TSA Confiscates Insulin

A diabetic pregnant woman’s insulin was confiscated by the TSA.  Apparently the TSA officer decided it was a threat.  The TSA’s response was to quote their liquid carry on items policy.  Very helpfull.

Now I had to go look it up online, but from what can I find the standard sizes are either 3ml or 10ml vials, WAY less than the 3.4ounces (100ml) that is the max allowed on a flight.  Even if she had 10 vials with her (which I doubt personally, but you never know) that’s ONLY 100ml which is the max SINGLE size the TSA allows on the plane, and you’re allowed SEVERAL containers of that size.  She also states that the vials were properly labeled AND she had a letter from her doctor. Plus they didn’t take her syringes either.  Go figure.

Way to go TSA, I wonder if they realize that they not only put that woman’s life at risk, they risked the life and health of her fetus as well should something have prevented her from getting more insulin on her trip.


Top 10 Fantasy and Sci-Fi books of all time

Go vote here.

Personally I found it very difficult to narrow it down to just 10 (I was at close to 30 before I realized how many I had, and I wasn’t done), but I also found it interesting what books they were missing.  For example:  they list Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera series, but not his Dresden books, and Dresden is a much more popular and acclaimed series.  Anne McCaffrey gets the mention with ONE title, instead of the whole dragon series, which would have made ever so much more sense.  David Eddings, again one part of a series, instead of the entire series.  Mercedes Lackey gets mentioned in two different places for two different trilogies….that are really just parts of a larger series.  David Weber only gets a mention for the FIRST book in the Honor series rather than the whole series itself, even though that first book did NOT do well untill well after the next few books were out and people were going back to find it after having read books 2 & 3  (infact I read books 2,3 & 4 before I was finally able to track down a copy of 1, and THAT was only because they re-released it!). 

I do have to say though that I was delighted to see so much Asimov and Heinlein, not to mention the inclusion of the Liaden Series by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (Oh Helene!!! if you don’t mind your fantasy with a distinct touch of Sci-Fi mixed in you need to pick up this series!!!).  And of course the Princess Bride is listed, as is The Last Unicorn…..Choices choices!!

Found via a Facebook link from Think Geek, though I’m now seeing it crop up in several places I frequent.


News & Links

UK Court Decides that Every Time a Link is Clicked it Violates Copywrite Law.  And the ruling was upheld on appeal!  Expect Google to stop carrying UK websites shortly.

Hackers Unlock Car Via Text Message.  On the surface kinda cool.  Once you think about it, kinda scary!

And my favorite for the day:  Georgia Mom opts for new trial after being convicted in the death of her child.  Seems the lady in question was to lazy to walk down to the cross walk and decided to jaywalk across a 4 lane road with 3 small children.  Her excuse was that the bus stop let her off 1/3rd of a mile from the nearest crosswalk and that it was to far to walk.  Now I’ve never spent time in GA, but even Syracuse’s horrid public transit system would have had a stop closer to the crosswalk than that, which means that all she had to do was ride the bus for another stop or two, get off at the crosswalk, cross the street and then walk back.  Instead she decided to “run across the road” and her 4yr old son, one daughter, and she herself didn’t make it across.  Her son was killed.  The driver of the car was convicted of hit & run.  Mom was convicted of jaywalking, secondary vehicular homicide and reckless conduct.   She ought to consider herself lucky they didn’t toss on child endangerment for the other two kids.  Personally I’m glad to see them throw the book at her.  I’ve watched parents drag kids across the street infront of traffic several times, and had to stomp on the brakes myself a couple times when someone did it in front of me.  You want to endanger yourself that way fine, but don’t drag your kids in too.


Readiness Drill Goes Wrong

And that’s the actual title to the article.  Personally every time one of these makes the news I think the title ought to be more along the lines “Some Idiot in Corporate Decides to Scare the Crap out of Most of Their Employees and See if They Can Kill Another.”  This is the FIRST such article I’ve seen where the authorities make the point that if one of the victim employee’s had been lawfully armed the “robber” could of ended up dead (and in CA too!).  Seriously though, who thinks this is a good idea? 

Not that I’m against readiness drills, its probably the only way to make sure your employees actually know how to react in a real situation, but every time one of these such drills makes the news none of the “people in charge” have put any REAL thought into how the “victim” employees are going react and feel about it.  “oh, they’ll run and hide” (uhuh, better hope you don’t have a former military person working there, they might head for cover, but they’re just as likely to come back out of cover firing too) “we’ll tell them afterwards it was just a drill, they’ll understand” (uhuh, and when you have workers comp claims for “mental suffering”?)

Has anyone heard of one of these such “drills” going WELL?  Personally I’m just waiting till someone decides this is a good idea and a prepared employee shoots the “robber.”  Bets on how many years said employee will get?


Power outage

Just got power back after our 4th power outage since we moved here in September of last year.  4 in less than a year.  Admittedly the causes of each has been different and none lasted more than 5 hrs, but thats not a good way to start out the first year of living here.  We’d been planning on putting in some kind of solar/wind/battery backup system, but costs are a bit prohibitive so its something we’ve been setting aside moneys for (as well as keeping a close eye on Clarian Power).  But we may have to look into putting in a generator of some kind sooner than that.  Heat in the winter (and potentially some basic cooking) isn’t a problem thanks to the wood burning stove, but powering the basics is. 

Sigh, yet another expense we weren’t planning on this year!

Anyone reading this have any suggestions as to brands, styles, types, etc?