for hints about the struggles

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For the folks who actually read this I'm sorry I haven't updated the site much. I'm sorry that I haven't had time to write lately. I've been busy, and I've been throwing between fifteen and twenty hours a week away in my commute. I'm wrestling with some fairly big things right now. some of which would be very helpful for me to work out in ths arena. some of which may not be appropriate. in any event hang on there I'm not gone and I'll be back.

in the mean time if anyone has an ISA card that puts out NTSC it could help the whole not writing thing by redeeming some of those hours I've been throwing away

Thanks much to Elise for this link. I have always felt that Paul was a Dishonest Powerhungry distorter who twisted everything he wrote to whatever little plan he had at the time. I am not saying that God doesn't occasionally come down , strike people blind and have a little conversation with them occasionally. I am just saying that he didn't do it with Paul. All those letters? I just reject. I have read them and I am pretty sure he was off the mark. I have always felt alone in this before this post. Most non-LWOG's even seem to accept Paul's story. All of the Hate and stupidity I hear on the local Christian Hate Radio Affiliate seems to stem from those damn letters or the old testament ( and there's just not much you can do about the old testament. lots of cause for self superiority and hatemongering in there) . The books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John do alright. From a strictly anthropological point of view they are kind of Ideal. Four slightly differing Eyewitness Accounts of the same events written down by folks with decent informational hygiene habits. A historian's wet dream. We probably have more accurate history there than we do of the Kennedy assassination. Not so Liar Paul.
anyway it's nice to know I am not the only one out there who feels that way.

I was listening to the reggae show on ciut on the way home from work today because I am quite sick of hearing the crap about the election. I think it ended all to early. we should have all pushed this thing to its limit and then a little farther. we should have had the electors squabble then switch allegiance back and forth at the last minute. we should have thrown it to the house, then to the senate where the tiebreaking vote would have to been cast by gore himself. we put all these failsafe in there for a reason. lets fucking use them. When will we ever get another chance. fucking stodgy old supreme court justices. we put them in charge of the damn thing and they are afraid to see if it will work. (or at least five of them anyway. the other four seemed ready to rumble.) It's like having a having a porsche 917K you bought at the estate sale of an old teamowner and putting it in a museum instead of trailering it down to your local vintage racing establishment and seeing what it'll do. seing what it feels like to run the long straight at 180 miles per hour. Fucking pansy assed woussy bastards.
So i'm pissed. I'm sick of the hearing about and I just can't handle Terri Gross' obsequious crap with the chucklehead who wrote the impeachment ordeal and is gonna have the first book to market with this one too. So I listen to the reggae. good news too they seemed to have ejected the fellow who turned it to an hour of literal word of god nonsense and replaced with actual reggae. (and toronto is the place for it. If you are looking for real rastafaris (not the pot smoking morons you see in the movies but the real honest never cut their hair, never eat meat, gunsmuggling, bad ass muthafucka rastas) Toronto is the place to go.) They helped put it all into perspective for me.

Rasta A: Yah mon, dat stoff in the oonighted snakes uff mareeka t'day. hmmm!

Rasta B: wott it motter. I kun tellem 'part 'neehow. em all from Babylon. no rooom for dere kine in Zion.

For those of you who didn't know this already. I am very seriously going whole hog Rastafari. if only So I can be there when Babylon Burns.

Democracy is coming to the USA. Thank You Elise as always for just the perfect quote.

Yup that's her to a t. I'd have to say she's becoming much more self aware these days. Something I'd highly recommend over self-conscious

The only woman I have ever loved in my adult life besides my wife has finally found a decent man. This isn't really news. In fact it wasn't really news when I found out weeks ago. It's just taken this long to articulate exactly how I felt. I say finally found not to indicate any fault in her. No she's damn near perfect. I say finally because decent men are in extremely short supply. There just aren't many men around that are worth having. Patti has one. Elise has one. I like to believe my wife has one, but I know this was not always the case. At this point I know exactly one who isn't taken and his availability is somewhat complicated.

So it is with barely containable joy that I hear of her good fortune. By all accounts he is a good man. and about damn time. He is packing his whole life to go to be with her and give her the support she deserves as she begins a great venture in both the business world, and her personal world. I wish them happiness and a long happy life together. (and eventually a happy life closer to home so they can visit and we can watch each other's kids grow.)

Her happiness is vital to me, like that of my children and my wife. Her misery and pain is like a dagger into my own flesh, and there's been no shortage of that. Over the years I've known her, she's been a good friend, a love if not a lover, a good friend to my wife, heir to my children, and altogether more decent and loving and forgiving than I ever had cause to hope. She once refused to marry me, and it may be one of the smartest things she's ever done( and there's been no shortage of those either). Had she not refused I would have been an entirely different person than I am now and she would have been forced into my shadow. Now she has grown into the person she should be and could not possibly fit in anyone's shadow. I am far the richer seeing her happy now, with my life as it is with my wonderful wife and perfect children.

So would everyone within earshot please join me in wishing them Health, Happiness, and Love always in hearth and home.

Here is a piece I wrote about six years or so ago. I am not sure why I dug it up or why I am posting it now except that It seems the thing to do.

Duty, Loyalty, Responsibility

I group these together because while they are separate concepts they are interrelated. Lets start with

Responsibility

A person has responsibility for their own actions, inactions, choices, and any processes they control. Additionally a person has partial responsibility for any processes that they can affect but not control. These things are permanent. You are responsible for this, like it or not. A person can also CHOOSE to accept responsibility for things above beyond and the minimum standards. This isn't always a bad idea but it rarely leads to happiness. That's ok; it's your CHOICE.

Duty

When a person accepts responsibility for a person, process, idea, or whatever that is not in that person's control I call it duty. This can lead to happiness. This can lead to world conquest and concentration camps. Let's be careful with this one.

Loyalty

The mechanism by which a person acquires duty is loyalty. Again the CHOICE is free here. Loyalty given to a person, process, Idea, is a CHOICE; you have responsibility for it. Keep in mind that you may not be able to choose the duties that come with giving a loyalty. CHOOSE your loyalties carefully. Don't bitch about your duties.

We don't live in a perfect world. There are conscription armies and shotgun weddings. These kind of things make for hard choices; death or a bad marriage, prison or military service. While these things don't blur the lines about responsibility, duty, and loyalty, they do blur the lines around

Honor

Honor has to do with how a person keeps loyalties and duties once accepted. Honor does NOT have to do with loyalties and duties that one person feels that some other person should have. A person makes an agreement and honors it by keeping that agreement. It may not be dishonorable to break an agreement under certain circumstances, then again it may be. The lines are not so clear here. Each person has to make their own CHOICES and live with them, or die with them.

An Illustrative Example

During the buildup to the Persian Gulf War or more accurately during Desert Shield I had a friend who was opposed to the war. I was also opposed to the war. We had a talk one day where she felt that even though she was a VOLUNTEER member of the Air Force Reserve she shouldn't have to go. She said that if her unit were activated that she would take a dishonorable discharge or desert or whatever it took not to go. I told her that if she did I would not support her, trust her or allow her to teach any children I might have in the future. She was very surprised by my response. I explained to her that by volunteering for the Air Force, and accepting their money, training, and allowing them to put her through school and then deserting them the first time that they asked for Duty she would be forever DisHONORable in My eyes. My feelings about the then impending war did not play a part in my feelings about honor and trust. Did I fail in my duty to stand by a friend? No, I only told that she would lose my trust. Would I have given her the same answer if she had been drafted? Probably not. She did go, but I don't know why because to this day she won't talk with me.

None of this is news to me. It might be to you. And don't think you won't find similar stories on the democrats either. this is how it works and has worked for a long time. If you look at the US constitution( I keep it in my palm and look at at least once a week) you will find that we the people were never meant to actually select the president. we would select some people we trusted and then send them off to washington to select the president. They were to be honorable people who held no public office. I think that might be preferable to the way we buy and sell elections now. If you want to know who elects your president the answer is to follow the money. Soft money especially. this is why they gutted McCain in public. He wanted to end this practice. Accepting campaign donation bit him in the ass once and somewhere along the line he decided it was wrong.

It is Wrong

But it is how it is. And no matter who wind up as president the thing we all should take away from this is that It doesn't matter that much who you choose as president.


It matters who owns your president

Happy 70th Birthday G. Gordon Liddy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One of the interesting side effects of my new job is that I get to spend almost three hours a day in my car in some of the most beautiful land in the country, where they have radio stations that don't suck. My longtime standby and friend has been cfny. They have been out on the edge for decades and somehow managed to stay relevant the whole time.one of the few stations in the world where you can hear Ministry one minute, James the next, and Sneakerpimps five minutes after that. Because my drive takes me along the south shore of Lake Ontario I can hear them for almost the entire drive if I want. However, There is a station in Rochester that plays even deeper on the albums and sometimes even older stuff. (for instance leaving work on the Saturday before the election I got to hear California Uber Alles on the radio) It is a pretty pleasant drive if a little too long.

Coming home from work wednesday I was in the mood for a little reggae. I realized that this yearning was opportune as on wednesdays there should be some righteous dub on the University of Toronto station.

Oh how right I was.

Can anyone tell me when the Born Again Christians invaded the reggae music scene?! The music has always had a religious bent but this is very different from the story of the Rastafari. This disturbs me greatly. Mostly for the danger of mixing up stories and mythos and mindsets. Let me tell you why.

Picture yourself a Jew in Babylon. Subjugated , Oppressed, in bondage, misery, but with the knowledge (not merely belief, but actual knowledge) that one day God would show up and start tossing miracles around and you would get to slaughter all of the evil bastards who held you down. It would all be Ok because God told you it was. Not only were they worthless because they were not chosen, but they dared to put his chosen into chains. It must have been a little easier to live within Babylon when every moment your mind was filled with the picture of it burning. This is essentially the Rastafari story. Every good little Rasta pictures himself a warrior waiting for this day, kind of like Samson chained to the pillars of the temple waiting for his hair to grow back(Ok so I'm mixing the books up a little bit. I'm trying to give you the feel of the story not the actual facts and nothing explains Rastafari like the Old Testament). The gist of all this is while they look forward to the bloodshed all they plan on is destroying Babylon and starting from Scratch. Probably not that bad an idea when you think about it.

Not so the Born Agains (note here that I'm not talking about each and every one of you individually, just the particularly rabid ones that you let dominate your radio stations) . they are looking for the end of the world, and some of the nutjobs are actually trying to make it happen faster. That is a whole different story. While I am loosely called a christian, I just don't buy the whole revelations scene. I think the Mormons are closer to the truth than that pile of bad mushroom trips. So, anyhow I tuned the next day to the local Christian Hate Radio Affiliate ( for those of you who don't know how it works Christian Radio station operate something like the Product Information Network. They don't have any content themselves. they don't sell any advertising to support themselves. the sell the airtime outright. then the various ministries buy the time from them in hopes that they can scare enough godfearing christians into sending them money so they can continue whatever it is that they have decided is their Calling) The folks on the air there range from fairly moderate hatemongers like Dobson and his Focus on the Family gig to wackos like the Watchmen on The Wall from the Southwest Radio Ministries (where this week they actually spent almost twenty minutes of airtime paid for by your generous contributions building an argument against Ted Turner as the Antichrist(personally I'm betting on Steve Case). Hours of ranting is available for your listening pleasure but no Reggae.

No real point here I just felt like ranting.

And if you feel like sending a generous contribution so I can continue to pay the airtime and continue this Calling please feel free to email.

oh that is so funny it hurts

I haven't been posting much lately, and I know that those of you that aren't coming here with wierd search queries are actually wondering "what does he think of the election?" well boys and girls let me tell you:

When I originally raged about the general worthlessness of the candidates, I was genuinely angry. But that was only because I never in my wildest dreams imagined that something this wonderful might have happen.

This debacle is exactly what we needed.
More to come later......

I am a good husband, father, and in general an example of what a decent human ought to be. I am not conceited about this, it is just how it turned out. It wasn't always true about me either. I was a pretty evil bastard for some of my life. I still carry a pretty heavy karmic debt-load from those years.

A debt-load that apparently carried a baloon payment this last couple of weeks. Every mechanical or electronic thing I came in contact with broke or cost me money or both. I will give you one of the example and you can extrapolate it to the rest of my life and imagine with me that a big chunk of that debt is paid off.

I am back working for the company that I have been working for the last six years. ( I never quit or left the company I just didn't work for them for a while) Instead of the travel intensive project management stuff I used to be doing I am back managing a store. A very fucked up store(which isn't really a big deal in a month or so I can have it purring like a kitten and next spring when the customers come back it'll be profitable again. The hitch is that it is about an hour and a half drive from my house. It is a pleasant enough drive with virtually no traffic( in fact for some stretches of the drive it is conceivable that if i wrecked my car it could be an hour before another car passed by to report it). I however drive an '84 pontiac parisienne that sucks a bit too much gas and has other minor issues.

This Tuesday during the most desolate(and not coincidentally most beautiful) portion of the drive all of my guages ineverything else on the car that depends on voltage(such as the ignition coil) blinked off. This caused the engine to stop firing, a most disconcerting notion in the middle of nowhere at sixtyfour point three miles per hour. in the process of coasting down I hit a pothole in the shoulder. Vroom everything a go again. I made the last twenty miles of the drive bouncing from pothole to pothole keeping the the car running. When I finally got to work I parked it and walked away.

My wife and kids had to come get me that night. I thought about it all day. I realized that the proble had to be one of the battery cables. maybe some corrosion inside the connector, because I lovingly keep all the battery terminals I own clean as can be. A visit to my little brother produces tw different length positive cables and two different negative cables( slightly used but definitely serviceable). With the tools in the car, I figure I'm all set. I spend about fifteen minutes and determine that the problem is the positive cable, specifically the end of the positive cable that goes to the starter solenoid. The same starter solenoid that I had replaced less that five months previous.( and also the only work on the car that I've ever paid some one else to do.)

Neither of the positive cables I have will work. So I wash up and go to work. I handcraft the finest battery cable you will ever see. Fine stranded battery cable tinned copper its full length in a saltwater proof insulator with tinned copper lugs and all crimped with awesome Ancor crimper. My grandchildren will be able to use that battery cable. On my lunch break I crawl back under the car to replace cable. (At this point I have to mention that removing the cable was no big deal because the lug at the solenoid end had actually corroded off and the cable just sort of rested against the post, explaining the behavior at the potholes) At this point I discover that I can't actually remove the nut on the solenoid because none of the rathets or wrenches I have with me are short enought to swuing in the space where the solenoid is. so I have to bag it and go bact to work.

That night another trip to my brothers yields a ratchet that should work. The next morning I show up an hour early and go at it again in the parking lot. This time as I start tightening the nut with my new beautiful cable on it the nut on the (only five months old!!!!!) solenoid just busts right out of the housing. At this point I just start laughing and wash up and got to work. What else can I do?

At present the stud with nut tightened on it is held into its appropriate place on the solenoid with a bit of Minnesota Mining and manufacturing's finest silver Duct tape and the car runs beautifully. It took a few deep breaths to realize that that was the best solution for now. With the help of a friend to run as wingman I'll bring it home tomorrow.

I am not sure which I find most disturbing:

The fact that Google consistently ranks me as one of the world's leading experts on "forced cunnilingus"

The fact that fifty percent of my last two month's hits came from that particular search engine query

the fact the somewhere in my archives there is something that is causing Google to draw this conclusion

the fact that there are this many people using Google to search for this

take your pick

in the meantime folks remember unless you subscribe to freedom you aren't anonymous at all. So would the gentleman whose IP address resolves out in Saudi Arabia who found my website while searching for "fuck my wife" and then came back for a world record nine page views and still visits occasionally please email me? I know you have a story you want to tell.

Been doing stuff. living life and that kind of the thing. I've had some remakably bad machine related karma over the past couple weeks. as a direct result of that there is a very old and way too small hard drive in this machine right now. And still no broadband access into my house. those stories and many more coming over the next couple days.

Announcing the return of the world famous halloween bonfire and bacchanalia at the family compound.

Costume not absolutely required, but we will pick on you mercilessly if you don't have one or if you obviously didn't try very hard. This is an open invitation to all those who will be in the WNY vicinity on halloween to all who are interested and can handle general wierdness, excessive use of swords and the occasional very loud noise.

email me for details.

I've just installed eudora 5.0 on the windows box at home. It has this awesome little feature called moodwatch. it rates the emails coming in and going out with zreo to three chili peppers. I don't have too many three pepper emails but the few I do have seem to be from Declan Mcullagh I never thought of him as a pottymouth, so I am kind of interest to see the wordlist they use for the rating scheme. Any as a fun game for the next couple weeks I'll reply to email with how many chili peppers you earned and exhort you to increase you score. <giggle>

just in my mail box. Spam advertising Spam services.

What we offer:


*General AOL Lists or other ISPs
$200.00 for 1-million e-mails sent.
$400.00 for 3-million e-mails sent.
$600.00 for 5-million e-mails sent.
$800.00 for 7-million e-mails sent.
$1000.00 for 10-million e-mails sent.


WE ALSO HAVE LARGER PACKAGES!

Larger packages no less. "listen pal, pissing off ten million people at a keystroke just isn't going to cut it for me. you'll have to come up with a LARGER PACKAGE"

There really aren't words for this.

It's October. October is all kinds of fun where I live. The leaves start to turn. The weather finally cools off. Bow season starts soon. (Not that I have time to sit around in the woods shooting deer, but I do have a number of friends who do have time and occasionally have the need for someone with a piece of paper to come and pick one up, and I do so love venison jerky).

October is also the time I like to take my boys down to the park next to the canal to watch the cruisers go south for the winter. There are quite a lot of them. In fact the lion's share of the cruisers who come to the Great Lakes each year pass through my hometown. It's not the only way out but it's still the best way.

I used to be the guy they all visited on the way. I used to manage the coolest marine store between Detroit and Annapolis. Now I watch them run South for the winter with their masts on crude sawhorses on the deck, their folding bicycles lashed to stanchions, the dinghy crammed between the cabintop and the forward hatch. I watch them run South shivering because most of them don't even own warm clothes. The closest thing to a winter jacket they own are lined heavily built raincoats that salty people call foulies.

I once wanted to join them, but I couldn't ever get my wife to go for the kind of discipline that it would take to achieve that dream. Eating lentils and rice and peanut butter sandwhiches because all the rest of the money goes to build the boat just wasn't her thing. Nor was the idea of borrowing seventy or eighty grand for a used boat I'd have to refit really the deal either.

My wife has been growing frustrated lately at our life in this overly commercialized, keeping up with the joneses society. The sort of thing that frustrated me all along. (I'd be much less of a danger to society if I didn't have to deal with it very often). She's been shopping for boat plans.

We've settled on two or three designs from Jay Benford. I'd link right to the designs but he doesn't put the actual designs online. Just the price list. Right now I am torn between the 37.5 sailing dory with the raised flush deck and the steel 45 cat ketch. The dory I could definitely afford to build and it could easily hold enough stuff, but the interior space will be a little cramped as the boys grow possibly necessitating a bigger boat later. The steel cat ketch is over twice the size and has a really sweet looking fantail stern. We wouldn't grow out of it, but it would be considerably more expensive to build. The only reason I am considering it is I have access at a fair price to a plasma table big enough to cut the hull plates from a CNC file. That brings steel into a reasonable possibility. And which would you rather smack a rock with? Half an inch of wood wrapped in kevlar and fiberglass? Or five millimeters of Corten steel?

This is the boat I'd built if money and time wasn't a big deal. I'd make the kids drill holes in their toothbrushes and my wife could forget about bringing her shoes but we could leave Lockport and be in Rio 16 days later. there is even an excellent juniper currently for sale now for not too much more than what materials would cost me. all that stands in my way is a mere 280 thousand dollars.

But then what would be the point of taking her to Rio without a decent pair of shoes?

Columbus Day

Today is the day we celebrate that point in history where our ancestors began to rape the western hemisphere in earnest. I enjoy getting a day off in October, even if I don't celebrate Christopher Columbus. If any of you have not already done so make sure you go out now and buy and read _Pastwatch_ by Orson Scott Card. It is the most useful way to celebrate the holiday I can think of that I can think of.

I, however, celebrated it a little differently.

I went to the McDonald's with the two story Playplace. It was cold and rainy and I have three boys five and under. (Single dads note: this is the place to meet single moms. I can't tell you how many hearts were broken with " yes they are beautiful. I have a nine month old over there with my wife that is just as beautiful.) It's a good place for the older boys (5 & 2) to work off some energy on a crappy day.

The thing of consequence that happened there had nothing to do with playground. As I walked toward the playground with the tray loaded with carbonated sugar-water and grease, an adorable fifteen year old girl moved to open the door into the playplace for me and smiled at me. not a flirting smile just a warm friendly smile. I was haunted. Her face and smile sent me screaming back in time almost ten years.

When I was 19, I spent an entire summer dating a fifteen year old girl. A beautiful, bright fifteen year old girl with a very fucked up homelife and some serious self esteem issues. I met her while chaperoning some party or bonfire or some such for my little sisters(who were probably 14 at the time). I some how got suckered into giving her a ride home, and for some reason I still remember that it was in my uncle's Cherokee because my car was boxed in to the driveway at the time(This was during the T-Rex period of me driving a 1970 Caddy coupe deville). While driving her home I realized that she was actually fun to talk to and actually had thoughts running around in her head. This conflicted greatly with the picture I had of fifteen year old girls at the time, which was why I mostly dated 30 year old women at that point in my life (the conversation was actually worth having, and the sex was,, well, look, I don't really have to tell you do I?, let's just say that by the time you get to be thirty you have probably had enough time to practice). Anyway, this particular fifteen year old was a delight to be around. So I took her to a movie, and pretty soon We were spending lots of time together.

The whole thing came to a crashing end not too many days after she blew up at me for not having sex with her(Snuggles, kisses, and sometimes when I was weak the occasional pet, but definitely never sex).

"For crying out loud! We've been going out for four months! And you never try to have sex with me!"

"You're fifteen. I'm nearly twenty. You have a lot of complicated stuff going on in your life right now. do you really think that It'd be a good thing for you right now?"

"It's not like I'm a virgin!"

"Believe me hon, It's not because I don't want to."

"You don't love me! You don't care about me! You don't want me!"

With her head pressed to my chest, my shirt warm and wet with her tears, and her enveloped in my arms, I said inside my head but not with my mouth "I do and I do and I do."

She dumped me three days later after telling my mother that she was going to dump me for not having sex with her. I don't even have words to describe how wierd that was. She felt comfortable with my mom, and her own mother was just plain nuts, but I wasn't ready for that. I definitely wasn't ready for my mom to take her side in the matter. I got dumped.

Three years later she was married to a shiftless, lazy, stupid, small time coke dealer, and joining the Army. Not too many months later a friend of mine called me to tell me that she was an inmate of his in Leavenworth. (Leavenworth for crying out loud! He says "there's not much I can do for her" "well look do what you can, She's a tough girl and physically can take care of herself, but emotionally, you know what I mean." "yeah I do. Like I said theres not much I can do") Another dear friend of mine later let her stay at her place but eventually booted her out for doing coke again. I haven't heard from or about her in over two years.

The thing I have always wondered is, "If I had fucked her and stuck aroud with her longer could she have worked through the self esteem issues from a safe secure environment and actually used the wonderful brain of hers?" It's tortured me for years. There is nothing I can do about it now. Water over the bridge. But having that nameless girl in the McDonald's flash me that same smile, the one that used to drop me to my knees ten years ago, can still bring it all back like a full on kick to the solar plexus.

Her older sister works at the gas station across the street on Sundays. Just sundays. It's the job she's had since high school and the folks at the gas station just can't bear to lose her even though she's grown up, married and has a real job. When I catch her there we both do this little anti recognition thing like neither of us want;s to be reminded of how we know each other, so we just pretend we don't. Except we do. And right now Sunday can't come fast enough, because I need to know, is her little sister's life still a mess? Or (I pray) has she finally wrestled the demons and gained control of herself.

it's bad enough that my palm has no spell check but to find my stylos(they aren't really typos are they?)from the mistyped search engine queries in my referrals is a little goofy at best and annoying at worst.

on working the second shift

My two older boys believe that if they go to bed well for their mama, (you know no fighting no biting and most importantly no screaming and waking up the littlest boy) that I will come in when I get home after midnight or so and give each of them a kiss and a hug while they are asleep. In the strictest sense this is true. What they don't know and what I don't have any intention of telling them is the I do it even if they were awful for their mama.

will this be considered lying to them when they grow up?

Just so nobody gets the wrong idea. I am not an animal rights activist. I have at times been a vegetarian, but for health reasons, not for any moral issues about butchering animals. Critters eat other critters; it's how it should be. I ate low on the food chain because it was healthier for me and my kids and in general for the planet they will be living for the next few years.
But I am not an animal rights activist. I may not necessarily be a human rights activist. At one point in my life I aspired to be an Eco- terrorist. But it's more complicated than that. The wackos in the Earth Liberation Front( Yes, I know they have a website. Go find it yourself) accomplish the opposit of their intended goals virtually all of the time. The people who spike forests generally result in killing the poor bastards who work in the mill cuz there are no other jobs in the town they grew up in and miss the evil bastards who actually bribe the congressmen (and the bribeable congressmen) to get the ridiculously profitable and wasteful logging concessions. There are just too many stupid eco-terrorists.

The issues (as is the case with virtually everything in life) are just too complicated. There are no clear lines dividing right and wrong. There are things that are blatantly wrong(The Cuyahoga River catching fire for instance) and things that are obviuosly right(like sustainable organic farming). But there are so many shades of grey in between. It's hard to know where to begin. There aren't any companies that are so intinsically evil that the best thing to do is hunt down the entire executive council and kill them(with the possible exception of Monsanto, and Archer Daniels Midland, who are so evil that they make the health insurance industry look squeaky clean).)

Most of the rest of the world's corporations and governments have some shades of grey in between. And this is where it get's hard. The hardcore treehuggers have bit on some "holy truths" that just aren't true. Convenient rallying points, maybe but not true. For instance if you look at the whole cycle analysis of diapers it is actually more harmfule to the environment to use cloth diapers than paper. They are both phenomonally destructive but cloth are worse. Not what that nice college kid shaking you down for Greenpeace told ya huh? People don't like it when you challenge their dogma. I was there when the most reasonable and honest and informative environmental issues magazine ever (it was called Garbage if you are interested) went down and was killed by its publisher after the amount of Hate mail that showed up when the published and article detailing that little factoid. "Don't bother me with facts m'am, I've got dogma".

So maybe the real solution to the diapers is to stop reproducing? Wellll,,,, that gets complicated too. First think about who are the ones most likely to choose this option? The bright people who have the ability to look long range and do the right thing for the good of humanity. Anybody notice the flaw there yet? Smart caring people not breeding, Dumb, evil, Jerry Springer watching people breeding like rats in a sewer. Not the world I want to be responsible for at all. Then there is the further complication of all the birth control hormones released into the environment. Oh you didn't think about that one didya? Well, your local sewage treatment probavly does a fair to middling job removing bactreia and major toxins from the water before releasing it back to the environment(at least when it isn't raining really hard), but they aren't even remotely equipped to remove all the hormones you pee into the magic hole we call the toilet. Those little synthetic hormones stick around a long time and they fuck with the reproductive cycle of all kinds of critters. Some critters that we might like to eat or at least would prefer not extinct.

Yessiree a lack of sexual reproduction means extinction for most species on the planet. It's similar to the whole swordfish deal. just a few decades ago the size of the average boated(you can read that as dead) swordfish was of a size that indicated several years of breeding(remember from a gene pool standard necessary for survival of a species, if you are killed after you've finished breeding that's just fine). Now they are averaging a weight that would indicate that they are sexually immature(read that not breeding yet). While there are some people that feel that it would be a good thing if we got rid of most of our sexually immature males it wouldn't bode well for the species. Nor does it for the swordfish. But where does one point the finger? At the fisherman we all grew to love in _The Perfect Storm_? At the consumers who continue to buy the stuff almost to a person unaware? At the fish processors who pay big buck to lobby for ever increasinf permit to catch these fish? at the lobbyists? at the congresspeople?

And there's the rub.

You see the eco-terrorist needs a target. There has to be some property to destroy or somebody to kill or maim. And in my eyes it has to be someone responsible, not some innocent(to varying degrees) bystander. The actual evil bastard who made the decision knowing it was wrong and did it anyway because it was profitable in the short term here and now. Those people are hard to find. However my patented parable of the fox may apply here. You might only have to find a few to make it worthwhile.

On the other hand it might just turn out like killing other vermin. You can kill as many squirrels as you want, but as long as you've got an orchard full of walnut trees they'll keep coming back

For Tom,
search engine query fron my stats
query?p=dumbass%2Bmarines&b=20&hc=1&hs=1

The weekend before last I took my kids to the zoo.

I hate zoos.

Most zoos fill me with a rage that in a person with less self-control(like a kid from the next town over) could cause a guy to blow up federal buildings. I just can't help trying to imagine what it must be like living your whole life in a cage. Going to gaol is one thing. With very few exceptions the people in gaol knew that their actions had the possibility to land them there. What polar bear wakes up in the morning and says to himself "I think I'll go down to the water's edge and snag me a baby seal for breakfast. Gotta be careful though. I might land myself in the zoo. "? Not many I bet.

My wife really wanted to go. And by now you all know how I feel about my wife.

We went to the zoo.

There were two zoos to choose from. The one zoo least likely to cause loud boom-like noises was unfortunately across an international border and a two and a half hour drive away. Not a day trip, weekend maybe, but not a day trip. So we went to the zoo nearest us. With the sorry rationale that if we give them money maybe the zoo will be able to afford better facilities.

Buffalo's zoo was built in the Golden age of Buffalo. I was a time when the lion's share of the nation's wealth flowed through buffalo. A time when the freight shipped down the Erie Canal changed New York City from a second-rate podunk backwater port living in the shadow of Philadelphia into the financial cornerstone of the free world. It was a time of robber barons enjoying the years before the Sherman Anti-Trust laws and the rise of union labor. It was a time when the twelve year old children working in the sweatshops weren't about to write any letters to the zookeepers complaining about how small the cage was for the lion was in the zoo they couldn't afford to see, if they could write. Ah, yes the golden years.

We went to the zoo. We saw three elephants in outdoor space of about a third of an acre. We saw saw a golden eagle in a cage he could barely spread his wing span in let alone fly. I nearly took bolt cutters to the cage that held three red wolves in a triangular spacewith the legs about thirty feet and the base about forty. They had a tiger in an "environment" about 120 feet by 25.(in case at this point you think I only care about top level predators, they had wallabies and mountain goats and a rhino in just as shameful accomodations). The crowning glory of the whole trip was the polar bears.

Three of them. In three separate wedge shaped "environments" made out of concrete, that still bear the bronze plaque fron the Golden Age proclaiming for all the world to hear "The Bear Pit". Each polar bear had their own individual wedge. In each wedge they have fake rocks, a little fake cave to hide fron the sun but still remain in view of the public, a pool of water with a cube of white rotomolded plastic about three feet to a side floating in it(evidently to put the poor bastard in a mind of ice in the 85 degree heat), and a very sturdy blue ball to play with. The first of the three was nearly catatonic. He just sat there next to the pool that for some reason causes patches of green algae to grow in his coat, and stared in to nothing, not even swatting at the flies that crawed on his eyeballs. The second one though, that was a different story. He was pacing. Pacing back and forth across the longest unobstructed pertion of his wedge, which happened to be the arc allong the tewnty five foot pit that separated hime from us. Pacing and glancing at my boys, pacing and making extended eye contact with me. Eye contact that said

"I should have hundreds of square miles of tundra and pack ice to hunt, and I'm stuck in this fucking wedge. They kill and butcher all my food before I even see it, and sometimes they give some crunchy crap called polar bear chow or some shit like that. But I see your eyes out there and you know it's wrong. You do. and you do nothing about it. But that's ok, I'm exercising, and that pit isn't so far across, and those kids of yours, they're a nice snack size. You remember that when you go home. those guys on either side of me may have given up but not me. No sir, not me."

If I had a baby seal to give him I would have. Right then and there. Heaved it across the pit and run just to keep his eyes off my boys.

We're not going back. That's a shameful way to run a zoo. I'm not giving those evil bastards any money. I wish I could get back what they got. My kids aren't going back, my wife's not going back, I'm not going back.

unless maybe,,.., I can find the Chairman of the Zoological Society of Buffalo and talk to him, show him what I saw in polar bear number two's eyes,,,



and then heave the bastard across the pit and run.

Today is the anniversary of Henry Hudson discovering Delaware Bay. That is if one can be said to discover a place where there is already a thriving population of humans. Perhaps the title shouldn't read "discoverer of delaware bay, the hudson river, and hudson's bay" but instead read "captain of first expedition of non-viking and non-basque white people to poke around the northeast coast of north america".
Great discover, my ass. His crew eventually marooned him in Hudson's Bay. A fitting end.

When I was younger and unmarried camping for me meant taking a CN train into the bush, stopping at a bridge over a river, unloading three canoes, and gear for six guys for nine days in the two minutes thirty seven seconds that is allotted by the engineer, the last guy jumping off a moving train, and then taking eight or nine days travelling down to where we left the trucks. It is not as macho as it sounds, but it is,,, well,,, spartan. You don't bring anything you don't want to hump on a 500 meter portage with a 100 meter rise in the middle of it. For most of us that meant food, shelter, and a bottle of 98% N,N,diethyl meta toluamide bug repellent. I have also been known bring along headnets and duct tape my pantlegs to my boots. The blackflies can be brutal in May.

Last week I went camping with my wife and kids. We actually went to a provincial park. Long Point to be exact. Excellent place, nice beach, the best tent sites are 452,453, 454. There are sites closer to and even on the beach but I am averse to actually pitching a tent on sand.
Some things are different about camping this way. Air mattresses, for instance, make a big difference. Having a wife along to snuggle and ,um, do stuff with is nice. The ability to run into town when you run out of bug spray or for ice cream is also nice.
In short it was a wonderful week, except for a few moments when it was awful.
Next time I'll bring a screen tent, spare tent pegs, more parachute cord, bigger tarps, and actually remember a knife.
In all I highly recommend the experience and the place.

Some more notes on roofing:

Whoever decided to park that high pressure system over the top of WNY for the the few days I was in town thank you!! It kept the skies clear and the rooftop temperature a nice tolerable 80 ish.

My little brother is a bit of a perfectionist. He also did roofing professionally for awhile. My father is not a perfectionist. Stuff like this can lead to all manner of family strife.

tool list again:

gasoline/hydraulic 4 wheel drive lift w/rollout extended reach platform.

BIG air compressor with manifold and LOTS of hose.

framing nailer (stick type)

coil nailer for roofing nails

lots of BIG tarps.

chalk lines with Red chalk not blue

high quality utility knives, some with straight blades, some with hooked blades.

a good cordless screwdriver (I use Dewalt)

a good cordless circular saw (ditto Dewalt)

20 oz framing hammer

tool belt w/hammer loop and at least one big pocket.

Hey there! I have been incommunicado for a little while for a variety of reasons. I will eventually blog out the story buut for now I simply apologize to the practically five or six distinct IP addresses that kept coming back looking for something. more another day but I'll post a couple lost in the palm for a the last few weeks.

the thing about spoon feeding infants is that they can be unpredictable, suddenly snapping at the spoon full of organic apples and apricots like a mongoose at a cobra's spine. this is particularly likely if you have been encouraging carnivorous behaviour by rolling his cheerios across the table and only allowing him to eat the ones he catches.

Whew! haven't had internet or personal email access more or less since friday night. I am away from home right now and count on work for these things(and who wouldn't prefer a t3). The problem stemmed from some "interesting" things that novell netware does under specific conditions when configured a specific way. Note that this is a newly documented "feature" of novell. In fact the novell geeks are still documenting now. Now that our valiant IS department has done battle with the great dragon there is a great deal of butchering and descaling to be done.
But due to their efforts for the last 5 days straight, I now have internet and email access again. However all our remothe users will be out in the cold for a while longer. When something like this happens It is frequently cause for much abuse of the IS people. So for just a moment please take the time to see it from their POV.

You've worked 15 hours or more each day for the last five days to root out a problem that has never happened to any ever before, it doesn't respond to the sum of your and every smart person you know's collective knowledge. the people who wrote the software have been here for three day with all their "helpful" thoughts. and some person from Marketing calls you up and says "I can't get my network printer to work, when are you idiots gonna get your act together?" Try not taking a hostage right then. So you know what I did? I wrote the entire darn department a thought out and sincere thank you note. even though they aren't finished yet

Zowee! Forbes has a spiffy article on Tempest (VanEyck type Phreaking). A relatively intelligent piece on it too.

I was recently alarmed by the Navy's decision to use windows 2000 to run C and C (command and control for those of you out there that don't speak Acronym) on the next three aircraft carriers our fine nation will build. Anybody who thinks that Microsoft hasn't figured out the lobbying thing needs to rethink that notion. Turns out that they will also refit 7 other vessels as a part of the deal. <Shudder>

"Blue Fox wave off and keep out twenty miles, We have a blue screen error and aren't sure we turned off the Phalanx. You'll have to wait till we reboot the servers and stations here, should be about 50 minutes. Conserve your fuel because we can't get a gas bird off the deck either. Communications out while we reboot."

But as I picked up the Aug/Sep issue of Professional Mariner( which I just noticed has a website. I can't check it out just now as I am on the palm) to check out the Maritime casualties column, I became concerned about fly by wire in general. For those of you (probably most) who don't know already, The maritime casualties column is a place where they detail as much of every commercial marine accident they can with causes and conditions. The intent is to provide a sort of "forewarned is forearmed" prophylactic effect and prevent repeat accidents. This time around I noticed two accidents DIRECTLY caused by fly-by-wire failures.

The worst one had one of the sleazy/slick casino gambling boats in Miami. They rammed a ro/ro( rollon-rolloff, they sacrifice capacity and stability for WAY convenient loading). They lost their engine AND steering controlls upon leaving the dock and the Princesa kept right on steaming in the direction and throttle position she last had. Right in to the ro/ro Seaboard Venture which was moored the the Dodge Island terminal. Both vessels were damaged, no fuel leaked and no injuries reported.

Now here's the deal:

The controls (Kobelt, who unfortunately had the quarter page ad only a few pages away) run on a 24 volt DC system, pretty much standard stuff. They will operate normally with voltages as low as 16 volts but when the voltage drops below that the units default to what ever rudder and throttle position they last recieved. In Kobelt's defense the units can be manually overridden in in the engine room by the engineer who can recieve voice communication from the skipper (pretty much the way ships have been doing it since we first put engines in them(or for that matter even before that, the work was done in the rigging instead of the engine room)). Princesa's skipper just didn't happen to do that( I suspect that he had no one in the engine room). On Princesa the switch controlling the battery charger for that particular bank was in a broom closet. Yup, a broom closet. Have any of you out there every carelessly chucked a broom into a closet and not payed attention to any switches it may have flipped. I know I have. Pretty stupid design. Somewhere there is a Naval Achitect whose feelings are hurt by that statement. Tough. Any way the controls happened to have just enough voltage left to get away from the dock and get her pointed at Seaboard Venture. The investigating Coast Guard officer reported that this was the company's ninth incident in 18 months.

The other incident was a board a twin Z-drive Tug in Anchorage. Z-drives are an Incredibly cool innovation in the towboat industry. They provide a prop with however many thousands of horsepower behind it with the ability to swivel a full 360 degrees. You can put the power in what ever direction it is most needed( incidentally this issue also has a lenghty and informative article on deciding just that). The cold hard fact of Z-drives is that they have to be fly-by-wire. There really isn't any other way to do it. In this particular incident two wires came loose and the Stellar Wind backed into and destroyed an unoccupied catwalk in the harbor. No apparent harm done the vessel in fact the picture shows the wheelhouse virtually unscratched. The wires were terminated on the block with spade-type terminals. Very convenient terminals in that they can be slid in to place easily. However the reason that they are specifically Forbidden by the ABYC is that they can slip out almost as easily. They have since switched all of the terminals to much more sensible ring terminals. Had Stellar Wind not been designed to hit things hard and repeatedly there would have been much worse trouble from two little wires.

Yeah Right, where you gonna find a hundred of those?

well I think that more of us regular(not rich,morally bankrupt, or sucking on the tit of campaign fundraising) people should think about not just voting but actually running. all of the decisions seem to be made much earlier in the process. there is no decision to be made in nov. unless we all show up en masse and vote nader and his like into office. But even that is difficult because most of us have no options at all for House members or Senators.
the time to get involved is at the primary level. ignore the spin and vote for who you trust not who you think your favorite party(There used to be a band called ScrewRadio and my favorite tune from them was called "The Republicrats"I don't ever remember them being played on the radio but that probably wasn't the point) wants you to trust. We've been told to believe in this nonsense of a two party system. and here is the big news flash.

We don't need it!
it could make electing presidents a little more difficult, but we don't have a prime minister type system so having a genuine MULTI party system won't hurt us in the coalition government crap. In a congress with 15 or twenty parties a piece of legislation might have to stand on its own merit. I can imagine the synergy now. I don't really have a problem with a congress that gets virtually no laws passed. I'd like to see fewer laws passed and the ones that do go under more scrutiny. slice out the pork and stop tacking appropriations on to a piece of law for something completely unrelated.

The only hitch to all of this is that we would have to actively become involved with our government and this is the weak point in all schemes of a democratic nature. Maybe democracies need a period of fascim every fifty years or so to remind them of why we should vote.

In keeping with Keith's theme. I have a grumble about the folks at my health care provider(which is unfortunately blue cross of california). They are denying coverage to my infant son. They have done it to each of the older boys in a more or less similar fashion. On one of the older ones( i can't remember which) they covered my wife's hospital stay and denied the child's costs. They sent us a letter stating that we had not proprely informed them that we were going to have a baby. Eight pluss month's of prenatal care they covered and they need a friggin registered lett stating that we expect a baby? I swear they must make up crap like that as they go along and hope we buy into it so they don't have to pay.

This time I did send them the letter. So they covered the hospital costs and none of the doctor visit's, shots, and care since. Evil bastards. If I am going to get fucked with every time I'd almost rather just budget the money and pay it myself. except there is always the risk of something really bad happening. My wife doesn't get sick very often, but when she does it's usually at least 80K to get her back from the hospital and then the evil bastards know they have me.

For all the lies, exaggerations and propaganda about the canadian healthcare system, I can say this:

My uncle wrecked a Honda Goldwing just north of Barrie, Ontario on our way north for a camping/canoe trip. He is a Canadian citizen, and an Ontario resident. After leaving the hospital with a spiffy new titanium and teflon hip and quite a bit of other minor work and several weeks stay in the hospital he was presented with a bill.....

for his long distance phone calls.

I am not saying we have to model theirs exactly but I am quite positive our system isn't working.

My doctor has more people working for him trying to get paid for his services that he does providing services. That's just wrong.

My Insurance company spends much of it's time trying to trick me out of coverage that I have paid for. That's just wrong.

Keith's Insurance company has a person making decision's about Fiona's health that doesn't know the meaning of congenital. That's wrong and DANGEROUS.

What would it take to overpower the lobbying might of the insanely profitable insurance industry and get something that works. something short of armed resistance I am sure. I am thinking more along the lines of a hundred or so decent scrupulous honest congresspeople.

All this talk of tires on suv's has got me thinking about Sport Ute's and a question a friend of mine asked me.

"If you had to pick a vehicle to drive from Montreal to Rio what would it be?"

Immediately in my head I started building a very custom vehicle. He put a stop to that by saying it had to be a production vehicle. So I started thinking about it.

It sure as hell wasn't going to be a ford explorer. They are a fine car if you just can't bring yourself to drive a minivan and happen to live in a lake effect snow belt, and Never take it off-road. Like the rest of ford light trucks the frames just aren't strong enough(over 1 tons they are ok)

Blazer/Jimmy have ok frames but some other serious usability issues. So they are out. The full size versions are just too big. Don't even think about a suburban.

Likewise the Hummer.

Pathfinders suffer from the same things as the explorers. The Xterra has some promise and is very well designed, but needs a few more years in the field before I trust it.

I really like Isuzu troopers. The dealer network is really too sparse and when the break you could be stuck someplace for a long time.

A strong case could be made for the mitsu Montero being the world's toughest suv. They have the highest percentage finishers at Paris-Dakar for something like the last two decades. This, however, isn't a high speed run across thousands of miles of open deserts. It is a high speed run across thousands of miles of well paved interstates followed by thousands of miles of poor, unimproved, and awful roads through the jungle.

Range Rovers are just too posh. Too much overhead to run just to get someplace. The assorted no-frills Land Rovers? Well I just never got over the whole Lucas electric thing.(At a vintage car race I once saw a t-shirt that had on it "the real reason the English drink warm beer" with a picture of a Lucas fridge).

Dodge Dakotas. Snurfle giggle snort. At least they look cool.

Which leaves us with the Jeep Cherokee. Not the big one, the little one.

In '94 Jeep gave up on the vaccuum shifted axle, removing its last major weakness. You can get parts for it nearly anywhere in the world. Its road manners are nearly as good as a car. Its close quarters, rock crawling, hill climbing, and usable lowend power are second to no other vehicle. Its high speed, gravel road performance is fantastic.

If I had to drive it off the lot and go, I'd get the:

Two door
31.5 BF Goodrich TA/AT tires on steel wheels.
Full size spare w exteral carrier.
4.0 liter straight six.
5-speed manual.
Air-conditioning w/optional rear vent/console
Manual locks and windows
In dash cd player w/ weatherradio
skidplates
the 25 gallon gas tank
posi rearend.

that would be as good as it gets from the dealer. I have a further list of modifications I would make if I had a couple weeks to prep it. I'll post those if anyone shows any interest.

an interesting little tidbit. after I posted my interpretation of events at bellatlanticnowverizon, someone whose ip address reverse dns resolves out to be inside the bellatlantic firewall spent 15 minutes and 6 pageviews on my site. no cries for help from the union leadership yet though. show who is on top of their game though doesn't it.

On the plane out to San Jose sunday evening, I had the curious fortune to be on the plane with a bunch of Adobe geeks coming for the annual tech conference. and one very sorry Macromedia geek. Bad news folks. In the estimation of everyone (even the poor lost macromedia guy) on that plane the only sorrier more bug infested piece of crap any of them have ever come across than the current release of adobe golive is shockwave. They are embarrassed by it. but apparently powerless to do anything about it. I bet it's been a fun conference this week.

I don't know if any of you out there have noticed but there has a been a distinctive lack of pop up windows and banners on mysite the last month or so. They used to really piss me off, but I am a sole breadwinner for a family of five(and lately my darling wife has been nearly the sole care giver of a family of five) and I can't really justify the cost of a domain name and hosting for a vanity project like this. But the banners really irritated me.

REALLY irritated me

Irritated me like ford contours

For the last month or so I have been the combination canary/guinea pig for Blogphiles. I can honestly say that the canary is still breathing the guinea pig is not squealing, I have yet to be denied ftp access, the server has always been available to my few readers, and you just cant beat the price. A year can be settled up for the price of movies and popcorn.
If you are interested by all means visit the place and get on the list for when it goes live

I've decided not to post the piece about BellAtlanticNowVerizon that I wrote this weekend. Suffice it to say that I have been lied to quite enough and after five days of this finally have phone service again. As far as getting my DSL turned on? Don't hold your breath, I'm not. I'm not about to start my own lawsuit but I'd happily join a class action on the subject. I've got meticulous records if you're interested.

Instead, I thought I'd discuss for a few moments what is at the root of the troubles those evil bastards face. If you look at the front page of today's mcNewspaper you will discover that the CWA is striking for "wages, benefits, and working conditions". Well that is not exactly it. In fact it's not really even close.

First we need to look at some history. Let's go back a few decades. We have the US in a boom before the depression. Some people are making money hand over fist. The stock market is soaring, and it is the age of industrial giants. A very few men control most of the nations resources. The people who work for them have serf-like lives.

At this point in history labor unions are mostly guerrilla/terrorist organizations. "give us fair wages and livable working conditions or we'll take possession of your plant and keep you from earning money till you do". They actually had to be able to back it up with almost military tactics because what they were doing was illegal, and the mighty industrialist would sic the police, national guard, or worst of all the Pinkertons on them as soon the union made a move. It was all cloak and dagger and esprit de corps back then.

Over the ensuing years the Unions had some notable victories and traded some of their power for respectability, job security, and health care (unintentionally getting us into the hellacious mess healthcare is now). The had public corruption scandals, image issues, and outright malfeasance in recent years. The have made poor long term decisions for short term gain. They have looked after the needs of current and high seniority members while all but forsaking the prospective and low seniority members. The end result of all this is that the unions have put themselves in a position where they still have to battle the same evil bastards while facing low public support, declining membership, few prospects for growth, and all while staring at battered rusty ploughshares that used to be shining swords. Not a real good place to be.

Now to the current situation. BellAtlantic has just pulled some cute chicanery/merger and changed the whole damn company's name to what used to be the wireless division. Neat trick, and some people made a killing on the deal. As we all know, immediately following a merger companies do some nasty stuff to their employees. They fire as many redundant positions as they can. The ones they can't fire outright they transfer across the country or destroy their QWL, or whatever it takes to make them go away. This is pretty much routine and somewhere there is a textbook describing howto in much more detail.

Well the CWA has read the book too, and they know how it ends. What they want is some involvement in who gets bent over. What they also want is access to the jobs in the wireless and tech sections of the business. When the company renames itself after the nonunion part of the business, it is pretty much saying that is where the growth is and we are now formally in union-busting mode. Just as sure as sending Pinkerton's in with lead pipe and sawed off shotguns.

The CWA has the opportunity here to be the first union to really get the tech economy. It also has the opportunity to make the same stupid mistakes it has been and ensure the death of the union and ultimate triumph of the robber barons.

Let's all hope it goes the right way.

Oh and if you are a union leader who got the message but aren't sure what to do next, email or page me. Let's talk.

Some notes on roofing:

There are very good reasons for the rule in most modern building codes that allows no more than three roofs on a building.

Having the right tools makes incredibly unpleasant tasks merely unpleasant. For ripping five or more layer of roofing off a 180ish year old house here is a good start:

flat bars similar to the stanley Wonderbar

spade forks out of high grade steel w/ash shafts and a d-handle

magnetic sweeper with a long mop handle and some Serious magnets

high power ratio tinsnips(or airframe shears)

hat

sunscreen

water bottles with the pop tops that you can open with your teeth

non skid nail buckets

industrial push brooms

20oz straight claw hammers

worm drive circular saw

lots of sheets of plywood and assorted 2x4's to make slides and funnels to the dumpster

high quality cordless drills

file to keep forks and flatbars sharp

Whatever your high school history teacher told you about nails being precious in the early 1800's in rural america was a bald faced lie. Those bastards nailed those cedar shakes on half inch centers.

If any one out there has a use for 70 or so pounds of 180 year old square nails in startlingly good condition let me know.

Walk carefully on 180 year old roof planking.

Asphalt shingles lose a lot of strength in August heat and sun. Sometimes this is good sometimes not.

If it's hot enough to melt shingles, drink lots lots of water.

left my palm in the hotel today. was a little tired. had a really hateful post obout BellAltanticNowVerizon. I'll post that tomorrow. and a wonderful post about the joys of removing five plus layers of roofing from a 180 ish year old house. they'll come tomorrow. today I thank the folks that left me email and stuff.sorry I blew you off this weekend but not only didn't my DSL get turned on on thursday but in the process of attemping it the morons in charge actually managed to turn off my regular phone service. which still hasn't been turned on.

yup that's right my wife is at home with no phone and three boys. fortunately my uncle live a few houses down and my parents only a tiny bit further.

I n a few short hours I will go to my dreaded nemesis the SFO airport. I will board a very full plane where now inspite of the fact I have enough miles to get the unlimited free upgrades to first class I won't be getting into first class because the redeye out of SFO is so full every night of Novell guys going of the fix some damn mess that there are never any seats to upgrade into.

some notes on the process.

Am I the only one who giggles when I type NWA.com and get an airline website?

After congress raked them over the coals over the detroit fiasco Northwest has become a lot like Elise's mythical Dareya Air. they even have taken to distributing a little pamphlet that says something like "we don't promise to get you or your bags anywhere ontime or even in one piece, but we do promise to feed you or at least tell why we aren't giving you food, and If we do make the decision to feed you and your bags into the chipper with the squirrels we'll definitely notify you at least fifteen minutes in advance."

Will one of the morons who has been dumping money in tech companies left and right and thereby royally screwing the real estate market in northern california( i have a friend who lives in a chicken coop and pays nearly twice what I pay for a three bedroom place on over an acre in WNY) please throw a few million Billy's way?

I am going home for a few days and will be spending some quality time with my wife and kid's and putting a roof on my parents' place so I probably won't post much or at all till monday. Have a good weekend and fill my box up with email.

About two weeks ago I came to the conclusion that I wasn't brought out here to actually fix this project. I was brought out to scapegoat. A worthy and venerable position, scapegoat. However not one suited to my job skills and temperament.

So! You say, what exactly are your job skills? Slacker, you obviously have enough time on your hands to do this.

This I do in the spare time I would be sitting in the hotel by myself wishing I was home.

Back to the skills. What can I do that is really special.

I trouble shoot human systems. Nearly every system has weak points. I work on human ones. Your retail store/warehouse/ department/etc. not profitable? It is probably a human based problem. I'll tell you what it is and how to fix it. Give me the freedom and authority, I'll even fix it for you. The problem probably isn't what you think and I'll bet the solution isn't either. I've got a remarkable record and if you trust me you'll have happier, more productive employees, lower training costs(and more training), less turnover, and most importantly, a fatter bottomline.

Now how do you put all that on a resumé when the the stockholders cannot be allowed to know projects you work on are even necessary let alone successful. I think this is why spooks so seldom retire from the CIA or NSA.

All that aside, I have other skills that may prove to be marketable, but they are also difficult to put on a resumé or they are things I would be morally incapable of. For instance I have the skill set to be a world class contract killer, but I lack the emotional and moral makeup requisite for the job. And just how do you put on your resumé that you can nurse about any kind of sorry, neglected heap of machinery far past its intrinsic limits in really poor conditions. If your life depended on driving a '71 monte carlo, firing on five cylinders, and riding on bald tires through a snowy mountain pass while people took potshots at you with large caliber rifles, I'd be the guy you'd want at the wheel. But how would you know? And would I want to? How do you put on a resumé that when in possession of a clear and barely attainable goal I can get other bright people on the bus with me and ask them to follow the path with cult-like fervor. Where's the checkbox box for that on the application?

Instead I have:

Special Projects Manager
present to two years ago

Regional Inventory Manager two to three years ago

Manager/Store Liaison three to four years ago

Store Manager four to six years ago.

"Ya load fifteen tons and whadda ya get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
St. Peter don'tcha call me cuz I can't go.
I owe my soul to the company store!"
I can't remember the songwriter. I learned the song many moons ago when my father got us a scholarship to the UAW's Walter and May Reuther Family Education Center. Great People there, even better library. Histories of unions and guilds. And the collection of folk music. Oh the collection! Makes you wonder how they got so corrupt and irrelevant.

in fact I particularly love the candidate analysis. This is what I've been saying all along presented in a nice neat but tongue fully in cheek checklist. Neither one is a viable choice. but they have sucked in all the money to run and advertise. And look at the sorry ass nazi the reform party has served up for us. And even though I am going to throw away my vote on Ralphie, he's not going to be elected.

As humans what have we learned by experimentation this century? Communism doesn't work(people starve and get sent to camps and get corrupt). Fascism doesn't work(people starve and get sent to camps and get corrupt). Free for all go for the jugular capitalism doesn't work(remember the 80's). Managed capitalism works great for the richest people(but has mediocre at best and deadly at worst results for the other 99+% percent of humans on the planet.)

What other thing might we try. Here's a couple ideas.

Twice a year we all get to vote on the two most corrupt congresspeople. No electoral college no filter just straight public vote. They are then taken to the middle of the Mall and Shot on public television(after the kids bedtime please!)

Before you are allowed to hold public office you must work at least four years in some hard physical labor public service. (think Habitat or the thirties work camps) we might even get our interstates back in shape

A constitutional monarchy with a once a year vote of confidence. failure same as for the corrupt congresspeople.

I am sure other people out there have ideas feel free to Email

I apologize for the bloodthirsty nature of todays post. For rather obvious reasons, I get crabby when I am away from home for too long.

today's politics link. get this Jello is performing in sync to the bush coronation. zowee maybe I was on the right track after all.

I can honestly say that I never wished I lived in New Jersey before. This makes me think about it at least a little. I particularly like the reference to the Black Rhinoceros party at the beginning of the page. (that will have to be a whole post later I searched for a good link to put in here but could not find anything but an article which you have to wade thruogh about a dozen other stories to get to a storie about the RCMP 'fessing up to spying on and harrassing the members of the party back in the Heyday.) I'd vote for Dinizio. His thoughts on the the issues are well reasoned and honest. Most importantly he has a backbone. He will certainly not be elected. but I'd vote for him. But then I'd vote for Jel-o Biafra. I'd have to think long and hard about Henry Rollins though. I'm not a big fan of that much jockishness.

I got this little tidbit on the crappy newsfeed on my pager last week while at lunch with some of my coworkers. At the time I said that I thought it was a good idea. I think we need politicians who will say what they think. and show a little unpopular opinion if it is the right thing to do. I can see it now.

"Mr. Dinizio, As the lead singer of a punk band in the 80's, did you ever participate in recreational drug use?"

"Fuck You. Next question please?"

"Mr. Dinizio, we'd like to know your opinion of campaign finance reform."

"Well what we have done up till now has sucked Great Big Hairy Syphillitic Moose Cock. However I have a plan which should remove most of the corruption and vote-buying that big-ass corporations like GM and GE use to get the laws they want passed."

"Errr well then... Mr.... umm Biafra, as the vice presidential running mate is there anything you hope to achieve in office?"

"Yes, I'd like to see mandatory Drug Use training for police and tolerance classes for police administrators. I'm tired of watching people getting their ass beat for mouthing off to the pigs."

" Umm yes well thank you folks for that fresh and interesting outlook. We'll see you in November"

It's not that I feel the need to have swearing in public ok for politicians. It is just that I would like to see more of them actually doing what they believe instead of sucking the money of large corporations in exchange for corporate welfare. And once in awhile they need to be able to say "fuck you that's none of your business".

I had thought of running for office a couple year ago my in my hometown not affiliated with any party. I let my Dad and friends talk me out of it. You see in a town populated by over thirty five thousand people only about 800-1000 to a thousand actually bother to show up for the election. I was pretty sure I could mobilize enough freaks and wackos to get me in. I was confident of my ability to do a honest and good job that I could stay in. Now I am thinking a little more seriously about it. When I get back home I need to visit the board of elections. I've got a little less than sevenyears till I am old enough to run for President according to the copy of the constitution I keep in the palm. and less than two till I am old enough to run for senate. hmmm food for thought. Does anyone know how much it costs to enter a senate race? not the advertising and whatnot, just the paperwork. The advertising would have to be free and the staff even more so. I am not exactly flush with cash and I am not about to be taking much in the line of donations.

thanks to Elise for the Dinizio link.

But, the Leatherman that has sat comfortable in my port bow (left front) pocket is starting to get a little bit nervous.

One small note it turns out that spyderco has a web site. I've updated previous post(s) to reflect this. The hitch to the deal? I can't find the left handed mariner available on the site. damn. I carried one of those for a long time. There was hardly a day it didn't get used. Now there is hardly a day that it isn't sorely missed.

If you have never owned a spyderco it can be hard to describe just how much you notice the absence of one. They sit comfortably in your pocket, clipped in place so your hand always knows exactly where to find it. no thought necessary. It is just there. My mariner had the clip mounted in a manner so as to make sit in my port stern (left rear) pocket just perfectly. It could be out in fractions of a second ready to slice anything that was refusing to cooperate (fedex paks, parachute cord, fishing line, even those annoying but necessary pieces of plastic around the top of a snapple Iced Tea). The mariner has a sensible sheepsfoot shaped blade so it was hard for me to accidentally harm myself or others around me. The blade is, however, around four inches long and serrated the entire length with the patented SpyderEdge.

Because of my comfort and the relative safety of the knife in my hands I often forgot how disturbing the sight of such a thing could be to those unfamiliar with them. Tom has an interesting story to tell about me me doing this very thing in a place that turned out to be a very inappropriate place for a knife of any sort let alone one like that. I don't have much call for a knife while I am here working in the veal fattening pens( I think the term that use here is cubicle), but I still miss it every time I get the mail.

Ok boys and girls Switch to full on Geek Mode now. Somebody just did a bunch of work I've been thinking about doing. This is good news because it makes it a lot easier for me to build this thing that has been living in my head for a while.

What they did is write a set of python classes for garmin GPS units. Wooo Hooo. They did it to be able to upload and download their waypoints to their linux computer. What they haven't done is get NMEA working but that is going to be a lot easier now.

Here is my vision of the thing I want to build:

in a mini AT case(or something even smaller) A big harddrive that is easily removable with an ok processor, a killer sound card, a video card with ntsc output for this screen.
power it all with a nice inverter

run a stripped linux on it. no unnecessary drivers or daemons just a kernel and some libraries. Maybe an x-server. mount the hd as read only. use a version of mp3 player like his. pack the hard drive with mp3's ( 20 gigs is a lott of music. nearly every cd I own.)
And this is the cool part. get some good cartography software and use it with the Garmin TracPak screwed right to the trunk lid of my car. I'd never have to be pissed about forgetting the CD I wanted to hear right now and I'd never have to get lost in some sorry industrial wasteland like cleveland again.

Am I the only one who think this might be cool?
hope not

I just repaired the archive link. apologies to the the literally 1 or 2 of you this may have inconvenienced.:-) It was a result of me being careless when I moved here to be the guinea pig/canary. the canary is still breathing. the pig isn't squealing. I'd highly recommend the place.

I have said this before and I still think it applies

We are the sum of stories we believe about ourselves.

Or at the very least our Self Image is. Who we are is VERY strongly determined by our self image. Having your self image out of whack can cause some unpleasant things. Things like anorexia, compulsive needs to shop for shoes/toasters/new wardrobe/etcetera, depression, addiction to various things, you name it.

The stories you believe about yourself can be affected by the people around you. When you are with people who believe good stories about you, it is very easy to believe good stories about yourself. Unfortunately, the same is true when we are with people who believe bad, nasty, unproductive, or ambivalent stories about us.

You could even experience difficulty from having an older sister who still see you as her sweet, bumbling, little brother who couldn't get a date to the prom. For her, it would be a fond memory. For you, it could contaminate your set of stories and cause you to be unable to make good decisions about potential lovers.

A further unfortunate thing is that we don't always have the ability to simply avoid the people whose story set could harm ours. We might not even consciously know who they are. Family, coworkers, friends. Any of then could contaminate us with good stories or bad stories. The good stories let's not worry about. They shouldn't hurt anyone. Instead let's focus on a tool to defend ourselves from both other people's stories and our own(sometimes we do do things that make for bad stories)

Looking back at each time in my adult life that things have really started to get fucked up and out of control, I see the coincidence of me not writing, not hanging out with friends passing time. Not Telling Stories.

There is an extrapolation of a huna principle called repatterning. It works like this:

you slam you finger in a door. You mangle it. Badly. You look at it. In your mind you back up a few minutes and the slam the door again, this time without your finger in it. Then do it a bunch more times. The finger will heal very quickly and may even heal instantly(rare, but it happens).

The technique uses your Lono (the thinking part of your self) to trick your Ku(the physical part of yourself) into thinking that it never happened so the Ku's image of it self hastens to match the Lono's image. I don't claim that this is a cake walk but it is doable with a good amount of self-awareness and discipline. I tell you this as someone who has walked through fire pits unscathed. I don't think I could walk through one where I am in my life right now, but I could get back there if I needed to.

I believe that we can use the same tool the get our Lono to to trick itself. By telling stories about ourselves to ourselves when someone one harms (unintentionally or not) our self image we can undo the damage or at least hasten the repair of damage. So here is my advice:

Tell stories !

About ourselves, about people we care about, about our cars, about our boats, about completely Imaginary things. (my oldest boy has an incredible array imaginary friends and he uses them to great success in this. Tink is his troublemaker, Deezhy-Dazhah(a black dragon that breathes fire AND ice and has Strong Magic) is his protector.)

The important thing is for the stories to reflect things you want to be, or parts of yourself you want to change. This way we become in control of our Selves. And our strengths, weaknesses, and assorted neuroses.

This morning I actually spent a little time reading the free McNewspaper that the hotel provides me. There was an article about Marshall Mathers aka Eminem aka Slim Shady. The usual uproar about his hate filled lyrics and violent themes. Yada yada bla bla bla.

I'm sick of it. Sick of the bitching. Sick of the talk of censorship. Sick of the self-righteous rantings of people who pretend to be above hate. The country we live in guarantees us the right to free speech. The current Supreme Court interpretation includes art as a form of speech. I have no desire for that to be changed. It could restrict what I write here. Or worse, restrict the writing I try to sell. If you don't like try moving to another country where they don't have that freedom(like Canada where even Dr. Laura is restricted as hate speech)

The thing that has to be remembered about this guy is that he is doing satire. Yup, satire. Just like H.L. Mencken, or Gary Trudeau, or Hunter S. Thompson. I have to be honest with ya here I do find him at least as funny as HST. Sometimes even funnier.

If you look at the "hate lyrics" a little closer you find that he hates nearly everyone on a more or less equal footing. Gays, straights, women, men, his wife, himself, even Dr. Dre, the guy who fronted the cash for him to make this a career. He hates them all.

Having some experience with walking the Earth filled with hate, I can say with some authority that it is not a healthy lifestyle choice. Neither is smoking cigarettes, and I have friends who do that. Smoking isn't funny. Ever.

Sometimes Eminem is.

Let's just leave it at that.

For anyone who cares,
my caroscope

Driving to Ciao! Bella! I followed the most amazing truck. It was a 3/4 ton Dodge with the big diesel. The only way it would be possible to be more macho would be a Hummer with the snorkel kit.

Now here is the kicker. The tailgate was totally covered with bumperstickers. 1 I heart cops, 1 jesus was a hippie, and 22 of the vaguely pro-lesbian humorous variety. These ranged from "Boys Lie" to (my favorite) "Mom, sorry I missed church, I was busy practicing witchcraft and becoming a Lesbian".

If it wasn't 3216 miles from my wife and kids I'd love this town.

This week's underlying theme has been girls from my high school. More specifically girls from high school who wouldn't date me. To be fair though, with only two exceptions, that describes pretty much all of them.

It all started at the airport. 0200 at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport, my friend Brian was there to meet me. Brian, whose brilliant, beautiful, and currently far away girlfriend lives and works in Honolulu, cuts short his conversation to greet me. Knowing the ins and outs of maintaining a relationship over long distance( and that's really the on the deal on thelong distance thing. Not much growth or development, but plenty of maintenance) I send him off to reestablish contact and proceed over to where the luggage will be unpacked at a positively glacial pace because all but one baggage handler was sent home at 0015 when the airport closed.

There stood Tara Richards as beautiful the day I met her in the ninth grade( this time however without the skinned knee and black eye( apparently due to a softball incident but I noticed that the other girls treated her with a level of respect that may have been mixed with fear so I to this day believe that the story was some type of secret all girl cover up)). I had always had a little bit of a crush on her. She had always been civil to me, and occasionally even talked to me like I was a worthwhile human being. Now here she was eleven years later standing in front of me, greeting me warmly and talking about the time in between.

So friendly in fact that the boyfriend that she is here to pick up starts giving me the eye. I briefly wonder whether the jealousy is self inflicted (he is a cheating bastard and assumes everyone else is), mutually inflicted(the relationship just isn't that stable and he doesn't feel that confident in his position), or her-inflicted( she's cheating and he allows himself to be a victim). There is a part of me that wants to toy with the guy, leave him in a quivering state of jealous rage. That's the part of me that still has trouble dealing with the misery that was high school.

Instead I changed the subject to my wife and immediately copped a beta-male posture and countenance. I'm turning into a nice guy, I really am.

Then after the burial fiasco I took my eldest boy to his karate class. I sat near to yet another girl I had a crush on in high school watching her daughter in the same class. She wasn't nice to me when I finally worked up the courage to talk to her back then. This time I couldn't remember her name, not that it mattered. She spent the entire class avoiding eye contact of any sort.

She did still look good. However,( and this is the kind of thing that brings joy to my petty and small minded heart) she did not look as good as my wife does and my wife has had three times as many children.

Then the crowning point of my trial by former fellow high school classmates. My wife is invited to a tupperware party. A tupperware party with one of the most popular girls in school and one of the smartest(she beat me at chess, but date me, not on your life). I had to resist the temptation to beg my wife to spend the evening bragging(and probably lying) about what a perfect husband I am. Still I hope she made some subtle mention of me. I wanted them to see not only that I have this beautiful, wonderful wife/mother of my three perfect boys but also that she enjoys being married to me. Petty, definitely, but I didn't beg, I didn't even mention it. I know my wife loves me and is proud of me, and if she felt like telling them about it she would and if not she wouldn't. The fact that she feels that way is enough for me.

My Uncle Noel Died last week.
In the comedy of errors that is my family's frequent blight, it was decided to have the funeral out in Massachusetts and then move the body back home to Lockport and interr him in the family plot. This was accomplished by the lovely young Nancy, a girl about my age who was Noel's neighbor for ten years, and also happenned to be a mortician.

My uncle Noel was a Marine. It was impossible to know him for more than five minutes and not know this. He became a Marine in 1942 in the South Pacific. It was a hard time and place to be a Marine, but the ones who survived that time were Marines at a level that may not be achievable anymore. He never felt particularly like a hero for the things he did, he was just a Marine, and he did what Marines are supposed to do.

The USMC provided an honor guard at the burial. I am pretty sure these weren't real Marines. Their dress pants had visible wrinkles. There were only 5 with guns so Noel got a fifteen gun salute. The worst thing was the flag. They didn't fold it tight enough to tuck it properly. They undid and refolded it twice and finally resorted to folding the end into a point and jamming it in.

I make a big deal of this because this type of flubbing around was the sort of thing my uncle taught me to associate with squids or regular army (he never spoke ill of the air force,they provided close air support). In matters of ritual the Marines were always superior. In my admittedly limited experience I have found this to be true. I am doubly disappointed because I know that it would have mattered to Noel. Like a great Viking being buried in a common grave instead of being burned in his funeral ship these things matter to warriors.