I may have mentioned I have a WM6 phone now, the Mogul from Sprint, and I have to say that if I reboot it twice a day it’s a stable device. I could probably only reboot once a day but I like to be safe. I would go iPhone but Jobs and co. are worse than MS at locking crap down. I am waiting patiently for the Andriod phones in Q4 and will snatch up an HTC dream and suffer the pains of early adoption for that but at least I’ll get geek cred for it.

I updated the romeosidvicious muxtape and think this one might be a final product, meaning that I will make another muxtape account for future mixes. It’s pretty damn slick right now and I can’t imagine I will get a better flow out of the songs I want!

I have to update the backend here and at Last Chance Diner this weekend and work a new theme for the diner as well. So the weekend is sort of packed as I also need to test Joomla for the family website as the specialized software has the wife in a tizzy.

We had the baby (figure everyone already knows but just in case) and the pics are up at Michelle’s gallery. So go gaze at the new little addition to the clan. A few more and I’ll be prepped for world domination.

For the record my brother was the one driving while our friend Ryan did the taping for the video above.

“This guy couldn’t maintain a single lane for more than about one minute,” Kelly Potter said. “He did not belong on the road.”

Potter said that a van forced his car off the road on Beltway 8 near Bissonnet Street at about 11:30 p.m. Thursday. Potter called 911 to report the driver and his passenger pulled out his video camera to record the driver.

Kelly witnessed a drunk driver, something he and I both despise, run someone off the road so he did what anyone else would do, called 911. A twenty minute response time is awesome for HPD to respond to someone who has already run someone off the road and is weaving through traffic.

A Houston police officer eventually pulled the driver over. After speaking with the driver, the officer determined that there was no indication the driver was impaired and saw no need to give a field sobriety test. He let the driver go home to his nearby apartment.

This is not 100% accurate according to Kelly. The officers decided to let him go since he was 20 feet from the driveway to his apartment. He spoke to the Sargent on duty right after the stop and was told they decided to let him go and said the officers may have made a mistake. Channel 2 news doesn’t mention this and my brother isn’t a liar. Go watch the video, I’ll try to get the whole thing from him and YouTube it this week, and tell me if being 20 feet from your driveway is an excuse to be let go? The dispatcher told the officers my brother was there with video and they never bothered to even talk to him. They didn’t speak to the driver long enough to discern anything about his state of sobriety. I know a little about this having driven wreckers. The officers involved were lazy and shirked their duty plain and simple. There is video evidence. They have a record of the stop. They should prosecute this guy. Of course they really can’t since the lazy officers who made the stop didn’t bother to look at the evidence, or even field test the drunk bastard.

“He (the officer) was there and we weren’t,” Wice said. “The fact that that officer ultimately concluded based upon their experience, training and expertise that no further investigation was needed, while somewhat dismaying to the Good Samaritan and maybe to some of us, ultimately that’s a decision that we don’t have the right to second guess.”

I have news for Mr. Wice: We DO have a right to second guess. Anyone who watches that video has a right to second guess the officers. We have a right to demand an investigation. We have a right to hold the officers accountable for their negligence. If that man left his apartment later than night, still drunk, and killed someone the blood of his victims would be on the heads of the HPD officers who didn’t bother to do their jobs. We have every right, in fact we have an obligation, to question actions such as these. Especially when there are credible witnesses and video evidence. We have a right to demand these officers be disciplined and made to do their jobs. If we don’t then HPD will be allowed to continue being lazy. Police officers are not above the law. Mr. Wice we are not dismayed. We are outraged.

This opens up a ton of questions. Is it alright to drive drunk if you make almost home? Did the officers know the drunk driver? How long until the officers shift was over?

I want to look into getting the audio of the traffic stop under one of the free information acts so we can hear what the officers heard. I will see what all I can gather and post here.

Since most of of the stories are AP stories I am not bothering to find one that isn’t and will merely use actual quotes from the supporters of the “victims”:

Stephanie Storey - Fiance of Hernando Riascos Torres, felon, illegal immigrant, thief
“This is not over. It’s not over by a longshot…”
“premeditated murder”
“I’m very surprised that these two lives had no value, that someone can take the law into their own hands and shoot them down like animals and absolutely get away with it. I’m more than angry right now…”

Ms. Storey I feel absolutely no sorrow for your loss. While I hope both men were saved and had merely fallen from the path of good the fact is that your betrothed was stealing from someone when he was shot. He was a felon. He was an illegal immigrant. He is to blame for his own death. His life had no value because he himself had devalued it. Joe Horn stepped from his home and shot him because he was stealing from an honest, hard working, human being. The goblin would have called your husband had no respect for the laws in this country and had proven it time and time again. He is now dead because he was stupid. He took the risk of breaking into someone’s home and taking the stuff they had worked for, the stuff they had earned, and yet you think he should still be out there able to do the same thing again. It is over dear heart. It was over when the goblin ceased to use oxygen the rest of us might need some day. The waste of skin you were sharing your life with inflicted losses on others over and over again and you claim his had no value because the grand jury didn’t indict his killer. You, ma’am, need to search your soul and ask yourself when you fell of track so much that you would share your life with someone such as you were. Find yourself a church and get right with God. I hope the two men were in His good graces but it would be dishonest for me to say I was sad they have ceased to pollute the gene pool. Maybe I need to repent for that but for you to come after Mr. Horn is beyond the pale.

Of course the like of Quannel X are coming out of the woodwork decrying this as a racist crime. The 911 tape proves different. Mr. Horn used not a single racist epithet. He was concerned about his neighbor’s home and possessions and his own safety. He preserved both and the grand jury agreed. Good on ‘em…

I wish my neighbors were more like Joe Horn and less like a batty old crone and her ex-convict son.

1. Moonlight - Leeeroy Jenkins reference (here for your viewing pleasure)

My friends THAT is an awesome bunch of references. Some of them are obscure, for those playing the home version, but it has made my last couple of nights. Anyway I promise more on the job. I am simply out of time. I have to go to sleep so I can get up before the sun…and look I ain’t complaining about it. That alone should tell you how awesome the job is!

To all those who responded to the call for help I cannot thank you enough!

You people are stupid! Just because you bought a digital camera at Walmart doesnt mean that you know how to make a picture or process it correctly in you PC of shit computer. Photographers are not SNOBS, they are working professionals who are trained to capture moments in time.

And one cannot help but wonder why this troll even bothered. Photographers are not “trained to capture moments in time” but rather trained how to take pictures and work a camera. Someone with natural talent can go far taking pictures without any “professional” training. The thought process that people can be trained, in any shape, form, or fashion, to “capture moments in time” could only be the deluded fantasy of one who watched too many Kodak commercials while young. Aside from the rest of the faulty logic it is obvious that the person who left the comment has precious little education based on the lack of punctuation and the horrendous grammar contained in the brief venomous spew they felt compelled to bang out on their keyboard.

Nevermind that none of us who commented referred to all professional photographers as snobs but rather a specific set of them. This set of “professionals” (note the use of quotes) believes things such as they should be served the same food as the guests at a wedding and the bride and groom should forgo tradition to make the photographer’s life easier. It is to these people that we give the internet version of the middle finger. Had anyone with any spark of intelligence read the comments they would have realized that the comments were based on the type of attitude presented in the article and not at professional photographers as a whole. There are always people who give their industry a bad name and the author of the article in question is, in my not so humble opinion, one of them.

I couldn’t help but point out the idiocy. My wife is much more civilized than I and simply removed the comment because it’s her blog and she’ll do what she wants with it. Me, well I prefer to bring this sort of thing to light and make snide remarks about it. Does that make me better than the person who wrote the comment? Probably not. Nonetheless it amuses me…

If anyone knows any assistance ministries in the Houston or Harris county areas please let me know. I have emailed a few today but can find very few through my google searches.

It occurs to me that someone might offer me consulting work if I post my resume so here it is.

Mark L Potter - Resume

Now Aoghdan is so skinny that he looks like a cancer patient or a refugee with his head shaved. If I wasn’t married I’d tie a bandanna on his head, go to the store, and pick up women using him as bait. Yeah I am evil but women can’t resist a little boy who looks like he’s doing chemo! I am so wrong. I can’t even believe I admitted to that. It’s a good thing I am a Christian and God tells me that certain things are wrong. I would be so screwed if that were not the case.

I’ve been hittin’ the bar a little hard lately. You see I get out of work at midnight. My kids have been asleep for four hours and wife for two. I could come straight home and hang out with Harley (the new dog who’s not Spot but is pretty OK for a dog that’s not) or I can hit the bar for Power Hour(tm) and have a few. I have been choosing option two a bit too frequently. It’s a bad thing to go drinking when you are broke and worse when your barkeep lets you run a tab and forgets to make you pay for over half of what you order. All in all it’s not the best scene.

Now before you all go thinking I am a raging drunk let me make it clear that I am only having a couple beers and relaxing. Holy shit that sounds like a justification if I ever heard one! It isn’t but there’s no convincing some people.

Anyway the best part of the drive home is this stretch of Clay Rd. that goes through the Barker Reservoir. There are no lights, there are hardy any cars, and it’s about perfect for introspection accompanied by the right music. Lately it’s been mostly a Scott H. Biram thing but there has been some Jason Boland and Jackson Taylor sneaking their way in with some Drag The River for good measure. I am not sure I am figuring anything out with all the introspection but ’tis an interesting experiment to be sure. In fact I am pretty sure I am figuring nothing out.

On a different note I am finding myself more drawn to, and it’s hard to describe, the new school of old school country music. But it’s not really old school either. I wouldn’t want to drag it too far into the alt.country label either. Anyway it’s folks like SHB, Drag The River, Justin Townes Earl, Jackson Taylor, Shooter Jennings, and so on. Anyway all of the previous drivel is just to get the muxtape I made today. Yeah it’s cheesy but tis’ kind of a cool way to share music. The mix isn’t that good overall. In fact as far as mixes go it’s about a solid 5, middle of the pack effort. But in my defense, and a weak one at that, I made it on the way out the door to spend all day with family out of the house. So I am not going to go changing it all up. Pop over there and give it a listen will ya? If you hate it then oh well…