lookin

You won't be alone tonight.

It was a slow day.

Concerned Lady Macbeth was a bit of a buzzkill, The Bard feels a sonnet coming on.

I learned that OZ will wait until everyone has stopped posting in a thread, and then close it.

Numbers aside, let's just say I've been invited to sit on the Cialis Board of Directors.

Two weeks ago, Boeing had a hardware problem. I think today they also have a public relations problem and a regulatory problem. Which is the toughest to solve remains to be seen. Having been caught with its pants down once, I doubt the FAA will bend over so willingly again. Boeing needs a five-star fix fast. And the longer the planes stay grounded, the lower public opinion goes, and the longer the airlines lose money. Which brings up the liability issues. With so much outsourcing, who pays any damages that may be piling up? Can't advise the Boeing experts what to do, but I would encourage them to feel a sense of urgency.

Perhaps we could offer ourselves up as expert witnesses. If anyone can tell a good set of genitals from damaged ones, it's us.

A consummation devoutly to be wished, no doubt, but while we're waiting, it may just take us bozos to give the Feds the hotfoot they need to start scorching Boeing's vitals. And, in our defense, the experts aren't doing all that much better. According to this Forbes article, in spite of lithium-ion batteries' long history of burning up, the 787's lead engineer, Mike Sinnett said Boeing's system had "computerized controls" and "multiple layers of protection that it thought would keep the batteries from overheating and contain any problem." He managed to convince the regulators, and the rest is history. Those computerized controls offered tremendous promise. They would shut down the battery if it developed a problem and operate as a firewall that would stop a short in one of the battery’s eight cells from spreading to the other seven. What’s more, Boeing claimed, the 787′s pressurized air system would keep flames or smoke from the burning battery from getting into the passenger cabin. So much for the expert opinions. Apparently, Cessna replaced its lithium-ion batteries with safer nickel-cadmium batteries after a fire a year or so ago, but Boeing has convinced some 'experts' that the extra forty pounds and extra effort to switch to safer batteries would make the 787 commercially unviable. Well, that may be an expert's opinion, but it sure smells like bullshit to me. And bullshit just happens to be a field of expertise in which I'm prepared to go toe-to-toe with the very best in the business.

Array for Hollywood! That screwy, ballyhooey Hollywood! Where any office boy Or young mechanic Can be a panic .

Ah. At least I was allowed a few moments of wide-eyed optimism. Thanks for the effort. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go try to center myself.

OZ, it might be helpful if you asked the programmers themselves to test the fixes they made, so they can see whether or not they worked. For example, after they 'fix' the formatting issue, try it to see if they can now center an image. And, after they 'fix' the 'Show New Content' button, try it to see if all posters are still named 'Array' or if they have now reverted to their actual screen names. It might also be useful for you yourself to try the 'Show New Content' button and see what user name shows up for you. If TotallyOz shows up as expected, then it's most likely my issue alone. Right now, the highly welcome 'fixes' don't seem to be working for me, but that could be a result of a funky cache, an incompatible browser, user error, or some other self-inflicted wound and it may be up to me to take the appropriate action.

Now that was fun!

I certainly hope he'll send you back to us in one piece.

A Tel Aviv BoyToy named Nate Thought he lived on the Eurasian Plate. When he learned it's a fault, He exclaimed, Oy, gevalt! I should probably double my rate!

You're not only informed, but gracious and open-minded to a fault!

And the prison lobby. At $166 a night for a single bed in a bad neighborhood, they can afford to influence a lot of legislation. Plus, they have a built-in loyalty program and can even offer a weekend getaway to select customers.

Mebbe so but, in my book, anyone who can use 'pecksniffian' in a post is worth a second look. I had to look it up, but am I glad I did! I make no judgment, by the by, as to whether or not the word was used in fairness; merely that it was used at all.

Sounds like our Hi is in heat again. Time perhaps for an avatar change?

Well, I take it back. Just finished a post with everything looking just the way I wanted in 'Preview', made one small edit to the text, and all the formatting blew up. Centering no longer available, except for one line, and extra carriage returns inserted between all lines of text. If I tried to remove them manually, I lost font color in most lines. Tried fixing that, and lost centering entirely. And, as the 'Array' name is still with us in the 'New Content' view, it seems the recent bout with malware has left behind some fairly intractable collateral damage. I'll check back in a week or so and see if the programmers have managed to bandage the software's 'skin'. Without doing anything rash of course.

Make that 101 insults. I started watching the video, when a banner ad popped up inviting me to make a donation to Public Advocate so they could fight the powerful Homosexual Lobby. The organization has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and is headed up by a guy whom the Washington Post called 'a leader in the nation's anti-gay rights movement'. I don't know how ads get served up to individual viewers, though it's my understanding that they are targeted to specific audiences rather than just showing up randomly. I expect they would know I had clicked through to the video from a site named BoyToy, though why they thought that might make me a likely contributor to their organization eludes me at the moment.

Or is it?

To continue my admittedly imperfect analogy from earlier, if a runaway slave had returned and, instead of being beaten within an inch of his life, he was merely returned to the fields with a slap on the wrist, do you think he should have thanked his lucky stars and continued working till the day he died? This is not a straightforward case of right against wrong and Swartz did have mental health issues to contend with, and the federal prosecutor was no doubt a good son and took in many rescue animals, but the fact remains that fighting an unjust law is often no longer a case of standing in front of a judge and making a truthful and effective argument. As a result of Swartz's tragic action, this law and, hopefully, others like it may now get the public scrutiny it should have had before it was put on the books. Or it may not. The media and the public may decide the story has no legs, and continue to allow knowledge that should be in the public domain to remain locked behind firewalls, available only to folks with the cash to get at it. This is not the first time someone has sacrificed his or her life for a principle, or because of plain old exhaustion and, sadly, I expect it won't be the last.

I might have had stoner sex with a weatherman's son but my memories are cloudy.

I guess those runaway slaves should have stayed and faced the music too. Perhaps you have the resources to take on the Feds over a wrongheaded law, but most of us don't. Swartz was on his way either to jail or to financial catastrophe and very likely both. For the U. S. Attorney and the federal prosecutor, it was just another day at the office. A fair fight is one thing, but this was something else again.

Thanks. I do that over at Daddy's but here I try to read everything. I like to read all your posts, which can show up almost anywhere, and Lucky, when he's in town, is all over like a rash. And now that there are sixteen forums (!), peckering through them piecemeal for new posts would leave me clicking like a cheap pair of dentures. So the 'New Content' button seems to be my only option for now. I knew we were separated at birth! What made you change, if you don't mind my asking? When I was a kid, I always read from my least favorite to my most favorite. Sometimes a strip would head downhill, so it would get read earlier. It would take a long time until it got dropped from the list altogether. But I always ended with Peanuts in the Inquirer and Li'l Abner in the Bulletin. Also, just noticed that the formatting tools seem to be working again! One glitch down and one to go!