Today at lunch I had a friendly discussion about the recent developments surrounding a particular famous Olympic athlete and his poorly chosen method of relaxation. It seems the sheriff of the town where the unfavorable picture was taken of Mr. Michael Phelps has decided to pursue an investigation into the people involved with the activities partaken in said picture. I did not comment on the legality of the main issue, ie whether marijuana should be legalized or not, but merely on the fact that people are chiding the sheriff for his actions.

I suppose I did get a bit stubborn during the course of the conversation and once or twice prevented the other party from voicing their point. But I already knew what their point was. It was the same point and issue that all the people riding the sheriff were already espousing. Namely that it was a waste of resources to pursue the investigation. Phelp’s already said he was sorry, why can’t we leave it at that?

Facts:

1. It is currently illegal to possess marijuana. (I will neither agree or disagree with this, it simply is the state of things currently.)
2. Michael Phelps was pictured using a bong/water pipe.
3. He later admitted that yes it indeed was filled with marijuana and not tobacco.
4. The sheriff, based on that picture, took it upon himself to find and arrest the parties involved.
5. Michael Phelps has a certain level of celebrity that undoubtedly  brought extra scrutiny to bear.

Yes it may be unfair that the sheriff went after arrests based on the picture simply because of Phelp’s celebrity status.  It may be a huge waste of law enforcement resources for rather minimal charges. As far as I know, Phelp’s has yet to be charged with anything. But he has already admitted to it on record. That alone is enough. His lawyers would have a hard time having his admission thrown out, especially because he said it during a press conference and he was not under arrest at the time so he would not have been in violation of his Miranda rights.

The stubbornness on my part came in when the other party involved in the conversation tried to get out their point that it was simply marijuana and surely a huge waste of resources to pursue it, and I constantly interrupted with the question: Is it legal to posses or consume marijuana?” Sure it was a bit annoying, and it was meant to be. More then trying to support the sheriff, I was trying to drive at the point, were is the line where laws can be fudged a bit?

Sure he was not hurting anyone? I attempted to make a comparison to attacking someone with a knife, but only cutting them a little, to the point of drawing blood but leaving no scar. The other party complained that comparing attempted murder or even assault was not accurate when talking about drug use. Why the hell not? Are not both against the law? The biggest difference I see is that the assault depends solely on the second party (the victim) deciding to press charges or not. In the case of drug use there is only one party. So if we apply the same rules to laws governing drug use, then the victimized party should decide whether to press charges or not. Which then means the person using the drugs should decide whether they want to press charges against themselves or not.

The point being that while the actions the sheriff have taken may be a bit overzealous, especially if he does not apply the same resources to similar cases when no celebrity is involved, he was still enforcing the law which is what he was hired to do. If you think the law he was enforcing is ridiculous or outdated, then you have every right to petition the government (local and federal), seek elected office yourself, stage demonstration (legally and peacefully) and more to see it get changed. Until then, you should full expect to pay for the consequences of your actions until such changes are made. That goes double for celebrities and others under the public microscope.

The first batch (good old original plain) was just as I imagined, a piece of cereal heaven in my mouth (just like your mom). Then I started thinking, can you make them any better?

So I set out to try some variations. First up is the Chocolate Orange RK. Not sure if they were better but they were definitely damn good eaten

The Recipe:

Ingredients:

1. 1/2 stick of butter (4 tblspoons)
2. 1 bag marshmallows ( i prefer to use the mini ones)
3. 6 cups rice krispies
4. Zest from 1/2 of orange.
5. 1 cup (or more depending on your tastes) semi sweet chocolate.

Steps:

1. Zest 1/2 of the orange if not already done. To zest use a fine to medium grate to grate the orange peel. Try not to go to far with the zesting, just take off the top layer of orange from the rind/peel.
2. Melt the butter in a large pot.
3. Add the orange zest, stir so it is mixed evenly.
4. Add the marshmallows, stir until completely melted.
5. While waiting for the marshmallows to melt, begin melting the chocolate.
6. Grease a 13 by 9 pan with butter or crisco.
7. Once the marshmallows are completely melted, remove from heat.
8. Add the rice krispies and stir until evenly coated.
9. Spoon into the pan.
10. Butter the backside of a large spoon and use it to smooth out the rice krispies in the pan.
11. Finish melting the chocolate and pour the melted chocolate on top. Smooth to desired thickness.
12. Let cool.
13. Cut and serve.

Tip: Cool in the freezer or refrigerator. One it sets the chocolate faster, two it seems to help set the marshmallows and butter faster as well which keeps the rice krispies krispier.

I repeat, I did not vote for Obama. Political alignment aside, I was open to giving Mr. Obama, sorry, President Obama, the benefit of doubt as he took office. Waiting to pass judgment until he was just about done with his term. Recent events have caused me to reconsider this position, or at least start him off with a C.

FOR THE LOVE OF PETE! You do not get elected by pinning all the current economic woes on the then president and associating your opponent so closely with the then president to the point people believe it, only to try and post key staff that have issues with there own money management. You already got lucky with the secretary treasury who failed to pay more in taxes then most of the people that voted for you make in a year pre-taxes. Now you have two more potential appointees back out because of the very same reason.

Nancy Killefer: and Tom Daschel:

Although it is a great ploy to draw attention from the guy that did get approved. Most people will probably now overlook the previous tax problems like they were nothing compared to these two. But it still leaves me with a very queasy feeling about his administration, and it is only a month into it. One piece of advice: avoid anyone that has had tax issues, or who could face possible jail time if they were audited.

My wife recently told me a story from her child hood. She had a friend in highschool, ( when I heard the story I thought it was elementrary school), that she wanted to ride the school bus with. But her father did not allow them to have friends stay over during the school week. This did not deter my wife. Her friend came home with her. Their master plan was for her to hide and sleep in the closet. Unfortunately her father through a wrench into the plans by coming home sick early from work. She was not smart enough to think he might notice a difference in her behavior, ie staying back in her bedroom instead of watching tv in the living room. So he comes back and pops his head into the room to check on them and the friend darts back into the closet. Busted. And in less then a year.

The man had to have cameras installed in his house to catch the woman. And he only became suspecious the past few months when he finally noticed food missing. I love food, I would have noticed missing food much sooner.

I live in Georgia. I grew up in Georgia. I got me some learning on in Georgia. I find it unacceptable for that many students to fail the test. I find it unacceptable that they are throwing out the test scores because it just doesn’t seem right for that many to fail. Something is wrong here. Either the tests do not reflect the curriculum, the teachers are not teaching the curriculum, or the students are just that stupid. My money is on all three. The tests seemed to always be just beyond the base curriculum, which is acceptable to test the extent of the students knowledge and skills. The teachers can only teach what they could get to in the amount of time they had, limited further by dealing with the students. And based on one of my universal rule that everyone is stupid, students are stupid.

“But my kid had all A’s and B’s in Social Studies and still failed”. How many teachers have a mandate that says the students must have a certain grade or higher? I never remember middle school being terribly difficult. Sure you could classify my as one of the smart kids in school. But even when I did poorly there was always a way to make that poor test score up. And I could easily believe it has gotten even easier with even more extra credit being given out. I do not want to go off on a tirade on what is wrong with our educational system so I will stop where this seems to be heading and move on to other questions I have concerning the CRCT.

First, have they investigated the difference between the test and the curriculum that is supposed to be taught?
Second, have they investigated the difference between the curriculum that is supposed to be taught and the one that actually is?
It seems premature to just throw out the entire test with out answering either of those questions with yes.

Third, why are the schools not getting the test results? I would think the schools, if given the test results, could pinpoint exactly what problems the students had, which would then help to answer questions one and two. Supposedly they have gotten some feed back from a few teachers, which is good. However this is only part of the investigation. You must also have a neutral party compare the state curriculum with the test and not simply rely on the teachers. Of course the teachers are going to say the test is not testing what they taught, but you must verify that they are teaching what they were expected to. The southern states are NOT a separate country no matter how many of use think they should be since the civil war should never have happened based on the U.S.’s own declaration of independence (although it said nothing of separating peaceably and no provisions for succeeding from the union were really provided for in the constitution, although if I am mistaken on that last part by all means feel free to correct me, I did after all go to public schools in Georgia).

Fourth, why was this problem brought to light a week before most state schools go on summer break? This should have been seen and addressed well before now. I know I would hate it if I had to take another standardized test just before, or worse yet just after, summer break starts.

Fifth, why do both the curriculum and the tests have to be changed to in order to properly assess the students knowledge and skills? It would seem that only one is at fault and only one must be adjust accordingly. Although I would not fault them for scrapping the whole curriculum and tests and starting over from scratch assuming that is the new curriculum and test are at the very least on par with the level and amount of knowledge and skill as required by its predecessor. Otherwise they will just set education back even further.

Personally I have no problem simply failing all of the students and holding them all back another year. I personally fear that generation eventually being the ruling generation.

I have been toying with the idea of starting another blog, especially now that I have finished up with school and will hopefully have more time on my hands. There are plenty of personal diary blogs out there and I do not particularly feel like sharing nor do I think any would be all that interested in my life. The additional blog would like relate to my work and possibly hobbies I am trying to develop. Most likely I would start with the work related themed blog since I have more experience and stories to write about. But just what would it cover? Well I am a Software QA Engineer. So it would deal with software quality, development, and testing. Rather boring for the average reader, but could prove very useful for me as it would provide a way for me to organize, collect, and vent on software testing methodologies, strategies, technologies, theories, and so on. Anyway, on the ulterior motive part.

Creating a second or more blog is rather trivial. Maintaining it just as trivial (granted more work, the work is not really any harder). The trick is advertising and keeping the advertising managed across all your blogs. Well them sharp fel’ers over at Entrecard have provide what looks to be a very promising means to handling this (at least managing your entrecard advertising). You can now link your different blogs to the same entrecard account, allowing you to switch “blogs” without having to logout, clear your cache, and log back in. It promises to manage the cache for you. But I do not have a second blog so I have not really tested this out yet. But if you have multiple blogs and belong to entrecard, I suggest you try it out.

In other un-related entrecard news, they have released the free entrecard official ebook. I have given it a quick read and it looks great for newbies. It provides some pretty straightforward steps to getting started, and a few more “advanced” features as well. Anyone already familiar with entrecard may not find it to be that useful. Although it does provide some brief tips on how to keep readers once you get them to your blog. It is not the world’s best book, although for now it is the world’s best book on entrecard.

Back to the original original topic of the post, dissociative identity disorder (DID). Before starting another blog I think I will have to take some time and brainstorm a few ideas, not just for general theme for the blog, but some initial content to see if I have enough material to actually start another blog or not. With that, I now return to the regularly scheduled content (at least if something crazy or odd happens that is worth writing about).

Thus the SAM LSD, aka Self Actuated Mechanical Linear Sand Disclocator. That seems to be suitably gewgaw.

So now for the final SAM LSD (and you will have to forgive the shoddy camera work, I was using a hand held usb webcam and you may want to turn the volume down as the sound can get rather annoying).

The robot is done.

The reports are submitted.

The degree project completed.

Now just waiting for the grades to be posted.

Assuming I did well on all the reports, I expect another semester of all A’s. Making my final gpa for my master’s a nice even 4.0. I must admit though, I am very disappointed in the program. My undergrad degree at GA Tech was much more challenging. Not just because it was initial exposure to content, but because the professors were much stricter.

Should students in a master’s level program really be allowed to turn all the assignments up until the last day of class? With no penalties?

I also expected a little more structure and specialization to the program, along with more guidance and advice from a faculty advisor. Particularly as it related to the “degree program project”. I suppose it is my own fault for doing a project not sponsored by a faculty member, but rather a project actually related to my current job and occupation. Stupid me for trying to make it relevant.

 Anyways it is done. I am more then certain I passed everything and very certain I got that 4.0 for the semester and thus the program. But you never know.

In any case it means that I can now resume the regularly scheduled bloggin activities. So stay tuned.

1. My wife is both my wife and my sister in-law.
2. I used to hang a pen from my glasses while at GA Tech (and took alot of shit for it for some reason) and hence my first web page: http://www.thehangingpen.com Not much there and less updated then here, but hopefully that will change when I finish up my masters.
3. My top 3 movies are:”The Big Hit”, “Batman Begins”, and “Roman Holiday”
4. I can wiggle my ears. One at a time.
5. I prefer ketchup on my spagheti.
6. I have a fear of heights, unless I am in an enclosed space, but I also have a fear of tight enclosed spaces (like a coffin)
7. I am allergic to the allergy medication Zyrtec.
8. I am proud that my grass is greener then my neighbors ( for the past 3 yrs since we have moved in, his yard has always been in better shape, but all that seeding and fertilizer has finally paid off and it gives me an odd sort of pride.)

The article is much funnier if you read it incorrectly, as in Steven Seagal not Seagull. But basically Steven returns the Super 8 for his doughnut. I loves me some doughnuts. If someone gave me a free doughnut every day, damn straight I’m going back for another one. The employees argue they don’t give him any other food, but he keeps returning. Well they keep giving him more doughnuts. Apparently if noone answers he taps on the glass. If too many people are there he starts squaking and making noise until his doughnut needs are met. One of these days he is just going to whip out one of his super awesome karate moves. Although I am certain it would not be as awesome as if it was Chuck.