Whitebread on Patrol

We do this with several other couples. The first few years we traded $20 bills. Now we just go to dinner together sometime during the holidays and go dutch on the bill.

I wish my entire family would do it. Every year everyone gets lots of thoughtful, cute, and completely unneeded crap that ends up cluttering our homes or being discretely offloaded.

Does anyone else do this with anyone in their life?

I share this here because less than 1% of my non-interweb friends will get these jokes. Use them this holiday season on family when you feel that you aren’t getting enough blank stares.

Went to the mother in-law’s house for Thanksgiving. Stopped at the IHOP on the way back for dinner. Left a $20 tip for the waitress that had been there since 0800. If popular perception is to be my guide, I am now mandated to turn in my libertarian card and throw away all my Ayn Rand novels.

Today is the day off I get in place of Veteran’s Day. I was out running errands, and one of my stops was a place where, by state law, carrying a gun is a crime, even with a Handgun Carry Permit.

I had already taken my holster off to put it in the glove box when I remembered that the badge in my pocket lets me carry just about anywhere I want.

Then I remembered that my wife, who is probably a better person than I and just as proficient, isn’t trusted to carry her legal gun into that building.

Then I was angry.

Four hours of boring paperwork but pleasant people. Lunch. Two hours of being yelled at by the SWAT Commander. Two hours being driven around the city with more pleasant company.  Given a training schedule that puts us at six weeks of training (including two weeks of dedicated weapons training and interspersed follow-up after that), followed by two weeks of FTO, a 10-week academy, and then lots more FTO.

Came home and ran until I threw up, then walked a bit more. Ate a heaping plateful of food and still feel like I’m starving.

Am supposed to be standing behind my desk at parade rest at 0745 tomorrow morning.

Getting pepper sprayed on Thursday.

Will need to find a way to make posts password-protected if I want to continue to post about work.

Went to the PD today to get poked, prodded, measured, photographed, etc. Got all ten fingers printed plus palm prints… times five.  Saw an open box marked [Whitebread] full of leather holsters and reflective rain gear. Got called “officer” by the staff.

Two weeks until my first day. 18 days to my swearing in. Academy isn’t until the start of the year. Until then I think it’s in-service training and “ridealongs with a gun”.

Received in the mail today:

Dear Whitebread:

This letter is to advise you that you are being offered an at-will employment position as a Police Officer, with an hourly rate of $[Not Much], with the City of [The City, My The City], contingent upon satisfactory completion of our pre-employment physical examination, drug screen, and psychological examination.

Continuing my search for interesting InfoSec demonstrations and lectures, I came across this gem.

Basically, this guy is saying that if you want to keep the goons at the airport from going through/stealing your tech gear, pack a gun in the case with it.

I’ve had good success doing this when flying. Checking a gun means you get to use a REAL non-TSA lock, and they can only open it for searches while you are present.

Deviant Ollam – Packing & The Friendly Skies from Deviant Ollam on Vimeo.

I had finished my work for the day and was waiting for the office to close, so I pulled up a video on Wardriving. An incident within the demonstration caught my attention. Check it out starting at about 5:00.

Fail.

Whitebread: http://fukung.net/v/7384/2240lz0.jpg
pdb: see, if I ever run a company, I’m gonna make at least one slacker hipster sit on the product review team
pdb: if he starts snickering at a design, another guy finds out why
Whitebread: Are you calling me a slacker hipster?
pdb: good god no
pdb: you’re the least hip person I know
pdb: Mr I didn’t know Dougie Hauser was gay
Whitebread: This did not go in the direction I had hoped

This all started with a bladder infection.

The smaller of our two cats, Cloud, got a bladder infection that caused him to start piddling on the dining room floor. We got the infection cleared up, but the piddling remained. We tried everything, and even tried giving him to Squeaky, who eventually found that he was piddling on her carpet, as well. She sent him out to live on the family farm of her fiance, where he is currently chasing bugs and birds and having the time of his floor-piddling life outside.

But we still had Abigail, the Maine Coon we adopted shortly after getting married. Cloud, always aggressive and feisty, had always driven the more antisocial Abby nuts. We found that not having a second cat was even worse, though, in that she constantly cried for attention after being at home alone all day.

Obviously, we needed a second cat in the house. Our preference was for a more laid-back feline that wouldn’t terrorize Abby, while still providing company to keep her from driving us insane. I’d had Himalayan cats growing up, and my experience had shown that long-haired cats tended to avoid the psychopathy of tabbies.

Last Sunday, headed home from lunch after church, we stopped at a whim at PetSmart to see what they had up for adoption.

We found a long-haired cat with the name “Symphony” on the cage. She seemed very lethargic, but was a pretty cat. When the volunteer noticed our interest, she pulled the near-limp cat out of the cage and handed her to MrsWhitebread, whereupon the cat started purring. It was only then that we noticed that Symphony didn’t have a front right leg.

The volunteer explained that she had been found limping along with her right leg drawn close to her body, and a shattered canine tooth which was badly infected. An x-ray determined that the right elbow had shattered into pieces, rendering the leg unusable, and that this injury appeared to have occured early in the approximated two year life of the cat. Our theory is that she fell or was thrown from a tall distance, which broke her leg and shattered the tooth on the same side.

The pet rescue program paid for the operation to remove the useless leg and infected tooth completely from privately donated funds, which must have cost a fortune. The surgery took place on April 1st, and “Symphony” seemed to have made a full recovery.

Almost from the moment she was first handed to us, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that this would be the cat we would take home. We filled out the paperwork, bought a carrier and bed, and set the cat inside. She immediately plopped down in the same position we had found her in, completely exhausted.

She was very skittish and tired easily when we got her home, which caused me to worry that she might be in a great deal of discomfort and might not ever really be happy. The last week, however, has been a series of pleasant surprises about her ability and her attitude. This is a seriously happy little cat. She doesn’t appear to be in any pain, even when being picked up, is constantly affectionate, and has even started playing. (How does a three-legged cat chase a ball across the carpet? I can’t explain it, but it involves scooting and is absolutely hilarious. Video soon.)

We named her Breda, with Breda’s permission.

Her health seems excellent. She is mildly overweight, which is not surprising considering her inactivity in the month following the surgery and the wet food they were feeding her. Now that she is playing and eating dry food, I’m sure that she will trim up a little bit.

Anyway. Pictures:

I once had the displeasure of watching my coworker receive a phone call from his daughter telling him that her car had been broken into. She had been travelling with three friends in a large city for sightseeing and shopping. On the final morning they had checked out of their hotel room and gone to the local mall for a few hours before it was time to head home. Heeding her dad’s advice about keeping her valuables safe, she had the girls lock their cameras and laptops in the trunk with the luggage instead of leaving them in plain view in the cabin. The cabin was bare of anything remotely valuable when they left.

You can guess what happened. Someone apparently watched them move their bags to the trunk before going into the mall, smashed the driver’s side window, popped the trunk, and helped themselves to the contents. Three laptops, two DSLR cameras, a cell phone, and the luggage of all four girls was gone.

I sometimes store a computer or a firearm in the trunk of my car, so this bothered me greatly. Yes, part of the solution is not to be seen at your destination loading something into your trunk, but that’s not always practical.

I decided to add another button to my trunk release, so that both buttons must be pushed simultaneously in order to pop the trunk.

The concept is simple, and having heard it, you could probably figure out how to make it happen for yourself. Still, here’s pictures from my installation. The pictures are absolutely craptacular, as they were taken with my BlackBerry.

If you’re already into this sort of thing, this project will cost less than $5 and an hour of your time. You’ll need:

• Two wires long enough to run from your trunk release button to your new button. I like to use pairs from cat5 cable for this sort of work. I picked the brown and brown/white pair. You may vary your color selection if you wish.
• Button, button, who’s got the button? Any momentary pushbutton will do. I got a red one and a black one at Radio shack, $3 for the pair.
• Scissors or a knife to strip wire.
• Electrical tape and/or wire nuts.
• Solder and soldering iron. Since this is in a car, a battery-operated soldering iron is preferred. You can use a traditional soldering iron with an extension cord, but make sure you’re using a heavy-gauge extension cord.

First, you’ll need to get to the wires behind your trunk release button. On my 1997 Mercury Sable, this is as simple as prying off the plastic cover around the button.

You’ll be picking one of the wires, cutting it, and attaching both ends to your long wire. You only need to cut ONE of these wires! ONE! I suggest waiting until you have the wire in place before cutting anything, as there might not be much extra slack in this wire to prevent it from falling back into the body.

I decided to mount my extra button with the sunroof controls, which are on the ceiling of the cabin above the rear-view mirror.

How you hide your wire depends on your car, but it’s not as hard as you might think. Most cars are packed with flexible trim that can be pulled back to hide a wire. People who install car stereo equipment do this all the time.

I was able to make my wire completely invisible to the user. Mission accomplished!

Cut ONE of the wires going to the button that came with your car. Strip a half-inch off both ends of this wire that you’ve exposed, strip your new wires, and connect each of your new wires to one end of the factory wire. Twist together and tape. You don’t *have* to solder, but I prefer to make a really good connection so they won’t want to vibrate apart later. Remember that your car gets very warm, and that will have an impact on your electrical tape. This means that you can use the tape to keep metal apart that you don’t want to touch, but don’t use it to keep things physically together if you can avoid it.

Even if you don’t solder anywhere else, you’ll need to solder now to connect your wire pair to your new button. This is how I mounted my button. I’ll note that if you get a small enough button, the diameter of it is small enough that you can skip the drill and just drive your hot soldering iron through the plastic to which you desire to mount it. I would never do such a reckless thing, of course.

Presto. If you press the red button, nothing happens. If you press the trunk release, nothing happens. If you press them both at once, the circuit is closed and the trunk pops open.

Alternately, you could completely remap your trunk release so that, in this case for example, the trunk release does nothing but the red button releases the trunk. I don’t recommend this for two reasons: First, anyone in your car who notices the strange button (kids?) will want to press it, opening your trunk. Second, many cars (like mine) will release the trunk even if you’re in gear and going 75 down the interstate. If If I’m trying to operate my sunroof, for example, I might accidentally press the button. As a second button, that wouldn’t do anything. As the only button, it will release the trunk lid. Bad juju.

Hope this has given you some good ideas. Obviously I can’t be held responsible if you monkey with the electrical system in your car and break it and/or yourself. Proceed with caution.

Sams recently started carrying Plano cases with wheels that are about the size of a footlocker. Price: $14.67 plus tax.

It fits suspiciously well into the trunk of my car, and fits all the crap I always have in there (trunk bag, blanket, toolbox, air compressor, socket set, crowbar). It is also not lost on me that an AR-length rifle would sit neatly inside.

They have two buckles on the front and one on each size. Everything is overbuilt and sturdy except the hinges. When the box is closed I’m pretty sure I could throw it down a flight of stairs full of rocks and it would survive. It has rollers on one side, but with no extending handle they aren’t practical to use unless the contents are heavy enough to merit crouching to pull the thing, or you are short enough that the side handle is at a natural position while walking.

And they have notches to stay lined up while stacked. I think I’m going to have to pick up half a dozen of these. They beat the ever-loving snot out of rubbermaids.

Presented without comment.

Flickr gallery here.

Again, thanks to xyankeeworkshop for the plans. I’m enjoying the setup immensely.