January 2023 – Page 5 – Bear Bussjaeger

Strawberry Practicum Forever

Until USC’s letter explaining the evils of the word “field,” I had no idea that I should be offended by it. Indeed, I — and my co-workers — tended to be proud of our job title of “Field Operations Technician.” We were the folks who went out and got our hands dirty making things work, fixing things; as opposed to the soft Network Operations people in their cushy air conditioned cubicles.

POT (Practicum Operations Tech) just doesn’t have the same ring. No doubt we would have been offensively labeled “POT Heads.”

In fact, I foolishly even took a bit of pride in being the descendant of people who worked in cotton fields.

Now that I have grasped the concept of mandatory offended status, I must note that “practicum” is far more offensive than “field.” Practicum is Latin, the language of that notorious slave-holding, imperialistic, colonizing Roman Empire. An empire that was far from properly democratic.

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If WorldCom Was Still Around, I’d Suspect A Manager Was Playing In The Patch Panels Again.

FAA grounds all US flight departures as result of system failure
he FAA on Wednesday morning delays the departure of all domestic flights until 9 a.m. as a result of a system failure.

The computer problem was first reported at about 6 a.m. ET.

“The FAA is working to restore its Notice to Air Missions System, the agency tweeted. “We are performing final validation checks and reloading the system now. Operations across the National Airspace System are affected. We will provide frequent updates as we make progress.”

Back in the ’90s, I worked for WorldCom in a POP. I came back from lunch one day to find my manager working in the T3 patch panels.

He looked pretty damned flustered. He had some coax patch cords in his hands — one end plugged into some jacks — and a phone glued to one ear. He kept trying to plug the other end of cords into other jacks. Alarms were blaring; I glanced at the mux and saw that a couple of T3s were down (thhis was back when a T3 was a pretty big deal).

The manager spotted me. “Carl, I think you should take over!”

“Take over what?”

“I’m grooming a T3, but it isn’t working. You fix it.”

I assumed my most sincere face and said, “Oh, no; it’s a really bad idea to switch personnel in the middle of the job.” And I stood there and watched…

As the manager suddenly dropped the phone to the floor, and ran out of my POP.

I strolled down the aisle and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

Some guy on the other end replied. “Welge?”

“Nah. This is Carl, the POP tech.”

“Where’s Welge?”

“Beats me. He just ran out of the office in a panic.

“Shit! We have an FAA T3 down. It’s been down for forty-five minutes while Welge screwed around. CAn you help?”

“Possibly. Give me a second.” And looked the each end of the patch cords, and simply swapped the in and out at one end. Welge had spent 45 minutes trying to patch in to in and out to out. Alarms silenced. “That should do it.”

“Oh, thank god!”

If I recall correctly, WorldCom got fined a few million bucks for that little bit of unauthorized — and thoroughly incompetent — maintenance on their inter-regional data line in the middle of the day.

And I’ve got several more stories about that incompetent fuckhead Martin Welge.

TZP Column: Crime Doesn’t Pay… ‘Round Here

At some point, brighter criminals might figure out just how heavily armed non-criminal Georgians are.

OOPS. BAD GUYS ARE SLOW LEARNERS.
Seems some idiot tried robbing a convenience store in ruralish Georgia. It didn’t go well for him.
[Read More]

Bye Bye, Federal Income Tax?

Rep. Buddy Carter [GA] has filed HR 25 – Fair Tax Act. I’ve been looking it over.

Basically, it repeals all federal personal and corporate income taxes, and replaces it with a national sales tax. If it somehow passed as-is (which it won’t, see below), it would — in theory — be an improvement over the current system. You’d keep more of your money.

L. Neil Smith once calculated that seven-eighths of the price of a loaf of bread is actually taxes: cumulative taxes along every stage of production; farming wheat, selling to milling companies that turn it into flour, selling to bakeries that turn it into bread, selling it to distributors that in turn sell it to stores. And finally the sales tax the consumer pays.

HR 25 gets rid of that cumulative taxing. In theory, companies should adjust their prices down to compensate for the taxes once built into the price, that they’d no longer be paying. You’d still be paying a 23% sales tax on a new lower price, but that beats paying 87.5%. The problem I see is that few companies would adjust their prices accordingly; they’d view it as just an improvement to their profit margin.

Or, perhaps, some genius could convince companies that dropping prices would be a great PR move. Doubtful.

But I can’t see this passing. It would be tough in the barely Republican House, and impossible in the Dimwit controlled Senate. It takes away the Dims’ power to social engineer corporations through taxation. Worse, from the spendthrift Dim perspective, it caps federal revenue at just 14.91% (plus some other stuff).

Worst for the Dims: It eliminates the IRS, one of their favorite Lois Lerner style cudgels with which to threaten and damage political opponents.

It won’t pass now, anymore than did the previous attempts. Nice try, Buddy.

Why Wait?

Put yourself out of our misery now, Doctor Death.

Why I want to die at 75′: The White House oncologist and Obamacare architect, 65, who will refuse ALL medical treatment in 10 years (even if he gets cancer)
A world-renowned oncologist and one of the architects of Obamacare will refuse any medication in 10 years to achieve his goal of dying at 75 – including antibiotics, chemotherapy and even pain meds.

Unlike many elites with ambitions of immortality, Dr Ezekiel Emanuel, 65, will act as if medical leaps made over the last 200 years never happened and make no efforts to cheat death.

You may recall Emanuel from the Obamacare days. He was incorrectly accused of suggesting “death panels” that would determine whether anyone deserved medical care, and how much. In fact, he recommended a chart that would taper off care depending on one’s age and medical condition, no panels of humans required.

Anyone Recognize This?

Someone sent me this pic this morning, with the amusing subject line of “Good for bear?”

Obviously a grenade launcher, but darned if I can ID it. Does anyone recognize it, or know if it’s even real? Maybe a movie prop or video game weapon?

Do You Trust The “News” Media?

I don’t. And I’ve got a recent example to illustrate why I don’t.

You may have heard about a Virginia teacher allegedly shot by a six year-old student.

The first report I saw about this, on the day it happened, said a teacher was shot but no students were involved. At that point I suspected some domestic dispute, or maybe an angry parent. That report also said the teacher had a non-life threatening injury.

Then we heard that a student certainly was involved, and was the shooter.

Then the teacher’s wound became “serious.”

Then she was in critical condition.

This morning, I found a newsfeed headline that said she had died. But clicking the link and reading the new report, she’s alive and has been upgraded to stable condition.

Whatever “stable” might mean. I saw her reported in “critical but stable” condition at one point; that status shows up in a lot of news muddia reports about shootings (and other injuries). It drives me nuts, and it pisses off my RN sister.

If you’re in critical condition, you’re on the verge of dying. If you’re somehow “critical but stable,” it only means that they’re constantly working to stave off death. A good example (which my sister has seen) is pumping new blood in as fast as the patient is bleeding out from multiple perforations.

“Critical but stable” really means, “He’s close to death, but we don’t want to upset his family by admitting it.” And reporters are too stupid to figure that out.

So, no; I don’t trust the news. Nevertheless, I still read a lot of news reports. Mainly in an attempt to gather enough random hopefully-facts to piece together a narrative that makes sense. And I damned well never take initial reports on a high profile incident as even semi-related to our reality; most reporters are out to “scoop” the competition with whatever rumor they can get, the more outrageous and click-baiting the better.

This Screams “Fed Op”

The guys who allegedly sabotaged the Washington state power substations on Christmas have already been busted. The timing alone suggests the feds already knew who arrest.

Two Washington men charged in 4 substation attacks on Christmas that cut power for thousands: FBI
Two men were charged Tuesday in connection to all four substation attacks that occurred in western Washington state over Christmas, as the federal government pursues prosecution for increased instances of electric grid sabotage across the country this winter.

Matthew Greenwood, 32, and Jeremy Crahan, 40, both of Puyallup, Washington, have been charged with conspiracy to damage energy facilities and possession of an unregistered firearm.

Let’s look at those unregistered firearms.

Really crudely cut rifle and shotgun. And note the “make-shift silencer” apparently duct-taped to the end of the barrel. That doesn’t suggest particularly high IQs. And why bother? To be stealthy?

I think not. Because they…

…parked their truck in the light, right in front of a surveillance camera. That isn’t stealthy, and it isn’t smart.

Did stupid shit. Did stupid shit unnecessarly with stupidly and unlawfully stupid guns. Caught instantly. Looks like another case of the feds setting up idiots just to bust them, and pat themselves on their backs. Note that they still haven’t caught the perps in the earlier NC sabotage/vandalism. I figure they had these guys on tap, and used them as copycay “revolutionaries.”

I noticed this in comments.

I wonder where these two learned where and what to shoot at to knock out a substation(s). Because one would have to have some training to know how to get that done.

There are ways to sabotage a substation using specialized knowledge. But just putting bullets in transformers, shorting lines, or shooting insulators works too, and any idiot can do it. When I was still a kid, power companies used to routinely ask people not to shoot those old glass insulators, so as not not to cause outages. In Memphis, squirrel-induced outages were a regular occurrence.

These guys look about as bright as a squirrel.