It's Halloween.

AAR tomorrow.

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Before the fire I had a wall covered with WW2 propaganda posters.

Most of which were maritime related. 

In the middle of them I had slipped a National Lampoon poster to see who was paying attention.

While a lot of people caught it quickly there were about an equal number that didn't catch it at first and the WTF look on their face when they did was fun to watch.

A handful of people let it got right over their head.

                   

                            

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I'm looking at people bellyaching about college loans

and although I am pretty unforgiving about paying it back. You borrowed the money you should return it. 

If you got a degree and are using any of it whatsoever at work then the whole thing, principal and interest should be able to be written off for tax purposes. That's fair. It should all be a write-off.

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Back to the Sillcock key post.

One time I made the mistake of helping myself to water in a park of some sort. I was besieged by a small group of hippies that I gladly refilled canteens and bottles for. 

Enter the Head Hippie that said I should leave the key there to be used as 'The People's Key' so that everyone could get water on demand.

Of course he demanded it and made an effort to take it out of my hand. I stuffed a quick knee onto his groin that really didn't connect very well. I think it caused him some pain but was not a square crippling nut shot. He got wide-eyed and I walked off.

People's key. In a pig's a$$ it was going to be a people's key. He just wanted it so he could charge two bits a canteen fill to everyone else's.

Looking back on it I think that he suffered enough pain so that I got his attention and realize that I was willing to fight to keep my personal property. That was enough.

I often wonder how leftists are going to react when the system starts taking their personal property.

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Things that used to be luxuries are now (supposedly) needs.

and much of this makes no sense.

I hear people complaining about being unable to afford things yet many of those same people spend $8 daily on their way to work for their special latte whatever. That's $40/work week. 

I pay well under a buck a pot for coffee.

Then the average one person DoorDash order runs about $30 for one order for person and that's $210/week. Four days worth is $120. It adds up fast.

On top of that how much does your lunch at work cost? Ten or fifteen bucks a day sounds about right. That's another $50-75 weeekly.

This adds up and adds up fast. we're looking at some fairly serious cash outlays here if you bother to add it all up.

Then for many nothing will do but you get the latest and greatest iPhone runs about $1142 or more. a Walmart Samsung runs about $125 and it lasts years pretty much as long iPhones and does everything most people need to do. 

Impulse buys for a lot of people are another waste of money. A lot of the things people purchase is for a pipe dream of sorts. For example a guy might purchase a fly rod with the intention of going fishing but never gets around to it. Had he thought it out ahead of time or actually had a solid plan that fly rod might have made sense but now is sits in a closet somewhere gathering dust.

One thing I have noticed about younger homeowners is that they tend to take care of their vehicles and keep them longer and think purchases through. They appear to be more frugal and goal oriented and usually cook for themselves instead of eat out or DoorDash.

They also don't take lavish vacations. The travel industry has managed to create the 'need' of a lavish vacation for people. Staying at home and doing repairs or a simple road trip gets a person away from work and can provide a satisfying break.   

I will be the first to admit that houses are more expensive even after adjusting for inflation over time but if a couple is willing to work at it it's still fairly doable.

One thing that new homeowners usually forget to think about is that over time they will get pay raises and with a fixed mortgage the home will get easier to pay off as time goes on. as time passes and inflation increases money can be put to the principal and get the home paid off faster.

Once house payments are out of the way money will be available for other things. Take a vacation. You'll appreciate it more because you earned it.

To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

More memories. keeping clean on the road.

One of the things about life traveling is that it wasn't all that hard to keep fairly clean but you did have to work on it.

Over the years I have washed a lot of clothes in creeks, rivers, ponds, waterfalls, streams and even janitor room sinks although laundromats worked well if I could afford them. (I generally could.)

Water was generally easy to come by even in cities or towns because I always carried a Sillcock key. I just had to look up what they are officially called because I always called mine a water key. They operated operated hose bibs on commercial buildings and enabled me to fill canteens, fill leaky radiators and wash up if I needed to.

The difference between being a bum and a gentleman of the road is being able to keep reasonably clean and presentable.

I just noticed the old Sillcock key on a shelf and it triggered memories of my wandering years.  

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Please do not put ow ls on the toilets.

This goes way back to the Mobil refinery on the Delaware River. I don't know what's there today. Wait a minute. I Googled it. It's now the Paulsboro refinery.

Anyway in the employees men's room management forgot to make sure the toilet paper was replaced regularly and when it ran out the guys did what they had to do and used paper towels. This caused blocked toilets.

Instead of making sure there was ample TP they hung up a sign that said "Please do not put towels in the toilet". That was a bigger insult so when they ran out of TP they did what they had to do.

One wag picked off some of the letters so the sign read 'please do not put ow ls in the toilet."

The sign was replaced, vandalized again, replaced and vandalized.

When we went in there to load the dockman noticed a plastic owl with glow in the dark eyes and asked if he could borrow it. We had put it there to reduce the number of bird droppings on the fuel tank. it worked pretty good at reducing it.

We did him one better. We loaned him a new one we kept as a spare and told him to return it because they were hard to come by.

A couple months later he returned it and told us what had happened.

Someone stuffed the owl into a toilet and then unscrewed several light bulbs and left the restroom dark and dingy. Some supervisor walked in and saw the glowing eyes of the owl looking at him and (this being the 27th telling of the tale which grows with each retelling) $hit himself. Most likely he panicked, left and went elsewhere.

Anyway management finally asked what was going on and immediately fixed the problem.

What makes me wonder is why the problem existed in the first place. Those plant employees are not animals. They are human beings and as such deserve to be treated like human beings. 

When someone casually mentioned that they were running low on TP someone should have fixed things instantly.

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Obama screwed up with his library.

It's an eyesore and there are reportedly unpaid contractors. 

He should have hired Donald Trump to build it. 

Trump would have built it on time and on budget.

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There are about 154 female Rangers as of about a year ago.

which is 100% legitimate because while the DoD relaxed the standards for women to be in Combat Arms, Ranger school didn't relax a damned thing.

Somewhere out there are 154+ badass women the met the standards, passed the course and were awarded the tab. For the record one of them is an ICU pediatric nurse which I find to be too cool.

I was listening to someone gripe because Pete now requires EVERYONE in combat arms to meet the same requirements that her male counterparts do.

No combat arms unit needs anyone of either sex that can't pitch in and carry their own weight.

Grunts already have too much crap to lug around as it is much less have to carry some of someone else's.

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One time I heard a TV reporter claim that blacks were getting a raw deal because they were not getting 'prestigious' combat arms assignments and the promotions that went along with it.

I only heard that once because I'm sure it was pointed out .to her that people get to choose their jobs before they enlist and can also reenlist to change their career field. That's what probably shut her up.

Everyone gets the same opportunity. Nobody's special.

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I was wondering about what ever became of the nurse that graduated from Ranger School.

Captain Molly Murphy is now an ICU pediatric nurse at Walter Reed. 

When the fist women Rangers were going through the pipeline I asked a (then) recently retired Ranger School instructor if they had dumbed down the course to let women graduate. He told me he had wondered the same thing and made a couple of calls to his friends that were still in.

Nope. She passed the course fair and square. She passed every single training day.

It's a 62 day course on paper but the last day is administrative. They give orders and other administrative things. A lot of graduates spend that day in the hospital getting medical treatment. A lot of candidates that have pushed on through injuries and illness turn themselves in that day.  It is not considered a training day and doesn't effect graduation.

Molly checked herself in along with others to get patched up and the naysayers tried to say she didn't finish the course. She had and had done well in it.

A while ago Pete Hegseth raised the standards for Combat Arms MOS category. What he did was ordered gender neutral PT tests, using the male standard. That means if a woman wants to become a grunt she has to pass the new PT tests. 

I like the idea because it raises the standard. I'm sick and tired of double standards, period. It's unfair to those that make it to the top and sounds like a participation trophy.

Anyway some chickee-poo decided that the woman that graduated Ranger School was proof that women belong in Combat Arms.

Apples and oranges. SOME women belong in Combat Arms. Namely the women that qualify and pass the same test required by men.

Grunts pack enough $hit as it is. They don't need to be forced to carry someone else's that doesn't belong there in the first place.

I'm with Pete on this one. 

To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY