Southern California, after burning to the ground last summer and fall, is having problems with mudslides now that actual measurable rain is falling. Boo Freaking Hoo.

To paraphrase Sam Kinison “You see this, this is sand. You know what it’s gonna be in a thousand years? It’s gonna be sand! You live in the desert! Get your kids, get your S!@#$!, we’re making one trip!”

Southern California is the edge of the Mojave Desert. People weren’t meant to live in that area in any real concentrations. The native vegetation in that area is adapted to live in semi-arid conditions and will burst into flame if you shine a flashlight at it when it’s in its dormant, dry period. And we all know how well sandy soil holds together when the vegetation is sparse and charred and you dump a few inches of rain on it in a couple of days. Add to that the fact that occasionally the earth will quake itself into a frenzy underneath the very rocks and sand that make up the landscape, and I quickly remember why I’ve always called SoCal “The Land That God Forgot”.

Why do I keep being bothered when these blithering idiots get burned, rained, mudded, or blown out of their homes? “Oh, my house got washed away after I rebuilt it when my creosote bushes and eucolyptus trees burned it down last summer.” Cry me a river and move somewhere sane, like Nebraska.

about what this article was for.

The headline is “Afghan Dogs Reunited With U.S. Soldiers Returning From Deployment“. At first glance through my no-sleep, no-caffeine eyes this morning, I honestly thought they meant that some trooper had been reunited with the “Deployment 10” females that he had cozied up to sometime after his 6th month at a remote base in Afghanistan, and now feels a deep sense of shame about after getting back to the real world and seeing what a good looking woman actually resembles.

Turns out it’s actually about the efforts to bring a couple of actual canines to the US after they were adopted by a soldier during deployment.

My bad. Lord, I need some coffee.

Over the weekend, an electrical outage at a pumping station caused the relase of almost 50000 gallons of sewage into a creek here in Louisville.

Hey, things happen. I’m not condemning anyone for a mechanical/electrical breakdown.

However, I’m not pleased by the response to it:

“Schardein says crews responded quickly to the call after, notice came in
over a central communication system between all treatment plants and pumping
stations. He says, “we got the warning on our computer screen about
3:15. We had a crew acted by 5 a.m.”

So it took an hour and a half for someone to notice there was a problem, get a crew out to the site and get some sort of power going to get the discharge of effluvium to stop?

Pretty bad if you think about what that spill is doing to the people who live in that area. Yes, they say they don’t smell anything, and I’m sure that MSD is doing everything they can to contain and clean up the mess. But an hour and a half to get on-site and do something when raw sewage is spilling into a neighborhood and a creek?

Glad to see my utility bill money is going towards something constructive.

• All that work you did to clean up the house on Saturday morning? You won’t be able to see the difference by bedtime on Sunday.
• That part you bought for your truck so it wouldn’t stall out every time you took your foot off the gas? It’s not the same as the one you pulled off the engine and a replacement won’t be in until Tuesday.
• Those metric wrenches you bought? No clue as to their whereabouts. Good luck using the crescent wrench on the bolts holding your throttle body on.
• Yes, you need a haircut. No your barber isn’t open on Sunday when it occurs to you that you should get one before work on Monday.
• That server you’re working on from the comfort of our living room? It’s going to lock up sometime during its boot process when you can’t SSH into it.
• The remote console to said server? Guess what doesn’t work tonight. Since you’re going on-site anyway, just work the next 4 hours in the computer room. Did you remember to set your DVR for that show you wanted to watch?

Last week, it was 1 degree on Wednesday when I took Girlie Bear to school. This morning it was 43.

All of the snow and ice in our yard is now mud, and the fish are swimming in the pond.

I smelled skunk at least 4 times this morning during the commute, so the critters are coming out of their holes.

I saw two flights of geese headed north this morning.

It’s early February.

This just isn’t right, and the sudden increase in temperature and humidity is wreaking havoc on my health.

I miss the Great White North and the Great Brown Southwest, where it may have sucked, but it sucked in a consistent way.

Just got back in from helping Irish Woman put Baby Bear in the car for the ride to day care. He’s bundled up in about 4 layers of clothes, coat, and blankets. All that I could see underneath his hat was his pacifier, his eyes and his nose. Looked like one of those Glowworm dolls from when we were kids.

Weathercritter says it’s 12 degrees downtown, which means it’s 10 here in the boonies. With the wind chill, it’s below zero. Even for someone who remembers going outside and playing at recess when it was 5 degrees below before the wind chill, that’s officially cold. There was about 3 inches of snow drifted up against the porch, and I went out with no socks under my Converse, so my feet are a bit nippy. Koshka certainly thought so when I tried to put them under her rump to warm them up.

The groundhog saw his shadow the other day, so we’ve got 6 more weeks of this stuff to go.

Bundle up campers, it’s cold outside.

Just saw this.

A big bore caliber like that in a pistol? It hurts just to think about it. Put this up on my list of wants when money is no object.

“It’s the .88 Magnum, it shoots through schools”

Iran has reported that it launched a satellite into Earth orbit over the weekend.

What’s worrisome is that if you can put a satellite into orbit, you can put a missile into a city.

Even if you don’t have a nuclear payload, just having the ability to put a high explosive warhead into a major American or European city would be enough to create panic.

Here’s a situation you should consider:

Assume that the guidance package on an Iranian ICBM would be about as good as a Soviet missile in the 1970’s or 1980’s. So it wouldn’t be able to target a particular building, or even a particular city block, but might have a circular area of error of between 1 and 2 kilometers.

Now let’s assume that you fire, oh, 25 or so of these things at Manhattan, London, Berlin, or Hong Kong.

Yes, you’re not going to hit anything important on purpose, but if you sprinkle high explosive bombs over a city like that, things are going to get pretty scary for those on the receiving end, even if their individual chances of being hurt are pretty minimal.

And it’s not too difficult to take a few years and improve both your payload and guidance enough that you have a really workable nuclear deterrent.

Let’s see how the new administration reacts when they wake up to realize that Iran not only hates our guts, but they have the tools to start World War III, and they don’t care if they all die in ball of fire. To them it would be a blaze of glory.

Well, the schools are finally open, the kids schlepped themselves off this morning, and I’m back in the office. Almost got killed on multiple occasions on my way to work due to the fluffy white stuff that was coming down causing seizures on the part of the other drivers.

Spent the day doing stuff that got put off last week due to noone being able to work at the office. Gotta love it.

From The Onion, one of my favorite publications:

Aquarius Jan 20 – Feb 18

Sure, a spoon full of sugar may make the medicine go down, but if it’s suppositories you’re struggling with, the spoon isn’t going to help.

Could be my new motto.