Stupid People want to Continue to be Stupid

KSL is reporting a blurb entitled: Not everyone happy about no texting-while-driving bill.

Some say they don't want all their driving time to be a waste. "You know, the text can wait. But it's just like, for me, pulling over would be just ridiculous," one man said.

It rather boggles my mind that it is even necessary to pass laws prevent typing up text messages while driving. Making phone calls while driving is one thing, if you let the call take precedence over the driving you will probably end up in an accident, however you at least still have your eyes available to watch the road, and hand(s) to do stuff. But texting? You are necessarily removing your eyes from the road and distracting your brain and fine motor skills to type out a stupid message, and using one or both your hands to do it! Getting caught doing this should already cause you to get your license suspended for reckless driving.

And apparently there are people who believe their text message is so important that it absolutely cannot wait until they reach their destination. Who do these people think they are exactly?

Several months ago some friends and I were driving up to Salt Lake City. We were in the car pool lane and came up along a car that was swerving back and forth about half a car's width into the lanes on either side of it. We saw the girl driving it looking down at a cell phone held in her lap, using both hands to mess with it. We laid on the horn which startled her into looking up and correcting her steering into a single lane. Once she noticed we weren't a cop she promptly looked back down and began swerving again. [sigh] Stupid people. We should've called UHP, but didn't have the number. So frakkin' dangerous. GET OFF THE ROAD!

These days, unions often suck.

First, don't get me wrong, unions had a very important place in forcing employers to provide safe and healthy work environments to employees. They were a critical part of the Industrial Revolution era of things. However, it sure seems like they've lived long past their original usefulness. It seems to me that oftentimes now unions are more an agent of stagnation and rot than good change. My impetus for writing this short post today comes from this article (which will be changing as the news conference in currently in progress): Obama urges special rewards for best teachers. The teachers' union has long opposed merit pay/bonuses for teachers. Why? Just WHY? Oh, you mean if we reward teachers for being good at teaching then the bad teachers might feel inferior somehow? Good! Having been through 12 years of public education I would be more than happy to put pressure on the crappy teachers to encourage them to either improve or find a new job. But, from my discussions with actual teachers, it seems that the teachers' union mainly exists to ensure that firing any teacher is difficult, and that no teacher gets rewarded in any substantial way for being better than others.

I've had an interest in possibly teaching at a high school level, however it is the nonsense included in things like the teachers' union that makes me think twice. I'd prefer to work in a field which rewards me for being good at what I do.

Sometimes, I Hate Americans

Nintendo Slapped With Strap Lawsuit Once Again

It is completely outside my realm of comprehension how anyone can believe it is Nintendo's responsibility that morons LET GO of their Wii controller and break something. Honestly, can I sue a baseball bat manufacturer because I swung the bat really hard, let go, and it hit my window? It was nice of Nintendo to include wrist straps on the controllers and then to voluntarily make the wrist straps stronger. If you're letting go of the controller and then stressing the wrist strap enough to make it break then I have news for you and your playing skills: You're doing it wrong!

Denial of Service Attack

The interesting things happening with the Board just keep on growing. For anyone trying to use the Board today (Monday) around 5:30 you may have seen the Board start serving up "Technical Difficulties" pages for a bit, and then go down. The part where it went down completely was me, trying to keep the server alive while I did troubleshooting.

The immediate problem was an incredible number of apache processes chewing up all the database connections. The cause of the issue was a certain IP address requesting the main page about 3 times a second for an hour or so. The server didn't really like that too much. Once I discovered this I blocked the IP address and brought the server back up. After another 15 minutes of getting HTTP 403 errors sent back to them the IP address stopped requesting pages. Now, whether intentional or not the result of this process is known as a Denial of Service (DOS) attack. So named because, as you may have discovered, when it's occurring the legitimate users, such as yourself, cannot access the content of the website.

I'll keep an eye on the situation and continue to slave away to make sure the Board stays alive for your viewing pleasure.

My current hypothesis on the matter is that the attackers that accessed the server last month are retaliating for me locking them out. But that's just a theory.

Just Wow

Police say teen [girl] driver hit 107 mph in a construction zone.

OSP Trooper Ryan Hockema tried to stop a red 1995 Ford Mustang he spotted going 87 mph near a construction site. According to the trooper, the vehicle then accelerated to speeds as high as 107 mph in the work zone while failing to maintain the travel lane, following other vehicles too closely and making unsafe lane changes.

The driver, Messer, allegedly told the trooper she had trouble seeing while talking on her cell phone before stopping for the officer, according to OSP.

Kimberly Messer of Springfield Oregon, you should have your license taken away for a very long time because of this. You are a hazard to everyone on the road. I hope your parents leave you in jail for a day or two before taking you home and grounding you for the rest of your life. How stupid do you have to be to drive like that and then mention anything about talking on your cell phone. She's incredibly lucky that she's 18, because Oregon has a ban on cell phone use for drivers under 18.

No, The voters are not the problem

The Charleston Gazette is running an article about early voters having their votes switch from Obama to McCain.

Two of the voters describe the problem like this:

"When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain." - Virginia Matheney

"When I pushed Obama, it jumped to McCain. When I went down to governor's office and punched [Gov. Joe] Manchin, it went to the other dude. When I went to Karen Facemyer [the incumbent Republican state senator], I pushed the Democrat, but it jumped again. The rest of them were OK, but the machine sent my votes for those top three offices from the Democrat to the Republican" - Calvin Thomas

That sounds like a pretty big problem. It sounds like the machine knew they were touching the screen to indicate a vote for Obama and after registering that information by marking the box it then changed the vote to McCain. That is not acceptable. Here was the response from the county election officials:

"[Jackson County Clerk Jeff] Waybright blamed the problem on voters."
"People make mistakes more than the machines," he [Waybright] said, "but I went in yesterday and recalibrated the machines. We are doing everything we can not to disenfranchise anybody."

No, wrong. This is not a voter problem. The software on the voting machines should absolutely prevent this from happening. I can think of two possible situation as to what the software may do to cause this behavior and either option is unacceptable in a voting machine and the software should be fixed. This is typical government type reaction to using a crappy product, rather than demand a product that is well designed they believe that training everyone to use a non-intuitive and crappily designed product is the solution.

Here's scenario 1: The boxes used to select a candidate are too close together and the software has a hard time determining which box the user actually touched. Solution. Vote for one office at a time, candidate choices are buttons that are 3 inch squares with 3 inches between them. Lots of room to do this.

Scenario 2: The software registers any touch that doesn't land in a box as a touch for the first box or last box on the screen. No, bad. Wrong. The software should be designed to ignore any click that doesn't clearly land inside a candidate box.

And, to add to that it should be really easy to allow the voter to verify their ballot. Once you made your selections you should get a Confirmation Page, like everything in the world gives you. It should say something like "For President you have selected:" and then in VERY BIG BOLD LETTERS the name of the candidate. "Is this correct?" Yes, No.

Software that randomly switches votes is absolutely unacceptable. I've been through this tirade before, so I won't go all the way into it. I will suffice it to say that the current crop of electronic voting machines could be the worst thing to happen to democracy in a long time. The ability to commit election fraud on a county and state level is incredibly simplified with insecure, poorly designed machines that provide no paper backup of what is happening.

"I Can Still Fix This"

With the world around him disintegrating and the hordes of angry, misled citizens banging on the doors and windows President Bush was heard saying to a close aid, "I am the Commander in Chief! I can fix this, I can fix all of this." Also heard was "I do not need to explain why I say things. — That's the interesting thing about being the President. — Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

He then went on to explain that he built this economy on lies, bad business practices, and poor politics, so we should just continue with those 3 pillars of strength. There is no need for fiscal responsibility or accountability "This is an anxious time, but the American people can be confident in our economic future," he said. If we all just dream of rainbows and sunshine it will come true, because "I am the Commander in Chief" and that's what I want.

Please ignore the fact that I promised the economy would be okay after doling out the "economic stimulus checks". Turns out I was simply trying to stave off disaster until _after_ I left office so we could all blame someone else. Also ignore that I said everything would be OK after shelling out money to all sorts of corporations that I have friends in and things got worse. But, please, please, please, in 3 months, forget the fact that I said this: "the U.S. government's financial rescue plan was aggressive and big enough to work"

Also, from that same source:
"Bush says anxiety feeds market frenzy but U.S. rescue plan will work." He then went on to discuss how blood drives sharks crazy. Those loony creatures, just can't get enough after they smell the first drop.

Thanks Bush. As the world crumbles around you I'm sure standing there saying "Don't Panic! We can fix it!" will make a big difference.

Also, it looks like the DOW will drop below 8000 today. Note that this is ~2500 points below where the DOW was before the $700 Billion bailout that Bush "ordered" Congress to approve was passed.

Things that Annoy me

If I'm waiting in the turn lane to cross 3 lanes of traffic then don't come up behind me and start honking. I know why I'm there. I'm not confused about being in the turning lane with my turn signal on. I'm waiting for a safe chance to turn, which I realize must be a foreign concept to you. If you'd like to cut in front of 3 lanes of vehicles traveling 45-50mph be my guest, but I'm going to sit and wait until it's safe. Jerk.

Awkward

So, I have a water bottle here at work that I take the water fountain and fill up each day. While sitting at my desk I pour the water into a plastic cup and drink it. So throughout the day I usually drink a liter of water. I've known that sometime I'm going to knock over the bottle or the cup and spill water, but I hoped it wouldn't happen and that if it did there wouldn't be much water in the one to be too big of a problem.

Unfortunately, I went to grab a pen and knocked over the half full cup of water, which was conveniently angled directly at me, at the front of my pants to be specific. So now my shorts are soaked right at the crotch and all down my left leg. It looks bad. Like really bad. So bad that if I didn't have witnesses that I had knocked over the water you probably wouldn't believe that that's the truth. [sigh]. I was hoping to leave right now too. I wanted to go home to charge my phone and grade the homework at home. But alas, now I am confined to my office until my shorts dry.

Awkward.

The Big One: WaMu Seizure

I don't remember who it was, and am too lazy to go look right now, but someone with an inside scoop was warning that within the coming weeks we'd see one of the biggest banks in the country fail. That day appears to have been today.

Washington Mutual was seized by federal regulators today. The nation's largest savings and loan operation and the largest bank failure in American history, according to the NY Times article. The assets of the company were immediately sold for $1.9 Billion to JPMorgan Chase which will absorb the $31 Billion in losses.

But don't worry, no will go hungry due to this failure, particularly not the CEO of WaMu. Alan H. Fishman who has been CEO for less than 3 weeks will still be able to receive $11.6 Million in severance, and keep his $7.5 Million signing bonus. Pssst, hey America, I think I know why your financial companies are in the toilet. You're paying people $19+ Million for 3 weeks of work. 3 weeks of work which ends with your company failing and being sold off for chicken feed. Seems like a bit of a problem to me.

Scams

From Slashdot:

I was thinking to myself "God! My EMail account must be in problem, I didn't receive any spam since the weekend", then I got this really great offer, a guy who is going to give me 20% of 5 million US dollars to help him recover a lost bank account. Well that's perfect, I'm the one who's finally gonna be rich!

------

That's nothing. I got an offer this morning of $700B, with little oversight and no accountability. All I have to do is prove that I recklessly lost hundreds of billions of investor capital.

That is the sad truth about what Bush is trying to push through Congress right now, the sadder truth is that Congress will pass it because it's an election year and a vote against this insane bill would be construed as "abandoning the people" by their opponents or some such nonsense.

Guarantee FAIL

Ever have one of those times when you try to do something really nice and it doesn't work out because of some other entity's failure?

Today I learned that a friend was feeling down, so I found a place online that works with local florists to have them deliver a little bouquet to this person's place of work. They said they had guaranteed same-day delivery for orders received before 2:00 pm. My order was placed before 2:00 pm, and I waited to hear from this person and their excitement of flowers surprising them at work. It never happened. And finally at about 6:00 (in the timezone of the person) I get a phone call from the florist saying they didn't get a chance to deliver the flowers and would I like free upgrade and have them delivered tomorrow. No, I don't want them delivered tomorrow; if I did I wouldn't have specifically placed the order with someone guaranteeing same-day delivery. So, I tried to do something really nice, but was foiled.

Don't guarantee same-day delivery if you can't make good on that guarantee. If you're a real customer pleasing business you would have called me when you realized you weren't going to make it and offered something like: "We won't be able to do it, but we did guarantee to deliver today, would you like us to contact other florists and find someone who will be able to do something similar and arrange for that delivery on your behalf?" That would have been customer service. But no, instead I get, "We didn't do it, do you want us to do it tomorrow?"

Welfare Economy

In the United States there is clearly no reason to be fiscally responsible.

If you're the government, you can spend trillions of dollars on illegal invasions of other countries, no one will stop you.

If you're a citizen you can live off of welfare checks and sit on your butt all day, because heaven forbid you be deprived of cable television, cigarettes and alcohol. If you happen to dig yourself under thousands of dollars in credit card debt the ads on the radio say that you can settle with the lending companies for pennies on the dollar.

And, if you happen to be a giant corporation or bank then the government will simply buy your company if you have money problems. Since when has it been the policy of our nation to simply nationalize companies that look like they'll go bankrupt? Fed loans AIG $85 Billion. This is a 80% stake in the mega-corporation. Does the federal government really need an 80% stake in a non-government corporation? Sure seems like if your company has over a TRILLION dollar in assets it should know how to handle its finances properly, especially a company that deals in finances (namely Insurance).

Growing up I was taught that if you mismanage your money then you eventually go bankrupt and life becomes very complicated and unpleasant while you try to get things fixed. And here I've been living like a sucker by working my butt off to stay out of debt. Little did I know that the real American way to live is to spend, spend, spend, and then cry to the government when you can't pay your bills. [Grumble, grumble...]

Sleep, please return

I haven't been sleeping well the last couple of weeks. I don't know why. But, it's been incredibly annoying. Last night, I got in bed and laid there rolling back and forth trying to get comfortable for about 1.5 hours. Then I woke up about every hour during the night. It sucked. I need a switch on my brain that I can just turn off. Instead I lie there and my mind is wandering all over the place about random stuff going on in my life. I don't feel stressed about these things, but they seem to keep my brain worried. So all this with the cold previously mentioned has made me rather zombie-like. How lame.

Lame

I have a cold, how lame.

Amen to That

The Daily Kos has a post by "trenttsd" entitled "A Palin convert". I don't know anything about this trenttsd, but I felt the same way he did as I watched Palin's speech last night. I would recommend reading his little post and then re-read her speech and see that he is exactly right. The entire speech contained very little aside from a series of accusations and attacks upon the Democratic party and its candidates.

The worst part, which sickened me when I watched her say it, was about three-quarters through:

Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he's worried that someone won't read them their rights? -- Sarah Palin Sept 3, 2008

And the most disturbing part was the wild shouts, cheers, and applause that followed that statement.

I am absolutely worried that someone won't read them their rights. I am absolutely concerned that they be allowed to speak with competent legal counsel and appear in a courtroom before a judge and jury. I am fully committed to requiring the government to produce a writ of habeas corpus detailing exactly what they are being charged with.

If we don't do these things then we have abandoned everything that makes this country different and great. We claim that we want liberty and justice for all, that explicitly means that we cannot tack on little caveats such as "except for the people we think don't deserve it".

Sarah Palin, by uttering such a ignorant statement you have proven to me that you understand nothing about what this country stands for. You understand nothing about why this country is loved by so many. And you understand nothing about leading the world to a better future.

The Olympics Falsified

At ward FHE last night we were watching the Olympics. I began mentioning some of the many things happening that cause a distortion of reality involving the Olympics. One of the girls there was incredulous of my information and as more keeps popping up daily I thought I'd take this chance to inform you, my dear readers, about the lie that is the Olympics.

1. Fake Coverage. NBC's coverage of the opening ceremony was altered so as to show the various nations in a different order than they came out. At least the version they have posted on their website is different than the official order in which the teams were to appear. From the video on the NBC website you can see the US team on the infield waiting before the NBC video shows the US team enter the stadium. There doesn't seem to be any official news coverage of this, but see the slashdot story here: http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/09/2231231

2. Fake Fireworks. Apparently the fireworks show that the world saw for the opening ceremony is not the fireworks the people in Beijing saw. The one broadcast to the world was computer generated. The official story is that the they thought it would be too dangerous to film the fireworks live using helicopters, so they faked it. See: http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Beijing-Olympics-Opening-Ceremony-Faked-Firework-Footprints-Added-For-TV/Article/200808215075291?lpos=World%2BNews_3&lid=ARTICLE_15075291_Beijing%2BOlympics%2BOpening%2BCeremony%2BFaked%253A%2BFirework%2BFootprints%2BAdded%2BFor%2BTV

3. Fake Singing. The cute, "flawless" (quote from the man in charge) little 9 year old girl singing at the opening ceremony was lip-syncing to the voice of a 7 year old girl. The 7 year old girl does not look good enough to be displayed to the world. See: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/08/12/oly.kids/index.html

4. Fake Weather. The Chinese government fired 1104 rain dispersal rockets leading up to the opening ceremony to prevent rain from disrupting the festivities. Ok, so this one is actually kind of cool. See: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/09/content_9079637.htm

Resolution

The situation with the problem roommate has been (almost) entirely resolved. I would like to make one solid comment about something I discovered about myself in this process: If you screw with my ability to relax, feel comfortable, and feel safe in my home I will become very vindictive and wish harm upon you and your property. I'm fairly confident that most people that know me would consider me to be a nice guy, laid back, fairly easy going. But if you screw with my home I will become ruthless. I absolutely will not tolerate having my home ruined.

On Sunday afternoon I was sitting in my living room reading a book. My mom called me and I was thus talking to her. As I was in the process of relaying the events that had happened thus far his wife walks in the front door holding his key. Big no-no. The fact that he gave her his key is unacceptable, and then for her to just walk in is worse. She "just wants to come and use the laundry facilities" we have. I told her that I needed to leave (to go to ward break-the-fast) and that I wasn't comfortable with her being in our house alone. After telling me to just wait a few minutes, I told her that I couldn't because I needed to leave immediately (it was already 3:56 for 4:00 break-the-fast).
Then her disgusting, belligerent attitude comes pouring out. Basically telling me that I was out of line to ask her to leave my house. (Mind you my mom is listening to the whole exchange on the phone still). I get fed up with being polite and simply tell her to get out of my house. I tell her straight out that she is not welcome in my house and never has been and that her behavior with respect to my house has been unacceptable. She starts trying to talk back to me, multiple times, each time I cut her off and tell her to, "Leave. Now. Get. Out. Of. My. House".

Finally she steps out of the door and again begins trying to tell me off, to which I simply closed and locked the door. I had told her that she is not welcome, management says she's not allowed in the house, and that if I saw her in the house again I would call the police. Of course now I was afraid that if I left she would immediately let herself back in, but she apparently wasn't that stupid.

However, the next day Papa Funk came down stairs to find her standing in the kitchen! Apparently the roommate continues to think that he will be able to just sneak her into the house when he thinks we're not home. They left when they saw him. They have since come back a number of times, each time with her just coming in even when we're there. It's absolutely incredible the disrespect they have for our home. We spoke to management who told them they needed to have the rest of their stuff removed by Monday evening.
(See, he already has a contract somewhere else and has been moving stuff out for the past 5 days, but continues to use our stuff when it's convenient for him. For example, using our dishes and leaving them dirty on the counter, or pouring the remains of his cereal onto the counter. Or using the laundry stuff, including my dryer sheets and detergent, because it's more convenient apparently. Oh, and they took my Chili Powder! My Chili Powder! Come On! It's $4 worth of spices, was it really necessary to steal it?)

So today, after Papa Funk came home from work to find the front door left wide open (while the swamp cooler was running and they were nowhere to be found, possibly for hours) we decided to finish the job ourselves. We told management that we wanted the locks changed once they were moved out. They had left a vacuum cleaner and a piece of furniture in the house still. So we moved those items outside to the side of the house and changed the locks ourselves.

We were just sick and tired of having to worry about our stuff being gone every time we left the house, or not being able to sit in our own home and read a book without her coming in and arguing with us. So it's done now. They have nothing left inside the house and the locks have been changed, we'll simply give the new keys to management and call it finished. The more vindictive part of me really wanted to simply toss the vacuum and furniture in a dumpster and say, "Well, when we got home the door was left open, so I guess someone stole them, sorry, that's why we close and lock the doors when we leave the house." But Papa Funk told me that would be too vindictive, so we didn't.

The moral of the story is, as I said:
"Don't screw with my home, (fill_in_the_blank)!"

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.

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.