Thursday, March 28, 2024

It's the Netherlands now, you know.


said someone to me when I called the place 'Holland' which is what I called it for about the first 50 years of my life. The name's changed but the people are the same. It's one of the fairly few places in Europe where they like Americans. They tend American war graves to this day.

In my mind the place is 'Holland' and the people there are 'Dutch' and they grow beautiful tulips and when you hear a clop clop clop you know it's a Dutch jogger because they wear wooden shoes as they jog past windmills. When they get home they have a bottle of excellent beer. All in all it sounds pretty good to me.

Now get off my case. I like those people.





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Tuesday, March 26, 2024

One of the things middle management used to forget about old hands


is that it's pretty likely old hands know a lot of people that they don't.

There are two incidents that come to mind over the years. Both times my shipmate and I were warned that we had to give the people we were going to meet a good impression and yada yadda yada , so on and so forth.

Anyway, as the person in question walked in after an hour long lecture on how important it was to out on a good impression I heard my shipmate say, "Quequeeg! How ya doing? Last I heard you were going to visit the folks in Vanuatu! Did they throw a missionary in the stewpot for you when you got there?"

The port captain looked in horror.

"Nah, we got McDonalds now," he replied. The port captain didn't know what to think, say or do until my shipmate made introductions.

"This is Piccolo and that's some port captain."

The port captain lamely said, "I guess you guys know each other." and left shaking his head. Needless to say, we got the contract.

The other time there was a supervisor and a port captain in the room when the person in question arrived. He was halfway down the stairs and I looked up and heard, "Piccolo! What brings you to the west coast?" Long time, no see!"

"Hey, Ceesco Keed! When they send you out here?" I asked.

"Two years ago. What's the relief crew like?"

"They're OK," I said.

The supervisor's face lit up relaxed but the port captain looked incensed because he had been upstaged.

The customer looked at the pair of them. "These guys are squared away. I'll tell Tom to ink the contract IF these two are running the show."

Then the bull$hit of what we had been doing since we saw each other last started. The port captain looked pouty because he was left out while the supervisor was tickled pink we had managed to get the contract.



 




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The Kingdom of Eswatini is the new name for Swaziland.

When I heard that a while back the first thing I asked myself is 'why? Did all the Swazis move out or something?'

The next thing I wondered is if I have to work it again to keep it in my DXCC log. (I don't.)
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In other gnus my cell phone wants to update its software and will do do on its own if I do nothing. WTF just get it out of the way.

More junk that means shorter battery life between charges is the likely outcome. I keep deleting junk and they keep adding to it. 

One thing I do have down to a fine art, though is that every morning I run a cleaner and then reboot the whole damned thing. 

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I see where someplace in Minnesota is blaming the auto industry for making cars that Black people like to steal.

Oh.

I can't help but think what would happen to me if I happened to own one and installed an alarm in it that would enable me to catch the thief. Who would go to jail?

The guy trying to steal it?

Or maybe I'd be charged with hunting over bait.

It's all so tiresome.









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Monday, March 25, 2024

I just worked a wonderful woman on 20 meters. You never know who you are going to run into.

What a kind voice she had. It was a joy to talk to her!

She was running her rig from Austria where apparently she lives now and I instantly opened her QRZ page and checked her out. She had a link to her personal website and I found out she is a Saudi Sheikh's daughter! She's kind, educated and very well traveled and studied mathematics in the States and earned her Master's in Vienna. In addition to that she speaks three languages I know of, Arabic, German and her English is perfect, unaccented American English.

For a while she worked with special needs children in Riyadh and that takes a special kind of patience. She's a talented, attractive, special kind of woman.

Of course as an old man that watched a lot of old rerun movies as a kid the fact that she's the daughter of  a Sheikh that rang a bell. Off to the Official Hollywood Guide to Old Movie Characters.

Let's see, here. S...S...S...SH..S H E....here it is. Sheikh...Sheikh... Sheikh's Aunt...No. Here it is. Sheik's daughters. Two kinds. Let's see here...Oh, yeah. Beautiful and ugly. Oh yeah, The ugly one is the daughter the Sheikh tries to force the hero to marry. The hero usually grabs a sword about two minutes before the wedding ceremony and fights his way out and joins the Foreign Legion at Fort Zindenauf and is awarded the Legion of Honor for shooting 38 of his pursuers off of the back of a camel. (Of course Hollywood never explains how they got 38 people on the back of the camel)

Here we go....Sheikh's beautiful daughter...This is the one I'm looking for. Let's see. What's her appropriate story line? Oh, yeah.

She and the hero meet and fall in love at first sight. The Sheikh finds out and has someone haul the hero out into the desert and drop him off in the middle of nowhere 100 miles from food or water to leave him to die of thirst and starvation. 

In the next scene it's after dark and the hero miraculously shows up outside the Sheikh's fort wall, fit as a fiddle and rested leaving the audience to wonder how he survived. He's freshly shaven and has a meticulously groomed pencil thin moustache. His clothes have come straight out of the cleaners.

He's clad in a pair of those baggy pants, the pointy shoes that have a little bell on the tip, a white V-necked big, baggy sleeved dueling shirt a bandana on his head and a dagger in his teeth and just happened to have found a coil of rope next to the wall enabling him to lasso an abutment and scale the wall.

 Sneaking past 5 or 6 lazy, sleepy guards he finds his way to her room. They embrace and decide to run away. Stealing the Sheikh's favorite horse, the gallop out the gate as the alarm is sounded and from out of nowhere 1000 shouting, sword swinging men on camels are seen pouring out the gate in hot pursuit.  (I guess he kept his army hidden in a giant underground bunker of some sort because they appear out of nowhere.)

After about 6 or 8 pretty good fight scenes and several close calls they escape to Chicago or Detroit and live happily ever after.

Actually Hollywood stereotypes certainly doesn't hold true only for Sheikh's daughters. It often holds true for Americans. One of the greatest exports America has is the western movie. 

Because of this one thing that is not a good idea to do is to try and clear French customs while wearing American western clothing. Don't do that and DON'T ask me how I know. 

The customs inspector will take one look at you and in his mind will decide That man is an American cowboy! Cowboys carry revolvers! Where is he hiding his six-gun?  He will then proceed to tear through every bit of your luggage in an effort to find one. When he doesn't he will look at you with suspicion trying to figure out where you are hiding it.

I wondered about what he was thinking. Did he think I was going to pull out an illegal pistol, fire a few shots into the air and stampede a herd of cattle through the streets of Paris? 

(Personally I don't need a six-gun. I have the US Cavalry on speed dial so if I had a problem in Paris a quick call would have a bugle blaring and thundering horses charging down the streets of Paris, rescuing me in the nick of time. Never in the history of the motion picture industry has the US Cavalry been too late.)

Another thing is that during my (real) career as a seaman I surprised a few people when I let them know that most Americans were not millionaires and that I live in a modest home in a quiet neighborhood that I had mortgaged. (Now I am an old retiree living on a somewhat limited income)

Anyway, this woman apparently has radio in her blood. He father had the first callsign issued in Saudi Arabia, HZ1HZ, and she wrote that she used to sit and listen to her father communicate with people all over the world in English. I'll bet her father has JY1's call sign in his log. (JY1 was the late King of Jordan and was on the air regularly.)

When her father passed somehow she got his Saudi callsign issued to her. Her father was Deputy Minister of Communications in Saudi Arabia and she was the first woman to he issued a license in her province.

One thing Hollywood got right about this YL is she's a raven haired beauty straight out of central casting. She's a very attractive woman. One thing that Hollywood seems to gloss over is she was not born in North Africa where all of these old adventure movies seem to have taken place. She was born in an entirely different continent. Saudi Arabia is a part of Asia. Good old Hollywood. Never let the truth get in the way of a thrilling adventure story.

I think that one of the best parts of ham radio is that you never know who you are going to meet or get to listen to on the airwaves.


%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Later that night I was talking to my nephew and he asked me if I had run into anyone interesting on the air. 

"Yeah, as a matter of fact I just worked an interesting woman. She's a Saudi Sheikh's daughter. Wonderful woman. Spoke perfect unaccented American English, she was working out of Austria," I said.  

"Oh, yeah? Cool. You know, those people take their education and travel seriously. I'll bet she learned her English in the States," he replied. 

"I think she did. She studied math here. Now tell me, when I said 'Sheikh's daughter' what was the first thing that you thought of?"

I could tell by his voice he felt kind of sheepish.

"You know, Hollywood really gives us a really lousy picture of reality..." he hedged.

"Out with it! First thing you thought of." I interrupted.

He laughed. "A beautiful dark haired exotic women that runs off with a handsome stranger out in the desert somewhere."

Hollywood. Never let the truth get in the way of a thrilling adventure movie.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Speaking of Hollywood, I had a cab driver that was born in Casablanca driving me from an airport in New York once. 

When he said he was from Casablanca my smart-ass nature ran away with me.

"Casablanca, huh? Is Rick's Place still there?"

He turned and gave me the look one gives to a wise guy like I was being at the time.

"Nah. He sold it right after Elsa and Lazlo left for Lisbon and stowed away on a ship that had a stop in England where he got off. Elsa and Lazlo were already there and Lazlo was busy helping out DeGaulle organize the Free French so Elsa ran off with him and they headed to the States together settling in Chicago where they got married and had a couple of kids. Later Rick got involved with some redhead and Elsa divorced him and took him to the cleaners and when the redhead found out he was broke she dumped him. Rick spent the rest of his life a drunk living under a bridge in Cicero."

Needless to say I laughed myself silly and realized three things. First we were kindred spirits and that he had a pretty good education from somewhere and that he had seen the movie.









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Sunday, March 24, 2024

I don't know who Steve Garvey is and I don't care.

I see where he is running for office and one of his online ads brags about his baseball career.

I don't give a damn about his baseball career. 

And it might surprise people to find out I don't listen to Cher, either just because she's a singer.





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Everything these days is SO important

that we have to endanger the rest of the world by answering texts while we drive in heavy traffic at 60 mph.

It's IMPORTANT that we find out who is wearing what to the big party. It's IMPORTANT we find out instantly what time the game is going to start two weeks from now. It's IMPORTANT we find out who is buried in Grant's tomb right NOW! It can't wait! Gotta happen NOW!

Years ago when cell phones took hold and I finally got one I got called to the home office which was a little over 2 hours away.

I fired up my pickup and started in that direction and instantly after I got on the Interstate my phone rang. A glance told me it was the office. We had a 'no phone use while driving' rule in place so I pulled into the breakdown lane and answered it to be greeted with a breathless ''Where are you now?"

To which I replied, "I am sitting in the breakdown lane on the Interstate."

"OMG! What happened? Did you break down or get into an accident?" 

"No. We have a no drive and talk on phone policy so I pulled over to answer you," I said.

"Well, get going! We need you now!" he shouted.

That entire conversation repeated itself five more times during my drive and when I arrived the big boss asked me if I had been caught in traffic.

I said I had not but I had to pull over to answer the phone six times because someone kept calling me to see how far along I was.

THAT raised his eyebrows and I knew my caller was in for an ass chewing and a math lesson.

As for why I had been called? There was a question regarding a delivery I had been in charge of and the customer had a couple of questions that could have easily been answered over the phone but his boss had told him to talk to me face to face.

Needless to say this was IMPORTANT.






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Saturday, March 23, 2024

Download the free app!


and add more useless crap to your phone and slow it down even more.

"Hey, I just got the free app from a truck stop outside on Minot, ND! Pretty cool, huh? I'll get 20 cents off of a gallon of gas every time I stop in!"

Of course the idiot has never been there and isn't likely to go there in the foreseeable future but if he ever does he'll be able to save $2.50 on a fill-up. Either that or the place will have changed hands or gone belly up and the app will be no good by the time he gets to use it.

I've been fighting a battle with my phone since Day One. 

Everyone wants to fill my phone full of crap, I want to delete it. It's a never ending battle.

One other thing, the more crap you have running the faster the battery runs down.



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Friday, March 22, 2024

One of the rights I give up when CCW

is the right to be a smartass. I can't start anything whatsoever and probably with good reason. I have to stay lily white because if I start something and it escalates then I no longer have a right to defend myself.

The right to self-defense can be easily lost by starting trouble of some sort. 

I say this to clarify that I am NOT running around packing heat and looking for trouble.

In fact I damned seldom run around the neighborhood armed and generally speaking, if I do it means I am headed somewhere where it might be prudent to.

Occasionally my wife would ask me to carry because she knew it would make me behave myself.



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Thursday, March 21, 2024

Why the names have been changed to protect the innocent/guilty.

Some bonehead busybody I know once asked me why I don't just say the hell with it and name names, places and times.

"Yeah, maybe I ought to," I said. "Your mother was the best piece of a$$ I ever had. She had a Japanese love swing and what happened in the back seat of my '63 Ford I still have show up in my dreams. Want me to start there or does that hit a little too close to home?"

It was funny watching him turn beet red and what made it funnier was he knew we lived 700 miles apart. It was just the thought that made him turn purple.

How about giving people a bit of privacy? A lot of those that are still alive have kids and grandkids they are trying to raise. A lot of them were single when much of this $hit was happening and they don't need the embarrassment.

"Oh yeah? Piccolo got drunk with you and two stole a police car? I never heard about that one!" That's the last thing some poor bastard raising a kid needs to hear his kid repeat to his father.

On the other hand, my unindicted co-conspirators and I can certainly share a few laughs out of earshot of the nosy ones.



 











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