Last night at the club meeting I voted against accepting the new treasurer's minutes.

Later he told me that he expected nothing less from me. He knows why I did that. I did that to keep things from being boringly unanimous. It doesn't really mean anything.

Once someone asked me about that and I pointed out that unanimous votes after a while make things look like the vote is rigged.

We're an AMERICAN club and if you snatched 10 Americans at random off the streets and locked them up and made them go hungry for a couple of days and then fed them a steak dinner probably 7 would simply chow down. One would complain that he wanted his sour cream on the side instead of on the potato. Another would gripe about the salad dressing and one would be a vegan.

We're all different.

Yet at the club we share common interests which is great. 

Still there is something about constant unanimous votes that make things look rigged.

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One day at the coffee shop.

Someone asked me what I do for a living.

I told him I had an on line sign business and he asked me how that was working out for me.

I told him I generally get about an order a week until October when I get hit hard and sell between 2 and 300000 signs for Halloween and I generally clear a buck apiece on them.

He asked why that was.

I told him my lawn signs that say 'A registered sex offender lives here'.

His jaw dropped and he asked me who would buy such a thing.

"People in dense suburban neighborhoods that don't want to buy candy for the local kids," I answered.

He didn't know what to say.

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Protip. Do not do this. Or maybe you SHOULD do this.

When a woman dog walker starts telling you about her dog coming from an animal shelter and going on and on about how shelter dogs are the best and yada yada yada it is not a very good idea to say you are looking for a girlfriend and ask if a woman's shelter is a good place to look for one.

On the other hand, maybe if is a good idea because the screeching is generally epic and makes for pretty good entertainment.

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Ahh, yes. Racism at it's finest.

I read where the Oregon governor signed a bill stating that the requirements of being able to read, write and do basic math are not necessary for minorities to get a high school diploma.

What racism! Oregon now has turned a minorities' HS diploma into a meaningless piece of paper and employers will refuse to hire them.

Total racism!

If I were a person of color with kids I'd be headed to Idaho in a heartbeat where my kids would at least have a shot at getting a decent education.

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Someone asked me how I would split up money given to the states for education.

I would NOT split it up evenly. I would do it STRICTLY by merit based on educational excellence.

The top ten states would get 4% each

The top second place states would get 3% each

The middle 10 states would get 2% each

The 10 states in 4th place would get 1% each

The bottom 10 states would get nothing.

Reinforce success and create serious competition. The parents of the lesser states would pressure the school committees to shape up and get some of that federal money. The competition would raise our national educational level and I'd bet that inside of a decade or two we'd be back to number one worldwide.

When you reinforce success and penalize failure things change and change fast.

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As big of an a$$hole he is, Bill Gates certainly created an awful lot of jobs,

both directly and indirectly. He also created a number of other billionaires. I seriously doubt Bezos or Zuckerberg would have gotten rich without him and the technology he devised.

Bezos would probably be running a mail order bookstore somewhere without him. I won't guess what Zuckerberg would be doing.

Of course we'd still have phone in pizza delivery and a few essentials but there would be no Uber, Doordash and things like that. Stores would not be delivering like they do now. (FWIW I have never had food delivered other than phone in pizza about once every year or two)

Microsoft supposedly has 114,000 employees but that's the tip of the iceberg. MS technology has created incalculable numbers of jobs. 

Microsoft also created entire career fields. Anybody that's an IT guy got into an industry more or less started by Gates.

I really can't think of anyone in recent times that's changed the face of humanity more than Bill Gates. He did it on his own, got incredibly rich in the process and that's OK by me.

On the other hand he's still an asshole.

Funny how that works.  

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One sheet of 1/4 inch plywood, a few zip ties and some paint and I could cause serious chaos in this township.

There's a bulldozed lot on a major thoroughfare that has a nice chain link fence around it. On Nextdoor there's speculation of what is to become of it.

We'll fix THAT one!

Get a sheet of 1/4 inch plywood and lap a coat of white paint on it and then letter it with large letters.

                               COMING SOON!

          BLACK ORCHID GENTLEMANS CLUB

           girls! girls! girls! Live nude dancers 24/7

Zip tie it to the fence and then stand back and admire your masterpiece.

Never mind the fact that the township wouldn't permit it in the first place, people would look at the sign and just KNOW that there's going to be a club moving in and the morals of the community are going to be corrupted and the townships on the road to hell.

The screeching would be epic even after the city managers stood up and went door to door assuring people that it ain't gonna happen. The screeching would go on and on over absolutely nothing.

There would be protests and probably picket lines. This would serve to get some people out of the house an give them exercise and fresh air and it would give the druggies a golden opportunity to burglarize their homes while they were out manning the picket lines.

Win/win.

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Keep at it. Burn those Teslas. Then see what happens next.

Before the election the average Tesla owner was a green minded moderate Democrat. 

They were concerned about the environment, climate change and were fairly green minded. They bought the Tesla out of concern for the planet and the country as Teslas are American made.

A little over 2 months into the current presidency Teslas are a target for extreme leftists. That's rich and self-destructive.

An awful lot of moderate Pittsburgh Democrats are generational Democrats. Their daddies and granddaddies were steelworkers and voted Democrat. The sons and daughters followed suit.

Over the years I have met any number of people like that who espouse Republican values and yet still pull the D lever because they've never really sat down and thought about it.

Over the past few years at the rod and gun club I belong to I've had a couple members tell me that they are former Democrats and most of them say that they didn't leave the Democratic party, the Democratic party left them.

So now we have some poor working stiff that bought an American green car to support climate change and the American car industry and he comes back out of Target and sees his car vandalized and in some cases a smoking pile of ashes.

I don't think he is going to be a vary happy camper.

He's going to take a long, hard look at the people that did that to him and is either going to double down and blame Trump OR he is going to look twice at what the Democratic party has morphed into and reconsider his party affiliation.

Keep burning Teslas, leftists. Every time a Tesla burns the owner takes a red pill and buys a MAGA hat.

Of course I counted on no less from the left because you can't fix stupid. 

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Now that I am retired I can say this.

Your boss only signs your paycheck. That's all. He puts his John Henry on it and hands it to you.

Where he gets the money to be able to do this is from the customer. 

Be polite, be professional and if there is any legitimate disagreement call someone that's further up the food chain to settle it.

Treat your customers like gold even if they are first class jerks.

They are your source of income.

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I dropped bourbon from my pre bedtime ritual recently and I'm mildly surprised.

Some time ago my sleep apnea numbers were a little too high so I experimented with a healthy dollop of bourbon before bed. The numbers dropped to an acceptable level so I ran with it for quite some time. 

About a week ago I decided to try something. I replaced the bourbon with a couple of melatonin gummies and am having very mixed results. The numbers seem to improve a bit and I seem to have better sleep patterns and have started to dream again which is a BIG change. I woke up at 0200 last night in the middle of one that was really whacked out and marveled and had no problem going back to sleep again.

I seem to be less comatose when I sleep. I do sleep a little lighter and feel a bit more refreshed when I wake up.

I think I am going to run with being basically alcohol free for a while and see what happens. I said basically because one night a week I go to the sportsman's club to get out of the house and have two Guinness draughts which are low (4.2%) alcohol.

I'm going to run this way for a while and keep an eye on the way things go because it seems to show things improving and it keeps me interested.

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In other news I keep a planner of appointments and other events and things of that nature. This one begins and ends in June as it was likely designed for teachers.

It's a June 2024-June 2025 model. I ordered a June 2025-June 2026 model because I have a couple of appointments set up for 2026 already.

When a medico give me an appointment card I write it on the appropriate date AND staple the appointment card on top of the note.

I have two cards for 2026 appointments and tonight when it arrives I will do just that with them.

I have a terrible time keeping up with things so I have religiously taking to writing them down. It works for me. 

I log my medications twice a day and about 2 weeks ago I started everything that I have eaten and my daily weight. I've lost a few pounds because of this.

Once for the hell of it I logged replacing a roll of bathroom tissue to see how long it lasted because a friend of mine said with a wife and 3 girls he was using about a roll a day. Mine lasted me 53 days. I didn't cheap out with it, either. 

Logging and posting appointments has been a good policy for me.

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Over the years I have thought and rethought the drug issue.

Lately there is a big ballyhoo over fentanyl which I consider a waste of time and money. 

Previously I posted that I consider heroin addiction to be a self-solving problem. I think I'll put fentanyl use in the same category.

We have wasted enough time and money on chasing druggies all over hell and back so I figure that we ought to let nature run its course.

We're still where we used to be billions and billions later so why bother?

Let Darwin sort it out.

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I remember the field problem I was on years ago when the battery commander walked by and asked us how we were doing.

It was a rare Ft. Carson summer downpour, a real gully washer. Everyone was miserable.

I replied cheerfully, "Sir...Well, Stanley, here's yet another fine mess you've gotten us into."

He looked at the three of us and we were soaked to the bone and shook his head. He was wet, too and just as miserable as we were. So was the First Sergeant about 50 feet away, just barely out of earshot.

The Old man wandered up to Top and had a few words and Top looked over at me, turned back to the Old Man and laughed.

About ten minutes later I was doing something else and Top came up to me. "Ahh, yes... PFC Piccolo." he sighed. "What are we going to do with you?"

I said nothing. 

"Between us, Thank you for making the Old Man's day," he said. "Oh, and the captain told me to compliment you on your excellent use of military courtesy."

I looked at Top confused.

"You said 'Sir'," he replied. Then he shook his head.

"What are we going to do with you?" he chuckled and walked off. 

For weedks I kept waiting for the other shoe to fall.

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