In Debt? Move to CA!!

I headed into the grocery store today and while I was on my way in two women were on their way out. One was talking to the other and I overheard her say “…you need to eliminate your debt. Maybe you should move to California.”

I wanted to turn around and ask if the lady was high.

Me – are you high?
Her – what?
Me – you are telling your friend to move to CA to get out of debt? When was the last time you were in CA? Do you have any idea how much it costs to live out there?

I can’t imagine anyone significantly increasing their cost of living by moving to CA as a way to get out of debt faster.

Kudos To Sears

I had some tools that got broke over the last year and they’ve been sitting on my top shelf of my tool box for a while. I finally remembered to take them to Sears so they could replace them. All Craftsman tools have a lifetime warranty.

I walked in, found a dood, showed him my tools. One of them was a bit older and they didn’t make the exact same tool anymore. He grabbed the new version, plus a replacement for my others.

Walked to the counter, he rang it up – didn’t ask me my name, phone number. Didn’t ask me to sign anything. He just handed me the new tools and said thanks!

I know Sears has been getting a bad rap lately, but I couldn’t have been happier with that kind of customer service.

Get out and Vote!!!

I noticed this year that I haven’t seen much in the way of grass-roots vote movements like Rock the Vote. Maybe they are happening and I am just living under a rock. I don’t watch TV much, and I don’t listen to the radio very much anymore, either.

I went and did early voting yesterday. I was already hearing that lines were getting long and I didn’t want to waiting until Tuesday and have to stand in 2+ hour long lines! My experience was pretty nice. I was in and out in about 10 minutes but some places already have long lines.

I’d love to tell you that I don’t care who you vote for, but that’s not true. I do care who you vote for as I certainly believe one candidate is better than the other. I might ask that you please vote on issues and not race or gender. I also might ask that if you don’t know the issues that you try to learn about them real quick. A person voting blindly is probably worse than someone not voting at all.

When I was going over the ballot there were several candidates for offices and positions that I was not familiar with. In some cases I knew I didn’t like some of the candidates, but didn’t know enough about the others to cast a vote.

And as much as I keep hearing that the U.S. will never support a 3rd part there were a surprising number of libertarians on the ballots this year.

If you listen to the mainstream press it certainly seems like Obama is going to be our next president. I can’t say I am very happy about that, but I don’t think it’s going to be quite as bad as everyone is making it out to be (thought I still think the potential for it to be bad is there – I am not for socialism, fascism, and government control). It’s funny that I’m reading some of the same rhetoric coming from the right-wing / conservative bloggers that I heard from the left-wing / liberal people when Bush was about to get re-elected. The big one being “if he gets elected I am leaving the country.” Not many people left. I certainly have no plans to leave.

That’s it. Get out and vote. Exercise your right as a U.S. citizen. One way or the other, history will be made in the next week.

A little Halloween Humor

Here are a couple of items that were sent to me that I thought were funny....enjoy!

Me and My Bike

No, not my motorcycle. I mean by bicycle from years gone past. I used to ride my bike a lot. I didn’t sit inside and play videogames if it was nice out. I was outside riding my bike, going places my mom told me not to go, and generally getting into something that would resemble trouble.

My niece hasn’t fared so well at learning to ride her bike. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that she lives on a very busy street and can’t “practice” all the time. I’m not sure she has many other kids to play with on her street. I said she could come over here and ride since there is hardly any traffic and there are always kids outside learning to ride their bikes.

And I love my mom, but anytime bicycles are brought up she has to recant that I got stitched up a lot “falling off my bike.” Hearing it from my mom you would have thought I was a ‘tard that didn’t know how to ride a bicycle. “But there was gravel….” She’d say, as if this made it all better. As if it made it OK to wipe out. What she doesn’t realize is that now I sound like an even bigger ‘tard.

“Yup, there was gravel there but Brad was so retarded that he’d ride in it anyway, fall off his bicycle and then we’d take him to the hospital to get stitched up.”

Actually my mom would never say anything like that, but you can see the wheels spinning even in the minds of seven year olds (even if they can’t ride a bike very well). You can see them looking at me, an old man in their eyes, and thinking I’m an idiot. So much for respect.

That’s when I always have to tell the kids what it was really all about. I’d tell them how I’d ride my bike for hours all over the place. How we had real trees and woods to ride in. We’d go down to the creek and setup ramps to jump across the creek – sometimes we didn’t make it.

And the gravel? Well that was an opportunity now wasn’t it? You’d have to start way, way, way back. As in maybe at the other end of the block, preferably uphill from the gravel. Why? So you could build up plenty of speed of course.

You’d mount your bike and start peddling. Then you’d lean over the handlebars to get the maximum amount of torque possible to will the bike to go faster and faster….and as the wind picked up, your hair blew back off your head, and the landscape would become a blur you would spot your target – the accumulation of gravel in the corner from weeks of traffic without rain or maybe even a refresher from the friendly road crew.

Balls out, no fear…. You hit the gravel!! And…..lock up the rear tired and put the bike into a power slide….5 feet….10 feet….15 feet!!! You just did a monster power-slide through the gravel!!
Of course, it didn’t always work out that way. Sometimes it was epic failure. Sometimes, like a tard, I’d wipe out and have to go get stitched up. Maybe mom is right after all.

Re-Visiting the Pucker Factor

Yesterday was a pretty nice day here. It was almost 90 degrees with a cold front knocking on the door in the evening. I hadn’t been on the bike since my trip to E. Texas and while it is still pretty filthy I thought I’d try to ride a bit.

I guess it just wasn’t my day to ride. I tweaked the tire pressure to get it right and then took off to get a bite to eat. Part of the parking lot is a one-way “strip” or alley. I looked in the direction of on-coming traffic and nobody was there so I started to execute my turn and some fuck-tard was coming the wrong way down the strip. I didn’t hit them (or vice-versa) but there was a brief moment of panic until I made sure that they weren’t going to take me out.

After scarfing down on some food and getting my blood sugar in order I took off and hit some faster sweepers, but it was not to be. There was too much traffic and I had to take it easy. Not a big deal as I don’t need any more tickets.

I made myself get lost on some back roads and was taking it pretty easy as I just didn’t quite “feel right” for some reason. I was coming around a bend in a road at a fairly low speed, maybe 15 ~ 20mph, and just started to lean into the turn when it started sliding out from under me. I don’t mean part of it stepped out, the entire bike started to fall away.

This would be the pucker factor kicking in.
Purely reactionary I stuck my right leg out and caught it and then kept the throttle on just a tad and sure enough it hooked back up. I never saw anything in the road to indicate it was that slick. I wasn’t going fast. My tires were plenty warm. I have no idea why that happened but I decided that I had enough and it was time to go home.

The problem, now, is that I am rapidly losing confidence in my tires. It seems that since I have put new tires on the bike I have had several such “odd” episodes in which the bike has simply failed to perform or respond in a predictable fashion. It could purely be coincidence. The tires I have on it are supposed to be really nice tires with good traction, but I don’t have much confidence in them at the moment.

More stuff that pisses me off...

I had just posted an article about Card calling the liberally biased media out when I come across this article posted in the Chicago Tribune.

Apparently, the left doesn't take to kindly to conservatives calling Obama a socialist. It isn't hard to see that the democrats have been implementing socialist policies for years and that Obama is clearly for more socialist policies.

But that isn't what gets me...this quote, and the fact that it is not refuted by the paper is what gets me:

"Obama is about as far from being a socialist as Joe The Plumber is from being a rocket scientist," said Darrell West, director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution. "I think it's hard for McCain to call Obama a socialist when George Bush is nationalizing banks."

Really? George Bush single-handedly started nationalizing banks? Of course! Why I didn't I think of that. Forget that it was democratic policies that started the process. Forget that it was democrats that cooked the books and took big payouts, forget that these same democrats are still in office, and forget that the republican party - including Bush - tried repeatedly to stop it, but were blocked by the democratic party.

Let's also forget that congress nationalized the banks and which party controls congress right now? Oh! That's right, the democratic party!

The fucking press blames everything on Bush as if he somehow bypassed the entire system and did whatever he wanted to. BTW - I almost forgot, he's certainly capable of it. Anyone that has God-Like powers and can cause hurricanes, flooding, and global warming could probably circumvent our existing governmental system. Doh!

A Skewering of the Press

When I was significantly younger my friend gave me a book by Orson Scott Card entitled "Ender's Game." I really enjoyed the book even though I am not really into sci-fi reading. In fact, I went on to read several more of his books that were part of the series.

Yesterday, Bling! sent me a link to an article that was written by Card. Apparently he also moonlights as a newspaper columnist. Card is a democrat and he essentially skewers (Bling!'s word) the liberally biased media and press. Not because they are liberally biased, but due to their lack of integrity and inability to report the truth when it comes to any type of political issue.

I found it very refreshing to see a democrat in the media calling people out on it.

http://www.ldsmag.com/ideas/081017light.html

Why are we turning Socialist?

Last night we were having some wine and cheese and inevitably the conversation turned towards politics. I must work for the only company in the state of CA whose employees are predominantly conservative (not necessarily republican).

One of the questions I asked is:

if we are able to look the history of fallen nations and countries, and if we are able to look at existing nations today, and we are able to determine that socialism and socialistic policies do not work and lead to the corruption and downfall of the country, while simultaneously hurting the citizens, the very ones that socialism is supposed to protect, why are we, as a country, continuing down the path of socialism and why do people vote for socialist policies and leaders?

It didn’t take even two seconds before one of the other guys spoke up and said he had the answer. I asked what it was and he said “human nature. As humans, we want something for nothing.” And everyone agreed.

I’m not sure it’s all-encompassing, but it sure did fit.

Hunting AIG Scumbags

I had recently written about AIG’s discretionary spending while getting bailout relief money. As it turns out they also went on a nice executive hunting trip to the tune of $86,000 while they were requesting another $37.8BILLION!!! Would someone please tell me again why we are bailing them out?

One thing that is kind of nice is that the NY Attorney General told them to back off or they would start prosecuting them. A quick excerpt from the AG’s letter to AIG:

For example, in March 2008, ignoring the massive losses AIG was experiencing, the Board awarded its Chief Executive Officer a cash bonus of over $5 million and a golden parachute worth $15 million. Similarly, in February 2008, a top-ranking executive who was largely responsible for AIG's collapse was terminated, but still permitted by the Board to keep $34 million in bonuses. This same individual apparently continued to receive $1 million a month from the company until recently.

Moreover, even after the taxpayer-funded bailout of AIG, the company paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for luxurious retreats for its executives, including an overseas hunting party and a golf outing. We believe these expenditures and payments, made in the absence of fair consideration, violated New York law, specifically, N.Y. Debtor & Creditor Law fj 274, which deems such payments to be fraudulent conveyances.

Obama Supporting African Thugs

Prelude:
Here is a post that I put up about a week ago. One of my friends wrote me an email to let me know that I had been duped and that my facts were wrong according to Snopes. Sure enough, I went out to Snopes and was a bit surprised that most of what I had written, and been writing about, and had known to be true was suddenly wrong!!

Since it was so far out of whack, I pulled the entry down as I didn’t want to be someone spreading dis-information as easily as everyone does on the Internet. I also went back to researching the information and made a startling discovery.

Snopes is liberally biased and this is proven repeatedly by showing Snopes reports compared to actual facts and events that shape politics. Do a google on Snopes and liberal. So I went back and continued to do some more research on my original post. I am going to let it stand. The only thing that is partially unclear is whether or not Obama is really Odigna’s cousin. What is not unclear is that Obama has some sort of relation with the man and has campaigned both with and for him at various times.

Snopes may be good at dispelling hoax emails, but I can no longer trust them to accurately report on political issues. One report I read indicated that the author searched multiple instances of Obama and then multiple instances of McCain. Overwhelmingly Snopes reported negative information of Obama to be False, while it simultaneously reports negative information about McCain to be true. Who do you trust? I suppose you have to gather the facts for yourself and arrive at your own conclusions.

And now, without further delay….the original post!



I’ve written about Raila Odinga before. He’s Obama’s cousin and as he puts it, they stay in close contact. Obama recently donated almost $1-million U.S. dollars to Odinga’s cause. BTW – the Obama camp refuses to comment on the donation.

What is his cause? Rewriting the constitution of his country to change it to a nation of Islam based on Shira law. He was just recently involved in a political melt-down in which thousands of people were slaughtered – mostly based on their race. Odinga was just named Prime Minister in an effort to stop the violence! This is not the first time Odinga has been involved with this level of violence. Let’s call it what it is – genocide.

Again, you just don’t hear about this much here in the west (America). Not only do you not hear much about the Muslim violence and genocide in Africa the media consistently fails to report it in any manner associated with Barack Huessein Obama.

And yes, I used his middle name just like Sherrif Mike Scott who is now being persecuted by the press.

Look – you people that support Obama seemingly and consistently turn a blind eye to his political and Muslim ties, and ties to violence, outside of the U.S. And why is it important that it’s Muslim ties? Because the violence and genocide that is occurring in Africa and other parts of the world is directly related to Islam, its beliefs and it’s teachings.

It’s hypocritical to fault the Bush administration for continued violence and the war yet you turn a blind eye to Obama and his support of his cousin (Odinga) who could be called an orchestrator of mass murder.

That’s why conservatives in the U.S. are very concerned about Obama’s loyalty to the U.S., and the constitution.

One way to wake up….

This morning I got up a tad early. It wasn’t hard since I am in PST and my body is two hours ahead from normally being in CST. But the world is just not made for non-coffee and non-tea drinkers in the morning. Here I am in a huge-ass hotel and casino and I can’t hardly find me a soda to drink in the morning. But after walking around for a while I was able to get a soda and blueberry muffin to start the day.

I then went to my massage appointment. Everyone was really nice and I was scheduled for a deep tissue “fusion” massage. Cisco footed the bill, including the tip and I was told that there wasn’t an upgrade available. I’m not sure what it cost for sure, but I overheard the receptionists telling some of the other people that the “lower end” massages were around $130. I figured this one was probably about $160+.

The woman was really good and definitely got deep. She would get it to the point where it hurt a little bit and just when you thought you couldn’t take it anymore she would roll through the muscle and finish it off. Then she followed up with a lighter massage and heat rocks.

Since I had access to the gym and spa (which I refused to pay for yesterday) I took advantage of it and hit the steam room with eucalyptus in it. I sweated it out for a good ten minutes or so and then spent time alternating between the dry sauna and the steam room before showering and getting back to the grind.

There are worse ways to start the day off.

To Cheap to Work Out

I am a cheap bastard. I totally admit it. But I am also practical and a man of principal. I'm staying at the Bellagio in Vegas courtesy of Cisco. They are having a partner appreciation and awards function here and invited me to attend.

I've got a real nice room with a king-sized bed. I don't know what it costs, but I can assure you that it is not cheap. I wanted to squeeze in a workout so I went to the spa and health center. They told me it would be an additional $25.00 / day to use the facilities.

WTF? I stay in hotels that cost far less than this and have FREE access to the workout facilities. Hell! My gym membership doesn't cost me $25 / month!!

it seems absurd to me to have to pay that kind of money to use the workout facilities.

I guess I'll be working out in the room.

Financial Quote of the Week

In light of the recent crash of the stock market, here is a quote that was forwarded to me by my friend John:

"THIS IS WORSE THAN A DIVORCE. I LOST HALF MY MONEY AND I STILL HAVE MY WIFE"

More of your Tax Dollars at Work!

Just days after the feds gave billions of dollars to AIG they took off an went on a $410,000+ executive retreat.

Then they asked for another 30+ BILLION dollars.

Nice. I'm glad to know my tax dollars are well spent.

At least they decided that spending another 1/2-million dollars for a retreat at the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay was in poor taste....

Just updating....

It sure seems that many of my entries have been about politics lately. As much as I don’t want my site to be considered a “political” blog it is obviously something that is important to me. Combine that with the upcoming elections, the economy and the bailouts and I guess you can expect to see a fair amount of entries on it.

But that’s not all that is going on. I’ve been working my ass off in CA this last week. I had a terrible experience with my client and am trying to “fix” things. I spoke to someone here and told them about my solar panel analysis. They didn’t think that $25+ thousand dollars, 3000 sq. feet of solar panels and an 18-year ROI was that bad. Freaking Californians.

But the weather here has been great. I got me another convertible and the morning and evening drives are great. I pretty much don’t see the car beyond that because I’m putting in 12+ hour days with clients….but not tonight. I am going to go somewhere and have a “beverage” and a decent meal.

And what is it with drivers out in CA anyway? You are cruising down a highway marked at 65mph and people are driving 50 or 55 all over the place. Back home if you are on a highway marked 65 you better be doing 80 or you’ll get ran over. I don’t get it.


Last night I had my beverage out on the back lawn overlooking the valley. There were dear grazing in the yard below where I was. They didn’t seem to care I was there. I went out for dinner and tried this Sushi place I hadn’t been to in a while.

I valet parked the car since there wasn’t anywhere else to park and went inside. Then I left. Why? Because they wanted $24.00 for a freaking bowl of soup!! No, I am not kidding. Sushi rolls were anywhere from $20 ~ $35 a roll. I told them I was appauled at their prices. I think they were high as kites, but the place was packed. Hey! If they can get morons to pay three times as much as other places then more power to ‘em, but I wasn’t going to do it.

I went to another place in Saratoga – still pricey but I had a bowl of soup, some sushi, and a small saki all for $20.00.

I have been opening the windows at night. It’s cool outside. I was worried about not having screens on the windows but surprisingly I haven’t had any bugs fly in the room and try to eat me alive – even with the lights on. Did CA outlaw bugs?

VP Debates

I was watching some of the VP debates. It was fairly interesting and I was wondering why Palin kept coming back to energy issues even though the question was clearly about something else.

But, when Biden indicated that the major difference between himself and Obama vs. Palin / McCain was that they knew that climate change was all man-made and that you couldn’t resolve an issue unless you knew what the problem was. I completely lost my respect for him and whatever else he had to say.

Why? Because it shows me a man that is not willing to listen to reason and logic. A man that is willing to ignore science and the scientific methodology that, in fact, shows that we still do not know 100% what is causing all of the climate changes we see.

Steve's Bailout Bitch

I called my friend Steve up to talk shop about music. He was in the middle of watching the updates on the bailout and boy was he pissed. In fact, he was livid. He was so mad that he could barely complete a sentence.

He was pissed over several things….I’ll list some of them here, and I apologize that these are not direct quotes but paraphrases that I remember from our conversation:

One of the things he was really pissed about is that nobody, including McCain has the balls to stand up and point the finger at Obama and members of his staff for being directly responsible for the situation we are in.

True and I agree. And, if you want to argue that feel free. The media may not be portraying it much but democratic economic policies, bills, leaders, and cover-ups are directly responsible for creating the sub-prime market and the meltdown. Google it, watch it on Youtube, whatever.

Something else he was really pissed about is that he doesn’t believe an economic bailout is appropriate, yet the government (both republicans and democrats) are going to shove it down our throats. (As of this writing it has just been passed by both the house and senate with Bush signing the bill). I suggested Steve try calling his representatives but he and I both had the same problem – we couldn’t get through due to the call volume from people requesting that it not be passed.

Agreed. I don’t know anyone that wants this. I even know a few people that are fairly empathetic to the government bailing people out and even they aren’t sure this is a good thing. Economists seem to be split on the issue. So why is the govt. shoving it down our throats?

And Raines? Steve was furious about Raines. If you don’t know who Franklin Raines is he is a fellow democrat that cooked Fannie Mae’s books, drove ‘em into the ground, and then took a huge $20+ million dollar payout. As Steve put it, this is bigger than Enron (I agree) and Raines did the same thing Ken Lay did so why is he not under indictment and being prosecuted?

It might have to do with him being Obama’s top economic advisor. And sadly, we have a presidential nominee that had a big hand in the problem, with a top economic advisor that was directly responsible and yet somehow the story is not getting out and people aren’t going to jail.