The replacement transformer being sent from Washington to Arizona has once again hit a snag. This is the third delay since it was loaded off the ship and onto a trailer. First, it fell off the trailer. Then they had to stop and figure out how to negotiate a hill. Now, the California Department of Transportation has decided it can't move forward until it has been moved to a trailer better capable of handling the load.
Out of curiosity, if a more suitable trailer exists--why wasn't it used in the first place??
I'll start my own conspiracy theory. I think California is trying to sabotage our replacing the transformer. See, we've made it thus far without a rolling blackout, and the hottest part of the summer (knock on wood) is probably behind us now. That makes California look bad since they can't seem to accommodate their own power needs. People are moving out of California and into Arizona and Nevada like crazy. If Arizona has their own power concerns, maybe a few of their residents will think twice before moving here.
I'll bet Channel 5 would buy into my theory. Hell, if they'd report on strange lights flying over Palo Verde the day of the outage, why not?
Its probably not "X-Files" enough for them.
Tammy bought herself an early birthday present...
Congratulations!
November is officially "Travel Your Ass Off" month.
The opportunity of a lifetime presented itself--in other words, my friend Heidi is living in London. A few weeks ago, she asked me to come for a visit. Yesterday, on Travelzoo's Top 20, I found the deal I couldn't pass up. British Airways was offering non-stop flights from Phoenix to London for $159 each way.
The great fare doesn't take affect until October 28, and Heidi is moving back to the States December 11. Since we're going to Hawaii later in November, I had a very small window to work with. Somehow, I managed to find a week that works for Heidi, works for me and doesn't conflict with anyone else's vacation at work.
So I'm going to London!
I'm very excited but a bit scared, too. Xan couldn't join me since we're going to Hawaii and he's used some vacation time on various fishing trips with his dad. So I'll be flying overseas for the first time alone. Thankfully, Heidi will be there to meet me!
I will hardly be at work the entire month of November. Going back to work after all this is going to suck.
A poll shows that 74% of registered voters in Arizona favor denying social services to illegal immigrants and requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.
Um... who are the 26% voting against this? The ones who registered to vote with no proof of citizenship?
We have enough Americans and LEGAL immigrants on welfare as it is--should we be giving it to people who sneak across the border with no concerns about the law?
I think not.
HELL YEAH on Prop. 200.
I'm not a fan of PETA or their antics. I've never really paid much attention to their claims before, and I think they take things way too far.
But after reading about the abuses committed by employees at the Pilgrim's Pride poultry processing plant (a major supplier to KFC), I felt sick. Rather than assume the allegations were true, I felt that the responsible thing to do was see for myself if it was really that bad. So I watched the video.
I lasted all of about 15 seconds.
In that time, I saw enough that I will NEVER buy a Pilgrim's Pride chicken from a grocery store again. And if no one is held accountable for the disgusting acts being performed by their supplier's employees, I'll put KFC on my list of "never agains" as well.
I'm probably just naive to assume that others aren't mistreating animals meant for slaughter. I suppose if I ever found out that such behavior is common, I'd become a vegetarian. I just find it extremely disturbing that people can derive pleasure in causing horrible pain to a defenseless animal.
I don't believe there is anything wrong with eating meat--other animals are carnivorous. Its part of nature. But that doesn't mean its okay to torture the animals first.
Those people should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
As if things weren't bad enough, another fire at a North Phoenix power station has taken out a transformer.
Of course, the conspiracy theories are abound. Channel 5 news is implying that strange lights spotted over the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant during a recent outage may have had something to do with it. The buzz in the office says Al Qaida is to blame. My other half thinks eco-terrorists are involved.
All I know is that the rolling blackouts are now practically inevitable.
My co-worker and I are hoping they start with our office.
Why is it that every idiot who has ever replaced a hard drive thinks they can do my job?
A small business that I do a little side work for wanted to hook up a wireless router so the owner could access the internet on his new laptop. I advised against it for security reasons. Even though you can lock down a wireless router pretty well, its still not 100% secure and I'm not comfortable running one in a business environment until they become more secure.
For whatever reason (maybe they didn't want to trouble me with it... maybe they didn't want to ask since I advised against it), they called Dell and had them send someone out to install it for them. So Dell sends out one of their fine service contractors to install the router.
Surprise, surprise... this morning, I get a phone call. Only about half the people in the office can connect to the network. After hearing about the installation of the wireless router, I immediately suspected the problem.
"Where is that wireless router connected?"
"Well, there's a grey cable going from the back of it to the blue box."
(Translation: the "blue box" is a Linksys router/firewall I had installed a few weeks ago.)
"Unplug that cable from the back of the blue box and restart the computers that can't get on the network."
Voila! Problem solved.
If this idiot was too stupid to hang a router off the back of another router without turning off DHCP, he clearly hasn't got a clue how to set up any kind of security. I'd be willing to bet I could have driven over there and gotten on their network without batting an eye. No WEP, no MAC address filtering (clearly, or the clients in the office wouldn't be getting an address from it)... NOTHING.
Now... I realize that this person is not an employee of Dell, but Dell most certainly should be screening their independent contractors better than this. Dell's in-house network team does a great job supporting servers. Why would they send someone so completely unqualified to do an installation for a small business?
I don't get paid NEARLY enough...
Even though I find this mildly amusing, I really think that Arnold Schwarzenegger needs to stop with the movie references in his speeches. It just seems to imply that being an actor is still his primary focus in life.
Its obvious how he became famous, but come on... at least ACT like the Governor now.
Even if Ronald Reagan used "win one for the Gipper" in a speech or two (I don't know that he DID, but IF he did), that was an inspirational movie.
Somehow I'm not deeply moved when I'm watching The Terminator.
Immediately after being let outside yesterday morning, I heard the commotion that I've heard several times before that indicates just one thing--Trixie caught another bird.
Many times before, Trixie has caught young grackles in our yard. She's extremely quick, and they're not fast enough to escape. The adult birds always make a fuss which lets me know when she has caught one.
This time, however, she caught a baby cactus wren. But before she could do any damage, the very protective parents were under attack, swooping down and pecking her in a divebomb formation. I rushed outside to stop her from eating the bird, only to see her with a look of, "What the hell?" on her face as she's being distracted by the parents.
I yelled for her to come into the house and the little bird scampered away into the corner of the yard. I walked over to see if the little bird was injured. As I got closer, the parents expressed their unhappiness at my approaching their baby. He was fine, so I left him there.
At some point during the day, the baby's parents moved him to a safer location--under our garden hose reel. They kept a close watch on him until dark, when I could see he had nestled down to sleep behind the reel. I sat a little container of water nearby.
He was still there this morning, and I could hear him crying for his mother. She continued to keep watch. When I opened the door to let Titus and Trixie outside, he scurried out of his hiding place into another corner of the yard. I kept a watch on the dogs to make sure they didn't go near him.
Now, I'm not sure what to do with this little bird. Research tells me I should leave him there as long as his parents are still in the area. It also tells me that when a baby cactus wren leaves the nest, he is still dependent on his parents for food for about a month! I don't think I can continue to monitor my dogs that closely for a full month. And then there's the stray cats that roam the neighborhood. I'd be pretty pissed if I'd protected him all this time, only to find he'd been eaten by a cat. I know, survival of the fittest and all that. But before we had the dogs, the stray cats were always leaving half-eaten doves in our yard and it freaked me out. Amazing how having two big dogs around has made that stop.
Anyway, I hope this little bird learns to fly soon. I don't know how long we can keep this up.
Every year I make a New Year's resolution to be better at remembering people's birthdays. Every year I fail miserably.
Last Sunday was my sister's birthday and I failed to find the time to call and wish her well. Of course, I thought about it first thing in the morning and again at about 9:00pm (that would be midnight in North Carolina, which I figured was too late).
I'm guessing my family has me figured out by now. And I'm not the only one in my family who's guilty of being notoriously bad at this.
In any event, Happy Belated Birthday, Sherry! I hope it was a good one.
I make probably the first political post I've ever made, and I get my very first TrackBack!
Unfortunately, I'm far too middle-of-the-road to run a political blog. I'm all in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy, even though I'm not (wealthy, that is). I'm pissed off about off-shore outsourcing of so many American jobs. I'm pro-choice and pro-death penalty. I think we need to solve the healthcare issues in this country but don't want to do it at the cost of lowering the quality of healthcare for those of us who have decent coverage. I think we need to get lazy people off welfare and teach them to be self-sufficient instead of giving them handouts. I'm not opposed to gay marriage. I'm concerned about the environment.
Funny thing about political parties. It seems as though the politicians are getting further to the left and further to the right, but most people that *I* know fall somewhere closer to the middle.
So while I'd love to give Joe at "Truth in Politics" a good debate, I don't necessarily disagree with his comment. There is a part of me that wonders how much of our going into Iraq was based on another agenda other than terrorism. And if the Democrats had put up a candidate that I felt was truly more middle-of-the-road, I might be inclined to vote that way this coming election. As it is, I don't see Kerry as middle-of-the-road.
I disagree with some of the opinions on both sides, as I did in the last election and the one before that. It comes down to once again, the lesser of two evils.
So I guess my blog is destined to be limited to those who enjoy listening to me ramble, or who like the references to the somewhat off-the-wall articles I try to dig out.
I think I have about six regular readers. :)
That was one helluva thunder storm that rocked the Phoenix-metro area last night.
Trixie (our female boxer) has always been scared of thunderstorms and fireworks, but I've never seen her so terrified. A few of the thunder-claps sounded like they were right outside our bedroom window. I couldn't help but jump they were so close, but that didn't help Trixie at all. Her heart was racing, she was trembling uncontrollably and she was panting so fast I thought she would hyperventilate. Every time I thought the storm was moving away and she would start to calm down a little, it seemed to circle back and get loud again.
Needless to say, not much sleep was had in our household last night. So it was particularly annoying to wake up and have to deal with all the idiots on the freeway, who for some reason were so freaked out that a storm had blown through that it was bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way from Mesa into downtown Phoenix.
No accidents that I could see, mind you. Just people driving slow for no apparent reason.
On the up-side, the storm cooled things down 15-20 degrees from what the morning temps have been the past three days or so. Should be nice and steamy later in the day as it heats up.
This must be someone we know--he's riding a stand-up. And he's doing a tail stand.
Kinda lame caption, though. Someone needs to clue-in the Arizona Republic what a jet ski is (water skier?).
I shouldn't be complaining, as we've had it easy so far this summer. But 100 degrees with 20% humidity at 7:50am sucks...
Its like a friggin' sauna outside today.
I don't strive to have a political blog (rather, just expressing my own thoughts, opinionated as I may be), but I just had to comment on this story.
While I find this a highly unlikely scenario, I think that either Colon Powell or John McCain would improve the Republican ticket immensely.
Being an Arizonan, naturally my vote would be for McCain. But either would be a better choice in my opinion.
While I think the country is in dire need of improvement, I can't blame GeeDub completely. No other president has dealt with anything near the magnitude of September 11 in over 50 years. That single event has resulted in devastating consequences for our economy and feeling of security. Its impossible to say that any President could have done better with the cards that were dealt him. Nobody knows what the outcome may have been had we not taken the measures we did.
Its easy to blast him now. But remember how you felt the morning of September 11. Remember the bipartisanism displayed, the Republicans and Democrats singing God Bless America on the steps of the Capital.
All those feelings are gone, and the mudslinging is in full force.
In any case, the only way I see someone else on the ticket is if Cheney resigns on his own, a highly unlikely scenario.
It should be interesting to see how the elections pan out.
A jury has apparently found Chandler Detective Dan Lovelace "not guilty" in the murder of Dawn Rae Nelson.
I have to say that I'm somewhat surprised, although I was never comfortable with them convicting the guy of murder. Manslaughter? Sure. But not murder.
She was caught in the act of commiting a felony (filling a fake prescription) and then attempted to commit felony flight. Does that mean she deserved to die? No. Do I have a whole lot of sympathy for her?
No, I don't.
Maybe that makes me a bad person. But to me, he didn't just outright kill her in cold blood. He was trying to make an arrest and things got out of hand. Its not right, but I just don't buy murder.
I think the prosecution got greedy going for murder. If they had charged him with a lesser charge, they may have gotten a conviction. Granted, the judge gave the jury that option and they still came back "not guilty". But I still think it may have been easier to sell them on a manslaughter charge outright.
Ultimately, I think that's why Scott Peterson will be found "not guilty". The prosecution never should have gone for first degree murder of Laci and Conner. A more believable scenario is that she found out about his affair, they got into an argument, things got out of hand and he accidentally killed her. That's not murder one, and THAT jury does not have the option to find him guilty on a lesser charge.
My personal opinion is that he deserves the death penalty. Any slimeball who could kill his pregnant wife shouldn't be allowed to walk the earth. I just don't know that the prosecution will be able to sell a California jury on murder one.
Back to the story at hand--I'll be interested to read more about the Dan Lovelace jury decision when the details come out.
Making a smoking section in a restaurant is about as effective as making a peeing section in a swimming pool...
Oh great... the nuke plant burps. A substation catches fire. A vital powerline is endangered by a wildfire. Now we could face what Californians have been dealing with sporatically for a few years now.
So if the city cuts my power for up to four hours at a time, what the hell am I supposed to do with my fish tanks? Even if I put the filters on a UPS (actually three of my four tanks already are), the temperature swing from lack of A/C will likely kill them.
This is ridiculous. In this day and age, how can we be so vulnerable?
The upside of this is that I could get outta work for a few hours.
Back from Laughlin for the annual 4th of July festivities.
The lake was crowded and the weather was hot, but a great time was had by all. Memorable moments (and way inside jokes) include discussions of setting up a fake campsite, Porpoise-Man (and his impersonator), and plans to rent out Big Surf for Jet Ski Jam 2004 (okay, I made up the name but I had to call it something).
Oh, and how many engineers does it take to load a jet ski cart? Three (and one IT person to explain how it works).
That was for you, Leigh...