aubreyturner.org

This is something that I’d always felt intuitively, but I’d never really given it much thought.  I was raised on rear-wheel drive (and big V-8’s) and I just never liked the feel of a front-wheel drive car, despite what everyone was telling me about their safety.  Combine this with the fact that most front-wheel drive cars during my formative years were econoboxes, it was enough to turn me off of them for good.

We don’t get snow and ice here enough to have a lot of practice driving on it, but the experience I had with a front-drive car on it told me that the safety benefits were overrated.  I’ve gotten used to oversteer and I’ve learned countersteering if the rear wheels should break loose (having spent the past 10 years driving pickup trucks).  I’ve also gotten really used to using the accelerator to hold a curve (which doesn’t work so well in front-drive cars).

Perhaps this explains my disdain for most cars these days (that and the fact that most of them are too damn small).  The cars that interest me are either AWD or rear-wheel drive (and have V-8s).

Link via Instapundit.

At this point I don’t care anymore whether we find WMD in Iraq or not.  Simply liberating that children’s prison makes the whole operation worth it.  The mere fact that Iraq had a children’s prison highlights the pure evil that was Saddam Hussien and his minions.

I’m still having a hard time coming to terms with even the concept of such a thing as a children’s prison.  It’s just not something that I can wrap my mind around.  Apparently, I’m not the only one.

My conference ended early today and I met Kim du Toit at DFW Gun Range for some shooting.

Kim let me try his Marlin Camp Carbine (.45 ACP).  It was a really nice gun.  It isn’t too long or heavy and it doesn’t beat you up with recoil.  I think a bug has been planted.  One of these days I may have to obtain one.

Of course, turnabout is fair play.  Kim seemed to enjoy my Ruger Single-Six and expressed interest in getting one of his own.

Update: Of course, just because I went to the range today doesn’t mean that I won’t go to my usual session on Friday after work.  Hmmm…. I may need to order more ammo…

I just saw this (Washington Post registration required) over at The Command Post.  Apparently, Mohamed ElBaradei thinks that any tests for WMD in Iraq will need the to be done by the U.N. to have credibility.

My initial reaction to such a statement is to wonder if he’s been smoking the same crack as the Iraqi Minister of (dis)Information.

To the nimrod at 166.102.192.7 (h7.192.102.166.ip.alltel.net), the virus-laden email that you sent me didn’t work. 

What kind of a chump do you take me for?

The conference I’m attending is for technical people from my company.  A variety of technical sessions are being offered through Wednesday.  I attended one today concerning creating highly-available systems.  The presenter was a former chief engineer on a nuclear sub who now works for the company.  His point throughout the presentation was that your system’s reliability depends not only on technology, but also on your people and the processes that they follow. 

The most interesting point he brought out was something that was learned from 9/11.  We in the industry were quick to set up redundant systems in geographically separated datacenters and to put procedures in place for offsite backups, but we forgot about distributing people.  The companies that were located in the World Trade Center had offsite backups and redundant systems in place, but they didn’t have people who were ready to step in and fill the positions of those who were killed.  All that physical preparation wasn’t very useful because there were no people available who knew the systems.

I have to admit that I hadn’t given much thought to this topic before, even though I’ve seen what happens when people become too specialized and aren’t cross-trained on each other’s jobs.  It’s one more thing to factor into the next system that I’m involved with.

I’m going to be attending a work-related conference this week.  It’s in downtown Dallas and I have to be there at 8:00 am.  Outside of rush hour, this wouldn’t be so bad (39 miles / about 40 minutes).  But I’m going to have to make my way through rush-hour traffic, which means I will be leaving at 6:30am. 

That would normally be bad enough, but this time change crap is really going to mess with me (it’s going to feel like 5:30am).

I’ve come to the conclusion that cats are insane.  I was over at a friend’s house last night for a birthday party.  She has a large cat that is generally pretty friendly.  I was petting the cat and scratching its back, which it seemed to like, when it suddenly bit me (and it wasn’t a little play-bite either, as it drew blood).  What causes a cat to go from happy to biting like that?

All I can conclude is that cats are not to be trusted.  They’re sneaky little devils and you never know what they’re going to do.  I’ve always preferred dogs to cats (although I don’t hate cats), and this is just one more thing that reinforces that.  A happy dog isn’t going to bite you while you’re petting it.

Now I’m pissed.  Check out this article from Wired about the comments of some lawyer from the Manhattan Institute about those of us who oppose government spying on innocent citizens.

If you don’t want the government to do what it must to protect you from terrorists, you should butt out, said Heather MacDonald, a lawyer at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. She made her remarks Wednesday at the 13th annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference.

And, she urged, stop all the panic-stricken screaming, because it’s endangering human lives.

Al-Qaida and other terrorist groups wield technology as a weapon with no worries about privacy rights, MacDonald said. But fear and distrust of anti-terrorism and surveillance technology hampers the U.S. government’s ability to shore up defenses and stop attacks before they happen.

…

McDonald said the “hysterical cries” from those who see dark plots behind every government antiterrorist plan just proves that privacy advocates have a “luddite mentality.”

Luddite?!  Anti-technology?!  I’ve forgotten more about technology that this constipated harpy will ever know.  In fact, it’s because of my occupation that I know just how insidious these kinds of technologies are.

It isn’t hysterical or luddite to demand that the government follow the damn constitution.  We have a right to be free from government searches and seizures unless they have a specific and demonstrable reason.  What part of that does she not understand?

I will not sit idly by while government hacks and control-freak politicians destroy what little privacy we have left.  I will not be bought off by false promises of “safeguards” and outright lies that the information won’t be abused (Quis custodiet ipsos Custodes?).  I will continue to stand up and tell them to their faces that they are misguided, wrong, and in danger of destroying our constitution.

Damn wankers.

Mrs. du Toit has an interesting new essay up on her site this morning.  She talks about the way in which we sometimes “just know” that something is going to happen or how something is going to turn out.  Very often we are tempted to dismiss these thoughts, since we don’t seem to have a rational basis for them, or we don’t want to believe them, or perhaps we don’t want others to think we’re bonkers.

I understand how she feels about this, since I have often felt the same way.  There have been times when I just knew how something was going to turn out, but I had no identifiable rational basis for it.  I must admit that I’m not 100% accurate about these things.  There have been times when I’ve been wrong. 

There is still a lot that we don’t know about how intelligence operates.  I know that most of us tend to seek patterns in the world around us.  It could be that there is some kind of subconscious or non-linear process in the brain that allows us to integrate numerous small inputs and create a larger picture.  Perhaps we’re merely taking advantage of this process without realizing it.

Mrs. du Toit worries that we’re on the verge of another world-wide conflict, World War III.  As of yet, there are few indicators that we can directly identify that would lead to this conclusion.  However, I have also had that little nagging voice in the back of my head telling me the same thing since September 11, 2001.  I don’t have a rational explanation to give at this point.

For everyone’s sake, I hope that we’re both wrong about this.  I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what the next 10 years bring.