Money matters.

I have a "family member" who I regularly see posting vacation pictures to social media. They're always going to famous theme parks and other places with their family. I'm not jealous one bit, but I do question their financial management.

As I understand it, the male half gets a draw from the family trust every 2 years in the mid 5-figure range. At no time have they ever owned a house. They have always rented. It's been this way since they've been together, around 15 years. They're always buying stuff they don't need, and whenever there's a holiday, they buy gifts for everyone.

My wife and I make about the same that they do, but we don't have kids to support. We're buying our house, and building up equity as we go. We live frugally, not spending a whole lot of money, trying to scrimp and save wherever we can, but it's tough.

I ran the numbers a while back. If they had saved the money that they've been spending on vacations, or at least put the money they get in the draw toward buying a house, they could have had a house bought and paid for a long time ago.

Steaming pile of word vomit.

The latest phrase from the SJWs is apparently "Hegemonic Masculinity" to refer to a reason for "Rape Culture", something you already know is something ginned up by the SJW community in order to allow women to discount any agency in providing for their own safety. (You're victim-blaming, shitlord!) So let's break this down:

he·gem·o·ny (həˈjemənē,ˈhejəˌmōnē/) Leadership or dominance, especially by one country or social group over others.
mas·cu·lin·i·ty (ˌmaskyəˈlinədē/) Possession of the qualities traditionally associated with men.

Let's compare this with one of their other favorite words: "Patriarchy"

pa·tri·arch·y (ˈpātrēˌärkē/) A system of society or government in which the father or eldest male is head of the family and descent is traced through the male line.

A system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it.

So they've used two words instead of the one that they usually use, because the impact of that word has been so diluted by all their bullshit.

SB50 EOC Porn

As a Public Safety IT Geek, this picture really gets me off.



The incredible amount of pre-planning of cable management and workspace management just amazes me.

• All the cables are color-coded and labeled. 
• Everything is run through wiring troughs that are laid on top between the tables. 
• Cable bridges are used to protect the cables running across traffic lanes.
• Every workstation is labeled with the ICS Position or task. 
• One printer per table, with high-volume MFP's and large-format Printers on one side of the room.

Think of this set up mirrored across all the other Three-Letter Agencies that were supporting the SB50 security operations.

Several years ago, I was recruited to work on "Project 57", which was a "continuity of operations" program in case the State's Executive Branch had to be moved to an alternate location. Everything necessary would be in ATA cases that could be rolled into a semi-trailer, Connex, or even a rented box truck, then rolled off into any building like a school and within a couple of hours, executive processes would be back up and running.

PG&E does this when they have to set up camp to support utility restoration after a disaster. They have everything built into road cases or purpose-built carts, carried in a semi-trailer that is very similar to the "Camp-in-a-Box" that CalFire and USFS have for their incidents.

When Stoopid (tm) and Bureaucracy collide.

If you haven't noticed yet, I post a lot of rants here. It's cathartic for me, and let me get things off my chest that I really can't say on Social Media, or other locations that are tied to my real name. This is going to be one of those rants.

Currently there are thousands of fires for over 100,000 acres burning across the State of California. Equipment gets moved back and forth in order to staff incidents. Sometimes it gets moved from SoCal to NorCal orvice versa, depending on where the fires are burning. Incident Commanders, Operations Chiefs, Planning Chiefs, and Logistics Chiefs all work together to order the right equipment and personnel to be at the right place at the right time. Sometimes they will order equipment before they even get there, because they know the area and the issues they will encounter.

Earlier this week, 10 engines from SoCal were ordered for an incident. They got halfway there, and got turned around because they were the wrong type. They got almost home, and got turned around again to go to a different incident. They made it to that one.

An incoming team to an incident ordered a piece of equipment that they knew that they'd need. It's a very specialized, technical piece of equipment that comes with highly competent and qualified staffing.
Screwup #1: It wasn't in the ordering system.
Screwup #2: It really was in the system, but the ordering point didn't know how to order it.
Screwup #3: Instead of that specialized piece of equipment, because the ordering point didn't understand what was requested, they ordered a piece of equipment that was totally unsuited for the purpose.
Screwup #4: When the previous screwups were realized, they ordered the correct equipment, but by then, the ordering system was overloaded.
Screwup #5: When the system finally got straightened out, the home agency of that piece of equipment was denied, so it didn't go out.

Result: The Team that ordered the piece of equipment doesn't have what they need, and it's making their jobs exponentially more difficult.

Cultural Appropriation is dead.

Thank you, Rachael Dolezal.

No longer can the Cultural Appropriation NAZIs on college campuses and in society ever again complain about "Fiesta Night", "Luau Night", "Carnivale" or any other themed events as long as they remain silent on Dolezal. She has fully appropriated another culture by adopting the dress, hairstyles, mannerisms, and identity of a race of which she is not. Yet, the SJWs remain silent, or, if they do speak up, they defend her Cultural Appropriation.

She has carried the charade to the point that she is now even questioning her biology. She is her own "birther", denying that her biological parents, who are listed on her Birth Certificate, may not be her real parents. That's something easily cleared up with a DNA test.

The next time a Frat House has a "Bombay Nights" party, and the SJWs complain, then unless the SJWs denounce the Cultural Appropriation of Africans by Rachael Dolezal, they have nothing to stand on.

GTFO. Just GTFO. (Part 2)

I've got a real simple solution for everyone who thinks that the US is such an evil, racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted country.

GTFO.

If you don't know what that means, it means "Get the Fuck Out".

I'll even go one step further: I want the government to give you money to GTFO. I want the government to give each and every adult that wants to GTFO $100,000 and their children $4000 per year of age up to age 18 to help them relocate to a country of their choice. The only stipulations are that they completely give up their citizenship, and that they never enter the US ever again. They can go wherever they want with that money and start a new life.

That money is to get them packed up and moved, including all transportation costs to another country. With that money, they should easily be able to purchase or rent housing, and they would have enough money to sustain them while they look for a job. If they plan it right and go to the right country, they may never have to work again, and still have everything they want.

To ensure that they leave, the government will contract with moving companies to move these people, using the same contractors that move military families from base to base. The people leaving will also have their transportation costs paid for by using the government contract rate for flights from the nearest airport to their departure location to the nearest airport to their relocation location. They will get a "draw" of 10% of the money for the family for incidental expenses enroute, and the balance of the money less the moving and transportation expenses after 90 days in their new country.

There can be an agency set up as part of Homeland Security to manage this, maybe as part of CBP/ICE, to manage the people who want to leave.

Reminds me of a song.

"I see a bad moon a-risin'. I see trouble on the way..."

A new YAFULC*is taking shape right next to the college, in between campus and the "student suites" that have already been built. You know those kinds of student housing, where there's 4 bedrooms with 4 private baths, and a common kitchen and living space. But that's not what I'm going to talk about.

The YAFULC's anchor is a 22 screen movie theater. There are 2 huge rooms, and 20 smaller ones. The huge ones seat around 300 people, and the smaller ones seat around 100. That's a potential total of 2600 people in the rooms at any one time, plus all of the people coming and going to and from the next showing of the movies.

Signs are already sprouting up as to the future tenants of the other spots in the YAFULC. One is a local brewpub, one is a well-known ice cream store ("Icy Rock" IYKWIM), and the other is a fishy-named fish taco place. The other slots are currently empty, and waiting for new tenants to "Built-to-suit" the spaces. All-in-all, there's about 2 dozen spots for businesses to come into. Hopefully this won't be another retail hellhole, and will be more a nightlife type of venue.

Now the bad news: There isn't enough parking. Yes, it may look like there's plenty of parking with the huge lot for the "event center" next door, but whenever there's an event, you have to pay to park. Here's what I see happening:

• People are going to park in the area reserved for the student housing, pissing off the students and the housing management. 
• People are going to park in the area designated for the event center, and are going to be pissed off when asked to pay. 
• People going to events are going to park in the free parking for the YAFULC, and are going to piss off the customers of the YAFULC, leading to the above. 
• People parking in the YAFULC parking, patronizing the YAFULC businesses, are going to be pissed off at getting parking tickets; because the time limit they are going to set isn't going to allow them to have drinks, have dinner, see a movie, and have dessert afterwards, even though that's exactly what the businesses and planners want them to do. 

But wait, there's more!

This property (and the campus housing) is on property wholly under the jurisdiction of the Campus Police. I know you're doing a WTF right now, so let me clear this up: A State University has allowed a developer to build "off-campus, privately managed student housing" and a YAFULC, all on University property. 

It's bad enough that the current generation of college students have no respect for the police; but even though the Campus PD officers are all fully qualified, 100% legit, sworn Law Enforcement Officers as defined by state law; the students have less than zero respect for them. 

I can see that the mix of college students, booze, and campus cops is going to make for some really bad mojo for this YAFULC. 

The only redeeming quality is that it's right off the freeway, in case someone needs to make a quick getaway. 

*YAFULC: Yet Another Fucking Urban Lifestyle Center aka "Big Box with a Strip Mall"

I dislike Aircards.

I have to deal with aircards every day. Some days everything works perfectly, and others just suck. The days that suck are when I can't make the aircards work right, no matter what I try and do. One of those is trying to delete a stored profile on a Sierra Wireless card, especially when the "delete" button is grayed-out.

I did find a hack that works, though. Here we go:

1. Log in as Administrator.
2. Create your profile. 
3. Save your profile (It saves as an encoded XML file)
4. Delete the C:\Program Files\Sierra Wireless\3G Watcher\predefined_profile.xml file
5. Copy your saved profile over to the above folder
6. Rename it to the above filename. 
7. Reboot. 

This should leave your single desired profile as the only profile that loads. You can then make any adjustments that you want to finalize the profile. I've tried this with the 340U, and it works.

I'll update as I find more hacks to make the aircards play nice.