A mishmash

This post is going to be less of an essay and more of a bunch of stuff.  Hopefully still interesting!

-Turns out a ton of people wanted my vacuum.  Post Here  As such, it is going to a good home despite only being mediocre at its primary function.  The new owners are convinced they can fix anything, but I am not at all sure that their 'fix-fu' is better than mine.  Either way, I don't get to hatchet it up.  In an amusing twist, it is the same people that I gave the Dr. Scholls pad to a few weeks ago.

-I wrote very recently about the WOW mod GearScore Here.  After I published my post I got a reply from the author of the GearScore mod giving me an update about it.  Apparently the newest version of the mod is going to fix a lot of the issues with the old one and allow the user to check and see if the target is geared intelligently or stupidly as well as the raw power level of their equipment.  From the video he posted it seems like the update is really good and informative so I look forward to using it.

I have to say, that reply got me really pumped up.  I know that a number of my family members and real life friends read my blog which is great, but if there were 100 equally good blogs they would read mine because of our real life connection.  Them reading it says I don't suck, but it doesn't really say I am great.  However, when a total stranger comes onto the blog to make a post it makes me excited because it means I am leaking out into cyberspace.  I have no way of knowing who reads my posts as the only record I have is who is signed up as a follower.  It often feels very strange to write here because I really don't know my audience.  From my time in sales I am used to tailoring presentations to the audience in question so it is quite bizarre to be trying to write to a completely unknown demographic.

Is it a little wrong to be giddy that I have more of an audience than I thought?

-I heard on the radio today that people are going to be allowed to bring carryon baggage onto planes to the US again.  This is something that just boggles my mind.  Everyone who thought about it for 1 minute knew that people who wanted to smuggle potentially explosive compounds onto airplanes could do it.  When a man tried to detonate explosives on a plane in the washroom and failed, it was not a sign that planes were suddenly more dangerous than we had thought, but rather a sign that even if a terrorist gets explosives onto a plane (which is easy) it is remarkably hard to actually accomplish anything.  When this man failed to destroy a plane he changed *nothing* with regards to airplane security.  However, the response of banning all carryon luggage on US flights went forward regardless, causing incredible amounts of frustration, delay and cost.

Every time the authorities overreact in a useless manner to a threat already well documented and understood they help terrorists rather than hindering them.  There are many great ways to prevent terrorism such as preventing access to the flight deck, scanning for metal weapons and training airport personnel to look for suspicious behaviour.  Once these are implemented there is no reason to rapidly change the rules unless a really new, unexpected threat comes to light and this is not such a threat.  If terrorists cannot actually blow anything up they are certainly happy to cost their targets time, energy and money and create an environment of fear.  By panicking and giving in to desperation we are hurting ourselves and giving terrorists even more reason to continue in their awful ways.  Have the courage to stand up and say that we are doing all that can be reasonably done to protect ourselves and stick to it.  People would be much better served knowing that security is doing the right thing than knowing that they are thrown into a state of mad panic every time something happens.