More Good News Bad News on the Job Front

The good news: I am once again gainfully employed

As of today, a written offer has officially been extended to me by a top twenty fortune 500 company, for a relatively senior technical consulting position.

I have accepted their offer.

In this position I will manage the information security operations of a multi-state "infrastructure" provider (vagueness at employers request, to prevent identification), and will not be required to travel; though it is a 65 mile one way commute to the office (but it's really only an hour and fifteen minute ride most of the time so it's not that bad).

The bad news:

It's about a 40% pay cut from my previous job. They tried to get budget approval for the next higher tier position, but couldn't, and I agreed to come in at the lower level, provided we agreed that I would be promoted to the higher tier (presuming performance warrants) in twelve months. The next higher tier is still a 25% pay cut from where I was, but it's certainly much better.

The manager understands that he's hiring me at a position and pay far below my experience and capabilities, and he'd like to correct that. Frankly he'd like to hang on to me for more than a year or two, and he knows the way to do that is to make sure I'm not getting better offers from competitors every six months. I don't expect it will be a problem advancing within the company, now that I'm actually IN the company. The hard part was getting me hired in the first place.

The important part is, I'll be taking home more than our "monthly cost of living plus 20%"... though unfortunately not MUCH more.

Oh and on the slightly irritating front, it took them FOUR MONTHS to extend an offer from the date of first interview, and exactly two months from the day of my tentative verbal offer to the day they cut my offer letter.

I was hoping to start next week, but it looks like with the pre-hire paperwork etc... they won't be ready for me until the 23rd.

Funny coincidence, that will put me out of work exactly six months; tieing my previous longest time involuntarily unemployed (though frankly, I could have been employed in November or December... I just really didn't want those jobs).

What about gunsmithing?

This won't be stopping me. Crispin Arms is still going forward. My FFL paperwork will be reprocessed shortly.

It's just that now I'll actually be able to... oh, I don't know... pay my bills?

The Guncounter Forum is Successfully Migrated

All,

As of midnight Sunday, April 8th, the Guncounter forum is migrated, up, and
functioning, with apparently zero data loss, on the new server.

Until the DNS change is made, the forums can be reached at
http://theguncounter.mgtt.net/forum/

I also have a redirect from the old server to the new, so that as long as
they're hitting the old (except via a specific bookmark), they'll be
redirected; but that should transparently go away when the DNS is changed
over.

The only weirdness will be the cookies on the board won't work until the
DNS change propagates. Once you stop seeing the forum at
http://theguncounter.mgtt.net/forum/ and start seeing it at
http://theguncounter.com/forum/ once again, the cookies will work again.

Again, please let me know about any other weirdness, either responding to
this post, or posting to the thread of the same title on the forum.

The Guncounter is Temporarily Down for Migration to New Servers

We'll be down until sometime tomorrow morning most likely. I'll update here if anything changes.

Commentary from an Honest and Self Aware Liberal

They do exist...

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #383

For me, the epiphany came in my second season on Roseanne. At thirty-nine years old I finally woke up to the fact that the principles I was taught as a child, like fairness and justice, have no place in the world of power and money. The rules of the sandbox, strictly enforced by a wise and compassionate adult, are laughable when the sandbox is the television business and there are Mercedes and Bentleys parked alongside it. What's odd is that twenty years later, despite my belated awakening to the reality of amorality, that old schoolyard programming continues to insist on its rightness. Ideas like "play nice," "share your toys," "no name-calling," "take turns" and "misbehaving gets punished" still resonate inside me as if they were some sort of fundamental truths. Of course, I now know that they are not. At best, they're ideals. Lofty goals to aspire to. The truisms of the real world are more along the lines of, "my ball, my bat, my rules" and "money talks, bull$#*! walks." Which brings me to our impending presidential election. A classic showdown between the lessons we all learned as children and, well... reality. Further complicating the situation is our collective, unconscious desire to be supervised by that wise and compassionate adult. But there is no such adult. The truth is, we are alone in the sandbox. The game we play, seemingly forever, is called "Ideals vs. Money and Bats." For what it's worth, I'm betting on the latter, but there's a little boy in me who insists on voting for the former.

This would be a liberal admitting that their ideas don't work, that the world isn't the way they want it to be or pretend it is... but that they keep voting for it anyway because they WANT it to be that way.

Of course, they think the reason it doesn't work is because the other side are bad people, and they're wrong about that; but hey, can't win'em all.

How far we have fallen...

Crossposted from The Liberty Papers, where I am a contributor:

Reading these point/counterpoint posts on the question of how the supreme court would decide on Obamacares constitutionality, was quite disturbing to me in several ways.

On the one hand I was heartened, because clearly both Brad and Doug are sane and rational folks with a reasonably solid background in both law and politics, and a foundational understanding of the constitution…

Of course, that only highlights how many people in this country are not.

Any reading of the constitution… of the very intent of the founding of this nation… makes it clear that our federal government is meant to be one of of limited and enumerated powers. If the government can mandate this, they can mandate anything. This is the fundamental argument about the necessity for a limiting principle to any government act.

And anyone who doesn’t want unlimited, unconstrained government can see that. Sadly, it seems that the idea of unlimited, unconstrained government is quite popular in some quarters… even with some supreme court justices.

The basic liberal/progressive/leftist argument for socialized medicine is “we should do this even if it IS illegal and unconstitutional, because it’s the right thing to do so the supreme court should uphold it”.

I.E. “It’s good because we want it, and therefore it should be legal because it is good; and we need to get rid of this whole “limited government” thing, because it gets in the way of us doing what is right and good.”

What I also find heartening is that both Brad and Doug both seem to have a good sense of all of this…

But that is also disturbing…

Because both of them seem to share the same actual opinion:

Both believe that Obamacare is ACTUALLY unconstitutional, and should be struck down…

…It’s just that Brad is cynical enough about the supreme court and the political aspects of the decision that he thinks enough justices will be able to argue themselves into ignoring the constitution and doing what they want to do, rather than what is right.

… and Doug believes that there’s a good possibility of that as well; he just has a bit more hope that they won’t.

… and if you look around the commentariat, that’s pretty much the split of positions that every other knowledgable observer has as well.

And if that isn’t disturbing to you, then you really have no idea what is going on, do you?

TheGunCounter Forums are Migrating Software and Servers this week

So, one presumes most of you know that I am a cofounder and administrator of The GunCounter forums, whether or not you happen to be a member or regular reader.

I am crossposting this here now, so that people who go looking for the forum and notice it is down at some point this week, will know what's going on.

Also, it should explain some why I'm a bit busy this week.

For several months, our hosting provider has needed us to migrate from our old server farm, to a new server farm with updated OS, libraries, tools etc... The old servers are running on worn out hardware, and obsolete software revisions, and need to be decommissioned.

One of the things hindering that process has been that we were two revisions back on our forum software, and the current revisions of PHP and MySQL (the underlying language and database for the forum software), were not bug compatible with the version of the forum software we have been running. Unfortunately, through several test cycles, I had not been able to successfully perform a non-destructive upgrade of the forum software.

With the newest release of the forum software however, in theory, there is both a seamless non-destructive upgrade path from the old version to a current version; and a compatible migration path to the newest revisions of PHP and MySQL on the new server farm.

So, around midnight pacific time last night, we conducted a number of maintenance and cleanup operations, got a full backup of the site and database, then upgraded the boards software to the latest revision. After the upgrade successfully completed, we tested it briefly, and then got a post upgrade full backup of the site and database as well.

All of this is in preparation for the move to the new server farm, which must occur before Sunday. We are working on the test servers for the migration now.

We hope to be able to conduct a seamless migration; shutting down for maintenance some time late Friday night or Saturday (at the latest. We may do it overnight on a weeknight if we're ready earlier), completing a migration of the forum and database to that point, throwing DNS over and then going live on the new servers.

In this process, there will be some disruption of service; as little as an hour or two for some (depending on how long it takes to do a final migration. It's not a small database), to as much as 24 hours, depending on exactly what corner of the internet you are in relative to our hosting provider, and how long DNS changes take to propagate.

In the changeover, the new site will most likely become accessible to different folks at different times, because of this. This isn't a bug or a deliberate rolling upgrade, it's just a part of how the core technologies of the internet work.

If all goes well though, most people should be able to access the site within a couple hours.

Unfortunately, we have not been able to successfully test a site migration thus far. We are hoping that the new revisions of all the software in question (php, MySQL, and phpBB), and some newly installed tools on the new server farm, will allow us to migrate successfully; and we will continue to work on this and test through the week.

However, no matter what, before noon on Sunday, the Guncounter will be on the new servers; because the old servers will be powered down.

If we are unable to migrate our current software, that may mean a change of forum software. Even if we are able to migrate the software, we may not be able to migrate the database properly and It may mean a loss of content. We hope not, we don't think so, but it is a possibility.

In the mean time, as I said, we upgraded to the latest forum software revision last night; and I need folks to be on the lookout for weirdness between now and then. Post any glitches, misses, bugs etc... here in this thread.

Thanks, and hopefully we'll get through this fully intact.

What a contented puppy-cat

That by the way is the top of the back couch cushions. Both Zoe (pictured) and Wash, like to roost up there... when we let them get away with it. One should note... That cushion is about 3 feet wide, and about a foot thick. Zoe is about 60lbs, and Wash is about 70. That is not a small couch, and these are not small dogs.

The Zero Sum Fallacy and the CBTE

Unc linked up to K's Cock Block theory of Economics with his own comment here:

Somethings are zero sum games, as in for one person to gain, another has to lose. Futures are a zero sum game, as is poker. A few things aren’t and this is the basis of the cock block theory of economics. I’m not so sure. Despite the fact there is a seemingly limitless amount of money since the feds just keep printing it, there are only so many resources. So, I don’t think the theory works so well with respect to those resources.

This is particular pet peeve of mine because although some resources are limited, the ability to create wealth in particular is not zero-sum. This is what the Cock Block Theory of Economics is all about. This is the comment I left at Unc's:

Resources ARE limited, depending on which resources you're referring to. Physical resources are limited, as is time.

However, humans have one resource that we never seem to run out of: our ability for ingenuity and creativity. The ability to add value to either a produce or a service or prevent value from being lost is what people pay other people to do. This is the very basis of wealth creation and why, even with limited resources, we've gone from being at the mercy of nature to warm water-tight homes and cheap food that we didn't need to grow ourselves.

When someone is attempting to make money by adding value and they are continually hampered in their efforts by a bureaucracy (which adds no value of its own) does anyone win? The bureaucracy feeds itself for a short time off of the labor of others, and some moronic voter gets to feel good because they made the world "more fair". However, who knows what would have happened if that inventor didn't need to spend days each year dealing with insane paperwork and bureaucratic hurdles. Maybe they would have discovered a real alternative to gasoline or a house-cleaning robot if they'd just been able to devote more time to the task.

There are tons of people who spend all day, every day, preventing others from accomplishing any kind of wealth creation. Lawmakers, bureaucrats, lawyers, rivals, competitors using methods other than competition (sweetheart deals, friends in the administration), leeches of all sorts. What good could they accomplish if, instead of focusing on making life harder for the truly productive, they spend their time learning how to add value themselves?

Internet has been spotty here since Monday

Which is why I have not posted what I wanted to the last few days.

As I've mentioned before, I'm on microwave internet service. A small microwave antenna sits high on the side of my house, pointing to the top of a 7,000 foot mountain about 10 miles slant range from me.

It's March. It's windy, and it's still snowing on the mountains, and unfortunately, there was a power outage on the top of the mountain for a day or so; and some intermittent network issues since then.

Unfortunately, I've been having some major internet problems generally for a few months; ever since they "upgraded" to new radio equipment late last year (including a radio "upgrade" for me).

Finally, after a few months of refunding me for service (I have a QOS guarantee) they decided to use the opportunity of the power cut to replace the node on the mountain, which they did yesterday, and this morning; and also my radio.

Analog RF engineering geekitude ahead....

They've upgraded me from a single band radio with a horizontally oriented plate radio, to a dual band, MIMO unity capable radio, with cross oriented poles and a dish instead of a plate.

That has upgraded me from a single 28Mbit wide channel to two 56Mbit wide channels. I also went from 18db above the noise floor to 28db above the noise floor.

My contract says I should get a minimum 1.5Mbit synchronus sustained with burst up to 8Mbit.

On the old radio gear I was MAXING out at 1.4Mbit, and only averaging a couple hundred Kbit.

That's why I've been getting refunded on my service since December.

On the new gear I'm maxing out at 8Mbit with an average of around 2Mbit.

I'm a hell of a lot happier about that. Of course, now I have to start paying them again.

Oh and my latency is spectacular by the way. I'm getting under 20ms to a commercial server in Seattle, under 30ms to Dallas, and under 100ms to London.

That's rather important since my "landline" is VOIP over this internet connection. Anyone who has called me in the last few months knows that my landline was iffy. Near as I can tell now, it's pretty good.

Kinda NSFW - K's Theory of Economics

So I spent a goodly portion of the afternoon on the phone with my best friend back in AZ. As is usual, we were talking about our current issues in life and people that make them worse.

In specific, we discussed those lovely people who believe that the good things in life are finite, that they need to bring you down in order to make themselves feel better instead of striving for good things themselves.

K: It's exactly like the cock block theory of economics.
Mel: The what?
K: Oh, I haven't told you about my cock block theory of economics?
Mel: No?

K's Cock Block Theory of Economics: Say money equals sex. There is an infinite possibility for free sex wherever you look, you just have to try to get it. Lots of people, lots of options, lots of ways of getting sex. But some people think that it's limited, and that if someone is getting laid then someone else out in the world isn't getting laid and that's not fair. Or they want to get laid but don't see it happening, so they cock block everyone else.

So there's people cock blocking everyone else from having sex, and the sad part is that if they just let it happen there would be plenty of sex for everyone. But they're so busy cock blocking other people that they're not having sex, and no one else is having sex because they're being prevented from doing so.

Apply that to money, and you can see how people who prevent others from making money really just screw everyone over.

A realtor who knows his local market

Found this while looking at the local freebie classifieds:

DEFENSIBLE 60 acres near
Farragut State Park, bordered
by timberland, recorded
single access easement,
$180,000. Go to
www.(redacted).com to or
call (local well-known real estate agent), 800-xxx-
xxxx or 208-xxx-xxxx

Reality Check: Why, even if Romney is as bad as "they" say (and he isn't) you should still vote for him... or at least against Obama

There's a hell of a lot of folks out there sturming and dranging, with much rending of garments and gnashing of teeth etc... etc... that Romney is no better than Obama; and that we'd be better off with Obama being re-elected, but having the Republicans secure a stronger majority in the house, and a full majority in the senate (preferably veto proof) so there would be a divided government.

The idea here is that gridlock is better than a unified government led by a moderate who isn't dedicated to cutting government expenditures, and government interference in our lives.

These same folks frequently point to the gridlock of the Clinton years as a perfect example; because with a divided government, congress was far less able to screw the country up.

These people are dead wrong.

Oh yes, they're right, in that a divided government restrains congress (unless there are vetoproof majorities of course). Unfortunately it does almost nothing to restrain the powers, roles, influences, and general ability to screw the country up, of the executive branch.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people really do not understand how our three branch system of government works. For example, they tend to think of the President as having a lot of domestic power and power over the economy, which is entirely false... at least directly. Most people don't understand that as an individual, the president has very little direct power over anything but foreign policy, and short term responses to emergencies.

However, the president (and very importantly his party), has a huge amount of indirect power over our lives, through judicial and administrative appointees, and the administration of the executive branch and the agencies thereof (DOJ, FBI, ATF, IRS, DOE, DOI etc...).

It's through these courts, and executive agencies, that we intersect with the federal government most in our lives by far. When you are interacting with the federal government, it is almost always going to be through an executive agency, or a court. Who runs these institutions, how they are run, and how they exercise executive powers, has a huge impact on our lives, and our nation.

Ironically, not only are the wailing gnashers dead wrong, but the very example they cite to support their contention, provides a fully sufficient argument to prove my thesis.

There are four EXTREMELY important reasons why Obama cannot be allowed to have a second term:

1. Supreme court justices
   
2. Other federal judges
   
3. Executive branch appointees (heads of agencies, senior bureaucrats etc...)
   
4. Executive orders, signing statements, administrative rule and procedures, and other executive instruments of regulation and policy

The president as an individual has very little direct power over domestic issues as I said; but these four elements give the president, and his party (the party tends to provide or at least strongly influence the candidates and final decisions for each of these posts, as well as for the interpretation of executive powers) ENORMOUS power to screw the country up.

Remember, lots of people said the exact same things they're saying now about Romney, about Bush the Elder back in '92 (and frequently they voted for Perot as a protest), and Bob Dole in '96 (Dole was a deliberate sacrificial lamb in that election anyway); and so we got 8 years of the Clinton adminstration reshaping the federal administrative and judicial regimes.

We are now, almost twenty years later, STILL dealing with the problems caused by Clinton appointees, and particularly with how the Clinton administration ran the DOD, ATF, FBI, and CIA.

We'll be cleaning out Obama appointees for years as it is; we can't afford to give him the chance to screw things up even more.

Honestly, the last ten lines of this post should be enough of a reason for any conservative or libertarian to vote Obama out...

• DC v. Heller was decided 5-4
• McDonald v. Chicago was decided 5-4
• Supreme court justices are a lifetime appointment
• Antonin Scalia is almost 76 and will be 80 years old by 2016
• Anthony Kennedy is almost 76 and will be 80 years old by 2016
• Stephen Breyer is almost 74 and will be 78 years old by 2016
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg is almost 79 and will be 83 years old by 2016
• The mean life expectancy for men in the United States is 76 (for women it's 80)
• All four of the negative votes for those two decisions above were from liberal justices
• Obama has already appointed two horrifically bad liberal justices, both under 60

A little health update, and I'm getting some "free" money... sort of...

I'm not sick anymore... WEll of course I still have the cancer and the endocrine problems and the crazy hormones and the edema and... you get the picture; but at least I am finally over my creeping crud...

It's just 3 weeks later, and I'm better, yay!

I actually had a docs appointment today. My regular update for the doc, plus I had to get some bloodwork done. I got drawn for my monthly liver and kidney function (they just do a CMP) and and lipid panel.

I usually get the lipid panel twice a year, and had my last one in December so I wouldn't normally be due 'til June. However, our new health insurance plan gives us $250 (each) into our HSA for filling in a "health assessment", and another $350 (each) for getting an updated "biometric screening", which includes a CMP and lipid panel. Oh and $200 each for a couple of online self paced "health education" classes.

Basically, we get a total of $1600 into our HSA for the two of us having a doctors visit and a blood test each (well, actually it's like 19 blood tests, but it's only one blood draw) and a couple hours of filling out online forms.

Not bad. Better than the $700 total the company used to contribute annually to the HSA, and helping, a little bit anyway, to offset our increased cost of prescription medication.

In other good news, my fasting blood sugar is still normal (114), as is my a1c (5.4%), resting heart rate (72) and blood pressure (128/84 this morning).

We'll see how my cholesterol is in a couple days when the lipid panel gets back. I'm guessing a bit higher than last time just based on my diet and lack of exercise over the past few months, but last time I was around 160 so I'm not too worried.

I also talked to my Oncological surgeons assistant today, and she still wants me stabilized below 360 before she does the surgery.

The really irritating thing has been myweight continuing to yo-yo. Before I got sick I was fluctuating wildly in a range between 349 and 386. Since I've been sick I only took the diuretics a couple times (when my hands or feet or both swelled up enough to be painful) and over the course of three weeks, gained 50 lbs.

So yeah, that's irritating, but it's nothing new; and I'll be back down where I was within two weeks of being back on the diuretics consistently.

Basically, no real change since last time, which is, I suppose, a good thing; but still kinda frustrating.

Definitely still not used to daylight savings time yet...

Mel just IM'd me saying "I'll be home at 6:15, will you be ready"(referring to us having our weekly night out). I looked around thinking "hmmm why is she  saying this now it can't be more than 4:30... oh wait"

My brain and body are still used to the sun position matching up with the actual hour, rather than the semi arbitrary obsolete congressional/railroad prescribed time... and it's 5:40, not 4:40.

I'll still be ready in time of course, it's just one of those moments when you think "and we still do this why exactly?".

By June 21st, as far north as I live, it'll be 2130 local before full dark.

Ok seriously, Janine Turner... What the hell?

When did you go from this:

To some freaky plastic mannequin head?

And could you please, please, please, go back?

Oh and believe me, that second picture is SO much better than she just looked on fox news. Inflated lips, botox everywhere else, and texas beauty queen (which, admitedly she was. She grew up near Dallas and was a model at 15) blonde hair... just hideous.

Seriously, she's only 49, she really doesn't need to look like Zsa-Zsa.

k'thanx'by

Adultery, Prostitution, Rape, and Islam

This post is a consolidation and recapitulation of a couple of comments made across a couple of posts from the week or so, on the subject of rape in the islamic world.

Last week, Clayton Cramer posted a piece about the Beslan terrorist attack, in which he noted that the personal testimonies of the victims that some of the hostages were raped, seemed to have been scrubbed from official records, and regional reportage of the incident; and that Wikipedia had a pretty transparent apologia over the incident (go read the linked piece for the full context, I'd have to excerpt the whole thing to make sense here) quoted here:

The lack of food and water took its toll on the young children, many of whom were forced to stand for long periods in the hot, tightly-packed gym. Many children took off their clothing because of the sweltering heat within the gymnasium, which led to rumors of sexual impropriety, though the hostages later explained it was merely due to the stifling heat and being denied any water.

In his last paragraph he wrote:

The two sources that this paragraph gives for this claim says nothing that indicates that the claims of rape were incorrect. I find myself troubled by how many books and articles refer to this claim, which seems unfortunately quite plausible--and yet I can't find any immediate newspaper accounts that refer to it. Can you help me?

As someone who is familiar with the region, I responded:

You almost certainly won't; and you can guarantee any Chechnyans will edit out any mention of it in wikipedia.

Cultural rape shame in the region is EXTREME (both islamic, and christian), and it will almost certainly never be acknowledged in local sources, or by Ossetians.

This is a cultural pathology very familiar to those who know islamic culture, and balkan and transcaucasian culture; but is really not well understood here in the United States (not that rape shame isn't a huge problem here as well, it's simply an entirely different order of magnitude).

Apparently my comment (and those of the other commenters) triggered some further interest on Claytons part about rape in the muslim world; particularly in the context of Surah 23:1-11

The believers must (eventually) win through,-
Those who humble themselves in their prayers;
Who avoid vain talk;
Who are active in deeds of charity;
Who abstain from sex,
Except with those joined to them in the marriage bond, or (the captives) whom their right hands possess,- for (in their case) they are free from blame,
But those whose desires exceed those limits are transgressors;-
Those who faithfully observe their trusts and their covenants;
And who (strictly) guard their prayers;-
These will be the heirs,
Who will inherit Paradise: they will dwell therein (for ever).

This passage is taken by many muslims, as a commandment to be chaste except in marriage OR with slaves and captives. It has been used as justification by muslims to rape slaves, prisoners, hostages etc...

A few days later, Clayton posted a further missive on Sharia law and Rape:

I spent some time this evening researching the claim that sharia law requires four male, Islamic, adult eyewitnesses to get a rape conviction. This turns out to be true, but slightly misleading, or at least, incomplete. Sharia law, with its very severe punishments, does apparently require four male, Islamic adult eyewitnesses for the crime of zina (which includes rape, adultery, and premarital sex, and does not distinguish them clearly). In some countries, eight adult females can provide the testimony, or some combination of men and women.

It turns out that the standard, which may have been intended primarily to prevent a person accused of adultery from being executed without extraordinary evidence, is so demanding that a non-sharia based-law is used to punish rape, with much less severe punishments, in many Muslim countries. The reported rape rates in Muslim countries are so astonishingly low that I am inclined to think that these crimes are just not being reported.

I felt I needed to expand greatly on my previous comment about rape and shame in the islamic world:

Unfortunately, yes.

Actual rape is shockingly common in the islamic world, particularly in Africa and the Arabic portions; particularly among the lower economic classes, and among what are effectively lower caste populations of indians, pakistanis, afghanis, indonesians, africans, and other darker skinned or mixed race muslims; who are imported into the arabic and other lighter skinned muslim countries as cheap labor (because many of them speak arabic, and have no resources or education to help them protect themselves).

These people are effectively made into indentured servants, or even slaves; and their masters take the "masters privilege".

Rich arabs, particularly "royalty" (though the arabic definition of royalty is... expansive. There are thousands of Saudi princes for example) tend to view the lower class staff as fair game, or even as their due, or just reward.

Often rape is used as a means of control, or shaming, of either a woman or her family (which may "force" the family to kill the woman to "restore their honor"). It can even be used to gain business advantage.

Also, gang rape, by roving bands of young men, is sadly not uncommon. Usually, they excuse their behavior as "punishing the wicked temptress" for "tempting" them with their wicked bodies, uncovered ankles and wrists etc...

You will find, if you look closer into it, that most muslim women who are punished for "adultery", are in fact rape victims.

Sadder still, the rape gangs have moved into europe with large scale lower class muslim immigration; particularly in Germany, Sweden, and France. The city of Malmo in sweden has essentially been declared a no-go zone for white women. They have even seen some rape gang activity in Canada and the UK.

I can't even get into Africa without getting angrier than hell... In the sudan, tanzania, djibouti, eritrea, somalia, ethiopia, the congo, sexual violence is so commonplace as to be beneath notice. Again, you'll find that most women in Muslim africa punished for "adultery" or "prostitution" are in fact rape victims.

The final major factor is the cultural rape shame. It's so severe in the islamic world that there is a near 80% death rate from it; either by suicide, murder, stoning and other "punishment", and honor killings.

Frankly, I haven't even begun to touch on this subject. I personally could write a short book on it, never mind a real expert on this subject. I know there are several books on the subject of sexual violence in Islam, and sexual violence in africa; generally first person accounts by refugees, or serious scholarly/governmental report type things. I don't know of any books that seek to be serious reportage, commentary, and analysis on the subject.

For some reason, Americans in general know very little about this.

The false statistics of sexual abuse in the United States (and believe me, if you've seen a statistic on sexual violence in the American media, it's almost certainly false. This topic is so politicized as to be completely unreliable at this point) are ridiculously well publicized; but the actual genocidal horror (and yes, it is very much a part of the African and eastern European genocides, and for genocidal reasons) of sexual violence in Islam and particularly in Africa is basically unknown.

That idea simply dumbfounds me, never mind making me angry.

A Well Deserved Whuppin

A couple weeks back, Og posted a little throwaway "#7 of my top ten worst beatings":

Og’s Mom: “Don’t you get smart with me!”
Og:”How would you know?”

--sound of furniture being destroyed and repeated impact with blunt instruments

As it happened, when Og posted this, I had just returned from Massachusetts, where I had gone to memorialize my mother with my family. That put me in mind of my past, and I decided to post a little anecdote of one of my "formative experiences":

The worst beating I ever received from my mother, was due to similar smartass stupidity.

Now, my mother was 5′3 and 105lbs. By the time I was 9 I was bigger than her. When I stopped growing at 13, I was 6′2″ and 265lbs of mostly muscle and smartass.

Around 10 or 11 she pretty much stopped trying to hit me, just because it would have been a waste of time and effort.

So, one day in the summer of my 14th year, my mother (who would have been 34 or 35 at the time) and I were having a fight in the kitchen. The fight turned kinda nasty, and I said, with a great big shiteatin grin on my face “what are you going to do, hit me?”

So she did.

An open handed slap across the face, about as hard as she could hit… which, for a 5′3″ tall 105lb woman was pretty hard… but I had 11″ and 160lbs on her, and by then 8 years of Jiu Jitsu, and football, and wrestling.

Me, being composed as I said, mostly of muscle and smartass; did exactly the thing you would expect… I laughed at her.

So she tried to hit me again, and I caught her wrist; and she jerked it away so hard she sprained it… me, all the while, laughing at her.

At this point my mother got as angry as I’ve ever seen another human being get… I mean bright PURPLE with throbbing forehead veins and all and I was just falling all over myself laughing at her because I KNEW she couldn’t hurt me…

Oh boy, was I wrong.

See, the open handed slap of a 105lb woman may not hurt all that much… but my mother understood things like leverage, and mechanical advantage, and using the tools to hand…

While I was busy congratulating myself at how clever I was, my mother held her wrist in her other hand, turned slightly, and then spun back around the damn quick…

With a 12 inch frying pan, across the side of my head, with the entire force of her hopping mad body behind it (it turned out to have been hard enough to fracture her wrist)

I staggered back and fell flat on my ass, too stunned to swear.

My mother… all 5′3″ of her stood over me with the frying pan in her hand and said…

“Well… that wiped the smile off your face didn’t it. Don’t you EVER forget, I brought you into this world… I can take you out of it”.

Good news bad news on the job front

I talked to the hiring manager today for the job I've been waiting for an offer from. The good news is that they have the offer in process. They really need me to start... well, actually they needed me last month.

The bad news is "the process".

The company had a hiring freeze just as they were starting the hiring process for me. So now, they've had to come up with an "exception process", and then put prospective hires through it.

I'm the first one in the process, and I've already cleared the justification hurdles etc... Now it needs to go up to "executive approval".

Because of the freeze, and because of the level of employee I'll be, my hiring has to actually be approved by the damn CEO (of a 350,000 person company by the way); which is why it's taking so long.

However, when I spoke to the hiring manager he said that I had the stamp of approval and strong recommendation etc... etc... of all levels. So it's unlikely the CEO will not approve extending me the offer.

I had to go through this at my last long term job as well, and it also took about the same amount of time.

I applied for this job in the first week of January, had my first interview in mid January, my second interview in early February,  I got my tentative verbal offer the 29th of February, and will get my written offer, likely some time around March 30th.

So typical big company hiring speed.

Yaknow... maybe it's just me but...

Does it even count as a "Behind the music" if, at some point there isn't some dramatic music with the voiceover guy saying something like "and then it all came crashing down".

I'm not dead, I'm just still frikken sick

So the last two and a half weeks I've managed like 3 posts. I'm not dead, or lazy... or at least any lazier than usual anyway... I'm just STILL FRIKKEN SICK FROM THREE WEEKS AGO.

Unfortunately, this is what happens when you have cancer. Your immune system is so screwed up by the cancer, and so busy with other things, that you just sorta stay sick for weeks at a time; or you get opportunistic secondary infections etc... etc... etc...

This time around I have been hovering around the edges of bronchitis and bronchial pneumonia. I either had a very bad case of acute bronchitis, or a very mild case of bronchial pneumonia... or rather, if the latter, both (because I definitely had bronchitis).

Joy.

The bronchitis is mostly gone now, but I'm still having all the fun of being "low level sick". Fever, coughing, mucus, headeaches, joint pain etc...

I thought I was better for a day or so last week, as usual... and as usual I was SADLY mistaken, and paid for my presumption tenfold.

And of course I'm still only able to take my medications when the symptoms get so bad that I have to; because, as I have said, you really don't want to be taking these things when you are sick (their side effects when you AREN'T sick include dehydration, and reduced kidney and liver function).

Oh and without my medications, and made worse by the being sick; I'm on what I like to call the "sleep rollercoaster". I spend 24-48 hours not being able to sleep at all, then I sleep for 16 or so hours, three or four days in a row; then back to 24-48 hours of not being able to sleep.

Aint we got fun?

So yeah... I'm not very productive at the moment obviously. I'm not particularly happy about it, but until this crap clears up, there's not much I can do about it.

Cancer aint for sissys boys and girls. As always, I strongly recommend against it.