A good point made by the Bayou Renaissance Man

 I came across this posting from Peter regarding the fragility of our infrastructure, which made me think of the potential for mayhem here in Sin City.

Contrary to popular belief, Hoover Dam only provides a small portion of electricity for the Las Vegas area; most of our power comes from natural gas turbine generator plants, with a bit of solar and geothermal power generation thrown in.  The natural gas supply mostly comes from western Texas and eastern New Mexico via pipelines thru Arizona, and IIRC there's also one coming from Wyoming via Utah.  Altogether, those are vulnerable to disruption from natural disaster, malevolent actors, etc.

Water is also an issue as almost all of it is pumped from Lake Mead, and over 90% of what we take out is put back in after it's treated.  Granted, it's still vulnerable to various things, and lord help us if the pumps fail.  The fabled Las Vegas Springs are just a memory as they literally stopped being a source of water here after the 1950's.

And since Clark County has been pretty much a big D stronghold since before I moved here (in 1991), expect the usual mindset from similar voices in other dastardly D areas.

Prep quietly, keep things low key, and keep your powder dry (easy to do with all the heat).

Another year older, yay me

 Today is another year passed since I started on this earth.

Hard to believe that I am now 55, I feel as horny as 25 (or 15 for that matter), and goes to show age can really be just a number.

By coincidence, an old acquaintance from my high school days came up to visit for a couple of days, and last night I took her down to Fremont Street, and had a chance to finally go into the Circa Hotel-Casino which I meant to go visit since they opened about 2 years ago.  Wasn't too bad, plenty of eye-candy to behold both inside and outside.  After extricating from there, I took her down on a cruise of the Strip, and it was typical assholes-and-elbows traffic even at 00-dark-30 on a Saturday night/Sunday morning.

Gave me a chance for one more look at the Mirage before they close up on the 17th of this month.  Sad to see an icon go, but change is the name of the game here in town.

Tonight, back to the grind.  At least I'll have my regular partner back with me on shift this week.

It beats the alternative I think...

 From BCE:

He's right, can't really do any worse this time around.

Keeping busy

 Just keeping busy with work and some personal matters.  Changes are coming, some good, some so-so.

Will keep y'all in the loop best I can.

A good example how spousal abuse is blind to the gender of the victim

 Link to story

Abuse is abuse, no matter what.

More from the blogosphere and some personal updates

 Some more tidbits from the blogs I try to follow:

1. BCE is reminiscing on 20 years since he went to Iraq as a civilian contractor and how times changed.  I will say this, he's now almost half the man he used to be.  Thanks for stepping up to the plate and still sending good vibes to you and Gretchen and hope her battle with cancer ends in a resounding victory.

2.  Not much from Electrospaces (formerly known as Top Level Communications) lately, there's an article (in Dutch) regarding how the Dutch government is proposing regulations on how their intelligence community is able to respond to cyber threats.

3. Over at Wirecutter's blog, I came across this interesting tidbit about how PornHub is going to block users in Texas in order to be compliant with a recently-passed state law that penalizes sites for not properly verifying the age of their visitors to prevent underaged folks from viewing the content.  Depending on how they got their gateways configured, this can be easily circumvented with a VPN client just like how lots of folks are able to view IPTV content from other areas which may be blocked.  Time will tell if this is gonna work out...

And on a personal note, my dad is once again back in the hospital for internal bleeding (his hemoglobin was at 4.5 :-o ) so hopefully they can find out where it's coming from and get it fixed.

Another personal and professional note, the live show that I regularly work as a backstage medic announced that they are closing and that the last day is May 11.  I'll post more later about that along with pics when I get a chance.

Some thoughts on combat survival from the Russian point of view

 In my usual tromps around the blogosphere, Peter at Bayou Renaissance Man posted this article from a interesting source on some suggestive advice to the Russian soldier on how to deal with the combat in the Ukraine.

I find it an interesting study on the mindset of the Russian soldier's mindset in particular and the Slavic culture and worldview in general.

Considering that Russia is trying to bring itself back to greatness on the world stage, it does bear some study.  Knowing your potential adversary is a basic tenet on preparing for conflict.