Crazy…….

We got on the subject of crazy today. Who is, who we think might be crazy, those that are certifiable and then just general crazy.

Beautiful women always have a great big box of crazy, that they use as occasion demands. If they don’t get their way for instance, they get out the crazy. They sometimes don’t even know themselves, what they want, but they know that isn’t it. Don’t make me get out my crazy on you.

This leads to discussions like, “you should know what I want”, or “that’s not the right (enter size, shape, color, shade as appropriate), even though you are certain it never came up in the first place.

Then there are priorities like stopping the bull dog from eating a neighbor or friend, but don’t hurt the dog, just tell the person to get their limb out of the dogs mouth. It has to be their fault right?

There’s always the “porn star in training” outfit that is worn in an unfortunate place, and then she gets ticked off because guys stare. Ok, I can see things that you wouldn’t show your mother at home, and you expect me to not stare. Fine, I’ll start carrying bags for my head so I won’t look.

I had a girlfriend tell me “Look the girls in the swimwear store are in bikinis!”. I hadn’t noticed, but when being told to “look”, I did and was berated for following instructions.

Then as we all know at the wrong time in the hormonal cycle, nothing is right, nothing fits, tears or screaming are flickering just behind the eyes.

Run for your life!

The crazy we deal with at work is sort of general, do this, don’t do that, work at a fevered pace but don’t hurry.  Make friends with the alligators that you are up to your butt in, while draining the swamp, but don’t hurry and don’t make a mistake.

Another kind of crazy is the control freak who needs to impose his will, who bypasses you casually, then criticizes you for not being able to meet the job requirements.

We were talking about removing the plug and draining the crazy tank, but are now afraid to start, what if the threads on the plug gall, and we don’t have a tap to restore the threads, then we will have crazy leaking out and no way to stop it.

How crazy is that?

What will they have an app for next?

Color me flabbergasted!

I knew smartphones were, well, smart, but they can control a satellite? James Bond would be envious.

Antares also carried three coffee cup-size Phonesat satellites — called Alexander, Graham and Bell — into orbit as part of a space technology experiment for NASA's Ames Research Center in California. The tiny 4-inch-wide satellites use commercial smartphones as their main computers. Another small satellite the size of a bread box, called Dove-1, also rode into orbit as part of a commercial agreement for the California-based company Cosmogia. Dove-1 is reportedly an Earth-observation and remote sensing satellite, according to a NOAA remote sensing license document. 

I think back to the days when portable phones were bricks, bags and  barely able to be installed under the seat of a truck. Not only are they small enough to lose, now they have the computing power that exceeds my desk to of a few years ago.

What’s next?

In the beginning of this blog I wrote a lot about the people who can change the world, and choose to do so badly. Our political leaders in particular deserve some watching. I have let slip my commenting, not so my watching. One thing that frustrates me is the fact that the current administration was reelected. That alone shows that many of the people in this country only want something for nothing. I understand that everyone votes their pocket book. Some want to keep their taxes down, others want a handout and don’t care about taxes, because they don’t pay anyway.

I am offended by the administrations rampant vacationing, in the face of fiscal austerity. The quotes of “cut the spending and make it hurt”, tend to get my dander up.

The changing of accounting practices to return less of my Social Security taxes also provides considerable irritation. That’s not an “entitlement”, that’s a debt that the government owes me, because they took my money, and the deal was I would get it back when I could no longer earn a living. The fund has been robbed so easily and so often, that it’s now business as usual.

No other nation I have heard of will award retirement benefits to a non-citizen, we do, and we award them to people who didn’t stay long enough to pay in a significant percentage of what they will receive.

This is the first POTUS that bows to foreign leaders.

 As arrogant as he is, he should bow to no one.

 This is the first POTUS in living memory that doesn’t support Israel.

 He uses I, Me, Mine, to the extent unheard of in recent years.

From the beginning I have held the opinion that the socialist in chief really intends to destroy our way of life. He was raised and educated by 60s radicals, who preached the violent overthrow of government, and those people don’t easily tolerate anyone who disagrees with them.

In the beginning I liked the idea of a “post turtle”, a turtle sitting on a post doesn’t know how he got there or what he’s supposed to do now that he is there. This guy isn’t one of those, he knows exactly who put him where he is, and they have told him what to do.

 If you consider the debt and the attempt to raise taxes, both activities that have been responsible for killing off jobs, it becomes obvious that the collapse of the economy is the goal.

If our economy goes down the tubes, civil unrest, riots, protests of huge proportion don’t take a lot of imagination.

Martial law will follow close, with the setting aside of the Constitution, until the emergency has passed, or so they will say.

Then it’s in the fan, we will have a president for life, or some system that will guarantee the same thing.

Historically, Democracy is always followed by a dictatorship.

I really feel that after all his hard work to destroy our way of life, he won’t give it up easily. 

Johnathon Aiken

New grandbaby today!

 Number seven.

 When will these children stop procreating?

I love them all, but there are so many.

Catching up… The Harleys,

The strange part of this is, I don’t really like Harley’s, which doesn't really add up with owning three of them. After all it’s not like I planned it, or anything.

 I've come and gone from riding all my life.

 Our first “motor bike” was a bicycle with the pedals removed, a ball bat driven in the bearing opening, and a gasoline washing machine motor bolted to the bat. The rubber drive bushing drove the rear tire by friction. Top end was about 35 mph. That feeling of going fast, the adrenaline, the rush, well I was hooked.

 The word kamikaze comes to mind.

I’m nothing like as crazy as some folks are today but, I’m crazy enough. Riding on I 95 in South Florida will do for proof.

In 2008 I bought a Kawasaki 900 Vulcan Classic, a laid back touring bike. It gets about 52 mpg, and below 70 mph is fine, much above that and your eyes can’t focus due to vibration. My son in law brought me in contact with the Red Knights. The rest is public record if not history.

Most riding clubs spread the word about this, that, or the other fund raising ride. Some of the brothers got together to join DAV in a memorial ride to benefit Wounded Warrior, if I remember correctly. At any rate I participated in an escorted ride from a local town, south into the next state and back home. Several stops were required due to it being in the scorching hot summer time.

One of the stops was at a Harley shop. We all strolled around looking at all the chrome and shiny paint. I was looking at price tags as well. 24 k for an ultra glide, 20k for a classic, 18k for a soft tail, 12k for a sportster. Crazy.

As I walked, shaking my head about the prices, back to my bike, I saw a red gold bike and picked up the price tag. I looked, rubbed my eyes, looked again and called a sales dude over to make sure someone hadn't

 made a mistake. He assured me that it was correct, I asked him what the bottom line, no financing, price out the door was? When he told me, I said “I’ll be back”.

That afternoon I bought my first Harley.

I brought it home the next day, delayed by bad weather, and my son in law, allowed that it was indeed a beautiful bike, but was I still going to buy his Sportster as we had discussed?

Forgot that, I did.

Considering the purpose of buying the Sportster was to provide revenue for him to buy a minivan to haul my granddaughters around, I felt kind of compelled to follow through.

Now I owned two Harleys.

The third was bought with “found money”. When my mother died, after medical bills, she was effectively broke. At sometime or other she had bought an annuity, and then if I know her, forgot to tell anyone or decided it wasn't their business. So, some months later I get a letter, and after a subsequent claim, a fairly hefty check.

Log on to the interwebs and find a very nice bike for just the right price.

I still don’t like the way Harleys sit, all of mine have been lowered, quiet exhaust, low and tinted windshields. If you can get them low enough, they can be comfortable to sit on to ride. If you don’t lower them, in my opinion, it feels like you are sitting on the back of a chair, very high.

The current plan, and all plans can be changed, is to sell the Kaw, use the money to make the Sportster into a chopper, and trade the baggers in for a newer Harley bagger.

Somewhere in there are a couple of long road trips and that feeling that somewhere along the way it was worth it.

Watch for me on the road.

Catching up...as promised.

About a year and a half ago I got a call from my niece  She told me "Grannie has fallen and is in the neurological ICU."

A punch in the head would have left me less addled. I gathered my son and did a speed trip to the hospital four hours away. It did not end well for her.

She was as we would say, Bull Headed. She refused live in help, of any sort, since my dad died fifteen years ago. She just didn't want anyone under foot. As long as I can remember she has been falling asleep in the chair in front of the TV. I guess that night was no different.What time she fell is anyone's guess. At about three o'clock the 911 center got a call from her, that she had fallen and needed help.

No Kidding.

 When she fell, the left side of her face got the floor first. Her nose was broken and some pretty hideous bruising was visible. The medical staff, I really don't know how to describe the folks that opened her up, her dignity was not their issue, but she didn't resemble anyone I knew when I saw her. They didn't even set her broken nose. They shaved her head and sawed a hole in her skull. The real problem was the subdural hemotoma. They opened her up and stopped the bleed, but the damage was done.

As a side note, they stopped all medications and her high bp went back to normal. Seems that $1500 a month that she paid for meds, might not have been all she hoped for.

Odd, wouldn't you say?

Some days later she awakened. She chatted with the family that was there, had a cup of coffee, read in one of her "bodice ripper" novels, and then went quiet, then unresponsive and then stopped breathing. Part of the clot had moved and an ischemic stroke ensued.

In the interest of truthfulness, I didn't get along with my mother. She never wanted children, and told us so, in pretty vile terms. Somethings a child really shouldn't hear. There are other things, but I'll not speak ill of the dead. She has passed and all her ability to harm us has passed with her.

Side notes on the family, I have consigned them to the isle of broken toys.
My sister has adopted Wicca as her belief, and that pagan religion is worse for it. She accused her daughter of murdering my mother for drugs. That's just stupid.
My niece has manipulated, lied and cheated to the point that neither my son or myself will ever have anything to do with any of them. I'm sure they will not miss me, nor am I likely to miss them.

The funeral was a tragic comedy aided by the "family" gathered about.

Respect for the recently departed never crossed the mind of the majority of the attendees.

They will have to answer for their behavior, may the good Lord have mercy, if he judges them, I hope they don't get what they have earned.

Smarter than a sixth grader? Probably not.

I've spent the afternoon trying to get the security system up and running.

Not going all that well, actually.

Spent some quality time and about forty calls to tech support getting all kinds of info from the CONSOLE sitting in my office.

Frustration is trying to program numerous functions, delays, names and sounds with a total of three buttons.

Good luck with that. I was semi successful. Need help with the last sensor. Waiting for TLOML to get home for a second attempt.