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Sayeth Tbogg:
There is much to be said for White Zombie played very loud as the soundtrack for a long drive.
Yes. Including “Hello, officer.”
(When we moved from DC to St Louis, a good friend gave us a mix tape for the drive – we called it “The ‘Hello, officer’ Mix” since it started with Ministry’s Jesus Built My Hotrod, segued into the 1000 Homo DJs cover of Sabbath’s “Supernaut”, and pretty much continued at that pace. Ah, good times.)
Posted by protected static as music at 5:33 PM PST
After all, they’re what you call… experts.
Oh. Wait. So are these guys: Los Alamos National Laboratory Researchers Accidentally Blow up Building with a Cannon.
Whoops. The Mustache of Disapproval radiates disapproval.
(via Mother Jones, via… TPM’s headlines/news aggregator, I think…)
Posted by protected static as geek at 7:15 PM PST
“Did the framers of our Constitution ever envision something like a semi-automatic weapon?” [Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle] asked.
*sigh* Nor did they envision the Internet or Scientology, yet these are also protected under the Bill of Rights…
Three WA legislators have introduced a ban on so-called assault weapons, partially in response to the ambush and murder of a Seattle policeman. Ironically, the weapon alleged to have been used in this specific attack, while a semi-automatic rifle, is unlikely to be banned under any such legislation.
Posted by protected static as politics at 9:58 PM PST
Over the weekend we went to the Seattle Children’s Theatre for their “In the Wings” program for Peter Pan. As one of the teachers from the SCT drama school lead the group in various drama-y, interactive-y exercises (for which I have somewhat less than zero patience, but okay… that’s what blogs and iPhones are for), she asked the kids what some of the benefits of not growing up would be.
Listening to more than one child pipe up with variations of “you won’t ever die,” it occurred to me that one of the more poignant aspects of Peter Pan (and perhaps one of the keys to its initial success) is that it takes place a few short years before Nibs, Tootles, Slightly, Curly, and millions of other boys will be permanently Lost in the fire, smoke, and mud of the Western Front…
Posted by protected static as random at 10:10 PM PST
…groused The Boy as Doc struggled to subdue his hair with industrial quantities of gel, a rubberband, and a thoroughly inadequate hairbrush.
“Come again?” said Doc.
“Their brains are being pulled out by their ponytails.”
Posted by protected static as YADM at 8:34 PM PST
Behold: The Boy’s first programming book. Which he requested by name.
My feelings are… mixed.
Posted by protected static as YADM, geek, programming at 9:57 AM PST
[Anita] Dunn would never have used Hitler as a source for perseverance and setting the right objectives. Why[?] Because Hitler’s evil is self-evident. So why is Mao’s rancid evil not self-evident for a person like Dunn? Because she retains a double standard for far left totalitarianism over far right totalitarianism. It’s that insulting and morally disgusting double standard that gets my goat. Mao was responsible for the deaths of up to 70 million people – and Dunn sees him as a useful strategist.
The reason many people see Mao as a useful strategist is because, well, he was an excellent strategist. Hitler… not so much.
(Oh yeah… Mao was also a pretty decent writer. Hitler… not so much.)
Posted by protected static as politics at 6:34 PM PDT
“Bomb hits outside suspected Pakistani nuclear-weapons site”
Commentary would be superfluous, I think…
(via TPM)
Posted by protected static as politics at 9:11 AM PDT
The feeling one experiences when an emotionally-charged event elicits conflicting impulses to respond.
Posted by protected static as random at 7:04 PM PDT
A few thoughts about consistency, of course (Pace Emerson. let’s not limit ourselves to merely foolish consistency…).
Ahem. Programming geekery ahead…
Posted by protected static as C#, programming at 7:50 PM PDT
Just because he’s President doesn’t mean he’s allowed to get all uppity-like.
Posted by protected static as asshattery, politics at 5:16 PM PDT
Using statistics about gun crime and violence to downplay the seriousness of carrying firearms to political demonstrations isn’t comparing apples to oranges so much as it is comparing apples to Orange-throated Tanagers. Why?
Because some people go looking for a confrontation, which is when Really Stupid Shit happens. And when it happens, it happens fast.
Posted by protected static as asshattery, politics at 5:53 PM PDT
How I wonder what you’re at:
On Sunday, the shuttle had a stowaway attached to the external fuel tank, and although NASA was sure the little animal wouldn’t be a debris risk, the bat remained attached to the shuttle, apparently stuck in place. New details have now emerged about why the bat didn’t fly away before Discovery launched…
Ouch. Like a teatray in the sky, indeed…
Posted by protected static as space at 5:58 PM PDT
On oh-dark-hundred Sunday morning, I dropped Doc* off at SeaTac for a flight to Dulles. She’s been training a lot of therapists in a new PTSD treatment technique, and this is no different.
Okay, this one is a little different. From Dulles, she was bound for Vienna, Austria; from Vienna, a flight to Erbil. From Erbil, a four-hour or so drive to Sulaimaniyah… Given the time difference, I’m guessing she’s arriving there right about now.
Okay, so maybe this training is a lot different.
She’ll be working with a couple of NGOs to translate training materials into Kurdish and Arabic, and to train community health providers to treat Kurds tortured by Saddam Hussein’s Baathists. The efficacy of her treatment will be compared to that of another short-term therapy.
This all came together very quickly, maybe over the span of a month or so… Her mentor from graduate school was initially approached to do this, and she recommended Doc. It’s exciting as well as good work – and as developing countries go, relatively safe even for Americans; how could we say no? So she’s in Kurdistan for two full weeks, with a couple days travel time and an extra day to decompress in Vienna on the way back.
Skype will be our friend…
(Title from Doc’s dad’s reaction when she told him “I’m going to Kurdistan for a training!” Yes, she was trying to deflect attention from the fact that this is legally still Iraq, even if Sulaimaniyah has been effectively independent since 1991. Obviously he didn’t fall for it, not that she really thought he would.)
[edited @ 1:00PM 9 March to add: they evidently ran into a sandstorm (!!!) en route from Vienna and were temporarily rerouted to Syria (!!!); she's safe on the ground in Erbil and spending the night in a hotel there. Well, we always knew it was going to be an adventure... (also edited to clarify that it's Vienna, Austria and not Vienna, VA - an improbable but not impossible confusion if you're familiar w/ Dulles & the Northern VA/Metro DC area.)]
*Doc: my wife. Got tired of always writing about her as ‘my wife’ when she’s got, like, an actual identity. And a pretty well-defined one at that (as this probably illustrates). Ergo, Doc.[back].
Posted by protected static as random at 9:47 AM PDT
…I have to call BS on the IQ part of their name!
When we first moved to Seattle, I submitted a resume to a local staffing firm, SolutionsIQ. They’re one of the big dogs in town, particularly when it comes to getting contract work @ The Beast of Redmond. I may have updated it for them when I got laid off five or six years ago, but still… five years is a pretty long time in the tech world. Periodically, I get semi-spam from them looking for MS SQL developers, which I delete. But today… today I got a doozy:
Job Description:
An Application Support Analyst III has in-depth experience, knowledge and skills in an application support discipline (Message Processing, Mediations, Provisioning, Billing, Web, Middleware, Retail Activation Systems, Payment Processing, etc…). An Analyst III is able to work independently on escalated issues and prioritizes, investigates and resolves them with minimal guidance from others. They function as the technical leads of their teams. Occasionally an Analyst III will be given opportunities to lead teams and projects to resolve complex technical issues.Experience:
• Telecommunications experience required (4 to 6 years preferred).
• Strong experience working with Oracle on Unix using command line and GUI SQL tools.
• Strong knowledge of relational database design and support, including the support of large carrier class enterprise software systems.
• System Analysis experience in the support/operation of a of large carrier class enterprise software system, preferably in a wireless environment.
• Experience in testing, quality and change management methodologies.
• Previous experience in 24hrs/day, 7days/week systems support capacity.
• Experience in troubleshooting customer related issues and managing customer relationships required (4 to 6 years preferred).
• Extensive experience with revenue reporting and accounting.
• Business systems analytical experience required (4 to 6 years preferred
• 4 year degree (In Information Technology related field preferred) or equivalent work experience
• Schedule Hours: M-F 8 – 5, some weekends and nights
If one were to draw a Venn diagram of ‘My Skills’ and ‘This job spam,’ the universe of overlap would be, at best, a single point: SQL. And it’s the wrong dialect of SQL, to boot. Oh, and I’ve developed some middleware components. That’s all. No telco, no Unix (I hadn’t even noodled around with Linux when I last updated my resume with them), no Oracle, no ’support of large carrier class enterprise blah blah blah’, no 24/7 support, no revenue reporting, no accounting, nothing.
I fired off a terse WTF email in response – any matching algorithm worth its salt should have left me out of that one, unless they’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel for candidates. And to scrape quite so low as me with these particular requirements strikes me as bordering on malpractice.
In short, SolutionsIQ would appear to provide neither. Discuss.
Posted by protected static as asshattery, geek, spam at 10:24 PM PST