Divemedic

Traitor

The “Isis Bride” who defected to Isis and joined the terrorists in fighting her own country now says that she was just a “dumb kid” when at 15 years old she and two classmates set off for Syria to join the terror group. Her two friends are believed to have died in the fighting. She had three children by her Muslim husband, all of them killed in the fighting.

Keep in mind that she was, as late as 2019, saying that she had no regrets, but claims that everyone should have sympathy for what she has been through. Otherwise, she has shown no remorse.

Her biggest regret is that she can’t watch Friends or the Kardashians.

I do agree that your country shouldn’t be able to remove your citizenship without a fair shot at a hearing. Instead of exile, they should allow her to return and face charges of treason and terrorism. If convicted, then the penalty should be life in prison. If it is proven that she directly supported the war by providing material support or by actually taking up arms, she should be put to death.

By Divemedic, ago

Weakness

Biden begged Putin not to attack America’s infrastructure using cyberattacks.

“We made it clear we were not going to allow this to go on,” the president said. “I gave them a list. … There were no threats, just simple assertions made. I think the last thing he wants now is a cold war.”

It’s almost like giving them a list of where we are vulnerable. If he believed that Russia was actually carrying out deliberate cyberattacks and had any balls, he would have said something more like:

“The United States views any cyberattack upon its strategically important infrastructure as being no different than a deliberate attack. The United States would be forced to defend its interests if such an attack were to occur. It would be most unfortunate for everyone if an attack originating from within your borders were to be mistaken for a deliberate act.”

By Divemedic, ago

Savannah Shooting

A so-called mass shooting in Savannah. Two dead and six injured. While this seems to support the “mass shooting” claims of the left, this is not what most people think of when they think about mass shooters. Like the majority of shootings in the USA, this is one group of black males shooting it out with another group of black males over whatever gang and drug related issues that they consider important.

Chief Minter said preliminary information leads police to believe this shooting stemmed from a conflict between two groups. Savannah Police’s gang unit was on the scene Saturday. Chief Minter said it could be connected to a shots-fired incident on Tuesday in the same area. Chief Minter said no one in the area could provide information to police about Tuesday’s incident.

It was a driveby where gangs shot at each other. 60 shell casings were found, 8 people were shot (including a toddler) and no one saw a thing. Tell me again how cops are the problem in black neighborhoods.

The police chief just spins the problem, and that is the main reason why there IS a problem, and why that problem will not ever be fixed. Eight months ago, the police chief said they need “guns off the street” but aren’t saying a thing about controlling criminal gangs.

By Divemedic, ago

Should I tell my neighbors I own guns?

I saw the headline on Slate, and I thought, oh crap. What will this be?

It is a question written by a pair gun owning, liberal Fudds who believe that guns are only for them and not anyone else, it is over the top ridiculous cuckold crap.

They are locked in the attic (which is only accessible from a pull down ladder that even my 6-foot tall spouse can’t reach without a step stool). What do we do here?

This is NOT responsible gun ownership. Your entire idea of securing your guns away from your children is to hide them in a spot where you think your kids can’t find them. As your kids get older, they will find them just like they would find Dad’s porn stash, except that this cuck likely doesn’t look at porn. Here is an idea- as a card carrying anti-gun hunting liberal, why don’t you have a locking gun safe? Isn’t that what you assholes demand of the rest of us?

The advice he gets from Slate is just as bad:

Explain why you have the guns, appease my fears (that you’re pro-strong gun laws), tell me where you keep the guns, and explain how difficult it would be to access them.

Why not do the same with your bank accounts?

How about this:

Me to neighbor: “I own guns. They are locked in a safe unless I am using them to kill small woodland creatures or frighten off some minorities.”

By Divemedic, ago

Flying sucks

I hate flying. Not because of a fear of flying or crashing. I hate flying because it is a truly horrid experience. Let me tell all of you why:

I arrived at the McCarron airport in Las Vegas yesterday at 4 pm, Pacific time. I have TSA Pre-check, which supposedly means that I have passed a background check that allows me to fly without removing my shoes or belt, among other things. Except the TSA has their metal detector turned to its most sensitive setting, which requires me to remove my wedding ring, watch, and belt EVERY. STINKING. TIME. This REALLY pisses me off. Do you want to know why?

Because on more than one occasion I have had 2- TWO- pepper spray dispensers and a push dagger in my carry on. Once, it was an industrial sized can of bear mace that I had forgotten was in my bag when I flew home from Alaska. The TSA is a bunch of incompetent asshats.

With that out of the way, my flight boarded at 5:30 for a 6:05 departure. With a flight time of four and a half hours, plus a triple time zone change, we were scheduled to arrive in Orlando at 1:40 in the morning.

We were initially delayed because a suitcase had been checked on board by a passenger who was not onboard the flight. Big no-no. So we had to delay while they located the asshole in one of the airport bars. By the time that was sorted out, Southwest airlines had a computer failure that grounded all of the company’s aircraft. We sat at the gate with no air conditioning for over two hours.

The guy in my row, a black man, decided to take off his shirt and socks. He began rubbing his feet and fanning himself with the plane brochure. The smell was horrific. As time marched on, some people left the plane. The guy finally went to a row with open seats.

We finally left the gate at 8:15. There were crying babies in the rows behind me, so I put on my noise cancelling headset. The WiFi in the plane was broken, so no in flight movies, music, or entertainment of any kind. Southwest doesn’t sell or allow any alcohol on their aircraft, so I decided to try for some sleep. You know how that goes.

We landed in Orlando at 3:30, and by the time I collected my bags from the carousel and my car from long term parking, it was 4:30. I finally got home at 5:45, to collapse in my bed until 10 o’clock.

Southwest had another ground stop caused by another computer issue less than 18 hours later. In all, the two delays cancelled or delayed over 2,800 flights.

Have I mentioned how much I hate the entire experience of flying? I will say that, other than flying, it was a very relaxing and much needed week of R&R. Back to work in the morning.

By Divemedic, ago

In practice

So to sum up my strategy for gambling, the way to maximize my time at the table for the amount I am losing is to put a limit on daily losses. As an example, I will use my just completed trip to Las Vegas as an example. My limit for this trip was $300 a day.

So day one, I played for 2 hours and lost $40 before getting tired and going to bed.

Day two, we went to watch a hockey game at a sports bar before hitting the casino. At the casino, I lost $300 in a total of four hours of play. My total loss for the trip is $340.

Day three, we played Craps for 2 hours after breakfast. I won $300 in that morning session before losing $400 in the afternoon. That means I am down a total of $440.

Day four was Saturday. I wound up losing my full $300, meaning I was down $740 for the trip.

On Sunday, I needed to play slots to earn some comps. I wound up winning $182 on slots before we had to go pickup my mother in law at the airport, and her flight was delayed by 4 and a half hours due to storms in Orlando. I found a Craps table at NYNY and won nearly $1,500.

On day six, I played for just a little bit before heading to the airport and won another $100 and change.

So I began the trip with $1,500 in gambling funds and got back on the plane home with just under $2,400. Not bad for a 6 day trip.

We flew from Orlando to Las Vegas for $400 each, round trip. We checked into the Park MGM. The first four nights were free because of comps.

In total, we spent about $750 in food and alcohol, mostly because we had some comps.

One thing that I want to mention is comps. Those are the free perks that you get for gambling. We stick with the one that gives us the best offers. In our case, that is MGM Resorts.

In this case, we stayed in the hotel for 5 nights at a total cost of $223. I had gotten comped 4 nights for just the cost of resort fees. We also got $200 in free slot play and $100 in free food and drink. I get offers for comped stays 4 or 5 times a year. Sometimes with comped resort fees, sometimes not.

What this means is that we spent under $1,800 for a 6 day, 5 night vacation. Factor in the money won at the table and it was even cheaper.

We went to street party for the Las Vegas hockey team and ate some pretty good BBQ ribs, saw a couple of shows, and did a bit of sightseeing. I got to see an obviously rich Chinese guy take out a $100,000 loan from the casino to gamble with. Saw a fight, got in a fight, and had a pretty good time.

Now I am getting on the plane to go home back to work while my wife is staying in Vegas with her mother for a few more days of mother/daughter time. Now to get some sleep on the plane. I won’t be home until 4 am.

By Divemedic, ago

Use of Force

I just had the oddest experience that I have ever had in Las Vegas. It ended in a use of force incident.

My wife and I were playing Craps at Harrah’s this morning. My wife was standing to my left. We were at the end of the table and a woman walked up to the table on my right and tried to buy in with $25 cash and a slot machine ticket worth $77. The dealer told the woman that tickets were not accepted at the tables, and directed her to the cashier’s cage that was 20 feet away. The woman left the $25 in chips on the table and headed that way.

She returned 10 minutes later, and I pointed out to her that the chips she had left behind were still there. She said “I don’t care about that, it’s chump change,” then put the chips on the field. I was the shooter and rolled a 6. Her money was taken by the dealer. She asked the dealer to place another bet, the dealer asked for money, the woman again tried to use the slot machine ticket. My wife helpfully told her that she needed to use cash. She left. After she was gone, I made a joke: “That’s what happens when you legalize pot.” The entire table laughed, dealers included.

She came back a third time, about 15 minutes later. She stood so close to me that our shoulders were touching, despite the fact that no one else was at our end of the table. I slid my chips to my left, away from her and closer to my wife. It made me nervous. The woman said, pointing to my wife,”She isn’t helping me. I should just punch her.” I told the woman that this would be a bad idea and that she needed to leave. I asked the dealer to call security. I couldn’t leave, because I had about $200 in play. The woman left, and the dealer said, “She is someone else’s problem now.”

You guessed it- she was back 5 minutes later. The stupid ass tried using the slot ticket again. She said, “I don’t have any circle things (meaning chips?) to play with, so I will just take some of his.” She then reached in and grabbed a handful of my chips with her right hand.

I grabbed the offending hand HARD and twisted towards me as I stepped to my right, into her, planting my foot behind her. At the same time, I lifted her arm and pushed. Off balance, she started to fall and I was just starting to finish the move when my wife yelled “stop.” I eased up and let the woman keep her feet. Security was there pretty quickly. They removed her from the property. As they were doing so, she insisted that security get a supervisor and “fully document” the incident. She will be lucky if they don’t have her arrested.

My wife later said she was worried that I would be the one who got in trouble. She also said that she wasn’t sure that I needed to use force. I explained that the woman had already verbally signaled her willingness to get violent and was in the act of committing robbery. What I did was a clear case of the lawful use of force in self defense.

First time I have ever had to use force in my wife’s presence.

By Divemedic, ago

Las Vegas

I am in Las Vegas. Just a few minutes ago (1230 Pacific time) a pair of Blackhawk helicopters (the variant with the refueling probe on the front) flew from the west and made a left to fly north, directly above the Las Vegas strip. Altitude was less than 300 feet, as they were below the level of my hotel.

Doors were open, and personnel were seen inside. Seems kind of odd, but not the first time seeing spooky stuff here.

By Divemedic, ago

Intel

The ransomware attacks continue. There are several hospitals (at least five) that are rumored to have been attacked by ransomware in the past two weeks. They are trying to keep it quiet, but the attacks were largely successful in at least a few of the attacks. Two hospitals are known to have been without computer support for over a week. I know, because one of them is the one where I work.

Some systems were not affected because they were on different servers, but the common thread here is that all of the hospitals that were attacked used the same medical record reporting software. That may or may not be important. At any rate, the loss of this server affected everything: medical records, prescription tracking, payroll, scheduling, email, you name it, it has all been down for over a week. They can’t even make people pay for food from the cafeteria because the POS system isn’t working. No cash register means that they are letting us eat for free.

Payday is Thursday, and we are already wondering if we are going to get paid. We can’t issue new account numbers to patients, and everything is being done on paper. We are tracking patient location and status by writing on windows with dry erase markers. everything has been reduced to using pen and paper. My unit alone has three people per shift, and we are generating over 800 pieces of paper during every 12 hour shift. That works out to each of us filling out one form every 23 seconds. Every second for 12 straight hours. We aren’t administrative- we are a clinical unit. Those papers are there to document what we are doing. I don’t even know how we are getting anything done with patient care because we are so buried in paperwork.

Some people are being furloughed because their jobs are completely dependent on computer technology. Other departments (mine included) are working overtime to handle the additional workload. I suggested that it would be cheaper to send people with nothing to do up to the departments that need help with paperwork, rather than pay people overtime. That suggestion was ignored. The extra paperwork doesn’t require technical or medical training, it simply needs hands and a functioning brain. Instead, my unit is working overtime. I worked 60 hours last week, and 60 hours the week before. So yeah, I really hope that we DO get paid.

That has cut into my personal time, as well as into my blogging.

The other thing that I wonder is why are all of these ransomware attacks happening all of a sudden? In this case, the hackers are demanding $5 million from EACH hospital that has been hacked. Is it money? Some other motivation? Why now? Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. The question is: Who is the enemy? Are we at war? Is this China? Russia? Iran? Or is it the Democrats trying to sow confusion? All of those sound farfetched, but what events of the last two years haven’t seemed even more unlikely?

We have already seen a bioweapon unleashed on the world, only to find out that our own government not only knew about the virus, they instructed us on countermeasures that they KNEW were untrue, but also that the guy in charge of responding was part of the team that developed it, and that our own government sponsored it. Then a part of our government used it as cover to rig a national election. I don’t thing anything is impossible at this point.

By Divemedic, ago