Thoughts on background checks

Let me share something with you. I'm on the email list for Organizing for Action. I'm there because unlike a lot of people I associate with, I voted for Barack Obama, not once, but twice. However, I got an email today that has me really thinking. They wanted me to lend my voice to efforts to require a universal background check.

The beauty of how our political system is supposed to work, is that we don't have to agree with everything. This is definitely a case where I think a background check system is a silly idea at best.

You see, the article they sent had the quote we've all seen so often claiming a majority of Americans and even NRA members support the idea. It struck a nerve.

Here's why, I've bought all sorts of stuff in private sales and not once has anyone inquired into my background other than the common back and forth typical to that sort of transaction. Nobody asked to see my driving record when I bought my cars or van. No-one told me that I couldn't purchase my bow and arrow without providing my name. I didn't have to have my psychological evaluation when I purchased a used set of golf clubs. The other day I bought a knife for my kitchen without anyone or anything checking a database. Yet all of these items have the same lethal potential as a firearm.

What about the silliness of 'every' transaction. Really? I have to do a background check on my kids if I decide to give one of them a gun for their birthday? What about if I decide to purchase one of the guns my dad has, you mean he has to conduct a background check on me? How about my friend and co-worker that has a concealed carry permit, do I need to check him out too? To what point? What is going to be accomplished by all this? If I was worried about any of these people getting guns, I wouldn't be giving or receiving one from them.

Does someone magically stop becoming a threat to society once they purchase a weapon and pass a background check? The newspapers seem to indicate otherwise. People snap; they go bonkers; they do bad things. A check on them at a moment in time really doesn't accurately assess what will happen in the future.

That aside, I'm not afraid of more guns being available and untracked by a lack of background check. Bad people are going to get their hands on guns. Fact of life. Background checks won't change it. The sooner we accept this, the easier we can sleep at night.

How many of us are up at night worried that the guy next door is driving on a suspended license? Do we panic that the car next to us might not be fully paid on his insurance? Have we seen the copy of our pharmacists license to dispense our medication? Did you personally check her out by calling the university listed on your doctor's diploma? Do you ask to see the food handling permit of the person making your fast food order? In school how did you know your teachers were accredited and licensed to teach?

Just because we have a hot button topic, the loss of life due to firearms misuse, doesn't mean that we need to institute a bunch of policies that really aren't going to solve anything. If we're going to chase that rabbit, then let's make sure we go down every other hole of assumption that exists as well. For me, I'd rather assume that the guy asking to buy my gun is legally able to do so. It's a simple thing called trust. I'd much rather be trusted than mistrusted, so I try to treat everyone else the same. Does it backfire? You bet! Does it mean I should stop? NO WAY!

Let's keep private sales private. Let's let trust and good sense do their part. It's easier and doesn't require an act of Congress. Instead, let's focus on fixing our budget and economy.

Mac OS X Lion

I was asked tonight about upgrading to Lion among some other things. Since it might help someone avoid the same mistake, here is what I wrote:

I'll speak about Lion, DON'T

I was having some issues with my machine, so rather than do a complete re-install of Snow Leopard, I upgraded to Lion. It has been a nightmare.

I can't even restart my computer without having to boot into Recovery Mode to run the Disk Utility. I've had horrible memory management issues (meaning it gets really slow). I don't feel like the issues with my system were improved at all.

I have read that a clean install, ie, wipe the hard drive and start over eliminates these problems. Still, there are other things that make this a horrible operating system. Lion eliminates Rosetta, so if you have any older applications, those will no longer work. The toolbars have very poor contrast, it's hard to see what is a button and what is disabled. The scrollbars on the side of many applications auto-hide, meaning you have no idea at times how far down a page or document you are. Important folders, like the Library, are entirely hidden from the user (makes things like adding or removing fonts very hard).

In short, I am dreading having to support anyone running this system as it works right now. I am not a fan at all and will likely be formatting my hard drive and starting over with Snow Leopard this weekend.

UPDATE

I finally found another show stopping but in this pile of dreck known as Lion. The CIFS share from my NexentaStor system at home doesn't mount properly through Finder. I can authenticate and mount the share, but all the permissions are screwed up. I am shown the folder, but told through Finder that I don't have any permissions to view the content.

Now, you wanna know how retarded this system is? If I put it to sleep while connected to the drive, it suddenly allows me to open it and see the contents. But don't dare try to open a folder inside the share, I don't have permission to those apparently. Oh sure, I can get to those by opening the folder from the command line, I can even do everything I need to from there, it's just the Finder that's broken. GRRRRRR!

Frustration with Apple

So this morning I was asked to pull some images off an SD card using my MacBook Pro 15. Now in the past I've had issues using my microSD cards and an adaptor. I always thought that it was just an issue with the adaptor (it's a genuine yum-cha from who knows where). So I never thought too much about the trouble that it gave me.

Imagine my surprise when this name brand SD card gave me the same issues.

Here's what I have to go through to load the things.

• Pray that it's going to work
• Insert card
• Wait to see if the OS recognizes it
• Remove card
• Put it back in, shifting it slightly forward
• Wait again
• Pull it back out again
• Push it into the slot, now more to the back
• Jiggle the card in the slot
• Pray that the card's not hosed now
• Jiggle the card some more
• Repeat any of the above steps until:
• See it pop up in the OS
• Threaten everyone around you to not get close to the computer and literally kill anyone that brushes or touches the card until you're done with what you need to do.

As the contact pins are all in a line across the card, I never suspected that making one work would be such a challenge. Every cheap device I've thrown one at, it's just worked, until I got the Mac. Seriously, I know the motto used to be "Think Different" but why take something that works everyplace else and curse it?

So I've been patiently waiting a few weeks to post these. They were a gift for my fiance's cousin, so I couldn't risk leaking them to the Internet for fear that it would give away the surprise. They've now been received and gifted, so I can finally put them online.

The pattern and book they came from were quite terrible. I really didn't like the way that they were initially supposed to be done, so these have been heavily modified. The ears for example are completely from my head and much taller than the pattern called for.

I've now got requests for pairs for adults. I'm going to have to see how that goes. My initial thought is that I'm going to have to charge through the nose if people want me to come up with an original pattern for an adult foot. Somewhere in the neighborhood of a couple hundred bucks. I don't know, would you pay that much for a pair of slippers? They would be a very limited edition and I'd probably even let the person choose the colors.

More knitting

Today I blogged a couple more knitted pieces onto Men Who Knit. Rather than duplicate the content here, I'll just put up the pictures and a link or two.

An unusual new year's post

So this is going to seem a bit random. I'll start by saying that I sort of have a vested interest in this post. Granted, the pension check I get from Hasbro really doesn't amount to a whole lot each month, but in the name of full disclosure, I did work for them and continue to receive money from them each month.

That said, I was never involved in the production of the toys. I worked for the hobby gaming division, Wizards of the Coast, in a business support role. Hardly a marketing, insider or really anything that would amount to much at all in the grand scheme of things.

This afternoon though, I discovered something really incredible about something they are doing with their Littlest Pet Shop (LPS) line of toys.

My girls are really into the figures and when they got their gift cards to Target from their grandmother, they hounded me to take them shopping. After dragging them beyond the entry way and the dollar value area just immediately inside the store, we made our way back to the toy department.

At this time all the LPS stuff was on sale, so several of my daughters purchased some of the packages and sets. The youngest got one of the boxed sets and was excited about it when we got home, so immediately set about opening it up.

In the current tradition of just about everything, the box was filled with the toys presented against a cardboard and plastic insert. Normally I've found things taped and wire tied into this packaging and so wasn't too surprised when she asked me for help getting everything out.

I was a bit surprised when I found that the wire wraps holding the figures and playset in place were bright pink. Now pink is my favorite color, so I thought it was quite clever to use it in packaging a set designed for little girls. Had it been any other color, I would have dismissed it out of hand, but I set these aside thinking I could easily reuse them.

Fast forward to today. I'm sitting in the living room picking up some of the scattered bits of packaging that seem to keep appearing from nowhere. I know for sure that over the past week, I have had this living room spotless at least 3 times, yet there still seems to be bits of packaging, wrapping paper and other stuff all over the floor. Either the children kept bits back to annoy me, or somehow the stuff is creeping out of the dumpsters and sliding beneath the door back into my home.

Anyway, I find one of the pink ties. I notice as I pick it up, it seems to be wrapped in paper, rather than being a single plastic piece. So I start to peel back the paper layer.

What I uncovered was another layer of paper, which I also proceeded to remove. I did this 2 more times and was left with 4 pieces of pink paper and absolutely NO wire inside. I was amazed!

Whether they made the move to using twisted paper as a cost savings or a greener manufacturing process, I don't know. What I do know is that I'm very impressed. It strikes me as a wonderful way of cutting down on the hassle in recycling and also the annoyance of having another bit of wire to deal with.

When I was removing it from the package, I had no idea it wasn't a wire tie, it had the same structure and feel. Maybe only a bit less rigid. It was very cool and something that I thought worth sharing. It may just be me, but I'm impressed when someone challenges the norm and goes their own way. Coming up with a twisted paper tie to replace the usual wire tie really catches my attention.

I know, sort of goofy that I'd get all excited over the packaging of my daughter's toy, but that's just the way I am. I certainly think it's blog worthy and totally worthy of being my first post of 2011.

Here's hoping everyone else can find a new way to innovate and get excited. Have a happy new year.

Couple more items that I thought I needed to share. The top is a pair of socks I'm particularly proud of. The patter was designed for a much lighter yarn and an adult foot. This has been scaled and resized for my daughter. She loves the socks. I had so much fun with this pattern.

The mittens are a pair I created for when Jen gets here in February. Since she's from Australia, she's never owned a pair of mittens or any real winter clothing. This is going to be my contribution for keeping her from freezing to death. HAHAHA.