Something unusual happened to me in the restroom

I was going into the restroom to urinate and some guy who was a couple urinals over from me started talking to me. He was saying something about how there was some new guy working over in some department, and he apparently thought that I used to work there at night. He asked me if I was working days and I responded in the affirmative. Then, he asked me if I liked working days, and I said "Yeah." He had me confused with someone else, but I didn't tell him that for some reason. Then he started talking about how he called the new guy by the wrong name or something one time by accident and I realized that I had been playing along for so long that I couldn't tell him that he had me confused with somebody else no matter what happened. Fortunately, he left the restroom before me, and since I don't remember having seen him before, I don't expect to see him again. His speech was a little slurred sounding, he might have been drunk...or mildly retarded.

McCain for Boxing

I generally approve of everything that John McCain says and does, so this certainly puzzles me:

McCain threatened to hold up every piece of legislation in the Senate while House leaders refused to go along with McCain’s pet project of establishing a national boxing commission.

I just don't understand, why does McCain want to establish a national boxing commission? And why is it so important to him? It just seems very strange, and well, I suppose a little disappointing. I think there are other issues that the Congress needs to address before they get to boxing legislation.

Wedgwood and Meadowbrook Branches of the library

I've been to the Wedgwood branch of the Fort Worth Public Library quite a few times, but I've never been to the Meadowbrook branch. I was browsing the library's website when I saw a picture for the Meadowbrook branch:

Compare that with the picture of the Wedgwood branch:

I just thought that was interesting. The Meadowbrook branch opened two years before the Wedgwood branch and, according to their respective webpages, they are equally sized. I'm just glad that the architect didn't come up with a different design for the Wedgwood branch because it might have turned out even uglier.

No confidence in Rumsfeld

Leave it to John McCain to say what needs to be said:

U.S. Sen. John McCain said Monday that he has "no confidence" in Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, citing Rumsfeld's handling of the war in Iraq and the failure to send more troops.

Andrew Sullivan elaborates:

He's right, of course. The sheer cumulation of incompetence, arrogance and denial make our current defense secretary a serious and continuing liability in the war on terror. The trouble is that Rumsfeld's critical errors - misrreading pre-war intelligence, needlessly alienating allies, under-manning the occupation, the loosening of ethical restraints that led to Abu Ghraib, leaving troops in the theater without adequate armor, and on and on - are inextricable from the president's own policy decisions. So Rummy stays.

Near the beginning of the president's term, I was optimistic about Rumsfeld, since I understood that he wanted to modernize the military and eliminate some costly and largely unnecessary weaponry. However, after all these failures, I disapprove of the job he has done. We would be better off if Rumsfeld were no longer in charge.

No comments

I'd like to point out that nobody has (yet?) commented on the previous 12 posts...

No e-mail at work

I used to be able to check my primary personal e-mail account at work without a problem. However, Lockheed began blocking it yesterday afternoon. This is quite unfortunate. I don't receive a lot of e-mail, but it is nice to be able to communicate with people while at work. Reading my e-mails wasn't very time consuming, it took no more time than a personal phone call...are they going to take away my phone access too? That pisses me off...well, at least I only have 11 more days left here. Wow, 11 days...that's not very many...

Hard drive secured in place

I got a new hard drive, as I mentioned, without a way to secure it inside my computer. However, rather than paying the $20 that was being requested to buy a bracket online, my dad and I made our own bracket from a piece of scrap metal.

Before:

After:

It's not fancy, but it keeps the hard drive from moving around.

Previous post here.

Chad Hutchinson watch

While 18 year veteran Vinny Testaverde had a QB rating of 42.6 against the worst pass defense in the NFC, Chad Hutchinson had a comparably robust rating of 59.1 against 7-6 Jacksonville.

UN Aid Suspended in Darfur

DAC, I think you're the only one who reads these Sudan updates, so here you go.

The United Nations has suspended its humanitarian operations in Sudan's troubled South Darfur area following a shooting that killed two aid workers, the agency said Monday.

The Sudanese employees of Save the Children — medical assistant Abhakar el Tayeb and mechanic Yacoub Abdelnabi Ahmed — were killed Sunday when their convoy came under fire in South Darfur, said the U.N. statement.

It did not say who fired on the convoy.

Prisoner deaths in US custody

Rights group alleges new deaths in US custody in Afghanistan:

A human rights group said it had evidence of two previously unreported deaths of Afghan prisoners in US custody in Afghanistan (news - web sites) and accused Washington of covering up abuse of detainees.

...

In addition, the rights watchdog identified two previously unreported deaths which it said took the toll of detainees known to have died in US custody in Afghanistan to six, including four cases of alleged murder or manslaughter.

...

The US army announced in October that 28 soldiers could face charges over the two deaths, ranging from involuntary manslaughter to assault and battery, maiming, maltreatment and conspiracy.

In another case, a Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) contractor was charged in June this year with beating an Afghan prisoner to death at a US base in Asadabad, 200 kilometres (125 miles) north of Khost, in June 2003.

Human Rights Watch called the US investigation into deaths and abuses of prisoners in Afghanistan inadequate.

"The US government is dragging its feet on these investigations," said Adams.

This behavior by the US miltary is unacceptable. This administration has done an unacceptable job with the war in Iraq. War sure does seem to bring out the worst in people...

Saints vs. Cowboys: Review

The Cowboys took the lead early and the Saints looked pretty bad. The Cowboys' defense started pretty well, but the Saints later had some passing success. Julius Jones looked pretty good at first, but after the Saints figured out that the Cowboys couldn't pass, his performance suffered. Despite Vinny Testaverde's abysmal performance (14/35, no touchdowns), he was only able to throw one interception in his race with Carlson Palmer and Jake Plummer to lead the NFL in interceptions.

In a way, I'm kind of glad that the Cowboys lost, now the playoffs are out of reach and maybe Bill Parcells will finally start to focus on next season. And, after Testaverde's performance, Parcells can't use the excuse that Vinny Testaverde provides the team with a better chance to win than Drew Henson does. But, I think the fact that Parcells kept Testaverde in the entire game indicates that Parcells still might not put in Henson. While I can't identify the reasons why the Cowboys are so much worse this year than last year, I have noticed that I have disagreed with Parcells a lot more this year than last year... I think the evidence clearly indicates that I would be a better coach.

From the Dallas Cowboys' clubhouse at ESPN.com:

Ex-Cowboys owner Bright dies; sold to Jones
Harvey R. "Bum" Bright, a staunch Texas A&M booster best known for buying the Dallas Cowboys from founder Clint Murchison and selling them to Jerry Jones, has died. He was 84.

That headline is interesting, why would Jerry Jones want to buy him?

Thunderbird is an alternative to Outlook Express

There has been a lot of buzz about Firefox over the last few weeks, but Mozilla, the non-profit organization that develops Firefox, also has recently released an e-mail client called Thunderbird that competes with Outlook Express. For the past month or so I've been using Thunderbird to check my mail and I've been satisfied. Though I don't think Thunderbird has as many comparative advantages over Outlook Express as Firefox has over Internet Explorer, I'd recommend trying Thunderbird out alongside Outlook Express for a few days, like I did at first. Here's a list of 18 reasons why some guy thinks that Thunderbird is better than Outlook Express. I dunno, I use it and like it, so you might want to try it, but I don't intend to promote Thunderbird nearly as much as I'm promoting Firefox.

10 million Firefox downloads

I just thought that I'd mention that Firefox 1.0 has been downloaded 10 million times since its release a little more than a month ago.

Restaurant reviews

For the past few months, I've made it a biweekly policy to try a restaurant that I've never been to before. I had just gotten tired of going to the same restaurants over and over, especially the ones I'm not completely satisfied with (e.g. Olive Garden and Romano's Macaroni Grill). So far, I'm very glad I tried this idea (which was originally Andy's). It's been nice to eat at new places that someday might be added to my list of favorites. Sure, I've been to a couple places that I didn't like that much, but I've definitely appreciated the added dietary variety in my life and I hope to continue this tasteful exploration indefinitely.

Restaurant Review: Zolon

This restaurant is owned by the same people who own Zoe italian and it has the same trendy atmosphere. All meals on the dinner menu come in either a full-size or a half size. I wasn't especially hungry when I went, so Lesley and I shared a half-sized pizza, which was still big enough for both of us and it tasted pretty good and only cost like $6 or something. They offer a cheese pizza that was not as good, though. While the half-sized pizza was plenty of food, the half-sized steak was quite small and came with no sides of any kind. It wasn't too unreasonable of a value, though, for a steak, since the sides could have been ordered separately. Still, I wsn't particularly impressed by it, and while I wouldn't mind returning to evaluate it further, I don't think I'd recommend it yet.

Restaurant Review: Tokyo Cafe

My dinner came with an unremarkable salad with mediocre lettuce. I ordered the broiled salmon with honey ginger sauce. It was a pretty sizeable chuck of salmon and the sauce was quite good. The vegetables (carrots and broccoli) that came with it were pretty good too. My plate (before tax & tip) was $9.50, which isn't bad for a salmon dinner. Still, I wasn't really impressed with it. It was pretty good, and I would have no objection to returning, but I wasn't impressed enough to recommend it.

GM plant tour

Tuesday at work we got to go on a field trip to the General Motors plant in Arlington. I'm not entirely sure why we went, but I think it had something to do with the fact that some people at Lockheed want an assembly procedure at Lockheed more similar to an assembly line like GM's. I enjoyed going, it was fun. While the GM plant was similar to Lockheed's plant in many ways, they produced their products much differently than we do. Their manufacturing process seemed to be much more streamlined and efficient than ours, but their product is much higher volume than ours. Quite a few jobs were done manually, but there were also quite a few machines that did specific tasks. Anyway, I had been wanting to go to the General Motors plant, so I'm glad that I got to go, especially since I got paid for it.

Additional hard drive

Adam's work had some hard drives that had a high rate of failure, so Adam got to take some home and so I got one. I haven't formatted it yet (or even secured it inside my computer), but it's nice to have another hard drive. I'll probably use it for backup and/or for when I install Linux. Dell doesn't provide another hard drive bracket with my computer so I have to find a bracket or somehow to secure the hard drive. Still, it's kind of cool to have two hard drives.

Follow-up post here.