no charges have been filed.
So some dumb fucker left his loaded gun sitting around and he has not faced any charges for the death that resulted from it. I would be shocked if he ever did, either.
And should the owner have really, really, really, known better? Hell yes. The owner of the gun is a sheriff's deputy. Somehow, this is supposed to make us feel better, I suppose?
The gun involved was Fanning's personal weapon, not his service pistol, she said.
Yes, I'm pissed off about this. I would have submitted it to the front page but since this is drudgedot and it makes the NRA look stupid it would never be accepted there. Hell, not that long ago when there was another case of a shithead leaving his gun out in the reach of a young child the kid shot themselves with it and this site called it "the wii suicide" (as if a toddler could harbor thoughts of suicide).
And a hearty Rot In Hell for Maggie.
Honestly, fuck all you fawning, simpering retards who've never set foot in Blighty. Except for a 5 minute period in 1982, a minimum of half the country has always hated her guts, and for good reason. So unbunch your panties already.
Oh, and, Trifecta is in play (only reason I posted this damn thing.)
The title has nothing to do with what I'll talk about - I just heard Perfect Strangers on the radio this morning and it got stuck in my head.
While it was playing I was thinking about something that happened a couple weeks ago when I was in Thailand.
I've been to Thailand quite a few times. My first visit was in the late 80's as a sailor and then I've been at least once a year or more in the last 4 - 5 years. I've been enough times that it's become quite routine. I know my way around the airport. I have a rough idea of what the markets will be like in whatever city I visit, etc. This time I flew into Bangkok and then had a 2.5 or 3 hour drive to where I was staying.
During the drive I was fighting to stay awake - but what kept jumping out at me over and over was, "Wow - there are so many pickup trucks here!"
I'm willing to bet that the number of pickup trucks hasn't recently surged in Thailand. My guess is that the reason I noticed it so much this time is that it was my fist visit after living in Hungary for a while. Going from the US to Thailand, the number of trucks I see on the road would not be noticeable. But compared to here - it was on my mind for the whole visit. And I realized something for the first time. I love stuff like that. I think it may be the biggest reason I love to travel. I quickly become used to the environment that I'm in and start to filter stuff out. I don't consciously notice a lot of things around me after a while. I don't know what the proper term is for this - I'm sure some of you do. It's that whole idea that fish are unaware of water. I use to have a snippet of a poem I kept taped to my desk,
" Oh, where is the sea? " the fishes cried,
As they swam the crystal clearness through;
" We've heard from of old of the ocean's tide,
And we long to look on the water's blue. "
I long for experiences that knock me out of this numbness to my surroundings. I love seeing cool and exceptional things too - but even moreso I think - I love to just get an awareness of what I take for granted. I'm the same way with people. I love to have friends and conversations that force me to look at things differently. I don't like for everything to feel obvious. There is of course a limit. I have a co-worker who thinks very differently from me. Enough so that dealing with him can be a real chore. The chasm is too much to cross. He's another American - which is kind of funny. Most of my friends and the people I hang out with here are not. Same idea - I like what my Hungarian, Romanian, Albanian, and so on, friends bring to the mix.
At some point I expect I'll end up living in the US again. Honestly I'm not too crazy about the idea. I've really taken to Europe, and this part of it in particular. If I had my druthers I'd retire to Slovenia. Maybe somewhere not far from the farm where my great grandmother was born. But at some point my kids will head home to go to university and I'll head back. Maybe it will be more interesting as I'll have been gone long enough to make America new.
My last visit back I'd only been here a little over a year. So it wasn't such a big deal going back. It was a little annoying but not so much more than it was before I left. The in your face over indulgence that permeates so much of everything in the USA gets to me sometimes. But it's not like it wasn't that way before I left. It's just that much more obvious now that I've had a bit of a break from it. The insulation from the rest of the world is also difficult - but again - I was already aware of that before I moved. It's just now I get to be around more people who live lives that are connected and aware of others outside their own single context. (And that part isn't a critique of the USA alone. I've met Hungarians who are largely the same in that regard. They are not really aware of a whole lot outside Hungary and even moreso outside Europe. And they aren't interested.)
So I'm a bit of a junkie for these new experiences/view points. Probably part of why I enjoy the books I do as well.
Well - nothing deep and I'm sure nothing new. Just a glimpse in my head from my morning commute. The one Google Now told me about before I left my house. That deserves its own JE.
The 225-page report presented on Tuesday includes eight recommendations, most notably a fuller articulation of the NRAâ(TM)s proposal following the Newtown shooting to place armed security in every school in the country.
The report outlines a model training program for school resource officers and school personnel that, along with proposed changes to various state laws, would enable designated school personnel to carry firearms after having undergone training.
Yet of course it does not offer a plan to pay for any of this. They also don't seem to have a grasp on the actual numbers (of guards and guns) required to fulfill this plan. Consider a few things:
In other words, the NRA plan is epically short-sighted (and that is being kind). They want to solve the violence problem by bringing in more lethal force. They seem to live in a world very different from the country I reside in. They apparently are so afraid of violence that they feel firing teachers to hire security guards is somehow a good move.
I bought by Galaxy S3 from T-Mobile, in the US last year. So it is the SGH-T999 model. I've been very happy with it. I've stuck to running it as stock for a couple reasons. The biggest is that I just didn't want to hassle with learning how to change the underlying software. Secondly, because I wanted to keep everything cool in terms of the warranty and what not. I even jumped through all their hoops to get my unlock code from them.
But I ran into an issue the other week that finally used up all my good will towards t-mobile. I went to use the phone as a hot spot and couldn't. It wanted me to pay for their tethering plan - which doesn't exist where I live.
I didn't have time right then to do anything but this week-end I did a little reading and today I installed Cyanagenmod on it. So far everything seems to be going very well. And I actually have control over the device that I paid (in my mind anyway) a pretty hefty sum to own. None of the steps were all that difficult and my biggest holdup was it would not flash the new rom until the battery was over 85% charged - which I thought was odd, but it worked out.
I'm getting all my stuff back to the way I like it and enjoying being on a newer version of Android than the one that Samsung and T-mobile officially supply for this phone right now. Which is idiotic.
So - moving forward I don't plan to purchase phones from t-mobile any more. I'll probably stick with Nexus phones from Google and avoid all this headache. I wont get another new phone for a while. I bought a new, high end phone so that it would last a while. But when I do I wont make the mistake of getting stuck depending on mobile phone companies.
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Certainly, their point of my comment in a discussion in my own journal entry being overrated must be accurate. And the fact that all four of these happened in a very short time is nothing but a coincidence. Nothing to see here...
LITERALLY. ACTUALLY. The news that these words are just being used indiscriminately as intensifiers has pushed Grandma to bludgeon herself to death with a literal thesaurus. Or even a metaphorical thesaurus.
Of course she is certainly not the first conservative nutjob to literally not give a shit about the English language when it gets in the way of her metaphorical quest to destroy the Obama white house.
Calligra Author was announced last summer. Things are still early and often there isn't much to see. (Clicking on the Author Handbook in the Author Help menu takes you to that page.) So things are still rather rough, but I bring it up because when I ran an update today Author got installed on my machine. I was excited to see that and ran it but there's not much to see yet. It's built on Calligra Words and still pretty much looks just like it. When you start Author you are asked to choose a template and none of those offered really make sense for Author, they are just brought over from Words. But I'm optimistic for the future.
I'd never noticed before but in the announcement for the project they said it would be compatible with Plume Creator. I checked to see if Plume was available in the Fedora repos but it's not unfortunately. It looks pretty interesting. They have debs, source and a windows installer at Sourceforge. Not sure if I'm interested enough to install it from source. Maybe later if they get it to 1.0 or something. Of course hopefully by then it'll get pulled into the repos.
So Author really isn't amazing or anything yet but it's good to see they are working on it and I'll be watching it.
It's freaking hot in Thailand. The night I left Budapest the outside temperature was 8 and when we landed in Bangkok it was 33. And humid.
But I can't complain, even though I just did. And it doesn't matter that much as all day I'm in an air conditioned conference room. I always enjoy being in Thailand, the Thai people could be the friendliest on the planet.
Got to go to "Monkey Island" and feed some monkeys. That was kind of cool. I've never seen monkeys in the wild before. Got a lot of work done with my co-workers from all over the world. They are good folks so I love when we get back together. Tomorrow I fly home (I've been here a week) and I'm looking forward to it. I missed the big Budapest spring snow storm but that should be melted and I can get to fixing up my yard.
I'll try to post some pictures later.
If every day goes like this, how do we survive?
We're working late on the night shift to get peace of mind.
Eric Prydz, "Every Day"
I can relate to this one all too well, especially of late...
What is algebra, exactly? Is it one of those three-cornered things? -- J.M. Barrie