Frenzied Daddy

A ninth grader in Tennessee has been charged with theft and sent to court for stealing … a forty cent lunch. Fifteen year old Jon Riker receives a reduced lunch at Gallatin’s Station Camp High School. One day last semester, his mother forgot to give him the forty cents for lunch. He was hungry at lunch and he went through the line and didn’t pay. He received a three day suspension and a court date.

Ok, so the kid did take lunch without paying for it. But forty cents is a little silly. The problem is the school’s no tolerance stance on lunch thefts. I think a more appropriate solution could have been found, perhaps involving dish washing, or detention, or something.

In the mother’s defense, she’s been a little frenzied herself. They have a family of six, and tje youngest had brain surgery recently. I have lunch money slip my mind too, but I just get an annoyed phone call from the cafeteria lady who reminds me to send in some lunch money.

In the spirit of “sending in lunch money,” some people are banding together to send lunch to kids at the school; sending forty cents to

Station Camp High School
600 Lower Station Camp Creek Road (1040 Bison Trail)
Gallatin, TN 37066
Attn: Principal Art Crook

With a kind note suggesting he use the forty cents to buy lunch for other kids who don’t have the money, and following that up with a suggestion to find creative, appropriate punishments for kids who steal lunch.

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The world is abuzz with the news that Microsoft is making another play for Yahoo. I’m not sure what this means, overall, but the technological folks in my life won’t stop talking about it.

However, I found news of another cable cut in the Middle East positively alarming. Ok, one break in an underwater cable, sure, could be an accident. Two cuts? kind of weird. But three?!!

What happened at the beginning of the mess in Iraq? Do you remember the bloggers, the news, the live video feeds? I do. I remember the blog of the Iranian, recording everything that happened in his town. ( This chart taken from The Internet Traffic Report. )

Yeah, sure, I’m willing to admit that I’m susceptible to conspiracy theories, especially against the “current political regime.” But now, Iran’s network is cut off from the Internet. Major lines of communication are out of commission for at least two days, possibly as many as ten.

Doesn’t that strike you as scary? Or am I off my rocker? Again.

I’m getting mildly crotchety in my old age. I spend way too much time on the internet reading insightful blog posts and other forums. I tell ya, it’s wearing me out. I’ve had it up to -here- though with blatant apostrophe abuse. People, an apostrophe does not mean “hang on there’s an s coming!”

So when I read this post about the author wearing an “Arrest Bush” t-shirt to his local Outback restaurant and being confronted by a little old lady, I was dumbfounded. On one hand, he had a salient point about what happens after we arrest Bush; that the little old lady wanted to make sure he knew about the Nuremburg war crimes, and that Bush needed to be tried against those standards, and the little old lady was agreeing with him. On the other, he used an apostophe in a possessive “its” ( … as it’s guiding power… )

Damn, damn damn. Whatever shall I do?

Who is the genius who, when given a demitasse of delicious, pungent espresso with a sweet fluffy crema, passed over the steamed milk, passed over the cream, passed over the chocolate, passed over the lemon zest and decided to dump tap water into it?

And call it “American,” ok, Americano.

Great; a watery espresso…the only kind of person who would drink a watery espresso would be an American? I hate americanoes. Give me either the drip coffee or the straight espresso. If you must dilute the espresso, use ice; it’s the same thing, but cold, and so easier for me to wrap my brain around.

And to add injury to insult, most places, including Starbucks, screw up the ratio and make truly watery coffee. It’s pathetic. Although I will admit that a large coffee at Dutch Brothers is almost palatable; four shots of espresso in a 24 oz cup, filled with water. It almost takes like coffee. But still. Bleah.

Don’t insult me with an Americano. I’d rather drink coffee from seven-eleven.

When I first caught wind of this, I thought it was a sick version of some “viral buzz” for the new Batman movie ( The Dark Knight ) which looks ( looked ? ) awesome.

But, no, now that I find the story on the New York Times, it sounds like he’s dead. The police said they did not suspect foul play and said they found pills near body.

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In fricking conceivable.

Here’s the link for a trailer for The Dark Knight. I don’t know what they’ll do now; if filming is done ( doubt it ) or what.

Trailer

Damn, who’s laughing now?

It sounds too cool for school.

The Lightkeeper!!

Ripping the CD you bought to your computer as an MP3? That’s a paddling! RIAA, you suck.

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OGG is an alternative to MP3 ( not that the RIAA wants you to rip your CDs to OGG either ), and in the interest of helping HTML be media-happy, it was going to be a part of the HTML spec (like your EM and your STRONG and your H1 tags ); now that’s been ripped out thanks to APPLE AND NOKIA!!!!!

Seriously, pals, wth.

It seems like every day we have another spiteful story about Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee. It reminds me of the Incredibles. Syndrome has done away with all of the other superheroes, so there’s only himself as a logical candidate when the crap hits the fan, or his robot goes haywire, or whatever.

I propose to you, my fellow democrats, that Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee aren’t really the candidates that we need to worry about. I suspect that the Republican party has already forgotten them, and that their candidate will be running on a platform of “not-them.” Like “Dick Cheney…. He’s not Huckabee.” Know what I mean?

The Republican Party is doing some sleight of hand to get us all riled up about how much “worse than Bush” a Romney President would be, and then will pull the carpet out from beneath us, and surprise! a Cheney/Rice ticket ! (Or something even I can’t imagine.)

Get your tin foil hats out and put up your shields; this could be a bumpy ride.

Damn.

It’s things like this that make me wonder what the heck I’m doing living in the basement and writing web pages. I haven’t really ranted in a while so I’m due. Stand back while I clear the bile from my ducts.

This 78 year old pensioner lived on her Social Security for ten years and still managed to save enough money to take the dream trip of a lifetime; she and a friend planned and booked a flight and then a cruise to Alaska. It looks like she paid her money directly to Princess Cruises.

This woman was scheduled for a trip to Anchorage, where the cruise would start, from Baltimore, to Minneapolis and then to Seattle, and then on to Anchorage. She made it to Minneapolis.

Things went downhill. The flight from Minneapolis to Seattle was delayed for two hours due to mechanical problems. We’ve all been there. It happens. So she missed her flight from Seattle to Anchorage. Then she had an opportunity to run from one end of SeaTac to the other — to be faced with a full airplane, and no room for these two elderly ladies. They raced to another plane, but that offered flight was booked too. Two people offered their seats to the elderly women but the flight attendants wouldn’t let them switch. So these two pensioners who saved for ten years for this trip of their dreams missed their boat when it left from Anchorage.

Northwest Airlines did great; they offered to send the women on another flight to a different port and they could meet up with their cruise. But they would have missed the glaciers — the part that made it all worth while for the ladies. And when the ladies decided they’d rather just go home because they were exhausted ( I guess waking up at five in the morning, taking two flights, racing across SeaTac can be kind of wearying ), Northwest flew them home for free. And then refunded their money for the flights that they didn’t use.

They refunded it to Princess Cruises. Another person might expect that something would be returned to the woman; at least the airfare for the trips, trips that weren’t even on Princess. This is what pisses me off.

But Princess spokeswoman Julie Benson said the woman will not get the refunds; Princess keeps the combined total of $559.80. The cruise line negotiates fares and special refund conditions with the airlines, Benson said, and the line’s policy is an industry standard :”The cancellation penalty applies to the cruise, airfare, prepaid excursions and pre- or post-cruise packages.” Because the woman hadn’t bought travel insurance (her friend did), she gets nothing back. Benson said it would be unfair to other passengers to do something different for just one.

So not only does this woman not get the dream trip she saved for ten years for, but she’s out the $2500 and the $550 for the airplane tickets. Damn.