A Month of Mondays

Your love is like  asparagus jelly

It's Women's History Month, as work reminded me. These emails are getting through my filters, then I get agitated, then I take it out on you, the readers.

Still no left handed history month 

How, you ask, does one celebrate Women's History Month? Let me count the ways..

1. pray for the next ridiculous month's celebration to come quickly
2. bitch, yell, carp, scream, or complain at somebody, preferably a man
3. talk about window treatments, new furniture, and the perfect flowerpot for that space
4. take 4 times the usual number of minutes (hours) to get ready
5. pretend you didn't notice your shirt is buttoned as low as it is
6. when somebody cuts you off, don't scream at them
7. when asked to take out the trash, tell your spouse not now, you have a headache

Today I identify as  Lieutenant Columbo (deceased)

The Phrases are getting out of hand.

"Game Changer" has to be used at least once every 3 minutes, whether on tv or at work.

"At the end of the day" is quickly catching up.

The only good news is that "it is what it is" is falling out of favor.

We, as Linguistic Police, have a duty to knock this stuff out of the lexicon.

You're going to be shocked. Or maybe not.

But there are now babies born with 3 parents, currently only legal in the UK.

Apparently there are a few ways of doing this, but the easy way is always the best. It involves 3 or more people, a mattress, a donkey, and Alec Baldwin's 'stunt' gun. If one of the persons has a disease, you might want to go via genetic manipulation, which is considerably less fun, even though the donkey is still on the table.  The 3 parent technique could create babies at risk of severe disease.

• So called 'normal' people want some time to figure out what's going on, because they blank out when someone says 'science.'
• Republicans desperately need something in there about killing babies so they can pass a bill against it.
• LGBTQ+1 organizations (the democrats) need something in there about killing babies so they can pass a bill protecting it.
• Religious organizations forbid it because the 3 parents aren't married and can't be married (but send the donkey anyway).
• What about the man in the street? People in the street should get to a sidewalk quickly, lest they become a statistic.

Supreme Court declines to decide whether city-backed prayer vigil violated First Amendment

Of course it did. The clickbait headline neglects to mention that the courts are first deciding whether the 2 plaintiffs have a right to sue. In refusing, it gets kicked back to lower courts to make the determination of standing, then violation.

At issue for the Supreme Court was a more procedural question: Whether the plaintiffs, who attended the rally and alleged they were “aggrieved” by what they saw, were injured enough to meet the threshold for suing.

Huh? I don't believe you need to be a certain degree of 'aggrieved' to sue. A violation is a violation. I'll be back with more Backseat Legal Driving next week. The Supreme Court is moving to the side of religion lately. This issue needs to be monitored- it affects all of us.

Scientists have mapped a secret hidden corridor in Great Pyramid of Giza

Ancient Astronaut Theorists say this is proof that the pyramids were constructed by aliens because the Egyptians didn't have the technology or ability to build a corridor.

Regular Old Theorists say this points to there bring a big hole in the pyramid.

Archaeologists say they're pissed because they can't even get permission to look at the pyramid.

The dog was chewing on something. Upon closer inspection, she had brought in a mouse. Or most of a mouse. Instead of dropping it on her mommy as a present, she decided it was too tasty to give away. After a brief but loud discussion, I was elected to remove it (or what was left of it). Part of me is revulsed, the other part proud. I will keep this in mind later, when she starts to lick my pillow.

Biden FCC nominee withdraws, blaming cable lobby and “unlimited dark money“

• Oh yeah, she's also a lesbian. This fact made a certain political party very upset. I won't mention which one. Much mud was thrown at her.
• I remember the 2016 elections. The Log Cabin Republicans were a group of gay people voting republican. The R-tent looked very inclusive back then. Apparently the tent shrunk in the wash, only leaving room for certain republicans.
• Nobody mentioned Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Spokespersons for both parties preferred to emphasize the positive: they are in complete agreement with each other in many areas: higher salaries, larger government, less rights, and higher taxes.

Wife, returning from whatever it is she does in the morning, asked what I wanted for breakfast.

Apparently she didn't take me seriously when I said malt, bacon burger, or barbecue. After all these years, she still doesn't know when to take me seriously. I'll probably wind up with one of those disgusting breakfast things. The convenience store has Breakfast Burritos. Burritos are my favorite Mexican food, but Breakfast Burritos have things like eggs and sausage in them. Who eats this stuff in the morning? Or at all? Then I reminded her we probably still have Breakfast Burritos from last week. If we do, they're a lovely shade of blue and furry now. I suggested an egg, cheese, bacon sandwich, hold the egg and cheese, but she doesn't remember too good, so it's always a surprise; usually not in my favor. As least I can count on a Coke (unless Supply Chain Difficulties stopped all Coke products from showing up. Again). 

There are certain foods that are foreign to me because my mom didn't make them. Sausage is one. It's ok, as I really don't like it. I remember having the best popcorn of my life once, at a friend's house. After a bit of intensive detective work, it was discovered that Friend used butter, while Mom used margarine on our popcorn. We solved it amicably, by promising not to call Child Services if she used butter in the future. Have I mentioned we were complete bastards? Nothing changed.

Another thing that really threw me for a loop was people getting burgers with mayonnaise. No sane person where I grew up put mayo on burgers. Whenever we left the area, I had to specify NO MAYO on burgers. It was counter-intuitive.  When I forgot, I had to give the burger to my brother, who hated mayo on burgers too, but I was the bigger brother and would maim counsel him if he did not follow my orders instructions.

Speaking of instructions, we went food shopping last night, reminding my why food shopping is not one of my chores. I will gladly do dishes and haul service elephant poop out of the living room, so long as I don't have to go food shopping. First of all, we have to make sure it's not more than the mortgage payment. I noticed the dog eats better than we do, especially treats. Her treats are more numerous and healthy than anything we eat. And more expensive. This is because there are more stringent regulations for pet food than human food. This is counterproductive, because if we die first, who will buy treats for the dog?

Never ask 2 people with little to no memory to go to the meat counter. Since there were only 2 people behind the counter and 2 people in front of the counter, they were completely jammed up. One was on strike and the other involved in deep conversation with the good looking blonde next to us. We noticed that nobody was actually slicing anything, so we used the electronic order thingie to order and we'd pick it up later in our trip. Hopefully the guy allegedly slicing the meat would be done with the blonde by that time, assuming a brunette hadn't shown up later. Later at home, Wife asked if I put the meat away. No I didn't, largely because neither of us remembered to go back to the meat counter to get our already-sliced order.  Damned if we do, hungry if we don't. Next time we go shopping with an adult.

No blog entry would be complete without news of Tesla.

Last week it was rear seats turning into ejector seats. Like there's something wrong with that.

This week it's steering wheels falling off. This is a particularly good one. I wonder if you hit autodrive when the steering wheel falls off or just panic and scream your head off.

• There's a Tesla down the street.  Every time I pass it I laugh and think of posting updates on it. I'd tape them to the windshield, but I'd be afraid it would fall out or spontaneously combust.

But we're not done with Elon Musk yet. The EU told him to hire more staff to moderate Twitter.

I'm not sure why his business is any of the EU's business and highly encourage Elon to troll the hell out of them on Twitter. Perhaps he can encourage the EU to fund their demand.

A place to exercise your brain? Introducing mental health gyms

Yeah, we've run out of good and even marginally bad ideas. Now we're beneath the bottom of the barrel. Mental health gyms? It's not polite to poke fun at people with issues, especially considering my entire house has issues, including the dog. But you're reading ThermionicEmissions, where we poke at everything. Besides, what do you suppose you do at a mental health gym?

• Parietal lobe push-ups
• Cerebral Cortex chin-ups
• Frontal lobe fscking around
• Basal ganglia boxing
• Brain Stem Boogie -cool down

Volkswagen took some heat last month, when they were asked to track a car by the police. Volkswagen told the fuzz that they wouldn't track nothin' till somebody paid the bill to reactivate the 'connected car service.'

Volkswagen is very sorry  they got caught and says it will never happen again they will not get caught a second time. The service has been made free so they won't get caught again. They are testing implants that let the police know what the driver and passengers are thinking. At this point, the implants are rectal, so when the state makes them mandatory, the driver can tell them to stick it up their ass.

It's International Women's Day. Or it was International Women's Day.

It comes in the middle of Women's History Month.

I dunno.... it looks to me like the people who come up with this crap are all female.

Every day is Women's Day. We love them. We worship them. They demand it.

It was just Valentine's Day. I never get a thing on V-day. Not so much as a piece of candy. It's all about the women. Roses increase from $12/dozen to $75/dozen. If you have a penis, you had better be prepared to bring the goods, whether flowers, candy, dinner, jewelry, or new cars. Maybe a yacht or a small office building. Perhaps a reversal of your vasectomy. Perhaps a vasectomy. You never see women rushing all over stores, worried and upset they can't find the perfect V-Day gift for their husband(s). 

So it's Valentine's Day, International Women's Day, Women's History Month, Do as you're told year, and She Who Must Be Obeyed life. It carries you from birth to death, which may be hastened by failure to observe any of these mandatory holidays. 

Mrs. lefty specifies there will be no presents on V-Day (not just for me). She forgets to balk when the flowers show up. 

Windows is Sucking More Than Usual Today

 

Your love is like  rat tomago

The results of the Pew poll that asked the American public its thoughts on how to address climate change are in. Americans are for it; they just don't want to do anything about it.

Today I identify as  a Magnum. Either the ice cream popsicle or the condom - you decide.

Yes, 25 minutes to 'update', reboot, and log into work. If the company ever stopped to total time lost to Windows rebooting and general Windows screwing around, they'd have a heart attack.

I noticed it behaves better when I don't try to use it.

My email settings are now stored in THE CLOUD. This indicates my employer has drank of the Kool Aid and bought the CLOUD Hype.

Sometimes I run Task Manager to see what's going on. This is an exercise in futility because even when I figure it out, I can't do anything about it. Perhaps I secretly like to frustrate myself.

Windows Installer is doing something. It's always doing something. It's a very sneaky part of Windows. And if/when it installs something, I'm positive it will require a reboot, most likely during an important meeting or function.

Windows: It's not an operating system, it's a virus 

• Microsoft suspends “all new sales of products and services in Russia”
• they're going about this in the wrong way... they need to sell MORE products to Russia. That should foul things up nicely.

Know what's fun? A couple hours of dirty sex.

But that's not why I'm typing this. 

A trip to the $5 and Below store. Due to inflation, the $1 stores have closed, so we go to $5 and Below, which is a misnomer, because there are $5 and above products. I'm a sucker for interesting tech gadgets and last time purchased a small tripod/holder for my phone in my office. You could bend it any way to make it work for you. It was a great purchase (I thought).

Naturally it could not end this way.

Something's always wrong and the Phone Tripod morphed. The rubber pad that holds 'phones of any size' slipped, turning the unit into a Phone Tripod and Launcher. It starts to slip and eventually launches the phone into the air. For reasons I can't explain, I caught it a few times. It's almost like a game now. I don't worry because it's the work phone iDevice. 

Last night I bought a different phone holder (because I like pain). This one had little suckers on it, like an octopus, without having to feed it. It could bend into places, which really sold it. I put the thing up, grabbed the phone, and while I was grabbing it, the device popped off and fell under the desk. Because I crave failure, I tried it again. This time it popped off and fell into a place that took 15 minutes to retrieve. It took me a while, but I finally realized that this store is where bad ideas go to die. 

You've all tried reading the phone in bed. It's a pain in the ass, and if you try a larger tablet, it's a pain in the arms. So the $5 store (and below) buys out the stock of this.... gadget. Picture a four foot bendy aluminum necklace with a phone holder on it. Are you still with me? You bend it so you can lay in bed, with one end around your neck and the other end with a phone one it, at someplace convenient. To make this a technical review: it sucks. Naturally I received two of them over the year.  It's a great idea in theory...

If you want an iDevice case, this is the place for you. Aisles of them. iDevice cables. I'm surprised they're not selling the phones.

Wife looked at some colored markers. I told her to read the fine print to see what their special power is. The markers she picked up were guaranteed to dry out and fail on the trip home. I have to be fair, though.... the sticker pack she got was 100% functional. Their candy section was unreal.

Speaking of candy, the place to invest for maximum gain used to be drugs. Then vintage guitars. Now I'm convinced it's Jelly Bellies. I have a bit of an addictive issue with the hot cinnamons. When we visited the factory, they were $8/lb. They're more now. President Taxit wants to prop up the jelly bean industry with a multi-trillion bill to be introduced this week. And I can't afford my hot cinnamons. Or even the regular red cinnamons. I signed up with Google to put ads on the blog, just so I could get jelly beans. Last year I got two. So no more ads.

• it's late, I'm tired. I sure hope that large fuzzy thing I saw was the dog

While I'm minding my own business at work in my office, Mrs. lefty is watching Toothless Bingo, aka daytime tv, specifically judge shows. I guess these are the  new Jerry Springer.  Heaven hep us.

War Report

• The Russians opened fire on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.
• Hey, yeah, lets fire on a nuclear plant. What's the worst that can happen?

In other Russia news, they are blocking Faceyspaces.

Maybe they're not as stupid as we thought.

Ukrainian and Russian Pornhub Performers Protest the War

• It's early in 2022 and we still haven't removed 'game-changer' from the lexicon. It's never too early or too late.

Flying AIDS News

Here’s how kids’ COVID vaccines are holding up in the real world amid omicron

Documents Reveal Hundreds of Media Companies Including Conservative Media were Paid by Federal Government to Promote the COVID-19 Vaccines

U.S. far from normal with Covid deaths 10 times higher than seasonal respiratory viruses, report says

Florida health officials to recommend AGAINST vaccinating 'healthy' children

COVID can shrink the brain as much as a decade of aging, study finds

Kyiv psychologist suggests angry Ukranians take out their frustrations by building fire bombs

They can 'peacefully demonstrate', just like BLM!

I wonder if my insurance will cover this doc. I like what she has to say. My 'creativity' desires official psychological sanction.

The US Space Force plans to start patrolling the area around the Moon

• 1 Adam 12, see the man about Russian satellites buzzing his house
• .. check out reports of Chinese space junk headed your way
• ...reports of Iran's ships exceeding speed limit - pull them over and search for drugs

Space Force still has no justification that makes sense, unless you're a military contractor. Patrolling the Moon is just pushing Silly a little further. And we get to pay for it.

• AI model detects mental disorders based on web posts
• they tested it out on Twitter and the AI committed suicide 

Can we stop it already?

A man's son died after committing suicide, after an energy drink addiction. The man is calling for a total ban on energy drinks.

First, our sympathies on your loss, Sir.

Then, we should not ban a single thing because your son had a fatal problem with it. You claim it was an addiction. Fine, so is tobacco, alcohol, and gambling, none of which we have banned (or should we). People need to take responsibility for themselves, which is a non-concept today.

McDonald's and Coca-Cola boycott calls grow over Russia

People are upset because some companies haven't spoken on the invasion.

The Speech Police are out again. This time it's the Haven't Said Division. 

Nail me to a cross, but I'm not going to stop drinking Coke either way. Question: we want to hurt Putin, but do we want to hurt Russian citizens? Same principle for McDonald's, although I'm not likely to darken their doorstep regardless.

• I'm probably gonna regret this, but I was watching a documentary on pot and there was a guy holding a bud, pruning it with tiny scissors. 
• Why? Did it need a haircut? Were the other buds looking down on it? 

So it's International Women's Day.

Don't they rate a month?

Still no Left Handed History Month 

The Abominable Snow Span

I don't understand it and I never will.
If I have a late work conference at home, Marshall will invariably have to go outside. I don't know if it's my boss' voice or a stock market fluctuation, but the moment the meeting starts, he appears and starts literally whining to go outside. This is naturally followed by the shrieking and howling to come back in. If I didn't mute my phone, they'd think I was torturing an animal.

• Two of the largest Denial Of Service attacks ever occurred recently. DOS is when you point so much traffic at a server, it can't get data in or out. These attacks were made possible by a helpful service run on the server. How can an external bastard use this service? The people who set up the server left this service available to the internet. It's bad enough that normal people have to set things up correctly with no knowledge or help... these are the professionals, who are supposed to know.
• The professionals don't read this blog and therefore don't know about lefty's law: Don't. Don't open that email, don't click on that link, don't leave anything in the default configuration, don't use stupid passwords. This law applies to absolutely anything and everything from home users to top tier experts. The key here is called default deny. Deny absolutely everything on the server internet access. Only allow absolutely needed ports (services and channels). If you don't know this, as a professional, you aren't a professional and have no business near a server or security functions.

According to an IBM study, millennials put less effort into traditional password hygiene than older generations.

"Dude... passwords are so.... hard, man."

It's 2018 - buck up, you lazy shits. There is no excuse for laziness or refusal to consider security. Don't tell me you're Cyber-Stupid to make me do it for you. Don't tell me you don't understand or it's above your level or you can't learn nothin on Tuesdays. Older folks have had enough time to learn how to do things. Younger folks grew up with computers. There is no longer any excuse.

• The Department of Homeland Security, the agency tasked with securing the nation, “could protect its information and systems more fully and effectively,” according to a damning new report from the Office of the Inspector General. 
• The agency "protecting us" isn't protecting itself. Such is the quality of the Homeland Security concept. A perfect example of Security Theater.
• You have to admit that the tragic events of 9-11 spawned a new era in government expansion, personal restrictions, spying, and alleged protection of the masses/homeland.
• Are you mad yet?

Today's social commentary doesn't need much in the way of commentary...

College librarians argue Christians who say 'God bless you' are Islamophobic.

• "Don't follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you."  - Margaret Thatcher 
• she stole that from us!  - Apple

Tarrant County, Texas, has a unique aid to keep things going in the courtroom: a stun belt. This marvel of technology delivers 50,000 volts to the defendant, should he become unruly. A judge used it to 'convince' a defendant to answer questions after he refused.

WHAT?

A higher court found that stun belts cannot be used as punishment in court.

Guilty until proven innocent.

Unreasonable punishment.

Assault.

Sheer stupidity and violation of laws by someone who is supposed to be judging innocence or guilt.

The other side of this is that the defendant is using these technicalities to get out of a charge of "soliciting sexual performance from a child."

The man has rights, just like you and me. Aside from the belief that convicted child molesters should be put to death, psychologists state that they cannot be rehabilitated (like cigarette smokers).

• Amazon confirms some Alexa devices are randomly laughing and says it's working on a fix, after multiple users posted about it on social media.
• If there's any random evil laughter in my house, I better be the one producing it.

On National Womens Day, we celebrate the fairer sex.

I don't think everyone appreciates what women have to go through on normal days... the female host of a program was talking to another woman about the show's topic. She was bent forward, exposing her cleavage. All men in the viewing area instantly leaned forward and became completely focused. To make matters worse, they were thinking that the interview should cease and the program focus on her breasts. This is disrespectful and downright rude.

And I promise not to do it again.

In all seriousness, I try to celebrate women every day. They are truly the greatest gift to humanity.

• This blind lady is walking along, dog beside her, and says good morning to someone else on the sidewalk. How does she know? That dog must be pretty well-trained if he tells her it's Bob.

The Demons of Hell are back

It's been a very quiet, level week. That should've been my first clue.
Because of my wife's conditions, she does not function every day of the week. This week has been particularly non-functional, which probably has some relationship to it being a very quiet, level week.

The second thing I heard this morning was, "the mortgage company took out double payments." Why yes, they did, completely hosing the checking account. The first 'customer service' person said there's nothing she could do.  Gee, thanks. That was helpful. Is this still being recorded for customer service purposes? The second customer service person was actually serviceable, giving us a clue.

Follow along with me a minute... the bank, which processes electronic payments in microseconds, can't arrange to have the mortgage company void a payment. We have to go there, get a letter, Return Receipt it to the mortgage company, which will then light a fire, put on their ceremonial steer heads and loincloths, and dance merrily. This has absolutely nothing to do with our payments; they just like to do this on Fridays. The letter will then go to their Yeah Right Department, where they will Get Right On It. They will then have to call the bank, but not during their ceremonial celebration. This whole thing should take less than a month, and we won't have to pay $900 in bounced check fees when the dancing stops.

And it's a wonderful thing that I happen to have a check to deposit, so we can do boring shit, like buy dog food and, heaven forbid, people food.

Have I mentioned the medicines yet? The nobel laureates at my wife's doctor's office have to call her medicine in. Of course they didn't, in spite of three calls confirming it and sending them reminders via smoke signals and the bat phone. If you can get a human on the phone at all, it will be one with an accent so thick you can cut the clouds over my house with it. They agreed, again, to call in the prescription. Due to Congress and the lobbying power of insurers and Big Pharma, we never know how much this one prescription is going to cost. In January, it's $400. In February it's $300. It tends to migrate and wander a lot, like my single atom of patience. At least the copays can be proven to exist, unlike my patience.

OOPS -  I don't have $400 on me - it's in the bank. Correction - it WAS in the bank.  Hey, how about that money I got back from lending it out? Yeah - here it is! This is another example of what happens when I get money. It goes away. ZOOM. If I make the mistake of physically touching it, it goes away faster. It's that old Money Tease... it lets me touch it, feel it, smell it, caress it, then it's GONE. Poof!  I am not making this up or exaggerating.. this is what happens. If, for some strange reason, I am allowed to keep any more than $50, something will pop up that requires it.  If I don't manage to spend it immediately, the next day will bring another Urgent Need.

I'm told all the money will be returned to me.
Sure it will.
If there's anything left.
And if I get any money back - BLAMMO - something else will quickly come along that desperately needs it.

Since it's a snow day, I'm home, working on some intensive tasks.
Wife tells me she's going to clear the car because she has yet another doctor appointment. If she doesn't have at least three appointments per week, she feels lost. Since she's been in bed most of the week with a bad back, I suggest that cleaning snow from a car might not be the best choice of activities. No, off she goes. We do not learn from our mistakes around here - we insist on repeating them every time.

Five minutes later she reappears with a broom, breathing heavily, to tell me it's too much. Can I do it?  OF COURSE I can do it. Nothing I ever do is so important that I can't stop what I'm doing immediately and deal with the emergencies of other people. Even if I'm in the midst of something important - no problem. I used to have a sign on my desk that said "Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." The boss' wife wrote on it "Yes it does". She's a smart lady.

Being furious has its advantages.. I hammered my entire arm on the snow and it broke into city-sized pieces and rolled off the car. Then she gave me the broom and I wedged it under the mounds to get more snow off. OOPS - the aluminum-ish broom BENT in half.

At this point you're probably wondering, as I am, what I did to offend some old lady with two teeth in a cave somewhere. Or perhaps I harpooned an Inuit in the process of clubbing a baby seal. Ran over a nun?

This also begs the question of how to reverse the curse. Do I have to give the old lady $20,000 in hundred dollar bills so she can burn it? Send a shipment of fresh baby seals to Alaska? Make a generous contribution to the nunnery?



But it ain't over yet, no sir.

At the pharmacy, my medicine wasn't ready. Why? I went to pick it up a few days ago and there were no refills - they were calling the doctor. This morning they looked quizzically at my wife and said no one had called. They gave me a few to hold me over.

I got a work email.
Up top it said "what are we going to do about lefty?"  This is no surprise to me, as people have been asking that question for most of my life.  Apparently my boss had ordered software for the entire department by name. Everybody got installed except me. The request very clearly had "leftystrat" listed along with everyone else; even the sight-impaired could figure this out. Yet nothing. Perhaps we've inadvertently discovered the invisible ink of computers! We can all type my name, but the minute it leaves the computer, it turns invisible and you need a special decoder ring to see it. Unfortunately, all the decoder rings vanished when they threw out all the records incriminating the company in a lawsuit I cannot talk about. By mistake, of course. So no one actually knows I exist, outside of my department and hopefully payroll.

This all occurred before 10am.

In the midst of a much-needed nap, I got a call (because I only get calls when I'm sleeping). My beloved had cleaned out the car. And my medicine was in a trash can at Lowes, with the rest of the trash from the car. My eyes hurt because they were both trying to look at each other. She hurried back to discover that Lowes is a very clean organization, having dumped the can 30 minutes ago.


I have two modes: Level, and OMFG, THE CHECKING ACCOUNT CRASHED AND EVERYTHING'S BOUNCING.
Although too much Level would be boring, what would be the harm in the middle of the two extremes?


Every now and then I get a tiny pleasant surprise. This comes in the form of the sweet nectar of validation. Completely out of the blue, someone will say, "Wow. You guys really have way more than your share of crap."  We freeze. We process. We take a deep breath. And sometimes we feel so good.


I ask for so little, and that's exactly what I get.

• A type of ice not known to be present on earth was recently discovered inside a diamond. It is referred to as ice-VII and is about 1.5 times as dense as the stuff we put in our glasses, ice-I. Next year they plan on discovering ice-VIII, and the following year it's Return of Ice-II, starring water-I.

PELOSI WATCH

On Ru Paul's Drag Race, Nancy Pelosi said politicians could learn from drag queens. If I were a DNC bigwig, I'd quietly insist this woman "retire". The House Minority Leader goes on a tv show where men compete to see who looks best in women's clothes.  Her retirement should be announced today because next week she's competing in a swimsuit contest. She thinks it's the Miss America contest and is working on her weightlifting skills.

The People's Republic of California Speaks:

A coffee shop in Oakland is refusing to serve law enforcement officers for the "physical and emotional safety of our customers and ourselves. We need support of the actual community to keep this place safe, not police." 

Coffee shop workers did not respond to requests for comment on the policy, but a post on their Instagram account showed a photo with writing in Spanish that says, "Talk to your neighbors, not the police."

Of course they're well within their rights to refuse service to anyone and I support that.  I just wonder who they're going to call when the place gets robbed or has an issue with a very irate customer. I have an inkling that the police will be slightly more welcome should this occur. But they will still have to pay for their coffee - it's the principle.

With A Bullet

California's bullet train, that would connect San Francisco and Los Angeles, is now estimated to cost $77.3 billion, an increase of $13 billion, and could go as high as $98.1 billion. What's a few billion between friends? 

• In Pennsylvania, a family was saved when their cat alerted them to a fire. They became concerned when the cat acted strangely. How could they tell?

Just remember: Julia Roberts' hair costs more than your yearly salary.

• United Airlines has absolutely gone out of their way to top any news story about anything they ever did to any of their passengers, including the one they physically dragged off the plane.  United, who hired Hitler's public relations company, forced a passenger to put her dog in the overhead bin. The dog died.
• There are no words for this abject, criminal stupidity.
• And I will get in trouble when I suggest putting screaming children up there.

RIP Steven Hawking.
The man was a thinker. He was also somewhat of a medical paradox, in that he lived so long with his disorder.

News of his passing came from Reddit, in spades.
Reddit did not disappoint. Within minutes, there were bad jokes and memes. You have to give credit to the forward-thinking people whose immediate response is to get out the horrid jokes and fire up the meme-makers. I have to keep reminding myself to do this, but the thought process isn't burned into my skull as yet. In addition to the already delightful black humor, there was at least one conspiracy theory; that Professor Hawking died a long time ago and was replaced by at least one stand-in. This is claimed because of the pictures looking a little different over the years, with the newer ones looking younger than the older ones. I'm not touching this with a ten foot pole.

In Passing/Passed/Whatever

My grandparents were great people.

As the first grandchild, I could do wrong. I'm told my grandfather would screw up and call other grandchildren lefty.

Looking back, nowhere did this matter more than when I was five and my father died.

As I got older, I isolated myself from family. An uncle told me that one should treasure family. Since I'm always right, I ignored him. But who did I call when I got my first IT job? My grandmother.  She was very proud of me, especially because I was an unschooled, self-made IT geek. She told me in her own unique way.... "I'm so proud of you. You've come so far with nothing." To this day we laugh.

I could've been a much better grandson; I live with this always.

My grandfather passed early from Alzheimers.

The entire family went north for my grandmother's 94th birthday. That was all she wanted: she passed shortly after.

This is the first time I've written the whole thing out. 

My uncle was right: family is important. Cherish what you have. 

Hopefully they read blogs wherever they went.

I miss them terribly.

Anal Probing by Illegal Aliens

Australia has many scenic views and an endless supply of deadly fauna. Australia also has female traffic light signals. Not to be outdone, London's Trafalgar Square has gay marriage-celebrating signals. Because the government has already cured cancer and has some time on its hands. But it gets better - Australia's Minister for Women said that it would make public space more inclusive of women. Because women felt they couldn't cross the street before this?

• Many police departments across the country are maintaining their own DNA databases.  The ACLU is suing San Diego over warrantless collection of DNA of a minor without parental consent. Apparently this process allows police to skirt state and federal laws about who they can collect from and how long the samples can be retained. Loopholes are magnificent, aren't they?

Stop what you are doing this very minute and watch Star Trek - Libertarian Edition.

• Just in case you were bored today, the latest Wikileaks is most interesting. It concerns the CIA and its spying/hacking army. Among other things, how malware can turn androids, iDevices, Windows computers, smart cars, and smart TVs into listening devices. Yeah, I'm tinfoil hat. Yeah, I made it all up and this release is just coincidental fiction.

If there's one thing I learned in my life so far, it's that I'm not that good at mornings.

• Faceyspaces has a program to report and remove images of child abuse (that haven't already been removed). Journalist reports child abuse images. Faceyspaces reports him to the police. Don't. Use. Faceyspaces.
• In other news, Faceyspaces plans to update its algorithms to "listen" for people who are in danger of suicide (warning - FB.com link). This is a refreshing change from listening for people who are in danger of not being accurately marketed to in a targeted fashion. No word yet on who this data will be sold to.

On International Women's Day, we celebrate women and their contributions. We also note that women are taking off work to celebrate and march in parades; thus nullifying their input for the day. This is akin to everyone taking off work on Labor Day. We also eagerly anticipate International Left-Handers' Day.

• Reaction to the Wikileaks CIA spying story has been swift for cell phone OSes. Based upon vpn use, antivirus manufacturer F-Secure has stated that 80% of iDevice users have the latest OS; they tend to update quickly. The outlook is not so good for android users, because phone manufacturers are slow to distribute OS updates. While the Nordics (F-secure area) have a high percentage of android 6 and 7, most of the world still uses 4 and 5. Android users: bug your phone manufacturer and make sure you're current. Check your OS version in Settings.
• The nice folks who wrote the Notepad++ program have fixed a .dll file process by which the CIA could hack the program and monitor what goes on in the background. While this is by no means foolproof, it will prevent the program from loading anything other than the proper .dll file. This will not prevent problems if the hackers are already there or if the notepad++.exe file is replaced. Credit where credit is due.
• Meanwhile the CIA says Americans should be deeply troubled by Wikileaks' latest leak. I think most of us would tend to agree, just not for for the reason the CIA states ("jeopardizing personnel and operations"). Nowhere does the CIA address jeopardizing citizens' rights and privacy.
• Curious about what the CIA thinks of your antivirus?

Confide, a secure messaging application very popular with White House aides, has been discovered to have "multiple security vulnerabilities of varying severities", proving that DC cannot even hide questionable thoughts or misdeeds correctly.

• A while back I reported on the US government trying to get records from an Amazon Echo's spying to help their murder case. The Echo is Amazon's version of Google's Alexa, that sits there and processes requests (what is the weather, set reminder to call Mom, how late is Costco open?). At question is anything Echo might have recorded during a murder. The trick here is that Echo (and Alexa) isn't supposed to record anything that isn't preceded by  "Echo" (or "Alexa"). Amazon decided not to fight the subpoena and submitted to demands for the recordings because the defendant said he didn't mind the recordings being submitted to prosecutors. Amazon could have and should have fought this on privacy principles. Next time it could be your data.

Things are always more interesting at Walmart. The St Augustine, FL, police were called to Walmart, due to the 4-5' shark found in the parking lot. Yes, it was a whale of a sale.

Not to be outdone, Vilano Beach, FL, found a shark in a driveway. Sorry, Charlie.

• Yes is to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year. Asked why it took so long, a spokesman said it was because Donna Summer, Green Day, Joan Jett, Michael Jackson, NWA, Public Enemy, RUN-DMC, and Tupak needed room.

Happy International Women's Day!
I am a dead man