As promised, our Governor has announced plans to layoff up to 10,000 NY State public employees. In typical brave fashion, these layoffs will take place on Jan 1, 2011 – the first day of the next Governor’s term, and the day that Paterson’s pledge to not lay off workers expires (which he agreed to when the unions agreed to a deal to reduce pension costs). Of course, both the likely Republican candidate, Rick Lazio, and Democrat Andrew Cuomo have already said they intend to cut the State workforce, so I suppose they’re down with whatever Blinky comes up with. What the hell – they can always just blame it on him. I can think of a lot of layers of unnecessary management that could easily be done away with, but my guess is it’ll be the little guys (and gals) that get axed.
Folks in Pensacola, FL may be seeing a little oil on their beaches today. They ought to ask Obama to come down for a photo-op this weekend so BP will bus in a few hundred cleanup workers for the day.
BP is now moving into the “cut and cap” phase, where apparently they plan on cutting through the bad pipe and putting a cap on it. All at a depth of about 5,000 feet, which I think – and Andy will probably be able to tell us the exact number – is at a pressure of over 2,000 pounds per square inch. I’m guessing that putting a cap on a pipe that’s gushing oil under those conditions (I mean, since the oil is coming out of the hole, rather than sea water going in means it’s got more than 2,000 psi behind it, but then I don’t really know how all that works) is a little difficult. I mean, threading pipe is kind of a pain in the ass under normal conditions (but then, I don’t reckon they’re doing it by hand).
Now, I’m a bleeding heart, big-government, tax and spend socialist librul, so it should come as no surprise that I’m OK with Robbie Reich’s plan to have the feds take BP into temporary receivership until the leak is plugged and everything’s all cleaned up (twenty, thirty – fifty years, tops). But I’m not quite sure why so many teabaggers and redneck Republicans seem to be clamoring for government intervention in all this. I mean, I know the golden rule is that the taxpayers assume the risks and a handful of corporate executives get the profits, but I thought the teabaggers wanted all that to stop. It’s almost like they’re a bunch of, oh, what’s the word? Hypocrites.
Well, so yesterday sucked, and I don’t see today being any better.
Better an oiligarchy than the socialism.
We’re all doomed. Think I’ll try this.
I don’t think cap is the right word. They are not going to stop the flow but to “capture” as much of it as they can while waiting for the magic relief well to be finished.
The gulf oil disaster is very depressing.
However, this is my last day to travel to the Bronx and tomorrow is my last day in the Brooklyn school. Then there is some stuff to take care of and we’re off to Wyoming to dig up some fossil fish whose deaths were not caused by BP.
If I was paranoid I might think that they are more concerned about ‘capturing’ the escaping oil than the damage it might do once it is in the Gulf.
If I had a suspicious mind…
:tinfoil: :tap:
I’m moving to Arizona.
Travis, don’t forget to take your papers. Sheriff Joe will be looking for you.
Papers!? Why would I need papers? I don’t know how to read.
So you don’t have to wipe your butt with a cactus.
No, that’s why you save your receipts.
I think I like oilygarchy better.
Travis, just don’t become an AZhole. :no:
I don’t want to be like some whiny employee’s somewhere who’re making the lifes of IT guys even more miserable so I’m putting this out there for anyone who might know-
The kid graduated from college and is staying with us til July. He was setting his laptop up and dropped his Hatachi Terrabite (isn’t that some kind of dinasour that roamed Wyoming?) 4 ft onto a carpeted floor and broke it. Staples said they couldn’t save anything because something inside is broken. It’s got his entire four year college career on it (everything he’s written).
Staples said it would cost $1000 to retrieve the info and that they don’t have an anti-static something-or-other doohickey to do it.
Any ideas? :doh:
All I’ve got is if the hard drive itself is not busted you could transfer to a new enclosure.
Depends on what broke, Art. I assume this is an external hard drive?
As Vernon said, if it’s just something in the enclosure that broke and the drive is intact, you can pull the drive out and stick it in a new enclosure.
I’m guessing either the circuit board on the drive cracked, or possibly a connector broke. I guess you might be able to find an identical hard drive and swap the circuit boards, but it’d probably require having somebody solder it off and back on, and that’s not so easy with electronics.
You can ship the drive to a data recovery place, but that’s likely to cost big bucks.
If it’s a connector, it’s possible you could kind of cobble something up temporarily to get the data off. Really depends on what broke and how bad it broke.
You could try putting a containment dome over it to try and stop the data leaking out, and if that doesn’t work, try filling it with mud.
This was my LAST school day. Hooray. Some things of course remain to be done but in a week we’ll be on vacation.
Mayor Bloomberg has decided to stop the layoffs of teachers by freezing teacher salaries for 2 years. The union is vowing to fight but the newspaper says the contract has expired. If it has I don’t understand how the raises are in place.
Of course Bloomy has already given substantial raises to his aids. That, he says is needed to retain the best and brightest. Apparently teachers and other personnel such as IT folks and nurses do not need to be paid in order to retain the best and brightest OR NY State doesn’t care if these workers are the best and brightest OR they are all full of sh*t.