aubreyturner.org

I went to Connecticut last week, flying into Harford and driving to my final destination (the other alternative was La Guardia, but I have zero desire to go into New York unless I have no other choice). 

• My belt buckle set off the metal detector at DFW.  It usually doesn’t do this.  Makes me wonder if they’ve turned up the sensitivity.  There’s the possibility that I just got a different machine, though.  The past three flights I’ve gone through the security station near gate C10.  I usually end up at the machine on the right.  This time was the one on the left.
• The pilots are now announcing at the beginning of the flight that people should not “congegrate” near the restrooms.
• It took me a while to figure out that the exits on some of the roads in CT aren’t the same as the mile markers, like they are in most states.  It definitely threw off my mental calculation of how far I had left in my trip.
• I was surprised to see that almost all ramps were circular.  You’d think that in an area with frequent snow that a straight ramp would be safer (i.e. less likely to have trouble with sliding in fresh snow).
• I tried to finish The System Of The World on the return trip using my Tungsten T3.  Unfortunately, the batteries ran out with only a few chapters to go.  Expecting this I’d bought a paperback in the airport.  Still, I wish fuel cells or microturbines would hurry up and get here.  Batteries suck.

It’s amazing to me the amount of hair that one medium-sized dog can shed.  I just cleaned the lint screen after taking my sheets out of the dryer and was amazed to find a wad of black hair.  The washer gets most of the hair out, so that was just a small portion of what was originally there.  I also see the same thing when running the vacuum in the living room.  It’s a bagless model, and it doesn’t seem to matter how many passes I make, I get a great big wad of dog hair in it every time.

And while I’m talking about the dog, I find it amazing that despite being a long-haired dog who loves to swim and jump into the brush along the trail that she doesn’t smell.  When I bathe her I usually get lots of sand and dirt that was hiding in her fur, but if you hadn’t washed her you wouldn’t have ever know it was there.  She also somehow manages to make her collar smell bad, usually within a few days of getting a new one (I’m starting to suspect that she does this on purpose).  The amazing thing is that she doesn’t smell, just the collar.  Washing them doesn’t work, so I end up having to get her a new one every couple of months.

I’m travelling for a business meeting this week.  I will be back late Friday, although given my usual proclivities I probably won’t post again until the 15th.

Unless there is a change of plans, this will be my last business trip of the year, for which I am grateful (there was some talk about a meeting in Minnesota, but I’m hoping that one doesn’t come back up again until the spring).  Something about travelling for work just wears you down.  Between being packed into a closed environment on the airplane, the dry hotel rooms, and the time changes (this time I’ll be in Connecticut), I usually pick up some kind of bug that hits me on Thursday or Friday.  Maybe I should start travelling with a mask (and lobbying hotels to put humidifiers in the rooms).

As some of you may know I maintain a list of gun shows for the Dallas/Fort Worth area.  It gets around 4000 hits a month by people looking for information on gun shows in the area.  What I find interesting is that I have a big disclaimer at the top of the page explaining that I’m not officially connected with any of the shows:

Important disclaimer—please read: I am not a promoter and do not have any official connection to the shows that are listed. If you have questions about the show or about promoting your product or service at a show, please contact the promoter directly.

Despite this, I still get a couple of requests a month via the contact form asking for information on how to get a table at one show or another.  What’s worse is that clicking the show’s date will take you to the show entry page, where the promoter’s phone number is given.  Clicking the show venue will take you to the promoter’s website.  I don’t know how I can make it any more simple, especially given the disclaimer. 

While I’m griping about the gun show list, it’s also starting to attract spammers.  I give a form at the bottom of the gun show page for people to subscribe to get announcements whenever I change the show listings.  When you sign up you get an email confirmation from the list manager, which appears to come from the list’s email address.  A few spammers have trolled the form and grabbed the email address and then attempted to spam the list.  But since it’s an announce-only list, the email only comes to me, rather than going to the whole list.  But what’s worse is a hunting guide from East Texas who signed up for the list and then attempted to send announcements to the list promoting his services.  I’ve told him twice now that he can’t send announcements because I’m the only one who can do that (and further that I consider it spamming to try to send stuff to my list given that I explicitly promise at the bottom of the form to use the list for gun show announcements only).  I’m hoping that he got the message the last time, but we’ll see.

I have noticed that many people decry the Clear Channel hegemony over DFW-area radio.  Just below the surface there seems to be a desire for the government to do something.  But the market usually responds to a monopoly, it just may not do so instantly.  Recently, I have encountered two independent (or at least non-Clear Channel) stations in the DFW area:

• 106.7 KDL, which bills itself as the “Texas Party Station.”  It started out with mostly dance mixes (although it’s had an unfortunate trend towards rap and R&B lately).  But it’s definitely independent and has taken clear aim at Kid Craddock and KISS FM (which is a Clear Channel station).
• 100.3 “Jack” FM, which plays a mix of 80’s and current stuff.  I’m not sure who’s behind it, but given their derisive attitude towards Clear Channel, I’m sure they’re not part of the Clear Channel empire.

There’s probably more out there, but these are just the ones I’ve found out about lately.  Those who are seeking refuge from Clear Channel now have some choices.

Given this guy’s reaction to the election, you’d think someone pissed in his Wheaties this morning.  It’s rife with righteous anger and indignation as well as being full of bogus stereotypes about American Southerners.  As somone who lives in the South, I thought I’d reply to one small part, though:

The self-righteous, gun-totin’, military lovin’, sister marryin’, abortion-hatin’, gay-loathin’, foreigner-despisin’, non-passport ownin’ red-necks, who believe God gave America the biggest dick in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land “free and strong”.

Let’s go through the litany one-by-one:

• gun-totin’  Ok.  I’ll give him this one.  But it is a human right and I choose to exercise my human rights.
• military lovin’  I’m not sure what’s wrong with this, so let’s move on.
• sister marryin’  Dude, that’s so worn out.  Have you actually ever been to the South?
• abortion-hatin’  I’m not sure why anyone would love abortion.  Still, I’m not advocating that it be made illegal.
• gay-loathin’  Wrong.  Some of my best friends are gay, and anyone who wants to bash them is going to have to get through me (and a hail of bullets; hmm… perhaps that gun-totin’ thing isn’t so bad after all) to do it.
• foreigner-despisin’  I don’t have a problem with foreigners, provided they don’t try to tell us how to run our country.  I welcome anyone who wants to come here and see what America’s all about.  I also welcome anyone who wants to become a citizen.
• non-passport ownin’ red-necks  Hmm… I’ve got a passport and while my neck is a bit brown, I don’t see any red there in the mirror.

As for the God bit, I’m an agnostic.  Amazingly, I haven’t been rounded up and put into the religious camps yet.  But you never know… 

One of the themes of the MSM (as noted here) on the Bush victory is that the gay marriage issue brought out the Bush voters.  Perhaps it did in some states.  But I can tell you that this isn’t the case for a lot of people who voted for Bush.  In fact, I despise the Republican position on this issue (as well as a number of other moral ones) and I was deeply disturbed by the results in those 11 states that had various marriage bans on their ballots.  There was one and only one reason I voted for him (and I had to hold my nose to do it): the war on Islamist bastards who want to kill us (or whatever name you want to give it).  We can argue about gay marriage and other moral issues later, after we’ve either killed all the terrorists or made them give up (I don’t care which, I just want them to leave us the hell alone).

I suspect most of the “mandate” the Republicans got was really based on the fact that a lot of people saw the Democrats as fundamentally unserious when it comes to our country’s security.  I remain very wary of many of the other parts of the Republican platform and agenda and will be watching them very closely.

I keep hearing people on both sides saying that the country needs to “come together” and somehow the President is expected to “unify” the nation.  I can tell you right now that it won’t happen.  First, I think there’s a bit of disingenuousness on both sides, since I get a strong sense that both really mean “those idiots need to do it my way” when they say we need “unity.”  Second, I don’t see how the President will be able to work with people who think he’s the second coming of Hitler. 

The ideas of majority rule and mandates also won’t help here.  I find it a bit ironic that the same Republicans who tout that this is a Republic and that mob rule is bad suddenly have found religion on the popular vote.  I seem to recall these same people pointing out how the popular vote didn’t really matter in 2000.  I suppose I’m not surprised.  Still, one of the things I consider a fundamental guiding principle of our Republic is that the minority is supposed to be protected from the whims of the majority.  The idea that the minority is supposed to STFU and sit down is ananthema to our system (despite what I may think about that minority; 55 million of you voted for John effin’ Kerry!?  What were you thinking?!).  To think that they’ll suddenly have a change of heart and go along with the majority is a delusion.  I know that Clinton’s reelection in 1996 didn’t change my thinking.  I wasn’t suddenly going to roll over and “get with the program” based on the whim of the majority (yes, I know it was actually a plurality, but it doesn’t really change my point).

There will be no unity in this country, not with the deep divisions that were highlighted in the recent elections.  To expect unity is to fool onself. 

I find myself becoming increasingly annoyed by the excruciatingly early Christmas commercials and displays we’re being subjected to by retailers.  They got started well before Halloween (or at least Lowe’s did).  I understand getting Christmas catalogs out early, given the usual lead time for mail order houses, but the stores have crossed the line this year.

I’d like to give the people responsible for this a good shake, but barring that I suppose I will try an alternative method to get their attention.  Others are doing Presidential pledges.  I propose a Christmas pledge.

Specifically, I pledge that I will not play their game.  Until Thanksgiving is complete, I pledge not to buy any presents, trees, lights, wreaths, foods, candies, fruitcakes, or any other Christmas paraphernalia. 

Bah and Humbug, I say.

This was supposed to be a quiet week between last week’s trip and another trip I have to take next week.  But somehow along the way my calendar has been infested with 17 meetings for the week.  And it’s only Tuesday, so it’s likely that more will be added, likely on top of each other, given how things went yesterday and today (there were originally 19, but I had to reject two of them due to conflicts).  What’s annoying about this is that the people calling these meetings have access to a button in the scheduler that lets them check to see if their meeting fits into everyone’s schedule (it will even propose alternate times, based on meeting duration and availability of all participants).  The fact that they send me meeting invitations that overlap other meetings tends to make me a bit crazy, since it indicates a lack of respect for the meeting participants (as well as a “me first” mentality).  Often, these are the same people who don’t have agendas and are pathologically incapable of ending a meeting on time.