It's been raining here for nigh on 5 days. And I mean raining—none of that drizzly or sprinkly stuff that makes fashionistas and girly-men squeal for fear of frizzy hair. We have been down right lavished with water in this deluge.
Thankfully, there weren't as many befuddled drivers out, at least not when I was on the road. Though I did nearly rear end a highway patrol car this evening as he was making a traffic stop. The person he was stopping was cutting through traffic to try and pull over as quickly as possible, so the CHP officer followed, also cutting through traffic, and nearly caught my front bumper in the far right lane. *sigh*
So, I've posted a few times about Blackwater, the private security company that has been under fire for their operations in Iraq. Well, it appears as though Blackwater is no more.
Truthfully, they're still here. They just changed their name. Blackwater Worldwide will now be known as Xe, and the subsidiary, Blackwater Lodge & Training Center (which is the entity that's has been in Iraq), will henceforth be called U.S. Training Center Inc.
The company claims that the name change comes with a change in company focus—Blackwater (I mean Xe) will shift away from providing personnel protective services and instead focus on training and logistics. Not a bad decision considering Cheney isn't in office and won't be continuing to shovel private security contracts their way. And chances are that the new administration will move away from privatizing the military all together. I wonder if they'll ever shake the name, and stigma, of Blackwater. Not likely.
Blackwater is included in the Girly-Men and Wusses post because if they truly feel they did nothing wrong, there's no need to be changing their name. Companies shift focus all the time without changing names.
In other news that pisses me off, Republican Senator Judd Gregg, despite having pledged to "support, embrace and move forward with the president's agenda," withdrew his nomination for commerce secretary, citing ideological differences with the president's stimulus plan.
There are two main reasons this pisses me off. One, Senator Gregg knew what the president's positions and goals were before accepting the nomination. And two, even though Gregg doesn't agree with President Obama, he could have stayed and provided a much needed fiscally conservative voice. As it is, he has deselected himself, and his position, from being heard at the cabinet level.
Senator Gregg makes the Girly-Men and Wusses post because he backed away from a real, and necessary, challenge and doesn't have the cojones to do the job he said he would do.
Lastly, social networking powerhouse Facebook changed their Terms of Service yesterday. As before, when you post content to Facebook you grant Facebook license to use said content for whatever purposes they like. The new part is that deleting the content no longer revokes Facebook's license to use the content. Incidentally, deleting your account won't revoke the license either.
In case some of you were wondering, this is the reason I haven't been participating in the various Note memes on Facebook lately, like "25 Random Things about Me." Be careful what you post.
I wonder how many users would have deactivated their accounts to opt out of the new Terms had they been given advanced notice of the change. Facebook makes the Girly-Men and Wusses post for pure mendaciousness.
UPDATE: Facebook responds to users' privacy and content ownership concerns here and here. As the Mashable article says, Facebook's position seems to be "trust us, we won't do anything bad." Facebook stays on the Girly-Men and Wusses post.
By-the-by, Scoob chose the title.
Showing posts with label Blackwater. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blackwater. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Sickly
I don't know if it's the crud or allergies, or both, but Scoob is outta commission. And between taking care of the sickly man, trying not to get sick myself, and keeping up at work, I'm finding fewer and fewer minutes to blog.
Interestingly, I ran across an article on Monday that said allergy season was starting earlier here in the Bay Area due to the warm-ish and dry winter we've had so far. It's supposed to rain a bit this weekend, so hopefully that'll get some of the pollen out of the air. Scoob has year-round allergies, and spring is usually just brutal. I revisited that herbal cough remedy from November and whisked up a batch for him tonight.
We ordered a closet organizer thing a week or so ago--it was one of Amazon's deals of the day, so we got it on sale. It arrived today. Depending on how Scoob is feeling this weekend we may tackle the project. My goal is to take two nearly useless closets and make them useful again. I'll let you know how that goes.
One thing I did notice was that Blackwater security forces have been banned from operating in Iraq. Hopefully, now that Cheney is out of office, this ban will be more effective that the banned issued in September 2007. Clearly, this is not a new issue.
This video is very cool. I think it's a music video, but it's a unique take on sleepwalking. I wonder if the cat dreams like this when his legs twitch.
Also, I like the video-jokes here. The "Broccoli" joke made me laugh out loud. And the purpose for making the site and videos is interesting. Note: There are a couple f-bombs, so turn down your volume or put on your headphones if you don't want little ears to hear.
Interestingly, I ran across an article on Monday that said allergy season was starting earlier here in the Bay Area due to the warm-ish and dry winter we've had so far. It's supposed to rain a bit this weekend, so hopefully that'll get some of the pollen out of the air. Scoob has year-round allergies, and spring is usually just brutal. I revisited that herbal cough remedy from November and whisked up a batch for him tonight.
We ordered a closet organizer thing a week or so ago--it was one of Amazon's deals of the day, so we got it on sale. It arrived today. Depending on how Scoob is feeling this weekend we may tackle the project. My goal is to take two nearly useless closets and make them useful again. I'll let you know how that goes.
One thing I did notice was that Blackwater security forces have been banned from operating in Iraq. Hopefully, now that Cheney is out of office, this ban will be more effective that the banned issued in September 2007. Clearly, this is not a new issue.
This video is very cool. I think it's a music video, but it's a unique take on sleepwalking. I wonder if the cat dreams like this when his legs twitch.
Also, I like the video-jokes here. The "Broccoli" joke made me laugh out loud. And the purpose for making the site and videos is interesting. Note: There are a couple f-bombs, so turn down your volume or put on your headphones if you don't want little ears to hear.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Oh, What a Week
But it's over and I'm done. It's officially vacation time. Woot! I brought work home with me, definitely not woot, but it's for Monday, 12/1, because I'll be working from home. Jury duty. Another not woot. It's my second call up this year because I had to defer the earlier one due to a funeral (obviously not mine).
So I'm mostly back to normal, normal for me anyhow. The digestive system kicked back into gear on Thursday and by Thursday night I was feeling pretty good. I still have some tenderness in the ribcage area where I supposedly bruised my pancreas and if that hasn't cleared up by the time we get back from vacation I'll be back at the doctor's. But dudes, that was seriously the worst case of food poisoning I think I've ever had. It even tops Thanksgiving 2000, and that was a doozy.
Unfortunately, Sweetie got sick with cold/flu just as I was getting better so we've still been taking things pretty easy around here. He said he was feeling a bit better today so I'm hoping he'll be even better on Saturday. It would suck to be out of commission two weekends in a row, and last weekend was b-e-a-utiful here. 80 degrees and sunny, sunny, sunny. Hard to believe it's late November.
So the vacation plan is to hit the open road on Monday and head straight for mom's house in Oregon. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. We'll head to Eugene and do some casual house hunting on Tuesday and do a little shopping (no sales tax in Oregon yo). Oh what's that you say, but all the good sales start on Friday? You won't catch me anywhere near a retail brick-and-mortar store on Black Friday. I won't do it and you can't make me. No way no how. I don't care how good the sale is. In fact, the better the sale, the more likely I am to give your store a wide berth. There is no material thing on this planet worth braving retail on Black Friday.
Anyhow, back to the Tuesday shopping. I think Sweetie is planning to get me my Christmas present early this year, actually, I know he is, because he told me. My digital camera took a dirt nap a few months ago and anytime I want to take photos I have to borrow his, download the photos to his laptop, then email them to mine. Oh, the horror, life is so rough, right? Anyhow, we'll be shopping for a camera.
I've also been thinking about replacing the laptop. I scrubbed a lot of programs off the hard drive and it helped a bit, but it's still incredibly slow compared to what it used to be. I've found it runs better if I power it off whenever I'm not actually using it. Waking it up after a "nap" is when it seems most sluggish. And the fan runs constantly from the moment I turn it on. I don't think I'll replace it this trip, but when I do I think it'll be with a desktop.
When I work from home I need to 10-key webpage node reference numbers a lot. No, really, a lot. I also need to use the number pad for diacritical marks (alt+0225 gets you an á, and alt+0241 gets you an ñ). On the laptop I need to copy paste these each time I need to use them because the numbers on the keyboard don't work for this for whatever reason. And when you're working on guidebooks to Latin America, that's a lot of copying and pasting. Thank goodness putting the guidebooks to Asia and places like Budapest online are way off in the future. At least I know the Spanish diacritic keystrokes by memory.
Dudes, I'm on vacation! How did you get me monologuing about work? That's enough of that.
So between Sweetie and all the people that've been sick at work, I thought I'd check the Google flu tracker and see what the flu trends are. If our little corner of Berkeley is any indicator, the Bay Area should be royal blue on this map. But then again, they're making their map based on search terms, not actual medical data.
Ze Frank launched another photo project following the election for blue and red voters to share messages with each other. It's interesting and just made me feel good about all of it now that the campaigning is over. Then again, almost all Ze's stuff makes me feels good. Especially the duckies.
So Blackwater has been back in the news. In case you've been hiding under a bush since the war in Iraq began, Blackwater is a U.S.-based private security contractor and they're the largest security contractor operating in Iraq. So far they've been the biggest winner of State Department security contracts. Yes, Cheney has ties to them. Anyhow, there have been stories in the past about how Blackwater handles operations, how their security efforts conflict and interfere with our Armed Forces efforts, and even cases where Blackwater operatives have killed our troops in friendly-fire. So now we're learning that weapons shipped to Iraq by Blackwater have found their way to the black market. And again, no charges have been filed.
Two funnies and then I hit the hay.
For all the cat lovers out there, How to Tell if Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You.
And, if you live in the Americas and have ever felt somewhat disoriented, this may have something to do with it. (Save it for future reference when you're trying to explain to someone why you're not one of those people with a good "sense of direction".)
So I'm mostly back to normal, normal for me anyhow. The digestive system kicked back into gear on Thursday and by Thursday night I was feeling pretty good. I still have some tenderness in the ribcage area where I supposedly bruised my pancreas and if that hasn't cleared up by the time we get back from vacation I'll be back at the doctor's. But dudes, that was seriously the worst case of food poisoning I think I've ever had. It even tops Thanksgiving 2000, and that was a doozy.
Unfortunately, Sweetie got sick with cold/flu just as I was getting better so we've still been taking things pretty easy around here. He said he was feeling a bit better today so I'm hoping he'll be even better on Saturday. It would suck to be out of commission two weekends in a row, and last weekend was b-e-a-utiful here. 80 degrees and sunny, sunny, sunny. Hard to believe it's late November.
So the vacation plan is to hit the open road on Monday and head straight for mom's house in Oregon. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. We'll head to Eugene and do some casual house hunting on Tuesday and do a little shopping (no sales tax in Oregon yo). Oh what's that you say, but all the good sales start on Friday? You won't catch me anywhere near a retail brick-and-mortar store on Black Friday. I won't do it and you can't make me. No way no how. I don't care how good the sale is. In fact, the better the sale, the more likely I am to give your store a wide berth. There is no material thing on this planet worth braving retail on Black Friday.
Anyhow, back to the Tuesday shopping. I think Sweetie is planning to get me my Christmas present early this year, actually, I know he is, because he told me. My digital camera took a dirt nap a few months ago and anytime I want to take photos I have to borrow his, download the photos to his laptop, then email them to mine. Oh, the horror, life is so rough, right? Anyhow, we'll be shopping for a camera.
I've also been thinking about replacing the laptop. I scrubbed a lot of programs off the hard drive and it helped a bit, but it's still incredibly slow compared to what it used to be. I've found it runs better if I power it off whenever I'm not actually using it. Waking it up after a "nap" is when it seems most sluggish. And the fan runs constantly from the moment I turn it on. I don't think I'll replace it this trip, but when I do I think it'll be with a desktop.
When I work from home I need to 10-key webpage node reference numbers a lot. No, really, a lot. I also need to use the number pad for diacritical marks (alt+0225 gets you an á, and alt+0241 gets you an ñ). On the laptop I need to copy paste these each time I need to use them because the numbers on the keyboard don't work for this for whatever reason. And when you're working on guidebooks to Latin America, that's a lot of copying and pasting. Thank goodness putting the guidebooks to Asia and places like Budapest online are way off in the future. At least I know the Spanish diacritic keystrokes by memory.
Dudes, I'm on vacation! How did you get me monologuing about work? That's enough of that.
So between Sweetie and all the people that've been sick at work, I thought I'd check the Google flu tracker and see what the flu trends are. If our little corner of Berkeley is any indicator, the Bay Area should be royal blue on this map. But then again, they're making their map based on search terms, not actual medical data.
Ze Frank launched another photo project following the election for blue and red voters to share messages with each other. It's interesting and just made me feel good about all of it now that the campaigning is over. Then again, almost all Ze's stuff makes me feels good. Especially the duckies.
So Blackwater has been back in the news. In case you've been hiding under a bush since the war in Iraq began, Blackwater is a U.S.-based private security contractor and they're the largest security contractor operating in Iraq. So far they've been the biggest winner of State Department security contracts. Yes, Cheney has ties to them. Anyhow, there have been stories in the past about how Blackwater handles operations, how their security efforts conflict and interfere with our Armed Forces efforts, and even cases where Blackwater operatives have killed our troops in friendly-fire. So now we're learning that weapons shipped to Iraq by Blackwater have found their way to the black market. And again, no charges have been filed.
Two funnies and then I hit the hay.
For all the cat lovers out there, How to Tell if Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You.
And, if you live in the Americas and have ever felt somewhat disoriented, this may have something to do with it. (Save it for future reference when you're trying to explain to someone why you're not one of those people with a good "sense of direction".)
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