Food workers with AIDS

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This post is going to make me sound like a complete asshole, but I’m OK with that. I was reading a story about a man with AIDS suing McDonald’s over wrongful termination. The man says he was forced to resign from his corporate management position when McD’s found out about him having AIDS. However, I was struck by the last few paragraphs at the end of the article.

Ann Fisher, the executive director of the AIDS Legal Council of Chicago, estimates that there are 100,000 U.S. food service workers with the illness.

“If everybody with HIV who works in the food service industry didn’t show up for work tomorrow, America would starve,” she said.

You ready for me to sound like an ass? I don’t want anyone with a terminal disease that is contagious through the sharing of bodily fluids to be preparing my food. There, I said it. However, I feel justified in saying this because AIDS is spread through bodily fluids, usually blood via sexual contact. Anyone else reading this ever prepare food? If you have then you know that sharp objects are plentiful in any resturant.

Before you post a comment about how big of an ass I am ask yourself this: Would you allow an HIV infected doctor to operate on you? A dentist?

  1. AIDS myths and urban legends
  2. AIDS and HIV information.

Cingular Doesn't want Cell Phones on Planes

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It appears I’m not the only one that thinks cell phones on airplanes is a bad idea. What struck me in this article is the FAA‘s stance on cell phones.

An FAA spokesman told the paper that when it comes to calls on planes, the agency is looking at issues involving aircraft safety, not the social interaction of passengers.

They best worry about the “social interaction” of passengers if they let the various loud mouthed ass clowns make cell phone calls on flights I’m on. That is if “social interaction” involves me punching some asshat in the face for talking loudly on his cell phone in the seat next to me. Looks like it’s time to pony up the money for some noise canceling headphones.

On Apple moving to Intel

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A lot of people on the Internet are pissed about Apple moving to Intel processors. A lot of people could care less. Most are shocked this even happened. I, personally, don’t really care. At first it confused me that they would leave the 64-bit PPC platform in favor of a 32-bit x86 architecture, but I have since seen that they are planning on using 64-bit chips that Intel has yet to release. So here are my only concerns with the fact that Apple is moving Intel.

  1. Apple must continue to ship their machines with the OSX goodness I have grown to love.
  2. Any computer running OSX on Intel chips must be designed by Apple.

I could care less about everything else. As long as I get faster, cheaper and better performing computers that are designed by Apple and run OSX I could care less about what chip they run on. Though I would have been bummed out if they switched back to 32-bit CPU’s.

Another cute, rich, blonde girl abducted

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Unless you have been living under a rock you probably have heard about some girl from Alabama going missing in Aruba. Another awesome example of mainstream media’s horrific slide into oblivion. Have you noticed the media has been telling us for about the last five years that unless you’re pretty, white and rich they could care less if you’re missing, unless of course rape, incest or molestation is involved.

I had a conversation with my mother about this girl a few days ago and I told her I could care less about this. I know, it’s horrible of me to say that, but the way I see it the girl brought whatever her fate ends up being on herself. Here are the facts of the story.

  1. She went to a foreign country with 100 of her school friends on an unsanctioned “Senior Trip” with seven chaperones.
  2. She went to a bar with a few of her friends and met three guys.
  3. She left the bar at 1:30AM with three total strangers in a foreign country.
  4. Nobody there, her friends or the “chaperones”, apparently thought this might be a bad idea.

How does this make this girl sympathetic? Personally, it looks like Darwin is thinning the herd on this one. If you’re a pretty American girl in a foreign country and you leave a bar, possibly intoxicated, with three total strangers who are all men, then you’re just asking for trouble. Especially when you’re only 5’4” and 110lbs. From where I’m standing this girl had every chance in the world to avoid her fate, but didn’t.

It's not about the pot stupid

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The Supreme Court just screwed you over big time and you don’t care because the decision involved pot. Everyone has been sounding off about the recent decision that state laws governing medicinal use of marijuana do not override the federal ban despite the pot being grown, used and given away for free within the confines of a single state. Does that sound like “interstate commerce” to you?

Congress and the federal government et al have used the “interstate commerce” clause in the constitution to grab tons of power. They used this to justify income taxes, drug policies, etc. Anyone who is in favor of a strong centralized federal government scares me. Why? Well, of course, I’ll tell you why.

This means individual states cannot decide what is good for their own state. For instance, Texas could outlaw gay marriage while California chooses to make it legal. The Supreme Court, essentially, has said with this decision that states do not have the right to govern what happens within their borders. Remember, the pot was grown, consumed and given away for free within the borders of the State of California. Why does the federal government get to step in here? The voters of California have spoken. They feel medicinal use of marijuana, which is prescribed by a doctor, should be legal. If they don’t care, then why should the federal government all the way back in Washington, D.C. care?

This smacks of majority tyranny. If 51% of the states think that something should be illegal, but Vermont thinks it should be legal, then who are we to care? If you don’t like a state law then don’t live in/visit that state. Simple as that.

Condo Renovations

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The last two weekends Lauren and I have spent hours upon hours working on the condo. We’ve been painting trim, painting rooms, upgrading switches, outlets and heaters and, on occasion, totally screwing things up. Below are a few of the recent projects with some tasty before and after shots. The first is the one I’m probably proudest of. I ripped out the old and nasty baseboard heater and upgraded it to an wall unit. The second is a before and after shot of our balcony. I started with 20 inch square deck material that I bought from Ikea and, basically, cut it to fit our balcony and then nailed it all together with boards underneath.

Before and After Heater Upgrade

Balcony Deck Upgrade

By no means is this all that we’ve done the last two weekends. Here is the laundry list of things we have done in the last few weekeneds.

  • Painted the guest bedroom “mocha brown”.
  • Painted four new interior door slabs only to realize that I had measured two of the doors wrong and I couldn’t hang the other two doors because I was neither equipped with the knowledge or the right tools for the job.
  • Put new trim in the guest bedroom.
  • Put new switches and outlets in the guest bedroom, our bedroom and the bathroom.
  • Painted the window sills in both bedrooms.
  • Replaced the baseboard electric heater in the guest bedroom.
  • Put in a faux deck on our balcony.
  • Painted over the nasty yellow in the living room with a clay color.

This coming week our contractor is coming to put in all new interior doors, which will need to be painted and trimmed. After that is done we plan on painting and putting new closet doors up in both of the bedrooms.

At that point we will have hit a wall. The other projects from that point forward will need to be handled by professionals. We plan on gutting the kitchen and the bathroom and then, the final touch, putting in all new carpet.

You know you live in Seattle when …

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My mom forwarded me the following list. It was originally intended for people living in California, but many of them apply to Seattle as well. As a result I’ve modified the list and created my own You know you living Seattle when …

  1. Your coworker has 8 body piercing’s and none are visible.
  2. You make over $300,000 and still can’t afford a house.
  3. You take a bus and are shocked at two people carrying on a conversation in English.
  4. Your child’s 3rd-grade teacher has purple hair, a nose ring, and is named Flower.
  5. You can’t remember … is pot illegal?
  6. You’ve been to a baby shower that has two mothers and a sperm donor.
  7. You have a very strong opinion about where your coffee beans are grown, and you can taste the difference between Sumatran and Ethiopian.
  8. You can’t remember, is pot illegal?
  9. You need a compass and a tape measure to park.
  10. It’s barely snowing and there’s a report on every news station: “SEVERE WINTER STORM WATCH.”
  11. It’s barely snowing outside, so you leave for work an hour early to avoid all the weather-related accidents.
  12. HEY! Is pot illegal?
  13. Both you AND your dog have therapists.
  14. You drive 60MPH in the fast lane, 55MPH in the middle lane and 45MPH in the right lane.

There you have it. My updated list for Seattle. Enjoy.

Copy Songs from your Ipod

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Lauren’s iBook died recently and, with it, went all of her songs. I told her we could most likely recover the songs from her iPod so it shouldn’t be a big deal. However, as many of you probably know, you can’t simply restore your music library from your iPod. Thankfully, there is hope! Being the UNIX geek I am I whipped up a shell script to get all the songs of the iPod and it worked like a charm. 


#!/bin/sh

IPODPATH=/Volumes/iPod/iPod_Control
DST=/tmp
TYPES="mp3 mp4 m4a m4b"

for ext in $TYPES
do
    find $IPODPATH -name *.$ext -print -exec cp {} $DST ;
done

I’m sure I’ll be getting a letter from Apple any time now, but there it is. Using simple UNIX commands you can easily recover the songs from your iPod. Maybe Apple will listen to it’s consumers and create an avenue to back up and recover one’s music library. Until then, UNIX is your friend. By the way, for those of you wondering, the m4b extension is for books. You may have other extensions on your iPod as well. To find what extensions you have I found the following command to be most helpful. 


find /Volumes/iPod/iPod_Control/ -print | awk -F . '{print $2}' | sort | uniq

Of course you’ll need to change the names of the directories above to the actual name of your iPod (mine is simply named “iPod”). Once mounted it should show up in your /Volumes folder.

By the way, those of you with Cygwin installed should be able to use these scripts, after modifying the paths as well on your Windows iPods.