What I hate...

...about the license model of software "purchasing" is encapsulated in the picture below:

I am positively swamped under deadlines, and Microsoft has decided that it can't remember if I have an Office subscription on this machine or not. Never mind that I was using Word as recently as last night.

So, I have to re-purchase everything because I simply don't have time for lengthy phone holds today.

Kids, once upon a time, you would buy a box with some things in it that were shaped like the "Save" icon, and you would stick those in a slot like a giant thumb drive, and you would load the "Program"...which was like an App, except it didn't constantly tie up your machine with unwanted bloatware updates...onto your computer, and there it would reside. It would function until you decided to sell the machine, at which point you could stick the "Save" icons into the next computer and install the "Program" on it and keep using it!
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My only remarks on that subject.

First, on the phone the other day with staghounds, he remarked that it's a thousand wonders we haven't had one of the narcissistic nihilists wear a GoPro while committing their heinous acts yet. I'd say that last week's events make it a near certainty that one will in the near future, and news directors across America will practically decorate their cupcakes at the thought of airing the footage while simultaneously wondering aloud why such things happen. After all, some clueless yayhoo at NBC actually wrote the following headline:
--------------, Virginia TV Killer, Vowed on Day of Firing to Make 'Headlines'.
I swear, self-awareness is so uncommon these days it should be considered a f%$@ing super power.

Right now, what do you think the easiest way would be for the average American schlub to get their very own Wikipedia page: Win a gold medal at the Olympics? Write a best-selling novel? Or shoot five or six people in a moderately telegenic fashion? Incentivize something and you will get more of that thing.

Meanwhile, on gun fora threads mostly full of endless dreary chest-beating about MAH SITUATIONAL AWARENESS*, Glenn Meyer raises a point that was all too quickly drowned out by the ritual chanting but bears a repeat out here:

If you had some knowledge of the attentional and alertness literature, you would not be surprised. In all kinds of critical incidents, even with highly trained personnel, cues are missed.

There is a trace of blaming the victim in the proclamations of how one is always on the alert and ready to go. It serves to make you feel better than there is a just world and it is the victim's fault for not being the steely eyed dealer of death that you are. It also reduces your anxiety as you feel so much better as you are a warrior and it wouldn't happen to you. You sit on your toilet, scanning the environment, wearing a vest with a ceramic plate! Add the Dunning-Kruger effect, as to your superb ability.

Since you go around armed with significant firearms and have lots of training (as most of us here probably do), you expect a 24 year old newscaster to have a Glock 19 on her at all times and blame her for not doing so. Yes, I believe in being prepared but I'm not going to rant and blame a young woman for being killed by a monster. It is the monster's fault.

*Remember: Chanting "SITUATIONAL AWARENESS" with your fellow congregants at the daily virtual prayer meetin' prevents criminal assaults just like chanting "FOUR RULES" and "BOOGER HOOK BANG SWITCH" prevents safety lapses.
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Customer Disservice.

Roseholme Cottage held hostage, day thirty-one.
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Seeing red.

Still no intertubes. Fantastic stream of excuses from AT&T.

Further, POTS has been down since this time last month. The problem is the line from the pole to the house. AT&T has known this since the guy who set us up with the faster intertubes last year slapped some bubble gum on the line and promised to send a fixit notice upstream.

Obviously he never did, and so the line tech who was out on Saturday said he'd send a lineman to fix things. The lineman claims he was here on Sunday, but he must have been wearing his cloak of invisibility. So then they send out a data guy today who can't fix anything. He says he's put in for a lineman who'll be here tomorrow. I hope it's not the invisible guy from Sunday.

EDIT: Oh, bonus! Mister Super Second Level Tech, the one who was invisible on Sunday, apparently came back today invisibly again, and marked our problem as resolved. We found this out when AT&T called Bobbi on her cell phone and asked her to rate her service. I guess they had to reach her on the cellie because the land line kept ringing busy... since, you know, it was never actually #$&@ing FIXED.

This is insane. You call some script drone in a cubicle who knows nothing. They dispatch some guy who is capable of doing diddly little fixes around the house. He can't fix it so he calls the bigger guy. The bigger guy just %^&#ing blows you off and marks the problem solved and when you call to complain, who do you call? The same script drone in a cubicle who knows nothing who was in on step one of the whole mess which just starts the vicious circle again.

I need to rattle the biggest cage I can find there. When AT&T can't successfully get an analog signal from a pole across some twisted pair to a telephone handset a hundred feet away, they have completely failed at their core competency. They knew how to do this stuff in Eighteen hundred and blankety-bleeping eighty-five, for bleedin' Alexander Graham Bell's sake!

I hate you, AT&T.

There needs to be a special Smart People Illuminati you can join where you get special Service Line numbers so you can avoid having to listen to endless ****ing phone tree questions that ask retards "Is the land line plugged into the wall?" and "Is the cup holder on the computer retracted?"
I nearly threw my ****ing cell phone across the room.

"Yes! Yes! I already checked the simple stuff! That's why I'm calling you people!"
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Wonderful Sunday...

Bobbi's working the weird shift this weekend, so she got home after noon today. We pedaled over to Zest only to find out the tragic news. No more crème brûlée French toast! No more sausage-sausage gravy!

To assuage our grief, we pedaled up the Monon a bit...

My grief is somewhat assuaged by a Brugge hanger steak & frites, with sweet chili and hot curry sauces to dip the frites and a glass of the delicious sour Pooka beer.

 What a cool bike! Who sells Brooklyn bikes here locally?

 But of course that's the answer...

The owner of the 1967 Firebird is telling us two things with the windshield banner: 1) What year his car is, and 2) That he doesn't know how apostrophes work.
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Jesus, make it stop.

So over at Autoblog, there's a piece about how the efforts of automakers engaged in legal CYA maneuvering are now exploiting a provision in the DMCA to try and keep owners out from under the hoods of vehicles that are increasingly "No User Serviceable Parts Inside" sealed tangles of computer-controlled components.

So far it's the Alliance of Global Automakers vs. the Electronic Frontier Foundation lobbying the U.S. Copyright office as to whether or not the extensive software found in current cars meets the requirements for intellectual property protection, which could keep home tuners and handymen out from under the hood. This has come to a head with a lawsuit by Ford against a manufacturer of home automotive diagnostic equipment last year:

Last September, Ford took steps toward consolidating such control, filing a lawsuit against Autel US Inc., a diagnostic-equipment manufacturer based in Huntington, New York. Ford alleges the company unlawfully copied trade secrets and accessed on-board computer systems that relay technical information on diagnostic codes and repair data.

A policy statement by John Deere is also cited in the article. So that's Ford and John Deere... How did I find out about this article? Well, I sat down at my computer at zero dark thirty this morning to find that someone had tagged me in the comments of an Oleg Volk Facebook post that opened...

"Interesting that GM, the company most famous for On-Star spyware pre-installed in all of their rather poorly made vehicles, is leading the effort to make something illegal."

Really? General Motors is "most famous" for On*Star spyware? Not the Corvette? Not the public assassination attempt by Ralph Nader? Not the ignition switch coverup debacle? No, they're "most famous" for building a cell phone into the car. Call me on your iPhone and tell me all about it.

Don't tag me with stuff like this before sunup, people. Manichaeism before 0800 does nothing good for my blood pressure. I don't want any part of your War for Justice in Society until after lunch.

God, I long for the day when buying a chicken sandwich or a car is not a signalling device for an entire weltanschauung.
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Unplugging the modem...

...is probably cheaper than antihypertensive drugs.

RT if paste-eating morons and drooling simpletons make you want to ragepunch your monitor.
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) July 3, 2014

ETA: No? Just me then? I should take a break.

FML

So, I was in a splendid mood last night. Good weather this weekend. Plans. Stuff to do today and tomorrow. Chattin' away with some friends on the intertubes, when...

I snapped the crown off an incisor biting into pizza.

Festive. Just what I needed. The timing almost literally could not have been worse.


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Also...

So as I'm blinking my way reluctantly towards consciousness for the second time this morning, the opening fanfare for the Today show is playing on the TeeWee, and I cock an ear at it, thinking "Maybe it will give me something to write about today, because thank gawd that *&*^$#@# missing airliner won't be the top story anymore."

And the announcer says "French satellite spots debris field!"

That television's continued existence proves anti-gunners wrong every day.
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Irked.

So, I post up something about some lousy ammo I got yesterday, and the comments start.

"Check the bases with a magnet and they will probably be steel," says one helpful numbnuts who didn't sign his comment.

Really? "Steel", you say?

Jesus wept, what kind of drooling simpleton do you think I am? We'll leave aside all the years where I, you know, ran a ____ing gun store and just focus on the fact that the shells are base-up in the sidesaddle. You think I might have noticed that they weren't yellow? That I use a magnet on a string to pick them up off the range floor and dump them in the trash, separate from the recyclable stuff?

I fix a shotgun in a hotel room two thousand miles from home with a %^&$ nail file and a month later I've got somebody trying to patiently explain 'chamber polishing' to me like I just fell of the turnip truck and bumped my head on my first firearm yesterday.

So, I'm going to throttle back on the firearms content. Instead, here...

I'm sure someone will be along shortly to explain "Now, Tamara, that's what we call a 'cat'. I don't know if you noticed, but he seems to be upside down."

What have you been up to today?

Me? I've been repairing a shotgun with a nail file, using the hotel room floor as my work bench.

The Good: Two Leatherman tools. The Bad: Neither has a file. The Ugly: My nail clippers do.

Stupid rookie mistake.

I need to do some emergency shotgun work here in the hotel room and also catch a nap between now and when the bus leaves for the range at 5:00 local.

Let's just say that if it wouldn't have gotten me DQ'ed for breaking the 180, I might very well have busted the last several clays on stage five by flinging the 870 downrange at them. Instead, I just said "That's it. Call it." to the RO and ate the ton of Failure To Engages, then muttered "For you, ze var iz over," at my gauge.

Cradle and Grave of Liberty, Part Deux...

Remember the TJIC incident?

Well, TJIC got his Massachusetts FID* reissued, and has reapplied for an MA LTC**.

Now the local po-po*** is surrounding his crib, wanting to inspect the premises. Without a warrant. In the suburbs of Boston. On Independence Day.

Is irony dead in this country?

I'd type more, but I'm on the phone with casa de TJIC and I need to light the beacon fire...


* FID: Firearm Identification. What you need to own a gun in MA.
** LTC: License To Carry: What you need to take firearms outside of your house in MA oustide of very restrictive circumstances. Comes in many flavors.
***Like, ten cops.

EDIT: See comments below for updates.
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In a nutshell...

Og boils blog comments down to their essence.

Remember: The only reason to share little bits of your life with the internet is so that random strangers can tell you that you're doing it wrong.
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ZOMG SNOWMAGEDDON! Life after white death.

They're saying 6.2" of snow down at the airport, but it's more like 8" here at Roseholme Cottage. It's still snowing, but looking at the radar, I doubt it's got more than an inch or so left in it, so it'll be time to go shovel the walks and dig out the roomie's car here before too long.

Maybe I'll see if I can break trail down the alley with the Subie.

Sorry about turning the Turing test back on in comments, but Blogger's spam comments filter has just completely collapsed under the onslaught recently. I woke up this morning to find twelve digital turds plopped in the latest comment threads since 0100, and that's not counting the sixty more in the spam traps.

Google jiggled their search algorithms back some time last year to more heavily weight backlinks in "social media" and news article comments sections, and even-less-scrupulous-than-usual SEO types responded by unleashed hordes of gibberish-'n'-backlink-spouting 'bots on the Blogosphere. Comment spam had been a desultory sort of thing before that, sort of the universal background noise of blogs, but by the end of the year I was scooping as many as 300 spam comments out of the trap first thing every morning. It wasn't so bad as long as they were getting caught in the trap, but now they're getting past the filter and I won't stand for that.

Anyhow, sorry about turning the CAPTCHA back on. I've got to go shovel now, but I'll be back.

In the meantime, courtesy of email, check out this link about a Nat Geo photographer who got "adopted" by a 12-ft. female leopard seal who apparently thought he looked a little scrawny and needed help learning to hunt penguins... (It's the third slide show at the link.)

Another trope demolished.

So the poor Safelite guy came out and replaced the windshield Wednesday afternoon, all Carhartted up against the 18°F weather. The operation took a little longer than normal because whoever had replaced the windshield last time had used glue up the vertical edges and now glue will be used there forevermore.

Since the vehicle had to sit unmolestered for a bit, I walked to Twenty Tap for a late lunch. (Pressed brisket sandwich and a pint of Flat 12's Nunmoere.)

Yesterday morning dawned sunny and clear, if still bitterly cold. I rolled the car out for the new windshield's inaugural trip and, passing under a tree on Guilford, just shy of my destination at Kroger, something large and incontinent dropped a present on the squeaky clean new glass. Right. In front. Of my eyes.

Did you read headlines yesterday that screamed

"Enraged Indianapolis woman pulls car over to side of road, empties high-capacity murder clip of deadly assault weapon into tree, reloads, and does it again!"

No. No, you did not. Because I didn't.
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Starting the new year off with a *CRACK!*

Driving back from Tennessee after the BCS game, it seemed like the interstate in south Indiana had been liberally salted with pea gravel. Every couple miles would come a resounding "POK!" or "TAK!" as a stone would carom off the bluff North face of the Subie.

Eventually the inevitable happened: With a resounding "CRACK!" something whanged off the driver's side A-pillar, about six inches above dashboard level, and a tiny crack appeared. By the time I got home, it had wandered well out onto the windshield, stretching a couple inches out of "Repair" and into "Replace".

Just to put the cherry on the icing of the cake of the incident, I was sitting in downtown construction traffic last week, running late for an appointment with the almost-a-dentist, when the crack started propagating again at an easily visible pace. In the space of a block, it grew another 8 inches, and added insult to injury by taking a left turn to make sure that it was well within my lower field of view. You can imagine the way I turned the air blue while pounding my forehead on the steering wheel rim.

I scheduled a windshield replacement for yesterday morning, right on the street out in front of my house. It promptly started snowing yesterday morning. We're rescheduled for tomorrow afternoon, so if you have any outdoor plans in the Broad Ripple area, you might want to look into having an alternate ready...

Rant #351,792

I am going to take apart all the phones in the house and find the one that has the sensor in it that detects that I'm either on the loo or on the complete opposite end of the house, on the wrong floor, with my hands full of laundry and with closed doors between me and the nearest phone, and then causes the line to ring.

I'm going to find that sensor, remove it, and use the patent information printed thereon to discover whoever invented it. And when I find that fiend, I am going to make them eat it, one bite at a time, without salt.

Overheard in the Office...

Me: "Wait, the federal government has a site called 'blog.usa.gov'?"

RX: "Yes, the federal government has a blog, complete with cute little pictures of the family dog looking at the Christmas tree. If you don't believe me, you can go look."

Me: *buries face in hands* "My soul hurts."

Later, overhearing a commercial on the TeeWee down the hall:

Me: "WHAT?!? You can't do 'scrapbooking' on a Nook! There aren't any scraps in a tablet!"

Your modern world frightens and annoys me.
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