Two things.

Something is horribly wrong if your police department is advertising for new recruits on the radio in a market that is 180 miles away. The New Orleans P.D. has been advertising on regional radio stations in Jackson MS. Advertising the fact that your P.D. is understaffed isn't a Good Idea. Apply here if you consider handling drunks and dodging bullets a good time.

I was at the grocery store late last night, and got behind a woman with a child and a cart of groceries in tow. She proceeds through checkout, and slides her bank card through the card reader. It doesn't work, the cashier tells her to try again. After a second try, the cashier says "It says to call the bank." The woman replies, "Oh, I just got this card in the mail, you think I need to call them?" Now... when was the last time you got a credit or debit card in the mail that didn't have a BIG sticker on it telling you to call the bank to activate the card? I have no patience for idiots.

Is it THAT bad that lawyers think we need to find their phone number at the drop of a hat? Here in Jackson, there are a few major players, and their ads are all over the place. We just received this year's updated phone book, and Don Evans ("No fee unless I collect for you!") has his add imprinted upon the spine and back cover, while Richard Schwartz ("One call, that's all!") had a flexi-magnet glued to the front cover. This got me a little curious, and I looked in the yellow pages. Surprise! The Attorneys section is highlighted and is the largest highlighted section in the book. What is this world coming to?

You've gotta love a day that includes a news item that can legitimately contain the sentence: "The giant hot dog stumbled over the sausage and also tumbled to the ground."

On another note, I'm excited about this weekend! I'm going to see Cats at the Orpheum in Memphis with friends this weekend. A good show and Beale Street with friends... THEN... THEN in two weeks I'm going white water rafting on the Chatooga with some buddies! THEN I close on my house! July is quite possibly the best month ever created.

Wow! I just moved my entire blog from my Road Runner site to Blogpost! I'm impressed with how easy that was!

I was outside this evening at dusk, and I was reminded of how fitting the word "dusk" is at times. The air had an odd quality about it, the sun was wetting and the light was filtered through some low-lying clouds. Dusk. The light had a yellow-ish hue, similar to the way the world looks through amber sunglasses (you know the variety, "Engineered for enhanced vision!"), this clear but hazy color really hit me. Dusk. Yup, sometimes it's the little things in life that make us stop and take notice.

I'm buying a house! I'm buying a house! I'm buying a house!

Yup, I'm seventy-five percent excited, twenty-five percent apprehensive. After signing papers about the possibility of mold in any structure, and the problem with stucco, I've got this feeling that my good luck in the last few months will turn to bad as soon as I've got that debt tied around my neck. Remember the movie The Money Pit? (except of course there won't be a Shelley Long in my story.)

On another note, I notified my apartment complex today that I'd be moving out in a little over 30 days. I signed a paper with them, and they told me about things they'd check out after I moved out, and gave me a checklist of things they check so I'd know how to make sure I get my full deposit back. This checklist has the normal things you'd think of: repairs to sheetrock, vacuum carpets, patch holes, clean blinds, clean bathtub, shampoo carpets (due to pets), exterminating (pets), clean stove/oven, ... WAIT... exterminating? Pets???? Is there a major problem with people leaving pets in their apartments when they move out?

"I'm sorry sir, but you left your siamese cat in your apartment when you moved, can you come pick it up?... You don't want him any more?... Oh, you'd like us to exterminate him? We'll get right on it." And you thought you had a bad job.

Last time I caught a flight to Minnesota, I noticed something that has been in the back of my mind ever since... just a little tidbit that I thought was strange that's somehow stuck with me. When they gave me the in-flight pretzel snack, for some reason I studied the package of pretzels (I must have really been bored!), there at the bottom on the back was a phrase that has since stuck with me: "Snyder's of Hanover pretzels, not affiliated with Snyder's of Berlin".

What? Was there some kind of family feud in the pretzel business? I could imagine an old German immigrant getting angry at his cousin Lars at the sub-par quality of pretzels he churned out using the family name, then starting his own company to compete. The family would have split along the "crunchy but not overly-dry" or "salty but not overly-so" battle lines, and the two companies would battle it out in the free economy that is the promised land! Well, I found out that it's not nearly as exciting as that. Snyder's of Hanover is mainly a pretzel company with chips, Snyder's of Berlin is mainly a chip company with pretzels. The only connection seems to be pretzels. *sigh* I thought I was onto something big.

It's sickening to see how the top brass in the company I work for are making millions off of their stock options while the rest of the company enjoys lower yearly raises than ever before. Our top brass has gone on a stock trading frenzy in the last month, selling old stock for current market value and excercising stock options to buy new shares at highly discounted prices. Our CEO, President, and a VP have combined to profit more than 5.8 million dollars in the last 30 days alone. I wonder why... maybe because of this upcoming news? Darwin Deason hasn't profited from stock options recently, but he has sold more than 15 million dollars in stock in the last 2 months, I'm guessing some of it will be used to cover his legal defense. I don't know why this hasn't been picked up by more media sources yet.

This week has been a long one for my family. Sunday, my uncle (father's brother) went to the hospital with heart trouble. He had open heart surgery on Wednesday morning, with complications that had him in and out of surgery for 12 hours or more. It was very trying on everyone, both at the hospital and away. He pulled through, but not without some drama. I heard the doctor say at one point that he had been through 6 units of blood. It's time like these that I'm proud that I donate blood regularly. And you should too.

Oh, and when my cousin shook the doctor's hand and thanked him for sticking with his father through the ordeal, the doctor politely said "Son, don't thank me, thank God." That's one doctor who has his head on straight.

When I was in Minnesota a couple of weeks ago, I was involved in a discussion with a Greek citizen who is going through the naturalization process to be an American citizen. We talked about how different things are in other parts of the world (most notably mandatory military service for males in many countries), and about the naturalization process. We eventually talked about the test that potential citizens must take to become a citizen, and how the average American wouldn't know all the answers. Well, later, he sent a link to me with sample questions for the naturalization test. Not surprisingly, most of the questions were easy, but a few weren't. I took the test about 10 times I guess, which makes about 35 questions I'd guess (some questions repeat quite often), and missed about 4 questions. This makes my score about 89%. I'm slightly embarassed that I didn't make an A.

June Carter Cash passed on today, and it made me pull out my Johnny Cash Greatest Hits CD. The Man In Black is one of those rare souls that come along every now and then to challenge the norms, change the world, and generally becomes a living legend. He's a legend in country music, made a splash on the alternative music scene in the mid 90's, has a large religious music presence, and in general has one of the most recognizable voices and personas of the last few decades.

My grandparents listened to him. My parents listened to him. I listen to him. That's saying something. How many other living legends are there out there like Johnny Cash? Not many.

For the latter part of this week, I've been in Minneapolis for a meeting, I flew up here Wednesday and will head back on Sunday. As usual, I found a book to read for the flight, an interesting book that would keep my attention for the boring flights. This time I chose Isaac Asimov's Steel Caves, the second in his "Robot Series" of books. I had read the first (Robots of Dawn) a couple of weeks ago and thoroughly enjoyed it, so I was fairly certain the rest of the series would be just as good. I wasn't disapointed.

After reading these books, I find myself noticing more and more parallels with our society's current state and the world of Asimov's future. For instance, I noticed closed circuit cameras everywhere in the airport, and in other public places around town. I began noticing some of the more futuristic things scattered about, such as the lounge in the airport specifically designed for the business traveler to hook up to a high speed connection in a small private kiosk. In Asimov's future, privacy is a thing of the past, almost even in a person's home (which are no longer houses, but apartments in huge sckyscraper complexes.) Communal kitchens serve the masses, as well as men's and women's "personals" where one sees to their personal hygene needs similar to a central bathroom in college dorms. All in all, Asimov predicts that for efficiency reasons privacy will be whittled down to the bare minimum in the future. What scares me the most, is Asimov's dead on (in my opinion) assessment of the human race. In not-so-subtle ways he uses our tendency toward racism and applies it to robot-human relations. In other ways he discusses overpopulation and polution problems and how the human race is inevitably self-destructive. His stories are at once entertaining, but have depth and bring out some interesting views.

Another blog I read, Joggua, had a post the other day about searching for your own name on the web to see what the other people who have your name have done.

Apparently, a Joe Clune was on an All-Star hurling team in Ireland in the 1920's. It kinda makes me proud, and makes me feel I should learn more about my Irish heritage. (Note to self: I'm not entirely sure I really have as much Irish in me as I think.)

Another Joe Clune is a triathlete that placed 29th in a field of 175 in 1998. Don't have much more info here.

Also, there seems to have been a Joe Clune who played basketball for Louisiana State University in 1960. This embarasses me, he seems to have been a decent defensive player according to the stats, but it's LSU! I don't like LSU. Coincidentally, I noticed that the coach for UK for the game is the coach their arena is currently named for: Rupp.

I also found a new Joe Clune, but he hasn't done anything yet.

Strangely enough, I didn't find my own web pages when searching with Google. This is probably because I have relatively few instances of my full name on my web pages, and then it's not in the index fields.

I'm a big music listener. I work best when I have some upbeat tempo music playing, I dunno why, it just gets me going. Anyway, I was sitting here programming a part of the new Mississippi Medicaid system and listening to Weezer. The actual song was Surf Wax America, and it struck me as ironic.

Here is a song about doing your own thing and not joining the normal rat race that everyone else does.
I'm bailing out because I hate the race
Of rats that run round and round in the maze
I'm going surfing, I'm going surfing!
And it's ironic because it's getting me up to hyperspeed as I code.
The sea is rolling like a thousand pound keg
As I insert code for pharmacy claim processing into a weekly report that will show every single medicaid claim processed by the system.
We're going surfing, we're going surfing!
A report that will show literally millions of dollars in aid going through the system each week.
You take your car to work
I'll take my board
Now that, my friends, is the definition of ironic. (By the way, the company I work for runs medicaid systems for 14 states and the District of Columbia among other things. One of those other things is being the market leader in the photo enforcement of traffic laws, namely the running of red lights. I feel dirty now.)

Man, if I could write like this, well... I guess I'd be a paid writer like him. Scroll down to the part about Rick Santorum to read a hilarious comment on the hottest topic of the day. Here's the funniest part:
for heaven's sake, if they repealed a law against riding dogs while naked and slathered with Crisco, would you strip down, grease up and find a pliant Schnauzer?

The U.S. military is holding children younger than 16 years of age at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (link). After being appalled earlier this month by the discovery of a children's prison in Iraq (link), I'm quite surprised to find out that we are detaining children. Canadian officials have tried unsuccessfully to gain access to a Canadian child who is being held in Guantanamo Bay. Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman, is quoted as saying "Their release is contingent on the determination that they are not a threat to the [US] nation and have no further intelligence value."

Come on, we're talking children here. I thought we were the good guys? Our own laws lay out special treatment and consideration to be given to children accused of criminal acts, yet we won't allow the Canadian government to contact a Canadian child being detained???

Well, apparently there are some new driving rules that have come out since I got my drivers license back when I was 16 or so. I've gathered my notes and thought I would share them with those of you who might be a little behind in the times like me.
1) if you see a sign that says your lane ends in one mile, stay in your lane. Stay there until the last possible second so you'll get to where you're going 2 minutes faster. Then, when you MUST get in the other lane, act upset when the other drivers won't let you in.
2) rip your turn signal lever off of your steering column, nobody uses it any more anyway.
3) if the electricity is out and the red light is not working, realize it's your lucky day and barrel through the intersection at 60 mph while yelling "SUCKERS!" to the cautious drivers who stopped
4) if the red light turns red when it's your turn, and you for some reason can't gun the engine and narrowly miss cars to get to the other side, just sit in the middle of the intersection making no attempt to get out of other people's way. Because it's much safer to sit in the middle of an intersection than to run that red light.

Today was a good day.

The International Broadcasting Bureau is working on software to help Chinese surfers throw off the yoke of their government's censorship (read more about it here). Basically, the Chinese government has a firewall in place to block access to many news organizations and political sites on the web. The IBB hopes to set up software to allow the Chinese citizens to circumvent the political constraints placed on them by their government. Aside from the fact that this software could be used by anyone to get past firewalls (i.e. your average worker whose company blocks entertainment sites, or the teenager trying to outsmart his parent's controls) I don't see this plan working very well. The simple fact of the matter is that the Chinese government will find a way to quickly nip it in the bud, or worse, unplug the connection to the outside altogether.

I went and looked at the instructions that Bennett Haselton (an activist commissioned by the IBB to suggest a solution) offered, and was appalled. I'm a programmer (and one time system administrator) with a high sense of what running a server entails and what risks one takes with running any servers on a home PC using an always on connection. Mr. Haselton's instructions never mentions any of these risks, nor does he mention the need to check for updates for the software he recommends that you install. I hope the IBB did not spend much of our money on this guy.

I'm glad to see that General Franks has made the statement that troops will stay in Iraq until a free government is in place. This is a very important point to me. Hopefully we can help the Iraqis establish a good government that helps them build their country into a nation that is free from oppression and ethnic strife.