An Evening In The Garage

Boys Will Be Boys...

"Batten Down The Hatches Captain..."

...And Full Speed Ahead...


I'm sitting here in the dark in my basement shop this evening working on the Old HP Laptop computer running on batteries...

by the light of a flashlight...

...fortunately with the internet Cable modem and router powered by my UPS in the upstairs office.

Right now I'm surrounded by a puddle of water about 1" deep in places around my feet.

You see, we have been POUNDED not once...but TWICE this evening with powerful thunderstorms which I'm sure at one time or other each contained a tornado, and while we missed the tornadic winds we did get excellent examples of pingpong ball to golf ball sized hail for five or ten minutes in each storm.

Then the second storm finally managed to inundate my gutters with torn leaves and other debris, and pile a two foot high dam of hailstones up against my basement door causing my floor drain to stop up and inundate half of my basement including my shop and storage area with about an inch of standing water in some places.

Now the problem is that there is more rain I can see coming on the internet radar, but it's still raining and lightening so much I'm afraid to go outside and try to stand on a ladder and to clear the gutters in the dark.

Maybe I'll get a new shingled roof out of this adventure, else go the path I'm taking with my bank and fire the insurance company and find someone that actually gives a damn in the process.

I knew I should have been working on the roof cleaning gutters rather than chasing a lawn tiller around the back yard last weekend.

Am I getting too old for this crap, or is it just me being lazy?

I Have A Bad Case Of Plumber's Crack...

I Don't Know Whether To Laugh Or Cry...


You know, Ladies and Gentlemen...

In spite of the economy and the current job/employment situation, I say that there is the distinct possibility that there are some people out there that either operate from the standpoint of "just not giving a rat's ass"...

else they're just plain TOO %$#@ STUPID to successfully handle the ins and outs of doing the job they're in on a daily basis.

As an example opposite of what I'm talking about, take ME for instance, as a person who is actually interested in doing my job and understands I have to provide a useful, marketable service for a reasonable cost, generally within the agreed upon time frame.

How do I do that?

Well...
First of all, when you call me on my business telephone or my cell phone (my business phone automatically forwards to my cell), I do something which is apparently beyond the capability of many independent businessmen and some if not all employees of the "Plumbing Companies" listed in the telephone book and on the internet with operations located in Southern Alabama.

I ANSWER MY FREAKING TELEPHONE.

Next comes the difficult part, apparently.

When someone which has taken the effort to find me and my company and made the aforementioned phone call to me and/or my office, and I've successfully answered the telephone and said "hello" and identified myself by name...through a series of questions (by me) and answers (by the caller) I can generally manage to tell them after a few minutes if I actually supply the services which they are requesting.

(If the idiot on the other end of the phone is cold calling me trying to sell me Gold Futures or stock in some obscure failing company, or telephone service or new vinyl siding for my all brick house....things go a little differently...but you get the picture.)

So any way, back to my story...so now after answering the telephone, and questioning the caller about their needs, and agreeing that I can in fact supply the service, I apparently do something which is amazing...veritably unheard of in the annals of the so called "plumbing profession."

I do something which I'm pretty sure, if I were a "professional plumber," would qualify me for admission in the "International Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Hall of Fame", if there is such a thing.

It's pretty simple actually.

You want to guess or would you rather just that I tell you?

I PRODUCE A WRITTEN  PROPOSAL DESCRIBING THE SCOPE OF MY SERVICES AND OFFERING A PRICE FOR SAME.

Isn't that Idea FREAKING A M A Z I N G?

Then of course if we come to an agreement there's all of the messy stuff like purchase orders and having to do the work and pay my material suppliers and labor on the project, and then comes the invoicing part after the work is completed and there's always that 30 day period spent standing by the mailbox waiting on the check to arrive.

But other than the above, as I see it that pretty well describes how to run a successful business if you are not a lieing cheating theaving IDIOT.

Now...(taking a big breath here boss)

For most of last week I've been making phone calls to "professional plumbers" seeking the services of same to find and repair a leak in the main service line running under one of the concrete driveways at my mother's home on the farm in  in Lower Alabama.

Fully three quartrers of the phone numbers had been disconnected and were out of service, and half of the ones still working had unintelligable answering machine greetings and when I left a voice mail with a phone number didn't return my call.

I managed to find TWO companies within a three county region of southern Alabama which actually answered their telephone and were willing to come out and take a look at the problem and quote "give us a price."

The first guy showed up...on time...and then called me and said he could do the job next week and he'd get back to me with a price.

Never heard from him again...

The second guy showed up on Friday afternoon...again on time...said he could do the project on Monday but simply stated he worked for $85 per hour and get this...

he said that he "would not put anything in writing."

Further, in spite of me calling the local utility Locator Service ("Call before you Dig"), he said that they wouldn't locate water line on private property.

I thought that my head was going to explode.

What a stupid piece of shit asshole the fellow apparently is.

He wants me to hand him my Mother's checkbook and then sit up here in Knoxville while he and a bunch of day labor drunks and drug addicts screw around digging holes and waisting time runnning back and forth to Ace Hardware and Lowe's because "we don't have one of them fittings on the truck."

Bullshit.

So as a result I'm getting on a Delta Airliner at 7:35 this morning and flying to Dothan by God Alabama and if I can't solve the problem myself I'm going to load my Shotgun and stand guard over the proceedings on Monday while the aforementioned team of "plumbing professionals" does an expedited effort on the project.

You will have to excuse me now while I wipe the spit off of my monitor and go wipe the foam off of my mouth...

Blogging Suffering Due To Government Red Tape

Words Suitable For Public Consumption Few And Far Between...


Sorry for the lack of posting this week, but...

I have a good excuse, and it comes in the form of a question...

Anybody out there but me already totally PISSED OFF from having to fool around with "end of the year" financial issues i.e. tax bullshit?

I swear the agony of opening the mail and anticipating filling out forms makes me want to pull what hair is left out of my ever greying, ever balding head.

State Corporate Registration.

State Sales and Use Tax.

County Business license.

State Corporate Income Tax.

Federal Corporate Income Tax.

Would someone tell me where there is supposed to be time left to actually MAKE SOME MONEY in this process for the next couple of months?

Hello...

I'm listening?

OK...time to get back under the pile of files and continue calculating...

Saying What You Mean...And Meaning What You Say...

It's All Slowly Becoming Illegal Today


I'm not sorry this morning, Ladies and Gentlemen, but this Thanksgiving Season finds me more than a bit perturbed.

I'm afraid that I'm more likely to just sit around sulking to myself rather than running around publicly giving thanks for stuff I benefit from in what up until now has been a fairly good life.

Let me see if venting here on the Blog this morning will relieve a little of the pressure on my Spleen so I can take a complete breath and relieve the pain that proceeds up my spinal cord from my rectum to the base of my cranium...

Here goes...

You see, it's like this to this middle aged, ever greying, ever balding white man of Anglo Saxon descent.

It seems to me that all of the professional "do-gooders" and elected "busy bodies" i.e. the self proclaimed philanthropists and politicians have taken away--slowly, and incrementally-- much of what I consider to be most everything fun out of living life here in America.

And the stuff that you can still do that could be considered fun they've installed handrails on and passed laws and installed placards with instructions indicating why and how I can't have fun using the aforementioned things which are supposed to be fun to use.

I present as evidence the 99.9 percent of the hotels out there with swimming pools which are either only 4 feet deep else are 10 feet deep but instead of a fiberglass diving board today only have some caulk or epoxy filler sealing up the holes where the diving board was in the 1960's.

Further, in business and personal relationships, we can't call an asshole an "asshole", we can't call a useless-nigger-wife- beating-son-of-a-bitch a "useless-nigger-wife-beating-son-of-a-bitch," and now on an international basis...when towel headed Iranian Mullahs build Centrifuges we have to have "multi-lateral talks"...

...or when the the slanted eyed idiot shit headed communist North Koreans...

the same slanted eyed idiot shit headed communist North Koreans that were lobbing artillery shells across the 38th parallel in the early 1950's over my uncle's heads during our so-called "police action" in that area...

YES...when those same slanted eyed idiot shit headed comunists yesterday started lobbing artillery shells again across the so called "de-militarized zone" around the 38th parallel....

all we as Americans get in response  is bloviating by the President and Secretary of State while everyone looks at their watches and wonders what time to put the turkey in the oven and if they need anything else from the Grocery store before Thursday noon.

All of that said, I'm here this morning to set a few things straight for anyone that doesn't have a cranium full of cranberry sauce and/or hasn't shoved so much stuffing up their ass and down their throat that all of their blood supply is diverted to their intestinal tract for the balance of the year 2010.

THERE IS SOME SERIOUS SHIT HAPPENING OUT THERE IN THE WORLD, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.

RIGHT NOW.

And we need to take ACTION...

RIGHT NOW.

Just because it's the "holiday season" doesn't mean that we can change TV channels and wait until January 3rd to catch up on what went on while we were at the airport having safe sex with a TSA worker wearing blue latex gloves.

Further, and more specifically, sitting around watching College Football games and picking your nose and going deer and turkey hunting after goofing around the yard with the kids and grand kids while burping the essence of left over Green Bean Casserole isn't going to get you any further away from the inevitable.

We all voted recently for a group of people which we hope will make some important changes in the way this country conducts it's financial and foreign affairs, but unlike your automobile you just can't point the government down the road and put things on cruise control and wait to see what destination you arrive at.

There's still a whole lot of navigating and management that has to be accomplished, and I'm not quite certain that the crew we have in the American cockpit is competent and up to the task yet.

Am I the only one that watches the news and gets more concerned and agitated every day while looking at the crap being foisted on the world in general and blamed on or placed in the lap of America and Americans in general?

There's not enough liquor in the liquor store and Marijuana in Mexico to numb me enough to dull the sense of anger and anguish I feel right now...

...and that's the way it is...November 24, 2010


(and screw Walter Conkite in his moldy grave...)

I'm Ready To Fire Everybody And Leave Town

The Fruits Of Ineptitude...


I swear to God, Ladies and Gentlemen, but virtually EVERY SINGLE VENDOR I have working for me has either lost their minds else they have gotten together and signed a pact or pledge saying they were going to screw up my product delivery schedule by every possible method.

And I'm not aware that I have done anything close to a level  of deserving this kind of treatment mind you.

I pay their (my vendors/creditors) invoices on time, in full.

I generally allow for reasonable delivery schedules and I pay the asking price for the products without too much haggling.

So they must just want to go out of their way to torture me...

...so they can watch me have shivering, angry fits causing my blood pressure to rise, veins to pop out of my neck and forehead, and what's left of the hair on my ever greying, ever balding head to fall down to the ground.

Seriously...

Twenty years ago there would be a half dozen people in cities as remote as Michigan and as close as Nashville that would have been cursed out on the telephone or possibly in person as a result of the stupidity and mistakes I've had to endure in the past couple of months.

But I've gotten mellow in my older age and elect to hold my tongue more often these days.

It's unbelievable to me that in an economic climate where so many people are out of work that the people that still have jobs can perform their functions in such a feckless and obtuse manner.

You know?

I'd like to put into place some sort of system where customers could hit a button and cause  the moron on the other end of the telephone to be ejected from their chair and out of the building and some other poor yet competent slob (or slobbette) would magically appear in their position...pajamas and house slippers and all.

That would make a great TV commercial...sort of like the Staples "Easy Button"...

ONLY BETTER AND MORE SATISFYING.

Now where did I put my really BIG hammer...

Put This In Your Pipe...

And SMOKE It...


I have a copy of the Qur'an on the way to my house via Amazon for the purposes of lighting my Webber Kettle reading the words directly, but over the past five or so years I have personally read a good deal of the passages referenced in this video from pages on the Internet and find it to be a valid reference:




Doesn't that make you shudder in your stocking feet?

I believe that we need to extinguish the lives of many of these Bastards following this radical form of Islam, and anything else short of victory...unlike the pussyifcation of America found during the Korean and Vietnam War, will result in our ultimate demise.

For this reason I am completely happy that I never had any children (because men like me knew better than to take on the responsibility and then not fulfill the promise), but I worry about my Sister's young boy--my Nephew Reagan--and the other Children and Grandchildren of friends and relatives and an infinite number of other kids and grand-kids and young adults which are threatened by this ever expanding, ever growing threat.

I'm just happy I'm 51 rather than 21...

This is serious SHIT in my opinion, and you can call me a racist or a bigot or just a stupid old, mean old, ever greying ever balding moron or whatever, but understand this...

I know how to aim a gun and shoot it.

I can tell the difference between shit and shineola.

I don't give a damn what you or your mother or Congress or the Supreme Court thinks.

At some point my life is worth less than the value of the idiocy I can stop in the process of giving up the few years left over in the name of peace and justice and the American Way.

It's just that simple...

Crazy On A Ship Of Fools--Part MCMXXXI

If I Had The Money I'd Be Out Of Here...


Just in case you haven't been paying attention here on this blog, the bottom line these days is that if it weren't for two women--my mother and my girlfriend Pat--I'd be living somewhere other than the United By-God States of 'Merica in the near future if not for the past several years now.

OK...cash on hand and cash flow also being considerations, but still...

And where exactly I'm not sure...probably Belize or Costa Rica...but anywhere else in this hemisphere other than the place this nation is being transformed into by America despising Morons and other breeds of generic Socialists/Liberals/Progressives in recent years.

I guess I'll sit back and watch the continuing disintegration of the country I grew up in for a while longer and see what the results of the November election produces.

And until then...expect further complaining in my usual eloquent but politically incorrect form...

"Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"

...Knowledgable Words On Getting Old...


Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

--Dylan Thomas (October 27, 1914 – November 9, 1953)



(doing the math...Mr. Thomas was only 39 when he went into "That Good Night")

"ID Hell"

Dealing With the Government and Government Employees...


"Joy, Joy, Please Lord keep me from killing someone..."

My prescription "Drivers License/Government ID" which currently allows me to do things like cash a check or get on a commercial air liner under the auspices of the FAA and the so-called Homeland Security Administration's expert airport "security screeners" expires on my birthday.

That would be...

T O M O R R O W.

So this morning about 6:30 AM I'm heading over to the local Department of Motor Vehicles office to stand in line in anticipation of their opening at 7 AM, and hopefully I'll be home sometime between then and next Thursday.

Isn't it amazing that people will hand over important tasks to the state and federal government--things like retirement and medical benefits--to a group of people which can not design an infrastructure to handle a known quantity of "customers" and simply take their money?

When they have a MONOPOLY on providing the services which they are supposed to provide?

I mean...it's not like I can drive down the road the other direction and come home with a drivers license from Lowes or Home Depot or possibly Kroger...you know?

The local Rooms To Go Store doesn't have a special selling a sofa and love seat with two end tables and a coffee table with a free government recognized identification card thrown in...all purchased under a contract with "six months same as cash" terms.

So I have to go now and shave and shower and practice biting my tongue so I can come home without a felony charge of ripping someone's arm off and beating them to death with it...either some idiot standing in line with me or one of the insolent government employees I expect to encounter in the next four hours.

Regards Y'all...

Drainin' The Swamp

Cooking Gator Tail...


Well, I have Good News...and I have Bad News...

(and of course there is also just the usual blogger type blitherings)

First of all, the GOOD NEWS is that I have a fairly reasonable semblance of a functioning computer back in our Server PC position here at the Turbo Pup Compound on the Banks of the Mighty Tennessee River.

It took probably twelve or fifteen hours to accomplish over the past week and one-half, but still...

The BAD NEWS is I'm still stuck using Windows Vista as my operating system because of the scheme or schemes of collusion or contempt shown to computer users by companies like Hewlett Packard and Microsoft.

The way things work as I understand it is that Microsoft, in their efforts to continue to earn record shattering profits every single year, maintains a program of forcing computer users to buy whatever product it is that they want to sell at any given time on the calendar.

To that end, they force users that know better--people like me which have been dealing with Microsoft since the inception of DOS 1.0...

People like me that know that all Microsoft products have been flawed...intentionally or unintentionally..through the ages since the early 1980's...

People like me that know that virtually the minute you turn on a computer and boot any given Microsoft operating system the people out at Microsoft in Washington State are planning on making you download an X.1 or X.2 version of the program while at the same time ultimately planning on SELLING you yet another and Another and ANOTHER properly working version of the product which they already sold you a year or so earlier...

So any way, in late 2007 when I ordered what I call our "Server PC" from HP and had it built, the only operating system available at the time was an incarnation of Windows Vista.

"But What if I want Windows XP Professional..."

"No...its Windows Vista or nothing...you'll have to go buy some stupid crappy computer from the local computer shop smelling of exotic incense...staffed by people wearing strange clothing with red dots on their foreheads..."

So I took a big breath and bought the HP computer I wanted and closed my eyes as I clicked the little button that said "OS Windows Vista Home Premium Edition."

And so here I am almost three years later still not only suffering from the decision to let HP install the Vista Virus on my computer...

...but also finding myself WILLFULLY INSTALLING the exact same software back on my own computer because the way HP and Microsoft have it worked out...

...previous versions of Windows...

...stable operating systems like XP Professional...

...won't work on my Server PC because there are no XP compatible drivers for half of the accessories like the Lightscribe DVD/CD drive and other important crap.

So after about ten days I finally gave in and drank the Coolaid and here I am this morning happily typing away with a catatonic stare of a Vista Zombie.

I got the TV tuner card software re-installed and MS Office and AutoCAD and PhotoShop CS3 and another zillion things I use on a daily basis, and I JUST DON'T CARE ANYMORE because...

...I REFUSE to pay Microsoft for Windows 7 which is apparently the only way I can "Upgrade" my computer operating system.

Sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do...you Know?

And in other news, my back up external hard drive...the only hard drive in the/ON THE ENTIRE FREAKING PLANET which held all of the crap I lost when Vista lost it mind...

...the hard drive which also decided to stop driving or writing or reading or whatever it is that hard drives do...

...the hard drive that decided last weekend that it didn't want to talk to or listen to my Server PC any more...

...is sitting at the local computer shop getting an haircut and pedicure and possibly an enema but they tell me that the problem was in the case of the external drive unit and that the drive itself was preliminarily A-OK.

So I ran out to Staples and picked up a new 1 Terrabyte Segate external drive for the low, low price of $79.00 plus tax and later this morning they are supposed to let me have 34 months worth of photos and data and business correspondence back into my office.

I may just have to take a shower and go to bed and sleep with it...I'll be so happy to have the information back.

Needless to say, if you understood HALF of the past million words of rambling, I'm one tired but happy middle aged Redneck Injuneer this morning.

And on that note...Regards Y'all...

Up To My ASS In Alligators

Don't ask...


News continues to break here at the Turbopup Compound on the banks of the Mighty Tennessee River.

The kind of news which starts out as rumors and fears about things out of my direct control, but which could end up having some aggrivating consequences if and when things come true in the next couple of weeks...

But...

In my normal devil-may-care manner, I'm forging ahead because I have no other choice.

Unfortunately the situation makes me mentally uninterested/incapable of writing a whole lot here on the blog for the time being.

I'll wander around the Internet and see what else is going on besides the liberals bashing Glenn Beck and get back to y'all later I guess.

WhuaaaaaatttT?

"If Thy Right Hand Offend Thee..."


OK, Now I have Windows 2000 professional on a computer (formerly a Vista robot) that won't recognize the internal sound card to make beeping and burping sounds, and even more aggravating is that it doesn't have an Ethernet connection or any other network connections because it wants to go to the Internet to download the drivers but it needs the drivers to go to the Internet.

Or in layman's terms...

"now I can't get to the Internet without going to the Internet to get the stuff I need to go to the Internet."

Somebody better come collect my sharp knives...

...and it's a good thing I don't own a bridge or the Eiffel tower else I'd be considering jumping off of something right now.

Dangit...

"Out Damned Spot...Out I Say"

I Gave Myself A "Digital Enema?"


As my regular (and irregular) readers know by now, I've been suffering with the Cancer known as "Windows Vista" on what I laughingly call our "Server PC" since I let HP build us a custom machine in late 2007 and ship it down to our little Island on the Georgia Coast.

Giant hard drives and 22" monitors aside, the so-called Vista "operating system" delivered by Bill Gates et. al. at Microsoft, in my considered Redneck opinion...

TOTALLY SUCKS.

Not only does Vista TOTALLY SUCK, but it TOTALLY SUCKS harder than the gravitational forces of the largest black hole in the entire freaking universe/solar system/infinity.

All of that blithering aside, our so-called "server PC" finally coughed up a liver and a spleen and possibly a couple of kidneys yesterday afternoon and evening, and I ended up having to sit through doing a "restore your PC to Factory conditions" ritual complete with incense and sitting cross legged naked in the floor on the skins of a Bear and Cougar bowing down in front of a human skull with a burning candle sticking out of the top....

and when I got done with the process a week a couple of hours later I realized that AutoCAD and PhotoShop and my Microsoft Office Suite and my TV receiver card software and my Cannon Digital Camera software and EVERY F**KING THING I had installed since buying the computer was...

G O N E.

Fortunately I have an external back up copy of all of the data files, but it is a few weeks old because I was intending to move the 500 GB drive down to the laptop in the shop and never got around to it so Norton is a little behind on my archiving.

But any way...

As I set there looking at the then "restored" computer that was now dumb as a brick and asking to connect to the Internet with America On Line's free trial services, a little tiny light bulb lit up in my ever greying, ever balding head.

What began as a little trickle of thought rapidly surged to a torrent of emotion, verily a tidal wave of sparks and lightning bolts of mental electrical currents, as I had the liberating experience of realizing that I was now free to break the shackles, rend the bonds, and struggle free from the slimy mucous dripping grasp of the Microsoft Vista Home "Premium Edition" and crawl on my knees back to my beloved Windows XP Professional haven of safety and digital security.

I owned a legal copy of the Windows XP Professional 2002 edition which I had bought in my efforts to restore the little Dell laptop Pat's company abandoned in our posession when the hard drive failed back in 2006 (and on which I'm blogging right now beside the sick former Vista machine), and when I purchased a new hard drive I also bought an OEM copy of XP on E-Bay for something like $99 and I still had one legal install available.

So you know what I did?

I flushed Vista down the toilet without a second thought and within the next day or two, after a few dozen hours of work and a littany of curse words, I will hopefully have a squeeky clean Server PC running XP Professional, with AutoCAD and Photo Shop and my other programs all residing comfortably in a new and improved directory structure.

Companies producing crap like "Vista" which is so obviously flawed that they have to deliver the next generation of software and change the name (Windows 7) in hopes of keeping idiots from knowing it's the same thing slightly modified would be stoned to death in Iran/Iraq or Afghanistan, but here in the By-God United States of 'Merica their biggest fear is being called up before the Senate for a "hearing."

And on that note, I'm "hearing" my Server PC calling wanting me to push the "next" button and keep on installing software.

Regards Y'all...

Ebonics Translator Jobs?

Channeling Your Inner Negro...

This story is really too much by it's self, so I'll withhold any commentary and just let is stand here on its own.

Click on the link and see the news about the US Justice Department wanting to hire people to translate the language used in surveillance tapes:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/bizarre/justice-department-seeks-ebonics-experts


I first saw the story last night on Drudge and somehow avoided writing about it, but then my blog Buddy Rodger over at Curmudgeonly & Skeptical picked up the item and went a step further, finding this on-line "Ebonics Translator" which could save the government idiots a few taxpayer dollars in the process.

Type in some phrases and sit back and laugh at the results...





I like the conversion of the phrases "Where is my calculator?" and "I forget how the toilet flushes"


Heh...

I Want One...

Mercedes SLS Gull Wing






Unfortunately I'm a couple of dollars short of the $200,000 price tag...but still...

It's Obama's "Taxpayer Payback" Time?

We're Reaping The So-Called "Benefits" Of The Government Motors Bailout...


So I was feeling a little lethargic and lazy if not just plain guilty the past couple of weeks because I couldn't get excited enough to deliver a good rant here on the blog.

Not to worry, Ladies and Gentlemen, because when you read this Wall Street Journal (via the American Thinker) story about GM spending $715,000,000 on one of it's Mexican auto plants to produce a new engine and upgrade their production line you're probably gonna be pretty pissed off just like I am this morning:

U.S. automobile giant General Motors Co. said Tuesday it plans to invest close to $500 million in its Ramos Arizpe plant in northern Mexico to produce a new line of engines as well as a new vehicle...

"We estimate that these technologies allow for a 9% improvement in fuel efficiency from current engines," Lieblein said, adding that the investment will directly create 390 jobs in Coahuila state, where Ramos Arizpe is located.

Another $215 million will go toward upgrading the factory's production lines to build a new vehicle for the domestic and international markets, she said, noting that the investment will be key to maintaining 400 jobs.

Assembly of the vehicle, which wasn't named, is set to begin in the last quarter of 2011. GM plans for it to "give long-term viability to this plant by gradually substituting some production volumes."

GM today is apparently as tone deaf as everyone and everything else touched by President Obama and the Obamamaniacs.

The country is going down the crapper for many Americans and Obama not only sends Lady Obama off to France to spend $75,000 a day in vacation dollars in one foreign country, but at the same time lets (or more likely demands) that General Motors send THREE QUARTERS OF A BILLION DOLLARS to Mexico to support manufacturing what we today laughingly call an "American Automobile"?

The good news is that there will be several thousand Mexicans making US dollars without having to walk or swim across our southern border I guess.

And here's another thing to think about which just occurred to me...

How much do you want to bet that the UAW (United Auto Workers) is, as I write this missive, in the process of organizing the workers in Mexico?

That is, if they haven't already got the plant workers paying Union dues.

Imagine the political outcome of Mexican Autoworkers paying dues that come to US Unions, which then turn around and make donations to the Rat Bastard Commie Socialist Democrats.

Yeah...that "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" effort in the Congress is a humanitarian effort and has nothing to do with money.

Dammit...

Oops

That's Gonna Leave A Scar...




Ouch...

(and thanks Rodge)

I Brined My Butt

Now I Need Help Rubbing And Roasting It...Anyone Interested?


OK...Not Really.

I've actually already brined it and rubbed it and now it's laying out on the grill over a pan of water cooking in indirect heat.

MY (Boston) BUTT...that is...

If you want to know how to brine and rub YOUR BUTT...go over HERE to my other blog--"The Redneck Gourmet" and see how many times I can write the word "Butt" in a single recipe.

Time to go check on my Butt now I guess...


Heh

I Need An "Electronics Exorcist"

My Shop Is Haunted...


So I cooked bar-B-que ribs and fresh corn on the cob and new potatoes for dinner last night after basking on the deck like a lizard for most of the afternoon.

Smoked my last cigar and sweated on the newspaper did most of the crossword in the process, and I vaguely recall some Vodka in the form of "Seabreezes" crossing my lips once or twice...OK...maybe four or five times.

Then I collapsed into bed before dark but then by 3 AM I was half awake and puzzling over the final details of this stupid PLC programming exercise I'm going through.

I finally gave up sleeping any longer and stumbled down into the basement and by 5AM I had managed to go backwards to about where I was last Thursday.

For some reason the Laptop computer and the PLC got together and decided to barf up every time I tried to download my revised code saying there were errors in instructions I hadn't changed in over a week.

So I had to go back to Wednesday's version of the program and then reconstruct all of the code and screen edits I had done, and now at 8 AM I'm back to slightly ahead of where I started at 3 AM.

If you're not a programmer you can just think I'm sloppy or crazy, but the people out there that live working on the inner thought processes of all of the machines which we take for granted today know that many if not most are like spoiled "mentally challenged" children.

They don't know how to do anything and they spend most of their time unable to understand else just plain ignoring instructions on how to do whatever it is you're trying to get them to do.

I spend half my time ready to throw everything out in the yard and the other half celebrating some small victory which many times is only short lived.

Any way...my brain is fried for the time being...

...so I think it's time to go out while the temperature is still under 100 degrees and fire up the weed eater and wake up the neighbors early on a Sunday morning.

Regards Y'all...