I can't decide which airline I hate more - USAirways or United

The one time, the ONE time that I check a bag in almost a year, and USAirways loses it. I can't complain too much, though - they lost an entire cartload of bags, left behind when the plane left Charlotte. Some ramp tramp (baggage handler) needs to be fired for that. Hopefully I will get my bag back. However, I may have screwed myself by mistakenly throwing away my baggage receipt before I arrived home. USAirways won't reimburse me if the bag never turns up.

United, however, has screwed me AND my relatives over. First, their connecting flight to Chicago O'Hare was cancelled. So they DROVE to O'Hare. Then they sat on the ground for four hours. Only now are they on their way, and they will arrive long after midnight. My espresso is wearing off, and I will have a tough time driving home when they finally arrive.

So, I can't decide who I hate more: USAirways or United. Right now, it's USAirways, because for the last couple of trips, they won't let me check in online. "Invalid Record Locator Number," it says. Well hell, it's their stupid number, I don't make it up. I am getting tired of that.

Arrests of illegal aliens are up only 750 percent?

MSNBC is whining that arrests of illegal aliens are up 750 percent, and MSNBC is complaining that it's tearing apart families because the parents could be deported while their US-born children, who are by default US citizens, stay behind.

Two things about this story are nagging at me.

- One, why are arrests of illegal aliens only up 750 percent? Why isn't it 10,000 percent? Or more?
- Two, why are illegal aliens who are born in the US considered citizens?

Well, ten minutes of research turned up this:

In 1953, during "Operation Wetback" (a derogatory term for illegal aliens who had swum across the Rio Grande River), hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens were rounded up in a vast sweep. Several hundred thousand more illegal aliens vanished overnight, fleeing back across the border ahead of the law enforcement onslaught. And that was just a thousand law enforcement agents, not deputized citizens, doing the enforcing. Today, "activists" claim that there's no way we could round up all the illegal aliens, so we shouldn't even try. Ha. It's been done before, with far weaker organization and technology. And the best way to kill the incentive for illegal aliens to come here in the first place is to impose heavy fines and jail time on employers who hire illegal aliens. When the demand for obscenely cheap labor dries up, the incentive to come here will too. Of course, you won't see any fat-cat Republican OR Democrat Congressmen pushing that. They own the businesses, or have ties to the businesses, who are employing that cheap labor.

Bestowing citizenship on illegal alien babies who are born here is a misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which reads: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside." The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 to prevent Southern states from denying recently-freed slaves citizenship. But it's mistakenly applied today to mean that babies born in the US of illegal aliens are now citizens, despite Supreme Court decisions that clearly limit the Amendment's scope to exclude illegal aliens. This directly results in the deliberate behavior of illegals, having babies in the US simply to serve as "anchors" to help keep the family in the US, and to help bring in more family from overseas. This needs to stop. Because then the point that MSNBC is whining about would be moot. Illegal alien families would NOT be split up, but would be deported together, as a unit. All very orderly and humane.

Of course, in other countries in other times, illegal aliens were simply rounded up, slaughtered, and had their heads stuck on pikes outside the city gates. Nothing says to visitors, "behave yourself and follow the rules" like a head on a pike. Humans, at least in the Northwest quadrant of the planet, have become much more civilized than that, in the past thousand years. Unfortunately, it could be argued that such civility is demonstrably detrimental to the health of the nation and its democracy, if the flood of illegal immigrants is allowed to continue unabated.

MSNBC-style whining about immigration enforcement cannot and should not make citizens feel guilty for that enforcement. As citizens, we all have a vested interest in protecting the society and the democracy that we have collectively worked so hard to build. Illegals, by definition, do not respect that. If we don't respect it either, what will be left?

Intrusive blogging

Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary:

Main Entry: twit·ter Pronunciation: 'twi-t&r Function: verb Etymology: Middle English twiteren; akin to Old High German zwizzirOn to twitter

intransitive senses: 1 : to utter successive chirping noises; 2 a : to talk in a chattering fashion; 2 b : giggle, titter; 3 : to tremble with agitation : flutter

transitive senses: 1 : to utter in chirps or twitters; 2 : to shake rapidly back and forth

Now there's a website called Twitter.com. There, you can put people who are soon to be your EX-friends on a list. When you blog, or text or instant-message to the Twitter website, it can broadcast your thoughts to all those people on your list via text message and/or instant message and/or email. The site says that it answers the question, "What are you doing?" (because "wasssssssuuuuuuuup" is probably copyrighted by Budweiser). I think it opens up whole new realms of possibilities in the never-ending quest to annoy people. For example, you are reading this text because you came here to do so. I am not sending it to you on your cellphone, or via instant message, or to your email. If I did send it to you, you would quickly become annoyed, as I think 99 percent of other humans would. Unfortunately there's at least one percent who think that forcibly broadcasting their every thought is wonderful, and they are now cheerfully irritating each other and everyone who has the misfortune to be on their Twitter contact list.

Already, businesses are discovering that, just like MySpace and YouTube, Twitter is yet another avenue for advertising. So not only will you get intrusive emails and texts about what your friends are having for dinner, you will also get ads for the latest stock tips and free software.

I think the root word of "Twitter" is "twit, " if I'm not mistaken.

Main Entry: twit Pronunciation: 'twit Function: noun 1 : an act of twitting : taunt. 2 : a silly, annoying person : fool.

The mating dance, IT-style

I sit on the edge of a bullpen area, facing toward the bullpen. The walls are low, so I can see across the entire work area from my seat. Next to me is a large square of desk surfaces, where perhaps 10 people work. They are all male Information Technology workers who are anywhere from 20-something to 50-something years old. It's usually a very low-key buzz of activity, or at least it was, until they moved a female into their midst. There were already a couple of older females on the other side of the bullpen area, but they are, shall we say, not of interest to the younger males. This new female is in her late 20s or early 30s, tall, dyed-blonde with the roots showing, shapely, and bubbly in that sorority-girl kind of way. It's very amusing to watch the social dynamics change in that bullpen area, now that she is there. The normally quiet, industrious males are now going out of their way to engage her in conversation and to make her laugh, which is easy to do. Although she is the center of attention, she is in as much danger as a springbok in the midst of a tribe of arboreal sloths, in that even if they could catch her, they probably would not know what to do next. Still, it is interesting to watch the verbal interaction. I would be curious to review their group's productivity metrics over time to see if the female's presence has made any impact, positive or negative, on their collective work output.

Why you should watch "Firefly"

You may have missed "Firefly" when it came out on Fox Network television in 2002. Certainly a lot of people missed it. Fox did their best to kill the series by showing the episodes out of order, and then cancelling it after 14 episodes. But it's certainly one of the best television shows of the decade.

What is "Firefly"? It's a story of nine people in the future who live on a tramp space freighter that looks like a firefly, hence the name. They eke out a marginal living on the edge of civilization in a faraway solar system, roughly the equivalent of the Old West after the American Civil War, 500 years in the future. Society is a mishmash of American and Chinese influences. Some of the crew of the ship are veterans of the Independents' (the outer planets of the solar system) doomed rebellion against the Alliance (the core planets of the solar system), and this makes for some good background for their characters. Every character has a past, and a distinct personality, and each person reacts differently to whatever happens to them as a crew.

The show is unique for several reasons:

• There's excellent character development. Everyone has a history and a reason for what they do. Part of the fun is figuring out why.


• Their ship is a flying junk heap. Most space shows have a bright, shiny ship, which is very clean and sterile and well-lit. This one isn't. Mal (the captain) bought it in a salvage yard, and it's held together with bubble-gum, baling wire and love by the ship's farmgirl mechanic, Kaylee.


• The music is quite different. It's very western-style, fiddle-type music, which suits its frontier-style storyline, and it's in sharp contrast to the symphonic antiseptic atmosphere that we're used to seeing and hearing in space-oriented television and movies. And there's not much music. Much of the action has no background music, which is refreshing.


• The dialogue is very witty, even while sprinkled with Chinese cursing and country-style language like "ain't."


• There is no sound in space. Many space-oriented TV shows have sound in vacuum. This show is realistic, in that it doesn't. Explosions are pretty, but silent.


• The camera work is rough and ready. Computer-animated sequences of ships are filmed as if by a hand-held camera, out-of-focus sometimes, and jiggly. It gives a wonderful "you are there" quality to the action.

I highly recommend that you watch it. You can get the 4-DVD set at Target for about $20. You can also download individual episodes from Amazon to your PC or your Tivo for $1.99 each here, which is a great way to sample the series without committing to a boxed DVD set. My favorite episodes are "Our Mrs. Reynolds" and "Out of Gas."

If you like the show, then watch the series, THEN watch "Serenity," which is the movie they made in 2005 based on the series. Serenity is the name of the Firefly-class ship that they travel in. The movie answers many of the questions that the series didn't get a chance to answer. Plus it's a rollicking good time. Love, thievery, fights, witty banter, sex, space battles, and cannibalism. All the qualities of a cinematic classic.

Watch "Firefly." I bet you'll like it.

Finally made it to the GWN

I finally made it to the Great White North. I had to run home and change out of my three-day-old clothes, and then go back to work, arriving after everyone had already left for the day. Good - that lets me get more stuff done. I should still be able to get 40 hours in for the week.

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I'd like to say "thanks" to my regular readers, and also the irregular ones, and even the downright odd ones. I'm flattered that you read this at all. Thank you. I will put more pictures up next week when my niece and nephew are visiting.

Stuck in Philadelphia

I am stranded in Philadelphia because:

• a month ago, all nonstop flights to the Great White North were sold out, booked by Canadians going home from the jungle.
• All the good connecting flights were sold out.
• So I bought a connection through Philadelphia. Which, by definition, is not a good connecting city.
• And which had a big snowstorm this past weekend.
• Which stranded thousands of passengers in Philadelphia.
• Which caused a big traffic jam at the Philadelphia airport Sunday night as they tried to clear out the backlog.
• Which meant that my flight was delayed into Philadelphia by 90 minutes, causing me to miss my connection to the Great White North.
• And there are no more flights available until Tuesday.
• Because there are still more Canadians trying to get home from Philly, and they've taken all the seats.
• So here I sit in Philly.

For want of a nail, the war was lost. At least I will get an authentic Philly cheesesteak sandwich out of it.

A watershed event

We didn't want water in our shed, so we worked on it some more this weekend. We:

• Caulked it inside and out, top and bottom, to fill in all the corrugated bends and voids
• Shimmed it on the west side so it wouldn't have a gap at the bottom between the wall and the foundation
• Painted the roof white with oil-based paint, which does NOT come off your skin without a lot of work, or suitably poisonous solvents
• Moved heavy bins of leftover gravel around to the other, hidden side of the shed
• Built plastic shelves inside the shed
• Put a bunch of yard implements in the shed
• Padlocked it with a leftover padlock from our moving truck, back in 2005

We also bought more 20-inch 70-pound concrete paver stones, and built a nice patio off the back lanai. Now we have our barbecue grill there, a table and chairs, and a couple of sore backs. No pix, unfortunately - I ran out of time to download the camera. Next week, when I'm on vacation.

You can't always get what you want

And you usually won't want what you got. At least, I was reminded of that by a friend who may be getting an opportunity to do something they've wanted to do, and now they aren't sure they want to do it. I think that's interesting. I'm the same way. I told my darling wife, "Honey, I want to hang my machineguns on the wall." And she said, "Of course, dear." And that took away my need to do it. Very skilled in her feminine wiles, she is. Tell a man he can't do something, and he'll find a way to do it. Tell him he can, and he'll decide it's not important. Of course, I may do it anyway, but I'll need to use some toggle bolts - those things are heavy.

Anyway. You won't always want what you got. It's an annoying feature of the human psyche. Makes it interesting, though, watching other people want what they can't have, and reject what they do have. I know my friend will do what's best for her. That's all anyone can do.

A mighty fortress is our shed

We finally, Finally, FINALLY finished the #!&#ing garden shed. By "finished," I mean that we put all the pieces that came with it, together into a structure that superficially resembles the picture on the 300-pound box it came in. However, we still have to caulk all the gaps left where the corrugated metal panels of walls and roof fit together. And we still have to build shelves of 2x4 and plywood inside the shed, to hold all the mountains of stuff that we have. And we need to paint the roof white to reflect the sun. And we need to cut a small hole in the wall near the peak of the roof, and cover it with mesh, to let the hot air out, lest the lawnmower spontaneously explode in the summer heat.

Nevertheless, the aforementioned garden shed is finished. I am sorely relieved. Sore, as in it took six hours Saturday and three hours Sunday to put the metal pieces together. They're not kidding; it takes two patient people working diligently to cobble the dang thing together. But it's finally done, and it looks right purty, too. Pictures next week. I was too busy this week to download them from the camera.

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We also bought a nice set of bamboo living room furniture from a nice couple down the street who are moving in with their son to be able to pay their medical bills. And, I bought a brand-new lawnmower off of them for my rental property, used just three times. The engine on it is the same engine as my other mower has, so I now have parts for both. Very handy.

Just the facts, ma'am

But of course the Canadian Broadcasting Company doesn't bother to mention certain facts of the case when they report on this story below.

The facts:

• Iranian couple, Majid and Masomeh (they won't give their last name) leave Iran and seek political asylum in Canada in 1995. They settle in Toronto. They have a baby, Kevin, in 1997. Kevin, being born in Canada, is a Canadian citizen. (Remember, bestowing citizenship based on where you are born is stupid. Watch what problems it causes, below.)
• Canada denies their asylum claim and deports them back to Tehran in 2005, where the father claims he is tortured by Iranian authorities. (Canadian media doesn't mention why their asylum application was denied. Nevertheless, remember that Canada deported them.)
• They "obtain" Greek passports from a people-smuggler.
• They leave Iran and travel to Guyana by way of Turkey.
• They board a chartered flight from Georgetown, Guyana, to Toronto, in January 2007.
• A woman has a heart attack on their flight, and dies. The flight is diverted to Puerto Rico, which is United States territory.
• All passengers are required to disembark, which is standard procedure when a plane makes an unscheduled stop in American territory.
• A passport check reveals that the Iranian couple's Greek passports are stolen. (The CBC fails to mention that, although the Toronto Globe and Mail did.)
• The couple is detained by US authorities because of the stolen passports. (The CBC fails to mention that. Instead, they say it's because Greek passports in the US require a visa while Canada doesn't. Because they were going to Canada, they didn't have a visa.)
• The couple is sent, with their Canadian son Kevin, to the T. Don Hutto Family Detention Center in Taylor, Texas.
• The center is a former prison, which was re-opened as a special 512-bed holding area in May 2006 for illegal alien families. It is one of two detention centers that are specifically designed to keep families of illegal aliens together, instead of splitting them up by holding the parents in detention and putting the children in foster care, or by letting the family go with a "notice to appear in court" later, which they almost never do. Instead, the center enforces US immigration law by preventing the family from simply disappearing into the United States. Detainees receive civilian clothing, private rooms, schooling, food, medical care, access to a library, play areas and a gym; and are free to move about within the air-conditioned facility because the internal doors are not locked. (These facts aren't reported by the Canadian media.)
• The Iranian parents are now attempting to apply once again for Canadian asylum. Unfortunately, Canadian immigration law only allows you to apply ONCE for asylum. If you get rejected, you're not allowed to apply again.
• Meanwhile, the CBC is trumpeting the fact that a "Canadian citizen" (nine-year-old Kevin) is being held in American detention, and isn't it horrible. At best, he could be re-admitted to Canada, but his parents probably will not.
• Meanwhile, they will have a hearing to obtain US asylum, since they are being held in the US. (This fact isn't reported by the Canadian media.)

In a tear-jerker phone interview with nine-year-old Kevin yesterday, the CBC chose to focus on the allegedly horrible conditions in the Hutto Family Detention Center, and how bad the food is, and how the education isn't any good, blah blah blah. Such a horrible place, they said, quoting various liberal groups who complain that it's still a prison. But don't forget the key facts: The Iranian parents were deported by Canada the first time. The Greek passports under which they were traveling back to Canada were in fact stolen. Although they arrived in the US involuntarily, now they are being held because their passports were stolen. They don't want to go back to Iran, but Canada won't allow them to re-apply for asylum.

Even though the CBC says nasty things about the America family detention center, the really sad fact is the Catch-22 that the Iranian couple is in. The CBC needs to get a grip. These poor folks are lucky to have a place to be while they get this Canadian mess straightened out. It's my tax dollars that are paying to house them and their Canadian child, to feed them and clothe them and educate them, to keep them comfortable and safe.

A simple "thank you" would suffice.

Watching music videos with no sound

It's interesting to listen to your own music, while watching music videos on TV. You get to focus just on the cinematography (and I use that term loosely) of the music video, and ignore the music, which usually sucks anyway. For example, in "What Goes Around" by Justin Timberlake, we see what happens to women (especially Scarlett Johannsen) who date Justin Timberlake (they die in a fiery car crash). And then someone has done a remake of Tears for Fears' "Mad World" (a classic in its own right), aiming the camera down the side of an office building while mimes form moving shapes and images on the sidewalk below. Very inventive.

Crazy busy

This is two tons of #89 gravel, destined for the foundation of our garden-shed-to-be.


It took innumerable trips with our garden wheelbarrow...


... to shovel it into the wooden foundation frame. Of course, yours truly filled up the frame to the rim, without taking into account that we needed to leave it two inches BELOW the rim to make room for the two-inch-thick patio pavers to be laid on top, inside the edges of the frame. (The pavers are stacked on the other side of the foundation, here. 70 pounds apiece.) Sigh. So my darling wife had to rake out two inches of the gravel. After we had laid the pavers down and then discovered my error and pulled them back up again.

My back hurts.


Sunday was beautiful... hardly anyone on the beach.


Distant boat.


Our favorite dead tree. Unfortunately it's also the favorite of gay guys who hang around, waiting for a hook-up. Yecch. One came out of the bushes and marched down the beach away from us. I found myself deducing that he must have "pitched" that morning, because had he played "catch" instead, he would have had more difficulty walking. Then I forced myself to think of something less gross, like eye surgery.

A gull in the surf. I like the boiling waves behind him.


This is our century plant (Agave americana) that we found cast off on the side of the road, freshly uprooted by another homeowner on a landscaping crusade. These variegated types are unusual and expensive... for us, free was the right price. They grow about 12 to 16 feet across, they usually last about 25 years, they bloom with a 25-foot flower spike, then they die. Whoever named them didn't bother to actually watch how long they live.


Century plants have "nasty sharp pointed teeth," to quote "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." These drew blood from me when we moved it and planted it.


This is a close-up of our fishtail palm. He was not happy next to the driveway, being baked all day in the sun AND being hit from below with reflected sunlight all the driveway. So we dug him up and moved him to the other side of the yard. Hopefully he'll like it better over there. We plopped a Chinese fan plant into the hole where he had been. The Chinese fan looks much better there. It also has nasty sharp pointed teeth. I bled on that one as well. I am not liking plants very much, lately.

It was a foggy day Friday, so it was a good day for the garage sale. It stayed cool most of the morning, but the bugs were out and biting. I was eaten alive.

Our garage sale had very good attendance on Friday (200 people, in huge caravans, but not many buyers), and lousy attendance Saturday. We set up six big tables on the driveway Thursday (really, 2x8-foot sheets of plywood on sawhorses and upside-down buckets and garbage cans) and then covered them with big sheets of plastic clipped down for the night. Our signs said 8 AM - 2 PM, but people showed up at 7 AM. We went out and finished setting up, and by 9 AM we had had 100 people come through. We closed up at two on Friday, and we'd had 250 people come through, and sold $230 of stuff. Saturday was dismal - only about 50 people, and $30. The darling wife was not happy with me, but I insisted that we box up everything that didn't sell, and go donate it, since it was already out of the garage. We packed the car with 10 boxes of stuff and ran it right over there, and oh, what a relief it was to get rid of it. Now we have about one-third of the garage empty. Yay!

One very nice lady, who told us all about her daughters, bought my old Lexmark multi-function printer for $20. She was buying it for her youngest daughter's not-quite-new laptop. She wanted the printer because it had all the software and cables with it. I didn't tell her that the RS-232 cable might not fit her daughter's laptop, which is probably too new to have an RS-232 port. Most laptops are all USB now. But $20, what the heck. Her programmer husband will know what kind of adapter cable to get for a USB. I tried, but couldn't find one that would work, which is why I bought a newer Lexmark printer. The new one also has a fax in it, anyway.

Another guy bought my book, "Never Let Me Go," written by Kazuo Ishiguro, who also wrote "The Remains of the Day" (horrible movie, even Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson couldn't save it). The guy asked, "This isn't the same author as who wrote "The English Patient," is it? Because THAT book was SO depressing, I hated it!" I shrugged and said I didn't know. I didn't have the heart to tell him that this book was even worse. It's the one I read last year that made me so angry, where surplus British kids in the future are parted out, with the government summoning them from their workaday lives to harvest their organs in state hospitals, then sending them back to work, until they die from too many missing organs. That book was truly horrible. I was excited that someone was taking it off my hands... I don't have the heart to throw a book away, but that one almost deserved it. It put me right off reading anything featured in airport bookstores. Or on the Oprah list. Or on the New York Times best seller list. I was reading the praise for it on Amazon.com, written by delusional pretentious fans of "literature." Apparently they have gotten "literature" mixed up with "feces-laden toilet paper." I felt sorry for those people. P.T. Barnum was right. There IS a sucker born every minute.

We went and saw "Ghost Rider" the other day. We love Nicholas Cage. It's a fun movie...better than some comic-book-to-film movies like "The Hulk." This one is about a stuntman who, as a child, sells his soul to the Devil (played by Peter Fonda of "Easy Rider," the quintessential motorcycle movie - I've never seen it) to save his stuntman father's life from cancer. The Devil heals his dad, but then kills him the next day during a stunt, in typical Devil fashion. Boy discovers that he's invulnerable, because the Devil has plans for him. Boy grows up to be daredevil stuntman (Nicholas Cage), unkillable. Devil calls on him when Devil's own son decides to take over the world. Stuntman turns into a flaming skeleton, riding a flaming rip-snorting living motorcycle, which I guess is an update on the original Ghost Rider, which was a flaming skeleton of a Texas Marshal riding a demon-horse back in the 1880s (played by Sam Elliott in this movie). Anyway. Typical paint-by-numbers plot, pretty easy to figure out, but beautiful flaming-skeleton CGI. Eva Mendes is fun as the girlfriend, but she was better in "Hitch" with Will Smith. The obligatory use of the song "Ghost Riders in the Sky" during the end credits. Three stars. Marvin sez check it out.