him to listen to for his entire shift.

Oh, and the opening song on the disk will be this one,

A Passage to Bangkok – Rush

It’s his Friday so I hope he has a good night.

Posted in Kewel! | Comments Off on The Soundboard: Dazed and Confused

RNS Quote of the Day

Posted on October 13, 2005 by Professor Booty

Every political system is based on some code of ethics. The dominant ethics of mankind’s history were variants of the altruist-collectivist doctrine which subordinated the individual to some higher authority, either mystical or social. Consequently, most political systems were variants of the same statist tyranny, differing only in degree, not in basic principle, limited only by the accidents of tradition, of chaos, of bloody strife and periodic collapse. Under all such systems, morality was a code applicable to the individual, but not to society. Society was placed outside the moral law, as its embodiment or source or exclusive interpreter – and the inclusion of self-sacrificial devotion to social duty was regarded as the main purpose of ethics in man’s earthly existence.

Since there is no such entity as “society�, since society is only a number of individual men, this meant, in practice, that the rulers of society were exempt from moral law; subject only to traditional rituals, they held total power and exacted blind obedience – on the implicit principle of: “The good of that which is good for society (or for the tribe, the race, the nation), and the ruler’s edicts are its voice on earth.�

Ayn Rand: Man’s Rights – 1967

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Porcine Aviation Watch

Posted on October 12, 2005 by Professor Booty

You may have already seen this, but if you haven’t head on over to Rox Populi, where Roxanne has asked,

“I know you’re out there, reading this blog. Never commenting because you don’t want to incur the wrath. I can’t say that I blame you.

But, please consider de-lurking today to let some good folks know how the Democratic Party can get your vote.�

I found it via Say Uncle, who gave an excellent answer that includes the first few steps the Dems could take to try and pry my precious vote from my fingers. Unfortunately for them, they don’t even really see my vote as precious and never will, which is another reason why they’ll get it when pigs fly.

The first dozen or so answers are excellent, then we get the first whining lefty who declares all of the previous commenters to be ‘non-moderates’. It goes on for another dozen or so of good, solid items the Dems could do to earn the votes of potential swing voters when another delusional ‘member of the reality based community’ stops by and pisses in the corn flakes by declaring it impossible for anyone who reads blogs to be a moderate or a swing voter.

You know that feeling you get when a family friend or family member you like screws up royally over and over again, that knot in the stomach that says ‘What can I do to help them’ even though you know there is nothing you can do but watch them slide into an ever deeper pile of crap; well that is how I’m feel about the current administration.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud I voted for Bush instead of JOhn KErry or the nutjob that was the Libertarian Presidential platform, but I knew it was a ‘lesser of two evils’ vote before I cast it.

I do not foresee the Dems pulling a candidate out of their hat from any of their current crop of available peanut gallery members that I would vote for, but I don’t know of a Republican that I’d vote for in 2008 at this time either. Granted, Clinton seemed to come out of nowhere in 92 and I barely knew anything about Bush before 2000, but you’d think that with a lame duck in office and Cheney already saying he won’t run, the Repubs would start farming out a few possible candidates by now.

But I’m straying from my point: You may have noticed a dearth of political commentary on the pages of RNS in recent weeks (probably months). That is because of my apathy due to a number the current administration’s and Congress’ actions or lack of them. I find it hard to get up the gumption to defend someone or a group of someones on an issue I don’t support or really even care about just because of a party brand.

I’m a full on supporter of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, although I would like less pussyfooting around and more dead terrorists. It is great to have a President that doesn’t treat the murder and assault of our armed forces and our citizens as a crime. I am also happy at the tax cuts that I and 10 million of the working poor received. But other than those, I’m having to grasp at straws for other reasons to be happy with this administration and this Congress.

They slacked on the drilling in ANWR and they’re not cutting the pork that is the base of what constitutes a ‘fiscal conservative’. They are staying so far away from the immigration issue that they didn’t even include a single question on the topic in their own party poll questionnaire.

They aren’t pushing any pro-gun ownership legislation now, nor have they really done so during their time in power. Sure, the sunsetting of the AWB was great, but we were all on pins and needles for a while waiting for it to happen.

And those are my main voting topics: Dead terrorsits, lower taxes, cheap gas, no illegal immigrants and more guns in my safe.

Or should that be: dead taxes, cheap guns, lower illegal immigrants (only midgets?), no terrorists and more gas?

Anyway, I don’t really give a squirt of piss about abortion, gay marriage, drug abuse, internet porn or any of the other ‘Repub’ talking points that I can think of off the top of my head.

I am the moderate that Roxanne is looking for to see what it would take to get me to vote Democrat. I think I’m pretty average in that respect, from talking to the Teamsters I work with and the people I know and talk to outside of the blogosphere. She has the answers sitting in her comments section that she can cut and paste and send to the DNC and all they have to do is listen and act and the vote of this upstanding citizen with no party affiliation would be theirs.

What is so hard about that?

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | 4 Comments

A Rumble in Brighton Tonight

Posted on October 12, 2005 by Professor Booty

Actually, it’ll be this afternoon in Seattle, but its pretty close.

Here’s the background:

Back in January I became a state-licensed Weighmaster and I man the scalehouse at my company’s transfer station for eight hours of my scheduled ten hour night. We let just about every hauling company in the area dump at our facility, usually at a lesser rate scale than the city or the county dumps charge.

One of these companies has a respectively large number of employees and vehicles, but they are non-union. As you can imagine, the Teamsters local is not happy about either that fact or that we let them dump there, and today the unhappiness may come to a head.

The Teamsters reps have been harping on the non-union company’s drivers to join up, meeting them at jobsites and other transfer stations with the ‘Go Union’ pap. Most of those drivers have told them to piss up a rope, but there have been a few who have taken the bait. The owner of the non-union company had supposedly said some things that could be construed as anti-unionizing to those drivers and the Teamsters took offence and have filed ‘discriminatory work practices’ charges with the county to see if they can bounce his company out of their county contracts.

Meanwhile, the guys who work in the repair/fabrication shop at my facility have been working without a contract for a while now and the Teamsters are planning on taking advantage of some rule in their old contract that lets them onto the property to do a full court press on the non-union drivers with picketers at the gates and runners to talk to the non-union drivers while they’re trying to dump their loads.

Needless to say, my company isn’t happy about being used as such and has consulted with their lawyers and concluded that while they do have to let the Teamsters onto the grounds of the facility, the company gets to pick where the Teamsters can situate themselves. The Teamsters will probably not be happy with this, as I have seen the chosen location.

Nonetheless, they will have to stand where they are told. Their only other option is to resign from their positions within the company and picket where they want. They have been warned of this and cannot complain ignorance of this fact.

While some of the Teamsters that will be here are drivers from my company, not all of them will be. It will be interesting to see if the picketers from my company will chose their union or their jobs should the group decide to leave their designated area to picket the main gate.

If this does happen, guess who else is going to have to drive through the picket line at the main gate; yep, little old non-union me.

I have taken the courtesy of personally informing the shop steward that I will be allowed through the gate without so much as a scowl from any of the picketers, lest I file harassment charges against any of my co-workers manning the line and that if even one of them touches my truck as I pass through, I will not hesitate to immediately stop my vehicle in the middle of their line and exit it in order to seek immediate physical retribution from said individual and any who plan on backing him up.

He said he did not like my tone, but agreed as we have been through this before. For some history, check below the fold.

So we’ll see what transpires today. Hopefully nothing will happen, but you never can tell with pension chasers who can’t figure out when they are being ripped off by a corporate ponzi scheme called a union.

They get all emotional when in groups.
Continue reading →

Posted in Useful Idiots | 2 Comments