Out with the Old and In with the New

Some of you may notice that there's a new commenting system for Intellectual Poison, I've replaced BlogOut with Haloscan for several reasons.

The biggest one is that Haloscan seems to be alot more reliable. I've yet to not have the comments link show up after a refresh of the page. BlogOut was getting to the point where it was every other reload was missing its comments. And that gets old.

Another big reason is to speed up load times. I know BlogOut was hanging the load for some folks and that's just unnecessary. And it could also drive you away and that's the last thing I want.

I can also now edit posts and delete those that don't need to be there. And monkey with the colors and formatting of the new comments as well, even embed the Fire in the Sky pic I took a few months ago.

No epiphanies here, just a sigh of okay, time to move on.

But I am now seriously thinking about paying Movable Type the transfer fee to have them migrate my blog to their systems as Carlene suggested. The price has gone up some but that's alright, its still a deal to not have to cope with the nightmares I've heard about moving to Movable Type. But I do wish they'd get their TypePad deal up and running soon because the install process is quite alot less involved.

I just want to blog, I don't want to spend hours fiddling with the controls.

After Hour Cop Stories
This is a new feature I'm going to start working on that will grow out of my conversations with my neighbor who's a sheriff and one of the nicest and coolest guys you'll ever meet.

A week or two ago we were talking as he got ready to go to the gym and I was doing something in the storage space. Somehow we got onto traffic stops and he related his way of not writing tickets but still having an impact and getting a damned good laugh in the process.

When he used to be a highway patrolman he hated writing tickets. Just because it was a pain to do, certainly not because he didn't think people deserved it. So, instead of ticketing everyone he pulled over, he would occasionally mess with their heads a bit (much like what I think happens in Super Troopers but as I've not gotten my DVD yet I don't know).

He would pull over a car and then just sit in his patrolcar, staring at the car he'd pulled over for about five minutes. Then he would slowly walk up to the driver's side window, they'd roll down their window and offer him their license, registration and proof of insurance. And he'd just stand there staring at them, wouldn't take their papers, wouldn't say anything. Would just stand there and stare at the driver. Keep in mind that he's a big guy, six two or three and built like the proverbial brick shit house. After a few minutes of silent intimidation he would slowly walk back to his car and sit in it staring at the offender for a few more minutes.

And then he'd start his car and drive away leaving the person to wonder just what the hell had just happened.

That is, unless the driver started mouthing off and being an asshole. Then he'd write them up for as much as he could.

And that brings this post to the advice corner. If and when you get pulled over, though you may be pissed off and ready to battle, don't. There is nothing you can win by being an asshole to the police. All you get is no slack at all, if you're a jerk then they will almost certainly write you up for as much as they can. Why? Because they have to deal with dickheads all day long. Differentiate yourself, be polite and treat them like another human being and not the law. They're doing their jobs and you wouldn't have been pulled over if you hadn't been breaking the law. Recognize this simple reality and you will find yourself getting warnings or reduced tickets instead of the full brunt of the law.

Simple really but so many people think its a good idea to argue with the police about getting stopped. Its not.

Oh yeah, the other thing is don't admit you knew you were speeding or whatever you were doing. That tells a cop that you knew what you were doing and broke the law on purpose and that'll piss off most of them just as much as being an asshole.

Thus endeth the sermon.