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Greatest news coverage ever!

Reenactments were never so accurate. Ohio is for bears. Check it out.

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Lord of the Dance: A Challenger Appears

…and he was discovered in Mount Clemens, Michigan at the Stars and Stripes Festival.

Music is “All She Wants to Do is Dance” by Greenstreet. I shot this on Saturday, June 27th around 3:50pm

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Update on What Happened

I just recieved a call from the detective on the case.

Apparently they recieved a tip that I had stolen computers at my house? This has come as an abrupt and interesting surprise for me and I really don’t know what to say. All the detective had to say was that he believes that I have something to do with something, but there’s nothing that can be proven so since nothing was found, this is the end of it.

Apparently something happened at my old cleaning job, although he wouldn’t name specifics as to when or where, all he said it was “around a time when I filled in”. Honestly I can’t remember the last time I worked for them. Either way, this is random, weird, and I’m glad it’s all behind me.  Anyone who knows me knows I build all my own PCs, save for the laptops.

Although I may get a call from the Sheriff’s Department regarding the marijuana possession, this is the end of everything as the “lead” to my house yielded no results. The detective seemed like a nice guy, and gave me some shit for saying they trashed my house, telling me that the place was already pretty trashed when they came through.

If I want a warrant than I have to a FOIA request to the police department after 56 days. But unless the sheriff’s want to be a problem, everything should be ok.

Thank you all for your support

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New Login / Comment System

Due to request, I’ve changed the way people leave comments and log into Conveniently Misplaced.

The first is the comment system, which uses Disqus. This allows for a prettier display, guest posting, better conversaion / replies, and syncing up with all other blogs that use the Disqus system. So it should be fun and much more interactive for you guys, which I’m excited about.

Second is the login system, which has been integrated with Clickpass. I had openID set up for a long time but it didn’t catch on. With Clickpass you can login using an MSN, AIM, Facebook, OpenID and more. So it’ll be easier to login and connect.

Enjoy B-)

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This morning, my house was raided by police

In order to halt any rumors or speculation before they start, I’m making this information public.

This afternoon at 12:49 pm, my brother Tom called me to inform me that upon his arrival home, that the house had been completely trashed by police, leaving a note and a card at which to call them.

Now, why in the world would the police want to raid my house? Good question, which I tried to find out. I went over to the Clinton Township Police Department to speak with the detective, and I was told that he was in court for the rest of the day and that I would have to call or come back in the morning.

Still confused as to why a Mount Clemens home was searched by Clinton Township Police, I went to the Sheriff’s department (who polices Mount Clemens) to ask a deputy as to why this would happen. He asked where in Mount Clemens I lived, and when I told him this he exclaimed that he knew a raid was going to happen on my house (without having to look it up, mind you), but couldn’t give me any additional information and that I would have to talk to Clinton Township Police.

From there I tried to get a copy of the warrant, so I went to the circuit court. I was told to go to the district court. Fair enough. The people at the district court told me that the Detective was probably part of a larger task force and ongoing investigation. I was also told that a warrant would not be available through the court system until after 56 days, when it becomes public record, or until charges are brought, in which case I can make a discovery request to a prosecuting attorney.

However, I truly do not believe that it’s going to come to that.

So until I get any answers from the Detective in the morning, here’s what he left for me.

Police Return Tabulation

Note that there is no Judge or Magistrate listed on the form and that the information is scarce, at best. This is ALL I have to go on until tomorrow morning at the earliest.

The simple truth of the matter is that as a result of lifelong (at least as far back as I can remember) knee pain, I have chosen to medicate myself with Marijuana to ease the pain. Those of you know know me know I have problems getting up and down stairs, and if a building catches on fire I will be unable to flee the building in any fashion resembling quick.

I have not yet taken the steps to become an official Medical Marijuana patient because as of right now, I’ve been more worried with getting my day-to-day expenses as well as my credit cards paid off. I’m also a responsible user, I don’t drive, work, use heavy machinery, etc. while under the influence of anything.

I also have decided to not make this a public issue due to my community involvement and run for public office. Despite my feelings on this issue I have not come out and said anything. I would not want people to get any pre-concieved notions about my character based on such things, so I’ve remained quiet on the matter. I still do not wish to make this a political point or anything like that. However I am going to be more vocal when things cross me, such as this.

I am extremely bothered that I wasn’t contacted and all I have to go on is this ridiculous note. So I’m in a pretty pissed off mood right now and hope to get to the bottom of this tomorrow morning. I have no desire to get dragged through the courtroom over such a minuscule amount of marijuana.Marijuana possession in Michigan is punishable with up to a $2,000 fine and up to 1 year in jail for a misdemeanor, none of which I plan on doing.

While the damage to my house wasn’t as bad as I would have anticipated, here’s some pictures of the stones overturned.

A moved and opened laptop in my office

Computers just thrown about in my Office

They moved the couch to check out the attic...where I'm sure they promptly said "fuck this" and closed the door.

My 9mm glock and case (yes, registered and legal) left on my bed.

Old computers, dug out of my closet and thrown on my bed.

A drawer in my dresser, left open

Tom's Desktop, isn't the monitor lovely?

Tom's drawer, left ajar

Tom's room. His PC was ripped out from it's nook and cranny and left on his bed

Tom's Floor: Completely fucked

The stuff they decided to tear up and what they didn’t seems pretty weird to me. My personal computer was untouched aside from the scanner being moved, despite the old Apple II and old broken down PCs that were looked at. My server was untouched, as was my switch and other networking equipment, but my brother’s PC was completely trashed.

It seems that they were more interested in computers than anything else, which just baffles me. No computer crimes have been committed, and there is no doubt that if they were suspect of such things that the machines would have just been siezed (good luck getting anything to work once it’s off the network tho :p ).

So right now, I have no idea as to what or who they were after, why my house became a target, or anything else.

This is the complete story as I have it right now, and I will post more updates when I know what is going on. Aside from very minor drug posession, I have done nothing wrong and aim to get to the bottom of this quickly.

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The “Up In Smoke” Version of Obama’s Tobacco Bill

Just what we need: More government control over another aspect of our lives. As a former smoker (still a hookah smoker), I can tell you up front that this bill is a complete joke and abuse of power.

How you ask? Well lets just look at the “findings” by congress right from the bill itself.

1) The use of tobacco products by the Nation’s children is a pediatric disease of considerable proportions that results in new generations of tobacco-dependent children and adults.

That’s all well and good. However Childhood Obesity (up to 33% of kids) is much more rampant than the number of high school seniors that smoke (up to 24%). Not to mention that studies are showing that teens are smoking at substantially lesser rates than in years past, and this figure continues to fall yearly. Other problems facing kids, such as childhood obesity, all the nonsense on the television and in the media, and the glorification of anti-culture culture is on the rise, and much more dangerous.

People like Lil’ Wayne are much more hazardous to the nations youth than cigarettes.

I Use To Tote A .38 Up In My Crack Days. I Tote That AK-47 In My Rap Days.

2) A consensus exists within the scientific and medical communities that tobacco products are inherently dangerous and cause cancer, heart disease, and other serious adverse health effects.

Remember the old days, when we all agreed on things like Eugenics and that Heroin was good for you? Times were so much simpler then.

5) Tobacco advertising and marketing contribute significantly to the use of nicotine-containing tobacco products by adolescents.

Yah! Remember this commercial from last year’s superbowl?

Me neither. Get real, nobody markets cigarettes to kids like they used to. Just because little Barry Obama got duped by some TV commercial on his way to nicotine and cocaine doesn’t mean that the rest of the world is this nieve.

9) Under article I, section 8 of the Constitution, the Congress is vested with the responsibility for regulating interstate commerce and commerce with Indian tribes.

Poor Indian Tribes can never catch a break. Sadly, this has no real meaning in the actual bill itself, it was just thrown in there to remind the indians how much better the white man is at getting things done than they are.

16) In 2005, the cigarette manufacturers spent more than $13,000,000,000 to attract new users, retain current users, increase current consumption, and generate favorable long-term attitudes toward smoking and tobacco use.

…So? Why is it a crime for a private enterprise to market their product? Cocoa Cola, a product which contributes to diabetes (which causes lots of cancers), unhealthy weight, dental problems, and more. But that’s OK. Think about this: When was the last time you saw a commercial with kids enjoying cigarettes. Now, when was the last time you saw a commercial with kids enjoying a sugar-induced, unhealthy beverage?

This glass is literally sitting on my desk as I write this post

17) Tobacco product advertising often misleadingly portrays the use of tobacco as socially acceptable and healthful to minors.

What congress cannot grasp is that this is not misleading: among minors, it IS socially acceptable to smoke. Despite anti-smoking campaigns and whatnot.

1 Tobacco product advertising is regularly seen by persons under the age of 18, and persons under the age of 18 are regularly exposed to tobacco product promotional efforts.

They’re also exposed to The Sham Wow Guy Vince, Billy Mays’ Oxyclean, Big Chief Chewing Tobacco, and a million other things. Not every kid owns a pair of Nikes because they’re on TV as much, and they sure as hell don’t rush out to buy a new Sham-Wow. Just because something is advertised, it doesn’t mean that people are going to go out and buy it.

21) The use of tobacco products in motion pictures and other mass media glamorizes its use for young people and encourages them to use tobacco products.

Like what, for example? Name 1 movie geared towards children that glamorizes smoking? The only thing I can think of is that  scene in Mrs. Doubtfire where Danial Hillard quits his job because the parrot is having a smoke.

You only see smoking in movies geared towards adults. And even then, it’s an accurate representation of the way we live: some people smoke. We can’t erase that by not including it in movies. Besides, people in movies who smoke aren’t usually the most oscar nominated roles. Typically we see the convict, the biker, the creepy eurpoean, the prostitute or the strung out crack addict reaching for a cigarette. If anything, Hollywood is unfair towards the normal everyday people who enjoy tobacco products.

25) Comprehensive advertising restrictions will have a positive effect on the smoking rates of young.

Fallacy 101.

And, my personal favorite:

(35) Tobacco products have been used to facilitate and finance criminal activities both domestically and internationally. Illicit trade of tobacco products has been linked to organized crime and terrorist groups.

This takes the cake. Not only is this a danger to children and adults, but it FUNDS TERRORISTS!

"Welcome to Flavor Country" - Osama Bin Laden (Probably)

Where are all those people who cried foul during the Bush years for him using terrorism as an excuse to do everything under the son that he wanted? Well, it appears that as long as the terrorism gag is used in their favor, it’s okay. This is just plain disgusting.

Based on findings like this, how can HR 1256 not be a success? Gee, idk.

The bill goes on for pages and pages of nothingness, rambling on about how the FDA gets to flex their muscles, despite the fact that they’re done a traditionally poor job in a large number of things that they have tried to do.I could go on and on picking apart each piece of the bill, but anyone with a shred of common sense will be able to do that just by looking at it briefly. I just highlighted some of the fun points to get you started.

If you can stomach the BS, I encourage you to read the text in it’s entirety here.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-1256

Till then, I’m going to go see if Thank You for Smoking is on On Demand.

Ooh, not to mention: if you go outside without sun block, you are at risk for skin cancer. Do we chastise the beach goers for damaging their body the way we damage cigarette smokers?

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Badass Punk / Pirate VW Rabbit

Another fun find while driving. Note the spraypainted skull and crossbones on the door.

This is the last of the “random weird cars I see while driving” for a while. I promise. But this was too sweet to not post up.

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Webcam Daycare: Creepy Daycare Concept…or creepiest daycare concept?

I was driving home from my cousin’s graduation party yesterday in Waterford when I came across something rather odd.

Behold, the sign:

Webcam Daycare: Voyeurism for the concerned Parent

Their website boasts:

Welcome to the award winning daycare where you can see your kids at play while you’re at work! Enrolled parents have a login account that will allow them safe and secure access to the webcams anytime.

First off, the title of “award winning” means nothing. Just because somebody gave you some recognition doesn’t mean that some creeper might not still end up working there.

I can only really imagine two kinds of parents who would be interested in this kind of toddler spying program: Those who are extremely worried about their kids getting molested and those who don’t know how to cut the cord and just let their kids be.

Now, if you were really worried about something happening to your kid, maybe you shouldn’t entrust them to complete strangers. Or at least not to a daycare company that doesn’t have references. Parents know other parents. Surely someone could recommend a reputable daycare that doesn’t hire people who end up on To Catch a Predator…right?

pic related...but unlikely

Basically, you can’t trust anyone. Cameras or no cameras. It’s just the way it is. It’s all to convenient for the server to just happen to crash and something can happen. Then your little sense of satisfaction of knowing your child is safe goes right out the window.

And even so, who says “Well I won’t be completely satisfied until I can watch my child at every moment?”. If you’re that paranoid, I can only imagine what kind of hell your kid, and his father, go through on a day to day basis while dealing with your paranoid shit.

And in defense of the Daycare people, the problem may ensue where you may appear to be molesting / grabbing a child / whatever when it’s entirely something different. That can lead to a legal battle and an unbelievable amount of trouble for you. Not to mention, it’s not like you can call up your best friend and say “uhm, yah what do I do if I get accused of touching some kid?”. You’ll just end up on the internet, begging for advice, and eventually joining some “wrongfully accused” support group. Making this scenario all the more real is that it’s easy to understand why a parent of a previously molested child would think that a daycare with webcams is a good idea. But that also means that they will end up super overprotective and may end up scrutinizing your every move. No es bueno.

And uhm…not to mention….

You’re broadcasting a video of kids playing on the internet! Which is just inviting your website to get hacked by some guy who has this as his computer wallpaper:

I didn't know she was 3...

While the site has a nice SSL cert, that doesn’t men a whole lot when compared to what people will do to break in. Hell, I’m sure people would hack the server just to prove that it wasn’t a safe and secure haven. Or equally as bad, what if one of the other parents has a thing for little kids? Getting his kicks becomes easy once he’s granted access to the video network.

Nothing is truely safe or secure, and this is no exception. Putting it on the internet makes it all the more vaulnerable.

Not to mention, there’s something wrong with getting kinds exposed to so many cameras so early in their lives. Nothing like getting them ready for a lifetime of surveilence the moment you leave your house, courtesy of Big Brother. It’s all just plain wrong.

So let’s review:

PRO:

• Feed your obsession with watching your kids.
• Give yourself a false sense of thinking your kids are ultimately ok.
• Watch little kids play…if that’s your thing.

CON:

• You feed your obsession instead of seeking help.
• You leave your kids subject to pedohackers.
• I’m sure the extra “security” ain’t cheap.
• Your surround your child with cameras at all times.
• You allow the other weird parents to watch your kid all day.

Conclusion:

The concept of webcam daycare is creepy, weird, and is more or less exploiting your spawn.

Society always has nice ways of throwing these little curveballs at us that keep it interesting.

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Bumper Stickers….not always smart

While I don’t really consider this a “car’ blog and don’t plan on making it one, there’s been enough interesting car coverage to warrant a new category.

Anyways, on my way home I encountered a car with one of those pro american, save your job bumper stickers. The ironic bit being that it was on a Chevy HHR and this immediately threw up some red flags.

Behold, the car.

Chevy HHR: Made in...

Behold, the hypocracy.

Last I checked, Ramos Arizpe was a suburb of Monterrey, Mexico. Let’s ask google maps.

Accurate Map is Accurate

Now granted, the HHR brings in jobs for white collar executives, a design team, and dealerships, but really, is that what the pro-american message that is trying to be portrayed? The idea is to support manufacturing jobs…and cars like the HHR don’t represent that in really any fashion.

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Lack of updates courtesy of PHP security issues

So I have all kinds of stuff that needs to get posted on here, including pictures of the half torn-down Tiger Stadium as well as the Packard Pant and whatnot. However, it’s been screwy getting in to make any updates before recently.

Here’s the story.

I’ve been working on a small freelance project where the most time consuming bit was going to be the photo gallery. So I wrote something up to show the pictures, browse directories, make image previews, etc. Instead of being ghetto-fab and just using CSS to set the width of the images, I found a nice thumbnailer script that uses PHP’s GD library and even had an image cache so that it wouldn’t be ridiculously slow every time it was run. It’s called Smart Image Resizer from Shifting Pixel. I was excited and decided to test it.

Well, the script was set up to search all directories in the folder “galleries” and take the first image from each folder and use that one as the preview image. Simple enough, right?

Well, not when it encounters an empty directory.

It tried passing something like “array index[2]: Invalid” to the PHP script as an argument for the image. This, unbeknownst to me, caused my web server’s security to freak out and give errors like the following:

2009-06-10 21:33:23 XX.XX.XX.XX  /thumbnail.php?/.?width=350&height=350&cropratio=1:1ℑ=/gallery/test1/. HTTP/1.1 domain.com Access denied with code 403 (phase 2). Match of “rx (\\.(?:gif|jpg|png|bmp|jpeg)|^http://$|^[0-9]+$)” against “ARGS:image” required. [file "/usr/local/apache/conf/modsec2.user.conf"] [line "825"] [id "340161"] [rev "14"] [msg "PHP Injection protection for Image ARGS (S)"] [severity "CRITICAL"] 403

Except like I said, I had no idea that this has happened. So from where I sit, I’m just trying to FTP some files and go about my day. Then it locks me out. No big deal right? Server’s getting rebooted or something, I’ll just try again later.

Still can’t get in. I check the server from my phone, it’s fine. Eventually, I get back in, go back to testing, and get locked out again. I proceed to go down to my girlfriend’s house, assuming that it’s blocking my IP address for whatever reason, and it locks me out there.

So I’m pretty bothered and confused at this point. Keeping mind that this has happened over the course of a few days. Eventually, I get in touch with my hosting people and figure it all out. But that still won’t stop the server from kicking me off if it doesn’t like the image value to pass.

So I patch my gallery to only pass something to the script if there is a file there, and all is well again.

On top of that, I worked till almost 730 today, put in almost a full day on Sunday, had to rebuild my home network setup and have had random day to day stuff to deal with.

Updates are coming soon. Till then, there CAN be a thing as too much security .

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Hookah HDR (Neon Sign)

Snapped this earlier in Downtown Mount Clemens. It’s a neon sign at the Heads Up Boutique.

Hookah: In HDR

Taken with my trusty Samsung NV15. View a larger size here.

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The Epic Love Story of Sierra and Gary