Shall Not Be Questioned

Facebooking

So after much harassment from more than a few people, I’m doing the whole Facebook thing.Â The fear of losing my job this week, and having to network again, was what prompted my conversion.Â But I will admit, Facebook is fascinating, and also kind of creepy.Â Consider this picture I found of my mother (upper far right side), who has been dead for 14 years, on the Facebook of someone I probably haven’t seen for 16 years.Â Found someone else on Facebook I hadn’t talked to since high school, and is in the same industry as I am.

If you’re on Facebook, feel free to add me as a friend, though I am under my real name and not my pseudonym.Â Most of you who are regular readers should probably have figured my real name out by this point.

A Celebrity Worth Supporting

If you have never heard of Nigella Lawson before, you’ll start to fall in love with her right now.Â If she didn’t live in London, some of you might volunteer to go protect her since she recently pissed off ALF and PETA.

When asked on BBC1â€™s The One show if she thought the fashion industry should outlaw fur, Nigella replied that she would wear it if she could kill the animal herself. …

Then she made a stabbing motion and added, â€œGoing into a shop and buying a fur coat would be an act of weakness. But if I could go into the woods and kill a bear myself, I would wear it proudly as a trophy.â€™â€™

ALF just named her a “legitimate target” according to one outfit.Â PETA seems more sane by simply saying her comments make her unattractive.Â I’ll let you guys decide if they are right.

I knew a woman who trapped the foxes that made up her vest.Â I admit, I think it would be pretty cool to have a fur jacket that I caught myself.

Grave Detail

Getting 1/3rd of the folks removed from your company’s IT systems is always quite a bit of work, especially when one of those folks had admin rights to your company network.Â I was fortunate that IT only lost one person.Â Every certificate and key the company had must be considered to be compromised, so there’s much re-keying and re-provisioning of certificates that needs to be done.Â Not to mention cleaning everyone who got the axe out of all the groups.Â The folks who got the chop often want personal files, contacts, and calendar information.Â All that stuff has to be gone through to make sure it’s not company secrets.Â This essentially means my projects are all on hold, and my schedule has just been shot up.

I’ve survived probably a dozen layoffs over my 11 year career, and I’ve always ended up wondering who really was on the wrong end of the deal.Â But in this economy I’m happy to still have a job.Â The key to surviving layoffs is to be indispensable.Â One reason I’ve resisted taking paper pushing management jobs is because in my experience, those people tend to be expendible.Â While I am at a management level on paper, I still get my hands dirty, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.Â The company I work for is still a listing vessel with a leaky hull trying to right herself in the Biotech Sea.Â Now we’re operating with a skeleton crew.Â We’re either going to get to port with the crew we have remaining, or the ship is going to sink.Â The next few months will be critical.

Ed Rendell Says Obama Thinks We’re Stupid

Of course, we gun owners already know what Obama really thinks of us.

While doing an interview this morning, Ed Rendell said that Obama’s handling of the Blagojevich scandal indicates that he thinks the American people aren’t so bright as to understand why Obama’s people would need to talk to Rod’s people.

â€œThey have never been in an executive position before,â€ Rendell said on MSNBCâ€™s â€œMorning Joe.â€ â€œThe rule of thumb is whatever you did, say it and get it over with and make it a one-day story as opposed to a three-day story. Politicians are always misjudging the intelligence of the American people.â€

He doesn’t stop there because Fast Eddie never does. Instead, he actually makes the very good point that the public would understand why he had an interest in who took the seat and talking to the Governor’s office would be a natural step in the transition. Of course, then he implies that Blagojevich “was the craziest S.O.B. in the world.” Gotta love our Governor.

Fire a Gun, Go to Jail

Firearms & Freedom points out some absurdity with the proposed model legislation for bullet serialization.Â The ammo serialization bill also demands that non-serialized ammunition be destroyed before 2011, so under this model legislation, you can forget reloading.Â As others have said, ammunition restrictions might be a new model for the gun control proponents.

Argh!

Massive restructuring at work today. Lost 1/3rd of the company. My manager and his manager are both gone. Spent most of the day resetting passwords and deactivating accounts. Sad time for a lot of people. Busy time for IT.

Palm Pistol Maker Interviewed

Matt Carmel, the inventor of the Palm Pistol, got a pretty fair shake in this story from a Fox affiliate out in Colorado. He believes that the registration was canceled because of politics surrounding the Second Amendment.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms classified it as a standard pistol, but inventor Matthew Carmel wanted to spread the word to senior citizens. So he spoke with the FDA and was advised to register his company as a manufacturer of medical devices and list the pistol as a “daily activity assist device.”

On Monday, the FDA said it had determined the Palm Pistol was “not a medical device,” the Associated Press reported.

Carmel said, “I would assume it’s due to political pressure…I most certainly do see this as a Second Amendment issue.”

There’s also a poll on whether or not the Palm Pistol should be considered a medical device.Â So far, the results are only about 21% in Matt’s favor.Â So go click through and tell them what you think.