Security, Fredcoin style!

Oh, dear -- another terrible crime centered around cryptocurrency. This one was no hacker or pyramid-scheming bamboozler at work. In this case, 12 violent punks were sentenced for home invasions in an attempt to steal cryptocurrency -- and while they were at it, maybe some cash and nice watches, too. 

These jerks! They're ruining everything good about cryptocurrency -- that is to say, it's not real and you can't carry it around! Its value comes from pretending it has value. If this kind of thing goes on, people won't even bother with cryptocurrency. They'll just go back that boring old regular currency. And who wants that? 

Not you, my friend! Therefore you need to invest your crummy US dollars in the crypto that has the best security around: Fredcoin! 

But, you ask, why should I expect a rinky-dink outfit like Fredcoin to have better security than the "big name" cryptos?

I'm glad you asked! Allow me to present my company's 10-Point Security Assurance Points that explain why our security is second to none! Or second only to nuns, maybe.

1) At Fredcoin, your assets are not contained in some easily found safe deposit box or something. No, no! We keep them right -- wait a sec, I thought I left them here. Must be my other pants.

2) Our crack security staff is always on high alert. 

3) Point 3 is temporarily out of order. Please try again later. 

4) We know that the weakest link in cybersecurity is the meat puppet who pushes the buttons. So we reduce exposure by keeping the interaction with the computers to a minimum. The less we work, the safer you are! Safety through laziness. QED!

5) Louisville Slugger, amirite?

6) REDACTED 

7) No one ever thinks to look in the bathtub.

8) Our alarm system from Stiiv's Hacienda of Security is top-rated! Call 1-800-ECURITY (leave off the S for Security!).  

9) We're totally experts in crime prevention. We've studied the classic texts.

10) They can only get the password out of you if you remember the password! 

So you see, Fredcoin is clearly the winners' choice, the only cryptocurrency for you. But don't take my word for it! Ask our security team.

Mission: Forgotten.

Mr. Philbin inquired whether I was intending to comment on last week’s failed attempt to murder the former president. I believe everyone on the planet has already done so, and as more information comes out and the Secret Service looks worse and worse, more will comment again (and ought to). Feet must be held to fires; swords must be fallen upon. Justice demands it.

And yet, I suppose we’ve come to expect that justice’s claims will go unanswered. As is typical now. The government is loaded with people who not only don’t accept the buck when passed, they also use buck-repellent on their gold-plated rears to prevent the buck ever arriving—however properly it should. Harry Truman is long absent. 

It’s of a piece with a blog entry I posted earlier this month about our supposed elites and their stupidity. As has been pointed out with appropriate vigor in many quarters, the Secret Service has opted to show its stupidity by forgetting its mission and picking up lesser missions instead. Instead of protecting the presidents and other key figures, they seek to indulge in social justice and social engineering, hiring candidates based on their potential to be girlboss action figures rather than their capacity to do the job. We have seen some results of this mission misdirection.

A similar situation has been going on in reverse in women’s competitions, where men dressed as women are pulverizing girls at sports and even winning beauty competitions. The mission—giving women an arena in which they can achieve greatness—has been thrown aside for silly concerns.

This has been going on in fire departments for decades. It became more important to get women in the firehouse than to have firefighters who could handle the often extreme physical challenges of the job. To enable social change, physical requirements had to be lowered. 

I asked a buddy who retired from a Manhattan NYFD firehouse if one of the highly touted female recruits had ever wound up in his unit. He said they were never assigned any, but he worked with some when he was on temporary loan to other houses. And no, they couldn’t do the job—they were just not strong enough, however fit. So the department would shuffle them into desk jobs. They will get the same cushy pension and Cadillac health plans as guys who'd spent 30 years dragging adults out of burning buildings. The situation is worse now under Mayor Eric Adams’s highly politicized fire chief, but that’s a long story.

It seems like way too many people believe the fish-out-of-water stories in which totally unqualified persons are put in difficult positions or authority, but succeed because they are clever and mean well. This assumes no job requires any knowledge or expertise. Anyone can do it with the right attitude, so why give it to some old white dude who’s spent his life in the field? The mission will be accomplished. And if not, we tried real hard!

I'm not just blaming the women involved, mind you -- I'm blaming everyone for forgetting the purpose of the job. And having an all-men squad is definitely no guarantee of getting these jobs done. It was only in 2012 that Secret Service agents were found to be spending more time getting loaded and banging prostitutes overseas than focusing on their duties (“Wheels up, rings off”). And again, that’s forgetting the mission, just for different priorities. 

This is where we are in America right now: Everyone wants to do everything but the damn job that he's supposed to be doing. You'd think that wouldn't be too much to ask for any job, let alone one that prides itself on duty and honor, but apparently we're choosing to be too stupid -- not to mention too selfish -- to live. 

Reports from the road.

We took a li'l road trip recently, which is why blogging has been even spottier than usual. Just a few days to visit family out of state. It was delightful, but that's not my topic today. Actually, I have two:

1) Dog-gone

We were not staying with family, but rather in a hotel in town, and we were bringing oversize puppy Izzy with us. This by far would be the longest road trip he's ever experienced, and since he's not one of those dog that loves car rides, I was worried about how he'd fare. Would he freak out? Get carsick? Whine to stop every ten miles? And what of the hotel? Sure, they claimed they were pet-friendly, but were they? Would Izzy test the bounds of their hospitality? Bark at random hours? Establish dominance by peeing all over the room? Anything could happen. 

Well, it all went off far better than I had hoped. Izzy was perfect -- the ride out was stressful for him, but he settled down and took it easy. We made one pit stop on the way (for me as much as him) and he was fine. He was beloved by the extended family and only barked exactly one (1) time on the whole trip -- the morning we were leaving, as we were packing, when some kids were running and shouting in the hotel hallway. Then he slept pretty much all the way home.

I'd like to thank Embassy Suites for being as good as their word about pets. They are very clear about the ground rules, which are hardly onerous -- use the rear lot for his trips out, clean up after him, don't bring the dog into the dining area, and so on. These requests came in a bag (with very 70's style art) that was full of dog treats -- a spoonful of sugar and all that, you know. 

2) Fire!

When I got home, loaded with bags and trailed by dog as I walked up the porch steps, I was disquieted to hear the fire alarms going off in the house. No smoke inside; no clouds of particulate matter. These are alarms wired into the ceiling, and there's a dozen all over the house, and when one goes off they all go off -- so no telling where it started. I ran from room to room, pulling them off the ceiling as I went, because it was obvious right away there was no real emergency. The next-to-last one was the culprit, in the ceiling of a storage room. My guess is that some bold spider, hearing the empty house, made his move to take over the joint; he knocked some dust into the detector, fried himself on the wire, and set the alarm off. It could have been peeping for days.

You could hear the sound from a couple of houses away. It must have annoyed the neighbors. Especially the lying sack of lies who lives next door. 

So, that's a plus, anyway. 

On the whole, a great trip, but it's nice to be home. I hope I'll be able to pass along more bloggy goodness this upcoming week. 

Mission: Get into places and back out.

In the old Mission: Impossible show, the one thing you could always count on was that the team would have really good forged papers. They never got caught because they used a Form 13-F when the guards would have expected a Form 16-B. Peter Lupus just handed over the clipboard, a guy looked at it, and soon a mysterious crate with Greg Morris inside would be delivered. Later it would open up and the cat burglar would get to work. 

In the days pre-9/11, a friend of mine was convinced that you could get into any office building in Manhattan with a clipboard and maybe a lanyard. Just look like you know what you're doing and brazen it out. Sometimes it wouldn't even be that big a deal. I read an article about how gorgeous the lobby and elevators are in the Chrysler Building, so one day I just went in there wearing my suit and tie. Went straight in, rode in the elevator, left. Didn't even have to sign a guest book. (They are gorgeous, BTW.)

The clipboard act might have been worth a try to get into more secure properties back in the day. But security began to tighten after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and now, well, it would be easier to get a four-ounce bottle on an airplane than to sneak into a building with such a simple trick. 

However, something tells me this probably would still work.

It's the same principle as my old pal's clipboard gag -- use the appearance of mission and authority to do what you're not supposed to do. It won't work in a Manhattan office building now, but apparently you can take whatever you want from stores. This is partly because security in a Walmart isn't that great, but partly because no one cares anymore. If Target and other stores in California are just going to let looters and thieves take off with whatever, why should a branch in, say, Omaha care that much? 

So that's the world we've built in the new millennium -- maximum security for everyday schmucks, crooks running wild in the streets. For the first time in my life I hear about stores being shut down because people are stealing too much. That's serious. Ordinary petty theft is a minor infection; this kind of thievery is a fatal disease. The parasite has taken over the organism.

I had another friend whose son got in trouble with the law back in the oughts. This Napoleon of crime had the idea with his buddy to go into Target, grab all the video game discs they could hold, and dash out the door. So, the kid got a criminal record for his trouble. Now it appears he wasn't an idiot, he was just ahead of his time. 

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Secret Service names.

As everyone knows, at least thanks to Wikipedia, the Secret Service uses code names for U.S. presidents and their families, assigned by the White House Communications Agency. The agency provides a list, and the president can make the choice among them. (President Obama chose "Renegade," because there's nothing more anti-establishment than the President of the United States, I guess. I think Trump may be "Le Grand Orange," since that's available now.) Seems silly that code names would be publicized, but apparently there's no real secrecy need for them anymore--they are useful as shorthand and for the sake of tradition.

The practice started with Truman, who was "General." Ike, who had been an actual general, was stuck with "Scorecard." Kennedy had the appropriate name "Lancer." Reagan's was also appropriate: "Rawhide." Curious that Clinton's was "Eagle" and not, maybe, "Pants."

Secret Service protection for the president dates back to the assassination of McKinley in 1901. But you have to wonder what some of our other presidents would have had as their code names, were the practice of guarding and naming older than they are. Hmm... perhaps something like...

Abraham Lincoln: Stretch

Franklin Pierce: Cipher

Rutherford B. Hayes: Fuzz

William Taft: Lumpy

John Quincy Adams: Littlejohn

George Washington: Optimus Prime

William Henry Harrison: Sneezy

James Madison: Half-Pint

James Monroe: Pint

Andrew Jackson: Quart

Ulysses S. Grant: Gallon

Calvin Coolidge: Hush

(First term) Grover Cleveland: Rocks

(Second term) Grover Cleveland: Redux

Theodore Roosevelt: Chaps

Franklin D. Roosevelt: Specs

Thomas Jefferson: Ploughman

Woodrow Wilson: Nag

Martin Van Buren: Baldy

James Buchanan: Freebird

Chester A. Arthur: Buddy

C'mon, doesn't he look like a Buddy to you? 

Times Square: Bring a bag.

So we're part of the very cold weather that's gripped the East, of course, and now it's New Year's Eve. I suggest that people who want to join the celebration in Times Square bring a bag, so when their hinders freeze off they can carry them home.

Also, they may want to make an appointment to see a psychologist on Tuesday, because I think they're nuts.

crazy people in large numbers

I've lived my whole life in and around New York City, and I've never been tempted to spend New Year's at Times Square. That includes before terrorist douchebags made such events even more ridiculously miserable.

Right off the bat you have to deal with the weather. It's never balmy in Manhattan on December 31. It sometimes rains. It may even snow. Tonight the low is supposed to be 10 degrees Fahrenheit. Maybe with wind, which will drop it considerably lower. It will be either the second- or third-coldest New Year's in Times Square since they started dropping the ball in 1907. Accuweather says, "Wind chills are expected to fall as low as 5 to 10 degrees below zero tonight into New Years morning," and few Tristate Area denizens have Antarctic explorer gear.

And you have to be in this weather for hours. If you wished to go to Times Square tonight, here's what you would have to do, according to the official Times Square Web site:

"to get the best view, arrive early in the afternoon."

"Knapsacks, large bags and umbrellas are not permitted."

"There are no portable restrooms in Times Square during the celebration."

"Public drinking is illegal in New York City. Police will confiscate alcohol."

"There will be no licensed food and beverage vendors in Times Square."

"if you leave your viewing area to dine in a restaurant, you will not be able to return to your spot in a viewing area."

So you can freeze, stand in place for ten hours, not be able to eat, drink, or pee, and for what? To see the Tongliang Athletics Dragon Dance? The Kinjaz doing storytelling through dance? Or worse, Neil Diamond?

Think of it: Forced to stand in the frigid cold for ten hours without food, water, or bathroom use, to get blasted at the end by Antonique Smithh and Mariah Carey, and endure Andy Grammer playing the worst song ever written -- "Imagine." Under any other circumstances it would be a freaking war crime. The organizers would be hanged.

One New York Post reporter wrote that it "sounds like a urine-soaked hell," and as you can guess I am inclined to agree.

No, frankly, I think I will pass on joining 999,999 to 1,999,999 other humancicles milling about with bad music playing and crowds of grumpy people who can't pee.

We'll probably stay home and avoid Alcoholic Amateur Night entirely, perhaps watch TCM's annual run of all six "Thin Man" movies. Last year we forgot to switch the TV to Ryan Seacrest at midnight, and I hope to make it two in a row this year.

Shred your identity.

I enjoy using my shredder. It's weird to enjoy destruction so much. Only I and guys who abate asbestos get so much wholesome fun out of wholesale destruction. 

Whee!

For security, we are all supposed to shred documents we don't need, generally after 4 to 7 years, but some we have to keep anywhere from a couple of days to forever, according to this list from H&R Block. Got to protect your identity. Security through annihilation. I've also taken a big sack of paper down to Staples for their shredding service via Iron Mountain -- 99 cents a pound, as of yesterday -- when I cleared out the file cabinet last time. It feels good to shred.

You may remember the "Blue in the Face" episode of That's so Raven. Raven's father, Victor, becomes somewhat obsessed with his new shredder. Dad winds up shredding her chem homework, and Raven's salvage attempt leads to an unstable chemical reaction that paints them both blue the next day. Okay, not a great example of the joy of shredding. But it is an example of how powerful said joy can be. It's the only episode of any show I know of that explores the topic.

Here's a photo that's been making the rounds online:

Now, I'm sure there is a perfectly innocent explanation for why a hearse would be toting around a wood chipper. But it does make for an interesting idea. I mean, you could really shred your identity, if you get my drift.

Not that I'm rushing things, but . . . I have a neighbor with whom I have been having some issues, mainly because I am a normal guy and he is lower than plankton turd. I am pretty sure he will die in jail one day, but just in case I should go first, I would like to hire this hearse/chipper service.

All they'd have to do is back the contraption up to my neighbor's house, aim it at his porch, and load me in. I'll leave him with something to remember me by.

Just make sure I'm really dead first. As we learned from That's so Raven, premature shredding is a no-no.