Friday, June 18, 2010

The Three Tenors Terrors

Funny, But Dangerously True...





(Watch You Tube take this video down...like the last one done by these people...because it might be "offensive")

Thursday, June 17, 2010

What The Heck Happened To Me?

I Think I Better Call Somebody A "Mental Health Professional"...


I was sitting around taking a break for a minute this evening, and something suddenly hit me.

I've put in about 30 work hours over the past three days.

I haven't done that in over two years.

I haven't done it regularly for over a decade.

I hope I'm not going to make it some sort of habit, or I'll be kicked out of the ASOPPABB (American Society of Professional Pirates And Beach Bum's) and be stripped of my Hawaiian Taxi Driver Shirts and knit Rasta hat with fake dreadlocks.

Maybe I shouldn't have said anything here on the blog, but chances are I won't pull off such a feat again in the near future so if the ASOPPABB officials come knocking I'll just say it was all boastful self aggrandizing.

Regards Y'all...

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Attention K-Mart Shoppers...

The Tree Is Off My Roof...


We had a hellascious thunderstorm here at the Turbo Pup compound yesterday afternoon.

In addition to the fun of enduring a 10 hour power outage--from 2:45 until about 11:50 PM, in the middle of the fireworks show a tree (or more accurately, a tree BRANCH the size of a 12" wide tree fell over and landed on the roof over the bedroom.

After deciding to buy a new Home owner's policy when I got off the phone call where they gave me a roofer and and tree services name but promised to stop by sometime in Fiscal 2010, I went over to talk to my neighbor who's tree the branch belonged to.

He said forget hiring a tree service, HE would take it down.

I said I'd loan him every tool I had, hold the ladder, and stay out of the way when required.

Got 'er done...more details and possibly some photos later...got to check e-mail and make a couple of calls.

MORE... 10:30 PM

I forgot to mention the lucky way the branch fell--actually just "leaning over" onto the roof, such that there was virtually ZERO damage. A couple of shingles were nicked along the edge of the gable.

Talk about luck, in the end of the day we avoided having to have a new roof and possibly made a new friend of our neighbor in the process.

Can't ask for much more than that I guess....

Abridged Official Transcript Of Oval Office Address

Brought To You By This Blogger As a Public Service


"Blaa Blaa Blaa Oil Spill Blaa bla balallllllaaa British Petroleum, Blaa blaa blaaa working families blaa blaaaa forced compensation.

Blaa blaa blaa great country blaa blaa limitations of my office blaa blaa determination blaa greater regulatory reform.

Green energy blaa blaa blaa don't pay attention to Owl Gore bonking that bimbo instead of his wife bla blaaa blaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Fossil fuel evil like Heroin blaaa wind energy blaa ethanol blaaaaa solar panels on your new bicycle blaa blaa shut up Biden blaa blaah.

Now I've got to go call for a tee time blaa blaa blaa and get started working on killing the coal companies once I'm finished with the Oil Companies...blaa blaa blaa

Thank you America...and good blaaaaaaaaaaaa evening"



Overall it was only a little over 18 minutes of Hell...I've listened to it once on the Radio and watched it once on TV and every bone in my body aches from enduring the process.

Now I have to go soak my head and press it in a vice and see if I can squeeze the inane words back out my ears and nose.

Please excuse me.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Two Steps Forward...Three Steps Back

Do The Hokey Pokey And You Turn Yourself Around...


Dang it if yesterday wasn't one of "those days" for me here at the Turbo Pup Compound the International headquarters of my little company

You know, the sort of day where you're awake all day and you're sitting in front of a Computer doing whatever it that you're supposed to be doing (not playing Solitare or fooling around on E-bay in other words,) and when 5 PM comes the pile on your desk of stuff needing doing is higher than it was at 8 AM.

I guess the good news is that I have new profitable stuff to do on a more frequent basis.

The bad news is that I have the sort of personality where just because it's time to go to work on any given task doesn't mean I have the energy and creative mental attitude to crank through the process and deliver my usual super human superlative results.

I have to wait until my mind locks onto any given problem in order to make good use of my time and efforts. That's a good reason to not be on anyone's payroll but my own in spite of my two year long investigation into returning full time to the "American workforce."

I have proposals or the requests for proposal laying on my desk representing 300% more dollar value that the work we've done since the company started last fall.

I'm excited, but the work is complex and the proposals sometimes take a full week's worth of man-hours to complete at this point because we don't have a Catalog or a standard product line--everything is custom designed and custom built...and I just can't sling prices out the door without doing very accurate pricing estimates in order to not get beat and also not end up giving things away at cost.

Oh well, I could be sitting here with the phone lines quiet and nothing to do, so I guess that I should stop complaining.

Meanwhile, in national news I see where walking down a ,pubic public sidewalk with a camera in your hand while asking a US Congressman a simple question can get you assaulted.

Don't you imagine that if the tables were turned and I walked up to a Senator or Representative on the street and proceeded to grab him by the arm and neck I'd be spending at least one night in jail and probably have an assault conviction on my record when the dust finally settled?

Moving on, NOAA reports that the first area of "disturbed tropical weather" is slowly sliding it's way across the Atlantic. I can do without the hysteria but you just wait and see all of the wild eyed reporting with so-called pseudo-experts chiming in talking about the devistation which will result if the ensuing storm moves into the Gulf of Mexico.

Of course one real tangible outcome of any storms in the Gulf of Mexico will be the effect on the slow process of capturing and pumping the leaking oil out of the damaged wellhead. I hope BP has some plan for keeping their jurry rigged vaccum apparatus intact even if they have to move the workers and equipment away from the site in anticipation of the storm.

They could be right back to square one if a large enough storm forms and comes near.

I can't decide how upset to be about this disaster...it's certainly bad for the residents and the tourists and I personally have a number of friends and family which reside in coastal Panhandle cities.

But all of this freaking out and running around in circles like your head is on fire over the first event of this kind in the 60 year history of offshore drilling is ignorant, uninformed overkill in my considered Redneck opinion.

And finally this morning, on the cooking front, if appliances keep dieing in my kitchen I'm going to be reduced to grilling weenies on the grill every day.

Our little 12 bottle wine cooler (that only actually holds about five or six bottles has given up the ghost last winter and is still sitting on it's stand serving as an expensive table for keys and junk mail.

Now the over the range combination "vent hood"/microwave has crapped out in the past couple of months and I've been too cheap and lazy to go down to Home Depot and drag a new one home.

I hate "vent hoods" which do nothing but suck up a little smoke and steam and blow it right back in your face, so I'm planning on buying a REAL VENT hood wide enough to cover all four eyes on the Range and with a big blower. Then I'm going to cut a hole through the carport wall and blow my fumes out on the old Chrysler 300.

It's only a little more expensive to buy the hood and a giant counter top microwave that's large enough to actually pop a bag of popcorn on the turntable and then when we move take it with us (the microwave) rather than bolting it to the wall in the kitchen.

Of course the new hood will also require a new or modified backsplash and if I do a new backsplash I want to replace the existing counter tops, and after writing about the process my back already hurts and my brain's getting tired worrying about the other details, thus...

I'm gonna go now and do a little more proposal writing...

Y'all have a LOVELY day, if you will...

Monday, June 14, 2010

New Project Yields New Tools

Tools To Men Like Toys To Toddlers...


It seems that I might get to go tool shopping in the next couple of weeks in support of a new Injuneering project.

The prospect of making decisions on new tools was actually enough to get me out of bed and keep me off the sofa most of yesterday in spite of the weird malady that struck me down Saturday.

I've had similar symptoms twice in the past three months, and in an effort to understand the process I've decided to call it the "shaking shuddering hee-bee-jee-beees"...

And I'm suspicious that it might just be psychological because in spite of the physical symptoms--fever and aches--I think that it could be the result of watching all of the stupid crap that's beamed into my home on Cable TV.

Follow me here...I'm afraid that after a steady diet of Weather Channel and FOX News and Food Network, followed by the occasional foray over to CNN and some of the broadcast channels like ABC/NBC/CBS/MSNBC et. al., that my immune system takes over and forces me to lay down and close my eyes for ten or twelve hours and just take a "chill pill."

After all...you can only spend so much time screaming at the television and throwing old dirty underwear and socks at the screen in response to the "latest inane example of mental ineptitude purveyed for public consumption" LIEMIPPC for short.)

You know?

So any way...I'm quoting a new project which requires a bunch of machine shop work once I get through doing the drawings, but instead of all machining being done by a vendor outside our building I'm looking at doing some of the lower tolerance work myself...in the process buying a nice drill press and a metal cutting power bandsaw and using them to cut the raw stock in house and make a bunch of sharp metal chips in my basement floor in the process.

Of course having the new tools in the basement will open up a whole new world of insanity induced construction projects...things like the first prototype of the "Rogers' Pulse-Doppler Laser Nippleometer"...a creation that's been on the drawing board for about 15 years at least now.

It's really a simple device you wear on your head or like eye glasses, designed to be able to accurately measure the ambient temperature by bouncing a laser beam off random women's breasts.

The concept was pretty exciting years ago when I was single, wandering around in public looking at them (women...not their breasts) and wondering if it was really that cold outside or they were just glad to see me...

but I digress...

...so any way...I'm back on my feet, feeling better, and have quite a busy week chasing new proposals around trying to close some business and starting Tuesday building more Pneumatic Valves, so I'm sure you'll understand why the blogging will be sporadic at best.

UNLESS something really STUPID happens and I have to chime in.

In the mean time...

Regards Y'all

Sunday, June 13, 2010

I'm Tired & Cranky

Under The Weather & Busy Also...


Well, I got a late start Saturday morning, but by mid-day I managed to drag myself to Lowes' to get some flex pipe for the mutant pool filter project and stop by Food World, but by about 3 PM I was shivering and sleeping on the sofa with some kind of unexplained fever, and it was near midnight before I was able to get up and eat a sandwich.

The proposed and planned "Beer-Butt" chicken had to spend the night in the basement fridge as a result.

Maybe Sunday will see chicken rather than Pizza for dinner.

It sucks getting old...More later when I wake up if I feel like writing.

Sorry Y'all...