Thunderstorm In Texas

I always find it amusing how Texans are afraid to go to California due to earthquakes, but Californians are afraid to come here due to thunderstorms. Some of my co-workers are happy to say “give me an earthquake any day.” I truly don’t understand this because you can seek shelter from a thunderstorm, but your ass is toast in an earthquake if it’s severe enough. Where are you going to go? If it’s a bad storm or a tornado you can avoid the path. Try to avoid an earthquake.

I once had a co-worker of mine tell me a story about coming to Texas. They were staying at a hotel in the DFW area. A storm rolled in and they went out on the balcony of the hotel to watch it. He said after a few minutes a bolt of lightning came down and split a tree in half about 50 yards away with enough thunder to rattle the windows and stand the hair up on his arms. As he put it, he said “fuck this” and went back inside.

Well, last night we had a good one. It was not only big in terms of physical size, but it was also big in severity. If you’ve ever seen Doppler radar displays of storms you have probably observed that they start off with a light friendly color and then go to yellow and then red if it’s severe enough. Well, last night the swath of yellow and red extended for about 100 miles north to south, and probably 15 miles east to west. On the front of it were numerous rotations and several tornadoes were spawned as a result.

But here is where it gets fun. On the occasional rare occasion you might have seen the radar turn blue or purple. This was the case last night, but it went further than that. It was black. I’m not kidding. The Doppler radar had huge black cells in them where the hail coming down was softball size and straight-line sheer winds were in excess of 100mph with rain coming down at 3+ inches / hr. I figured that they made them black to indicate you were doomed if you were caught in that shit. They might as well have put up little skulls and crossbones in the black part. I’ve never seen black cells before.

I guess I was lucky. I was just south of one of the black cells by a few miles, but got nailed pretty good by the red, yellow, and purple. The rain came down so severely that I couldn’t see across the street, and then it started hailing. Fortunately nothing big, but fairly intense.

From this pic you can get an idea of what I was looking at out of my front door. You can see the hail starting and it raining pretty good. Just to let you know, the reason the sky is blue is not because it was twilight and the sun was going down. This was taken at 9:30pm at night. It was pitch-black with the storm, but I happened to snap this one off right as some lightning lit up the sky.

The next picture is a picture of my back porch (please excuse the mess). It’s kind of hard to tell, but the rain was sheeting over my gutters it was coming down so hard and my yard as well as the porch were flooding. The really sad part? I live on a hill. That’s how hard it was raining.

But hey! I survived and as far as I can tell the only real damage I sustained was that one of my struts on my rooftop antenna came loose. I’ll have to jump up there and fix it. At least my house wasn’t shaken apart and the earth didn’t open up to swallow me whole. I’ll take the thunderstorm.

It’s All About the Ride….

We had a pretty good ride this weekend. We took off on a south-easterly route as opposed to a south-westerly route like we normally do. I had ridden part of this before and knew the road would be good with lots of beautiful scenery.

It was cool on the ride, but not cold. Just about right as long as you had some gear on which is to say that you would have been cold without it and you weren’t hot with it on. I always ride with gear on, but my friends often do not so it was good to see them sporting jackets, chaps, etc.

It’s springtime here in Texas and though it’s significantly cooler than normal the flowers are out in bloom and just about everything has greened up nicely. The bluebonnets are out, but not in mass numbers like they usually are. Sometimes, it’s a sea of bluebonnets as far as the eye can see. I think the cold has kept them at bay, though.

There are all kinds of reasons why we ride and I’ve read some very good summaries of why people ride. I am not sure that I care to list all the reasons I ride as there are many. Sometimes that reason is very simple – I am one of the small percentages that can actually ride a motorcycle whether that is because of the ability to actually ride, or because I am not afraid to ride. Not many people ride bikes and that makes us (riders) a small close-knit community.

Other times, it’s the little kid in the car next to me waving at me as he eyes my bike. They are already realizing there is a something different about riding a bike that goes beyond being stuck in a cage just as I knew there was a kid. I wave back and their face lights up even if the mom is cursing me in the front seat.

Then there are all the people that I meet when I ride. People just seem to be friendlier. “Hey that’s a cool bike, what kind is it?” at the gas pump. Stopping for lunch might yield a “What a gorgeous day to be out and about. I wish I was out there.” I am not sure if riding bikes turns you into more of a social being, or if we ride bikes because we are social beings. I think it’s the latter.

And when you are riding you get to experience the world. You are in the world and a part of it. Not stuck in a cage where you are isolated from sound, the smells, the sight and the feeling that the world has to offer. You might argue that you can get that in a convertible and I’d argue that there is still a big difference between having 2 tons of metal wrapped around you with a windshield and riding upon a machine that exposes you to the elements.

And yes, I can twist up the throttle and run through the curves harder and faster than most people ever would in a car. As I lean the bike in I am aware that my contact patch with the road is a mere ½-inch per tire and I get to physically work my motorcycle through the corner as I feel the g-forces push on my body and my bike. Knowing that at any moment an error in judgment or traction could wind me up in the ditch, or worse. Enter the corner too hot or simply realize that there is something in the road and you will find the pucker-factor quickly kicking in. For some reason I find all of this simultaneously exhilarating and oddly fascinating at the same time.

And through it all, it’s my peace….my zen….my chi. It is not only unwise, but very difficult to think about anything else but the sheer effort of riding in this manner. I often find that I am very relaxed during the ride as well as at the end of it. One of my friends told me that while on the back of my bike they zoned out to the extent that they couldn’t remember sections of the ride. How often do you get that relaxed without falling asleep?

But I also am mystified by some people and their preference of riding just as they must be by mine. In the motorcycle world you have a few basic categories of riding: Street, Off-road, and Stunting. If you ignore the fact that stunting and off-road is illegal on the street that means most people ride to commute, or ride for pleasure, or both. In any case that gets us down to two basic categories – cruisers and sport-bike riders. And though there may be a whole plethora of sub categories those are the two main ones.

And somehow, those are two worlds apart in the motorcycle community. If I put aside all of the animosity between the two camps I still don’t quite understand cruiser riders vs. sport riders. I’ve done both. I had a cruiser. I always wanted one and I finally got one. And then I realized that it was not conducive to my riding style. After a ride in New Mexico and grinding my pegs down (by leaning into corners) I realized that my style was more aggressive and I gave it up for a sport bike.

And what I’ve found since riding a sport bike is that the entire reason we ride is different. You can analyze why that reason exists but it’s there. Sport bike riders apparently live for the twisty road. The one that curves endlessly and offers the sights, smells, sounds and feeling that one cannot get from a highway.

Cruiser riders live for the interstate and the long slab down a well traveled highway. Put your feet up on the highway pegs and drone endlessly down the highway as mile after mile unfolds.

One might say that I am generalizing, and I am. But let me put it to you like this – when I get out and ride the roads I like to ride I rarely see cruisers. I see other sport bikes from time to time, but not many cruisers….until I get on a major highway and then they are all over the place. I could probably note every bike and factually cite that cruiser riders are on the major highways 80 or 90% more than on the back roads. Seriously, on one ride I counted about five motorcycles for nearly 100 miles. Then I got on a major highway and quickly racked up over 100 motorcycles (almost all cruisers) in only 20 miles.

And that’s what I don’t understand. Why is there such a huge disparity between where sport bike riders like to ride and where cruiser riders like to ride? Granted, the bikes themselves are made for different purposes, but it’s clearly not the machine that forces you to do one or the other as both machines are capable of either one. If you want to ride the back roads, you buy a sport bike. If you want to ride the highways you buy the cruiser.

But I take almost no pleasure at all from putting my bike on an interstate and slabbing it down the highway. I’d rather not ride the bike than be forced to endure this for hours on end. Turn the tables, though, and some of my cruiser rider friends would say the exact same thing about the roads that I like. It’s that different.

So while I don’t get understand the difference it’s why I ride that counts. It’s not about the destination. It’s the journey that lies beneath my tires and for me that is not found on the interstate.

I'm Addicted

So easy, so simple, yet.....

Police Tasers

I read an article about a man that was tasered so severely that he had a massive coronary and lost all but a fraction of his heart muscle. Doctors cited his ejection fraction at 10% or less and couldn’t estimate how long he might live.

Prior to being tasered for over 65 seconds straight, as well as receiving 10 taser shocks in under 2 minutes the guy was a healthy working-class adult.

Now, before I go any further let me assure you that I am not someone crying over a person getting hit with a taser. The police have a very dangerous job, and we empower them to use force I order to constrain criminals and protect themselves. And let’s face it, most criminals won’t simply stop and cease whatever it is they are doing because you ask them nicely.

This guy had a drug problem and had just made a drug purchase when he got nailed by the police for a traffic violation. In the ensuing stop he resisted arrest and got tasered.

I’ve not yet read any incident where the “victim” complied completely and still got tasered or beat. It’s probably happened, but most of the articles I’ve read are simply this:

Failure to comply with the officers
*And*
An excessive use of force (i.e. the taser).

Aside from ignoring the matter the police only have a few options when enforcing the law and / or detaining potential criminals:

Asking them to comply (i.e. stop!)
Physical confrontation and contact without weapons
Physical confrontation and contact with a club
Confrontation with pepper spray
Confrontation with a taser
Confrontation with a gun

A gun is clearly and definitively a deadly weapon. Pepper spray has been shown not to even affect some people at all, or at the very least not provide enough stopping force to ensure the safety of the officers.

Tasers, somehow, seem to be the best choice. They provide stopping power and limit the distance the office must be from the suspect. But somehow, we’ve gone wrong. I think part of the problem is that the potential long-term effects of tasers are just being realized. It was assumed that tasering someone didn’t really do any irreparable harm, but apparently there are plenty of medical cases citing otherwise.

Due to this assumption the officers have apparently taken this to mean it’s OK to just taser someone whenever they don’t immediately comply with the officers request. Clearly we have a lot of cases where the immediate repercussions of one’s actions is far more severe than the infraction.

Last year, the Fort Worth police department reported five deaths from tasers. That’s reported and proven and doesn’t account for any unreported deaths or other injuries that may have been linked to tasers but wasn’t proven.

While I don’t believe we should take tasers away from police officers I do think there should be a general policy review of how and when to use a taser. Maybe it would help improve public relations and prevent some unnecessary harm to citizens.

And let me flip that coin over for a moment – when a cop asks you to stop, or get on the ground, or sit still just do it. And then there won’t be a reason to use ANY force on you.

More Thought On Climate Change

I had a hard time eating my lunch today. It was a tasty dish of linguine and clams, but it was what I was reading that was making me sick. In the observer there is what could have been a very interesting article had it not been so slanted and full of errors and inconsistencies that it made me not want to eat.

The subject of the article was about our national parks and how park officials are dealing with….well, I’m not quite sure. In one paragraph it was global warming. In the next it was climate change (the buzzword since apparently global warming isn’t happening). Which is it? Global warming or climate change? They couldn’t seem to decide and flip-flopped back and forth between the two.

Sigh…. So I struggled to get through the article, but then they started citing warmest temperatures on record (factually incorrect) for several parks, rising sea levels eating away the costal terrain (factually incorrect), etc.

But…I kept trying. I was able to get as far as mentioning that park officials aren’t quite sure what to do. The general operating procedure for environmental sanctuaries has typically been to let nature take it’s course and not interfere.

But suddenly, this isn’t good enough. The landscape is changing. Species are dying off, or moving out. And of course, it’s all due to climate change or global warming. I’m not sure which, if you go by the article.

So now, if you are a greenie you may not like what I have to say (not that the first part of this hasn’t already got your hackles up).

Climate change has been happening for billions of years. Guess what? It will continue to happen for billions of years. Many of us like to think of California as a beautiful paradise with oceans, giant redwoods, and luscious green fields…..but it wasn’t always this way. Over the span of a few million years, a significant portion of CA was transformed from desert to the forests that inhabits it today. Some of CA is still desert. And do you think that the species of animals that inhabited some of those original deserts and swamps are still there now that the redwoods are growing? Of course not. They moved on. They adapted, or they died off. This was not man’s doing, but nature’s doing. The natural evolution of life on our planet.

Look people, this is a natural occurrence of our planet. I’m not trying to convince you that people can’t or don’t have an impact. They certainly can. And ultimately we are also part of this natural system.

But part of the problem is that now people are not only trying to stop or significantly reduce man’s impact (not a bad thing) to the environment but those same people are now impacting the environment just by trying to “save” it from itself, or what might otherwise be a perfectly normal step in climate change and evolution.

The environment was not meant to be static. Stop thinking of it in such a limited capacity as the scope of recent history and the near future.

And do you really want to make a difference? Then stop breeding. That’s right, you heard me. Stop breeding. Stop having so many freaking kids. Stop letting illegals pour into the country by the millions. Stop trying to save every single person on this planet that probably shouldn’t be here due to evolution.

OMG! What am I saying? How can I be so cruel?

It’s simple…. For every human being in our country, or on the planet for that matter, we feel that we must provide the basic necessities of life. That pretty much comes down to a handful of things:
Food
Water
Shelter
Medical treatment

In order to provide food we must transform the landscape to provide the food in the form of crops or farms (animals, fish, etc.).

In order to provide water we must damn the rivers, change their flow, and drain them. This also plays a role in providing food.

In order to provide shelter we must cut trees, mine for gravel and other minerals (bricks, concrete, steel).

In order to provide medical treatment we must again harvest certain chemicals, we must manufacture chemicals, and we must also test those chemicals.

And somehow we have to have education in order to teach people how to farm, irrigate, build and treat people.

And once all that is done, there must be a system in place to transport all of these goods and people from one area to another (our infrastructure)....

Why? Because there are too many freaking people.

I know, I know. I’m a bastard. But it’s quite simple.

Forget renewable energy, forget hydrocarbons for a moment and think about the very basic principles of why we have to have that stuff in the first place. It’s because we have to alter our planet to accommodate the people.

So if you really want to do something to “save the planet” then stop breeding, stop trying to save everyone, and stop participating in a world that requires being altered to support everyone. Can you do it?

Emergency Exit From a Tent!

A few weekends ago I was down at Fossil Rim with a pretty lady and we stayed in one of the “permanent tents” that they have down there. These are pretty cool structures that are a hybrid between a tent and a permanent structure. The walls have studs in them, but the actual walls are made of canvas. They are tiny. Maybe 12 long x 10 feet across in the main room and then the bathroom is just large enough to stand at the sink / toilet. Don’t get me wrong, these are very cool just not very big. So you can imagine that I cracked up when I saw the emergency evacuation procedures posted above the toilet.

My thought is that if you can’t find your way out of this then you really are a ‘Tard.

Jake Walks Among Us – Pt. 1

Bling! and his wife went out of town to attend a wedding this weekend. Since I didn’t have much going on, I agreed to puppy sit for them. Their puppy is Jake. Jake is a bloodhound and German Shepard mix. He mostly looks like a bloodhound with some darker markings of a Shepard…..that is until Mrs. Bling! sticks his ears up and then he looks a lot like a Shepard.

Jake is still a puppy, but he’s a large puppy. At just over three months old he already weighs just over 30lbs. He’s pretty smart and fairly well disciplined, but I can tell he’s testing me a bit to see what his boundaries are.

I wasn’t paying real close attention and he grabbed the cord that lets my Venetian style blinds up and down. Naturally he tugged on it and the blinds came down and then pulled the cord back. He thought this was a game and wanted to keep playing.

He also managed to pee on one spot of the carpet….in fact, while I was typing this he peed on a spot on the carpet, and I had just taken him out. But it’s not all his fault. He’s in a new environment, and although I’ve been around Jake before it’s not the same thing as having his true masters there.

I also later realized that I can take Jake out four times in an hour, and he’ll use the bathroom every single time. That dog can go!!!

Jake Walks Among Us – Pt. 2

I’m into my second day with Jake. Last night was off to a rough start as Jake wanted to play while I was trying to cook dinner. So I gave him his dinner first, and then worked on mine. That seemed to work out a bit better.

Of course, I had to take him out a few times, too. Then I tried to kick back and watch a DVD but Jake would have none of that….at least not at first. It took me a while to get him settled down and then he wouldn’t leave my side while he slept. I even took a nice hot soak in the tub and he came in to lay next to the tub….then next to the bed.

And then I was woken up in typical dog-style-fashion with him being bright eyed and bushy tailed at 6:00am. He came in and barked once at me and then put his big paws up on the bed. He didn’t try to get in bed, just wanted to make sure I knew he was awake….which meant taking him immediately outside to pee and poo. Then it was breakfast time.

I took him for a jog to get me some breakfast. Jake is testing me, I can tell. I’ve had him on three walks now and every time he doesn’t mind me nearly as well as Bling! and Mrs. Bling! He’s still good, but not as good. He has a much harder time “heeling” with me than with them.

So I kept him outside and played with him a bit before doing some yard work. Jake does not like new things and new noises. The lawnmower terrified him and I hadn’t even started it, yet. I tied him up with a long piece of rope so he could sit outside in the grass or under the truck. When I was mowing or weed eating, it was under the truck. Take a break and he’d chill on the grass.

We’re still feeling each other out a bit, but I’m onto his game. Wear his ass out and then he sleeps for a while….

Jake Walks Among Us – Pt 3

I must have worn Jake out pretty good yesterday as he crashed pretty hard about 9:00 and slept ALL night long. He woke up once in the morning to be let out and then promptly crashed back out.

Naturally, he woke up at an “inopportune time” and I had to feed him and then play with him a bit to calm him down. After that it was off to the park. I walked him, ran him, and let him chill in the shade. We had other dogs and kites so he got to play with the dogs and chase the kites. Other kids played with him and all in all I’d say Jake had a great time.

As soon as we got back to the house he sacked out. Bling! came by to pick him up and take him back home. He was so tired he didn’t want to get up and go home. But alas, away he went.

It was a lot of fun and responsibility having him around for the weekend. I really enjoyed his company even if we had to test each other every now and then. But I think it would be a lot easier with two people instead of just me. I also have to re-think whether I should get a puppy or not. I am not traveling nearly as much but I still think that’s a lot of work and effort to keep a watchful eye on the puppy and it would be hard for me to ask anyone to do that.

As much as I miss him, it’s also nice to have a break. Now I know how parents feel with kids….. And at least I can go over to Bling!’s (how is that for grammar?) and still play with him.

Moving to Montana Now – Pt 2

Some of you may know that I’ve been up in Montana a bit here and there for vacations and work. Over a year ago, I had an opportunity to live in MT but ultimately turned it down for several different reasons with one of the biggest ones being the sheer expense of moving up there due to the housing costs.

I’ve had one of my friends who is into real estate keeping an eye on things for me and I’ve also had a chance to check out some properties while I was hanging out up there. The recent collapse of the housing market and tightening of the economy has really brought the cost of homes and land down by a significant margin.

That being said, I finally made the plunge and invested in some land up there. It’s a pretty sweet spot up in the foothills of the Bear Canyon area. It’s got a little creek running through the property of 10 acres and is totally surrounded by trees and open fields.

But there is one catch, I can’t afford it without selling my house so I’ve also made the decision to sell my house and move up to MT. I know I can’t get as much as I’d like for my house here, but I have quite a bit of equity and that will help pay for a new house to be built up there.

I’ll be in the mountains, with the animals, and have skiing, hiking, biking, fishing, etc. all nearby and no more blistering summers and 2 weeks between seasons.

It’s going to be difficult announcing this to my friends and family, but I guess I’ll have to start making the phone calls. Wish me luck…..

This Kind of thing Pisses me Off

Why is this allowed to happen? Simple – American has no federal law that defines the national language of the United States. I’ve already pointed out that state and local governments can pretty much pick any language that they like.




If you think this is about what language that we speak, you may be missing the point. The real point is that we are allowing multiculturalism to tear apart the United States one little bit at a time. We are losing our unity. That is the point.

Think your Mac is Safe?

On March 27th at a hacking contest a hacker compromised a Macbook Air in two minutes. Comparatively, the Vista box was not compromised until two days later. And the last update I read indicated that the Ubuntu box was still standing.

Here is the original article.

Gay Activist Risk Your Life

My friend sent me a fairly interesting article on an apparent movement happening in the gay community and culture.

The article was posted in TownHall, which is a pretty conservative site. Unfortunately, the article has such a heavy religious slant that it's hard to read through it and extrapolate meaningful information from the religious overtones. You can read the original article here.

But I stuck with it and was fairly appalled at what I read. The gist of the article is that even though the FDA and CDC have strong evidence supporting a higher rate of diseases in gay males (gay) activists are fighting to remove bans on gay males from donating blood.

From the article:

Current U.S. health regulations prohibit men who have sex with men (MSM) from donating blood. Studies conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) categorically confirm that if MSM were permitted to give blood, the general population would be placed at risk.

According to the FDA, MSM “have an HIV prevalence 60 times higher than the general population, 800 times higher than first time blood donors and 8,000 times higher than repeat blood donors (American Red Cross).

“[MSM] also have an increased risk of having other infections that can be transmitted to others by blood transfusion. For example, infection with the Hepatitis B virus is about 5-6 times more common, and Hepatitis C virus infections are about 2 times more common in [MSM] than in the general population,” according to the FDA.

A recent CDC study rocked the homosexual community in finding that although MSM comprise only one-to-two percent of the population, they account for an epidemic 64 percent of all syphilis cases.

Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, is demanding that the ban be lifted and that gays be allowed to donate blood. This is a very dangerous and selfish position. I don't have a problem with people being gay if that's what they want to do, but I don't think it's proper for someone to intentionally risk my life to get a point or personal agenda across.

According to the article homosexual militants have been protesting their bans by deliberately trying to fill blood banks with their blood. Right now, they don't even know how much blood is infected.

That's not a protest. That's a direct attack on the health care system and other human beings. I am astonished that people would deliberately place other people's lives at risk by ruining the blood supply that could save their life and possibly infecting them.

More on Gun Control Bans

As the elections are heating up you may be hearing more about gun control and gun bans. Here is a video showing what is happening in England. They’ve been banning guns and it hasn’t been helping. Things have been getting worse.

…and I love the Brits. Clearly they are angry and not happy with the situation in U.K., but they remain calm and articulate.

Political Correctness Still out Of Control

…and maybe it’s even worse now that the elections are on! I’ve really been trying to avoid paying much attention to any of this stuff because I just don’t believe that any of the potential candidates are good candidates for our country.

But, the political juggernaut is in high gear and you almost can’t help but hear the reverberation of it in your daily life. I guess if you live under a rock, or do nothing but eat Cheetos and play XBOX you can avoid it.

The latest thing that is plastered everywhere is the problems Obama is facing with regards to public ridicule over his relations with his former Pastor Wright. Obama gave a speech or two on the subject, and I only caught pieces of it. However, I’ve read lots of commentary about the speech on both sides of the fence.

Initial polling indicates that most people don’t think it makes much of a difference and that his speech quelled the disruption.

But, I’m not here to write about Obama. I’m here to write about hate and political correctness.

Let’s start with a term I absolutely cannot stand – African American. I’m not going to re-hash this as I’ve already posted about it here.

I think Americans are pretty much fed up with racial tensions, but the question is what are we doing about it?

Prejudice is usually fueled by ignorance or fear. This can go hand in hand with being racist. This may not always be the case, but it’s a start. As an example, my grandmother used the term “colored” in reference to black people. And she harbored some pretty strong feelings about them. Growing up, I think that some of it was due to “their generation” and later attributed this to simple ignorance or fear.

Now, I loved my grandmother but I didn’t agree with her. This would be an argument that Obama uses as well. But there is a difference. And it’s a big one that should not be overlooked.

Fear and ignorance can be overcome. We can all make a difference by extending our hand instead of our fist. We can show each other that we aren’t all stereotypical and that we don’t have to hate each other. Hate. That’s a strong word, but its part of the problem.

For people like Pastor Wright, Farrakon, Jessie Jackson, and others hate and dissent are what they preach. This is not simple fear or ignorance. It’s fearful to think that because you are black you will get the crap beat out of you by a police officer. I can understand that scenario. But that’s not the same thing as being taught to hate the police officers and dissent against them. And it’s not just black people. White people do the same thing.
My grandmother didn’t preach hate and dissent, but she did unknowingly project a poor image of black people. I have a good friend that is fairly prejudiced, and it drives me nuts. To the point that I don’t want to be around him sometimes. But he doesn’t try to get others to feel the same way. He’s not trying to get me to dislike black people and that is a substantial ideology that I think most people don’t get.

It seems like I’ve read a lot of “angry white man” articles lately. And I can’t say that I wholly blame these people. There is definitive racial tension in this country and it’s not all about fairness and inequality for a specific race. I think that while trying to make things better we have made things worse.

Personal Note: It’s funny that as I was originally writing this I went off on some wild tangent trying to prove a point that I later thought was the wrong point to prove.

And since then, I haven’t been able to finish this article so it’s been sitting here on my desktop waiting to be finished. That’s why I haven’t put much on the blog lately. For some reason articulating my opinion on racial issues has proved to be rather problematic.

But what I think is more important is the big question what are you doing about it? What do you do in your every day life that either encourages prejudice and racism or discourages it?

I think too many people are intentionally, or even unintentionally, encouraging it.

Taxation to Oblivion

One of the things that the politicians in California have turned a blind to, and hate to admit, is that rich people are leaving CA in fairly substantial numbers. I'm not trying to give you the impression that the LA freeway is jammed packed by millionaires in their SUVs with the golf clubs hanging out the back and the foof dog stuck on the dashboard.

But they are leaving none-the-less. Why? Well there are multiple reasons for this, but the consensus of the two primary reasons tells us that it is due to the taxes and the ever increasing illegal alien population.

CA is one of the, if not the actual, most heavily taxed states in the country. There are taxes after taxes after taxes after taxes there. While it may not seem like much, consider that Tiger Woods elected to leave CA and saved more than 5-million dollars a year in taxes!!!!

The same is true of other wealthy persons that are money conscious. Again, the politicians tell us that this isn't happening but the census tells us that it is. And there is one other thing that tells us that it is. Think about this for a moment - it is believed that CA has one of the highest concentrations of wealth (per state), and we know that they have the highest taxes of any state, and the state is going broke. How can that be? How can you have so much money and be taxing the hell out of the people and be going broke? Because the rich folks, the ones that pay the majority of taxes, have had enough and are getting out while more and more people flood into the area and suck up resources without paying taxes. That's how.

But CA is not alone. In the U.K. where socialist agendas have been pushing ever-increasing taxation corporations are pulling out and leaving the U.K. They are electing to go to other countries that do not have the same substantial tax burdens being imposed by the U.K. government.

And in the U.S. the same thing is beginning to happen. Energy companies have long been working to get out of the U.S. due to the increasing taxation and regulation burdens imposed by the government. I'm sure most of the greenies would say that is a good thing, and perhaps that is a topic of debate....but consider this: Those same energy companies are not only trying to be better at becoming more green, they are also the ones leading the front on alternative energy sources, AND....that creates jobs and stimulates the economy. But it's not just energy companies. And when any big company says that they don't want their world H.Q. in the U.S. anymore we should really be thinking about why.

History shows us that when big corporations leave an area that the area often has a lot of difficulty sustaining good economic growth. These corporations are going to leave voids that will need to be filled. But until the government realizes that they are not providing an incentive to be here this is not going to change.

And what will happen? Well, I'm certainly not an economist.....but the cycle seems to be this:
tax the shit out of 'em.
then they leave
then there is less money
so raise the taxes to make up for it
nobody comes
raise the taxes some more to make up for it
and on...and on...and on.... until something drastic changes.

I think we are heading for hard times if the cycle isn't broken.

A Letter to Budget

I am now thinking about writing Budget a lovely letter expressing my gratitude towards their excellent customer care –

To Whom It May Concern:

On March 16, 2008 I was en route from Bozeman, MT to San Jose, CA. I had elected to rent a car from Budget for my week-long trip in SJC. Seeing as how I travel quite often and spend an average of about $35,000 in travel expenses in a year I am sure that you can appreciate my choosing Budget as one of my preferred car rental vendors.

I’d like to take this opportunity to applaud Budget for being a progressive company. I work in the IT industry. Most of us in the industry work outrageously long and strange hours, as well as being on call, in order to keep the computer and network systems up and running. It’s nice to know that Budget bucks this trend by placing the happiness and satisfaction of their IT personnel above that of their customers.

I know that in other enterprise network environments that I have worked in we would never be allowed to pull the systems down for maintenance during normal business hours. Imagine my surprise when I called reservations at 3:00pm on a Sunday to find out that Budget was taking that extra step so that the IT folks wouldn’t have to do maintenance in the middle of the night.

Never mind the fact that I, as the customer, was about to be stranded at an airport. Never mind that I had a reservation with Budget. Never mind that it was still the middle of the day on a very heavily traveled day. Budget decided that its customers were not that important and took down the systems for maintenance.

And as luck would have it, I ended up not getting stranded at the first airport. Fortunately, due to severe turbulence and many flight delays I was now in another city (SFO) and not where I was to pick up my rental car (SJC). I really enjoy it when this happens, especially because it allows me another fine opportunity to interface directly with the folks at Budget that tell me that they can’t help me out. Yes, I realize it isn’t Budget’s fault that the plane almost fell out of the sky after sever turbulence and that we were forced to route to another airport. But I also realize that Budget has no compassion for its customers by refusing to alter an existing reservation to alleviate me having a particularly bad travel day. After speaking to a representative and then a supervisor and even asking for special dispensation due to my ordeal I was flat out told that it wasn’t possible to waive a one-way pick-up fee even though some of the other car rental companies in the Bay Area don’t even charge this fee to their customers.

Yes, I guess that means that Budget is a fine all-around company to its employees even at the expense of its customers. I had plenty of time to think what that must be like to work for a company like this while I spent the next two and a half hours taking the charter bus to SJC so I could pick up my car and drop it off at the same airport. That being said, I’d like to send you my resume for review. At least I wouldn’t be having to work odd hours and travel all over the country, and I wouldn’t be getting screwed by other car rental companies.

If you don’t like my resume, please feel free to shove it up your ass along with a set of car keys.

Trippin’ on United

I am on a two-week trip that includes Montana and California. The Montana part of the trip has gone great, without any real problem.

The California part has not started off so good. I had to grab a United Airlines flight out of Bozeman, MT to get to CA. Of course, as I’ve said before, you can’t get in or out of Bozeman on a direct flight. Even if you want to get to Seattle directly you can’t get there without going somewhere else, even though getting to Bozeman or leaving Bozeman to another destination on Alaska Airlines would route you through Seattle.

Now I am not a big fan of DIA. I get fucked every time I have to fly there and this time was no exception. The flight out of Bozeman was delayed due to the in-bound flight being delayed. No big deal because I had a 2+ hour layover at DIA. I get to DIA and go through the usual gate-change crap. But now the flight is also delayed. Why? There isn’t any crew to fly the aircraft!!!! To top that off, the chick at the gate tells me that she can’t give me a seat assignment because they have over-sold the flight. Great. Is there another flight to SJC today? No? What am I supposed to do? They can get me to SFO, which isn’t too far away except that my car rental and return flight to TX are both out of SJC.

I then call up Budget to see if they can tweak my reservation so that I can pick the car up at SFO and return it to SJC (where my flight home is). That would allow me to get a confirmed seat on the SFO flight. The girl tells me that they are doing system maintenance and can’t look up or do any reservations. AT 3:00PM IN THE FREAKING AFTERNOON. That’s nice…. Thanks Budget.

Luckily, the aircraft we were supposed to be on got changed (why, I do not know) and we got another aircraft with more seats. At least I now had a ticket.

No we sit around for another hour and forty-five minutes past take-off time to get off the ground. But finally, we are off!!! Out the outbound, the aircraft hits some severe turbulence and the ride is a little sketchy, but I’ve been through far worse. I chill on the flight and as we are getting close the pilot comes on to tell us that due to the turbulence he is diverting to SFO for immediate inspection of the aircraft. I can SEE the SJC airport…just put the plane down!!! But no, we re-route to SFO.

They get our bags out on the carousel and tell us to proceed to bus area 4 to get a charter to take us all the way to SJC. Mind you, the flight crew hopped off the flight and right into a private limo and took off.

Now I call Budget again!! Basically I still want to do the same thing. Pick up at SFO and drop off at SJC because of getting stuck at SFO. The first guy I talked to said he couldn’t help and passed me to a supervisor. That guy was freaking useless. They wanted to charge me double the rate to rent the car that way. Fuck them.

So then I get on the bus and ride all the way back to SJC so that I can get my car. The bus ride wasn’t that bad because now it’s so late in the evening that there isn’t any traffic left.

I make it to get the car, and then make it to the hotel. TWELVE hours later. Yes, that’s right. It managed to take me just over twelve hours to get from Bozeman, MT to SJC.

I actually had a very interesting and nice dining experience at a Vietnamese restaurant near the hotel, though, and at least that was nice. This place served everything “family style” which is to say that you got a huge plate of veggies, your own mixers for sauce, your main course, a bowl of hot water and a plate of dehydrated rice paper. Basically, you put the rice paper into the bowl of water until it softened, then use the veggies and main course to make a wrap and scarf down. It was really good.

And I made it back to the hotel. Glad to be able to grab a hot shower and crash out…..but there wasn’t any freaking hot water. None. I call the lobby and complain. The guy looks into it and calls me back to tell me it will be hot in a little while. However, when I crawled out of bed at 6:00am there still wasn’t any hot water so I couldn’t get a shower. Great. Now I had to go teach class without a fresh shower.

And just to make sure things couldn’t get any better; none of my updated classroom materials had arrived electronically. That means that my presentations were older than (behind) the revisions the students have. Fuck it….I’ll wing it.

Mo Green!

I’m in the middle of a two-week trip that has me out to Montana and then San Jose, CA. Maybe its coincidence but I feel like I’ve been completely bombarded with “green” thinking since this trip began.

It started off with the entirely “green” issue of the Delta magazine that they have in the seatbacks of the airplane. The whole issue was dedicated to environmental issues.

Then, it seemed like every time I was flipping channels on the TV there was someone being interviewed about how catastrophic environmental change is going to be!!! Yes, even though we’ve seen a definitive downward trend in the temperatures people are still preaching doom and gloom. Only now, it’s not “global warming” it’s “climate change” because people are catching onto the fact that “warming” isn’t exactly happening.

Then, when I was up snow boarding I heard multiple people talking about how the ski resort wasn’t “green” enough and wow! Look at the effects of global warming – right in the middle of a nice snow-dump late in the season.

I even recall partially reading one article that a guy has written about climate change. He thinks that we can get back to pre-man Co2 levels in about 10,000 years. That’s an interesting thought because pre-man there were Co2 levels that were less than they are today, and there were Co2 levels that were significantly higher than they were today. Which ones do you think he is referring to? I find it interesting that the Co2 theory folks tend to virtually ignore scientific analysis of greenhouse gases.

But it’s all good. I made sure the hotel didn’t wash my sheets and towels while I stayed there…..

Another Slow Weekend....

I say it over and over again, but it's always interesting to me how many things I think of to write on here and then I either can't find the time or I forget them when I do find the time.

For two weekends in a row, now, I've not done a whole heck of a lot from a social perspective. For some reason, my friends in TX are always either too tied up or simply don't want to do anything. Take your pick. But it amounts to me generally spending a lot of time alone on the 'Priller or doing other things.

I've managed to get a few things, done, though and that is a good thing. Among them have been two weekend of pre-spring yard work. I've cut back all my dead vines, shaved the dead grass down, fertilized it, etc. I've also gotten some work done on the 'Priller, continued to collect my income tax information, re-worked some minor things around the house, etc.

Yesterday I spent the morning with Young Blood tearing down his motorcycle engine. He has a transmission problem so we yanked it out of the bike and started tearing it down so that we could split the cases on it and get to the internals. After you get it out of the bike, it is surprisingly not that difficult to tear it all down. Putting it back together may be a different story, though.

I've also been prepping to go out of town on Monday. It was short notice, and since my mom's birthday is on Wed., that meant that I had to hustle to get her a gift before I leave out of town. Not a big deal, but I was running my errands today and then stopped off at Boston Market for some lunch.

The church crowd had just let out and while it wasn't quite packed it was definitely busy. I am sitting there scarfing down on my chicken and the table across from me is a single mom with two girls. They got into some kind of "jinx you owe me a coke" spat and I guess one of the little girls won. The other got very upset. The mom says "why does everything have to be about winning and losing?" uh-oh. One of those. You know why? Because a lot of life is made up of wining and losing. Obviously there are sports in which you have a score and a clear winner and loser. But there are other things in life, too. Did you get that promotion? Did someone else beat you out to get it? If so, you lost. Sorry, that's the breaks. I don't believe in coddling children into unrealistic expectations of fairness.

Then I came home and spread fertilizer and spent some time outside just hanging out in the yard. I am going to have a beer and then get cleaned up to meet my parents for dinner.

It's funny how our perspective of things can change rapidly. I recently have had some thinking to do due to a curve ball life may be throwing at me. I say may because I am not sure of exactly how things are going to play out, and ultimately I'll have to deal with them. I guess that is not any different than any other situation, but the ramifications could be substantial in this case.

Wax in my Boxers…

For Christmas I was given one of those nifty heated lamp thingies that heats up and melts wax. You stick a scented wax in it, turn it on and smell the goodies.

This was all good until I tripped over the cord. If you have ever let a candle burn to long and gotten wax on the carpet or something you know how frustrating it can be to clean up. But imagine that when my foot hit the cord the wax went flying and managed to efficiently send out a nice spatter pattern covering a rug, the carpet, baseboards, walls, and windows all in one fell swoop.

I tried the newspaper trick, but all I ever get is the junk mail circulars that have the already-waxed paper with color and that’s not good.

So I took a pair of old boxer shorts and an iron and proceeded to heat the wax up so it would melt into the boxer shorts. I got about 90% of it up with this method, but the shorts are ruined. I dunno, maybe I should wear them again. It could be interesting….

Say Goodbye to Bush

Black Bush that is, not George Bush. Last night, I poured myself the last little bit of some Irish whiskey that I picked up while in Ireland over 7 years ago. The whiskey is Bushmills Black Bush and was aged 11 years at the time I bought it. That made it about 18 years old, and it traveled with me from Ireland back to my home here in the U.S.


For the last few years, the last bit of that bottle resided in a very cool decanter that Bling! bought me one year. Every now and then I’d have a little bit – neat. Maybe with an ice-cube, but nothing more. Last night I poured the last of it. It was incredibly smooth and rich and while I was sad to see it go, it went very good.

If you ever get to try a near 20-year-old bottle of whiskey, give it a shot (no pun intended, and that would be a waste).

Jogging on Sidewalk

I do not understand why people that jog choose to do so on the street as opposed to the nice, safe, sidewalk that is provided to them. I feel like running them over in my truck…

Fixed Incomes

I get tired of hearing people say “….but I live on a fixed income.” Or “…but they live on a fixed income.” You know what? EVERYONE lives on a fixed income. Even Bill Gates lives on a fixed income when you get right down to it.

Are You High? Yes, but at Least I Know What Time it Is!

I was leafing through my latest edition of Forbes. Forbes, take note – you are getting to be just as bad as any woman’s magazine that is littered with ads and has no real content to the magazine.

My dad and I are always astounded by the prices of watches. He is far more analytical about his watch(es) and reminds me of how he has some cheap watch and how much time it loses (or doesn’t lose) over the course of time. Between us, I have the most expensive watch at about $100.00 for a titanium Skaagen watch. I love it because it’s small, and very lightweight.

But Forbes was highlighting some of the expensive watches. I am not talking about Rolexes….those don’t even cut it by these standards of extravagance.

It’s a NOTOS Martin Bruan at $29,950. This was the least expensive watch in the article. That’s not $29.95 or even $2,995. That’s twenty-nine-thousand dollars. Are you high?

So I keep reading…..

A Horological Machine No. 1 at $150,000

A Bugati Type 370 at $200,000

A Vulcania HD3 at $375,000

And the winner….at over $1million dollars (for a fucking watch??!!!??) is a Aeternitas Mega 4. I actually exclaimed out loud “Are you fucking high?” Forbes goes on to list the features, but I don’t even care at that point. A watch. A watch that you wear on your wrist that costs over $1million dollars.

What does it cost to build an atomic clock?

Obama / Hillary / McCain

It looks like the tides have turned and it is going to come down to Obama and McCain. I guess there is still a very small chance that Hillary can get the nod, but it seems unlikely.

In any case I have some friends that are supporting Obama. I don’t, but we each have our opinions. One thing that they have that I do not is that they have a candidate they believe in. I have never been able to vote for a candidate that I believe in. I am jealous.

In fact, I am pretty disenfranchised with the whole thing.

I do not like Obama, and I do not like Clinton. It’s not that I wouldn’t vote for a democrat, but I will not vote for someone that supports socialism and fascism.

I also can’t stand McCain.

Normally, I wouldn’t give McCain my vote…and I may still not. The only reason I would vote for him is to put a republican in the white house and try to keep some semblance of balance. The house / senate could still override the president’s veto, but it becomes more of a challenge. Look what having an all-republican house, senate and white-house did. We need balance.

So once again, I feel fooked. There isn’t anyone that I like and it seems like a hopeless situation.

FHA Increase

It looks like the FHA has increased loan amounts to $200,160 for a single family in Texas. I live in a fairly decent neighborhood and my house was nowhere near $200k. In rural areas $200k will get you a pretty sweet pad on some acreage.

If the idea behind FHA loans is to help provide loans to people who either can’t afford it or have bad credit. These would be high-risk loans, right?

So again, here we see a fine example of loaning excessive money for homes to high-risk applicants.

Government Bail-Out of Mortgages

If you take my recent post a step further this same issue has also caused the bubble that has now burst and is hurtling us towards a recession. I saw on the Consumerist web site that they were ragging on the Bush administration for only passing some legislature to give people and additional 30-days to figure out how to work something out with their lender before they get foreclosed on.

The comments back were pretty much chastising the Consumerist for taking such a position. I agree with them. As my friend says, anybody has the right to enter into a bad contract or agreement. This goes for the lender as well as the lendee. Nobody forced anyone to buy houses that were (and still are) overly priced on interest only loans with 3 ~ 5 year flexible arms.

They either did it as an investment property, or because they couldn’t afford to do a conventional loan. One guy, and I mean ONE guy on the Consumerist commentators said that it is cold hearted to not consider all of the other things going on in someone’s life like their credit card debt, cost of food, job market, etc. Hey! You know what? It’s called a fucking budget! You take all this stuff into account and then you look at the bottom line and then you’re supposed to say that you either can, or cannot, afford to take out that loan. Lost your job? That sucks, but sometimes that is life. Life isn’t always fair. If I lost my job I have money saved up to get me through. Again, it’s that whole budget thing.

And as for the lenders? They are just as guilty. They knowingly lent people this money without considering the risk of their investment. It was very shortsighted of them and all they saw were the dollar signs flashing in their eyes! Hey! Look at this! This guy can’t possible afford the $400,000 house on this note. If the interest rate changes we’ll get house and his money and then get to resell the house!! YIPPEE!! Only, they didn’t anticipate the consequences of their actions by creating a false economic value of homes.

Here is an amusing stick-figure slideshow of how the process worked.

So now the bottom is falling out and somehow once again the government is being blamed. What about the people making bad decisions?

I applaud the government for taking some steps to try to get people to work it out. The reality, though, is that most of the people defaulting on their loans could never really afford it in the first place. Apparently, a large percentage of them have never made a mortgage payment or were already severely behind. Statistically speaking, these people never pay their bills on time and probably never will.

Now I am hearing of proposed legislation to empower judges to absolve remaining debt on home loans! This is absolutely absurd. What do you think is going to happen when a huge chunk of these banks and lenders get told to go fuck themselves and that they are out BILLIONS of dollars? Who is going to pick up the tab on this one? I suppose Joe-Taxpayer and those that make their mortgage payments, because surly they are going to pass this cost onto the consumer. Yeah, that’s really going to stimulate the economy.

Instant Credit Anyone?

Although I still consider myself to be young, the inevitable reality is that I am 36 and rapidly approaching 37. When I was younger it was difficult to establish a line of credit. I remember living in my apartment and wanting to buy some new furniture. I shopped around a bit and nobody would give me a loan so I could have a new place to rest by butt and prop my feet up.

Loan? Forget it
Credit card? Forget it.

So I went down to the bank and took out a secured loan (that is, I already had the money) for the amount of the furniture I wanted and then bought the furniture. I spent the next few months paying off the loan with a very small amount of interest.
When it was done, I had established some credit and was now eligible to get credit cards or other loans. It wasn’t that difficult, but it was drastically different than how things are today.

Today, you are “pre approved” for all kinds of loans and credit cards. People with horribly bad credit can get all the credit they want if they don’t mind paying the obscenely high interest rates that go along with it.

Maybe the credit card companies are playing the odds because they know some poor college kid is going to rack up $10,000 worth of Pizza and not be able to pay off the interest for a long, long, long time.

A lot of people want to blame the government for the credit crisis we are in, but the government is not solely to blame. I’d say that the majority of the blame rests with the institutions that continue to give out loans and money left and right to anyone that says they want a loan or credit card.

I Found Them!

Supposedly, there are approximately 17,000 Kenyans living and workign in North Texas. That's quite a staggering number considering I didn't realize there were anywhere near that many here in the entire state.

But I found them! Apparently they all work at Fry's down the street from my house!

Obama and my Concerns

For a while now, I’ve been trying to read up on some of the right-wing rhetoric about Obama. As I’ve stated, I haven’t been real impressed with him from what I’ve read, but I have also never heard him speak. I understand that he is a very dynamic and charismatic individual and even most hard-core-conservatives say you have to hear him.

Yet, there are still some major allegations that are levied at him. Namely:

1) While he continues to talk of change, hope, unity, etc., he has as of yet failed to provide any real substance or a plan of action. What is this change that is coming?

2) He is Muslim, has ties to the Muslims, and is empathetic to Muslims. Pick any combination of the three.

3) He is a member of a racist church and is himself racist.

All of which ultimately bring into question his commitment and convictions to the U.S. and our way of life.

With regards to the talk of change, hope, unity, etc., I can’t say that I personally have an opinion one way or the other. I simply do not know enough to make an informed decision.

With regards to Obama being a Muslim, there are an awful lot of emails circulating. Some of these indicate that he is Muslim, was at one time a Muslim, and that he was sworn into office on the Quaran. The good thing about the Internet is the immediate availability and distribution of information. The bad thing about the Internet is the immediate availability and distribution of bad information.

If you just take a little time to read up, you would quickly find that Obama not only isn’t a Muslim but that he never was Muslim. His father wasn’t even a Muslim at the time Obama was born and his mother is Christian. Osama himself claims Christianity as his religion.

He also didn’t swear in on the Quoran. That honor goes to Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison.

But….and isn’t there always a but…. The rest of the allegations bother me. They bother me because the more I dig for information the more they are apparently true with little or no contradictory information.

That Obama has close ties to Muslim supporters that are trying to impose Sharia law is absolutely true. This includes support of his 1st cousin Raila Odinga. Odinga is a Muslim that is leading a front / jihad in Africa to impose Sharia law. This is not a peaceful endeavor and includes the murder of many Africans. Muslims have been committing genocide in Africa for years, but you don’t hear about it much in the media.

http://michaelinmi.wordpress.com/2008/01/31/barack-obama-and-his-support-for-islamic-sharia-law-and-al-qaeda/

http://righttruth.typepad.com/right_truth/2008/01/obamas-sharia-c.html

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2008/01/barack-obama-backs-taliban-supporter-in.html

http://stoptheaclu.com/archives/2008/02/01/barack-obama-kenya-his-cousin-odinga-and-islamic-jihad/

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.arabic/browse_thread/thread/da1e125d12657ecd

and if those aren’t enough just google it.

As for the racist church, I had to think about this one for a while but have finally come to the conclusion that I believe the church to be discriminatory if not outright racist. A brief excerpt from their mission statement:

Commitment to the Black Community
Commitment to the Black Family
Adherence to the Black Work Ethic
Personal Commitment to Embracement of the Black Value System.

Now what I won’t do is launch into some rhetorical tirade about how if you swap the word “white” for “black” in the above that people would have a field day with it. And I don’t have a problem with black people supporting each other within the community and trying to make a better name and place for themselves. The whole world would be a better place if we all focused our time, effort and energy a little more positively.

It’s the last two that bother me. In my opinion those two mission statements simply imply that there is a different system and set of values for black people than other races and that they should be supported and nurtured. That’s pretty racist just about no matter how you slice it.

Then I also read first-hand reports of the church itself and some of the things that were said during sermon. These included stained-glass windows depicting dejected black people in handcuffs with white people as the judges and officers. Sermon’s that included a directive:
“Black people! Grow up! Stop helping white people” – Rev. Moss

I don’t think there is any way around that statement. He isn’t just telling black people to stand up for themselves. He’s objectifying white people as an oppressor and telling black people to be defiant to them. That’s not only un-Christian like, it’s pretty racist.

As one first-hand account put it “And where other churches might talk about the devil or about evil, Trinity demonizes white people.”


But all of this doesn’t answer the ultimate questions:

Is Obama a racist?
Is Obama empathetic to Muslims, Islam and Sharia law?

I guess only Obama can answer that, but I’d be concerned.

LINUX Hates Me

For those of you not into computers, there is a whole vast array of operating systems. Operating systems (or OS for short) is the basic program that allows you to interface with your computer and run other programs such as your browser (to surf the web) or email.

Without getting into the specifics and variations (such as mainframes) and giving you a lesson on this, it comes down to a handful of OS’s that the average Joe might use:

Microsoft Windows and all it’s derivatives
MacOS
LINUX / UNIX

Windows wins the popularity award. It doesn’t mean it’s the outright best but it does mean that they were very successful at marketing it and they did a lot of good things with integrating the applications.

MacOS has always been the OS of choice for those into graphic arts, audio / video applications, or that think they are part of the elite avant-garde users, or just hate Bill Gates and Microsoft.

LINX / UNIX is the preferred operating system of many administrators because of it’s stability and open-source platform (LINUX). It’s also a great OS for hackers due to it’s granular level of control.


But first, let me clarify two things:

Article 1 – If you are the kind of person that would argue that LINUX and UNIX are not the same thing, then you are also probably the kind of person that would argue that variants such as Debian, Solaris, AIX, etc. are not LINXU or UNIX. It’s really simple, they are ALL freaking UNIX. Do you know why I am just as dangerous in Ubuntu as AIX as Solaris? Because they all have the same command structure and share commonality between directory structures….oh, I know…it’s hard for me to say that when Ubuntu puts it’s distribution build libraries under a sub-directory with a slightly different name than CentOS, but I can fuck either box up just as easily. If you are this person, get over it. Get out of your mom’s basement, go grab a beer and try to have some fun.

Article 2 – MacOS is LINUX with a nice-fancy GUI thrown on top of it. If you want to argue that it’s a derivative of debian, see article 1. The main reason I’ll never own a new Mac? The cost. I don’t see why I should pay twice to three times as much as the same hardware that I can get from another vendor, and they still don’t have two buttons for the mouse on the laptops!! HELLO! This has been around for 20 years! Put another button or two on the mouse and quit trying to be so god-damned separatist. Your GUI shell is not worth that kind of money. Far cooler ones are out for LINUX and they are FREE. Last but not least, don’t argue with me how intuitive a Mac is. I’ve used them. I’ve even used them with people that love Macs. You know what? It’s so intuitive they can’t find files and folders because they aren’t sorted alphabetically and in order to do so would require an act of God and five hours on the phone with tech support. Yeah, that’s slick.

All of that being said, I really like LINUX. It’s free. It’s stable. It’s inherently more secure than Windows, and it can be highly customized.

But it hates me. I’m not a “normal” user. I’ve used computers since I was about 5 or 8. I was programming my own stuff in the 5th grade and grew up around them all my life. I got into network some years ago and never looked back. What I’m trying to say is that I am not your average idiot when it comes to computers. But I am also not an uber-geek LINUX guy (see Article 1). Because of this, I find LINUX very frustrating. It’s difficult to get around and everything is cryptic. OH! But you just load this GUI shell, and this application and now it’s all graphical. Umm…yeah, that’s AFTER you get the basic OS installed, the shell AND the slick package that is supposed to alleviate all the other dependency problems that LINUX has.

Why, just in the last few days I tried loading Ubuntu on two test machines I have here. One is an old dell piece of crap that is great for testing. It has very little RAM and two hard drives in it.

The other is a Compaq 1RU file server with a gig of ram and a SCSI RAID controller.

Guess what Ubuntu did? It loaded right up on the dell, and then proceeded to puke on boot-up and never worked again. Nice.

Then I tried loading it on the Compaq. The installation GUI loads up just fine, but it can’t find the SCSI controller and hard drive array. So I went out to Ubuntu and read the documentation on installing the required drivers during the installation process so it could find the hard drives. You have got to be kidding me. I’d rather have my eyeballs plucked out by Jehovah Witnesses on crack.

That’s not to say I’ve never gotten some flavor of LINUX to load on either machine but really, things should not be so difficult.

You know what loaded great on either machine the first try? Windows. When LINUX can get it’s proverbial shit together to pull this one off and be usable to the less-than-average user then we’ll probably have a winner.

Advantage here? Probably Mac – but not at the cost.

Deliver Us From Evil

This is the title of a movie that I managed to get through last night. It was difficult because I kept getting client calls late into the night. Fortunately, it was a documentary so it wasn’t hard to watch a chapter and then not watch it for a bit.

The movie touches on the issue of the sexual abuse of children and the massive cover-ups that take place within the Roman Catholic church. I guess everyone knows this happens and jokes about it, but I wasn’t quite aware of how severe of a problem that there is.

The film estimates that there are approximately 100,000 victims of pedophilia within the U.S. It also estimates that 80% of victims will never come forward. That’s a fairly staggering number.

Worse, though, is that the Roman Catholic Church has aggressively denied and covered up the problem. In multiple instances they sent a known pedophile to other parishes to work with children and then paid these pedophiles to keep quiet about it. This goes all the way up to the current pope as he had direct involvement in some of the cover-ups. It’s estimated that the Church has spent over 1 BILLION dollars in legal fees and payouts to victims.

Worse yet…. It doesn’t appear that they’ve done anything to resolve the issue. I guess I never liked the idea of church very much in the first place, but this is pretty despicable by any standards of morality or civility.

A Year in the Making

A little over a year ago I was on my way home from Montana. Since I had spent a considerable amount of time there and my house was painfully devoid of artwork I wanted to get a nice panoramic photo of some mountains and scenery to hang in the house.

I shopped at several galleries, and almost picked up a photo or two but nothing ever quite struck me as what I wanted to see. What my mind “sees” when I think of Montana. Then, one day I was up at Moonlight Basin getting some runs in and there it was!! Up on the wall was a gorgeous photo showing Loan Peak Mountain, the Spanish Peaks mountain range, some water, trees, etc. THIS was the photo I wanted, but I had little chance of sneaking it out of the building considering it was roughly 20 feet long.

Because MLB is a client of mine I had an “in” and asked if I could get a print of the photo that was hanging on the wall. It took some time and they finally decided that I could get a print of it. Because of the size of the photo it could only be printed on canvas.

Over the course of the next year there were many email exchanges discuss price, if it was being done, etc. Part of the problem is that the printers kepts losing the emails and then “forgetting” about them. I felt bad because I didn’t want to bug the girl at MLB that I was working with. She was great, though, and kept working with me through the process.

Finally, they emailed me and told me it was done!! The total cost was a fraction of what I thought it would be so I was really happy about that. I got the check in the mail that very day and about a week later my tube finally showed up in the mail.

I promptly took it down to several frame shops to get it quoted and ended up going with Aaron Brothers. Bling! had suggested I try them out and not only did they have a great price but they were really wonderful to work with.

I picked it up last night and while it would have been easier to wait and have a friend help me hang it, I made a beverage and grabbed a tape measure, a level, a laser level, a pencil, two ladders, and a notepad. It really wasn’t that painful, and I got it hung in a little under an hour while taking my time and sipping on my beverage.

Here is the product!! I haven’t decided if I got the height right or not. I might move it down a little bit, but I am going to let it sit there for a week and see if I like it or not. It also needs some additional lighting and that may take me a little while to get around to.

But finally….after a year…..

Over Simplification?

I have a few friends that like to email stuff from time to time. I’ll tease them a bit here because they often like to blind carbon copy (bcc) everyone and don’t often coordinate their efforts. This means I get the same email two or three times from the people that I know.

But some of them are good and informative. Here is one that I got recently. It was apparently written by a guy named Charley Reese. I have not been able to confirm this, though it seems plausible given Reese’s background.


BY CHARLEY REESE

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don't write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don't set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don't control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices - 545 human beings out of the 300 million - are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered but private central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one single thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

A CONFIDENCE CONSPIRACY

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common confidence conspiracy regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a SPEAKER, who stood up and criticized G.W. Bush ALONE for creating deficits.

The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes.

Who is the speaker of the House? She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow Democrats, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto.

REPLACE THE SCOUNDRELS

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts - of incompetence and irresponsibility.

I cannot think of a single domestic problem, from an unfair tax code to defense overruns, that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it is because they want it unfair. If the budget is in the red, it is because they want it in the red. If the Marines are in IRAQ, it's because they want them in IRAQ.

There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power.

Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exist disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation" or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible. They, and they alone, have the power. They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses - provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees. We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess.

It’s an interesting synopsis and to a large extent it’s right on the money. But alas, it may be just an over simplification of the way things work. In any organization, business, or government you have a few people that control and represent (if they choose) the people of that entity. In our case, this comes down to 545 people representing about 330 MILLION people. That’s 0.00017% of the population that tries to appease the rest of us and run the country.

And let’s face it, we know they don’t all get along or believe in the same things just as the 330 million citizens don’t. We also didn’t get here overnight. Some of the laws, codes, and practices are things that were put on the book in previous administrations that may have been good for the time, but are no longer applicable.

We also have a very difficult time changing things once they are put into place. So while it would be easy to take the above writing and simply say “fix it” it would be much harder to execute if you could even get the 545 people to agree on anything.

The one thing that is absolutely true about this article is that it is those 545 people that are responsible for where we are going and have the authority and opportunity to change things. But they are not alone. They are not solely responsible for the actions of the rest of us in the U.S. Not all problems are a direct result of the government being involved or not involved as the case may be. As a citizen you bear some of that responsibility. By your actions or inactions you also allow situations to develop and arise and then what do you do? Blame it solely on the 545 people in office?

But please don't misunderstand me, I pretty much agree with what he has to say.

A Brief Lesson In Politics and Definitions

The debates are heating up and it looks more and more like Obama has a very solid chance of winning, but it’s not over yet. One rumor I am hearing is that we could see a Clinton / Obama ticket. The best of both worlds? Perhaps if you are democratic liberal. It’s a nightmare if you are a republican conservative. Which are you?

I’ve often used the term “socialist” in reference to Clinton and Obama. I’ve also been refuted or told that “socialist” is the wrong word to use. But I’d like to draw from a few definitions (all taken from dictionary.com):

so·cial·ist /ˈsoʊ ʃə lɪst/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[soh-shuh-list] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. an advocate or supporter of socialism.

2. (initial capital letter ) a member of the U.S. Socialist party.
–adjective
3. socialistic.


If we look at this definition we can pretty much derive that someone is a socialist if they advocate or support socialism. Many people confuse socialism with communism. They are oh, so very close, but not quite the same thing. So, the next definition is socialism:

so·cial·ism /ˈsoʊ ʃəˌlɪz əm/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[soh-shuh-liz-uh m] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

2. procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.

3. (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.

Note that on definition #1 the ownership and control is usually an organization such as the government. What this effectively means is that the government becomes responsible for the production and allocation of wealth or services as it sees fit. Clinton is a supporter of socialized medicine. It was her thesis in college and she tried to push it while her husband was in office. At this time I won’t argue the benefits or detriment of socialized medicine though I will say that I believe some type of reformation is necessary. She still supports socialized medicine. She also has repeatedly stated that she wants to take the profits of businesses and individuals to support government programs (i.e. redistribution). Obama and Clinton also support other similar systems and the further taxation of the American people. They are socialist by the very definition of the terms.

The next question you should be asking is if this is good or bad. I suppose that depends on what your beliefs are with regards to governmental and financial systems. Most fiscally conservative people see this as a bad thing. I tend to agree with it. Our country was built and founded on principles of capitalism, not socialism. I see this as Anti-American, but I suppose America is defined by what it is and not what it was supposed to be.

The other thing I find ironic about all this is that pretty much all democrats as well as some republicans and independents are upset with Bush and Cheney because they have managed to expand the reach and power of the government.

I agree with people when they say that they see this as a bad thing. I personally believe that the government should stay out of business and private lives with the exception of regulations for safety. This is an idealistic approach and is obviously not feasible. That does not mean that I support Bush and Cheney’s approach to expanding the power of government.

But let’s take the argument from a liberal / democratic approach. They don’t like Bush and Cheney for this reason, yet at the same time they are supporting candidates that want to dramatically expand the power of the government through socialistic systems! That’s pretty hypocritical in my opinion. If you follow logic and reason one should not criticize Bush and Cheney and at the same time support Obama or Hillary.

But I’ve often said that politics is like religion. If you talk to religious zealots (ok, even your plain-Jane religious folks) you will find that they are very adept at dismissing logic and reason when it fits their cause. The same thing is true of politics.

Bush and Cheney are often referred to as “fascists.” For definition sake, and since this entry contains definitions I’ve included the definition of a fascist here.

fas·cist /ˈfæʃ ɪst/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[fash-ist] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. a person who believes in or sympathizes with fascism.

2. (often initial capital letter ) a member of a fascist movement or party.

3. a person who is dictatorial or has extreme right-wing views.
–adjective

4. Also, fa·scis·tic /fəˈʃɪs tɪk/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[fuh-shis-tik] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation. of or like fascism or fascists.

It is also necessary to define fascism to conclude one is a fascist:

fas·cism /ˈfæʃ ɪz əm/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[fash-iz-uh m] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. (sometimes initial capital letter ) a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.

2. (sometimes initial capital letter ) the philosophy, principles, or methods of fascism.

3. (initial capital letter ) a fascist movement, esp. the one established by Mussolini in Italy 1922–43.

This becomes interesting because to a large extent, fascism tends to support socialism and vice-versa. This is true of Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, etc. These people were fascists. The closest you can come to Bush being a fascists is by the 4th definition which states:
“a person who is dictatorial or has extreme right-wing views.” One might argue that by expansion of governmental power that he could be classified as a fascist, but I’d say that’s stretching it. I would be more likely to say that democratic politicians are closer to fascism than republican candidates, but I suppose that is arguable depending on which politician you pick and chose from.

I wonder if it’s through misinterpretation that our language evolves and changes. The definitions of liberals and conservatives has certainly changed over time. It would be interesting to have an English scholar comment on this one as I certainly do not have the education and knowledge to address it empirically.

My bottom line – I hope that you have a better understanding of the actual definitions of the words and what they mean. I do not support socialism and I do not support fascism, but I think they have both been misinterpreted or misused.

A Quick Scare

Through an interesting set of co incidents I had brief scare that I was a victim of identity theft.

I’ve always tried to be fairly conscious of my personal information, but you might recall that not too long ago my wallet was “lost” and I never got anything back. The only thing that was ever returned was my driver’s license, which showed up in the mail about two months later. Kind of odd.

Over the last week I was in California. Most of it was business, but since I had to be there on Tuesday I flew in on Friday and went snowboarding with one of my co-workers.
We headed up to Dodge Ridge near the Tahoe area and got some nice fresh powder in due to the storms rolling in off the Pacific.

About 2 days ago while still in California I get a call from someone at Tejas De Brazil on my cell phone. They wanted to let me know that I had left my credit card up there, but that they had locked it up in their safe.

I immediately called them back and spoke to the manager. They asked if I was Mr. “Smith” and of course I said I was. They said they had my credit card. I explained to them that I was in California and that was not possible. Again, they confirmed that I was Mr. “Smith.” And had I ever dined there before. I explained that I had, but it had been years and I was in California and there was no way that was me. It bothered me that they called me on my cell phone and so I asked how they got the number. They told me that the person left that number when making the reservations – for a party of NINE! This place goes for about $50 a plate, so figure the bill was somewhere around $500 not including any alcohol.

I politely asked for the name on the credit card. Surprisingly enough it was almost identical to my legal name. The only real difference being that the first name on the card was close to my middle name (which I go by), and the middle initial was the same as my legal first name. You can imagine that with a name like “Smith” that it could easily be a coincidence if you excluded the fact that they called ME on my cell phone.

Now I am thinking that someone is trying to pull a fast one. I get as much information as I could and call up “Rip-U Bank,” which is the bank on the card that Tejas De Brazil had. Coincidentally my credit card is always with a “Rip-U Bank.” At first I got a little bent out of shape because they wanted MY account information. I asked what would happen if I didn’t have an account with “Rip-U?” Did that mean that they wouldn’t explore the possibility of identity theft? No no no…of course not! Then the security guy asks how long I’ve had my cell phone and I explained it was at least seven years old.

Now the guy hypothesizes that someone with a nearly identical name as mine just happened to transpose a couple of numbers for his cell phone and that they accidentally called me. I asked if he was serious or kidding and that I’d have better odds of hitting the lotto. He did not find me very amusing, but I wasn’t laughing, either.

After being assured a call back I took his name and manager’s name. They indicated they would note it on my account and return my call.

The next day, no call. Imagine that, eh? I called them today and got a different guy on the phone. This guy was very helpful. He called the merchant while I was on hold and got all of the account information for the card that was the restaurant. He looked up that account and then cross-referenced it to mine. NOTHING matched. That’s good! It just means that we have nearly identical names.

So the big mystery is how they called me on my cell phone. The “Rip-U” bank guy figured this one out after talking to Tejas for a while. Well, as it turns out if you ever go to Tejas De Brazil and make a reservation they stick your number into a database. When the guy left his credit card they looked up MY name instead of his and called me. That made much more sense.

It was a bit of a frightening experience, but all is well in the end. “Rip-U” bank even put a security hold on my credit cards until we straightened this out. The only thing that really irks me is that the first guy just didn’t seem to take this very seriously.