Looking forward

Providing nothing really gets on my nerves between now and Sunday night at 11:59pm, this will probably be my last post of the year. It's not that I think it's been a bad year - on the contrary, it's been a great one, despite the bumps and bruises (both figuratively and literally). I just prefer to look forward to things coming up. So with that said, here are the things I'm looking forward to in the New Year, separated in to their different categories.

• Movies - I've got to admit, aside from Pirates 2 and X-men 3 of this past summer, I've always been looking forward more to next year's movies. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (all CG and looking awesome), in March; 28 Weeks Later (sequel to 28 Days Later), Shrek III, and Pirates III (oh please let this one redeem the dredge that was the second one), all in May; Ocean's 13 in June; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (!), Transformers (!!!), and The Simpsons movie all in July; and finally, The Bourne Ultimatum (!!!!!) in August.
• TV - 24 - sure, I've seen the previews with Jack Bauer all "now I can die for something," (in the words of Jeff, pshaw!), but something tells me this won't be the last hurrah for TVs best character and show; Lost - I'm all sorts of hanging on Feb. 7th, the day this crack-like show returns (and yes, I admit it's been a little slower this season than the previous ones; you had to expect a few hiccups trying this new "6 shows, long break, then the remaining 18"); CSI - in my opinion, this show has had a rebirth of sorts; Prison Break - another show that has surprised me with how they've been able to keep entertaining material flowing outside the prison walls; and the Gilmore Girls - here's my man card, please be gentle.
• School - one big long word that's been a big long time in coming - G-R-A-D-U-A-T-I-O-N, Dec. 2007. Though I do have to mention that it is possible that date will slip to May 2008, I don't care - ya know, the whole light at the end of the tunnel thing.
• Family - I'm looking forward to spending more time with my family. I haven't blogged about it at all, but my grandfather's health is greatly deteriorating, my grandmother isn't doing that much better, and my niece is getting bigger before my very eyes. Sure, school is important, as is church - but I plan on keeping things far more balanced from now on.
  

Free Cat

Twas the evening of Christmas
and all through the house;
our kitties were stirring -
they didn't want a mouse!

My wife in her sweater
and I in my stretchy jeans
had just returned home
from eating too many beans.

We brought in the gifts, boxes, and bags;
we unpacked the luggage, packed so neat,
when a thought occured to my bride,
"My babies must want to eat!"

Down the stairs they went,
with such a clatter;
it sounded more like a bowling ball fell
as a fact of the matter.

The eating commenced
and tummies were filled;
now all that was needed
was to view the bills.

When what to my wandering eyes did I view?
One, two, three pellets of poo.

I pulled back the rug,
(Why - I'm not sure),
to discover more
in the shape of a pug.

"Bad Bandit - Bad Poppy!" I heard her yell
as I almost vomitted from the smell.

I grabbed some tissue
to pick up the morsels
knowing that my wife
did not want to be troubled.

Knowing that one kitty
could only have done that,
I put up this post
to offer a free cat.

Merry Christmas

2050 lights (and I didn't get them all out).
Three days.
One trip to the doctor.
One furrowed brow from Mrs. Misawa (for getting on the roof without her being there).

More to come next year.

Transformers trailer

An English Transformers trailer has finally hit in the UK. Follow this link to check it out. If you've got bandwidth to spare, go for the full screen deal; if not, click on full screen anyway and go have dinner, then come back and watch.

I Love Being a Girl

One of the first things my wife and I butted heads on shortly after getting married was the alarm clock. No leaving the seat up, leaving it down while standing, not squeezing the toothpaste right, blah, blah, blah. Oh no - it was the alarm clock. This was a two front battle at that.

Now I am a heavy sleeper, therefore an alarm clock has but one task before it as far as I'm concerned - wake me up. I get my slothful slumber genes honestly - my dad was the king of sleeping through just about anything. This being the case, until my betrothed came in to the picture, I always used the beep setting and would rarely even bother the radio.

This all came to a rather screeching halt one of the first mornings after the honeymoon (After the Honeymoon... hmm, sounds like a future blog post to me). Naturally, with the alarm on my side of the bed, I was charged with setting it, including deciding whether or not to use music or the beep. Also naturally, I chose beep. Let the record show that this was the last "naturally" thing I did.

When the alarm klaxon sounded the following morning, my brain started it's boot up sequence (do I have clean underwear?); little did I know that as part of my wife's boot up sequence was to literally stick a boot up something, especially when awakened to the bleeping beep. I though she was climbing on to me in a moment of newlywed fueled passion - I was wrong. Clearly, this angelic creature whom I had said "I do" to only a few weeks before had transformed at the sound of the beep to a badger. Shortly thereafter, it was decided, citing reasons of self-preservation, that music would be the wake up call of norm in our household.

One would think this made for smoother sailing. One would be wrong.

Fast forward a few months to a sleepy Saturday morning that we unfortunately had to set an alarm for. Now this being a Saturday, I was quite fond of taking my time to get out of the bed; I was even more fond of the snooze button. In the middle of one of these snoozes, the radio began to play a favorite song of the time, thus, I decided to listen whilst pondering the clean underwear conundrum.

Apparently, overnight, the badger had turned in to a rattlesnake. "Are you going to turn that off?!" came the screech, causing the dog downstairs to turn around three times and pee. Me, being a smart-allecky sort of fool, looked her square in the eyes. Realizing I was about to be eviscerated for noncompliance, I turned the radio completely off and backed away from the bed whilst waving a red ballon. (In the interest of fairness and me being allowed back in my house, she did apologize for snapping at me)

So this morning, I'm lying there in my bed, snoozing for seven minutes before being awakened by the alarm. Now recently, the format for the station we had it on changed; what used to be Lite 94.9, known for nauseatingly starting the Christmas season in March, was now 94.9 The Bull, a country station. Now country music is an area that I just simply tolerate, much in the way that the Christians and Muslims tolerated each other during the Crusades. During high school, I did develop an appreciation for Garth Brooks, Colin Raye, and even the classics such as Johnny Cash and George Jones. Shortly thereafter is when Shania Twain hit the scene, followed by Faith Hill and a host of other angelic looking country ladies singing about the greatness of being a woman. That's when I left the country music scene; I have too much testosterone raging through my body to fully understand the female mind. Besides, I love being a guy.

Except now I've got some song stuck in my head about how I should love being a girl, implanted in my brain from my clock radio that should have awakened me to Nat King Cole or Manheim Steamroller. Man, I feel like a woman.

Much ado

Mercifully the school semester came to a close last Wednesday - at 10 pm, I headed home and got the first good night's rest I've had in three weeks. 3 down, 10 to go - potentiality is there for me to be walking the graduation walk this time next year.

As I began this year griping about idiot instructors and students, I'll end it with some serious kudos for my digital professor. At the beginning of this year, had anyone told me that I would be capable of programming a microcontroller on my own with only a fellow student to plunder through with me, I would have laughed. While I would described myself as somewhat computer savvy, I do not (and still won't) consider myself a programmer. The fact that our digital final project - an elevator microcontroller - would trap people, not take them to the desired floor, and sometimes just begin opening and closing it's doors as if possessed should easily elliminate me from the pool of other code obsessed geeks. (No offense)

That said, I have secured for myself a small place in the land of Geek. I have crossed over, leaving behind the old ways of DOS, unexplainable crashes, and constant reboots. In short, I'm Linux-groovin', baby!

Currently, I have successfully installed Ubuntu Linux ver. 6.10 on both my laptop and work desktop, and each day I'm getting one step closer to not needing anything put out by Bill Gates. While this is a great feeling, it has been anything but a breeze. I orginally installed Linux as a second OS so that I could still boot into Winblows Xp when I needed my fix. Even at this point, I haven't completely cut the umbilical and probably won't for quite some time, but it's still a good feeling to know that if necessary, I don't ever have to drop $300 for a new OS ever again.

I have some random brain droppings that I've scribbled up over the past few weeks that I'll probably edit during the next few days and put up.

In the Name of Drugs

The recent use of a no-knock warrant here in Atlanta, what I deem as a blatant abuse of power by police and judges on either side of the political aisle (as well as completely illegal), has prompted me to spew forth from my minute IP soapbox today. I will go ahead and warn you that if you find yourself agreeing with conservatives and if you toe the line of the Republican party, you'll probably want to take a hike; ditto for short attention spanners.

For starters, here's what the Fourth Ammendment says about the searching of individuals and their homes:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated; and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

In 1995, SCOTUS set the standard in Wilson v. Arkansas - for a search to be valid and not violate the individuals' rights spelled out above, there must be a "knock and announce" by the officers serving the warrant. The police simply cannot kick in your front door and come on in at their whim. This procedure is not only in place to protect rights, but to protect lives.

Think of it this way (if you haven't already): you're at home with your family having a typical evening. Suddenly the door is blasted open - what do you do? Grab a bat? A gun? Huddle the family? Has the thought even crossed your mind that the ones coming in on you are (supposedly) the good guys? Of course not!

If you're like any other law abiding citizen, fight or flight kicks in and you prepare to stand your ground or get the hell out. Stories of home invasions, especially here in the Atlanta area, are rampant; for the last year or so, it's even included police impostors, guys kicking in doors or windows and immediately yelling "police" or "FBI" in order to nullify the possibility of the homeowner arming themselves or calling the police.

So what's to separate the good guys from the bad guys? As set forth in the Constitution and in the 1995 SCOTUS ruling, they have to knock. Which leads to the all important question - what happens when the good guys don't knock? Simple - when taken to trial, the evidence is tossed. At least, that's what's supposed to happen...

Rewind to six months ago, Justice Scalia offers an opinion in just such a case, Hudson v. Michigan:

Whether that preliminary misstep [the lack of knocking before entering, m] had occurred or not, the police would have executed the warrant they had obtained,and would have discovered the gun and drugs inside the house. But even if the illegal entry here could be characterized as a but-for cause of discovering what was inside,we have “never held that evidence is ‘fruit of the poisonous tree’ simply because ‘it would not have come to light but for the illegal actions
of the police.’”

My heart sank like a bowling ball in a tub of Jello when I first read that; still does today.

We are a nation built on the rule of law; those laws (loosely) say that you may enjoy your rights and exercise them to the fullest extent possible until you violate somebody else's rights. At that point, the police and courts step in and punishment is meted out proportionally - at least that's the general idea. That's woman's long-winded way of saying that when you do something wrong, you get punished; the punishment serves not only as a system of justice but also as a deterrent. Much the same as any parent-child relationship.

What Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Kennedy (all conservative) did was removed the punishment. There are no consequences whatsoever. Rhetorical question: if you can do something illegal but suffer no consequences, would you do it?

And as if that wasn't enough, Scalia, apparently in an effort to cleanse his conscience, offers us this consolation:

...social costs are the deterrence benefits. The value of deterrence depends on the strength of the incentive to commit the forbidden act. That incentive is minimal here, where ignoring knock-and-announce can realistically be expected to achieve nothing but the prevention of evidence destruction and avoidance of life-threatening resistance, dangers which suspend the requirement when there is “reasonable suspicion” that they exist...[emphasis added, m]

So, the social costs here, as far as Scalia is concerned, are the destruction of evidence and/or avoiding fatalities (assumedly both police, criminal, and innocent bystander). Even more chilling:

Today ’s decision does not address any demonstrated pattern of knock-and-announce violations. If a widespread pattern of violations were shown, and particularly if those violations were committed against persons who lacked the means or voice to mount an effective protest, there would be reason for grave concern.

Justice Scalia, I give you "grave concern." This is a map of the U.S. compiled by the Cato Institute documenting what they call para-millitary raids, including no-knock warrants, that went wrong. In most cases, these warrants and raids were all done in the name of the war on drugs; I won't get into it here - mostly b/c I haven't fully made up my own mind about it - but it really begs the question, "Is it really worth it?"