Archive for September, 2015

Obit watch: September 14, 2015.

Monday, September 14th, 2015

Moses Malone, legendary NBA player with the Philadelphia 76ers, Houston Rockets, and San Antonio Spurs (among other teams). NYT. HouChron.

Frank D. Gilroy. Interesting story. He knocked around television for a while in the 1950s and 1960s, then had a huge Broadway hit with “The Subject Was Roses”…and then was unable to replicate that success, and spent the rest of his life knocking around movies and theater.

Art (Acevedo), damn it! watch. (#X of a series)

Friday, September 11th, 2015

In the time I’ve been doing the Art (Acevedo) watch, I don’t think I’ve ever put up a photo of the chief. Some of the articles I’ve linked to may have had photos, but I don’t if people click through, and I don’t think there’s ever been one here.

Until now.

Yes, the chief is kind of a geek.

The chief also has a button installed in his office that makes the noise of the “red alert” alarm in classic Star Trek episodes.

Also:

“On the day it opens, do not call me,” he said. “Do not get in my way. I will be at the Alamo Drafthouse with a bucket of buttered popcorn.”

“Do not get in my way.” If someone does, could they be charged with obstruction of justice?

Random thought.

Friday, September 11th, 2015

Sensors included on the iPad Air 2 and iPad Pro:

  • Touch ID
  • Three-axis gyro
  • Accelerometer
  • Barometer
  • Ambient light sensor

Not included: GPS, unless you purchase one of the cellular models. It looks like “assisted GPS and GLONASS” are built into the cellular chipset or something?

I keep thinking about getting an iPad or some other sort of tablet to supplement my first generation Kindle Fire. But it always comes back to this: I want GPS, and can’t get it. Okay, I could if I bought a cellular model, but:

  1. The cellular iPad 2 is $130 more than the Wi-Fi equivalents in every memory configuration. Same with the iPad Pro. Except the Pro only has one cellular/Wi-fi memory config, and that’s over $1,000.
  2. I don’t want cellular data. I don’t have the $60 to $85 a month it would take to add a device to my plan. $60 to $85 a month is at least one good Smith and Wesson a year. I’d be perfectly happy with a device that just does Wi-fi, as long as it has GPS. If I desperately needed data in non-Wi-fi areas, I’d enable the hotspot feature on my phone – at least that’s only $30 a month, I think.

It isn’t just Apple, though. I’ve looked at Android tablets too. I’ve heard that Android gives you lower-level access to GPS data than iOS, but I haven’t been all that impressed by the Android tablets I’ve seen. The price/memory ratio just seems out of whack to me.

Best Buy, for example, is selling a Nexus 9 with 32GB of memory (which to me is a hard minimum; I’d prefer 64GB) for $432. I can get a Mini 2 for $319 from Apple, or a Mini 4 with 64GB for $499. Decisions, decisions. Do I want an Apple device that doesn’t have GPS, but that I can trust to be updated regularly and work for a while? (I’m still using a MacBook I bought in 2007 as my main computer.) Or do I want to buy another shoddy piece of crap Android thing that’s going to stop getting updates in 18 months, but does have GPS?

Or does it? The specs on Google’s site show the Nexus 9 does, but they also show it has a cellular chipset. Does the Wi-Fi only version do GPS? Can I buy a cellular tablet and use GPS on it without a carrier? Who knows? I can’t find that on Google’s site, the specs on Best Buy’s site don’t mention GPS, and asking a Best Buy employee seems like a good way to invoke the customer appreciation bat.

Am I making this too hard? Am I asking too much? All I want is a reasonably priced tablet that does GPS and doesn’t require a cellular data plan. Why is this so hard?

Flaming hyenas update: September 10, 2015.

Thursday, September 10th, 2015

Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow’s trial is set to start November 2nd.

But that could change.

Why?

Six of “Shrimp Boy”‘s co-defendants pled guilty yesterday.

…George Nieh pleaded guilty to every count filed against him, including 146 counts of money laundering and a slew of weapons and drug charges. Leslie Yun pleaded guilty to five counts of money laundering and drug-related charges.
Kevin Siu pleaded guilty to eight of the 24 money laundering counts against him, and Alan Chiu pleaded guilty to 13 of 36 money laundering charges.
Yat Wa Pau pleaded guilty to trafficking in contraband cigarettes and admitted to his involvement in sales of contraband cigarettes worth more than $300,000.
Andy Li pleaded guilty to felony possession of a firearm along with money laundering and marijuana possession.

The judge is considering postponing the trial, I guess so “Shrimp Boy”‘s legal team has time to evaluate the situation and possibly change their strategy in light of the guilty pleas.

As a side note, sentencing for convicted former California Democratic State Senator Leland “Uncle” Yee is scheduled for October 21st.

This is sportsfirings.com…

Wednesday, September 9th, 2015

…not policechieffirings.com. But I do find this interesting:

Cincinnati Police Chief Jeffrey Blackwell was fired Wednesday after city leaders concluded he had belittled his staff, violated rules, destroyed morale and plunged the police department into crisis.

The reports portray Blackwell as a poor leader and publicity hound who favored a core group of favorites over the assistant chiefs and district commanders who are part of the traditional chain of command. According to some of those officers, Blackwell badgered them to obtain free tickets for him to sporting events, approved overtime for his friends without going through proper procedures and personally attacked officers who disagreed with him.

He also allegedly took selfies during a funeral procession for an officer who was killed in the line of duty.

Obit watch: September 9, 2015.

Wednesday, September 9th, 2015

Joaquin Andujar, former pitcher for the Cardinals and the Houston Astros. NYT. HouChron.

Obit watch: September 8, 2015.

Tuesday, September 8th, 2015

Judy Carne. WP. She’s just at the fringes of my memory: I remember watching “Laugh-In” with my parents, and I remember “sock it to me”, but she left the show when I was four…am I inventing these memories?

Martin Milner. “Route 66” went off the air a year before I was born, but I loved “Adam-12” when I was a wee lad. I have the first season on DVD, and you know, it still holds up well.

The FARK thread is actually pretty respectful, and worth reading if you were a fan of “Adam-12”, “Emergency”, and “Dragnet”. It reminds me that I want to write a re-evaluation of both “Dragnet” and “Adam-12”, arguing that what Jack Webb was trying to represent was his vision of how policing in general, and the LAPD specifically, should work. Not the way it really did work, but the ideal that he felt they should strive for; in a way, you might say that Webb was trying to represent on television Peel’s Nine Principles of Policing.

TMQ Watch: September 4, 2015.

Friday, September 4th, 2015

From the man himself, in case you don’t follow him on Twitter:

Obit watch: September 3, 2015.

Thursday, September 3rd, 2015

I was thinking this morning: the first movie I have any recollection of seeing was the original The Love Bug at a drive-in somewhere in Virginia. NYT. Nice article in the WP.

Also among the dead: Ruth Newman, who passed away at the age of 113. Ms. Newman was a survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

“She would tell us she remembered my grandmother being upset because they had just milked the cow earlier, and she had separated the cream and all and put it in containers that got thrown to the floor,” Ms. Dobbs said.

There is one known survivor still alive.

Ms. Newman attended a few of the annual earthquake commemorations in San Francisco. However, her daughter said that on some occasions, Ms. Newman preferred to sleep in rather than rise before dawn to attend.

Smart woman.

Art (Acevedo), damn it! watch. (#W of a series)

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2015

The chief is staying in Austin. And getting a pay raise.

In other news, VonTrey Clark has been deported from Indonesia:

Clark, 32, was handed over to 13 agents of the FBI and was flown to Texas on a specially chartered plane from the bureau.