Yearly Archives: 2012

Dept. of Cry Me A River

Posted on by

Some TSA union reps are whining that their public perception as useless, ineffectual doofuses is hurting their bargaining power. You think? Or could it be, as Balko notes, that their low esteem and morale is due to their role in enforcing policies that “hassle, degrade, and humiliate” travelers while producing precisely zero security benefits?

The most hilarious part of the linked story is the apparently unironic assertion from TSA drone/screener that “any bag I open could be my last.” Um, jackass? I’m pretty sure the death-due-to-explosions count for TSA employees is 0.

The author of the sympathetic article is also a real piece of work. Despite a lack of any evidence, he claims that TSA screeners “have some of the most dangerous jobs in America.” Really? Seriously?

In the article, he suggests that TSA’s job would be easier if they could arrest people — but then whined when Balko suggested he was actually calling for them to have arrest powers.

How about let’s all support the STRIP act instead, which prohibits any TSA employee “who has not received federal law enforcement training or is not eligible for federal law enforcement benefits from using the official job title of officer, or wearing a metal badge resembling a police badge or a uniform resembling the uniform of a federal law enforcement officer.”

That makes much more sense to me.

Oh, PLEASE nominate this boob

Posted on by

Emboldened by a stronger-than-expected finish in Iowa, Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum — a guy who, in December, insisted nobody ever died in America for want of health care — is doubling down on the crazy. Today he got in a pissing match with a college student over gay marriage, which is precisely the sort of thing that’s going to keep happening.

But the best gift he’s given so far is this:

One of the criticisms I make is to what I refer to as more of a Libertarianish (sic) right. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. That is not how traditional conservatives view the world. There is no such society that I am aware of where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.

He said that. Really. The video is from a talking-head show, but it includes actual audio of Santorum explaining how it really is the government’s business what goes on in the bedroom. Remember, this is a guy who’s opposed not just to Roe v. Wade, but also to Griswold v. Connecticut and Eisenstadt v. Baird — cases that establish the rights of persons both married and otherwise to buy birth control. It’s hard to imagine today, but there WAS a time when it was considered Constitutional and acceptable for a state to outlaw birth control, or to outlaw its sale to unmarried persons.

That’s the world Santorum wants to return us to. So please, GOP, please please please nominate this man. I beg of you. Really. Bring the crazy. Bring it all the way to next November.

PS: The New Republic has a great list of the craziest stuff Santorum’s said so far, but look for that list to get even LONGER, especially if he wins a primary.

Police will bully until there are consequences

Posted on by

Cops who order or engage in the kind of behavior outlined here should suffer lasting, serious repercussions, including personal liability to lawsuits. We’ve gone far enough with this immunity bullshit; departments feel free to violate the rules because there are not consequences. The balance of power is entirely too tilted towards the state. Insisting police commanders and patrolmen be held accountable is an excellent step in the right direction.

More Things Designed To Irritate Customers

Posted on by

I’m trying to get some support from Mozy now, on our corporate account. Mozy have a pretty good product that I don’t mind paying for, but their support SUCKS.

The first sin they’re committing is in the back-end user-self-service portal. It’s a nice set of tools for managing their product, but there are no support options. Support is sequestered on an entirely different site, with different credentials. WTF, Mozy? I can’t just log in and open a damn ticket when I notice something weird.

The second issue is something I suspect some idiot marketing droid thought was a good idea. It’s a variant on an old problem. The right way to do hold music is to play something decent and inoffensive so the holding party knows they haven’t been disconnected. Real music is best, not made-up production library bullshit — and then just fucking let it play. Do NOT periodically pitch me with ads, or tell me how important my call is, or babble incessantly with little messages the Chi O in your marketing department thought were cute. Just shut the hell up and let the music play.

Why? Because if it’s music, I can just put the call on speakerphone and go back to work, and maybe even get something done while I’m on hold. It’s easy for my brain to half-listen to the hold music and notice when it’s a human voice again, which signals I should pay attention again and shift back to the task at hand (in this case, figuring out why my backup didn’t run). Peppering the hold channel with lots of meaningless human chatter means I have to basically listen to the fucking thing much more closely, which makes it commensurately harder to shift to a different task while on hold.

At Mozy, the music never plays for more than 20 seconds without a cheery message popping up. It’s insane.