the daily dub

While reading an article about US-based airlines not allowing in-flight cell phone calls, I stumbled across a gem. The article was talking about why the FCC hasn’t lifted the ban on in-flight cell phone usage. Many people sent in complaints along the lines of “but then I’ll have to listen to Chatty Kathy blab about her pedicure in her latest valley girl drawl.” There was also a warning from the Department of Homeland Security (a name reminiscent of xenophobia and cold-war era Communist Russia):

And there was even a security warning from the Department of Homeland Security, which said terrorists could use mobile devices to detonate onboard explosives more easily…

- from Popular Mechanics.

Excuse me? You read that right, DHS thinks lifting a purely statutory[1] ban on cell-usage would risk an increase in the likelihood of a terrorist attack…

Gee. Last time I checked, Terrorists sure do care about staying within the letter of the law while they are attempting to blow shit up. How would allowing cell phone calls for the average joe increase or decrease the likelihood of a terrorist attack using a cell phone? Last I checked, anyone can get a cell phone onto a plane today and make a call - they just don’t want you to. And it doesn’t take a genius to have some kind of timer rigged to the power button on a smart phone in your checked-luggage to the dirty deed (even if airlines were smart enough to sweep bags for RF interference before putting them on a plane)[2].

This has lent further support to my belief that The Department of Homeland Security has no command of statistics, science, or common sense. All they are is Security Theater.

Seriously? Lifting the ban on in-flight cell usage might increase the likelihood of a terrorist attack? Next thing you know, they’ll say removing flouride from the city water supply might decrease the likelihood of an attack because all the terrorists will be at the dentist’s office instead. Or maybe that banning in-flight laptops would decrease the likelihood of viruses spreading on the internet.

Morons.

---

[1] I say purely statutory because I’ve never had a problem turning my personal cell on and getting signal in the cabin of a plane.
[2] I would be surely surprised if they did anywhere near this level of screening.

I came home, all excited to edit up the show into mp3s for your enjoyment, only to be greeted by the sound of a scraping disk in my laptop…

DiskWarrior shows no love, either:

DiskWarrior App: Unknown disk: ‘disk3s3′, sectors: 116948022, size: 512, type: ”
DiskWarrior App: Rebuilding disk device: disk3s3
DiskWarrior App: disk3s3 Extents, Catalog and Attributes tree sizes total 454.19 MB.
DiskWarrior App: disk3s3: Bad (slow) blocks appearing in range 101896 to 102151, unless disk was asleep and delay was due to spin-up. (-1835501)

Why did this have to happen *before* I got that show off my disk…

[EDIT: DiskWarrior brought the love - The index is repaired, with only 1 file damaged. First order of business - copying that show off.]

[EDIT 2: DiskWarrior can't repair the disk, but I can build me a "preview disk." I used this preview disk to get everything that I didn't backup last week off the drive. All seems to be okay with the recording, thank god...]

[EDIT 3: Trying to even do a second repair left me toasted..

DiskWarrior App: disk3s3: Bad (slow) blocks appearing in range 1270352 to 1270607, unless disk was asleep and delay was due to spin-up. (-1835311)
DiskWarrior App: disk3s3: Bad (slow) blocks appearing in range 1270608 to 1270863, unless disk was asleep and delay was due to spin-up. (-1835274)
DiskWarrior App: disk3s3: Bad (slow) blocks appearing in range 1271120 to 1271375, unless disk was asleep and delay was due to spin-up. (-1835206)
DiskWarrior App: disk3s3: Bad (slow) blocks appearing in range 1271888 to 1272143, unless disk was asleep and delay was due to spin-up. (-1834781)

This disk appears to be dead.
]

My sister freaked out on me last night. She asked if she could crash at my place (without me there), and I said no. It’s one thing to come visit, but it’s entirely another thing to use me and my place when it’s convenient, and as an escape.

It’s my place, and it needs to remain my place.

After I told her no, she proceeded to attack me, personally.

What joy this Christmas has been…

This year has been an odd one, indeed. I find myself, oddly enough, planning for a rapid escape from my parents’ houses.

It seems to me (and this is just my observation, which I’m told is actually pretty good) that my mom straight up lied to my sister last night.

My sister had a falling out with our uncle around Thanksgiving. She asked my mom if he would be here Christmas Morning (this is what I remember hearing). My mom said it would be just us kids, our grandparents, and our mom.

I had a ReallyBadFeeling™ about this from the time it happened. I had heard that everyone was coming up for Christmas dinner, so it didn’t make sense. This afternoon, I asked my mom who all would be here Christmas day, and sure enough, everyone, including this Uncle would be here.

So, either I completely misunderstood my sister’s question, or my mom lied through her teeth to manipulate my sister into being home for Christmas.

Either way, I am preparing myself to duck and run.

I’ve been advised by sage people to pre-confer with my sister, come up with some “code word” we can speak to each other that means “GetMeTheFuckOutaHere.” I think this is good advice.

I’ve been feeling, lately, that my mom dumps a healthy fuck-ton of guilt on us kids for not doing things the way she wants them done. These two things also happen to be some of my pet peeves… guilt, and telling me how to do things that i’m perfectly capable of figuring out on my own… thanks.

Impromptu backpacking trip, anyone?

If you own a RAZR (aka piece of shit), and you forget your voicemail password, and you call AT&T, they don’t connect you to Motorola to fix the problem.

It’s clear, to me that voicemail passwords reside completely under AT&T’s jurisdiction, there is absolutely no reason to involve the *handset* designer in resetting a voicemail password.

So, why AT&T, why on earth did you redirect me to Apple to reset my god damned voice mail password? And all was going well until I mentioned that I own an iPhone.

If anyone is going to ruin the user experience of iPhone owners, it’s AT&T. Every last time I’ve had to deal with these pricks, it’s been nothing but headaches.

100% jerks, every last one.

On the complete opposite side, other than waiting in line for the Genius Bar, replacing my broken iPhone from Apple has been painless.