Young Blood has 9 Lives…

Well maybe it’s only 8 lives, now. Last night I was out with Hopper and YB to get a bite to eat and have a few beers. I took my truck because I won’t drink and ride. Hopper and YB both will drink and ride which I think is a bad combination.

I’ve never been a very spiritual person. I’ve never felt like I’ve been touched by God or had some epiphany which I attributed to divine intervention of any faith. However, last night I think YB certainly felt that something or someone was watching out for him.

It all started innocently enough. We had dinner and some brews and then went into downtown FTW. We all had another drink and then I decided to split so I could get up early to catch a flight to Chicago.

I get home and I can’t sleep. I’ve had two horrible nights of insomnia. But as I am finally getting ready to crash YB calls me and tells me that he’s been in an accident. Of course, the first thing I ask is whether or not he’s OK. He is. How is the bike? As he put it, mostly OK but there are chunks missing out of his wheels. WTF? I get his location and tell him I’ll be there in a bit.


According to YB he was moving at a pretty good clip somewhere around 80 or 90mph down I-30. I’m not quite clear on exactly what happened next but he must have been maneuvering to overtake someone when he hit a curb, or a curb-like structure. He said he remembered the bike going airborne, and he going airborne off the bike. He held on to the handlebars and came back down. When he landed he said he could tell something was really wrong as he had no real control of the bike so he pulled in the clutch and eased it into the ditch.


Sure enough, as you can see by the pictures the front wheel is bent up pretty good but there is a huge chunk missing out of his rear rim. I have never seen a set of rims that was messed up so bad that the bike wasn’t completely wadded up. Usually the bike is wadded up causing the rims to get trashed, but it can happen either way.

Front Tire -

Rear Tire -
Fortunately, he had some other guys stop on the side of the road with him. We were able to load his bike into the back of my truck and get it to the shop where he works. He took a work truck home.

YB is real lucky. He not only walked away from this, he has walked away without a single scratch and no other damage other than to his pride. I hope he thinks about that next time a beer is set before him while he has his bike out.

I Didn’t Wear any Underwear for a Week!

That sounds pretty disgusting, eh? Actually I was wearing swim trunks or quick-drying hiking shorts with built-in mesh undies the entire week. Now? I am wearing underwear. In fact, that’s all I am wearing. I just got done mowing the jungle that is considered my yard. Why was it a jungle? Because I wasn’t wearing any underwear in Costa Rica for a week.

BTW - I was trying to wait until I got the rest of the photos back from the trip, but that hasn't happened yet so I'm posting what I have!

We took off for Costa Rica on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008. Our flight was late getting into Costa Rica but getting through customs and immigration there was a breeze. We flew into San Jose, but then had to take a van ride to Manuel Antonio. This is across the country and took about 3 hours, in the rain, dark and fog. The ride wasn’t too bad but they drive differently down there. Our driver drives the route all the time and so he was hauling ass, even when it got real foggy up in the mountains and visibility was down to a few feet. I don’t know how he saw the hairpin curves, but he did and was able to make it even if the rest of the group was white-knuckling the armrests and chuckling nervously.

We made it to our rental house at about 3:00am. Fortunately, we had pre-ordered some groceries and liquor so we were able to make beverages and have a snack. We stayed up until about 4:30am and then decided to crash out. Unbeknown to us at that point, the sun comes up about that time and by 5:00am you can’t sleep anymore because it’s bright and sunny….along with monkeys, crickets, frogs, and birds all yammering at each other.

The house itself was beautiful. It clearly was designed to be a rental property with lots of room, every room facing the ocean, full sized bathrooms for every room, a third floor balcony, a swim up bar in the pool, and a small guest house. I am still not 100% clear how we came by this place but one of the guy’s family owns a rental house in Costa Rica. I believe they swapped a week of rent at their house for this one, plus the difference in price which meant that we got away with this dirt-cheap.

Surprisingly, it was significantly cooler there than it was here. The sun would fry you quick as we were only 9 degrees off the equator, but it rained every day and with us being about 300 feet off the ocean we had a cool breeze most of the time. We rarely ran the AC and generally kept the place opened up to let the breeze through. However, we had to keep the screen doors closed because the monkeys would get in and steal stuff. Yes, you read that right – keep the screen doors closed because the monkeys would get in.

They would hang out in the trees right off the balcony’s and while I never saw it, it supposedly was not unusual for them to be hanging out on the balconies and porches. There were several species of monkeys there. The howlers were the noiseiest and while we never saw them we heard them on most mornings as they would migrate through their territory.

In front of the deck was a fairly tall tree that was dead as a doornail. It was referred to as the “Tree of Life.” I know that sounds odd, but growing in the tree was an orchid vine that was beautiful and the birds that would hand out in the tree all day were incredible. There were toucans, at least two varieties of redheaded woodpeckers as well as several other species of very colorful birds. They would hang out all day, fuss, and catch insects.

We also had a sloth hanging out in the tree by the driveway. Yes, we were truly in the jungle even though we had a pretty kick ass place to stay for the week. We didn’t venture to the beach much because the deck and pool of the house was such an awesome place to hang out, and of course we had our beverages handy.
But venture forth we did. All of the tour companies were really cool. They would pick us up at the house and take us back. Most of them provided breakfast and lunch in the tour and this pretty much meant that all we had to do was get up and be ready. This wasn’t real hard when the sun came up and the jungle erupted in a chorus of cacophony.

White Water Rafting
One of the tours that we went on was a white water rafting tour. Now, I have friends that kayak and lived with a guy that did this professionally. I’m not exactly ignorant of the sport, but have always been a bit afraid of it. I’m not a real strong swimmer and I know you can get sucked into a hole and not be able to get out – lifejacket and boat or not. So I had a bit of nervousness going on this particular tour but I wasn’t going to let it ruin it for me.

On the way to the put-in point we stopped several times so the guides could point out the trees, vegetation, birds, etc. Some of the cool stuff was the teakwood trees and the leaves that could produce a henna-like die if you rubbed the leaf on your fingers. Costa Rica has several types of plantations including teak wood, rosewood, African palms, coffee, etc.

After we got to the put in point it was raining a little bit and they gave us a great safety briefing. We put on all our gear and then divided up into two groups for the two boats that they had. One of the other guys, Steven, and I got stuck up at the front (bow) of the boat as the “strong rowers.”

The rafts are large inflatable rafts divided into small rows. There are NO seats and nothing to strap you in (you really don’t want to be strapped to a boat that is flipped over anyway). You basically wedge your feet into the seams of the raft and sit on the outside of the boat so that you can row more efficiently. I know what you are thinking….sounds sketchy, right?

We were told that the rivers would be running upwards of class IV rapids. Rapids are classified by how difficult and dangerous they are. A class I rapid is smooth, calm water without ripples or obstacles. A class VI rapid is imminent death and should only be attempted by someone that is both a professional and completely crazy. To me class IV rapids just meant a lot of fun, but fairly scary, too as they are definitely dangerous.

We had a great time going through our first few sets of rapids and made our way to a giant waterfall that we all hung out in before setting back down the river. That’s when the trouble started.

We entered into a class III / IV series of rapids. We got through this just fine and since we were having a good time our guide decided to take us back up the seam and into the rapids again. When the rivers are running good and making these rapids they often create “holes” which is where the water drops sharply over something and goes below the average waterline. This is typically followed by a wave. He guided our raft into what looked like a pretty serious hole and I don’t exactly remember what happened but what I was told is that Steven got pitched out of the boat. I am also told that I was in the air going over Steven, also being pitched out of the boat into these rapids.

Now I had a lifejacket and helmet on, but it still took me a good three or four strokes to reach the topside of the water. Once I got top side I oriented myself appropriately for being carried down the river. Worst case? When I hit the pacific hang a left….

But seriously, the boats were WAY back there and there was another set of rapids approaching. Even with my lifejacket on it was difficult to keep my head completely above water when it started rippling. I was not looking forward to going into the next set of rapids without being on a boat.

Fortunately for me, the guides were trained in rescue techniques and got me into a boat prior to hitting the next series of rapids. After our guide realized that Steven and I were OK and that we weren’t upset or mad it was “game on.” While the other boat would hit the rapids and side-skirt the holes and waves our guide would take us directly into them. You might approach a hole that had a 2 foot drop before hitting a wave that was already 3 feet above us. Hitting that kind of hole felt like the boat was going vertical. The guide is yelling at us to row and I can’t find anything but air with my paddle. I heard later that the guy was evening leaning back off the boat and all kinds of stuff to make sure we got the “good experience.”

But it was a lot of fun and a lot of work. Just before we stopped for lunch we hit the last set of rapids and there was a small hole that we went through. All of the safety kayakers that had been traveling with us were waiting there. Our guide whistles at them and says something in Spanish. They all vacate the area as we turn the boat back around. This is looking bad all of a sudden. Sure enough he takes us up the seam and then intentionally turns the boat sideways into the hole pitching everyone out of the boat. My friends tell me that he was already jumping out before flipping the boat. He wanted to make sure we had a good experience. But the kayakers were right there and we all managed to get the boat flipped back over and recovered everyone.

After lunch the safety kayakers took off because there were no more rapids and it was simply a calm float down the river. Calm until we saw the crocodile that is. It was sunning itself on the rocks and when we came by it slid into the water and disappeared. The croc was maybe four or five feet long, but if you heard our friend Cassandra tell the story it was about 20 feet long and breathing fire as it came after our raft and we had to beat it off with our oars.

But it truly was a fun and awesome time on the river. The guides were all very good and everyone in the outfit was paying attention to us and our safety. Will I do it again? Sure. But I’m hoping I don’t get pitched out next time…..

Zip Line Canopy Tour
Another tour that we did was zip-lining in the canopy of the rain forest. A zip-line is a steel cable that is suspended between two platforms. You are in a small climbing harness of sorts and you secure yourself to the cable with a very small pulley and let it carry you between the two platforms.

This was a really fun tour because you are about 90 feet up and really in the treetops at any given time. We had one girl with us that was absolutely terrified and wore a strange mask of fear mixed with a smile. Admittedly, the first time you zip-line it’s kind of sketchy because you are stepping out over a ledge above a tree, river, etc. and the only thing holding you up there is a little tiny steel cable, a carabiner and your harness.

Once you get over the initial fear and learn to trust your gear and the guides it gets fun really fast. You have to climb and hike a bit to get up in the canopy, but once you are there it’s a lot of zip-lines to get around. The guides were very strict about safety and you were not allowed to touch your own gear (least you unhook something and fall). Even the guides were very serious about staying fastened to something at all times. Out on the zip-line you could get moving fairly quickly and a quick glance around made it seem as if you were just “in the middle” of this beautiful forest.

During the tour we also got a chance to do a couple of free rappels from tree platforms down to other platforms. This scared some of us more than others, but the big terrifying event was a Tarzan-like swing between two platforms. Figure that you are between 80 and 90 feet up. You are standing on a platform in one tree, and you are going to grab a rope and swing Tarzan-style to another platform in another tree. Of course, you are hooked on to the rope so you can’t really fall but for some reason this terrified people far more than anything else we did that day. I was OK with it as I used to do stuff like this all the time as a kid but for some of our group it was the thought of it being a rope and not a steel cable that scared them. The girl that was terrified of everything else literally screamed out in fear as she swung from one platform to the other. I was in tears I was laughing so hard at that that point. Yes, I am a bastard as I found it highly entertaining. But I have to admit, this girl was pretty much terrified the whole time but she did it. That takes cajones!

The only thing I was even remotely disappointed in with the tour was that it was all about the zip-lines and having fun. There wasn’t much in the way of pointing out the flora and fauna of the forest, and I can’t recall seeing any animals of significance during the tour.

We all agreed that the photographers drove us batty. They managed to get some good pictures and that was a good thing, but they really could have toned it down some and allowed us to experience things without feeling like we had to “smile” and “look at me” the whole time.



Horse Back Riding

The last tour we did the day before we left. This was a very gentle horseback ride up a pretty sketchy road through the rainforest. The horses were family owned and we heard that they were all treated very well and only had to do one tour every three days. The family was nice and began our tour with the traditional rice and beans with eggs and a tortilla for breakfast.

After that we met our mounts and took off up the road. When I say took off, it was a nice and slow relaxing pace. Finally we had a chance to look around and take our time checking things out without someone driving past as we looked out the window. Our guide seemed to understand this and we had some good conversations about how this was what made the tour very enjoyable.

After a while we came upon a cut-out in the forest and our guide led us up a trail. This trail was barely wide enough for one horse and it seemed like you could get hurt pretty bad if your horse decided to take a wrong-step. I was thinking that this must be similar to what it’s like taking a mule into the Grand Canyon.

At the end of the trail was a beautiful waterfall. We all went for a swim and the guide took plenty of pics for us. At this particular river the water was mostly fed from a natural spring but during the rainy season it would be fed by runoff of the higher mountains. The whole area that we were swimming in would be under water and the waterfall itself would engulf the surrounding walls and vegetation.


The ride back was non eventful, but again that is exactly what we all wanted. Simple and relaxing. It started raining while we were at the falls so we just let it rain on us. We were already wet, why not? We did find it amusing that while on the way back we passed another tour that was on ATV four-tracks and they had their ponchos on and were trying to stay dry. Why you would want to take a four-wheeler up in there is beyond me. Our guide offered us the ponchos that were tied on our saddles several times and we all refused. We enjoyed having it rain on us. We were in the rain forest after all. There was a certain peace and symmetry with this. I think our guide appreciated this as this was his home and his way of life.

Just Chilling

Otherwise, the rest of our time was pretty much spent relaxing at the house with an occasional walk to a restaurant or the beach. I ended up cooking most nights, but that was fine by me as I usually had someone making me a beverage and I didn’t have to help clean up. Dinners were usually had outside and we all enjoyed each others company. We did walk down to the national park of Manuel Antonio one afternoon and hiked up The Cathedral, which is a natural peninsula. It had a pretty good elevation difference with the beach and you could get some really good views from the top. We also saw a number of types of vegetation and critters that we hadn’t seen yet. Some of these included lizards, geckos, crabs, mushrooms, flowers, and of course up-close-and-personal monkeys.

After the hike we ended up on a very calm beach and all took turns taking a swim in the cool waters. There wasn’t much in the way of waves as the beach was fairly well protected by the rocks and other land masses. This helped cool us all off before we took off and hiked back to the house. It was downhill getting to the park, but it was all uphill going back. At least we were getting our exercise in.

The day we left it was raining and had been all night. It was supposed to rain for another three or four days. Our driver picked us up early so because there were already reports of felled trees and accidents on the main road back to San Jose. Still, I don’t think our driver drove any less slow or any safer than he did at any other time. At least this time we got to see what we missed on the way in since there was some daylight out.

Costa Rica is a beautiful country with a very diverse panorama. You just have to take your time and stop to smell the flowers.

Gummy Lighthouses?

WTF? Is it just me or is this a really bad idea?

Ferrets Anyone?

Democrats and Oil

Not too long ago I made the mistake of telling one of my friends that Democrats want to raise the price of oil. My friend is involved in the Democratic party to some extent and told me that they didn’t think it was part of the platform campaign. After they looked into it, it turns out that it is indeed not an official stance of the Democratic party. Ok, I stand corrected.

But, it’s often been said that actions speak louder than words. The actions of congress are pretty indicative that the Democrats (currently controlling congress) either want the price of gas to go up or that they simply do not understand basic economic models.

It is believed that there is enough oil in America and in American shorelines to give us independence from other countries for our national oil supply.

But,

· Democrats have blocked the development of new sources of petroleum.
· Democrats have blocked drilling in ANWR.
· Democrats have blocked drilling off the coast of Florida.
· Democrats have blocked drilling off of the east coast.
· Democrats have blocked drilling off of the west coast.
· Democrats have blocked drilling off the Alaskan coast.
· Democrats have blocked building oil refineries.
· Democrats have blocked clean nuclear energy production.
· Democrats have blocked clean coal production.

Keep in mind that the red part of the graph is over an eight-year time span. The blue part of the graph has occured in less than one year.

My impression is that Democrats, through environmentalists, want to source and utilize alternative forms of energy. I’m OK with this and think it’s a good idea, but I’ll also point out that it’s unrealistic to believe that any new energy source is going to be plentiful and economically viable in the next three to five years. That means that we should have two goals. The first being to seek out and develop an economically viable energy source that we can integrate into our society. The second being to alleviate the economic stranglehold that other countries have on us due to our dependence on their oil.

I don’t see why they have to be mutually exclusive and I certainly don’t understand why we have to impact the economy so severely in the interim. One person I spoke with said that if we don’t do this then there isn’t any incentive to develop new technologies. I suppose that is entirely possible but I’d also speculate that we are well beyond that as many companies have too substantial of an investment in alternative energy sources as to forget about them. Furthermore, that mentality is an “ends justify the means” mentality which I’ve never been very fond of.

What I really find astounding are the people that vote in the existing congress, and then get mad at what’s happening to the economy due to the soaring price of gasoline. Yet, they still don’t want to allow drilling on our land and off shore. Obama says that he is not upset at the price of gasoline, but that it rose so quickly. Not upset? It was almost $5.00 / gallon when I was just in CA. The trickle down effect is amazing and yet the nominee for President says everything is chill.

And if the environmentalists are so concerned then why do we allow foreign countries like China to drill off of our own shores and capitalize on our resources while we stranglehold our own companies? China has got one of the absolute worst track records of environmentalism of any country.

Hertz Uses Lube

Ok, I really don’t know what I did to piss off the car rental gods in some life, but I must have done something really terrible. I think when you break it down to an ass-reaming, the car rental companies are far worse than the airlines. If you want a good ass-reaming just go rent some cars.

My trip has been a little rough mostly because of dealing with Hertz. I flew into San Jose on Tuesday. Now, I know better than to fly into San Jose without a car rental reservation. If you don’t have one, you may or may not be able to get a car. If there is one available, be prepared for that ass-reaming I was talking about. Lube is optional, but certainly not provided by the car rental companies.

The flight was OK, but when I get to the car rental company there are about 25 or 30 people in line, and only TWO agents working the counter. To make matters worse, there are another handful of people standing and sitting around. After waiting my turn to get to the counter I get to find out why. Despite the fact that all of us had confirmed reservations, there are no cars available. Not that the car you wanted wasn’t available, there weren’t any cars available.
So after dicking around with them for about 2+ hours I finally get a car and am on my way. I drive down to Salinas (CA) and make my first day of class. Let me tell you, there is freaking nothing in Salinas, CA. It’s the lettuce capitol of the world. All the lettuce and cabbage comes from Salinas. You can drive for five miles and see nothing but lettuce and cabbage. And the town? Think of Trader’s Village that just goes on for miles and miles. Really, there just isn’t much here.

But that evening I hit a Japanese place that the students / clients had suggested. It was surprisingly tasty and they had some of the best sushi I had eaten in a while. I go out to the car and it won’t start. Nothing. The engine won’t turn over. I dick around with the gear shift lever and a few other things that could cause this type of behavior, but it won’t turn over. I’m thinking electrical / dead battery. It’s about 7:00ish so I call Hertz and they send out someone to jump start the car.
This guy shows up in his power diesel and hooks up some cables. No luck. It still won’t turn over. It won’t even try to turn over. But this guy was only called to jump the car so he takes off. I have to call Hertz again. Hertz says they want to tow the car to San Jose and that I can get a new car there. San Jose is at least 1.5 hours away. I tell them I’ve already had to dick around with waiting for the car, now I’ve been stranded an hour, and that I am not going to spend the next three to four hours dicking around and that they need to bring me a car. They inform me that there isn’t any place open at this hour and I’ll have to wait until morning. Fine, tell the tow truck drive to give me a ride to the hotel (which he did) and get me a car in the morning.

The next day, starting at 6:00am, wasn’t much better as the first agent I talked to said I would have to go pick the car up. I told her in no uncertain terms that was not the agreement that we had and that it would be in Hertz best interest to proverbially kiss my ass and make things right or I’d never rent from them again.

I end up getting a cab to my client’s site because they can’t get me a car in time. Later they give me a ring and tell me I can come pick up the car. Again, I have to explain that they are supposed to bring me the car. They explain that it will be “a little longer” because they are busy. I call them again at 5:30 and ask where my car is. It’s on it’s way.

The guy shows up in the car and asks “where is the other car.” I told him that Hertz had it towed and I hope he isn’t expecting me to take him back to wherever he came from. I think he took that well. Finally, 22 hours later, I had another rental car.

I haven’t written Hertz, yet, but you can bet that I will. I want an apology, and I don’t want to have to pay for an entire day of car rental that I didn’t get to have. Somehow, I am still not as mad at them as I am at Budget. Maybe it’s because Hertz used lube….

Recent Things That I Wish I Didn’t Know About

Preparation H and dance clubs
Apparently, the club-goers out on the east coast are slathering their bodies up in preparation H prior to going in the club. Apparently the cream causes your skin to tighten over your muscles giving you a more “ripped” look. But that’s all it is, the look. And what do they do to combat the smell? Dump a bottle of cologne over their heads.

But it must be working, this is the trend and those guys are getting the chicks. Go figure.

The Poo Button
http://www.poobutton.com

Back from the Jungle!

Well I am back from Costa Rica. It's hotter here than it was there. I am trying to write up my thoughts and notes on the trip, but am only able to write a little bit each day. I'm also waiting for all the pictures to get compiled from all the cameras.

Be patient, it's coming.....

I'm Outta Here!

Hey everyone -

Sorry I haven't written much lately. I've been on the computer so much with various projects that I really have been trying to take a break from it in the evenings and afternoons.

In any case, I'm going on vacation to Costa Rica. See everyone in a week!

I Escaped the Housing Bubble

For years I heard it from almost every side: You can’t lose! Real estate is continuing to escalate. You buy a house for an investment! Look at the money you can make. And on and on and on.

Part of this was me being in Montana and seeing the unbelievable price of homes there. I also spend a bunch of time in CA and see the unbelievable price of homes there, too. I was pretty torn about possibly moving to MT but the housing market is primary what kept me away. Everyone in my company kept telling me to buy, buy, buy. They are all from CA and see the value of homes on the rise. The same was true of MT. But it was not to last and I saw this a long time before it happened.

But these people didn’t live in TX. I did. I saw that TX stayed undervalued by approximately 10% compared to the national average. I saw that my home value only increased by very small percentage over a ten-year period – roughly the rate of inflation. This was not new to me.

Well, here we are now with the bubble still collapsing. Foreclosures are at an all-time high. Housing prices have plummeted. And it’s not over, yet. Here is an interesting article about one little house in CA that had a 68% drop in value within one year. Click on the house for the link.

Sometimes I really want to go back to all these people out in CA that kept telling me to buy and ask them how they feel about it now.

Arbitration Clauses

It seems that more and more corporations and businesses are trying to force consumers into binding arbitration. This is a very serious practice and should not be taken lightly.

In short, arbitration is not bound by the rules of the courts with regards to the discovery process, the ruling process, or any other process. It also forces you to give up your rights as a consumer.

Arbitrators rule against consumers 98% of the time. Think about it. That’s a huge number. I wouldn’t think much of it if it was closer to 60% of the time or even 70% of the time as I believe most people do not have a legitimate grievance most of the time. But 98%??

The National Arbitration Forum has come under scrutiny and lawsuits over the whole process. Yet, businesses still put the clauses in their contracts and consumers continue to sign away their rights.

And, I’m not completely against arbitration. Arbitration can expedite what could otherwise be a lengthy and costly dispute for both the corporation and the consumer. But the arbitrators cannot be hand selected by the companies or their affiliates and associates and this is exactly what is happening.

The only way we are going to get this practice to stop is to stand up for our rights as consumers and tell companies that we will not agree to binding arbitration. One in a thousand won’t cut it. A company will simply say that is too bad and move on down the road. But what if they lost even 30% of their business because consumers stated that they had enough? Then you would see change.

I Slabbed It….and Saved!

This past week I had to make an appointment in Killeen, TX which is home to Fort Hood. I figured I’d get down there quick, and play a little bit more on the way home. On the way down I took I-35. I got caught in a little traffic trying to get out of FTW due to road construction but after that it was smooth sailing.

Basically, I slabbed it down there. If you recall reading a previous post (http://invioletlight.blogspot.com/2008/04/its-all-about-ride.html)
about how we ride or why we ride I mentioned that I just don’t understand the mentality of this.

Well, I still don’t. It wasn’t outright miserable, but it didn’t do much for me either. I certainly didn’t find my zen place as slabbing it just didn’t require much mental focus and attention. I didn’t find it much more taxing than driving my truck.

On the way down, it was just a tick under 150 miles and it took me two hours. I filled up my tank and that netted me right at about 40 miles to the gallon on the nose (ok not quite on the nose, but pretty darned close). Conversely my truck gets about 13mpg and that’s downhill with the wind behind me. It’s definitely a money saver to take the bike.

After the meeting I decided to have some fun coming back and play a little bit. I didn’t have all day to waste so I figured I’d hit a key road or two and then just enjoy the scenery of Texas the rest of the way back.

Well, going back took me a little over 200 miles and 2.5 hours. Needless to say I didn’t get nearly as good of gas mileage on the way back even though the winds were with me. I never touched I-35 or any other interstate for that matter. It was all country roads. Some of them were more twisty than others, but since I didn’t have time to dawdle I did try to take some of the more popular country roads back in.

It was on these roads I found my inner peace. My Zen. The reason I ride motorcycles in the first place. Forget the interstate, this is where it’s at. Rolling tarmac, rivers, greenery, smells, temperature differences and feeling like I am part of the environment rather than part of the rat-race.

I have to admit, though, I was laid into a twisty at about 90 mph. The warning on the curve governed the speed at 40mph so I was into it pretty good. Suddenly, my bike stepped out on me and I started to wallow towards the outside of the curve. Thankfully I didn’t panic and my tires hooked back up. I laid it in harder, gassed it, and here I am to talk about it. Talk about pucker factor!! Sometimes it amazes me how exhilarating that is. What is it about skating the edge that does it for me? I have no idea.

In any case, I had a good ride and I got to write it off for business. For all of you that slab it, keep slabbing it. Stay off my roads and out of my way. For those of you that ride the twisties, I hope to see you on the road and flash you a peace sign.

At The Speed Of Junk Mail

Last week, I filled articles of incorporation for a new company I am trying to get off the ground. I got all the paperwork processed, stuck it in an envelope, and mailed it off to the Secretary of State for the state of Texas.

This Wed., I received my copy of the filings with the acknowledgement that the company is now official and exists. This is a good thing.

Today (Friday) I received my first official piece of junk mail for the company. As much as I knew I’d start getting unsolicited junk mail I didn’t expect it to happen quite so fast. Who says companies aren’t efficient?

Fencing Project

So my dumb-ass friend, Bling! decided to replace his fence this weekend. (Sorry Bling!, you knew I had to open like that)

For those of you who don’t know Bling! he just can’t do anything ½-ass or even close to normal. He has to go above and beyond on the projects that he works on. Now, I can’t fault him for this because I am not a whole lot better myself.

But he decided to replace his fence and do it himself. He’s got a decent sized backyard and the cost to replace the fence was going to be several thousand dollars. He calls me up and asks if I can come by on Sat. to help out. No problem.
Saturday I get there and no Bling! He’s gone to the hardware store to get some chain and a “come a long.” Why? Well, in order to remove the old posts and put the new ones in Bling! rented a bobcat with a hydraulic lift and auger on it. But remember all those storms and rains we had gotten? The ground was super soft and the bobcat was stuck down about a foot or in the mud….in what is now nice trenches in his backyard.

The first thing we did was spend about an hour getting the bobcat unstuck and back on the trailer so now it was out of commission which put us back to manually digging out all the old posts and what-not. The mud was still making it ultra-difficult to get the posts out and after a while we decided to cut them off below the ground-line rather than spend all day long digging posts out.

Next came putting in the new ones. I didn’t have much more time to spare on Saturday as I had other things to attend to but I suggested he go rent a two-man auger so while he did that I help move materials around. Bling! bought everything as raw material (slats and supports). They said that the difference in price to purchase pre-built 8-foot sections of fence was fairly substantial. So I started carrying slats and what-not back into the backyard.

Bling! got back with the auger and was not in a very good mood and I was about to jet, but it looked like this was going to do the trick. I called him later and he said that they still had to hand-dig a couple of holes but that they got all the posts set and the concrete was drying.

It was just one of those projects that kept having things go wrong. I hope they started going right after I left….maybe it was me?

I never heard from him on Sunday (it rained again), but he said he got his fence finished and that it looked good. Maybe he’ll post up a pic.

Between his fence and my lighting project and I am tied and done with projects for a while.

Lighting Project

If you’ve followed the blog for a while you might remember my posting about getting the photo of Lone Peak.

http://invioletlight.blogspot.com/2008/02/year-in-making.html

After getting the photo mounted it needed lighting which kicked off a new project. The first thing to do was find some lights that I liked. The problem there is that I found a few that I thought would work but didn’t after I tried them out.

I ended up going with some Tech Lighting products called Freejack with the Swivel head.

Yesterday I finally got them installed. It took longer than I thought because I had to make all the measurements without a good frame of reference. But then I got the holes cut and the cables ran and wired it all up.

Hit the switch and…..nothing. But that was easily fixed after finding that one of my wires came lose while I was stuffing them up in the junction box.

I am pretty happy with the lights. I have some slight aesthetic work to do on them, but it’s pretty minor. I used a 34-degree beam bulb with a frosted anti-uv lens on it. Here is the finished product.

Ireland Gripped by Panic as Flooding Continues

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?