I did something I never thought I would do

and that was talk a young man OUT of military service. 

In this day and age I certainly would not sign my life over to the Swamp just to have them spend it frivilously.

The older I get the more I see how things are and I do not like what I see.

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First lemonade stand of the season.

Not bad. I've never gotten a bad glass of lemonade from a little kids sidewalk stand and this one even served pretty good cupcakes.

Over the years I have run into mean spirited jerks that have tried to make a big thing out of these childish enterprises because they are untaxed, uninspected and have underaged children working them and so on ad nauseum.

I've gone off on a couple of them over the years and as a result replaced the chip on my shoulder towards people like that with the entire tree. It rests very lightly on my shoulders as I truly enjoy having it there.

Once I told one of them to call the police because the police like good lemonade and many of them enjoy dealing with children. I explained the business for the kids would take a sharp upturn with visits by policemen. Cops like good lemonade, too. It really galled him. Seeing him galled warmed my heart.

There really has to be something wrong with a grownup that wants to stifle an industrious little kid. Kids like that should be nurtured and respected for their efforts to try and make a few bucks at an early age.

While I truly love to see a little kid out there hustling to make a buck and sometimes wonder how many millionaires got started that way, I have to admit that there is an even bigger reason I can't pass a lemonade stand and that's to piss off the miserable people that come along and run their mouths and keyboards about how it is illegal.

I tell them that I love nothing more than helping a young child embark on a life of crime.

Fact is, I also love helping little old ladies enter the criminal sector.

Covid helped that one along and left me with a warm, fuzzy feeling after some exhausted poor old woman found herself walking up to enter the exit and said, "Oh, foo! Now I'm going to have to walk around!"

I was wearing my Humphrey Bogart fedora at the time and ran over and said to the hapless old lady, "Hey, shistah! Let's embark on a crime spree together," and offered her my arm.

She was kinda shocked until she saw my grin and asked me "Who do you think you are? James Cagney?"

"C'mon, gorgeous!" I replied. "Where ya been all my life?"

Now this poor old woman had never done anything wrong in her entire life but at that time she realized that enough was enough. She took my arm and I slowly escorted her in through the out door.

As we went under the door header she said to me, "They'll never take us alive!"

I melted.

Enough IS enough. It was an absolute joy to aid and abet that poor, tired old woman in such a crime as going in the out door.

The type of person that complains about a lemonade stand or other youthful enterprise should be ostracised. The kind of self rightous person that would actually call the police on a little kid like that should have their jaw broken and their fingers smashed..

There is hope, however. 

One teenager told me that he was trying to find work mowing lawns and someone asked him if he was licensed, bonded and insured!

"No lady, I'm a criminal.  Mow your own damned lawn!" he answered and walked off.

Of course she instantly called the police who asked her for all of the information she could provide and they tracked him down.

I asked him how that worked out and he replied "Pretty good. Cops mow their own lawns but a few of them hire me when they go on vacation. One even hires me to shovel snow when he leaves town to make his house look lived in while he's away."  

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I think it was last summer when I wrote about the southern sheriff that raided a lemonade stand with over 40 police cars showing up and officers in full riot gear. The little kid was on page one of the local paper being carted off in handcuffs by shotgun wielding deputies wearing a pretty good mean little kid scowl. There was another picture of him sitting in a cell. It was truly hilarious.(Of course the laundry list of charges were instantly dropped.)

The woman that reported this heinous crime became the laughingstock of the entire county.

Needless to say, the sheriff was re-elected by an insane majority if for no other reason than the entertainmant factor. 

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I have found the best way to get away from middle age stupidity is to either eat an ice cream cone with a 5 year old girl or split a half pint of bourbon with a 90 year old man.

The little girl is too young to know any better and the old man doesn't care anymore.

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The Great Ring Doorbell Camera Circus

in a nearby apartment complex is really entertaining to listen to.

It's a busybody's paradise now according to a resident I know.

Jimmy opened his door without putting down his groceries! That's unsafe and could cause the whole building to collapse!

My take on this is that I ain't getting involved because it isn't my fight, but if I lived there I'd simply buy a ski mask, gloves and a long coat from an out of town Goodwill somewhere and walk right up to the cameras and steal a bunch of them, put them into a bag and throw the bag into the complex dumpster.

There is nothing that would make people go straight into a panic faster than having their expensive trusted state of the art security system compromised and/or stolen by some clown wearing a fifty cent mask and a $3 Goodwill trench coat.

Getting rid of the evidence would be pretty easy, too. Simply redonate it to another Goodwill.

Then again as I write this I think I'd use a Guy Fawkes instead of a ski mask because it would add a little terror to things.

It's not my fight but eventually someone will come along and do something. I hope my friend is still living in that hole of busybodies if/when it happens.

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Today I am going shooting.

I am taking a 10/22 to a service rifle match.

It's a 200 yard match with reduced targets to simulate 3 and 600 yards.

Seeing how I was ringing steel constantly at 200 yards I should do reasonably well.

We shall see what we shall see.

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More on sea oats.

In the wayback I knew there was a pretty good sixed cluster of sea oats  and I was going to dig it up, split it into quarters and transplant them

Plan B.

I didn't do my annual fall leveling last fall and today I went into thewayback to look at the sea oats patch. Along the ways  I saw a number of sea oats tufts because the big patch had apparently reseeded.

Now I have a couple of dozen tufts for transplanting and I can leave the big clump there to reseed again.

A pretty good deal.

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Sea oats.

are an ornamental grass and I just ordered 300 seeds which will be here in a couple of days.

I have a couple of places in the yard that can use something like that as a fill-in.

Today I am going to garden and plant the annual marigolds as well as mow the lawn.

Nothing exciting.

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I don't know what to write about today.

One of the things I have noticed is that when you are talking to a child or an animal the person accompanying them often thinks you are talking to them.

Generally speaking, the kid or animal is going to be far more interesting that the adult with them. 

It always irks the adult when they hear me say, "I was talking to the (cat/dog/rhinoceros/kid or whatever)".

I think my all time favorite was when a couple was walking their dog, a truly handsome animal. I was on the front porch having morning coffee when they passed by and I spoke to the dog and said, "You beautiful thing, you."

The husband got irate and said, "That's my wife." 

"I've heard some of the clergy will perform same sex weddings but I have not heard of any that will marry a human to an animal" I replied. "Wow! That give an entirely new meaning to the term 'screwing the pooch'.

He was just starting to fly off at the handle when the brains of the operation, his wife, spoke out.

"He was talking to the dog," she said.

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One thing I have said countless times that never sinks in is

that people that are old house remodelers are masters of the illusion as were the plasterers that finished the walls back in the day.

Crooked studs? No problem. Just put more plaster into the dips and less into the crowns. 

With sheetrock I have had to plane the rises out and shim the dips to keep the walls flat looking. Old houses are a nuisance that way.

And don't give me that crap about old world craftsmanship and back when people really cared because almost every piece of removed trim exposes pretty raggedy unfinished edges.

A lot of people don't realize that the instant a house even starts to be build things start shifting around. In a few years things are no longer straight, level, flush, plumb or square. You can run your mouth about how good the contractor or carpenters were. It ain't them. It's nature.

My house was built right after WW2, likely for GI Joe to raise his kids in after he returned from war where he was fruitful and multiplied. The lumber I was told came from Neville Island where there was a wartime shipyard. I believe it as it is slightly oversized.

It was slapped together and there are a lot of bowed and twisted studs and my guess is the plasterer was the one that made it all look good.

For me, in order to get the walls flat enough to take sheetrock well I've had to plane and shim or sister or replace a number of them.

After 75 years (like my house is) everything is out of kilter even though it doesn't look like it.

Depending on how things have shifted, a level really is only good to show the carpenter how far out of level something is. 

A remodeler's job is to make things appear to he straight, level, flush, plumb and square. 

Needless to say, the most aggravating thing a remodeler faces is Ken or Karen that went down to Homeless Depot and bought themselves a level to follow the now poor bastard around and hassle him.

After that happened a couple of times when I showed up to check the job out beforehand I started bringing a level and a square and showing them what their house was really like. It proved to be a smart thing to do.

One couple that had a recently built house got upset and wanted to go after the contractor that built it but I explained that the situation was pretty normal, especially where they were living. Kodiak has a lot of seismic activity and things shift around a lot.

One of the jobs that convinced me to talk to the client before I started work was a woman that had just bought herself a brand new level. She insisted the two front windows I had installed were out of plumb and she was right. They were. However, they matched the rest of the doors and windows which were out of plumb. No matter how I tried to explain things she wouldn't listen.

I agreed to do this with a caveat. If she was happy with them being plumb after I redid them, fine. No charge. BUT if she wanted me to put them back she paid for the time it took me to set them out of plumb, reset them plumb and rereset them the way I had it to begin with.

I did get paid three times for installing the windows because she went outside and saw they looked crooked even though they were perfectly plumb.

What is interesting to note is that about a year or two later thing reshifted and everything was plumb again...for a while.

Another thing that I remember is the time I built a fisherman a gear shed. He noticed I was taking my sweet time making sure the basic platform was perfectly level and flat. He asked me about it and I simply told him to watch what happened next.

On the flat platform I built a jig for building trusses and they went together clickety click. These were set aside. Next we framed the walls and carefully squared them up so the diagonals were dead on and then raised them and nailed them together.

We didn't bother to check them for plumb If the platform was flat and the walls were square they would be plumb. The fisherman saw that and questioned it. I told him to grab a level and check them. They were dead on.

We insured the outside walls were straight and the trusses fit perfectly. Clickity click.

The fisherman was impressed. 

Now, mind you, I had explained beforehand that hecause we had used green roughcut lumber (his request) and coupled with the fact that there was a lot of seismic activity on the island that things would shift. The doors we build and installed were slightly undersized. We hung them with huge oversized hinges.

I said that it was taking into consideration lumber shrinkage and shifting and he agreed. We did install kind of a 'weather flap' like most leather flight and motorcycle jackets have to keep the snow out.

About a year later we checked it and as to be expected everything was a little cattywampus but it did the job, the price was right and it wasn't an eyesore.

That's when he started talking about it to other fisherman and I wound up building a few more for other fishermen. 

Oh yeah, the guy that we built it for saved us a lot of explaining because he told the guys how we did things.

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Interesting event yesterday, radiowise.

I worked two ships back to back, a Polish ship's officer and a Brit.

I believe the Pole was using the ship's radio and the Brit was running his own QRP (reduced power) rig.

That was a pretty good way to end the day. 

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Buffalo for breakfat.

Yeah, I know. It's really bison but because the bison hunters were called buffalo hunters I call it buffalo. To me bison is a newspeak sissified snobbish name for the critters.

It's pretty good stuff and lower on cholesterol than salmon, given equal weights. You do have to cook it on low heat, though because it's really lean.

Anyway a half pound of buffalo burger mixed with onions and peppers is a pretty good breakfast, especially if topped off with an egg.

Throw an egg on top of practically anything and you can call it breakfast.

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A lot of the rules don't really apply after about 2200.

I generally cruise through residential neighborhoods at or under 25 MPH because I deem it the prudent thing to do and not because of some dopey sign telling me to.

After, say 2300 I'll go a little faster because the kids are inside or at least should be.

Come to think of it, the reason I do this is because of kids under six and grownups over 30. 

The kids six and over have been trained to pay attention and they pretty much do.

What happens often is a person at about 30 starts to forget their training and gets sloppy because they seem to think thay are exempt from the rules because they are not little kids anymore.

That was displayed recently by the 40 something that was riding a bicycle down the middle of the lane. I gave him a quick, muffled toot of the horn and he gave me an arrogant annoyed look and took about a block and a half to get to the side of the road.

I'd seen him before and knew I'd see that arrogant asshole again.

Off to eBay and a $15 purchase.

Next time I saw him ahead of me I ghosted up on him and he got a five second blast from a locomotive horn, panicked and drove up onto someone's lawn.

It should be carefully noted that when I get behind teenagers doing this, a quick, muffled toot and they do pull over and more often wave in gratitude because I didn't give them a long blast like a lot of Karens do. I simply and quietly as possible let them know I am behind them.

I treat the kids with respect and they return it.

Another case of the kids often being much easier to deal with then their parents. 

Back on track. Maybe I ought to change my under 25 until 2200 policy to midnight to avoid adults that might be up. 

Then again, there ought to be a public service announcement made at about 2300 nightly.

"It's 11 PM do you know where your parents are?"

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Exercising a right.

This goes way back to the 70s but a couple of times I strapped a revolver on and wandered through Colorado Springs. 

I was pretty much left alone and I don't recall anyone running and hiding when they saw me. A couple of times someone asked me about it and I explained that I was doing it that day simply to exercise a right that I hadn't exercised before. 

A little kid behind me was heard to ask his father if I was a cowboy and his dad said I probably was. IIRC I was dressed western that day.

I do remember going into a shop of some sort and the shopkeeper telling me I was about three hours late for High Noon. We chuckled.

A cop saw me and paid me no mind to speak of. I think he looked at me to determine that I was sober and that was about it.

I wasn't trying to draw attention so much as I was simply trying to exercised a right that I had never used before. I felt at the time unused things atrophy and to a certain extent still do.

Personally I think that open carry in this day and age should be legal everywehere even if it is stupid.

Time have changed and I imagine if I did that in this day and age I would get hassled quite a bit by any number of dip$hit do gooders. 

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Oned of the things that is starting to really get me wound up

is trying to get business done over the telephone.

It's only gotten worse over time. 

It's not only the 'push one for English, push 2 for Spanish part that irks me. That I can understand.

Nine times out of ten the problem I have run into that I am trying to correct was caused by a human and only a human can fix it. The AI involved hasn't gotten very good and it wastes everyone's time.

It often takes me forever and a day to get to a real live human being and it just keeps getting worse and worse.

I bet if a company advertised that they would rip that entire system out and hire a few human beings they'd do rather well. The amount of money spent on humans to help people would easily be offset by the number of customers they'd gain.

I suppose the AI tampers with studies along these lines because they don't want to be out a job and sent to the electronics recycling bin.

Try this: Run the study the old fashioned way using no computers and see what happens.

Either that or have the companies start paying people for the amount of their time they waste.

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Support bacteria.

They're the only culture some people have.

(Stolen shamelessly from somewhere else)

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I wonder how many of you were upset

over the post about my TG nephew.

Fact is I look at everything as an individual situation. I do NOT believe in a one size fits all in most situations. (No. It is not OK to hack up your neighbor just because you don't like him.)

In his case it was the right thing for him to do.

What I abhor is the groomers and the parents that permit their minor children to undergo irreversible surgery. Drag queens have no business reading to children in schools. It's nothing more than grooming. The mere suggestion of such a thing should have the parents pay a little visit to the school committee with torches and pitchforks and maybe a piece of 3/4 inch manila rope.

The instant a school committee person says, "We feel" they should be cut off instantly by the people telling them that they are going to feel pretty damned sore if they don't resign instantly.

Public schools are no place for religion, politics or sexual grooming. Let nature run its course.

I'm also no fan of LGBTQ parades, either although I do not believe they should be outlawed (Remember I am an Old School Libertarian) I simply won't attend one. 

Every family has someone that is different and doesn't fit into the mainstream somewhere along the line and I'm certainly not going to $hit can a family member (or anybody else for that matter) that has done nobody any harm and is a decent human being. 

 

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Almost missed a day

But I didn't.

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Shoot the hostage.

Various criminals, terrorists, what have you often take hostages as a bargaining chip.

Someone once asked me how to make the practice stop and my answer was 'Shoot the hostage'. The were shocked at what appeared to be such a calloused answer.

The truth is that people do that because we let them get away with it. We allow them to buy time, manipulate sympathies and so on in order to protect the hostage(s).

The hostage is their one bargaining chip and if we make it policy to take it away from them istantly then the practice of hostage taking will stop simply because it doesn't work anymore.

The answer is to go in and take the hostage taker out as quickly as possible and not negotiate at all. Not once in a while, not often, but every single time.

Over time that will save lives.

Some time ago, and I don't recall the fine details, a group took a Russian classroom hostage. The Russians simply wrote the children off as being dead and stormed in anyway and shot every single one of the terrorists dead.

Most of the students survived because of that. Most likely if they had negotiated and carried on when the terrorists realized they were not getting out they would have murdered the kids.

A former State Policeman once told me about a police seminar he attended that had a Russian policeman in the class. 

They were discussing car chases and the instructor asked the Russian officer how they handled them. He replied,  "Not happen in Russia. Have RPG in car."

Obviously the hostage isn't the target the good guys aim for but by refusing to permit them to use another person as a bargaining chip the practice of doing so will stop.

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I said this once and someone asked, "But what if the hostage is a little baby?"

"No exceptions. If you let them negotiate because they have an infant as a hostage then the forces of evil will start taking infants as hostages. Go in and take the hostage taker out," I replied. "Why do you want to see more little babies taken hostage? It means more dead babies in the long run."

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Over the years I have made references to younger women

like the time at Walmart I told some nosy Karen that I was helping my (nonexistant) girlfriend get her driver's license. Of course it outraged her.

The interesting part about it is I really didn't care a whole lot for younger women back when I was dating. As an old man, if I was thrust into the dating world again the last thing I would look at is a young woman. 

I used to watch 80 YO guys get off of cruise ships with a 20 something draped on their arm and think they were out of their mind. They were not fooling anyone. Shades of Anna Nicole Smith!

In reality between my mid 20s and 30s I dated a number of older women. At the time I was dating for fun and company. I had no thoughts of settling down.

In general I don't care for younger women because they generally have too much youthful stupid drama in their lives. Needless to say, there are a lot older of drama queens but to a certain extent many of them eventually outgrow it. Some don't.

The general requirements (not hard and fast) were as follows.

1. Divorced but not recently, no widows. It's easier to compete with a rat than a saint. 

2. Had to have a child. It avoided the drama of the biological clock ticking away and also greatly reduced the chances of entrapment. Although kids were often a PITA, it was a LOT easier than listening to the biological clock crap.

3. Be self sufficient. 

4. A brain, sense of humor and imagination and comfortable with themselves and their age. The last thing I wanted was a woman still trying to be a teenager or 20 something.

5. The usual assortment of OEM parts and NO DRUGS.

Actually age per se was not a hard and fast requirement, there were a handful of women my own age that pretty much for the bill but not a whole lot. I was trying to avoid the whiney "I wanna go to the club" set as they were too interested in being cool and were obviously caught up in the youthful bull$hit.

Besides the I wanna go to the club set was simply trying to go shopping on my nickel.

One thing for certain is I sure the hell don't want to have to reenter the dating world in this day and age.

It sucked back in the day and I know it's only gotten a LOT worse.

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I got a pretty good nephew to hang out with these days.

who used to be a niece.

With all of the transgender crap going around people tend to miss something and that is that there are cases where it IS the right thing to do.

Granted, it's not really the truth every situation or probably not even most but there are cases where it is a good thing. Sometimes God makes a mistake here and there. Look at avacados. He made the seeds too big.

Somewhere before birth in the womb or somewhere in the manufacturing process something short circuited or there was a kink in some gland somewhere and the brain and body didn't quite match. I think he made the right decision to TG and I respect him for it.

He waited until he was 25 and his brain had fully developed and made a decision to do so and afterwards quietly went about his business with no bull$hit, fanfare, advertising or parades. He avoids attention on the matter as much as possible. He simply wants to be left alone and go about his business like any other human being.

He's got a quiet job he loves, takes care of himself and goes about his business. He's one of the kindest people I know and I'm rather pleased to have him as my nephew.

He's a pretty good guy to hang out with and has a delightful sense of humor.

To tell you the truth, I'm glad he went that route because he truly sucked at being a chick.

 

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I had to listen to someone talking about the wonders of modern medicine

and when they were through I said something that made their brains dribble out their ears.

"Trash collection and modern plumbing have done far more for the eradication of disease than all of modern medicine combined.

Don't thank the doctor because you haven't contracted cholera or some other nasty disease. Thank your trash guys and your plumber."

While modern medicine can certainly cure any number of diseases, plumbing and trash collection prevent them ahead of time.

What is interesting to note is that both of these jobs are looked down on.

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Don't let my kid sister see this post.

I was visiting her and we went shopping together a couple of times.

Mostly we were together but one time I wandered over to a sales person because I was looking for something. My Sis found it and was waving at me. The sales person saw it first and said to me, "Looks like your wife found it."

I turned my head and there was Sis holding what I was looking for.

I turned back to the sales person and said, "Thank you! Oh, that's my mother-in-law." and walked off leaving with a confused look on her face.

My sister is 12 years younger than me but actually looks about 20 years younger then me.

Keep 'em guessin'.

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Well, Boys, I got the shower fixed.

There was this dopey safety stop in the mechanism and I just pulled it out and threw it away.

Between that and the energy and water saving showerhead I threw the guts out of I'm gonna have a pretty good shower now and if I really want to I can now really scald the hell out of myself!

It also means I can turn the hot water heater down and save a few bucks on gas.

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Protip regarding toilets: 

While I have not done this in years, I believe they still sell Old School rebuild/repair kits.

Set it for the tank to hold as much as it can and when you flush just hold it until the entire tank empties and that should work pretty good. The kits, IIRC, ran about $20 back when I bought one last.

What kinda sucks is you have to hold the lever down for a few seconds. You just can't flip it and walk off. Still, it works pretty well.

Mine can flush an entire Thanksgiving dinner and day of constant eating followed by six fiber bars as a late night snack without a hitch.

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New and improved my ass.

Screw code. Screw energy saving. Screw green. Screw the National Safety Council and screw everyone that subscribes to it, the horse they rode in on and anybody that looks like them.

I knew it and this is my own fault. I listened to someone else and now my new and improved shower valve gives me water to the showerhead the same temperature as urine.

Now I can have my shower piss down my back and tell me it's raining. I CAN'T GET A HOT SHOWER!!!

The water hits the valve at almost 130 yet the 'We're trying to make you safe'' mechanism mixes it with too damned much cold water so I won't get scalded.

Gee! What if someone turns the cold water on while you're taking a shower?

The old valve used to give me a head's up and I could turn it down on the damned few times that happened to me. It's called paying attention.

I have managed to deal with GFCI outlets, though. I guess they work OK once I get rid of a couple of old extension cords that had the third prong broken off. For a while they kept popping. 

Pull the trigger on the Skilsaw? Poink! 

Back when they first came out every construction supervisor would carry about a dozen duplex outlets, a screwdriver and a pair of pliers. As soon as the electrical inspector left he'd yank the GFCI plugs and replace them so the subs could get some work done instead of running back and forth to reset the damned things. I''ll admit they've gotten better.

Still, as far as installing a shower valve goes, it's just one more of those nanny state things that makes life just a little more miserable.

All I ask for is a toilet that can flush a man sized dump down in a single flush. (I got that after a couple of basic field modifications that I won't get into here.) and a decent hot shower that I'll get by hook or crook.

Maybe crank up the hot water heater a few degrees. Ring it up to, say, 200, leaving a 12 degree safety margin to keep the bastard from boiling.

(Gee, Piccolo! What's that bubbling sound coming from over there? Time to drop the hot water tank down a couple of degrees.)

Actually I didn't replace the shower head because the old one was pretty damned good. My wife brought it home and told me it was a water saver. I tried it once, removed it and replaced it and it worked damned well. It still works well. (After I removed that little washer that restricted the flow.)

Between toilets, shower valves and now unavailable 100 watt incadescent light bulbs (The latter actually used as small heaters in the winter for the spot where the water enters the house) I could get myself a nice seafaring job on Lake Erie smuggling these goodies in from Canada.

Five gallons per flush toilets, non approved shower valves and 100 watt incadescent light bulbs smuggled in on a 32 foot sailboat and I'd be in Fat City!

Job opportunity! 

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The other side of the story.

Someone griped because they bad mouthed a local contractor on Nextdoor and the post disappeared. 

Well, no $hit, Sherlock. Nextdoor was covering their ass. Can't blame them for that....not even a little bit.

In libel suits both the writer and the publisher usually get sued.

The only defense against libel is truth and the Nextdoor people don't know what's true and what isn't. 

"Joe Blow walked off of my job on the first day and I haven't seen him since."

True. 

But why did Joe Blow walk off the minute he arrived?

Because the client didn't live up to their end of the bargain. They were supposed to empty the room because they were too cheap to pay Joe to do it and too lazy or stupid to do it themselves. They wanted to save money and when Joe showed up he took one look at the room, saw nothing had been moved and walked off.

Can't say as I blame him. I did the same thing once under the same circumstances. 

I wasn't going to take responsibility for dropping something on a glass coffee table or spilling paint on an antique desk. I'd be just plain stupid to. Later when the homeowner asked me why I walked I told them just that. They didn't live up to their end of the bargain.

Later when they tried to bad mouth me the most common answer they got is "What did you expect? You didn't live up to your end of the bargain?"

Of course the homeowners (Ken and Karen) were indignant when they were confronted by the rest of the story that people heard from me. Those that knew them confirmed it was a likely scenario.

So Karen and Ken have a bad experience with a contractor. They run their keyboard on Nextdoor, the contractor sues and wins. It would be one thing if Karen and Ken footed the entire bill but they're not. Nextdoor has deeper pockets and likely they will foot the bulk of it.

And, THAT Dear Reader is why your little complaint disappeared.

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I recall some dolt that posted a picture of an alleged speeder that supposedly was going at some tremendous rate of speed down her street. They were behind them and (probably) reached for their camera and snapped a quick photo.

The photo, apparently taken with a fast shutter speed proved nothing. It actually looked to me like someone had parked the car badly on the side of the road AND the picture displayed their tag number.

This means the driver following the speeder was likely speeding AND driving distracted and was far more of a danger than the speeder who was speeding and therefore probably paying attention to what they were doing.

I called them out on that one and pointed out that they were in effect doxxing someone and if they had done the same thing to me I would have shown up at the doorstep of the occupant of 1234 Main Street and had a little talk with them.

1243 Main Street was their address. It took me two minutes to look it up based on their names and information posted on Nextdoor.

The whole thread disappeared. Fair enough.

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I just finished reading the original Beau Geste

It was a pretty good written in the 20s and had the usual characters in a swashbuckling adventure story whereby someone runs off to join the French Foreign Legion.

Not a bad read at all for about a buck on my Kindle.

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In other gnus the insurance company sent me a pretty good replacement chain saw so I'll have something to chase the kids around with come Halloween.

As ususl, the kids know there isn't a chain on the bar. It's the parents that go ape $hit.

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 NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

Low heat and time.

Makes practically any piece of meat tender.

I just threw a nasty pork roast I got for a song into the slow cooker and will leave it there for about 24 hours and we shall see what we shall see.

My guess is that in about 18-24 hours it will fall apart when I pull it out and I can make a pretty good pulled pork out of it.

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Undate. Yup. It fell apart and I put it into a mixing bowl and added barbecue sauce and got a pretty good pulled pork out of it. GREAT sandwiches!

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When I make slow cooker chili I use dried kidney beans sometimes and don't even bother soaking them the night before. I just throw them in the slow cooker and let the hot juices soften them up.

(That's if I decide to add beans which I may or may not do depending on the mood I am in at the time.)

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Padlocks suck. So do keys.

Unless you use them daily or at least fairly often.

Today I just ground through three of the bastards because the keys were missing.

I guess a bit part of it is that I never replaced the Big Key Rack after the fire and I should probably do that right now.

I used to keep all the seldom used keys on it but God only knows where they went. 

Then there are the padlocks to deal with. I organized the family padlock collection once. I got all of the keys together and put the proper keys to the proper padlocks on split rings and locked them to the appropriate lock. It was easy. You would just slide one of the keys off of the split ring and open the lock to retrieve the rest of them and go on with business.

Then someone that won't be mentioned bellyached about it and took ALL the keys off of the rings and threw them into the plastic bag because they thought it was too damned difficult to deal with that way.

Next time I find the family padlock collection I swear I am going to throw the entire mess into the trash and start over.

Then there was the time that someone wanted ALL the padlocks keyed alike which is another story because I bought five keyed alike and inside three days that someone decided we needed six.

Hmmm. I see one leftover from shortly after the fire.

Adios! 

It's in the trash can now!

Come to think of it, I DO own a universal padlock key. It's also called a hammer and it's easier to bust the hasp than the lock but it does the job. 

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Clark Gable wrote letters to the loved ones of fellow fliers KIA

during WW2.

Gable joined the Air Corps after his wife, Carole Lombard, was killed in a plane crash during a war bond drive.

Gable was officially restricted to flying very few milk run missions but would sneak on board other missions. How many missions he flew is unknown but it's estimated they were quite numerous. Hitler had a bounty on him if he could be captured alive. Official sources have it listed he flew 5 combat missions but it's accepted that the number is much higher than that.

Anyway, at one point Gable took to writing bereaved families of men that had been shot down or killed in action.

At first Gable was looked on by his fellow fliers as a spoiled big shot movie star but later gained the respect of the guys he served with because he became one of them. He sought out dangerous missions and cared about the guys he served with.

Another Hollywood type, Jimmy Stewart flew a lot more missions than he was given credit for.

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You have to live up to your end of the bargain.

I remember the time I bid a job based on the customer clearing EVERYTHING out of the room.

When I showed up they had not moved a single thing. I walked out.

They actually chased me down and oddly enough it was the woman that understood my reasoning.

"Who is going to pay for the glass coffee table if I drop a hammer on it?" I asked. The husband said I was.

"THAT'S why I wanted the room clear. To keep your property undamaged. You said you wanted to save money and do it yourself and you didn't. I'm not taking responsibility for damages." I replied.

The wife spoke up and told me to take the day off and come back the next day.

When I got there the entire place was empty...MUCH to her credit.

I don't know what happened while I was gone.

Still, a deal is a deal, If you accept the terms you have to live up to your part of the bargain. 

Later on I ran into her downtown and we chatted. She turned out to be one of those few women that men instinctively like.

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The bastards are always taking things away from the troops.

While I was in the army in the 70s things got started. They took away our mess hall and replaced it with a dining facility. Nothing really changed but the name but for the rest of my hitch I called it the mess hall as did practically everyone else.

Actually I refused to call the new 'dining facility' by that stupid name. For the whole time I was in I ate chow in a mess hall.

Back in the day things like that were a source of pride. In the service (any branch) people did things a little different that people on the outside. It was a part of what made military life unique.

For centuries sailors dressed like sailors until they went through a stage where the Navy and Coast Guard made Monday morning inspections look like a bus driver convention. I do see that the Navy has gone back to Crackerjacks and Dixie Cups so a sailor can at least look like a sailor again.

It also made things a little fairer for the gentle sex as the Crackerjack pants have 13 buttons on the flap that serves as a fly. returning to the old 13 button flap gave women back 13 chances to change her mind.

(I've heard some sneaky sailors use velcro now just to prevent that from happening.)

Uniform changes over the last 50 years for the most part have been a waste of time and money. I see where the Army has gone full circle and gone back to greens and pinks which is pretty good. Soldiers now look like soldiers. I will give credit to the army for improving their fatigue type uniforms by using more modern materiels.

First Sergeants were once properly addresssed as "Top". It was an old term for senior NCO, a Top Sergeant. To First Sergeants being addresssed as 'Top' was a source of pride. They had earned the title.

Nowadays it's "First Sergeant' instead. That's yet another inside loss.

I'm somewhat surprised that Sailors and Marines still poop in a head. I'm mildly surprised some shorebound chairborne admiral hasn't changed it to 'sanitary facility' or some other dopey thing.  

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There was also another cop in town with a Master's degree.

Being my usual self I once asked him if a guy with a high school education could do his job as well as he could.

"Absolutely!" he replied.

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