If Headlines were more accurate and less sensational

Sometimes I wish I could rewrite headlines to reduce the sensationalism and increase the accuracy.

For example:
Teen decapitated at Six Flags over Georgia
This should actually read: "Stupid kid ignores multiple warning signs while climbing over TWO six-foot fences and ends up dead"

Even ignoring the multiple warning and danger signs you should probably start to wonder if you're supposed to be in a location that required you to climb over two six-foot fences to get there.

Yes, it is sad that he is dead for such a stupid reason. But if the family tries to sue the park I am going to be really annoyed. What more could the park be expected to do?

Why do things like this happen to us?

So that title may sound a little dire, but if anyone recalls in 2006 a bum moved into our apartment for about 40 hours. Now we have situation where we're currently living. Papa Funk and I were roommates at the time of the bum incident, and now we have to deal with this one. Management companies have got to do a better job of screening applicants.

For those not in the know I'll bring you up to speed on the state of our house. Fall/Winter there were 4 of us living here. One got married in March and hasn't been able to sell his contract. The other moved to Japan for the summer and didn't sell his contract. So since the end of April it has just been Papa Funk and I living here, and that has been quite nice.

Last Thursday Papa Funk and I were sitting at home doing whatever. I think he was watching TV I was cleaning the kitchen. It's about 11:00 pm. Someone knocks on the door to say that he's signed a contract and will be moving in and has some stuff to drop off. Ok, that's all well and good. There's a small problem to start with. He has a thick accent (he's Haitian) and some days we can only understand about 20% of what he's saying, so just figuring out the whole "has a contract" thing was kind of tricky. But that's fine, you know, people are allowed to have accents.

His contract didn't technically begin until this past Wednesday, so we told him that over the weekend we'd clear out the room (we'd been using it for storage). So over the next few days he brings over more and more stuff which starts piling up all over, and over the weekend we finally get a chance to pull all of our stuff out of the room and his stuff gets moved in.

Turns out that the reason he's moving in is because he's getting a divorce. Because his wife decided to start smoking and drinking again (she was a convert and they got married in the temple). She would also go out partying with her friends and overdraft their checking account all the time. He finally figured out that that wasn't a good situation to be in.

Also it turns out that Papa Funk knows them because they come to his work. And he knows that his wife is a little bit on the crazy side in terms of being socially/fiscally/generally responsible. He feels that she is not a person we can trust to have in our house, and since the guy is getting a divorce we figure he must feel the same way. So we tell him that we don't want her in our house, ever. And he says he's fine with that.

We help him move stuff in and get his computer set up and stuff and generally be nice to the guy. He's trying to get his life back on track and things are messy, but we're nice.

He officially moved in on Wednesday (got his key from management) and things are fine.

Thursday, (that's the very next day!) Josh and I are sitting at home in the evening and there's a knock at the door. It's his (crazy) wife saying that she's meeting him here and that she'll just wait for him in his room. Standing on our front steps with her bleached-blonde hair done up in the typical Utah Rat's Nest hairdo (gross). We tell her, No, she's not coming in if he's not here. Cause we have no way of knowing if she's coming in to steal his stuff or do something inappropriate, ya know? They're supposedly getting a divorce, which generally means people aren't on good terms with each other. So we tell her to come back when he's home.

Now remember, we told him we didn't want her in our house, to which he agreed. About thirty minutes later he gets home and brings her in, and Papa Funk and I are not happy about it. She's inside for about 30 seconds and starts demanding answers about why we wouldn't let her in; to which we tell her why and she starts talking back at us. We were getting pissed.

Unfortunately for Papa Funk, I had to leave at this point to pick my sister and brother-in-law up at the airport. I didn't get home until about 1:45, so I'll fill in that part of the story from what Papa Funk told me.

He stayed up until about 1:00 waiting for her to leave, because he didn't feel comfortable going to bed with her in the house. She and new-guy finally left and Papa Funk locked the door and went to bed. I got home about 1:45 (as I said) and brushed my teeth and went upstairs. I'm in my room reading and within 10 minutes I hear his bedroom door open (his room is on the ground floor) and then I hear the front door open. Curious, I get up and move towards the stairs to try and determine what's happening.

The way my house is laid out is that the stairs break halfway up and make a 180 degree turn. On that landing is a window. At night this window acts as a perfect mirror to the doorway downstairs between the living room and kitchen/bathroom/bedroom area. So from the top of the stairs I can see a perfect reflection as the front door closes and he walks back into his room, followed by his wife after which he closes his bedroom door. I was not happy about this, but since it was already 2 am and I had work in the morning I decided I wasn't going to go argue with them about it on the spot. I waited for about 10 minutes to see if she would leave before going to bed.

In the morning Papa Funk got up and went to work, and then I got up around 9. While I'm in the shower I can hear his bedroom door open, and then the front door open and close. When I get out of the shower he's up and walking around. So I'm about 99.9% certain that she stayed the night. He snuck her in when he thought we were asleep and then tried to sneak her out in the morning. After we very clearly expressed that we didn't even want her in the house at all, to which he agreed. Of course, since this is single housing, the fact that he brought her into his bedroom at all, regardless of marital status, means that he violated his contract.

I told him straight out when I got done changing that, "She is not allowed to be sleeping here.". To which he tried to tell me a story about her leaving and coming back this morning before I got up. Which would have fit with what Papa Funk observed, because he did not know that I witnessed her coming in and going to his bedroom at 2 am. So after he told his fabricated story, I told him, "I know she came over last night after I got home at 2. So I just want to be clear: She is NOT allowed to sleep here." So he's got to know that he's busted.

Papa Funk and I then spoke to management, because we really don't want to come home one day to find our stuff gone. She's crazy enough to do it, and she is able to manipulate him into doing whatever she wants. So if she manages to convince him to let her borrow his key, we are going to have problems. Management agrees with us (thank goodness) and spoke to him to tell him that she is not allowed to be over here. It makes us really uncomfortable to have her in our house. Then management spoke to us again and said to tell them if anything else happens and he'll be gone instantly (it's nice to have management that loves you as tenants). Luckily, since he brought her into his bedroom, he violated the housing contract and getting rid of him will be rather easy, if need be.

So, now he knows that she cannot be in our house. So if he's stupid enough to bring her over here again thinking we won't find out [shakes head slowly] he's just asking for trouble.

He's a nice guy and all, but he doesn't seem to be in the top ranks of intelligence and allows this woman to manipulate him so much. And we hate worrying if our stuff will be gone when we get home. Or coming home and not feeling comfortable because we don't know if she's going to show up or not. Your home should be a sanctuary. And for Papa Funk and I it has been for months. That peace and security has been destroyed and we don't like it. We get enough stress at work every day, and want to be able to relax at home.

Now we feel like we have to play guard duty on the house day and night to make sure she's not there. I feel like I need to stay up late to listen for the front door, because he's already tried to sneak her in once. I don't like feeling this uncomfortable in my own home. So part of me and Papa Funk almost wishes for her to show up so that he'll be gone and we can get the locks changed and not feel like this. But if he does shape up and keep her away from here, then it's only four and a half weeks before his contract ends and we'll survive.

Sorry for the long post, but that needed to get out.

Crime and Punishment

I finished reading Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. A few years ago I tried to read "The Idiot" but got distracted about a third of the way in, and never finished it. So this is my first successful foray into 19th century Russian literature.

I must say, I actually rather enjoyed it. It was somewhat of a tough read that took some energy, but it was rewarding. I probably would have more enjoyed a better translation, but this one (the 1914 Constance Garnett) was mostly intelligible. There were passages every so often that wouldn't make any sense, which I'm not sure if it was just due to poor translating, or if the phrases used made more sense in 1914 than they do now. I will admit, Svidrigailov's suicide was a bit of a surprise to me, perhaps I wasn't picking up on all the nuances of his character or something. I had to do some online reading to fully understand why he did it.

I'm not really sure what it was about the book, but I just liked it. Perhaps it was brutal honesty of Raskolnikov's character, or maybe it was something completely different. Either way, I enjoyed it. Just thought I'd say that.

Ahhh, poor IT management is my gain

I'm sitting in a hotel (hotel to remain unnamed) room in Rexburg (I'm here for a wedding) and the hotel is supposed to have wireless internet. The connection was working for about 10 minutes and then crapped out. So I started doing some troubleshooting. Luckily the access points are mounted outside on the balcony completely accessible. So the first step was to try connecting to another of the access points they have, no luck. So I disconnected one of them and plugged in my own ethernet cord, that worked beautifully, so the problem was with the access point itself. So I came back inside and re-associated with the access point. Then I pinged the broadcast to see what IP address would respond, just one. Good, that must be the access point. So I do a port scan on it and discover it indeed has port 80 open (web page access).

I point my browser at the IP address and I get the expected login prompt. I quickly try a few default passwords (usually Linksys devices are setup with no username and the default password is 'admin') this, and a couple of variations didn't work. However, on like my fifth try I got in. Username: 'admin' Password: 'admin'. [shakes head slowly]. If I were a jerk I could simply go around and reprogram each of their access points and cause all sorts of mayhem. But since my goal was to get internet access I moved ahead with that in mind.

Note: First of all, allowing admin logins over the wireless connection is a very stupid idea. Second, leaving the default name and password on access point which allows wireless admin logins is a very bad idea.

But in this case, it worked quite nicely. I then did a wireless scan to find the least cluttered channel (guessing that the connection issues were due to channel congestion). I then switched the access point to run on channel 8, and low and behold everything is working marvelously.

So the moral of the story is: Don't leave admin accounts to your wireless access points using the default information especially if you allow wireless admin logins--- unless, of course, you want to allow a friendly guest hacker to fix your poorly configured network.

Maybe the country can still be saved

Finally some order and respect is returning to the treatment of the Constitution in this country. It turns out that the Supreme Court feels that a US controlled military base, like Guantanamo Bay, still has to abide by the Constitution despite the strongest wishes of Bush and his administration. Finally, the people being held here will be able to demand that our government tell them why and present evidence supporting that reason. If our government doesn't have the proper evidence, the people will be released. This is the first step in restoring our country to what it claims to be, a beacon of freedom and the rule of law. The fact that anyone believes it is OK to keep people imprisoned indefinitely without needing to explain why is disturbing. The fact that the Bush administration has been doing so for years is despicable.

This quote from the right-wing Justice Scalia is rather disturbing: Justice Antonin Scalia said the majority "warps our Constitution." [http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/12/scotus/index.html]

I wouldn't consider applying the Constitution in the way it was meant to be applied a "warping", more like saying that anyone the government decides doesn't get to benefit from the Constitution is a warping. Especially since we've also declared those same people to not be prisoners of war, and therefore the Geneva Conventions don't apply either. So the Bush Administration (through Bush's direct consent) declared that the people being held at Guantanamo Bay were neither Prisoners of War (military prisoners) nor civilian prisoners, therefore their treatment could not be defined by either the Geneva Conventions or the Constitution.

I'm glad something is finally being done about it. Hopefully Kucinich's articles of impeachment against Bush will make some progress and we can show the rest of the world that we actually don't like having lying, war-mongering tyrants leading our country.

Too Smart to be a Cop?

According to the NY Times a man attempting to join the New London, CT police force was denied employment because he scored too high on the intelligence test. A judge decided this wasn't discrimination because they deny anyone scoring that high a job. I'm not really clear on how that makes sense, in my opinion that's kind of like saying "well they deny everyone who's black a job, so it's not discrimination." Sadly police officers tend to get a reputation for being not-incredibly-smart bullies; this doesn't help that. Now, I understand that there is very likely a minimum allowed score for the test as well. Someone does need to be smart enough to perform the job properly; it just seems kind of stupid to say that someone is too smart to be a police officer.

I have a theory as to why people don't like police very much. When is the only time most people ever interact with a police officer? When they get pulled over. So the majority of people's experiences with officers is when they are getting in trouble. That's not going to produce good feelings. I think Provo could help improve the relationship between the police officers and the public by creating a couple of foot patrols. Have a pair of officers that walk up and down Center Street (where there seems to always be at least 2 patrol cars). They can speak to people and be friendly, improving the public opinion of the officers. Have one or two officers that walk the neighborhoods around campus saying, "Hi" to students walking to/from class. Let people know that the police are good, friendly people (I hope they actually are).

Just some random thoughts.

My Birthday

My mom has incredible luck in finding unavailable Wii items. I got my Wii last Christmas because she happened to be in Wal-Mart walking by the electronics department and saw them bring their entire shipment of 3 out to the cabinet. She was able to get this Wii Fit because she was in the electronics department at Wal-Mart planning to buy something else, but asked if they had any just in case. The person went in back and brought one back from their entire shipment of 2.

Thanks Mom!

[Addendum]
Oh, after I set it all up, when I played again after everyone left it wished me a Happy Birthday, and the little dancing Wii Balancing Board cartoon thingy was wearing a party hat. It's the little things like that that Nintendo does right that make their stuff awesome.

Friends

I just wanted to take a minute and say that I have awesome friends. Some of them might not be the most on-top-of things so far as planning is concerned, but they are genuine people who have a lot of heart. I appreciate everything they do for me.

The Second Interview: Are you legit?

So earlier this week (Wednesday) I had my second interview with the company previously mentioned. Not that I mean to criticize, but they probably should have planned ahead as to what they wanted to ask me questions about. It mostly ended up being a general information gathering type session. The developer I spoke with mostly just asked me if I knew things like, have I used X before, how much work have done in X, how familiar am I with X, do I feel confident programming in X, why do you want to work with us, what do you plan to do when you graduate, what do you want this job to do for you and your future plans... those kinds of things. I was never actually asked to exhibit any of my programming skills or system design skills. Towards the end of the interview I actually offered to show him some of my work, which he let me do. He seemed pretty excited with what I'm able to do in my various non-pay capacities.

On Thursday morning the HR guy called me to see if I wanted the position. So I accepted and headed into the office to sign all sorts of papers about Non-Disclosure Agreements, company policies, At-Will employment, etc. Then we were waiting for one of the developers to come in so he could setup an account for me, during which waiting time I was sent to play the Wii, which I did. I played about 10 bouts of boxing without losing, taking a guest account from 0 to ~800 skill level. I also played some tennis, then I was starting to get tired so I turned it off and went to chat some. The developer showed up and got me an account setup. Due to the startup nature of the company, I'll be using my own laptop to work on, not a big deal, but a little silly. So I spent a few hours that evening installing software and setting up the SVN connections on my laptop. Not a bad way to spend the day getting paid at a pretty decent rate.

So, assuming this position continues as anticipated, I will have gratefully solved my financial problems which would have come to a head next March. And I can start feeling like I can buy groceries again without worrying if I really really want something or if I can live off of a cheaper cheaper set of food products.

Things I've noticed that involve the church

1:
So lots of people have been following the trouble in Texas involving the polygamist sect and all. What I found interesting was that at the beginning the news reports all referred to the people involved as the FLDS church. Lately, however, they're always referred to as the "polygamist sect". I thought that was interesting and would not be surprised at all if the LDS church PR department requested that the term FLDS not be used because the LDS church doesn't like the suggestion that there is an active association there.

2:
The church has a rule that your not supposed to have red punch in the meeting halls to prevent stains on the carpet/chairs/etc. I've thought about this as I was watching an X-Files about a cult. I think part of that rule might be to avoid the appearance of having people "drink the Kool-Aid" which is often associated with the suicide ritual of cults. Where the participants drink the red Kool-Aid which has been poisoned. It would certainly not look good to have visitors come to an activity where people are all standing around drinking red punch. Just a thought on the subject.

Why I will not be voting for McCain

This is one reason why I will not be voting for McCain:

[N]either the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001. [...]

We do not know what lies ahead in our nation’s fight against radical Islamic extremists, but John McCain will do everything he can to protect Americans from such threats, including asking the telecoms for appropriate assistance to collect intelligence against foreign threats to the United States as authorized by Article II of the Constitution.

--- McCain adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin, speaking for the campaign

Supporting the Bush Administration's policy of running illegal warrant-less wiretaps on US citizens is stupid, coming straight out and saying you'll do the same thing is unacceptable. You will receive no vote from me if your plan is to continue dismantling the Constitution in the same way the Bush Administration has for the last 8 years.

Moving On: Fighting the (Housing) Man

Phew, I haven't got that riled up in a while now. That, my friends, is why it is impolite to discuss politics at the dinner table.

Let's find something less controversial to write about.

Being the end of the month I knew I would be seeing the utility bill from management soon. I had allotted $50 in my budget to cover any electrical and gas expenses for May. I was hoping that this $50 would have plenty of extra room since May was fairly warm and we only needed the heat on for about 7-12 days.

When I saw the bill located on the door reading $115 I was a little enraged. That was more than double what we'd paid any previous month. It was ridiculous. So on Friday we went to the management office to tell them we would not be paying that amount, and asking to see the bills from the utility companies. Turns out their workers are just incompetent and their management unfamiliar with legal contracts.

The worker dividing up the bill did it incorrectly, so when it read $115 it should have said $76. The second part was that one of the managers decided that since two of the people with contracts weren't actually living here that they'd just charge the two of us for all the utilities. Now, from their perspective I can follow that thought process. But, we must also consider two other points of view:

1. In order to heat a house there is a baseline amount of gas that will be used regardless of how many people are actually living there, and since we only kept the heat at 65 F it wasn't like we were being excessive. So doubling our utilities bills is not fair to us simply because the other contract holders don't live in the unit.

2. The contract holders signed a contract stating that they would pay for utilities. They still hold the contracts (despite not living in the unit due to being unable to sell them) ergo they are still legally obligated to help pay for utilities.

To top it off, if they were suddenly to decide to change the distribution of the utility bill they should have had the courtesy of discussing it with us first.

Having taken care of the matter the $115 bill has returned to a more anticipated bill of $38.

Why do you have to fight with people just to get things done the way they're supposed to be in the first place? Why do the people that are too nice or perhaps not as savvy about things like this have to get screwed out of their money? We're the best tenants this company has ever had and they recognize us as such. We take care of the property, make it a million times better than it was when we moved in; just treat us with respect.