Well, it looks like I picked a fine time to have my trusty Dell take a crap on me. As you all know by now, I was without the Internet for about 10 days. However, I am proud to report that I am writing this from a brand spankin' new Dell laptop. I could have updated last night, but I didn't have cable (more on this in a moment). But, as luck would have it, this blog went silent when you all needed me the most. We didn't get a chance to discuss a lot of stuff. So, I started a running log on the whiteboard in my kitchen to collect all the random thoughts that I had while I was down. So, without further ado......
I guess I can't really start any other place than with the shootings at Virginia Tech. When I saw what happened, I couldn't help but wonder if something like that could happen at dear Old State. But those thoughts were quickly interrupted by the knowledge that it did happen there. Only a year before the Dunmore Elite arrived on campus, a mentally ill young woman killed a fellow student on the HUB lawn. It just puts things into focus about how precious life is, and how quickly it can be snatched away. My thoughts and prayers go out to the Virginia Tech community.
A lot of people want to make this incident into a debate about guns. And on the surface, its a pretty compelling argument. But the thing to remember is that he acquired the guns legally. Maybe we should have a slightly more elaborate process to be able to purchase a firearm than a 1 minute background check. However, I think its a slippery slope to use one event to try and pry even more of our rights away from us. First, the government restricts gun sales, and the next thing you know they are using illegal wiretaps and spying on American citizens. Umm....ok, bad example. But you get the point. Also, before we blame the guns, how about we blame the weirdo who did this? Quite frankly, I would feel much safe if all the weirdos were rounded up and their access to us normal folks was restricted.
Also, can someone help me out with this kid's name. Now, remember that I have had restricted access to the media (Internet and cable) during this whole thing. How do you pronounce it? Cho looks like the first name, but they are using it as a last name. Why is this?
You really have to wonder what pushes a person to this kind of thing. Initially, the AP was reporting that he was upset because Ron Mexico had given him herpes. I am pretty sure this wasn't true, but you have to wonder.
Whew.....OK, enough of the serious stuff. Moving right along.....
As I alluded to previously, my cable TV was out as well. You really have no idea how dependent you become on things until they are taken from you. I didn't have TV from Monday until tonight. Turns out that someone else in my apartment building moved and Comcast sent someone out to turn off their service. However, they disconnected mine instead. Good times! However, I am proud to report that I am back in business (along with a new DVR). And they did credit me for the days that I didn't have any service. So, I didn't have to start a new boycott on them or anything. (But they are on my watchlist.)
Keeping with my public utilities theme, a lot of people around me lost power this past weekend. For those of you who don't live in the southeastern PA area, we had a Nor'Easter come through here. It dropped a ton of rain, and the winds were strong enough to knock down power lines. Here's my question. At what point does it make sense for the power company to bury the damn lines? Maybe I am missing the big picture, but this just makes a ton of sense to me. I would think that the added maintenance cost would be offset by the reduced outages and manpower that is required when lines go down. Not sure if you are aware of this, but when union labor has to get out of bed at 2 am, that doesn't come cheap. Now, some people who regularly post to this blog are infinitely more qualified to answer this than me. And, I am expecting a full report to why this isn't being done.
Should I break all these thoughts up into a 2nd post or just keep going? Ah, screw it.....I'm going on.
This whole Don Imus situation was beaten into the ground, so I don't want to go into it. But one thing about the process confused me. At the end, the Rutger's women's basketball team accepted the apology that Imus gave. The media reported this like it was a big deal. Like it was a necessary event in the healing process. What exactly is the formal context of "accepting" an apology? If they had rejected the apology, what would have happened? Would we have had to start over again? Would he have had to make a counter-proposal apology that was a better offer? These are the things I like to think about.
I watched the VH1 Rock Honors in HD over the weekend. One of the groups that they honored was Def Leppard. One of the songs that they performed was "Rocket." In the chorus they sing "Rocket. Yeah....." and then something that I couldn't understand. I tried to figure out what these words were. My best guess was "Rocket. Yeah. Sail away....yeah." Turns out that the correct lyrics are "Rocket. Yeah. Satellite of Love." That wasn't even close. Looks like I picked a bad week to stop doing mushrooms.
I have a beef with the literary community. Can we please stop using the words "latter" and "former" when we are describing items in a list? I can never remember which is which. And if you think I am stupid, think really quickly which means the first and which means the second one. Couldn't do it either, huh? I thought so. Let's just all agree to stop using these. Thank you.
You know what irritates the shit out of me for no reason at all? Those kids with those sneakers with roller skates built in. I have no reason to hate these kids as they whiz by me, but I do. I don't think that I have quite reached the age when I am worried about one of these young punks knocking me over and breaking my hip. But I am fully convinced that I can't be more than a year or two away.
Here's another thing that really annoys me. Sometimes when you go to a website and you have to enter an address. Most times I can just type in the letter "P" and it immediately takes me to Pennsylvania. But every once and a while I come across a site that puts the country of Palau, ahead of Pennsylvania. How is this rational? I know that it is in alphabetical order, but it doesn't make any sense. Are we supposed to believe that more Palauans are logging on to the Internet than the residents of PA? Of course not. Let's try to fix this one.
Ok, my hands are hurting. Thats enough for now. Hopefully, I gave you your Kevin fix for a while. Take care and I post again on Monday.
~Kevin
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1 comment:
Wow, lots of pent up thoughts. Good stuff.
I can address the issues around putting power lines underground. Please realize that I am not familiar with the tariff that your local electric utility has with the PUC, but I am somewhat familiar with that of the electric utility to your north. It comes down to the fact that these utilities are defined as overhead companies. This means by default the install overhead facilities. The only exception is in underground residential developments where there is a state law that makes utilities install underground facilities.
There are benefits to going underground, most notably is that trees can't fall on the wires. There are a lot of problems too. How would we go retrofit the system? Its not easy to go get new right of way from landowners to bury this stuff.
Then you get people digging and destroying underground facilities.
Then you get cable failures. You want to talk about cheap? How about that 2 AM call when an underground cable failed. It takes 6 hours just to find the problem, because you can't see it. You have to do a lot of testing. Then some schmuck gets his yard torn up so the failure can be spliced out. Under normal circumstance (not a storm) a similar overhead problem takes much less time to fix.
Then there is literally the $1,000,000 question: Who pays for it? The utility certainly won't as its not built into their rate base. The customers will end up paying for it by way of higher rates.
I don't know how much trouble PECO had from that storm, but in the LV we weren't in bad shape.
Readers Digest: It costs money to go underground, and the utility (more accurately the shareowners) will not pay for it.
Those rollerskates piss me off too. I hope those kids get some serious permanent injuries from those things. Wait, no I don't because then my healthcare expenses go up because of those douches. Fucking communists.
Don Imus is a Douche. MSNBC/CBS was just looking for a reason to fire him because of his crappy ratings and they got their out.
The reverands Jackson and Sharpton are douches. I demand an apology from them on behalf of the Duke lacrosse players. I also demand that the reverends pay back all the money the Duke families had to pay in defense of the bogus charges. Why doesn't anyone have the ball sack to call these racists out? Is it because they are black? Please pardon the pun, but this is nothing more than the pot calling the kettle black. I'm sick of it. No, the white man isn't keeping you down. You want to know what is? Playing he God damn victim all the time. Go get a job and a paycheck. Act respectable. It doesn't mean acting white, it means doing the right thing and moving on with life. Douches!
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