Author: Fuzzy Curmudgeon

I’ve been trying to say this since day one. I don’t like to blog about technology but I just have to nod my head here.
I don’t give a good God damn if Microsoft does end up ruling the world. BillG couldn’t do worse than BillC. And it’s BillC’s anti-business “Justice” department that started all of this.
Say what you will about Microsoft’s buggy products, but Apple and all of the *nixes are right up there in the bug department with them. Microsoft gets more bad press than anyone else because it’s fashionable to hate them.

Article in NRO discussing our new surgeon general and those who opposed him because once he shot a criminal dead, dead, dead.
Would that more doctors were so civic-minded. (And it’s hilarious to note that most of the complaining is coming from Emory University. I wonder…would their board of trustees or regents be called an Emory [sic] Board? They’re certainly raspy and abrasive enough. And their exposed fraud Michael Bellesiles is pretty rough around the edges for an academic.)

PejmanPundit has an in-depth, quite righteous Fisking of Brian Whitaker’s article in the Guardian that disses MEMRI. Damn. Go get him, Pej…

…if anyone cares.
Busy, busy day.

OK, one MORE. I can’t resist.
The Professor just put up a link to a Georgia General Assembly resolution renaming Cynthia McKinney Parkway in DeKalb County to its original name, “Memorial Drive”,

in honor and memory of all of those United States Citizens who died on or after September 11, 2001, as a result of attacks on this nation by foreign enemies and in defense of this nation against further such attacks as part of Operation Enduring Freedom; and the Department of Transportation is authorized and directed to erect and maintain appropriate signs identifying the same.

What a wonderful slap in the face to someone who richly deserves one.

OK, one more.
In an article in today’s American Prowler, Lawrence Henry makes some thoughtful points. I’ve also read Clancy’s Every Man a Tiger and I was intrigued at the time by the huge gulf between the attitudes of the professional Saudi military officers Chuck Horner dealt with during GWI and the apparent attitudes of the Saudi ruling family.
Maybe we really don’t have the problem with the Saudis that many (including me) think we do. Maybe the princes are about to overextend themselves and wear out their welcome. Would a military government in Saudi that was friendly to the U.S. really be such a bad thing?
It’s something to ponder.

Via Best of the Web, this story actually makes me laugh a little.
For some reason I saw my Dad shaking his finger at me and saying “you go out and kill yourself, and I’ll never speak to you again!” Which is something my Dad probably would have done, but just as probably with a big grin on his face.
Somehow, though, I don’t think this young idiot’s father was laughing very much. Which is a good thing.

An excellent article by Richard Perle, entitled “Why the West Must Strike First against Saddam Hussein”. (Link from LGF)

It occurred to me this morning as I read the news (and I can’t remember which article triggered the thought process that has been fermenting all day and just taste-tested nicely; if I do I’ll link it) that, given the past and continuing support of the House of Saud for militant Islam as a means of exporting revolution and saving their sorry asses from the gibbet, we need a new term for “militant Islam”.
I humbly suggest “Wahhabism”.
So from now on when I talk about “militant Islam” in some context or another, I will simply substitute the word “Wahhabism”.
And while we’re redefining words, one of these days maybe we’ll take back that good word “liberal” from the ass-kissing socialist dickweeds who hijacked it back in the ’50s. As I blogged about the other day.

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.