The WoW 4.2 Patch Day PvP Troll / Griefer Blues . . . And More

Warning: This post contains some rather naughty (NSW) words.

I am not going to rant about the intricacies of World of Warcraft here. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. It's just that WoW is a perfect vehicle for my observations this Day That Patch 4.2 Dropped. I'll do my best to avoid or translate MMO-speak, largely because most of you are not conversant with MMO-speak and because the issues I am highlighting are more about human nature in cyberspace and some issues I am working than specifically ranting about WoW trivia.

This particular bit of new content, Patch 4.2, has been in the works for quite awhile. Two of this patch's great new features are several very lore-heavy new quest series. One of them is a one-pass -- non-daily -- quest series that has as its reward a considerable sum of gold and an "epic" item grade cloak. Since my characters' cloaks are nowhere near this quality, I made doing this quest series a priority as far as my WoW time was concerned.

I can understand everyone and his dog doing these quests along with me, since this is Patch Day. Good cloaks were hard to get in Patch 4.1. Folks of both factions, the awesome Alliance and those motherless curs of the Horde, gathering in confined areas where the quests -- killing swarms of elementals -- were happening. Then some folks of both factions were showing up for these quests "flagged" for Player-vs-Player (PvP) combat. The default on my server is that players must voluntarily "set their PvP flag" to engage in PvP. However, under certain circumstances -- like attacking or healing a flagged player -- the PvP flag gets set without player input.

So there I was, killing elementals when I swapped targets to a flagged Hordie and popped him with my trusty boom stick. Hunters in WoW have animal companions that fight alongside them, so my trusty gorilla (yes, I engage in Gorilla Warfare) did his area-damage thunder stomp . . . and suddenly I was being hit by six Hordies. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, damage piling up like a wreck in tule fog on I-5 . . . all I could do is fight back till I died. I took two of the fsckers with me, though -- hunters are nasty in PvP.

I waited five minutes while dead. If a PvP flag is set automatically, it goes away after five minutes of no PvP action . . . and the Horde guys cannot see me if they are alive and I am dead. I resurrected and made the adjustments -- an animal companion without an area of effect attack, my raptor "JeebusPony". I also took a few other measures too technical to detail here to limit the chance of attacking flagged Hordies.

My point is that the people on my server are mostly dedicated to questing and raiding -- in other words, Player-vs-Environment (PvE). If we wanted the added pain in the ass thrill of needing to watch out for the other faction all the damned time, I'd play on a PvP server where my PvP flag is ALWAYS set. Questing in crowded areas flagged is trolling for unintentional PvP combat against people who usually do not want it -- like me.

Most of the trolling people had special PvP gear -- there are special armor pieces and weapons with statistics that enhance PvP performance -- that gave them an enormous edge in PvP. Most of these unintentional fights were rather one sided due to gear and the PvE mindset. I spend very little time engaging in PvP, so I'm not familiar with class tactics and I do not have gear with PvP stats.

But not all fights like these are one-sided. I got flagged again. This time it was a flagged lone death knight -- think of a non-evil slightly undead anti-paladin -- who got dinged by the accidental fire of my boom stick. He closed the range, which is a move right out of the "How to Kill Huntards for fun and profit" book. He proceeded to beat the ever-loving snot out of me with his ugly-ass two-handed sword . . . but he was alone and did not have PvP equipment. I managed to open the range and keep it that way with "stun and run" tactics right out of "How to Kill Death Knights For Fun And Profit". Down to less than 5% of my hit points, he retired from the fight for a short but obligatory dirt nap.

So flag trolling on a PvE server is kind of dickish. It's within the rules of the game and if not done to excess, not harassment. However, there was another move being pulled that some saw as dickish. There is a class of no-no behavior in the WoW community called "griefing" that is simply not tolerated by the Game Masters. Player accounts have been permanently banned for extreme instances of griefing. Standing atop key NPCs, killing key NPCs, blocking access to inns and in-game mailboxes with large mounts, which makes interaction with these in-game assets very difficult or impossible -- these are just a few examples of griefing.

Anyway, several of these PvP-flagged people were standing on the quest NPCs for the various phases of the new quest series. Not only can you not easily interact with the NPCs, trying to interact with the NPC and mis-clicking may well lead to an unintentional attack on a PvP-flagged foeman.More unintended combat, more delays resetting the PvP flag.

Something people who know me well -- or not so well -- realize upon spending time with me is that I have a mercurial temperament coupled to an incendiary temper. I've gone from zero to full asshole rage in slightly more than nothing flat. Far too often, these rages have been over life's more trivial matters, like a certain popular multiplayer video game.

A couple of years ago, I would have nerd-raged over the level of jerk behavior I saw this morning while playing WoW. I would have reported every one of them to a Game Master, their Guild Masters and possibly posted their names on WoW Jackass for good measure. I may have even raved about it on one of my blogs . . .

Oh, wait. . . . .

Anyway, the point is this: Things that used to utterly piss me off, small stuff that usually prompted me to go on a raging tear, don't do that to me anymore. I still get angry -- oh hell yes I get angry!

However, I'm in control now, not the anger.

What happened? I Got Help™ -- long long overdue Help. Some of what some of you have been telling me for years finally forever defeated the demonstrable impermeability of my skull. I gained practice with my toolbox o' Cope Building® working my issues. I now have a deeper store of Cope® than I've ever had. I ask for what I want, I practice avoidance only as a short term relief measure, a "time out" to give me the ability to face the issue. It's not all about me. I now assume going into stressful situations that I can and will handle it. I seek solutions to problems, I don't just recapitulate them. I relax now on cue, meditate away the stress and work with the understanding that people do stuff that annoys you not because they are evil dickheads. More often than not, annoying behaviors are the other guy's way of Dealing With Stuff, not malevolent asshattery aimed at me deliberately.

These changes could not come a day sooner. For one thing, I was dreading the kids' summer vacation this year. Last year's edition was sheer hell for me. I was stressed out and grouchy all the time. That is a Very Bad Combination around children . . . hell, around human beings. As Esteemed Younger Son started counting down the days to Summer Vacation, I'd gotten so far out of hand that my behavior was threatening all I had worked for over a year to build here.

So, Esteemed Younger Son's annoying behaviors are not him trying to drive Uncle Rich up a wall for shits and giggles. He's trying to get wants and needs met by methods he understands how to use. I do things to limit how much the TV volume bugs me rather than bitch about it. When I need a time out, I think of it as a tactical retreat under fire into hard cover to regroup and plan how to overcome the emotional challenge. I buy time to think when I need to. I do not need to have an instant answer for everything.

By this time this summer, I thought I'd be going absolutely batshit crazy. Instead, I'm going sane. OK, maybe saner. I'm sure to run into scenarios where no amount of Cope® will suffice, where no tool can magically fix things. However, in the event of a lapse, I'm going to redouble my efforts and remember that "error" is just another name for "learning experience."

Whotta concept, eh?

So, in the context of the above, all the griefer madness today in WoW is simply gamers being gamers. Not one of them did what they did because they had it in for me. The very worst thing they could do to me is render my avatar dead.

As my dad once said, "What is the worst thing can they do to you? Cook and eat you?"

Judgment at Abbottabad: So why am I not dancing in the streets?

One of the most important ideals to emerge out of the Second World War is the notion that individuals can be called to account by due process of law in the aftermath of conflict for crimes committed in the name of a nation or ideology. These criminals can be captured, held, tried and punished for even something as horrifying as genocide. Even decades after the famous war crimes trials, fugitives from justice such as Aldolf Eichmann were still being brought to account. Many were captured, tried and punished . . . by sentence of court.

Fifty million died to fascist aggression in twelve horrifying years of war and genocide, but the architects of that cataclysm were called to account in a manner consistent with the values we were fighting for. In the face of overwhelming evidence of their crimes, even genocidal Nazis and Japanese militarists were offered the benefit of due process at trial.

In these debased times, apparently we can no longer afford the luxury. Due process of law is a sad casualty of this War on Terror™

Last night, President Obama informed the world that Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the attacks of 2001.09.11, was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and the US has his dead body. This electrifying news triggered spontaneous celebrations around the country and even some praise for the President from the various Republicans seeking their party's presidential nomination.

So while this monstrous mass murderer is now explaining his crimes against his religion to Allah in person and a nation rejoices . . . why am I not celebrating?

First of all -- it's not because I'm some kind of crypto-Islamofacist terrorist socialist communist who hates America, kicks puppies, eats kittens raw and thinks American Idol sucks. Far from it. Unlike many who are having a Beltane mass public triumphalist war-gasm over this, I've served this country in the US Navy. I think I understand a thing or two about war and the way the world works. The part of me that understands the latter is not in the mood for celebrating.

Reason the first for not wanting to celebrate: I hold with the idea of that all human beings have inherent value -- even Hitler and OBL. Yes, even a villain like Osama bin Laden. Even the dearth of this monster diminishes us.

Reason the second: Apparently OBL was killed in a daring raid by US Special Operations troops. Boots on the ground, not bombs from the sky. Intelligence and light infantry were Obama's choice of weapon, not data nets and remote-control drones. This operation could have gone very very badly for the troops and Obama, as both living Democratic former presidents can attest. Barack Obama risked his chances for a second term as President on the success of this raid. My point here: If the President chose to rely on light infantry / commandos for this task, there was the possibility of capturing OBL for trial.

If OBL were taken and not killed in action, the end result would eventually be the same: OBL would never "get off on a technicality" even before the most bleeding heart judge in the universe. Yes, any trial would be a theatrical event to rival Broadway, a media circus that would make OJ Simpson's trial look like a kiddie ride, and a trial would take time.

Due process has a price. But justice at the cost of our values and our souls is hardly worthy of a great nation like the United States of America.

However disappointed that we aren't going to try OBL for his crimes, I applaud the US military for its valor and courage in carrying out a dangerous mission. The guys in camouflage and the intelligence community scored a brilliant success on this operation. However, there is a bigger picture here . . . one that worries me over the long term.

Edit for clarity and a couple of stupid spelling errors.

Welcome to the fscking Hell-i-day season!

I was enraged and outraged to the point of incandescent fury at work today, to the point where I almost got up from my desk and walked straight to HR to file a complaint.

My workplace is almost universally viewed as one where intolerance is not tolerated. People have been disciplined here for a wide variety of discriminatory or defamatory behaviors. Bigots simply do not last long here.

The issue concerned a "discussion" among my boss and coworkers dissing the variety of holidays other than Christmas and Thanksgiving. "All them other ones seem like that 'Festivus' they had on Seinfeld."

In other words, not quite real to them.

It took every ounce of self-control / self preservation I had to not leap out of my seat in sheer disgust and start ripping off necks. Interjecting myself into the conversation with chapter and verse on how the First Council of Nicea set Jeezuz' birfday to coincide with the Roman festival of the Unconquerable Sun (Sol Invictus), and that how virtually EVERY culture, historical as well as modern. celebrates this holiday seaon in one way or another . . .

I wanted to scream. WE are ALL celebrating the VERY SAME THING!!!!

The Return of the Sun / Light / Source of Light.

GET THE FSCK OVER YOURSELVES!

WoW WotLK prelaunch -- Plague Zombies Are Eating My FUN

As of late Sunday, I am on the verge of canceling my WoW subscription due to extreme dissatisfaction. The only reason I have not picked up the phone already is that Blizzard customer support does not work weekends.

The dissatisfaction I am experiencing has to do with a game world event. EVERY major city is currently infested with plague zombies. The plague infests NPCs as well as player heroes. No spell the heroes posess as nominal abilities, (Cure Disease spells, Cure Disease totems, etc) even put a dent in this plague, the only cures are available from widely scatred clerics in town who are usually as undead or about to be dead as you are. These clerics are in very high traffic areas in the cities, but I have only gotten one cure form a cleric in the two days of this shitheaded event. Plyers who become zombies are now the enemy of anything with a pulse, so it's PvP (player vs player, the part of this game I utterly hate) time.

The cities are crucial to running a wow toon smoothly. Cities have banks and auction houses, both essential to getting better gear and making more gold to get ready for the release of the expansion pack in 2 1/2 weeks. The event is of course epansion-related. Nonetheless, the event is extremely unfun for me. If I want unfun, I'd go to work.

Other than that, the pre-expansion update to version 3.02 (with the new talent trees, the new profession and everything else but Northend and Death Knights) is actually a lot of fun. I'm spending more time in the live server than on the beta

WoW bitz

1. I have resigned as GM of the guild I inherited and left the guild. I was running into resistance to some of the common sense things I wanted to make this guild great (selective recruiting, slow promotions, etc). What sent me over the edge was one of my officers. He'd recruit just anyone into the guild (and wonder why our guild's bank would be ripped off . . .) even though I said I wanted to interview every applicant. but the final blow was when he sent me an invite to a group to help out in a dungeon THEN asked me "r u bsy?"

That is an incredibly rude thing to do. As it happens, I'm NOT a player who spends his limited online game time hanging out in a city to shoot the breeze in /General or /Trade chat. When I log into WoW with a particular toon, I'm there to gain levels and gold. Visiting with friends is a very distant second priority. Just because I am not raiding Kara, playing a battleground or running another instance does not mean I am open to invites by default.

This happens to tap dance on most of my pet peeves about certain WoW players. As it happened, I was working on a longish quest that took a lot of fighting and travel to get to the site of the quest. I don't mind fighting my way in or out once (after all, that's part of questing) butI did not want to fight my way through the same bunch of monsters a second time after breaking off the quest to go to an instance (dungeon) that's so far below my level that it isn't funny. I do not "power level" guildies through tougher instances than they can handle nor do I expect anyone to power level me. The same clown yesterday asked me to help him with a quest that is doable solo well below his level. Part of learning to play WoW is learning to do quests alone when possible and appropriate. And, in my experience, it is possible to solo all the way to level 70.

There are a LOT of free resources out there to help the soloing player. You don't need the Bradybooks guides. A web browser and Thottbot, WoWHead etc. and a co-ordinates UI mod are enough.

Yes, I could have answered "I'm busy." Yes, I could have saved the time it took to type this rant.

2. On a happier WoW note is the Web series The Guild" -- it IS funny.

Watch it:

Hillary Clinton: You just lost my support. PERIOD.

I simply cannot believe what HRC said the other day with respect to her candidacy and that of presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.

This is mind-boggling that HRC would rather praise her all-but-certain opponent while the primary process is still underway than remeber who'se fscking side she is on!

With "friends" like her, who needs enemies?

I'm also incensed that Ms. Clinton has been playing the "fear card" -- "Vote for me or the terrorists will garotte us all in our beds!" How sick and tired am I of the politics of fear? The last seven years have been a living experiment in the Tarkin Doctrine; every time I hear a politician laboring to scare me with some news that Those Dark People Are Gonna Kills Us All!!! I just set that voice to my ever-growing "/ignore list."

The President's job is not to protect me from every and all peril in the world. The job is to "Support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United Stares against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to same." I do not expect the President to ensure my personal safety or that of the "nation," if it means giving up the essence of Americanism to obtain that safety. I expect the President and Congress to see to it that the US Armed Forces are as ready as they can be for credible threats to the national security.

I am FAR more afraid of what a McBush follow-on to Shrub will do to the tattered remnants of the Constitution and Bill o' Rights than I am of screaming hordes of jihadi conjured on demand by the scaremongers to frighten me into surrendering even more of my freedom!

Gary Hart, onetime Senator and Presidential candidate, has a few words for Hillary (via Huffpo). Is her lust for power so great that she'll cripple her own party? What use is getting the nomination if she gets creamed by John W. McBush in the fall?

What next?

OK, this is more than enough!

What "this" is, is that a state legislator in Mississippi has introduced a bill to forbid serving overweight people in restaurants with more than five seats.

No, this is NOT a joke! I guess since discrimination against people with dark skins is out, these assholes have to have someone to discriminate against. Or maybe this is a way to accomplish the same goal (since people of color are also very often overweight).

Overweight people are a class of people it's OK to hate. Perhaps the only one left in the US anymore. We get stares . . . we get sneers . . . we get criticism disguised as unwanted medical advice from EVERYONE, because everyone is a weight loss authority. The last thing overweight people need is shame; most of us have enough other issues with our relationshio to food as matters stand!

At least some medical people are starting to understand that strident advice / shaming people to lose weight is counterproductive.

There and Back Again . . .

There's a good reason for the gap in my posting: I was in the hosptial for swelling and infected wounds in my legs. While I had my MB with me, I had no way to connect it to the Internet --I guess we're still a few years from what EarthLink founder Sky Dayton called "packetspace."

Ten days of almost no Internet (I had the browser on my cellphone, and that's it), coffee or TeeVee did not quite leave me a gibbering idiot. I was a near-run thing, though.

The most noteworthy aspect of this stay was that they (Kaiser) transferred me to a Kaiser-run skilled nursing facility (KPPACC) in San Leandro, about 100 miles from my current digs in South Sacramento.

I was not amused.

Highlight of my hospital visit: I successfully suppressed the urge to throttle by roommate at KPPACC. Idjit would have the remote for the one TV set the room had and play the most mind-destroying teevee other than political campaign ads or Fox News Channel: soap opeas and sports. Not only that, he'd read the damned paper with the fscking teevee on!

Whotta asshat. I wanted to stuff that remote down his throat, I was so pissed. I chose instead to employ my iPod -- stuffed with tunage from Leslie Fish, The Elders, Seanan McGuire and Flogging Molly -- and headphones to block out the sound; fortunately I had Civilization 3 loaded on the MB, a perfect non-Internet game for whiling away large blocks of time.

I also had The Sims 2 on my phone, another very good game. I'd never had the chance to play the game much until this trip to the hospital, and I got my money's worth from it during the ambulance ride to San Leandro.

M&D also brought me some spare underwear and Guinness pajama bottoms before I was shipped off to KPPACC. I wore the PJs for most of my stay at KPPACC. The tangerines helped stave off the hungries from the notoriously small (and utterly flavor-free) portions of Hospital Food® and the sugarless Jelly Bellies and Gummi Bears were treats I savored.

I managed to read William Gibson's Idoru as well -- I wouldn't say it was better than Neuromancer but it was better than Count Zero or Virtual Light.

At Kaiser South I encountered some utterly awesome nurses and a wonderful doc.

My daughter, bless her, came to pick me up and bring me home. Our first stop on the way home: Starbucks.


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Listening to: Sun Green & The Imitators with Neil Young & Crazy Horse & The Greendale Chamber of Commerce - Be the Rain
via FoxyTunes

The Christian Hell Just Froze Over . . .

I am in complete agreement with a New York Times editorial for once.

The very best thing about Leo . . .

Two words: TIME MACHINE.
Time Machine is the very best single reason for a Mac user to buy and install Leopard . . . and of you are a Windows user, the very best reason to go get a new Mac. Time Machine is a backup and restore utility. In a word, you can, at need, "go back in time" and restore your entire system or even a single file from any 1-hr increment in the last day, any day in the last month and any month thereafter. So, if in the middle of writing your master's thesis your MacBook Pro's internal HD packs it in, if you have TM and an external hard disk, you can restore the last backup (not to mention OS X, all your preferewnces, email, etc) of your thesis once the hard disk is replaced, and on you go.

You can restore a single file, your whole iTunes Library or thw whole fscking startup partition. No more need to use Target Disk Mode and another Mac. No more "log in as root, drag and drop your Home folder (c:\Documents and settings\yourname for you windows users) and HOPE you got it right." For some users, enabling the OS X "root" account is like handing a drunk with Tourette's Syndrome a greased grenade . . . only "sudo rm -R /* is capable of more damage in less time (think dropping to DOS, cd c:, then del *.*). No more Retrospect, .Mac backup 3.x (not a bad program, but it's about as intuitive as brain surgery when compared to TM) or needing to rely on a non-Apple solution.

Best of all, TM does this silently and automaticly..

Windows, by comparison, has "system restore" which is great for restoring Windows system files . . . but it does nto do jack about your master's thesis or your email, pics, music, videos or porn.

I had been looking forward to buying a new external hard drive to try this feature out once my finances allowed for it. Fortunately for me, I won a nice 250 gigabyte USB 2.0 drive today for quarterly sales performance. This is plenty of space to allow me to back up the 100 GB drive in my MacBook (currently about 40 gigs free). I'm going to put at least three partitions on the disk: one OS X for TM (I'm going to names it "HD Welles"), one also OS X (one just big enough to serve as a 10.5 startup disk, probably named "DaVinci" -- as in Leo-nardo) to install Leopard so I can boot off this drive at need and one formatted for FAT32 (Disk Utility does not speak Windows NTFS) so my good friends Michelle and David can back up their docs/music/pics/etc/omg/wtf/bbq.

Since the disk will be partitioned three ways, I think I'll call it "Gaul." Of course, people will look at me funny (not that they don't do that already . . .).

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Listening to: Styx - Suite Madame Blue
via FoxyTunes

I hate payday loans

Yesterday I proclaimed my appreciation for Sacramento RT and Elk Grove e-Tran. Today's bit of bloggery has to do with an industry that should, even in a free market, be run out of town like criminals. And, sadly, one I became all too familiar with during the first part of this decade.

Back when I was a kid, usury laws were on the books that forbade the loaning of money at massive rates of interest. People with wealth and property could always secure loans with collateral from federally regulated banks. Folks lacking these resources turned to "the bank of Guido and Luigi," the local shady operators, often a Family operation, who substituted the threat of pain or worse for more tangible resources and charged enormous rates of interest. Well, laws have changed and the collection specialists (legbreakers) are something of a thing of the past. Now anyone with a fixed address, a steady income and a startling lack of financial sense can score for themselves a "payday loan" from one of 22,000 such bloodsucker locations scattered across the fruited plain.

Payday loans are like the Dark Side of the Force in Star Wars: " . . . once you start down the Dark Path, forever will it guide your destiny . . ." "Easy" money is soooo seductive, a quick way out of a jam that carries a tremendous cost of its own. How well I know because a few years ago, my paydays were little more than covering last pay period's payday loans and re-writing new ones . . . then taking the cash, minus a couple hundred in fees, to pay the bills.

I admit it, I knew better. I could read the disclosure statements and I winced at the 300% - plus APR interest rates. I wish in retrospect I could have learned to say NO to these loans. I'm owning up to my own weakness, accepting my share of the blame. I've completely eschewed them and stayed that way for almost two years.

It seems that the industry now has a trade association. Go figure.

I love Sac RT . . .

Yes. Really. However, in the words of one of Kevin Smith's characters in Clerks:

"This job would be great if it weren't for the fscking customers."

As far as I'm concerned, the Sacramento version of Light Rail rocks on toast. Back in the early 90s, I was without a car for about a year, and Light Rail was my main transportation. I did a lot of walking as well, but my terms on a bus were relatively few and far between.

Yes, I love Light Rail, but there are some things about the people on Sacramento RT and Elk Grove e-Tran that get on my fscking nerves. The bus would be great of it weren't for the the other passengers . . .

To wit:

1. Operators who converse on their cellphones (even with Bluetooth headsets) while driving the bus. OK, folks, this one really hjorked my spazz-button when I first saw it. During the duration of my ride on a bus, my very life and that of every other soul aboard that bus is in the hands of an operator who may be suffering from divided attention due to domestic drama or some other conversational or emotional state. I don't know what state law or sac RT's operating instructions say, but I'm going to find out if professional drivers are allowed to use wireless headsets and drive. In either case, if it is allowed, it's unprofessional at best and fscking dangerous to passengers.
2. Light Rail passengers who engage in extremely LOUD cellphone conversation about matters that should not be publicly shared. Folks, you may not be driving, but some of your cannot-help-but-overhear due to your LOUD voiced conversations are the very definition of Too Much Fscking Information. I'm all for free speech, and I'm barely shocked by what passes for conversational profanity anymore . . . but if you must discuss intimate details of your lives in my presence, could you please lower your voice?
3. LOUD cellphone ring tones. Yes, I understand that most of the ring tones sold from AT&T and other wireless providers are from popular tunes, and this art form consists of some very angry and profane speech. Again, I'm pro-First Amendment -- NOBODY has ANY right to tell you you cannot listen to or use part of a song for a ring tone on your cellphone. If you did your fellow passengers the dignity of turning down the volume on the ringer in public (and OFF in certain venues, like theaters, for the love of Eris), I'd be your very best friend.

3. Light Rail passengers who play their music aloud in direct violation of LRT rules. Guys, this one is posted as verboten on EVERY LRT car and every bus. Of all of my gripes, this one is the least excusable. After all, you cannot control when the phone rings or remember to turn it down, and I can understand it if you're deep into conversation and not practicing consideration for others. Why is there NO FSCKING EXCUSE? EVERY CD / mp3 player comes with headphones ...please use them, OK? If you do this, for me, and listen to your music with headphones, I'll refrain from blasting you with Tom Smith, Seanan McGuire, or going nuclear with bagpipe music.

5. RT rent a cops with that wannabe cop attitude. There was this Wackenhut guard at the Marconi-Arcade LRT station hassling some poor schmoe because he was standing between the tracks, waiting for the train. The next trains were several minutes out and the passenger was harmless, not drunk or otherwise whacked. Just standing there, looking up the tracks. The rent-a-cop on patrol looked to me for a minute he was about to go tactical on this poor guy. I got my phone out and set the video camera to record if the whack job of a security officer was about to Rodney King the passenger. The passenger finally realized that Dirty Harry meant business and sat down shaking his head. He saw my phone in camera mode and smiled his thanks.

I encountered more than a little of this attitude back when I worked as a security guard. I worked as a guard for a couple of reasons. Security was very easy work. In those days I had lost all confidence in my abilities as a technician and figured I could never work in the field again . . . so I took a job that required almost no thought whatsoever. It also was a job that allowed me to do child care during the day while Ex#1 worked and /or went to school. Among the high school dropouts and fellow losers (as I freely admit I was, back then) was a small number of people who thought a stint as a security guard would look good on a resume when they applied for the police department, other law enforcement agency, or (Goddess forbid!) the military. All I can say is that some of the extreme head cases left as soon as they realized we were in the observe-and-report business and not in the kick-ass-and-take-names industry. Some did manage to perform auto-rectocraniectomies. One colleague did become a Sacramento PD officer, another went into the Army as a military policeman.


At any rate, I had to vent. Don't let this rant keep you off public transit. I know, transit has its limitations and there are many times when you gotta drive . . . but taking transit when it is feasible helps reduce your carbon emissions footprint, which makes the Goddess smile. The exercise you get from walking to bus and train stops will make your healthcare provider smile, too.

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Listening to: Seanan McGuire - Dorothy
via FoxyTunes

Catapulting the Propaganda on cable teevee, and Why Cable Internet Is Evil

As all five of my readers know, I absolutely HATE television. I do not, and will not own a TV set. While my new roomie, bless his lupine soul, has satellite TV at our place and I had Comcast cable TV at my last place, I refuse to buy a set.

Speaking of cable internet versus DSL: AT&T Yahoo! consumer aDSL beats the holy snot out of Comcast cable for internet access. While cable IS faster and a bit simpler to set up (your computer is configured by default for cable over ethernet, DSL configuration is a bit harder), aDSL is a LOT more reliable. Back when I lived near CSUS, with both my first set o' roommates and my own place, the DSL went down a total of twice, and a power-cycle of the CPE and router fixed the issues. World of Warcraft latency was usually under 25 milliseconds -- not too bad at all. When I lived with Evil Otto, thanks to the wonders of cable "bandwidth sharing" the connect speed would drop to the point where WoW latency exceeded 1500 milliseconds; web pages and email took forever and a day to download (so I knew the game issues were not Blizzard's servers).

Not to mention what Comcast is doing to Bittorrent users . . . never has a problem with Bittorrent when connected to SBC / AT&T Yahoo! consumer aDSL. Of course, if Comcast hoses Bittorrent, it will also hose World of Warcraft updates because these updates are distributed using the Bittorrent protocol.

Moral of the story: do not get cable internet. Ever.

Back to the evil that is cable teevee. Even though I don't own a set, many public places where I spend time have sets tuned to Fox News, CNN or ESPN. It is very easy for me to ignore Faux News and Conservative News Network because of the sheer idiocy the hosts. For some reason ESPN is harder to ignore but the sheer inanity of big-time sports -- not to mention how addicted certain parents of mine are to teevee sports -- makes me more sensitive to it.

Anyway, I saw an ad the last time I was exposed to the toxin that is ESPN that made me go "WTF?" The spot was a generic VISA card ad. What made me go "WTF" was not the usual conspicuous consumption / debt overload stuff that makes me want to puke. The ad is basically a parade of consumers buying stuff they don't need with their VISA cards . . . then one of the parade of customers offered Federal Reserve Notes -- cash -- instead of a VISA card to pay for his purchases. From the look on the clerk's face you'd think the customer offered to pay for his crap with a used condom. Two thoughts went through my head at this point" one was "Why is cash treated like a leprous dead badger with AIDS?" When last I looked at a dollar bill, it said "valid for all debts, public and private." Just what is the Wall Street / Madison Avenue politico-economic axis of evil REALLY trying to say? To me it sounds like "Cash (and by extension, the government that issues it) cannot be trusted but VISA (and by extension the private sector) can be."

Of course, from the standpoint of someone who has a massive distrust for the current regime of corporate overlords in DC, you have to wonder. Is government issue cash money on the way out the door? Perhaps it is. Thanks to the "War on Drugs," cash transactions of more than $10k must be reported to the IRS to ferret out money laundries. Then there is the terrorism angle . . . I'm sure that dealers in weapons, explosives and other things needed for terror operations do not take credit cards (then again, the 9/11 guys got the job done with box cutters . . . and Home Depot takes plastic . . .).

Anyway, there is a long history of private currencies in the US -- Hmmm...something to think about.

Brain on random...

1. Feeling like fsck thanks to a a bit of a cough and cold. Been resting; hope to feel better tomorrow.

2. New phone arrived yesterday -- Sony Ericson z310a. Pretty nice phone, really, if the damned thing would work. I managed to get it charged, registered on the AT&T network, turned on, entered some phone numbers manually (it does not sync with iSync 2.x in Mac OS X . . . needs Windows and proprietary software), and shut it down for the night, never to turn on again.

Now the "fun" begins . . . Called AT&T's "customer service" people. Selected "other" from a voice menu, and got billing. "Tech support?" . Rep number 2 knew her onions. For once I decided to NOT say "I'm a tech, I know what I'm doing . . ." to someone doing tech support because I didn't want to come off sounding like an idiot if the issue was something I overlooked. After explaining my troubleshooting, the tech said "Yep, you've done everything" and transferred me to a long wait and someone with the typical accent heard from reps who live in a certain very large South Asian nation famed for total cluelessness in phone support. This rep told me I was in the wrong queue, and before I could start unloading my utter frustration onto her, was again transferred . . . to FSCKING SALES! By this time I was primed like a block of plastique and I went off, big time. I demanded to speak to a supervisor. She did what I'd do in her place and offer to help . . . which I declined after explaining why. I asked again. And, like I've done in her place, was warm transferred to another agent who, from her accent, resided in a large but sparsely populated North American nation. I calmly told my story of totally inferior service, that if I had not already put money on the books to activate the phone, I would have canceled already. At that point she said "pick a phone from the go-phone list you want." "OK, does it have to be the same phone and does it have to be the same price or less?" "No. I'm giving you a credit for a phone upgrade or accessories for your trouble." "OK, how about the Motorola RAZR v3?" The RAZR is the phone I really wanted two years ago. It has a camera, and Bluetooth. iSync 2.x and that phone do get along. In other words, my OS X Address Book and iCal will sync to the RAZR via either Bluetooth or USB without 3rd party crapware like The Pissing Stink, er, Missing Sync.

Now I'm getting a RAZR and not having to pay an upgrade price for it. This is my second Sony product that has been an extreme disappointment (the first was my Clie PDA). I'll avoid Sony anything in the future!

Not to mention that AT&T did a good job of addressing my dissatisfaction.

3. Finally, a Democratic presidential candidate who GETS IT!
And, "it" is the oath of office: " . . . support, defend and protect the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic . . .". As far as I'm concerned, the official acts of Shrub and Dead-eye Dick certainly qualify them as the latter foe.
The more I look at Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama, the better Senator Chris Dodd looks. While Obama and Hillary draw all the attention and the money, but from what I have seen, Dodd's the real deal. At a time when Congress seems to be engaged in a game of "Let's grab our ankles and grease up for Shrub!" Dodd is LEADING!


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Listening to: Pink Floyd - On the Turning Away
via FoxyTunes

Incredible...

As I made my rounds of the blogosphere last night, I simply could not believe what I was reading.
Yesterday, the Democratic-controlled US Congress passed a bill that would greatly expand the President's power to spy on Americans -- wiretap them, intercept emails and so on -- in the name of "protecting" the Amurikan peeple from terrorism without the safeguard, such as they are, of the FISA court.

Shrub says he needs these extra-Constitutional authority to keep the American people safe from the threat of terrorism. Given that this has been a summer of incredible unease -- the "gut feelings" of Homeland Security director Chernoff, the unceasing catapulting of propaganda from the Giggling Murder Monkey himself with his barrage of speeches conflating the various species of "al-Quaida," the gathering economic storm that is the US subprime mortgage market -- I have to say that there is a sense sometimes of we are about to face something really really bad.

None of the above scare me half as much as what the Democrats in the US Congress did in enabling that admitted criminal in the White House to continue further shreading the Constitution. I seriously thought the election of a Democratic Congress was supposed to stop this kind of crap, to rein in that pathetic excuse for a leader and human being. Now with the Iraq War bill and this second capitulation, I am now FURIOUS with the Democratic leadership who LET THIS HAPPEN. And, once again, one of the Senators from this "Bluest" of Blue States, Sen. Feinstein, has voted in lockstep with these most evil of men. Kudos to Sen. Boxer and Rep. Matsui for doing what they were sent to Washington to do.

Flogging Molly has the words for how I feel right now.

Random bits, bytes, nybbles, etc

1. " . . . that [his] name not be lost to the knowledge of men . . . " -- One of the very best folksingers who ever lived has not had his tunage for sale on the iTunes Store . . . until now. When I started buying music via iTunes, I looked in vain for Canadian folk muisc legend Stan Rogers. I was first introduced to Stan's music in, of all places, the SCA (yes, his songs are almost as "period" as an iPod). I first heard Barrett's Privateers at a Society bardic circle. I asked for the lyrics from the bard and learned the song by heart by the time I got home from the event (a 5 hour drive to An Tir for a war). I ran into more Stan Rogers goodness a few years later in the context of what was then the most compelling science fiction RPG background of the 1990s: Traveller: The New Era. Apparently, one of the developers was a Canadian, because one of the adventures for that game involved a starship called the Mary Ellen Carter. In many ways, that song pretty much sums up TNE. One trip through teh google later, I made the connection between these two experinces and Stan Rogers. Once other, more pressing, needs are met, I'll be downloading teh good stuff again. I currently have recordings of both songs -- the rather good 3 Pints Gone cover of Mary Ellen Carter and, in two of the greatest offenses ever recorded against the memory of a great artist, that fools-gold voiced tenor frank emerson's "covers" of MEC and Barrett's Privateers. If you're going to pay tribute to a legend AT LEAST GET THE LYRICS RIGHT AND DON'T DROP VERSES! Biggest waste of two bucks ever. And don't get me started on the waste of iTunes Library space that is his version of The Minstrel Boy! To paraphrase PeeJee from Something Positive, were I female, I could menstrate better music! I can only hope his name is lost to the knowledge of men!

2. ID10T: It's not just for computer novices anymore!
Customer calls in, issue is that his Mac is booting to a blank gray screen on its LCD display. This is not an especially common issue. There are notes from prior contacts where the previous "tech" documented that he did "everything" -- reset SMC, booted to CD, advised trying an external monitor and calling back with the result. He did everything, all right . . . everything but what was to me the blindingly obvious: resetting the fscking PRAM. I had Mister Customer reset the system's PRAM, and lo and behold, built-in video returned.

/rant=ON
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls: I simply could not believe this. Resetting PRAM fixes a lot of stuff: USB / Firewire / ethernet / modem port issues, mis-recognition of the hard drive and most especially video issues. Usually PRAM resets are an overused troubleshooting step for issues where they are singularly ineffective, typically startup issues that arise after the OS starts loading. This is stuff any noob fresh out of training knows.

And this guy was NOT a newbie. Nor was he from an outsourced contact center. He sat two isles over from me. He made a customer troubleshoot ineffectually and even left him with the expectation that his system would need service, for an issue that should have been resolved with the very first troubleshooting step tried. He made someone call in a second time, wait on hold to music that may not quite be to taste, for an issue that should have been fixed in less than 5 minutes.

People like him are why I sometimes get angry enough to explode. Why? Because call center tech support reps like me are ranked for perks like desirable schedules, promotions, awards and such by two things: sales and call statistics . . . especially call duration. I got the distinct feeling from the customer that he felt rushed by the rep (something we are NOT supposed to do) because after we did the quick fix on the one system he had two other issues with other computers for me to look at! Fscking stats whores like him do this all the time. So you piss off a customer and leave me to clean up the mess. Not to mention hosing my call stats, which makes getting awards, promotions, and a decent schedule harder.
/rant=OFF
I feel a bit better now....

DMV is A-OK

In years past I used to go to great lengths to avoid visiting a California DMV office for any reason. The lines for "service" at hot, sweaty CalDMV field offices rivalled bread lines in the old USSR. A visit to DMV meant a long, uncomfortable standing wait in line to speak to a surly old battleaxe of a clerk with a smart mouth, a bad attitude and virtual immunity from discipline thanks to Civil Service who seemed to want to be there even less than you did. When I absolutly HAD to visit the DMV, I either made an appointment online (much shorter wait, but the same surly staff), went to the local Cal AAA office (which handles some DMV business with a staff that is far more friendly) or went to a remote DMV field office in a smaller town like Lodi or Jackson where the lines were far shorter and the staff was a lot friendlier.

I expected much the same kind of wait-in-line hell from my visit to DMV today. Boy was I in for a surprise. My expectations were exceeded by such a margain as to be blogworthy. The facility I visited was fairly new, not a building that was built in the middle of the Cold War. Gone was the single long, slow, endless queue that wrapped back and forth in rope-boundary lanes like a ride at Disneyland. Standing in long lines is not good for my legs. Replacing it was a short-n-snappy "Start Here" triage line that was over almost before it began. The attractive young woman listened to my issue and handed me a number. By the time I'd whipped out an ebook to read while I waited, my number was called.
Waiting to serve me at the counter (not the usual straight line of windows but a jagged series of triangles that reminded me of a "star fort" from the 30 Years War) was another attractive and capable young woman with a positive attitude. She handled the transaction and I was out of there in less than 10 minutes.
Color me amazed appreciative and very pleased. Amazed because the conventional wisdom among American politicos - abetted by a certain loathsome species of conservative politico - is that it is impossible for government to do anything efficlently. Indeed in their view Government IS the problem in America today, that private enterprise would do a better job than a government agency. Frankly, today I got much better service from DMV than I've gotten from some for-profit corporations. As a customer service professional, I recognize and appreciate good service when I get it. I never hesitate to fill out surveys and speak my mind about how how well I was served. I'm certainly going to let DMV know that this field office is doing a great job. Whatever share of the DMV fee I paid today goes to operating the field office, I begrudge not a cent of it. Finally I am pleased that DMV was respectful of my time. Many large organizations, no matter what their PR says, could really care less about the amount of time a client or customer spends dealing with them. In the case of DMV, it isn't as if a dissatisfied customer could threaten to take their business to the competition.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot? (volume 1337)

Let's see if I get this straight. Reason with me; follow my logic:

Yes. It's true. Dick Cheney thinks the law does not apply to him because he's a member of two branches of government.

a. If the Vice President of the US is a member of the executive branch of the United Stares Government, and is therefore subject to laws covering said branch's actions, and...

b. If the aforemntioned official of the US Government, in his capacity as presiding officer of the US Senate, is a member of the Legislative Branch and is subject to laws covering the Legislative Branch

c. Therefore, VPotUS is NOT subject to laws covering the Executive Branch!

OK. While I am no lawyer, I'm very very familiar with the Constitution of the US. I aced my 8th grade pass-or-not-graduate exam on it and aced the entire course on it in high school. Not only that, I'm pretty well versed in logic. In all of my vast-for-a-layman knowledge of the US Constitution, there is not a word there that says anything like "VPotUS is above the law because he is a member of two branches of the government."

If you're a member of, say, the Freemasons and the Knights of Columbus, are you immune to rules affecting members of one or the other alone? This makes less sense than a hockey boot or a football bat.

But that's what Dick the Prsck seems to be saying to us.

Stabbed in the back...

I am ashamed this day to call myself a Democrat.

I am nothing less than enraged over the downright perfidity, the abject betrayal, perpetuated on the 70% of the American people who said, without equivocation whatsoever: "Get the US OUT of Iraq, bring the troops HOME! NOW!"

Keith O's Special Comment says it all....

Kudos to my own Congresswoman, Rep. Matsui and to Senator Boxer, for representing my views.
Senator Feinstein did vote for this abortion.

I got "ACS'd" -- did YOU??

/rantmode=ON

Fsck Shrub and the horse he molested as he rode in here.

This is what happened to the decennial, constitutionally-mandated, intrusive but tolerable every decade US Census: The American Community Survey. Think of the ACS as a census short form. And, the law says you MUST respond to it, on pain of severe fines.

This is the sccond fscking time I've gotten one of these fscking forms. The last time was in 2004, a mere four years after the only census mentioned in the U.S. Constitution . . . and the congressional / legislative reapportionment, which is the only reason the Constitution mentions for even having a national census in the first fscking place!!

Further, this survey is an unmitigated pain in the ass, a total reaming sans lube. I have applied for credit with less intrusive data requests. As far as reapportionment is concerned, Uncle only needs to know my name, where I live and my age. With the eliminationsof the noxious "three-fifths of a person" bit in Article 1 section 2 (slavery stuff), there is no fscking need my race (what the fsck do they expect me to put as my race, Blood Elf? Deryni? Klingon?). Other government programs? Every ten years is enough!

Why oh why are they doing this crap? It's a boondoggle for demographers / marketers, a payoff to industry by the most business-friendly. people-hostile, utterly without a soul EVIL Administration in US History. And the unmitigated BASTARDS use the law as a hammer to make us kick down info OR ELSE!!!

/rantmode=OFF