Subtitled: Gee, thanks Polly.
My favorite nemesis, Polly Summar writes one of those “and now this in obvious news” articles today in the ABQjournal.
Thanks, Pol! Couldn’t have worked that out for myself! What with, the, you know, skin I have and all.
To be fair, how much must it suck when your editor hands you the task of writing about how hot it is? In New Mexico.
Ah well, the non-natives need something to complain about.
Good work, Pol!
Wednesday’s ABQjournal has a story that was, in my opinion, inevitable.
Suspects Held In Diesel, Gas Theft
Yup. Gas prices are so crazy. Recession is on. People have taken to stealing gas.
Are you surprised? Didn’t think so.
“Mark Hogan would park his box trailer over gas stations’ underground tanks, open a secret compartment and pump thousands of gallons of gas out of the ground.
Police say he then sold the fuel for $1.75 a gallon for unleaded and $2.50 for diesel.”
Hoo, a good deal!! Bet it sells like hotcakes, too.
Dude sold it mostly to his friends and used the money to fuel his meth habit.
Nice.
“The New Mexico Petroleum Marketers Association reported that 500,000 gallons of gas and diesel had been stolen from about 30 (Albuquerque) metro stations this year.”
And at $4 a gallon….I’m sure the $2M out of the coffers is but a blip on the petroleum screen…but I’m sure I know who will pay for this.
If you listen closely you can hear my wallet scream.
Remember back in the 70’s when people used to “pump and run”? That in response to gas shortages and high prices.
Oh well, these days you have to slide a card to get the pump to work anyway, so this is just the next “workaround”.
*sigh*
Oh Fair New Mexico, how I love, I love you so…
“A crew working on state government’s Rail Runner commuter train cut a fiber-optic cable in Santa Fe Thursday, jamming telephone lines, cutting off Internet and cell phone service and causing other problems over much of northern New Mexico outside the capital city.”
Living in the Silicon Valley, this kind of stuff is a HUGE deal. Not to under evaluate the effect on Santa Fe, just sayin’…if this happened here, lawsuits would begin flying.
Since part of what I do in my job is manage the telco requirements of my company, every time I do a contract, THIS is what I have in mind when we talk network diversity.
If someone (or many someones) isn’t fired over this, they oughta be.
Not the medical kind. The emotional kind. And, oddly, in this case related to medical personnel.
This morning I read this brief article in today’s ABQjournal: Hospital Officials: Prank Not Funny
My first thought was “I’ll bet it is.” I mean, really, office pranks are funny. And hey, a hospital is *prime* for good office comedy. Lots of ways you can go with that.
Well, in reading the article, I discovered the joke in question wasn’t actually all that funny, at least not to me. It probably was to the hospital workers who had put in a twelve hours shift and were punch drunk and silly. And generally an office prank arises out of people being 1) tired, 2) fed up and 3) both.
So these hospital folks were caught on the security camera putting a cartoon image of Stewie in the frame that had recently housed a photo of the Chief Operations Officer.
It might have been a loving, joking tribute to the employee who had moved on to other employment, likening him humorously to the baby bent on world domination. It might also have been an after-the-fact tacky comment on the nature of the hospital executive.
Either way, I don’t know and really, I don’t care. But I do think that the fact this made the newspaper and there is huffing and puffing from the powers that be at the hospital is sort of silly.
Office pranks are everywhere. I’ve done them. I’ve been a victim of them. Hell, I once aided and abetted my coworkers kidnapping a diminutive office mate and wrapping him tightly, still seated in his ergonomic office chair, in shrink-wrap plastic (except for his, you know, breathing areas). Round and round and round on the shrink wrap platform and we then rolled him over, green in the gills, to the pile of racks and equipment that were being moved to a new location.
Had the guy had no sense of humor, I suppose that HR wouldn’t have looked kindly on the prank. Huffing and puffing would have ensued. Turns out the guy has a great sense of humor, and our boss almost peed his pants laughing so hard.
What the hospital employees missed was a few vital keys to a good office prank: Timing. And know your audience.
Ooh, all this talk has me itching for a good interoffice prank. Sadly, my current crop of coworkers have NO sense of humor. The timing is good (the office is in shambles, we’re moving buildings) but the audience…not so much.
Got an interesting link from The Good Man this morning. “New Mexico fights to protect the lynx” from CNN.com and same story under “U.S. Sued Over Lynx Protection” from the ABQjournal.
My first read was in passing only. Sort of a *snort*, “figures”, : shrug : kind of response you get used to being from New Mexico and being left out.
In a nutshell, a conservation and animal rights group is suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service “to force it to extend Endangered Species Act protection to the Canada lynx in New Mexico.”
Big deal, right?
“The federal government lists the elusive, furry cats as threatened in 14 states— but not in New Mexico.”
Oh? Ok. Well, fair enough. And then further…
“The Colorado Division of Wildlife, which has released more than 200 lynx in Colorado since 1999, tracked about 60 of the animals into New Mexico’s Taos, Rio Arriba and San Juan counties…”
60 divided by 200 equals THIRTY PERCENT of the released animals aren’t protected.
Ah. So none of those wildlife “experts” at Fish and Wildlife thought that the “elusive, furry cat” would, you know, roam?
Have they MET the western region of the country? You know, wide open spaces, mountains, nice weather, lots of small furry things that a big furry thing might like to eat?
Has the Mexican Gray Wolf taught us NOTHING about how animals will roam when looking for viable food sources?
So what’s kind of head shaking about the story is that if the “elusive, furry cat” is in Colorado, it is totally protected under the Endangered Species Act. Once it crosses over into New Mexico? Open season.
No one tell Neal Trujillo that, ok? Cimarron isn’t all that far from the Colorado border…
Photo source.