A whine about prepackaged food.
I bought and ate a couple of just-add-water boxes of Pad Thai and Thai Peanut from a company called Thai Kitchen.

IT SUCKS.

I followed the directions and when I was done I had a lovely meal that would have gotten a street vendor beaten.
It left an odd aftertaste that took at least an hour to go away and had an overall taste reminiscent of soggy cardboard. Perhaps the noodles were stale all I know is that I will never buy that brand again.

I finished the Pad Thai because I was half starved, the Thai Peanut I took a bite of and tossed.

I do not expect miracles from these just-add-water products but I do expect something that doesn’t offend me to the point where I refuse to even consider trying it again.

I know the companies are trying to cut corners on ingredients, but if they make crap they wind up with a bunch on one-time customers and no repeat business.

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A Midway Airport in Illinois they are testing a new system for moving passengers through the screening process.

It consists of 3 lanes marked with ski lift symbols. Which of course would only confuse those of us that don’t ski. Fortunately there are written explanations and, hopefully, security personnel to explain things.

You have the slow lane for beginning travelers, families and other slow moving passengers. The casual traveler with some experience gets the blue lane and the expert gets the black diamond lane.
These lanes are self regulating. The TSA expects you to chose the right lane for your level of travel experience. Fools.. If people could be trusted to take anything but the shortest line, we wouldn’t need traffic cops.
Read the complete story here.

This looks like another failed attempt to blame the passengers for all the delays.

While travelers cause a great many delays, the biggest problem are the number of complete and utter morons the TSA hires, along with what appears to me to be a complete lack of proper training and supervision.

Anybody who can’t tell the difference between a laptop (macair) and a nefarious device designed to take over the plane and control the world, is both improperly trained and a technological Neanderthal.
Read about it here.

They have also instituted something the Israelis have been doing for many years, “behavior detection officers.”

The TSA’s behavior detection officers are trained to pinpoint passengers displaying extraordinary stress and fear, or signs of deception during questioning—all earmarks of terrorists who may be on scouting missions to find weak links in airport security, officials said.

Riiiight. The TSA, those people who don’t properly screen their own people are going to judge others.
See this article.

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Read the full story in the Chicago Tribune:

The Bush administration forced its top environmental regulator in the Midwest to quit Thursday after months of internal bickering about dioxin contamination downstream from Dow Chemical’s world headquarters in Michigan.

In an interview with the Tribune, Mary Gade said two top political appointees at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency headquarters in Washington stripped her of her powers as regional administrator and told her to quit or be fired by June 1.

This has to do with the biggest Dioxin contamination in the country.
Dow has been stalling and refusing to cooperate, until Gade invoked emergency powers to force the issue.

Now the Bush administration puppets are once again defending the worst offenders in environmental history.

The first thing King George and his court Jesters did when they got into the Whitehouse was to replace everybody that looked like they might interfere with big oil and the chemical companies making obscene profits while destroying the planet.

The second thing was to replace anybody in the AG’s office that might call into question the legalities of what they were doing.

I can remember when we had a President instead of a King.

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If you work someplace where they have been downsizing or are talking about downsizing.
If you work in an industry that is back sliding or simply failing outright.
If you find yourself wondering how long your job or company is going to last.

You need an exit strategy.
The first thing to do is log every expense no matter how small.
The next is to analyze things like your grocery list. If you buy nothing but top of the line, money can be saved by settling for less expense cuts of meat and buying less junk food.
Develop a realistic budget and stick to it.

If you think a layoff is imminent apply for credit. Things like a home equity loan or better yet, a line of credit based on your home equity. The object is not to use the credit but to have it available when things go wrong. It is far easier to get credit while you are still employed.

Make an honest list of your marketable, verifiable skills.
Familiarize yourself with as many aspects of your company as possible. A multi-skilled person is a greater asset to management than someone who does only one thing.
Study any aspects of your field that you are unfamiliar with, either by books or studying online.

Do Not turn down any extra hours.
If things look dire, work extra hours at no pay. (Just be certain that your supervisor’s boss knows that is was your idea, but be subtle when you mention it.)
If you can get your name in front of the bosses often enough (in a good way) it may not save your job, but the odds are it will get you a letter of recommendation and a shot at being among the first to be rehired.

Be prepared to be unemployed or underemployed for several months.
Be prepared to change fields or to work for less money.

As someone once said: Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
Save where you can and remember to Budget the luxuries first.

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The government is scrapping a $20 million prototype of its highly touted “virtual fence” on the Arizona-Mexico border because the system is failing to adequately alert border patrol agents to illegal crossings, officials said.

The move comes just two months after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced his approval of the fence built by the Boeing Co. The fence consists of nine electronic surveillance towers along a 28-mile section of border southwest of Tucson.

Less than a week after Chertoff accepted Project 28 on February 22, the Government Accountability Office told Congress that it “did not fully meet user needs, and the project’s design will not be used as the basis for future” developments.

Although the fence continues to operate, it hasn’t come close to meeting the Border Patrol’s goals, said Kelly Good, deputy director of the Secure Border Initiative program office in Washington.

Project 28 was not intended to be the final, state-of-the-art system for catching illegal immigrants, Greg Giddens, executive director of the SBI program office in Washington said. “I think some people understood that and some didn’t. We didn’t communicate that well.”

If they knew it wasn’t up to snuff. Why did they give an $860 million contract to Boeing? And why didn’t they wait for the GAO findings?

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According to Forbes The primary provider of internet services for the Navaho Nation has been shut down.

OnSat Network Communications Inc., the company that had provided the service, said that’s because it has not received $2.1 million in federal funds needed to pay a subcontractor for satellite time.

The Universal Service Administration Co., which administers the E-rate program, is withholding the funding because of a tribal audit that showed OnSat may have double-billed the tribe. The audit also raised questions about how the tribe requested bids for the Internet contract.

A number of children use these computers to get their assignments and turn in their homework.

In the case of one mother, the drive to Page, Az. to put her child in regular school is 160 mile round trip every day. With gas approaching $4.00 a gallon this is not very practical.

E-Rate won’t pay because OnSat may have double billed.
There may have been something not quite right about the initial bidding process.

Fine. What about a little hope for the kids, or doesn’t anybody care that they can’t finish High School and then can’t get a job because of a lack of education.
Perhaps this last is a bit overly dramatic, but it sounds to me like a lot of posturing by all sides at the expense of the kids.

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A chill just went down my spine.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department will activate his department’s new domestic satellite surveillance office in stages, starting as soon as possible with traditional scientific and homeland security activities — such as tracking hurricane damage, monitoring climate change and creating terrain maps.
Sophisticated overhead sensor data, radar, and other monitoring and imaging technology, will be used for law enforcement once privacy and civil rights concerns are resolved, he said. The department has previously said the program will not intercept communications.

“There is no basis to suggest that this process is in any way insufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans,” Chertoff wrote to Reps. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) and Jane Harman (D-Calif.), chairmen of the House Homeland Security Committee and its intelligence subcommittee, respectively, in letters released yesterday.

Democrats say Chertoff has not spelled out what federal laws govern the NAO, whose funding and size are classified. Congress barred Homeland Security from funding the office until its investigators could review the office’s operating procedures and safeguards. The department submitted answers on Thursday, but some lawmakers promptly said the response was inadequate.

Lawmakers asked for a legal framework and details of how the program would operate to ensure Americans’ privacy. Homeland officials promised not to begin the program until they answered lawmakers’ concerns.

The satellite program is designed to provide federal, state and local officials with extensive access to spy satellite imagery to assist with emergency response and other domestic security needs. But critics say the Bush administration hasn’t created legal safeguards to ensure that the program won’t be used for domestic spying.

Rep. Harold Rogers of Kentucky, the top Republican on the subcommittee that doles out the Homeland Security department’s money, called the spy satellite program “an important tool for domestic counterterrorism operations” and said he will work to ensure the department will meet congressional requirements.

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This is Orazi. He weighs in at 35lbs.

It is not clear whether Orazi has a medical problem, or is being overfed with the wrong sorts of foods.
He is pictured here with with his owner, Laura Santarelli, with whom he lives in Eupilio, Italy.
He’s a long way from the world’s record, but I’m glad I don’t have to feed him.

The fattest cat on record weighed 41lbs.
We will never know if there are larger house cats because the Guiness Book of World Records stopped recording the fattest animals because they were afraid people would start force feeding them.

A friend sent me this link to something completely different. This blog.

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I found this blog in the Daily Kos. In it the author compares his 7 year old’s behavior to modern diplomacy.
This line describes the situation. “After starting school, she almost immediately absorbed all the most primal lessons of grade school social interaction, and has become a small, pink-clothed monster.”

If you have children, or for that matter have payed any attention to foreign policy.
This will be all to familiar, and would be side splittingly funny, if not for the oh, so, accurate comparisons between the behavior of children and policy makers.

The difference in behavior between children and politicians is that children will hopefully outgrow it.

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It’s strange what you find when you wander the net.


If you like cats Gato Island is a site worth visiting.
It appears to be made up entirely of pictures of house cats, but they are cute and some of them are funny.
The site is definately worth a look, if only to get your mind off the six o’clock news.

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