Worst Beauty Pageant Response Ever?

This is truly pathetic. I'm not sure she even makes one complete or coherent sentence.

Texas Whacks the 400th Inmate

Today, Johnny Ray Conner was put to death by the State of Texas. Conner marks the 400th inmate to be executed since 1976 when the U.S. Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume. Three more are scheduled for next week.

A recent acquaintance of mine and I were talking and she indicated that she was against the death penalty. She is an admitted liberal. I don't personally share her viewpoint. I struggle a bit with the moralistic side of the equation, but I completely agree with the philosophy behind it.

My father was telling me that one guy was proposing that if you are against the death penalty that you could "sign up" to make sure that if anyone ever committed a capital offense and you were the victim, that the state would fore go the death penalty based on your personal beliefs. I don't think that is a 1/2 bad idea. I think that we could do apply this same type of "put your money where your mouth is" behavior to a lot of different ideas.

Anyway, I'm tired....outta here!

Shit Man!

Today we are in class and we are getting ready to break for lunch. One of the guys (student) gets up and I notice something dangling out from the waistband of his jeans that looks suspiciously like toilet paper.

I tell the guy about it and he is kind of big so he blindly reaches back there and pulls it out and it falls on the floor. it IS toilet paper, and it also has shit on it. Now I'm not talking a lot here, but clearly there is a nice brown smear all over the paper. Ick.

The guy reaches down and GRABS the paper and wads it up in his hands and then throws it away without being mindful at all about not getting shit all over himself.

So now I am standing there, kind of in shock at what just happened. I am fully expecting him to excuse himself to go wash up.....but he doesn't!!!!! He goes to lunch just like that. Not once did he go and wash his hands or anything.

Needless to say I made sure I didn't touch a DAMNED thing that this guy was near for the rest of the day.

How gross can you be?

Pillow Fight!

Sometimes when I am eating and I am bored I check out what games are available for download on my phone. If it's free for a little while, I might get it and play it until it expires.

One of the games featured today was "Pillowfight." I love the description:

"Join an elite and sexy crew of hot women in the exclusive world of competitive pillow fighting."

No, I did not make that up. I am not sure I am creative enough to make that one up.

But as it turns out, I did Google it and there is an "official" sport of pillow fighting.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=competition+pillow+fighting

About God***n time!

The title is a direct quote from Bling!!! A while back he sent me a fairly interesting article and I am just now getting around to posting on it. Sorry for all the delays, but it’s just been nuts lately.

The article is from http://www.politico.com/ and is entitled “Bush Orders New Crackdown on U.S. Border.” The article goes on to mention and list various elements of the newly proposed package. It also has several quotes from bush.

One of my favorites is:

After the announcement, President Bush released a statement in Kennebunkport, Maine, saying that despite the failure of Congress to pass a new law, his administration "will continue to take every possible step to build upon the progress already made in strengthening our borders, enforcing our worksite laws, keeping our economy well-supplied with vital workers, and helping new Americans learn English."

Are you kidding me? Does the Bush administration really believe that everyone is that stupid? Well, perhaps, but let’s face it America….most of you have earned it. Aside from that fact, let’s pick this one apart a bit.

“….Every possible step….in strengthening our borders, enforcing our worksite laws….” Ok, let’s just take that little tidbit and work with it a bit. The Bush administration has been consistently weak and lackadaisical with any regards to protecting our borders. If anything the administration has gone out of its way to allow illegal aliens IN to the U.S. The administration has also been great at ensuring that local law enforcement has been hamstrung and not allowed to create, enact, or enforce laws that would make it tough on illegal aliens to reside in the U.S.

How about some more of this quote…. “….keeping our economy well-supplied with vital workers…” See my above paragraph. The Bush administration has worked hard to ensure that illegal aliens are practically protected by allowing cities to pass their own laws with regards to making it very difficult to investigate illegal aliens and have them deported as well as fining business owners. This stuff isn’t new. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while I have cited this type of behavior by cities and municipalities over and over again.

And I love the last part – “…and helping new Americans learn English.” Let’s get a few things straight, here. Number one, these are NOT Americans. They are illegal aliens that have violated federal law by being in our country illegally. I don’t care what the color of you skin is, and I don’t care where you come from. If you enter the United States illegally you are committing a felony. Most of these illegal immigrants are making an exaggerated effort to circumvent United States law and culture. Mexican immigrants are borderline hostile towards the U.S. and are trying to reclaim it for their own. They are doing a good job, too!!!! Muslim immigrants are already having laws bent and created for their own means including trying to impose Shira law and having local, state, and federal funds used to build schools just for them. Does anyone else see a problem with this?

And last, but certainly not least…. Where, just WHERE do we mandate that anyone has to learn English? It’s not the official language of the U.S. and as far as I can tell there has never been any real political pressure to make it so. We now have municipalities making Spanish their official languages. State and Federal governments are mandating that school systems have bi-lingual teachers available. Hospitals and health-care institutions are also doing the same thing. This is not a push to learn English. Look around you and open your eyes.

I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night. This is an insult to my intelligence and is not appreciated.

To take it a step further, why is Bush suddenly trying to do something about all this? Well, in short, he’s trying to butter people up. His last effort at granting amnesty to illegal aliens and increasing the number of illegal jumping the fence every year failed. A large reason for that failure was due to poor enforcement of existing policies. So, now Bush figures he can throw us a bone to appease us and then try to push it through again. It’s coming, so watch out!!!

Political T-Shirts

Thanks to Bling! for one of these, and the other is something that I found. One for each political preference......Can you guess which one of us contributed which shirt?

ARRRGGHHHH!

FUCK! I am kind of pissed off right now. I am VERY stressed out from work. I am getting a whole whopping ONE day off from the 6th up until the 31st. Out of all that time I am going to be out of town predominantly the whole time.

Let's also pile up all my regular work, plus the extra stuff I am trying to take care of. Then consider that ALL of my professional certifications expire at the end of the month. I told work about this MONTHS ago and requested extra time to study. I was allocated TWO fucking days, and they are passing and I have barely gotten anything done because I can't get ONE hour to myself without being interrupted.

But, that doesn't matter because I only ONE free day to take the exam anyway, and if I don't pass I have to wait a week to re-take it..... but due to the only day available, if I don't pass then I am history because my certs expire before I can re-take. Nice, huh?

I also have to still get ready to fly out of town tomorrow, I have a client that is having severe problems and keeps bugging the shit out of me, the guy there barely 'spaks' English, and I am supposed to be meeting up with friend tonight, but i can't do that, yet, because I can't get in the goddamn shower to clean up!

And Bling! and I may be cancelling our trip to the Dragon because of the LEO's being a bunch of cocksuckers http://www.tailofthedragon.com

So, I am REALLY not in a good mood at the moment and there are so many other things I wanted to write about on here but I just haven't had the time.

Crazy Schedule

I am getting ready to fly out to Chicago as I write this. I JUST came from San Jose (about a day ago)

Wed - back from Chicago
Sat - Fly to North Carolina
Get back from NC and then fly to Montana
I may be in Montana for about a month, but it's not known for sure as of yet.

If I do that, I'll have to fly home to get things prepped for my vacation!!!

My Pointer Is Too Small!

The last class I taught in San Jose was interesting. It was a little too large and difficult to manage. I had about 25 students. I like it when it's about 15 or less.

In any case, I actually had a student ding me on my evaluation because.....

“Recommend instructor replace his current laser pointer with one that displays a larger light point….”

I've never had anyone tell me that my pointer was too small!!

Is He Black?

I was having a chat with my friend the other night. She has a Suzuki Hyabusa and has been riding it for about a year, now. She really enjoys the bike and I was telling her that I was looking forward to the new ones that are coming out.

She told me there was a guy at work that asked her for some help picking one out and learning to ride it. So here we have a first time rider that wants to get a bike that weighs in at about 450-lbs and lays down over 190+ bhp to the rear wheel. This is an accident waiting to happen. I asked her if she directed him to take the MSF (motorcycle safety foundation course) and get into a used 600cc bike to start with.

This guy wasn’t interested. He wanted to get a new ‘Busa, extended the swing-arm, drop (lower) the bike, custom paint it and chrome it all out. He does not, however, want to raced it.

So I asked if he is black. She asked does it matter? And I said, not really, but typically only a black guy would take a bike like that and sink a ton of money into it to customize it in such a manner and never ride it or use it for what it was made for.

Not Wired!

A few days ago I was working out at the gym and went to hit the elliptical machines for some cardio. I grabbed a “Wired” magazine and started reading it. I hadn’t read something like that in a long time, but it’s technology based so I figured I’d enjoy it.

As it turns out, I was wrong. The magazine does focus on technology. But it focuses on trendy technology. The latest cell phones, PDAs, game machines, laptops, etc. Not much on how this stuff works, but a lot on what bells and whistles they have. The formatting of the ‘zine is also geared towards the trendy folks that just have to be connected all the time.

I find it slightly ironic that my career and job is focused on making this technology work so that you can have access to things like this blog on your cell phone, but at the same time I don’t want anything to do with being connected all the time.

I don’t really give a ratt’s ass that my cell phone can surf the web, act as a camera, play videos, play music, etc. I don’t use these features and I certainly don’t want to be in a position where people can get in touch with me via phone, SMS, email, or some other form of communication 24 x 7. And because of this, I also don’t care what the latest cell phone / pda / MP3 player wizardry is that would allow me to do this.

All you hip, trendy, wired to the hilt folks can enjoy living in your virtual world. I’m going to go ride my bike and relish in the sights, sounds, smells, and experiences of the real world.

A Terrorist No More!

The TSA must think I chucked my turban and denounced my ways of terrorism. I just checked with the gate agent for my outbound flight to SJC and they said I was no longer on the “no fly” list. I guess they caught “the other guy.”

I never received any acknowledgement from the TSA on my request. So I don’t even know if they properly received my request. Nice, huh?

The whole security thing is a joke. Especially after I found out that employees of the airport and airlines can pretty much skate right through security without a check after-hours. You don’t enforce security some of the time, you enforce it ALL the time.

I don’t mind that we have tighter security. I DO mind that it’s a farce and not effective. I guess you could say it’s the illusion of security. Considering that my hard-earned tax dollars pay for this and I am the one that is standing in lines and wasting a lot of the time at the airport it really pisses me off.

Dream Theater In Concert!

Last night Dream Theater played at the Nokia building. The first two bands weren’t that good and I’m surprised that anyone even opened for DT as they typically don’t have opening acts.

DT started up about 9:00pm and it took about an hour to get through four songs. So far so good!!! Over all, it was a totally awesome concert! Those guys are just wrong, though. People shouldn’t be able to play that well for that long.

The only critical things I would say are that:
1 – James Labrie (lead vocalist) is getting pretty thin on top and needs to cut that shit off!! He’d be better off doing something different.

2 – James also flubbed a few lines on a song. I think he forgot the lyrics for a moment. Either that or the sound system was having a problem.

3 – I was slightly disappointed that they only played for a little over 2 hours! They usually play for closer to 3 hours.

Otherwise a most excellent show!

BTW – a big Thank You to Hopper for buying me a few beers and loaning me a few bucks for a shirt. I didn’t exactly have a way to spend much cash (see previous entry!).

I’m a Dumb-Ass!

Yesterday, I was talking to a trainer at the gym about signing up for some sessions. I told him I’d take 5 sessions just to tweak my training regiment. He said that was great and asked how I’d like to pay. Credit card, of course.

Then it hits me like one of those times when you are stuck on the freeway in rush-hour traffic in downtown Dallas and you suddenly have to go to the bathroom. Really, really bad.

I lost my wallet.

Not just a credit card or something, but the whole freaking thing! I went to the grocery store (which I lothe to do anyway) after working out and bought some fruits and veg to eat. Since I had my gym shorts on, I didn’t have a pocket to put my wallet in and stuck it on the little tray that is part of the grocery cart. I even remember telling myself not to do that because I’d forget it.

Sure enough, I did.

Scramble back to the grocery store (three hours later). The carts have all been taken inside. I go in and check, but they haven’t had a wallet turned in. Scramble back home and start calling banks and what-not to have my credit cards cancelled and re-issued.

I also went to the DPS today to get a new photo ID issued. Something tells me that this picture wouldn’t fly anymore.

Dream Theater was last night, and while I couldn’t go to the ATM to get any money out I was fortunate enough to keep a few spare bucks stashed in the house so I had a little money to spend.

It was really strange, though. I felt pretty nekkid out there. Not in the same way as not having my wallet with me, but in the way that I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t show ID, couldn’t get any money, and couldn’t pay for anything beyond the few bills I had in my pocket.

So now I am waiting for the fallout. I have new credit cards on the way, but I can’t buy airline tickets, rent cars, or get hotel rooms for work. I also am going to have to wait until the new cards come in to setup some of my e-payments again. And, of course, I need to call my insurance companies so that they can re-issue me some new insurance cards.

It’s pretty much a big pain in the ass and I’ll have to watch everything real carefully just in case someone decides to try to steal my identity (never had a problem with this before).

At least the extra rubber I kept in my wallet is easily replaced and not missed…..much.