The EPA’s proposed lead ammo ban is being covered by pretty much everyone, including Lawrence. I don’t have a lot to add to either Lawrence or Tam’s takes, but I do want to say “I told you so.”
(This in turn, for no particular reason, reminds me of the Robert Conquest story.)
Marcel Albert, French ace, with 24 victories to his credit on the Eastern front. In his honor, I’m declaring a temporary moratorium on French military jokes.
Since this was sent to me, I’ll also note the death of “Howdy Doody” head writer Edward Kean.
So what does the tastefully named Gregg Easterbrook have for us in this, the second week of our TMQ Watch?
Let’s start with Monday’s “TMQ Preview”, “NFL shouldn’t take fans for granted“, in which he shows off another common TMQ trope: “…there is no law of nature that says the NFL must always be so popular.” Easterbrook’s point (unlike food and shelter, the NFL is an optional commodity) is hard to argue with, since it’s so obvious. However, his discussion of the ticket sales problems the Jets and Giants are having is enlightening; also noteworthy is his report that naming rights to their new stadium remain unsold. I would be a lot happier, though, if Easterbrook would provide sources for these reports.
Moving on to today’s TMQ, Easterbrook’s AFC preview:
That’s it for this week, folks. Two weeks into this year’s columns, and Easterbrook hasn’t come up with anything I can argue with him about. The season is still young, though. Try the veal, and remember to tip your waitress.
I spent the better part of three hours at a Best Buy yesterday, with Mike the Musicologist waiting for me, trying to upgrade the cell phone that I’ve had since 2004.
Every time the Best Buy rep tried to go through the process, even with AT&T on the line with her, they got an error message. Every time the AT&T rep tried to go through the process on his end, they got an error message.
At one point Miguel, the AT&T rep, had four different people looking over his shoulder trying to figure out what the problem was; both the Best Buy and AT&T rep said that they had never seen anyone have this much trouble with an upgrade before.
(You’re probably wondering, “Why did you spend three hours trying to do this?” Well, a large part of the reason was that during the process, I developed something of a crush on the Best Buy rep, who was pretty, smart, has excellent taste in movies, and kind of likes guns. But that’s another story.)
In the end, the lovely Best Buy rep told me that the best they could do was make notes in my account, that Miguel was escalating this to “Premier”, “Premier” is only open Monday-Friday, and that I should be hearing from “Premier” once they’ve had a chance to review the case.
I’ve called AT&T Customer Service four times today. The first time, the customer service rep at the main number transferred me to “Premier”. The “Premier” rep told me he couldn’t access my customer records or any notes in my account. I asked him to get a supervisor on the line and waited close to an hour for the supervisor. (I eventually had to hang up because it was the end of my lunch hour. Yes, I spent my entire lunch hour on hold with AT&T.)
The second time, the customer service rep transferred me to “Premier”, but we got a crappy connection; I could just barely hear the “Premier” rep on the other end of the line. I asked for a direct callback number, and was told “Just call the same number you called earlier” (that’s the main customer service line).
The third time, the customer service rep actually gave me the direct “Premier” number (866-499-8008) and transferred me to “Premier”. The “Premier” rep I spoke to seemed totally incapable of understanding that I didn’t have an order number (because we never completed the order), and insisted that they only deal with activation issues on web-based orders. After telling her three times that this case had already been escalated to “Premier’, I asked for a supervisor again, was put on hold again, and eventually had to hang up. (Memo to AT&T: I have a freaking job. I can’t be on hold with you people all damn day.)
5:07 PM: I am now speaking to “Premier” rep #4 today, who is telling me once again that she can’t pull up my account, and she can’t help me. I’ve just asked her to get a supervisor on the line. It’s now 5:40 PM.
5:51 PM: still holding for that supervisor.
6:00 PM: Supervisor. Holding.
6:08 PM: Supervisor Nathan Snow is on the line. Nathan Snow is telling me that “Premier” can’t help me, that “Premier” is just a return order/exchange department for orders placed on the web. I’ve told Nathan Snow that I want to talk to the person who can help me, and I want to talk to them now.
6:14 PM: Back on hold. Nathan Snow was singularly unhelpful, just like everyone else I’ve spoken to (except the lovely and talented Best Buy sales person; I never spoke to Miguel, the AT&T rep, directly).
6:17 PM: Nathan Snow is still trying to get “Business and End User Care” on the line.
(You’re probably wondering at this point, “Why don’t you just DTMFA?” Because I’m stubborn. “Why don’t you just go to the Apple Store?” Because I’m not sure I wouldn’t have this same problem, and be waiting another three hours, at the damn Apple Store. “Why didn’t you go there in the first place?” Ever been to an Apple Store on a Sunday afternoon? That’s the classic example of a Mongolian fire drill. “Why can’t you write more like Stingray? That’d be entertaining.” Agreed, and I would be very happy to suggest in public that AT&T take their G–d—ed phones, their f—ing service, my final m—-rf—ing bill, and shove all of them squarely the f–k up their a–. However, my mother does read this blog, and I try very hard to watch my language out of sensitivity to her.)
6:24 PM: Nathan Snow has Rosa Velasquez (sp?) on the line and is transferring me to her.
6:27 PM: Rosa clearly hasn’t read the notes in the account.
6:29 PM: According to Rosa, the problem is that I was on the “Blue” network and they’re the “Orange” network, so they need to transfer me from the “Blue” network to the “Orange” network. She’s trying to figure out how to do that.
6:32 PM: Even though they upgraded my plan, they didn’t change me over from the “Blue” network to the “Orange” network. Rosa is trying to figure out how to change me over from the “Blue” network to the “Orange” network, but now she’s saying I may have to go to a physical AT&T store to get that done. I’ve explained to Rosa that surely, during the three hours I spent at Best Buy yesterday, Miguel or one of the four other people he worked with yesterday would have figured that out.
6:36 PM: Rosa is trying to tell me the nearest AT&T stores are in Kyle and Lockhart. That’s interesting, since their store locator brings up one at 2601 S. IH-35, about 8/10ths of a mile from the main Dell campus. Rosa just found that one as well.
6:40 PM: Rosa says that they can order any device “except the iPhone”, so I’m going to have to go to the physical AT&T store in order to get my account transitioned from the “Blue” to the “Orange” network. At this point, I honestly do not know why I have not suggested to Rosa that she, and the entire AT&T corporation, consume a giant bowl of something disgusting and unfit for human consumption, and gone over to the Sprint store instead. Sheer perversity, I guess.
6:46 PM: Rosa just came back and confirmed that, yes, I have to physically go to the AT&T store in order to complete the upgrade. She’s checking to make sure that the AT&T store is actually open.
6:54 PM: How long does it take to check and make sure the store is open?
7:04 PM: Rosa has had me on hold for 20 minutes now while she supposedly verifies that the store is open and can complete the upgrade. If I hear “No text message is worth getting hurt over” one more G-dd—ed time, I am going to hurt someone myself.
7:07 PM: Rosa is finally back with me, and has confirmed that yes, they can do the “migration” from the “Blue” to the “Orange” network. For my time and trouble, they’re willing to offer me…a $50 credit. That was exactly two hours, start to finish, on the phone this time. Plus three hours in the store yesterday, plus close to another hour and a half over my lunch hour and breaks, for a total of six and a half hours. That implies that AT&T values my wasted time at about $7.69 per hour. Isn’t that roughly minimum wage?
Edited to add: 8:28 PM: F–k AT&T. F–k them, f–k everyone who “works” for them (where “works” is apparently defined as “slithering across the ground, leaving a trail of pus and corruption everywhere they go”), f–k their infrastructure, f–k the f–king iPhone, f–k all of it. I have reached the limit of my patience and tolerance with these mouth breathing a–holes. Someone needs to wipe the entire company off the face of the Earth with a liberal dose of cleansing fire.
I went by the Sprint store after I walked out of the AT&T store. Unfortunately, it looks like an Evo 4G from Sprint would be $15 more a month, even with my 25% discount (vs. 21% with AT&T), they don’t have any of those in stock, and they don’t know when I’d be able to get one. Since AT&T and Sprint are the two companies that offer a discount, I’m seriously considering just simply doing without a cell phone. The other option I’ve considered is picking up a Go phone and swapping SIMs, but at this point I’m not even sure that would work (the whole “Blue”/”Orange” network thing). I’m also seriously considering mailing my phone back to AT&T along with a container of K-Y Jelly and detailed instructions on how to use those two things together.
LabRat, I know you and Stingray aren’t going to read this until you get back, but how do you people cope with this level of rage without killing people or breaking things?
I like Jackie Chan. I like Jackie Chan’s movies: well, most of the ones I’ve seen anyway.
But when I think of Jackie Chan as a tastemaker, I’m reminded of an interview I read with him a few years ago, in which he argued that a particular move was “good”, not for any objective aesthetic reason, but because it made a huge amount of money. (I want to say that was an NYT interview, but I can’t find it now.)
That was the first thing I thought of when I read this article about Mr. Chan and his history of failed endorsements: air conditioners that exploded, shampoo laced with carcinogens, a VCD company that collapsed due to fraud, educational computers that flopped, a failed cola…
Still, calling the man the “Asian Terry Bradshaw” seems a bit harsh. After all, he does have most of his own hair.
I’ve been trying to get the photos from my recent trips organized and put together for Flickr purposes. Here’s the first set, which contains some photos of a Frank Gehry designed building in Las Vegas (and a couple of other buildings, too):
Ruvo Center and other buildings July 2010.
I’m still learning how to use the Nikon. There’s a fair number of photos in this set where I did one photo with the camera set to full-auto exposure mode, and a second photo in the same position with the camera set to aperture priority and stopped down to f/22 or smaller, so I could get a sense of depth of field. (Most of these were taken with the 18-55 mm Nikon kit lens: I think I used the 80-200 mm VR lens for the Stratosphere/pyramid photos.)
Comments either here or on Flickr are welcome.
Pittsburgh continues the downward spiral: 40-81, .331 winning percentage, 53.622 projected wins. Not 110 losses yet, but if trends continue (note that they were 39-75 a week ago, and are on a three game losing streak) that goal is in sight.
Balmer’s 43-79, .352 winning percentage, 57.024 projected wins.
And Houston’s at 53-67, .442 winning percentage, 71.604 projected wins. They may come closer to a .500 finish that I expected at the start of the season.
The NYT is all over Philadelphia’s efforts to save three historic ships: the Olympia, the United States, and the battleship New Jersey.
The New Jersey does not actually seem to be in any danger, except from government cutbacks. People have been trying to save the United States for years, but there just doesn’t seem to be that much enthusiasm; the current plan is for a conservancy to purchase it, and convince someone to turn it into a hotel, casino, or other project.
Of the three ships, the Olympia seems to be the most endangered and most important. What’s interesting to me about the NYT article is that:
The NYT is also on the case if you want to spend six figures on a fish tank. But what if you don’t? The NYT is there for you, too, with some options in the four and even three figure range.
Into the Wild
A post by Sebastian led us to this post at the Defensive Handgun Blog, about the possible legal issues associated with using an Evil Black Rifle in self-defense. (I’d actually be more concerned about over-penetration in an apartment than the legal issues, but I’ve heard other people say that .223 tends to break up and not go through sheet rock. Does anyone have some definitive knowledge on this?)
A link in that post, in turn, led us to one of our favorite tales from “The Ayoob Files” feature in American Handgunner: the story of Gary Fadden, or as Mr. Ayoob puts it, “F— you and your high powered rifle!” As a matter of fact, we were just thinking about this story the other night, and are delighted to find a linkable online version.
Short version of the story: Mr. Fadden and his fiancee were out for a Sunday drive when they got into a confrontation with a group of bikers. The bikers chased Mr. Fadden and his beloved for over 20 miles (this was prior to ubiquitous cellphones) before Mr. Fadden decided to make a stand at his office.
Mr. Fadden’s office was at the Heckler and Koch plant, where he worked as a salesman for H&K. In the truck with him was a legally-owned personal Ruger AC556 (the full-auto version of the Mini-14; one question that isn’t answered in the article is why a salesman for H&K was using a Ruger product, but we figure that’s none of our beeswax). Mr. Fadden made his stand, fired a warning burst into the air, the biker uttered the phrase that pays (quoted above), charged Mr. Fadden, and Mr. Fadden put a six-round burst into the biker, killing him deader than the box office of “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World”.
What makes this story interesting is that the local prosecutor, who was apparently up in arms that someone would use a full-auto rifle in self-defense (as opposed to an engraved Perazzi over/under, perhaps), chose to charge Mr. Fadden with first degree murder. Mr. Fadden was found not guilty in a somewhat unusual trial (an undercover police detective actually broke his cover and testified in Mr. Fadden’s defense; the prosecutor spent so much time waving the AC556 around that the judge actually gave special instructions to the jury), which resulted in the local prosecutor throwing another temper tantrum.
We commend both Mr. Ayoob’s article and the one at the Defensive Handgun Blog to your attention.
In other news (blogged elsewhere, too, but we can’t let it pass without comment) the WP has discovered that people in other parts of the country do things differently. For example, some of them carry…guns! And they take their kids shooting! (The WP user poll, “Should parents teach their children to use guns?” is running 87% “Yes” at the time I write this.)
This has also been blogged in a few other places, but we did want to highlight this post by David Kopel over at the Volokh Conspiracy about the latest questionable activity by the Obama administration; blocking South Korea’s efforts to sell 100,000 surplus antique rifles in the United States.
I have been somewhat negligent in covering the trial of Scott Lando, which ended yesterday.
Mr. Lando was a former officer with the Austin Police Department; he was commended at one time for bravery, and for making the most arrests in his sector. However, things went south for some reason, and Officer Lando was fired in 2008.
Former Officer Lando has been accused of various charges, including aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and prostitution. However, in this particular case, he was charged only with four drug charges; Lando was accused of giving crack and money to hookers and their “boyfriends”.
Interestingly, three of the four drug charges were dismissed by the judge before they even reached the jury, due to insufficient evidence. After deliberating for two days, and telling the judge twice that they were hopelessly deadlocked, the jury finally convicted Lando on the one remaining charge; that he gave crack to the “boyfriend” of a hooker he met while on patrol.
The trial featured some rather sensational allegations; specifically, hookers claiming that Lando brought them to his house, had “unprotected sex” with them (note that it isn’t bad enough that Lando just had sex with hookers; it has to be spelled out that it was unprotected sex) and gave one of the hookers a pair of Harley Davidson motorcycle boots that belonged to his wife.
Speaking of Mrs. Lando, she’s stood by her man the whole time, claiming that the hookers in question broke into her house and stole her stuff.
Something stinks here, but I’m not sure what. When you go to trial on four charges, the judge throws out three of them before they even reach the jury, and the jury is deadlocked on the last one…
Is it okay to tattoo a seven-year old child?
Is it okay to tattoo a seven-year old child if at least one parent gives consent?
Does it make a difference if the seven-year old child allegedly begged and pleaded until the parent gave in? (Note that this fact is disputed; the father claims this, but the child’s mother claimed that he was held down and forcibly tattooed. The child himself testified at the ensuing criminal trial that he didn’t want the tattoo and cried throughout.)
If any of these things do make a difference, what’s an appropriate charge? Aggravated mayhem? Injury to a child? Felony f-ing stupid?
Who bears more of the responsibility here? Certainly, you’d expect the parent to be the bigger party here and say, “I don’t care how much you whine, I’m not letting you get a tattoo.” But we all know there are parents who give in to whatever their kid wants. And it’s easy to imagine a parent who says, “Hey, what’s the big deal with a tattoo?” Does the tattoo artist have a duty to say, “I don’t care what the parents say, I’m not tattooing a freakin’ seven year old”?
Edited to add: Speaking of irresponsible parenting and art, Patrick over at Popehat makes an interesting argument that Rachel Stieringer is a more important artist than Andres Serrano. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Ms. Stieringer and her artistic output, I won’t spoil it for you; I’ll just encourage you to click over to Patrick’s blog entry.