Nasty boy, our Jack.

This season has had a couple of laugh out loud moments, as well. The image, a few hours into the final day, of Jack not only surviving getting stabbed, but then pulling out the knife and throwing it across the room to embed it in a baddie, killing the poor guy, was priceless.

Last night had another great moment.

Sprint is a big advertiser, and product placer in the show. Cell phones are almost always obvious Sprint phones, and last night there was a scene where a Sprint Overdrive mobile hotspot (I have one – it rocks) saves the day, allowing Chloe to actually create a mobile hotspot to circumvent the extra security imposed on the CTU network by politicos trying to cover up their bad behavior. I’m not sure how a Sprint mobile hotspot can get them past the security – I mean, will Sprint suddenly see an uptick in sales to terrorists wanting to take advantage of this valuable exploit? Come on.

The following is a SPOILER, so if you’ve DVR’d this week’s episode and haven’t watched it yet, STOP READING.

Minutes later, interrogating a very bad Russian man, Jack realizes that the secrets the man is hiding resides on the SIM card from his phone that has mysteriously gone missing. Jack hypothesizes that the Russian has swallowed the card, and proceeds to, in rather graphic fashion…Well, let’s just say retrieves it from a decidedly unwilling hit man. How Jack knew exactly where in the man’s intestinal track to go find the tiny SIM is a mystery that would baffle Dr. Gregory House, but hey, whatever. He’s Jack Bauer, and as the saying goes, “Chuck Norris wears Jack Bauer pajamas to bed at night.

Upon extracting the SIM card from the belly of the Russian, I turned to my wife and said “watch this, there sure as hell won’t be a Sprint logo anywhere near this phone and sure enough, it was an AT&T phone that Jack held in his bloody hand.

No, actually I’m lying. There was no logo on the phone, although in all honesty, I don’t think it would be the worst thing in the world to promote that your cellular technology is so tough that Jack Bauer can cut one of your SIM cards that a Russian hit man had just eaten out of him, plug it into the phone and make a call. That’s tough tech.

But, I guess no one wanted a piece of that scene, so a Product Placement opportunity, wasted.

It deserved an after-the-show-celebratory frozen yogurt. Plus, posted with a couple clicks from my iPhone, using the free WordPress app.

Well, I’ve disconnected…er, deactivated my BookFace account, which I announced in a previous post because they’re playing fast and loose with my privacy and more importantly, being arrogant about it. I may be back, but certainly not after I’ve completely scrubbed my information clean and satisfy myself that my privacy is protected. Unfortunately, that protection is going to have to come from not letting BookFace have access to it, rather than simply believing them when they say they’ll be careful with it. They’ve lost me on that. There’s no way I’ll ever trust them with anything that’s not created completely for public consumption.

And that’s sad, because one of the cool things about BookFace was that it allowed you to segment the internet into public, not so public and somewhat private. No more. I consider anything I put on BookFace to have exactly the same level of privacy as something I post here, or say on one of my radio shows.

One of the other things that weirded me out about BookFace was something that happened a couple weeks ago. I was friended by the little sister of one of my high school buddies. I thought “GREAT!” I’d always liked her, she was a nice kid, and it’s great to reconnect with people you have childhood history with.

Then, I saw pictures of her grandkids.

There was just something about seeing the grandkids of my high school buddy’s little sister. It was just too much. Cute kids! But it’s tough enough to see pics of your friends’ grandkids (I’m a little behind – My son is 8, so I feel about 30). But my friends’ younger siblings having grandkids threw me for a loop.

And by the way…If you need the origins of “BookFace,” here you go:

In two words, PRIVACY and ARROGANCE.

I’m really not impressed with the fact that the people who run this service feel that they can change the default privacy paradigms, saying “hey, opt out if you don’t like it.”

Okay, done.

If you’re wondering what this is all about, here’s a pretty good indication of canaries in the coal mine flying toward the exit. I think the lead pipe that broke the camel’s back was that if you’re logged into BookFace, they pay attention to other websites you visit and share that information with their partners. Uh, that’s new and should require an opt-IN rather than an opt-OUT.

The good news is, I don’t want to drop off the grid entirely, so it’s making me want to spend more time and attention on this blog.

Read Kim Stanley Robinson’s “40 Days of Rain” trilogy, about the advance of climate change. In the second installment, “50 Degrees Below,” DC and the Eastern Seaboard is locked in a massive snow and ice storm event.



Doug Little’s ArmedPersonalDefense.com is the best way I know of, to get the kind of training you need to protect yourself in dangerous situations. APDI offers CCW (Carrying a Concealed Weapon) certification, a must if you wish to carry a gun, but don’t want to openly do so. As Jim Rawles said on the show, Arizona is an open carry state, meaning you can carry a gun without a permit as long as its visible. To carry concealed however, you must have a special permit issued by the Department of Public Safety. Doug can help you with that.

Jim Kunstler’s Website – Update weekly every Monday.

Michael Panzner’s sites, Financial Armageddon and When Giants Fail.

Jim Rawles’ site Survivalblog.com has everything you need to prepare!

And then there’s always next November!

I’ve posted a longer excerpt at the link above. Remember…First draft.

5,005 (though the NaNoWriMo wordcount validator reports slightly less) words of The Sabra written. Going well, so far.

Here’s the synopsis:

The Sabra introduces Detective Michael Gilligan, who has moved from Chicago to his hometown of Phoenix, Arizona to join the Phoenix Police Department’s new Special Investigations Team, working on cases that may have ties to terrorism.

A former U.S. Navy Seal, Gilligan joined the force after Desert Storm and spent 15 years in the Chicago Police Department before circumstances, both personal and professional forced him to leave that city and the Department. Gilligan has found a place in this new organization because he has the investigative experience and tactical skills required for the job, but what his superiors don’t know, is that his interest in anti-terrorist work goes beyond law enforcement. Despite his Irish surname, Gilligan is Jewish, and is driven by events in his past that complicate his life as a Police Officer.

When the sole survivor of a group of illegal immigrants abandoned in a closed tractor trailer outside of Phoenix turns out to be a Saudi citizen with known ties to al-Qaeda, Gilligan and his new team find themselves in a dangerous position. As they begin to unravel a mystery that involves the smuggling of terrorists into this country, SIT finds itself caught between international terrorists who may be in the process of executing “The American Hiroshima,” the FBI, that doesn’t want local law enforcement anywhere near their investigation, and an American intelligence service that no one’s heard of, but may be trying to help al-Qaeda commit the single most deadly act of terrorism in history.