Sleepless in Midland

"Bromance" and other new words

Heard the word "bromance" a couple of weeks ago. Had to look it up.

Oxford doesn't have it, but they've got lots of other good words that are new enough and yet old enough to qualify as "new words," celebutante, mentee, and rendition, for examples.

One has to go to UrbanDictionary.com to get a definition of bromance. I thought it meant a homosexual relationship, but no, the word "Describes the complicated love and affection shared by two straight males."

Then there's nomance -- a romance that is going nowhere.

Also homance. A relationship between a john and a ho, right? Nope. "When 2 straight females have a really close friendship with strong love and affection towards one another. It is like a bromance for females." Okee dokey.

Here's one that is so new it isn't even in the UrbanDictionary. Foemance -- a love hate relationship. Let's see how long it takes for someone to submit it there.

Obama's Chinese fortune cookies

Imoa.us speculates about what Obama's fortune cookies might have said on his trip to China. Sample:

You do good job! Take a bow!

Some of the best ones are in the comments: for example:

Stimulus have more pork than million eggroll

Um, this isn't racism, is it? One never knows.

A welder's sparking rod - Plus a manhole exposed!

No, it's not gay porn. It's a water drainage pipe repair.

Left click on a thumbnail for a larger pop-up.

There's something mesmerizing about welding. The sparks, the bright glow, the smoke -- it's a cross between 4th of July fireworks and Christmas lights. Throw in Labor Day, and it's a holiday triple treat.

Then there's the manhole. We've all seen manhole covers in sidewalks and streets. But did you ever wonder what the rest of it looks like? Well, there it is in fiberglass splendor.  A manhole xxxposed!

I didn't know what it was and had to ask. All of this is taking place at a road repair project at the intersection of Garfield and Golf Course Rd. in Midland, Texas.

I'm becoming a such a nuisance around that work site that I was told I need a hard hat, a reflective vest and safety glasses. In other words, gear up or get lost.

Free tickets! MCT production of "A Christmas Carol"

Three new contests!

This time the prizes will be pairs of tickets to the Midland Community Theatre production of "A Christmas Carol" on three separate nights.

It's a play based on the tear jerking, heart warming Charles Dickens story about a mean old rich guy and a poor working class family, and ... well, I don't want to give it away. (Heh heh. Is there anyone who is not already familiar with the story?) The theatre people are calling it a "musical," but surely there's a "bah humbug" in there somewhere.

So here's the deal. I've got six tickets -- two each for the Saturday night performances on November 28, December 5, and December 12. There will be three separate contests for those tickets. To enter the contest please email me telling me which night you want and you will be entered in the contest for that night's tickets. A drawing will determine who wins. You can enter all three contests, but you can only win one pair of tickets. Already won tickets in a previous contest? No problem.

The deadline for each contest will be noon on the Monday before the performance. I'll email the winners asking for an address for snail mailing the tickets.

Email me to enter. And good luck!

Road Repair -- work day two

It's the formerly busy intersection of Garfield Street and Golf Course Road in Midland, Texas, currently closed to traffic. City Engineer Rene Franks was kind enough to explain what happened in terms elementary enough that even I could understand.

There's good news, and there's bad news. First, the good news. The old pipe will be dug up in the intersection and replaced with new plastic pipe with a 50 year life expectancy. And the bad news? The intersection will probably be closed until after Thanksgiving. OK, we got that out of the way.

Ms. Franks provided a little history. There are some natural low spots in the area that have always accumulated rain water --maybe they were buffalo wallows. The city made these temporary reservoirs into parks, and drainage pipes were put under the streets so that the water could be pumped out of the parks.

But these 35 year old pipes developed problems in two ways.

The drainage pipes were coated with zinc which should prevent corrosion. However, a rock might enter the system and bounce along the bottom, nicking the zinc all along the way. Once the zinc was nicked, corrosion could occur. First a pin hole would develop, and the pressure of the draining water would create a jet of water which would eat away at the surrounding soil. The hole gets bigger, and water creates a cavern.

The other way, and the one which caused the most damage in this intersection, was a size mismatch in the drainage pipes. There's a water line crossing the spot where the drainage pipe was supposed to have been. And the original installers attempted to solve this problem by using a smaller diameter drain pipe in that spot to avoid having to move the water pipe. The smaller drain pipe was connected to the bigger drain pipe with an adapter. Eventually the adapter gave way, and a major soil erosion problem developed under the street producing a big cavern. But amazingly, a layer of caliche above the leak became so compacted that it formed a hard ceiling which prevented the street from collapsing into the cavern.

Ultimately, a small hole appeared at the surface, and that started this whole ball rolling.

P.S. The same thing happened a year ago at an intersection a mile West of this one. And there are drain pipe connections with the same type adapter all over the city.

Obama searches for his approval rating

Road Repair Day One -- a surgeon's touch with heavy equipment

It's the intersection of Garfield and Golf Course Road, Midland, Texas. Saturday afternoon a hole was discovered under the street, and it was determined that a water drainage pipe had ruptured. The spillage eroded the ground creating a cavern under the street.

Sunday was a day of rest, and repairs began today, Monday, as a crew used heavy equipment to dig up portions of the street. As you can see from the photos, standing water in the drain pipe must have rusted out the bottom.

The photos are pop-ups.  Left click on a thumbnail and a pop-up should appear in the current window or tab.

The CAT 416E operator looked like a surgeon performing a delicate operation as he carefully moved that heavy shovel in and around the gas pipe.  The only question now is how much of the drainage pipe to uncover, remove, and replace with more durable plastic.

Sorry commuters, it will still be a while before the intersection opens again.

Previously: Attention Midland Commuters -- a big hole where the street was.

Attention Midland commuters -- a big hole where the street was

Anyone who regularly passes through the intersection of Garfield St. and Golf Course Rd. in Midland, Texas, will need to plan for a traffic interruption the next few days.

One wonders how long it took to develop, but yesterday afternoon the surface finally broke. A driver saw a hole in the street and alerted firefighters at a nearby station. They took one look and called in the troops.

All photos are pop-up.  Left click on a thumbnail and a pop-up should appear in the current window or tab.

The Street Department blocked nearby intersections and widened the hole for a better look.

 

It seems that a waste water line sprang a leak, and the escaping water washed out a significant amount of soil under the street. The result: a big bad hole. What a mess.

I'm tired.  Watching people work is such an exhausting endeavor.

Updated: See Road Repair Day One -- a surgeon's touch with heavy equipment.

If you captured Osama bin Laden, what would you do with him?

Shortly after 09/11/01 there was an informal query circulating among friends: If by some circumstance you captured Osama bin Laden, what would you do with him?

It was an interesting little exercise. Would you kill him then and there? Would you try to inflict on him some of the pain and horror his victims experienced? Would you see that he got a trial, and if so, in what tribunal?

All of this comes to mind as we learn that Atty General Eric Holder has elected to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to the U.S. to be put on trial. Now there are all sorts of problems that could result from that decision. For starters, Mr. Mohammed is not shy, so we can assume he will be trying hard to exercise U.S. Constitutional rights of free speech in the most outlandish sort of way.

Leap forward and assume Osama bin Laden is captured. He would be read a Miranda warning, and with the precedent set by the Obama administration, brought to the U.S. for trial. Let the circus begin.

In the meantime, we can hope that the main stream media won't provide KSM too big of a soap box.

An expensive apostrophe

A Welsh View directs us to this typo. Or maybe it was just a case of not knowing the proper usage of an apostrophe. When "it" has possession the rules get thrown for a loop.

It's a Range Rover magazine advertisement, and this mistake must have been seen by dozens of people before the magazine hit the stands. But it probably passed under the radar of a lot of magazine readers, too.

In all fairness, mistakes like this are easy to overlook. Recently I found a horrendous mistake in one of my blog post titles from last summer. But that's the beauty of blogging, mistakes are fixable. Catching them is another matter altogether.

Citizen Police Academy

They've had 35 of these in Midland, Texas, and the 35th Citizen Police Academy ended last night with a certificate presentation and a delicious meal at a local restaurant. The citizen academy is a public relations effort on behalf of the MPD, and for anyone interested in the workings of the police department, these courses are excellent learning opportunities. Plus free T-shirts! It was a win/win situation.

Officers from each of the departments described what they do, and they all answered questions in the most knowledgeable and cordial manner. (The organizational chart you see on the right came from the 2008 MPD Annual Report.)

There was too much material to try to summarize, so I'll just say that it was an excellent program, and every citizen should try to take advantage of this opportunity to get to know the police a little bit better.

Here's one little tidbit that may or may not be helpful to know. A SWAT team leader gave a lecture and showed some of the gear they use. And he answered questions.

Sample question: "A Midland citizen is in bed at night, he's got his handgun by the side of the bed, and he hears a commotion at the front door. If it's the police he would comply with what ever they demanded. But how does he know whether it's a home invasion or the SWAT team?"

Long answer made short: "There have been home invasions in Midland where the invaders said they were police. ... You don't know."

On a lighter note, there were plenty of power point presentations with lots of photos, among which were crime scene photos including a cadaver on a slab, a decomposing body, a severed head, and wounds too gruesome to describe. Enjoy that free meal.

The arson trial, the guilty verdict, the execution, and the Texas Governor

Texas Governor Rick Perry replaced the head and some members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission (TFSC) in September, and some are crying foul -- CNN, for example. Before the shake up, the TFSC had hired a consultant to investigate and report on the case against Cameron Todd Willingham who had been convicted and executed. And there's the lingering feeling among death penalty opponents that Governor Perry was trying to sweep the whole thing under the rug. Examples here and here.

The Willingham case

It happened a couple of days before Christmas in 1991. The wife left the house that morning while Mr. Willingham and the three children slept. A fire broke out, Mr. Willingham got out of the house with minimal injury, but the three children perished. Mr. Willingham was accused of deliberately starting the fire, and he was tried, convicted and executed.

Was Mr. Willingham guilty? At this point it's hard to say. The consultant hired by the TFSC reported that a State Fire Marshal made some conclusions that, based on the available evidence, would not be sound by today's standards. But Mr. Willingham's story had some holes in it, for example, he said escaped the fire through the kitchen door. However, the first firefighter on the scene said there was a refrigerator blocking that door. And there's this:

Fireman Franks also said that after the fire, Mr. Willingham came back to his house and poured a large bottle of British Sterling cologne on the floor from the bathroom to the room in which the twins had died and said that if any more samples were taken from the floor, those samples would have cologne on them.

What should a juror make of that behavior? Was he trying to contaminate the scene? There was a jailhouse snitch, too, who said Mr. Willingham confessed that he had deliberately set the fire to cover up an injury he caused to one of the kids.

The jury was convinced, but who knows what really happened? Anyone interested should read the consultant's report and the Corsicana Fire Department's response.

Texas Forensic Science Commission

Back to the shake up at the TFSC. The TFSC was created in 2005 by H.B. No. 1068. It established a nine member commission with the following duties:

Sec.4.DUTIES.(a) The commission shall:
(1) develop and implement a reporting system through which accredited laboratories, facilities, or entities report professional negligence or misconduct;
(2) require all laboratories, facilities, or entities that conduct forensic analyses to report professional negligence or misconduct to the commission; and
(3) investigate, in a timely manner, any allegation of professional negligence or misconduct that would substantially affect the integrity of the results of a forensic analysis conducted by an accredited laboratory, facility, or entity.

Put simply, the TFSC was created to oversee crime labs. And it was probably a legislative reaction to all the reports of bad science coming out of the crime labs in Houston and elsewhere in the state.

However, the TFSC seemed to have gone off track a little bit when it got involved in death penalty politics. Before the shakeup they had not established any policies and procedures to accomplish their legal duties. And the hiring of the consultant to scrutinize and try to disprove the Fire Marshal's testimony in the Willingham case may have been beyond their authorization.

It shouldn't have come as a great surprise, then, to see the shakeup. And the new presiding officer, Williamson County District Attorney, John Bradley, maintains his independence from the governor. And they will issue a report on the Willingham case, eventually.

So those of us out here in flyover country should just sit tight and wait for their report. Some mistakes were probably made in the investigation, but nothing is going to bring Mr. Willingham back to life, and the TFSC is not going to rule or even opine on his guilt or innocence.  And there are plenty of other reasons to critize the Governor without trying to build up an issue on this case.

Can you buy a used ATM full of card numbers? Apparently so.

This guy bought an ATM through Craigslist in Boston, and after his friend read the manual, they managed to get it to reel out tape with hundreds of credit and debit card data. Read about it at I Bought an ATM off Craigslist for $750 w/1000 CC#s on it. Yup..

And watch a news video at Myfoxboston.com.

Pretty amazing.

NY cop: "Hey, look at this cool laser on my Glock." BAM! "Oops, sorry."

First the good news: handgun accidents are on the decline. The bad news: they still happen, often with tragic consequences.

 An off duty cop in Eastchester, NY, was showing a friend the laser sight on his Glock 9mm handgun, and he accidentally shot the friend in the throat. The friend was pronounced dead at the hospital. Link.

Police department armorers like Glocks because, among other reasons, they have fewer parts than some other brands, and many people believe they are more reliable. But, they have a light trigger pull and no manual safety. In the Eastchester case the police officer was pointing the gun at his friend, and the police officer's finger must have been on the trigger. A Glock is very unforgiving of carelessness. So adherence to gun safety rules is a must.

Let's review Richard Fairburn's Causes and cures for the negligent discharge:

1. All guns are always loaded. (Even if they are not, treat them as if they are.)

2 Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy. (For those who insist “this particular gun is unloaded,” see Rule 1.)

3. Keep your finger off the trigger till your sights are on the target. (This is the Golden Rule. Its violation is directly responsible for about 60 percent of inadvertent discharges.)

4. Identify your target, and what is behind it. (Never shoot at anything that you have not positively identified.) What I mean by the term negligent discharge (ND) is, a round fired from an officer’s weapon that they didn’t intend to fire. Several factors can enter into the causation of a ND, but they almost invariably involve mishandling on the officer’s part.

Finally, the photo of the handgun you see above was borrowed from lohud.com because of the neat way their CSI crew packed up that handgun. Looks like a very efficient way to store a handgun for evidence.

Thanks to Clif Sikes, CHL instructor and MPD Crime Analysis Supervisor, for the pointer.

The Poor Man's Fall Foliage Tour

Some people take expensive trips to the Northeast to get to see fall foliage, and it's probably worth it for those who can afford it. For the rest of us there's the poor boy foliage tour -- a slow drive around town. And the fall foliage in west Texas makes for some very pleasant sight seeing.

[Left click on a photo for a bigger pop-up.]

Here are a few shots taken in the past two days. Some of the tree leaves are turning a brilliant yellow before they fall off the trees. And some turn a beautiful red. I suppose the difference between the Northeast and here would be quantity but not quality.

There's always the human input, too. Ya gotta love this place.

Top ten ways to tell whether your Army shrink is a Jihadist

Nidal Malik Hasan's brother tells reporters that the good doctor was a "peaceful, loving and compassionate person who has shown great interest in the medical field and in helping others". And yet he went on a killing spree murdering unarmed soldiers at close range.

We here at Sleepless in Midland are also interested in helping others, especially the psychiatry patients who might end up with a doctor like Hasan. The road to recovery might be a little bit shorter if they knew whether their shrink was wacko. So here are some clues Army psychiatry patients should look for.

Top ten ways to tell whether your Army shrink is a Jihadist:

10. His psychiatrist's couch is a bed of nails.

9. Excuses himself to change into something more comfortable, comes back wearing a suicide vest.

8. Says he doesn't want to get in your head, he wants to remove your head.

7. Diplomas on the wall: college, med school, terrorist training camp.

6. Keeps referring to "Commander in Chief Osama, er, I mean Obama."

5. Instead of 12 step program, a 12 gauge shotgun.

4. Can't stop talking about his favorite TV show: "Dancing With the Stars In The Arab Street."

3. On his wall: photos of Freud, Jung, Bin Laden.

2. You try to tell him about your PTSD, he interrupts screaming, "I'm the one with PTSD!"

1. Sign on door: "Gone fishing killing infidels."

Happy Carl Sagan Day, 11/7/09

Billions and billions -- the "Cosmos" series that ran on PBS years ago educated millions of viewers.

Carl Sagan caught some criticism from the scientific community because he became so popular among the non-scientists. But that changed when they realized that being popular wasn't such a bad thing.

Sagan was a big foe of junk science, and he did his best to try to expose hoaxes, debunk myths and educate people. His book A Demon Haunted World was a good one in that regard. But judging by the junk science that gets passed around as fact these days, the Sagan effect was temporary.

Broward College in Florida is honoring him today with the first annual Carl Sagan Day with guests such as Phil Plait and the famous skeptic James Randi who offers the $1 million paranormal challenge -- some easy money for any mind reader or spoon bender out there.

Sigh. If only I had a transporter to beam me to Florida for a few hours.

Good job, Sergeant Kimberly Munley

This is a hero's story.

If you hear gun fire, do you go toward it or away from it? Sergeant Kimberly Munley did something few of us could have done. But she was trained well, and she used that training to save countless lives when she charged into a gun fight and shot Major Nidal Malik Hasan who was on a killing spree at Fort Hood, Texas, on 11/5/09.

Here's the way the Statesman described it:

[Director of emergency services at Fort Hood Chuck] Medley said Thursday’s shooting began in a medical area of the Soldier Readiness Center building around 1:20 p.m. By 1:27 p.m., Munley had arrived, he said, and was outside the building when the shooter, who he identified as Hasan, emerged from the building, gun in hand.

Medley said Hasan ran toward Munley, firing at her. He said Munley returned fire with her pistol, hitting him. Munley was shot in both legs and one wrist, he said. He did not know how many times she was shot.

She entered a very dangerous situation and ended the threat. And by golly, she deserves the highest honor for that bravery. Here's more from that same Statesman article:

Munley is a civilian police officer with the Department of the Army and serves as a SWAT team member and firearms instructor for the department, Medley said. He said she joined the police force in January 2008 after serving in the Army.

Medley said the Army police department had been doing ‘active shooter training’ as a precautionary measure since the 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech University in which a student killed 32 others before taking his own life.

“When you have an active shooter hurting people, our protocol is to move to the threat and eliminate it. That takes some courage and skill,” he said. “If there was a person there to respond, Kim Munley is the one we would want to be there.”

Going toward not away from gunfire is a hard thing to do. In 2007 I had the privilege of watching some police officers at an active shooter session training session -- see Active Shooter Training at PBLEA for the writeup and a link to photos. An officer explained that the training process was analogous to teaching someone to crawl, walk, trot then run. And the objective was to inoculation the officers to the unpredictability and danger of a situation so he/she could think clearly and proceed to eliminate the threat.

Clearly, Sgt. Munley was trained well, and it paid off.

And she has a personal side.  WSJ says this is Munley's Twitter site:

Name Kim Munley
Location Killeen, TX
Bio I live a good life....a hard one, but I go to sleep peacefully @ night knowing that I may have made a difference in someone's life.

I hope you slept peacefully last night Sgt. Munley, because you sure did make a difference in people's lives yesterday!

Three girls drowned in submerged Jeep - what could they have done?

Here's some advice that is easy to say but much harder to do: Don't panic.

ABC has the story. It happened in North Dakota when three Dickinson State University students and softball teammates were probably out stargazing, according to one dad. Apparently their vehicle sank in a stock pond, and the poor girls drowned. What a waste. It's reminiscent of those fatal accidents in which sea side Spring Breakers drove off ocean piers.

They had the wherewithal to make cell phone calls to some friends, but for some reason they were unable to exit the vehicle.

It's easy to sit here and say that they should have gotten out. But obviously something kept them from doing that, most likely a sense of helplessness, and the only escape device that came to mind was the cell phone.

Daddies, give your daughters these for Christmas. It fits on a key chain, it's called a ResQMe, and it contains a spring loaded spike that is supposed to shatter a car window in an emergency situation. Of course, remembering that it's dangling from the key chain and what it's for might be hard to do in a state of panic. But it wouldn't hurt to have something like that around, just in case.

Gun Accident Rate Declining

I started writing about gun accidents (negligent discharges) some years ago at this blog for the purpose of highlighting aspects of a certain brand of handgun and its potential for careless discharge. It turns out that while many of the accidental discharge that get reported have involved the Glock brand, Glock has no monopoly -- plenty of other brands get shot unintentionally. And as Glock fans have drilled home, the gun doesn't go off by itself, someone has to pull the trigger.

But here's something that really caught me off guard. From Howard Nemerov, it's How common are accidental firearms injuries?. His conclusion, accidental firearm deaths have declined steadily from 1984 through 2006. The chart you see here was cribbed from that article, and in fact, I had to spot check some of the CDC data to believe my own eyes. I didn't double check each year, but the few I did appeared to be accurately reflected in the chart.

The graph reflects the ratio of the number of unintentional firearm deaths to the total population for each year.

This decline was happening as gun ownership has grown substantially. There's no chart for it, but the years for which non-fatal firearm accidents were tracked show a decline also.

Therefore, we have to conclude that having more guns around has not resulted in more gun related accidents. Why would that be so? I have to conclude that people are more safety conscious around guns than they were in the past. Maybe all the gun training courses available these days, especially the concealed carry classes, have helped make people more aware. And maybe the stricter laws regarding juveniles' access to guns had some part to play, too, at least as to that age group.

Anyway, gun safety is always a good thing.

Post Script: I still think that Glock has a some features that in combination make it very unforgiving for the careless -- a light trigger pull, a hidden striker, no manual safety plus the requirement that the trigger be pulled in order to remove the slide.