New Look

Hadn't been by in quit a while and they gave me new toys to play with so I desided to play and see if I like this style better.

I Try To Help The Economy, And What Happens?

I have been living the life of a monk for a number of months. I've (kinda) kept up with my bills...damn, when you get to my age, months roll by in what seems like days. I go to work and go home. Grocery shopping every couple of weeks. That's about it.

Over the months, I was able to save up a pretty good chunk of cash sitting in my checking account...so I decided to splurge on myself.

I bought a big screen TV (before Kalifornia could make them illegal), a blue ray player, plus some blue ray discs to play on them.

I decided that I needed new clothes, so I bought 3 pairs of pants, 6 new shirts, lotsa socks and underwear, pajamas, a belt, and new hat.

And a couple of other fun things.

Tonight I stopped on the way home from work to put gas in my truck...no problem. Walked into the mart to get a carton of cigs, and my card was declined...BIG PROBLEM!!! Didn't have enough cash (remember cash?) to buy a carton, so I blew it off. Went across the street to my liquor store to pick up some beers, declined again. I did have enough cash for the beer, but now I was a bit miffed. I knew I had more than enough in the bank, so the paranoids start to set in...the IRS is after me for something...someone has gotten my card number and...wait a minute...I've gone from normal spending of about $1K per month (mortgage not included) to spending close to 2.5K in about a week and a half...wonder if that could be the problem.

Went online when I got home, and confirmed that there was ample cash in my account, so I called the "Help line" and I have to admit, they were helpful! Inside of 10 minutes, my card was unblocked, so life can return to normal tomorrow...even though I'll have to get up 15 minutes earlier to buy cigs on the way into work in the morning.

I tried to help pull us out of this Depression, well, no good deed goes unpunished.

Is This A Surpirise???

I took a "test" today on "The Best Political Quiz" site. I gotta say, I was stunned by the result!

Where There Is A Will....

There is a way.

I'm Baaack!!

All is well in my little piece of the world, I just took a break from blogging. The last month has been routine, but interesting.

I can now talk with my son over in Korea over the internet. The time difference is a bitch, but when I work graveyard it's something to do during that 1 to 3 AM lull. If I'm home, and up, we can use the webcams, though the video delay can be a little disconcerting if you pay too close attention.

It's good to be able to see and talk to him again.

My wife came through town a few weeks ago for a couple of days before heading back to Montana. It was good to see her again, but she's better off up there and I ain't going to live anyplace that has temperatures in the single digits. Not to mention there really isn't a thriving oil industry there.

Had to put my poor 19 year old cat "Belly" down. (I didn't name him) Cancer got him. Even though most of the time it was like we were two roosters in the same hen house, I miss the bastard.

Got another dog. A Pit/Lab mix. Sweet as hell, but she's 1 1/2 years old and full of energy. Shannon was loved by the family I got her from, but her training was a bit on the harsh side so she still cowers if I speak loudly to her. She'll fit in as she gets more comfortable. She's smart enough. Ralph, my other dog, was able to teach her the dog door in one day (Thank the gods)

Here is the best pic I've got of Shannon. If I crouch down to try to snap a shot, she's in my lap and all I get is a close-up of a dog nose. Got plenty of those.



Finally, Here's a pic of the mountains over my little valley from my drive home from freezing my butt of at work last night. 35 degrees at 3AM and for a SoCal boy that's more cold than I like.



That's how I like my snow...UP THERE. It's pretty to look at, but getting up and going out to dig my truck out before going to work...I'll pass.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

I haven't been posting lately because, even after my insisting I was going to get in the spirit of the season, it still took a couple of days to get out of my normal Grinch mood...I finally did. Just in time for a minor medical problem to crop up, which being a man, I ignored and denied until it became a big minor problem.

I got to visit our excellent local ER (Verdugo Hills Hospital) yesterday morning because I was in intense muscle quaking pain when I stood, sat, walked or lay down, and you should have seen me when I even contemplated transitioning from one phase to the other.

All is okay now, just semi-infrequent minor pains to remind me of what happens with putting off until tomorrow would be best handled today.

As to Christmas, I hope you have all enjoyed a great day with family and friends. I was hoping that Santa would have dropped off a nice shiny new conceal carry piece, but...maybe next year.

In that vein (and the spirit of the season) I'll give you this video (which, of course they won't let me embed):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TC2xTCb_GU

Is It Still 2009?

Where the hell did I go?

I said I'd be gone for a few days ...18 days ago.

Had a great time in Phoenix. My friend is not a political junkie like me, so we didn't discuss much politics, and the few things I brought up, we agreed on, which made for short conversations on those subjects.

ME: "Congress is screwing this country royal!"

Friend: "Yep."

ME: "Yep. Need another beer?"

When I got home, I still had five days off and I was in a good mood, so I avoided the news and just skimmed blogs for the next week.

Back to work was night shift...long, boring and cold, then 4 days off and the depression of being alone for Thanksgiving set in. My Mom and brother in Oregon, the wife in Montana and my boy in Korea. There was something good to lift my spirit, my neighbor made me a nice pumpkin pie, which I scarfed in one sitting. (Thank you Alexa!!)

Chris did actually call me on Thanksgiving, the first time I've heard his voice since he left, but I was paranoid of how much it cost him to call, so I kind of cut him short. He wants to come home for a friends wedding in May, and even though I'll probably only get to see him a few hours, I want him to have the cash to make the trip.

I'm getting no joy from football (again) this year. My Raiders...suck, ASU...sucks, any team I decided to root for, just to pick a side, they choose that game to play their worst.

This imbecility out of (surprise) Joy Behar,s mouth got me wound up:



While Whoopi was funny, I couldn't believe that none of them (at least in this clip, and NO! I don't watch The View) really didn't understand that this weekend, the "start" of the Christmas shopping insanity, is the point where stores start to make their profit...going from Red ink (loss) to black ink (profit).

The fact that Behar didn't know what it meant and "ASSUMED" it had some deep racial connotation to it just shows this woman knows nothing about bookkeeping or economics.

Damn near 11 months of running a store and you only make profit on that last month of the year. Working around the Christmas holiday and having to open up your business at 4AM to draw in that extra sale to make the rest of the year worth while.

I just wish the damn liberals could grasp the fact that "Black" can mean something other than a racial pejorative. Most of the time "black" is just a color.

10,000 Hits

I finally hit a milestone! Last night at about 11:45 PM I got my 10,000th hit. It took a while (3 years 10 months), but I made it. This will be my 537th post, so I average one about every two days. I'd like to do better, but I doubt that's going to happen. Actually I'm surprised I've kept it up this regularly, this long.

Thanks to all of you that drop by, even the pervs looking for 16 year old Mexican virgins (about 85% of my hits).

Station Fire

As I approached home today, my little valley smelled like a doused campfire and looked like it too. Thick with a wet cloying miasma. I felt like a fish being smoked.

My boy was ragging on me about not posting pictures of "the biggest fire to hit La Crescenta" and he wanted to see. I had the camera in the car with me last night, so I figured I would drive around "upper" La Crescenta and take some shots of how close the fire got to the homes.

THE MAN wouldn't let me!!!

If you don't have ID saying you can be there, you can't cross Santa Carlotta Rd. The Sheriff's were polite, but I couldn't get close to the burn areas.

I've lived here for over fifty years and this is the first time I've seen the San Gabriel Mountains burn on their front face. Two days ago it was scary. My house down at the bottom of the valley was safe, but I know a lot of people living up close to where the flames were and I really feared they would lose their homes.

If this had sprung up a month from now, when the Santa Ana winds (pronounced Santana) kick in, it would have really been hell on earth.

I did get a couple of pics before the cops chased me home:\





The mountains you can't see are huge (not speed bumps like the Appalachian "Mountains").

The wind is calm today so maybe the fire crews can gain more ground on this today.

I'm off for the next seven days, so if I can sneak up close, I'll try to get more pictures.

16 Year Old Mexican Indian Virgin Girls

HA!!! Caught you again!

This is an internet ritual for me that goes back two years.

It started with this: 14 year old Mexican indian virgin girls

Continued to this: 15 Year Old Mexican Indian Virgins

I'll tell you, they are still the largest entry page. At least 5 to 1.

For your patience, I'll give you some music.

Videos are non-existent for these two movies that were complete surprises when I first saw them.

"Phantom of the Paradise" was an extra, we went to see something else, but they stuck this movie in first. It was a combination of Faust and Phantom of the Opera with a rock sound track.

This is Jessica Harper doing two raw takes of "Special To Me".

Great voice!

You'll have to go to the link because there is no embed and seeing her sing is way better that looking at an album cover.

Phantom of the Paradise - Special To Me - Jessica Harper

This one is not really a video, just the album cover, but I love this song (and the movie), I was on the slow side of learning about this movie, but as much as I got sucked into this movie (I probably went 20-25 times), I never dressed up or went up on stage.

Whoops

Missed one day of blogging because I was just too tired after work.

Missed the next day because I screwed up on paying the damn cable bill, they shut down my internet and was too tired to deal with it after work.

Today is a Friday for me, so I figured I'd deal with it. Igot caught up on the bill and while getting my internet connection back running, I got to talk to a very nice tech guy. My computer is over 7 years old and showing it's age...it's slooowwww. While waiting for my computer to reboot and get the browser going we had a lot of time to chat. Being he had asked me what state I was from at the beginning of our conversation, I asked where he was. He was in Panama.

He was pleasant, polite, knowledgeable, very patient and spoke English with only a hint of accent. I had to go though this same scenario about a year ago and it was not a pleasant experience. That tech was nice enough, but couldn't speak English worth a damn. On top of going through internet withdrawal syndrome and being PO'd at myself for missing the damn bill, I was dealing with a guy that couldn't explain how to correct the problem.

Either Charter is hiring better people, or I just had the luck of a bad draw last time. I just can't trust cable companies since my experience back in '85 when
Sammons Cable insisted I owed them $300 and I showed them all the bills that said that actually they owed me $75 credit. They threatened to sue me, ...then went out of business...I still have their converter box that they insisted I bring into their office sitting in my garage.

And The Winner Is...

LC Forger from the Rott.

Yesterday I did a shout out here and on a open thread at AIR for anyone who could figure out what kind of plane was in a picture given to my kid.

Turned out to be a B-19, the forerunner to all long range heavy bombers. Only one was built and it was scrapped in June of 1949.

Some more pics and a quick history of the plane here.

And a more detailed history here.

Thanks to all for playing!

Looking For Some Help

All you military buffs that drop by here, I could use some assistance.

My son has always been in love with military stuff, particularly aircraft. He can name just about any plane flown by this U.S....but this one.

The picture was given to him by a friend that found it in a relatives garage for a welcome home present. We know it's a bomber, a big bomber, but that's about all.

It's a big photo, so I had to chop it into two pieces to scan it (No!, I didn't cut it up.)

First the main fuselage:



And the tail section:



If you click on the pictures, they should biggify.

Thanks in advance for any info.

This and That

Haven't been around here much lately. Work has been moderately busy. We finally have all the wells running that we can at this time, but the "automated" controls still aren't working, so it keeps you moving, monitoring tank levels and gas pressures.

Politics just give me a headache these days. I watch what's is happening and sense where it's going...and I don't like it!

I finally found the damn cable for the camera to download the pics I took when I went out to see Chris. Of course I found it after I went out and bought a new one. The old one was right in front of me ("If it was a snake....", Oh G-d, I'm channeling my mother!). I'm not much of one for taking pictures, but for posterity, here are the ones worth posting.

This is the barrack that Chris was in at Ft. Benning:



He only wore his Class A's on "Family Day" which was the first time I got to see him after 3 months and he had a few dozen things he wanted to do on his first day of freedom. I didn't think about a picture until it was time to take him back to base, so it was dark and rushed, but I did remember, because he wouldn't put them on again to get another pic.



The next are of his graduation at the National Infantry Museum which opens June 19th. His was the first class to hold the ceremony there...in the rain...and with two platoons graduating at the same time.

The museum from afar:



Closer:

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The "Follow Me" statue now located in the main entrance to the museum:



Chris is last one in the right column in this one. Notice that our rough and tough soldiers are standing under cover while the families are stuck out in the rain. I looked like a drowned rat when the ceremony was done...and those 25 minutes were the only time it rained all day.



That night, after signing a form promising not to damage gov't property and delivering it to a certain location by a certain time, they let me have my son for 24 hours. We spent the day in Columbus so Chris could spend more of that fat paycheck from Uncle Sam that he couldn't touch for 10 weeks. Stayed one more night in that wonderful city and I got a chance to see my kid once more as I remembered him:



Drove down to Ft. Rucker the next morning and I managed to deliver him undamaged and on time. This is the last time I saw him when I dropped him off at his Company HQ:

Music Day

I'm just going through getting everything done to leave SoCal for Georgia on Tuesday.

I'm doing laundry and trying to straighten the house up a bit before I go. That's a put on the radio and crank it time. These are just a few songs that went by and I thought I'd pass on to you. I like them, but I may not know what the message is, I just like the music as it goes by.

Sometime Around Midnight - The Airborne Toxic Event



Incubus - Love Hurts



Rise Against - Prayer Of The Refugee



Foo Fighters - The Pretender



No messages here, just music I turn up when it comes on.

If It's Friday...

It's raining and this storm pushed some nasty stuff in front of it coming in. It could be a cold that's got me, but it came on in minutes. I had been up for hours, feeling fine, drove to work and about 30 minutes before the rain hit, my sinuses were maxed out.

I'm not posting because the sheer magnitude of ineptness of the new administration just has me reeling. I can't beleive that someone elected President could be so clueless. Obambi can't find a single person for his cabinet, outside of the Republicans he selected, that doesn't have a tax problem.

Our patriotic duty to pay our fair share...yeah, right!

And this "Stimulus Bill"! Obambi thought he could just trust Pelosi to write it without administrative guidelines? 40 years of pent up socialism all rolled up in a bill that is suppose to get the economy under control? Nothing like telling people to work hard so we can tax the hell out you once everything is back to normal. Makes me want to work harder.

Right now I'm just sitting back and smiling at the silence of my lib friends and co-workers who are now realizing what they voted for.

I got a jones on for classical music today and just happened to run across this:

"Guitar: Impossible"

Just Fun Today

Work is good. I'm on graveyard shift (which I like), and I've just missed the rains that are passing through. Nothing on TV at night so lots of cruising the net and reading between rounds, which are every 20 minutes right now due to trying to sell natural gas and having to manually operate a valve to keep the pressure and flow right. No biggy, it's something to do.

A couple of thing I ran across:

Why engineers have dogs



Just a song that was hanging in my head this morning

Incubus - Love Hurts



Think I'll go buzz the ATM. I'm going to start pulling cash out to shove in an envelope for my trip to Georgia for Chris' graduation from Boot. If I don't start setting the money aside in small chunks now, I'll spend it somewhere else and come March I'll be scrambling.

Pet Peeves and Helping A Friend

The Imperial Tech Wizard over at the Rott is setting up the site for the new year and is running a test on the server. He's asking us to post as much as we can to test the server so glitches show up now rather than when we need it. I've been trying to swing by and post something when I get the chance and I got this little rant and decided to save it for proserity

LC cmblake6 sez:

$1.499 Here on base!

Round here we call that $1.50. :em93:

That is one thing about the oil industry I can’t stand. People drive by and go “Oh, it’s $1.49″,. NO! it’s not. I know it’s just a penny, but with a 30 gallon tank, those pennies add up over a year.

Now that I’m on a pet peeve rant…I hate digital time too. I don’t really care if it’s 9:48 PM. It’s 10 minutes to 10, or 9:50. Hell, “it’s coming up on 10 o’clock is close enough. :em12:

And people who are late really fry my bacon. :em96: Going back to the digital time thing, if you are managing your time that closely that minutes or seconds are important, you’re probably going to be late. The guy hitting the office door at 30 seconds before shift change is an inconsiderate a**hole. The guy being relieved has to stay longer to give the shift report. I shoot for twenty minutes before being someplace, then if traffic is bad I’m 15 minutes early, if traffic sucks, I’m there 10 minutes early. If it’s a fast report, the guy I relieve is free to go…early. I’m not going to hold him there until the second hand sweeps twelve. I have one guy that relieves me, and I’m lucky to get out 25 minutes after my shift should be over. The fact that he keeps interrupting with useless crap of what he would do if he were the owner makes what should be a 10 minute discussion into 30 minutes. :em98: Heard it before and would probably do the same myself…IF!!! I were the owner.

I drive by two of the four entrances to Dodger Stadium on my commute and in 5 years, I’ve only been late twice (less than 5 minutes).

OK…I feel better. :em95:

I tried to include all kinds of things in this post. Links, bold, the quote button, smiley things.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! to all.
---------------------------------
The bolding and links and I went back and blockquoted and the smiley's (those :em?: things) didn't cross, but what the hell.

The last line was sincere.

Merry Christmas!!! We've actually got SoCal snow tonight...it's raining. ;)

11 Days

I suck at this blogging thing.

Part of it is the season. I get depressed this time of year.

Everyone gets all caught up in the "Xmas Spirit", but seem to forget what that happy feeling is suppose to be about. The getting together, the gifts, the sparkly lights are meant as a day to reflect on one thing, the birth of Jesus.

If the actual date we celebrate is off, I don't care!! We stole the date from the Druids, but like April Fool's Day, them guys thought the year started on the 1st of April (ha ha, you...fools).

I work next to the wholesale district in downtown L.A.(What do you want? Clothes electronics, jewelry, mannequins? They're on sale, buy now!!). The traffic was unbelievable. Horns honking, sirens whizzing by, a lot of stress going on that has nothing to do with the real point.

I'll pull out of my funk. It usually works out that the closer to the 25th we get, the more the other crap falls away. So after putting a dent into your good mood I offer this:

May you, your family and friends, have a very heartfelt Merry Christmas

Housecleaning

Just goofing today.

Did some housecleaning on this site. Had some things that were driving me crazy, so I figured out how to fix them. Nothing anyone is going notice but me, but every time I ran into these little glitches I'd just get a little angrier about not catching them before it got stuck in here.

I wanted to customize my header with a Pic...Text...Pic, but it got to complicated for me to work on today.

I've added a poll to the sidebar. I'll update when I feel like it.

Four and a half weeks until the damn election. I know how I want to vote, I could just go absentee, but that wouldn't shut up the talking heads on TV. I can't get away from it.

I have listened to the debates and will try to catch the last two, but that will be just to see if either of our esteemed Presidential nominees manages to screw up bad enough to flush his chance (I can hope can't I...leave me something to live for!).

I'm wondering that if McCain loses, if Palin will be around in 2012. A combo of Palin and Jindal might not be a bad ticket. Even if McCain wins Palin/Jindal '12 wouldn't be bad.



Future President of the United States.

F*ck Yeah!!!

(Sorry I caught part of Team America last night.)