aubreyturner.org

Because I work at home, I have a second phone line installed in my office.  It’s used strictly for business, and it’s set up such that calls to my business line are forwarded to this phone.  The phone itself has no voicemail or answering machine, since my company is paranoid about communications being stored on devices outside of corporate control.  That’s all handled by the forwarding service.  It’s actually kind of handy, since messages left at my business line can be sent to me in an email and I can get faxes without having to connect a fax machine (the service stores them and I can get to them on a website).

Anyhow, I never give anyone the actual number of this phone, since it’s only intended for forwarding.  If someone I know wants to call me, they’ll use my regular number or my cell.  But I can always tell when it’s the beginning of the month, since this phone starts ringing every few hours.  It appears that the previous owner of the number skipped out on some debts and the collectors seem to get busy around the beginning of the month.

I have to answer this line, since even with caller-ID I can’t be certain whether it’s for work or not (the majority of these collectors don’t show a name, only a number if I’m lucky).  The ones that can’t be arsed to use a real person get under my skin a bit, but what’s really starting to irk me, though, is that the mouth-breathing morons haven’t figured out after two years that I’m not the guy they’re looking for.  I even had one of the more idiotic ones ask me if I knew where the guy had moved to!  Hello!?  How in the name of John Moses Browning am I supposed to know that!?  I’m just the poor schmuck who ended up with the deadbeat’s number.  Now quit bothering me and take this number off your lists!

Anyone know a keysequence to send down the line that will set the caller’s phone on fire? 

A few bits of hard-won wisdom from the past few days:

• Should one be listening to music while shaving in the morning, Rock Concert Movement No. 1 should be considered right out.

• Any cooking involving flour should not be undertaken while wearing a dark blue shirt.

il-leg-al
adj.

1. Prohibited by law.
2. Prohibited by official rules: an illegal pass in football.
3. Unacceptable to or not performable by a computer: an illegal operation.

n.

        An illegal immigrant.

It would seem that some DISD trustees aren’t quite up on the whole concept of illegal aliens.

Dallas’ school district has a shortage of bilingual teachers.

DISD trustee Joe May knows where he can find a lot of people who speak Spanish fluently and are already in the country. And he’d like to put them to work.

But there’s at least one big hurdle: The school district cannot knowingly hire illegal immigrants because it’s against federal law.

Mr. May wants to amend that so the district can hire illegal immigrants who are college-educated and can qualify for the district’s emergency teaching certification program. The issue will be discussed at the school board’s policy briefing today.

This is the sort of fuzzy-headed nonsense that we get for putting up with PC phrases like “undocumented immigrant.”  Language matters.  If one considers an “undocumented immigrant,” one is likely to conclude that this person somehow forgot to stop off at the office on the way into the country to pick up some papers.  It’s all just a formality.  It glosses over the fact that this person deliberately and knowlingly broke United States federal law by entering this country without permission.  It doesn’t matter now nice they are or how productive they are, they’re CRIMINALS.

Now, having said that, I understand that large parts of our economy rely on people willing to work for very low pay, and that most of these jobs are filled by illegals.  I’m not completely unsympathetic to people who are just seeking a better life for themselves and their families.  Regardless of that, though, we need to get a handle on this and establish a system that lets them come here to work while allowing us to control who crosses our border.  No one who breaks the law should be rewarded.  An “amnesty” program simply rewards people who have broken the law.

I also strongly oppose bilingual education.  If a student doesn’t speak English, that student needs to learn it before coming into the school system.  It galls me that the taxpayer has to pay for teaching English to students who live in this country.  I don’t have a bias against Spanish, so much as I have a bias against people who don’t assimilate to our country.  Further, we simply can’t afford to teach students in every possible language.  That way lies madness and the destruction of our way of life.

Anyhow, in the here and now, DISD already has programs to recruit bilingual teachers abroad, in a legal fashion.

Some districts, including DISD, go abroad to recruit bilingual teachers and help applicants obtain their work visas.

But getting a work visa isn’t an option for illegal immigrants already here, said Maria Elena Garcia-Upson, regional communications manager for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

“While we empathize and sympathize with these individuals, there is an orderly fashion in which one can immigrate to this country,” Ms. Garcia-Upson said.

Given the current threats to this country, we simply cannot tolerate our leaky southern border any longer.  I don’t care whether we build a physical wall or an electronic one, but it’s time to close it up and get control of who’s coming into the country.

This post by Jeff reminded me of something concerning the so-called “gun debate” in this country.  Gun owners are regularly demonized by the anti-gunners as blood-thirsty child murderers who have short fuses and who will kill everyone in sight in a hail of gunfire after a minor fender-bender.  Frankly, if gun owners were as bad as they say we are, we’d have killed all the anti-gunners long before now. 

It’s easy to mock or demonize the civilized.  The real test of guts is mocking the violent and uncivilized.

One of the things that strikes me about the Muslim reaction to the Danish cartoons is that it reflects an immature worldview.  Mature people recognize that you can’t respond to words or images with violence, no matter how offensive those words or images may be to your beliefs.

I grew up in the buckle of the Bible belt.  Many people decry the ways of fundamentalist or even overtly-religious Christians, ascribing all sorts of malacious actions to them.  But I can tell you that I didn’t worry about them trying to kill me because we didn’t agree.

I tend to operate on a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with regards to religion.  It’s only the overly zealous types who try to “save” me who earn my ire and disrepect.  I have told several of the more pushy sorts that I wasn’t interested in their “creation myth.”  That tended to send them off muttering about “burning in hell,” etc, but even so, I’ve never worried about them doing violence against me.

Grown-ups don’t burn down your house or kill you over a religious disagreement.  It’s time for the Muslim world to learn to live and let live.

There’s going to be a library design charrette this Saturday (02/04/2006) at Keller Town Hall.  It claims to represent “stakeholders,” but citizens will NOT be allowed to provide input.  So it appears we are going to be given a choice in the election of a new library in Town Center or nothing. 

Last Friday’s Keller Citizen had a few choice comments on the subject from Mayor Julie Tandy.

If the bond fails, she said, “I think it would send a very strong message about what our community thinks about its future and how it much it believes in its citizens.”

She said a library is an important part of fostering a vibrant, well-read, articulate and educated population.

“My goal for the short-term is to get the information out,” she said, citing some complaints that it has not been available.  “We’re going to try to solve that.”

While the city cannot promote the bond election itself, she said officials’ responsibility is to provide that information.  It’s up to the citizens to read it.

“I am confident when they get the information, that they will vote in favor of it,” Tandy said.  “When it passes, I hope it will be accepted.”

Lovely.  So if you don’t support the bond package that they concoct you’re obviously against a “vibrant, well-read, articulate and educated population.”  Or perhaps you didn’t read the information.  Because obviously if you did you’d have voted for it.</sarcasm>

As for the information that has been available so far, I’m less than impressed.  I want access to source documents.  I want to see third-party, impartial studies that show actual economic impacts from where this has been done (the library update documents hint at this, but don’t show sources).

Whether this will be accepted, as Mayor Tandy hopes, will depend on whether they really listen to public feedback.  So far, I’m not getting that impression.  What I’ve seen so far has been a very grudging acknowledgement that they need to open up the process to the public, yet I’ve not seen any real openness.  I suppose I’ll wait and see what comes out of all this.

In the meantime, a couple of thoughts on the library issue:

• Costs.

  I can’t help but think that there’s a bit of public-service-itis here, as I’m not getting the feeling that the taxpayer is being respected.  I want to see serious consideration given to cost at every level of the design and planning.  And I can’t help but think that a Town Center location will drive up costs.

• Hasn’t this already been approved?

  I’ve heard a lot of talk about “consultation” with citizen groups after the failed 1999 bond issue.  Supposedly, these meetings allowed them to hear objections and address them in the new proposal.  However, it doesn’t take the place of an election.  It also doesn’t take into account the input of those who moved to Keller after 1999 and who pay taxes.

Previous posts:
The Arrogance Is Mindboggling
Library ‘O Doom
The Library Thing
Democracy In Action

Our local CERT has refresher training as part of each monthly meeting.  We’re going over one chapter from the class in each meeting.  Tonight, being the second meeting of the year, is Chapter 2 (fire supression), and I’m the instructor.  I decided I’d check the FEMA CERT page, which has been hosting the training materials just to see if any changes had been made.  Instead of the usual page, I got the following:

Important Notice For CERT Program

CERT and Citizen Corps were transferred to the Office of Domestic Preparedness (now the Office of Grants and Training) in August 2004. FEMA continued to maintained the CERT website in support of our DHS partner. As of January 31st, 2006, FEMA will transfer the CERT website content to a new CERT/Citizen Corps site. We expect that Citizen Corps will have the new website available by February 15th. When it is, we will post the address here. CERT information, CERT questions and team registration will be handled at the new address.

EMI will continue to offer IS-317 Introduction to Community Emergency Response Teams.

I know it’s a fairly short interval (at least in government terms), but it means that none of the CERT training materials are available during the transition.  Anyhow, it boggles the mind a bit that they’d just leave it down like this.  They’ve had 17 months to perpare, and they still can’t coordinate handing off the site.

I’ve had customers for web work that would be ticked off if you had 15 minutes of downtime, much less 15 days.

(Edited last sentence to make more sense…)

I won’t be holding my breath for a reply, but I sent an email to the Carole Keeton Strayhorn campaign asking for information on her platform.  So far, I haven’t heard any concrete information about what she thinks, just the usual stuff about “putting aside partisan politics.”  That sort of talk can usually be interpreted as “get out of my way, you dunce, so we can do it my way.”  Her assurances that she’s a conservative also make me suspicious.  If she was truly conservative, people would know it from her positions. 

The fact that she was endorsed by the Texas State Teachers Association doesn’t help her with me.  The TSTA has ALWAYS endorsed Democrat party candidates in the past.  Their support for Strayhorn just reinforces the impression I get that she’s really a Democrat party candidate in disguise. 

I guess we’ll see.  If she ever makes a substantive statement about her positions, that is.

I’ve been hearing rumblings that the Keller ISD is going to come back at us soon with another bond package.  It’s getting really tiresome.  After getting their dream package of $155 million rejected, they “pared” it down to only $99.75 million.  That bond passed.  I’m eagerly awaiting the release of information on the next bite at the apple.  Let’s hope they’ve come to their senses and don’t try any stupidity like putting artificial turf in this one.

Anyhow, I suppose it could be worse.  Frisco ISD is proposing a new bond package that could go as high as $1.2 billion (yes, that’s BILLION).

Voters in this swiftly growing city could be asked to endorse a school bond package as large as $1.2 billion in May, an unprecedented amount for suburban taxpayers in Texas.

With an average of 20 new students arriving every school day, a district committee is considering proposals, stretching from $600 million to $1.2 billion, to finance a massive building program for families lured to this Collin County suburb.

The largest proposal is more than twice the size of the district’s last record-breaking $478 million plan three years ago. It tops every plan ever put before voters in the biggest cities across Texas except for a $1.37 billion package approved in the Dallas school district in 2002, records show.

Dallas has roughly 1.2 million residents. Frisco, formerly a small farming community and now the fastest-growing district in the state, is home to slightly more than 80,000 people who would be asked to shoulder what could be several hundred dollars a year apiece in additional taxes.

Cobblers!  That’s a lot of money.  And it’s on top of $478 million from three years ago.  I’d be forming a taxpayer revolt and perhaps a tar-and-feather party if I had to suddenly pony up that much money in taxes.  Especially since I don’t have any kids. 

It’s really time to start considering having the users pay for the services they use.  I know I’ll get labelled as a cold-hearted bastard who hates children, but I’m past caring about that touchy-feel nonsense.  A user-pays system would put the burden squarely where it belongs, which is on those who caused the problem in the first place. 

<whine mode=“socialist”>
   But what about the poor?  How will they pay for school?
</whine>

My first thought is that the bastards ought not to be having them if they can’t pay for them, but if you want to be all share-and-share-alike, then spread the burden across the user base.  But leave me the hell out of it.

This system would also benefit those who homeschool or who use private schools.  These people are effectively double-taxed in that they have to pay for a service they don’t use and still find the resources for educating their children outside of the system.

So just how do you tell if a groundhog has seen his shadow?  It’s not like he can suddenly turn around and say, “You woke me up for this?  Put me back in my hole you perv!”