Guard Dog

They have security and cleaning services at night but I believe they are contractors & they insist on a school staff member being with us. They won't let them work at night. I was at Pritt HS today, they had a student escorting me. He was a office aide or something like it. He was really interested in what I was doing and kept asking me about the project, technology etc. He asked me how you get a job like this. I laughed and told him that all you have to do is try you hand at a number of different careers and fail miserably at every one of them.

I was going to bet I was older than you my friend...but I think I'd have lost!

They just have a strict set of rules regarding working time and who can be where when. I forget that schools really are a government operation and that makes them inflexible just by definition.

I started walking down the first six schools to get the new DAS systems today to plan the layout. I don't know how teachers do what they do. I was in a middle school today that has a staff of 90 and over 1200 students. That's like herding cats! I don't have kids and my niece and nephew are grown now so I don't spend any time around kids so it just boggles the mind how a teacher can get and hold their attention for the time it takes to teach a class. I'm finding the schools to be somewhat difficult to work with though. I thought it would make sense to do all the installation work at night but apparently the union won't allow anyone to work at night to escort us and the administrators insist on school personnel, escorting us, not security contractors. I told them doing it at night I could have the whole thing done in one night. During the day it would take 2-3 days. The told me, politely, that was my problem. And it is.

Great post Alan! Humans are basically good but also fundamentally flawed I think. There are always going to be evil bastards among us like the cowards who plant a bomb then run away, and there are always going to be selfish bastards like the politicians and "journalists" who are attempting to use this tragedy for their own political ends to push an agenda (Yes I'm talking about you Barney Frank and Salon) or like all the scam artists setting up fake charity "victim funds" to trick people into donating. But the inspiring thing is all the people who ran to help, not just police and first responders but regular folks, even after the second bomb went off. They didn't know if there was a third or a fourth out there. They saw people who needed help and they ran to help. I find that inspiring.

My body tells me it's spent 60 years dealing with my crap and it doesn't like me... AKA I have "Old man back" and "old man feet" and a "trick knee" from my work at McDonalds. There is a line from a song, don't remember which one but it" "I'm much too young to feel this damned old" My favorite is a quote from Mickey Mantle "If I'd known I was going to live so long I'd have taken better care of myself"

Unless there are some big changes my predictions in the OP are going to be ALL wrong. The Rays are just killing me. If they get a man on base it's like seeing a cat in a hot air balloon, nobody knows how he got there and his odds of getting home don't look too good.

It's not the age it's the mileage.

You gotta watch yourself there. I worked there for six months and kept a VERY low profile. Where were you?

It's a right to HAVE it, not tote it around with you while it's loaded. Besides, I'm cool with that. I have one in two states myself and if you are going to have folks armed I'd rather they demonstrate some competency with handling them.

If I watch it like I read the book I'll watch two and a half episodes then give up on it and donate it to the local library

Just finished reading A Memory of Light last night. I'd give it 4 of 5 stars. Some of it was a little forced but overall it was a good conclusion. One observation for those who read it... do you guys thing Brandon Sanderson might have been playing Portal while he was working on that book?

Yesterday I wrote Uncle Sam a big check, then went fishing and listened to the Rays - Red Sox game in the morning. I was depressed about the check, even more depressed after the game, didn't catch anything (although that hardly matters) then heard about the bomb. It was a bummer of a day all around.

I did two float deployments. I can't say I shared Wals & Gifteds awe though. But then again I was on gator freighters both times. USS Dubuque & USS St. Louis. That's a long way from Enterprise! The upshot was though, I was just cargo, not crew.

From what I'm reading the bomb was a somewhat amateurish build despite the number of injuries it caused. The current thinking is that is was more likely one or two a******s working alone rather than an organized attack. So far a number of groups have disavowed responsibility. I wonder if this is another incident like that Adal Hassan guy in Texas? Whoever it was needs to be hunted down like the vermin they are... and they will be.

I just woke up to a hell of a racket. I flicked on the porch light and saw my grill overturned and a pack of coyotes running through my yard. Tommy is going nuts barking at them. So I swept up the ashes and cleaned up the mess muttering curses on all coyote kind. But I'm sort of glad to see them back. I wondered where they had been.

A female gamer explaining why many female gamers are not present on these forums because they would likely not be as interested as their male counterparts are in the niche that these forums fill? I'm surprised that it took to page five of this thread to get that. Very shortly you are going to find out why I think this post is funny!

She's 48, clearly Ponce De Leon was on to something when he looked for the fountain of youth in Florida. GD, I remember you were once married and I think it was in Florida, is this the ex missus? Not quite! My ex was not that good looking, and not that successful. And she HATED politics. Considering how things turned out I guess that was understandable.

I've got to agree with Trashman. The President has said and done scores of things worthy or criticism and scorn but this is not one of them. My only concern is that he is dead wrong. The best looking state AG is Pam Bondi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pam_Bondi of Florida. Of course she is a Republican and is in the process of suing the government over Obamacare so I'm pretty sure he hates her. He seems to hold everyone who disagrees with him in total disdain.

The Rays took tow of three from the Indians this weekend. I caught all three games. David Price go rocked on Sunday though. He's off to a rough start. Tonight it the Marlins home opener. It will be interesting to hear what the attendance will be. I'm betting >10k.

Wow, somewhat surprising to hear this kind of venom. But then everyone was snarky and nasty when Regan passed too. I guess speaking well of people who were champions of liberty is out of style around here, even if they were not perfect. But then freedom is not something the posters on this board value highly so there we go.

I just had the funniest thought reading this forum. It's like we're all sitting around this giant bar at happy hour and Bruce says "This bar is great but it needs more chicks! It's a sausage fest in here!" Tell me you did not totally get a flashback to Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle there! There actually used to be a good bunch of regular female posters here, Dark Raven (who actually accounted for about 4-5 of them) Darque, Lady Di, Quioxitic, they were not treated any worse than anyone and each one gave as good as they got. Lady Crimson is the only longtime regular female poster left unfortunately. Out of all of them if I could bring one back it would be Di, she was sharp on topics like this. I have never played an MMO and the games I like tend not to attract female players so I don't have much to offer on this and most of the women I know who do game seem to prefer MMOs. Eve seems to be the favorite based solely on my uninformed non scientific information. So if you want to meet lady games that's where they are.

This one if for you Volo! http://youtu.be/_JbcHf13wCM

You and I could probably do it. Just walk Stanton and throw off speed junk to everyone else! In other news Yu Darvish came within one out of a perfect game. Wow, remember when that was rare?

Back from a road trip for work. I'm taking the rest of the week off (sort of) then meeting next week for the purchasing agreements for the Dyer County project. Busy busy. On a side note it gets bloody cold in Iowa. Yeah, yeah I know all you Scandinavians are rolling your eyes right now. Canadians too. Remember all experiences are relative.