SSCC #364–TSA

Seriously, I’m having problems not wishing violence upon people.  Why?  Because I have no clue why anyone would feel the following is acceptable behavior.

While I was going through the TSA, some of them started laughing in my direction. I thought it might’ve been someone behind me, but I found out otherwise.

They went through my bag (for no reason), and found a couple bags of candy I brought. I was told I wasn’t allowed to fly with that (wtf? I’ve flown with food before — these were even sealed still because I brought them right in the airport). I was then asked if I would like to donate the candy “To the USO”. Since I know the airport there has an Air National Guard base, and I figured it would go to the soldiers, I (annoyed) said sure, why not?

The guards, as I was getting scanned, started eating the candy they just told me was for the soldiers. In front of me, still laughing at me (very clearly now). One of them asked why they were laughing, and one of them came up to me, pointed at my shirt, laughed at me and said, “Fucking deafie”. The Louisville TSA called me a “fucking deafie” and laughed at me because I was deaf, and they expected wouldn’t say anything back (or wouldn’t hear them). Make no bones about it — she was facing me and I read her lips. There was no mistake. I would later find out that they had called at least 4 other individuals the same thing.

Seriously, it makes me so angry I can barely see straight.  What angers me more than just the actions of these despicable individuals is that no one yelled at the agents.  No one confronted them.  Everyone stuck their tail between their legs. 

I know exactly why no one was willing to stand up though.  No one wants to be stranded from home on the whim of some high school drop out who was too stupid to get his GED.

I am at a loss of words why anyone would tolerate that behavior in general.  While yes you do have a small risk, the quickest way to minimize the risk is to bring the majority of those who were silently protesting inside to the fight.  You do so by leading from the front.

I am disappointed in my fellow Americans.  Not only for the fact that they would allow the TSA to grow to such a behemoth mass, but they would stand by and do nothing in that situation.  I’m tired of waiting for legislators to do something.

If you’re flying, buy a bottle of Mountain Dew, drink it or dump it down the drain.  Refill it while you’re in the bathroom and feel free to let them taste test it.  Harass them verbally when seen in public.  Call them names while they do their job, make their jobs miserable.  Make it so no one would willingly take that job.  There are other options, many of which are of questionable legality, but then again, revolution is legal in the first person while illegal in the third person.  What they are doing is illegal, yet no one has acted to stop it within legal means.  Well at what point to do give up on Plan A and move to Plan B?

I refuse to fly specifically because of these state sponsored thieves and molesters.  I am reaching the point where I am going to be hard pressed to control my rage towards any of the blue gloved Gestapo.

State Sponsored Criminals: The whole damn lot of the TSA

Because when someone is deaf, or has any other disability, it is perfectly OK to harass them, steal their stuff, and be rude, insolent, and total pricks because your employer is Uncle Sam.

*And if you didn’t get the clue, I am pissed and if anyone has any video of a TSA agent being verbally ridiculed to the point of emotional breakdown, that would seriously help cheer me up.  Hell seeing a bunch of people riot in an air terminal would be a big step up.  There’s a reason our legislators aren’t doing a damn thing about it, we aren’t seeking to do damage yet.  This shit keeps up, I’m sure someone’s tripwire is going to snap

If riots occurred in air terminals, if people started being injured because of the TSA’s attitude towards the general populace, attitudes would quickly shift… I’m not saying anyone should, or condoning any such action, I am merely stating an observation that our legislators fail to act because they see no need or concern to act.

I’m all for making some molester who thinks it’s OK because Uncle Sam told him to stick his hands down little Timmy’s pants or up little Tiffinay’s skirt realize he’s a piece of crap who should be expunged from society as the heartless predator he is.  I would say to start laying on every last legislator too, but they’re a bunch of corrupt cowards anyway, and that type of stuff happens on a daily basis so what would be new?

**End Rant!

H/T to my buddy Jonah from high school.

Yes Please…

Via an email from my mom.

4 Star General’s Package

-Introductory tour, history & training


-Driving the Abbott convoy style & the FV432 APC using periscopes simulating a combat driving situation through our scenic wooded course
 

Test firing three historic machine guns in our indoor range

2 passengers are included    

What really got my attention though was:

Yeah, at $749 bucks I can think of a lot of other stuff I’d rather do, but man it would be fun.  I am a bit sad that their guns have been de-milled though. Honestly I’d rather shoot from the tank than just about anything.

Don’t get me wrong, driving a tank = awesome.  Lobbing a HE round a mile and smacking on target, priceless.  Just sayin’!

 

Quote of the Day–Shepherd Derrial(7/9/2012)

A government is a body of people, usually, notably ungoverned.

Shepherd Derrial – Firefly: War Stories


[Couldn’t say it better myself.  For those who don’t understand, who governs the government?  Traditionally in our Republic, all were accountable under the same laws.  Our fearless leaders though have determined that they need one set of rules for them and another set of rules for their slaves constituents.

As the law no longer keeps our overlords in check, including their ability to write laws without any prescribed authority to allow them to legislate the topic.  Yeah, do you see where this is going? –B]

SSCC Honorable Mention–Australia

So this one came from Sean and hails from the land down under*.

A former Victoria Police officer charged with child sex offences allegedly held a gun to the heads of victims and gave Kit-Kat chocolate bars to another after abusing him.

Yeah, it’s just as bad as it sounds.

The man, who now lives in New South Wales, faces 39 charges including several counts of rape, indecent assault and gross indecency. The charges relate to nine girls and boys aged between five and 14.

The real icing on the cake is that some of the incidents occurred while he was on duty.  State side many monsters have gone in to law enforcement to allow them to hide in plain sight.  Since this was outside the states, I’m hesitant to give him a number though I really want to.  I run the count to predominantly show corruption in the American system, if I included foreign governments I could just call it a day with Iran, China, and North Korea.

The fact this is an honorable mention has nothing to do with the incident itself, but merely the fact it occurred outside the US.  There have been other’s that have made the count in similar circumstances and this man deserves as much scorn as his countrymen can throw at him.

International State Sponsored Criminal: John Doe**

Because being a cop means that you have a huge amount of trust merely by having a badge.

*I had to put something in there to cheer me up because this sucker is just depressing. 

**As always if you get his name, please let me know.

Quote of the Day–King Fergus(7/8/2012)

Princess or not. Learning to fight is essential!


King Fergus – Brave

[The wife and I went to see Brave last night.  Fergus and I would get along quite well.  I was glad to see Disney break the traditional mold for their princesses.  The line above combined with the following absolutely made me fall in love with this movie:

But I thought princesses shouldn’t have weapons? – Princess Mérida

Which in context was down right awesome and hilarious!  But you’ll have to go see it.  It’s definitely worth it, you’re either laughing, going “look at them, they’re so cute”, or going where did that damn dust come from.

Seriously I don’t know what some of these critics are smoking.  My suspicion is they prefer pop culture for their girls instead of geek culture… and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, let me educate you in graphical form.

pop-vs-geek1

Yeah, that about sums it up. –B]

CloudFlare Review

So a friend of mine ended up having his site offline last night after a DoS attack took his web hosting offline.

About 3 months ago I decided to give CloudFlare a shot.  After 3 months I thought I would give a quick overview of how it went and what differences I have actually seen.

Page load speeds, there was a noticeable difference when I migrated the site.  I left a archived version of the site available for tracking down broken links and the like.  So this was equivalent of me flipping the off switch.  Using the archived site is unbelievably slower than what it was prior to migration to Word Press.

Bandwidth usage proves this.

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I did the change over in the beginning of April.  Sitemeter and Google Analytics both have shown at least a steady and slightly increasing traffic over those months, with January being the largest.  So I could say that effectively CloudFlare has cut my bandwidth down by 1/3.  CloudFlare’s analytics are accurate as well and provide some extra differentiation.

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One downside though is as you can see above, AWstats is no longer accurate.  You can see the number of Unique visitors is no longer accurate, however you can see that the number of visits does reflect that number.

When I first did the change over I did have some weirdness and problems.  Mainly that my hosting provider was reacting to CloudFlare like it was a DoS attack.  The majority of the requests are forwarded through their network for speed reasons.  So the number of high hits from their services made them look suspect.  I got the issues straightened out and things have been much more stable since.

When my hosting provider did have a hiccup, the site content remained available.  While I couldn’t post new content, I wasn’t loosing viewership which was a huge plus.

There are also numerous apps that can be installed with CloudFlare to aid in thinks like link tracking and malware detection.  There is also a service to help monitor for people scraping content, including people hot linking images.

Overall I have found the service worth the setup time which actually was amazingly simple.  I’m not quite big enough to find their pro services worth it, however I do see how they might be beneficial if I had considerably more traffic.

The only setup required is to point your root DNS entry to CloudFlare and enter your DNS info that your hosting provider has into CloudFlare.  If you have a full website and you’ve had downtime from service issues, CloudFlare can help mitigate that.

Five Years Ago

I married my best friend.  He is the love of my life and I am happy and proud to be called his wife.  Even though the last few years have had ups and downs, I wouldn’t change a thing. The various trials and tribulations ha ve made us stronger individually and as a couple.  I love you TMM now and forever. Happy Anniversary!

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July 7, 2007