Oh I Wish I Were An Oscar Meyer Weiner a NY Congressman

OK...NOT Really...


I don't know about you, but I'm really tired of having to pay for the $1,000 shoes and $250 ties worn by this little cocksucker "Congressman" A.K.A. Anthony Weiner:

In spite of being 6'3" tall, wearing size 13 shoes, and spending most of my life carrying around over 225 pounds on my frame, I still haven't used up as much oxygen and caused as much heartburn for the people around me as assholes like this little angry bastard has caused spending five less years than I have on the planet.

This little shit head really thinks that he is better than you and I, and he believes that his association with "Teflon Bill" Clinton via his recent marriage to sHrillary's valet is going to keep him from paying the price for sending photos of his semi engorged penis to everyone on Twitter.

Let's face it, we all know little idiots like this in one shape form or fashion and for the most part can stay far away from them, but I still enjoy watching him squirm in the public spotlight he's cultivated his entire miserable life.

Since he has a "D" behind his name he'll probably survive this current scandal to text another coed another day.

And thats the way it is...June 3rd, 2011...

BurrrrppppPPPP...

All I Can Currently Deliver Is Guttural Body Sounds...


It's freaking hotter than Hades over here in Eastern Tennessee this week.

Seriously...

If my brain could, it would slide down out of my head, past my heart and lungs, further down below my large and small intestines, and hang down there below my "manly parts" originally occupying the area between my legs somewhere south of my knees right now.

But it can't (and I apologize for the crass mental image I just delivered, but still...things are as things are...)

So ritght nwow mye synnbapses areee allle oaverloadeded dew to tempraature exhaustation and thrust I halfe 2 stop righting wright now...

Reguardssss Youallleee...

"Pork" (Government Inefficencies) Killed The USA Space Program

YOUR Wallet Is Next If You Don't Pay Attention...


So I'm sitting here this morning watching the Space Shuttle Endeavor's final landing down in Florida.

I tried my best to schedule to make it down for the launch of this mission with my old Buddy Tripp last month, but one thing lead to another and he went down for the launch and I sat here picking my nose and toes doing the stuff I normally do on a day in and day out basis.

Being not only a "Baby Boomer" Boy vintage 1959, but also being a by default "Space Race Child" and wanna-be astronaut about a thousand years ago, I can't help but get a little misty eyed over the ending of this next to last Space Shuttle Mission officially known as STS-134.

(mouse over and click to enlarge the infarred image...captured off of the NASA HDTV feed on my computer)

As I watched NASA TV tonight during the landing process their call of the landing in both Eastern Standard Time and Central Standard Time reminded me of the Whoreish Politicalization of President Kennedy's famous proclamation that we get to the moon before 1970.

You seen, when the idiot in the Book Repository blew our President's head off, the VP Johnson assumed the reins and the keys to the country's budget process and couldn't stand that the basically unrepresented state of Florida would get all of the money spent on the program because they wanted to kill sea turtles launching rockets out over the Atlantic Ocean since Werner Von Braun escaped from Germany after WWII.

So the young Texan/President Johnson used his political power to help spread the proceeds from America's "Space Race" into his home state's direction by putting "Mission Control" about a 1000 miles away over in Houston, Texas  instead of building another building at Cape Canaveral or Cape Kennedy on land already owned on the Florida coast...something you could barely GIVE away in the early 1960's.

And meanwhile over in my home state of Alabama, our Senate/Congressional team--Sparkman, Allen, and Dickenson--couldn't stand being left out and so they did the the same thing by setting up part of the Space Programs up in Huntsville, Alabama.

Problem is, as we've learned over the past near 50 years, there was a shit load of bureaucratic inefficiency and duplication and out right insurrection and competition between the factions created between 1961 and 1969, and partially as a DIRECT RESULT of this political pandering PORK BARREL bullshit we find ourselves as of July 2011 unable to launch a man into space within the boundaries of the By-God United States of 'Merica.

And that's just a F**king crying shame...in my considered Redneck Opinion.  

Is it just me?

When Life Gives You Lemons Jellyfish

Make Lemonade Peanut Butter & Jelly(fish) Sandwiches...


OhHHHH...where to start writing this evening???

OK...

I know...

I had a pretty productive day, when it was all said and done I guess.

I got all of the ceiling electrical wiring finished in the "Wee Pub" by about 2 PM, so now I have two separate dimmer light circuits--one over the bar area and another in the seating/dart area--which are all hooked up ready for the ceiling skin to be installed.

On the computer/computing front, the old HP laptop is still belching and farting a little but most of the problems are Internet search engine related..AutoCAD and my other technical programs all work fine.

It was blistering hot here today, with the backyard weather station indicating about 93 degrees F at 4 PM before we had a little pop-up rain shower that cooled things off a little.  The temperature was enough of an excuse to keep me from doing anything but peeking outside until it was time to run out at quitting time to do some errands and catch a couple of cocktails at happy hour.

Then left over Pizza and Grilled Boston Butt were served for dinner to clean out the Fridge.

I actually had time to do a little professional writing (don't get excited...it was a PLC Controller owners' manual) and now this evening I'm all mellow and calm and managed to wander around the Internet looking for silly stuff to write about.

To that end, my regular readers know I like to pick on a number of seasonal news stories that the Lamestream Media writers keep in their lockers or under their seat cushions (which can also be used for flotation devices) and that they trot out almost every year--on que--depending on the month and date on the calendar.

This year so far we've had "Record Winter Weather" (in spite of Owl Gore's Global Warming), then "Killer Tornadoes 'Targeting' Population Centers", and now that summer is upon us???

Get ready...

Not Hurricanes...

You Ready?

Not Shark Attacks...

Really Ready?

Not Skin Cancer from going to the beach and tanning booths...

Really, really, Really REALLY Ready?

OK, this year we we need to stay home or run back to our ocean front Condos because we already have Jellyfish Hordes Crash(ing) Florida Beach Parties.

I almost spit my wine onto the computer screen and peed my pants when I saw the headline. Here's a sample of what we all need to be "afeared of" this beach season:

Ah, summer: the lazy, hazy time when Americans adjourn to beaches in droves to soak up the sun--and this year, at least, to get stung by jellyfish.

More than 800 people at beaches along Florida's Atlantic coast were stung this weekend by the swarm of purple-colored sea creatures, which washed up on shore en masse, thanks to consistent east winds, according to Eisen Wicher, a Brevard County Ocean Rescue official.

CNN interviewed one local family, the Smiths, who said they'd driven for three quarters of an hour to get to Cocoa Beach, but left after five minutes when their daughter was stung.

The stings cause itching, burning, and rashes, similar to a bee sting, but aren't usually serious, unless the victim is allergic. Lifeguards have a vinegar solution on hand to neutralize the stinging cells.

Still, two people were taken to the hospital after suffering from respiratory problems, Witcher said.

Thousands more, understandably spooked by the jellyfish, stayed out of the water.

OoooooKaaaayyyyyyYYYYYY...

It's not just that they're citing the fact that when you go to the beach that you run the risk of encountering various forms of "sea life"...noooooOOOO...

this year it's "HOARDS" of Jellyfish "Crashing" Beach Parties.

That's right, Ladies and Gentlemen, if you read the headline, we are lead to believe that the Jellyfish are avoiding unpopulated and low density areas of the beach in favor of swarming the locals of "Beach Parties."

(I personally am waiting for a story about Africanized Killer Bees somehow cross breeding with Jellyfish, thereby creating giant organized swarms of intelligent pathological killer Jellyfish which attack in mass once someone inadvertently comes to their attention.)

No, seriously folks...this is such a non-story it makes me laugh at the lengths these so-called "professional" journalists will go to find something to write about.

You see, I've spent more than a few days/hours of my life participating in the sport of offshore fishing.  Primarily off of Florida's Panhandle Gulf Coast.

You think that you've seen Jellyfish laying around on the beach before?

I've gone fishing on half day trips where we stayed within a few miles of shore where the Jellyfish were so thick--and I mean Jellyfish eighteen inches to two feet in diameter--that we could troll for hours and all you saw was a sea of Jellyfish all around the boat.

The Jellyfish were so thick you had to pay attention because they would catch on the fishing line and make your fishing rod tip bounce around just like you had a strike by a 20 pound King Mackerel.

And these Jellyfish were SWIMMING with their tentacles and bodies...trying to fight the current to stay OFFSHORE since they live in the water...not dieing on the beach at a beach party.

I didn't hear any little Jellyfish conversations saying "Dude...let's paddle on in and catch a monster curl wave and then run out on the beach and pick up some human Babes...

...then we'll show them our pricks testicles tentacles"

cough...hiccup...eek...akkk..oh...nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOO


UPDATE: 2:00 AM

Sorry, but my Zen-Like state was interrupted by a stupid Comcast "Internet Service Outage" starting about midnight and just now ending at 2:00 AM.

I've since been twirling around in the basement because I couldn't access some other stuff in needed to do the Owner's Manual project.

I'm going to go now before I REALLY write something I'll regret.

Regards Y'all...

Windows XP Recovery Scam Feckless Under My Wrath

(Only) Three Hours Later...


Well Ladies and Gentlemen, the good news this morning is to my surprise only three hours after my earlier posting, things here on the old HP laptop aren't back to 100%...but close to 95%...

And I guess that the Jury is still out...

But...

In this latest "Computer Exorcism Exercise, I managed to make a couple of executive decisions (the quality and substance of which is something I'm not Internationally known for in the past), and instead of downloading some stupid free "anti-virus/spyware" software or electing to run screaming down to the local computer repair store populated with "experts" 30 years younger than my ever greying, ever balding head...

I simply booted the whimpering computer up in Windows "Protected Mode" and then used the real "Windows Recovery" program to reset everything back to the way it was last Friday before all of this current BS started.

Then I dumped Windows Internet Explorer 7 off the hard drive, ran a back up of my data files (including recovering my latest ParaChem PLC software Rusty), and right now things seem to have been improved a great deal although there are still some strange quirks that need to be worked out.

For instance, most of my data files had been converted to "hidden files" so I had to handle that situation, and my Internet Explorer favorites all disappeared but I had a good back up in Mozilla Firefox and I also exported the favorites from the Server PC and moved them down here to the Basement International Headquarters of Plastics Engineering Technologies (or BIHOPET for short.)

So any way, by and large a successful evening I guess.

I still want to go out and find the idiots responsible for crap like I've just gone through and either draw and quarter them or keel haul them after beating them to the verge of death with a "Cat 'o Nine Tails"

Is it just me?

OK...Holiday's OVER...Back To The Real World

Please Don't Throw Me In Dat Briar Patch...


This week could be fairly troublesome interesting. 

I thought that I already knew what to expect when the Memorial Day Holiday started last Friday, but as is usual around here things have changed a little bit due to unforeseen circumstances--computer related.

My poor little old HP Laptop managed to catch the latest Trojan Bullshit Computer Crap called Windows XP Recovery Scam .

It's the same old spam scam where something jumps on your computer off of an infected web site and proceeds to change things in your Windows registers so that all you see is a fake screen telling you that your computer hard drive is about to crash and offering to scan the drive and repair the problem.

Problem is...the Spam program is the PROBLEM.

And of course after it gets through scanning, even if it finds nothing it still tries to get you to give it a credit card number to pay for selling you a program to "FIX" the situation.

I never let it get past the first few seconds of it's presentation, but I made the mistake of turning the machine off with a hard stop press of the power button, and then in the process of rebooting the INFECTION just wrapped it's tentacles further around my operating system.

Now when you boot up in even "Secure Mode" it only lets you get so far before popping back up with the same BS warning of non-existent problems and an offer to fix things...FOR A PRICE.

So now instead of doing productive work on some new software modifications for a PLC and working on basement wiring, I expect to spend the next 24 hours screwing around trying to act as "Computer Exorcist" removing this evil spirit.

Like I said before, I think that the government should pass a law making it legal to hunt down and maim and/or KILL the idiots out there in the Cyber World that think it's funny or profitable to break into my house through wires and damage my property.

I have to go now before my head explodes.

Missy The Turbo Pup Rides Floats Again

You Can Take The Dog From The Beach...But You Can't Take The Beach From The Dog...


My regular readers probably remember that our little miniature long Haired Dachshund "Missy Sippy Queen" (her AKC pedigree registered name) A.K.A. "Missy The Turbo Pup" was born in Southern Mississippi and spent most of the first year and one half of her life living with us on an Island on the Georgia Coast.

As a result, let's just say we have a little girl that is very comfortable at the pool and on the patio at the Sea Palms Country Club restaurant and of course she commands the beach with ease given the opportunity to visit.

Unfortunately she only gets to the beach two or three times a year now since we moved to Knoxtown, but she's had an above ground backyard pool each of the past three seasons large enough to accommodate her pool accessories and two or three invited adult guests on occasion.

This season being no exception to the rules, this morning I found it my duty to get an early start working on the tasks required in the official re-opening the Turbo Pup Back Yard Pool And Beach Complex (or TPBY PABC for short) for the 2011 season.

Of course not one BUT TWO trips to Home Depot were in order because in addition to needing a few extra fifty pound bags of play sand to level the pool area and clean up the winter damage to the Beach area, after we got home from the first trip I ended up not being able to find my "air nozzle" to use with my air compressor to blow up the inflatable ring running around the top of the little 30" deep above ground pool we saved from last season...so I had to climb back in the car sweating and filthy and go BACK to HD.

Once we got the pool cleaned up and back into position beside the Boardwalk, when we started filling it up with water and it's shape started rounding out and rising back up off the ground, Missy suddenly realized what all of the hoopla was about and went over and started crying and barking wanting to get in the 4 inches of water standing there.

We humored her and let her wade around for a while while it continued to fill, and then about three hours later when it was nearly full she again climbed in and floated around on her float on and off for a couple of hours while I started cooking her favorite dinner...PIZZA!

After dinner now she's been reclining on our bed dozing and watching Dale Earnhardt Jr. run  out of gas 1000 feet from the finish line in the Charlotte NASCAR race.

Tomorrow I have to finish up some details and get my Monster Hybrid Pool Filter (or MOHY POFIS for short) cleaned up and re-connected to the connections on the Pool Sidewalls.  Last season its new 1/2 HP centrifugal pump and dual canisters made out of two old crappy filters they sell with these little above ground pools did a good job and I hope to get at least another season out of the beast.

That said, I guess it's time to do a little reading and get my check list ready for the daily visit back to Home Depot tomorrrow.

Y'all have a LOVELY balance of the Memorial Day Holiday...If you will...

"Memorial Day?"

Everyone Keeps Getting It Confused With "Veterans' Day" I Think


Well, it turns out that I ended up missing not one...but two Family events in two different states on Saturday.

I'm not going to go into the gory details other than to say I had a couple of pretty good reasons for each absence...

...and I regret to admit that the silence gained by being allowed to just sit around here at the Turbo Pup Compound on a "holiday weekend" when everyone else is running up and down the highways and interstates or sitting in airports and bus terminals was a welcome relief.

I did manage to spend about three hours stumbling around my basement shop finally getting two new 20 Amp AC circuits installed which I started last winter. So now my shop and the adjacent "Wee Turbo Pup Pub" area of the basement have some the only three wire grounded electrical service in the building (the Kitchen Range and HVAC system being the other two as far as I can determine.)

Now later this morning plans are to finish up some recessed lighting details in the "Wee Turbo Pup Pub" area, then get the Turbo Pup Pool reinstalled in the back yard and filled with water for the season.

I'm not EVEN going to begin to try to comment on the news right now although there is some stupid stuff like the coverage of Child Murder Trials down in Florida and things endlessly repeated on FoxNEWS and CNN that make my eyeballs roll uncontrollably back into my ever greying, ever balding skull.

That said, I think I'll go now and take a nap for a while.

Y'all have a LOVELY Sunday and balance of the Memorial Day Weekend if you will (and drive/fly safely while you're at it...)

Strange Visitors In The 'Hood

Odie and "Terror The Terrier" Claim Another Conquest...


I mentioned in the past week my ongoing battle with a couple of little dogs which live diagonally behind us here at the Turbo Pup Compound on the Banks of the Mighty Tennessee River.

The good news is that my next door neighbor heard about the loss of my "yard shoe" and asked the owner of the little pack of Mongrels about it and he had indeed found a giant  size 13 "Zapatos" (shoe in Spanish) and it was returned.

Then late on Wednesday the same neighbor reported that a "baby Opossum" had been chased up a tree in her back yard by Odie and Terror.

Here's what I found when I wandered over to take a look...

Not only is that not a "Baby Opossum", but that is a fine example of a giant 20 plus pound "Albino" 'possum.

I've seen another Albino a couple of blocks away in the last year which had a much whiter coat that this fellow (he was a male and should be proud of the equipment he has dangling there in the tree with him...)

but still...

He stayed up there in the top of the tree baking in the sun until sometime after dark and at sunrise yesterday morning he was gone on off doing whatever it is that Opossums do all day.

Just when I think I'm going to lose my mind something like this comes along to distract me and make me laugh.

Good thing...You know?

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stupid News For The Un-Informed

Twisters (Tornadoes) Don't "Target" Population Centers


I've spent at least half of the past couple of days yelling at the idiots on the Television who are apparently reading from the same script written by Owl Gore and the Global Warming Zombies freaking out about what should be considered to be NORMAL spring weather in the Midwest.

While it is a horrible fact that the statistical odds are that over a million year period that every single square inch of our planet will probably see a natural disaster...earthquake or flash flood or wildfire or hurricane...

...It is also a well known fact that the United States experiences Tornadoes at a rate MORE THAN FOUR TIMES that of Europe or any other country/land mass in the world.

Almost EVERY YEAR...

Not just, as the idiots on the TV news would have you believe...

...not just THIS YEAR.

It's like this, Ladies and Gentlemen...

I grew up in lower Alabama living with both Hurricanes and Tornadoes, and FEMA was a figment of Jimmuh "Smile When You Say That" Carter's imagination and Owl Gore's Greenie Weenie Zombies were still sucking their thumbs and toes in their playpens.

I've been through three Hurricanes and a half dozen tropical storms, and I've been at ground ZERO in two Tornadoes where the sky turned green and the rain came in horizontal.

And I don't look forward to it but if I live another 25 years I'll probably see at least another couple of Hurricanes and tornadoes in the process.

BUT...

All of this current media hysteria just makes my eyes roll back into my skull and drool to slide out of the corner of my mouth.

Face the facts...with live on a planet spinning around the sun through the solar system at breakneck speed under the forces of gravity and operating under the vaguely understood principals of a science we call physics.

And our little slice of "atmosphere" within the bottom twenty miles of the surface of the planet contains the oxygen we need to live and breath...but it also contains water vapor and energy in the form of temperature gradients--thereby producing a dynamic "heat engine" effect where the hot areas and the cold areas try to get together and average everything out in the end.

Thus when you get a bunch of cold dry air running up against a bunch of warm moist air...KABOOM...

A local TORNADO!

And on a regional basis IN THE SUMMER...HURRICANE  everybody jump in your car and evacuate!!!

It's just that simple, and religion and political and education and socio-economic/race/gender issues be damned...it will grab your trailer or your car or your house or as a minimum YOUR ASS and grind you up and tie you in a knot if you happen to be unlucky enough to be in the storm's path.

Weather doesn't care what political party association the President or the Congress has at any given moment.

Weather also doesn't give a crap if you regularly attend church or you donate to the March of Dimes and the United Way and build houses with Habitat for Humanity.

GOT IT?

OK...That will be all...for now...

I Have A Crappy Attitude

Excuse Me While I Shut The %$#@ Up...


I'm having one of "Those" days...

Bye Y'all...

This Is A Test Of The Emergency Broadcast System

This Is Only A Test...


I'm afraid that I have to admit that my neural synapses are almost completely overloaded these days.

It just might take a month or so to get over living through the past two weeks of my life.

After spending a semi-unplanned ten days out of town in another state--mental and physical--followed by having a house full of pseudo relatives ( i.e. Pat's family ) in town for half a week, I think that I've realized what a quiet existence I generally enjoy as a middle aged childless curmudgeon.

Let's face facts...Ladies and Gentlemen...

Having Kids wandering around the property warps reality in ways beyond my ability to comprehend, and spending time with more than one other adult human inside my official "building of residence" taxes my patience and tilts my world off of it's axis in an alarming fashion possibly requiring counseling and medical attention...

Right now I feel like I'm sort of some kind of mutant cross between Dustin Hoffman's character  "Rainman"






with a nice mix of  Christopher Lloyd's character "Reverend Jim"...

and possibly Andy Kaufman's "Lakta" from the TV show "Taxi" thrown in for good measure.

I'd say I'm a little more Reverend Jim/Latka right now in as much as I'm harmless to anyone other than myself...

But still...

I have to attempt to get a grip on the details of several different projects while at the same time trying to head out of town toward either a funeral in Ohio or the originally planned Memorial Day Festivities in Lower Alabama this weekend.

Nothing seems to be easy these days...justifying the cost and time to head north versus the cost and time to head south.

Maybe I should just stay home for the next couple of weeks and save money rather than risk insulting anyone in the process.

I'm entertaining suggestions if anyone has any insight into a solution to my delimma...

Idiots In The Roofing Business

How Do I Hate Thee? Let me Count The Ways...


It's pretty much common knowledge that I've been in the "Industrial Injuneering and Construction Business" on and off for a good part of the past 30 years.

I've also on a much more limited basis been in the residential renovation and construction business for about that same amount of time.

All of the above said, it blows my mind this afternoon that with the current employment situation and economic conditions there is such a large proportion of idiots--many if not most of which probably didn't even manage to graduate from HIGH SCHOOL--which can't manage to answer their own telephone number published on business cards on in the Yellow Pages or on Internet Web Pages...

and in some cases to respond back to me with an intelligent quotation after taking the time to drive up to my house and knock on my front door asking to fix my roof.

Seriously, Ladies and Gentlemen, in the THREE AND ONE HALF WEEKS since my roof and yard was pounded with a golf ball sized hail storm, I've only managed to get two written proposals in hand while at the same time talking in person with six or eight different inarticulate, dis-organized morons representing themselves on the telephone and/or on my front stoop as "professional roofers" or representatives of companies involved in the aforementioned "roofing business."

The "feeding frenzy" surrounding this latest natural disaster is a textbook study in human nature.

These idiots want me to sign a contract...

RIGHT NOW.

...with basically no written proposal in hand...

...and because they can see by the look on my face and the light burning in my eyes that I am not an IDIOT and that I will proceed to "tear them a new asshole" at least proverbially if not literally they don't want to deal with me when they can simply wander on down the street and take advantage of some of our old widow ladies or some absentee owner with a bottomless checkbook.

I offer a sincere "Sorry" to all of you asshats posing as "roofing contractors", but not now or tomorrow or next week or next month will I deal with such a stupid group of (un)professional idiot opportunists.

I believe that I'll just wait for the dust to settle and take my chances on getting someone that actually knows what they are doing rather dealing with those of you out there just responding to the smell of blood CASH in the water.

You know?

Getting Old Sucks

But I Guess It's Better Than The Alternative...


Pat and the Turbo Pup and the Niece/Nephew/Child returned late yesterday from an over night trip to visit her Daughter's family in south Atlanta.

Me?

I volunteered to stay home and anchor things here at the Turbo Pup Compound solo for a change.

I spent the weekend walking around without shoes and a shirt...sometimes clad only in underwear...basically doing nothing all day if you don't count sitting on the deck in the sun working crossword puzzles and the few hours spent staking up tomato plants.

Oh...and I did manage to get all of my tools put away and the shop cleaned up and re-organized in anticipation of doing some clean-up work on three PLC programs I have running in the field right now.

So now after a quiet weekend spent "home alone", this morning finds me trying to make plans to attend yet another elderly relatives burial services...this time in southern Ohio.

It's one of those impossible trips where "you can't get there from here" unless you drive cross country and I can't spend three days out of the week in the process because I'm already so far behind in my work from being out of town most of the past two weeks.

Ideally it would be a "fly up in the morning" kind of trip where I meet my Cousins and ride with them to the Rogers family cemetery up on top of a hill out in the middle of nowhere in southern Ohio...then have them drop me back off at the Columbus Ohio airport so I can fly back home later that day.

I guess it's time now to head to the basement and start wrestling with electronic crap again.

Wish me luck, if you will Y'all...

The Dog Ate My Homework Stole My Shoe

One Annoying Little Bastard He Is...


We live in a pretty cool old neighborhood.

Basically it's the same sort of neighborhood I grew up in since it was built about the same time in the early 1960's.  The only real difference is that it is in eastern Tennessee instead of Lower Alabama.

Today most of the houses are occupied by older widow ladies whose husbands have already gone on to Glory, with the balance of the houses filled with second and at most third owners.

The sad thing is that what was once a giant vacant property between our street and the Pike has been filled in over the past twenty years with  professional offices and townhouses, and there's a string of duplexes and quads which anchor the streets at each end of our street and they've apparently seen their better days because they're becoming more and more a bit of an eyesore because the freaking Mexicans have moved in.

Don't get me wrong here Ladies and Gentlemen...

In spite of my past ranting, the Libertarian in me says that a property owner has the right to rent his property to anyone he wishes to that pays the price he asks...I just wish the said property owner would also police his property and make his tenants not treat the exterior and lawns like a junkyard.

Closer to home, we have a delightful Mexican family next door who are the HOME OWNERS.

What an amazing difference ownership makes when it comes to the appearance and standard of care regardless of the native nationality of the owners.

Then two houses down in the other direction there is something going on in the form of a rental/lease deal and if you count the number of cars in the yard there are eight adults living in a three bedroom 1-1/2 bath house.

Apparently one of the "Hispanic" men there fancies himself an auto mechanic so you can almost guarantee that the hood is up (or off of) at least one of the cars night and day most of the time.

And one or more of the women is either running a daycare center for the other area immigrants (legal and illegal) else there is a giant band of midget Mexicans living in the crawlspace (because there's not room for them in the main house.)

Behind that house on the next street over is also a band of Mexicans or Central Americans and word has it that they own that property, and other than having a half dozen vehicles parked in the driveway and on the street out front they are pretty good neighbors, EXCEPT...

they have these two little shit yapper dogs--a little Chihuahua named "Odie" and this other wire haired terror terrier mutt of as yet unknown name.  Let's just call him "Terror the Terrier" and leave it at that I guess.

So any way, they can't weigh thirty pounds in total, but these little bastards are the scourge of the neighborhood.

If a leaf falls off of a tree at night...

...they bark endlessly.

If you walk outside in the evening to get something out of your car or smoke a cigar...

...they bark endlessly.

And the most annoying thing is that the owners let the little pack of mongrels out of their pen occasionally to run around and rape and pillage and reek havoc in and on the adjoining properties.

Odie comes over and lifts his leg and pees on everything in sight when he can.

And Pat caught "Terror the Terrier" trying to drag one of my "yard shoes" off the carport a couple of weeks ago.

She yelled at him and he dropped it.

Then after being out of town for ten days and leaving my yard shoes sitting alone outside unguarded,  yesterday when I went out to stake and tie up my tomato plants...GUESS WHAT?

Yep...I only had one old dirty tennis shoe sitting there by the porch swing.

So now I'm forced to wear my "back up" yard shoes...the really stinky nasty ones I usually reserve for doing stuff in the mud and things like running the weed eater.

Dang it, I don't care if a bus load of Mexicans move into the neighborhood because the flood gates have already opened, but I just wish that they could miraculously overcome their "cultural issues" because in the end...my problem is not racial...but more of a clash of a cultural nature which is very difficult to overcome I'm afraid.  

Is it just ME?

"It's The End Of The World As We Know It"

And I Feel Fine...


Sorry about the recent light blogging, Ladies and Gentlemen, but after returning home late Wednesday night and getting the luggage put away we've since had a house full of visitors beginning Thursday afternoon.

Between chasing/being chased by a little 2-1/2 year old red head girl and cooking for/entertaining the Adults in the party, I'm losing my mind trying to catch up from being out of town for ten days.

The stupid IRS is driving me crazy sending me forms and asking me questions since I had the audacity to start another corporation, with them rewarding me with a demand for more money or to fill out another form I've already filled out and mailed about once a month.

The funny thing is that I haven't actually made any real money yet, but if it is up to the IRS apparently I won't be making any Cash in the near future either because apparently the IRS expects me to work full time telling them why I'm not making any money by owning a company.

I'm thinking that maybe I can start a company with a business plan involving spending 50 hours a week filling out state and federal government tax forms for fun and profit.

Wait...I think someone has already thought of that...

Isn't it called being a Tax Lawyer or a CPA?

In other news, I've decided to just check off all of the things I have on my "To-Do List" and throw it away because there is some wild eyed Idiot named Harold Camping and a bunch of his followers running around out there saying that  the world is supposed to end sometime later today.

Wait...I just checked and it is currently 4:55 PM in Tokyo and other than still trying to recover from the earthquake and Tsunami a couple of months ago things are still pretty much just peachy in Japan. 

Not a single appearance of "Godzilla" or "Mothra" or any of the other cataclysmic creatures found in the cheesy horror films coming out of the island nation.  Things like this fellow...





Of course this is my favorite Godzilla...shown in a 1980 vintage performance by the rock group "Blue Oyster Cult":




So any way, I've got to go now and screw around with some more things like expense reports and shuffle some other papers around my desk top, and I trust that everyone will have a LOVELY balance of the weekend in the mean time.

Regards Y'all...

Back Home Again

None Too Soon...


Everyone's tired.

Regards Y'all...

It's Alive--Part 3.1415

Success At Last....


About 11 AM this morning I had reason for celebration on the job site.

One single silly little conversion error in one of the levels I was measuring was basically filtering down through the program causing almost all of the problems I was experiencing since last Friday afternoon.

The simple inclusion of an extra algebraic calculation in one line of the ladder program and everything started working like it was supposed to work.

Now all I have to do is go in Wednesday, do a final QA/QC check, and conduct an hour training class for a half dozen operators and supervisors.

Then assuming that the above all goes as planned we're back across the Appalachians to the Turbo Pup compound on the banks of the Mighty Tennessee River by bedtime.

I'm ready to sort through the mail and sleep in my own bed for a change.

Regards Y'all...

Final Day On The Job Site?

I'll Know By Noon Today...


I'm back on the site this morning at 7 AM hoping my programmer's latest efforts solve a couple of bugs we're having in the Alarm logic on the PLC panel.

Since most everything else is working as expected, we'll make a few tweaks and then run it through a couple of cycles and hopefully get out of town this afternoon.

We Me luck...Y'all...