Stupidity plain and simple

Canada, eh? No hand washing allowed

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Yet another disgusting and ridiculous ruling by a human rights commission has been shat upon us, this time regarding the washing of hands in a restaurant.

It seems that if an employee is unable for whatever reason to wash one’s hands, such employee may still continue to serve and dispense food to customers. Notwithstanding the latest hospital directives for visitors and everyone else to wash their hands to prevent the spread of disease and pestilence, apparently in British Columbia, courtesy of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, one is not required by law to wash their hands while serving food in a restaurant.

So then, apparently this hand-washing fetish that Lister so wisely promoted in the 19th century has become obsolete. Who could have known that a human rights commission and the fount of knowledge contained within its board members could prove so convincingly that hand-washing is not required to prevent the spread of disease?

Link here.

Hardware/Software

Vonage dial-out problem

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VonageUpdated below

I had a Vonage dial tone, but every time I tried to dial out, the dial tone would continue on through the number-pad entries, and the dialed number would sound busy. The dial tone continued sounding in the background. I was unable to connect to any dialed number.

I rebooted my modems and the Vonage modem, but still the dial out problem persisted.

As a last resort, I unplugged the power supply from my telephone, and then plugged it back in. That solved the problem in it’s entirety. I’m not sure why that solution worked. Possibly the problem had something to do with the phone’s circuitry when I turned off the power via the fuse box in order to install a ceiling fan.

All in all, I’m happy with my Vonage account. It’s much cheaper than a regular land-line telephone account and includes all the features in Vonage’s basic fee that would be cost-plus with other providers. Vonage is also much cheaper than those solutions sold by cable television and internet providers.

The only other issue I’ve encountered is the caller id time-set problem, which I covered here.

Update: I’ve had this dial tone problem occur one more time. Rather than reboot everything, I merely unplugged the phone’s power supply from the wall socket power outlet, plugged it back into the power outlet, and everything was good to go one more time. Why is it happening? I don’t know, but I consider it to be a minor annoyance.

Disappointments

D.B. Cooper is good for tourism

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Renewed speculation in the D.B. Cooper case has been encouraged by the discovery of a deployed parachute near Amboy, Washington.

A tattered, half-buried parachute unearthed by kids had D.B. Cooper country chattering yesterday over the fate of the skyjacker, who leapt from a plane 36 years ago… newsday.com from AP

I’m left wondering if the latest publicity stunt storm is just that, dreamed up by an imaginative individual who would like to increase tourist travel to the region. What better way than to deploy an old parachute and have someone eventually stumble on it in the woods? Of course, I, along with many others, hope it’s all true. Old D.B. — and yes, he is getting old by now if he’s still alive — lives on.

Link to latest speculation here.

My previous speculation here.

Politics, Stupidity plain and simple

Nipple ring security alert!

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I’ve heard it all now, courtesy of Teh Stupid Administration:

A Texas woman who said she was forced to remove a nipple ring with pliers in order to board an airplane called Thursday for an apology by federal security agents and a civil rights investigation. — msnbc.com Travel News from AP

Of course, it happened at an airport in Texas. What can one expect, considering where the current Leader of the Great Free WorldTM claims residency on his hat ranch?

Link to article here.

Drifting and dreaming, Encounters, Personal

Fear and loathing in the valley

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She was hired to sell biker clothing, and she was good at it. Prior to that she was somewhere down the hill, at a discount mall on the way to L.A.

I don’t remember exactly when I started paying attention to her, but I first noticed her for her saucy walk. It wasn’t overtly sexual – nothing like that at all. It was just, well, saucy. Her long, dark, thick straight hair would swing with her every step. She had bangs that covered her forehead, cut to a perfect line. Her eyes were the darkest brown that I’ve ever seen, and believe me on that, because I’ve seen my share.

She was intelligent, and could talk knowledgeably about almost anything. She had a degree in something, but I’ve forgotten now. She spoke Spanish too. I thought that was pretty cool for a girl from Arizona who left home when she was 14, moved west, went to high school on her own and then university.

She had traveled a bit. North to Vancouver, where she got bored out of her tree and then headed back south. Imagine that — bored in Vancouver. We laughed about that.

I was afraid of her, mostly because I knew inside of me that it would be a long, hard fall and I wasn’t certain I wanted that again at that stage of my life. Then I got involved with someone else and put those thoughts away.

For a while she dated one of the sales guys, got to tweaking with him, and I mostly forgot about her. Well, let’s say that I forgot about her as much as one could while still laying my tired eyes on her every day at the shop. I remember one quiet lunchtime when she told me she had a splitting headache, and one look into her pinprick eyes told me it was from tweaking. I wanted to kick her ass, but of course I didn’t. I hoped she was smart enough to figure it out for herself. Eventually she did, and the salesman with the dyed hair left town.

I still wonder what I would have done had she not stopped on her own.

Much later, just prior to my leaving, we went down together to see the Bettie Page movie. We made plans to attend the film noir festival, but it wasn’t to be. A few days later, she was gone, and then I was gone, and I never saw her again.

I trust you are well, Delissa, and happy.

And one more thing: Thank you.

Riding farther, seeing more