He who represents himself in court has an idiot for a lawyer and a fool for a client

Or in this case, herself.

Honda gets $9,867 hybrid mpg judgement overturned

LOS ANGELES –  A judge overturned a nearly  $10,000 small-claims judgment against American Honda Motor Co. that was won by a  car owner who said the automaker misrepresented the gas mileage of her hybrid  Civic, according to a ruling released Wednesday.

I’d guess that at least in Honda’s mind, it wasn’t the amount, it was the idea of encouraging people to sue in lieu of accepting the rather paltry class action settlement. Probably a sound strategy.

Peters, a lawyer, previously urged Honda owners to take the small-claims route  as she did, and her initial success led some 1,700 other hybrid owners to follow  suit.

I wonder how many of those 1,700 are now likely to sue Peters?

This could go on for years.

Read the whole article, it’s pretty interesting. The judge refuted every one of Peters’ Points (try saying that three times fast) with not only logic and law, but common sense.

I’ve had the new phone for about a week now, and like it. I’ve put some apps on, but not a lot. I’m still getting used to the email and web browsing aps and will add some more as time goes on. I’ll probably resist the urge to turn it into, as a friend of mine calls his wife’s phone, “An Angry Birds machine that you can make phone calls on if you want.”

One thing I’ve noticed is the persistence, perniciously so, of some apps, especially ones that have come with the phone. For example, my phone has Facebook on it. I don’t use it, have taken it off the screen, but it’s still running and using power and memory. Probably not a lot of either, but if they’re going to load the phone up with crap I don’t want, then they should just give them out for free. I also have a Blockbuster Video app that I can uninstall updates to, but not the core app. I’m sure that there are others, but those are the two I’ve found so far.

So, is there way to dig down deep into the OS and get rid of these virus like apps? I know that there is such a thing as “rooting” a phone and I should do some research on Al Gore’s Internet and see what that’s all about, but hopefully one of my readers can help me out with that one.

The only downside to this phone is that it eats through the charge on the battery quickly. Which the sales guy told me was a problem with Android based phones. Hopefully by getting rid of some apps I don’t use and don’t want, I’ll be able to improve that a bit.

If you watch The Big Bang Theory,  you probably know what M.O.N.T.E. is. If you don’t here is a helpful link to introduce it. Funny stuff, at least to me.

This is even funnier, because it’s real, not TV.

10 Angry Robots You Shouldn’t Let Inside Your Home

From the article it seems that the real Robogames predates the Southern California Wobot Fighting League Wound Wobin Invitational, but either way it’s pretty funny. At least to me.

I just bought a new Android based phone. It’s a lot different than my Crackberry, that’s for sure. I need some aps put on it, though. I already installed a flashlight ap, and I’m going to put on Lemon to track receipts, but I need more. EMS related, not EMS related, serious aps, fun aps, all kinds of aps.

Send me suggestions, please.

North Korea: Satellite fails to enter orbit

(CBS/AP) North Korea’s much-anticipated rocket launch ended quickly in failure early Friday, splintering into pieces over the Yellow Sea soon after takeoff.

North Korea acknowledged in an announcement broadcast on state TV that a satellite launched hours earlier from the west coast failed to enter into orbit. The U.S. and South Korea also declared the launch a failure.

Failure to Launch

Joking aside, they won’t stop at this failure. Just as they are still trying to detonate a successful nuclear weapon, they’ll keep on trying until they succeed. It doesn’t matter how many of their own citizens starve to death while they spend millions if not billions of dollars in their quest to be like the big boys.

Dangerous people playing a dangerous man and we have a feckless President in DC.

Sorry if I offend any of my legion of readers with political maunderings.

Argentine president dismisses ‘absurd’ UK claim to Falklands

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina’s president, used the 30th anniversary of her country’s invasion of the Falkland Islands to rubbish Britain’s claims to the south Atlantic territory, saying: “It is absurd to pretend dominion more than 14,000km across the sea.”

“It is an injustice in the 21st century that there are still colonial enclaves,” Ms Fernández said in a sobre speech in Ushuaia, the capital of the province of Tierra del Fuego to which Argentina says the islands it calls the Malvinas rightfully belong.

Note that this is the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War. Which Britain won. Maybe Ms de Kirchner figures with Britain tied up in Afghanistan and the US having a feckless President that won’t back up a long time ally, it will work out better.

Britain doesn’t have near the military it had back when it ruled much of the word. Or even as much military as it did 30 years ago. However, it’s military has been pretty active over the past 10 or so years and it is full of combat experienced soldiers, sailors, and airmen. I don’t know that I’d want to put Argentina’s military up against them.

Hopefully this will be resolved peacefully, or Ms de Kirchner will reconsider her intemperate words. That last thing the world needs right now is yet another armed conflict.

Not only increase accidents, they are fraught with the possibility of fraud.

Now comes this,

Pasco judge challenges constitutionality of red light cameras

“If they are going to prove I was driving the car, it’s their duty under the law to prove the identity of the driver,” said Filippone, 45, who maintains his 2002 Nissan Altima crossed the intersection a split second before the light turned red on April 15. “It unjustly shifts burden to me and makes me shoulder the burden of having to prove their case.”

Pasco County Judge Anne Wansboro agreed. On Feb. 17, she dismissed the charge, saying in her order that the law “impermissibly shifts the burden of proof to the Defendant and therefore does not afford due process, and is unconstitutional to the extent due process is not provided.”

In some states motorists have to pay “court costs” to contest a traffic citation and those costs can exceed the cost of the ticket itself. Of course, even at that the surcharges on your insurance might make it worthwhile to fight.

Despite the bleating of politicians it’s not about safety or even “for the children”, it’s about revenue pure and simple.

My question is this. How do we know that the company that provides these cameras isn’t just photoshopping the lights to make it look like people are running the red lights? There is no first hand review of the photos by a police officer, so we have absolutely no proof that these are real violations.

Plus, how do you rebut or cross examine a picture?

Just more examples that some public officials think of their citizens not as people to whom they are responsible, but sources of revenue.

It’s been a busy week. Two funerals, two classes, a dead washing machine, and a new firearm. All of which I could blog about if I had time. Except I don’t as I’m getting ready for a road trip down south which will have me out of town from tomorrow morning until sometime Tuesday. Trouble shooting and then buying the new washer took most of my afternoon, other than the time buying the firearm. One was more fun than the other, and cheaper as well. I’ve written and scheduled a post about that for Sunday. If I have any Internet access on my trip, I’ll try to get some other posts up, but it’s not likely.

There’s a Country Music post scheduled for Wednesday too.

An EMS grumble is in the works, but not ready and probably won’t be until after I get back.