Tag: Rant

The beat keeps moving on.

As I sit here in another airport waiting area, I again realize the futility of airport security.

The entire TSA was probably created to give people jobs and create a semblance of security.

This time, I got into the line at LAX – United that had the scary body scanner.
I stood in two blue rectangles and placed my hands above my head, not unlike a prisoner, about to be shackled and tortured. In defiance, I stuck my tongue out during this process.

After I got through, thinking I was in the clear, the TSA dude tells me that he has to pat me down anyway. WTF. Sigh.

And then he “handles” me.

I feel so secure right now. Ugh.

Time goes by, so slowly

I seem to be letting larger amounts of time slip by between posts, and that kind of makes me sad.

Between having the ability to Tweet, Facebook status update and Google Buzz, i feel that sometimes I just don’t want to write, and that is a Bad Thing.

Writing is a great way to dump some of the thoughts, feelings and ideas from inside this mess of a brain to written word, and in the past has allowed me to review these at a later date to see what the heck I was thinking and talking about.

Now I am not committing to writing regularly, or even on any set schedule, but just doing it now and then seems to help out.

In recent past, I’ve been tinkering with all kinds of technologies – from TCL to python and powershell, from WordPress php and css to Google AppEngine, and even more in the hardware and software realms.

Some of the things I am teaching myself is how to understand enough of the lowest possible level to get the core ideas to then be able to make that jump into the high-level arena, where having the big picture is crucial.

Some of that lies within data visualization, some of it relies on knowing the inner workings of a system, another is how to get data in and out of a management interface, and trying to figure out what is the question you want answered.

I think figuring out these kind of things are the challenges I like most.

You can’t do THAT on TV!

So last night I was watching late night television on Comedy central, and after midnight they run ads for Girls Gone Wild. The ads show scenes out of their DVDs, showing girls is a variety of locations, “going wild”.

Let’s clarify this – “going wild” seems to be lifting their shirts to expose their breasts and possibly making out with another girl.

Now that’s wild.

What bugs me about this is that the girls exposing themselves is always covered by a playful-looking “CENSORED” graphic – always covering the naughty bits – but when two ladies are kissing, that’s not required to be censored.

Now, I’m not suggesting that everything be censored, but censors, get your ideas straight.

Why are certain body parts censored, but physical activity is not? It seems that if the censorship is governed by the conservative puritan movement, then women kissing is a much greater offense to the whole “God’s way of the world” anti-same sex activity idea, much greater than the natural, life-giving mammaries that we all suckled on as children (apologies to those that were strictly bottle-fed, your therapist should try to sort you out).

I’m not suggesting that censorship is good, or needed, or that we should also censor these activities, but if you’re going to censor something, at least be consistent, or not at all.