Category: PSA

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Layers and Layers of the Onion

Putting a tall fence around one’s house gives potential intruders a way to hide from third party observers, but it also gives you a way to hide your “capsaicin claymores” from potential intruders, so. . . Command or sensor detonation is the obvious decision tree. Switchable by remote?

Also working on a way to make a capsaicin fogger from my fog machine, and way to sensor trigger it (including safing it for yard use, & other controls). BTW, “capsaicin claymores”? #3 food can, CO2 cartridge, tripwire, Ghost Pepper powder, etc. When combined with things like Osage Orange as an ornamental face for a fence/wall, blinding strobes, etc., yeh, can have a tall fence/wall and be relatively safe from home intruders. Relatively. (A moat with gators would be nice, though.)

OTOH, Can live in a hardened bunker and not be safe from militarized law enFARCEment thugs.

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Don’t Trust, But DO Verify (or Falsify) Anyway

I’m told that the reason phishing “attacks” work is that the phishing email/phone call seems to come from a “trusted source” like a CC company, insurance company (that one does business with), or government office/agency. Really? I mean seriously, to begin with, who trusts ANY of those sources, even when they are determined to be genuine? That alone, quite apart from all the other reasons to hang up/report SPAM, report to authorities, etc., anyone who trusts ANY call/email contact, formulated as a typical phishing contact or not, without AT LEAST verifying the source simply deserves to get what they have comin’ to ’em. *smh*

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Culture Tip

“Ducktail beard.” How a subliterate grup who is also culturally illiterate regarding anything more than 15 minutes old describes a particularly poorly-trimmed Van Dyke.

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Comparatively Speaking. . .

Glitter is often so horribly misused that, at times, it seems to have been spawned from hell, but any reasonable person would prefer a “whoop” of preschoolers tweaked on a sugar high and given unlimited bags of glitter at a funeral to a drag queen show in kindergarten.

That’s all I’m sayin’ about that.

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So, Musk Wants Governments and Businesses to Pay for Twitter Use?

This is a Good Idea. Of course. And, also of course, companies and governments (and agents of governments), including such leftard-cowed/pwned Hivemind sources as PC Mag (which has already published multiple denigrations of and dire warnings about the Musk-Twitter takeover) are. . . uncomfortable with paying for a bully pulpit. Screw ’em with a rusty chainsaw.

Charge Companies, Governments to Use Twitter? It is long since past time to do so.

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Marketing Fluff = BS

Saw some bedding (sheets and pillow cases) touted as “literally the stuff dreams are made of.” Queen size: $240/ Ah! But they are made from organic cotton!

*pfui* I’m throwing the BS flag on the whole concept. ALL cotton is made up of hydrocarbon chains and is therefore organic. A premium price for BS? Nah. I’ll pass.

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Do NOT Make YOUR Problem MY Problem

You won’t like it if you do.

Well, the rumbles I’ve been hearing about Fedex deliveries in recent months going from average/poor in service to execrable have another data point. Call from Fedex Freight. Nope, the package they accepted to deliver to me? Nah. They can’t get here from there, not with the truck they want to “deliver” it with. . . And it is too big for our vehicles. Oh, and it’s a gig they accepted from another freight company–Pilot Freight–that accepted the package for delivery, then decided to fob it off on Fedex. Now, the original company says it’ll “try to work something out.” There is no try. There is only do and do not. Neither one did their due diligence, and neither one wants to be troubled to deliver the package they accepted to deliver.

Ain’t it grand when folks make a commitment w/o doing their homework and with little apparent intent to fulfill it? *shrugs* Next up: the company that sold me the product. We’ll see if it intends to earn its money. (Just to be clear: I kinda enjoy holding folks’ feet to the fire when they try to back out of fulfilling a commitment. Makes me smile. 🙂 “YOU took the gig. Don’t make it MY problem that you don’t want to do your job.” *heh*)

Progress. Called the retailer. The retailer’s the 500 pound gorilla in this. Retailer kept me on while conferencing in the company that accepted the original contract to deliver. Ruh-roh. Response: “I’ll fix this,” and a promise to call me back with a delivery date/time. We’ll see, , ,

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Another View of Faith

I have posted before that our part of faith =~= trusting obedience. Today, a streaming video study of Psalm 32 cut out shortly after verse 9 had been read, and it seemed propitious, as it spurred me to recall moments with horses that allow me to expand on that verse:

Psalm 32:9 “Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee.”

Several things popped out at me when I read this this AM. . .

Yes, ordinarily horses need to be controlled via external means such as a bit and bridle, for guidance’s sake for both them and any person around them, but. . .

There is much more to control of an equine than a bit in their mouths and a hand on the reins controlling them through that bit. There can be relationship, as well, and teaching/training, and. . . trust.

The relationship between the horses and their trainer in the video above are a good metaphor, IMO, for the relationship God desires with his people: a relationship of trust and obedience. Know this full well: those horses would not be so very compliant had their trainer not well and truly earned their trust through consistent and judicious care.

While I have never experienced that level of trusting obedience from a horse, I have had glimpses of it, brief moments where the trust a horse placed in me were humbling, engendering an even greater desire to be trustworthy. If we could but grasp a bit of that for our relationship with God, we would find Him completely, over and abundantly, worthy of our trust.

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“Type 1” Bureaucrats Only Want to Do Their Jobs

Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”:

First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

For the last three years, contacts with the public works department here at Third World County™ Central have been rather. . . pleasant, ever since the new director of public works has come on board. It’s exceedingly pleasant to deal with a member of ANY government bureaucracy who just wants to do what his job description asks of him and actually behave as a public servant. Heck, I’ve seen the guy actually get down and use a shovel himself to help get things done faster. Shocking, I know!

Kicker: he’s available, and pleasant to deal with even on a Sunday, and even via his personal cell phone. (And a good thing, too, because the one remaining sore point–poor funding for public works–means that public works has had to keep patching a water line that should be replaced. False economy, of course, because multiple calls for water leaks on public works’ own supply line have ended up costing more than replacing the line once would have been. That’s not on the public works director. It’s on cirty government and its other, non-infrastructure priorities.)

 

Note: None of the above addresses the issue of whether any given bureaucracy has a legitimate reason for existence. That’s a whole different critter.