Month: July 2012

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Over-React Much???

In an article this morning in the Christian Science Monitor the pundits and wags are already talking about the probability of increased security at theaters.

Uhhh It was ONE fucked up dude…

Statistically speaking ONE does not represent a trend.

While tragic, the Aurora theater shooting was an incident carried out by exactly 1 crazy person. 

This is not a wake up call to increase the level of fear in our country. Unfortunately that is exactly what the media is doing. 

I already don’t go to the movies very often.

Here’s why

1) the expense,

2) the crowds

3) the idiots texting throughout the whole fucking movie

4) the idiots talking throughout the whole movie

5) most of the movies SUCK!

But if you add metal detectors, and prohibitions on what can and cannot be carried into the theater, For example a shopping bag from another store in the mall then a lot of folks are just not going to bother. Really? I’ll have to carry my $200 of jeans out to my car then come back to the movie theater? Nahhh I’m going to get in my car and go home.

I’ll simply wait until the movie in question is available on pay per view or DVD/BlueRay. Lets face it, the time from theater to DVD has gotten ridiculously short.

So I personally have no problem waiting until I can rent a movie for 5 bucks and then every one in the whole house can watch it. I save 13 bucks, can make my own popcorn, have a beer and press pause when I have to take a leak. I like my surround sound system better than the theaters most of the time anyway and I don’t have to wear earplugs because the soundtrack is too loud. Everything is under my control and honestly, I like it better that way anyway.

Of greater concern to me is how we as a people react to these situations.

I agree with metal detectors at airports. The metal detectors at airports were not a result of terrorism… They came about as a reaction to NOT ONE… But Several aircraft Hijackings to Cuba. The metal detectors weren’t about making people FEEL safe… they’re about actually doing something to BE SAFER. 

Today we have to take our shoes off at the airport because ONE stupid moron tried… AND FAILED to light explosives in his shoes.

We are patted down and / or XRAYED, Microwaved, or otherwise imaged to determine if we’re carrying weapons or bombs on airplanes because a couple of morons tried to set off explosives in their underwear. We can’t carry liquids on planes because of the threat that someone might make a bomb out of two liquids.

As any 1st year chemistry student knows, there are elements that are inert until they are mixed with plain simple water. There are a variety of chemicals and elements that in even small quantities can make big booms, or poison gases. These chemicals could be carried on planes in a variety of ways.

The only way to be truly safe on an airplane is to not permit luggage, or carry-on bags of any type. And every single passenger and crew member on the plane would have to be naked. In addition,  there could be no in flight services, no moving about the cabin, no bathrooms, and every passenger would have to be locked into their seat for the duration of the flight.

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Even then, you’re only mostly safe… the plane could be sabotaged, or there could be an act of God that causes the plane to fall out of the sky.

In the wake of the theater shooting, New calls for gun control, restriction of ammunition, and greater security in theaters, are being heard from around the country.

Nidal Hasan

When does it stop? Where do you draw the line?

One could argue that James Holmes and Maj. Nidal Hasan were both involved in the study of brains… By the knee jerk logic of the talking heads… ALL psychology and neuroscience study should be halted because it makes gun toting crazies who shoot into crowds of people.

Are we to have TSA style security in all public places?

Should going to the local shopping mall require a pat down? How about the grocery store?

Will we be required to take our shopping bags out to our cars as we complete each purchase?

Done at Macys, out to the car, back through security Second X-ray of the day, done at Pennys back to the car, back through security 3rd X-ray of the day, and so on.

If that’s what we’re heading for we’ll all be glowing in the dark by the end of the year.

Why didn’t we hear calls for tighter security in the wake of the Brian Stow beating? Oh… yeah the criminal thugs who destroyed Mr. Stow’s life did that with their fists and feet, in a parking lot. I suppose that the only way to prevent something like Brian Stow is to shackle everyone from the time they leave their cars until the time they are returned to their cars.

The point is this…

Being completely safe is an illusion. The only way to be completely safe is to never leave your house, even then safety isn’t guaranteed. So whether you acknowledge it or not we all make choices about the level of personal safety that we’re willing to accept.

Gun control, Draconian Security procedures, and restrictions of our freedoms are not the answer.

We as a people, shouldn’t live in fear. We shouldn’t change our lives because of terrorism, or lone gunmen, or the fear mongering of the talking heads on TV, or of the political candidates.

We as a people, can help to insure greater safety of the society at large by paying attention, by choosing not to ignore odd things.

James Holmes reportedly opened an exit door in the theater and then propped that door open while he went to his car to get the guns and body armor.

All it would have taken is for any one of the people in the theater to close that door. Presumably Holmes purchased a ticket… if he’d forgotten something or needed a medication from his car, he’d have a ticket stub and he could have re-entered the theater via the front door. Holmes needed the dark, he needed stealth and inaction on the part of the theater goers. Someone would have raised an alarm if he’d walked through the main lobby with guns and body armor.

This is not to imply that the victims were at fault. They behaved exactly as predicted and exactly as everyone in America would have. They didn’t get involved. They didn’t ask WTF? 

People who are about to do bad things typically “telegraph” their intentions before they act. If everyone in our society would stop ignoring the odd, the out of place, or the strange, then we’d be a long way toward being safer.

If we instead reported odd behavior or odd situations or asked questions of the person that was acting odd then we’d be in a safer environment all the time.

Criminal activity almost always requires stealth. Asking or having a Policeman ask a suspicious individual what they’re doing may be just enough to stop a crime before it happens.

We text, call, email, Facebook and tweet pretty much 24 / 7 you’d think that with that kind of communication there would be no crime.

But in fact we are so glued to the glow of our smart phones that we’re not only driving distracted…

We’re LIVING distracted.

Consider that, the next time you’re in a restaurant and you notice people texting more than talking.

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And YET ANOTHER EDD #FAIL

Ok so here’s the deal.

As I’ve chronicled The California Employment Development Department is anything but what it’s name claims it is.

We’ve learned that calling them and reaching a human being is impossible.

We’ve learned that when they call you to ask you questions in their Eligibility Interview process, that they are unable to transfer you to any other departments. But occasionally they can at least answer a question.

We’ve learned that EDD does not know what a directive statement is. They prefer to use passive voice in their correspondence, suggesting potential actions that you might wish to take when the drug induced haze of your medicinal marijuana or ‘shrooms wears off.

Today we’ve learned that if you happen to be one of the people who owns a macintosh computer OR if you happen to run one of the Linux variants  that you had better be prepared for your claim form to take between 2 and 5 hours to file online.

Yes! You read that correctly. 

It seems that the EDD is Windows-centric 

On the Macintosh platform ANY error in data input will cause you to have to force quit Safari because once the EDD generates an error dialog box in Safari you CAN NOT CLEAR THE ERROR DIALOG. No matter how many times you click on the OK button.

This means if you fail to put two zeroes after a decimal point, or you include an apostrophe in a contraction in a text box, or you have a dash in between the area code and dialing prefix on a phone number, you’ll generate an un-clearable error.

And guess what… You’ll get to go right back to the beginning of the form and start all over again.

I finally re-loaded an Virtual machine containing Windows XP just to be able to get through the damn form.

I’m trying to print a copy of my EDD entry form right now… and I think that the print routine has hung, Which means that I’m going to get to re-enter all the information yet AGAIN.

The irritating part of this is that the ONLY way to communicate with EDD in terms of filing claims is to do it ONLINE. Given that fact, you’d at least hope that they could program their fucking form so that ANY modern web browser can be used.

Mind you these are the people who are responsible for BILLIONS of dollars in California tax money, and they can’t be bothered to test their forms for compatibility.

Considering that Apple is still based in Cupertino you’d think the California web sites would at least work properly with Apple systems.

Of course, at some point Apple will look at it’s bottom line, then look at the tax burden it’s carrying because of it’s presence in California… And they’ll move to another state.

If companies like Hughes and Northrop Grumman decided it was time to move… Apple can’t be far behind…

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And my car is done

It’s been a good but very expensive week.

The car turned out very nice.

Before

In the before and after photos, you can see the difference. I also had the front grill changed out from the normal BMW chrome to a Black Chrome. It was one of those situations where since they were going to have the bumper off the car and disassembled to do the repainting, I saved myself the labor charges by having the grills swapped out now rather than waiting to do it later.

I’ve always liked the look of black trim. Before, the only chrome on the car other than the roundels was the grill. The dealer had parked my beastie in the service bay nose out (very nice). And I’m sure that more than a few men dropping off their cars were thinking “Hummmm, I wonder how much that costs?”

Overall I like the look a lot more. Somehow this simple little change makes a big difference in the look of the car. It comes across leaner, & more aggressive. Now I just hope it’s not too aggressive otherwise I’m going to be attracting the attention of the CHP.

 

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One more picture, then it’s off to deal with the rest of the stuff I have to do today.

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Mid LIfe Crisis

IMAG0229 Yeah I’ve reached that age…

You know, that point where you think about some of the things that you wish you’d done but never seemed to have the time to do. In reality these are the things that you just never felt you could let yourself do or make the time for.

Lately I’ve been experiencing little flashes of insight about some of the things I never let myself do, or was too self conscious to try.

As I’ve gotten older, fatter, and sassier, I’m starting to loose some of those inhibitions.

One thing I’ve always wanted to do was know how to play a musical instrument. I can noodle out some simple pieces on a piano, hell I even gave trumpet a half-assed try. You know what held me back? Embarrassment that I couldn’t play the instrument perfectly after a few tries at a piece.

My folks tried to tell me that practice was what I had to do, but there was always this fear in the back of my mind that someone was listening and they were suffering from my attempts at music.

Well in the immortal words of Janis Joplin “Fuck That SHIT!”

I live with a classically trained professional musician and have for 23 years. I’ve heard the endless practicing and the swearing at not getting something quite right.

We were talking about something obliquely musically related and I said what I’d come to believe for most of my life ” Well I can’t carry a tune in a bucket” and he said “You’re wrong about that, I’ve heard you singing.”

I was mortified. I don’t sing unless I’m damn sure no-one can hear me.

I guess somewhere in the 23 years when I was singing… I wasn’t quite as alone as thought. Or I’d been singing to something on the radio without realizing it.

So there I was all embarrassed because… well… he’s a professional and my screeching must have set his teeth on edge.

Then he goes on to say, that my analysis of “Wailin Willie” in Grand Junction, CO was essentially right on. Willie was pushing his voice way too hard and was singing out of his range. Willie was attempting to cover these facts by turning the amp on his guitar up and inflicting sonic damage on everyone in the room so that hopefully they wouldn’t notice how truly bad Wailin Willies singing was.

Then he said that my singing in addition to being well within my range, was also in the right key and actually followed the melody line of what I was hearing, for example a song on the radio. He told me that I couldn’t do that if I was tone deaf and that I most certainly could carry a tune.

Now here’s where the midlife crisis come into play.

I’ve always loved guitars, and I’ve always wished I could play one.

I’ve loved Fender Guitars. The look, the sound, and well everything about them. Gibsons are cool too, but something about the Fender has always visually and acoustically appealed to me more than Gibsons.

So I came out of the closet and said “Lets go tour the Fender factory” late Monday evening.  Tuesday Morning, we were walking through Fender in Corona and I was loving it.

After the tour, we wandered through the Fender Museum and I was having a ball. I think I did 4 loops around the museum.

Again I wished I could pick up one of these beautiful instruments like some of the youngsters present were doing and just play them.

After we left the Fender plant, we stopped by Sam Ash to pick up some music for a gig he’s playing later in the year, and I wandered into the guitar room. I didn’t see anything that was really impressive and frankly Sam Ash doesn’t do a very good job of displaying their guitars. So I wandered back to the sheet music and a beginning guitar book caught my eye. It was cool because I showed TAB and then later begins presenting TAB and standard musical notation. I was standing there reading this book and thought, “Hey, I could do this“

We leave Sam Ash, empty handed.

“Hey could we stop by Guitar Center? They’ve got a chromatic tuner I’ve been wanting to take a look at.” “Sure, we’re going right by the place and we’ve got nowhere else to be until this evening.”

We walk in to Guitar Center. It’s chaos… we find the tuner and he plays with it for a while. I’m walking around the store and looking at some of the Guitars.

I notice a few Fenders, there’s a few keyboards, some drums and an assortment of other stuff scattered around. I glance through a window to one of the sound rooms. There are stacks of Amps, and some guitars hanging on the wall. Most of all when the door to the room closes it’s quiet! It’s cool and there’s a stool so I have a seat and enjoy the silence.

This is a great place to escape the chaotic drummers, and insanely loud grunge guitar playing of the proteges of the Goth, Emo crowd.

Then I look up, and well It was a kind of magic…

Hanging there is the most beautiful guitar I’ve ever laid eyes on. I take it off the rack and it feels good in my hands. I strum the strings and can tell the low E is a bit out of tune with the rest of the strings but I don’t know if the low E is right and the rest are wrong or if ti’s the other way around.

Then I look at the price. Whew! Out of my range… I hang the beauty up and leave the room for the chaos of the main floor.

I find another handsome Fender from their Modern Player line that’s more around my price range. As I’m looking at it I notice two things. 1) this one is made in China, 2) The fit & finish isn’t quite up to what I’d expect.

In fact it was the roughness that caught my attention and made me look at the serial number. Yep, a CN prefix and the words “Crafted in China” on the back of the head stock. But it’s a Fender, it’s not as polished as I’ve seen or expect it’s also only $600.

I look at a few more Fenders, One from Mexico, Fender has an Ensenada plant. One from the US, Manufactured in Corona, CA. Which leads me back to the beauty in the amp room.

Yep, US prefix, She was made in Corona. The pickups are the standard production units, not the hand wound artistry of Abigail Ybarra, but this beauty is all Fender, all US and I’d just seen the factory she was made in.

As an aside Mrs. Ybarra is one of the sweetest people and she’s totally famous for hand winding the pickups for some, if not all of the biggest names in rock & roll.

I hate to hang the beauty back on the rack. She’s somehow crawled under my skin. I know I’m insane, I can’t play the thing. You don’t buy a work of art like that and not play it…

We leave empty handed, from the second store. We’re going to a Celtic music concert at the Redlands Bowl so it’s time to bail or we’re not going to make it.

Next day, after an interview that was annoying for a number of reasons… I ask “Do you think I could learn to play a guitar?” The answer surprises me “Yes.. I think you could and you’d probably enjoy yourself.”

So after some hemming and hawing, soul searching and acknowledgement that I am out of my fucking mind, we head back to Sam Ash and really look at the beginner books.

Having a musician with you when you’re trying to figure out if a primer is a good one or a bad one is a really nice ace to have in your pocket. We pick up two primers and the music he was looking for the day before.

We head to Guitar Center, I looked at the lower priced alternatives. I tried to see the merit in purchasing one of them. But none of them felt like they had the soul of the beauty in the amp room. Even another Fender hanging right there with a heftier price tag didn’t “feel” right.

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Sooooooo.

Here’s my newest obsession.

The Beauty in the amp room is my beauty now. She’s a Fender Stratocaster… I’m using a borrowed amp. If it’s quiet here in the house I don’t really need the amp, but hearing the fullness of tone and the clear ringing tones is a serious treat.

I’m learning the basics, I’m doing it for no-one but me. While I was practicing this afternoon with the amp on, I wasn’t embarrassed when I screwed up a chord. Even my screwups can’t really make beauty sound bad.

I now know what playing till your fingers bleed can mean. (I’m not there yet but my hand stopped working today after about an hour of chord work.)

I anticipate that the chord work will continue for quite some time. I’ve got to improve the fine motor control, strength, and proprioception in my left hand. These things will take time. This is the last hobby for me for a while. I can get up at 6 every morning and be busy all day. When I start working a real job again, I’m not sure how I’m going to keep up with the interests I have right now.

I’ve decided though I’m going to pursue the things that enrich my life and put a smile on my face.

It’s good not to be embarrassed.  

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Paraprosdokian Of the Week

A Friend sent me a list of these. I thought it would be fun to share them

Paraprosdokians are phrases or sentences that lead us down the garden path to an unexpected ending.

Evening news is where they begin with ‘Good Evening,’ and then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.