guapacha.com

Today the new alien flight training rule goes into effect which means that all non-US citizens taking any kind of flight training have to get pre-approval from the TSA before they start. Further, flight instructors now have to verify the citizenship of US student pilots before they are allowed to start training.

According to this AOPA article the TSA refused to let resident aliens (green card holders like myself) be exempt. Apparantly they don’t trust that the INS is weeding out terrorists; all those background checks, FBI-vetting etc doesn’t mean squat to them. On the other hand, they have trust that (a possibly resident alien) flight instructor can verify that a US citizen’s papers are the real deal. Pathetic.

And its all pointless anyway. If terrorists want to learn to fly they’ll forge a US birth certificate – could you spot a fake? – or learn to fly elsewhere. Its just another government public relations exercise with no real value. So, rest easy dear readers in the knowledge that this terrorist-until-proven-innocent won’t be doing any more flight training after I finish my commercial rating.

This story is the best Christmas present ever! As many may know my time working for Pfizer was as hateful as they come. Clueless managers, pointless projects and no direction from anyone, and I hear it gets worse. I read an article at the time Vioxx was taken off the market which said that, whilst Pfizer had made no studies public to this fact, it was to be anticipated that Celebrex could be similarly harmful. Their weasely CEO Hank McKinnell gloated at the time that their drug was safe, now he feigns surprise at this latest study. Give me a break – lawsuits are coming your way and I will laugh as your stock price plummets.

Couldn’t happen to a more deserving company.

Looks like the blog comment spammers were busy overnight, my two sites, eschwa and wtf were all hit by the comment spammers. I had a couple of hundred to get rid of at the MINI blog site. So, since I can’t legally hunt them down and torture them, I’ve installed a bunch of anti-spam plugins to see if that helps any.

Also planned this long weekend is the ‘upgrade’ from Eudora to Thunderbird. I’ve been a Euroda user for over 7 years but I am tired of it crashing on a daily basis (and I have spoken to others who suffer the same) when there are images in an email, or you delete an email ‘too quickly’. Of course, being a good computer guy I’ll be backing up my old email directory just in case and all that good stuff. I’ll post an update as to how well it goes.

Dear reader, I know the reason you come here is to learn more of my oh-so-correct opinions on important matters. So… here are a couple….

Watched some of the opening of the British Parliament on C-Span last night (yeah, my life is real exciting) and I enjoyed being reminded that no one does pomp and circumstance like the Brits. But what gives with the Lord Chamberlain turning his back on the Queen after giving her the speech? There were times when that would have meant ‘off with his head’.

I love The Amazing Race, its easily the best reality show on TV, but this season’s teams seem a little contrived. What’s up with all the models – is this the only way for pretty boys and girls to get assignments these days? And I know we all watch for the conflict but in previous seasons, tension developed during the race, some of the guys in this Race seem to be in it for trouble from the get-go, to the point where it seems staged (a scripted reality show – no way!). I’ll still be watching it, if only for the two sisters, but wouldn’t it be nice if next show they had some teams where the women were the jerks and the men were the ones saying “she really is a nice person, they just get this way when they are stressed”.

Finally, the NBA Brawl. I can’t believe how ESPN, team coaches etc are defending the players for their behaviour. One of the players said that if he was walking down the street and throw a cup at someone he expected to get hit. That might be true but I am sure he would also expect to have that guy thrown in jail, whereas here the players are saying they can be justified in hitting fans. Apparantly we don’t know the pressures they are under – I disagree, the man walking down the street, probably wondering how he will be able to afford to retire, pay off student loans etc is under much more pressure than someone earning $6M a year. Another player said he plays for the team, he doesn’t care what the fans think of him. You need to wake up – you play for the fans because they are the ones who make the team money, and the team is not there for the glory of the game, its there to make people rich. Perhaps 20 years ago it was different but today all I see is a bunch of whiny egos who care about nothing but themselves. I hope Artest and the others (including guilty fans) spend a little time in a jail to think about that.

I love my iPod, I love iTunes and I even enjoy buying music from the iTunes Music Store. This weekend I was overjoyed to find that I could hook up to Music Stores in other countries, and almost all the music I like from UPop was available on the UK site. But then I tried to buy some tunes and met with resistance: you can only buy if you are registered on that country’s site, and to register you need a credit card with an address in that country. Wah!

According to Apple this is due to “copyright concerns” but if I was an artist abroad I’m sure I would want my music to be available for purchase anywhere. More sales means more $$ for the record companies, especially as now I’ll probably have to download the songs from some filesharing site if I want them. Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if I could buy from all the stores?

Whenever I am set to learn to fly a new plane, the Santa Ana winds return. It was a blowing a gale over the mountains this morning, and it makes for very bumpy conditions in the air. It will not be any fun this week.

Why the hell does this idiot have a prime-time talk show? He walks on at the beginning like he’s some big star, makes a few “I’m so humble” gestures to the crowd whilst clearly being anything but. Then his interviews and, ahem, comedy bits are as about as interesting and funny as having a favourite pet put to sleep.

And while we’re on the subject of people I can’t stand seeing on my TV, will someone please get Kerry and his Smithers-style lickspittle Edwards off my TV screen? I don’t care what they are saying, their gestures and smug ‘saviours of the human race’ expressions piss me off. If I had a vote in the USA I’d probably be a Democrat but whoever advised these two to act how they do should have to work on McEnroe’s lame-fest as punishment. Although I really don’t like Bush, hopefully I won’t have to see them after a few more weeks as I can’t afford to replace any more TVs.

This weekend sees the opening of the new version of Shall We Dance with Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez. As many people hopefully know this is a remake of a fabulous Japanese original movie.

Despite my dance background, I don’t intend to see the new version as I can’t see how it works. What makes the original so great is the premise of the man going behind his wife’s (and his culture’s) back to take dancing lessons, thereby freeing his soul from the sad life he has fallen into. The remake tries to keep this premise intact but I don’t see how anyone can take such a thing seriously in Western culture. Whilst they might be fine actors I don’t see Gere or J.Lo portraying the dignity that is evident throughout the original.

So far, I’ve read a bunch of reviews that agree with me so I am confident that I am not going to miss anything by not seeing it. Rather I’ll dust off my copy of the original and spend a sure two hours with Koji and Tamiyo. And, no matter whether you see the remake or not, I urge you to do the same.

In other movie news, I see that one of my favourite movies ever in the whole universe is finally out on DVD – Betty Blue. I’ll be buying my copy real soon, and you should rent this too though it’s content is less suitable for children than Shall We Dance.

Hey, why not have yourself a foreign film night?

This story from the BBC describes how the French government is backing a move to install cell phone signal blockers in all cinemas and theatres. I wish the same would happen here – it is very annoying to have your movie disturbed by cell phones lighting up around you as their owners text message oh-so-important information to each other. Hanging’s too good for ’em!

Ok, so I’ve noticed over the last few weeks that more and more ‘gentlemen’ are not flushing the urinal after use. I think it must be 50-50 right now as to whether there will be a nice clean bowl when I go into the bathroom or a stinking yellow fluid to look down on. Its the office, its public restrooms at the beach, the freeway, restaurants, everywhere. Has our society become so selfish and lazy that we can’t even flush the freaking toilet after ourselves now??

I’ve built quite a few PCs in my time and after every one I say “never again” and yet still I am lured by the promise of a cheap machine in exchange for an hour of construction. But it never is an hour, if the machine starts at all, there will be a problem with memory, or if not, the drivers won’t work with the OS etc etc.

My most recent machine built without problem but I discovered that the motherboard was so cheap that the CPU was running real slow, and this machine was going to be my main video compression platform. So I bought a new mobo but destroyed the CPU trying to get it out. Now I have a new CPU (P4 3.2GHz) in the new mobo and the damn thing doesn’t boot into the BIOS, but isn’t giving any errors.

Next time I’m just buying a G5.