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If I hear the newsdroids on TV use the word “escalate” again I think I’m going to go down to the station and shove that teleprompter up their ass.  Perhaps they’ll be able to read it better there.

If there’s one personal habit that drives me completely up the wall it’s when someone smacks while eating.  That wet squishy sound wedges itself under my nerves like fingernails on chalkboard does to some people.  If it goes on for too long I have to remove myself from the room lest I make an unfortunate remark to the offender.

Lately I’ve found myself mortified by that evil sound as I hear it escape from my lips on occasion.  The problem is that my braces take up space and make it more difficult to keep everything “in check.”  It takes conscious effort to prevent any unfortunate sounds from escaping.

Oh well, I suppose I can just remind myself that this will eventually pass.  Only 17 months to go…

There’s an interesting thread on The High Road concerning how to deal with a “Loss Prevention” person who demands to search you as you’re leaving a store.  Of particular interest to me is how one would deal with this in Texas while carrying. 

I’m not talking about setting off the scanner or cases where they want to verify a receipt against the contents of a cart or bag.  I’m interested in the full-on case where they suspect you’ve taken something and want to try to detain and search you.  In relation to that, I was curious as to the level of force they’re allowed to use (i.e. can they lay hands on you?). 

A lot of misunderstandings in the thread came from the fact that the law differs from state to state.  In some states they are not allowed to do much of anything.  In others they retailer (or employees) can take fairly drastic measures to detain a shoplifter.

Searching the Texas statutes led me to the following from the Civil Practice & Remedies Code

§ 124.001.  DETENTION.  A person who reasonably believes
that another has stolen or is attempting to steal property is
privileged to detain that person in a reasonable manner and for a
reasonable time to investigate ownership of the property.

The question then becomes what constitutes detaining a person in a “reasonable manner” and for a “reasonable time.”  Further, in their investigation of the ownership of the property, how far can they go in performing a search? 

The big problem I see here is that if someone is legally carrying a concealed weapon, then that person absolutely could not allow any kind of search of his person such that anyone else could access the weapon.  Further, even announcing to them that you’re carrying could potentially violate the concealment requirement of the law.  So you’re faced with a situation where you cannot allow a search and you can’t explain why.

My thought is that I would ask why I was being detained and explain to them that I will not allow myself to be searched by anyone other than a sworn peace officer and that they need to call the police right away or allow me to leave.  Further, if anyone places a hand on me I’ll ask if that person is a peace officer.  If not I will inform them that they may be facing criminal assault charges and the potential of a civil lawsuit, since I’m willing to wait for the police, which seems perfectly reasonable.  I just won’t be going anywhere (i.e. the “back room”) or allowing them to search until the police arrive. 

But frankly, I’m going to make a huge stink with the management about the incident when it’s over, because I don’t steal and they would have no reason to try to detain me.  Heck, it bugs me when I see people eating a grape in a grocery store if they haven’t paid for it yet.

Let’s just hope I never have to find out how this would work out.  My biggest fear in that situation would be some Rambo-wannabe who won’t listen or can’t be arsed to deviate from the script even if I’m being calm and rational.  But if it comes down to it, I can’t allow myself to be handcuffed or otherwise put in a position of having my carry piece found and taken by anyone other than a peace officer. 

Is it just me, or does this product scream that its wearer is carrying a gun?  I’ve always been weary of so-called concealment vests, but one with the NRA logo on it seems a bit indiscreet.

You may want to be careful what you say while on hold.

It is the opening line on so many phone conversations these days: This call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes.

The taped message is so common that many callers might assume that no one is ever listening, let alone taking notes. But they would be wrong.

Monitoring is intended to track the performance of call center operators, but the professional snoops are inadvertently monitoring callers, too. Most callers do not realize that they may be taped even while they are on hold.

It is at these times that monitors hear husbands arguing with their wives, mothers yelling at their children, and dog owners throwing fits at disobedient pets, all when they think no one is listening. Most times, the only way a customer can avoid being recorded is to hang up.

Actually, I’ve suspected this to be the case and I use the hold time (especially when they have some stupid advertisement playing in the background) to get in a few jibes about the ads or about the stupid phone mazes they make you navigate before you can get to a real person.  I also like to make comments about the stupid robots that make you talk in the hopes that the monitors will eventually pick up on the fact that they’re alienating their customers by foisting us off on these chatty-Cathy machines.

Link via Slashdot.

During the last legislative session, the busy little beavers in Austin passed (and the Governor signed) 1625 bills into law.  So far this session, they’re already off to a quick start, with 391 bills filed in the House and 155 bills filed in the Senate. 

It really irks me to see this sort of thing, since there’s no chance in hell that the average citizen can keep up with all the new laws.  As I wrote in the above linked article, I’d like to see a requirement that the government notify every citizen about all the new laws as well as (like a commenter suggested) a sunset provision where they were required to reauthorize every previous law every 10 years.

While the Texas legislature is meeting to find new and novel ways to suck our pocketbooks dry to pay for the public school elephant, we should also be on guard for other nefarious items, such as HB50 (Rep Smith, Tarrant), HB309 (Rep McClendon), and SB25 (Sen Zaffirini), all of which appear to be identically worded bills that would establish authority for sobriety checkpoints in Texas.

The very idea of checkpoints of any kinds makes my skin crawl.  These so-called representatives need to be hounded from office for violating their oath to preserve and defend the constitution.

I didn’t know until this weekend that you could buy a shredder that would shred credit cards and CDs in addition to paper.  The only downside is that this model is a strip-cut, rather than a cross-cut model.  Although it’s a cross-cut model, my previous shredder was getting kind of frustrating due to its limited capacity and slow speed.  Since I tend to shred a year’s worth of stuff at once (I keep three years of records and shred all the old ones when they pass the three year mark), I decided to give this new one a try. 

This thing eats just about everything you throw at it and barely slows down.  It sucks in a CD and spits out little chunks without missing a beat.  I’d been wondering how I was going to dispose of old back-up CD-Rs.  They can’t be reused and since they tend to have personal information (emails, account info, Quicken files, etc), they need to be destroyed before disposal.  Now they’ll be no problem at all.  It’s actually kind of fun, in a destructive sort of way.

Whenever I do a Hotsync with my Tungsten T3, I wait for it to finish and then hit the power button to turn it off.  Sometimes, though, it turns itself back on after a few seconds.  Usually, turning it off again takes care of it, but there have been a few times where it’s waited a few seconds and turned itself back on again (sometimes it decides to be even more persistent and I have to repeat this cycle three or four times to get it to stay off).

I think my Palm is haunted.

I received a letter from TSRA over the weekend.  As is typical, it was soliciting donations, but it was interesting in that it gave the 2005 legislative priorities for TSRA.  One thing in Texas law that’s always bugged me is that there is no provision for vehicle carry.  TSRA aims to correct this problem during this session by introducing a measure extending the definition of “private property” from your home to your vehicle.  We saw a move in this direction during the last session with a new law that made motor homes private property so they would be exempt from the general restrictions on carrying handguns “on or about your person.” 

Some other items of interest (verbatim from the letter):

• Extend the length of a CHL renewal from 4 years to 5—and keep the fee the same.
• Expand access to “Non-resident” CHLs, so frequent visitor (from states without CHL reciprocity with Texas) can legally carry while traveling in Texas.
• Reduce the CHL “replacement fee” from $25 to $10.  And expand the payment options.
• Make the fact that you have a CHL confidential and private—not a matter of public record.
• Extend the CHL renewal period (now one year) for active deployed military personnel.
• Eliminate CHL range requirements for military personnel with similar official training.
• Stop cities from practicing the hostile annexation of hunting lands—which limits our hunting areas
• Monitoring of a hot issue that may become law: halting the discharge of firearms in riverbeds.

That last one has me a bit puzzled.  Below the highlighted text it says the following:

Large ranchers want to stop anyone from shooting in a riverbed—below the line of vegetation.  If this hotbed issue becomes law, it would drastically curtail the freedoms we enjoy for duck and fowl hunting.

I’m not sure I understand this one.  Couldn’t a rancher who wanted to stop someone from shooting just post their land as off-limits to hunters?  Or is there something special about a riverbed?  For that matter, why would just “large ranchers” push for this?

One other issue I wish they’d take up would be to modify the way court “premises” are handled with regards to CHLs.  When the law was changed to prevent cities from posting public property with 30.06 signs, the wording about how courts are handled was also changed.  Unfortunately, it ended up placing the entire building off-limits, even if the court inhabits only a small section of the building.  The law needs to be changed to specify that only the court offices themselves are off limits to prevent cities and counties from arbitrarily and maliciously placing court small or temporary courts in buildings that otherwise wouldn’t have them.  Further, I’d like to see a requirement for a secure storage area at all such locations.