Kat’s Den

Ditto.

Got into the habit of staying up rather late over the holidays, and didn’t get to sleep Monday night until 2 or so… so Tuesday passed in a blur. As is usual with me, I was tired as crap when I got home but by bedtime, I was wide awake. I finally fell asleep, and then got woken up by the Nextel at 4am. One of the jurisdictions in our county had a barricaded gunman with an SKS rifle and was asking for the tactical team. Urrrgh… Woke up, dressed, was scraping the ice off my car when they called back- never mind, he gave up. Well, now I’m awake… got maybe another 45 minutes of sleep before the alarm went off. As a side note, it’s better to just stay awake; that little sliver of sleep just made me more tired. As a second side note, the least the inconsiderate bastard could have done was let us kick in his door after waking us up at 4am.

Qualifications (see a couple posts down) went OK, despite my misgivings. A few people took more than one try, a couple required remedial; which I did this afternoon. One of them squeaked by on the last try… after I noticed they were trying to shoot isocoles, but not locking their elbows out.

Maybe they’ll practice some more this year.

Let’s hear it for the new year… all together now… yaaaaay.

No, really, I’m not that much of a humbug. I just haven’t gotten that much of a thrill out of holidays for a while now; for me, most of them are just another day. Unless I’m purposely out with other people who are celebrating it, most holidays are just an annoyance because nothing’s open. This particular year is the first since 1990 or so that I’ve had the holidays off; usually I would have worked Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, but since I’m an office bitch now, I have to take the holidays off. Maybe that’s why holidays aren’t anything particularly special for me. My big New Year’s Eve celebration? Made some pasta, drank some beer, smoked a cigar. Thus the year ended not with a bang, but a whimper.

And I get to take a new gift into the new year… a shiny new 42 USC 1983 lawsuit! For those not familiar, that’s the federal rights violation civil lawsuit aimed at law enforcement if, for example, they use excessive force. In this particular case, someone I arrested two years ago for a DUI filed at the last second (statute of limitations is 2 years) claiming I used excessive force in arresting them. Now, I don’t believe the case will even get to the deposition stage before it gets thrown out; it’s patently absurd and I documented the arrest meticulously… but anyone can sue anybody for anything in this wonderful nation of ours, and plaintiffs hope for that big settlement from government entities. I know this case has no merit… but it still sticks you right where live when someone accuses you of something you never did and you get that federal subpoena.

Reading the weather.com forecast for tomorrow, I was struck by the wording. I quote:

As upper-level energy begins to scream eastward, the area for potential severe weather will extend to southern Alabama, southern Georgia, and the panhandle of Florida through Wednesday afternoon.

OK. Now, I realize that weather forecasting isn’t exactly the sexiest thing on television, Hurricane Katrina notwithstanding; but I see a trend here. We can’t make a cold front as daring or controversial as something like The Shield… or can we? All we need to do is follow the examples from prime time TV… and throw in some of those porn-ad email spams; they seem pretty successfull… I can see the forecasts during sweeps week:

“A strong, thick cold front will be thrusting eastward from the fertile midwest tonight… It will mix with sultry, moist air from the Gulf and EXPLODE into the unsuspecting Southeast with a FURY not seen since last spring!! WATCH to see if the cast of 24 will survive this- and the SHOCKING ending that will leave you DAMP!!!”

Well, maybe not. There’s still hope for topless weather girls.

Being the paranoic control freak I am, I enjoy reviewing the website statistics generated by my hosting provider every now and again; if for no other reason to reassure myself that someone somewhere looks at the site. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell. Some of the things I look at are referrers and search terms… I think the photo gallery gets more hits than anything else; I know the hit count on the bloody tampon Halloween costume picture goes through the roof every October. Anyway, while perusing the referrers, I noticed one with a return link for the cpanel webalyzer statistics page of rustedtusks.com… someone checking their stats and referrer links. Except I recognized this URL… one of the web comics I read regularly, Slop. Waves to Mulefoot, who doesn’t know me, but I guess now knows I appreciate his comic enough to visit it daily.

Some of the search terms used that resulted in hits on this site:
grendel p10
bedroom webcams
firearms concealment techniques
grendel firearm p10
skull tattoo sketches
werewolf tattoos
painful thoughts tattoos
intel cs430
black and gray tattoos
kat s pet services

I feel sorry for the guy who searched for “bedroom webcams” and found mine. Not what you were expecting, eh? Heh. The firearms hits reminds me that I need to get off my ass and finish the handgun manual…

Well, at least somebody looks at the site. No, I’m not that insecure. Let’s face it, most weblogs are boring crap… who cares what you ate for breakfast today? I keep this one up because I’m too stubborn to care that no one cares what I had for breakfast. Which was the usual, a Coke and a Prilosec. You gotta wade through a lot of crap to find one gem on most ‘blogs. Maybe I’ll drop a gem or two every now and again; maybe not.

Holy crap, it’s cold. Yeah, I know it’s December, but damn. Thursday we accumulated about 1/4 inch worth or ice that knocked out power first to the house and then to the office, so I spent the day looking for trees blocking the road. Watching the transformer blow up outside the office was interesting, though. As usual, weather forecasters were baffled by southern winter weather predictions and smugly claimed that we wouldn’t get any ice the day before, then acted like they knew it was coming all along. I usually plan on the opposite of whatever the prediction is during the winter.

Coming up this week, firearms qualifications! Joy. All week out at the range, freezing my butt off in the morning, listening to people who should have been practicing complain about not being able to shoot. One would think that if you knew your job depended on being able to perform one action, you’d practice. Not so, apparently. And who will they blame when they can’t qualify? Me, of course. Let’s see how many of the 90 pass.

Well. At least I get Friday off for Christmas. Speaking of Christmas, this is the first one where I’ve had money to buy presents for the family.

Fixed some of the nagging CSS and table-layout issues that had been bothering me… of course, while they look fine in Firefox, they probably look cocked-up in Exploder. Oh, well… Daily News page and Webcam page got the treatment.

If I had to have a peeve, I guess it would be folks who refuse to take responsability for their actions. Not just for the big stuff- like the guy tried to sell undercover officers a pound of marijuana, led them on a car chase when they tried to arrest him, and then was furious that they were chasing him (”I ain’t done nothing wrong!”); or the murderer who blames it on his dog- but the little stuff as well, like running into the guy in front of you in your car because you were tailgating (”He should have been driving faster!”). I realize this is a self-defense mechanism, the brain just trying to protect itself from the awful realization that it made a bad choice; but it’s become an epidemic of rationalization. I’m just as guilty; when I fuck up, my first thought is what the excuse will be. It takes a bit of extra gumption to own up to it. I suppose the small stuff is just annoying; but when it gets to the level of being incensed that you were arrested for clearly doing something illegal, it’s downright offensive. Suck it up and blame the person who really screwed it up, for once. Oh, no, that’s too hard. Society made me stick that knife in my spouse. Alcohol did. Stress did. Not me, I’m not to blame.

Here’s news for you, junior- you’re the one spending the next 20 years in prison, not alcohol, or society, or stress. Enjoy it. And have a nice big cup of STFU.

Still haven’t gotten the front LED turn signals yet, but here’s the accent lights, LED tail light and integrated LED rear turn signal. The only camera I’ve got is a fully-auto digital, so I really can’t adjust the aperture or shutter speed to show the tail light well. The turn signal is very yellow and very distinguishable.
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And work is… still insanely busy. For the next ten days, I’ll be filling out a detailed timesheet, noting what I’m doing every 15 minutes, as part of an efficiency study. Maybe… just maybe… it’ll show the need for a second person in training full-time.

Maybe.

I read an article today about how the south was losing it’s unique character due to the influx of people relocating from other regions. It said that fewer and fewer people living in the southern states identified themselves as “southerners”, and touched on some of the stereotypes that color the region.

Living within an hour of Atlanta, I’ve definately seen an influx of people from other regions of country. Having lived in Georgia all of my life, I’ve seen some of the stereotypes. But do I still identify myself as a southerner?

Well, some of the stereotypes are a bit off. I’d say the south was probably a bit more religous than some other regions, if protestantism is your thing. I’ve met plenty of ignorant inbreds around here, but far more intelligent and self-sufficient people. Racism? Exists here, the same as it does everywhere else; and there are far more rabid racists in the north and west. One stereotype that does stick, I think, is that southerners are a lot more polite that folks I’ve met from other regions.

I can’t claim to be a farm boy from the country; the town I grew up in, while in the northwest Georgia mountains, was hardly Lil’ Abner territory. I went to a private school. I don’t have much of a southern accent- raised by television, as it were. I don’t listen to country music. But… I don’t want to live in a big city. I miss the mountains. I often find myself wishing I could find a plot of land near the Tennessee border in the Smokies that I could build my house on- that is, if it hasn’t been turned into subdivisions yet. I’m nostalgic for a rustic, laid-back southern small town that probably never existed outside of fiction.

Yup, I still consider myself a southerner, even if I don’t have a rebel flag painted on my orange Dodge Charger.

Oh, hey, and happy Turkey Day. The parents are headed to Sparta Tennessee to visit with my mom’s family; I’m staying here. I’ll probaby go down for Christmas.

Yeah, last post I said I was looking forward to getting back to work. Whuff. I hadn’t been in the office for 30 minutes before the phone started ringing off the hook and things started piling up. I’ll probably end up with a good bit of overtime on this check. On the plus side, things weren’t as screwed up by my absence as I feared they might be. (Though I’m glad it’s friday, because I just faxed off a stack of class applications and filed them away, only to find out I hadn’t signed any of them and have to re-submit. Ooops.)

I had three areas on the motorcycle I wanted to improve: Touring (Givi hard bags, gel seat, heated vest), Performance (aftermarket exhaust, jet kit, K&N pod filters, progressive fork springs), and Bling (integrated LED taillight/turn signals, LED engine accent lights). So of course I first went the cheapest and most useless route- the Bling. It’s all arrived from Clear Alternatives and Custom Dynamics, and I’ll probably spend this weekend putting it together.