Strangers knocking on the door

From the Minneapolis Police Precinct 2 Update:

The Precinct received two calls this week from relatives of elderly people in the precinct. One of the seniors lives in Prospect Park and the other in Windom Park. In each case, the relative was told that two people dressed in uniforms had knocked on the front door. When the door was answered, the resident was asked if he/she had an emergency. When they answered no, the two parties asked to be let in to use the telephone. At this point, we do not have a clear discription of the uniforms, so it could be a service company, police, or other type of uniform.

And the advice:

* Do not let strangers into your home.
* Install good locks on doors and windows and use them.
* Install peepholes on front and back doors at your eye level. This is especially important if you use a wheelchair.
* Ask for identification from service or delivery people before letting them in to the property. If you're the least bit concerned, call the company to verify.
* Call your crime prevention specialist for a free home security survey to help identify your individual security and safety needs. In the second precinct, the Crime Prevention Specialists are Rick Maas (673-2797) for the area north of Broadway; and Carol Oosterhuis (673-2874) for the area south of Broadway.
* Get involved in your block club. Watchful neighbors who look out for you as well as themselves are a frontline defense against crime.

Just because someone is in a uniform doesn't make them who they say they are.

Faith Healing....didn't

Parents Prayed While Daughter Died

An 11-year-old girl died after her parents prayed for healing rather than seek medical help for a treatable form of diabetes, police said Tuesday.

Because miracles happen every day(not really) and god will answer your prayers, ignoring the billions of other people with needs.

Maybe, just maybe, god answered your prayers decades before you asked him to, by allowing science to outrun superstition and letting the good doctors develop treatment for common illnesses and diseases.

Idiot.

And the police in that town aren't any better.

The girl has three siblings, ranging in age from 13 to 16, the police chief said.

"They are still in the home," he said. "There is no reason to remove them. There is no abuse or signs of abuse that we can see."

Neglectfully allowing your daughter to die because you don't like doctors is abuse.

Teenagers?

Two Red Wing teenagers arrested for impersonating cops
Impersonating a cop is a good way to get shot. If you are pulled over, and you aren't positive it is a cop, keep driving and call 911. The real cops really don't mind.

Interesting bit:

Deputies tracked the vehicle down and pulled it over in Welch Township. They arrested an 18-year-old man from New Brighton and an 18-year-old Lakeland man.

Eighteen is the legal definition of adult in the US. Why does the headline refer to them as teenagers?

We're the only ones qualified enough....

From Tam.

"You should give the fire what it wants to avoid getting hurt."

"We're the only ones qualified to use fire extinguishers safely."

"Just get to a safe place and call 911 and let the experts come take care of it."

"Try and reason with the fire."

"The fire will just take the extinguisher away from you and use it against you."

What has the world come to?

If you're going to protest government action, why would you get a permit from the government to do it?

Remember the sixties? I don't.

People would protest what they saw as injustice, regardless of the government's approval. They had the courage of their convictions, even if they were wrong, and were willing to go to jail to defend said convictions.

That's real protesting. This is just whining.

That said, I hope they protest in the street in front of my car. Pacifist cowards.

Pacifism is defined as the courage to let other people do violence on your behalf while you condemn them for being your savior. If you're a pacifist, do you call offer your throat to the predatory burglars, or do you call 911? Calling 911 is delegating your responsibility for yourself to the police and their guns. If you call the police for defense, you are not a pacifist, you are a coward. Do you support taxation, in any form, for any reason? Do you understand how taxes are collected? If I don't pay taxes, I go to prison. If I refuse to go to prison, the police will take me away, at gun point. If you support taxation in any form, you are not a pacifist, you are just willing to give away your rights.

Remember
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. " -George Orwell

This means you. The rough men and their actions allow you the opportunity to fly your yellow flag for the world to see. If your betters didn't support your rights, you would be beaten, raped and served for dinner by the bad men who aren't being allowed to destroy you.

Boss's Sick Day

Wayback Memery

Via Jay G, I find Scaryduck has started a meme.

Post your oldest email.

First, I've had a hotmail account since 1996. Yes, that long ago. I also have a 5 digit ICQ number.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I let the hotmail account lapse, and it went inactive, killing my archaeological treasure trove of early spam and joke forwards. It's been resurrected, but only as a dumping ground for questionable website registrations and MSN Messenger.

So, going back to my last un-backed-up computer crash, my earliest email is dated 11/20/2001. Here it is:

I sat, as did millions of other Americans, and watched as our government underwent a peaceful transition of power. I was proud as Mr. Bush took his oath of office.

I was sad as I watched Mr. Clinton board Air Force One for the final time. It may surprise you that this made me sad, but watching this part of the days festivities, I saw 21 United States Marines in full dress, with M-16s, fire a 21 gun salute to the outgoing President.

It was then that I realized how far America's military had deteriorated.
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Every last one of them missed.....

More from Minneapolis

Here's one from the Juvenile Unit of the MPD.

Investigating: ROBBERY of PERSON: 15th/Park Av: Victim approached another victim, asked to walk with him because group that were loitering around grocery store at 15th/Chicago were following her; she thought they may rob her; group approached then robbed them both; checking for video or any other info on group from store.

Carry a gun if you are planning on protecting the damsel in distress.

Minneapolis 4th Precinct Highlights, WEEK 529 –MARCH 11 - 17, 2008

This kicked over my giggle box:

26th & COLFAX MONDAY 2010 HOURS 08-075393

15 year old female and long time friend, whose last name, physical description or address she didn’t know, were walking down 26th when she was shot in the buttocks. Victim said they crossed paths with a large group of males who stared them down and then she heard shots fired. Related – Weapon Recovery 08-075403

Vicious pack of thugs this week:

20XX RUSSELL WEDNESDAY 1758 HOURS 08-070114

31 year old male severely beaten and numerous of his items had been taken. Suspects fled and after a foot chase two of five were caught

29TH & JAMES THURSDAY 2000 HOURS 08-071607

27 year old male jumped by four or five males, one with a knife, who beat him and took $15.00 from him.

So much for avoiding problems by locking your doors.

BROADWAY & PENN SATURDAY 0300 HOURS 08-072914

36 year old male in town from NY working at the MOA got lost after dropping off a security guard and stopped to ask four males at the intersection for directions. As he did one male broke out his van’s passenger side window and jumped inside and another reached in and held him down while the first suspect took his laptop.

Why turn in the freebie? It should be a perk of any new home purchase.

35XX COLFAX THURSDAY 1200 HOURS 08-070975

Officers flagged down by a male who’d recently purchased a house and upon cleaning it out found a 22 caliber revolver.

Reason #2679 to carry a gun

Goth clothes 'prompted killing'

A 15-year-old boy kicked and stamped to death a woman because she was dressed as a Goth, a court heard.

As I said on an email list:

This is getting to be more common. I was going to say "more common in
the UK", but it's not just there. I run a website tracking home invasion in Minnesota, and I see lots of crime reports. There isn't a week that goes by that doesn't include a pack of thugs stomping someone during a mugging. It seems to be standard procedure for a mugging in some areas.

There is a certain subset of civilization(not race/religion/nationality based) that holds life to have no value, because they apparently don't value themselves in any way. Stomping someone to death over the $10 in their wallet, or the color of their
lipstick is somehow acceptable, because they don't consider their own lives to be worth that same $10.

There's a reason I carry a gun and teach carry permit classes.

Socialist uses the unsophisticated or greedy as political point

Or, Same old, Same old.

Congressman Keith Ellison plans a tour of foreclosed homes in north Minneapolis today.

The Minnesota Democrat will be joined by Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel and New Jersey Congressman Donald Payne. State elected officials and housing advocates also will be on the tour.

Afterward the delegation will meet to discuss legislative and executive responses to the foreclosure crisis.

It's not a crisis, it's a correction. People who shouldn't have gotten mortgages, or at least mortgages as big as they were, are getting their houses foreclosed. People who can't make the payments according to the terms they agreed to, are getting their houses foreclosed. People who thought ARM means free money, so they refinanced their family's home, without regard to the future, are getting their homes foreclosed.

Let it happen. Don't slow it down, or things will get worse. It's like pulling off a band-aid. Do it fast and get it over with. When it's all done, the supply/demand equation will come back into balance and home prices can fall down to realistic levels. Then, maybe, some of these people will be able to afford to own a home.

Maybe this time, they'll read the mortgage papers before signing them.

Just give them what they want...

...and they'll leave you alone, right?

Wrong.

OLSON HWY & HUMBOLDT MONDAY 2040 HOURS 08-068206

Female/61, kicked, punched, pushed to the ground by five 20-25 year old males old who also took $10 from her.

Bastard thugs should be retroactively aborted.

Quizzy Goodness

I am a: Heckler and Koch, Model P7 in 9mm

What kind of handgun are YOU?

What DnD Character am I?

I Am A: Lawful Neutral Human Wizard/Sorcerer (3rd/2nd Level)


Ability Scores:

Strength-13

Dexterity-13

Constitution-15

Intelligence-19

Wisdom-14

Charisma-15


Alignment:
Lawful Neutral A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal code directs him. Order and organization are paramount to him. He may believe in personal order and live by a code or standard, or he may believe in order for all and favor a strong, organized government. Lawful neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you are reliable and honorable without being a zealot. However, lawful neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it seeks to eliminate all freedom, choice, and diversity in society.


Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.


Primary Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.


Secondary Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.


Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

News Roundup

There is no excuse for this crap. A molester in a daycare center needs to be removed, before having his molester-bits removed. The daycare provider should have kicked him out, the state should have arrested him, the first set of parents should have protested LOUDLY.

A 4-year-old girl was molested at her St. Paul day care center by the owner's 15-year-old nephew. But no one took action to get the boy out of the home — or stop the day care from operating — until he abused another child at the day care months later.

As much as I hate the idea of more government, I am occasionally moved to consider the idea of licensing requirements for parents. Honestly, what the hell can move someone to possibly blind or otherwise maim the one person who absolutely, in all ways depends on that individual? Children should be able to have absolute trust in their parents. "Mother is the name of god in the hearts and minds of small children."

The video showed the woman dousing the girl, spraying her in the face and down her legs. The woman continued to grab the girl as she tried to flee.

Investigators said they believe the child is 3 years old.

Minnesota is moving to eliminate the mortgage industry. If you remove the incentive for businesses, the businesses will stop offering their services. If someone signs an agreement, complete with an understanding that they will lose their house if they don't live up to their end of the bargain, why does the government need to get involved? The borrowers shouldn't have signed, in the first place if they couldn't make the payments, or didn't understand the paperwork.

The worst part, is that, at the end of the year's reprieve, the homeowners will be deeper in debt. This called "passing the buck." Somehow, I bet it will be the Republican's fault when this crap law falls apart next year.

ST. PAUL — Minnesota lawmakers are moving to cut foreclosures in half this year by making banks delay proceedings against more than 15,000 homeowners who have fallen behind on subprime and other risky mortgages.

The “Subprime Mortgage Foreclosure Deferment Act” unveiled Wednesday would freeze foreclosures for some borrowers for a year, buying them time to hang onto their homes. Homeowners would have to make reduced mortgage payments or lose the deferment.

Democrat candidate Al Franken announces "I thought laws only applied to the other people".

I see a future firefighter. Way to go, kid.

Seven-year old Carter Callahan and his mother rented the downstairs portion of the home from the 80-year old man who died in the fire in Oak Grove.

Carter told KARE 11 News he noticed the fire and tried to rescue the man and then ran out of the home.

Gangs and "Tough"

A comment on Kim's site reminded me of a story.

We had a problem when we liven in COMMIEfornia with a mall in next town with hispanic gangs walking abreast down the mall corridor.

I've seen that problem at the Monstrosity Mall(of America).

At the time, I had long, dyed hair, and more piercings in my face than an uncooperative bull. I was 6’2” and weighed just over 200 pounds. My friend had a mohawk and scalp tats, standing about 6’. He was(is) a biker and looked it. Our little(!) brothers are 6’6” and 6’8”, weighing in at close to 300 pounds each.

To be clear, we had, in order:
1) My little brother. Six feet, eight inches of construction worker.
2) Me. Six feet, two inches. Long, black hair, and problems with metal detectors.
3) My friend. A reject from Mad Max, except he wears jeans under his chaps.
4) His little brother. Two inches shorter and four inches wider than mine.

When we walked into the mall, walking abreast, the little gangbanger pukes parted like the red sea.

It was fun.

Update: Damn. That's almost 1000 pounds of redneck.

Configuring a Linksys WRT54G Wireless Router as an Wireless Access point.

Yes, you can do this. You will need to do the following:

1) Power down your entire system. Disconnect the WRT54G from all other devices, wait one minute, power up the WRT54G and allow it to fully boot, then reset the WRT54G to factory defaults. Power down the WRT54G.

2) Then connect one computer, by ethernet cable, to a LAN port on the WRT54G, then power up the WRT54G and computer, and make the following changes in the WRT54G:

a) set the "Local IP address" to 192.168.1.2 (this assumes that your primary router is set to 192.168.1.1 and you are not using 192.168.1.2 elsewhere in your network)

b) set the "DHCP server" to "disabled"

c) Save your settings. You may be disconnected from the router at this point. Do not worry about it.

d) Exit your browser and power down your entire system.

3) Next, wire any LAN port from your primary router to any LAN port on the WRT54G. Do not connect anything to the Internet port on the WRT54G.

4) Power up your system. It should work. Note that your primary router will control all router settings ( DHCP server, port forwarding, firewall, etc.). Your WRT54G will only control your wireless settings.

5) I assume your primary router is also wireless. If so, set the two routers as follows:

SSID: same in both routers (do not use "linksys" )
SSID broadcast: enabled in both
Encryption: same in both
Encryption key: same in both
Channel: set routers to different channels. Ideally routers should be 5 or more channels apart. Usually channels 1, 6, and 11 work best.

Thank you, toomanydonuts

Old, or Chicken?

I'm thinking about selling my bike.

In June, Brat #3 will arrive. Brats 1 & 2 are 8 and 1, respectively. I hate the idea of not watching them grow up, and the money would be handy.

But I love to ride.

And I rarely get to, because they don't make child seats for motorcycles. Brat #1 can ride on the back seat. 2 & 3 are years away from that.

On the other hand, my wife will be staying home with the baby most of the summer, so I'll be able to ride every day...during rush hour.

Dilemmas, dilemmas.

Quote of the Day

"Well, if it's so easy to take the gun, I'll just take it back" - MNGlocker, in response to a gun-fearing radio host's comment that his gun would just be taken away from him by a criminal trying to mug him.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ, III

ruffelo's story:

We were walking through the skyway system in Minneapolis, near St. Olaf's (maybe I can zero in the location tomorrow). I was fairly aware of our surroundings, but we were also engaged in conversation. I had noticed the man in a blue jacket standing up ahead in the street-overpass, but he seemed to be talking on his cell phone. As we entered this particular overpass, he stepped towards the middle with his hand inside his jacket and loudly commanded, "Don't Move!" It is worth noting that this was the moment I realized that no one else was within sight and he had glass and a brick wall behind him.

At this point I quickly scraped aside my coat and sweater and acquired a firm grip on my handgun (IWB - 3 o'clock), as I said "What!?!" I doubt he could actually see the gun. While reaching for my gun, I thrust my weak arm out in a 'halt' sign. I don't know exactly how everything happened so quickly, but it was just as I practice.

He seemed very surprised at the resistance and quickly said, "Naw, it's cool, it's cool." This attitude change, his eyes, and his quick turn to run made it obvious that he knew exactly what I had my hand on and this was not his 'first time.'

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ, II

Xavier's Story:

I handed Little Darling her bag and took her hand as we began to negotiate the maze of parked automobiles. I glanced back and saw that the two young men had spread apart, one on either side of us and to the rear. That is when I felt it. They had matched my stride and were circling me. Like an antelope, I knew I was being stalked by jackals, only I did not know why. Time was accelerating at head pounding speed, and Little Darling, blissfully unaware, was along for the ride.

Sunday morning in the Wal-Mart parking lot.

Gygax

Full Frontal Nerdity:

The Order of the Stick:

Thank you for all of the fun times.

Another one's gone

MILWAUKEE - Gary Gygax, who co-created the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons and helped start the role-playing phenomenon, died Tuesday morning at his home in Lake Geneva. He was 69.

Requiescat in Pace, sir.

War of the Worlds

Dark Horse Comics is doing an online graphic novel of War of the Worlds. It's definitely worth reading.