IT HAS COME TO MY ATTENTION (he said in his most pompous "I really am an arse" manner) — no, seriously, someone told me that some of  the folks in AOL/AIM Level 5 "baenbarchat" had been curious as to why I haven't been in the chat room.

The answer is simple, AIM/AOL hate me. Or something. Every time I try to enter the baenbarchat chat room, I'm booted out. I've tried it with Pidgin and several other clients. It's something peculiar to my computer, I don't know what and I've quit trying to fix it or work around it.

Scott Bragg is working on an alternate chatroom in his spare time (read that as he hasn't got much of it) that will probably end up on IRC. Which, I point out, is stable. More than can be said of AIM. AOL has decided to get rid of AIM, or at least non-AOL chat rooms by the simple process of sacking or re-assigning staff at AOL.

Their attitude is that they make no money on it because there are no ads. Understandable, they're a profit-making business, or are supposed to be. I somehow fail to understand why they can't configure it to support advertising. Their loss, in this case, literally, and AOL isn't wearing it any more.

So, I haven't abandoned folks, I just can't get in for more than five minutes. When Scott finishes the setup and stuff he has to do to get a chatroom working on IRC, I'll be there, lurking.

Remember, VOTE VETINARI in 2012. Havelock Vetinari may be a fictional leader, but he's head and shoulders more qualified to run things than any of the several idiots who are running for president as of now.

IT IS — AGAIN — the Sunday on which the Super Bowl is foist off upon the viewing public.

I'm in our computer room, which is adjacent to the living room, where the television lives. I've just listened to the opening of this year's spectacle. Not even the commands to the colour guard sounded right, everything else was — bleah.

Now there are two morons running their mouths explaining the obvious to the by-and-large oblivious. One presumes they take lessons from similar morons explaining what the president really said after a speech. As if the current holder of the office is capable of speech past a third-grade level.

You have now all been officially grumped at.

I have at least two more hours of this rubbish to hear.

This is one of the times that I believe the old French bishop was correct.

To the owner of 202-599-8502:

I do not participate in telephone surveys. However, if you wish to consult me professionally, you may mail me your questionnaire.

Do not forget to include a cashier's cheque for $500US. As soon as your cheque clears my account, I will fill in your questionnaire and return it. If it is less than five pages of legal sized paper, I will pay the postage myself. Should it be longer than that, you must include a postage-paid return envelope.

A written consultation (i.e., something requiring thought, research and real effort on my part) will require payment of my standard consultation fee, $2,500US, this, however, includes return postage fees via Registered Mail and one-time reproduction rights. If your firm wishes first publishing rights, an additional fee of $1000US is required. Exclusive rights will require a fee of $10,000US, note, however, that none of these rights are transferable or inheritable and that I will retain copyright and all electronic rights regardless of whether your firm chooses one-time, first time or exclusive rights.

Sincerely,

Leon W. Jester, Jr.

Make of this what you will.

E-mail to K-Mart and Sears, Roebuck & Co. management:

29 January 2012

K-Mart and Sears, Roebuck Management
Somewhere on the internet

Mesdames/Sirs:

I've just returned home from your store located in Roanoke, Virginia on Hershberger Road.

For your information, it doesn't even show up on your website when my ZIP code (redacted) is entered. The Lynchburg store -- fifty miles or so east of Roanoke -- shows up.

I went in to purchase some tee shirts. When I checked out, I was told to "just answer the questions" on the display of the credit/debit card machine.

Not only do I not need to do that, I'm not going to. All your firm needs for information about me is to verify by another form of identification that I am, indeed, the owner of the card presented.

I told the very nice lady at the cash register "never mind" and walked out.

Your firm has lost whatever profit it makes on an approximate $21.00 sale, plus the cost of re-stocking two packages of tee shirts and clearing an over-ring from the lady's cash register.

Moreover, until your firm eliminates such nonsense at checkout, you've lost any future business from me and my wife.

It's really an irritating situation for me personally, as I despise the crowds at WalMart. WalMart is also farther from my house, so there's additional travel involved. As your firm's prices and WalMart's prices are -- for what items I purchase from either firm -- very close, it's going to cost me more to buy at WalMart.

Because of the irritation factor I may well go to the Macy's or J.C. Penny stores in the same shopping area, simply to not have to deal with the ravening hordes at WalMart.

Your grand business plan would appear, on the surface, to be a failure.

I'm including my e-mail address so that, in the event your management recovers from a bout of stupidity and eliminates the checkout questionaire(s), I may be notified of same. Personally, I doubt your firm will do so, as once stupidity and thoughtless marketing set in at a large firm, they're usually there until it is bankrupt.

Leon W. Jester, Jr.
Roanoke, Virginia USA

E-mail: (redacted)
Post Scriptum: I will be publishing this on the internet, and should such stupidity prevail at Sears, Roebuck & Co., I will be purchasing such tooling as I need from Northwest Hardware, my local True Value hardware store, or other local merchants.

Dear Google:

It has come to  my attenion recently as I used your product that you employ stupid geeks.

Probably in management.

There exists a basic principle of which your firm has lost sight:

IF IT WORKS, DO NOT FUCK WITH IT

Please get rid of the stupid bastard who (sometime after 04:30 ZULU) changed my default page (again) to something marked "iGoogle"  -- preferably by dropping s/he from the top of a fairly short building -- say, four storeys -- so that everything breaks when s/he hits the deck and they spend a very long time in the hands of the first year medical residents before they die.

Defenestration from the fourth floor also works, if you want to be traditionalist about it.

You lot  -- and that includes you bastards in Redmond, Washington -- better hope I never make it to be Dictator, because if that happens, no more Mister Nice Guy.

Sincerely,

A Really Annoyed Client Suffering Caffeine Deprivation

Post Scriptum: Note the eyeball to the top right of this post. It's looking for you. It  doesn't belong to Glinda the Good, either -- LWJ

HARRY POTTER'S SEVENTEENTH BIRTHDAY

Scene 1: The coffee shop after sorting out the Death Eaters:

"Sod it, I'm tired of  this. I'm going to take my galleons and blow this taco stand."

OR:

Scene 2: The Weasley's Sitting Room: Scrimgeour has just finished giving Harry a ration of shit:

"You want me to fight for you? You do? There's about five million of you worthless lot out there to fight for. Ten galleons a head, put it in my vault. If it's not there by Friday, I'm off to the Keys. You'll have Voldie, I'll have guns and hot chicks in bikinis. I'm cool with that."

(Insert evil mocking laughter here.)

OUR INTELLIGENCE AGENCY needs to get back to the basics. The "good old days" — back when the CIA was laughed at by the Brits (who hadn't discovered Philby, et al.) and the CIA scored coup on the KGB on a regular, if very unreported, basis.

We need to go back to the days when being an enemy of the United States meant one lay low, very low, because if one appeared in the headlines and pulled feathers from the eagle's tail, one had a good chance of making the obituary page.

This would involve a change of government attitude from "let's all be friends, even the ones pissing on our flag" to "let them hate us, as long as they fear us."

The following is excerpted from an article in the electronic edition of the Washington Times.


Story at: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/21/american-spies-outed-cia-suffers-lebanon/

WASHINGTON — The CIA’s operations in Lebanon have been badly damaged after Hezbollah
identified and captured a number of U.S. spies recently, current and former U.S. officials told the Associated Press. The intelligence debacle is particularly troubling because the CIA saw it coming. 

( LJ Cut - click to read )

Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, boasted on television in June that he had rooted out at least two CIA spies who had infiltrated the ranks of Hezbollah, which the U.S. considers a terrorist group closely allied with Iran. Though the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon officially denied the accusation, current and former officials concede
that it happened and the damage has spread even further.

The Lebanon crisis is the latest mishap involving CIA counterintelligence, the undermining or manipulating of the enemy’s ability to gather information. Former CIA officials have said that once-essential skill has been eroded as the agency shifted from outmaneuvering rival spy agencies to fighting terrorists. In the rush for immediate results, former officers say, tradecraft has suffered.

Backed by Iran, Hezbollah has built a professional counterintelligence apparatus that Nasrallah — whom the U.S. government designated an international terrorist a decade ago — proudly describes as the “spy combat unit.” U.S.
intelligence officials believe the unit, which is considered formidable and ruthless, went operational in about 2004.

Nasrallah’s televised announcement in June was followed by finger-pointing among departments inside the CIA as the spy agency tried figure out what went wrong and contain the damage.

The fate of these CIA assets is unknown. Hezbollah treats spies differently, said Matthew Levitt, a counterterrorism and intelligence expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies who’s writing a book about the terrorist
organization

“It all depends on who these guys were and what they have to say,” Levitt said. “Hezbollah has disappeared people before. Others they have kept around.”

Who’s responsible for the mess in Lebanon? It’s not clear. The chief of Hezbollah operations at CIA headquarters continues to run the unit that also focuses on Iranians and Palestinians.

RAMBLING AROUND THE WEB produced this photo — what's wrong here?



1) Left-handed action, weapon mounted on right shoulder
2) "Shooter" is sighting with his left eye
3) Sling? Isn't that just for carrying a gun?

Our DSL has been having intermittent problems since April.

In that time, we've had a number of in-house service calls from Verizon techs.

I just realized, as I wrote the date on Bob's card, that it's not a good sign when you sort your service techs' cards by date of service.  ;)