Telling it like it is

On tuesday, one of the things on the ballot is proposition 1. Salt Lake City wants $192M to build a new police station and to do it, they want to increase every homeowner's property tax by $115 a year above inflation and re-assessment, FOR 20 YEARS. That means that in 20 year's time, on top of everything else, everyone will be paying $2300 more per house. That's more than double my entire property tax and you just know that once the government gets used to that escalator, they're never going to get rid of it. The problem (apart from that it doesn't cost $192M to build a police station) is that no commercial properties are going to be taxed, no hospitals, no landowners, no apartment complexes and no church properties. In other words, homeowners would be punished for owning a home, and all the other people who would benefit from more police presence, would be getting it for free. Vote no. They claim they've "explored all the avenues and possibilities" w

I discovered this morning that whatever heuristic software my bank use to detect fraud works really well. My card stopped working and when I called the bank they told me it had been blocked because someone had tried swiping it at a SprawlMart in Atlanta. ie. my card has been cloned. I told them to flag it as stolen and cancel the number and issue me a new card, which they're doing. So +1 to Zions Bank and -1,000,000 to the thieving fucker who thought he could get away with it.

We got on to the topic of the old Evans & Sutherland CEO at lunch today - and how he ruined the company, and as my blood pressure rose, I started wondering just how bad he was. Let's examine, shall we. The following shows a long-term stock graph taken from Google Finance. The arrow points to the date when he joined E&S. At that point they had about $90M in the bank and 1400 employees and the stock price was teetering around $32 a share. When they finally sold us off (the simulation division) to Rockwell Collins - where I now work - this is what had happened: He presided over 39 consecutive quarters of loss He took the company from +$90M in the bank to -$240M and put us in a position where nobody would loan us money any more The stock price had plummeted to around $4 He bought RealImage - a profit-making company - and turned it into a loss-making venture He bought AccelGraphics - a profit-making company, laid off all the employees and turned their graphics card business int

Halloween was fun last night. My EL-wire suit worked really nicely. We blacked-in the front porch and replaced the porch light with a blacklight. We had skeletons, skulls, cobwebs and spiders all over the place to decorate it, as well as gravestones and a fog generator in the front garden. The gag was simple: Paula sat inside with the front door open and I hid in the blacked-out section. When the kids came to the door, I turned around, turned on the wire suit and used an upside-down can of compressed air to generate a loud "pssshhh" sound and a blast of cold air. Brilliant !!! Our next door neighbour was in his camo suit and jumping out at kids from between his ornamental trees, and our new neighbour Rick across the road had a similar gag - his wife sat outside to lure the kids in and he hid in a camo suit in a bunch of leaves so he could jump up and pull off the scare. Next to him, Sean had his full-on Scream outfit on as well as his compressed-air-powered ghost hooked up t

A about a week ago, when California was on fire, I said to my wife : "I'm surprised CNN hasn't managed to link this to terrorism." I was, of course, joking. Well it seems the government bugs in our house picked that up and transmitted it to FauxNews who ran with the story. They went on air and managed to link the wildfires in California with Al Qaeda. They made up some bullshit story about a captured operative telling government interrogators that Al Qaeda were planning to set forest fires. (blinks, in disbelief) Ok look. This has to stop. This constant crap-mongering by the news channels to try to keep people afraid is ridiculous. More worrying is that nearly 50% of the country probably actually believe this bullshit. It's amazing how people can watch CNN and FauxNews can do so without realising that they're essentially watching the equivalent of 1940's Nazi propaganda (but with higher production costs). Open your eyes! Most of the mainstream cable news

Excuse the pun, but hot on the heels of all the wildfires, tonight there's been a 5.6 magnitude quake just north of San Jose. Good news - no damage or injuries reported. Bad news - it's the Hayward fault - the trigger fault for the San Andreas.

I got back to my PC a couple of minutes ago to find this error message floating on top of all my other windows: I love the last bit - simply "windows error". No duh!

You are road users - the road signs and lights, especially those pretty red stop lights apply to you too. You're not immune you self-righteous two-wheeling fuckers. So next time one of you jumps a red light and cycles in front of me to give me the finger, you're going to become roadkill. Two tons of metal vs. arrogant cock on a bicycle will only end one way.