In a little bit

When we moved to Kentucky the first time over 25 years ago, I opened a print shop. I needed some wiring in the shop and called a local electrician. He said "Okay, I'll be over in a little bit". Two and a half days later I called again to see if he'd forgotten me. He seemed miffed I'd called again and said "I told you I'd be over in a little bit!" That's when I began to realize the meanings of words varied from place to place. The other thing I learned was part of the reason the area was financially depressed. A lot of people won't do a job even if you hire them. That still seems true around here today.

When my daughter bought the acre adjacent to our property and had a mobile home set up, the people that put in the water and septic system, the phones and lights, were all johnny on the spot. Now months later she's still trying to get someone to skirt the bottom of the trailer. The mobile home company was supposed to send someone out right away, but no amount of calling has accomplished anything. We contacted others that do that work and no one gets back to us. I saw a fellow in a local restaurant I knew to be a builder, and a native of the area, so I asked him if he could recommend someone for the job. He told me he would do it and would call me that evening with a quote. That was a week and a half ago and I've not heard from him. We picked up skirting material ourselves and tomorrow I'm going to see if I can become a skirting installer, at least for one mobile.

I've also ordered the material for a back porch about 12 x 25 feet complete with roof for her place. If anyone has some free time in the next week or so, drop on in. I have an extra hammer. Claw hammer, not ball peen.

Nuttin' much happening

I gave up on the old weed-eaters and bought a new one, then started eating weeds around the place. The Yahoo weather report said fair and sunny today, possible showers tomorrow a.m. I wonder what those dark clouds rolling in could mean? It's about eleven at night now and the rain gauge says we've had over three inches of "fair and sunny" today. It's still raining. I had to retire the weed-eater long before I was finished. Ah for the good old days in Las Vegas where they were right about 360 days out of the year. All they had to do was say "hot and dry" for the summer, or "cool and dry" for the winter. I had desert landscaping there too, so no mower, no weed-eater.

Okay, I didn't really give up on the old weed-eaters. I've still got them sitting in the shed, and I'm going to play with them a while. I know the one has a problem with the motor locking up when it gets hot, but I think the other is just carburation. I'm going to take the carb off the one and put it on the other. If that doesn't do anything, then I'll trash them. Promise.

You can see I have lots of important things to do since I retired. It's my job to set the coffeepot up each night so all one of us has to do is turn it on of a morning. When I worked I had it on a timer, but we never know if we're getting up at five or eight or whatever. Generally it's when we wake up and feel like getting up, but usually around six. We download the email, take a quick look over that while the coffee brews, then retire to the back porch for cigarettes and coffee. If our daughter is working she'll generally walk over and join us for a half hour or so before starting out.

I'm investigating the idea of turning our drive over to the county. I've spent quite a bit of money and time in maintenance on it this year, but mostly I'd like to bring the mailbox down from the highway and put it in front of the house, and have trash pick-up here rather than on the highway. The mail deliver and trash pick-up won't drive on private roads.

It dawned on my I'd not seen a ball peen hammer in stores for a while. I wondered if they still made them so checked online. Yep, all sizes and prices. I'd buy me one of those if I had a clue as to what you do with that ball end of the hammer. Does anyone know why they make them in that configuration?

Okay, a wedding party picture.

Some of the wedding party left to right. Brother preacher with his two shot, 9mm Derringer, myself with 15 round, 9mm semi-automatic, the bride daughter with a 5 shot .38 revolver in an ankle holster, the groom with an 8 in the clip .45 semi-automatic, and my youngest son with a 9mm 8 in the clip semi-automatic.

Click to enlarge the picture.

Ramblin' on and on and...

I hope that's the last for a while. Our youngest daughter was married Saturday in Indiana. Her new husband was her secret heart-throb as a kid. He was a friend of our eldest son, and when she first saw him when she was about ten, she thought he was it. We moved away from Indiana when she was 13, then about six years ago he found her name on Classmates.com and wrote to ask if she was my son's little sister. The rest, as they say, is history. I think those two have a goth thing going though and both had black hair for the ceremony. He wore black leather and had a .45 caliber semi-automatic strapped on his belt. She made her own gown, floor length of heavy black lace over silver and had a snub nosed .38 in a holster on her ankle. I gave the bride away and had my 9mm semi-automatic on my side, and the preacher had a derringer in his pocket. Just because the 2nd amendment says we can. Quite a few people attended, and I got to talk with family members I rarely see. The Patriarch of the family was there, my uncle, mother's brother. He and one aunt are the surviving members of that generation but from the looks of him he may be around past a hundred. Amazingly healthy and looks twenty years younger than his 88 years. A couple of months ago he drove to Florida and back for his granddaughter's wedding. It turned out to be a good day. Of course my brother officiated. I told him this should qualify me for the family package, having two kids married in a month.

As I've said before, I do a daily e-newsletter for graduates of the high school in my little home town. Occasionally we get some interesting debates going via the newsletter with everyone sending me their comments and letting me put it all together and send it to everyone else. I just learned our little town has it's own urban legend. It seems, according to this legend, it was originally set up as two towns. One where the business district has always been to be named Salem, and another where the railroad and depot sat that would be called Jeru. The thought being as they grew together they would become JeruSalem. Fortunately I have a copy of the centennial booklet that was published in 1935, and includes the history of the town. It gives the details of the establishment of the town, even to it's size and the surveyor's notes, along with the three men that established it, and the justice of the peace that registered the paperwork. That was 1835, and the name they gave it at the time is the same as it's current name. The railroad, according to that book, ran it's first train into town in February 1880 a full 45 years after the town was established. Cold hard facts often ruin the best of urban legends. Ya gotta keep those things more vague.

Anyone big on repairing weed-eater's? I have two now, one of which runs somewhat thanks to my ministrations today, and the other may or may not run after I buy it a new spark plug. Of course the smart thing is to just buy a new trimmer. Both of those were under a hundred bucks, but there's something about a piece of machinery I just hate to give up on. By the time I get done fiddling with them I'll probably have several hundred dollars worth of time figuring at minimum wage, then I'll throw them away and get new ones.

SHUT-UP ALREADY !

You know what I'm sick of hearing? Our troops are killing civilians! The last time I looked Al-Jihad, al Qaeda, al-Islamiyya, Al-Ummah, Abu Nidal organization, Palestine Liberation Front, Asbat al-Ansar, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, HAMAS, Harakat ul-Ansar, etc. didn't wear military uniforms. THEY'RE ALL CIVILIANS AND THAT'S WHO WE'RE FIGHTING! Will someone please tell the main stream media?

Running hot and cold at the pumps?

So they're suing the gasoline companies to force them to regulate the temperature of gasoline coming from the pumps. To date such suits have been filed in California, Delaware, New Jersey, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Louisiana, New Mexico, Nevada, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia. The idea is, in warmer areas and warmer times of the year, gasoline expands considerably. Since there's only so many BTU's of energy per average temperature gallon, the "hot" gasoline will give you far less miles than cool gasoline.

I can see how people in places like the southwest or south might gain by this since their average temperatures are higher than in the north, but it would seem to me states that are suing like New Jersey, Delaware or here in Kentucky we would average out over the year. Hot weather we get expanded gasoline and less miles per gallon, but freezing weather it's contracted gasoline thus giving us more miles per gallon.

The other thing would be just how they would determine what temperature to set for dispensed gasoline. Would it be the same nationwide, or would they set it for an average for that area. Let's say for instance that Arizona has an average annual temperature of 82° so they set all Arizona pumps to dispense gasoline at that temperature. The end result would be the residents of Arizona would wind up spending exactly the same amount for gasoline each year, but now we've installed expensive temperature control devices on every pump. People in the very south of Arizona might well gain a little from this, but places like Flagstaff, where two foot snows are not uncommon in the winter, they would be buying warmed gasoline and get less mileage per gallon on average.

One major problem I do see with the idea of cooling gasoline as the pump dispenses it. Once it's in the tank of your car on a hot day, it's going to start warming up and expanding. Automobile gas tanks are designed not to explode in such situations, but the gas cap is going to be venting gasoline fumes out into the air like crazy as this expansion takes place. That means in towns and cities we'd be smelling gasoline fumes much more strongly, and someone smoking near a venting gas cap could well create a major fire hazzard.

To me it looks like another lawsuit trying to get something for nothing.

A new rudeness

Our ancestors had to content themselves with a communication system that often took months to get a letter through, then Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. I'm old enough to remember "Central" when you rang the local operator to make a long distance call. She would patch the call through to the county seat, and it would be plugged in to the state capitol. From there it would be routed from one operator to another all the way across the country. With each additional connection you would lose a bit of volume and quality so a call several states away might require you both to shout to be heard at all. It could also take a couple of hours to make the linkage and the operator would ring you back when they'd completed the connection to your party. I think the realization of direct dial really hit me when we lived in Arizona. We had a couple of girls from Holland living with us a few months, and they wanted to call home to let their parents know they were okay. In the front of the phone book it told how to dial international. They punched in the appropriate numbers and the phone rang in their parents livingroom in the Netherlands. Amazing.

Then they invented to mobile phone. Originally it was mounted in the car, or was carried in a small suitcase but as technology progressed they got smaller. Now I think the only limitation is enough space for buttons and ear to mouth capability, and we've created a whole generation that must be in instant communication with everyone they know. It's become the new measure of rudeness. Drivers so engrossed in their conversation they don't notice they're doing 30 in the left lane of the Interstate in a 70 mph zone, or drifting between lanes, running stop signs, and basically oblivious to the fact they're supposed to be controlling more than a ton of hurtling steel. Running into you in a supermarket because their mind was on the conversation rather than their surroundings, having the phone ring in a movie theater, a wedding, a funeral, just anywhere. Rudeness. They come to your home to visit you and half the time there they are taking and making calls on their phones like you have a hold button and will wait for them to get back to you when they finish with their chat. We even had an uninvited insurance salesman ask to show us his wonderful plan. During the presentation his phone rang and he answered it. He may not have noticed, but his sales pitch ended right there. Any chance he had of selling me a policy went right out the window. If they were talking to me and I just walked away in mid sentence, they'd think me extremely rude, but when they answer the phone in the middle of our conversation that's precisely what they are doing. I had to carry a cell phone for business for several years. If I was in heavy traffic or on the freeway when it rang I let the answering system pick it up and take a message. If I was with a customer the phone was shut off during that time. It doesn't take a genius to understand simple concepts of courtesy concerning this new bane on the American scene, so why is it most cell phone owners can't seem to understand this?

Universal Healthcare

During Bill Clinton's first term in the presidency, Hillary Clinton pushed for universal healthcare (dubbed Hillarycare by the media). It was resoundingly voted down in Congress. Now Mrs. Clinton is running for president and we're hearing talk of this again.

Every time the idea pops up we hear talk of how wonderful the Canadian system works, how much smaller European countries have government run healthcare, but here in the U.S. 45 percent of our population is uninsured. 45% is a deceptive figure because only about 15% have no medical insurance because of cost. That other 30% can afford it but choose not to. Even if you're uninsured, like all the illegals currently residing here, you can go to the emergency room and get treated.

In Canada you can count on long waits. Over twelve percent will wait more than a year for medical procedures - thirty percent for over seven months for treatment. Canadians that can afford it have insurance policies that are good in the U.S. and come across the border for their medical treatment. When government regulates the medical profession, they regulate the practitioner's income too. After eight to twelve years in medical school you can count on making less than a bricklayer in some areas. It doesn't exactly encourage people to go through all that schooling to become doctors, so you wind up with a shortage of medical professionals and medical facilities.

Free Health Care? It ain't free.

Government never runs anything as efficiently and cost-conscious as private industry that must make a profit to keep the doors open. By the very nature of government, it never will. That simply means government run healthcare will cost more and be less efficient. It isn't even as cheap as healthcare here. Forty percent of every earned dollar in Canada goes to national healthcare. In other words, if your health insurance here cost you forty percent of everything you earned, you would be on an equal footing with Canadians, except our medical facilities are the best in the world, and you don't have to wait for months. Like someone said, "if you think health care is expensive now, wait until it's free".

Seems appropriate

Not far from here I saw this mailbox along the road. Seemed a very appropriate design for someone with that name.