Categories Politics, Rants

TSA Confiscates Insulin

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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.

Categories Books, Links

Top 10 Fantasy and Sci-Fi books of all time

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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.

Categories Links, Rants

News & Links

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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.

Categories Guns, Links, Politics, Rants

Readiness Drill Goes Wrong

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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?

Categories Nothing Much

Power outage

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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?

Categories Guns

RFID chips part 2

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Ok, first off the problem most people are having with this concept isn’t really the RFID chips themselves, its the PR release from MKS on the subject.  There are several folks who aren’t understanding the hoopla because RFID chips are easy to disable so whats the problem??

Apparently the Italian government is requiring RFIDs for inventory control by gun manufacturers (can’t find much in the way of proof of this, all the articles I can find on the subject are in reference to the MKS press release and I’ve already discussed my opinion of that press release).  But my lack of proof doesn’t mean much as I don’t read Italian even a little bit, thus limiting my search.

RFIDs are NOT GPS trackers.  GPS trackers require a power source to send out their signal and that takes up a HUGE amount of space.  Don’t believe me?  Go search for GPS tracking dog collars and take a look at the size of the units.  Trust me if the dog world could make those smaller they would, but if they did there’d be no room for a battery that could power it for a reasonable time.

RFIDs can be scanned from alot further away than 3 inches (regardless of what the MKS press release says).  Basic inventory control has to happen from alot further away than 3 inches or the time saved by just having to scan the RFID is lost by someone having to sort out a whole pallet to scan each box.  Infact there was a case not long ago where a hacker proved he could, with enough power and LOS, get a reading off an RFID chip from a distance of at least a few hundred feet.

Now I suppose you could track an RFID by taking note of when its scanned at point A, and then again at point B and comparing them, but thats still not GPS tracking.

Borepatch has a post up on the subject point out how someone in the know could crash an entire system just by hacking the RFID.  Makes me want one just so I can screw with their heads.

I’m still reserving judgement on Chiappa and MKS till we see if there’s a reaction to the outcry over the press release.  If nothing happens, or the contents of the press release are confirmed as legit and “we’re not apologizing you morons” then yes anything imported by MKS goes on the DO NOT BUY list.  It’ll be interesting to see though if Chiappa does anything.  I don’t know what their options are for US distributors, but if they decide its time for a new one once the current contract ends?  Then I might just have to change my mind on them.

Categories Guns, Links

The natural skeptic arrises….

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At least a couple of the bloggers I read have linked and commented on the hoopla regarding Chiappa Firearms deciding to add RFID chips to their inventory methodology.  Or rather, the press release apparently put out on the subject by MKS (Chiappa’s US distributor).

Now, first off, I’ll be surprised if this is the first firearm manufacturer who’s decided to put RFIDs on their guns, and I’m betting that after this whole mess that Kahr got themselves into a bunch more may just decide that RFIDs are the way to go.  As long as I can remove the chip at my leisure without voiding the warranty I really don’t care if thats the chosen method for inventory control.  And from reading the comments it looks like I’m not the only one who thinks so.

The problem comes in with the wording of the alleged press release:

Others may prefer to wrap the revolver and their head in aluminum foil, curl in a ball and watch reruns of Mel Gibson’s 1997 film, Conspiracy Theory. Well, that’s a plan too!

Sounds pretty bad huh?  and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that someone with more money than brains put their foot in their mouth that badly and killed their business.  But there’s a reason why I say “alleged” press release.

First off, what halfway skilled PR person is going to let a press release with those words out into the public?  But ok, so the PR person needs to eat too and would rather keep his or her job than censor a VIP in the company….right?  But there are other problems with this press release.  Almost all the bloggers and forums having snits over this are doing one of two things:  a huge number aren’t linking to ANYTHING, simply quoting the press release from somewhere, the large percentage of the rest are linking to each other in a circular pattern.  So I hit Google.  I wanted to see the original press release.  But there’s a problem.  At least 3 different places are saying that THEY received the press release:

http://trochronicles.blogspot.com/2011/07/chiappa-firearm-tracking-chip-rfid.html
http://www.ammoland.com/2011/07/28/rfid-chip-in-chiappa-firearms/
http://www.gunreports.com/news/news/Chiappa-to-put-Radio-Frequency-ID-Chips-in-Firearms_3209-1.html?CMP=OTC-RSS

now I can believe that the press release was sent out to several places in an attempt to get it out publicly, but there are some subtle differences between them.  And that combined with the rest of this is making me wonder a bit.

The one from AmmoLand appears to be the earliest of the 3 to post the PR (though one doesn’t give the time actually posted so I can’t be sure), and in that particular version there are several italicized and () comments, which is usually a mark of a comment from the publishing author rather than part of the actual press release, and those italicized comments INCLUDE the damning lines that are the actual problem.  There are also some factual errors in the statement as well.

Now, its entirely possible that this is an actual press release from MKS and they really don’t care that this is going to annoy their customers, and the factual errors are the result of that same “don’t care” attitude, BUT its enough to make me wonder a bit.

Now I know absolutely nothing about any of the above companies so, either way it should be interesting to watch and see what happens!

Categories Books

It was TOO a cliffhanger ending Mr Butcher!!!

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So, my copy of Ghost Story by Jim Butcher (Dresden #13) arrived in the mail today.  And yes I promptly sat down and ignored the world to read it.  (Ok, not really, I had to take the puppy out a couple times….I think I forgot to eat anything though….I don’t remember eating anything for supper anyway, guess I ought to do that.)  I won’t spoil the book for those who don’t read as fast as I do, or the previous book for those who are just starting the series and haven’t gotten this far, but I must say…..Take that Mab!!!  Take that!  Heh.

I’m off to go re-read it now, after I eat something…..As for the ending of Book 12, Butcher states in the acknowledgements “To my dear patrons, the readers, I can only thank you for your patience, after leaving the last novel the way I did, then making everyone wait another three months past the usual delay while I made sure this book was ready to go.  Enjoy! (And, technically, guys, Changes did NOT end in a cliff-hanger.  Seriously.)”

Maybe by the technical definition of the term, but it was a cliff-hanger regardless!

Categories Guns

Got my waiver!

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In the mail today is the letter from the judge giving me permission to use references from my former home county instead of my current home county in the request for a pistol license.  Nice and quick, basically a week from the time I sent it to the time I got it back.

Next step is to go ahead and get the notorizations done on the application in the appropriate places and call to make the appointment to turn it in.

I will continue to update here.

Categories Rants

Buying a house

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Ok, so I’ve mentioned before that we bought a house last year.  The process was hell.  I expected it to be stressfull and difficult, but not the level at which it ended up.  By the time we finally were able to move I was so stressed my doctor was trying to medicate me for high blood pressure.

At the time I thought we’d just gotten particularly unlucky.  We ended up with a particularly slimy & swarmy lawyer, the title turned to not be as clear as the seller had thought it was (seriously not his fault, but it took an extra month to fix THAT mess alone), and then there was the bank.  I’d THOUGHT that maybe we just got unlucky enough to have ended up with someone who was new to the process handling our loan.  That had to be it.  Surely no bank would deliberetly treat people like they did us.

Since then I’ve had a few conversations with other Realtors about it, and have come to realize that maybe the way we were treated wasn’t so unusual after all.  But this week one of my co-workers drove it home.  He’s in the process of trying to buy his first house.  Now he does appear to have gotten a better lawyer than we did, and there doesn’t appear to be any problems with the title (yet…..*knocks on wood*), but he’s having the exact same set of problems with the bank we did.  Seriously.

Look, I understand in today’s economy that lending out enough funds to buy a house, even a small, inexpensive house, is a risky business.  I understand that you want to know every piece of my financial background, work history, and what ever else you can come up with.  I get that.  But this is the first time I’ve done this and I know you know that cause you made a point of telling me I qualified for all sorts of “first time homebuyer” credits and discounts and whatnot.  I also cannot read your mind.  If you need specific paperwork by a specific date YOU HAVE TO TELL ME.  Preferably BEFORE 24hrs before the specific date.  Telling me 2hrs before close of the days business that since I’ve not gotten X documents into you today means that the commitment letter is going to be late and we might not be able to close on time…..just pisses me off.  By the time you’ve done it for the 3rd or 4th time my blood pressure headed through the roof.  Especially since I’ve been asking you since day 1 if there was anything else you needed from us.  Again, and Again…..

I realize that the mortgages discussed here aren’t large by anyone’s standards (except mine as I look at the staggering amount of money I and my husband have to pay off in the next 29 years), so you’re not making as much off them as mortgage for a $200k or $300k (or more) house.  But its the buyers like us that CAN buy houses right now.  Our credit is better than average, we’ve been in the same decent paying (not high paying, but decent) stable job for several years, and the housing prices are finally down low enough we can afford a decent house.  Dispite the economy the housing markets damn near perfect for folks like me, my husband and my coworker.

The bank we financed through was one we’d both had bank accounts with for at least a few years.  Once the whole process of buying the house and closing and getting moved was done we moved all accounts except for the bare minimum checking/savings combo out to another bank.  The fact that they neglected to send out our commitment letter when they said they were going to (our paperwork apparently sat on someone’s desk for a week before anyone realized that nothing had happened) was simply the last straw.  If we ever have to refinance we will be doing it through a different bank.