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This little gadget is ingeniously evil.

The Mind Molester is an instrument of creative electronic harassment. It is an electronic device that can drive your victims a little crazy trying to figure out what it is and where it’s located. Your friends/enemies will become obsessed, awaiting the next chirp trying to determine its location, completely disrupting their normal activities.

Just connect this device to a 9-volt battery and plant it in an appropriate location. It produces a one-second electronic chirp about once every 3 minutes. Due to the chirp’s duration, frequency, and sound characteristics, it’s a very difficult, time-consuming, frustrating and maddening task to locate the unit. And even if they find it, they’ll have no idea what it is. The number of effective locations to plant the Mind Molester is limited only by your imagination. Of course, this device is for use on deserving subjects only.

Guaranteed to drive someone nuts, yet not physically harmful.

PLEASE REMEMBER: No talking, no smoking, and crying babies should be deposited in the receptacle in the lobby.—Thank You, the Management

I don’t remember where I first ran across the above quote, but it accurately reflects my thoughts on proper decorum during movie viewing (although I don’t care whether people smoke, but that’s not up to me anymore).  Anyhow, I was reminded of this by a story that’s been running on Fox 4 News the past couple of days about how more businesses are catering to people with babies and small children.  An example they gave was a new program from the Angelika Theater called Crybaby Matinee.  It’s a special showing on weekdays for people with babies.  The lights are kept dim (rather than completely out), and the sound is turned down. 

It seems like a great compromise.  People (especially stay-at-home parents) have an opportunity to get out and see a movie and the rest of us don’t have to put up with crying babies while we watch our movies.

Now someone just needs to start a matinee series for idiots who talk to each other and their cell phones during movies…

I recently installed a webcam in my office so I could see outside without having to pull back the blinds and let in a lot of heat.  The only problem was that my new “window” was often hidden behind other applications.  So I grabbed another monitor and connected it to my PC.  It turns out to be pretty handy, since I can put the camera page and other things that I monitor, but don’t actively use all the time over there and get them out of the way.

However, I suspect I’ve probably crossed some geek boundary with all this hardware…

On a few occasions lately I’ve noticed people without handicap permits parking in the reserved spots or even in the hashed “no parking” areas right next to them at the park.  Considering that I’ve seen these people out and about on the trail, it seems odd to me that they’d be worried about parking an extra fifty feet from the trail entrance if they’re about to walk two or three miles.  But I suspect this doesn’t register in their minds.

To get an idea of the scale of the folly, consider this map of the area.  The parking lot is on the southwest corner of the Bear Creek and Rufe Snow intersection (right across from where Pate Orr dead-ends).  The trail winds around and goes under Rufe Snow and ends up over at Keller Smithfield road (for now; they’re in the process of extending it from there).  The distance from the farthest point in the parking lot to the entrance is less than the distance you walk from the entrance of the trail to the end of the first bridge (that brown-looking structure just to the left and below the parking lot; it crosses the creekbed, which was pretty dry when the picture was taken).

I’m not sure where along the way I got put into the Zogby survey hopper, but I get email invitations from them to take online polls from time to time.  Today’s subject was the United Nations, its relevance, and the role of the United States.  I found it interesting that the question about the role of the United States didn’t have an option for “Get the U.S. the frack out of the U.N.” (or however they might wish to phrase it).  There was an option about “redefining the role of the U.S.”, but that didn’t seem appropriate.  Fortunately, there was an “Other” option with an entry field for me to enter more info.  However, the rest of the poll was similarly set up.  The option of taking our ball and going home just didn’t occur to them.  They asked various questions about how the UN could strengthen its viability and usefulness, but there really wasn’t any way for me to indicate that the whole crumbling, stinking, dilapidated thing should be razed to the ground and then pushed into the sea.

Sometimes, the most obvious answer is the one people don’t want to see.

I was shot by a member of the Keller PD Tactical Team last night.  No, not for real.  It was part of a training exercise and I was a volunteer hostage-taker.  I was holed-up in a back bedroom of a house with a fake gun, while two more of my cohorts were holding a hostage in another part of the house.  What’s amazing is that while we all knew they were coming* we didn’t know they were there until they were in the house.  I don’t want to say much more than that, though, lest I inadvertently give away some of their secrets.

Since this exercise was done in a house that they didn’t want to damage and it was near other houses, they didn’t use any flash-bangs or simunitions.  However, I’m told that they may want volunteers for a full-scale exercise next month that will include these elements.  I may be weird, but for some reason that actually sounds like fun.  If my schedule allows it I’m definitely interested in being there.

*The scenario for last night was that we had taken a hostage for ransom and were holding her in this house.  We weren’t supposed to know that the Tac Team was coming (i.e. we were supposed to be somewhat off-guard).  Of course, being a training scenario, we had advance knowledge that they were coming, which I suspect affected the scenario in some ways.  For example, I could have gotten off at least one round on the first officer through the door of the room I was in (if it had been for real) before he got me.  However, in real life someone in that situation would not likely already have a gun in hand (unless he were extremely paranoid).  And if someone was asleep in that room, he’d wake up to a lot of yelling and bright lights and wouldn’t have a chance to do much of anything.

While walking the dog this morning I had a weird thought.  As we were being passed by a man on a bicycle it set off a rememberance of the way some old-timers say the word motorcycle.  They pronounced it “motorsickle” (and no, this wasn’t just an Arlo Guthrie song; I suspect he got it from contact with these people), so that both bicycle and motorcycle sounded a lot alike.  While it seems odd to our ears, when you get down to it, what’s really odd is that both of these words have the same root (“cycle”), yet are pronounced differently now.  Perhaps those old-timers were actually more consistent than we are now.  But if you try saying either of the words using the pronounciation we currently use for the other, it just sounds weird to our ears (“bi-sycle” or “motor-sickle”).

I took advantage of the tax-free weekend by picking up a couple pairs of pants and some shirts at Cabela’s.  They told me during checkout that they could hem the pants for me while I waited.  Usually I end up taking them to a local tailor, but that often takes a week and costs extra.  However, I didn’t want to wait around on Sunday (amidst the crowd), so I went back this afternoon to have them done.  I had about 30 minutes to kill while I was waiting, so I ended up wandering about the store.

In my wanderings I found myself at the knife counter.  I’m not usually much of a knife person, but something about this one just called my name as soon as I saw it:

It ended up jumping out of the display case and coming home with me.

I really need to work on this whole impulse control thing…

A disturbed man fired shots at Ft. Worth City Development Director Bob Riley yesterday morning.  He was apparently well known to city employees, as he’d been there frequently to complain about various imagined issues.  Because of this, the city is now considering ways to increase security, like installing metal detectors.

I suppose they may need to do something, although I think metal detectors might be a bit overboard.  Anyhow, what really set me off was this gem from Ft. Worth City Council member Wendy Davis:

City leaders say they know state laws prohibit guns from being taken into government meetings, courts and court offices. But concealed handguns—if the owner has a permit—are allowed in other areas of government buildings.

Councilwoman Davis said that’s something that should change.

“We need to lobby back at the state Legislature and see what in the world happened to make this law happen and how we can get it repealed,” she said.

I cannot find words sufficient to convey just how sick and tired I am of being treated like a criminal by these blissninny idiots any time some fool with a gun shoots at a city employee.  I consider it an insult to law-abiding gun owners everywhere, and especially to CHL holders, who have been proven to be among the most law-abiding members of society in the state.  To lump CHL-holders into the same ilk as these criminals just shows that Ms. Davis has no clue as to what she’s talking about.  Perhaps it’s time that we went on the offensive and started suing people who slander CHL holders.  We need to start doing something to let idiots like Davis know that we’re sick and tired of this. 

There’s also an interesting bit of omission and phrasing later in this same article:

On Wednesday, officials said they didn’t know if Ray Redding—who is accused of firing a gun at City Development Director Bob Riley—held a concealed handgun license.

This seems disingenuous at best, since the local TV station knew that this guy has a felony conviction in his past (he pled guilty to a 3rd Degree Felony prohibited weapons charge in 1994).  He also has a long history of drug arrests, all of which would prohibit him from having a CHL.  It seems like the city should be aware of this, given that he was arrested at the scene and they should have looked this up.  And even if the city “officials” couldn’t be arsed to check into this before insinuating that he did have a CHL, the reporter could have fact checked it by looking up his criminal record on the DPS public criminal records site or with Public Data.  But the omission and phrasing allows for the continuation of the subtle linkage between violent scum and law-abiding gun owners. 

And reporters and politicans wonder why gun owners don’t trust them?  Obtuse pricks…

As part of our CERT training, we’ve asked the local head of EMS to teach us the First Responder class.  The first installment was last night, and we spent a lot of time working on spinal immobilization techniques, such as putting on a cervical collar and getting someone onto a back board. 

During the class I had one of those “Ah Ha!” moments, when it dawned on me that the back board is really just a great honkin’ splint.  The principle behind a splint is that it’s used to immobilize an area of the body by tying the area above and below the injury to the splint.  When you consider a possible spinal injury what areas do we have to work with?  Above the injury is the head, and below is the chest.  So, when you get right down to it, you’re just splinting the potentially injured area.

The fact that the patient is trussed up like a chicken is either a bug or a feature, depending on the patient.