On Leaving Late in A Leather Jacket
Dear Officers and Inspectors, I joined this organization three years ago because this country, and the INS, had been so generous to myself and my family. It’s been a good gig and a fun ride. Yesterday I turned in my shield; it didn’t feel good but it had to be […]
Posted on May 28th, 2005
Hey Buddy: Wanna Buy a Stoplight?
I’m having a garage sale on May 29. It’ s turning into a community garage sale as neighbors pledge to bring out some of their own goods. Directions: Corner of Poplar Ave & Jenevein Ave Poplar Ave in San Bruno, CA Date/Time: May 29 starting at 8am What’s for Sale: […]
Posted on May 24th, 2005
Introducting the California Poppy Redesign
I just rolled out a CSS and javascript redesign of the site. The posts should all render but a lot of the secondary pages (and links to them) are broken. I’ll fix those in the next few days. Clicking here should solve the broken links for now. Any criticisms you […]
Posted on May 3rd, 2005
Outsourcing Total Information Awareness?
GovExec.com, always a good source of inside-DHS information shares this tidbit from a closed-door information security meeting: Chertoff is thinking about Outsourcing Total Information Awareness. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff this week floated an idea to start a nonprofit group that would collect information on private citizens, flag suspicious activity, […]
Posted on May 1st, 2005
5 CFR 335.103(c)(3)(v)
I’ve been asked by o thers for the CFR code for reinstatement of permanent employess. Here it is: Code of Federal Regulations Title 5: Administrative Personnel 335.103 Agency promotion programs …Except as provided in paragraphs©(2) and (3) of this section, competitive procedures in agency promotion plans apply to all promotions […]
Posted on May 1st, 2005
8-hours of PAU
At every CBP airport there is a team called the Passenger Analysis Unit (PAU). These people sit in cubicles and read over the flight manifests looking for “Bad Stuff”. When they find it, they send someone out to intercept the suspects at the plane’s gate (long experience shows that people […]
Posted on May 1st, 2005
More on the Chinese Revaluation
To start this off: I queried a passenger today — a Chinese fund manager — about when the Yuan is going to appreciate and by how much. His answer was uniquivocal: 5% in June. This is markedly different than what I’m reading in the US sources about more than 2% […]
Posted on April 30th, 2005
Flightless Birds a Threat to Aviation
I’m sure there’s a perfectly good reason why TSA screeners in Denver decided to make pengins walk through the metal detectors before boarding a flight. It probably has something to do with loopy DC regulations and the possibility that a hand grenade is hidden in their fuzzy little bellies: Or […]
Posted on April 24th, 2005
Snippets of Nothing
It’s a strange moment when you look in your closet and think “damn, I need more colors.” * * * Someone asked the coffee guy at the airport if he knew me. When I was described as the Customs Officer who wears glasses, it didn’t help. Lots of Customs people […]
Posted on April 23rd, 2005
About-Face on Renminbi Threatens Economic Melt-Down
It seems like like all the economics bloggers are talking about floating the Chinese Yuan, “soft landings” and “hard landings” and what the Federal Reserve is going to do about what. The bothersome thing about brilliant minds is that they churn through so many permutations so quickly, it can be […]
Posted on April 23rd, 2005
China’s National Interest in a Full Employment
I have a partial answer to a question posed by Kash at Angry Bear: Why is China still holding on to its dollar peg if it’s not in its own interest? Let’s go back to Alan Greenspan’s comments, which, while cast as a negative are probably seen as a positive […]
Posted on April 22nd, 2005
April 15th Misdemeanors by TurboTax, H&R Block
April 20th David Lazarus, a San Francisco Chronicle columnist, wrote that TurboTax and H&R Block online tax filing systems may violated California law. Both companies use webbugs and cookies to provide third-party marketers with information gathered while customers prepared and filed their tax returns. Enter Section 17530.5 of the California […]
Posted on April 21st, 2005
Kintana the Aye-Aye
aye-aye, noun. (plural aye-ayes) latin: Daubentonia madagascariensis. Origin: Malagasy, aye-aye can mean something that someone does not want to talk about. So, because of local superstition, this lemur is thought to have got its name because people do not like talking about it. Description: A small nocturnal primate that lives […]
Posted on April 16th, 2005
Tax Day In San Bruno (CA)
Yep. I’m one of those April 15th, 11th hour, “last post office open” kind of tax payers. And I like it that way. Last year the last post office was Oakland. Driving up we were greeted by Libertarians and tax protestors waving signs and the city had a dozen or […]
Posted on April 16th, 2005
Dubious Honor for The President
This one comes via Robert Silvey of Rubicon, who earned a place on my RSS aggrigator for his writing on Canada… One of the benefits of being a scientist seems to be the right to name new things you discover. It’s supposed to be a great honor to have something […]
Posted on April 15th, 2005
DeLong Sr’s Law of Proofreading
It sounds like a corollary to Douglas Adam’s Somebody Else’s Problem field or Murphy’s Law… J. Bradford DeLong suggests a natural law of proofreading that deserves wider consideration. My father believes that one should leave typos in one’s galleys uncorrected. It is a law of nature that when one opens […]
Posted on April 15th, 2005