For the record: Steve Ditko. WP “Comic Riffs” (which quotes Neil Gaiman at length).
Obit watch: July 7, 2018.
July 7th, 2018Obit watch: July 6, 2018.
July 6th, 2018Claude Lanzmann, noted film director (“Shoah”).
Saman Gunan, former Thai Navy SEAL. He volunteered as part of the rescue mission for the trapped soccer team, and apparently ran out of air while delivering fresh air tanks to the cave.
Shoko Asahara is burning in Hell, along with six of his followers.
I’m not very well read in Haruki Murakami, but Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche impressed me, and I commend it to your attention.
Here in my car…
July 5th, 2018I bought a new to me car last Saturday. It’s a 2006 Honda Accord EX-L that had 82,000 miles on it (not bad, in my opinion, for a 12 year old car) and has quite few features I like: leather interior, sun roof, cabin air filter, power seats, and even seat heaters for that one month a year when those are actually useful in Texas. (Also ABS. I’m not clear on whether it has traction control or not. I checked the Honda-Tech VIN decoder and while it is useful, it doesn’t talk about traction control.)
Now that I have the car, I splurged on a couple of things. I got a dashcam for it: the Papago GoSafe 535, which is what the Wirecutter currently recommends. That one has gone up by about $13 in the couple of days since I ordered it, and it really wasn’t my first choice. I wanted the Spy Tec G1W-C, which was a previous Wirecutter choice that I bought for my mother’s car and have been happy with. But by the time I was ready to order, Amazon had sold out of the Spy Tec.
My other splurge item was a LELink Bluetooth Low Energy BLE OBD-II car diagnostic tool. Why? Several reasons:
Obit watch: July 2, 2018.
July 2nd, 2018Donald Ritchie, ultrarunner.
…
Ritchie was usually nonchalant when talking about his accomplishments, but he admitted that his 1989 run from Land’s End to John O’Groats, from the top to the bottom of Britain, had been a challenge.
“I developed a feverish cold soon after the start and then faced vicious head winds and sleet,” he told The Independent. “The cold soon developed into bronchitis, and this, together with stomach pains, intestinal blood loss, a sore mouth, regular nose bleeds, chest pains and torrential rains, led me to feel very relieved when I finally reached Land’s End.”
He still managed to set a record, completing the roughly 840-mile run in 10 days, 15 hours and 25 minutes.
I spent some time trying to put this into a different perspective for my fellow Texans. I found several different figures for the east-west distance across Texas, and I’m not sure which is most reliable. But one way of looking at it is: 1-10 from the New Mexico border to the Louisiana border is 877.45 miles. So Richie basically ran something very close to El Paso – Orange in less than 11 days.
Personal and administrative note.
July 2nd, 2018Those of you who are regular readers of my blog may recall that, almost exactly five years ago, I started working for the IronPort division of Cisco as a contractor.
I am pleased and excited to announce that, almost exactly five years later, and after many ups, downs, and changes, I am no longer a contractor: I am now an official, full time, “blue badge” Cisco employee, with all the rights and responsibilities appertaining to same.
I’m still doing IronPort and email security related stuff: the job hasn’t changed, only my status. This will bring some changes:
- a hefty pay raise
- possible yearly bonus pay (not counting those chickens before they hatch)
- Paid time off!
- Paid holidays!
- Better and (I think) cheaper medical/dental/vision coverage
- Reimbursement for continuing education. Unfortunately, St. Ed’s has apparently discontinued the Master’s program I was considering before I left Dell. But I might be able to leverage this into getting some certifications.
I’m also hoping that this will give me more access to resources, both inside and outside of Cisco, that I can use to pursue some projects that interest me, particularly with respect to computer security. (I’m thinking possibly more Bluetooth work.)
This blog’s policy remains the same: I won’t be discussing non-public matters involving Cisco here. I may point to publicly accessible documents, such as press releases or the annual security report, but don’t look here for anything internal. Anything I do say here is just my opinion: it certainly isn’t Cisco’s, and, you know, I could be wrong.
(Speaking of public matters relating to, in this case, an ex-employer: what the heck?)
Quick random shots.
July 1st, 2018I hate soccer.
This is a story about a soccer ball.
Margalit Fox, one of the NYT obit writers, is leaving the paper. And the Times graciously granted her a few column inches to say goodbye.
I have a theory about who that might be…
(Also, Ms. Fox’s new book sounds pretty interesting. I intend to keep an eye open.)
Musical interlude.
June 29th, 2018Apropos of nothing in particular.
Harlan Ellison.
June 29th, 2018LAT. LAT tribute by John Scalzi. Appreciations. The WP just reprinted the AP obit, but they did also run a nice retrospective. Lawrence.
The paper of record has not yet seen fit to publish an obit for Mr. Ellison (or, for that matter, Gardner Dozois.)
Edited to add: NYT partial obit. “A complete obituary will appear soon.”
Other people knew him better and probably have smarter things to say. This one is hard for me, because his stories and essays and criticism have been a huge part of my life for about 40 years now.
It is sometimes said that everyone in science fiction has their own Harlan Ellison story, which they will be glad to tell you anytime his name comes up. Here’s mine: I worked on a couple of Ellison projects a while back. (Basically, I was just retyping his manuscripts into a computer for later typesetting, etc.) While working on those projects, I talked to him a couple of times on the phone. I think he knew that I was nervous talking to him, but he never treated me with anything but respect and courtesy.
I think we would have disagreed on most major issues of the day, but he was a great and underappreciated writer, and I will miss him.
Susan Ellison has asked me to announce the passing of writer Harlan Ellison, in his sleep, earlier today. “For a brief time I was here, and for a brief time, I mattered.”—HE, 1934-2018. Arrangements for a celebration of his life are pending.
— Christine Valada, J.D. (@mcvalada) June 28, 2018
Quick update from the police beat.
June 29th, 2018Remember the fentanyl laced flyers from earlier this week?
Turns out it wasn’t fentanyl after all:
More than a dozen flyers placed on Harris County Sheriff’s Office vehicles have tested negative for fentanyl after a sergeant was hospitalized earlier this week from touching a paper originally believed to be laced with the sometimes-deadly opioid.
The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences tested 13 flyers, as well as clothing items and blood and urine samples from the sergeant who had symptoms related to drug-exposure. Those tests were all negative.
Apparently the initial positive was from a field test. This raises some questions that I just don’t have time to discuss right now, but which I sort of alluded to in the first post, and which I’d like to come back to later.
Edited to add: Well well well. Since I posted this update, the HouChron article has itself been updated with quotes from the sheriff’s office about the field test kits.
The Houston Chronicle reported in July 2016 that 298 people had been convicted of drug possession, even though complete lab tests later found no controlled substances in the samples tested at the scene.
All 298 people pleaded guilty to felony and misdemeanors before the field samples had been tested in the county’s forensic laboratory. Many of those people pleaded guilty based on the initial testing kits indicated the substance recovered at the scene was positive for drugs. Those test kits cannot be used in trial as evidence under Texas law.
Obit watch: June 28, 2018.
June 28th, 2018Daisy Kadibil, Aboriginal Australian.
When she was eight…
Daisy was taken from her home in Jigalong, an Indigenous community in the Pilbara region in northwestern Australia, where she had grown up. A sister, Molly, and a cousin, Gracie, were also seized, and all three girls were sent to an Indigenous settlement near the Moore River, just north of Perth, the nearest city, about 800 miles to the south.
There, longing for home, they sought to escape. In 1931 they succeeded, embarking on foot on a treacherous nine-week trek north across rough terrain and using as their guide a barbed-wire fence that had been built to keep rabbits away from pastureland — an astonishing feat that inspired a book and the acclaimed 2002 Australian movie “Rabbit-Proof Fence.”
Daisy was the last survivor of the three.
For the historical record: Joe Jackson.
Memo from the police beat.
June 26th, 2018Oddly, this one is mostly Houston based this time, though there is an APD connection that I’ll mention at the end.
Somebody put flyers on some Harris County Sheriff’s cars parked outside of one of their buildings.
The flyers promoted the organization Targeted Individuals, an organization which believes that the “Deep State” targets certain individuals.
The group believes the FBI and CIA purposefully inflict mental, physical and emotional stress on enemies of the “Deep State,” in part, by shooting microwave technology at their heads in order to cause brain damage, according to the group’s website.
I think this is their website. At least this is the one linked in the HouChron article. There’s another site called “Targeted Individuals” which seems to cover similar ground. I haven’t had time to dig deeply into either of these sites yet, though I’m generally familiar with the whole beaming microwaves/gangstalking/etc. theory.
But that’s not what makes this story weird. A deputy with HCSO went out, found one of the flyers on her car window, and removed it.
Apparently, the flyer was laced with fentanyl.
She initially did not think anything of it but soon started to feel light-headed and showed other fentanyl-related symptoms.
She was rushed to the hospital and is expected to survive as authorities investigate the flyers’ origination. She was released around 4:30 p.m., authorities said.
My first thought was: “How do they know?” Could it just have been heat-related stress or some other condition, and everyone jumped to the conclusion it was fentanyl? According to the HouChron, at least one flyer (I assume it was the one the deputy handled) “tested positive” for fentanyl, and the remaining flyers are being analyzed by the county forensic lab. No idea if the positive test was a field test, or something more sophisticated.
If someone is actually putting drug-laced flyers on cars in an effort to hurt or kill police officers, that’s a pretty serious escalation. I’m hoping it isn’t true, but in the meantime: paranoia and gloves are your friends.
A while back, I wrote about the cases of Terry Thompson and his wife. Briefly: Terry Thompson confronted a man for public urination at a Denny’s and pinned him to the ground. His wife, a HCSO officer at the time, helped him hold the man down. (The wife has since been fired.) The man passed out and died three days later. Mr. Thompson and his wife were charged with murder.
Terry Thompson’s trial was last week. It ended in a mistrial. The Harris County DA announced yesterday that they plan to retry the case. But:
Although all the jurors agreed deadly force was justified under the circumstances, [Scot] Courtney [Thompson’s attorney – DB] said, one refused to find him not guilty of the murder charge.
“One of the jurors said that he could not, he would not vote not guilty – and he hung up the jury for a day,” Courtney said. “It’s disappointing that a juror was seated and swore an oath to follow the law and then ultimately didn’t.”
On the lesser charge of manslaughter, 10 jurors voted not guilty and on the count of criminally negligent homicide eight voted not guilty, Courtney said.
And finally, noted for the record and without much comment, because I just don’t know what to make of it:
…
Hyenas on fire.
June 26th, 2018Quick update on (now former) state Senator Carlos Uresti:
(Previously. Previously. Previously.)
(Note how far down you have to scroll in the article before former Senator Uresti’s party affiliation is mentioned.)
Headline of the day.
June 26th, 2018Obit watch: June 26, 2018.
June 26th, 2018For the record: Richard Benjamin Harrison, of “Pawn Stars” fame.
Deanna Lund, noted for “Land of the Giants”.
Obit watch: June 23, 2018.
June 23rd, 2018It’s been a rough week and I got sidetracked yesterday. For the record: Charles Krauthammer. NYT. WP.
Thread:
I would like to share a story about Charles Krauthammer.
— Nash Jenkins (@pnashjenkins) June 21, 2018