Author: Fuzzy Curmudgeon

Most days I work in the software development department, sitting here in front of the computer in my pjs (I telecommute), sippin’ on a soft drink (or more likely ice water since I was down with the flu in February), readin’ a little news here, a blog or two there, and incidentally getting some work done.
But two days a week I am seconded to the product support department. Thankfully our front line support is handled by email (and I have an agreement with the company that I will NEVER have to do phone support). But as I suggested yesterday, the Internet is quickly becoming populated by total idiots masquerading as sysadmins and net gurus, who wouldn’t know a bit from a byte or a Hayes modem from a DSL router, or a DNS entry from a hole in their head…and they ALL want our software.
The problem with this is that I have to help them two days a week. And frankly I don’t have the temperment to do so anymore. Back in the days when we were all mainframers (and I admit I was one more by courtesy than anything else, although I CAN program in REXX), people actually had to have a fair amount of knowledge, and life was good. Today, the Internet has become pedestrian due to the web making it so much easier to use. I don’t hate the web; I loathe it while using it a lot more than I used to think I would. (Well — here I am blogging, for instance.)
The problem is, that while the Internet has become pedestrian, the people who run it have seriously decreased in knowledge and ability — probably due to the fact that there are so many open positions for sysadmins these days that anyone who can run Word and write a macro can get a job running an Internet server. Back in the old days, you actually had to know what you were doing before they turned you loose to burn all the lights on the front of the IBM big iron.
I’m exaggerating the problem — I hope. There are a few good people left who understand how it ought to work. What will happen when we’re gone? One of these days the Internet is going to be left to the script kiddies, I suspect. I’m only 22 years from retirement so I guess I’ll live to deal with it…
I ought to write a book. I keep threatening to.

…will be the big hole we blow in what’s left of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
What a wanker. Can’t these Islamist collaborators and fellow travellers go off and wank somewhere else?

Rachel Lucas gave me a link!
And her rant today is pretty amazing. I agree with all of it, even if I do use the cell phone in the car from time to time…
I was glad to see her first bullet point. It used to seriously annoy me when people wouldn’t shut the fuck up in class. It used to seriously annoy a couple of my professors, too, and they weren’t shy about stopping dead in the middle of a sentence, giving the class an icy stare, and waiting for the undercurrent to die away, then pick up right where they left off.
One of these profs began every semester with something like the following: “There will be a midterm and a final, and a paper due at the last class meeting. You may rest assured that the final is comprehensive. If this is not what you were expecting, please see me at the end of the period, when I will be happy to sign a drop slip for you and we will part friends.” I never got less than an A- in his classes, and I only dropped one of them (because I got sick in the middle of the semester and missed a couple of weeks of class — I retook the class later on in my 10-year university career). He’s retiring at the end of the year…

Probably somewhere in between, but I’m somewhat annoyed at Dawn for assuming without data that it’s evil incarnate.
Dawn is far too intelligent to make a post like this without at least taking the time to see whether or not her assessment is fair. I will excuse it on the premise that she is clearly quite angered by what she’s seen of home schooling, but I hope that she will actually do the research she admits that she did not do, because she will find that there is an awful lot of good home schooling going on out there, including lots of opportunities (including, in some cases, sports teams that are accredited to play the public school teams!) for socialization.
I have gut reactions about things too, but I try to do enough research to feel that I’m on solid or at least semi-solid ground before I start ranting about them. There are plenty of people out there (mostly socialists, Democrats, environmentalists, Islamic terrorists, and anti-nuke types) who rant about things they know nothing about already. Let’s not add to the trend.

I have rarely in my life been so privileged to deal with more stupid people who think they are Internet gurus in my life as I was today. I have literally been working since my butt hit this chair at 8AM, with maybe 15 minutes out to eat something for lunch. Morons. Morons, morons, morons. The moronosity quotient of the Internet must be at an all-time high.
I remember when people actually knew what you meant when you said “RFC”. And it doesn’t mean “Regionally Fried Chicken”, either.
Sheesh.

Ah, Chuck, we hardly knew ye…
Damn. Damn, damn, damn.

In the same article referenced below:

Cigarette sales in New York plummeted almost 50 percent in July after the city raised the tax on each pack from 8 cents to $1.50. The new tax, which Bloomberg pushed to help close a record budget gap, drove the price of some name brands to more than $7 per pack.

I thought the point here was to raise money to cover health care expenses allegedly accruing on the system because of smokers, not to actually stop them from smoking so the revenue wouldn’t be raised. So let’s see, we’re also going to ban smoking in restaurants in NYC…so cigarette sales are going to, hmm, plummet even more, aren’t they?
Oh, wait, I’m beginning to sound like Rush Limbaugh here…
…which may not be a bad thing.

Headline: NYC Mayor Wants to Ban Smoking in All Bars and Restaurants
Fine, Mr. Mayor, you won’t find my wife and me as tourists in your little town anytime in the near, mid, or far future if this passes.
I thought you were trying to boost tourism, not kill it.

Who said this, when was it said, and what was it in reference to?
“Away with the idea of getting independence first, and looking after liberty afterward. Our liberties, once lost, may be lost forever.”
Answers in the full text.

Continue reading “For those who fear the loss of liberties…”

Mark Steyn has some extremely trenchant observations today, but his last paragraph is his most important one:

You’ll notice, incidentally, that I haven’t used the word “liberal” to describe the left. “Conservative” has been carelessly appropriated by the media to mean no more than the side you’re not meant to like. John Ashcroft is a hardline conservative, but so, according to the press, is the Taliban and half the Chinese politburo and the crankier Ayatollahs. So I think we conservatives ought to make an attempt to reclaim the word “liberal.” We believe in liberty, and in liberating human potential. I don’t know what you’d call a political culture that reduces voters to dependents, that tells religious institutions whom they can hire, that instructs printers on what printing jobs they’re obliged to accept, that bans squeegee kids unless they’re undercover policemen checking on whether you’re wearing your seatbelt, etc., etc. But “liberal” no longer seems to cover it.

I agree. I think the Conservative movement does need to reclaim the good old term “liberal”. Hayek used the term 60 years ago to mean what we mean today when we say “Conservative”, not what we mean today when we say “Liberal”. It does not mean “liberal with handouts to the point of nanny state”, it means “a believer in freedom of choice, thought, and anything else you can think of.” And today the correct definition of “liberal” has much more applicability to the right than it does to the left.