Undrblog

Today is the 10th anniversary of the Columbine shooting. A number of news agencies are running articles regarding what happened that day, and what is different today. I just finished reading one very interesting article: http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/04/20/col … index.html

It’s regarding the "myths" behind Columbine. I remember this event pretty clearly. Because it sort of hit close to home. I was just out of high school (graduated in 1998). I was a gamer, and for my last 2 years of high school, I wore a black leather trenchcoat. This was before "goth" was popular. At least not in my town. I was an outcast, i had a very small group of friends. I’ll admit though, that this was mostly by choice. I didn’t really like most of the people in my class all through grade school. At about 5th grade, when kids start turning into teens, they start to notice that everyone’s not the same, and they form opinions on who’s worth their time and who’s not. Well I was always pretty open, and friendly. I didnt pass judgement on people on my own. People were people to me, other kids my age were just other kids. I didnt care what kind of clothes they wore, or whether they looked rich or not. Unfortunately everyone around me was starting to form those opinions, I didnt have the cool clothes and those $100 sneakers. I didn’t play sports. So I was slowly removed from the cool groups. Everyone else started to "mature" and i just kept doing what made me happy, not what they dictated as the cool stuff to do. This could very well be why I didnt get into drugs, and under-age drinking.

But I’m getting off topic. My point is, I was those kids, as the newscasts described them. A loner (sort of), semi-goth (trench coat, no piercings, eye makeup, or 100% black wordrobe), and I was into violent computer games. I liked explosives (see the tennis ball bomb post!), and guns. The big difference between me and the image the media portrayed? I like to think I was more in control of my life and psychological state. I respected things that could kill me, or others. I never saw my high school as a level in Doom.

So for the past 10 year’s, I’ve felt like I could sort of relate to these kids. I don’t in any way condone what they did, just that I could see where they were coming from. Ridicule in High School is terrible, and to a kid thats already depressed or unstable, it could easily turn into what happened in Columbine. What they did was terrible, but the picture the media painted, almost made them look like as much a victim as the actual victims!

So back to the article. Apparently, these kids were not the loners that the media made them out to be. They were not the victims of bullying that the media made them out to be. Apparently, they weren’t even members of this "Trenchcoat Mafia" that they were so linked to. The group that actually called themselves the trenchcoat mafia had graduated a year before. My guess is that they just tied them to that group because of their coats, and the fact that the group was so fresh in everyone’s memory. All of this information came from eye witnesses (students and whatnot interviewed afterward). You know, the kids that actually knew these guys. Their goal was actually to bomb the school, and not go on a shooting spree, according to their journals.

So, at any rate, theres the dump of my brain for the day. Hope you enjoyed the reading!

-War…

Over the past week or so, I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get XM Radio Online to work in Linux.
I just wanted to share my experience, findings, and eventually, success!

XM’s online web player does not work in linux. Or, I havent been able to get it to work anyway. I’m running Fedora Core 10, when I tried to load a stream throug the XMRO web interface, firefox loaded a player (i think it was totem, but its difficult to tell…) and basically hung. Not firefox,the player. It loads embedded in the page, and you cannot interact with it. I assume trying to load the stream hung the player.

So i started googling. I ran across a few references to a few players that would play mms:// streams (the format that xmro uses), but you need to get the stream’s address. I wasn’t really sure how to get that address. So these options were less attractive. Then I ran across uniXM. http://sourceforge.net/projects/unixm

It uses qt, so you’ll need qt installed, maybe even KDE. I already had KDE installed, so I did not need to install qt. I did need to install qt-devel through yum in order to get qmake. You basically download the package, make sure you have the dpendancies, and then qmake, make.

I ran into some issues, detailed in this thread on linuxquestions.org, http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions … ec-717227/.

Detailed in that thread, you’ll see links to downloads for the codecs needed, and the packages you’ll need to grab from yum to get xine setup with the right libraries.

Thus far, I like the player. It loads my presets, and channel data from xmro. It displays the song title and artist, and it doesnt have the 2 hour cut off that the web player has.

Good app, alittle difficult to setup, but with the info in that thread you should be good.

-War…

So about a month ago, Jess and I decided to adopt a dog from the shelter.
We’d lost lady a while ago, and theres a hole where she used to be in our family. So we thought it was the right time to save another pooch from the pound.

Jess went on up to the shelter on a day i was at work. Picked out a dog that we saw online. Her name is Lola, and according to the shelter, she’s 2. She’s a cute dog, but has no obedience training.

There she is looking cute laying her head on Jess’s lap.

So all around, a good dog. She’s not terribly mischevious, she’s pretty much house broken, playful, friendly, not timid, very curious, and generally a loving dog. When we’re home…

When we leave (like, you know, to go to work!) she turns into satan incarnate.

When we first got her, we werent sure how her and our doxie, Hannah were going to get along. So we would lock Lola up in the "dog room" and leave Hannah out in the main part of the house. Hannah’s pretty good, so we’re not too worried about her causing trouble. They both behave, we’re good.

Well we finally decided that it was time to start putting hannah in the room with lola. But we still weren’t sure that we wanted to actually put them together. So we borrow a small dog crate from my mom. And put hannah in the crate, and lola in the room. We go to work, come home, all is well, lola knocked over some stuff in the room, but otherwise, not so bad. The next time we leave them alone is to go to breakfast with my dad. We do the same thing, lock hannah up, and leave lola in room. Well she has a fit. We’re gone for about an hour. In that time she destroys an old ironing board, a blanket, tears the screen out of one of the windows and just generally makes a mess of the place.

We still have to go grocery shopping. so in my anger, i throw (not literally) lola in the cage, and leave hannah out. The cage isnt so small that she doesnt fit in it, it’s just slightly too small for her. Dont go thinking i’m some cruel inhumane dog owner. So we go grocery shopping. Again, about an hour we’re gone. We come back to find that lola has managed to pull the dog bed that was sitting in the dog room into the cage, along with a quilt that my mom had made for our old dog lady, and has destroyed them both.

Well we’re obviously not happy about this. but what can we do? We’re not the kind of people that would send her back to the shelter, so we try to come up with better solutions.

OK, so the problem was that there was something destroyable close at hand, so monday when its time for work, we make sure she’s not near anything.

Jess gets home before me, to find that the dog has managed to turn the cage on its side, and then stick her head out the bottom, she then proceeded to tear up the floor!

Ok, what can you do about that? we take the cage and wedge it between the table and one of the cabinets thats back there.
She manages to knock the one wall of the cage out, and get out of the cage. Wreaks havoc in the room.

When i get home, i take thick copper wire and reinforce the connection points for that wall of the cage.
She knocks out the OTHER END of the cage, gets out, and wreaks havoc.

I tie up the other end like i did the first one.

We order a larger cage.

I take two pieces of plywood, and lodge them beside the cage between the table and cabinet.
Lola knocks over the cage, and plywood, somehow gets the cage back over to where she destroyed the floor, and destroys it more.

I use hammer staples to attach the plywood to the sides of the cage.

9 staples hold each piece of plywood to the cage.

Lola removed 3 of the staples, and still managed to get the cage out of the corner, and into the middle of the room. Knocked it over.

New cage arrives.
I take two 4′ lengths of 2×4 and attach them to the bottom of the cage to keep her from flipping it over, the new cage has a tray, so now she cant get out through the bottom, right?
Lola shreds the tray, and manages to get one of the 2×4’s off of the bottom of the cage.

I’m getting tired of this by now. Every night after work i’m either fixing this cage, trying to outthink a damn DOG! or working on Jess’s car because its having electrical problems.

Hell with it. I take a small wooden frame, and drill drywall screws directly through it, through the bottom of the cage, and into the floor. I figure, she’s already destroyed the floor, what more harm can a few screws do!?
Now she cant move the cage, so instead, she CHEWS BARS OUT OF IT. Yes, she chews bars out of a METAL CAGE. She gets enough out that she can start to destroy the table next to her cage. She also manages to split some of the clips that hold the walls of the cage on, and gets partilally out of the cage. Jess comes home to find her halfway out of the cage howling.

Tonight, i welded the edges of the cage. And welded a 1/8" plate over the spot that she chewed the bars out of. I then screwed the cage back into the floor.

This is getting rediculous. I dont mind a challenge, but this is NOT supposed to be this hard!

-War…

Two for one today! I’ve got memories floating around in my head of TWO, not just once, incident regarding tennis ball bombs.

For those unfamiliar with a tennis ball bomb, follow along, you’ll get the idea.

Because this deals with amateur explosives, i’m going to say it first that anyone reading, with the common sense of a lamp post, should either STOP reading now, or convince yourself that this is a fictional writing, and that it wont actually work in real life. Fire, and explosives are dangerous. My friends and I were very careful…. erm.. well.. maybe very lucky is the right term… We didnt burn down any structures, vehicles, forests, or people in the process.

Ok, now that that’s out of the way.

A very long time ago, when the internet was still new to me, i was very thirsty for information, not the kind of stuff you can find in the library, but stuff that you can only found in underground sites on the web. Things like, the Hackers handbook, the Anarchists Cookbook, phone phreaking, hacking, general mischief sort of stuff. I was pretty safe in the things i actually tried. I wasn’t dumb enough to try calling Asia for free with a blackbox, nor was I ballsy enough to try hacking some bank somewhere. But i did read, a lot, about how those sort of things would be accomplished. One of the things that was really neat about the Anarchists Cookbook was how much information they had about explosives. Wow, that sentence looked really bad, the Obama gestapo will be monitoring my e-mail and web posts for the next 7 years. So, MR. CIA, if you’re reading this, I’m not advocating anarchism, or the use of explosives without a license… That would be.. dumb. yea, definitely.

So anyway, one of the devices I read about was the famed tennis ball bomb. For those of you that dont know what a tennis ball bomb is, it’s just what it sounds like. A bomb, made out of a tennis ball. Designed to be thrown at something (or.. someone?) and exploding in a firey spectacle. These things aren’t particularly powerful, nor are they all that dangerous. I’ll get into that in a bit.

So a few friends and I decided to try to actually make one of these things. The theory is simple. You take an average tennis ball, cut a slit in it, just big enough to fit match heads through. Then you take strike-anywhere matches, and cut the heads off, leaving just the heads, as little of the stick as possible. Then you stuff as many match heads into the tennis ball. Then you seal the tennis ball up with tape. When you throw the tennis ball at something, if you did it right, the match heads strike off of each other on impact, causing a chain reaction. As they flare up, the pressure in the tennis ball becomes great enough, that the tennis ball splits open, and the match heads come flying out, LIT, from the pressure. The result is a star-burst sort of effect. Sort of like very small fireworks.

So one day, after school, we’re bored, if memory serves this attempt involved Me, Wetzel, and Jose. We’re at my parents place, i’m pretty sure no one else was home. My sister was in college at the time, so she was probably off at class, my dad worked till 5, my mom worked nights, so sometime early afternoon she left for work. Anyway. I had a tennis ball. Probably an old dog toy, we certainly didn’t go buy tennis balls for this. We had just one. We had to buy the matches though. So we had one box of strike-anywheres, a few pairs of dikes (get your mind out of the gutter) and a roll of white electrical tape. Now, you’re supposed to use duct tape. it seals better, but we were poor, and had no duct tape. We probably spent all of our money on the matches!

So we spent about an hour cutting the heads off of these matches. Then we cut a hole just small enough to fit the heads through in the tennis ball, and started stuffing. Now this is sort of tricky. If you stuff things too tight, you could IGNITE the tennis ball right there in your hand. That would be…. bad. We probably could have packed it tighter, but we didnt want to burn the house down, or burn ourselves, so we played it safe. Then we carefully wrapped the thing with the electrical tape.

So now, we had one tennis ball bomb, and about an hour before any supervision was going to arrive. Where to light this thing? I had the perfect spot. There’s an unmaintained road near my parents place, that leads up to the Flagstaff in JT. We headed up there. Now, the only one of us that had a car at our disposal was Wetzel. Wetzel’s driving is… erratic, at best. Or, it was at the time anyway. So we hop in his car, we’re looking at a 4 minute drive at best. I think Wetzel wanted to see if he could do it in 3. We’re not wearing seatbelts, because it’s a 4 minute drive, and we’re dumb high school students.

Well there’s this hairpin turn that we have to go around to get on to this road. Wetzel’s driving, i’m riding shotgun Jose (a big hispanic guy) is in the back seat HOLDING the bomb. Most NORMAL drivers slow down to about 5mph for this turn. Not Wetzel, he must have taken at it 20. Which doesnt sound like much, but you need to see this turn. Now, Jose’s in the back cradling this bomb like its a damned newborn. So both of his hands are taken up with keeping this thing from enduring any jar’s or shocks, after all, we wouldnt want it to explode, in the car, right? So wetzel takes this turn, Jose, who has no hands to hold on with, weighs probably better of 225lbs (maybe more) gets tossed across the back seat from the force of this turn, slams into the drivers side rear door, and quickly exclaims "I’ve got a BOMB back here!!!". We laughed and continued on.

So we got to a "safe" place to finally try this thing out. Wetzel is elected as the designated "thrower". We find one of these cement drainage things. it’s got a little raised wall made of cement. We figure, cement doesn’t burn, cement’s sturdy… Perfect! Wetzel winds up, and throws. Now, here’s the part no one told us…..

Remember how i said the matches ignite, and start a chain reaction, build up pressure, and THEN explode? Well it takes 3-5 seconds for this to happen. We expected contact and BOOM, nooooo.. it doesnt work that way. Here’s somethign else we didnt think of… Tennis balls (even those with a hole cut in them, stuffed with match heads, and wrapped in electrical tape) BOUNCE!

So the scene played out something like: Wind up, throw, bounce, look of slight confusion from Jose and I (who are safely standing back), look of terror from Wetzel as he realizes that the tennis ball, containing what may or may not be a chain reaction of igniting match heads, is headed STRAIGHT FOR HIM as it bounced directly off the wall, and back in the direction it came from. Well, Wetzel’s never been called lethargic, he spring into survival mode and as the tennis ball bounced right between his feet, he jumped as high and as fast as he could, and IIRC, tumbled out of the way. Sure enough, right as it hits the ground, it explodes! Rather anticlimactically. The electrical tape didnt form enough of a seal, the pressure wasnt contained long enough, and it just split the tape right at the hole we made for the matches.

We studied the result, took notes for next time, and headed back to my parents place.

We didnt try the tennis ball bomb idea again for a little while. Wetzel joined the air force and spent 4 years defending our country, and the rest of us went on to either college, or some other sort of after high-school things. Well one day, Wetzel’s in town, on leave IIRC. I get a call from one of our friends, they invite me up to Wetzel’s parents place. Everyone’s together, and.. making tennis ball bombs! This time we’re all working, we all have a little money, we all have cars. So many more possibilities. So i hop in the Jeep, and head up there. I get there, i forget everyone that was up there, but at the very least it was the 4 horsemen, maybe pecic, i forget if he was involved in this particular disaster, or.. i mean.. event.

I find them sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by bowls full of match heads, and a standard tube of tennis balls. Also a few rolls of duct tape. They sprang for the good stuff this time. This has promise. I grab some dikes and start assisting in the match cutting. Wetzel’s dad was a Marine, in Nam, seems everyone I know that served in Nam is a lot more easygoing when it comes to things that could kill you. So he was actually right there giving us pointers, and sort of supervising. His family had foster kids as well, they were there, some watching, i think waiting for us to light ourselves on fire, others excited to see the result, others completely dis-interested (they had a lot of foster kids…). so we cut enough heads to fill 3 (iirc) tennis balls. We were a little more daring this time, and packed them just a tad tighter than the last time. We were older now, and smarter (right?). Then we carefully wrapped them in duct tape. Then we loaded them up in someone’s car (pretty sure we didn’t let Wetzel drive this time). We head to this little lot in the middle of nowhere that wetzel knew about. It’s one of these little lots that you find at the entrance to state game lands and things. Except this ones paved, instead of gravel. Perfect! Pavement is hard, sturdy, and doesn’t burn!

We learned a little from last time.
1. There’s a delay
2. Tennis balls filled with a chain reaction of igniting match heads DO bounce
3. DONT throw the tennis ball at something that MIGHT bounce it back at you.
4. STAND THE HELL BACK!

We have 3 attempts this time, so a few of us get a shot at it. This time, we stood on the pavement, and threw the tennis ball, as hard as we could, at an angle down on to the pavement. This made them bounce up into the air, and AWAY from the thrower. This, we found, was the RIGHT way to do it. It worked perfectly. It was dark. We used the KC HiLights on my Jeep to see what we were doing until the toss, and then i cut them off just as the thrower was doing his throwing. Spectacular! each one worked perfect. It bounced, and at about 20ft up, it popped. The match heads exploded outward in a star burst, and burned up before they hit the ground.

So there you have it. Fun with explosives!

-War…

Ok, so who else is following the current "stimulus" package? In the past year or so i’ve actually started making an effort to keep an ear on politics. See what’s going on in the world of our government and the elected officials we’ve chosen. I do this mostly by listening to a few talk channels on XM. One is Fox news talk, I can’t say i like all of their shows, but one I do is Brian and the Judge. I like how they seem a little more balanced than most radio shows. A lot of shows have one host, who has his own opinions on how things should be done, and he tries to convince all of his listeners that his way is right, and everyone else is a freakin moron. Anyway, this show has two hosts, and they bring in more than one point of view, they don’t just agree with each other all the time. They even argue with each other if they dont agree.

They’ve been following this new stimulus plan pretty closely. Did you know that they’re talking about a sum of $925,000,000,000.00 this time around. Now, it seems like just yesterday that the government decided to take $700,000,000,000.00 of the taxpayer’s money, and then threw $350,000,000,000.00 at a number of banks, businesses, and whatnot, and from what I’m hearing, it didn’t help! The recipients took the money, put it into bonuses, jets, limo’s, vacations, whatever, things that AREN’T helping the economy! So now we’re talking about taking more money, which I assume is to come from the taxpayers, and giving it out to more businesses and agencies? On top of that, a ton of the proposed money is to go to things like the FBI, and Police harley’s?! What does any of that have to do with stimulating the economy?

I heard this morning from someone they interviewed, sorry, I missed her name, but they were talking about this bill, and how it got so bloated. She said something along the lines of: The bill has to have enough "pork" to please the democratic members, and it has to be lean enough to please the republican members.

Ok.. WTF?! I have a better idea.. How about they steal just enough of our money to FIX THE DAMN PROBLEM. If they think that this stimulus can work, ok, that’s all well and good, if they really think it’ll work, and it works, then I guess it’s worth it. I can’t claim to be some economist, so I’m not going to say it wont work. I feel like it wont work, but I’ve been wrong before. Anyway, if it’s going to work, why not focus on making it work, and not what we can tack on to it?

The other thing I don’t quite understand is how this is going to help. How can spending more money get us out of all of this? Wouldn’t the point of a stimulus be to put money back into the pockets of the citizens. So they can in turn spend that money on things, thus improving the economy? Make some decent jobs to get the unemployment down, maybe cut some taxes so a little less of my paycheck gets taken away from me and put into some government account, that I then have to hire a damned accountant to get a little back at the end of the year.

I’m not blaming Obama just yet. I can’t say that I’ve heard any real evidence that he’s behind the whole thing, it sounds more like the senate/house to me. Everyone’s quick to blame the president just because he’s in charge, and I don’t approve of that, I think it’s better to see who’s really behind things before just blaming the leader. So I’m not going to go ahead and say it’s all his fault. Because right now i don’t think it is.

At any rate, I think cutting costs, rather than spending money, is what’s going to help us out the most. It’s very possible that i don’t understand all of the things at work here. So maybe I’m wrong, but some of the reports I hear about this stimulus bill, just burn me up.

-War…

Call me odd, but sometimes, when my mind isn’t occupied by any of the thousand things a day it seems I have to think about, it starts to wander, sometimes to daydreams, sometimes to ongoing issues in my life that I’ve been mulling over, and sometimes, to memories of the past. I have a good memory when it comes to good times (or sometimes bad times) from my past. Sometimes i can remember some of the oddest details from some party I was at, or some event that friends and I attended, or a date I had with my wife. Oddly enough, i have trouble remembering to take out the garbage, run the dishwasher, or pick up something my wife asked me to at the store.

So I’ve decided to start sharing these memories. So here we go, "4WD is useless on ice!".

In 1998 I graduated High School, and moved on to the working world, and of course, College. If you could call it that. I went to Allentown Business School, which later became Lehigh Valley College, and later became… bankrupt. Without going into too much detail, we’ll just say i may as well have bought the degree they gave me online, I probably would have saved money, and come out of the deal with just as much knowledge as I left ABS with, But that’s another story. During my first quarter at ABS, I had no car. I car-pooled with friends, got rides where i needed to. I had also started my first job, 2 weeks after school started, I started part-time at PenTeleData, in technical support. Still, i got rides from friends to make it to/from work, they were kind enough to schedule me with others that lived in my area. It was working out ok, but it was a little less than convenient. One day one of my friends decided he was going to cut some classes. I had just started my adventure into college, and wasn’t too keen on this idea. I wasn’t able to convince him to stay for his classes, but I wasn’t about to skip mine. So he left……… Left me stranded at school, i had to find a ride home. Luckily a friend of a friend was going to the same school, and she gave me a ride home. After that, I decided it was time to get a little independence. I started by convincing my dad to let me use his pickup to go to and from school. That worked ok, and got me through the quarter, but i wanted my own vehicle. Something I could call mine, customize it, be proud of it, and most of all, not have to give it back to its owner, and ask permission every time i wanted to go somewhere.

ABS was kind enough to give us a week off between quarters. So i used that week to find a vehicle. A 1989 Chevy S-10 Blazer. 2 door, 4wd, Black… it was perfect, well, at the time anyway. I still miss that truck sometimes. So we’re talking something like October when i picked this vehicle up. For Christmas that year, my mom bought me a nice brush guard for the front. "Euro Style" i believe they called it. It was one of those that wrapped around the front, had guards over the headlights (yes, this fits into the story). Am i losing anyone yet? Keep reading, it all makes sense later.

Now, my dad’s always owned a pickup, of some sort, as long as i can remember. His current pickup (at the time of this memory) is a 4×4 chevy full size. We’d been off-road in it from time to time, for hunting, boy scouts, things of that nature. And i loved it. I’d wanted a truck as far back as i can remember. I recall standing in the showroom of the local chevy dealer when i was something like 8 years old, looking up at this beautiful black Chevy while my parents were getting their car worked on. Just thinking about how cool it would be to own one someday. Now i had my OWN 4×4, you better believe I’m going to wheel it.

So a few months go by, it’s February or so in Northeast PA. I’ve had the Blazer for a few months, I’ve been through at least part of the winter in it, I’ve driven it in snow, ice, a few other not so nice conditions. I took it out on a few very mild trails… To date, I’ve never had a problem with traction, getting stuck, stopping, nothing. I’m feeling pretty comfortable with this 4wd thing. Mind you, I’m not an idiot. There’s too many people out there that think that because they have 4wd, they’re impervious to the elements. But I’ll admit, I’m starting to get that "I can go anywhere" feeling.

One evening, Chuck and I are out in the Blazer. I don’t remember what we were doing, but for some reason we were in this little development in Albritesville. A friend of ours has something of a summer home up in this development. He and his family moved off to Philly, but kept the house for whatever reason. Just as a get-away I suppose. Well we’re up by his place, I guess looking for un-plowed roads just to test out my driving skills. We drive to our friends house, no one’s there of course, we didn’t expect anyone to be there. The roads are plowed, but not well, so it’s mildly amusing. We stop at his house, so did the snowplow apparently, past his driveway there;s a snow covered road in front of us. His house is the last before a very steep hill with a very sharp turn. My guess is that no one drives this road in the winter, and the plow driver isnt willing to risk his neck to plow it. Well we decided to get a little closer to the bottom of the hill, you know, see how it looks. We pull into the un-plowed part of the road and continue on. There’s probably about 100 yards of relatively even road before it comes to the hill. We get to the hill and come to a not so happy realization. First, the hill is a sheet of ice, and second, there are no tire tracks in the "snow" behind us, you know, the "snow" we just DROVE THROUGH. There are no tire tracks because it is also, a SHEET OF ICE. The good news is, we’re stopped, not sliding around, just stopped. The bad news is, we have 100 yards of ice behind us, a very steep, sheet of ice in front of us, tree’s to the left of us, and about a 4′ drop, with tree’s to the right of us. The road we’re on slants slightly to the right of us, probably for run-off.

So there we are, on a sheet of ice, too wondering what the hell we should do. Well i figured, turning around on a sheet of ice is probably a bad idea. so we’d driven in without even noticing that it was ice, we should be able to just put it in reverse and back right out the way we came, right? So i put it in reverse, and slooooooowly start driving out in reverse.. I notice that we’re slowly starting to get closer and closer to that 4′ drop off to the right, this doesnt seem good, i drift to a stop so i can re-think. The blazer stops, and then continues to slide to that damned drop off!! What can i do now? my tires have broken traction, i cant think of any other way to stop this thing! Obviously, a 4′ drop isn’t going to kill us, but it IS going to damage my blazer, and probably leave us stuck there. This is the days before everyone has cel-phones, so we’d be stuck walking out to someone with a phone. Then I’d have to call my dad, who’d no doubt give me hell for even getting into this mess, then we’d probably get noticed by development security or something, and get some kind of fine for being in there in the first place.

For whatever reason, the blazer stops sliding, we’re safe again, but much closer to that drop off, and i know that if i start moving again we’ll start sliding again.. Now what do we do? Chuck has an idea. Now, for anyone who doesnt know chuck, let me give you a description.. About 6’10" (thats a guess) and probably 400LBS. Big guy, big heavy guy. He had this blue coat that he wore all the time, we all called him the blueberry. So what’s his idea? He’s going to get out, and push the blazer away from the drop off.. And then we’re going to use his weight to get the blazer turned around, and as far to the other side of the road as possible. Then we’re going to get off that ice as quickly as possible. So he gets to the rear end of the blazer, and gets himself into position. Puts his feet on the snow on the side of the road so he has some traction, and starts to push with all of his might as i drive in reverse. Guess what.. It works! He starts to push the rear of the blazer toward the woods on the "safe" side of the road! Ok, so we get to the point where the bazer’s across the road, the front is facing the side with the drop off, the rear is facing the safe side. But i can’t get enough traction to back up! the tires just spin, i go nowhere. So Chuck once again braces himself, and plants his hands on that brush guard on the front of the blazer. I put it in reverse, and he pushed as hard as he can. Once again, it works! he pushes me into the tree’s on the safe side. At this point, i dont care that i backed into a few saplings, I’d rather have a few scratches from little tree’s than a blazer flopped on its side from a drop off. Now my back tires are on the snow on the safe side of the road, and I have enough traction to back up a little. I back up as far as i can and turn the wheels down to the clear part of the road, and ever so slowly get the blazer to the point where it;s facing the proper direction, and the two drivers side wheels are on the rougher ice at the edge of the road so we get some traction. Chuck hops back in, and off we go.

Moral of the story? 4WD does NOTHING FOR YOU when you’re on ice. And always keep a blueberry with you when you’re wheeling.

-War…

And now, for Amy, and anyone else who finds my blog depressing….

Tell me something…

What’s the best way to turn average people into rude, arrogant, violent, murderous, assholes that don’t give a damn about their fellow man, or the property of others?

Simple, you cut all of the prices on all of this years most popular Christmas gift items, and then advertise it as the start of the holiday shopping season. People line up at the doors to every retail store in the country, and when the doors open, they race as though their lives depended on it (maybe it does.. i’ll get into that later) to the items that they want. They push and shove, they lose all patience and consideration, even trample store employee’s to death (yea, I said _death_) all for that mediocre "deal" on a flat panel tv, or Wii.

Have a look over here at the NY Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/busin … .html?_r=1

A greeter (and a relatively young greeter at that, not one of these old retired folks) at a Wal Mart in Long Island was trampled to death by a crowd of crazed shoppers. He was trying to keep some order amongst the crowd, and when the doors opened, they pushed the poor guy over, and trampled him! Two hundred some people just ran right over him, not with a car, or a cart, or something heavy, just their greedy, impatient, crazed feet. Now this guy’s family is minus one for this holiday season, all because of the craze that this event causes.

Who’s to blame? Everyone involved to some extent, except imho the guy that got trampled. He seemed to be the most innocent of anyone. He was just trying to help out by keeping these people at bay until they were actually allowed to get into the store. There’s no reason something like this had to happen. I’ll elaborate…

The retailers:
These guys have one thing on their mind. $$$ Dont let them tell you otherwise. The days of stores that actually care about their patrons are gone. They all care about the almighty dollar, and that’s it. They don’t _really_ care about the communities they’re in, or feeding the homeless, or curing cancer. Sure they all donate to these causes, but that’s all just to make them look like they care. In reality you have some CEO flipping out at his PR department because theyre requesting 20Mil to donate to the spotted owl. Do i know this as fact? No, but I bet I’m not far from the truth. They hype up this event, cut their markups from 400% to 300% for a day, make you think you’re getting a deal, and they rake in the cash. I heard from a Wal Mart employee yesterday, at the end of the day, their store (yea, just THEIR STORE) raked in over $1,000,000. So apparently the hype works.

The media:
I blame a lot on the media. They’re responsible for providing the public with facts, unbiased and fair. There only seem to be a few that still seem to stick to that. Most of them put their own spin on the "news" so it looks they way they want to. How do you think Obama got elected? But that’s another blog. Today I’m talking about assholes. The media hypes black friday up almost as much as the retailers do.

The customers:
I don’t mean every customer, I’m sure some of them are still civil, and don’t fit into my stereotype, but it seems that the majority do, and maybe it’s temporary. After Christmas is over they turn from Mr. Hyde back into Dr. Jeckal. This temporary insanity is the problem. Without it, all they hype from the Retailers and the Media would be in vain. The problem is that both sources are so damned good at working people into a frenzy, that most can’t resist it! I’d bet that if the media started telling you that Communism worked better than democracy, we’d be ruled by some dictator in a few years. Most of the American people stopped thinking for themselves a looooong time ago, and depend on their TV to tell them how to live their pathetic lives. Harsh? yea, but it’s how i feel, sorry.

Every single person that mis-treated someone else on black friday (or any day for that matter i guess) needs to be reminded WHY they’re even out there in their shopping frenzy. What’s Christmas? We all learn this at a young age. With some it sticks, with others it doesnt.

Presents right? An excuse to spend your money on others, and expect them to spend theirs on you. A day off of work, or a long weekend, or a reason to use a week of that vacation time you’ve been saving up. Or some time off of school. A reason to decorate your house with twinkly little lights, bows, ribbons, wreathes, and little wintery scenes. That’s what it’s all for right?

WRONG! We celebrate Christmas because of the day it represents. The birth of Jesus! Giving gifts is a tradition which represents the gifts given to the baby Jesus by the wise men. Yes, they were all valuable gifts. But does that mean that we should be treating our fellow humans like dirt because you want that deal on a PS3? What the hell happened here?

Ok, i’m done.. i think i got the point across.

Have a Happy, Healthy, and SAFE holiday season!

-War…

So, i’m sitting here, checking out Sanctuary, on SciFi. I havent seen the show yet, but my interest in Amanda Tapping’s career _after_ Stargate SG1made me want to check it out. Anyway, it’s November 7th. A few weeks from Thanksgiving here in the US. Now, not 2 weeks ago, all of the local stores were flooded with Halloween stuff. Decorations, costumes, whatever.
So what do i see during the commercials of Sanctuary? A wal mart commercial, about.. CHRISTMAS!

Now, dont get me wrong, i like Christmas, it’s an excellent holiday, not just because of all of the peace on earth crap, but the event that it represents. So what am i complaining about? What happened to Thanksgiving! Retail stores, Wal Mart especially, completely ignore this important US holiday in favor of Christmas, a holiday which just rakes in the cash for retail stores. Not just in gift sales, but think of the decorations, tree’s, and other holiday goodies. They just see dollar signs. They dont care about the significance of the holiday, what it means, or what we’re really celebrating. Just how much money they can soak us for.

So everyone, please join me in _NOT_ celebrating Christmas, until it’s actually TIME to celebrate Christmas.

Oh, and how was the show? One word…. Tribbles….

I’ve been doing a little work on the site. I now have a message forum tied to the blog! So any new posts from here on are tied to the message forum! All you’ll need to do is go register and login, and you can join in the discussion. Head on over! http://www.undrground.org/geek/forum/ -War