Thoughts On A Sunday

Spring weather has finally made an appearance, with daytime temps in the 50's and the occasional 60's to be seen during the upcoming week. The deep snows are melting away and more bare ground can be seen with every passing day. Unfortunately much of that bare ground is muddy, which means we have entered yet another one of the seven seasons of northern New England – Mud Season.

BeezleBub and I saw more than our share of mud yesterday at the dump. We barely made it in and out, the mud was so slick and deep. I think the only thing that kept the trusty Intrepid from becoming bogged down was the snow tires. They had enough traction in the mud to keep us moving where regular all-weather radials would have failed us.

I'll be glad when we get past mud season.

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It was a fine night out with the WP Parents and Siblings last night, celebrating the birthday of one of the WP Sisters. It's not often all of us can get together for an evening out, so we made the best of it. And, as is usual for nights like this, I overindulged, particularly on dessert. I did pay the price for it, believe me.

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I've always believed “zero tolerance” policies have been a crutch for the lazy, particularly when it comes to school administrators. It relieves them of having to make a decision and ends up hurting the innocent far more often than not.

The latest example of this is the strip search of a 13-year old girl looking for contraband ibuprofen. Other than the word of another student caught with a couple of ibuprofen tablets, there was no evidence the girl was carrying anything. After searching her backpack and pockets, the vice-principal ordered her strip searched, treating her like a street pusher, making sure she wasn't concealing the contraband in her bra or in her crotch.

This wasn't a girl selling dope on a street corner or on school grounds. It was an honor student with no history of disciplinary problems being treated like drug dealer by the school administrators.

This isn't the first instance of zero tolerance policies gone stupid.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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What would you think if you found out the Global Warming faithful may end up causing more harm and destruction through the actions they propose than global warming would cause?

Frankly, it doesn't surprise me in the least. Remember, to them it doesn't matter what's true as long as it makes them feel better about themselves. Hence, their self-righteous attitudes about their cause.

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At least the anti-war Democrats won't be able to criticize John McCain's support of the war in Iraq because his own son has served with the Marines in Iraq.

(H/T Instapundit)

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Here's another preview of what health care will be like under a Democratic White House.

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I use quite a bit of software in my job. One of my biggest gripes about software is the usability, whether it does what it's designed to do, whether it's easy to use, and if there's good tech support of there's problems. Most of the time the answer to those question is yes. But every so often I come across a program that corporate decided we needed to use and find it to be tough to use, have no particular logic to their menus or functions, and require extensive training if the employees are going to even have a prayer of making use of it. I've always thought business software was supposed to make it easier for people to do their jobs, not more difficult. It's time for management to start listening to the users about software and stop forcing software of questionable utility upon their employees. In the long run it's cheaper to do it right the first time.

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There is a way to be objective about whether a woman is attractive or not – Use a computer.

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Ed Kaitz writes in American Thinker about the propensity of liberals to use what George Orwell calls doublethink should be a warning. Kaitz warns that the this ability to believe to contradictory things at the same time is something they use to change the definitions we use to describe our thoughts and beliefs. It's something totalitarian societies use to good effect. Do you see the trend here?

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Rachel Lucas lays a smackdown on cellphone companies, stating quite accurately they treat their regular customers like crap but give new customers all the breaks and deals.

I don't know how they think they can get away with treating paying customers poorly. Any other business would be soon be out of business treating regular customers like that.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the snow is melting away, the mud is getting deep, and Ice Out is only weeks away.