I put some CD’s in the borrowed Rubicon for my listening pleasure while driving. Sunday, after dropping my dad off, I put my soundtrack of “Pirates of the Carribbean” in a green plastic CD case and set it on the passenger seat. Heading north on 29, I realized with a start it was gone, and assumed the wind had gotten ahold of it and it was bouncing around some Columbia neighborhood at the moment. However, when I got home I opened all the doors, looked under all the seats, checked the doors pockets and the lock box. No CD. I thought it was long gone, and I mourned it because its the best, coolest, freshest, most thrill-inspiring orchestral theme I’ve heard in a long time.

Flash forward two days, and I took the Rubicon up to work (after I was off, relax) to show Gary. He and Jamal came out, and while Gary looked at the wheels and pointed out the wider flares, Jamal looked under the hood. Gary opened the passenger side door … and there, standing upright besides the seat, was the CD.

…

Driving around in a car all day, I tend to listen to the radio a lot. In the late afternoons I try to listen to the “Don & Mike Show” syndicated in Baltimore on WHFS 105.7. Yesterday, I tuned in a bit late but learned quickly that Freda Wright-Source, the wife of Don Geronimo died early Monday morning of injuries resulting from a car crash the night before.

Wright-Sorce, 50, of Great Falls, was driving on Route 90 at 2 p.m. in Berlin, Md., when her vehicle was struck head-on by another vehicle that crossed a median to avoid a pile-up, according to a Maryland State Police spokesman.

In other words, because some jackass didn’t want to wait for the cars to get cleared, he (or she) killed a person. And, yeah, I might not be blogging about this if she didn’t happen to be on the radio almost every day as a quasi-celebrity. It’s a senseless death and there was no good reason for it — it’s not like a kid ran into the street and she swerved into a tree to avoid him.

This was absolutely pointless and could have easily been avoided, but some people are super impatient, and as a result her husband and her son have a big gaping hole in their lives.

What a fuckin’ dickweed.

UPDATE:

What a difference a word makes. Epiphany is right when he says, “Just a bit of difference in the wording, but enough to make the guy/girl seem less culpable.”

Maryland State Police said the 2005 Lexus that Wright-Sorce was driving was struck head-on Sunday afternoon by a 1997 Ford Explorer. Authorities said the Explorer’s driver crossed the median on Route 90 in Worcester County to avoid crashing into the last car of a 10-car pileup that police described as a series of fender-benders.

This is what I get for ranting without all of the story.

UPDATE: 7/29 Comments Closed

USA TODAY:

Bush did not respond to a reporter’s question Tuesday about whether he would fire Rove, in keeping with a June 2004 pledge to dismiss any leakers of Valerie Plame’s identity.

At a White House briefing afterward, spokesman Scott McClellan was pressed about Rove’s future.

“Any individual who works here at the White House has the confidence of the president. They wouldn’t be working here at the White House if they didn’t have the president’s confidence,” McClellan said.

It isn’t about confidence, Bush isn’t going to fire his closest political advisor because he ratted out some spy. The President seems to have this mentality that the people he has put into positions of authority are immune from making mistakes, and that if they do make mistakes, they’ll learn and not repeat those mistakes. Y’know, that’s all good and well, people make mistakes and learn from those mistakes … Les Aspin learned from his mistakes and that was reflected in the later years of Clinton’s second term.

Oh. Wait.

Seriously though - let’s face facts, Bush isn’t going to fire Rove, just as he didn’t fire Rumsfeld, who clearly deserved a big heap o’ blame for his role in Abu Ghraib (a much more serious event which I’m convinced led to deaths of allied servicepeople and helped terrorist organizations meet their recruiting quotas). There’s no accountability in this White House. Everyone who serves this administration does it at God’s Will, at least, that seems to be the point of view of George W. Bush — and, really, who is he to question God?

Just for clarity’s sake, I have never posted a comment to any blog — moveable type, typepad, blogger, live journal or what-have-you — without also posting my name. When I have posted anonymous comments (on blogger and live journal) I always end the comment with “-Malnurtured Snay” or “-Mal Snay” or sometimes “-M Snay.”

The first thing Gary’s son did today was to play drums on my head as I bent down to put away our Sysco order. In response, I did the only thing I could, which was to scream in pain. “What, what?” he asked. I glared, took off my hat, and he grimaced. Then Gary took him into the office and lectured him for the umpteenth time on the importance of leaving the employees alone. The kid took it, I think, a little hard, he enjoys coming into the store and helping out with some work (breaking down boxes, and setting up the stools) and bonding with his dad, but sometimes he doesn’t understand that there’s a difference between “work” and “fun”, and I also think he expects people (including his dad) to be easy on him because he’s the boss’s son (and also, he’s like, eight).

Gary also hired two girls to work in the store, which is unusual. His previous policy was, “I don’t hire girls because then no one does any work because everyone’s starring at their asses and trying to get into their pants.” But I guess he realized no one does any work anyway and he might as well try to get some decent help. One of the girls is the daughter of his friend and he gave a general warning that he’d be keeping a shotgun in the back for anyone who crossed the line, and that we’d better treat her like she was his own daughter. But, y’know, the last time I worked and his daughter was in the store (she’s four?) she wound up spraying me with the windex and I chased her through the store soaking her with the water bottle.

I got Scott S. to cover my Thursday shift, which means I’m bombing the apartment tomorrow. I’m still apprehensive, but I figure I should just get it over with. I’m taking the cats to the animal hospital at nine — it’s been a couple of years since they’ve been to the vet so they’re going to get the full array of shots and vaccines. They’re going to be bathed and spend the night. I’m going to bomb while I’m at the indy job in the afternoon, which means I should be able to start ventilating immediately afterwards. I work at night, and I’m hoping that by the time I get off that job, the apartment will be completely ventilated, which means I’ll be able to start cleaning immediately.

I’ll finish most of the cleaning on Thursday, but I want to get some laundry (including the bed sheets) done immediately, and I’d like to get at least the bathroom, kitchen, and hopefully the bedroom cleaned before I go to sleep.

I think that’s essentially my day today and my plans for the coming days. Super amount of fun. Yeah.

As curious as I am to know if I could get my cats to use the toilet as opposed to the litter box (it would free up a lot of bathroom floor space) — with this device — the problem is … I only have one bathroom in the first place, and I don’t want to have to move the cat’s “seat trainer box” every time I need to use the toilet, y’know?

(Particularly because I just know that one night I’d get food poisoning from a poorly prepared order of General Tso’s chicken and I’d be rushing to get on the toilet at three in the morning’ and forget the “toilet box” was there until I’m sitting in it wondering what these harsh-rock-like things were doing stuck to my ass. Plus, with my luck, the cats would be trying to use it then too, and they’d wind up peeing on the floor.)

HT: He Who Has Become a Blog Whore.

Back in the 1960’s, when Captain Kirk beamed down to the alien-planet-of-the-week, he’d flip open his wallet-sized communicator to tell Sulu what continent to fry with phaser beams. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, when Commander Riker beamed down to the alien-planet-of-the-week, he’d just tap a badge on his chest to call Picard a “balding weanie, too pussified to ever set foot on a hostile world.”

Kirk’s communicator became “reality” with flip-open cell phones (although most don’t actually “flip”, nor do they chirp). And it looks like Picard & Riker’s era of communicators is also about to become reality.

Via Quantum Sagas:

It operates in principle the same way that the comms badges on Star Trek do: the user presses the button on the badge and says the name of the target person with which they want to speak, a powerful server-based app determines the target and opens the channel (VOIP), at which point two way communications can take place.

There are some good links and fleshed-out ideas about this, but it appears one of its primary targets is hospital staff. An article in Forbes continues:

It turns out that communication in a hospital is often an amazingly inefficient affair. Nurses and doctors spend a lot of time playing phone and page tag. Nurses need approvals for treatments from doctors who often aren’t easy to find. Paging the doctor usually takes several minutes, by which time a nurse may have left the station where she was waiting. Then the whole process starts over until finally one catches up with the other.

With the Vocera badge, a nurse needs only to hit a button and say the name of a doctor. The request goes over the hospital’s wireless network to the server, which then locates the appropriate doctor and delivers the message more or less instantly. If the doctor is available he or she can respond right back. If not, the nurse can ask for another doctor, by name or by specialty. Say “I need an anesthesiologist,” and the server finds the nearest anesthesiologist and connects him.

There are some negatives I thought of. For one, an annoying chirp and then a person speaking loudly enough that you can hear half the conversation from down the hall. But when you stop to think of it, those stupid walkie-talkie phones have the annoying chirp, and anyone with one of those - or a hand’s-free-set* - is likely to have a conversation loud enough that it’s hard not to evesdrop.

Technology is cool.

Update:

Related Story —

For years, the U.S. military has explored a new kind of firepower that is instantaneous, precise and virtually inexhaustible: beams of electromagnetic energy. “Directed-energy” pulses can be throttled up or down depending on the situation, much like the phasers on “Star Trek” could be set to kill or merely stun.

Such weapons are now nearing fruition.

PHASERS!!!!!!

AWESOME!!!!!!

*Hell, anyone with a cell phone, period …

When I woke up this morning, my shoulder wasn’t hurting me anymore.

My head however … see, like I said, spent six hours in a topless Wrangler yesterday, and I’d gotten a buzz cut the week before. While I put suntan lotion on for the trip down, I did not reapply on the trip back, so my ears, cheeks, neck and forehead are all bright red. What I also didn’t count on was the sun burning the areas of the top of my head it could reach, so now I’ve got sunburn around all my individual hairs. Ick. How long do sunburns last, anyway?

I’m going to shower and go to bed and read some more of David McCullough’s John Adams, borrowed from my Uncle Bill (the other one).

I think my plan for fumigation is to take the cats into the vet on Wednesday for a bath and overnight stay. Fumigate while I’m at work, then air the place out in the afternoon and while I’m working my night job. Start cleaning when I get home from the night job — should give plenty of time for the apartment to ventilate. I can probably get a solid three or four hours of cleaning and laundry in, and anything I don’t get Wednesday night I can finish Thursday morning (assuming I can find someone to work for me Thursday morning, that is). Finish the day by bringing the clean cats home to the flea-free apartment. Then repeat process two weeks down the line to get the fleas that were eggs during the first bombing. Joy. Also: no perishables because I’m unplugging the fridge. When I wake up, I need to take an inventory of how many fans I’ll need to aid ventilation.

I think that’s it for me for this fine evening. Thank goodness for a night of solid tips and zero Ogre stupidity.

Oh - and damn the weather forecast - it’s going to rain for the next ten days? What fun is a Wrangler in the pouring rain? I mean, yes, lots, but I want the top down and doors off, y’know? And Saturday and Sunday night were going to be prime for country-road drivin … dammit.

JMac’s wedding is on Saturday, and he invited both Gary and Robin. Of course, Gary made up the schedule so that Robin could get to the wedding and then close at work; and so that he himself could only make it to the reception.

Gary’s not trying to screw anyone, but there’s a bit of a shortage in terms of employees, and two of three available managers aren’t going to be able to take off for the entire day on Saturday. Besides which, Gary probably only wants to go to the reception anyway …

… and as he admitted to JMac, “I thought your vacation was the following week!”

I had also requested Saturday off because Harry Potter is being released and, y’know, being a dork, I was hoping to spend the whole day enjoying Harry’s sixth year at Hogwarts. Because, y’know, I’m a dork.

Sadly, tis no to be — I’m working in the afternoon, but I’m off at four, so I’ll probably be able to get to Atomic Books to pick up the copy I requested be held for me. (Hmmm - wonder if I could bribe Rachel into letting me pick my copy up Friday night…?) Oh, plus, I might have a date Saturday night — not sure if it’ll be a “date” or a “date”, she’s a goth/Christian who teaches high school and is spending her summer vacation delivering pizzas. Worst case scenario: I get to see Batman Begins a second time. I’ll live.

Oh, here I go getting away from what I was talking about …

Anyway, so Robin switched with Mark, which means Robin is now working day shift, and both he and Gary are off in time for JMac’s reception, which is the way I think they want it — no boring church, just the food, booze, and slutty bridesmaids. (Actually, Robin doesn’t drink, and they’re both devoted husbands, but I’m sure Gary’ll make considerable headway into the booze and still have a hangover Monday morning).

Long story short - I’m the only opening driver and I’m working with both Robin and Gary. Saturday is going to be absolute hell. Usually it isn’t a big deal, because if I can get either one of them started on a conversation about jobs, home buying, or Jeeps, they usually forget to use me for the cheap slave labor I so often feel like. But since both are working, I’m essentially fucked.

(On a more personal note, I’m glad I never have to work with JMac again. Nice guy, but I’d get furious when he’d screw me on routing with the logic, “You’re here all day … you’ll make more money.” Well, yeah, because I am here all day, while you leave after three hours, stands to reason that the guy who worked a nine-hour would make more than the guy who worked a three-hour, don’t it?)

Tron recently upgraded my blog to a newer version of Moveable Type. There’s now an option under “post status” for a ‘future post.’ I’m hoping this means that I can select ‘future post’ and edit the time and date I want the post to appear, rather then editing the time and date of the post and having it post immediately to my blog from that future time and date.

Anyway, this is the test …

UPDATE:

Future Post doesn’t work. I mean, no different from using “draft.” It seems you still have to change the status to “Publish” before it’ll show on the blog. Why bother? Just write the thing in “draft”, then select “publish” and select the time and date you want. Grrrr.