One Man's Trash

Another Man's Treasure...


I've really had it right up to here (pointing to the top of my ever greying, ever balding head) with trash services here in Glynn County and the City of Brunswick.

In a little over three days I already have trash overflowing out of my ears and coming out of my butt here at the new house on our little island (located in unincorporated Glynn County), and I also have a virtual landfill on the unpaved ally side of my property over in Brunswick that the head of the Brunswick Sanitation Department has been promising to remove since May.

The problem seems to revolve around government mandated monopolies--in one case one hired by Glynn County, and the second actually operated by the City of Brunswick.

Since Glynn County is the entity most recently to cause their property tax owners to fall victim to this scam bullshit malfeasance, I'll talk about them first.

It seems that a few years ago the County Commissioners noticed there is a bit of a problem with dumping of household garbage and other refuse on private property and along the highways and other "public" property.

Rather than enforcing the existing littering and dumping laws on the members of the "public" which were guilty of causing the problem, the elected County assholes morons Commissioners decided to pass the responsibility and associated costs of their purported solution on to the private property owners of Glynn County.

They did this by hiring a private company to do the trash collection at homes and businesses which did not have dumpsters or other means of refuse disposal already in place, in the process adding the cost of the service to the land/property owner's annual property tax bill. (Our condo had dumpsters and it's own service personnel on site so we were exempt from this mandate.)

No if's, and's, or but's, about it, now if you own a house in Glynn County you will have government mandated trash service...even if your house is unoccupied, burns down, or due to it's condition, is otherwise un-occupyable.

Of course there was a huge public outcry and lots of gnashing of teeth, but in the end the government won out and, as a delayed result, today I had my first experience with Southland Waste Systems and their rocket scientist employees.

Yesterday I found from out my neighbor that Monday was "trash day" here on my street and further, that I had to make sure that my company/county supplied trashcan was not over filled--the lid had to close.

No problem...so far so good...

I had a trashcan sitting beside my garage when the moving truck drove up on Saturday, and we'd produced lots of trash since then so I seemed set to take advantage of the service that our landlord was paying for.

Only problem was, what my well intended neighbor did not tell me was that my "curbside" service was not actually at our house's "curbside."

Imagine that?

Oh yeah..the GOVERNMENT is involved, and that means that the meanings of ordinary words are never what you would normally expect them to be.

Evidently, by "curbside" service here in Glynn County, they mean some "curbside" other than MY curbside--a curbside that their giant truck can drive up to and pick up the can with some kind of manipulator arm to do the dumping with.

Any way, a little after noon today I noticed that the truck driver and his assistant busied themselves spending at least five minutes moving back and forth outside my driveway entrance avoiding my trashcan, even having the extra man actually exit the air conditioned cab of the truck to pick up and empty a few recycling containers, but when the dust settled and Pat came home from shopping we found that OUR TRASHCAN WAS STILL FULL.

No note, no gentle reminder, no nothing, just a can full of trash from moving and another week to wait for the next scheduled trash service.

Here's what I'm going to do.

First I'm calling in to the local Radio talk show at 7 AM tomorrow morning to tell my story.

Next I'm calling my county commissioner.

Of course all I expect to hear is lame excuses and promises to do better in the future, but in the end I will probably be told that it is my fault for not asking my landlord how far down the block and on which side of the street to place my trashcan.

I vaguely remember hearing talk show callers in the past complaining about having to have their trashcans 12 feet (or some other random number) from mailboxes, telephone poles, other trash cans) but it didn't occur to me until the damage was done.

What total bullshit.

I live on a cul-de-sac with a one way 12 foot wide strip of asphalt (which badly needs repaving by the aforementioned "county officials") that wraps in and out around giant Live Oak Trees and islands of vegetation.

My house apparently sits in a position where a $7 per hour employee would have to actually exit the air conditioned cab of the 500' long garbage truck in order to retrieve my trash can sitting adjacent to the road anywhere on the frontage.

God forbid that Southland Waste Systems should employ some smaller trucks or hire people to grab hold of an errant but innocently misplaced trashcan every now and then on some of the older narrow inner island streets here on St. Simons.

As is typical with any solution provided by the government, it's ONE SIZE FITS ALL, DAMMIT.

And is also typical with government, the customer is NEVER RIGHT.

Do I have a second on that motion?

All in favor?

Those Opposed?

The yeas have it...

(Next on my agenda...the City of Brunswick's abysmal "Insanitation Sanitation" Department.)

Falling Down & Screwing Up

Best Laid Plans Of Mouse & Man...


Well, we're HERE.

The only problem is, bits and pieces of our stuff is...

STILL over THERE.

By "over THERE", I mean over at the Condo.

Dang it...

We only managed to make two of the five or six final trips in my Suburban yesterday, with yesterday's second excursion featuring a final visit to the swimming pool.

Pat and Missy the Turbo Pup hung out poolside because Pat's back is bothering her, and I spun around in circles moving most of the plants out onto the front patio and loading another load of boxes and the more fragile stuff on board the SUV.

The ambient temperature was about 94 degrees F, with a heat index over 104 degrees F by 6 PM. We came home, unloaded most of our booty, and I collapsed on the sofa.

Then I got back up and, after making a late pizza dinner featuring a funky "eyeballed " crust (the measuring cups got left over at the Condo), I was asleep in the bed by 10 PM.

I woke up at midnight with a huge headache and with every muscle in my body cramping--at least that's the way it felt like.

It was my own fault. I sorta forgot to drink much Gatorade yesterday, and the water and white wine I consumed poolside just didn't get it when it came to replacing the minerals lost while sweating out a couple of gallons of my insides in the loading and moving process.

After drinking a few quarts of Gatorade and jumping around the living room walking like a three legged dog for an hour or so, I finally managed to settle down about four AM and get some more sleep. Come 8 AM I was still groggy and weak and, as a result, today has been a bust when it comes to picking up and moving more stuff from point A to point B.

As a further deterrent, the Weather Channel says that today it's a frigid NINETY SEVEN DEGREES FAHRENHEIT outside, with a heat index near 110, so paying our old landlord another $34 is an acceptable penance for my middle aged slovenly conditioning.

Expert procrastination has ensued all day, using my faint heart and wobbling legs as a mental excuse. I ended up sleeping until noon, then I did manage to open and unpack a few boxes standing inside in AC comfort while Pat made a rare solo jaunt over to Brunswick to pick up some necessities.

Just now when it came time to sneak back over to the condo we realized that Georgia Power had probably turned off the electricity because we were supposed to move last Wednesday rather than Saturday.

Sure enough, after placing a phone call and enduring the inevitable English/Spanish menu questions, we learned the juice was indeed off as of about noon today, but they would be happy to turn it back on for a $22 fee.

Sure...go ahead...it's only MONEY.

So I'm going to lounge around breaking down empty boxes, pack plastic bags full of foam peanuts, and cram bubble wrap squares back into the original boxes and possibly attempt to stash the whole moving mishmash somewhere up into the attic over the garage.

Then I'm going to write myself an industrial strength rant about the stupidity of the County GOVERNMENT forcing its home owning citizens and landlords to accept paying for trash services in their property tax bill.

No competition equals crappy service, no matter what the stupid "Bureaucrats" and popularly elected "gummunt officials" tell you...

Boxaphobia

Pack Me Up & Ship Me To Jamaica...


Well, ninety-five percent of our stuff is sitting here, mostly still in boxes.

Actually maybe ninety-eight percent.

Originally I was just going to move the plants and the framed photos and other flat fragile stuff hanging on the walls, but we managed to run out of room on the truck yesterday, so I inherited having to move anything left over that would fit into the Suburban.

That included Pat's desk, a bunch of chairs and patio stuff, and a bunch of "space storage" bags full of sheets and blankets...crap we'll probably never use again but every woman loves to hold onto "just in case."

So any way, we anticipate making five or six more round trips today, plus having to clean up the place, then we can focus our attention on opening all the boxes and surprising ourselves with what isn't broken and what wasn't labeled, weighs 100 pounds, and is sitting in the wrong room of the house.

I'd really like to design and build us a house to live in down here and get out of this paying rent business, but then again--when the Weather Nerds over at the Weather Channel start freaking out and NOAA puts a big Hurricane symbol on the map heading toward Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia I'm happy that I only own the contents of the building I'm sleeping in.

Speaking of Hurricanes, the Federal Flood Insurance Program (something that I've bitched about as being taxpayer subsidised insurance for wealthy people) threw us a curve ball last week and is making us endure yet another 30 day waiting period before our coverage goes into effect.

Three months premium for one month of coverage...the government definitely put the screws to us on this one if something wet and windy comes roaring ashore here before September 1st.

Still, if the coverage is available and cheep (about $350 per year), I'm gonna sign up and send in a check.

I guess that you could call it "Just Rewards" for being a hypocrite...

Five Hours Later...

The Truck's Gone


Al and his guys have already came and raised a dust cloud, and when they pulled out of the driveway we were three hundred and twenty five dollars richer than if we had worked with our original asshole mover that stood us up.

Time to grab a bite to eat and head back over to pick up the scraps.

I'm tired.

T-Minus Eight Hours...

And Counting


Didn't I mention earlier that I HATE moving?

Yeah...I believe that I did.

Right now I wish that I could just leave town for 24 hours and come back to find everything moved from the condo to the new house here on our little island.

Instead, I'm still looking at filling another dozen or so boxes with last minute stuff and packing both vehicles full of things like plants and lamp shades before our truck and crew shows up at 8 AM this morning.

Missy the Turbo Pup has taken things quite well thus far--getting used to negotiating a maze of boxes here and wandering around her new yard at the other place when we go over to work or deliver stuff.

Since it's rained about four inches over the past 48 hours here, I'm really hoping that God gives us a break tomorrow for a few hours so that that our furniture and boxes don't get soggy in the process.

In the mean time the media has apparently discovered all of the facts about the condition of our nation's bridges that I mentioned earlier, the democrats and other usual suspects are already blaming President Bush for spending all of the bridge repair money in Iraq and the Global Warming Moonbats are barking about the hot weather causing the collapse.

I guess that I don't have it so bad down here after all, so I believe that I'll go back to packing now.

Wish us luck...If you will.

Rain

Global Warming Sucks...


I have a truck coming at 8 AM tomorrow morning, having fired Mr. Moving Guy #1 and hiring Mr. Moving Guy #2 a couple of days ago.

In the mean time, the condo swimming pool is overflowing and all my outside plants are about to float away, the Weather Channel says that there is a flash flood watch in effect for our area, but things will improve later today.

Maybe a nice slow drizzle rather than a steady downpour?

I've got to go paint the foyer of the new house now.

Squish...


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Progress (Or The Lack Thereof)

Taking Matters Into Your Own Hands


I'm sitting here this morning watching the FOX News reporters spazzing out about the I-35 West bridge collapse which occurred during last evening's during rush hour, and as is usual I'm having to wince and avert my eyes from the stupidity on display by the media in the aftermath of an engineering disaster.

One of the reporters was interviewing some "bridge engineer" live on the telephone and came up with the question "do you think that this situation amounts to 'criminal negligence'?"

The self described "expert" replied..."NO."

Thank God that for once an "Expert" managed to hold his emotions and tongue in check while talking in front of TV cameras and not evoke FEMA or some other knee jerk reaction so early in the process when virtually nothing is known about the event or it's actual physical causes.

Being a fairly well educated competent mechanical engineer, and also having a great deal of practical experience working in the fields of steel and concrete structural engineering, I happen to know something about bridge design and further, about the condition of highway bridges here in the US.

My forensic engineering consulting experience has caused me to spend time reading about the history of engineering disasters, and one thing I've learned in the process is that we are all in big trouble when it comes to the condition of our nation's bridges, and your Government knows about the problem and is doing virtually nothing about it.

Here's the situation in a nutshell.

If it were up to me, I'd never drive across another bridge without first knowing that the bridge had been inspected and/or repaired by competent personnel.

By "competent personnel," I'm basically excluding the government at all levels and the associated government contractors usually employed by the "departments of transportation."

(Yes, I agree that there are a lot of good engineers and many well intended people involved in the bureaucratic process, but I'm afraid that the outcome isn't what was intended much of the time...so don't start E-mailing me saying your Uncle or cousin or mother works for the State DOT and you're coming to my new front door with a load of hot asphalt to repave my butt with...)

That said, I also admit that I cross six bridges every time I drive between our little island and the mainland, and I do this at least three days each week.

So you can feel free to call me a hypocrite because I know about and complain about the problem, but I also insist on ignoring it on a daily basis.

You see, our governments have been taking our tax money--stuff like gas taxes and car tag taxes originally designated for road and bridge construction and maintenance--and instead of fixing old bridges they're focused on building new bridges and widening existing bridges on a wholesale basis in order to meet traffic demands, when they should be spending the majority of our money REPLACING existing bridges that are in crappy, unsafe condition.

They also steal a good deal of the money intended for transportation infrastructure and spend it on "social programs"--things like providing cheese food products and diapers for un-wed mothers living on WIC and "Earned Income Tax Credits."

If you want to give yourself a good scare, go to US Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration Website and look at the number of bridges that are identified as "structurally deficient" and "functionally inadequate."

I just did a spreadsheet to do my own calculations, and according to the data on that website 12.35% of the bridges (73,694 out of 596,808 bridges) are structurally deficient and 13.43% (80,177 out of 596,808 bridges) are "functionally inadequate"...whatever that means.

It's not like I sit around at night re-packing my parachute or stuffing my car full of life preservers each morning before I drive across the causeway over the water and marshes to the mainland, but believe me when I say that I do worry a little about the condition of things under my tires each day. I also believe that the moron's that I witness whizzing past me at 60 MPH in a 35 MPH speed zone that the government allows to keep their driving privileges represent a greater danger to me than than falling steel and concrete beams.

So any way...you can look for this story to fester and swirl for another few days, then things will go back to the status quo with the media's Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton cheer leading party and the Global Warming Hysteria Show.

In closing, just remember that we kill over 40,000 people each year in auto accidents without bridges falling on peoples heads and from under their tires. Then there is also still the risks poised by lightening and shark attacks, not to mention angry, misguided, wild-eyed, towel headed, middle eastern Muslims intent on imposing Allah's will on all of us infidels.

Y'all have a nice day now...If you will...I've got to go finish packing up my belongings...

.

I'm An Incompentence Magnet

Intelligent, Qualified, Conscientious Persons Need Not Apply...


I have a few questions to ask this morning:

#1. How can you run a City government when no one is there to answer the telephone?

#2. How can you run a Cable/Internet company when the person on the other end of your 1-800 telephone number doesn't know where St. Simons Island is and can't make decisions about installation schedules and costs?

#3. How can you run a moving company when you won't answer the telephone or return phone calls?

#4. Finally, how can you run a moving company and not tell your customers when you will pick up their stuff? (See #3 above)

Regardless, we'll be taking possession of the new house today, but our August 2nd through 4th moving window is now somewhere out the window later than planned (maybe the 6th or 7th?)

Mr. Moving Guy will hopefully be getting back with us sometime between now and then.

In the mean time, I think that it's time to go clean my guns now...

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I Was Robbed

Police Department Useless...Again


I've mentioned here on the blog in the past that, although I still believe in the idea of public law enforcement and harbor a basic respect for law enforcement personnel in general, I find that the implementation of law enforcement to be quite lacking in reality.

Let's face the facts folks: The Police, being human, tend to focus their efforts on high profile crimes like murder, unpopular things like DUI, and violations which are easy to catch like speeding, while letting the majority of daily infractions go undeterred and unprevented.

I see more bullshit driving in one trip to Brunswick from our little island than should ever be tolerated--things like following too closely, weaving from lane to lane, running yellow and red traffic lights--but the police are content to sit by the side of the road smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee while their radar unit does their job for them.

I have a looooooonnnnnnnnggggg history of being a victim of crime, and only once have the police managed to actually catch anyone or do anything about what the vermin of society elected to do to me and my property.

For instance, in my life to date, I've survived:

1. A robbery in a Pizza Hut in Atlanta in 1979 where one of the assholes doing the robbery beat me in the head with a pistol (he broke the barrel off the piece-of-shit gun in the process.)

2. I lost a 1956 Chevy Belair that my Grandfather left me and that I was in the process of restoring. Some idiots drug it from the shed on our family farm on flat tires, onto a trailer, and delivered it to a junkyard where it was crushed for scrap.

It only had about 60,000 miles on it in 1978.

3. I've had my home broken into while in college, losing my class rings and other possessions like a TV and stereo.

4. I've had my S-10 Blazer broken into in Atlanta while attending a Georgia Tech basketball game, losing a stereo and a car phone and a $300 passenger side window.

5. I've had my Suburban broken into while sitting in the driveway of my Atlanta home, losing about $1000 worth of CD's and a neat little telescope (and a $500 side window.)

6. I've had my home broken into and the damaged contents ransacked twice after the building was basically destroyed by fire. Things like my coin collection and and antique radio were taken, even though they were black with smoke and wet with water.

7. I've had my car sitting in the driveway of the burned house vandalized in a theft attempt ($3,000 damage to a car worth $2,500.)

8. Had my rental property in Brunswick broken into three times to date, resulting in the THEFT OF MY PORCELAIN KITCHEN SINK in 2006.

The thing that each of these events had in common, with the exception of the Pizza Hut robbery, was that I had to personally FORCE the respective police/police department to even get excited enough to file a report.

Many if not most of the time I had to go to the Police Station to file the report because the police were supposedly too busy to come out and even try to look for evidence or dust for fingerprints.

Only once has anyone actually been caught and convicted (the car vandals) of the crimes which I have endured.

It was frightening how bored the police acted while taking our statements after the Pizza Hut robbery, and although I said that I could identify the robbers, I never heard another word from the Atlanta police after the incident.

The imbecile prosecutor on the car vandalization case sent me an incorrect court date via mail, and when I was unable to drive on one day notice from Florida to Atlanta to attend the hearing (after previously driving to Atlanta and filing a deposition regarding the cost of the vandalism), then the court refused, because of my absence, to award me any financial compensation from my teen aged black perpetrators.

The little bastards are probably bouncing between jail and the street today, if someone hasn't already put a bullet into the back of their miserable heads.

Now fast forward to Yesterday...

When I walked into my construction project, as usual, I was armed with tools, a couple of gallons of Gatoraid, and breakfast from McDonalds.

So far so good.

Then I decided to wash out a plastic cup and have myself a drink of Gatoraid with my bacon, egg, and cheese bagel.

What, no water pressure?

I paid the bill (I think), but I had no water.

Being the astute, prepared engineer and rocket scientist that I am, I grabbed my "tee handle" water valve tool and wandered out to the street.

Sure enough, the water was turned off.

"Certainally there is some clerical error", I thought, and with a quick ninety degree twist of the "tee handle" I'd have water again to wash my cup with.

Wrong...Mr. Sawdust breath...

I heard a gushing sound, and when I turned to look over my shoulder I saw water shooting out of the side of my building, into the air, twenty feet onto the adjacent vacant property.

Just Damn...

I turned the water supply off, and upon inspection I discovered that SOMEONE HAD STOLEN SIX FEET OF TEMPORARY COPPER TUBING CONNECTING MY WATER SUPPLY TO THE WATER HEATER.

I'm just lucky that the routing of the stolen piping allowed the water to excape outside of the building rather than inside the building, because the water meter says that about SIX THOUSAND GALLONS of water flowed out into the dirt before someone noticed the leak and turned off the valve.

I assume that by "someone", I mean that "someone" with the City of Brunswick turned the water off.

But...

Today, in attempting to communicate with the city by leaving a "voicemail" and finally talking to a human about 4:55 PM, I learned that they claim no knowledge of the leak and I'm now facing the daunting task of convincing them not to charge me for the water.

When I called the Brunswick Police's non-emergency number, I was invited to come down to the station to file a report else wait a few weeks sit around all day die of boredom waiting for an officer to actually show up at my property to make a report of the incident.

Six feet of 1/2" copper tubing is probably worth about $0.25 at the recycler, and I hope they can afford to buy fries with their final meal before the grim reaper comes and puts them out of their misery.

Fix One Problem

Two More Appear...


Well, I'm back online at full speed again as of about noon yesterday. The resolution wasted about twelve hours, involved two calls to Comcast Technical Support (and at least a half dozen other "attempted calls,) and one trip over to Office Depot to buy a new cable modem.

I guess that the good news is that we are no longer renting our cable modem from Adelphia/Comcast to the tune of $5.00 a month, and I guess the $90 price tag for the new Linksys Modem is a bargain compared to the $239 we've spent thus far on the rental unit.

Of course Comcast would have replaced our old modem for free, but I managed to resist taking them up on their generous offer of sitting here in the Internet dark ages until sometime late Wednesday when a technician could stop by.

In renovation/construction news, nothing at all has happened in my absence.

Imagine that?

I've been waiting for three weeks for the City of Brunswick to pick up two giant piles of leaves and tree limbs which I placed on the curb on each side of the property.

The Sanitation Department is in theory supposed to pick up lawn debris every Friday, but three Fridays have passed and I'm getting tired of picking beer cans, discarded lottery tickets, and other trash conveniently deposited on top of my edifices by passers by. In the spirit of being neighborly, it seems that any time you build anything resembling a trash heap the locals feel obligated to assist you by adding their own contributions to the assemblage. I fill at least half my curbside trashcan each week with their generous donations.

My hired man James is appearing to be either a scoundrel else he is in Jail or something because when I left town I paid him in advance for a half day of work clearing overgrown vegetation off of the rear of my property. I also left him in possession of a cheep new digital wristwatch and over a $100 of tools like a sling blade, a machete, pruning shears, and "loppers" for his use.

From the looks of things yesterday morning, neither he, his watch, nor any of my tools had been anywhere near the place since last Monday.

Just Damn...

He was supposed to work at least the five hours I prepaid him for in my absence, and we had a deal that the entire job was worth fifteen hours of time which he could work and be paid for Monday morning upon my return from Alabama.

I'm afraid that I am about to learn a cruel lesson about human nature and the rewards of trying to assist the "downtrodden." Jessie Jackson and the bleeding heart "homeless advocates" can cry all they want to, but I've bent over backwards to give James every chance to earn as much money as he can (at $10 per hour) and he continues to waste my time and challenge my goodwill as I've rearranged my own schedule countless times to make work hours available to him--only to have him show up late or in this case not at all.

I hope that he'll show up today with some reasonable explanation and get caught up on things, but our relationship has gone backwards at least a couple of months as it appears that I cannot trust him to get anything done without employing direct supervision.

The new house is finally vacant as of last Saturday, about three weeks later than first scheduled so we're getting screwed out of a new interior paint job. We went by last evening and most of the walls didn't look too bad, but the entry foyer and the bedroom hallway will definitely need a coat of paint once we move in because of the wear and tear of the moving process.

Speaking of moving, our moving company rep managed to dodge my three phone calls yesterday and not return my request to tell me whether his truck and three gorillas would be here on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday of this week. He better call today or I'm buying another machete and driving down to Tampa for a face to face discussion on Wednesday.

I'm already virtually paralyzed in the Kitchen because almost everything relating to cooking and eating is sitting in boxes waiting to be taped closed. We're over half way through the packing process, but we've got to LIVE HERE for at least one other day beyond today, and it would be nice to know the move schedule so I don't sit around eating peanut butter sandwiches and wearing dirty clothes because we were ready on Thursday and the truck didn't show up until Saturday.

It also costs us an additional $34 per day plus utility costs to sit here beyond Wednesday, but that expense was incidental to the process--I just hate to do all of this planning and have some moron that has already cashed our $350 deposit check jplay immature games and jerk me around at the last minute.

Needless to say that my other professional endeavors are festering in nearly finished but not quite complete piles on the coffee table. If I could put the time I've put into fixing Internet related computer problems I'd be finished by now.

Now I have to go get organized to spend another half day making sawdust, praying that my hired help shows up, and that the now daily thunderstorms abate for the rest of the week so when we move the furniture doesn't warp and have the veneer fly off of it into outer space.

It is, after all, tough being me...Isn't it?

Running At A Crawl

Comcast Isn't My Friend Right Now...


We made it back home to our little Island in record time today--about five and one half hours--just in time to let Missy the Turbo Pup run around in the rain to do her "business" and get everything unloaded and put away.

The rain kept coming, and it was a good thing we weren't an hour later on the road or the last segment of the trip from Waycross to home would have been very soggy. Thunderstorms lined up the entire length of US Highway 82.

Once Turbo Pup was settled in we snuck out to dinner at Bubba Garcias Mexican Restaurant, then came back home in time for my date with the sofa for a nap.

When I awoke about 11:30 PM I found that I had no VoIP phone service and no Internet,

Modem power off...reset...stand on my head...try as I might nothing worked.

Then I spent a half hour trying to call Comcast's "24 hour customer service on the back up land phone line and every time I got to the part where I could talk to an actual person in English the stupid phone system cut me off.

I finally dug around on my computer and found an unused three month free subscription to AOL that I hadn't used, so now at least I'm on line although it's at about 40 Kbaud dial up.

The real pisser is that Comcast's Website is set up for use with their cable modem service so all of the screens are HUGE and take forever to load and now I'm having trouble getting through their "chat" troubleshooting process to see if someone can help me without having to schedule a service call for sometime probably in the year 2010.

If comcast doesn't get their rental modem fixed pronto they are guaranteeing Bellsouth our DSL business at the new house.

I guess that you could say that High speed Internet is sorta like women...

Can't live with them...

Can't live without them.

Aaaaarrrrrrrrgggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh


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Barfalotahulalula

How Do You Say "Hangover" On Maui?


Well, after so many months of anticipation, it was all over with in what seemed like a flash last evening.

My reunion, that is.

Our flower Leis were a big hit, and a LARGE time seemed to be had by all.

As is usual, there were some notable absentees that live within ten miles of the country club and always manage to come up with some excuse not to attend.

One girl came all the way from Alaska for the event, and several more like me made trips over three hundred miles.

There were also fourteen souls that had no other choice in the matter as they had left this Earth sometime since graduation. I guess that isn't that high of a number of deaths when you consider that our class had 270 members.

Once again our reunion committee outdid themselves in the planning and preparation, and I look forward to the next opportunity to see friends I've known practically since the day I was born.

Time to get on the road back toward our little island now...

See Y'all again in about six hours.


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I Think That I'm Somewhere In Hawaii

But I Thought It Was South Alabama...


Well, we made it over to Ozark early yesterday morning with Missy the Turbo Pup in tow, and then we started realizing the obvious lessons that traveling with an animal teaches it's new pupils.

Lesson #1: Until you can check into your "pet friendly" hotel room, you will stay in your car with your AC running to avoid the ambient 90+ degree heat and a possible visit from the lunatics people at PETA or the ASPCA.

Lesson #2: You will also EAT breakfast in your car (see lesson #1).

Lesson #3: You cannot sneak in Wal Mart through the garden section with the aforementioned Turbo Pup because Wal Mart is NOT "Pet Friendly."

Thankfully I was able to sweet talk our front desk clerk at our "pet friendly" hotel into expediting the cleaning of our assigned room while we lounged at the "pet friendly" hotel's swimming pool for a little over an hour, and everyone (Pat, myself, and Missy the Turbo Pup) was basking the in air conditioned comfort of our room by 12:15 PM.

By the time we arrived at the hotel I had already received two shipments from Hawaii. The girls at the front desk were impressed.

The first package from Hawaiian Lei Company was clearly marked "flowers" and had instructions for special handling, and inside was one of these, an Orchid & Carnation "Double" Lei:

The second Lei was something called a "Kukui Nut & Mock Orange" Lei that looks like this:

(That one I bought for me to wear tonight)

Needless to say that Pat was surprised and impressed, even though they let the cat out of the bag a little early and I wasn't going to tell her until time to get dressed tonight.

Finally, in my attempt to adhere to dressing in Hawaiian attire for or upcoming celebration, the second package was from the Mele Ukulele Store and it contained one of these:

That's a little student model Soprano Ukulele--something I've thought about acquiring for several years now. It will go well with my ever growing collection of musical instruments.

So any way, with my new Hawaiian shirt on my torso, my straw hat on my head, my Kukui Nut Lei around my neck, and my shorts and flip flops adorning the lower half of my suntanned body, Pat and I hope to be be the best dressed couple at tonight's festivities.

In the mean time, I'll be skipping the golf tournament to spend yet another day lounging by the pool and tending to Missy the Turbo Pup's latest whims.

Wish me luck

Aloha

Pergatory

Internet & Otherwise...


This week's trip thus far has featured a broken home Air Conditioner and slow Internet service.

We trade slow Internet today for no Internet tonight, before moving on to a hotel for a couple of days of free high speed connection.

My fingers can hardly wait...

Ward Churchill Finally Relegated To History

Two Years Too Late...


After starting an investigation in the summer of 2005, last night the University of Colorado Boulder finally decided to remove the human turd, Ward "Little Eichmann's" Chuchill, from their payroll.

BOULDER – The University of Colorado Board of Regents voted to fire Ward Churchill on Tuesday evening, prompting the promise of a lawsuit from the embattled professor.

The Board of Regents passed a motion to accept the recommendation from CU President Hank Brown to fire Churchill from his position in the Ethnic Studies department.The measure passed with an 8 to 1 vote.

The vote was made just after 5:30 p.m. and Cindy Carlisle was the dissenting vote. The move came after academic committees found in 2006 that Churchill was guilty of academic misconduct, including plagiarism.

The board's decision came more than an hour after it was initially expected. It is unclear what caused the delay.

Immediately after the decision was announced people in the crowd booed and some swore at the board members.Churchill and his supporters then participated in a Native American ceremony outside of the building."

I am going nowhere," said Churchill. "This is not about break, this is not about bend, this is not about compromise."

This whole saga has been and probably will continue to be a sad but very public example of the level to which our colleges and universities have sunk over the past fifty years.

Many of the faculty offices and desks, in my opinion, are populated by a group of highly educated misfits that in another century would be relegated to a freaking circus sideshow tent.

Now they are given six figure salaries and something called TENURE.

Tenure, many times, is just another word for "job security for a incompetent bullshit artist", in my considered Redneck opinion.

I'd love to go back to school before I die and get a Masters or another undergrad degree from somewhere famous like Harvard or MIT, but in the back of my mind I know that the political climate on most campuses and my own political views would prevent me from getting a fair shake in the grade department.

It was, after all, not easy going in the 1970's and 1980's when academic liberal bias was still in the closet and everyone believed everything that Walter Cronkrite said on the evening news.

I KNEW That This Was Coming

Give Me Some Pork Fat, A Dozen Eggs, And A Glass Of Pure Cane Sugar...


I've been saying this for at LEAST thirty years, and my genius insight is proving to be true as
"scientists" have determined that "Diet Soft Drinks" can be linked to Cardiovascular health risks.

MONDAY, July 23 (HealthDay News) -- Drinking more than one soda a day -- even if it's the sugar-free diet kind -- is associated with an increased incidence of metabolic syndrome, a cluster of risk factors linked to the development of diabetes and cardiovascular disease, a study finds.

The link to diet soda found in the study was "striking" but not entirely a surprise, said Dr. Ramachandran Vasan, study senior author and professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. There had been some hints of it in earlier studies, he said.
"But this is the first study to show the association in a prospective fashion and in a large population," Vasan said.

....

A variety of explanations, none proven, have been proposed for the link between diet soft drink consumption and metabolic syndrome, Vasan said. That association was evident even when the researchers accounted for other factors, such as levels of saturated fat and fiber in the diet, total calorie intake, smoking and physical activity.

One theory is that the high sweetness of all soft drinks makes a person more prone to eat sugary, fattening foods. Another is that the caramel content of soft drinks promotes metabolic changes that lead to insulin resistance. "These are hotly debated by nutritional experts," Vasan said.

You see, here's the deal with all of this food hysteria and dietary BS we have in the world today.

I say that if you sit at a desk all day and then come home and vegetate on the sofa watching Entertainment Tonight and playing Playstation games, and all you eat is McDonald's and pre-processed "cheese food" products in brightly colored packaging, you're gonna spend most of you life as a slovenly lardass.

It's just that simple.

Drinking a few diet Cokes won't make a damn bit of difference.

The same goes for your kids and your dog and cat.

The human body was designed to hunt and fish and survive on a sometimes pretty crappy diet, living and sleeping under stressful conditions back before global warming melted all of the Glaciers, and sitting in air conditioned comfort and walking from the sofa to the garage and from the car to the front door of Sears & Roebuck every weekend just doesn't get it when it comes to keeping the amazing machine that God gave us all in good working condition.

I've eaten eggs my entire life, in mass quantities, even when the "scientists" and "medical experts" said that eggs were going to kill me.

I have over two pounds of butter in my fridge and freezer right now.

When I cook bacon, I generally cook something using bacon grease within 24 hours.

I have at least fifty pounds of baby back pork ribs, a Boston pork butt, and beef tenderloin in my freezer right now, along with a few dozen pounds of shrimp, chicken, and crab.

As I've said so many times before, I KNOW that I'm eventually going to die of SOMETHING, and I want to CHOOSE my poison rather than letting everyone walk by my coffin and utter the words...

"Don't he look good?"

My funeral will be closed casket.

(Actually I'll be cremated.)

More Computer Crap

Outsmarting Myself...


Well, I'm up early this morning, trying to finish up some of my nerdy design work in anticipation of being out of town for most of a week, and to my horror I'm finding some problems with file corruption in some of my software.

I don't know if it is systemic or related to my recent bullshit spyware/adware/malware event, and I'm still checking things looking for problems--but a week or more of design work could be lost unless I can find clean copies of the spreadsheets.

The bad news is that I've run my Norton 360 software twice a day for the past month or so and the backup feature has apparently reduced everything to the same "gobbly-gook status" in the process.

Am I a "super genius" or what???

I'm so angry I'm ready to throw the computer out into the parking lot and start using an abacus and a big fat first grade pencil again.


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New House

Check It Out...


(click)




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I Want The Whole Kit & Kaboodle

Comcast Apparently Sucks...


OK, I've already said that we're moving, right?

In spite of risking making my head explode, I'm also traveling to Alabama on Wednesday to visit my mother, AND attend my 30th high school reunion next weekend, and that means that nothing can be done toward packing and getting ready to move until we return to our little island on the 29th--TWO or THREE days before the movers back a truck up to our front door.

Since we were paying to live here, I made Pat wait until yesterday to start tearing the place up and putting things into boxes. We had our final dinner party Thursday night and entertained out of town guests until noon Saturday and the place looked great if I do say so myself--even though we only finished decorating and furnishing it over the past three months or so.

Any way, yesterday morning I decided to tell my utility companies about our decision, and first on my list was our cable and Internet provider, Comcast.

I logged on to their website and rummaged around to find the section of customer non-service relating to moving service addresses and was merrily typing in our new address information (Alabama Street...ironically) and when I got the to part where I was supposed to tell them when to connect the new service and disconnect the old service, I ended up sitting in stunned silence for a while.

You see, Comcast, in their infinite wisdom, requires that you provide them a five day window between the date of disconnection of your old service and the connection of your new service.

Five Days?

FIVE DAYS?

FIVE DAYS?

I screwed around for another ten minutes or so, then just logged off and abandoned my order request in disgust.

Does Comcast seriously believe that people are willing to go FIVE DAYS without cable TV?

That I can handle, but FIVE DAYS without Internet service will cause me to have some kind of a conniption fit and cripple Pat's business activities for the duration since she telecommutes from home.

Five days...

Boy oh boy, the gene pool available for doing cable installation must be infinitesimally small these days to need a five day window of time because the new house is already wired for cable and as far as I know all the guy with the tool belt has to do is show up and twist a couple of coax connectors together to get things rolling.

Five DAYS...

Here's what I'm going to do later today in an attempt to remedy this situation. I'm going to call Comcast and attempt to speak with a human in English, then I'm going to request that they establish an entirely new Cable/Internet account under my name at the new address and leave the old account active in our condo.

Then I'm going to require the rocket scientists customer nonservice department to activate the new account on the appropriate day while deactivating the old account at the same time.

Seems simple enough to me, how about you?

THEN, if they still insist on making us wait and endure a five day window without service, I'll be calling the Bellsouth DSL people and the Satellite TV people and telling Comcast to kiss my grits.

Is it just ME...or WHAT?

ok, Time to get dressed and head over to Lowes to buy more lumber now.

Y'all have a nice day...

Packing My Life Away

Arrrrrrggggghhhhhh...


I HATE moving.

I'm too cheep to pay the movers to pack my stuff, plus it's just creepy to me to have someone handling all of my stuff in the first place.

I wish I had a transporter like they had on Star Trek so that we could just "beam" all of our stuff over to the new house in one pile on the driveway.

Better yet, it would be even cooler if you could tag each piece with GPS coordinates and beam it from where it sits in your old place over to the new place, in it's final location.

Of course Pat would probably beam all my stuff into the garage or something. That would be fair reprisal for me beaming all her "nicknacks and paddywhacks"--you know...glass statues and vases and crap girls keep laying around on shelves and in lighted glass cabinets--into the back yard or onto the sun porch.

Now where's my roll of tape and black magic marker...


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