John’s Crawlspace

Let’s face it: America is overweight. Actually, overweight is an understatement… We’re fat as shit. Most people do have good intentions and want to lose the weight, but they’re not ready to commit to any type of diet or consistent workout regime. Thats why there are so many “weight loss pills” available, they cater to the laziness (fear?) in all of us, and to those individuals that are dumb enough to believe that you can lose weight just by taking a pill without making any changes to your lifestyle. Err… Yeah, anyway, there is a new miracle cure, and it works. Lose weight today with the miracle beer diet!

For the smart urban baby… BulletProofBaby.net’s baby stroller is “the ultimate in style, comfort and extreme combat protection.” It’s 100% bulletproof (as you may have guessed) and can even stop armor piercing rounds. Check out the video on the website… Wow. While I’d tend to doubt the legitimacy of that video, I suppose if it were real I wouldn’t be all that surprised. Stranger things have happened.

So now Demonoid is down too. This is the second time that this has happened in the past six weeks or so. It’s not really a big deal to me (as I’ve been pretty busy lately so I haven’t been downloading much) but I still don’t really understand how these sites are shut down if they aren’t hosting any infringing content. Anyway, the site should be back up eventually, and you can read more here. In the meantime, SumoTorrent is a good alternative, even though it’s a public tracker.

We leave for Ghana on Sunday… Our flight leaves JFK Airport at 3. So I’m heading to my friends house tomorrow afternoon and her dad is taking us to New York on Sunday morning. My computer is about to get the longest rest that it’s ever had.

When it was decided that I was definitely going to Ghana, my dad put me in touch with someone who had done an internship at the company he worked for. This guy was about the same age as me, and grew up in Togo, which is right next to Ghana. He graduated from Temple and now lives in the Philly area. This guy invited Cortney and I over to his place for an ethnic dinner and to tell us about his country and all that. So we ended up doing that on Tuesday night, and it was much cooler than I expected. I thought it would be awkward and very serious, but the guy was very easy to understand and he definitely had a good sense of humor about the whole thing. Two of his friends were there as well, and they all told us about what to expect and sort of put our minds at ease about certain things we were worrying about. I’m definitely glad I did it, and after I left there I was more excited to leave than ever.

When you talk about a month, it sounds like a long time, but I know that this month is going to fly by. Before I know it, I’ll be back here in the same routine, going to job interviews and etc. I went to a sports doctor yesterday and they did x-rays of my knees and he said I shouldn’t run for 4 weeks, so by the time I get back here I’ll be good to run again. Not that I expect anyone else to care about that, but I’m actually kind of excited for it. Anyway… Check back in about a month to hear about my trip and hopefully I’ll start posting regularly again… That is, if I’m not cooked and eaten by a tribe or something equally ridiculous. In the meantime, have a great Veterans Day, Armistice Day (!?), Thanksgiving, and whatever the hell else I’ll be “missing” while I’m gone. Between the Buried and Me. PAYCE.

I had tickets to see Between the Buried and Me (with HORSE the Band and Animosity) on November 1st. I was ridiculously excited for this show… I heard that BTBAM has been playing their new album, “Colors” (which is a fucking masterpiece) in it’s entirety, from start to finish, live. In my opinion that would have been absolutely amazing. I had the tickets for about a month and a half. So November 1st finally rolls around, my buddy drives up to Philly from Harrisburg and we head into the city. We show up at the Starlight Ballroom and… No one is there. Typically when there is a show there, people are all over the place on the sidewalk and stuff. The place was dead. So I asked some homeless guy… Wait, it’d make the story more interesting if I called him a crackhead, right? So I asked this crackhead (who happened to be foaming at the mouth) what was going on, and he told me there had been a shooting there, and that they weren’t having shows there anymore. Damn the man. I called some friends to see if someone could check online and see if there had been any mentions of the show being rescheduled on the bands websites or anything, but no luck there. We decided to head over to the First Unitarian Church because it’s only a few blocks from there, and they have a lot of punk/hardcore shows there. Sure enough, there were a ton of punk kids outside, but when I asked who was playing that night, they told me it was some band called Avail. I was pretty annoyed by this - The tickets were only like $15, so I wasn’t mad about that, I was just so excited for the show. When I got home I decided to do some super secret investigator work - Private eye shit, I can’t really get into details here, you understand. Anyway, I found this article which explained that the show had been rescheduled to the prior Wednesday. But they never sent out any emails or anything, so how the hell was I supposed to know? I think that is pretty crappy, on the managements part. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll have another chance to see them (I already have seen them twice) but I would have liked to catch them on this tour, right before I leave for…

Ghana. Yeah, I’m leaving the country in five days. I still don’t think it has really hit me yet. Am I prepared? Probably not. Have I spent a shitload of money (money I don’t even really have to begin with) on clothing and supplies that I probably won’t even end up needing? Yes. The organization that I’m doing this trip through sent out an email telling me what to bring - This included mosquito netting, and a sleeping mat. So naturally I got the most expensive ones I could find - Only the best for the king, right? Good thing that it turns out I don’t need that stuff at all. I was told to pack light, so I emailed these guys asking if I really needed all the stuff they mentioned, and they told me that I don’t. I guess there is a standard email that they send out to everyone who enrolls in the program, and a lot of the stuff on the list is only needed for people that are going for extended periods of time, like 6 months or more. At least I have this super comfy $80 sleeping pad. Son of a bitch. Anyway…

I went to a travel doctor a week or two ago to get my shots and stuff. I have always hated needles - In drug movies, it bothers me when they show people shooting up and stuff. I’ve always been a baby about that kind of thing. So it’s a good thing that I went in there expecting to get one or two shots maximum. Turns out I had to get 5. I’m sure it’s better in the long run that I got immunized for… Well, whatever they were for, I don’t even really remember. I got some malaria pills that have psychosis as a possible side effect, so that should be fun. The travel doctor lady walked me through a list of about ten thousand different things I should avoid at all costs. I’m not supposed to eat any kinds of salads (or other vegetables) and basically, for the most part she said to only eat meals that are served fresh and “piping” hot. Anything that has been sitting around or in storage is potentially dangerous. So that might be kind of rough to avoid, I guess I’ll just feel it out. She also said to avoid using tap water at all costs - Not even for brushin mah teefz. She said to only use bottled water. I’m hoping I can buy a case or two at the airport when I get there, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be impossible to only drink/use bottled water the whole time I’m there. Once again, we’ll see what happens.

As far as what happens once I arrive there, I’m not really sure what to expect - But I’m not worried about it either. I think the best way to go into this is with no real expectations, that way I definitely won’t be “let down”, and things won’t suck unless I get cooked and eaten alive by a tribe or something. Which might actually happen.

Anyway, I know I’m staying with a host family there, and I’ll be doing volunteer work at an orphanage. What exactly “volunteer work” entails, I’m not sure, but I know I’ll be teaching basic Math and English, and playing with kids and stuff. I’m hoping that during the weekends we’ll be able to travel. I bought a Ghana travel guide that has been pretty informative about attractions like the Wli Waterfalls, among other things, so I already know of some stuff that I wanna check out while I’m over there - And I’m sure I will find out about more once I get there.

Anyway, based on the feedback I’ve recieved thus far, you the reader aren’t too thrilled about someone other than myself making posts here. I guess that makes sense, seeing as how you come here to read what I write - If you wanted to read someone elses thoughts and opinions, you’d go to another site. Based on the IMs and other feedback, I’ll probably can the idea of having other people make posts while I’m gone. If anyone feels differently about this let me know.

I randomly saw American Gangster this afternoon with a friend of mine from school that I hadn’t seen in awhile. We were a little late for the movie so I was confused during the beginning, but it was definitely entertaining. Usually I lose interest in movies after the first hour or so. This movie was over two and a half hours long, and I didn’t get bored with it at any point. If the trailer was of interest to you, I’d say it’s definitely worth checking out. One thing that was a little odd to me though was that the movie was supposed to take place in the 1970s. RZA (Wu Tang Clan) was in the movie, and you could see a Wu tattoo on his arm. Yeah, I know, Wu Tang is forever, but that still seemed a little “off” to me. And it’s strange because I don’t usually notice “movie goofs”, or whatever you wanna call them. Anyway, not to take anything away from the movie itself, like I said it’s definitely worth checking out.

That’s all for tonight… I’m gonna make another attempt to watch Sicko, and pass out… God knows it put me to sleep pretty damn fast last night.

I’m writing this from an air plane. As a result of this, I do not have internet with me at the moment. I won’t be able to link you to some interesting news articles, upload an mp3 for you, research some statistics for a post here or even make the article visible to you. At least not until I’m grounded at LAX. More interestingly though, with this whole “Web 2.0” and the internet being the provider of the applications and so forth we must realize that the internet will be vital to making a computer useful for a consumer.

Let me tell you my process of waking up. I wake up, snooze my alarm about five or six times and finally “start moving” around 6:30am on Mondays, 8:00am the rest of the week. I then turn to my right and open my laptops screen. First step is unlocking my machine; doing the ol’ CTRL+ALT+DEL process and then pushing enter. I have now successfully “got on”. I open Firefox, open my work email, open my other work email, and then open up two forums I frequent, then Jon’s page then my my MySpace.

Occasionally I will have AOL Instant Messenger, Microsoft Office Communicator and Yahoo! IM running too. I have Limewire running in the background almost non stop. My old webcam used to run restlessly also (I haven’t had a personal site in about 6 months). This was all useful because of the internet. The WAN, the Untrust, the intarwebs (If you are Dr. Greg House speaking). Every application here would be useless if my internet connection was down. If I was in my office, I could still run MOC and read my email, but the latter of those two would still be crippled without the net. Just a thought I wished to share with you guys.

This morning I woke up listening to the waves crashing, a nice view from my rental condos window of the ocean, and my girlfriend coming in to wake me up. Terribly enough, my first thought was what I was going to write about next post while I live out guestship (new word, watch out Oxford) here. This is not unusually for me however. I love working, I love writing and most of all I love to tell people my thoughts (more on that later). Most mornings my first thought is usually of checking my email or something based upon whatever random consulting work I did the night before. It’s a 50/50 split between romantic thoughts of my girlfriend Monica, or an additional thought about my work. Working with computers, everyday I see new challenges. Some completely out of my league, some fixable in about twenty minutes with a simple spy ware killer, and some that require a few minutes on Google to figure out. It consumes my day to day activities, and shows me all types of new environments. I’ve seen some really cool shit throughout the Los Angeles area. There has not been anything too notable to most people, but enough to make a nerd savor the moment.

My thoughts. Call it a disgusting egocentric way of expression but nothing keeps me more entertained than telling people what I think and how I can fix something I deem wrong. As I usher you readers in for the holiday season I would like to keep this trend going. Jon will be picking back up of course in early December, and he can spray his yuletide and such all over his readers faces. For me though, I will be subtly hinting in to it until his return. I will find content to post, I will finish a good 10 to 15 more writings for those reading this. Mostly, I will be awaiting your comments. Let me know if you want my opinion on anything. Just post a few interesting topics in the comments section, and give me a few days.

Jons Crawlspace readers: My name is RandyC, I’ve known Jon from the internet for at least 5-6 years and have read almost every post made to this site. Yes, that includes all the shit lost from years past before wordpress and greymatter. He used to update the site manually with his own bare hands. Jon will be off to Gana soon and I am here to help supplement you. You are Jons readers, the lifeblood to the invisible hit counter most likely placed on this site. My quick history is I am a telecom specialist for a midsize mortgage company, work another job at a local/world famous sports and entertainment venue with there IT department and do consulting work on the side.

The TSA screeners at the airports have given me the impression that they are very much McJob employees. By McJob, I would like to say that they are essentially hired on the same way a McDonalds or CSC (more about that in a second) employee is hired. They check to make sure the person is able to speak some English, enough to say stop and say hello. The second requirement is that they can get to and from work on time.

Let me tell you about the CSC. Contemporary Services Corporation is an organization that places such as The Forum (Inglewood, CA) and the Coliseum and Sports Arena (Los Angeles, CA) and many other high profile venues contract out to:
Dodger Stadium
RCA Dome
Georgia Dome
Phoenix Convention Center
These are the people that check you for tickets and make sure that you aren’t blocking hallways et cetera. Perfect job for three categories of people. High schoolers/college students. The disabled. The Elderly. The job has almost no qualifications, most of the people I see working the positions are losers or dropouts or just all around stupid people. I’m not saying every single one of them is a complete failure, I just want to make it clear that anyone can have this job.

The TSA Security Screening Group is a group that the United States government has appointed to maintain security and the entrances to our airports, and as a secondary level of support for the international flights inbound. The people you would expect to be doing baggage checks and filing out suspicious passengers for a “doubletake” or more indepth look at there history would be people that tend to have higher qualifications than a grocery bagger. As a first line defense at a lower level than infilitrating the airport by clinging on to the bottom of a delivery cart — I would think that the TSA would appoint very talented, stringently trained and well qualified employees at the baggage screening stations. My thought is this: Much like police officers patrolling the streets, the baggage checkers need to be efficient at reading people coming through and pointing out luggage.

I can not tell you many times I have had family make it through security with knifes or restricted items, both by accident and because they have hidden throat cutting nail clippers and explosive coffee drinks from home in there purses or backpacks. The whole process is obviously a false sense of security as the same people that are checking me through my airports passenger screening are the same class of employees I would expect to be scanning my ticket at the Staples Center or Great Western Forum. Imagine for a moment that you have a taxi driver who has a history of alchoholism or maybe a teacher with a case of sexual misconduct.

Do you want Lamar Jackson Washington Ruffles of East Los Angeles, CA with a history of possesion of illegal drugs and unlicensed gun confiscations to be the same person who is assisting in ensuring that Rahim Sadir doesn’t blow your plane up?

A few facts I picked up from USAJobs.opm.gov by searching “Security Screener”. I found job # TSA-08-2005 Amended which is a TSO Screener position. These are the ones that ask you to remove your grapple hook belt and Trinitrotoluene based shoes. They are asked to “Educate and provide friendly customer service to travelers”, “Screen passengers and gather intelligence”, and finally “Discover and stop emerging transportation security threats, utilizing state of the art technology”. They must have a GED or equivalent, speak English and be physically in shape. I’m not going to go about this saying that anyone with those as there max qualifications are lower people. Many people haven’t had the fortune of a college degree, and many others have not had many oppurtunities in life to grow more talent. What I am saying here is that someone with those qualifications needs to prove themselves in a less important position, before being brough to an aiport terminals primary method of defense.

Most TSA employees I have come across:
smell like cigarettes
have a strong grip of Ebonics (ambiguated English)
have very little experience speaking proper American English
tend to be rude
To top it all off: Can not even perform there job correctly. Constant and obvious misprofiling, lackadaisical attitude regarding there jobs and required duties and constant incompetence..

Bottom line thought: Does that security even make a difference? Would airports be safer if we implemented more security, or is it just a big facade to make us feel better?