War on common sense drugs

Sometimes I'm very glad I don't live in the "war on drugs"-obsessed USA.

Discipline Decided In Student Inhaler Incident

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Texas -- A meeting was held Friday for a student accused of breaking school rules and state law by giving his girlfriend his inhaler when she had trouble breathing, News2Houston reported.

Andra Ferguson and her boyfriend, Brandon Kivi, both 15, use the same type of asthma medicine, Albuterol Inhalation Aerosol.

Ferguson said she forgot to bring her medication to their school, Caney Creek High School, 16840 FM 2090, on Sept. 24. When she had trouble breathing, she went to the nurse's office.

Out of concern, Kivi let her use his inhaler.

But the school nurse said it was a violation of the district's no-tolerance drug policy, and reported Kivi to the campus police. He was suspended for three days and charged with delivering a dangerous drug. He faced expulsion and being sent to juvenile detention on juvenile drug charges.

On Friday, school officials decided to expel Kivi but not press criminal charges. They said it was an amicable agreement.

I do not believe in suing over every little thing, but if that were my son or daughter, I'd have the school district in court so fast, they wouldn't know what hit them.

Unbelievable.

From Snooze Button Dreams by way of Jennifer's History and Stuff

Your license, please

This is why people who want to become parents should have to register, and pass a series of exams, including psychological exams.

AP) Police say a 2-year-old left alone for nearly three weeks while her mother was behind bars survived by eating mustard, ketchup, rice and raw pasta.

Authorities say the toddler was watching cartoons when found by her father. Police say the little girl is suffering from malnutrition and is now being treated at Wolfson Children's Hospital.

She was arrested and didn't tell anyone her two-year-old was at home alone! When her estranged husband tracked her down, she told him the child was with neighbors!

Being a parent is not a right. It's a privilege and a responsibility. You, useless piece of crap that you are, should never never again be allowed to endanger her. You don't deserver her, and your soon-to-be ex husband should get full custody of her.

I have no sympathy for anyone who abuses a child. Period.

UPDATE 2003.10.01: Bigwig over at Silflay Hraka has an entry on this entitled I Eat The Red.

WTF?!?

Just had an extended lunch break. Why? Bomb-threat to a business on the main floor of our building. We evactuated. Eventually.

I have no problem with evacuating under these circumstances. What I do have a problem with is the @#$!@#$ alarm system in this building. The policy manual for this building says that in case of alarm, unless on the floor of a fire, we should wait for instructions from the alarm intercom.

First, the alarm strobes started flashing. Then the electronic chimes started going. Then, after a very long time: "Your attention please! Your attention please!". Then back to strobes and chimes, but no message. Hello? You have our attention... what's up? This cycle repeated: strobes, chimes, "Your attention please! Your attention please", over and over. Then, it modified to this: Strobes. Chimes. "Your attention please! Your attention please! This is". This is what? A test? A drill? NOT a test? NOT a drill? A pizza? An April Fools joke? What is it, dammit?

We evacuated without waiting any longer.

Fix the damned intercom, you dumbasses.

Incidentally, the bomb-threat appears to have been a hoax. Happy Friday.

Worms, worms, everywhere worms...

Yesterday afternoon, around 2pm, the internal networks at work were invaded by WORM_NACHI.A (aka W32/Welchia.worm10240 [AhnLab], W32/Nachi.worm [McAfee], WORM_MSBLAST.D [Trend], Lovsan.D [F-Secure], W32/Nachi-A [Sophos], Win32.Nachi.A [CA], Worm.Win32.Welchia [KAV]), which generated so much internal traffic that it slowed our systems down, and our external access was blocked.

This generated an amazing amount of traffic considering that our internal workstations are 95% Windows NT, which is not affected by this worm.

This pathogen got in because a) some machines, new ones mostly, were not properly patched and b) a few machines didn't have up-to-date virus pattern files.

I don't wait for the NT group to patch my machine through SMS. I update my own. Same thing with virus protection. My machine works fine. I've never had a virus or worm on any workstation or server I'm responsible for.

If you're going to run a Microsoft shop, train your damned people how to maintain the protection on their workstations! They're not stupid. If they were stupid, you wouldn't have hired them in the first place, right? They don't have to know how to do everything, but if they're working on a computer, they should know the basics. Virus protection and security updates are the basics. Teach them.

Bill: go stand in the corner. Here's your Dickhead Dunce Cap.

---

UPDATE 2003.09.29: I seem to getting a significant number of hits from people looking for a way to fix the damage if they've been hit by this little piece of crap.

Here are some URLs to try:

Trend Micro
F-Prot
McAfee
Sophos

If anyone has a favorite security site with information and removal instructions, that I have not listed here, please feel free to leave a comment, and I'll add it.

Poetic justice...

Bigwig over at Silflay Hraka pointed out this news story. Apparently since the RIAA started its legal crackdown through lawsuits against downloaders, CD sales have fallen 54%.

I have an mp3 collection, but every single song is also found on CDs, LPs or cassettes that I own. None of them is newer than 10 years old. I can't afford CDs. They're too damned expensive. I don't get revenge by downloading all the songs I like. I get revenge by listening to radio. The record companies get some money from this, sure, but not as much as they do from CD sales. And listening is free.

Universal Music has figured it out. They've just dropped prices. Not enough, in my view, but it's a start. $9.99 (Canadian) for a CD from a new artist isn't great, but it's not as ridiculous as it was. Drop 'em a bit more, and I might actually buy CDs again.

Wednesday 2003 08 13

Today is the thirteenth day of August, 2003 CE.

Our office is being moved to another building on Saturday, so by 4:30pm on Friday, we have to be packed up and everything labelled. And since my manager and my supervisor are away this week, it falls to me to make sure everything is all set and ready to go.

Oh, joy.

I hate moving. I hate it even more when it's for work, and I get to pack up all the crap in one set of cubicles, to be moved over to another set of even crappier cubicles.

At least in this crappy cubicle, I don't have people walking behind me. In the new one, I will. I hate that. Hate hate hate hate hate.

Note to those who make floorplans for offices: don't make people sit with their goddamned backs to people!

Dumbasses.

Faulty statistics

I wish to draw to the attention of my thousands of faithful readers (ok, a handful of you) the fact that some of the free statistics tools out there, including one of the most popular, are wrong.

I give by way of example the fact that Site Meter does not track the use of the Opera browser. This is my browser of choice. No matter which version of Opera I use, Site Meter logs it as Internet Explorer 6. Blogpatrol, another free stats tool, shows about 10% of my visitors using Opera. Site Meter shows none.

Site Meter says Dave Barry's Blog has been visited close to a million times, but apparently his readers only use Internet Explorer and Netscape. That's odd. I was certain I was using Opera.

So... there are thousands of sites out there that dismiss Opera, because Site Meter says none of their users use Opera. What else does Site Meter report incorrectly?

Despicable people

Michele over at a small victory is having a terrible time with trolls, who are looking for information and pictures of the young woman involved in the case against a certain young sports star in the US. I won't mention the name, or the type of case, because I do not want those trolls here. Sure, I'd love to have lots of traffic here, but not that traffic.

In Canada, her identity would never be revealed, nor would pictures of her be published. But in the US, where they have long allowed television into the courtroom, the court system has become a media circus, and celebrity rights outweigh those of the non-celebrity. "His identity is well known, as the accused, so hers should be, too!" shout some of the rabid fans. "His life is ruined! Why should she do any better?" is another line. Well, the simple answer is: if he didn't do it, his life shouldn't be ruined. If she is lying, then she should be punished. We don't have the facts, so we should just sit back, and let the justice system, such as it is, take its course.

Just for the record - I'm not a big sports fan. I had no idea who this person was before this story broke. Quite honestly, I don't care one way or the other. I just want justice done. And in the meantime, the victim should be protected, and the trolls should just stay in their caves and be quiet.