InfiniteTides

I’ve got to stop checking my work email from home. The stress and anxiety it causes is not outweighed by the information I receive. Even when when I email a co-worker on a night I took off, all I get out of it is more stress from them complaining to me about work. And it seems that’s all I hear from my co-workers these days, complaints about each other, our supervisors and managers, die setters, operators, and all of the extra work they have to do because of the incompetence of other.

Basically, I’m saying that I need to leave work at work, stop taking it home with me, stop thinking about all of the bullshit that goes on there, because it shouldn’t be allowed to bother me when I’m not there. It’s just a job, not even a good job. There’s a pretty good reason why I’m not really tight with anyone from work. Basically, I only have one friend (Mark) there. I can do without seeing, hanging out with, and even emailing everyone else I work with in the real world, because it seems that all they want to talk about is work. I’d be more than happy to talk with some of them if work wasn’t the subject.  Hell, it’s the reason I’m not friends with Michelle.  All she ever talks about is work.  Friends are people you have contact with outside of work, not people with whom the only thing you have in common is your employer.

I certainly hope that the 5 inches of snow that fell over night will be the last winter storm of the season here in northwest Ohio. At this point, I seriously doubt I’ll be going to work this afternoon. I have 8 vacation days to use between now and the end of April, so I might as well call one in, put on a pot of coffee and go play in the snow.

I’ve been wanting to build a snowman all winter. This snowfall is perfect for rolling. It’s the kind of snow that crunches under your feet as it compacts. It’s the kind of snow that cries out to be packed tightly into snowballs and thrown into the butt of someone who might throw one back.

The US Department of Vaterland Homeland Security says they’ve completed construction on a “virtual fence” along the US border with Mexico. The “fence” covers 28 miles of the boarder in Arizona, outside the city of Nogales, and only cost $20 million. It consists of towers and advanced mobile communications designed to identify people crossing the boarder.

Funny, but that doesn’t sound like a fence at all to me. I just looked up the word “fence” at dictionary.com. The first definition is “a barrier.” What’s being described in the news is not a barrier at all. Towers that identify people sneaking over the boarder do not actually keep people out. They may aid in apprehending those who’ve already snuck in, but that’s not what a fence is meant to do. A real fence would keep them out or at least impede illegal border crossing. The “virtual fence” does neither.

Definition number 2 comes closer to defining the “virtual fence.” A fence is “a person who receives and disposes of stolen goods.” I guess you could say that since the “virtual fence” sort of receives and helps dispose of illegal immigrants (not exactly stolen goods, but close since they steal across the border) that it nearly matches this definition. But since it’s not a person, it fails definition 2 as well.

Here are the rest of the definitions given:

3. the place of business of such a person.
4. the act, practice, art, or sport of fencing.
5. skill in argument, repartee, etc.
6. Machinery. a guard or guide, as for regulating the movements of a tool or work.
7. Carpentry. a slotted guide used esp. with a framing square to lay out cuts on rafters and staircase strings.
8. Archaic. a means of defense; a bulwark.
–verb (used with object)
9. to enclose by some barrier, establishing exclusive right to possession: to fence a farm.
10. to separate by or as by a fence or fences (often fol. by in, off, out, etc.): to fence off a corner of one’s yard; to fence out unwholesome influences.
11. to defend; protect; guard: The president was fenced by bodyguards wherever he went.
12. to ward off; keep out.
13. Informal. to sell (stolen goods) to a fence.
14. Nautical. to reinforce (an opening in a sail or the like) by sewing on a grommet or other device.
–verb (used without object)
15. to practice the art or sport of fencing.
16. to parry arguments; strive to avoid giving direct answers; hedge: The mayor fenced when asked if he would run again.
17. (of a horse) to leap over a fence.
18. Obsolete. to raise a defense.

Number 12 might come close to being an accurate description of the “virtual fence,” but if potential illegal border crossers know of the fence’s existence and choose another route around it, has it really warded off or kept anyone out?  I think not.

The “virtual fence” sound like just another bull shit attempt to placate people who are opposed to our governments indifference toward illegal immigration via the border with Mexico.  A real fence that was planned will never be built, but a 28 mile $20 million “virtual fence” will certainly deter them.  Whatever.

I just performed a quick test of my USB flash drives’ transfer speeds, because it seemed that my 4GB Transcend JetFlash was performing much better than my 4GB Kingston DataTraveler.

So I timed the transfer of a 702MB file from my notebook to each flash drive. The results were not at all surprising. Transfer to the Kingston DataTraveler took 1 minute 55 seconds, while the same file only took 1 minute 8 seconds on the Transcend JetFlash.

Now that I’ve confirmed my suspicions, I’ll start using each drive for more specialized purposes. There’s no point in running portable applications from the Kingston DataTraveler because it’s so slow.