YABF : yet another battery fubar

Eventually, my death will be caused by an errant battery; I just know it.

Over the years, I've had my issues with batteries. I've blogged about these demons on at least a dozen occasions (the most recent was a false alarm related to the Sony batteries in my laptop).

This week, the problem was with my home alarm; after I came home to find that it had triggered (I didn't close the door tightly), I was shocked to see there wasn't a Dallas SWAT deployment surrounding my home.

Turns out my alarm company never got the signal because (long story short) the battery backup had failed. Whaat? The system was neutered because the battery went south - and the system didn't warn me; not sure I like that feature. The service guy arrived the same day I reported the problem, and quickly isolated the fault. He says those batteries last about 3 years (maybe 5 under ideal conditions) and probably triggered an amber light on the alarm panel, which I dutifully ignored.

Lessons learned:

#1 I set a calendar reminder, 3 years from now, to replace this battery, so I'm not paying for an alarm that'll never reach the monitoring center.

#2 Retail outlets don't stock a lot of these "alarm system batteries", which can sit on the shelf for many months. Best to check the expiration date, just in case.

#3 My alarm company sells fresh batteries, and will deliver them while they're in my area, almost for cost. I was "quoted" about $15 for one, versus double that from Batteries+ or RadioShack or whoever else carries them.

#4 When the amber "fault" light appears on the control pad, PAY ATTENTION.

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Unrelated:

Texas Governor = US President

Tonight's the night for the Top Secret Debate amongst the candidates for Texas Governor. What makes this absurd (typical Texas) is how the challengers are complaining that incumbent Rick Perry planned this solo debate so as to minimize the audience. After all, it's a Friday night, and that means that 94.3% of the population will be attending the local high school football game, and not glued to the television.

If you dig long enough on the Dallas Managed News website, you'll find:

TEXAS VOTE 2006: THE GOVERNOR'S DEBATE Gubernatorial debate with Gov. Rick Perry and candidates Chris Bell, Kinky Friedman and Carole Keeton Strayhorn. The media panel will consist of Wayne Slater (The Dallas Morning News), John McCaa (WFAA-TV), Sara Lucero (KENS-TV/San Antonio) and Christine Haas (KVUE-TV/Austin). KHOU-TV's (Houston) Greg Hurst moderates. Live and commercial-free from Dallas. It will also be available for viewing at DallasNews.com. (7 p.m. Ch. 8.)

Amusingly enough, I found NO sign of this on the local TV station's website: WFAA.com. Welcome to the state of Apathy. America: we're choosing Your Next President down here, so .. pay attention.

26^2 = ??

hardly a day goes by when I don't hear of a new word. Oftentimes it's something Truly Amusing like "meanderthal" .. but I think we should exhaust all the remaining SHORT words first. There are just way too many 2-letter words that need a loving home. (Scrabble players be damned), starting with [A] I can think of:

aa; ac; ae; af; ai; aj; ak (postal, and other abbreviations don't count); ao; ap; aq (the Arabs have taught us that we don't need a U after Q anymore); ar; au; av and az (taken: ab; ad; ag; ah; Al (proper name); am; an; as; at; aw; ax; ay)

[B] is more difficult, since all good English words must include A,E,I,O,U and sometimes Y:

ba; bo; bu (taken: be, bi)
ca, ce; ci; cu (taken: co)
da; de; di; du (taken: do)

and then we're back to a vowel [E], so more words become available:

ea; ec; ee; ef; eg; ei; ej; ek; el (Mexican pronoun); en; eo; ep; eq; es; et; eu; ev; ey; ez(taken: eb; Ed; eh (Wisconsonians); em; er; ew; ex

Once we're done with the remaining 2-letter words, we can progress to 3, then 4. After all, etymology is just way overrated.

You're On Notice - October 4, 2006

(courtesy of the On Notice Generator)

Oops .. looks like somebody misspelled Hizb' Allah ...

next up: Charles Carl Roberts V ?

My post from Saturday now sounds odd, given that Yet Another Classroom Execution has taken place .. this time in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania where the target was a group of Amish schoolgirls - bound with plastic handcuffs.

This time, the descriptions are about Charles Carl Roberts IV:

" .. an exceptional father ..."

".. a home-schooled Christian ..."

".. a respected and well-liked father of three ..."

Makes me wonder how many other exceptional Christian fathers get off work at 3am, go home and have breakfast with their children, calmly put them on a schoolbus, then proceed to cowardly murder Somebody Else's Children. Presumably one of his OWN children is named Charles Carl Roberts V : will he repeat his father's legacy, 20 years from now?

How many other Sleeper Cells - a/k/a Ticking Time Bombs - are out there, waiting to go off? Is the trigger the instant media attention - do they crave fame, or are they all simply delusional madmen who should've been placed in state mental wards, for the safety of the rest of us?

Mayberry has been bulldozed

It's over 1050 miles from Cazenovia, Wisconsin to Everman, Texas* .. but I couldn't help but draw a parallel between them today.

* about 50 miles from my home in Dallas

Yesterday, a high school principal - John Klang - was shot & killed in Wisconsin after a 15 year old (Eric Hainstock), who felt he'd been teased by other students, decided he had to kill someone.

Coincidentally, the New York Times published an article today about Everman, Texas principal Anthony Price, who has decided that "corporal punishment" (spanking) is a proper way to instill discipline in his middle school.

One of the problems with corporal punishment in 2006 versus 1972 (when I was the age of the Wisconsin shooter) is that it's now (apparently) socially acceptable to bring guns to school, with the intent of killing as many of your classmates/teachers as possible. I can imagine one of principal Price's students, after receiving a spanking, going home to collect her parent's gun and returning to end the life of the man who humilated her.

I don't have an answer to this problem, but those who think they can turn the clock back to The Days of Mayberry are simply delusional.

Who Wants Fairness?

What's wrong with Fairness? Isn't that something we aspire to? Well, turns out the answer - in Rove-Cheney's America - is a resounding NO.

I was mired in traffic a few days ago and flipped on the AM band. While waiting for a traffic report, I heard a waif whining that "we just HAVE to win in November, or the Democrats will bring back The Fairness Doctrine, and that will mean The End of Talk Radio". Naturally, the host (one of the many right wing sociopaths) agreed.

Turns out several Democrats (including Louise Slaughter) have suggested reinstatement of The Fairness Doctrine (quashed in 1987 - during Reagan's presidency) -- which would force radio stations to give as much time to opponents as to Coulter/Limbaugh/their ilk. Also, since Everybody Knows™ that liberal talk radio always loses money, it would be harder for conservative talk radio to be financially viable.

Completely unrelated (ha!): today is the last day of Liberal Talk Radio in Dallas. The local Air America station (KXEB-AM) is turning into a Christian Republican station tomorrow.

I recently read Don't Think of an Elephant and thus find it humorous that The Left is finally starting to wake up and use the Right Wing's DoubleSpeak tactics. Although he's not the one who coined the term - merely popularized it (newspeak, oldspeak, doublethink) - it makes me want to re-read George Orwell's [1984].

Deep Thought: If only Orwell'd named his book [2004], he'd have hit it on the nose. Then he'd have to change his name to Nostradamus, I reckon.

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Everybody Knows is a trademark of the state-run media (Fox "News"); Rush Limbaugh Productions; and the Christian Fascist Republican Party.