Window Washer

Field	Data
Title	Window washer
Description	Window washing the right way.
Tags	window washing washer Houston Texas Canon Elph 300 KDENLive
Link	Link

Leave it at home

There are several topics you just should not talk about at work.

Politics

Politics is just a way to control the masses. To paraphrase a recent speech by the President "Shut up and get in line."

I cannot call myself a conservative because I am not religious. I care that people in government know that I am their boss. They are there to get the things done that I want done. They are there to protect me and my rights.

This is just plane not the way it works. Everyone seems to be out for their own interests and every one else and their consequences be dammed. This is not how you make a civilization work. The idea is to be out for yourself and the collective at the same time. This is how the long term balance is maintained.

Sex

I'm a heterosexual. I don't care if you are or not. Unless I need to know what you call yourself, keep it to yourself.

I've never been good at the whole human communication thing. This includes and is specifically bad when it comes to communication about sex and dominance. I'm just plane bad at it. My wife says I am oblivious to women hitting on me. I always have been.

Religion

Religion is an early attempt at controlling the masses. I believe in God not religion.

"If you don't believe in something, you will fall for anything." I heard that somewhere. It happens to be true. People who are loud about the absence of God in our lives are happy to believe in global warming or climate change or whatever they are calling it this year. The sun has more to do with our temperature, but no one wants to admit to being a sun worshiper.

Notes:

Someone on the bus this morning had a conversation with no one about nothing. The guy was sitting there mumbling in some language I did not recognize to the back of the seat in front of him. He looked presentable. Was he rehearsing for a job interview, singing to himself very badly. No one took notice except me. Pat of me wants to know his story. How did he come to this? Who stands in place of the back of the seat in front of him? The rest of me is just glad he is quiet about it and nonviolent.

Lunch conversation today went by without my participation. I just wasn't in the mood to be sociable. There was one moment where someone sitting at another table by themselves was mockingly chastised by one of the people sitting at the "first table" where the crew happens to congeal on most days.They are mostly engineers, so I can't call this the cool kid table. Without being prompted, I said "He is with me." from my vantage.

Rain! Real reain that stuck around and got everything wet for longer than 15 minutes. More please.

Notes:

Facebook is pissing me off. I'm not getting all my updates from my friends and I haven't had time to figure out how to change settings as needed to make sure the information I want is making it to me. I don't have time to keep up with Facebook's bullshit.

There is another potential government shut down. That or there is not. They will just bitch loudly until the last minute and prevent things from shutting down. Nothing will change until an external force makes it happen. Unless aliens land or China drops a set, we are stuck in the status quo. Why are they covering this in the media.

My cough has gotten worse. For a long time I had a sniffle and was keeping the cough at bay. No longer. I had a fever moment last Saturday evening. I thought may have been the hump in this episode of disease. I was wrong. This is going to be one of those lingering things that takes a month to go away. The Nutty pot nose wash thing is helping greatly. Everyone should use one of these things. If only they had one for your lungs.

Lunch conversation today included "There is a USB version of everything." and "... nonalcoholic beer ...".

How long would you go hungry before you ate a cat? How long would you let your family go before you fed them a cat?

Our conference rooms are numbered A, B, C, D and R-656. I think there is another one. Apparently it is the conference room of many names.

Added the Linkedin app to my phone. Noticed I need to add a bunch of people and update my profile. It is the other and more important social networking platform.

Had to put together a couple machines for a new user. They will have to use both a cheap KVM and the button on the monitor to flip from one computer to the other. It will take some getting used to I'm sure. It is one of those things that would drive me nuts. In order to get one computer to look good, the other has to be kind or crappy. Or, they could both be crappy.

Frigging Facebook wouldn't let me embed or even properly link my YouTube videos with a thumbnail the last couple times. Bastards. This tyranny must end.

I just heard my own voice in my head and it sounded like it had a sore throat. Maybe it is time to hit the doctor.

Come on Rain

Field	Data
Title	Come on rain
Description	Come on rain.
Tags	goofy family fun rain driveway east Texas Houston Canon Elph 300 KDENLive
Link	Link

Bus screwup

I road past my bus stop this morning. I heard the names of the streets as we passed them, but they did not register in my mind. There were other tings on my mind. It turns out I had not paid my phone bill and had no mobile phone this morning. That distracted me enough to prevent me from getting off at the correct stop.

Normally, I get off right before the toll road. This mooring we cruised right passed it. Something I hate is when you hear the name of the street announced by the robot and immediately pull the cord, but it is already too late. Some days it is off by a great deal. This morning it was just enough to miss that stop and wind up on the other side.

Of course, I was a bit disoriented and had to ask the bus driver where the toll road was. I got off and started the half mile walk back to my office. I had to cross the toll road at Westheimer. It is easier to cross the toll road than Westheimer. You only have to deal with one direction of traffic at a time while traversing the toll road. With Westheimer, you have cars coming at you from all directions with unpredictable intentions.

I survived. The flashlight helped. It is very bright. I was able to tell people my intentions by waving the flashlight beam in my intended direction. This works well particularly for people turning right. They are looking Left for oncoming traffic, and not in the direction they intend to gas it. The flashlight kept me in their field of view.

I still managed to walk in the door at 07:01. How freaking early would I have been if I hadn't missed my stop? Sheesh.

Notes:

The guy running HP (The CEO) is taking off with 25 million dollars. He worked there for eleven months. Remember, he was basically fired for failing to meet some level of performance. Not bad work if you can get it.

One of the podcasts I listen to calls the social media places like Facebook and Google the new AOL design. They are out to surround you in a walled garden. He compares it to TV saying that form of entertainment has many people locked in to watching at specific times every week or so for new content. TV is dying. Everyone I know is fed up with being walled in to the garden. I've heard people hint that there should be a breakup of Facebook like the old phone companies.

There is officially no mobile phone provider that supplies an unlimited monthly contract that I can find. Sprint was the last hold out and they just announce a five gigabyte limit. They are going to charge for every megabyte over the limit. Five gigs is maybe enough to get your email every month. Who can afford it? I really am getting used to just not watching TV shows and movies. I'm getting used to not being entertained every moment of the day.

In progress

Cat the Jump jockey

Cat had a hard time answering nube questions. She is far to experienced to deal with the kids the brass keeps throwing at her. The economy is too good to pay people to bounce around the universe. People got more money for publicizing the life of genetically augmented kittens. The romance of roaming the depths of space have gone the way of stone axes.
By the time Cat got in the biz, the average salary of a bounce jockey, the people who piloted pods through wormholes, had dropped to just above the poverty line. She still can't afford to rent an apartment that allows pets.
Today she had a duty bestowed upon her that she really didn't like. Training is all well and good, but OTJ, on the job training, is pretty much the only to figure out if someone has the metal to be a pilot for Biesler Corp.
A bald head popped in the hatch up side down. "Permission to come aboard." The young man was, at least, something to look at for the trip to The Box and back.
This formality is completely unnecessary. Cat nodded him in without a word.
The two command chairs share a common air space, but are completely redundant units that surround the pilots. They lean away from one another at an angle of that matches the skin of the ship. It is cramped, but functional. All human needs are accounted for, as long as the trip is short. They also act as escape pods in case of emergency. Cat has never seen it in action, only in simulation, but a wall slams shut between the command chairs and each is ejected with gusto. The simulator is a pretty fun ride.
This design fist the cylindrical shape of the ship. The company doesn't believe in names so each gets a number. RXA-45421 in this case. The pilots do believe in names. This ship is Rita.
The nube slipped in through the access hatch above the left drive seat. He lowered himself without effort in to place. This was not lost on Cat. She liked men who were athletic, but they had a bad habit of not working out on the long runs.
Cat sat in the right side and been in her command seat for 10 minuets running diagnostics. "When you have a nube on board, run every check twice." she would say to others who took on the task of educating the eager or overzealous.
Where did Biesler Corp find these people. They start out so ready to please and think they will conquer the universe. It's a good thing Cat enjoys crushing souls. There is usually a single moment where they grasp the situation. If you catch that moment, you can tell in the next 10 seconds if they will snap, quit, or see it through.
"Who knows, maybe ... " Cat peaked at the itinerary on the interface to her left. Sure enough it had the nube's name on it. Andy Masseur. " ... Andy will break the mold." She thought to herself. She would have to remember the trick. "He sounds like a nube. I'll have to come up with a nickname."
Cat started release sequence. One of the last things done is to leave the cruiser. She started spouting the sequence bullet points before Andy even put on his harness. Why do they have a harness in these things. At no pint do you experience more than on gravity unless it is thousands of gravities all at once. The belts don't help much.
At about two thirds of the way down the list Cat says "What's the next step?" If he has been following at all, he will get it right.
"Spin up roll dampers." says Andy.
"You've been paying attention. Good. Finish the count." Cat says as she folds her arms and lets the nube go. Surely he has been through this a hundred times in the simulator. Besides, she just ran through it on her own a minute ago.
Andy quotes the book step by step and sure enough seems to have the list memorized. Still, he checks each step off on the primary interface front center of his command seat. Good show for the bosses. Someone just might be watching. If there is an incident, the feeds will be scrutinized by a legion of nit pickers until the end of everyone's career.
Cat couldn't help but think that this guy didn't look nerves. She was a wreck on her first run. A shutter ran up her spine just thinking about it. How many times had she been razzed by her generation of jockeys for CatDaoOne as it came to be know? She hoped it would be a while before the story made it to Andy. The brass must have gotten over it. They keep sending her nubes to train. “That was another time. Concentrate.” she thought to herself in the best motherly tone she could muster.
Andy asked “Which run are we making? They don't tells the trainees anything.”
“We have the Broadway jump.” Cat answered with a sound in her vice like it was something that happens every day. Nothing to see here. She didn't like that sound in her voice. It was the only sincere tone she could accomplish.



## BREAK ##
Cat answered "When you materialize in the middle of a star, the million tons or so of star material you send back the other way will have plenty of room in which to explode, without attracting too much attention."
In the next moment of silence, Cat anticipated the next question and continued "The dozen or so times it has happened that I know of, it didn't end up on the books. There is always some other reason given."
The look on the new recruit's face was priceless. She had that look many years ago. "What is this kid's name?" Cat thought to herself. The left most display had telemetry on it by this point. If she brought up the itinerary on one of the other displays, the Nube might see it. Her link was in her breast pouch of course. That would work as a backup display, but that would be obvious too. Cat resolved herself for the fifteenth time to make a better effort to remember first shot's names from now on.
## BREAK ##

Notes:

• Protagonist: Elise Catnaw (Cat)
• Nube name: Andy Masseur
• Company name: Biesler Corp.
• Run name: Broadway
• Ship name: RXA-45421 (Rita)
  • Cylinder, roughly. 40m long about 6m in diameter at widest point.
  • Only place for humans are the command chairs.
• Terms
  • Bounce: Taking off, traveling to the source box, jumping through the wormhole. traveling from the destination box to landing.
  • Jump: Wormhole activation.
  • Bounce jockey: Pilot of a wormhole capable craft.
  • The box: The points at each end of a jump through a wormhole.

Notes:

The fans on this computer I'm working on are stuck on random. They spin up and down with the whims of the fan gods I suppose.

Being invited to lunch after a morning interview is a very good sign. I haven't, yet.

Out the back window

The new buses Metro is trying out have back windows.

Field	Data
Title	The back window of the bus time lapse
Description	The new buses Houston Metro is trying out have back windows. Music: Fig Leaf Rag Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Tags	Houston Metro back window new bus time lapse timelapse evening commute Houston Texas Canon Elph 300 KDENLive
Link	Link

Flight

Turn off the sound and enjoy. Takeoff to landing.

Front wheels are superfluous really

In an effort to eliminate redundancy and green up the planet whatever government this is has decided to apply bicycle tax to only the front wheel. Scofflaws abound.

Rear-ender, old school

3 people injured. The horses couldn't have gotten though this unscathed either.

New flashlight deflector

Field	Data
Title	Homemade defuse reflector 2.0
Description	Using a pill bottle to turn my flashlight in to a video light.
Tags	video light homemade flashlight pill bottle defuse reflector Houston Texas Harris County Canon Elph 300 KDENLive
Link	Link

In progress

Cat had a hard time answering nube questions. She is far to experienced to deal with the kids the brass keeps throwing at her. The economy is too good to pay people to bounce around the universe. People got more money for publicizing the life of genetically augmented kittens. The romance of roaming the depths of space have gone the way of stone axes.

By the time Cat got in the biz, the average salary of a bounce jockey, the people who piloted pods through wormholes, had dropped to just above the poverty line. She still can't afford to rent an apartment that allows pets.

Today she had a duty bestowed upon her that she really didn't like. Training is all well and good, but OTJ, on the job training, is pretty much the only to figure out if someone has the metal to be a pilot for Biesler Corp.

A bald head popped in the hatch up side down. "Permission to come aboard." The young man was, at least, something to look at for the trip to The Box and back.

This formality is completely unnecessary. Cat nodded him in without a word.

The two command chairs share a common air space, but are completely redundant units that surround the pilots. They lean away from one another at an angle of that matches the skin of the ship. It is cramped, but functional. All human needs are accounted for, as long as the trip is short. They also act as escape pods in case of emergency. Cat has never seen it in action, only in simulation, but a wall slams shut between the command chairs and each is ejected with gusto. The simulator is a pretty fun ride.

This design fist the cylindrical shape of the ship. The company doesn't believe in names so each gets a number. RXA-45421 in this case. The pilots do believe in names. This ship is Rita.

The nube slipped in through the access hatch above the left drive seat. He lowered himself without effort in to place. This was not lost on Cat. She liked men who were athletic, but they had a bad habit of not working out on the long runs.

Cat sat in the right side and been in her command seat for 10 minuets running diagnostics. "When you have a nube on board, run every check twice." she would say to others who took on the task of educating the eager or overzealous.

Where did Biesler Corp find these people. They start out so ready to please and think they will conquer the universe. It's a good thing Cat enjoys crushing souls. There is usually a single moment where they grasp the situation. If you catch that moment, you can tell in the next 10 seconds if they will snap, quit, or see it through.

"Who knows, maybe ... " Cat peaked at the itinerary on the interface to her left. Sure enough it had the nube's name on it. Andy Masseur. " ... Andy will break the mold." She thought to herself. She would have to remember the trick. "He sounds like a nube. I'll have to come up with a nickname."

Cat started release sequence. One of the last things done is to leave the cruiser. She started spouting the sequence bullet points before Andy even put on his harness. Why do they have a harness in these things. At no pint do you experience more than on gravity unless it is thousands of gravities all at once. The belts don't help much.

At about two thirds of the way down the list Cat says "What's the next step?" If he has been following at all, he will get it right.

"Spin up roll dampers." says Andy.

"You have been paying attention. Good. Finish the count." Cat says as she folds her arms and lets the nube go. Surely he has been through this a hundred times in the simulator. Besides, she just ran through it on her own a minute ago.

Andy quotes the book step by step and sure enough seems to have the list memorized. Still, he checks each step off on the primary interface front center of his command seat. Good show for the bosses. Someone just might be watching. If there is an incident, the feeds will be scrutinized by a legion of nit pickers until the end of everyone's career.

## BREAK ##

Cat answered "When you materialize in the middle of a star, the million tons or so of star material you send back the other way will have plenty of room in which to explode, without attracting too much attention."

In the next moment of silence, Cat anticipated the next question and continued "The dozen or so times it has happened that I know of, it didn't end up on the books. There is always some other reason given."

The look on the new recruit's face was priceless. She had been in that seat many years ago. "What is this kid's name?" Cat thought to herself. She would have to check the badge or the red tape on her link. Cat resolved herself for the fifteenth time to make a better effort to remember first shot's names from now on.

## BREAK ##

Notes:

• Protagonist: Elise Catnaw (Cat)
• Nube name: Andy Masseur
• Company name: Biesler Corp.
• Run name: Broadway
• Ship name: RXA-45421 (Rita)
• Cylinder, roughly. 40m long about 6m in diameter at widest point.
• Only place for humans are the command chairs.
• Terms
• Bounce: Taking off, traveling to the source box, jumping through the wormhole. traveling from the destination box to landing.
• Jump: Wormhole activation.
• Bounce jocky: Pilot of a wormhole capable craft.
• The box: The points at each end of a jump through a wormhole.

End of the world as we know it

When Admiral Mike Mullen told the Senate that Pakistan directed the attack on the US embassy in Kabul it probably surprised no one. And when the Spectator sadly concluded that the Euro has finally been proved a swindle, probably not many were shocked many either. America has been stabbed in the back by it’s allies; its ‘partners against terrorism’. And Europe has been misled by its leaders. So ho-hum.
Did anyone expect the US to reorient its position away from Afghanistan and confront Pakistan? Does anyone believe the EU will give up the Euro, even if it is manifestly ruining them? Policy is no longer the art of doing the right thing. It is the craft of carrying forward a narrative.
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2011/09/22/see-no-evil/

Pajamas Media

Go read that article. You will then want to go here.

This guys's name is Richard Fernandez. I have yet to find him full of shit on any subject. I frequently disagree with him, but I have yet been able to prove him wrong or false.

Computer troubles?

Consider the alternatives. Stolen from American Digest.

In progress

Cat had a hard time answering nube questions. She was far to experienced to deal with the kids the brass kept throwing at her. The economy was too good to pay people to the ends of the universe. People got more money for publicizing the life of genetically augmented kittens. The romance of roaming the depths of space had gone.

By the time Cat got in the biz, the average salary of a bounce jockey, the people who piloted pods through wormholes, had dropped to just above the poverty line. She still can't afford to rent an apartment that allows pets.

Today she had a duty bestowed upon her that she really didn't like. Training is all well and good, but OTJ, on the job training, is pretty much the only to figure out if someone has the metal to be a pilot for Biesler Corp.

A bald head popped in the hatch up side down. "Permission to come aboard." The young man was, at least, something to look at for the trip to The Box and back.

This formality is completely unnecessary. Cat nodded him in.

The nube slipped in through the access hatch above the left drive seat. He lowered himself without effort in to place. This was not lost on Cat. She liked men who were athletic, but they had a bad habit of not working out on the long runs.

Cat sat in the right side and been in her command seat for 10 minuets running diagnostics. "When you have a nube on board, run every check twice." she would say to others who took on the task of educating the eager or overzealous.

Where did Biesler Corp find these people. They start out so ready to please and think they will conquer the universe. It's a good thing Cat enjoys crushing souls. There is usually a single moment where they grasp the situation. If you catch that moment, you can tell in the next 10 seconds if they will snap, quit, or see it through.

"Who knows, maybe ... " Cat peaked at the itinerary on the interface to her left. Sure enough it had the nube's name on it. Andy Masseur. " ... Andy will break the mold." She thought to herself. She would have to remember the trick. "He sounds like a nube. I'll have to come up with a nickname."

Cat answered "When you materialize in the middle of a star, the million tons or so of star material you send back the other way will have plenty of room in which to explode, without attracting too much attention."

In the next moment of silence, Cat anticipated the next question and continued "The dozen or so times it has happened that I know of, it didn't end up on the books. There is always some other reason given."

The look on the new recruit's face was priceless. She had been in that seat many years ago. "What is this kid's name?" Cat thought to herself. She would have to check the badge or the red tape on her link. Cat resolved herself for the fifteenth time to make a better effort to remember first shot's names from now on.

Notes:

• Protagonist: Elise Catnaw (Cat)
• Nube name: Andy Masseur
• Company name: Biesler Corp.
• Run name: Broadway
• Ship name: RXA-45421 (Rita)
• terms
• The box: The points at each end of a jump.

Sick day

Field	Data
Title	Sick day
Description	This video could have been so much better. Hell, it could have been Farris Buler's day off. I'm just not up to it.
Tags	Sick day off work home illness symptoms Canon Elph 300 Houston Texas KDENLive
Link	Link

Notes:

Experts are coming on radio shows saying Greece should never have been let in to the Euro. I remember any dissenting voices being squashed with great vigor at the time. I was paying attention somewhat. Now they are punting the issue. You know how I know? Because people keep asking the question and experts are denying it.

I want a tattoo. Not on me. maybe someone else's tat will do.

More stimulus. They are "printing money" by just cranking the numbers in a bank's bottom line. Thanks government. You could give that money to humans.

I shot a couple quick clips on the way home. Got home only to find out they had been shot with the white balance from this weekend's blue screen test. Everything looked like Marven Zinler's sunglasses.

Home sick. Feel like garbage. I sent an email to work that said I had "an upper respiritory catastrophe in progress". Wonder if that got a laugh out of any one.

Regeneration

Ever since I was a kid, I've heard about regrowing appendages and organs. This is the last thing anemone who is currently making money in the medical field wants to happen. There is no money in people growing new bits on their own.

Wouldn't it be grand if our government is attempting to destroy our current medical industry in order to allow this to happen?

Wouldn't it be grand if our government is currently failing to create jobs and allowing illegal workers to work because they will announce robots that can think and do like humans in five or ten years?

This is not what is going on. Our government is just inept. I believe they really have no plan other than obtaining and keeping power. Sad. We could do so much with all the power available to our society. It is just not happening.

Notes:

I had nose issues last night. I tried an old standby. I took an antihistamine. Guess what. I had a sore throat this morning. There is something about taking antihistamines that makes me sick. I really must find a better way to treat my allergies than these little pink pills.

The walk in this morning was interesting. We had a good soaking rain last night. It was the first in a long time. The grass had indeed become crunchy and was completely gone in the areas where people walk along side the road. It was a slippery mess. The plants are going to go nuts. I will be calling soon I'm sure to ask the county to mow the strip of land.

What ever happened to Signal Gas Stations?

The middle finger on my left hand hurts. I jabbed it a year ago. Never has gotten better.

They busted another trader making bullshit trades that ended up costing a bank over a billion dollars. The guy is 31. He was making promises and not booking them back to his employer. The argument is that the tax payers should not underwrite these assholes. This happened in Europe. It is something like the third time in recent history.

Someone cleaned the coffee pot at work. It was leaking all over the place. I believe they sent a couple runs of either bleach or another chemical through the mechanism. Whatever they did, it seems to have worked for the time being. The trouble is, these things tend to get go bad again. Not sure what to do. We only use bottled water in that thing. ... This happened after I got my cup bucket of coffee this morning.

Greece is going to bring the European experiment to it's knees. Will it survive? Well, someone will still live in the area currently called Greece. A lot of very wealthy people want Europe to work because they keep getting more rich and it makes controlling we lowly peon people easier. Someone proposed a European bond market again. At the end of the day, Germany is the one guaranteeing the lights stay on. It doesn't matter how you shuffle the paperwork.

The more people who have to move back home after collage, the less stigma it comes with. More jobs are vanishing to technology than to people over seas. There is a new term coming up, "jobbed" vs "jobless". There is another saying that people are fighting "Unemployed need not apply." There is a stigma for people who have been unemployed. The employed tend to avoid the unemployed.

The health industry is 14% of GDP in the U. S.. There will be a rush of patients in 2014 provided the new health care laws kick in. People without insurance tend to wait to get treated until they are much sicker.

I'm sick of hearing the term "green jobs". I'm sick of it more than other green this and green that statements. This is probably due to the sheer amount of my tax money spent on this bullshit.

Man, went for a walk around the parking garage for lunch. The weather felt great. There was just a bit of breeze, but not enough to cool everything off. It was great in the shade.

George Bush park fire 2011-09-13

Can't embed the stupid link. Refuse to upload fifteen times. link. Please let me know if the link works or not.

War

Listened to a story about a time traveler. He goes 100 years in to the future. It is bad. He comes back, but can't warn people. It made me ill. Particularly, since they could have just sent a frigging video camera in to the future and found out what he had found out.

I'm not sure if I hated the radio show I was listening to, or the goddamn Ford commercials they kept working in between the scenes.

This show was made in 1950. They went ahead 100 years. The target world was at war. It sounded a bit familiar. The idea of watching a light go out on a board to indicate intercepting missiles was a bit hard to swallow. "I saw the city through the television viewing screens." "If the 1950 world know the truth, they could prevent the accident."

I eat this stuff up. The idea of traveling 100 years in to the future is pretty cool until I remember that this is only 39 years in to my future. I can picture the dustpan world they described, only with much more effective and lethal weapons.

In the 1930's thew 1960's, most of the time travel was in to the future. Now, most of the time travel is in to the past in fiction. Not sure what to make of this. It does make me think the writers in the 50's were more optimistic than many today. Too bad time travel is impossible.

If I could go back in time, I probably wouldn't. If I had the choice to go forward, I don't know. I just might. Maybe they could fix my vision. Maybe not. They might finally have flying cars DAMMIT!! What would you do?

Litter

My walk in the morning and evening seem shorter than they used to. I really doubt they are going any more quickly or taking any less time. They do seem shorter. Surely, it is all in my head.

Every day there is more and more trash hidden in the grass. I find myself kicking old bits of wood, cans, watter bottles and just plane junk out of the way for the path. I find myself wanting to kick it in the road so the drivers have to deal with it instead of me. That would be a bad thing to do so I do not. I guess I'm just a good person at heart. Something like that anyway.

What kind of person throws something out the window of their car thinking it is just gone? They must know that another person, perhaps many, are going to have to deal with it after them. Surely they know that they are contributing just that bit more evil to the world.

Do you suppose cave dwellers littered, or threw extra or broken bits of things on the ground near their movements, in good times in order to leave useful bits lying around for lean times? Perhaps there is some kind of history to littering. Perhaps back in cave dweller days, when everything was made about one step from nature to product that sort of attitude worked. I mean, things were made from bits of plants, stone and animals. Products fell back in to nature without much disruption to the environment most of the time.

The grass is going to need mowing along that strip soon. Even with the drought over the past year, the plants have thrived. It frightens me how much garbage is going to be left behind after the mowing. It is going to look like a dump.

There is a dead cat one one of the paths. I've blogged about it before and how It appears to me like someone moved it. The cat is in a state of decay. The body has lost all shape and flattened. The bones have been stamped by passers. The body is in the open, but in the dark, there is no way to see it. It was a black cat after all. That may have contributed to it being hit in the first place.

I've tripped over the litter. It happens all the time. The ground that I walk on every day is an easement. Utility lines are under that area. It gets dug up at one point or another at least once a year. There is no chance of putting in a sidewalk for this reason. The ground is chewed up and very uneven. This makes it difficult enough. I do not look forward to the next rain. The ground has cracked and moved to a ridiculous degree. The plants have grown high in some spots and abandon the path where people place their feet. This means soupy tangled muddy waller to get through.

Notes:

They said on the news there was another fire in the park next to my house. It was on the other side, the north side. It was near some apartments. I cannot imagine how frightening that must be. I hope I never find out.

Lunch conversation today consisted of work stuff. Drag. I ended up walking around the parking garage. Felt nice to get outside.

A friend and I are looking to shoot a video for YouTube.

I heard two people yelling at each other at lunch today. The male sounded upset and the female sounded desperate. I could not understand a single word they shouted. I have no idea what language they were speaking/shouting. They were in the apartment complex south of my work. It made me think of a template for conversations. I'm quite sure that some conversations could be all but interpreted just from their tone and the actions of the people. I would like to harness this. I would like to know if there are any experiments using nonsense words, but real tones and actions.

Lower case letters were invented after upper case characters to save space on manuscripts.

Split the GOP

The following is from CNN via email. It is the most bias piece of news I have ever witnessed. I think that goes through my head every time I get an email from CNN. Not sure why I haven't canceled the automated service. It must be so I have something to complain about.

The Republican Party is split down the middle between tea party supporters and those who don't support the movement, a new CNN/ORC International poll suggests.
Forty-nine percent of Republicans and independents who lean Republican say they support the tea party movement or are active members; 51% say that they have no feelings one way or another about the movement or that they oppose it.
Demographically, tea party Republicans are more likely to be male, older and college-educated; non-tea party Republicans are younger, less-educated, women and less likely to say they are born-again Christians or evangelicals.
On many issues, the two wings of the GOP are in accord, but they aren't in agreement on issues such as the deficit, global warming, evolution, abortion, same-sex marriage, the Federal Reserve, the Department of Education or Social Security.

CNN Headline News email

Nitpicks:

• 51% have no feelings or oppose the Tea Party? Is it 49% no feelings and 2% opposed or the other way round? Did you notice my bias there?
• They don't capitalize "Tea Party" in may cases. This may make some people think it is not for real.
• By using the term "the two wings of the GOP" CNN is presenting a picture of a split in the Republican party already.
• By spouting a long list of issues and saying "such as" in front of it, CNN makes it sound like no two Republicans feel the same on any issue ever.

I can't help but think that the best thing that could happen is a split in the Republican party. I want religion on one side and politics on the other. I'll join the politics side. I say it should be called the Conservative Party, or the Stop Waisting My Money Party. This party should be pro choice, pro stay out of my bedroom (meaning letting any one human over 18 "marry" any other human over 18), pro business, pro people must be held responsible for their own actions, pro the U. S. is for U. S. citizens (all others must apply and go through the system) and pro the U. S. A. is number one and always will be. The party would win some Democrats as well.

Issue	Stance
Tea Party	Pro. I support organized peaceful resistance to tyranny.
The Deficit	Against
Global Warming	When very rich people stop getting more rich off it, I might start believing it.
Evolution	Pro. I believe God could have done it this way.
Abortion	Pro. I'm pro life. People should have a chance to grow up and make their own decisions, but I believe abortion should be aloud. I won't get one. Clear as mud?
Capital Punishment	Pro. Once people have had their Chance, if they screw up, they should be removed.
Same-Sex marriage	I believe government should not recognize any matrimony. It should be a religions thing.
The Federal Reserve	If the FED were responsible to the citizens of the U. S. I would not have a problem with it.
Department of Education	I haven't had time to love or hate this topic yet. Get back to you.
Social Security	Safety nets are great, but paying people to sit on their ass is something else. We need at least a rebalance on this topic.
Foreign Aid	It is time for the era of U. S. foreign aid to close the final chapter.

All the opinions expressed here are subject to change based on whatever whim I stumble over in my lazy, daydream fueled stupor we call life. Don't worry. No one is going to take me seriously because I can't spell.

The truck

Fiction

I met this guy in collage who got four hundred thousand miles out of his Ford Ranger. It was a 1985 Ranger too. That was not a good year for Ford pickups.

He said that a relation of his had an airplane parts business. Every weekend or so, this guy would get a sweetheart deal to act as Currier for his uncle or whatever. He drove all over Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma and even farther. It was routine for him to put a thousand miles on his truck on the short trips and double that on longer ones.

He went through three engines and four seats. He finally got rid of the truck after a couple years because the bolt holes were wallowing out in the frame. That and he was mightily sick of the truck by then.

All that traveling and he says he only used three clutches. He joked it was one per engine. Road miles will work like that sometimes. If you keep your foot off the clutch round corners and while sitting at lights, it will make a clutch last a lot longer.

I've never heard of anyone getting that kind of mileage out of a Ranger, new or old. It is funny how some makes and models will last and others won't.

End Fiction

This is another one of those stupid stories that won't get out of my head.

Notes:

I got home last night and edited two videos. I then put them up for the world to not bother clicking on. It was fun. I get a kick out of the whole shooting, editing, process. The uploading bit is annoying. The mechanics and playing around are a blast.

I lost the lid to my contact holder thing. I've been running without one. I carry it in my bag normally in case my contacts start driving me nuts. I have another one someplace. I really just need it for backup. I hate to buy one because the drug store wants $5 for a couple bits of molded plastic because it is related to something that is so expensive like contacts. I hate that.

A pack of the guys went to Whataberger for lunch. They are nuts because the round trip is something like half a mile. I almost wen with them. If Jake hadn't been pushing quite so hard, I would have. Just resisted because there was something to resistant against.

My right shoulder has a crick in it. Is that the right word? There is an itch inside the shoulder ball joint. It makes me want to stimulate the nerve. This is going to throw out my shoulder as I get older. I can't stop it. It has become a compulsion. I'm screwed.

Facebook is going to pull the same categorization of friends as Google Plus. It is a business decision. Google Plus gave people the tools and few people took advantage. Facebook will take a different approach and randomly assign your friends to categories. it will be up to you to fix the lists or go crazy trying to talkie to people.

You know it is bad. The price of peanut butter is going up because of the drought.

Texas wild fires

Field	Data
Title	George Bush Park Texas burns 2011-09-13
Description	This is about a mile from our house. George Bush Park, West of Houston Texas, burns on 2011-09-13. The Pyre Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Tags	firefighters helicopter firetrucks Westheimer takeoff drought dry wild fire east texas George Bush Park Canon Elph 300 Canon Elph 940IS KDENLive
Link	Link

Notes:

One of the NPR commentators is named (misspelled) Whorwich. I can understand how someone named Smith or Cartwright got their name. That one scares me.

Road down the elevator at lunch with the big boss. He is not a bad guy.

We have no goth people at work any more. There is a distinct hole in our genera coverage.

Stayed late yesterday. Didn't even post up the stuff I wrote. Left today a bit earlier than normal. That is, 17:00 or so. I refuse to call that early.

Since

It has been a while since I felt the satisfaction of having one of those problems that is a bitch to fix and yet, with effort, I fix it.
It has been a while since the tiles of the shower tiles have been clean.
It has been a while since I, with effort, have traveled or felt the want for travel.
It has been a while since spirits have crossed my lips.
It has been a while since I feel secure where I sleep.
It has been a while since I cracked a bible.
It has been a while since I found myself in a situation where I did not know where I was or how to get home.
It has been a while since my country felt like it did when I was a child.
It has been a while since I watched an episode of Big Bang Theory.
It has been a while since I spoke with a police officer who was not also a friend.
It has been a while since we have had rain in my county. Real soaking rain anyway.
It has been a while since I have had enough money to live comfortably.
It will be a while before all people are at peace.

Break conversation

• Video games
• Addiction to video games.
• Steam
• Buying games in bulk on sale and giving them to friends to have someone to play with.
• Tons of pretty good games.
• Gaming taking time away from other things.
• College gaming.
• Popcorn
• The variety of flavored microwave popcorns.
• How do you make caramel popcorn?
• If you put popcorn in front of most people, they will eat it.
• The smell of popcorn will sell it.
• Popcorn is about the only food that I will eat even when I'm full.
• Home repair and maintenance
• Our grass is dying.
• Everything on homes breaks.

I only went to lunch for about fifteen minutes. I went to the lunch room during afternoon break. Several engineers made noises about playing video games while spouting information they were reading online. One of the other engineers popped some popcorn. Another heated up lunch left overs. I talked and ate the left over popcorn the engineer didn't want.

Earphone rant

Field	Data
Title	Dead earphone rant
Description	Fixing a crap pare of earphones with Krazy glue.
Tags	krazy glue earphones fix repair magnifying glass Canon Elph 300 Houston Texas KDENLive
Link	Link

Break conversation

Best break conversation in a long time. This was ken, Brian and myself.

• Work
• What happened in meetings.
• Do we need controller such and such?
• Broken doors and home ownership.
• Ridiculously long whiskers from nowhere.
• Apocalypse preparations
• Fallout shelters
• In Switzerland, people are required to have a fallout shelter or reserve a place in a community shelter.
• Someone sells a prefabricated fallout shelter with all the trimmings.
• You have to be careful in Houston or they will float out of the ground.
• Short wave radio and other means of communications.
• Zombie vs societal breakdown preparations.
• Are your zombies alive and need to eat or dead and simply animated? This would affect how they spread and how long you need to sit in your shelter.
• How much ammo is enough? (never enough)
• One person's plan was "cardio". Be ready to run and out distance them. That is ... a plan.
• Contents of Safety deposit boxes.
• Shotgun vs hand gun reloading in the rough.
• Cash. You can't eat it.
• Gold. You can't eat it.

Lights

For the first time, I swapped the batteries in my flashlight the way I want to. I charged them both up on day one. Then I charged them both the second time because I couldn't get one to charge. This time I only charged one of them. It too well over six hours. Not sure why. I hope this is a good routine. It works for me.

So far this flashlight has worked like a champ. I use it the whole way from home to the bus stop. I leave it in medium. It is plenty bright for walking around.

It had been a week. I turned it on and handed it to Elle. "When it starts blinking on its own, bring it back to me." She had it for a long time. She got board and I just left it on the table. It still lasted a long time. She came over and played with it some more. It finally started blinking.

The holster works so far. I constantly grab the light looking for the tool and the tool looking for the light. The cases are not even close to one another. Still.

Notes:

I got a thumbs up from some guy in a silver car this morning. Don't know him from Adam.

Speed limit: 300,000,000 m/s

NPR interviewed some chick who was taking Communication Studies in school. "My family keeps trying to get me to worry about the economy, but I'm going to network here at school and end up with a job." Translation. "I intend to suck the right dick and end up with a job."

I watched 200 videos of people playing MineCraft this weekend. It looks like a really fun game. It is a combination of SimEarth, an FPS and lego. What is not to like? Funny thing, I'm sick of the game. I got all my want to play it out of my system. good thing because it it is not free.

New term from NPR. "pain-in-the-ass-sapient" used to describe glutton free people and anti glutton free people.

Why does my spell checker give me different suggestions for the same misspelled word misspelled the same way twice in a row?

I listened to a story about a post apocalyptic world where a preacher shouted for people to warship a mythical firefighter to come save them.

Had to look up how to do something with an RPM today. That was simple enough. I did come across a page that was bright white text on a black and gray background. I miss the internet and all things computer being so easy to read. Everything is based on black text on a white background to mimic pen and paper. We are on an old model that needs to be upgraded.

I am really sick of being the guy everyone comes to for the loan of a USB key at work. This is nuts. There are days that no one asks. There are days they fight over a $4 memory stick. I hear myself say "They sell those things across the street at Target." That makes me look like an asshole so I keep it to a minimum. It could be worse. I could be the guy people through things at.

Some boring guy's morning commute

This is what my commute is like most days. I don't know why he bathered shooting a video of it.

Caulking the door

Field	Data
Title	Caulking the front door
Description	This is NOT a how to video. Me making a video of the only thing I got accomplished this weekend. What happened to the front door? http://youtu.be/3wiLf50aZi0.
Tags	caulk front door mess home homeowner repair Houston Texas Canon Elph 300 KDENLive
Link	Link

Break in

Our house got broken in to. They kicked in the front door. The alarm went off and apparently scared them. Natalie was home at the time. The Sheriffs

We had to replace the door. We went to Home Depot. They said two to three weeks. The door could be shut and bolted with a board screwed in to the wall. So, we kept looking. We found someone called Mr Handyman. They could do it the same day.

Nat is a wreck. She was asleep when the alarm went off. She found the front door kicked open when she went to investigate. She assumed one of the cats knocked something over. Next time she will bust out the room swinging an ax. I'm not exaggerating.

The guy who did the work was great. He was in his fifties. He was from Michigan. He worked quickly and seems to have done a great job. You could tell he had been doing this kind of work every day for a very long time.

I'm just tired. I'm tired. I don't evern remember of what or why any more.

Break in

Field	Data
Title	Break in aftermath at my house
Description	Yup, that's right. We had a break in at my house. Thank God the alarm seems to have scared them off. I really hope this makes us look like a poor burglery target. Please prey for us. Thanks.
Tags	breakin break in kicked in front door broken door home invasion aftermath. Canon Elph 300 Houston Texas Harris County KDENLive
Link	Link

PlayOnLinux

A couple years ago I discovered a program called PlayOnLinux. It is a front end for Wine. When I looked at it before, it sucked. I forget the problem. I believe it just didn't work in the distro that I was using and was buggy as hell. I'm hearing much better news out of it now. I hope it will fix my issue.

Wine is not a Windows emulator. Wine is a library based back end for Windows based programs to run on. That means, Wine runs in Linux. There is no Windows involved. Wine is not a copy of Windows. Wine will not run programs unless all the commands and objects and such have been written in to Wine. This is an important distinction because it explains why everyone has such a hard time running games and complex software using Wine. Not all the bits are there at any given time.

PlayOnLinux is simply a frontend for Wine. It has a GUI and several prebuilt scripts that allow you to customize Wine including version for each program. Wine works for a huge number of popular Windows software packages including games. The trouble is you have to tweak it like a nutter for everything you run. This is where PlayOnLinux comes in.

Normally, I don't care about running Windows software. The only thing I cannot get some equivalent for Linux is games. Well, I want a first person shooter. I've found Battlefield 2. Apparently Crisis and a few others play under the PlayOnLinux platform.

I need to kill some bots. I'm a very weak player. The thing I'm after here is to dial the bots to stupid and blow their heads off with sniper rifles and rocket launchers. They have choppers in this game as well. The single player portion of the game kind of blows, but I don't care. maybe I'll find someone to play with online. I also want to get some driving game working. Maybe Grand Theft Auto. That is kind of a driving game.

Steam is listed as well. I hear you can download it and get a game without paying anything. This would be great for testing. So much for sleep.

Notes:

Many times when I'm vlogging, shooting a video of myself talking, I salivate and have to swallow. I think this comes from my mouth going dry from nervousness. Since I've noticed myself doing this, I've paid attention to podcasts and even radio. I've noticed the second string of casters, not the top pros, just might do the same thing. Typically people who have other careers and do radio or podcasting on the side do it. Now I don't feel so bad.

It felt great outside today. The humidity was kind of low. The temp was in the upper seventies in the morning, maybe low nineties in the afternoon. There was a breeze blowing. I cannot help but think all the smoke in the air from the wild fires north of us helped. Sad.

Crazy old coot

Looks like fun. Watch to almost the end. He cuts the fog. I do wish he would just aim the camera out the window more.

Hospital blogging

I only got spoken to by security one time. I think I just didn't stay in one place long enough for them to catch up with me otherwise. The dang skywalk things were all closed. I wanted to check them out. I hate that. Can't blame them.

That parking garage was wide open. There is a sign in the front of that mall parking lot next to the hospital that says "Lock, Hide, Take". I'm sure they have issues. What mall doesn't.

Wind is normally an issue, but this time was even worse. There was a tropical storm hitting Louisiana at the same time this video was shot. We here in the Houston area have suffered the wind and not gotten much rain out of it. I hear they are getting 20 inches of rain in Louisiana. They don't need it. Figures.

Field	Data
Title	Hospitol adventures
Description	Had to take a friend to the hospital and wondered around trying not to get in to trouble. Herman Memorial in Fort Bend Texas.
Tags	Hermon memorial hospital adventure parking garage roof exploring urban Fort Bend Texas Canon Elph 300 KDENLive
Link	Link

Notes:

couldn't ware my contacts today. When I put the left one in it hurt like something grinding against my eye. I had to stop while walking at th little stop and rob, it was closed, to have enough light and wind block in order to take it out. I gave up after attempting to clean it. It was not the contact lens, it was my eye. Even when I tried the other lens, same prescription, it did the same thing in my left eye. Just not the day to ware contacts I suppose.

I'm getting fed up with social media. Nat had run a group on Facebook for a bunch of friends on our old CB group. Some people wanted to be raunchy and adult. The rest wanted to be family safe. Well, there are now two groups and Nat is not controlling either of them. She has had sleepless nights over this transition. She just didn't want to deal with these assholes any more. I cut out very early. I don't have time for all the drama.

Water flows on mars. The temp is very low. The atmosphere is very thin. Water should evaporate very quickly. The evidence of flowing water on Mars makes some think that there is ice under the surface. something comes along that warms the water quickly. It melts. It flows. It evaporates.

Notes:

Three day weekend this weekend. No plans yet. May try to con my parents in to a BBQ.

Some financial guy talking about Football (Soccer) in Europe was saying that players are employees, but they are more valuable than employees in other fields because if they walked out on mass, there would never be that same team again. I disagree. I think that the idea of the team is a combination of the entire organization in addition to the players. I also believe that a bank for example would still be a bank if all the employees walked out and were replaced. The same is true for a Football (soccer) team, they will just loose games for a bit, until they get up to speed. Same might happen at the bank.

New light follow up

Last night I went to charge my new batteries for the first time. I tried to charge just the one battery. The lights wouldn't come on properly. I ended up hooking up both batteries and charging them. It turns out the batteries must be put in the charger before plugging it in. Then when the charger is plugged in the lights seem to act properly. Next time I'll try it with just one battery.

The difference between the fresh and expended charge was obvious. The medium setting is much brighter on the fresh battery. Even with all the playing around the battery lasted several days.

I'm using the tactical ring. That is the little plastic spur do-hickey that helps you grab the light and prevents it from rolling around under its own weight. As I walk across streets, I aim the light pretty much straight down at my waist and let my arm swing back and forth as I walk. This makes me highly visible as far as I can tell. It seems to work well even though this light has no bright single spot like many other lights. It is just so bright that it makes up for it.

The holster works well too. I approve of its design. It is simple and functional. It is also light and durable. The construction feel good. The light fits well even with the ring and lanyard fitted. It do4doesn't get in the way any more than my pocket knife. Now, comes the long term test. There are replacements at some Academe stores. The replacements are not of nearly as good design. They have metal belt clips and are hard and heavy. Maybe there is a better design online. The light does not do well in the pocket because the edges are just too edged.

Tags: Klarus xt10 Trustfire Lithium Ion batteries and charger