Here’s a hint: If you’re going to get drunk and high and then try to steal cars, don’t do it in a speedo. The cops just might come after you with a dog and you never know where they will bite.

EAST HARTFORD, Conn. — A robbery suspect wearing only a Speedo-style swimsuit was arrested in East Hartford after a police dog tracked him down and bit him on the leg.

Lucky for him, he got bitten in the leg. It could have been a lot worse.

Well, I saw this over at Random Nuclear Strikes, and I decided to give it a whirl.

I guess I fall towards the right, with a libertarian leaning:

My Political Views
I am a right moderate social libertarian
Right: 3.35, Libertarian: 1.84

Political Spectrum Quiz

And my foreign policy is a bit right of center, but not too bad:

My Foreign Policy Views
Score: 1.98

Political Spectrum Quiz

And culturally, I’m just about smack dab in the middle:

My Culture War Stance
Score: 0.49

Political Spectrum Quiz

Check it out and let me know how you did!

Blah blah blah 24 hour support blah blah blah

Yada yada vendor outsourcing yada yada

harumph harumph don’t know what’s going on harumph

blah blah more meetings blah blah

harumph harumph more tracking paperwork harumph

yada yada good meeting yada

Is it a bad thing to throw your boss under the bus on a meeting if he’s sitting next to you?

Good thing he knew I was kidding. At least I think he did.

My day started out kind of boring. Usual Monday morning paperwork, that kind of thing.

Mid-morning, I tried to update the system firmware on one of my boxen.

At the very end of the update, the system locked up and wouldn’t respond. The technician in the computer room tried a few things, but had no luck.

I grabbed a co-worker (4 eyes are better than 2) and we gave it our best to fix it.

Eventually, after exhausting every option we had, we started swapping out parts. Power supply? Nope. Memory and CPU board? Nope. Array Controller? Nope.

Finally, we got down to the system board. That brought it back.

Either my firmware update to the system console killed the system board, or the system board coincidentally fried when I was working on the system.

It must be my Midas Touch.

I had a ball doing all of this. It’s been a long time since I got myself elbows deep in a server, and I really enjoy that aspect of IT.

System Administration is a fun way to make a living, but eventually you age yourself out of actually touching the servers. That kind of thing gets left behind so that the technicians can learn their craft. And you start doing things like clustering, high-level system design, and all that.

But it sure is fun to turn screws.

OK, that title is a bit inflammatory. But I can’t think of any other way to do this.

Basically, a kindergartner, who is probably 5 or 6, was expected to know to get off of one bus on the way home and transfer to another. Apparently there weren’t any adults at the transfer station responsible for making sure she got off her first bus and made it to her second.

The driver of the first bus drove the child to the end of her route and put her off the bus. Miles from home. In the company of strangers.

BRILLIANT!

Luckily, she was eventually noticed by another parent and the child knew her mother’s phone number. Nothing tragic happened, unless you count a very traumatized mother and daughter.

The story is here.

I hope that the bus driver is terminated and charged with wanton endangerment. I can almost understand not knowing which child gets off where on the first day, but to just leave her at the end of your route is reprehensible.

This, of course, begs the question of why the little girl had to ride that second bus at all. Social experimentation in getting a “correct” mix of students is why. A decades old policy of busing kids across town is to blame.

We’ve been lucky that our kids all go to a school that’s close to our home. But that was probably pure luck. If JCPS decides that my son would better serve the demographics they want by going to school 30 miles away, then he’d be going to school across the county. Ditto for the other kids.

If students must be sent across town to create a false utopia of economic and racial mixing, then let it be children who are a little older and more responsible. That little girl had no idea how to change buses. There should have been an adult at the front of that bus with a list of kids to escort off that bus and put directly onto another bus. Instead the school board expects a child small enough that she still gets a nap in school to know where to get off her bus and which of the myriad of other identical buses to get on.

And she wasn’t the only one that had such problems that morning. I heard over the weekend of another child in the East End who was not where she was supposed to be while under the control of JCPS.

If JCPS decides that Baby Bear needs to go across town for his education, I will sell blood to afford parochial school. No child should have to endure hours of travel to school every day. And no responsible educator would put children in a situation where they may very well get lost by the adults who are supposed to ensure their safety.

“Extinct boobies return from the dead”

Certainly got my attention. Unfortunately, the New Scientist was messing with my head. I had visions of zombie breasts walking the countryside.

Turns out it’s a species of bird that was thought extinct.

This wasn’t the boobie I was expecting to see.

Oh well.

Just heard that Michael Vick has been signed by the Philadelphia Eagles.

As I’ve said before, he doesn’t deserve another chance in football.

What this means to me is that there will be no Philadelphia Eagles football in my home while Vick is on the roster.

At least he didn’t go to the Raiders. I would have bet they would have picked him up.

I took yesterday off to get the kids ready for school, and I’m kinda glad I did. There have been rumors of layoffs for a few months, but the fat hit the fryer yesterday here in Louisville.

Apparently the layoff meetings happened at another building, and the tension was very high on my floor. Only one or two people on my floor got let go, and none of them were on my team.

Management says those that have been laid off are getting good severances. I hope so. Losing a job is something that few prepare for ahead of time. A little extra money can make the difference between losing your house while you’re looking for work and moving into an apartment.

Word from higher is that this is the only wave. I hope so. I’m OK for now, but this hits close enough to home to get the hair on the back of my neck up.

Well, the kids started school this morning. Junior Bear is a senior, and Girlie Bear started middle school. They were out the door in plenty of time, but the bus drove past us without stopping. One of the other parents had the number to the bus depot, and the driver turned around and got them. 45 minutes later, but she turned around. She swears she drove by and there was no-one there. Oh well, better luck tomorrow.

Girlie Bear did OK on her first day. She’s figured out how to open a combination lock, and likes her classes.

Junior Bear’s schedule is messed up pretty bad. They’ve got his first period with him taking physics the first semester, and the second half of calculus in the second. I’ll have to talk to his counselor about that.

He’s taking an experimental distance learning class this year. The course is being taught at another high school in Louisville, and he’s taking it as an on-line course. He still has an hour a day in class with a teacher, but she appears to be there to make sure the kids are actually working. I hope that works out. It would make it easier for students to take courses that are not offered at their school without having to travel across town.

Here’s to a good school year!