More Stolen Votes?

Iowa Caucuses Prove Feckless And Inept...


In an era of technology advancement and endless touting of our modern era having the ability to advance and improve the quality of our life...

Once again--like Bush-v-Gore and the US Supreme Court decision --here now in THE VERY FIRST guage of which candidate should represent the Conservative Republican Party tonight I see potential voter fraud and intentional manipulation of our 2012 Presidential election compromised.

Don't get me wrong here Ladies and Gentlemen.

I really don't give a green gosh darn about what the people in Iowa ceremoniously marching around in tonight's "caucus" process think about who should be living on Pennsylvania Avenue in the White House in late January 2013.

What I do care about is that when and if we re-elect the multi-cultural, multi-ethical, multi-colored "community organizer in-chief" presently residing in the oval office that he is presented with a valad opponent and here from the outset of the official process to determine a Republican Candidate the Idiots out in Iowa can't execute a process they've been doing for nearly a century without screwing things up and losing critical ballots from critical precints.

One minute they're passing laws taking our rights away from us and making it hard or illegal to own a gun while at the same time playing games and screwing around with the very process which determines who gets to pass those same laws and legislation.

I don't know about you, but Belize or Costa Rica is looking pretty good.

Come to think of it, just writing about this crap after watching it unfold makes head hurt so I have to go and do some more stuff now...

Another Day With Without Pseudo-Professional Dumbasses

Taking Feckless Insanity And Elevating It To A Virtue...


I'm sorry to report that I spent most of the day yesterday waiting on "Roofers" to appear at my front door

The first one was supposed to show up at 10 AM based on the conversation I had with him on Tuesday. 

This idiot had actually already stood on my doorstep last weekend while I explained that I most definitely wanted an estimate and I would be buying a roof as soon as I could settle with my "Insurance Company."

This conversation apparently wasn't good enough to cause this moron to get off of his ass, take out a measuring tape and a pencil, and work up a price for a roof.

For some reason, after handing me a glossy brochure and a business card and learning the details of the project, the guy's pen must have run out of ink or he didn't have a blank sheet of paper or something else happened because after telling him what I wanted

...I didn't get a quotation.

And then after calling the number on the glossy brochure/business card and making an appointment for 10 AM yesterday he still couldn't pry his stupid ass off of the bar stool or out of the bed/off the sofa long enough to follow up on the opportunity. 

I'm not really asking for much...the project is really pretty simple...but thus far over the past THREE WEEKS I've only managed to get two written quotations to replace 28 square (2800 square feet) of three tab asphalt shingles.

Here...take a peek at my specifications:

• Tear off existing shingles and roofing felt and place in 10 cubic yard dumpster.
• Repair any rotten plywood decking on corners.
• Install new 30 pound roofing felt.
• Install 20-25 year three tab shingles.
• Clean up job site and get the &^%$ off my property after giving me an invoice and getting your check.

Then yesterday afternoon while Pat and the Turbo Pup and I were wandering around picking up some stuff at the CVS Pharmacy, another rocket scientist claiming to be in the roofing business decided to stop by un-announced and leave his business card and a note saying "no one was at home."

 

This poor simpleton had discussed my project with me on the telephone on Tuesday, and I told him to call before he stopped by if he could,  but if he wanted to look at the job and we weren't home he had my permission to climb on the roof and simply leave his quotation on the table on my front porch. 

 

Again I went over the specifications with him on the phone prior to his arrival...remember these details?  

• Tear off existing shingles and roofing felt and place in 10 cubic yard dumpster.
• Repair any rotten plywood decking on corners.
• Install new 30 pound roofing felt.
• Install 20-25 year three tab shingles.
• Clean up job site and get the &^%$ off my property after giving me an invoice and getting your check.

 I swear to God I'm incredulous at the feckless ineptitude of the people out there claiming to be in the construction business...specifically most recently...ROOFERS.

 

Further, I think that the fact that I actually know what I want done and I have a pretty good idea how to do it and how much it should cost is hurting my effort to get rational quotes.

 

Apparently if I was just some ignorant dumbass everyone would give me a price, but since I'm an intelligent arrogant ASSHOLE with an attitude no one wants to venture on to my property with a nail gun and a butt crack.

 

If you know anyone that can actually show up and put a roof on a building for a reasonable price on a pre-determined schedule...feel free to give me a call.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Screw- Top" Versus "Pop-Top"

Relieving The Pressure On My Brain


Well, the good news is that yesterday my girl and my Turbo Pup and I spent an entire day together in the same building for the first time in five days.

Turbo Pup's Mom lounged around recovering from her recent Hospital Resort Vacation.

Turbo Pup relaxed being happy that her entire Pack was back together and she could catch up on her normal 15 hour a day sleeping schedule.

And Me?

ME?

I was so busy I actually wore clothes and shoes all day while sitting at home--never left the building.

I needed the clothes and shoes because I had to meet with my PLC programmer in my basement shop in the morning to finally get this latest panel software moving off of dead center.

Then one thing lead to another and I looked up at the clock and it was already 2 PM and I was still fully clothed including shoes.

You see, most of the time around here my attire is at most a tee shirt and lounge pants and socks, and in the warmer months shirts and socks could be considered optional.

Not a pretty sight these days sometimes, but still...

So any wayyy...

Things were bouncing along pretty good until about 2 PM when I finally remembered to call and check on the progress of my professional pipe technicians  linear tubing installers  so called "plumbers" working down in Lower Alabama.

Mom hadn't seen or heard a thing today.

After an exchange of phone calls back and forth from her end, she called me back to report that the owner's wife had cursed her out, and hung up the phone.

I placed a call to their office to confirm that regardless of their intentions, that I was officially terminating their participation in the project, and the stupid lady proceed to call me and Mom--the customers--"incompetent."

When I pointed out that we were the customers and if anyone was "incompetent" it was the owners and some of the people working at Goolsby Brothers Plumbing & Electrical, the lovely woman then proceeded to curse at me and hung up the phone.

WTF?

I then wrote them a letter and faxed it over with a copy of a check covering the time they had spent out on the property on Monday and further instructed them that they were not to set foot on our property again or we would prosecute them for criminal trespass.

And so now after all of the crap I went through last week calling around looking for a competent plumber, and then flying all the way to Alabama trying to coordinate the effort, I find myself back to square one this morning trying to find someone smart enough to remove some dirt and connect a few elbows and some straight PVC pipe to the existing working piping on a timely basis for a reasonable price.

The good news is that I have two very good prospects...but the project probably will not be finished until next Monday at earliest--a week after we dug the holes and found the pipes.

Oh...WAIT...I almost forgot...

Now, as to the so-called "professional plumbing company" and the sweet, sweet, lovely woman--supposedly the owner's wife--manning the phones over at  Goolsby Brothers Plumbing and Electrical in Enterprise, Alabama?

They are going to rue the day they screwed around and acted like this on a project with a guy that's a blogger and knows how to handle things here on the Internet.

I'm not going the liable/slander route because I don't have to...they gave me enough stuff in less than a week to keep me busy for at least a month warning potential customers about our experience.

I'm starting later this morning with Angie's list.

Then I'll move on to all of the referral web sites that have customer reviews.

Then the Better Business Bureau.

I have a lot of paying things to do right now, but I have a looooonnnnnngggg memory, and any company that would let an employee...let alone the owner's wife...call and curse out a senior citizen for no reason, deserves a special place in Hell...

...and I have several ideas how to make sure they enjoy an expedited trip through the gates to their just rewards.

That will be all, for now...Y'all.

I'm Cranky

Why...Don't Ask...


Blogging is at standstill until further notice.

I'll sear everyone's eyeballs with rhetoric later when I feel like it.

Government employees are on notice of risking life and limb if they annoy me in person.

Climbing Out Of A Hole

Wall To Wall Coverage?


I'm sorry, and I'm glad that the Chilean Copper Miners are safe and apparently going to all be successfully rescued, but please...FOX News...

GIVE IT A REST EVERY HALF HOUR OR SO.

Last night they wore out my patience with their coverage just while the final testing of the rescue pod was being done.

Admittedly once they managed to start dragging people out of the shaft I did watch the coverage again--the first four miners--but then I had to change channels again.

I'm impressed that the Chilean President and First Lady are personally standing there on site to greet the rescued men. 

Do you think that OUR current Community-Organizer-In-Chief would take time out from playing Golf and destroying our economy and country to do something like that?

Don't think so...

So, any way, I expect the entire day and most of the night to be dominated by the story unless the Joe Biden keels over or someone blows up something  or there's an airliner crash or something.

I have to go change channels again now before my head explodes.

Y'all have a LOVELY day...

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...

No Cripples (Mental or Physical) Allowed

Spreading The Misery Around...


Dang it if they--the professional "Do-Gooders"--didn't manage to haul off and do something again this morning to piss me off here Ladies and Gentlemen.

Actually this latest bout of the Shaking, Spitting, Sputtering, Government Induced Conniption Fits (or SSSGICF for short) began yesterday afternoon while sitting adjacent to the Turbo Pup pool smoking a cigar and reading the latest issue of our local fish wrapper Newspaper, the Knoxville News Sentinel.

By now my regular readers might understand that sometimes when I initially find something worth blogging about I don't have the time to just sit down and write a good missive and publish it from my own personal Little Island of Insanity Little Island of Insensitivity.

Some of that stuff gets lost or slipped into the non-published files upon further consideration.

Then sometimes I have a fit of self control and I'm able to intentionally give things a rest for a while to see if my brain calms down and the foaming at the mouth recedes a bit so I don't damage my computer keyboard while writing...but I still end up writing SOMETHING when the dust settles.

This specific blog--delayed almost 12 hours in the making--would be the result of a combination of both circumstances:

A. Wanting to calm down a good deal and...

B. having a dinner of Country Fried Steak and roasted corn & New potatoes to cook for Pat and Missy the Turbo Pup yesterday evening.

That said, now let's get down to business and talk about this morning's politically incorrect rant...

Ready?

OK...(taking a big breath...)

I'VE HAD IT RIGHT UP TO HERE this morning (pointing to the top of my ever greying, ever balding head) with all of these simpering, whimpering, sniveling, booger eating, bed wetting "activist's" efforts to make every and any thing "affordable" and "accessible"...

... to each and every single person on the planet.

I say that if they keep it up at the current pace they're going to "empower" us all right out of business and existence, and if you're not following me yet on this issue, here's what I really mean.

I'm talking about crap like the the so-called "V-Chip" in everyone's Television Set which comes to mind...courtesy of the Imperial Federal GOVERNMENT of the By-God United States of 'Merica.

You remember the V-Chip, don't you?

A group of Canadian "do-gooders" teamed up with Massachusetts Congressman Markey back in 1999 and by the year 2000 every TV sold in the US and Canada had to include the cost of the "V-Chip" so stupid adults' children could be stopped from watching things like "excessive violence" and other "manure" "mature content."

I know that it might sound like a good idea at first, but then upon further consideration tell me the answer to a couple of simple questions:

Question #1: If you have kids, have you ever...Ever...EVER EVER programmed your V-Chip to stop your kids from watching "Debby Does Dallas" or "Deep Throat" or whatever other stupid BS that's on 99% of the broadcast channels and 50% of the cable Chanel's on any of the half dozen TV's you've purchased since the law went into effect in 1999?

Question #2: Even if you have employed the power of your V-Chip to marginally limit the content of your minor children's TV viewing (remembering that the TV sets already had a on/off switch and a channel knob since the inception of the TV in the early 1900's)...

WHY SHOULD I? A grown man who turned 40 in 1999 and never owned or operated a single child under the age of 21, be FORCED TO PAY FOR A DEVICE DESIGNED TO HELP YOU DO SOMETHING THAT IS NONE OF THE GOVERNMENT'S BUSINESS IN THE FIRST PLACE?

I guarandamntee you that at least 75%...heck...probably 90% of the TV's out there have never had their V-Chips programmed, and as I understand it any kid over the age of about eight that is computer literate can simply enter the menu on the TV and easily reset the "Parental Code" back to 0000 because so many parents are too stupid to remember their codes and have to have a way out of reversing the programming.

My answer to the ill-perceived "societal problems" which spawned the V-Chip and most other stuff like "Seat Belt Laws" and "Child Seat Laws" is to give people a test, and when society finds out that any given person is STUPID and unable to function without intrusive laws like this, I'd gladly pay the government to cut the testicles off of and the ovaries out of the offending citizen...else stuff a couple of rubber stoppers so far up a couple of offending orifices that producing chirren' that need Government Mandated protection from the programming content of Cable Companies would be a non issue during their child bearing years.

That would lower the cost of my new TV's by $25 or $30 each and I could get back to watching important things like Food Network and HGTV in peace.

But after that trip down memory lane, then what really got me started this morning was not the V-Chip but was this Knoxville News story about the shrieking "do-gooders" supporting the Americans With Disabilities ACT (ADA) shoving another legal settlement up the butt down the throat of a local businessman.


Apartment developer settles ADA suit

A Knoxville apartment developer is among the defendants who must pay up to $425,000 and make improvements at 21 complexes across the state, under an agreement with the Justice Department.

...snip...

According to a news release, the case grew out of work by the Tennessee Fair Housing Council, which provided the DOJ with information that several apartment complexes were inaccessible to people with disabilities. The DOJ filed a lawsuit in 2008.

"Equal access to housing for persons with disabilities is an important right protected by both the Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act," Thomas Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, said in the release. "This comprehensive settlement will ensure that equal housing opportunities required by law are provided in these 21 housing complexes."

In a prepared statement, Murphy Development said it has hired architects, engineers and construction firms that have contractually committed to meet all federal, state and local standards. The firm also said that in more than 10 years of owning and managing apartment communities, it has never received a tenant complaint related to the accessibility of its apartments.

"We plan to correct design flaws that are brought to light through this process and will continue in our commitment to providing accessible, affordable housing," the statement said.


OK...

Let's step back for a minute here and look at this situation rationally.

Say I make a little money and in the process of wanting to make a profitable investment I look around and see that the town is growing and people need a place to live.

And say that in the process I come to understand that the local job market is such that most of the people needing a place to live fall into a couple of broad categories.

1. People that have enough money and/or make enough money to buy their own building (house in legal terms) to live in.

2. People that either don't have enough/make enough money to buy their own building (house in legal terms) to live in else otherwise don't want to own a building to live in.

It seems pretty simple, based on that market analysis, Right?

But NooooooOOOOOHHHHH...just like the V-Chip and the Government and it's Big Government "Nanny State do gooder" supporters, it doesn't work that way when the "Americans With Disabilities" Nazi arrive at the local planning and zoning office.

Now in the past twenty-five or thirty years, according to the whining, sniveling, booger eating, bed wetting ADA "activists", if you want to build buildings (housing in legal terms) and make them available to the pubic public, you have to make each and every single unit you build "accessible" to people as defined in all of the ADA mumbo jumbo.

The bottom line is that compliance with this standard (the ADA) cost MONEY...and some businessmen business people want to provide "affordable housing" while at the same time not passing on the cost of ADA compliance to their customers...because by and large their market is...for instance...twenty something year old students at a nearby college or university.

And what the news consuming public fails to recognise is that the Government can tax and mandate things to infinity, but when a businessman business person has to absorb a cost--any cost--in a project...

3' wide doors in bathrooms

Elevators and ramps beside stairs in multi story buildings

Handrails in bathrooms

etc...

etc...

etc...


THE PRICE OF RENT OR OWNERSHIP GOES UP FOR EVERYBODY, EVEN IF THEY'RE NOT "DISABLED."

This CRAP and CRAP LIKE THIS in every single possible shape and form and fashion kills me, Ladies and Gentlemen.

And of course the unsaid bottom line, the underlying issue...heavy on the "lie-ing"...

is the idea that somehow it's better by passing the cost of the imagined "rights" and other government-mandated "services" on to the entire populations...

Thereby "Spreading The Misery Around" while at the same time making the "do-gooders" and "busybodies" feel good as they slap themselves on their own backs and snivel and simper and whine and cry and booger-eat/bed-wet themselves on to their next line item on their socialist/progressive agenda.

I guarandamntee you that within the foreseeable future the government is going to put mandates on the owners of single family homes--places like your house and my house--dictating that in order to build a new house it will have to meet the ADA guidelines in some form...

whether you need it or not personally...

because in the FUTURE someone might want to buy YOUR HOUSE and it wouldn't be FAIR for them to have to modify it in order to roll their wheelchair in the bathroom.

Further, just like the "GREEN ENERGY BULLSHIT INITIATIVES" being promoted today which will end up requiring owners of older homes to update windows, doors, insulation, and HVAC systems, just watch as the Government makes people add ADA accessibility to their property as a MANDATE in order to sell your old house because the people trying to get a loan in the purchase process can't receive financing without the modifications.

They're coming for ME and for YOU...

The useful idiots...the sniveling, bed wetting, booger eating, pawns used by the professional commie, socialist, Marxist, so-called liberal progressives out there that want to control EVERYTHING.

In many places like California and New England they're already here...and they're slowly slipping into places like Tennessee as I write.

You can sit around and worry about stupid crap like "American Idol" and the latest "Shrek" movie (I haven't been to the movie theater since the last "Lord of the Rings" film) but I'm in the process of cleaning up my financial situation and keeping my powder dry.

Is it just me?


MORE 1:15 PM SUNDAY...

I forgot to mention the crap which occurred while I was in college in Atlanta..."Adult only" apartments were all the rage and a place called Riverbend Apartments up off I-285 on the Chattahoochee river was the hip place to be.

They even had their own night club INSIDE the complex.

But no good thing can survive the sniveling, bed wetting, booger eaters, and some single mom decided that it was unfair that she and her brood of out-of-wedlock 'Chirren wasn't allowed to live in the complex so she could find her next "Babydaddy", and in response the Georgia Legislature and the Fed's got together and made it illegal to have apartment complexes which didn't allow children--under the guise of protecting the visits of weekend kids of divorced parents.

So a couple of self important assholes decided that the ONLY PLACE THEY COULD LIVE out of all of the apartments in Atlanta was a place like I wanted to live...a place free of other people's rugrats running around bouncing Frisbees off the hood of my new Car and cluttering up the picnic area by the river with "family outings."

Today I wonder how the "Active Senior" communities get by without the Feds stepping in and forcing them to allow a bunch of punk ass, backward ball cap wearing, subwoofer thumping idiots to move in and take over the pool every weekend.

Speaking of pools...time to go back and see what the Turbo Pup is doing in mine...

Re: No Re-Bar In Haiti?

Stealing Steeling Safety & Prosperity


A couple of things have bothered me the past couple of weeks as I have watched the TV news footage and look at newspaper photos of the damage and desperation after the earthquake down in Haiti.

I'm not talking about looking at things from the standpoint of being a God fearing Human faced with unbelievable amounts of carnage and death. What I'm talking about this morning is a subtle point which to the layman could be easily missed when in passing you see all of the scenes of death and destruction and suffering...

UNLESS you can take the time to clear you mind and see the details beyond the humanity and mortal horrors you're seeing.

Excuse me if I am wrong, but I'm pretty darn sure that I haven't seen much if any structural steel reinforcement---what we call "re-bar"--in the concrete walls and floors and ceilings in most of the photos of the collapsed buildings in Haiti be it a Cathedral or a "Palace" or a peasant's home on the side of a hill.

I guess it's just my "Forensic Injuneer" senses activating when I see something that has broke and hurt/killed someone.

In my considered Redneck opinion, I say that the people of Haiti, sitting on a known seismic fault line (which is beyond most of the indigenous population's control) and building everything out of hand mixed and hand poured concrete or cement or whatever they call their "cast and precast masonry construction methods," without secondary steel tension reinforcing, are the victims of a horrid infrastructural framework which could have done nothing but lead to eventual failure and disaster.

Any second year engineering student which has taken Statics and Dynamics and Deformable Bodies and a couple of quarters of materials science knows this to be a fact.

I ask myself..."Where do they go from here?"

I've spent a good deal of time in South Florida, the Florida Keys, the Bahamas and the Caribbean and have always been envious of the solid concrete construction methods covered with stucco and tile.

Problem is, that in practice these methods as implemented originate with the "tabby" form of primitive concrete fabrication also used here in Coastal Georgia and Florida in the 17th and 18th century by colonial settlers who, faced with limited wood resources (or in Georgia trees so huge like the giant "Live Oaks" so as to be unsuitable for being used for construction of anything smaller than a navy sailing ship keel.)

Salty water and sand and limestone in the form of ground up sea shells and bits of ancient coral reef fragments make a lovely fireplace or impromptu footing for a patio gazebo and is fairly stable when the wind blows at hurricane force.

But when the ground starts jumping up and down and shakes five feet from side to side things aren't worth a crap unless there is some steel inside, in the form of high strength rods buried somewhere there in the middle or a couple of inches in from each surface.

In the end it's all a reality of simple physics...readily understood today.

And yet it doesn't take new and improved and ever more intrusive "building codes" to drive home this grim realization...but that seems to be the only rationalization and realization and solution I keep hearing tendered by the idiot talking heads in the newspaper and TV news blurbs.

All of that said, my problem is...

What can we do about it all?

Passing a new building code won't undo the destruction which has already been done, and raising the cost of construction to meet codes like those in Atlanta or San Francisco or Knoxtown or on the gulf coast in Panama City Beach Florida today in Haiti-- a country which can't afford running water and indoor toilets--is counter-productive if implemented in a typical government induced heavy handed fashion.

Earlier this morning I wandered over to the Habitat for Humanity Website trying to see what they were up to, but all I see is platitudes and requests for money to send down to Haiti.

I'm proud to tell you that I'm not sending the government and country of Haiti one single dollar until I see some resolution to change what has been going on down there over the past TWO HUNDRED YEARS.

Encouraging poor people to live in mud stucco huts while they produce generation after Generation after GENERATION of little humans in squalor, without any hope of financial success and a lifestyle above abject poverty unless they escape to the US or get a job in major league baseball of the NBA is not in my mind a good use of my time and effort and currently limited financial resources.

Falling back on my experience as a volunteer project manager with Habitat for Humanity, I would, however, enjoy the opportunity to help design and build some sort of shelter or home or condo or abode of any/every other description which is feasable for erection in this geographic situation.

I guess it's just a little too soon to get started with the implementation of that sort of effort until the dust settles. It would be cool to come up with some idea besides government trailers like FEMA foisted on the Katrina Victims, but maybe that's the way to go.

Hey, that's it...let's put all of those used and new left over government trailers which were misused and abused three and four and five years after the hurricane onto a boat and ship them down to Haiti.

You and I have already paid for them with our tax dollars, and selling them for scrap is an inferior resolution to GIVING them to someone that actually deserves them and could put them to good use.

Works for me...

How about YOU?

"Chest Nuts" Roasting On An Open Fire...

But What If I'm A 'THIGH' Man??????


OK...everybody settle down after trying to understand the overt meaning of my title and subtitle, and take this quick posting under my new Blog category of "consumer griping" for what it's worth...because last night I cooked a dish--in this case Parma Rosa Chicken with Vegetables--and it reminded me to publicly ask this question:

"Has anyone out there but me noticed that boneless Chicken Thighs cost more than boneless Chicken Breasts in the grocer these days...even ON SALE?"

What's up that?

I guess that it could be that just like the "Buffalo Wings" craze made the price of Chicken Wing Futures go through the roof over the past half century, and today many people have discovered that the other "dark meat" cuts of chicken are capable of adding an interesting flavor and texture to things like Stir Fry and some other rustic pasta dishes I like to produce in my kitchen.

And just in case you hadn't noticed the price differential at your local Kroger, feel free to remember that you heard it here first...

Consider it my December "Public Service Announcement."

Now would someone knock me in the head and make me sleep for more than TWO or THREE hours in a row?

Nightie Night...