Kat’s Den

…for not updating. I blame the curse of World of Warcraft. A friend of mine bought a copy of it for his kids, and I warned him that if he started playing he’d become addicted. Little did I know that I would too. I keep asking myself why I’m playing but I also keep logging in every night to level my night elf druid. Sad, sad, sad.

So, over the past few months, a routine has developed. Work during the week- the usual administrative slog of creating and teaching classes, minding the quartermaster duties, background checks- then make the hour commute home, find something for dinner, and log in to WoW. Weekends I end up over at the friend’s house mentioned earlier to either go hunting, paint guns, or- you guessed it- log in to WoW. Lather, rinse, repeat. Although I did get promoted to Lieutenant at work- same job, but butterbars and a slight pay raise.

The modeling bug as bitten again, and I purchased a new airbrush and compressor. Unfortunately, the writing bug hasn’t bitten again, so no progress on the novel.

Oh, and I sold the Mustang. I didn’t want to, but I’ve had it three years and only put 15,000 miles on it. I went for stretches of a month at a time without starting it. By contrast, I’ve got 12,000 miles on the bike in a year. Why sit on a chunk of money that’s depreciating every year without driving it?

Got off my bum and updated the webcam page. Not that I ever remember to turn them on; but there are now cams for the office, laptop, and work.

I’m also a little tired of the constant yes-it-is, no-it-isn’t back and forth over “global warming”. Science should never bow to the whims of politicians on either side. The axiom of the scientific process is that you test your hypothesis to understand how something works; if the results consistently defy your hypothesis, you throw it out in favor of what the evidence tells you.

Unfortunately, in the political world, you find someone who’ll make the evidence fit the hypothesis you want. Or, more commonly, just look at a tiny slice of the evidence that supports your position and hype the crap out of it. Get it on the internet; after all, if it’s on the web, it’s true. Sorry, I think I’ll listen to the scientists who are honestly evaluating the data… at least, the ones who aren’t shilling for one side or the other. The honest scientists will say “Here’s our data, here’s the trends we’ve noticed, here they are on a millennial scale and here’s what we expect to happen.” You’ll also notice that most of them are cautious about causation… the why and how of these events is extremely complex and no honest scientist can state with certainty that X caused Y. I don’t look for scientific analysis from Rush Limbaugh or Al Gore.

But what can be stated is that there has been a global rise in temperatures within the last 1000 years. Wait, I already hear anguished gnashing of teeth. Yes, that 1000 years is a drop in the bucket on the timeline of the planet. It may very well be a normal cyclic change that has nothing to do with human intervention. But that’s unimportant. What is important is how does this change affect humanity now? What can we expect for our modern civilization? Certainly the planet will still be here. I expect that the worst doomsday scenario will still see humans surviving and possibly thriving- we’re almost as hard to kill as a species as cockroaches thanks to this grossly bulging frontal lobe. But what will the costs to our society be?

Pretty damn drastic. And whether or not it’s caused by human action is pretty insignificant. Even if it is, we don’t understand how; and any corrective action on our part is based on guesses and speculation and may ultimately make things worse- or not. We simply don’t know.

But if I hear another group of politically polarized idiots arguing yes-it-is, no-it-isn’t over a topic that they’re woefully, blissfully, and willfully ignorant of, it’ll take a lot of prozac to prevent my removing them and their potential offspring from the debate forever.

Sounds like a band name. Actually, it’s a set of heated pants, jacket liner, and gloves for the bike. And man, do these things work! Rode in 38 degree weather Saturday morning and only needed to put it on low… why did I wait so long before buying these? Have also ordered a Givi E52 top case and mounting plate, but they’re apparently being shipped from Nevada and haven’t arrived yet.

In other news, that firewall seemed to fix itself… and I have no idea how or why. I hate it when that happens, as it could happen again at any time and I still don’t know why. And I created a Facebook account… God knows why, but I have heard from folks since doing it that I haven’t heard from since childhood; so maybe there’s something to it.

Sooo… first week at the new job. I knew I’d have a job ahead of me setting up a training program pretty much from scratch; but no idea how much of one. It seems the former Sheriff of this county- we’ll just call him “G”- was basically coasting until retirement and never pushed for the budget the agency required nor allowed his deputies to do… anything. There hasn’t been a ticket written in the county in two years. The only training the deputies were allowed was the minimum required by the state. He was so anxious to move into the new jail before he retired that none of the jailers received any training on the facility. And, apparently, no one knows where anything is or how it operates.

Well, he retired in 2008, and his successor- my new boss at this new agency; call him “R”- has inherited a mess. A severe lack of equipment, uniforms, vehicles, and training; but at least the deputies seem eager to improve the office. When I started Monday, my training room in the new jail was bare except for a small wooden desk with a penis carved into the top of it. Spent the week getting desks, tables, chairs, office supplies, organizing and preparing; but it’s finally starting to come together- except for two things: The thermostat in my office doesn’t seem to do anything. Cold enough to hang meat in there. I suspect that the thermostat was turned off from a central location to save energy, since the room was vacant for so long. Heating and air guy is coming Monday to look at it.

Second thing is that since no one really knows how the new equipment in the jail works, no one knows how to service the phones, network, or camera system when they fail. Friday the hardware firewall that controls a VPN tunnel between the jail and the courthouse- and, therefore, internet access (not needed for many but essential for my job), the LiveScan fingerprinting system, and criminal record access went tits up and no one knew how it worked. The original contractor, when contacted, was helpful and friendly but wasn’t contracted to service it. The company that manufactured the firewall has a product support service that includes hardware replacement, but the old sheriff had let it expire to save money. On top of that, the model of firewall we have will be discontinued and unsupported after October of this year.

*sigh* So I spent the day, after spending $74 of my own money to re-instate the service contract through October, on the phone with tech support. Must be a problem with the DSL connection, they say; so now talk to Windstream. Everything’s fine on our end, they say; so back to WatchGuard. Finally get WatchGuard to send a new firewall that will be here Monday; so I guess I’ll be setting that up after the weekend and keeping my fingers crossed that it works.

So, if you have any experience with a WatchGuard Firebox X5 Edge, I may have a job for you.

2009 will certainly be a year of change!

If you’ve read earlier posts, you’ll recall that the candidate I supported for Sheriff of the county I live in (and the office I work for) lost the primary election. Wondering every four years who your boss will be is hard enough; but in Georgia, an “at will” state, unless your agency has civil service protections in place, you serve “at the pleasure of the Sheriff”. In other words, if he chooses, he can fire you for no reason at all.

You can probably already see where this is going. New Sheriff; not the guy I supported but I’m willing to work with him. I’ve got a good job, doing what I like, and an excellent pay check. Except, that on New Year’s Eve after swearing in the employees, he pulled me aside and informed me that he was bringing someone else in from the outside to take my position on February 1st and would not have a position for me after that date.

Well, yippy skippy. That’s the strangest way to be told to hit the door. I’m not the only one, either; but it’s a fairly common occurrence around Sheriff’s Offices after every election. There’s a long history, in Georgia at least, of outgoing Sheriffs destroying records and spending every last penny in the budget and incoming Sheriffs firing anyone who might be a political threat or whose position is needed to provide a job for a crony or supporter. Which brings us to the question: who do you want your law enforcement to be beholden to? Theoretically, an elected Sheriff is beholden to the voting citizens of his jurisdiction; but the same thing could be said of any elected official, and tell me with a straight face that they have the interests of the citizens in mind and not pandering to the loudest voice in order to get a vote. On the other hand, an appointed official, such as a police chief, is beholden to the mayor or city commission; who, also, are theoretically beholden to the voters but more often than not will be the real rulers of that agency. Six to one, half a dozen to another; both have some serious drawbacks.

In any case, I’m not waiting until February 1st; my resignation is effective January 23 and I start at a new agency the following Monday. I didn’t have a whole lot of time for job seeking; while my resume is impressive, in this economy, agencies are either in a hiring freeze or only have entry-level positions available. I’m taking a pretty heft pay cut, but it beats standing in the unemployment line.

Yeah, I’m an internet junkie. Surfing for me means following link after link on whatever little thing crosses my mind while I’m sitting at the computer. Every now and then I’ll fall back on old favorites, like failblog.org. While browsing failblog, I noticed two posts that really made my brain squirm: In one, I believe it was a letter to a newspaper editor, a gentleman speculated that the recent droughts were the result of daylight savings time. You see, all that extra light in a day heats the earth more, drying things up…

Oy. Really? There are people that stupid? Must be, because the other one that caught my eye was of a lawn sprinkler with a nice rainbow behind it. The woman holding the camera was complaining that she never used to see rainbows so close to the ground. “They” must be putting things in the water to cause rainbows so close to the ground! It’s a conspiracy!

Physics. It’s a conspiracy.

It’s been a really crappy couple of months. First the election- covered in the last post- then the usual drama around the station house, and then I find my mom has stopped taking her medication and had a paranoid episode in which she called 911 and got five cops respond to the house. She’s spent the last week in a behavioral health center and has returned home this weekend. What causes the most stress is that dad is convinced he can handle this on his won’t tell the kids what’s going on, so quite a bit of it came as a surprise to me. Not surprisingly, when I went to my doctor to renew my migraine medication, my blood pressure was pretty high. Doesn’t help that I have the eating habits of Michael Moore.

Found this, which appeals to my inner geek- don’t have much tolerance for graffiti “artists”, but this is a non-destructive graffiti that’s pretty damn cool.
Laser graffiti!

Yes, it’s been a long, hot summer. Not just because of rising temperatures due to the planet’s axial tilt and an ongoing drought in the southeast- no, because it’s election year.

Now, normally I’m a pretty apolitical person. I vote for who I think will do the best job, rather than along any party lines. I’m conservative on some issues, liberal on others, and middle of the road most of the time. But this election year, the vote affected me quite personally- I work for a Sheriff’s Office, and my boss, the Sheriff of this county for 24 years, is retiring. This opens the field up quite a bit on who will be my boss- and direct my job- for the next four years. In the running for the Republican Primary were the current Chief Deputy, a man who’s run the Sheriff’s Office for the past four years, is a bar certified attorney, graduate of the FBI National Academy, and someone who’ve I known to be a very decent, honest person. He has his faults, but is widely believed to be the most experienced choice. On the other side of the ticket is a Sergeant in a local police department, who’s been in law enforcement for 10 years and is also a decent person; but who has never worked in a Sheriff’s Office (which is a whole different beast from a police department) and has some skewed ideas about how a Sheriff’s Office should function. In his favor is that he’s the home-town boy. Of course, as the campaign wore on, the local guy’s supporters got nastier and nastier. To his credit, he hasn’t done anything really dirty that anyone can point to, but his fans are another matter.

So, who wins the primary in July? The home town guy. In my mind, the voters of the county threw out the nastiness of the local guy’s supporters and the vast experience of the Chief Deputy just to vote in the local guy. What’s really annoying is the fact that many of those people who voted for the local guy called the Chief Deputy after the election and asked him to stay on as Chief Deputy- “because (local guy) is going to need a lot of experienced help”. Are you shitting me? Add on to this the fact that out of 65,000 people in the county, only 31,000 are registered to vote- and only 6700 of those bothered to vote at all. What’s the point? It starts to make me wonder why I bust my ass every day for these people when only 1/10th of them vote and those that do seem to have said “We don’t like how you do your job”. The same trend is towards voting in county commissioners whose only concern is stopping growth- not controlling or directing it, but stopping it altogether and taking the county back to a small, agrarian, rural area. Hmm. Good luck with that- the growth is coming whether they want it or not. We’re too close to Atlanta and on too many transportation arteries for it not to. By sticking our heads in the sand, it will grow uncontrollably and in directions that will cause many, many problems in the future. But no, let’s stop it altogether- as if that’s ever happened without destroying the community.

Yeah, it’s got me annoyed and grouchy, questioning the idiots in this county, and wondering if I should flip them all the bird and go work somewhere else.

Farkles- the little bits and pieces you add on to a bike. Or so the term seems to be around the sport-touring community, I’ve found. Started with the electrical support for other bits and pieces- TomTom Rider 2 GPS, iPod. Ran wires from the battery to a Bluesea fusebox under the tail:

Only iPod power/audio adapter I could find ended in a cigarette lighter plug, so I needed a corresponding socket. It was also pretty short, ending at the edge of the tank. But, socket and plug fit (barely) under the tank skirt:

With the cover on the Bluesea fusebox… fits under the seat with a hair’s width to spare:

Mounts for the GPS and iPod should be here Monday; then it’s frame sliders, Datel voltmeter, and (pricey) Starcomm unit to tie all the audio together and feed it to the helmet.

I’ve got plenty of room in the garage for it now, as my roommate just sold his Suzuki SV1000. Well, he never rode it, anyway.

We’ll just ignore the date of my last post.

In the early ’90s, when the bikes I rode were all used ’80s Universal Japanese Motorcycles, Yamaha was producing a “sport touring” bike called the FJ1200. Sport tourers are comfortable, long distance touring bikes that still retain the power and handling of their sportier cousins. While plenty of people racked up amazing mileage on long trips on relatively small displacement UJMs in the 80s, long trips were definitely a chore. The Honda Silverwing and later Goldwing reached bigger, plusher sizes in the ’90s and became the long-distance touring motorcycle standard; but, while I’ve seen folks ride the hell out of those things, they’re far from sporty. Sport bikes and supersport bikes took off in the 90s and got faster and faster- and more and more uncomfortable for long trips. Towards the end of the 90s, Harley Davidson re-invented itself and the cruiser era took off.

But, for me, the slick plastic enclosed crotch rockets left my back sore; and the underwhelming cruisers left me unimpressed. There were sport touring bikes, sure- the ST, Concours, Pacific Coast *shudder*; but they were still more touring than sport and out of my price range. The Bandit was the closest I could come to the old reliable UJM of the 80s… but I kept my eye on the FJ (now FJR) as my “ultimate” bike.

Sooo… last Monday I traded in the Bandit on a 2008 FJR1300. I had to wait until Thursday for it to be delivered; and, of course, it decided to rain for the next three days. I’ve still managed to put 100 miles on it in that time. But what I’ve found so far is that it’s just as sporty as the Bandit was while being far more comfortable and suited to long rides. The adjustable windscreen keeps me a lot warmer (and drier) than the Bandit’s, I’ve got saddlebags now, the seat is far more comfortable…

I think I’ll keep it.