The Minuteman

The cops chased the wrong car and wound up arresting an armed man on a school campus.  Rollins College is a gun free zone.  The only thing permitted for self-defense is a spray, provided it is used correctly. 

Despite the rules, someone still went on campus with a firearm, oh boy, how did that happen?!

Its not like there is a magic barrier that prevents guns from finding their way on campus.

You know it’s bad for Obama when even his “hometown”, the bastion of corrupt politics, starts explaining why he shouldn’t run for reelection.

But there is good news for the president. I checked the Constitution, and he is under no compulsion to run for re-election. He can scrap the campaign, bag the fundraising calls and never watch another Republican debate as long as he’s willing to vacate the premises by Jan. 20, 2013.

Seriously, that’s got to hurt.  Then again fearless leader is so dense he might read the article and some how think it’s a compliment.

Read the whole thing, there’s some awesome line’s in there.  I think my personal favorite is:

Someone said that when a man is smitten with a beautiful woman, he
should remember that somebody somewhere is tired of her. Likewise, the
most inspiring presidents get stale after years of constant
overexposure.

It’s by no means the first time I’ve seen this analogy, but it’s down right amazing to see these come out of an editor at the Chicago Times of all places.

I’m not counting my chickens yet, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the GOP auger the Presidential election into the ground.  At the same time there’s a large uphill battle the Democrats are going to have just to retain the presidency.  I think I should start a pool on who’s going to screw the pooch.

A former social worker has pled no-contest to possession of child pornography and has been sentenced to 90 days in jail, of which 30 will be served, and probation.

But it get’s even better though folks.

His job while he was a social worker?  He worked in the child welfare unit with foster children.

How sweet, I guess he went to work with children so he could help them I supposed.  Makes me wonder what other shenanigans he was up to on the job.

Seriously, just because someone works for the government or is an elected official doesn’t provide them with some magical blanket that makes them special.  Well there is the magical blanket that keeps them from getting stiffer penalties than the rest of us.

Normally I’ve got some witty comment to go here.  This one though just makes me sick.

*The actual article is blacklisted.  So I got to rewrite the information and link to a third party.

I was wondering what to use for #100.  There were a few incidents I could think of historically that I had already covered that fit rolling over to 3 digits.

Erik turned to find three officers facing him, guns drawn, and all three shouting different commands: “Get on the ground!” “Drop your weapon!” “Keep your hands up!” Erik held his hands up, spoke calmly, told them he DID have a concealed firearm and a legal CCW and was an ex-Army officer. His girlfriend was screaming about Erik being a West Point grad, former Army officer, etc. Erik leaned to his left, hands still up, to expose the pistol, and repeated, “I am disarming; I am disarming.” Witnesses say he started to lower his right hand, palm OUT, perhaps intending to remove holster and gun together — but never got the hand below his shoulder, when one of the cops (believed to be William Mosher, who had committed a fatal shooting in 2006) shot Erik in the chest with a .45-caliber semi-automatic weapon. Erik dropped to his knees, clearly in shock, his face a picture of disbelief. He was shot a second time and collapsed. The rest is ugly. The three officers unloaded again, firing a total of seven hollow-point rounds. At least four, possibly five, hit Erik in the back, after he was on the ground and dying.

It ends up that Erik’s firearm never left it’s holster.  The call from Costco evidently also primed the pump for the officers to “see some action”.  The entire incident was a gigantic Charlie Foxtrot from the very beginning.  No single officer was in command, everyone was.  No effort was done to be civil or just find out what was going on.

Their solution to the problem was determined by them before they even got there.  We’ve seen that type of behavior before and it never ends well.

During the investigation some of the testimony was quite disturbing.  From the testimony it sounds like the Pima County Sherriff took lessons for the Gurerena raid.  Officers started shooting and didn’t know exactly why.  They felt justified because their fellow officers were shooting so their must be danger.

Self-restraint is a very important personality trait.  Even more important when your actions and behavior can cause a chain of events that will result in the death of an innocent.

State Sponsored Criminal Count: 100

Because if you’re a cop the mere fact someone has a firearm constitutes them using force against you.

via Sandra

Three boats, a car and an undisclosed amount of money: that’s what Guy Abbot is accused of obtaining illegally while he was employed as Sheriff in Middlesex County.

Abbot received 25 felony indictments handed down from a Middlesex County special grand jury.

Just the type of guy you want enforcing the law right?  Often when people do crap like this you hear about “paid administrative leave” a taxpayer funded vacation however apparently Guy Abbot is a special case.

Abbot was arrested Thursday, but he is already back at work as Sheriff after being released on a personal recognizance bond.

A lot of private companies will fire you just upon being charged with a felony.  If you get a job as a police officer though you can not only keep your job.  Talk about taking a the term “Job Security” to a whole new level.

State Sponsored Criminal Count: 99 – Guy Abbot

Because evidently when you’re a cop, 25 felonies translates to keep up the good work.

A physically disabled Atlanta woman, who said she was thrown to the ground and arrested for refusing to get out of her chair, is seeking compensation.

Dan Grossman, an attorney for Shequita Walker, 40, said she was sitting April 21 on a metal chair in the vacant lot next to her home, where she often sits on hot afternoons, when police officer Kenneth Thomas approached and asked her to move, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Friday.

Grossman said Walker, who suffers from severe joint pain and has a limited range of motion, told the officer she was within her rights to sit outside and Thomas then twisted her arm, causing her to fall to the concrete.

This is what happens when cops get bored.  It’s quite similar to this incident in which the judge joined in on the party.  The wife just forwarded me a nice article with a picture taken during the arrest.

Seriously on what planet is behavior like this deemed acceptable?

State Sponsored Criminal Count: 98 – Kenneth Thomas

Because when you’re bored and someone’s sitting on a public bench.  Ask them to leave for no reason or justification.  One way or another you’ll get to use force.

Via Daddy Bear in GBC

Skip to 2:07 for the part you actually care about.

Seriously I’m at a loss for words at the behavior of those officers.  What that man was doing was protected by state law and they arrested and assaulted him.  Even after being notified of their being in the wrong.

A note, I would suggest after notifying them of the law just keep your mouth shut.  They have created a monopoly on force by disarming everyone attempting to view a public meeting in a public building.  Some civil attorney is going to have a field day with this.

State Sponsored Criminal Count**: 97

Because cops can do whatever the hell they want despite the law. We create civilian disarmament zones and qualified immunity so cops can act without fear of reprisal.

*This is a perfect example of the enemy of my enemy is my friend.  Public unions are bullshit, but the behavior of the police and the flag preventing an act protected by state law is total crap.  Every officer involved should be thrown in jail immediately at a minimum.

**It has been pointed out that the video is lacking in what happened prior to the arrest.  There is a possibility these individuals were creating a ruckus in the gallery.  I am going to let this stand due to the statement banning video from the Gallery which blatantly violates WI law.  I wish there was video showing him just sitting there doing nothing but recording but who knows.  It appears to be correct and I’ll let it stand unless someone has video showing otherwise.  

So I have had this hosting provider since 2005 and they have been bought out a couple times.  Some of the pluses though include the fact my email is hosted in Exchange, unlimited disk space, and supposed unlimited bandwidth (found that today).  I have never had any issues at all requiring extensive customer support until this past week.

Starting last week Windows Live Writer stopped posting correctly to my blog.  It had happened intermittently previously and I figured it was another glitch.  After the issue didn’t clear in 24 hours to the support console I went.

Date	Type
09/15/2011 12:10 AM EDT	Ticket Created
09/15/2011 12:10 AM EDT	TMM contacted PowWeb
Subject:	Problems with libXML2
Customer Quote:	Earlier this year I started using XMLRPC to post content to my blog. Start in July I had incidents where posts would have the tags brackets(<>) stripped off. I ignored it figuring it was a glitch when it started working a couple days later.  Starting about the middle of last week though this issue has become permanent. While I was normally easily able to work around it, the work around fails when I am posting images.  Have there been any changes to the server configuration recently?  I know it was not caused by a site configuration change because 3 other sites all exhibit the same behavior that are not used as frequently.  Currently this is still just in the annoyance category, but as I start needing to put more pictures in content its’ going to increase on my ladder.  All assistance I could find online pointed to server configuration with PHP version and libXML version issues.  Thank you,  TMM
09/15/2011 4:00 AM EDT	Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
09/15/2011 7:53 AM EDT	Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
09/15/2011 8:51 AM EDT	Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
09/15/2011 9:50 AM EDT	PowWeb contacted TMM
Subject:	[P08757884000000000] Problems with libXML2
Comment:	Hello,  Thank you for contacting Support.  We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. In order to further investigate on your issue, please get back to us with the following information:  1) Exact steps to duplicate your issue.  2) URL of the page.  3) WordPress username and password.  Thank you!  Sincerely,  Kaila Pearson  Customer Support
09/15/2011 9:19 PM EDT	TMM contacted PowWeb
Customer Quote:	Drupal User Info:  Username: TestUser  Password: URL: https://www.the-minuteman.org Full URL varies based on post title, it happens when content is published or sent as a draft to the server. Reproduction steps below show how to make it appear on the front page.  Reproduction steps:  1) Configure Windows Live Writer for an “Other services” blog and point to https://www.the-minuteman.org  2) During configuration tell it to identify the blog theme.  3) At this point configuration will hang because the post displayed on the front page website (https://www.the-minuteman.org) is incorrect. For example I get the following:  pThis is a temporary post that was not deleted. Please delete this manually. (1eb91935-d1da-4e9a-85fd-82ce1220f24d – 3bfe001a-32de-4114-a6b4-4005b770f6d7)/p  This should actually be:  <p>This is a temporary post that was not deleted. Please delete this manually. (1eb91935-d1da-4e9a-85fd-82ce1220f24d – 3bfe001a-32de-4114-a6b4-4005b770f6d7)</p>  But the tags were stripped, and the inner text passed through as part of the blog post text.  Alternatively, you can skip the theme detection and attempt to post to the blog through Live Writer. The content within the post will exhibit the same loss of tags.  Draft posts can be open and viewed from this listing:  https://www.the-minuteman.org/admin/content/node  For some reason the tags are being stripped off and every piece of information I have found points to server configuration, not blog software.
09/15/2011 9:30 PM EDT	Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
09/15/2011 10:54 PM EDT	PowWeb contacted TMM
Subject:	[P08757884000000000] Problems with libXML2
Comment:	Hello,  Thank you for contacting Support.  We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Could you please get back us with the exact URL where you are trying to login to Drupal admin page, so that we can assist you further.  Please reply to this email with the requested information, so that we can assist you further.  Sincerely,  Riley Malson  Customer Support
09/16/2011 12:26 AM EDT	TMM contacted PowWeb
Customer Quote:	This is not tied to my Drupal web browser interface but the XML-RPC interface that different external programs use to post content.  The symptoms of the failure are visible on my blog. Here is an example post that failed.  https://www.the-minuteman.org/content/2011/September/15/failed-test-post-TMM
09/16/2011 12:27 AM EDT	Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
09/16/2011 12:41 AM EDT	Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
09/16/2011 12:41 AM EDT	Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
09/16/2011 2:31 AM EDT	PowWeb contacted TMM (Resolved)
Comment:	Hello,  In order to further investigate, could you please get back to us with the Drupal admin login details.  If you have any further questions, please update the Support Console.  Sincerely,  Mae Silva  Technical Specialist
09/16/2011 8:24 PM EDT	TMM contacted PowWeb
Customer Quote:	Here is the primary user account information:  Username: TMM  Password:
09/16/2011 8:44 PM EDT	Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
09/16/2011 9:49 PM EDT	PowWeb contacted TMM (Resolved)
Comment:	Hello,  Thank you for your reply.  I have checked there is no error logs to investigate further on this issue. Since Drupal is the third party application I suggest you to contact the vendor of the application.  If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to reply through Support Console. We are available 24×7.  Sincerely,  Neville Kodner  Technical Specialist
09/17/2011 1:26 AM EDT	TMM contacted PowWeb
Customer Quote:	I have investigated the drupal forums regarding this issue and I have gone one step further and mirrored my site on to a local development server I use for updates.  The mirrored version of my site, a fresh copy of files and snapshot of the database, placed within my test environment works as it should. I fail to see how this is my blog software or site configuration when I can turn the problem on and off by placing it on my test server here or uploading it to Powweb.  Not to mention the fact that it was running reliably at the beginning of August and I have not done any changes to configuration other than unrelated module updates. The issue also has seemed to come and go, finally becoming permanent over the past week. I initially ignored it thinking it was a glitch because it would come back later.  All information I have been able to find regarding this type of issue online points again to the web services host, not the drupal software.  My test server is running PHP 5.3.2  Apache 2.2.14  SQL Version 5.1.46  Here is the exact error in the Drupal forums:  http://drupal.org/node/415566  Here is a similar issue in the Drupal forums:  http://drupal.org/node/347298#comment-1209085  http://drupal.org/node/347298#comment-1295684  I’m confused though since you guys are running 5.2.17 and the issues reported were with 5.2.8. However this has turned on and off entirely on it’s own on your servers with my altering absolutely nothing in the configuration or settings within my blog. Meaning something changed in the hosting configuration.  There are no error logs because it is a function erroneously stripping out data that it should not. Drupal gets a result from a function call that it thinks is correct but is in fact wrong.
09/17/2011 1:28 AM EDT	Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
09/17/2011 1:37 AM EDT	PowWeb contacted TMM (Resolved)
Comment:	Hello,  Thank you for your reply.  We support PHP version 5.2.17, Apache version 1.3.33 and MySQ version 5.0.45.  If you have any further questions, please update the Support Console.  Sincerely,  Ariel Danson  Technical Specialist
09/17/2011 1:42 AM EDT	TMM contacted PowWeb
Customer Quote:	Has your supported versions changed since June? Something has changed and it doesn’t appear to be by my hand. I created a virgin test site and it is having the same problems.  I have been using Windows Live Writer since January without issue until about the middle of last month.
09/17/2011 1:42 AM EDT	Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
09/17/2011 1:46 AM EDT	PowWeb contacted TMM (Resolved)
Comment:	Hello,  Thank you for getting back to us.  We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We have not changed the supported version recently. Please reinstall the application or contact the application provider to fix the issue.  Thank you!  Sincerely,  Aden Nelson  Technical Specialist

So maybe I’ve been spoiled by the company I work for by the fact that we think customer service is a big deal.  Ownership of a problem is a big deal.  Making sure the customers problem is solved is a big deal.  Getting to root cause is a big deal.  Notice how it was marked resolved long before anything was actually solved.  Very quickly they blamed it on third party software without any actual proof.

This company has totally shifted the blame for the problem from them to me. Ignoring the fact that this has happened on two independent Drupal installs who’s configurations haven’t changed.  No single individual took lead to deal with this problem and just bounced it around.  I’m stuck copying and pasting the source code from WLW into the submission form in Drupal.  Any pictures I want to submit become an arm twisting game of getting the URL correct to point to the image if I’m uploading it.

I just checked, I have prepaid 2 years of hosting starting in Nov 2010.  That gives me a year to come up with a new hosting solution and a solid game plane for site and email migration.  I will actually probably move earlier because I pay per month for my Exchange hosting and if I can find it cheaper, that’s money back in my pocket that I haven’t spent yet.

In the past I was more than happy to recommend Powweb to friends but given the first time I really had a serious issue and support utterly face planted.

If anyone has any input on what the problem might be, here’s an example of what happens when I submit through WLW currently.  I have disabled the TestUser account, and regenerated a new site password for myself since they think this issue is resolved they no longer require access.  Keypass makes stuff like this much easier to handle.  I am NOT going to close this ticket until I find a resolution to this problem.  WLW worked without issue from January to the beginning of August.  At which point I had a few flaky issues, but they always came back.  Then last week it died permanently.

I am going to continue posting new content, I won’t be putting many of my own pictures up except through my photo gallery.

So I am all ears on good hosting providers that support PHP, MySQL, and Exchange services.  I’ve got time and if I move early I’ve got some side sites that can live out there that can die around November 2012.  I know I could host myself, my bandwidth out in BFE though isn’t that great and I hate general IT maintenance with a passion.  So fellow bloggers, what would you recommend.