The Vagaries of Elephant Sexing. And Sexting.

After our great success with the battery-powered Worx mower, we purchased a Worx... thing... it's a small chainsaw attached to a long pole. Wife says it's for getting rid of high branches. I say it's for long distance torturing of certain neighbors.

I guess it depends on who handles it.  Meanwhile, it's waiting in the kitchen.


ThermionicEmissions is saddened to hear Beth Chapman, Dog the Bounty Hunter's wife, passed away, most likely from cancer (1967-2019). Although an occasional target of the blog, we send our best to Dog and family.

• Japan is set to resume whale hunting. They say it's essential.
• Reached for comment, the whales say it's not essential.
• Funny mishap on the first day: someone harpooned Rob Reiner.

At the Glastonbury Festival (England's answer to Woodstock III), people observed...

Unfortunate songstress Neneh Cherry was warbling through her set when the veteran OS finally gave up the ghost. Alas, XP was dealing with the stage back projection, meaning that the audience lurched from being vaguely surprised to learn that Cherry was still around to the horrifying realisation that so was XP.

Yes, Windows XP, the long out of support, dead OS. Perfect example. The only safe, past term OS, is one that runs by itself and doesn't connect to any network. When Microsoft tells you to upgrade, they're not kidding. And you know how I feel about Microsoft.

•  Mauritania (election controversy), Ethiopia (coup), Syria (2x, exams), have had large internet 'interruptions' with the past few hours. This shows you how important the net is, and how control of it is so important for tyranny. Remember this the next time you demand internet censorship and control.

Confused by all the news about Huawei?

Just discovered were 3 accounts on a big business router; all 3 were hard-coded (built in and not removable), one was root (access to everything) and 2 were system accounts. The passwords are the same, so if you know one, you know them all. I suspect the ability to 'phone home' will also be discovered.

So if you don't understand why many are calling for dumping their products, you're starting to. As a glance at the news will tell you, our government is not all that good at securing things. Nobody on the planet wants to fire up their networking gear and find out it's available to anyone with the password and it's sending data to China (where companies work even closer with their government).

This is why it's disheartening to see the president and others backtracking on the ban. [never hope politicians finally 'got it']

Along those lines, large cloud services provider PCM was hacked, as discovered in mid-May. Why do I say that if you can no longer touch your data, it's no longer yours? The moment you let things loose past your home or business, you are at the mercy of bright as well as bungling people/corporations. You've widened your attack surface (made yourself easier to hit with a foul ball).  The hack was accomplished via phishing, as most are lately.

In reality, you're not going to avoid The Cloud, whether you know it or not. Just don't choose to. Sync your browser passwords? Get your info from anywhere there's a connection? Get login and password from anywhere you are? It's in The Cloud.  Just don't put anything out that you don't have to, especially for the sake of convenience. 

Dear lefty:

• Where can I get a tin foil hat like you? What's your size?
• Just pretend you have one and act accordingly. It will eventually materialize; faster if you're referred to as one by friends or online. 
• My size varies, depending on how smug I feel that day. It's always large, though.

A lot of you are probably asking yourselves about the incidence of human feces incidents in San Francisco. Anticipating your question, I found the following...

I don't know which surprises me more: that there are so many or that there are stats. A San Francisco friend's comment was 'notice the color'.

• Several days after once again brandishing swords with the US, Iran said it's over the limit of plutonium it's supposed to have.
• They also announced they have very small penises.

There are people who have read ThermionicEmissions via online translation!

Nice to know I can frighten people in other countries.  World domination is imminent. 

• Sony is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Walkman (1979). Where were you when it came out? A twinkle in your parents' eye? The back seat of a brand new Oldsmobile Cutlass station wagon? Still post-traumatic over the conversion to unleaded gas?

Karl Rove (R-Hell) was bemoaning the shit show that was the Democratic debates. His main objection was federal abortion funding, which he said 'violates morals and people don't want their tax dollars funding abortion.' Hey Karl - I'm morally opposed to war. I don't want my tax dollars funding the military industrial complex. You're a smart fella - you know it doesn't work this way... it's just convenient for your religious agenda.

Say what you will about Kellyanne Conway, but that New Jersey accent makes you want to gouge your own eardrums out. The sad thing is that her accent isn't all that bad for New Jersey.

This week's best overheard:

When police dug up the yard, they found the body. But unless it had 3 legs, there was another body down there somewhere.

COWORKER Follies

Ring ring...
Me: Yes?
Him: Hi, it's me. I wanted to get your idea on this project. I don't want to send the email first, then do the rest.
Me: I'm thinking we should wait on the email.
Him: Yes, but if we wait on the email, the boss will be upset.
Me: Why do you always call me to argue with yourself? Is your wife often upset with you and you can't figure out why?

• A baseball player died in a hotel at a young age. There is no cause of death but police don't believe foul play or suicide was involved. 
• When a musician dies, the cause of death is announced immediately, without autopsy.
• When there is a particularly nasty explosion, it is automatically not terrorism, before any investigation.
• How do they know this stuff?
• our condolences to the pitcher's wife of 7 months.

SJW News

Nike co-opted the Betsy Ross flag as a sneaker decoration.
There was incredible howling from Colin Kaepernik, because 'it takes us back to slavery'.
Nike will not sell them in the US.
Demands to destroy the Betsy Ross House and Betsy Ross Bridge are pending.

Men have named women's body parts, which is sexist.

Oreo is giving away special Pronoun Packs and encouraging everyone to share their pronouns with pride today and every day.

Pressure Cooking

Today's hottest  gift: Schroedinger's Pressure Cooker. It's a pressure cooker that's sealed, so there could be very unpleasant material inside or not.

Nancy Pelosi (D-Hell) has called for sensible pressure cooker legislation. Also a waiting period for the purchase of pressure cookers.

• Remember the exploding Samsung phone battery that allegedly set some guy's car on fire?  Firefighters determined that the phone was not the cause of the fire, although they're not sure what was the cause of the fire. It's kinda like pressure cooker bombs: when they explode, no one knows what they are, but they're sure it's not terrorism.

Our good friends and "protectors" at DHS let hundreds of illegal immigrants from dangerous countries become citizens because they neglected to check their fingerprints. Two of them got jobs at secure areas of airports.  Do you feel protected yet?  Once again, Security Theater.

• Kellogg has recalled around 10,000 cases of Eggo Nutri-Grain Whole Wheat Waffles in 25 states including New York that could be tainted with the bacteria listeria. The recall will affect no one, because who the hell would eat whole wheat waffles?

We've been hearing about the many benefits of turmeric lately, from depression to cancer. Someone actually did a study on it. Very interesting results..

• The Kaepernick protest is spreading to high schools, where students are refusing to stand for the national anthem. The NFL previously decreed that, in order to avoid conflict, their players will do The Wave during the anthem. Unfortunately, some sat out the Wave. Some 'took a knee,' which was stopped when the atheists poured Gatorade on them. Reportedly, next week, Kaepernick will nail himself to a cross during the anthem, on national tv. Not to be ignored, the cheerleaders of both teams will come together in a rare show of unity and launch fireworks out of their buttocks.
• I think the only true way to handle this, aside from sitting down and shutting up, is for both teams to blow themselves up. This way we won't have to deal with football any longer, the fans get a great fireworks show, and the problem takes care of itself.
• Your mileage may vary. Any recovered body parts are property of the NFL and may not be used without its expressed written permission.
• BREAKING NEWS: Kaepernick is now dead, replaced by the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie divorce. This will mask any real issues for weeks at very least!

Hackers have taken over a Tesla while it was moving. They got into the car's web browser (because all cars need a web browser) and obtained control of the car. Now let's face it, owning a Tesla will not be a problem for most people reading this blog, but don't think this kind of control isn't coming to Normal Cars soon.

• A Muslim refugee boat captain threw six Christians to their death because he blamed them for the rough seas. History has seen Christians do some pretty unsavory things but I'd hazard a guess that if they're on a refugee boat, they in fact have very little control over the weather. Even if they're not on a refugee boat. But let's not blame the Muslim- it's his culture.

"It's on because I'm waiting for my program to come on in a few minutes," which was my wife's excuse for the appearance of Dancing with the Stars on our tv. Since I don't have a DWTS filter for the tv, it proceeded to interrupt my surfing (laptop and couch-sitting). It's even worse than I thought. 

• Hell Update: work has mandated the use of iDevices. It was delivered the other day and, as I thought, it burned my skin. The advice from everyone up the chain was to leave it in its box. Since I require one feature of the device, this is not possible. We switched from Crappy Old Phones because iDevices could perform some feat not available in the Crappy Old Phones. The iDevice features this feat, but fails on one other, very important, area.
• To its credit, it started right up. And that's about it.
• Perhaps knowing how I feel about it, I can get no further with the alleged phone. In fact, nobody on two helpdesks or even Live Humans can make the thing work.
• I went Right To The Top, to the email administrator of the Whole Shebang. He's out for the week, perhaps the month.
• Some genius Up Top one day decided we need to use these infernal devices. No testing, no documentation, no training, no luck. Just GET IT DONE. As you'd imagine, everybody under this genius, which would be everybody in the entire company, is suffering for it. And did I mention that it has to be done within the next three days?
• So aside from the fact that my phone doesn't work and I can't get email, the job is looking up. The interesting part of all of this is that nothing is out of the norm.
• BUT WAIT!!! It gets better... in order to make my Work Phone work, I have to enter my Personal Credit Card. This is not Work-this is Apple. F-ing ridiculous. The Stupid - It Hurts....
• If Apple is trying to recruit me or even just get me to use its products, it's not doing a wonderful job. I'd rather have a Samsung and take my chances with it spontaneously combusting.

I have a very useful pair of bluetooth headphones with a mic. They actually take a while to power up - I suspect they have tiny little tubes inside them, which need to warm up before the bluetooth is ready.

• In case you're keeping score, like me, at work: I can't get email at my desk, my phone doesn't work, and no one can install any programs remotely, least of all me. Aside from that, it's a great place to work.

Ahmad Khan Rahami, charged with the New York and New Jersey bombings was found to have jihad videos on his YouTube account, as well as Judge Judy videos. I'd string him up for the Judge Judy videos alone.

Please, nooooooooo!!!!