Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Do NOT watch Gunny Peterson shoot. It is scary.
He took third yesterday in the President's match, yet won the shoot-off. The winner was a civvie which is a lot more common than you thing, second place was an Army marksmanship unit guy.
I don't understand the scoring system but I was behind him at the 600 yard shoot-off and he only dropped a single point. Guys like that scare me to watch. Incredible hand/eye co-ordination at it's finest. It is amazing to see talent like that. I was behind him watching the fall of his shot and it was ungodly. I think he was made of spare parts they found at Walter Reed or something because it is hard to imagine a shooter like that being made out of flesh and blood. The man is like a machine.
Yesterday at the radio shack an interesting thing happened. I made a QSO with a guy in Texas that used to be on the Marine team a few years back. He had a message to pass on to the team so I took off running to the firing line to pass the word like a good ham is supposed to. Then I ran back to the rig and passed on the reply. One of the shooters on the Marine team knew him from years ago.
Yesterday was a day short on QSOs but long on fun as at about 1900 a couple of the guys from one of the teams dropped by the shack. One of them commented that my little setup looked like something out of a movie set of a Japanese holdout in the South Pacific. It does look kind of laid back.
The main form of transportation around Perry for the permanent party is a fleet of golf carts. The MPs for some reason look out for me and when they see me hoofing somewhere they often snag me and give me a ride. They also keep an eye on my shack. In return I put their lunch sodas, gatorade in with the beer I keep on ice so they can get something cold to drink when they need a break.
I was up at first light and picked up the cigarette buts left by last night's visitors because although my camp may look like a coastwatcher's hovel, I keep it neat so nobody can really complain. You have to think of PR when you do something like this.
Yesterday there was a little National Guard detail I passed and I asked the crusty old Sergeant First Class if he would keep an eye out for my mother. When he looked up at me trying to figure out why a sixty year old man would be looking for his mother, I told him that if she didn't show up inside of 5 minutes, I was going to have to pick up after myself.
One dopey Pfc didn't catch on and asked me what my mother looked like. Go figure. There are some people you can put in a padded room with 3 bowling balls and when you return one of them will be missing, the other snapped clean in half and the third one will be impregnated.
The sergeant turned to me and gave a slight nod of thanks to me. He got it. He turned to the detail.
"His mother is not here to pick up after him and neither is yours!" he snapped.
Good NCOs are grateful for little things and setups they can use to their advantage and later on he thanked me when he saw me passing by somewhere else.
Last night the rig was manned on 40 meters by a young shooter off of a junior team that had a license. I told him to use both my call sign and name for QSL purposes and he was smart enough to do it. He made a couple of QSOs for me and I was grateful for the respite as I could sit there and yak with a couple of Marines that dropped in.
One of the interesting Marines that dropped by is a Master Sergeant that is shooting on his own nickel and on his personal leave time. He's an interesting man. Several of us sat around telling screwed up stories of our experiences both in and out of service.
One of the commo NCOs asked me how I got the antenna up the tree so high and I showed him my slingshot and fishing reel arrangement. He's headed to Wally World today for parts to make one and I would not be surprised to see a bunch of them floating around the services in the future. It's funny how the services hire technical people to design advanced field communications gear yet the whiz kids fail miserably with the little common sense ideas to get something like an antenna wire up a tree.
My scant records are en route to the base CO's office and I think that today I am going to have to put the nose to the grindstone and make a bunch of QSOs to fill up a couple of pages.
A Pfc asked me why I always seem to have something pink on and the tone in his voice was somewhat insulting and homophobic. I returned by suggesting he liked his women flat chested and with a small boy's butt and he got really annoyed. Then I told him I wear pink for breast cancer awareness.
The rest of the guys laughed at him and one of the guys took a small piece of my safety tape and put it on his golf cart, which is the one he shares with the Pfc, much to the embarrassment of the Pfc.
In other gnus I am seriously considering scraping up an M-1 to shoot the JCG match if I can find a last minute slot on the morning relay. I always shoot a perfect score in that match, based on what we call a 'JCG match perfect score'. It means all of our rounds fell safely into Lake Erie.
An NCO brought by a 4 digit serial number Garand last night. I guess it had started life as a gas trap model and the receiver had a square cut operating rod slot which was later changed to a round cut as squares cut into steel sometimes lead to weakness at the corners and the steel can crack after years of use. Round corners don't as the round shape is more graceful. The rifle had never been issued, and was converted to a gas tube modification and was put back in storage after it had been modified and was never issued afterwards.
The save the whales people seem to have laid low so far but I fear they will try and crash the JCG match. I get tired of how much money and time is spent chasing those idiots around and the truth is that military impact areas should simply be labeled 'Darwin zones' and the services should simply continue business as usual and anyone that enters an impact area should simply be left to their devices. Time to put a little more bleach into the gene pool.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Monday, July 30, 2012
Perry. First day.
Got set up after a brief SNAFU.
The CO forgot to notify the Staff duty NCO we were coming but we got that squared away in about a minute. I set up a hasty little shelter and shot a wire antenna up and was good to go in a short time. In a second after the shelter was set up the housing people were down on me liks white on rice asking me what I was doing. I referred them to the NCOs in operations and they went away slightly upset.
Ten minutes later the MPs showed up and told me to make damned good and sure that if anyone hassled me I was to report it to them immediately. My guess is that the housing people called them and the MPs called Operations who gave them the score.
My first QSO was california but there were and still are problems. We advertised one frequency per band for the 20 and 40 meter band and we should have had a backup. On 20 there was a huge contest that kkept bleding through because it was a kilohertz away and on 40 we got interference from a South American commercial station for a while and that was that.
Total QSOs the first day was about a dozen.
I spent some time with the guys I know here and also invited the Marine team over for dogs and beer which is scheduled for Monday pm after the President's match.
Still, a bad day at Perry is better than a good day just about anywhere else.
Sunday. Did better QSO wise and got COsta Rica and WA state which was cool. I am supposed to turn my logs into the base CO but she is not here for the weekend. I will meet with her tomorrow.
Any CO that takes the weekend off and lets her senior NCOs run the show during the NAtional Matches is likely either getting ready to retire or is a good officer that has enough good sense to let the NCOs do their jobs. I will bet on the latter.
Do not go onto the firing line with a Jim Beam bottle full of iced tea.
One NCO came by when I was on the air and said the shanty looked ike something a Japanese holdout in the South Pacific might live in. He laughed. He was off duty so I offered him a beer.
Monday: Met with the base CO and I was right. She's a great officer, competent and capable. I have a pretty good eye for officers and am generally right. This woman is a keeper.
I was supposed to turn in my contacts log but she simply told me to take it to the S-3 shop and have them make copies so I can retain the originals. The S-3 shack opens at 0600 so I will be able to get er done in the morning.
I planned on using 14.261 1600Z to 2200Z and 7.213 2200Z to 0400Z but there is a lot of contesting going on so I go up in clicks of 5 khz until I get a clear frequency. If any of you readers are hams, gimme a shout.
In other gnus I just bought a pink CMP ball cap AND a light pink CMP golf shirt.
Today is the P-100, the President's match.
One of the service teams has offered me a spare cot if I need it but I do not. Still, if something happens it is good to have a fall back.
The base commander had been briefed that we were NOT a high powered Amateur radio club, but an ad hoc group of guys that formed a club so as to be able to do this. WHile some other members are due in to help me out, I am a one man show for now. Last night an 18 YO kid dropped by. He has a tech license but I will allow him to spell me after he shoots today.
I hope help arrives as it sort of sucks being alone.
I have to drag ass to the club house to post on their WiFi so I may miss a day or three but check in and we'll see what gives.
I already have a Texas and Arkansas QSO and am not really officially on the air yet.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Friday, July 27, 2012
Today is going to be a long one
because I a packing out for Perry. There are a lot of things to do and I will be busy all day.
I do not know if I will have internet acess there so I can not guarentee that I will be able to post.
This very well may be be my last post for a week or so.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
I do not know if I will have internet acess there so I can not guarentee that I will be able to post.
This very well may be be my last post for a week or so.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Well, I have not been home 12 hours now, and that includes about 8 of them sleeping but I have apready pretty much started a brawl.
I went for breakfast at a place I know that I go to because it serves decent breakfasts but I really don't eat at too often because of the little group that meeets there practically every morning. Like a lot of Pittsburgh things, this place is not really a city. It is more like an oversized village.
Anyway, the group consists of a few guys that heve never crossed the county like and there are a couple of 'Al Bundy' types, meaning they were once football heroes when they were in high school which was most likely when the school buses were pulled by oxen. You can generally expect them to beat a subject to death for months, especially if it involves sports.
The guys are generally loud and pretty self important and judge a man's character by things such as how he has lived in town or who he took to the prom back in the day. In short they are pretty obnoxious.
Today's subject is the penalty they NCAA gave Penn State. I'm sure it was yesterday's and the day before's.
I got tired of listening to what a raw deal the NCAA gave Penn State and I guess I just snapped a bit.
I told them that Penn State ought to just shut up and pony up because if I were running the NCAA I would have given them a ten year death penalty and then banned them from bowl games for another ten years.
Fatso got outraged, of course and started telling me what a great guy Joe Paterno was.
I cut him off at the knees byy telling him that great guys do not enable pedophiles. They report them.
That's when I reallly lit into them and told the whole group that if this damned football was so important that they should have supplied their sons to Jerry Sandusky to sodomize on a regular basis. Then when the traumatized kid was having night horrors and screaming out in his sleep, they could comfort him by telling the traumatized kid about how important it was to win the Big Game next Saturday. I ended my rant with "Put up or shut up."
You could have heard a pin drop.
Fatso recovered first and got to his feet. "Wat do you mean by that!" he snapped.
"Siddown before you fall down, Fatso." I said conversationally. "Your life was over the day after you caught that pass back in sixty whatever. What I mean is that you guys are as bad as Paterno. You want to cover up child molesters. I guess you all think it's OK to diddle kids."
"I said no such thing!" he answered.
"Yeah, ya did. By covering for Joe who covered for Sandusky you're simply saying it is OK to molest kids for the benefit of a damned GAME. Now sit down."
He looked stunned, but slowly sat down.
A voice from a booth came out of nowhere. "He's right. I didn't see any of you guys feeding your children to Sandusky. I suppose you guys think it's OK to molest somebody else's kids, but not your own."
My breakfast arrived and I ate it the the angry glares of the little group I had managed to put in their place.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
What do they teach in college?
Right now I wonder about what a lot of my generation studied in colllege and I'd just bet that a lot the programs they went through during their academic years were totally incomplete.
I have several former classmates that went into various fields of endeavor ranging from business to working with handicapped kids to transportation and it always seems to me that their education is lacking.
In the military there is an old saw that says that company grade officers study tactics, field grade officers study strategy and general officers study logistics. While likely not 100% accurate, this statement certainly holds a lot water.
While at lower levels, tactics and strategy are important, the big overriding question that all armies face is how these people are going to be moved, fed and supplied.
Parallelling this in the humanitarian sector of the civillian world is the question of how a proposed program is going to be funded. It never seems to enter into the equation. There are a lot of people out there that are damned compassionate caregivers that seem to have never asked themselves the question of where the money for these programs is coming for as they clamor to their elected officials for more money.
When you ask a lot of our people that work with society where the money comes from for their program they generally give you a confused look and say that the money comes from the government. While I suppose it does, it really doesn't end there.
The people in these programs for the most part seem not to understand that there is only so much money available and that the government is not a bottomless pit that is capable of supplying every program that comes down the pike with limitless cash. Eventually the money runs out and the next step is deficeit spending which the government has been doing for years and is rapidly catching up to us. Most likely the system will implode soon.
Over the years I have had a lot of people suggest to me that the government ought to fund such and such. My answer is generally that it is fine by me IF they can figure out a way to do it without either raising taxes or deficeit spending.
Generally this gets a dumbfounded look or some kind of stupid answer that the government can simply print them up a wad of cash to support their whatever.
The truth about things is that everything has to be funded one way or another because nothing is free.
I suppose that if someone with a career goall of human resources, social work or some related field asked me for career advice I would ask them what their goals in the field are. If they want to make a career of working face to face with people I suppose that getting a degree in social work or human resources would likely be sufficient.
However, if they really wanted to make a difference I would suggest that get a minor in social work and major in economics so they can figure out a way to make these programs pay for themselves.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
I have several former classmates that went into various fields of endeavor ranging from business to working with handicapped kids to transportation and it always seems to me that their education is lacking.
In the military there is an old saw that says that company grade officers study tactics, field grade officers study strategy and general officers study logistics. While likely not 100% accurate, this statement certainly holds a lot water.
While at lower levels, tactics and strategy are important, the big overriding question that all armies face is how these people are going to be moved, fed and supplied.
Parallelling this in the humanitarian sector of the civillian world is the question of how a proposed program is going to be funded. It never seems to enter into the equation. There are a lot of people out there that are damned compassionate caregivers that seem to have never asked themselves the question of where the money for these programs is coming for as they clamor to their elected officials for more money.
When you ask a lot of our people that work with society where the money comes from for their program they generally give you a confused look and say that the money comes from the government. While I suppose it does, it really doesn't end there.
The people in these programs for the most part seem not to understand that there is only so much money available and that the government is not a bottomless pit that is capable of supplying every program that comes down the pike with limitless cash. Eventually the money runs out and the next step is deficeit spending which the government has been doing for years and is rapidly catching up to us. Most likely the system will implode soon.
Over the years I have had a lot of people suggest to me that the government ought to fund such and such. My answer is generally that it is fine by me IF they can figure out a way to do it without either raising taxes or deficeit spending.
Generally this gets a dumbfounded look or some kind of stupid answer that the government can simply print them up a wad of cash to support their whatever.
The truth about things is that everything has to be funded one way or another because nothing is free.
I suppose that if someone with a career goall of human resources, social work or some related field asked me for career advice I would ask them what their goals in the field are. If they want to make a career of working face to face with people I suppose that getting a degree in social work or human resources would likely be sufficient.
However, if they really wanted to make a difference I would suggest that get a minor in social work and major in economics so they can figure out a way to make these programs pay for themselves.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Keeping it simple
One of the things that sometimes drives me nuts is that there are an awful lot of people that do not understand the concept of simple.
It happens in just about all fields of endeavor.
My pickup, which is as simple as I could get it was a horror show to locate but I found it and I like it because it is simple. It has fewer parts to have to mess with and therefore is a whole lot less likely to die out on me. I am quite certain, for example that I will never have to replace a window opening motor because it doesn't have any.
I once hauled a younger guy to his boat and it was funny when he asked me which button to push to lower the window. The look on his face was precious when I said, "See that little crank? Turn it."
A couple of years back I sent a guy out to pick up a simple can opener, the kind you turn with your hand and costs a couple of bucks. He returned with a countertop electric model and explained that it was the simplest model he could find. I never even opened the box. I simply stuffed it in the trash unopened and had someone else pick up the hand operated kind. We still have it and it works like a charm. It does what it is supposed to do. It opens cans.
It fits nicely in a drawer, takes up no counter space, draws no energy. We don't eat a lot of canned stuff so it's not like we use it 137 times a day.
I have recently looked into emergency radio communications and have learned a lot about how a lot of people think. Some is good, some not so good.
There are a lot of hams that are techies and that is actually a good thing because a lot of good comes from that. These guys are the ones that make the hobby what it is today and these are the go-to guys for figuring a lot of problems out.
Some of them get so wrapped up in the technology that they have a very hard time comprehending simplicity. When you point to, for example, a simple field rig for field use that allows the use of voice and code they ask "But how are you going to send images through it?" They miss the whole point of simplicity.
The field rig is not designed to use a whole lot of data mode. It is designed to provide simple field communications. If you want to use data, you simply use the sophisticated rig you have in your warm, heated home. A field rig is about basics.
It isn't just about cars and radios. It seems to pop up just about everywhere.
It is funny the way a lot of people thing about tools and equipment.
Recently I rented a small jackhammer with a ground rod putter-inner head. I rented the thing to install a trio of ground rods, a pair for radios and one to make damned good and sure the household AC was properly grounded after I examined the ground there and decided it was insufficient.
I rented the jackhammer for that purpose and that purpose only and to simplify things I only took the jackhammer itself and the specific head to do the job rather than have to keep track of several expensive and easily lost parts.
As I was driving the rod into the ground someone came by and asked me a couple of questions about the tool and then asked me where the rest of the heads were. I told him I didn't bring them with me as I had only rented the tool for one specific use.
"Yeah, but now you can't use it to bust up concrete." he protested.
Who said anything about busting up concrete? I had and now have no concrete that needs busting up. The only reason I rented the machine was to install ground rods.
I suppose part of the mentality is that when you have a jackhammer you can bust up concrete which you certainly can. If you have no concrete to bust up there are a lot of people that will complicate things even more by finding some and making up a dumb excuse to open a can of worms.
"Hey! This is neat! I can tear up the driveway!"
Even though the driveway is in pretty good shape if you give some people a jackhammer they will decide it is time to replace it.
The same thing happened several years ago when I rented scaffolding. I was installing vinyl siding and as most of us know it comes with the color molded into the plastic. No painting is involved. While I was busy installing the siding someone asked me how come I didn't have the little hooks they give you to hook a paint can on.
"They're free," he explained.
"I'll give anyone that wants one a free poke in the eye with a sharp stick," I replied. "But you don't see a line in front of the house, now, do you? The hooks are just one more thing to get lost and I am not doing any painting."
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
It happens in just about all fields of endeavor.
My pickup, which is as simple as I could get it was a horror show to locate but I found it and I like it because it is simple. It has fewer parts to have to mess with and therefore is a whole lot less likely to die out on me. I am quite certain, for example that I will never have to replace a window opening motor because it doesn't have any.
I once hauled a younger guy to his boat and it was funny when he asked me which button to push to lower the window. The look on his face was precious when I said, "See that little crank? Turn it."
A couple of years back I sent a guy out to pick up a simple can opener, the kind you turn with your hand and costs a couple of bucks. He returned with a countertop electric model and explained that it was the simplest model he could find. I never even opened the box. I simply stuffed it in the trash unopened and had someone else pick up the hand operated kind. We still have it and it works like a charm. It does what it is supposed to do. It opens cans.
It fits nicely in a drawer, takes up no counter space, draws no energy. We don't eat a lot of canned stuff so it's not like we use it 137 times a day.
I have recently looked into emergency radio communications and have learned a lot about how a lot of people think. Some is good, some not so good.
There are a lot of hams that are techies and that is actually a good thing because a lot of good comes from that. These guys are the ones that make the hobby what it is today and these are the go-to guys for figuring a lot of problems out.
Some of them get so wrapped up in the technology that they have a very hard time comprehending simplicity. When you point to, for example, a simple field rig for field use that allows the use of voice and code they ask "But how are you going to send images through it?" They miss the whole point of simplicity.
The field rig is not designed to use a whole lot of data mode. It is designed to provide simple field communications. If you want to use data, you simply use the sophisticated rig you have in your warm, heated home. A field rig is about basics.
It isn't just about cars and radios. It seems to pop up just about everywhere.
It is funny the way a lot of people thing about tools and equipment.
Recently I rented a small jackhammer with a ground rod putter-inner head. I rented the thing to install a trio of ground rods, a pair for radios and one to make damned good and sure the household AC was properly grounded after I examined the ground there and decided it was insufficient.
I rented the jackhammer for that purpose and that purpose only and to simplify things I only took the jackhammer itself and the specific head to do the job rather than have to keep track of several expensive and easily lost parts.
As I was driving the rod into the ground someone came by and asked me a couple of questions about the tool and then asked me where the rest of the heads were. I told him I didn't bring them with me as I had only rented the tool for one specific use.
"Yeah, but now you can't use it to bust up concrete." he protested.
Who said anything about busting up concrete? I had and now have no concrete that needs busting up. The only reason I rented the machine was to install ground rods.
I suppose part of the mentality is that when you have a jackhammer you can bust up concrete which you certainly can. If you have no concrete to bust up there are a lot of people that will complicate things even more by finding some and making up a dumb excuse to open a can of worms.
"Hey! This is neat! I can tear up the driveway!"
Even though the driveway is in pretty good shape if you give some people a jackhammer they will decide it is time to replace it.
The same thing happened several years ago when I rented scaffolding. I was installing vinyl siding and as most of us know it comes with the color molded into the plastic. No painting is involved. While I was busy installing the siding someone asked me how come I didn't have the little hooks they give you to hook a paint can on.
"They're free," he explained.
"I'll give anyone that wants one a free poke in the eye with a sharp stick," I replied. "But you don't see a line in front of the house, now, do you? The hooks are just one more thing to get lost and I am not doing any painting."
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Keeping it simple
One of the things that sometimes drives me nuts is that there are an awful lot of people that do not understand the concept of simple.
It happens in just about all fields of endeavor.
My pickup, which is as simple as I could get it was a horror show to locate but I found it and I like it because it is simple. It has fewer parts to have to mess with and therefore is a whole lot less likely to die out on me. I am quite certain, for example that I will never have to replace a window opening motor because it doesn't have any.
I once hauled a younger guy to his boat and it was funny when he asked me which button to push to lower the window. The look on his face was precious when I said, "See that little crank? Turn it."
A couple of years back I sent a guy out to pick up a simple can opener, the kind you turn with your hand and costs a couple of bucks. He returned with a countertop electric model and explained that it was the simplest model he could find. I never even opened the box. I simply stuffed it in the trash unopened and had someone else pick up the hand operated kind. We still have it and it works like a charm. It does what it is supposed to do. It opens cans.
It fits nicely in a drawer, takes up no counter space, draws no energy. We don't eat a lot of canned stuff so it's not like we use it 137 times a day.
I have recently looked into emergency radio communications and have learned a lot about how a lot of people think. Some is good, some not so good.
There are a lot of hams that are techies and that is actually a good thing because a lot of good comes from that. These guys are the ones that make the hobby what it is today and these are the go-to guys for figuring a lot of problems out.
Some of them get so wrapped up in the technology that they have a very hard time comprehending simplicity. When you point to, for example, a simple field rig for field use that allows the use of voice and code they ask "But how are you going to send images through it?" They miss the whole point of simplicity.
The field rig is not designed to use a whole lot of data mode. It is designed to provide simple field communications. If you want to use data, you simply use the sophisticated rig you have in your warm, heated home. A field rig is about basics.
It isn't just about cars and radios. It seems to pop up just about everywhere.
It is funny the way a lot of people thing about tools and equipment.
Recently I rented a small jackhammer with a ground rod putter-inner head. I rented the thing to install a trio of ground rods, a pair for radios and one to make damned good and sure the household AC was properly grounded after I examined the ground there and decided it was insufficient.
I rented the jackhammer for that purpose and that purpose only and to simplify things I only took the jackhammer itself and the specific head to do the job rather than have to keep track of several expensive and easily lost parts.
As I was driving the rod into the ground someone came by and asked me a couple of questions about the tool and then asked me where the rest of the heads were. I told him I didn't bring them with me as I had only rented the tool for one specific use.
"Yeah, but now you can't use it to bust up concrete." he protested.
Who said anything about busting up concrete? I had and now have no concrete that needs busting up. The only reason I rented the machine was to install ground rods.
I suppose part of the mentality is that when you have a jackhammer you can bust up concrete which you certainly can. If you have no concrete to bust up there are a lot of people that will complicate things even more by finding some and making up a dumb excuse to open a can of worms.
"Hey! This is neat! I can tear up the driveway!"
Even though the driveway is in pretty good shape if you give some people a jackhammer they will decide it is time to replace it.
The same thing happened several years ago when I rented scaffolding. I was installing vinyl siding and as most of us know it comes with the color molded into the plastic. No painting is involved. While I was busy installing the siding someone asked me how come I didn't have the little hooks they give you to hook a paint can on.
"They're free," he explained.
"I'll give anyone that wants one a free poke in the eye with a sharp stick," I replied. "But you don't see a line in front of the house, now, do you? The hooks are just one more thing to get lost and I am not doing any painting."
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
It happens in just about all fields of endeavor.
My pickup, which is as simple as I could get it was a horror show to locate but I found it and I like it because it is simple. It has fewer parts to have to mess with and therefore is a whole lot less likely to die out on me. I am quite certain, for example that I will never have to replace a window opening motor because it doesn't have any.
I once hauled a younger guy to his boat and it was funny when he asked me which button to push to lower the window. The look on his face was precious when I said, "See that little crank? Turn it."
A couple of years back I sent a guy out to pick up a simple can opener, the kind you turn with your hand and costs a couple of bucks. He returned with a countertop electric model and explained that it was the simplest model he could find. I never even opened the box. I simply stuffed it in the trash unopened and had someone else pick up the hand operated kind. We still have it and it works like a charm. It does what it is supposed to do. It opens cans.
It fits nicely in a drawer, takes up no counter space, draws no energy. We don't eat a lot of canned stuff so it's not like we use it 137 times a day.
I have recently looked into emergency radio communications and have learned a lot about how a lot of people think. Some is good, some not so good.
There are a lot of hams that are techies and that is actually a good thing because a lot of good comes from that. These guys are the ones that make the hobby what it is today and these are the go-to guys for figuring a lot of problems out.
Some of them get so wrapped up in the technology that they have a very hard time comprehending simplicity. When you point to, for example, a simple field rig for field use that allows the use of voice and code they ask "But how are you going to send images through it?" They miss the whole point of simplicity.
The field rig is not designed to use a whole lot of data mode. It is designed to provide simple field communications. If you want to use data, you simply use the sophisticated rig you have in your warm, heated home. A field rig is about basics.
It isn't just about cars and radios. It seems to pop up just about everywhere.
It is funny the way a lot of people thing about tools and equipment.
Recently I rented a small jackhammer with a ground rod putter-inner head. I rented the thing to install a trio of ground rods, a pair for radios and one to make damned good and sure the household AC was properly grounded after I examined the ground there and decided it was insufficient.
I rented the jackhammer for that purpose and that purpose only and to simplify things I only took the jackhammer itself and the specific head to do the job rather than have to keep track of several expensive and easily lost parts.
As I was driving the rod into the ground someone came by and asked me a couple of questions about the tool and then asked me where the rest of the heads were. I told him I didn't bring them with me as I had only rented the tool for one specific use.
"Yeah, but now you can't use it to bust up concrete." he protested.
Who said anything about busting up concrete? I had and now have no concrete that needs busting up. The only reason I rented the machine was to install ground rods.
I suppose part of the mentality is that when you have a jackhammer you can bust up concrete which you certainly can. If you have no concrete to bust up there are a lot of people that will complicate things even more by finding some and making up a dumb excuse to open a can of worms.
"Hey! This is neat! I can tear up the driveway!"
Even though the driveway is in pretty good shape if you give some people a jackhammer they will decide it is time to replace it.
The same thing happened several years ago when I rented scaffolding. I was installing vinyl siding and as most of us know it comes with the color molded into the plastic. No painting is involved. While I was busy installing the siding someone asked me how come I didn't have the little hooks they give you to hook a paint can on.
"They're free," he explained.
"I'll give anyone that wants one a free poke in the eye with a sharp stick," I replied. "But you don't see a line in front of the house, now, do you? The hooks are just one more thing to get lost and I am not doing any painting."
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Keeping it simple
One of the things that sometimes drives me nuts is that there are an awful lot of people that do not understand the concept of simple.
It happens in just about all fields of endeavor.
My pickup, which is as simple as I could get it was a horror show to locate but I found it and I like it because it is simple. It has fewer parts to have to mess with and therefore is a whole lot less likely to die out on me. I am quite certain, for example that I will never have to replace a window opening motor because it doesn't have any.
I once hauled a younger guy to his boat and it was funny when he asked me which button to push to lower the window. The look on his face was precious when I said, "See that little crank? Turn it."
A couple of years back I sent a guy out to pick up a simple can opener, the kind you turn with your hand and costs a couple of bucks. He returned with a countertop electric model and explained that it was the simplest model he could find. I never even opened the box. I simply stuffed it in the trash unopened and had someone else pick up the hand operated kind. We still have it and it works like a charm. It does what it is supposed to do. It opens cans.
It fits nicely in a drawer, takes up no counter space, draws no energy. We don't eat a lot of canned stuff so it's not like we use it 137 times a day.
I have recently looked into emergency radio communications and have learned a lot about how a lot of people think. Some is good, some not so good.
There are a lot of hams that are techies and that is actually a good thing because a lot of good comes from that. These guys are the ones that make the hobby what it is today and these are the go-to guys for figuring a lot of problems out.
Some of them get so wrapped up in the technology that they have a very hard time comprehending simplicity. When you point to, for example, a simple field rig for field use that allows the use of voice and code they ask "But how are you going to send images through it?" They miss the whole point of simplicity.
The field rig is not designed to use a whole lot of data mode. It is designed to provide simple field communications. If you want to use data, you simply use the sophisticated rig you have in your warm, heated home. A field rig is about basics.
It isn't just about cars and radios. It seems to pop up just about everywhere.
It is funny the way a lot of people thing about tools and equipment.
Recently I rented a small jackhammer with a ground rod putter-inner head. I rented the thing to install a trio of ground rods, a pair for radios and one to make damned good and sure the household AC was properly grounded after I examined the ground there and decided it was insufficient.
I rented the jackhammer for that purpose and that purpose only and to simplify things I only took the jackhammer itself and the specific head to do the job rather than have to keep track of several expensive and easily lost parts.
As I was driving the rod into the ground someone came by and asked me a couple of questions about the tool and then asked me where the rest of the heads were. I told him I didn't bring them with me as I had only rented the tool for one specific use.
"Yeah, but now you can't use it to bust up concrete." he protested.
Who said anything about busting up concrete? I had and now have no concrete that needs busting up. The only reason I rented the machine was to install ground rods.
I suppose part of the mentality is that when you have a jackhammer you can bust up concrete which you certainly can. If you have no concrete to bust up there are a lot of people that will complicate things even more by finding some and making up a dumb excuse to open a can of worms.
"Hey! This is neat! I can tear up the driveway!"
Even though the driveway is in pretty good shape if you give some people a jackhammer they will decide it is time to replace it.
The same thing happened several years ago when I rented scaffolding. I was installing vinyl siding and as most of us know it comes with the color molded into the plastic. No painting is involved. While I was busy installing the siding someone asked me how come I didn't have the little hooks they give you to hook a paint can on.
"They're free," he explained.
"I'll give anyone that wants one a free poke in the eye with a sharp stick," I replied. "But you don't see a line in front of the house, now, do you? The hooks are just one more thing to get lost and I am not doing any painting."
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
It happens in just about all fields of endeavor.
My pickup, which is as simple as I could get it was a horror show to locate but I found it and I like it because it is simple. It has fewer parts to have to mess with and therefore is a whole lot less likely to die out on me. I am quite certain, for example that I will never have to replace a window opening motor because it doesn't have any.
I once hauled a younger guy to his boat and it was funny when he asked me which button to push to lower the window. The look on his face was precious when I said, "See that little crank? Turn it."
A couple of years back I sent a guy out to pick up a simple can opener, the kind you turn with your hand and costs a couple of bucks. He returned with a countertop electric model and explained that it was the simplest model he could find. I never even opened the box. I simply stuffed it in the trash unopened and had someone else pick up the hand operated kind. We still have it and it works like a charm. It does what it is supposed to do. It opens cans.
It fits nicely in a drawer, takes up no counter space, draws no energy. We don't eat a lot of canned stuff so it's not like we use it 137 times a day.
I have recently looked into emergency radio communications and have learned a lot about how a lot of people think. Some is good, some not so good.
There are a lot of hams that are techies and that is actually a good thing because a lot of good comes from that. These guys are the ones that make the hobby what it is today and these are the go-to guys for figuring a lot of problems out.
Some of them get so wrapped up in the technology that they have a very hard time comprehending simplicity. When you point to, for example, a simple field rig for field use that allows the use of voice and code they ask "But how are you going to send images through it?" They miss the whole point of simplicity.
The field rig is not designed to use a whole lot of data mode. It is designed to provide simple field communications. If you want to use data, you simply use the sophisticated rig you have in your warm, heated home. A field rig is about basics.
It isn't just about cars and radios. It seems to pop up just about everywhere.
It is funny the way a lot of people thing about tools and equipment.
Recently I rented a small jackhammer with a ground rod putter-inner head. I rented the thing to install a trio of ground rods, a pair for radios and one to make damned good and sure the household AC was properly grounded after I examined the ground there and decided it was insufficient.
I rented the jackhammer for that purpose and that purpose only and to simplify things I only took the jackhammer itself and the specific head to do the job rather than have to keep track of several expensive and easily lost parts.
As I was driving the rod into the ground someone came by and asked me a couple of questions about the tool and then asked me where the rest of the heads were. I told him I didn't bring them with me as I had only rented the tool for one specific use.
"Yeah, but now you can't use it to bust up concrete." he protested.
Who said anything about busting up concrete? I had and now have no concrete that needs busting up. The only reason I rented the machine was to install ground rods.
I suppose part of the mentality is that when you have a jackhammer you can bust up concrete which you certainly can. If you have no concrete to bust up there are a lot of people that will complicate things even more by finding some and making up a dumb excuse to open a can of worms.
"Hey! This is neat! I can tear up the driveway!"
Even though the driveway is in pretty good shape if you give some people a jackhammer they will decide it is time to replace it.
The same thing happened several years ago when I rented scaffolding. I was installing vinyl siding and as most of us know it comes with the color molded into the plastic. No painting is involved. While I was busy installing the siding someone asked me how come I didn't have the little hooks they give you to hook a paint can on.
"They're free," he explained.
"I'll give anyone that wants one a free poke in the eye with a sharp stick," I replied. "But you don't see a line in front of the house, now, do you? The hooks are just one more thing to get lost and I am not doing any painting."
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Monday, July 23, 2012
Roger Ebert and Ice-T.
.
OK, there has been a mass shooting in Colorado and a dozen people are dead. Now because this is in a movie theatre, Roger Ebert has claimed this as his turf simply because he is a movie reviewer and has made a pretty good living sitting on his ass watching Hollywood creations and then getting on TV and talking about them.
Of course, I do not believe that Ebert goes to theaters to review the movies he talks about on the boob tube. He probably has private showings as it is likely in the best interests of the movie people to give him first shot at seeing it so he can be informed when the movie actually comes out. While possible, I seriously doubt that you are likely to be find yourself sitting next to Roger Ebert at the local Bijou as he munches popcorn and watches the show.
Yet because the Colorado shooting took place in a damned movie theater, Ebert has come forth to give his take on the shooting and goes so far to say that the shooting proves that concealed carry of handguns is useless and should not be allowed.
Interesting. Where were the concealed firearms in the theater? I'd have to say there most likely were not a whole lot of them because the theater has a no firearms policy. The company that runs the theater does not permit people with firearms licenses permits to enter the theater.
They seem to believe that having such a policy will protect their patrons from the forces of evil.
We've all seen it before, "These premises protected by this sign." seems to be a pretty common policy in places. Of course, one seldom sees the sign in several languages so everyone can read it.
Of course it is a damned shame that the gunman didn't take the time to read the sign before he entered the premises or maybe he would have decided that murdering a dozen people might get him in trouble or something along these lines. Yeah. Right.
For some odd reason the rules didn't get obeyed. Whoda thought?
Of course, in the op-ed piece Ebert put in the NY Times, there was a spiel about a guy packing a pistol.
"Why do you carry a gun?" he was asked.
"Because I live in a dangerous neighborhood," he replied.
"It would be safer if you moved."
I suppose it would, but I'd just bet the guy packing the piece can't afford to move to the big, safe house in a gated community on the hill somewhere. Unlike the big shot celebs that run their mouths and sit on their asses in theaters and big buildings making the big bucks, this guy is probably one of the guys that actually gets OFF of his ass and BUILDS the buildings these big shots sit in.
I suppose that the guy carrying the piece could move. He could just come to work roaring drunk and do something cataclysmic, destroy something expensive like a bulldozer and get fired. Then he could blame his problem on his disabling alcoholism and go out on disability and get on the government tit. After that he could apply for Section 8 government housing and get a nicer place to live in a nicer part of town and not feel the need to carry a gun.
While unlikely, it would be poetic justice to see this poor bastard move in right next to Ebert. The moaning, wailing and gnashing of teeth is pretty likely to be epic because most people like that have a 'not in my back yard' attitude.
While everyone has the right to speak out and I will support that right, I wish that people like Ebert that have little in common with the average guy would just shut the hell up. I get tired of people like them running their mouths over things that they do not understand. You can bet your ass that if Ebert thought his life was in danger he would hire some sort of armed bodyguard. After all, he can afford it. He has a job making big bucks for sitting on his ass all day. The guy out busting his to make ends meet simply can not afford a hired guard. He's on his own.
Then again, I didn't see Roger Ebert offering to open his wallet and offer the help the guy packing the gun a better, safer place to live, either. Guys like him ought to either put up or shut up. They're not part of the solution, they're part of the problem.
In other news, I saw an interview with Ice-T.
While I am not a rap guy by a long shot, Ice-T seems to get it.
In his interview he pointed out that the 2nd Amendment was put there to give the average guy acess to weapons to be used against tyranny.
There is a lot to be said there because governments gone bad do not murder people by the tens or even hundreds. They murder people by the thousands and millions.
If you add up all of the murders commmitted in the 20th century you will find that the murders committed by individuals do not even begin to make up a fraction of the murders committed by governments gone bad. Every single time this has happened it has been preceded by a disarmament of the people, generally under the guise of public safety.
There will always be incidents like the one that took place in Colorado. In a free society there will always be people like that that are unbalanced. It is the price we pay for freedom. Yes, it does suck. Yes it is expensive. The incident in Colorado cost about a dozen people their lives and six time that were severely injured. This does not take into consideration the price that will be paid in mental anguish.
Still, when you add this up and the totals come in you can look at what it would cost by letting the government run wild without the ultimate check. When you do that and put it into cold, hard numbers, you begin to realize that it is not as expensive as it looks.
Anyone that has taken the time to read history has seen that just before every major genocide that has taken place in the world in the 20th century has been preceeded by gun control.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
An awful lot of people do not know the beginnings of gun control in the United States.
The first gun control laws were put in effect shortly after the Civil War to keep the recently freed blacks from having access to firearms. Most of these laws were passed by the Blue Dog Democrats.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
OK, there has been a mass shooting in Colorado and a dozen people are dead. Now because this is in a movie theatre, Roger Ebert has claimed this as his turf simply because he is a movie reviewer and has made a pretty good living sitting on his ass watching Hollywood creations and then getting on TV and talking about them.
Of course, I do not believe that Ebert goes to theaters to review the movies he talks about on the boob tube. He probably has private showings as it is likely in the best interests of the movie people to give him first shot at seeing it so he can be informed when the movie actually comes out. While possible, I seriously doubt that you are likely to be find yourself sitting next to Roger Ebert at the local Bijou as he munches popcorn and watches the show.
Yet because the Colorado shooting took place in a damned movie theater, Ebert has come forth to give his take on the shooting and goes so far to say that the shooting proves that concealed carry of handguns is useless and should not be allowed.
Interesting. Where were the concealed firearms in the theater? I'd have to say there most likely were not a whole lot of them because the theater has a no firearms policy. The company that runs the theater does not permit people with firearms licenses permits to enter the theater.
They seem to believe that having such a policy will protect their patrons from the forces of evil.
We've all seen it before, "These premises protected by this sign." seems to be a pretty common policy in places. Of course, one seldom sees the sign in several languages so everyone can read it.
Of course it is a damned shame that the gunman didn't take the time to read the sign before he entered the premises or maybe he would have decided that murdering a dozen people might get him in trouble or something along these lines. Yeah. Right.
For some odd reason the rules didn't get obeyed. Whoda thought?
Of course, in the op-ed piece Ebert put in the NY Times, there was a spiel about a guy packing a pistol.
"Why do you carry a gun?" he was asked.
"Because I live in a dangerous neighborhood," he replied.
"It would be safer if you moved."
I suppose it would, but I'd just bet the guy packing the piece can't afford to move to the big, safe house in a gated community on the hill somewhere. Unlike the big shot celebs that run their mouths and sit on their asses in theaters and big buildings making the big bucks, this guy is probably one of the guys that actually gets OFF of his ass and BUILDS the buildings these big shots sit in.
I suppose that the guy carrying the piece could move. He could just come to work roaring drunk and do something cataclysmic, destroy something expensive like a bulldozer and get fired. Then he could blame his problem on his disabling alcoholism and go out on disability and get on the government tit. After that he could apply for Section 8 government housing and get a nicer place to live in a nicer part of town and not feel the need to carry a gun.
While unlikely, it would be poetic justice to see this poor bastard move in right next to Ebert. The moaning, wailing and gnashing of teeth is pretty likely to be epic because most people like that have a 'not in my back yard' attitude.
While everyone has the right to speak out and I will support that right, I wish that people like Ebert that have little in common with the average guy would just shut the hell up. I get tired of people like them running their mouths over things that they do not understand. You can bet your ass that if Ebert thought his life was in danger he would hire some sort of armed bodyguard. After all, he can afford it. He has a job making big bucks for sitting on his ass all day. The guy out busting his to make ends meet simply can not afford a hired guard. He's on his own.
Then again, I didn't see Roger Ebert offering to open his wallet and offer the help the guy packing the gun a better, safer place to live, either. Guys like him ought to either put up or shut up. They're not part of the solution, they're part of the problem.
In other news, I saw an interview with Ice-T.
While I am not a rap guy by a long shot, Ice-T seems to get it.
In his interview he pointed out that the 2nd Amendment was put there to give the average guy acess to weapons to be used against tyranny.
There is a lot to be said there because governments gone bad do not murder people by the tens or even hundreds. They murder people by the thousands and millions.
If you add up all of the murders commmitted in the 20th century you will find that the murders committed by individuals do not even begin to make up a fraction of the murders committed by governments gone bad. Every single time this has happened it has been preceded by a disarmament of the people, generally under the guise of public safety.
There will always be incidents like the one that took place in Colorado. In a free society there will always be people like that that are unbalanced. It is the price we pay for freedom. Yes, it does suck. Yes it is expensive. The incident in Colorado cost about a dozen people their lives and six time that were severely injured. This does not take into consideration the price that will be paid in mental anguish.
Still, when you add this up and the totals come in you can look at what it would cost by letting the government run wild without the ultimate check. When you do that and put it into cold, hard numbers, you begin to realize that it is not as expensive as it looks.
Anyone that has taken the time to read history has seen that just before every major genocide that has taken place in the world in the 20th century has been preceeded by gun control.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
An awful lot of people do not know the beginnings of gun control in the United States.
The first gun control laws were put in effect shortly after the Civil War to keep the recently freed blacks from having access to firearms. Most of these laws were passed by the Blue Dog Democrats.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Fire is hot. Whoda ever thought?
One of the things that irks me is the constant need for studies of the obvious.
Recently our drone program had clobbered a number of terrorists that most likely couldn't have been taken out by our special ops guys. Good deal.
Now the powers that be have released a report telling us that drones can be used in the war on terror to replace having guys risk their lives.
Well, whoda thought? Isn't that what they were designed to do in the first place?
We spend a lot of time and waste a lot of resources checking out the obvious.
I swear, there are people out there raising children that need a report to tell them that you can take your kids to soccer practice in an automoobile.
For years they see families in cars, many of which have soccer club stickers and soccer balls on them. They see the cars stop at soccer fields and drop off their kids, yet they will ponder how to get their precious little Jimmy to soccer practice until they spend five hours on line hunting down a government report that says that automobiles can be used to take kids to soccer practice.
In other news, fire is hot and can be used to cook food on. I know this to be true because I read a government report on it.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Recently our drone program had clobbered a number of terrorists that most likely couldn't have been taken out by our special ops guys. Good deal.
Now the powers that be have released a report telling us that drones can be used in the war on terror to replace having guys risk their lives.
Well, whoda thought? Isn't that what they were designed to do in the first place?
We spend a lot of time and waste a lot of resources checking out the obvious.
I swear, there are people out there raising children that need a report to tell them that you can take your kids to soccer practice in an automoobile.
For years they see families in cars, many of which have soccer club stickers and soccer balls on them. They see the cars stop at soccer fields and drop off their kids, yet they will ponder how to get their precious little Jimmy to soccer practice until they spend five hours on line hunting down a government report that says that automobiles can be used to take kids to soccer practice.
In other news, fire is hot and can be used to cook food on. I know this to be true because I read a government report on it.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Saturday, July 21, 2012
WHy is the phone in the refrigerator?
Cell phone and fire alarm in refrigerator.
The cook was busy making something to eat and I decided I wanted a cold drink so I opened the refrigerator and noted the contents. There were the usual foods and beverages and the cook's cell phone and the ship's smoke detector. I noticed there were steaks out so everything seemed to add up.
Over the years I have done the same thing at home and it works. Before the days of answering machines I used to put the phone in the refrigerator when I didn't want to be bothered by the damned thing. It could ring in there for hours on end for all I cared.
Sometimes when I was in a bad mood and tossed the phone in the fridge I would smile and say to it, "Ring, you bastard! Ring yourself off the hook!" and I'd smile a little as I closed the door.
There are a few things that make me put the smoke detector in the refrigerator and one of them is when I decide to burn beef. Cooking a steak on a hot skillet will set the alarm off every time and it is annoying as hell listening to that noisy thing while I am simply trying to make a meal of some sort.
There are actually 2 reasons the smoke detector goes in the fridge. Ine is, of course, to keep it from going off and the other is so I will run into it shortly after dinner and replace it. While I could simply take the battery out and call it good, it is easy to forget to replace the battery. When it is in the refrigerator I will run into it after dinner sometime and put it back where it belongs.
Now that I have an answering machine for the phone I can simply turn the bell off and not have that damned thing bug me. Most of the calls the land line gets are only telemarketers, anyway and they hang up automatically when the answering maching kicks on.
I don't even know why I have a land line anymore and I have seriously considered getting rid of it but the Mrs keeps coming up with reasons for keeping the damned fool thing.
Back when we had the old style cradle phone with real ringers in them and I would stuff them into the refrigerator it was funny to see someone open it up and go agape and tell me, "Hey, did you know the telephone is in the refrigerator?"
Women would look confused when I told them why, but an awful lot of guys would smile and many would tell me they would have to remember that trick the next time they wanted peace and quiet. It works like a charm.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
The cook was busy making something to eat and I decided I wanted a cold drink so I opened the refrigerator and noted the contents. There were the usual foods and beverages and the cook's cell phone and the ship's smoke detector. I noticed there were steaks out so everything seemed to add up.
Over the years I have done the same thing at home and it works. Before the days of answering machines I used to put the phone in the refrigerator when I didn't want to be bothered by the damned thing. It could ring in there for hours on end for all I cared.
Sometimes when I was in a bad mood and tossed the phone in the fridge I would smile and say to it, "Ring, you bastard! Ring yourself off the hook!" and I'd smile a little as I closed the door.
There are a few things that make me put the smoke detector in the refrigerator and one of them is when I decide to burn beef. Cooking a steak on a hot skillet will set the alarm off every time and it is annoying as hell listening to that noisy thing while I am simply trying to make a meal of some sort.
There are actually 2 reasons the smoke detector goes in the fridge. Ine is, of course, to keep it from going off and the other is so I will run into it shortly after dinner and replace it. While I could simply take the battery out and call it good, it is easy to forget to replace the battery. When it is in the refrigerator I will run into it after dinner sometime and put it back where it belongs.
Now that I have an answering machine for the phone I can simply turn the bell off and not have that damned thing bug me. Most of the calls the land line gets are only telemarketers, anyway and they hang up automatically when the answering maching kicks on.
I don't even know why I have a land line anymore and I have seriously considered getting rid of it but the Mrs keeps coming up with reasons for keeping the damned fool thing.
Back when we had the old style cradle phone with real ringers in them and I would stuff them into the refrigerator it was funny to see someone open it up and go agape and tell me, "Hey, did you know the telephone is in the refrigerator?"
Women would look confused when I told them why, but an awful lot of guys would smile and many would tell me they would have to remember that trick the next time they wanted peace and quiet. It works like a charm.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Friday, July 20, 2012
Of illegal gas cans and pre-ban toilets.
Try buying a working gas can sometime.
It wasn't a long time ago when you could buy a 5 gallon gas can that you could use to put in the back of your pickup for off-roading adventures. Gassing up out in the Outer Mongolia area was pretty easy. You would pop the lid, pull out the spout, stick the spout into your tank and snap open the vent. In about a minute or so you had 5 gallons of gasoline in your tank and you were off and running again.
I suppose it you were not careful there was minimal spillage.
Enter the crybabies who moaned, wailed and gnashed their teeth to get Uncle to do something about the horrible amount of spillage and of course, Uncle did.
They now make 100% spill proof gas cans that are guarenteed not to spill a drop because you simply can't get the gas out of them. In addition to that, the spouts no longer fit into the average vehicle's gas tank filler.
Of course, when you finally DO get the gas out of the can you spill a whole lot more than you used to because you wind up breaking the safety nozzle that comes with them.
It didn't take long for the public to figure out that these new gas cans were not a very good idea and rather than do what they should have which is take a few cans of gas down to the offices of the elected officials that inflicted this little indignity on us and burn them to the ground, they reverted to an old American trick or two. Or three. Or ten.
Some people simply did what I did and bought a piece of clear hose and syphon the gas into their vehicles. Sometimes if I am in a hurry I just pull the entire cap off the can and dump it into the tank with a funnel I got at an auto parts store. It works pretty good. Other people made various jury-rigged nozzles, many of which leak far, far worse than the old ones did and create a lot more spillage.
Other people have just decided to get the old pre-ban cans from wherever they can find them.
I just went rooting around on eBay and wasn't too surprised that a beat up old pre-ban can runs about twice of what a new, and inproved government approved one does. I really wasn't too surprised.
Of course, the government had made it clear that this kind of conduct is illegal and I suppose there is a penalty for circumventing the safety devices attached to the gas can but I don't think that there are really a whole lot of policemen out there that are going to go too far to enforce it.
You forget that cops have lawns to mow, too and they suffer the same problems as the rest of us. They hate the damned things just as much as the rest of us. In fact last summer I got nailed cold by a local Gendarme who caught me filling my mower with my little hand made syphon.
He got out of the car and watched me carefully and instead of reading me my Constitutional rights and crossing my wrists with stainless steel, he furrowed his brows and said, "That's a good one. I'll have to remember ithat one."
I happened to have a bunch of fittings in my plumber's kit so right then and there I whipped him up one which he gratefully took. Before we get into the corrupt cop conclusion, neither of us looked at this as a police/citizen matter. This was strictly a guy thing.
This entire gas can thing really serves no purpose other than to make us a little more disrespectful of the powers that be, very few of which actually mow their own lawns or ever have to put gas into their own cars. If they did then they would realize that this whole gas can nozzle is nothing but a bad joke anyway.
All stuff like this does is alienate the average guy from the government just a little more with each new ill-thought and ill planned dopey little rule and regulation.
Another example of this is the new and improved one-gallon-per-flush toilet that got jammed down our throats a few years back as an effort to save water. While I guess the plumbing at my house even though it is an older house has kept the required fall in the drainage/vent/waste system, I have had a couple of stoppages over the past few years and good old Roto-Rooter has paid us a visit a time or two. Back when we had the older toilets there was no problem.
A lot of older homes have seemed to have this problem because over time the fall in the system flattens out a bit over time and as the earth shifts around a bit. Many people have been forced to replumb their entire systems to use these wonderful government mandated new and improved toilets.
Now in my home, from time to time I stuff a garden hose into the clean-out of my system and let it run a while to make sure the system stays running, hence using more water over the long run than I would had I not replaced the old toilet with the new and improved one. It is either that or I'll wind up having to call Roto-Rooter again and pay out the nose.
Of course, most of our elected officials do not live in older homes and the ones that do have simply had their entire waste systems replaced which is really no skin off of their nose because they most likely have either voted themselves a raise to pay for it or possibly there is a congressional plumber or something we don't know about. At any rate, there are not a whole lot of congress people that have dug up their waste systems with a shovel and wallowed in the mung and other crap to fix things themselves which is what an awful lot of us do to keep expenses down.
Of course, there was another route and that was one of international intrigue. You could simply smuggle a pre-ban toilet in from Canada where they were (and still may be) legal. If that was too much hassle and you didn't want to go that route, there are still rebuild kits out there that you can use to convert a new toilet into an old style one.
In short, like a lot of Americans, they either circumvent the law or simply break it because they know that the idiots that make these laws are so far out of touch that they don't understand what they are doing to us when they pass these stupid laws.
I get tired of watching Big Brother try and improve our lives only to make things more different, difficult and more expensive. I wish they would just learn to leave things that work alone.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Thursday, July 19, 2012
One ot the things I have heard regarding the Penn State scandal is that they ought to
go back and strip the school of what it had won during the period that Sandusky was molesting children.
Oddly enough I disagree although maybe a note of what happened to Sandusky and JoPa belongs next to the victories to put things into perspective. Still, the truth is they were pretty good coaches. They racked up an awful lot of victories and ran one hell of a football program.
Military courts-martials often do this sort of thing. They strip the guilty of all medals and decorations. I feel it tarnishes things a bit because it covers up the truth.
A guy that committed any kind of horrible crime can be sentenced to heing handed a blindfold and a cigarette as far as I am concerned but stripping him of any medals awarded in my opinion is simply trying to change history.
You can not change the fact that the man being tried by court-martial at one time did something above and beyond the call of duty to have been awarded a medal. At one time this guy must havebeen a pretty spectacular GI.
We are all the sum of both good and bad and I think I am certain that even Mother Teresa has a little trace of dirt somewhere upon her life if you want to dig around enough. Maybe she was like me once and ran with scissors. I'm also pretty certain that somewhere along the line Charles Manson did something that kind to someone during his life. Maybe he taught a little kid not to run with scissors. Who knows?
Another reason for leaving the facts as they are is that it serves as an example to others what happens when someone falls. Leaving the victories intact at PSU shows someone that cares to look just how far the guilty fell. They were at the top of the world and fell a long, long way.
It will also serve to show people what happens when you forget about character and put a game above it.
To deny the good is just as much an untruth as denying the bad and when you look at things in that perspective. It is just another lie, but one told by the other side hiding behind the veil of justice.
The side of good says it is always searching for truth and truth is just that. Stay classy and let the facts speak for themselves.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Oddly enough I disagree although maybe a note of what happened to Sandusky and JoPa belongs next to the victories to put things into perspective. Still, the truth is they were pretty good coaches. They racked up an awful lot of victories and ran one hell of a football program.
Military courts-martials often do this sort of thing. They strip the guilty of all medals and decorations. I feel it tarnishes things a bit because it covers up the truth.
A guy that committed any kind of horrible crime can be sentenced to heing handed a blindfold and a cigarette as far as I am concerned but stripping him of any medals awarded in my opinion is simply trying to change history.
You can not change the fact that the man being tried by court-martial at one time did something above and beyond the call of duty to have been awarded a medal. At one time this guy must havebeen a pretty spectacular GI.
We are all the sum of both good and bad and I think I am certain that even Mother Teresa has a little trace of dirt somewhere upon her life if you want to dig around enough. Maybe she was like me once and ran with scissors. I'm also pretty certain that somewhere along the line Charles Manson did something that kind to someone during his life. Maybe he taught a little kid not to run with scissors. Who knows?
Another reason for leaving the facts as they are is that it serves as an example to others what happens when someone falls. Leaving the victories intact at PSU shows someone that cares to look just how far the guilty fell. They were at the top of the world and fell a long, long way.
It will also serve to show people what happens when you forget about character and put a game above it.
To deny the good is just as much an untruth as denying the bad and when you look at things in that perspective. It is just another lie, but one told by the other side hiding behind the veil of justice.
The side of good says it is always searching for truth and truth is just that. Stay classy and let the facts speak for themselves.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Tear down that statue
There is an argument going on over the Penn State statue of Joe Paterno.
The fans in denial want it to stay.
It should be torn down. If it isn't it will only be a legacy to a man that covered up for a pedophile for years and years.
The problem with a coverup is that it always that the truth eventually comes out and the resulting scandal is a lot bigger because Americans in general hate coverups.
I like the way the sevice acadamies handle things.
The first time someone like Sandusky is discovered he is fired, reported to the authorities and the entire affair is made public. Had the Penn State people in power done this years ago the whole thing would have blown over and be well behind them and they could have come out of the whole affair looking like a school that believes in doing the right thing. The integrity of the institution is preserved.
Even from a financial standpoint they make out better because there is generally only one victim and hence one lawsuit and one payout. Right now there is no telling how much money this is going to cost PSU and it is their own damned fault. I hope the alumni have pretty deep pockets because this is going to cost the school an awful lot of money. People are coming forward as I write this and God only knows how many will show up with their hand out.
Sandusky is now in jail and that's where he belongs. Paterno got off light by dying before this thing broke and while he likely never lad a hand on a kid, he enabled Sandusky to. By enabling Sandusky it means he condoned it and that is just about as bad as the crime itself and maybe even worse.
Had PSU simply canned Sandusky and quietly slid him out the door and compensated the victim years ago it would not have amounted to a whole lot and Joe would have stood the test of time intact because he did the right thing. It would not only have protected his legacy but added tremendously to it because he would have been known as a man or real character and integrity and a man that faced the hard issues head on.
Recently I heard a fan say that one smear should not ruin a great record and that Joe did things the hard way and did things right.
Bullshit.
First of all it was not one little incident. It was decades of a coverup that enabled a monster to molest kids. Second, Joe did things wrong. He took the easy way out and covered for a monster.
I get tired of hearing about what a great guy he was. Great guys do not cover for monsters.
Over the years I have seen coverup after coverup and they generally end up the same way. Watergate, the Lewinsky scandal and a few more. Eventually the case comes to light and heads roll. Had Nixon or Clinton simply said, "Yeah, I did it. So what?" the entire scandal would have been a small couple of day non-event with the media and Nixon would have served his term out and Clinton would not have been impeached.
Leaving the statue up shows that PSU has not learned it's lesson. It's time for the NCAA to step in, do its job and teach PSU that sportsmen do not cover for monsters like that. It is time for action and a lesson to be learned for all schools with an athletic program.
Death penalty. Ten years.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
The fans in denial want it to stay.
It should be torn down. If it isn't it will only be a legacy to a man that covered up for a pedophile for years and years.
The problem with a coverup is that it always that the truth eventually comes out and the resulting scandal is a lot bigger because Americans in general hate coverups.
I like the way the sevice acadamies handle things.
The first time someone like Sandusky is discovered he is fired, reported to the authorities and the entire affair is made public. Had the Penn State people in power done this years ago the whole thing would have blown over and be well behind them and they could have come out of the whole affair looking like a school that believes in doing the right thing. The integrity of the institution is preserved.
Even from a financial standpoint they make out better because there is generally only one victim and hence one lawsuit and one payout. Right now there is no telling how much money this is going to cost PSU and it is their own damned fault. I hope the alumni have pretty deep pockets because this is going to cost the school an awful lot of money. People are coming forward as I write this and God only knows how many will show up with their hand out.
Sandusky is now in jail and that's where he belongs. Paterno got off light by dying before this thing broke and while he likely never lad a hand on a kid, he enabled Sandusky to. By enabling Sandusky it means he condoned it and that is just about as bad as the crime itself and maybe even worse.
Had PSU simply canned Sandusky and quietly slid him out the door and compensated the victim years ago it would not have amounted to a whole lot and Joe would have stood the test of time intact because he did the right thing. It would not only have protected his legacy but added tremendously to it because he would have been known as a man or real character and integrity and a man that faced the hard issues head on.
Recently I heard a fan say that one smear should not ruin a great record and that Joe did things the hard way and did things right.
Bullshit.
First of all it was not one little incident. It was decades of a coverup that enabled a monster to molest kids. Second, Joe did things wrong. He took the easy way out and covered for a monster.
I get tired of hearing about what a great guy he was. Great guys do not cover for monsters.
Over the years I have seen coverup after coverup and they generally end up the same way. Watergate, the Lewinsky scandal and a few more. Eventually the case comes to light and heads roll. Had Nixon or Clinton simply said, "Yeah, I did it. So what?" the entire scandal would have been a small couple of day non-event with the media and Nixon would have served his term out and Clinton would not have been impeached.
Leaving the statue up shows that PSU has not learned it's lesson. It's time for the NCAA to step in, do its job and teach PSU that sportsmen do not cover for monsters like that. It is time for action and a lesson to be learned for all schools with an athletic program.
Death penalty. Ten years.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
One ot the things I am going to do before I cash in my chips
is go to my nephew's wedding which I guess is scheduled for next year sometime.
This is not a bad deal and for just about the first time I am going to go to a wedding because I want to and not because I have been coerced into it.
Over the years I have come up with the damnedest excuses to get out of going to weddings because I don't like them. I suppose a lot of men don't.
This one is different and I want to go to this one for a whole slew of reasons.
I am honored to be invited because my sister and the mother of the bride told both of them that they could invite whomever they wanted and didn't have to invite anyone they didn't want. This is rare because when the couple getting married do this there are certainly going to be a lot of bent noses of people that didn't get invited.
Of course, the instant my nephew invited me I got a call from my sister telling me that I had better behave myself and that she was bringing an assortment of throat lozenges and a bunch of other stuff including a gag because just about every time the preacher gets to the 'speak now or forever hold your piece' line a fly lands in my throat and I cough. I guess I'll just slap a piece of duct tape over my mouth for that part.
I am going to make this one. I am simply going to reverse all of the tricks I have used to get out of going to weddings and make about as much effort to attend that I generally do to squirm out of weddings.
This is one that I am looking forward to.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
This is not a bad deal and for just about the first time I am going to go to a wedding because I want to and not because I have been coerced into it.
Over the years I have come up with the damnedest excuses to get out of going to weddings because I don't like them. I suppose a lot of men don't.
This one is different and I want to go to this one for a whole slew of reasons.
I am honored to be invited because my sister and the mother of the bride told both of them that they could invite whomever they wanted and didn't have to invite anyone they didn't want. This is rare because when the couple getting married do this there are certainly going to be a lot of bent noses of people that didn't get invited.
Of course, the instant my nephew invited me I got a call from my sister telling me that I had better behave myself and that she was bringing an assortment of throat lozenges and a bunch of other stuff including a gag because just about every time the preacher gets to the 'speak now or forever hold your piece' line a fly lands in my throat and I cough. I guess I'll just slap a piece of duct tape over my mouth for that part.
I am going to make this one. I am simply going to reverse all of the tricks I have used to get out of going to weddings and make about as much effort to attend that I generally do to squirm out of weddings.
This is one that I am looking forward to.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Monday, July 16, 2012
Someone reminded me
of the time I got called a racist at a party by the 'token Black' that was at the party. What was so funny about it is that it happened about a week after I had been partying with a group of blacks at a seaman's school in Maryland.
We'd had a few and a couple of the blacks there were teaching me to do the 'Temptation twirl', meaning I was gettin some sort of half-assed dance lessons. I suppose it was a ploy to monopolize the jukebox which was fine by me because I do listen to a lot of classic rock, much of which were created by black groups.
I have no idea why they tried as I am about as graceful on a dance floor as a cow is on roller skates but it was fun. The four or five us were lined up doing the Temptation choreography and after several tries I suppose I managed to look not TOO out of place, which means I was lousy.
The following night the same guys formed a little harmonizing quintet and they dragged me into it which was a riot because the only way I can carry a tune in a five gallon bucket is if the lid is put on factory tight. These guys were talented and really sounded good. I offered to slip out but they wouldn't have it. I sort of felt bad because I would have loved to sit back and listen to them. They were that good.
Still we had fun.
Anyway, I forgot what it was all about but I got called a racist because I didn't agree with the guy at the party.
Truth is he really didn't belong at the party but had been invited just because the host wanted to look like he was liberal minded or some such crap. I suppose it I had brought the guys I had been partying with a couple of days earlier the party would have just cooked but instead here I was dealing with an angry black that had been invited for the wrong reason and here he was callling me a racist.
"I'm a racist?" I shot back. "Me? Kid, you ought to get yourself a set of sheets and go burn a cross somewhere!"
The place went silent and several people looked horrorfied and it was a while before things went back to normal but over the course of the night an awful lot of people quietly told me I was right.
He was the biggest racist there.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
We'd had a few and a couple of the blacks there were teaching me to do the 'Temptation twirl', meaning I was gettin some sort of half-assed dance lessons. I suppose it was a ploy to monopolize the jukebox which was fine by me because I do listen to a lot of classic rock, much of which were created by black groups.
I have no idea why they tried as I am about as graceful on a dance floor as a cow is on roller skates but it was fun. The four or five us were lined up doing the Temptation choreography and after several tries I suppose I managed to look not TOO out of place, which means I was lousy.
The following night the same guys formed a little harmonizing quintet and they dragged me into it which was a riot because the only way I can carry a tune in a five gallon bucket is if the lid is put on factory tight. These guys were talented and really sounded good. I offered to slip out but they wouldn't have it. I sort of felt bad because I would have loved to sit back and listen to them. They were that good.
Still we had fun.
Anyway, I forgot what it was all about but I got called a racist because I didn't agree with the guy at the party.
Truth is he really didn't belong at the party but had been invited just because the host wanted to look like he was liberal minded or some such crap. I suppose it I had brought the guys I had been partying with a couple of days earlier the party would have just cooked but instead here I was dealing with an angry black that had been invited for the wrong reason and here he was callling me a racist.
"I'm a racist?" I shot back. "Me? Kid, you ought to get yourself a set of sheets and go burn a cross somewhere!"
The place went silent and several people looked horrorfied and it was a while before things went back to normal but over the course of the night an awful lot of people quietly told me I was right.
He was the biggest racist there.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Sunday, July 15, 2012
In the culinary department I am a Phillistine.
I have posted before that taking me to a civilized five star restaurant is a waste of time and money because I am of the ilk that would probably be looking through the menu for the meat loaf at Monesieur Pierre's of New York.
This is likely what I would do at Judy's Diner of Rattlesnake Gulch, Texas and I'd just bet Judy makes a better meat loaf for that matter.
I am without a doubt one of the least picky eaters out here and Mrs Pic has commented more than once that I could live comfortably in a concentration camp which very well may be true. The last time she said this was the time we painted the bedroom and she felt that sleeping there with the smell of fresh paint might not be a good idea.
I told her to sack on the couch and then went to the fridge and snagged a bowl of leftover spaghetti which I yaffled down cold in a few bites and then grabbed a blanket and pillow and proceeded to sack out on the nearest chunk of the floor. I was asleep in seconds and then rudely awakened to hearing her tell me that I could live in a concentration camp.
I said that I supposed I could and went back to sleep.
Of course, I am now teamed up with a man that happens to be the kind of guy that would make an excellent chef in a place like Monesieur Pierre's and he has just asked me what I want for dinner tonight and I told him that leftover meat loaf from last night would be fine by me.
This left him fretting for a minute as he most likely had some sort of civilized culinary treat in the back of his head planned out. He was probably frustrated as he was looking to make something special only to find that I was satisfied with last night's meat loaf straight out of the fridge.
He moped about for a minute.
"How about crumbled up leftover meat loaf tacos," he asked.
"Excellent!" I replied, knowing I had made him happy because he had something to do to display his skills.
It doesn't take a whole lot to make me happy. I would have been happy with leftover cold meat loaf.
Stilll, the crumbled leftover meat loaf tacos were pretty good.
77777777777777777777777
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Penn State is a university. It is NOT a football camp
and it should be treated as such. People go there to get an education and that is that. Football is a sport that the university takes part in and while Penn State has a reputation of having a damned good team, the school still exists to give people an academic edication.
The coverup scandal rocking it now angers me to no end.
The pedophelia that Sandusky is in jail for is actually not the part that annoys me. Things like that happen from time to time and when they do they should be dealt with right then and there. Harshly and with no mercy.
The part that truly angers me is that so many people covered for it and that Sandusky wasn't jailed years ago. It was covered up because of a GAME called football.
This is a clear cut case of the tail wagging the dog. Football in any school is secondary. Education is primary. It is time the NCAA came forth on this and suspends Penn State from football for the next ten years for this and the players should be allowed to transfer to somewhere else to play without penalty.
Like a lot of Americans, I get far more upset over a coverup than I do the original crime.
The school also should smelt down the Paterno statues and chisel his name off of the library (leaving the chisel marks as a reminder to others) and remove everything with his name or the names of anyone involved in the coverup after they are fired and if possible, charged.
Of course, there are an awful lot of people in the Pittsburgh area that will defend these people because they are blinded by the game of football which is just that. It is a game. Then again a whole lot of people in Pittsburgh seem to have a football problem anyway. Had Charles Manson been a good football player here he most have likely walked. Maybe a decade of having no Penn State games to go to will give them something to think about and give them a sense of perspective.
Back in the day in high school we had a coach that had a lot of integrity and a lot of grit. The rules were that in order to stay in any sports you had to hold passing grades. Long before I got to the school the battle had been fought.
A couple amumni approached out coach asking for an exception. Refused.
Then a couple of people approached a couple of the teachers and when the coach got word of it, he told the teachers to hold their course and speed. He would back them.
A couple of players when I was in got bumped off the team for bad grades and when some of the guys griped about the loss of him before the big game the coach told them to take it up with the players thay got booted because they were the ones that didn't live up to the team standards. That was that.
The coach knew that the school was not a football camp but an institution of higher learning and that football was secondary.
There was also no slack for misbehaving players, either. I was in one of the few schools where the players didn't get away with murder like they did in other places. If they got in trouble either in school or downtown they got booted or at least suspended a couple of games.
While the coach surely angered a few people, he was held in high respect by the community.
Looks like there are not a whole lot of people I can think of in the Penn State football program I can look up to.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Friday, July 13, 2012
The day the ice cream man flipped out.
Every suburbia neighborhood has an ice cream man that rides around in a truck selling ice cream to kids and their parents. Having that as a job is one thing that makes me wonder because I would have an incredibly hard time doing that job and keeping my sanity.
First you are dealing with kids and sometimes the kids are short on cash or likely want credit. They get this from their parents who will also complain bitterly to the poor bastard about the prices they charge whish is actually a lot higher than it is at the convenience store. A lot of this likely has to do with the price of gasoline and other costs the cretin parents have not taken the time to thik about.
I suppose I could handle that but it would be the ice cream truck music that would send me straight to the booby hatch. Imagine listening to an electronic calliopie playing 'It's a small world' all day long. In about a day or two I would be somewhere getting fitted for a nice, well fitting white canvas jacket with very long sleeves and a nice, shiny Master padlock on the front.
Anyway, Neighbor Bob and I were standing in the frony yard yakking about something or another when we heard the strains of the Dr. Hook song, "Cover of the Rolling Stone' off in the distance and getting louder. Whatever it was happened to be headed in our general direction and was getting louder and louder.
It came towards the end of the street but was hidden by the hill and suddenly it came roaring over the hill and came over it so fast that the wheels cleared the ground!
It was the ice cream truck!
He roared past my house weaving all over the street and a couple of doors down it clipped a pair of mailboxes and veered over and clipped a parked car. A block or so away it made a wild turn and wwent down the side street.
Bob and I were agape and in a second recovered.
"That son of a bitch is going to hurt someone!" Bob said as I started inside for the phone.
I grabbed the cordless, dialed 911 and headed outside and spoke to the dispatcher. Before I even got my report started the dispatcher interrupted. "Is this the ice cream truck?" he asked.
I told him it was and he asked me where it was. I stepped outside and listened and gave him an estimation as to where I thought it was based on the Dr Hook song I heard in the distance. Inside of seconds I heard a couple of sirens and inside of less than a minute things got quite.
Bob and I jumped into my pickup and headed down to the last place we heard the noise and near that we saw the ice cream truck on someone's lawn, and the driver being seated in a poilce car wearing a very chic matching set of stainless steel bracelets. The man was a rabid mess, spitting, sputtering and most likely trying to bite the arresting officer.
One of the the police officers went back into the truck and retrieved a number of pint whiskey bottles and put them into his car.
They drove off and the ice cream truck was left on someone's front lawn for later retrieval.
I mentioned to Bob that we ought to get back home and he commented that we ought to come back in 20 minutes and see if the kids raided the truck. Bob wanted a pack of Marlboros so we went to the convenience store and maybe 20 or 30 minutes later we drove past the scene of the arrest and saw the poor guy's lawn was covered with popsicle sticks and ice cream wrappers and there were a couple of kids coming out of the ruck with what looked to be the remains.
One kid had what looked to be a busted popsicle and the other looed like he had a squashed ice cream sandwich of some sort.
We drove home and laughed.
The next day I ran into a friend of Mrs Pic's who told me that the day before the ice cream guy had been ill humored. He had been snapping at the kids and when one of the parents whined that the ice cream man used to be a nice person when she was a girl, he had snapped back that when she was a girl the ice cream truck had to be started with a hand crank.
Over the next week or so I got the story piecemeal. It seems that the guy had been driving the damned truck every single day since mid April without a single day off. Apparently he had just snapped. I suppose I would have snapped under the circumstances, too.
Five consecutive months of 'It's a small world' running through your head all day and I would be sitting in a padded room at the booby hatch.
It must have been over a week later when I ran into the arresting officer in the convenience store drinking a well deserved cup of coffee and approached him for details, explaining my part in the arrest.
The cop was pretty good and filled me in on things to a point and commented that it was a pretty serious incident and took a sip of coffee which soon came shooting out his nose when I replied that if I were on the jury I would let the man off on grounds of temporary insanity.
After he cleaned up, he looked at me like he was taking me into quiet confidence. "A couple of us were at the station at shift change and we agreed the same thing," he replied. "The temporary insanity defense would likely work in this case! We all agreed that that a job like that and no days off would have made all of us go over the edge."
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Welcome back, Kotter.
One of the things I am grateful for back when I went through school is that an awful lot of my teachers had pretty good backgrounds and had more to contribute than just a canned classroom program.
Most of the men had been in the various services during WW2 and had seen something other than the town they grew up in. Many had taken jobs with the school system and had moved into the town I grew up in after they were hired. They had interesting backgrounds.
Of course, we had a few old maid schoolmarm types but these were mainly in the primary grades and by the time I hit junior high they were behind me. My 5th grade teacher was an old maid type but she was sharp and was an exception to the rule that old maid schoolmarms are a pain in the ass.
Even a lot of the schoolmarm types had some real world experience somewhere else. A couple of them had been 'Rosie the Riveter' types of one sort or another during the war doing defense work and one of them I knew had been a Marine officer, retreading for Korea when that had broken out. She was a major-designee when she got out, refusing the promotion as she knew she was leaving the Corps. Interesting woman.
Not all of the men that served had been fighters, they had served in a number of different functions in various fields. A few never served but had done other things beside teach. They and a lot of other of my teachers all shared one thing in common. They had other experiences in life before they went into teaching. I had a homeroom teacher that had spent 2 years in (then) Ceylon while he served in the Peace Corps for 11 cents an hour.
Another had put himself through school by working summers as a longshoreman in New Jersey. He was another interesting man.
One thing that hit me as I write this is that most of the men taught things like math and science. Three of my five English teachers were women. One was out and out lousy. I hated her. Three were lackluster and another was one of the most intelligent and compassionate women I ever met.
Five English teachers? Five?
Yeah, five. Yes, five. My sophmore English teacher was such an idiot that I used her class to study things I found interesting. She bored me to tears and about the end of the first quarter we had a showdown.
She asked me to describe the intrinsic mechanism and instead of explaining the New England transcndentalism that went on with Emerson, Thoreau and the rest of the 1800s New England free thinkers, I described the mechanism of a lobster boat's gypsy head in great detail.
After that I simply sat the class out and I recall a 33 question spelling test where she said the words were 3 points apiece and you got 1 point for spelling your name right, I left the thing blank and spelled my name wrong.
I took it with someone else the following year.
Enter the 'Welcome Back, Kotter' teachers, of which I fortunately had very few. My sophmore English teacher being the one I can recall.
These are the ones that I have seen lately that graduated from high school and went over a couple of towns to the local State Teacher's College, got their degree and came straight back to the school they graduated from four or five years earlier.
I had a few classmates that did this and I really wonder why the school system even hired them.
They had most likely lived at home for the whole four years, even if they didn't I really don't think they did a whole lot during their four years other than attend class. It's possible that the biggest thing a lot of these people had seen before entering the classroom was the time their daddies took them to the county fair.
Big deal. A teaching degree from the school three towns over and no experience in life whatsoever.
There seems to be an awful lot of that going around these days and I really feel for a lot of the kids that have had to face these inexperienced people in the classroom. While I suppose they can learn the particular subject being taught if they are motivated, they sure do not get the rest of the education that went along with it.
Back in the day there was a lot more to an algebra class than learning basic algebra.
Frankly, I think that hiring policies ought to change and before anyone is allowed in the classroom they ought to have some practical experience out of the world of formal education. They ought to not hire recent graduates unless they have had at least a few years out of college doing something else, and something that is not education related.
Work in the woods as a forester, run a business, do a hitch in the Peace Corps, start a riot on Boston Common, but do something, even if it is wrong. At least come into the education field with something besides a teaching degree and a trip to the county fair.
The kids deserve it.
Hell, they NEED it.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
I was traveling yesterday and it got interesting.
While I have posted that I hate misbehaving children in restaurants, I do consider highway rest stops to be pretty much free-fire zones. I generally ignore just about everything in places like that.
Kids do not travel well and outbursts are to be expected. I have to give parents a lot of slack in situations like this.
Anyway, a kid about three or four broke away from the table and the father sprang from his seat and in a gentle, carefully calculated flying tackle snagged the kid and sat him back down in his seat and reprimanded him in a gentle but very firm way. There was no beating, no excessive force and to tell the truth the father was a gentle but understanding creature. He had a pretty good sense of humor because he saw what was happening and didn't let it get to him and he didn't over-react.
This was a man that reminded me of my own father and is the kind of man that God put on this earth to simply do one thing. He was put here to raise kids.
Of course, some meddlesome do-gooder woman jumped up and told the guy she didn't like the way he was treating his children and told him she didn't like seeing children abused.
While I am generally loathe to but into other people's fights, this seemed to be a battle worth fighting.
"Butt out, Lady." I snapped. "The man knows what he is doing. I hate squalling kids in public and he is simply disciplining his children in a way I consider right and proper. He broke no rules. He was simply doing the right thing."
I turned to the father. "Good work! I love seeing a father take responsibility for the conduct of his children! You have my support 100%!"
The father beamed. "Thank you," he said. Then he chuckled. "If they would take kids that age into the military it would make my job a whole lot easier!"
I out and out laughed and turned back to the woman. "I would imagine I have seen your children before."
"Where?" she demanded.
"The Jerry Springer show," I snapped back.
Her husband blew up. "You can't talk to my wife that way!" I want an apology!"
"How does it feel to want?" I calmly asked back.
The man was a little bit bigger than I was and about 15 years younger. In a fair fight at Gold's Gym under the rules for the governence of boxing, laid out by the Marquis of Queensbury I suppose I might have had my hands full. Of course, I have a terrible sense of sportsmanship.
I cheat.
"Seems I am dealing with another person that's not doing their job," I answered.
"What do you mean by that?" he demanded.
"If you had slapped that bitch silly a few times she would stay out of a man's business and allowed him to raise his children properly," I shot back. I looked at the crossword I was working while I was eating my salad. Then I looked up at the father of the recaltricent child. "Need a three letter word, last three letters 'I, m, p that means coward."
"Wimp," said the father. He snickered.
"Thanks." and I feigned filling my puzzle.
"You still owe my wife an apology," said the meddler's husband. Some guys just don't get it.
"Eat your pizza," I replied calmly. "You are a growing boy and need all of your vitamans and minerals."
"I still demand an apology," said the husband.
"Ain't gonna happen. The woman got what she had coming." I shot back."On the other hand I could apologize for being untruthful. I can think of a lot more names that fit her. You will not like them." I said in a very cheerful tone.
I looked at my crossword and turned to the father of the kids. "Need a word that ends in 'u, n, t,"
He snarfed. Coca Cola came out of his nose. He looked at me agape for a second. I thought he was going to wet his pants on the spot. The grin he gave me told me I was his friend for life.
Then he stood up to his full height. He was no longer the easygoing man with a sense of humor that had just casually and gently picked up a small child. This man was a monster well over 6 and a half feet tall and very well muscled.
He looked at the meddler in a very menacing sort of way. Then he hooked his thumb toward me and in a menacing way he said, "I support this man 100%. You heard him. Eat your pizza."
Lions: 4
Christians: 0
They ate their meals in total silence and left.
When they were gone the father looked at me. "Thanks, Pal," he said.
I looked at him sternly. He wasn't getting off the hook based on some sort of sympathy because he was a guy stuk with three kids crap.
"You earned it." I said, seriously. "Being a father is a serious job and you are doing it well. Better than most." That being said, I stuck my hand out. "Piccolo"
"John," he replied. We ahook hands warmly and he returned to his brood.
Sometimes ya gotta help each other out or the assholes win.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Kids do not travel well and outbursts are to be expected. I have to give parents a lot of slack in situations like this.
Anyway, a kid about three or four broke away from the table and the father sprang from his seat and in a gentle, carefully calculated flying tackle snagged the kid and sat him back down in his seat and reprimanded him in a gentle but very firm way. There was no beating, no excessive force and to tell the truth the father was a gentle but understanding creature. He had a pretty good sense of humor because he saw what was happening and didn't let it get to him and he didn't over-react.
This was a man that reminded me of my own father and is the kind of man that God put on this earth to simply do one thing. He was put here to raise kids.
Of course, some meddlesome do-gooder woman jumped up and told the guy she didn't like the way he was treating his children and told him she didn't like seeing children abused.
While I am generally loathe to but into other people's fights, this seemed to be a battle worth fighting.
"Butt out, Lady." I snapped. "The man knows what he is doing. I hate squalling kids in public and he is simply disciplining his children in a way I consider right and proper. He broke no rules. He was simply doing the right thing."
I turned to the father. "Good work! I love seeing a father take responsibility for the conduct of his children! You have my support 100%!"
The father beamed. "Thank you," he said. Then he chuckled. "If they would take kids that age into the military it would make my job a whole lot easier!"
I out and out laughed and turned back to the woman. "I would imagine I have seen your children before."
"Where?" she demanded.
"The Jerry Springer show," I snapped back.
Her husband blew up. "You can't talk to my wife that way!" I want an apology!"
"How does it feel to want?" I calmly asked back.
The man was a little bit bigger than I was and about 15 years younger. In a fair fight at Gold's Gym under the rules for the governence of boxing, laid out by the Marquis of Queensbury I suppose I might have had my hands full. Of course, I have a terrible sense of sportsmanship.
I cheat.
"Seems I am dealing with another person that's not doing their job," I answered.
"What do you mean by that?" he demanded.
"If you had slapped that bitch silly a few times she would stay out of a man's business and allowed him to raise his children properly," I shot back. I looked at the crossword I was working while I was eating my salad. Then I looked up at the father of the recaltricent child. "Need a three letter word, last three letters 'I, m, p that means coward."
"Wimp," said the father. He snickered.
"Thanks." and I feigned filling my puzzle.
"You still owe my wife an apology," said the meddler's husband. Some guys just don't get it.
"Eat your pizza," I replied calmly. "You are a growing boy and need all of your vitamans and minerals."
"I still demand an apology," said the husband.
"Ain't gonna happen. The woman got what she had coming." I shot back."On the other hand I could apologize for being untruthful. I can think of a lot more names that fit her. You will not like them." I said in a very cheerful tone.
I looked at my crossword and turned to the father of the kids. "Need a word that ends in 'u, n, t,"
He snarfed. Coca Cola came out of his nose. He looked at me agape for a second. I thought he was going to wet his pants on the spot. The grin he gave me told me I was his friend for life.
Then he stood up to his full height. He was no longer the easygoing man with a sense of humor that had just casually and gently picked up a small child. This man was a monster well over 6 and a half feet tall and very well muscled.
He looked at the meddler in a very menacing sort of way. Then he hooked his thumb toward me and in a menacing way he said, "I support this man 100%. You heard him. Eat your pizza."
Lions: 4
Christians: 0
They ate their meals in total silence and left.
When they were gone the father looked at me. "Thanks, Pal," he said.
I looked at him sternly. He wasn't getting off the hook based on some sort of sympathy because he was a guy stuk with three kids crap.
"You earned it." I said, seriously. "Being a father is a serious job and you are doing it well. Better than most." That being said, I stuck my hand out. "Piccolo"
"John," he replied. We ahook hands warmly and he returned to his brood.
Sometimes ya gotta help each other out or the assholes win.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Life goes on and maybe history will repeat itself if I live that long.
My nephew, who is getting married soon asked me if I would be willing to step out of retirement and help him out if he fathers a son.
The sound of his voice made me know he was half-kidding me so I told him I only worked as a team with his mother. He chuckled.
About 30 minutes after the call I got a call from my sister, who also happens to be his mother and she told me David, her son, had just asked her if we would be willing to 'put the band together' if he needs it.
We both laughed gleefully, remembering the bullying incident that all three of us shared.
I guess it was almost 20 years ago and there was this school bully that the administration wasn't taking care of. David became one of his victims and the liberal crap was starting already in the self-defense area. This was in one of the most liberal holes in the nation.
Anyway, my sister rapidly grew tired of it and rounded up about a half dozen of the mothers of this thug's victims and quietly got them to back her up. My sister is smart enough to know that the proper wat to deal with school administrations is to spring a trap.
She arranged a meeting with the school principal, the bully, his parents, her and her son. I was also drafted to act both as a witness and to help out.
Now what was pretty funny about this meeting is that I knew the vice-principal. He had been my biology teacher many years back when he was a new teacher. He was really a bumbling idiot that had gotten the required degrees to work his way into administration, yet didn't have half of a brain in his head. The school system tended to promote from within and how this imbecile got to be a vice principal is beyond me. He was pretty incompetent as a teacher back when I had him.
So the seven of us went into the vice-principal's office and the meeting began. Sis had closed the door after we were all in the room and unbeknownst to either the vice-principal or the bully's contingent the half-dozen mothers quietly entered the school and gathered outside.
While we were in there the vice-principal tried to be the politician he wasn't and things started getting nowhere at twice the speed of light and when he started in with the counseling crap which seems to be the norm even these days, I grew pretty disgusted. I had predicted this and had come prepared.
I saw instantly where the bully got his bad manners. They came from his father because he started in on making quite light his thuggish son's ill manners. He made some sort of reference to his son's being punished over a 'fair fight'.
I looked at the father, "It's not a fair fight," I said, conversationally.
"My nephew weighs about 60 pounds less than that boy. Perhaps I can help level the playing field."
I turned to my nephew and took him aside and explained to him that I was going to teach him how to deal with bullies. The vice-principal looked over with the official school administrator and asked me what I had in mind.
WIth that I put my right hand up my left sleeve and produced a British commando knife and handed it to my nephew. The Brits refer to this nasty dagger as 'Black Death' and during WW2 the tool did an admirable job of keeping the German Graves registration people pretty busy. The tool was designed for one single thing and that was fighting against other human beings.
"Time for school," I said to my nephew and with that I started carefully pointing out the finer points of using such a dagger for defensive purposes, pointing out that he was not to stick it into his assailant's ribs unless it was absolutely necessary as it could get stuck there and hard to remove. I showed him how to make an upward thrust into the solar plexus and drive it up. I was also careful to point out the stud on the butt of the handle was useful for busting a head and suggested he target the center of the forehead if necessary. If such a blow did not kill an assailant, then it would certainly stun him enough so that he could finish him off at his leisure.
I also pointed out that a knife was good ecologically as it could be reused many times and still be an effective self-defense tool.
Of course, everyone in the room was agape except my sister.
The vice principal recovered first and looked at my sister. "What do you have to say about this?" he demanded to know. "You're the boy's mother!"
"He forgot to tell my son to throw sand into his eyes so he doesn't see it coming," answered my sister, smugly.
The vice-principal turned to me. "Where did you get that knife?
Where did you learn to fight like that?" he demanded.
"Bought it from Louie Reed back when I was a junior," I replied.
"Seven bucks and he schlepped it to me in your class. I learned to fight with it in your biology class, too when we covered human anatomy. If you recall, I paid attention in that class and did quite well in the test. The knife saved my skin in a brawl at New Joe's bar back in '73."
"I taught no such thing!" He snapped. He looked aghast.
"Yeah, you did," I replied. "You also taught me scientific thinking. The first thing you do when you encounter a problem is eliminate it. He's the problem and he needs elimination." I pointed at the bully.
"You want him to hurt my son?" cried the shocked mother.
"Certainly not," I replied. "I am not teaching my nephew to inflict pain. There will only be a small prick as the blade enters his sternum and then nothing. It will end painlessly, assuming my nephew learns his lessons."
My sister had quietly opened the door a bit so the mothers outside could hear the whole thing.
One of the mothers outside coughed or something because the vice-principal went to the door and opened it and stood here in shock.
"What are you people here for?" he asked.
Shirley Lindholm broke the ice. 'We're here because we're tired of that kid pushing ours around." She looked in at me. "Where can I get my son a knife like that?" she asked. My sister had told me that Shirley was likely to be sharp enough to ask something like that. Shirley could be a firebrand when she wanted to.
"Now wait a minute," protested the vice principal. "The school has a no weapons policy!"
"They also have a no bullying policy and it isn't being enforced!" she shot back.
About this time, the father of the bully said something stupid. "All this over a couple of fair fights? What a bunch of wimps."
That's when I lost my temper and turned on the balls of my feet and swung. Hard. The instant I connected I knew that the punch was going to leave him with a shiner out of a Norman Rockwell painting that would last for at least a couple of months.
He went flying out of the office and landed on his ass outside, stunned.
"Looked like a fair fight to me," shouted Shirley. "Self-defense!"
"I'm calling the police!" snapped the vice-principal.
"You do and every single one of us will file charges against the boy," shouted Louise Murphy, who was another mother. "Then we'll take this up with the school committee. They will roast you alive!"
I wandered out and picked up the father. "I just told you once. If I have to tell you twice it'll be the other eye. Curb your dog. If someone asks you what happened at work tomorrow, tell them you got whipped in a fair fight."
The vice-principal stood there stunned and slowly figured out what to do. He was in a daze.
Finally the vice-principal decided to do something. He told the bully's mother that if her son even looked at another kid cross-eyed, on or off school property that he would be expelled and that was final. The bully and his mother scraped up the father who was standing there holding his sore, aching and rapidly swelling eye and they fled amid a torrent of threats and insults.
My sister and nephew had simply stood there folded arms watching the other mothers rat-pack the vice-principal like a school of hammerhead sharks on a feeding frenzy. The man looked like he was fighting a swarm of bees.
My sister calmly looked at the vice-principal and told him that if he was not good to his word than they would take the issue up with the school committee and there would ba a lot more than six or seven mothers in attendence. He nodded with a beaten, humbled look.
The three of us left the office and as we did, Lisa Raymond, who was divorced, asked me over for dinner that evening. My sister answered before I could open my mouth.
"He can't, Lisa. Maybe next time. We have to get him out of town in case he presses charges," she replied.
I got to my truck and looked at my nephew and snapped my fingers and held my hand out. He handed me back my knife and I made my farewells. About an hour later I was over the state line headed for home.
Aftermath.
My neice heard about everything the following day and didn't know whether to be mortified or laugh like hell. She never had a single problem at school from that day until graduation. Of course, neither did my nephew.
The following day the kids at school did what they should have done in the first place. They rat-packed the bully and beat him senseless after school. This happened a couple of more times and I heard he settled down and seemed to do reasonably well after that.
After he graduated he left town and later someone claimed to have seen him in a Navy uniform but wasn't 100% sure.
The vice-principal retired a couple of years later. Rumor is that he left the state.
To the surprise of almost everyone, the father of the bully never pressed charges. The following Christmas, a friend of the family, an attorney, pulled a few strings and checked for us.There were no outstanding warrants for me anywhere.
My sister later warned me that Lisa Raymond was a pain in the ass that had constant problems with men. For the next several years Lisa would, between numerous boyfriends, call my sister and ask for me. She eventually moved to New Hampshire and a couple of years ago, Georgia.
Shirley Lindholm has stayed in touch with my sister and, by extension, my nephew.
Louise Murphy died a few years later of breast cancer. She apparently had ignored the warning signs until it was too late. In spite of all the doctors could do, she succumbed to the disease.
The knife remains in my safe. It is one of my oldest posessions.I recently found a place on line that specializes in these knives and found out to my surprise that it was genuine. Since I bought it in the 60s I had always thought it was a reproduction. It was actually made in the Ishapore arsenal and at the end of the war a number of these were sent to the United States as partial reparations for loans made to the Brits during WW2. In about 1947 a number of these were sold in the NRA monthly magazine through mail order for $1.98. It's probably worth a couple of hundred bucks today to a collector.
Upon the birth of my nephew's firstborn (hopefully a son) I will mail it to Shirley Lindholm who will simply hand it to him in a plain unaddressed wrapper and walk off mysteriously. He'll know where it came from.
For what it's worth, my nephew told me who is presently vice principal at that same school. I know her. I had her in my homeroom for six years. It would be interesting tangling with her.
Unless she has gone through some very radical changes she would be chewed up with less than a burp. She graduated from high school with me and went straight to a teacher's college a couple towns over and got a job as another 'Welcome Back, Kotter' teacher and never really went anywhere or did anything and likely has little to offer.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Monday, July 9, 2012
Au usual there is something to do and I'll just have to do it.
I have a long day planned today so I guess I had better get on it.
Still, the blog is an important part of it and I'll stop everything for a few to write down something and maybe even something semi intelligent.
The cat sure has come an awful long way over the past ten days or so as far as becoming more outgoing goes. He's a whole lot less shy and more of a cat that owns the home.
While he does hole up and sleep most of the day away and is still quite nocturnal, he's not as scared as he was when he first got here. He's also a little more playful and the past couple of days has decided that bare feet are a good thing to attack.
I do not mind this at all because he attacks without taking his claws out so there isn't any blood being drawn and that is a good thing. Although he is now getting pretty playful and less shy, it is getting pretty obvious that he is not an older cat.
All of the cats I have had over the years were older kitties and mature animals are a lot less frisky and energetic. This is going to be interesting.
Still, the little guy is pretty affectionate and that's a good thing. He sleeps with me now, which is another change.
My WAS (worked all states) certificate got here this morning so I now have my pin and certificate which is a good thing as I'll make a copy and bring it to work.
My next project is to see if I can get 100 different countries and for that I ought to get a somewhat different antenna. For the price some people charge for a wire antenna I can get a 43 foot free standing vertical and set it up in the back yard,
This antenna radiates at a low angle and is perfect for DX by a lot of accounts so I guess I'll just have to send away to DX Engineering and check it out. The best part is that I already have the tuner necessary to run it between the 80 and 10 meter bands.
I'll reroute my other wire antenna for the 160 meter band and I'll be good to go.
Right now kitty seems fascinated by the dish washer and is standing next to is as it chruns away making dishwasher noises. Of course, as soon as I write it, he loses interest and gets all sneaky and starts plotting another attack on my bare feet.
It's 0735 and I gotta get my day started.
Adios.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Still, the blog is an important part of it and I'll stop everything for a few to write down something and maybe even something semi intelligent.
The cat sure has come an awful long way over the past ten days or so as far as becoming more outgoing goes. He's a whole lot less shy and more of a cat that owns the home.
While he does hole up and sleep most of the day away and is still quite nocturnal, he's not as scared as he was when he first got here. He's also a little more playful and the past couple of days has decided that bare feet are a good thing to attack.
I do not mind this at all because he attacks without taking his claws out so there isn't any blood being drawn and that is a good thing. Although he is now getting pretty playful and less shy, it is getting pretty obvious that he is not an older cat.
All of the cats I have had over the years were older kitties and mature animals are a lot less frisky and energetic. This is going to be interesting.
Still, the little guy is pretty affectionate and that's a good thing. He sleeps with me now, which is another change.
My WAS (worked all states) certificate got here this morning so I now have my pin and certificate which is a good thing as I'll make a copy and bring it to work.
My next project is to see if I can get 100 different countries and for that I ought to get a somewhat different antenna. For the price some people charge for a wire antenna I can get a 43 foot free standing vertical and set it up in the back yard,
This antenna radiates at a low angle and is perfect for DX by a lot of accounts so I guess I'll just have to send away to DX Engineering and check it out. The best part is that I already have the tuner necessary to run it between the 80 and 10 meter bands.
I'll reroute my other wire antenna for the 160 meter band and I'll be good to go.
Right now kitty seems fascinated by the dish washer and is standing next to is as it chruns away making dishwasher noises. Of course, as soon as I write it, he loses interest and gets all sneaky and starts plotting another attack on my bare feet.
It's 0735 and I gotta get my day started.
Adios.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Yesterday was a high speed low drag run
I went to a town east of Comombus, Ohio to meet up with one of the guys that is going to do the Camp Perry radio thing with me. He's the guy that is the secretary of the club we formed so as to be able to get this thing up and running.
I felt the need to do this for a couple of reasons. FIrst I wanted to see if he was a human being or at least reasonable facsimile thereof, and I know he was likely thinking the same thing as we have only met prior to this over a damned keyboard. As anyone with half a brain knows, you can be anyone you want to over the web.
What was interesting is that I thought he was going to be a much younger man, and a guy that might of worked in an office and was surprised to find he was a rugged looking, shaggy faced guy almost my age.
Because I didn't wwant to shoot a whole day to hell, I left early clad in a khaki short and baggy khaki shorts and was greeted at his door by an easygoing guy in jeans and a T-shirt.
He's a nice guy.
We discussed the upcoming radio project that will take place next month and ironed out a few details. Seeing this is the first year and I have had a lot of input on it the object is simply to get things going and keep them up and simple.
Keeping anything simple when there are other people involved is hard as everyone and their cousin wants to drag their specialty into it. While maybe next year we might be able to do a little more with technology, this year we are simply going to try and get things running in a simple manner.
You have to remember that there are going to be the military people watching us and we want to be as transparent and leave as much of a small footprint as possible. The last thing we want ot do is invade the place and string up all sorts of wierd antennas and have people tripping over wires and things.
I'll bet you that both the communications officer and the Special Ops people are at least going to drop by and check us out because the SpecOps people are always looking for ways to communicate in difficult situations. They will be curious.
I suppose that if we get s few DX stations they will start asking us how we did it and will be amazed but the truth is that HF operatons are not really a reliable 'On demand' way of communicationg. What will likely happen is that we will answer a few questions and they will be both amazed that a little radio like the PRC 320 can jump the pond and then be disappointed when I explain that it is all a product of sunspots and propogation.
Another reason I went across Ohio is because the guy I went to see has a 43 foot vertical antenna which is supposed to be the ticket for DXing and I wanted to see how much hassle it would be to set up. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it required little and can be easily be raised and lowered by one old man.
The initial setup looks like an hour's work and I very well might bite and snag one after I run it by Mrs Pic.
For under $200 it looks like a pretty good deal.
Anyway, that's whay no big post was made yesterday.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
I felt the need to do this for a couple of reasons. FIrst I wanted to see if he was a human being or at least reasonable facsimile thereof, and I know he was likely thinking the same thing as we have only met prior to this over a damned keyboard. As anyone with half a brain knows, you can be anyone you want to over the web.
What was interesting is that I thought he was going to be a much younger man, and a guy that might of worked in an office and was surprised to find he was a rugged looking, shaggy faced guy almost my age.
Because I didn't wwant to shoot a whole day to hell, I left early clad in a khaki short and baggy khaki shorts and was greeted at his door by an easygoing guy in jeans and a T-shirt.
He's a nice guy.
We discussed the upcoming radio project that will take place next month and ironed out a few details. Seeing this is the first year and I have had a lot of input on it the object is simply to get things going and keep them up and simple.
Keeping anything simple when there are other people involved is hard as everyone and their cousin wants to drag their specialty into it. While maybe next year we might be able to do a little more with technology, this year we are simply going to try and get things running in a simple manner.
You have to remember that there are going to be the military people watching us and we want to be as transparent and leave as much of a small footprint as possible. The last thing we want ot do is invade the place and string up all sorts of wierd antennas and have people tripping over wires and things.
I'll bet you that both the communications officer and the Special Ops people are at least going to drop by and check us out because the SpecOps people are always looking for ways to communicate in difficult situations. They will be curious.
I suppose that if we get s few DX stations they will start asking us how we did it and will be amazed but the truth is that HF operatons are not really a reliable 'On demand' way of communicationg. What will likely happen is that we will answer a few questions and they will be both amazed that a little radio like the PRC 320 can jump the pond and then be disappointed when I explain that it is all a product of sunspots and propogation.
Another reason I went across Ohio is because the guy I went to see has a 43 foot vertical antenna which is supposed to be the ticket for DXing and I wanted to see how much hassle it would be to set up. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it required little and can be easily be raised and lowered by one old man.
The initial setup looks like an hour's work and I very well might bite and snag one after I run it by Mrs Pic.
For under $200 it looks like a pretty good deal.
Anyway, that's whay no big post was made yesterday.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
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