Let’s hear it for the new year… all together now… yaaaaay.

No, really, I’m not that much of a humbug. I just haven’t gotten that much of a thrill out of holidays for a while now; for me, most of them are just another day. Unless I’m purposely out with other people who are celebrating it, most holidays are just an annoyance because nothing’s open. This particular year is the first since 1990 or so that I’ve had the holidays off; usually I would have worked Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, but since I’m an office bitch now, I have to take the holidays off. Maybe that’s why holidays aren’t anything particularly special for me. My big New Year’s Eve celebration? Made some pasta, drank some beer, smoked a cigar. Thus the year ended not with a bang, but a whimper.

And I get to take a new gift into the new year… a shiny new 42 USC 1983 lawsuit! For those not familiar, that’s the federal rights violation civil lawsuit aimed at law enforcement if, for example, they use excessive force. In this particular case, someone I arrested two years ago for a DUI filed at the last second (statute of limitations is 2 years) claiming I used excessive force in arresting them. Now, I don’t believe the case will even get to the deposition stage before it gets thrown out; it’s patently absurd and I documented the arrest meticulously… but anyone can sue anybody for anything in this wonderful nation of ours, and plaintiffs hope for that big settlement from government entities. I know this case has no merit… but it still sticks you right where live when someone accuses you of something you never did and you get that federal subpoena.

Reading the weather.com forecast for tomorrow, I was struck by the wording. I quote:

As upper-level energy begins to scream eastward, the area for potential severe weather will extend to southern Alabama, southern Georgia, and the panhandle of Florida through Wednesday afternoon.

OK. Now, I realize that weather forecasting isn’t exactly the sexiest thing on television, Hurricane Katrina notwithstanding; but I see a trend here. We can’t make a cold front as daring or controversial as something like The Shield… or can we? All we need to do is follow the examples from prime time TV… and throw in some of those porn-ad email spams; they seem pretty successfull… I can see the forecasts during sweeps week:

“A strong, thick cold front will be thrusting eastward from the fertile midwest tonight… It will mix with sultry, moist air from the Gulf and EXPLODE into the unsuspecting Southeast with a FURY not seen since last spring!! WATCH to see if the cast of 24 will survive this- and the SHOCKING ending that will leave you DAMP!!!”

Well, maybe not. There’s still hope for topless weather girls.

Being the paranoic control freak I am, I enjoy reviewing the website statistics generated by my hosting provider every now and again; if for no other reason to reassure myself that someone somewhere looks at the site. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell. Some of the things I look at are referrers and search terms… I think the photo gallery gets more hits than anything else; I know the hit count on the bloody tampon Halloween costume picture goes through the roof every October. Anyway, while perusing the referrers, I noticed one with a return link for the cpanel webalyzer statistics page of rustedtusks.com… someone checking their stats and referrer links. Except I recognized this URL… one of the web comics I read regularly, Slop. Waves to Mulefoot, who doesn’t know me, but I guess now knows I appreciate his comic enough to visit it daily.

Some of the search terms used that resulted in hits on this site:
grendel p10
bedroom webcams
firearms concealment techniques
grendel firearm p10
skull tattoo sketches
werewolf tattoos
painful thoughts tattoos
intel cs430
black and gray tattoos
kat s pet services

I feel sorry for the guy who searched for “bedroom webcams” and found mine. Not what you were expecting, eh? Heh. The firearms hits reminds me that I need to get off my ass and finish the handgun manual…

Well, at least somebody looks at the site. No, I’m not that insecure. Let’s face it, most weblogs are boring crap… who cares what you ate for breakfast today? I keep this one up because I’m too stubborn to care that no one cares what I had for breakfast. Which was the usual, a Coke and a Prilosec. You gotta wade through a lot of crap to find one gem on most ‘blogs. Maybe I’ll drop a gem or two every now and again; maybe not.

Holy crap, it’s cold. Yeah, I know it’s December, but damn. Thursday we accumulated about 1/4 inch worth or ice that knocked out power first to the house and then to the office, so I spent the day looking for trees blocking the road. Watching the transformer blow up outside the office was interesting, though. As usual, weather forecasters were baffled by southern winter weather predictions and smugly claimed that we wouldn’t get any ice the day before, then acted like they knew it was coming all along. I usually plan on the opposite of whatever the prediction is during the winter.

Coming up this week, firearms qualifications! Joy. All week out at the range, freezing my butt off in the morning, listening to people who should have been practicing complain about not being able to shoot. One would think that if you knew your job depended on being able to perform one action, you’d practice. Not so, apparently. And who will they blame when they can’t qualify? Me, of course. Let’s see how many of the 90 pass.

Well. At least I get Friday off for Christmas. Speaking of Christmas, this is the first one where I’ve had money to buy presents for the family.

Fixed some of the nagging CSS and table-layout issues that had been bothering me… of course, while they look fine in Firefox, they probably look cocked-up in Exploder. Oh, well… Daily News page and Webcam page got the treatment.

Still haven’t gotten the front LED turn signals yet, but here’s the accent lights, LED tail light and integrated LED rear turn signal. The only camera I’ve got is a fully-auto digital, so I really can’t adjust the aperture or shutter speed to show the tail light well. The turn signal is very yellow and very distinguishable.
[thumb:188:l] [thumb:190:l][thumb:189:l]
And work is… still insanely busy. For the next ten days, I’ll be filling out a detailed timesheet, noting what I’m doing every 15 minutes, as part of an efficiency study. Maybe… just maybe… it’ll show the need for a second person in training full-time.

Maybe.

Yeah, last post I said I was looking forward to getting back to work. Whuff. I hadn’t been in the office for 30 minutes before the phone started ringing off the hook and things started piling up. I’ll probably end up with a good bit of overtime on this check. On the plus side, things weren’t as screwed up by my absence as I feared they might be. (Though I’m glad it’s friday, because I just faxed off a stack of class applications and filed them away, only to find out I hadn’t signed any of them and have to re-submit. Ooops.)

I had three areas on the motorcycle I wanted to improve: Touring (Givi hard bags, gel seat, heated vest), Performance (aftermarket exhaust, jet kit, K&N pod filters, progressive fork springs), and Bling (integrated LED taillight/turn signals, LED engine accent lights). So of course I first went the cheapest and most useless route- the Bling. It’s all arrived from Clear Alternatives and Custom Dynamics, and I’ll probably spend this weekend putting it together.

Well, I can see that image inserts from Coppermine needs a little work… looks like it put it at the very bottom of the post.

I survived DTIT, although to add a little bit more misery, the work Explorer’s battery was dead Friday morning. Didn’t charge during the trip back from Forsyth, either, so it went to Fleet for a new one. I’ve spent the weekend doing… aboslutely nothing, once again. Aaaaaaaah. Sold the truck last weekend, paid off the credit cards, and the money’s already burning a hole in my pocket.

I’m sorta looking forward to getting back to work tomorrow, and sorta not looking forward to the big pile of stuff I’m sure has accumulated. Well, twelve hours from now it’ll be moot.

I think the pic says it all…[thumb:185:l]

Ouch ouch owie ouch. Day 4 of 10 for the Defensive Tactics Instructor class, and I don’t think I’ve ever hurt this much in this many parts of my body at one time. The class will certify us to teach OC, expandable baton, and general defensive tactics classes (handcuffing, ground fighting, joint locks, takedowns, punches, strikes and kicks, weapons retention, edged weapons, etc) which means we’ve got to be proficient in all of them- which means we get beat on, punched, kicked, etc. etc. We’ve covered handcuffing, takedowns, some grappling and strikes, and expandable baton; and every day a new muscle group is sore and/or bruised. Well… only six more days to go.

Unfortunately, my being out of town for two weeks is hard on Kublai. He got over his 24-hour vomiting spell and has been fine; but anytime he gets nervous, or I change his food, he gets diarrhea. And he’s been nervous because I’ve been gone. Well… I’ll apologize to Ian and Patty when I get back.