Found: One Troll

Hello Airlines,

I know you’re slow to move. That’s fine. I just thought you should know why you won’t be moving me anywhere for the foreseeable future.

I used to love flying. It’s one of the reasons I studied aerospace engineering in college. I’ve held a US Passport since I was six years old. I’ve flown hundreds of thousands of miles around the world. So know how much it saddens me to say that flying commercial airlines has become so unbearable that I will no longer be doing it if I can help it. Right now I’ve got trips to San Jose, Reno, Las Vegas, Boston, Seattle, and possible Pittsburgh planned for 2011. In light of recent events, none of those plans include you. The most recent act in the TSA’s security theater is the last straw for me. You’ll get my employer’s money when I have to travel for business, but you’ll not see a dime of my own salary.

I’ve been through airport security in London, Bern, and Geneva. I’ve been scanned in Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur. I’ve had my bags prodded in Delhi, Bombay, and Madras. But I have never been treated in Europe or Asia with the depth of contempt that I’ve experienced from TSA employees in airports in Texas, California, and my home state of Arizona. I realize that you have no direct control over the TSA, but you have the lobbying power to get the Federal Government to back off unless they intend to spend a few billion tax dollars to bail out your failing businesses (again). Until you make noises about alleviating your passengers’ frustrations with the fatally ineffectual TSA, I hope your aircraft remain empty and unprofitable.

Sincerely,

Eseell

Yeah, it’s a week late, but I wasn’t even going to post the song this year until I found this version. It’s twice as awesome because this video is also performed in American Sign Language. Warning: This video is NSFW (language only) in two languages simultaneously! I’m not even remotely fluent, but I have had to give presentations in ASL (with much coaching) and this just kicks over my giggle box.

In #GBC last night someone linked to Raytheon’s jobs page for their Polar Services. They have a job opening right now for a network engineer on contract. Among their qualifications they list the CCNP, CCIE, and RHCT certifications. I’ve got all of those, and all of their “must haves,” so I’m seriously considering applying for the job. How cool awesome would it be to live in Antarctica for a while? Even if I don’t get it, or don’t take it, it might be to my benefit for my employer to realize that I’m looking around, just to keep them on their toes.

I had been planning to be at the NRA Annual Meeting in Charlotte, NC this year. Unfortunately, due to a conflict with my work schedule, it looks like I’ll be sitting this one out. If the NRA Convention sticks with PA as its location for next year I will probably be there, as I have family in the area that keep begging me to visit them.

Continuing the meme started by Marko, here were the contents of my pockets and belt when I came home this evening:

From top to bottom and left to right:

• Smith and Wesson 1911PD, “Gunsite”, .45ACP
• Spare Wilson Combat 47D Magazine
• Key chain, with Utilikey, flints, and spare lighter fluid
• Casio digital/analog watch
• Leatherman Charge TTi
• Surefire E2L Outdoorsman
• Black Crackle Zippo lighter
• Lamy Safari Charcoal with fine nib
• Mantis Knives “Classier Act” pocketknife
• DIFRWear RFID-blocking wallet
• Work phone: Motorola Q
• Personal phone: Nokia E71x
• 64GB iPod Touch

You can see that I have added a bit since I did this last year. Two things from last year are missing; my Mantis Knives Necessikey was confiscated by TSA on my way to some convention last year and I upgraded my personal cell phone. I bought the Lamy pen partly on Marko’s recommendation with the hope that if I spent a few dollars on a pen and made it my dedicated “carry pen” that it might not go missing like all my cheap disposable pens. So far, so good, as I’ve been carrying it for about a month and it is still handy whenever I need a writing instrument. I bought the iPod mainly because it’s a better music player than my Kindle (for airplanes), and I find that I use it all the time so I consider it money well-spent. The Zippo I purchased mainly because I wanted one. No compelling reason, really.

So I came home on Friday to the lovely sound of silence. The power company was working on my street and shut off the power to the neighborhood. Unfortunately, when the power came back my PC did not. After several hours of troubleshooting, it seems that my video card is defunct. From what I can gather, there was a defect in the manufacturing for that generation of Nvidia cards that caused their heatsinks to develop microfractures after long periods of use at high temperatures. Since it was a high end card, it was always hot. When the card cooled to room temperature, the cracks widened and now it overheats as soon as the OS loads.

Since I had planned to spend this weekend vegging out on Mass Effect in preparation for the arrival of ME2 later this month, I popped over to Best Buy to find a new card. Apparently, Best Buy no longer stocks high-end video cards in their stores. I guess that makes sense, since their selection of PC games has long since dwindled to copies of Hoyle 73, Fast Food Tycoon, and The Sims 57. Frustrated, I headed next door to Fry’s Electronics, who didn’t have what I wanted either, but did have high-end cards from the current generation. I grabbed one in the hopes of getting my uber-rig back online this weekend.

It was not to be. The machine would not even POST with the new card installed. My damaged card could do better than that! That’s what I get for buying from Fry’s. I brought the ‘new’ card back to the store where the girl at the returns desk helpfully verified that the device they sold me was, in fact, as functional as Ted Kennedy.

Defeated, I went home and ordered the card that I wanted. A better card than the one from Fry’s at a much lower price – even after expedited shipping – than I paid to those assholes.

There is a silver lining to this ordeal, however. About year ago I had to RMA my motherboard after my new mobo got toasted barely a month after I installed it. It was a huge pain to get all four of my DIMMs installed in the original motherboard; there was much tweaking of voltages and timings involved in getting it to run 8 gigs of low latency DDR3. I never bothered to do that again with the new board. Today, since my computer’s case was open and I had nothing better to do, I got the two extra DIMMs I’ve had on my desk for a year reinstalled in my PC. So, although I have a barely functioning video card that I can’t use to do anything fun, at least I have 8GB of RAM, again.

I attended the Red Wings vs. Coyotes game (short version – Coyotes got their asses kicked 4-1) with some friends tonight, and I think I’ve identified the main reason I hate going to sports games. Of course, I generally dislike crowds, but it seems that everyone at these games has removed the filter between their brain and their mouths. Perhaps it was never installed to begin with. Being surrounded by loud people yelling any damn thing that comes to mind defines a place very close to Hell for me.

I just got home from a rockin’ New Year’s Party. I hope everyone else had a good time last night and has a great 2010!

Lots of bloggers have favorite charities. In the gun blogosphere you’ll often see Soldier’s Angels or The NRA Foundation, which are both excellent programs. Right now, though, I’m going to plug my favorite charity: Child’s Play. Child’s Play was started in 2003 by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins of Penny Arcade fame.

Child’s Play assists Children’s Hospitals around the country by donating video games, movies, board games, books, and other forms of entertainment to help children keep their minds off the pain and loneliness of extended hospital treatment, similar to what Project Valour-IT does for wounded soldiers. Here’s how it works: each participating hospital sets up an Amazon.com wish list which anyone can use to purchase the items the hospital needs. This is, in my opinion, the one of the best things about the charity. With the Amazon wish lists, I know exactly where my donation is going, because I choose the hospital and buy the items with my own money, and then they get shipped directly to the folks in need. There’s no worry about how much of my donation is being spent on the children, because I decided how the money is spent. Genius! Better still, there are participating hospitals all over the US and Canada, so there’s probably one near you that you can help.

In addition to the wish lists, you can always donate cash at the main site, or at the Desert Bus For Hope fund drive, or if you’re in the Seattle area there’s a pretty sweet charity dinner and auction hosted at the same venue as PAX. All the cash collected (less 2-3% for administrative costs) goes straight into the hospitals.

Head over to the website. Check it out. I dare you to read the letters from grateful children and parents and not contribute.

To all of our veterans, and especially to Mom (USAF) and all of my friends currently serving.