Abolish the college loan program

and college will be affordable again.

Yes. It really IS that simple.

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June is over. The month of June has come to an end and I don't think

I saw a single 'Pride Month' showing the whole time except for maybe a couple of LGBTQ flags.

That was about it.

I've heard a lot about starting to call it veterans month but IMO Veteran's Day is good enough for me.

Mayb eJune should be 'Go fishing month'.

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You never ever negotiate with terrorist or criminals.

A few years back the Russians had a classroom taken over by terrorists that threatened to kill the schoolchildren. 

The Russians took the attitude that taking the classroom back by force was a life saving mission because they assumed the kids were already dead to begin with. The simply stormed in and took out the terrorists and saved a large majority of the children. 

I have not heard of an act like that in Russia since because the forces of evil have discovered that hostage tactics don't work very well in Russia. It simply produces a large number of dead terrorists with no tangible results. 

The Russians paid their dues to the reduction of terrorism at a cost of a few schoolchildren. For some it was very expensive. You don't raise a kid to have him killed by terrorism. Still, if you look at the big picture it means in the long run a LOT fewer schoolkids will be placed in harm's way.

I have referred to this as 'shoot the hostage' because one of the things that charging in does is remove the hostage from the equation. 

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Has anyone that's seen videos of people driving through protest lines and

ever noticed that usually it's the stupid looking fat chick that gets her leg squashed?

That's because she's stupid unlike the paid agitator that sent her out there. The agitator is smarter than that. He attacks the sides of the cars and always gets away clean to play another day.

It's always the stupid fat chick that never took a course in physics that never seems to understand that as fat as she is, she can't compete with a two or three ton automobile.

I have two reasons I don't like people that intentionally block traffic. They are stealing my time and I am running out of it rather quickly. I don't have time for that sort of bull$hit. I have a right to travel unimpeded. SCOTUS had affirmed the right to free travel. 

The other reason is that these people also block emergency traffic such fire, police, ambulance services, power companies, possibly dealing with outages, food deliveries, parents picking up children, store and pizza deliveries and other emergency services.

That pizza isn't going to deliver itself.

In short road blockers bring a portion of our civilization to a standstill without regard for anything else but their own interests.

If they don't have any respect for the general public I see no reason whatsoever that the public should show them any respect in return.

Snow plows seem like the best tool for the job.

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My kid sister made an interesting comment on life in Massachusetts.

after she moved to Florida.

"Maybe leaving Massachusetts wasn't a good idea after all. When I lived there everything was always someone else's fault."

I guess sarcasm just runs in the family.

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Thank God it is not snowing!

Could you imagine what it would be like having to shovel snow in this heat?

 

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 I get questions from time to time about the usefulness of ham radio and a big part of it is based on what they hear. They seem to forget 'the rest of the story' as the Late Great Paul Harvey used to say.

People often ask what is a foolproof way of communications in a SHTF situation. Fact is they are looking for a magic wand.

While it's true I've communicated with 244 different countries and entities around the world it's not an on demand utility. Everything has to be right for it to happen. The Propagation Gods have to be in a good mood for that to happen. Communication with Uncle Louie across the continent is not an on demand thing.

Actually if the power grid went down the majority of home ham stations would be silenced. They run on house current. 

Still, let's take a look at the hobby as a possible utility. From a practical point of view ham radio is divided into 2 parts, HF and VHF. 

VHF (aka 2 meters) is line of sight and as a result it is limited in distance because of the curvature of the earth, hills, buildings and other obstructions. You can increase your distance by raising your antenna higher off the ground but from a practical standpoint things go only so far.

Someone will probably jump in and say his cousin's college room mate spoke with the ISS in space and he probably did but you have to realize the ISS was above the horizon when he did that. It was in his line of sight.

In spite of it's limitations, VHF is a pretty good communication tool for short ranges if line of sight can be maintained.

The reason for this is that Very High Frequencies will go through the ionosphere and straight out into space and not 'skip'. 

Radio communication is basically divided into two categories, ground wave and sky wave. VHF is ground wave and as a result is limited in distance as I have explained.

Sky wave is what most people hear about when they hear Cousin Nerdly talking about gabbing with somebody in Outer Slobovia or some other far flung remote outpost. It's when the signal hit the ionosphere and skip. They often hit the ionosphere, skip, hit the earth, skip back up to the ionosphere and skip again. If conditions are right then one can communicate with someone halfway around the world very clearly. If conditions are lousy you're not going to do very well. You're basically going to be able to use ground wave and pretty much be restricted.

Back to even simply getting on the air when the grid is down. As I said earlier, if the grid drops most stations go with it. Needless to say, some hams have various backup forms of electricity via generators, solar power and that sort of thing. I once ran one of my rigs for about a week on solar power. Still, it was touch and go. 

While we're talking backup, I own a surplus military rig that has a hand generator that can recharge the battery but that's not as easy as you think. It can take hours of constant generator spinning to charge the battery to full charge. Still, it's doable. It's still far easier to recharge the battery with solar power or other means.

Another aspect that a lot of people seem to forget is training. Some people gather all sorts of 'survival equipment' and leave it in the wrapper thinking they'll be ready for TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It). They have knives, guns, long term stored food, camping equipment and God only knows what else, still in the wrapper and think they're ready to go. 

A lot of good that does him if he doesn't have a simple can opener and know how to use it. He's going to go hungry.

So is having a piece of electronic equipment you have not even taken out of the box. Or a rifle. Or a tent. You have to know how to use your gear.

As a ham I would have to say that in a TEOTWAWKI or SFTF situation about the only practical uses I would have for being able to be on the air is the possibility of setting up a local net to pass local information on. That could be done with 2 meter (VHF) which is pretty reliable for local communications, assuming you don't live in the bottom of a valley somewhere.

The practical application in my case for HF would likely be would be the ability evenings on 40 meters to make contact with hams in OH, IL, and IN. That's because the weather comes to me from the west. It certainly would not be spot on accurate but it would give one some idea. 

For example in IN just got a foot of rain it's a pretty good bet that western PA is going to get a pretty good dousing. Of course, the closer to western PA the station is, the accuracy increases. 

The bottom line is that there really is no reliable form of grid down communication out there. There is no magic wand one can buy to be able to sit in Baltimore and chat with their grandchildren in Sacramento without some sort of infrastructure. 

On the other hand it's another tool to work with.

After Sandy hit Puerto Rico I forwarded 5 joyful messages to 5 sets of parents that their loved one was safe. I got three of them directly from PR, one was a relay from a Cuban and another was from France. I worked a French station and he asked me if the email on my QRZ page was good. It was so he sent me an email forwarding the message.

In the FWIW department, these messages were short. "Call 123-456-7890 and tell her mom that Lisa says she's OK and staying in PR until next month." or "Call Sue Ellington 123-456-7890 Message reads Tom is fine. Will be coming home when I can."  The messages were not much but they certainly served to calm down their loved ones. Sometime I'll post the relay that wound up being to a real karen.

Still, there really isn't a surefire form of radio communication out there that will make 24/7 365 communication possible that is available to the civilian sector although a 2 meter rig might work for local communication fairly well.

 

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Widgets.

Some people don't understand analogies.

"Ok, so you have a job in a widget factory..." I started in a discussion about manufacturing.

"Wait a minute! What's a widget?" he asked.

"It doesn't matter," I replied. We're talking about how things work. What they actually make is immaterial."

"But I don't know what a widget is," he said, making me realize I was dealing with an idiot. I probably should have simply walked off then and there.

"OK, a widget is a subassembly for a frammis which is a component part of the A-16-4 Dynomoter that is used to power the BC-603 radio receiver used in Sherman tanks," I said. "The government signed an open ended contract for 1000/week in 1943 and they've been making 1000/week ever since because the government worded the contract poorly and has to keep taking them. Every week a truck shows up at a government warehouse and when the warehouse starts getting full they declare them surplus and sell them to the public. Somebody buys them."

"Wait a minute! Who sells them?" he asked.

"The government," I replied. "The same people that sell Jeeps for $50.

"What department is that?" he asked.

"I've been trying to figure that one out for about 60 years so I can buy a Jeep for fifty bucks!"

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Iran is screaming and shouting

because Trump (rightly so) took away their nuclear capability. While the left is screaming and shouting along with Iran, Trump did the right thing. De-nuking Iran is a big step toward world peace. 

If Iran gets the bomb at 0900 it's a lead pipe cinch it is going to be sent to Tel Aviv at 0915. Israel will respond in kind (as it should) and then it's game on for the rest of the world and we wind up with a YUGE chance of getting dragged into it.

Iran is stupid and I fully expect them to do something stupid and then we will likely be forced to hurt them real bad. 

That being said I think there's a pretty good chance some Iranian sleeper cell is going to be awakened to do something here in the homeland. The left will screech and blame Trump but the truth is that they will be wrong. The blame goes entirely on the shoulders of previous leaders that have left the border so porous that these people could so easily enter our borders in the first place.

When a country leaves its borders open it loses its sovereignty. It becomes a roadway or a free lunch to everyone wandering through. It allows everything to enter the country and drag along things nobody wants like disease, terrorism and other plagues on a civilized nation. 

People wandering through tend to ignore some of our customs (like using a toilet which spreads disease) and picking up after ourselves. It also gives golden opportunities for unfriendly nations to plant sleeper cells, spies and other thing not in our national interests to be  anywhere they want.

Trump has finally close the barn door after the horses have been let out by previous presidents of both parties.   

If/when an Iranian sleeper cell does anything not in our interests it will not be Trump's fault at all. The fault belongs to the previous administrations that let these people in here in the first place.

Then again I suppose an Iranian sleeper cell could actually provide us with some entertainment if they restrict their activities to Martha's Vineyard.

One other thing I have noticed is that Trump isn't trying to make a 'regime change' where the troops storm in and take charge and replace the ousted government with a nice hand picked team that's going to teach the locals to drink Coca Cola and try and Americanize them. It never works.

Instead Trump is trying to get the locals to oust the Ayatollahs and set up their own government and he can deal with them afterwards. It's risky but 'Regime changing' never works so let's try a more sensible approach.

____________________________

When was talking about regime change to someone I said 'Drink Coca Cola and smoke Camels'.

When she asked me if I smoke Camels my reply was "Nine out of ten men that try Camels go back to women and I'm one of them." 

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A bored day

I don't want to talk about it.

 

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I see where we have 'de-nuked' Iran

and consider that a good thing.

Once we can cut down about four or five layers of Iranian leadership there we actually might have some peace in the Middle East for a while.

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Solstice. A day late.

I wrote this yesterday so it's a day late and a dollar short.

Today marks the Solstice which means that at 2242 Eastern the sun will touch the Tropic of Cancer, 23.3 North of the Equator, marking the beginning of summer.

The spring has been chilly and wet but it sure looks like summer is going to come charging in like gangbusters. We're going to have a real heat wave to start summer off with.

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Not going to be a very good day

because I have to go through the books and play a bunch of stupid games over nothing.

One time when I was going through the books there was an item on the credit card that was from Las Vegas. I had a connecting flight at Reid and bought a cup of coffee there.

When the wife saw it she practically screeched "What were you doing in Las Vegas!?"

"I got a deal on it. There was a free ticket in the coupon book so I grabbed my Cold War Survival kit and hopped on the plane."

Then I showed her this:

And then told her to check my whereabouts on that date. That drew a mildly embarrassed "Oh."

She's generally pretty good but going over the books with her is sometimes a PITA.

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It's well past high time that our elected officials are held to the same standard as ordinary citizens

When Congresscritter Padilla was cuffed and removed from the closed press conference held by Kristi Noem they didn't go far enough. He wasn't stuffed and carted off to be charged with (at the very least) disorderly conduct.

Texas Congresscritter Al Green interrupted Trump's speech and was simply escorted out by the Sergeant-at-Arms. He was interviewed babbling that he didn't regret doing it and so on. 

I would imagine he would have expressed remorse had the Sergeant-at-Arms dragged him outside, beat him with is own cane, pushed him down the stairs onto the street and sent an email to Governor Abbot to send a replacement. Of course this is illegal but you get the general idea. 

I'm sick and tired of our elected officials hiding behind the badge of their office. Some are doubly protected by minority status and some triply protected by sex. I would imagine that a gay, black, female congresscritter would be able to get away with public murder spree.

It's well past time many of them get a good, hard slapdown and are forced to deal with the same rules and regulations that apply to everyone else.

As of now LeMonica McIver of NJ has been arrested and charged with several crime including assaulting a federal officer. That's a step in the right direction. If a conviction is secured some reasonable jail time is warranted, congressional status be damned that would be a good thing. Sauce for goose, sauce for gander.

A day or so ago, NYC Mayoral candidate Brad Lander was arrested for things including assault on a federal officer. Charges were later dropped. Too bad. If they had a case they should have prosecuted him. OTOH the case would have been tried in a NY federal court and most likely be thrown out by an activist judge.

Incidentally anyone that attacks any LEO (or actually anybody else) and wakes up to finding an unconcerned janitor with a broom and dustpan sweeping their teeth off the deck gets no sympathy from me.

LEOs are no different than anyone else. They have an absolute right to self-defense like the rest of us. 

I'm getting sick and tired of those (mainly but not all Democrats) carrying on in an uncivilized manner and ruining the decor of one of the most civilized of institutions, our legislative branch.

Prosecuting them when they act criminally would be a step in the right direction to reminding elected officials who they are supposed to work for.

Actually Congress is partly to blame because they have not really made any efforts to throw some of these clown show actors out on their ears. They have the authority to do it and should. If they started doing this they would gain back a lot of credibility.

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It comes down to it being a battle for optics.

Truth is so precious it must be protected with a bodyguard of lies.

Winston Churchill, 1943.

The first casualty of war is truth.

Attributed to Senator Hiram Johnson.

First of all let's get this straight. I am in NO WAY slighting the service people that fought in the Pacific. The fighting there was nothing less than savage. Part of this post is about the optics of the 7th War Bond Drive that happened in the States, far away from the action.

I no longer believe anything I see or read on the internet. The various technologies can spin anything anyway someone wants it to be spun. I should have figured that out after I read about the flag raising on Iwo Jima years ago. The picture was extremely dramatic but the truth is that it was raised by 40 man patrol that was sent to the top to raise the flag to improve morale. While the ascent was very lightly opposed, there was some brief fighting immediately after the first flag went up. Three Japanese emerged from one of the caves and were neutralized in short order.

The second, replacement flag, was raised several hours later because it was a bigger flag and could be seen better.  This is the flag raising Joe Rosenthal caught on film that became famous. The flag itself was brought up Mt Suribachi by a 3 man detail and was completely unopposed.

While the flag raising made it appear that the battle was over, the fighting continued with about five more weeks of savage fighting. For the record, Mt. Suribachi itself was considered secured when the flag went up although the fighting on other parts of the island went on for several weeks.

When the flag raising picture hit the press it was a major sensation. The surviving three flag raisers were  sent back to the States to participate in the 7th War Bond Drive which became a major success. Two of the surviving flag raisers in the photograph were misidentified so only one, Ira Hayes, an actual flag raiser was on the bond tour. During the tour Hayes was sent back to the fleet allegedly at his own request. Fact is his conscience likely couldn't handle what he considered to be a fraud on top of PTSD and he drank himself goofy and was sent back to the fleet. After Hayes left there were no more actual flag raisers on stage.

For those of you that are somewhat knowledgeable of history,  Rene Gagnon and James 'Doc' Bradley were not actual flag raisers as the public has been told for decades. Gagnon was handed a copy of the picture and was told to identify the people in it and misidentified several of them, including himself. He said he was one of them.

At first he refused to identify Ira Hayes. While Ira didn't have a college education he knew trouble when he say it. When he heard Gagnon was being called in to identify the people in the picture Hayes 'threatened him with physical action' if Gagnon identified him. Gagnon caved in and named Hayes after the Marine Corps threatened him with serious criminal prosecution.

When the tour got started the Corps knew that Harlon Block had been misidentified as Hank Hanson. They chose to keep quiet about it until 1947 when Block was recognized. Harold Keller was misidentified as being Rene Gagnon. He wrote headquarters. Years later in a scrapbook belonging to Keller that was a 'strongly worded letter' from a Marine major general basically telling him to keep his mouth shut. 

As for Rosenthal's picture, the optics were perfect. One look at it and one just knew that the Marines had savagely battled their way to the top.

Little did the public know that the 40 man patrol had simply been handed a flag and sent to the top of Mount Suribachi with orders to raise it to let the CO know they had arrived there. The public was totally unaware that the 40 man patrol got to the top of Suribachi unopposed. Little did the public know that the iconic picture was of a second flag raising ordered by a higher up to make the flag more visible to the troops to bolster their morale. 

The adoring fans never knew that their heroes were not, if fact the actual flag raisers. Personally I think that 'Doc' Bradley and Rene Gagnon thought they really were in the picture. There was a lot going on and it's easy to make a mistake. While as a serviceman I was on many details, I'll be damned if I can remember a whole lot of what I did. I know for certain and certainly expect that Ira and 'Doc' would have probably been somewhere else than on a war bond tour. Fancy rooms, good booze or no fancy rooms and good booze. 

Incidentally every Marine, soldier or sailor that served on Iwo deserved the royal treatment.

James Bradley, author of Flags of our Fathers said that the only one of the three that tried to take advantage of the situation they found themselves in was Gagnon. Bradley also said that he's reasonably sure his father was not one of the actual flag raisers.

Ira returned to the reservation with his ghosts and demons and was found dead in 1955 of exposure and alcohol poisoning. He was 32 years old. Hayes was also instrumental in publicly identifying Harlon Block as one of the original flag raisers after the war.

One glance at that picture and you see six Marines planting Old Glory on top of a heavily contested hill. Anyone looking at the picture immediately visualizes bombs bursting and bullets whizzing by as the Marines raise Old Glory. 

A simple work detail photographed at the right time in the right place became one of the most iconic symbols of WW2.

It was a case of pure optics.

Another case of pure optics was Treyvon Martin. 

When George Zimmerman shot Treyvon Martin the left screeched and posted a picture of a younger Treyvon and he looked like an honor student on his way to read Bible passages to his blind grandmother. 

Actually the picture sounded too wholesome for my cynical sorry ass so I dig and almost instantly saw a copy of his Facebook picture and that told a very different tale. A quick Google images search only shows a very, very few pictures of Martin as an angry 17 year old thug wannabe. They still show countless pictures of the innocent 12 or 13 year old.

Still, the optics of the first picture influenced a lot of people to the point where Zimmerman had to be tried to bow to public pressure based on the innocent looking picture of Martin taken years earlier.

Again, optics.

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Some of the straight faced bullshit I have told people over the years makes even me wonder.

One time I had some self-appointed psychologist started asking me questions about my childhood. Were either of my parents abusive? 

"No. My parents were damned good to me. When I was an infant dad would hold me and say, 'Wheeeeeee!' and throw me ten feet into the air and gently catch me. It's my oldest memory."

"Really? You enjoyed that as a toddler?" he asked.

"So long as we were outside. I didn't like it very much inside the house because we only had eight foot ceilings."

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Funny the things you think about in old age.

I was thinking about the time a fairly attractive chick took me home and as we were starting to get undressed I started to have a hinky feeling that something was not right. 

I turned and walked off buttoning my shirt as I walked out.

I heard her say, "Oh, hell. I wanted to go for it and you're walking out on me!"

It bothered me for quite some time until later on I heard there was a murder on the same street a couple of weeks later. I wrote down the address and it was about a block away and was unrelated.

I wondered about that for quite a while and then seemed to have forgotten about it until now. To this day I still don't know why I got the feeling and bailed out.

As I sit here I feel like I dodged a bullet of some sort. 

Funny how one remembers things like that as they get older. I have not thought about that in probably 40 years.

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Stop me before I kill again!

God! Someone reminded me of Covid.

Expect a couple of Covid stories.

I remember some guy jumping on my case because I didn't put my mask on fast enough to suit him.

I held out my cell phone and said, "Call the police! Have me arrested! STOP ME BEFORE I KILL AGAIN!!"

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What? What? What? That's AGAINST THE LAW!!!

Whenever the subject of drinking and driving comes up I usually say that I've always had a beer between my legs since I started driving when I was fourteen. (Actually I started driving when I was twelve.)

Most people understand sarcasm and smirk, laugh or roll their eyes, but not all of them. Some people get confused and start babbling about how you have to be 16 to drive and 21 to buy beer.

To those people I point out that I embarked on a life of crime when I was 8 which really gets them confused.

Actually there's more than a kernel of truth to this because from the time I was about 12 onward if it was after dark and the only two people in the car were my father and I there was probably a better than average chance I was the driver.

When I was about 12 I asked my father to teach me to drive and he pulled over and we swapped seats. Inside a year I was his regular after dark good weather chauffeur.

Every now an then dad would do something that came out of nowhere that was funny as hell. I was about 14 and we had stopped at the beer store and dad had gotten a 6-pack. when we were driving along dad handed me a beer and said, "Here. Don't open this. Put it between your legs."

"I'm planting a seed. The older you get the funnier this will become." he chuckled. "Now you can tell your grandchildren you drove around with a beer between your legs when you were fourteen."

He was right, as usual. Fifty nine years later it's hilarious.

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Look on the brighter side.

Some clown in LA got hit in a testicle with a rubber bullet and has to have it removed. Some woman posted a Sorry Sob Sister Story about in on Nextdoor.

I told her to look on the brighter side because now he can transition for half price.

I am currently sitting in Nextdoor jail.

Again.

Oh, well.

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Dreamers and visionaries.

Back when I lived in Kodiak someone once said that almost everyone that comes to Kodiak is either running from something or looking for something.

I was probably both. Running from the status quo and looking for adventure. I was 26 years old at the time had dreams. Some I managed to live, others changed over time. This isn't about me. It's about a few of the dreamers and visionaries I met.

The dreamers were just that. They dreamed and never really went anywhere. One couple would walk the docks from time to time and look at the very few sailboats that fishing port and dream. Shortly after I pulled into port with the 25 footer I had purchased in late '84 and stored on the hard they happened by and commented they were waiting until they could afford a 70 footer. 

A little  over 10 years later after I had left I met a friend from the 'old days' and  the 'who do you know' game started. He had just left Kodiak and told me the couple that was 'saving for a 70 footer' was still walking the docks looking at the same old tired sailboats and annoying new arrivals. They were still dreaming. They probably had never saved a cent toward their imaginary 70 boat.

For all I know they are still walking the docks.

He also said that the couple we both knew that wanted to build themselves a home without any loans had now had a beautiful place to live, located in what was considered to be an unbuildable lot. Everyone thought they were both crazy but that turned into respect and admiration as time passed. They did a beautiful job.

I do remember the house when it was near completion. The wife was gloriously pregnant with her second child when I left town. She was still working alongside her husband.

When they arrived they both started working almost immediately stuffing dead fish into tin cans at a cannery. It was pretty nasty work but they were motivated. The hourly wage wasn't much but the overtime was unlimited. Alaska law was over 8/over 40. Anything over 8 hour in a day and/or 40 hours/week was time and a half.

 They lived in the cannery bunkhouse for a while. It didn't take long before he was working for a local contractor and she found a pretty good job on the Coast Guard base. In weekends they often picked up a few shifts at one of the canneries.

Later when they bought their land every non working. non sleeping hour was dedicated to their dream. It took over five long, hard years but they had a really nice house that was theirs free and clear.  

 The couple that built their own home were visionaries. They had a vision and simply plugged away at it, board at a time, turning an unbuildable lot into a warm home. When it was finished they owed nobody a thing and built it with their own sweat, blood and tears. By doing so they had created a good sized chunk of wealth. 

Meanwhile many of their contemporaries were plugging away at paying 30 year loans. 

This couple was not alone. I know a number of people that did basically the same thing. I have met a number of people that had dreams and followed them.

Another wanted his own fishing boat and fished for other people and saved and saved. He kept his eyes and ears open and was smart enough to shift his priorities. He figured the money wasn't in the actual boat but the limited entry permits and he bought whatever he could. Then scarped up enough for a tired old purse seiner, fished that for a while, leveraged a 58 foot limit seiner and eventually sold the boat and permits as a package. In reasonably short order the boat was paid off.

Shortly after I met him he was in the process of making a deal with some investor group in Seattle that wanted the boat and all permits. He timed the deal well, made a killing and got to fish the boat for a few years as it's captain for a generous crew share. At that point he retired from fishing.

Commercial fishing was and probably still is a good way to make pretty good money but it's a crapshoot because there is no hourly wage of any sort. A crewman is paid a portion of the catch. If you catch no fish you don't get paid. If you catch a lot of fish you get paid rather well. When you go fishing you don't get a paycheck, instead you get an opportunity with risk attached.

Fishing also comes with a good change of getting killed. It's 40 times more dangerous than the national average making it far more dangerous than coal mining.

One of the other visionaries I met was someone that got a lemon and turned it into lemonade. He was a high school dropout that got drafted. When I met him he was the orthopedic surgeon that was fixing my busted foot. when we were talking he asked me about myself and I told him I was a licensed mariner. He asked me what academy I had gone to and I told him I licensed the hard way.

He gave me a broad grin and said, "Keep this under your hat but I never finished high school." That got my attention. I asked him how he had managed to become a doctor.

He had gotten drafted and tested well and did well in basic. There was a shortage of combat medics so instead of 10 weeks infantry training and being sent to Vietnam, they gave him 13 weeks of combat medic training and then sent him to Vietnam. After 6 months in combat he was sent to a field hospital where he was spotted by an Army doctor that mentored him. When he was back in the States he was offered a shot at the Green to Gold program if he'd reup, based on his service and several recommendations. 

He took the army up on their offer and the Army sent him to college after he tested. He majored in Pre-Med. Upon graduation he was promoted to 2LT and offered a shot at medical school, followed by internship and residency in Army hospitals. He retired from active duty after 20+ years as an LTC and stayed in the reserves where he was promoted to colonel!

FWIW the highest paying position in the active Army are physicians. They get quite a bonus for serving as they are much needed.

The man saw opportunity and had the brains and drive to take advantage of it to better himself. From fixing cars in his driveway to orthopedic surgeon! It didn't cost him a dime. In fact he got paid for it! Opportunity came a-knockin'!

Another GI was a combat arms artillery surveyor. He worked hard as a soldier and was promoted fast to E-5, did his four years and got out and took his skills and GI Bill with him. He found a job with a civilian surveying company part time as he went to college. When he finished his schooling he found work with a civil engineering outfit and in short order actually became a department head when the company opened a residential operation. He did well.

One of the things I saw in the army was opportunity. I was offered any number of schools and took advantage of several of them. I took a school called 'MAPTOE' which was a management course that broke things down to a series of small steps. I learned a lot of small things that certainly came in handy over the years. I learned how to organize things and it served me well in my careers.

As a young GI there was a 'knife fighting, snake eating' school I took that was interesting, demanding, challenging and just plain fun. We all paid attention to the knife fighting instructor because of his cool scars. (Later we found out they were from shrapnel, not knife fighting.)

I took several schools and classes in the service and learned from all of them. 

Over the years I have met a few people that either flunked out, got kicked out or otherwise failed to graduate from basic training. They usually give mamby pamby answers to why they failed. "The (insert service here) just wasn't for me." seems to be common. It's just another lame excuse for not finishing what you started. You simply did n't try.  

Basic training is generally a shock for teenagers. I went through it at 21 and look back on it fondly. I had a few years experience in the real world and actually enjoyed basic because I knew how the game was played. It was actually fun. 

Of the very few get an Entry Lever Separation many of them are for failure to adapt to military life. What's interesting is how many teenagers fall in and adapt quickly. There is also a few that enlisted for the wrong reason. They were looking at getting GI benefits and were stunned that they'd actually have to earn them. They most likely never thought it through, went into shock and simply failed on purpose. Most of these entry level quitters were not thinking ahead and lost out on a LOT of opportunity. 

There's still plenty of opportunity out there. As I sit here I could probably get a squared away HS grad a job starting at $65-70K and inside two or three years he can easily bring in six figures if he works at it. So far I have offered to do this for a number of youngsters who never have gotten back to me. The one that did had a criminal record involving drugs so that blew his chances out of the water.

My career was pretty meteoric, actually. I started as an entry level ordinary seaman in January and by the following October I had an Able Seaman AND a tankerman endorsement and my pay had almost doubled. Inside of a year I had my captain's license. I'll tell that story sometime else. Suffice to say I saw opportunity and jumped on it.

I constantly hear younger people complaining over things like they can't afford a house as big as the one they grew up in because the generational wealth hasn't started to trickle down yet. Fact is that a lot of boomers are now doing more than their fair share of keeping the economy strong by spending in their retirement. Of course the younger generation complains because they are spending their inheritance. It's theirs to spend any way they want.

One young man seems to spend an awful lot of time griping about the current state of affairs on social media. He goes on and on arguing about this and that, mainly leftist crap. My advice to him is that if he took the time he wastes babbling away on social media and put it to good use he'd be able to afford a house TWICE the size of the one he grew up in. It's easy to feel sorry for one's self as opposed to working to improve ones self.

There is a lot of opportunity out there. One of the neighborhood kids picked an in demand major and has not even graduated and has been offered and has job offers well into six figures upon graduation. His loans will be paid off by whichever company hires him.

Of course if you were foolish enough to get a degree that's not marketable you can look forward to paying off your loans as a barista at Starbucks. Have fun.

The girl up the street that majored in civil engineering got picked up a few years back and is making good money. Meanwhile the dolt a couple of blocks away listened to his Karen mother who told him he'd never amount to anything without a college degree. He went to college and skipped out on an apprenticeship program as an elevator mechanic. He's paying off his loans at a low paying job instead of working in a field where the average wage here in PA for an elevator mechanic is $130,500/year! 

Even little opportunities pop up out of nowhere. A while back I was going to run a few errands. One of them was to go to the bank and cash a check for $100 chump change walking around money. 

During my errands I spotted an antique pie safe in front of a house on the curb with a 'free' sign on it. I stuffed it into the bed of my pickup and before I got to the bank I saw an antique store and walked in. The owner and I brought the safe into the store and I walked out with $150 and didn't have to go to the bank after all.

All I had to do was stop my pickup and load a freebie into the bed. I wonder how many people had passed up the opportunity.

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At the doctor's office I said something that caught an assistant's interest.

I asked her where she learned her trade and when she told me I replied that "An education is an almost needed requirement in medicine. I've only met one doctor that never finished high school." 

When she looked confused I told her to "Google 'How many MDs have GEDs?' You'd be surprised."

I guess her curiosity got the best of her and she got her phone out because when we crossed paths later she looked at me and said, "I never knew that."

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Colonoscopy today

which was OK. It's the prep that sucks. 

The only thing that happened was when I mentioned that I wanted to see my doc before I went under. Done deal. I like the guy and don't get to see him too often. 

Protip for prep. It's a 2 part preparation. For the first part. They tell you to drink 2 glasses of water after the first dose. Drink 4 and start hydrating a day or two early. 

For part 2 after the dose drink 3 glasses of water.

The process sucks a LOT of water out of your system and you can dehydrate if you are not careful.

Oh yeah, I absentmindedly cleaned the toilet the day before. That was a waste of time.

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Another comment on George Floyd.

Ever notice how parts of the black community seem to make a hero out of a total bum like George Floyd?

It's always some criminal that becomes the hero.

How come it's never an honor student carrying a Bible to read to his blind grandmother?

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Someone didn't recognize my uniform

I was gardening a couple of days ago and figured I didn't have to go anywhere so I went looking for my rattiest clothes to wear. I discovered an oversized pair of jeans I have never seen before that were falling apart. They might have been a mix-up from work because I found them in a footlocker. They were too long so I rolled up the cuffs and too big at the waist. I decided to put suspenders  on them to hold them up but saw a long bungee cord and diagonally clipped the ends to belt loops.

Underneath the bungee cord was a paint covered T-shirt that looked like it had been in a battery acid fight. Worn out Topsiders completed the outfit.

The gardening was rolling along when the wife called me and asked me to pick something up at the local market. I probably should have gone in and changed but I didn't. I figured it would be a fast in and out trip.

Bam! Off to market. Item in hand. In line.

A mother and son team slip behind me and I overheard the mother quietly comment about the homeless man in front of them. (Me)

Actually I took no offense because I knew I looked like hell but I was feeling a little evil. I turned around.

"Ma'am," I said calmly, "I own my home free and clear. I'm not homeless. I don't hold it against you in any way for not being able to recognize the Old School working uniform of a United States Merchant Marine officer. Most people don't."

She looked confused, embarrassed and said nothing. The woman behind the register I have know for years had seen and heard everything. She addressed me with, "I see you're enjoying your retirement, Captain."

More confusion on her part. I paid for my item and left. 

Since retirement I've stayed in touch with some of the guys and we've discussed a lot of things that happened over the years. For most of my career, like most everyone out there, I shopped for work clothes at rummage sales, Goodwill and other high end establishments for work uniforms.

For a while I had a shopper named Bag Lady Sue that would dive the Goodwill dumpster where they tossed unsellable clothing. She'd get your size and set you up with about 2/3s of a USGI duffel bag's worth of clothes for about $10. Sue was pretty good and never sold woman's jeans to us because she knew they were like a cheap hotel. (No ballroom)

Of course much of this changed during the last decade or so of my career when the company issued company coveralls and ordered us to wear them if we were in a position to be seen by customers. Still, a lot of us old timers recall looking like homeless bums when we went to sea.

 

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I just put a letter to the IRS in my folio of things to do when I'm gone.

The envelope contains a letter and two bucks for unpaid taxes from the lemonade stand I ran when I was about 8 years old. It is to be mailed upon my demise.

I am now a contrite old man that wants to settle up and clear my conscience. As a small child I willingly and knowingly embarked on a life of crime by opening a sidewalk lemonade stand.

I will now admit that I ran the lemonade stand without the proper business license(s?), no insurance, and no board of health inspections. On top of that I skipped out on taxes.

If I recall correctly I made a profit of about 20 cents (Big money for a little kid back in 1959) I looked up the 1959 tax rate and it was 10%. I figure that with penalties and interest that the leftover $1.98 should cover it. 

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The single mom got remarried.

which is a good deal for her. Lately she seems so damned happy.

I like the woman. She's got a lot of moxie. When she got pregnant she took it as a wakeup call and decided to do something about it and got herself a career in health care and made something of herself.

She has done a marvelous job of raising her daughter who is a fine young woman and a child to be proud of.

Years ago when she moved in she was taking a walk to meet the neighbors. The guy across the street and I were having a drink in the driveway. We greeted her and she introduced herself and seemed to be what in my day would be called a 'cool chick'.

We noticed right off, of course that she was rather attractive which was needless to say an asset. She was a registered nurse which was indicative of being reasonably intelligent.  Both of these assets are not as important as the big one. Was she likely to become a pain in the ass?

You can draw a MENSA 10 as a neighbor, but if she's a pain in the ass she can easily and gladly be replaced with Down's Syndrome 1 if they don't upset the rhythm of the neighborhood. Beauty and brains in the 'burbs only carry so much weight.

Better to have a neighbor that's as ugly as a mud fence and borderline retarded with a lick of common sense that pitches in and is a good neighbor than a goddess that's a nuisance.

My neighbor and I tossed her a few curves and we both immediately decided she was probably going to be quite the asset in the community. It proved to be an accurate estimation.

I seriously owe her because she's the one that discovered the fire I had and not only reported it but actively tried to fight it until the US Cavalry (fire department) arrived.

I liked her from the beginning and managed to hide my dark sense of humor the afternoon we met when she mentioned she was a nurse raising a daughter.

I bit my tongue because I really wanted to say, "What? You're a single mom and a nurse?? No! No! You're doing it all wrong! You're supposed to be a stripper!"

She's been here for about a decade and I think one of these days I'll share my dark humor with her. 

Looking back onit, had I done that she probably would have laughed like hell.

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What a wonderful morning!

I woke up at some time before sunup and wandered out onto the front porch and listened to the birds planning a new day and decided to go back in and grab another hour of shuteye.

Before I did I cut loose with a loud coyote call and got all the dogs in the neighborhood barking. It was a chain where one dog gets another one going and so on. I probably managed to get about a block radius worth of dogs going, maybe even more then that. I don't think I have done this in decades. 

I listened to my masterpiece for a while and then went back inside and grabbed s little more shuteye, smiling as I dozed off.

Did I wake all the neighbors? Probably not which is fine. It wasn't my goal. I'm sure a couple might have been inconvenienced and had to tell the do to shut up and then roll back over again.

When I lived with dogs they could yap all night and I'd sleep through it. (The very rarely heard low growl at 0300 would instantly bring me to my feet)

Still, it was rather satisfying listening to the dogs spread the word to each other.

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I just realized that

George Floyd has been clean and sober for over 5 years now.

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Out of 535 members of Congress they out to take 500 of them

and drop them off of high places onto a hard surface and record the screams on the way down and the impact splats and sell the recordings to the American cartoon industry to use for sound effects.

I can see people that are true cartoon fans sitting in front of the boob tube watching Wile E. Coyote going off a cliff and one the fans commenting "Not bad! Elizabeth Warren scream and a Bernie Sanders splat."

"Definitely a Sanders splat but I think the scream might have been Jasmine Crockett. The screech seemed to be a little higher pitch than Liz Warren's."

"Yeah, maybe. They are pretty close, though."

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While we're at it we ought to toss Hillary, too.

I'll bet she can scream better than Fay Wray!

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Pam Bondi ought to pinch Hillary Clinton

for anything she thinks she can secure a conviction with and then sweat her. It doesn't have to be something she's facing 20 years for. It could be even a simple two to five, out in, say 25 months.

Hillary has threatened to drag a lot of people down with her, or so I read a while back. 

If she does rat everyone and their cousin out to save her hide she's still destroyed. She walks but so what? She's still destroyed because she'll be known as the rat that sold everybody out to save her own precious hide.

Adam Schiff's another one. I'd bet he'd sing like a canary. Charge him with the Russian collusion business and sweat him. See what happens. He'll drags a whole string of people down with him.

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