MaxRedline

The E.U. Is Hopeless

Under guidance issued to European Parliament staff, the organisation wants to get rid of words such as mankind, manmade, manpower and layman. EU workers and elected MEPs should instead use the terms humanity and staff, reports the Daily Telegraph which says a guidebook has been handed out asking them to avoid the “generic use of man.”

Britain's making a smart move in deciding to exit that idiotic bloc; PC has completely run nuts in Europe. They're gonna have to change this thing as well: Parliament. After all, it contains the letters m, e, and n. Can't have that!

Apparently Europe has nothing else with which to concern themselves.

 

Hi, Tech!

I wondered why I got an emergency alert from CRESA yesterday, warning that 911 lines were down. Turns out that it was a Bell company (CenturyLink, as they call it today) screwup:

Many CenturyLink customers across the U.S. were without internet Thursday amid a lengthy outage that even affected some Verizon customers. Customers from New York to California reported outages.

The knockout of 911 service was particularly disturbing.

I'm guessing that I got the alert from Clark County, Washington because we live in the West Hills of Portland at present, and therefore my provider's signals route through both Multnomah County in Oregon and Clark County.

At North Colorado Medical Center in Greeley, Colorado, doctors and nurses for a time had difficulty accessing patient records. Verizon said CenturyLink helps handle wireless network data traffic for Verizon and other wireless providers.

Sure glad they don't "help" my provider.

Credit/Debit Card Chips:

Credit card chips were created to defend against skimming devices which steal information through the magnetic strip on the back of the card. Security experts say criminals have already adapted their technology to read the chips as well.

According to the US Secret Service, the crooks are now intercepting inbound new cards and removing the chip, replacing it with a nonfunctional old chip. They then repackage the card and send it on its way. Once the "new" card is activated, they can then use the new chip to begin draining accounts.

 

"Sanctuary State"

California authorities have arrested the illegal immigrant suspected of killing a cop just after Christmas, local authorities say. Suspect Gustavo Perez Arriaga, 32, was arrested in Bakersfield on Friday morning for killing Newman Police Department Corporal Ronil Singh, 33, on the morning of December 26, according to the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department.  

Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson said Arriaga is a Mexican national who illegally entered the U.S. through Arizona several years ago and was a part of the notoriously violent Sureños street gang. He was trying to flee back to Mexico when he was found and placed in Corporal Singh's handcuffs then taken away on Friday. 

While nothing can bring the officer back, it's of some satisfaction to read that his killer was cuffed with with his victim's restraint device and then frog-marched off to jail.

The sheriff blames California's "sanctuary" law for the whole thing; noting that had they been allowed to work with ICE, the officer would likely still be alive because they'd have had Arriaga deported. Maybe so, and maybe not - catch and release is fine for fishing, but it's bad policy when dealing with illegal aliens.

 

Oregon Nuts (Not Filberts)

Alanna Partin, the Sweet Home woman arrested in downtown Corvallis in November after she allegedly reached for a handgun during a traffic stop, appears to be mounting a sovereign citizen defense, a legal tactic that denies the validity of the U.S. judicial system. Partin, 38, was in Benton County Circuit Court on Thursday morning for a status check in her case. She is charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm, interfering with a peace officer and failure to carry or present a driver’s license. The firearms charge carries a potential five-year sentence.

She also had an AR-15 with no serial number.

Sweet Home? Just a guess, but her sweet home's likely to be the Coffee Creek state pen for the next few years. Hope she's got someone lined up to look after her trailer.

After arguing with the judge for a while, she started to leave - at which point the judge informed her that she'd be immediately jailed if she walked out the door. She claims to be entitled to compensation of "not less than $100 trillion".

Insanity Defendants:

Those freed without ongoing supervision and care because of a state time limit commit crimes at twice the rate as a smaller group freed because the Psychiatric Security Review Board specifically concluded they would not be a danger if on their own, according to a Malheur Enterprise and ProPublica analysis. Oregon is one of five states that frees insanity defendants when they’ve reached their maximum prison sentence, without weighing a person’s health and danger.

One such guy is Sean Rieschel, of Newport, Oregon:

In 2010, Rieschel, then 39, faced an Oregon circuit court judge for his 25th criminal case.

He was found guilty but insane after assaulting a woman in Newport, and was sent to the state hospital in Salem, Oregon - but he was only sentenced to five years. Within months after he was cut loose, he was back in handcuffs again.

And the merry go-round continues to spin.

 

Puppets

Christmas Eve saw the presumptive new Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi issue a tweet that was identical, word-for-word, to one issued 23 minutes earlier by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

My, what a coincidence!

 

 

Ski Antarctica!

That's gonna be a nope from me, dawg.

O'Brady apparently lives here in Portland when not out stunting, and many reports indicate that he's the first person to "traverse Antarctica" all by his lonesome. Actually, he didn't: he went from the Ross ice shelf to the south pole and back again.

It's still impressive, as it's nearly 1000 miles on skis, pulling 400 pounds of supplies on a sled. And even though it's summer down there, it's still cold. How cold? Damn cold: you can take a pot of boiling water, toss the water into the air, and watch it turn to ice before it hits the ground. Yep, that's cold.

Had an ex-girlfriend like that, once....

 

 

Time To Build Another One

The big-box computer system I last built seems to be on its last legs, so I can save the box and other parts, but the CPU, RAM, and drives need to go. So I'll probably use DBAN to nuke the drives and get back to the rebuild. When I put that one together, it cost around $200 and has been good for a decade. When I get done with the rebuild, it'll probably outlast me. This one will likely cost a bit more to build. Most of the computer shops are gone; probably due to online options. Last time I went to a shop for parts, the owner asked if I'd like a job there. That's how bad things are getting. Build in China, ship to America.

 

Gosh, If Only There Was Some Way To Head This Off

NEW YORK (FOX 5 NY) - Federal authorities are reporting widespread flu activity across the country and two states with especially high levels.

Colorado and Georgia were singled out for high rates of influenza-like illnesses reported.  

80,000 deaths during last season were linked to the flu. Flu season generally runs from October until April. Flu activity generally peaks between December and February.

By contrast, for the last year CDC data are available, 33,636 gun-related deaths occurred over the course of a year. Obviously, guns are a huge problem; though less than half as much as anti-vaxxers, who manage to kill far more people in a far shorter time-frame.

So who presents the greater societal danger?

 

Meanwhile, Over At The Burger King...

Faced with a labor shortage of willing workers due to the humming national economy, a growing number of restaurants and fast-food chains are turning to a new source: Seniors. Senior citizens have a lifetime of job discipline experience in work and social settings in the real world, not online, an attention span beyond four seconds and the accompanying self-confidence that makes them ideal for customer interactions in such retail work.

The median food industry hourly wage is $9.81, the same sum such establishments would pay for an inexperienced teen without the experience and workplace decorum.

“A lot of times,” said Stevenson Williams, manager of a Church’s Chicken in North Charlotte, “with the younger kids now, they can be very disrespectful. So you have to coach them and tell them this is your job. This is not the street.”

It's been a while since I last set foot in a fast-food joint, but the crew was composed not of teens nor seniors; they were middle-aged Hispanic women. Perhaps it's different elsewhere.

Hiring seniors only makes sense, and not just for the reasons cited above - it gets them out of the house (or out of the senior home) and gives them a little extra cash. In the fast-food industry, food is often free or heavily discounted for part-time staff, which can be another plus for seasoned citizens.

 

 

Washington State News

MARYSVILLE — The plan was simple: Steal tools and pawn them for money.

That’s what two men, 22 and 23, reportedly had in mind when they showed up to the Coastal Farm & Ranch store in Marysville on Saturday afternoon, according to a police report. They allegedly took four nail guns, each worth over $400, walked out of the store and got into a Honda Civic.

They didn’t expect to be surrounded by about six customers with guns raised.

Boys, boys, get yourselves a job. Leave the stickups to the pros.

Oh, and don't drive down train tracks like this other aspiring brain surgeon did.