To Whom It May Concern

The recent use of AIT and pat-downs has raised a serious concern for me as an airline customer. The level of invasion dictated by these procedures does not provide an acceptable increase in my personal security in exchange. Further, my inability to opt out of both procedures without incurring a fine makes it impossible for me to stand up for my rights as an American citizen. How can we, as a nation, not see how personal privacy is violated, victims of sexual crimes are harassed, and religious persons are told that their God doesn't exist at TSA checkpoints?

Regrettably, my family and I find that we may be forced to find alternative means of transportation if these invasive measures are not removed. As airline customers, it is these companies that will ultimately suffer the long-term effects of the TSA chasing Rights-defending Americans out of the skies. I have sought to add my voice to other groups who also find TSA to be violating my rights and will continue to do so. What I hope to learn is what are airlines doing to defend the rights of their customers? Are there groups that the airlines are referring their customers to? And are there alternatives that the public is not being made aware of?

Sincerely,
Gregory Cox

For The Geeks In The Crowd

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Red Tape

I've talked about sleep apnea a couple of times, and specifically about how the military is not a fan. Well, despite having known that this diagnosis no longer applies for a while now, the military finally had acknowledged that fact. The trouble is that they are currently out of scholarships for this year, so I'm left out on the alternate list. Fortunately, this list is based on merit, and now that I don't have sleep apnea, I'm now a top category applicant. The thing that is most irritating is that when I originally approached the Army, already having lost the weight, they told me that sleep apnea would easily qualify for a waiver. If they had just said, "we don't know, you might need another sleep study" this whole thing might have been resolved months ago and I might be reporting that I am on Army scholarship... guess I should just get used to this sort of efficiency.

Got This in an Email From My Uncle

Dear Lord,
This past year you have taken away my favorite actor, Patrick Swayze; my favorite actress, Farah Fawcett; my favorite musician, Michael Jackson; and my favorite sales man, Billy Mayes.

I just wanted to let you know that my favorite president is Obama....
And my favorite congressman is Pelosi......
Amen

This Is How The Government Spents Our Money

I think I'm a reasonably smart guy. I like the fun of the moment, but I try to make a lot of my decisions based on the long term picture. That's a portion of why I bought myself a Toyota Corolla about 6 years ago. Its a relatively inexpensive car that also gets great gas mileage. Smart. So we all know about how the economy has tanked in the last couple of years and that the government is doing its best to print enough money to pay for all the new programs that not all of us need, right? Well this particular program for the government to give you a voucher for your POS car is one of the dumb programs that hit closer to home for me. Why should my tax dollars be spent to 'correct' the poor economic decisions of people who purchased gas guzzlers or the car companies that made the stupid things in the first place!!! If you're not incredibly worried about what our government is doing, I urge to you read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

I Don't Think Of Myself As A Complainer

But sometimes I just want things to be over with. In this case, I have been trying to sell the rings, more specifically the diamond, from my failed marriage. This is a total nightmare. No one really wants 'failed' jewelry apparently. So the ex knows I haven't sold it, and I assume she's complained about it to her friends because she sent me an email asking what I thought about having a friend of hers try and help us sell it on eBay.

OK, so I think to myself, I hate this ring, I want it gone, fine, anything to unload this thing. I send the ex a response saying OK, but lets sign a selling agreement, just to be safe. Dumb. So she forwards her friend's response to my request to have something signed before he sells the thing. Not helpful. At all. I'm not really surprised, I mean, the only reason I can think that he would be wanting to help her sell this thing is to get in her pants, and damn it if his email doesn't basically tell her she should just ask for the ring from me straight up.

I now know myself to be dealing with an ex who's deciding to ask all kinds of 'what if' questions and feel all sentimental about our marriage from hell. Can't tell you what kinds of warm fuzzies that gives me... cause they ain't warm or fuzzy.

If anyone reading this wants to buy the ring or stone, let me know, cause I'm ready to entertain just about any offer just to get the thing off my hands...

PG-13 Hilarity

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Why Do We Do This To Ourselves

As I sit here at work, really wishing that it didn't feel as tired as I do, I can't help but be angry about having lost an hour in my schedule over the weekend. Even the best explanations about why we do this ridiculous thing with our clocks leaves a logical mind wondering why we don't just pick one version of the time and stick with it. As far as I can tell, the reasoning from the opposition camp is way more sound than anything else you ever hear. I could almost move to Arizona just for the lack of daylight saving.

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So not many have commented here, but I've heard from many people in person and on facebook that they agree with my thoughts here. Not one person has said they like daylight saving time, so what is it that keeps us practicing it? Is there someone out there that likes this and just hasn't said so? Please comment if you're out there, I'd love to know your thoughts.

And We Pay For This...

This just gives me all kinds of warm fuzzies about my government:

Washington » Nearly 400 U.S. House members voted for a resolution Thursday honoring the University of Florida football team for winning the Bowl Championship Series title.

But Utah's delegation was not among them.

Read the whole thing in The Salt Lake Tribune
Its just revolting that congress wastes its time on crap like this when there are real problems out there.

Stupid

I hate driving in Utah. Normally its the other drivers that make me insane, but sometimes its the people in charge of the roads. For example, anyone that's ever been a passenger in my car driving north out of Salt Lake has heard my rant about how freeways should never have lanes that end in merges, especially left lanes (I think the only lane terminations should be exit only's so that even if you find yourself in a lane that ends, you're not 'forced' to cut off someone else in order to avoid driving off the road). Today's kudos go to the Utah State Highway Patrol. So, first, this happened:

Video Courtesy of KSL.com (or read about it here)

You just gotta love winter driving (read: some people shouldn't have a driver's license in general, let alone in adverse conditions). So anyway, they set up this detour that everyone gets to take:

View Larger Map
Notice that lefty at the north end that you have to take to get back to I-15. That's the only really significant light along the whole detour. As I followed the detour, I saw patrol cars all over the place, keeping order, stopping cars so that locals could turn out of this ridiculously bad traffic jam, generally being useful... until that one left turn. There's only one left turn lane for 11 miles of 2 lane traffic and we all know how short the green is on those. No officers anywhere near that intersection. No efforts to see that they've created a huge backup of traffic, that might have been relieved with a little attention. An hour and fifteen minutes later, I got back to the freeway was already full of cars who had arrived after the detour was lifted. Way to waste my life UDOT.

Still Can't Believe I Saw This

So went to the Aquabats concert on Saturday. The opening band was about what you'd expect from an opening band, but them something absolutely horrible happened. This:

came on stage. Its a little difficult to see, but that's one of the characters from the kids show Yo Gabba Gabba. Now I know that MC Bat Commander was the creator of the show, but give me a break. Putting a show that even a five year old knows to be less intelligent than himself on stage in front of a bunch of twenty-somethings who want to mosh and skank just shows how far off their grove the Aquabats have gotten. And I think I lost my faith in humanity when a large portion of the crowd actually sang along to the Yo Gabba Gabba songs that make even Barney seem erudite and a downright vocabularian.