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.
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)]
I forgot to mention that it was, as always, The Best Christmas Ever. I really, really like Christmas.
Sometimes, because I’m generally a nut, people awkwardly pause, formulate the question so as to not offend me, and ask me if I celebrate Christmas. Gentle reader, rest assured I celebrate Christmas. (I hate to think I’m giving off the vibe that I’m a Christmas-hater)
I don’t really do the Santa Claus thing though, maybe that’s why people get the wrong idea. My main reason for this is that I’m going to have to tell my kids “heroin is bad for you” and I don’t want old lies lurking in the back of their skulls. Also, deep down, I think that Santa Claus is made up to include, and be non-offensive to foreigners and commie-freaks. “Look, you’re in America. It’s a Christian nation, get with the program.”
So Baby sees the Mall Santa and calls him “Christmas Tree Man”. Pretty funny. It’s not that we’re hiding the Santa Claus thing, we just don’t really think much about it. She’s a little young this year, for the Sinterklass story, but it’s a pretty good one. Better than the whole chimney-deal by a long shot.
There’s a wealth of information out there, but most of it’s in Dutch.
Anyway, Happy Christmas.
My Uncle the Spammer
I mentioned earlier that I had set Granny up with a shell at the house. She had a brand-new virgin email account and sent exactly one email. To her brother.
Well yesterday she comes in to see if she has a reply and her mbox is overflowing with crap!
Unamused, I was, as I checked into this aberration. You know sometimes at the bottom of a web page there’s a link that says something like “mail this page to a friend”? I always wondered a few things about that.
Deke and the Lt. are great too, they’ve been playing for a while and it shows.
If you look at the picture, though, you might notice that all those South Sub guys have chairs and they forced me to stand. Some way to treat a guest! <g>
Four days and a wakeup call ’til Christmas and I think I have all my shopping done. Not bad. There is that thing I ordered for my lovely wife that I think won’t be here in time, but other than that I think I’ve got a new record. I’m pretty happy with my purchases overall, but of course Mrs. Bumper causes me the most grief every year. Yet another display of how we differ is that she’s very practical and I’m… Well, not. I would be happiest buying her something really useless every year, but I know she would pretend to like it but be disgusted inside. I want to buy her a piece of jewelry suitable for wearing about twice a year. She wants an air filter for her lawn mower. But my point is that she’s a little hard to buy for, and it’s always a compromise.
I’ve heard that people are having a hard time getting in the Christmas Spirit this year. I think it might be due to the short period between Thanksgiving and Christmas this time. Anyway I was having the same problem until Karl sent me this years card.
Yay! My Momma just had delivered to me an antique jewelry display case thingy. This is going to be the coolest desk ever; it has dozens of shallow drawers, is extra wide and, most importantly, isn’t actually a desk. Why is that last bit the most important thing to me? Well, I haven’t really thought about it ’till now (journals beget introspection). I guess it’s just the hack value. My Mom hacks furniture.
Now I have about two days of furniture rearranging to do here in the conservatory. It’s not the furniture so much as it is all those cables snaking all aver the place.
Thanks to everyone who made it out to my promotion ceremony and to those who thought about it but realized that they could be doing something else instead. I hate things like that and I would never expect anyone to show up, but it was pretty heart warming to see my boys from The Team had sneaked into the back row like the ninjas they are. I’m glad I didn’t see them before I went up to the stage or I might have been a little teary-eyed. Well except that I’m a man and I don’t cry.
Off to the White Hayride tonight and hope to catch some of the Geminid Meteor Shower and get my nuptial snuggle on.
My Granny was over here today sending her first email. I feel a little bad looking at my Granny as a science experiment, but it was interesting to watch a normal, intelligent person do something new. She somehow has escaped ever even using a typewriter.
I set her up with mozilla mail instead of the greatest MUA in the world because I thought it would be easier for a beginner, but the whole pointing-device paradigm is foreign to her, so I don’t know.
Mrs. Bumper took me out clothes shopping today. It was a pretty traumatic experience for me. I guess I’m just an institutional man, I’ve grown accustom to someone telling me what to wear every day. I decided on something and just wanted three of them, but that wasn’t going to satistfy the tailor. We ended up compromising and I got some things that are almost exactly the same, but in different weights. I really can’t see myself “mixing it up a bit” with a salmon shirt and Warhol-esque tie, so I just got black over white. I figure if it looks good on Monday, one just like it will look good on Tuesday.
This must be a manefestation of my sickness.
I usually don’t pay too much attention to what I’m wearing except: I cannot stand to be monochromatic. If I’m wearing black shorts I’ll wear a green t-shirt, if I’m wearing green shorts I’ll wear a black t-shirt. Other than that I don’t much care. Oh, I also don’t like t-shirts that came from the store. T-shirts should be commemorative. That’s my fashion advice.
The boys from my shift took me out for a nice dinner after work last night. I’ve become pretty enamored with them in the eleven or twelve days I’ve spent with them. I’m sure my record of showing up for work has made me less popular, but what can I do?
You’re all invited, as my personal guests, to my promotion ceremony. Friday, PromiseLand Holy-Roller Church, 1000hrs. I’ll understand if you can’t make it, but I wanted you to know you’re invited. I don’t know if there’s free food or not.
I have long sought to configure X to never-ever, no matter what, no consideration given to which sort of term I happen to be using, never, ever ring the terminal bell again. I know the obvious answer is to claw out the bell piezo with a fork, but on the laptop the terminal bell goes through the system speakers and as I mentioned the other day, I must be able to listen to IRC conversation.
I finally gave up and just asked and in about two seconds hoyhoy piped up with:
“if you’re running X, can’t you do a xset b 0 0 0”I mean, it’s like he was just thinking about that. Weird, but it has made my life just a bit better. And maybe someday, someone will type “never ever ever ring terminal bell in X” in a search box and this’ll make his life just a bit better too.
I went and saw my prospective new work environs yesterday. It’s the area where all the detectives used to be when I was just a pup matriculating at Catalpa Community College.
It’s a little depressing, like Barney Miller, but with cubicles. The only thing that has me a little stressed though is the thought of wearing adult clothes. I can’t seem to get a handle on just how I would dress were I all grown up and zero-hour is fast approaching.
Mostly it’s the shoes that are bothering me. If I can find some suitable clothes that I can wear with my Fort Lewis Go-Devils I’ll probably live.
