Archive for January, 2003
Blast!

Took the baby and my baby to see Blast! today. I’m not sure what it was but it was quite a spectacle. Mrs. Bumper said it was like a long halftime show and I can’t disagree. The coolest part is that they all ran around and blocked the exits and did an encore in the lobby.

Whee! I made it inside Command Magazine this quarter. And, man I’m looking good. Thanks guys!

Fence Update: I filed our answer with the court on Friday. I had checked with a couple of lawyers, but apparently the city’s attorney wrote their petition in such a way that no one is ever going to recover any fees in this case (what does he care, he’s getting paid), and I couldn’t really get anyone interested. Anyway the basic gist of our answer is that the city council has been infiltrated by space-clones intent on taking over the Earth one driveway at a time and only The Court can stop them.
It’s actually not so easy to deal with the courts as a “civilian”. Those people won’t tell you anything, man. I just want the barest information about administrative trivia: “Does this need to be notarized?”, “Does this have to be an original?”, “Do you need two copies of that?”. They always answer that they aren’t allowed to give legal advice. I’m really only asking them what they want. They’re all very nice but it seems that the policy is that they would rather you hired a professional.

Pilot Q7

My Mom, and fellow plumophile gave me a Pilot Q7 recently. I’ve only been carrying it for a couple of days now, but it is compelling. The stroke is a little thinner than I usually seek, but it’s dark and uniform and the friction is really about perfect. It’s a needle point, click-style pen with archival-safe acid-free gel ink. It could be a little heavier, but other than that it’s nice.
I bought myself a box of Bic Z4s out of desperation about a month ago and have been not unhappy with the performance. They are a little sloppy and do bleed through, and they are a removable-cap style, but they’re cheaper than the Z4 I really wanted, and do have a nice bold stroke. They’re really a solid enough pen, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to go back.

The pen is mightier than the sword. While this is probably true in a larger sense, in a one-on-one fight I’ll put money on the guy with the sword every time.

forgot

With the big fence deal and Detective’s School and my socks being too tight I forgot all about the TTPOA SWAT Conference being here next week. I hope I can sneak away from class a bit and see some old friends. Lots of good instructors this year, and it’s in Austin so I expect rave reviews. I notice the C.A.T.I. guys will be there. It’s worth it to spend a day with these guys just so you can laugh about it with other alums. The techniques aren’t really funny, but the fact that in Brazil they actually do hostage rescues by twisting the bad guy’s arm is hilarious.

This site best viewed on my monitor

— This site best viewed on my monitor. —
It turns out that Internet Explorer renders my big tranparent png at the top there as not transparent at all. I filled all the stuff that I intend to be transparent with my favorite color, 5b6b56, and then gave it an opacity of ‘0’. We’ll see if that helps. Give it a <shift>+reload and let me know.
I can’t remember if I knew about this ugliness before and chose to ignore it, or if I just thought about checking and didn’t. Oh well, maybe this’ll fix it. Of course, maybe it won’t.

Does anyone have a copy of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure I could borrow?

A Koan

The student asked his master: “Why should I use strict? And as I progress should I continue to use warnings?
The master punched his student in the face and wordlessly walked away. At that moment, the student was enlightened.

(a nationally accredited agency)

Mrs. bumper saw my new business cards and thought the red letters that say “(a nationally accredited agency)” were some kind of big joke I had put on there purposefully. “What does that mean? do they make you quit arresting people if you’re not ‘accredited’?
So I had to explain what little I knew about accreditation. And that is not much. I do know that plenty of departments go along swimmingly without being accredited. I also know we spend a lot of time and effort on things that don’t have anything to do with anything but getting and maintaining the mighty accreditation. I’m pretty sure ‘accreditation’ gets us some of our money back from the Feds, but I don’t really know. Nevertheless it makes me a little queasy.
I’m really not too high on the Feds being involved in local law enforcement. Our Narcs really love to “go federal” on a guy because the bad guy will actually spend real time in prison. Of course to ‘go federal’ you have to follow the federal sportsmanship rules, like not doing a search warrant until daylight, -About the time the school buses are picking up kids is nice, or knocking and waiting a polite 13 seconds before you break a door. I’m sure Keith’s widow feels warm inside knowing her husband went out because he was playing like a true gentleman.
Aside from being bitter, though, I think it’s just wrong.

Fence Update: If you haven’t been keeping up, or you got hit in the head and have amnesia, you can look here, here, here, and finally; here.
Friday the Constable was out to serve us with the papers the city filed. They still think they have an “Easement by Prescription” despite the fact that nobody but me was using the durn thing anyway, but now they want me to pay their lawyer and, oh, $20,000.00 for their trouble. *shrug*
Maybe I’m missing something, but that seems completely insane. I guess we’ll see. [Update 15JAN03: Fixed stupid links to a box behind my firewall. (thanks Tom)]