Archive for February 14th, 2011

Important safety tip. (#4 in a series)

Monday, February 14th, 2011

It has been said before, but apparently it needs to be said again.

Don’t put anything into an email that you would not want to see on the front page of your local newspaper.

This is especially true if your local newspaper is the LAT.

You may ask, what brings this on? I’m glad you did.

Remember Randy Adams? Former police chief of Glendale, California, who took a job as police chief of the city of Bell, at a much higher salary, while at the same time negotiating his disability pay from the city of Bell?

The LAT reprints some choice quotes from emails between Chief Adams and assistant city administrator Angela Spaccia. Quotes such as:

“I am looking forward to seeing you and taking all of Bell’s money”.

and

“LOL … well you can take your share of the pie … just like us!!! We will all get fat together … Bob [Rizzo] has an expression he likes to use on occassion … Pigs get Fat ….. Hogs get slaughtered!!!! So long as we’re not Hogs…All is well!?

As the LAT notes, the “Bob” in the above quote is Robert “Ratso” Rizzo, former city administrator.

Speaking of Ratso, I meant to note this last week, but it got past me: Bell’s city clerk says that Ratso ordered her to give out false information about his salary, and the salaries of the city council members. Also worthy of note: the clerk testified under a grant of limited immunity. (“Use immunity”, which prevents the DA from using her testimony against her. That doesn’t mean she can’t be prosecuted if the DA finds evidence other than her testimony to use against her. I am not your lawyer, and neither is Wikipedia, but here’s a link that explains the difference between “use immunity” and “transactional immunity”.)

Edited to add: Slightly longer version of the story here.

Public service announcement #2.

Monday, February 14th, 2011

TXDOT states that they’re planning to close I-35 at Ben White Boulevard again the weekend of February 25th.

Does anyone have any first-hand reports from this weekend’s closure they’d care to post? I tried to stay as far away from I-35 as I could; I saw one report in the Statesman of 15-minute delays at that intersection, but someone close to WCD stated they’d heard the delay was more like an hour.

Quote of the day.

Monday, February 14th, 2011

“Hell yes. We have hundreds of people coming.”

—Danny Payne of III Forks, a steakhouse in downtown Austin, responding to the Statesman asking if he was going to be open tonight, after someone drove a car into the front entrance last night.

Failure analysis.

Monday, February 14th, 2011

I have previously written about my interest in failure and failure analysis, so I feel compelled to link to this fine example of failure analysis:

Kirk Bohls and Randy Riggs on why the Texas Longhorns went 5-7 last season.

Some key points of failure:

  • the team was consumed with a sense of entitlement.
  • they lacked talent (or “on-field competence” as the Statesman puts it), and over-estimated the talent of the players they’d brought in.
  • divisions within the coaching ranks.
  • a head coach who withdrew from daily coaching.

(Speaking of bad Longhorn seasons, the question came up over the weekend: “What’s John Mackovic doing these days?” The answer to that is…weird, and kind of contradictory. His Wikipedia entry says he’s the head coach of “United States national American football team”, which apparently competes in something called the “American Football World Cup”. However, the Wikipedia entry for the “United States national American football team” shows Mackovic as the head coach for the 2007 team, and Mel Tjeerdsma as the coach for the 2011 team.)

Dear Sven Alstrom…

Monday, February 14th, 2011

…I live in Austin, Texas.

Spamming the comments in my blog with posts about your campaign for a City Commission seat in Lawrence, Kansas is a bad idea for the following reasons:

  1. I’m not going to vote for you, since I don’t live in Lawrence, Kansas.
  2. The vast majority of my readers aren’t going to vote for you, since they don’t live in Lawrence, Kansas.
  3. Any of my readers who do live in Lawrence, Kansas won’t vote for you anyway because you are a spamming scumbag. Let me repeat that: Sven Alstrom is a spamming scumbag.
  4. If you keep spamming my blog comments, I will be going to your ISP, Hostgator, and I will be asking them to shut your site down.
  5. Is there any word in what I just said that you have trouble understanding?

Hugs, kisses, and die in a fire Sven Alstrom you spamming scumbag. Sincerely, your friends at sportsfirings.com.

P.S. Strongly worded message follows.