I Had To Make Sure. You Know Those Politicians Lie About Everything

Soldier shoots dead politician he was guarding
Contrary to the headline, the politician was in fact very much alive up until the shooting, which ended up being a murder-suicide. This is disappointing not just because murder-suicides are generally bad, but because I really wanted to know why the security guy hated the dude enough to make sure there wouldn’t be any of this resurrection shit.

A Ugandan national army soldier has shot and killed a government minister he was guarding.
Wilson Sabiiti shot dead retired Colonel Charles Okello Engola, deputy minister for gender and labour, at his home in the capital Kampala on Tuesday.
The soldier then turned the gun on himself and took his own life.
It is not yet clear whether there had been an argument between the two men. Sabiiti was assigned to the minister’s security detail a month ago.
Before he took his own life, some eyewitnesses said they saw Sabiiti walking around the neighbourhood and shooting in the air.

Come ON, Man. Be A Pepper. Just Once. Everybody’s Doin’ It, Dude

A couple things of note here:

  1. A drug investigation resulted in the arrest of a Bruce E. Huffer, which is what prompted me to open the post thingie.
  2. Check out what the cops confiscated in the process.

    During the investigation police seized meth, marijuana, blue pills believed to be Fentanyl, yellow pills identified as Gabapentin, orange tablets with various markings, smoking devices, scales, bagging materials, several phones, recording devices, cash books, ingredients to manufacture meth, a can of Dr. Pepper, and various other items.

    Everybody sing along!

    Is there something I don’t know about Dr. Pepper? Should I be giving it another try?

We’ll Be Back To the Important Stuff Right After This Brief Wrestling Match

I haven’t seen WrestleMania yet, and I’ve been doing my best to avoid wrestling news so that there might still be some surprises for me by the time I do. But one thing that won’t be a surprise? There were a lot of damn commercials and generally wasted time. Oh, and a bunch of the matches went short so that they could fit it all in.

The shortened matches bit is a new wrinkle, but I’ve been beating that drum for years, as you likely know if you’ve been here before or have talked wrestling with me elsewhere. WWE routinely does four hour shows that could have been done in under three, and three hour shows that might need an hour and a half, tops. And it’s only gotten worse since the company was sold a few years ago. It’s not unusual now to watch a show and literally be able to skip ahead fifteen minutes or more from the time the last important thing happened to when the next one begins. Everything is a plug now. Part of that is just how business works, but eventually it does get to the point of ridiculousness. For me, that point was reached long ago, but it seems like this weekend is when the rest of the world finally caught up.

Without even trying yesterday, I smacked into not one, but two pretty mainstream articles about it. That’s bad. Or at least it would be bad if the ghouls at TKO cared at all about anything other than money and Donald Trump.

For an event named WrestleMania, there wasn’t all that much wrestling taking place.

Fans of professional wrestling are furious with WWE after the two-night show – billed as their biggest annual showcase event of the year – featured nearly as much commercials as it did in-ring action.

According to several tallies online, Saturday’s Night 1 featured roughly 86 minutes of wrestling while Night 2 on Sunday had just 82 minutes – though the second night’s total broadcast length was shorter.
However, during Night 1, there was approximately 74 minutes spent broadcasting commercials.

I’ll offer the same advice I always do. Unless it’s your job, you don’t have to watch any of this live. No one is forcing you to sit through all that crap. This isn’t the old days. I’m probably going to watch both nights of Mania in the time it took you to watch one, and while I’ll be annoyed by imagining myself being you, I’ll for sure be much happier knowing that I’m not.

No Gloves? No Love!

I saw something really really stupid that I just can’t make sense of, so I had to write it down.

Picture this. It’s January in KW. Not only is it January, but it’s this past January, you know the one where if it wasn’t snowing its face off, it was impossibly cold. Someone walks into Walmart. They’ve come in from out of town and forgot to pack a pair of warm gloves, so they hope to pick up a pair. They walk and they walk and they walk. They search the aisles. Nothing looks like where warm gloves might be hanging around. So they approach an employee. “Can you tell me where I could find some gloves?” they say.

The employee says “We don’t have any gloves anymore.”

“You’re sold out?” the person asks.

“No. We put out our spring merchandise now.”

Excuse me? That’s how you know that the orders must come down from Arkansas, you know, where nobody needs warm gloves. Have they forgotten that people lose gloves mid season and might need to replace a pair? Gloves are things people don’t just wear to be fashionable. They keep our hands warm!

I’ve seen this with other stuff, like sandals, or shorts, or certain kinds of shirts. It’s annoying, but this just seems really stupid.

Can somebody explain why stores do this? I understand that it would be stupid to leave Christmas stuff out all year, or to have Easter candy just sitting there in the summer. I know that at the beginning of a season, people buy stuff for the upcoming season. But people always need stuff to keep warm when it’s freezing cold! It just doesn’t make sense.

Carin.Stubborn@Homemadebraille.com

For one reason or another, I’ve been strolling down memory lane through the blog a lot. Sometimes it’s because of the drugs our related posts plugin is on, and sometimes it’s just because. At any rate, I came upon this post where I described trying to make Braille alphabet cards myself. It’s funny how your perspective changes as you get older. I read the post and thought “Why on earth would I sit and make alphabet cards when they’re already available? Also, hey goofball, you’d have to get someone to write the print alphabet on them, so you’re not really saving yourself any time or money with these homemade alphabet cards, ya dumbass.”

It also struck me that I’m a slow learner, and here’s why. That post was written in 2010. But I have a story that I’ve never written down that involves me trying to manually braille out multiple copies of something, a story that had a bunch of the same struggles as this one did. This story happened in 2013 and I might as well write about it now. But if I learned from my 2010 experience, I never would have gone through it at all.

Way back in 2013, Some people from my awesome job were invited to a National Federation of the Blind convention so we could accept an award. Myself, my boss, and our chief operations officer at the time were the ones who were going to go.

Time was passing, and I thought everything was under control. Then one night, a couple of weeks before go time as I was peacefully sleeping away, my mind woke me with a start. In the middle of my dream, a gong sounded and a booming voice said “Braille business cards!” I knew exactly what I was trying to tell myself. I knew that my boss and I had business cards in Braille, but did the COO? And if he didn’t, did we have enough time to get them professionally done? We were going to a convention full of blind people. We had to have Braille business cards.

I asked him the next day, and he said “No. Do you know where I could get some?” Um…yes, but no. Yes, because I knew the place that the company used to do them. No, because they wouldn’t have them ready for the convention.

So I went into panic mode. In a fit of stupidity, I told his executive assistant that if she sent over some of his business cards, I would manually braille them. She did, and I tried. But my failures were even more spectacular than the ones on the alphabet card post. I had 0 margin for error, and I am not perfect. Eventually I had to admit defeat and come up with something else.

I remembered those index cards that I had on hand for making alphabet cards and thought I could probably get 3 business card-sized pieces out of each one. I could braille what would have gone on the actual business cards on the index cards. Then I would go to Staples and get them to cut them into business card-sized pieces for me. They wouldn’t have any print, but at least they were in Braille.

So that’s what I did. I brailled and I brailled and I brailled. I think I can probably still remember what I wrote on those index cards. That man’s name and email address are etched into my memory.

Staples did not disappoint me. Everything looked like business card-sized pieces. I did the best I could. I had also told my boss who was coming to the convention about my adventures. She said she would try to figure out a way to get the print on there.

She did end up coming up with a better solution, although she was impressed with how business card-like they looked. I don’t know where she found it, but she found a company that would somehow put braille on see-through paper with a backing you could peel off. So we brought real business cards, and stuck the sticky Braille to them, and we were all good. My crazy Staples creations were never used, but at least I had something.

My point is maybe, if I’d remembered what happened in 2010, I might have found the sticky Braille before needlessly slaving away on those pseudo-business cards. Oh well, I guess it makes for a good story.

Thank Goodness We Don’t Go To Thunder Bay

Steve was helping me out finding links for my WaddleLoo post and came upon the story of Dom’s kindred spirit. “Why do you say that?” I hear you asking. “Was he a golden retriever? Maybe he was a guide dog.” Nope. He loved chasing geese a wee bit too much, and chased one out onto a not so stable ice drift in the middle of Thunder Bay harbour.

So now that I’ve got you truly confused, let me tell you a story. Domino doesn’t seem to get too interested in a lot of wild or domesticated animal life. He doesn’t care about squirrels, or birds, or even some other dogs. But the one thing he cannot resist is geese. Yup, those same aggressive, lunging, hissing geese I was talking about before. I’ll never know if this is true, but one day when we were walking home, I swear I felt him lunge for a goose. Dom, buddy ol’ pal, you don’t want to do that. That is not a moving dog toy. I can’t remember if this was before or after the incident where the geese were chasing us, so I can’t be sure if he was feeling protective of me, or if he decided this goose was an irresistible flying thing.

But the craziest story involving Domino and geese happened last Thanksgiving. My sister’s husband was very sweet and kept offering to take Domino outside so he could do his duty while I was at their cottage for the weekend. But he wouldn’t bother with a leash. He’d just go out with him and let him loose to do his thing. Over the course of the weekend, not once, but twice, Domino got distracted from what he went out to do and went in hot pursuit of a goose! He ran and he ran. The goose went into the lake, and Dom dove right in after it! I guess he was channelling his inner retriever. Thankfully, my mom saw what was going on, yelled for him and he came right back, but that meant he needed to be towelled off and kept outside until he dried so he didn’t leave wet trails all over the cottage. Like I said, this happened twice in a couple of days!

After reading this story, I’m very thankful we have never been somewhere cold where there could have been thin ice for Domino to walk out on, because I think the temptation of the geese might be too much.

Help Save Braille Doodle

When I was at the CSUN assistive technology conference last year, I was walking around the exhibit hall checking out whatever I could check out. There’s never enough time to see everything, and I always stumble onto things I had no idea were even there.

One of those things was the Braille Doodle. It’s a neat little tablet. On one side, you can make tactile drawings with a little magnetic stylus. On the other side is where the user can learn Braille. It shows you a letter, and then you can try to recreate the same letter in the cell next to it. I didn’t get to play with it for long, but I could tell it had potential, not just for wee little kids, but for adults who are learning Braille. The prospect of learning Braille can feel daunting and I think this neat little gadget can help make it easier and much more fun!

I think about one of my classmates from my last guide dog class. She really wanted to learn, but it’s a lot, and Braille is nothing like print, so probably felt even more complicated for someone who lost vision later on. I wanted to help her get started by using a muffin tin and some tennis balls to simulate the Braille cell, but guide dog class is not a time when there’s lots of excess time and energy, so it didn’t happen. But I think she would probably find learning Braille to be much more fun with this thing.

But I guess the start for this product was bumpy, and not in the Braille sort of way. They sold a bunch of units, but when they got the second batch made, they found a defect in a lot of them. So rather than ship defective units, they held them back until they could fix the problem. But this meant they took a big hit.

They have found a way to fix the problem, but they still need support until things are truly on their way. So they’re raising money to help get back on their feet.

I only saw the Braille Doodle for a brief moment, so I can’t describe it properly. But there are lots of videos on their GoFundMe page. Check them out. And if you feel so inclined, throw them some money. Every little bit helps.

Here’s a silly aside. Whenever I think about the Braille Doodle, I think about the old Magna Doodle,

And then I just can’t resist trying to imitate something I’ve only seen in a home movie. I got to watch one movie of Steve and family getting Christmas presents when he was younger. In the video, among other things, Steve’s little sister got a Magna Doodle and kept singing “Magna Doodle, Magna Doodle!” I guess it sounded more like “Magadoodle, Magadoodle!” But now if anything has Doodle in it, I sing the song. Magna Doodle, Labradoodle, Snickerdoodle, Braille Doodle, it doesn’t matter. It’s all an excuse to sing the song. I’m a silly goof.

Capitalism 1, Not Sounding Silly 0

Now that I’ve written this, I feel that I have a duty to note goofy sponsored sports stuff whenever I hear it.

While listening to the Seattle Mariners game just now, I was informed that “the Mechanics Bank score is Mariners 1, Rangers nothing”.

Two thoughts warred in my mind as I took that fact in.

  1. Dear god. Has it really come to this?
  2. How has none of these greedy dinguses ever thought to do that before? It’s only the most important thing about any sporting event. Seems like it should be one of the easiest, most obvious things to ruin.

I also have to wonder whether it’s only the Mechanics Bank score when Seattle is winning. Today I had to switch away before I could find out, but I’ll be sure to report back should I learn more.

Meat Department Joke Goes Here

There’s a bit of everything here. Racial slurs. Death threats. Apple throwing. Flower smashing. Relations with a refrigerator. Thank you, Seattle Police Department blotter.

On Aug. 5 at about a 2:15 p.m., patrol officers responded to the 1700 block of East Madison Street following a report of a man using racial slurs and brandishing a knife at security. Shortly after, he also threatened to kill everyone in the store.
According to the security guard, he confronted the man for allegedly “humping” a refrigerator and attempting to do the same to a customer. When challenged, the suspect became upset and kicked a flower display. He also threw apples.
Multiple officers responded and arrested the suspect for felony Harassment. Police booked the suspect, a registered sex offender, into the King County Jail.

Whoever wrote this release was clearly channelling their inner me, being sure to let us know that these were the “cold hard facts” and observing that this fellow’s life could get a lot more difficult if the judge ruled that he wasn’t allowed within 500 feet of a refrigerator.