10:16 – Barbara’s dad gets his last IV antibiotic dose at 4:00 this afternoon. Barbara and Frances are leaving work early to pick him up from the nursing home and take him back to his apartment at Creekside. Barbara will stay with him tonight because she’s concerned that her mom won’t be able to deal with Dutch physically on her own quite yet. Dutch is now able to stand and walk, but still has some trouble getting up out of a chair and so on. Frances will have dad-sitting duty tomorrow night and then she and Barbara will decide if Dutch is able to be on his own with just Sankie there to help him.
Our finished goods inventory of science kits is getting low again, so I’ll spend some time today and tomorrow assembling more finished kits.
11:52 – Never, ever even think of ordering anything from Vitality Medical. I ordered 500 oral syringes from them a year or so ago, and they’ve been spamming me ever since. At first, it was one or two spams a week. Now it’s up to at least one a day. I’ve repeatedly clicked on the unsubscribe link in their emails, with no effect. I’ve emailed their customer support repeatedly, again with no effect. I’ve called the support number repeatedly, again with no effect.
Yesterday, I finally checked the email headers and found that apparently Vitality Medical subcontracts their spamming out to a company called Constant Contact. No shit. They do what their name says. The FTC needs to shut these bastards down.
Bob, I’ll bet Vitality has improperly written the unsubscribe code for Constant Contact in their emails, or has deliberately altered the code. I’ve known a few people who use it and my unsubscribe attempts have always worked. I rather like the idea of Constant Contact — sorry you’ve had such trouble. Wish I could suggest a remedy. Maybe you should report Vitality to Constant Contact? http://www.constantcontact.com/support/index.jsp
My Dad forwarded me this email and I do not have the time to check it out (but I suspect that it is true given who wrote the new gun control bill):
“No wonder the Senate REJECTED the bill, Yesterday.
But we sure were never told of the actual terms of what the bill included.
You kind of wonder why this information never makes the papers or TV news…..
Read this very carefully….
The “most popular” part of the proposed Senate gun control bill (background checks) sounds like a good idea at first but is more restrictive than anyone anticipated and will have significant unintended consequences. There is a huge push to get it through Congress before the public has a chance to consider its contents.
Common activities that we take for granted will become federal crimes. These are not irresponsible exaggerations. Please take a moment to review the requirements of the bill. Here are a few examples of the restrictions in the bill:
EXAMPLE #1
Loaning your buddy a shotgun for a duck hunting trip will be considered a transfer. If the following requirements are not met, YOU HAVE BOTH COMMITTED A FEDERAL CRIME.
1. He must have already purchased his hunting license
2. Season is already open (and will not close before he returns it)
3. He cannot travel with the firearm through a county where season is not yet open or any area where hunting is prohibited and certainly not across a state line.
He CANNOT stop by your house on the day before season opens, pick up the shot gun, go to the sporting goods store to buy a license and shells then drive out to the hunting lease. In this scenario, YOU BOTH WOULD HAVE COMMITTED MULTIPLE FEDERAL CRIMES, YOUR WEAPONS WILL BE FORFEITED AND YOU WILL LOSE YOUR RIGHT TO BUY OR OWN A FIREARM.
EXAMPLE #2
It appears that only you may relocate your weapons. If your weapon leaves your home without you, the new legislation considers it a transfer of possession. ALL transfers require going through a firearms dealer, paying the transfer fee and a background check for the transferee.
Putting the weapon, even temporarily in someone else’s possession, requires a transfer through a dealer. There is no exception for putting them in a friend’s truck while moving to your new house or packing them unloaded, locked in a gunsafe into a moving truck.
Any scenario in which your weapon leaves your home without you is considered a transfer. Failure to properly transfer the weapon is a federal crime which can result in a prison term AND WILL RESULT IN THE FORFEITURE OF YOUR WEAPON.
In the scenario above, your buddy’s truck was used to commit a federal crime and WILL BE CONFISCATED just like with current Fish and Game violations.
EXAMPLE #3
Infractions as above which involve 2 guns of any type are considered weapons trafficking. You will be prosecuted under the same federal laws as a terrorist arms dealer.
EXAMPLE #4
Any of the infractions above (or hundreds of other routine scenarios) may result in federal charges, confiscation of ALL your weapons and being prohibited, like all felons, from ever owning a weapon again.
Please read the text of the bill yourself. Most of it is boring legalese but the sections on transfers and trafficking are critical.
Take a minute to think about all the routine activities like those above that will make you a federal criminal and result in prison time plus the confiscation of your weapons and other property.
A link to the bill is included below on the official Senate website. See Section 122 “Firearms Transfers”.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c113:S.649:
Read it and call your congressman’s office. Talk to their staff. Tell them how you feel about this.
Keep in mind, none of the above would have stopped the tragedy’s in Columbine or Newtown. The proposed law makes you a criminal and opens the door for confiscation of your weapons and property for otherwise routine activities.
Think and act. Congress is hoping that you will do neither.
If you found the patience to read the entire text, you also learned that exactly $100 million per year of your tax money is set aside to enforce these restrictions.
Finally, please forward this to your friends who may be affected.”
There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed or enforced nor objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt.
We’ve already seen examples of law-abiding citizens being jacked up and jacked around by way of the examples cited above, including returning decorated combat veterans who ran afoul of some zealous cop and prosecutor somewhere. It’s already being done, without that obscene legislation even being passed yet. And recall Plastic-Face Pelosi’s comment about passing bills not too long ago.
The ongoing transformation of this country to a de facto totalitarian fascist oligarchy is underway rapidly and soon most of us will be de facto criminalized under such a regime. The question becomes: how far will they go or be able to go before the system crashes under its own weight and corruption and incompetence? One may look to several major historical examples but one would also be smart to recognize that we will be entering entirely new historical territory in a huge country of 330-million citizens (subjects) who have among them somewhere between half a billion and a billion firearms, and by now, gigantic stockpiles of ammo rivaling the State’s. Among the military and police forces are their parents, children, siblings and cousins.
@SteveF and/or other dystopian (science?) fiction fans: it almost writes itself, doesn’t it???
I don’t write dystopian science fiction. The real world has caught up to the dire predictions, so I write dystopian contemporary fiction. Bummer, that.
Not so much of a bummuh when ya have it rolling in at ya all day and all night long, new material, that is. I have always maintained and believed that truth and history are fah wackier than science fiction, fantasy, or just fiction in general. In my dotage my reading is almost all history and poetry from the past 3,000 years. And lately have been looking into what we know of prehistory as it relates to homo sapiens sapiens.
I am considering kicking off a rolling diary/journal on a more or less daily basis as I see and hear all the shit going on now all around us. For my own amusement and practice if nothing else.
Better be careful about doing a daily journal. The government might figure out that your opinion of them is not as high as they might like.
I’ve known a few people who use it and my unsubscribe attempts have always worked.
Same here. I’ve gotten e-mails from several individuals, companies and organizations that use Constant Contact and, for those I’ve unsubscribed to, it’s always worked perfectly. In fact, if I ever get something I don’t want and see the CC logo at the bottom, I always expect the unsubscribe request to be painless.
This is my only experience with Constant Contact, and I have definitely clicked on the remove link, at least half a dozen times. Maybe Jim is right and it’s Vitality Medical’s fault. If so, they’ve shown no interest in fixing it.
“The government might figure out that your opinion of them is not as high as they might like.”
I won’t be putting it online; just my own private source of fun to share with family and friends. If someone gets a kick outta reading it long after I’m dead, that will be good enough for me.
The so-called government here can kiss my ass. My opinion of them is SO not as high as they might like as to beggar belief.
The firearms bill had a few other time bombs in it. One would have effectively removed the transport exemption for moving guns across state lines. Right now, if you are going from one locality to another where a particular gun is legal, and have the gun unloaded and secured (i.e. in a locked trunk) you can’t be arrested in a locality along the route for illegal possession. However, the transport exemption was to be amended to exclude violations of the local gun laws with a penalty of more than one year. So, if the NYC pistol ban has a penalty of over 1 year, you can’t transport a pistol through NYC.
Also, the way the law was worded, it banned Attorney General (and entities he controls, such as BATFE) from creating a gun registry from the background check data or other info. But it doesn’t ban DHS, DOD, or NASA from creating one.
Seen on a bumper sticker yesterday:
In a perfect world, a man’s relationship problems could be fixed with WD-40 and duct tape.
I called Constant Contact and they removed me from the database. It looks like this was Vitality Medical all along. I sure won’t be buying anything from them ever again.
ech, the utility of duct tape when dealing with women is obvious. What’s the WD-40 for, the brake disks on her car?
I am not a mechanic but I have heard it bandied about that WD-40 can lubricate more than brakes.
Just sayin’
“I’ve repeatedly clicked on the unsubscribe link in their emails, with no effect.”
What gets me is the timing dichotomy:
1. When you click on Buy then Submit, the transaction confirmation email comes within a minute.
2. When you click on Unsubscribe, you are notified that such may take up to 10 days.
OFD, you have some war stories, right? Some funny, probably, but certainly some grim. They make good stories for passing time or honoring your dead or passing wisdom to the younger generation but they really really sucked to live through, right?
Dystopian fiction can be an entertaining read and it can illuminate problems in our real world. When dystopian fiction is not inspired by the real world but actually takes events from the it, well, that just really sucks to live through.
Likewise. I have a couple ideas for neolithic fiction, but I want it to be as realistic as possible. ie, not Clan of the Cave Boor or similar tripe.
They make good stories for passing time or honoring your dead or passing wisdom…
With the way the line break fell in my browser, I had to read this several times to understand that you weren’t referring to honoring OFD’s ‘dead or passing wisdom.’
OFD never had any friggin’ wisdom, as illustrated by his signing up in the first place to work for Uncle, so how could it be “dead or passing?”
Yeah, I have a truckload, a boxcar load, a freighter load, of war stories, from three U.S. wars and years of street cop shit. That might get me a cup of coffee, but I don’t drink coffee so I’m fucked all the way around.
Well buckaroos and buckerettes, I am off to Germany and Norway for three weeks. Not that any of you really gives a rat’s ass, but I will probably not post, or check anything on this board for the next three weeks. The only technology that I will use is checking train schedules and IMing people at our next destination.
I will put up some pictures on my website when I get back for those of you that are bored or currently (hopefully short term) out of work.
I thought it was Clan of the Cave Bare
I’m probably missing something obvious, but why couldn’t you blacklist Vitality?
I had a brain cramp and mixed up Jean Auel (Clan of the Cave Bear) and Margaret Addled (A Handmaid’s Tale and other all-men-are-villains novels), hence the inapt mockery of the name.
Their messages do go to spam on my local email client, but what I want to do is blacklist them on the mail server and choose the “discard silently” option. Unfortunately, although I’ve asked them to make it option, Dreamhost says they’re afraid people will misconfigure their mail and lose important messages. I can still do it, but I’d have to create a custom SpamAssassin configuration file and maintain it manually, which is more hassle than I want.
“Not that any of you really gives a rat’s ass…”
Hey, I give a rat’s ass! That list of organizational tasks alone the other day was worth its weight in rat shit. For all the impact it probably made on Princess who will be on her way to Berlin May 15; guaranteed she’ll lose the cell phone (again) and contact lenses, and phone charger and if she takes her new laptop that we got her, she’ll lose that, too. Then she’ll call or email for money.
Have a nice time in the North, Ray! You’ll meet lots of my cousins, I’m guessing.
Lynn McGuire said:
“My Dad forwarded me this email and I do not have the time to check it out (but I suspect that it is true given who wrote the new gun control bill):”
I get emails making claims like this all the time and I will often take the three minutes it takes to check it out. There is no way to verify the claims in the email because the link to the supposed text of the bill leads nowhere. The bill may or may not do what is claimed in the email, but there is no way to tell.
Rick in Portland
Even when you do dig up the text of the bill (which usually isn’t difficult, though sometimes a pain because the actual name of the bill and what everyone calls it don’t match) it’s not always helpful. “Paragraph 42 c 1 a of the aforementioned bill shall be amended by striking the word ‘except’.” Many bills are deliberately written that way, of course, the greater to conceal the legislators’, staffers’, and lobbyists’ dirty tracks. And there’s the ever-popular “The Department of ABC shall promulgate and enforce regulation under this Act.”
The email claims that the bill contains specific items. No way to tell if, in fact, that was correct. The claims could be true or they could be made up. I have seen a lot of the latter. I treat any email making political claims as false until proven true.
FIFY
Ray wrote:
“Not that any of you really gives a rat’s ass…”
Do rats own donkeys over there?
Seriously, I’m looking forward to the reports and photos when you get back. I haven’t been overseas since 2003 and I’m getting the travel bug again, and in 3.5 days I will have a *lot* of spare time on my hands.
Are you taking your “Japanese tourist” cameras or something more portable? I like my dSLR but usually leave it at home and take something that will fit in my pocket.
OK, here is the Gun Check Act, or the “Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act of 2013” as filed in the USA Federal Senate:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s649/text
Section 122 is a complete legal nightmare mishmash, starting with:
SEC. 122. FIREARMS TRANSFERS.
(a) In General- Section 922 of title 18, United States Code, is amended–
(1) by repealing subsection (s);
(2) by redesignating subsection (t) as subsection (s);
(3) in subsection (s), as redesignated–
(A) in paragraph (3)(C)(ii), by striking ‘(as defined in subsection (s)(8))’; and
(B) by adding at the end the following:
‘(7) In this subsection, the term ‘chief law enforcement officer’ means the chief of police, the sheriff, or an equivalent officer or the designee of any such individual.’; and
(4) by inserting after subsection (s), as redesignated, the following:
And I really like Section 123 where you get 24 hours to report the loss of a firearm, or else (I am not sure what “or else” is):
SEC. 123. LOST AND STOLEN REPORTING.
(a) In General- Section 922 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end–
‘(aa) It shall be unlawful for any person who lawfully possesses or owns a firearm that has been shipped or transported in, or has been possessed in or affecting, interstate or foreign commerce, to fail to report the theft or loss of the firearm, within 24 hours after the person discovers the theft or loss, to the Attorney General and to the appropriate local authorities.’.
(b) Penalty- Section 924(a)(1) of title 18, United States Code, is amended by striking subparagraph (B) and inserting the following:
‘(B) knowingly violates subsection (a)(4), (f), (k), (q), or (aa) of section 922;’.
I wonder what happens if one was canoeing down the Brazos river, over turned, hit your head on a tree stump, lost all your guns and was in a coma for 7 days? So then you would be guilty of not reporting a weapon loss and be a federal felon. Nice.
Oh wait, I forgot. As a firearm owner, the federal hospital death panel would authorize your attending physician to terminate your life in the first 24 hours since you are not worthy of any federal medical care in maintaining your life. Double nice!
Never let it be said that I hate *all* cats. Here’s a picture of a boy standing next to a good cat:
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201304/s3747969.htm
Ray,
Bon voyage!
Chuck may disagree, but I can’t think of a damn thing from Germany or Norway worth the trouble of travel beyond Seattle except the people. Perhaps if I liked canned lutefisk?
Happy travels,
jim`
I think they do gun control all wrong. Instead of trying to limit firearms and bullets, or attempting to restrict guns to “right thinking people”, they need to make every crime committed with a firearm a capital crime. Shoot someone and hang. Wave a gun during a robbery and hang. Stick your finger in your pocket and pretend it’s a gun during a robbery and hang.
I don’t think my idea will actually cut down on crime, but it should help clear out the riff-raff!
Chuck won’t agree with you Jim, and neither will I.
He likes the svelte females with small norks, I like the countryside, castles, gardens and many other things. I did a coach tour of Germany 10 years ago and might go on my own next time, even though I don’t speak the lingo to any great extent. Norway’s nice too, but just looks like Germany with fjords to me.
Norway’s nice too, but just looks like Germany with fjords to me.
I thought Volvos and Saabs were the most popular there.
Mrs. OFD and MIL have had Saabs for years and keep shoveling money into them; our current Saab wagon has 180k on it. A Volvo station wagon that we owned a few years ago had the smoothest ride of any vehicle I’ve ridden in and was built like a tank.
OFD wants to know: what Euro country has the tall women with big racks?
Saab went broke, didn’t they?
Scotland?
Hm, there’s a lot of this going around:
“Your comment is awaiting moderation. ”
What’d I do?
You didn’t do anything. Akismet (the spam filter) was unable to contact home base for a while, so it automatically held comments for moderation. I had only five queued up, three of them yours and two spams.
Ah, thanks. That explains, perhaps, why some of my posts at other sites get held for moderation or appear immediately for no obvious reason.
Yeah, Saab is kaput. I guess. Mrs OFD and her mom are bummed.
Scotland has tall wenches with big racks?? But aren’t they all mad as hatters over there? With incomprehensible speech and a mostly bogus attachment to highlands Brigadoon-type crap that never happened? While somehow forgetting the many centuries of savage treachery, cruelty and sordid conspiracies—among themselves! (I say this as a Yank with a small bit of Scottish DNA, so don’t be coming after me with pipes and drums and fookin’ claymores, now…)
OFD,
I hate it when people relate personal stories on a forum, but you might get a kick out of this.
A couple weeks ago some guy in the next apartment building over was practicing his instrument.
His ‘instrument’ was the bagpipe, and he kept playing the same damn tune over and over, and over again for half an hour or more.
That’s the last I’ve heard from him. I wonder why?
jim`
Someone probably shoved a dirk into his vertebrae or ran it across his throat.
I actually love bagpipes and drums and have gone to many a Highlands game over the decades in Nova Anglia and Nova Caesarea.
Another anecdote: over twenty years ago I lived in a somewhat sketchy area of Woostuh, MA and in the warm weather certain types would come out in the street below our second-story apartment and really crank the salsa and hip-hop. We didn’t mind it in the afternoons for a few hours but by 23:00 or so it got old. I placed a big-ass boombox on the windowsill one night and cranked the Pipes and Drums of the Black Watch as loud as it would go for five minutes. Outside: utter silence for the rest of the night and no more after that hour again.