Forwarded message:
Date: Tue, 09 Dec 1997 20:22:01 -0500 From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com> Subject: Re: [Censored] Quote of the Day (fwd)
Jim Choate wrote, strictly adhering to permissible topics here:
You really should try to understand why you cow-tow to 'The Man'....
DPS sumbitch ran me down near DFW, me and my crap filled van, my mangy hide and shaggy hair, my NY plates, my wildly dumped substances, and sat behind for a few drags of AC in 100 degree heat, miked in the number, adjusted his mirrors, tilted the vidcam skyward, and climbed out, a big, very big widowmaker high on his fat ass, hustled his privates, spat juice, and farted hard enough to quiver the VW and me.
Where you heading son, what's the hurry, why you messing Texas highways with this garbage? Not on my watch, Yankee, let me see paper on this wreck, the vehicle, you. What's that smell?
Anyway, 24 later, I got the rig back, trashed more so, not so different, the lining had been long gone, so searching it was easy. What was new were ten bullet holes penetrating side to side, .30 caliber I guess, and a shotgunned rear window, inside out.
Why didn't you file against them? Texas judges don't take kindly to the DPS pulling this sort of shit. I worked at UT-Austin from 1984 to 1990 for the Physical Plant taking care of their nifty burglar alarm system (at the time really cutting edge compared to the rest of the industry) and got to work with UTPD, which because it is a state school are really DPS officers - unbeknownst to most folks, and find about half of them are real rednecks who get away with this sort of shit because nobody ever files on them. Did you know that if a DPS officer gets some number of complaints within a period (used to be 3 within 30 days) they were removed from active duty pending a review. It is even possible to have a officer fired if they recieve enough complaints. Most cops only get 3-4 complaints a year. It is *critical* for the system to work correctly that *every* infraction gets reported and if appropriate to file charges. Even if you don't win the cop will lose, the complaints go on their permanent record and get evaluated yearly and have a direct impact on their promotions and eligibility for other jobs. My brother has a really cheeky way to deal with this sort of shit. Once it is clear they are going to let him go he pulls some coin out of his pocket and hands it to the officer telling them "Here you go, go buy a personality." My personal method is to hand them my drivers license (if I'm on a public road and driving) and then refuse to answer any further questions. I usually answer with something like "I'm sorry officer, I'm not required to talk to you". My goal is to get the cop to either let me go right there or arrest me. Either way I win. Usually the most they get from me is a shrug. So far it's worked for me, never been arrested except one time when they had a computer screw up on a 6 year old ticket. Got arrested, posted bond, showed up at the hearing and requested to see the physical ticket. Charges were dropped because not only could they not produce the ticket but they couldn't produce any other evidence of the crime. My ace in the hole was that I still had the court receipt where I paid the ticket, never had to use it.
No ticket, no fine, just a reminder of highway justice, on the orderly property of the State of Texas, lawfully administered by cop, judge and jury on the spot, for cost saving efficiency.
Only because you allowed it by not filing. I sympathize with your situation but find your acceptance a little puzzling as well. By your inactivity you are promoting such behaviour. Democracy doesn't work if you are complacent or of a compromising nature. While it's true you might loose the fight, if you don't even try its guaranteed you have no chance of winning. A system works because the people refuse to allow it to fail. My personal philosophy is that if people would stand up and shout more they would be more immune to harrassment and other similar activities because it reduces the payoff to such abusive activities. Shine a light on cockroaches and they run for the dark. It's one of the reasons that I support this mailing list even thought I disagree personaly with the vast majority of views expressed by it. Should something happen to SSZ and by extension me, quite a few people who know me personaly and professionaly will get more than a bit curious after a couple of days of downtime if they don't hear from me. I further advertise this because it makes shure that those who are intending to harass me know that it is not an individual they are dealing with.
BTW, any chance your recent system troubles are related to your threats to law and order? DPS got cooperative service interrupters? Administering info highway justice.
My phone service problems w/ SWBT are because they are known for being incompetent. The problems that I have had with ISDN reliability are a known problem to the ISP's and heavy ISDN users through-out Texas. The reason that the ISDN folks and the POTS folks can't get their act together is that they use the same cable sets but keep different books and operate as an indipendant business division, one is residential and the other business. There are limited numbers of pairs in the neighborhood (it's only about 100 years old) so what happens is the ISDN guy looks at the various pairs, his records are out of date a week or more and as a result don't have the recent cable changes from my most recent POTS service call and therefore those pairs are listed as free so he uses them. This causes the POTS to fail, who comes out and now his records are out of date and he sees the ISDN pairs as unused and pulls them to fix the POTS. Round and round we go... [one of my users thinks this is a big conspiracy on the part of SWBT, the city, state, and federal agencies to put me out of business and shut me up. Personaly, I can't imagine being that big a fish.] Doesn't the fact that SWBT now has some say in Bell Atlantic and Bell South just warn the cockles of your heart....;) [anyone know how a clam, cockle, got involved in this saying?] Don't know if it is really on topic but both Bell Atlantic and Bell South use Tivoli to support their backbones and other services machines. There is currently a big internal fight (as I understand it) because SWBT has bought major stakes in both companies and SWBT wants them to use SWBT's custom self-developed piece of shit (personal opinion here as a long time SWBT customer, not indicative of either Tivoli or IBM's official or unofficial views; I'm just a lowly Senior Engineer and they don't let techies like me in on the political talks) network management software instead of using ours. I can say this, in the last 3 months since moving to this new house I have had 8 trouble tickets. None have been repaired in less than 2 days and the longest was like 6. Every time SWBT says it's my hardware, I swap out routers or check my wiring, but it ends up being their problem. I've been charged $30 for a onsite call that should have been paid by SWBT. I have repeatedly been advised to invoke their Level 2 Protocol Analysis support at $60/30 minutes and I have to pay the bill first and will only get reimbursed *if* SWBT decides it really is their problem. When I talked to them the other day I mentioned that I am thinking of getting the PUC involved along with a lawyer. Their responce was, verbatim, "Sir, do whatever you want to do." I gave them a couple of chances to make it right and I warned them I would fight. I'm currently starting proceedings with PUC. Did you know that if you are late on a SWBT bill one time your billing period is reduced, your monthly payment goes up, and it does this for a year following the occurance. So I figure that if you think your phone service is bad now wait a year you ain't seen nothing yet... ____________________________________________________________________ | | | | | We built your fort. We will not have it used against us. | | | | John Wayne - Allegheny Uprising | | | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage@ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|