Reclaiming culture?

Well I don't know much about culture but we have got to step up at some point and say: There is no such thing as a neutral journalist, that's an idiotic notion.   We should have each party pick some journalists and set rules that so many questions be taken from each party's journalist pool during government press conferences.   Maybe 60/40 Dem/GOP now since they have the WH and more senators. .   But it is way way past time to stop pretending that George Steffenoupolis is neutral.  All journalists should be like Rush and admit their biases.  Of course they can't be trusted right now so the Democrat party and GOP party should each choose a set of journalists so the public can at least hear questions from both points of view. 

ballot amendments I would like to see

1.  Do away with early voting.  Instead of trying to push photo ID to vote, lets push indelible ink and one day voting.    Require that mail ballots be mailed out only (may already be in place, but if not it should be)

2.  Any church, school or business that wants to be "gun free" zone must provide (armed?) security guards.

3. Personhood amendments should drop life begins at conception and set "personhood begins at 16 weeks" as the language to start (moving to drop to 12 weeks --the original court with saying no restrictions in first trimester had it about right)   -- wiki is probably not very accurate, they are saying the SCOTUS amended this to don't restrict before viability.   I know some states allow abortions that late but I don't think all states have been forced to follow that, perhaps the SCOTUS went to 16 or 20 weeks as the cut off point"   I need to know what the current law is.  

  I think we should never outlaw "plan B" BC pills cocktails and probably not RU-486 or whatever that acts up to 8 weeks, but I cringe that as the state we now say "oh ignore the fact that your fetus is kicking etc and looks just like a baby already, you can still have it removed as if he or she is just a tumor"    Let ILL and NY continue that if they like but states that value life should be able to restrict abortion to first trimester and maybe to first 8 weeks sometime in future.

4.  I would like my state to come up with some right to work amendments.   I think the idea has matured and even though we failed to pass them in the past a well written one could pass now, we have GOT to try to crimp the MSM/DNC funding pipelines wherever we can.  

  OK this does not belong in this post but leaving for now.

 I doubt it is ever possible to go back to once the floodgate of "everyone should get to vote" gets opened but only the people that FUND the government should be getting to vote.    No this would not end all medicaid, welfare and etc.   It would let the people who have to pay for things decide how best to balance "we gain quality of life by not having streets clogged with beggars, but we don't want to be bribing people to quit jobs either"    Having folks that only consume resources saying "give us more goodies if you want our votes" kills societies, going back to before the Roman empire.    I hope a future  society implements the wisdom of the U.S. founders.  I think land owner to vote will not be the way to implement it in future but there needs to be something that limits voting to those that are contributing to the government coffers.  

Senseless Conn. tragedy

I'm still reluctant to search for info on it thanks to all the false 'facts' the media released on friday; although I'm pretty curious about a number of things.

When was the divorce?   Did dad desire to hospitalize the mentally ill son and mom refused?

I did read a story yesterday or this morning that said (don't recall if any sources were named) that the mom had realized she could not cope with son any more and was looking at the steps it would take to hospitalize him and the sources guessed that probably sent him into the murderous level of rage.

Gun safe?  My gut feeling is she probably had one and after son attempted to buy a gun at a local Dicks but was refused he searched until he found where the combination was written or stored on computer,  most accounts say he was brainy.

Should high round magazines be limited?   My feeling is that a non insane person can achieve good defense with clips of 10 or less.  Would having to change clips more often have saved any lives from this crazy bastard?  Who knows, probably not,  but it might be useful if there was an armed guard on campus to intercept crazies.   I don't think any citizen resistance against a regime going Stalinist depends on high round magazines  -- I suspect good hunting scopes that allow 'sniper' actions on bureaucrats and their propagandists who felt themselves out of reach would be much more effective a counter to a state that tried to go totalitarian than being able to fire 30 rounds rather than 10 or even 6. 

I think the bigger issue for "OMG it was kids getting shot" is that we encourage the state to gather large groups of precious children into facilities where they are sitting ducks and at the same time discourage having armed security because we don't want to frighten them.     The large groups are probably not good for developing independent thinkers anyway but if we are going to cluster large amounts of kids together they should have a security guard,  seems to work in Israel.


A lot of people think 'mental health drugs' can cause these issues.    I don't know,  the article about the poor mom having decided she needed to commit the psycho son sounded like he was not taking anything.     The groups that gets those drugs has problems in the first place,  maybe the drugs do cause murderous rage to become more dominant than abject fetal ball depression or intense craving for nicotine in some cases....  Really, comes back to this: the only way to maintain some measure of safety is to be able to shoot down psychos that snap and are actively harming/trying to harm innocent lives.

  We could give the state free(er) rein to institutionalize and in some cases we are too lax now but a lot of crazies do not go around shoving strangers and shouting in their faces first and then escalate, they just plot a mass murder and make their attempt to carry it out.   The theater shooter in Aurora was in a grad school program.   Some lower functioning psychos would have been committed before they snapped and hacked someone with a knife back before the ACLU won a series of court cases making it harder to commit people against their wills but I don't know how many of these planners would be netted ahead of time. 

Looking forward to a 4-day weekend

Think I'll take the 24th off.  I have plenty of PTO and I never get anything done when I try to work that  day.   I've worked for this outfit for nearly 20 years and it still strikes me as odd that we get 10 holidays but Christmas eve is not one of them.   I suppose I should be grateful that Dec 25th still is.  Otherwise we get most of the postal holidays  --not veterans day cuz we're so peacefully pc ::)  and we get 2 paid days at Thanksgiving.

I should have gotten holiday cards ready to send this weekend but spent too much mental energy getting my p/u batteries charged so I could drive it, since its not good for a diesel to go too long w/o driving.   I think I'm going to have to replace the alternator on it AGAIN.  3rd time in 4 years.   The batteries seem to take a charge, although may not hold it real good anymore but I haven't replaced them since I bought the p/u so I will replace them and the battery cables, maybe do that first but I put the charger on the p/u an hour after I got home and it showed it had less charge then before driving so I suspect that means the alternator is shot.   I'll ask the mechanic if its possible to put a heavier than stock alternator on it too.  

I've got the blahs

Thankfully its only 8 more days until Dec 21.    More light will help lighten my mood.  Plus I wouldn't mind a bit if the Mayan calendar aligned with a new period either.   The period where my country was at least somewhat following the constitution and striving to have equal laws for all is gone.  I can't convince myself lately that we swung back after previous extra legal actions from Wilson,  FDR et al so we still might swing back to equal protection under the law. 

I look at democrats and can barely be civil some days.  I want to scream at them "WHY are you destroying this country?,  if you thought it was bad why didn't you just emigrate to wherever you thought was better?   where can I go to get what we used to have?  I'd just as soon leave your sorry asses to decline faster w/o my work ethic and bits of charitable impulses if I can find someplace populated by other people who understand reality." 

American communists, creating a workers utopia by creating a nation that doesn't know how to work

Have to confess I've never waded through the marxist manifesto or anything else that gives an underpinning philosophy for communism but still I think from general knowledge the goal is supposedly to create a world where the workers/proletariat class get a bigger slice of the worlds wealth. So how does bribing urban poor mothers to raise their kids w/o fathers and w/o teaching them minimal life skills, like how to put together a meal for themselves, fix a basic plumbing problem, etc helps create a world that will properly value the 'lower class' for the work they do to keep a society functioning -- when we are creating a group of people that don't know how to do the most basic work?

 Setting up SSDI so that multiple generations grow up being told "you're not mentally capable of working, just take this allowance and show up every couple of years to vote us in or the mean party might take your bennies away from you" Same thing as bribing the mothers to evict the fathers.

Setting up our schools such that teachers can just shove through any student they don't feel like spending time on with C's and these lazy, or bigoted teachers or sometimes good teachers who got burned out because schools cannot expel troublemaker mandatory attendees can not be fired but get to retire early with lifetime guaranteed pensions. How does wrecking education create a world where the workers will be valued?

 What is insane is all the smug upper middle class liberals who vote for politicians to wreck the lower class like this and pat themselves on the back for how compassionate they are being. Funny kind of compassion rigging society so that someone born in the wrong neighborhood is going to be told throughout their life. "you can't succeed so don't bust your back trying, just smoke some dope or drink some cheap booze or take these prescription pills we'll give you that have similar effects and chill out while you watch free-vee, we will take care of you as long as we are able (with overt threats that what will end us being able to take care of you is if the other political party wins)

Now I suspect that if (well I believe it will be when) the SHTF and people have to forage and fend for themselves some of these poor folks will rise to the challenge and cope in spite of being told so often that they aren't capable while a fair # of the pampered rich liberal democrat voting house fraus (some are male these days but seems a useful term) will be shell shocked and will starve. But what a tragic waste of human potential while we flounder along in the meantime.

Have to know your limitations

The cold weekend weather wasn't here yet this morning so I decided to ride Sadie, wind out of the west came up while I saddled and will bring the cold tonight but this is high plains country the little mare is used to wind after 5 years of life so I decided to ride anyway taking my usual route heading east. She was doing OK, a bit angst at going out alone + watching tumble weeds sail by. Not bad but a bit of trying to whirl and turn around mixed with 'not continuing forward' but being correctable so I figured its good exposure. Still I was thinking "I'll probably cut this ride a bit short, maybe just turn left at non-maintained county road and just go a quarter mile north and head back so we don't have to go by the junk next to the road that continues east. There is often some new or moved cardboard and so it gets well eyed even when the air is still. Almost to the corner I see the the neighbors SIL heading out for some target practice in his lot that borders the road I'm on and he fires towards the road that would be my left turn. I guess he was going to get some practice in windy conditions. Sadie does not have Shade's deep fear of gunfire but she gets a little fussed by nearby bangs. So I decided I would cut the ride very short and turn around before he even started his target practice. Little mare may be 5 and have experienced lots of wind but she hasn't got a whole lot of miles under saddle. Then I got to convince Sadie that we were not going to run home. She was again not bad, started cantering a few times and fairly up and down strides a couple times but not bucking and I just reminded myself not to haul back on the reins with both hands and give her something to brace on, just asked her to slow to trot with LH/RH squeeze and release on the reins and she did. I was wondering if she would stand to let me dismount when we got back, but she did after just a couple circles. She figured she deserved horse treats afterwards and I concurred.

Who is John Galt?

I was in a bad mood this morning. Painting project I left to L looked awful to me when I got home last night. What I get for leaving it to her judgement on whether to go with mom's thought of purple accent wall. Well can't say I did not give it a chance now. Plus the weather was fine but I'd thought it would be cold and sort of implied I'd be at work semi-early to move project along. Finally I decided "pbbbttt" on work, they all laze off taking PTO at their whims, why should I pass on riding when its predicted to be too cold this weekend and probably early next week as well. So I rode Shade and brightened my mood considerably. I have got to work on fostering my inner Galt and refusing to be the thinker/doer that keeps things tottering along and letting guilt, sense of obligations drive me vs rational thinking about my own future.

Did ride twice this weekend...

But I feel like such a sluggard. Had some things I thought I should do but didn't get to any of them. Oh well eventually I'll do all the essential stuff.

America's disease, the entitlement mentality

IMO One of the biggest problems with the U.S. right now is the huge number of people who are getting some form of benefits from the government but absolutely don't feel like they are taking welfare, a government handout etc .....

The Cloward/Pivens were absolutely brilliant in setting up SS and medicare as Ponzi schemes.  Today's retiree's and soon to retire baby boomers feel like they have paid in and are entitled to those benefits.  Most have no clue that they are getting way more than they put in, way more than even equivalent contributions to a very successful mutual fund would have generated.   Those that do know, still feel like, "well I was told this would be here for me so I planned on it and it would be unfair to take it away now".

The government made promises and I kept up my part of the bargain just because the country didn't plan correctly for how long folks would live, population and GDP growth etc I am entitled to this; even though I'm getting way more than I ever put in.

Then there is "Unemployment Insurance"  Everyone feels entitled to keep taking it as long as its available because "they took those premiums while I was working"  Again,  premiums cover less than 26 weeks but since the government is offering up to 99 weeks and calling it UE no one feels like they are taking a handout.  They all feel like "I earned this by working before I lost my job."  

Then the most insidious is the SSDI and welfare that blacks especially but now other minorities are told they are entitled to "because this country got rich off the backs of the slaves and taking land from natives and weaker countries, so they owe you a pay out now"   Also I'm sure that 'the urban poor' take SSDI payments for mental illness with the thought of "well you crackers denied me any kind of decent education or job opportunities and that has disabled me from being able to be productive"  --actually they have a point.   LBJ and hordes of bigoted teachers, protected by the NEA and local unions have ruined the quality of education for poor urban blacks and all other students that now go  through the dumbed down schools after 'desegregation'.    That was quite a con, convincing blacks themselves to push to get stuck with bigoted teachers who would refuse to teach their kids much of anything.

And of course there are all the government funded employees.   Most of them still cling to illusions that they are nobly foregoing higher pay in the private sector, that their job benefits the country etc etc.    I don't suffer any illusions that I am not getting a sweetheart deal but it is hard to walk away from that sweetheart deal.   The problems of the commons and all that,  its not like the country will reduce its annual deficit by my salary + overhead costs if I would leave. 

Need to stop burning daylight

So why am I typing instead?   I'm falling into trap of waiting for L instead of just riding and she can join if she makes it out.   She's probably burned out from driving etc and is not going to make it today but I need to take advantage of lovely sunshine.   Yesterday I skipped riding because it was overcast and felt kind of cold and damp and dad was going to the Wild Animal Sanctuary to give them a check for donations folks included in sympathy cards after mom died.

  TWAS was pretty cool,  I enjoyed it, the only cloud was thinking how much mom would have enjoyed it and she never made it over there.  You always think there will be plenty of time to see stuff that is near where you live.   If we had known they were so set up for visitors and with wheelchair/scooter rentals might have made the effort to go.  I was thinking I didn't want to take the time yesterday when I've been feeling time squeezed but it was very much worth the time.  Might even take visitors over there if we get any.  

But I did decide that I should probably gift the bulbs mom had ordered to someone.  Sis had said she might take some but she didn't :(   (I forgot to ask her when she was here both trips)    But they will probably be fine if she plants in spring except maybe won't bloom this year.    But they will be a burden not a gift to me if I carve out time to plant them and then have more pressure to keep flower gardens watered and I am not going to do that to myself.  Better they go where they will be enjoyed rather than resented.  

what to do, what to do.

I really don't know that I should stay on at a place where the newly hired president of the org quotes Che Guevera.  More probably attributed a quote that lots of people said to Fidel Castro's executioner.  Nothing wrong with a revolutionary sentiment wrt to maybe we can get rid of some of the old costly weather information collection schemes the big gub'mint agencies use now and replace them with our comparatively tiny budget program.  But if you say "to quote Che"  then you must be in the idiot crowd that glorifies him rather than knowing enough actual facts to revile the man.

That is just a sympton.  Most of the place voted for Barry, thinking they were saving science from budget cuts and preserving freedoms.  They have no clue that they voted to burn the country down just to (and its only a maybe in our case) keep the government cash flowing more freely for a few more years.     One thing for the people to vote based on greed now and an 'oh someone will fix things before they break down and kill us in 10-20 years'.  But to think that voting for the SCOAMT was a rationale decision that benefited the country?   I just don't know how people can really have that kind of blinders on, and some of these people are smarter than me wrt to understanding complex science.

They also have no clue that 100s of billions of dollars in government grants written first based on "OMG we might be going to burn up the planet we have to study this" and then drifting into responding to solicitations to "study how catastrophic will global warming be" and etc.  is not orders of magnitude bigger wrt to expectation bias etc than the paltry bit of money some skeptics take from "BIG OIL"  

It is very hard to leave a healthy paycheck with flexible hours but I don't want to feel like I'm selling out every damn week just for a job when I honestly believe these idiots voted to send the country into a deep recession and are scaring themselves with bullshit wrt to Global Warming.    CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but there is no good reason to think that there is a consistent factor of 3-5 multiplication effect from the bit of CO2 warming evaporating more water from the oceans.   Water  has three phases and only the vapor form is a green house gas.   They have no idea whether we will get albedo effects that halve the CO2 warming at times due to cloud formations.  No one knows cloud physics that well. 

CJ is better

I should call his office and request the vet to call me at my work # with some specifics but voice message left on friday said the high liver enzyme #"s which the Glenwood Springs vet thought might mean liver disease for CJ had fallen.  one # was still high but Dr Mike said it does change more slowly.  We will check again in about 2 weeks.    --more $ of course.   Saturday I moved CJ into a pen that the mini's used to have access to.  I had dad make a hole in the fence so CJ and mini's could share a water tank. 

This is working pretty good.   CJ and Black Diamond are both getting a bit of extra exercise running the fence line 'challenging' each other.   They can use the exercise.

Saturday I used the trick dad showed me with the tractor bucket to pull some of the built up wet manure back from the potty spots and filled in one low spot that was just dirt with a scoop of sand.   Sunday I picked out the rotted manure and bit of leftover hay from one low spot and put in 2 scoops of sand there and picked up a couple scoops of manure and hauled to the manure pit.   I need to ask dad if he can/will tackle AJ's pen and if not hire someone to come in with a skid steer.  Its a big mess and I feel like I don't have enough hours in a week to get to it. 

I'm thinking maybe we should try to get a boarder or housemate wanting to trade work for horse board or rent.   I can barely keep up and dad is lonely and would love to have someone to yak with.  I'll have to ask him about doing it.   He may not feel like he wants an outsider around but I'm feeling squeezed and its making me cranky too much of the time.   

Oh how I hate "progress"

I dislike change and progress of any sort means change.   Unlike the 'liberal' (Democrat party) voters I do understand that change is inevitable.   The notion that mankind could freeze the climate into the fairly ideal state of the late 20th century if only we would reduce our carbon based energy usage is so laughable.   Aside from the natural effects that we don't even understand yet its clear to anyone with a functioning brain that China, India, Brazil et al are and will continue to ramp up their CO2 production at rates far exceeding what cuts Europe and the U.S. can make.    But I digress.

Yesterday my I-mac at work froze when I was reading email first thing when I got in and kept freezing through 3 powering off and restarting cycles.   Finally I tried discarding my ergonomic keyboard and my ergonomic mouse substitute.  Switchrf to the miserably under-sized keyboard and the magic trackpad that came with the computer.  Apparently the latest automatic update to ward off hackers could no longer deal with the old keyboard and  my beloved keyboard tray with a mouse roller that kept me from having to reach way off to the side to reach a traditional mouse.   The computer has been happy since I switched the keyboard and mouse out. 

I however am quite annoyed at having to give up my comforts to keep the finicky computer going.  And this is stinking Apple, aren't they supposed to be about making things easy for the user?    This kind of progress is as useless as the political progress the Dems have going.  Make the user the slave to the cpu.   Make the private producer a slave to the state and its welfare system.   Yeah that will really help my personal productivity and get the national economy, which is still what funds our government, humming along, NOT.   

CJ: most expensive plug horse in the world?

I'm sure there are folks out there that have spent even more money on horses with even less utility but I needed a quick title.

CJ is our pack horse.   He can be ridden as well but has never been ridden beyond basic levels.  He is an easy going "good old boy" type of horse and will carry a rider or an elk nicely enough going along with a buddy or two and that is all we use him for.   He isn't really conformed to be very athletic and seems to have some early onset hock arthritis and a couple/three years ago a hind fetlock was bothering him. 

 He IS quite good for the basic "packer horse" duty: last year I never tightened the saddle one morning when I  put my rifle in the hard sided scabbard on CJ (I was not even trying to carry it on my AYRAB greenie) after dad had done initial saddling for me because my shoulder was weak.     The saddle was going to the side with the rifle scabbard bumping CJ on a back leg and only the hiking hunters we passed saying something brought it to my attention --   CJ had just kept walking along, not fussing a bit about things.

But two years ago sis had to bring down an extra horse because CJ got sick with pigeon fever right before we going to go hunting.   This year he had a colic episode up at the hunting campgrounds after I had come home and it was just dad and sis up there so they had to run him to the vet in Meeker, then friday he was better but not right so they took him to Glenwood Springs to get put on IV fluids.  The GS vets think there was a liver problem that caused the colic.  Possibly CJ ate something toxic and his liver will regenerate, but we might have put several hundred dollars into saving  a horse that is going to advance with the liver issues and not even be around or be able to do the annual pack horse duties next year. 

Oh well, he is a sweet thing.  Not just tolerant with packing stuff, but just super easy for managing.  Easy to give shots to,  If we put him in with an "I'm the boss" horse he just goes to the other feed every time they push him out.   If he is with a horse that he is bigger than he doesn't push them around other than keeping them out of the first food he comes to (very rarely even bothers to check if their food might be better unless the hay happens to be less palatable that day, or he is in a rare mood.) 

 I hope it is either a temporary thing after eating some toxic plants or we can manage his condition and have him do packing duties for at least a couple more years.   Darned big lug is just one of the loveable lug types. 

Finally checked some vote totals 2008 vs 2012

Hearing that Romney got fewer votes than McCain just rang false for me.  Well that is because in Colorado he got over 100,000 more votes than McCain did in 2008.   If those had been flipped votes the state would have gone to Romney.   But the Dems dug out more O-zombie votes in Denver, Boulder and Larimer counties for Barry than they lost to Romeny.   Even in Denver county, Romney got 10K more votes than McCain.   But the machines say 24K more folks voted in 2012 than 2008 and Barry picked up 14K additional votes to Romney's 10K gain.  

Oh well.   I had feared that a Romney win but the D's holding the senate might be awful.  They did hold the senate as well as Barry getting more votes so perhaps the Dem's will own the mess they are creating in spite of the MarxSpewMedia's efforts to pin it on the conservatives.    I think the country has passed into the point where folks are voting in politicians to raid the 'national treasury' to hand out trinkets to the masses*  --that 200 year lifespan that democracies and democratic republics tend to have.  The only question is how long will it take to break down completely and how many years of misery will follow the breakdown.    I think we got some extra time by being a republic but the rule of law and republic protections are eroding fast from my perspective so I think that we will soon see the cycle complete with a slide into tyranny. 

* http://www.wrisley.com/cycle.htm  

Hello president santa claus

Rush's reason on why Barry won.  Makes quite a bit of sense and the GOP needs to be careful not to rush into positions trying to lure voters that a) won't begin to compete with government as Santa Claus and b) will just lead to more people staying home even though they do understand that making government Santa Claus will collapse the government sooner or later and probably close to sooner if they feel like the GOP totally disrespects them for their views on morality or needing to have rule of law and a secure border or whatever.

I truly expected to be in a position of Romney won, now how do we make sure he sticks to getting rid of Obamacare and how do we get skittish GOP congressional politicians to actually reduce spending.   So now I have to decide just how to react to this.   Moving to Canada, with entrenched government healthcare and high taxes + very limited gun rights (even though I don't like shooting guns personally -- I have sensitive ears and I'm not very steady aiming) and the very scary to me free speech limitations thanks to their dumb HumanRightsCommissions that the commies and muzzies use to try to stifle debate does not hold any appeal.  I don't speak Spanish and would have a hard time trusting any of those countries to stay free even if they are currently better which I rather doubt let alone the hassle of importing horses.

Canada is the only option I can see and even though its been trending more conservative and we just let the looters win politically I don't see it as being better yet.  I'm not running a business so lower corporate taxes and hitting the people who 'benefit' from the 'free' healthcare directly doesn't really help me out.  At least it makes sense vs telling folks they can have something for nothing though.

 I guess I should look into their welfare system, that is a big problem here.  We have inner city schools that groom youth to be welfare collectors rather than teaching them anything and a system that encourages life long dependence on SSDI or other government handouts and that seems unlikely to be fixed in my lifetime.   If Canada has a system that doesn't encourage being on the dole as a way of life it may now be or will be by 2016 a better option for someone who doesn't want to encourage robbing people who create jobs to buy votes from people who think they are entitled to have cell phones and flat screens w/o working + have bureaucrats telling them they'll lose net $/week if they choose to leave the dole and they just aren't smart enough to ever get the good jobs that pay better than being on the dole.   Our U.S. welfare system right now is so pernicious,  it really makes people feel they are trapped in 'the ghetto'  no one shows them they have the key and could leave any time.

I should have stayed up at hunting camp

Well not really I am getting a bit of work done but I am so distracted wondering if the polling has been SO bad in order to allow Dems lots of wiggle room for their fraud or is just wishful thinking by the marxists in the media and they will cry foul when (please god save this nation) they lose.   I listened for a few minutes until I couldn't stand any more to some Dem talking head on radio yesterday implying that the Repubs steal the elections with the electronic voting machines because the polling doesn't match results.   (and we conservatives worry because Diebold is now held by a Spanish company with significant shares held by Soros.)  

 Umm the crappy polling results couldn't possibly be because the polling is not a random sample of every 10th or whatever voter and Dems seek out the college girls majoring in sociology to brag about voting for the socialists and the grumpy Repubs veer away from them because we like the idea of secret ballots.    I'm reading reports of exit polls showing Barry leading.   I partly think that some of this is those effing liberals who think they can sidestep any direct consequences just panting to have some riots when their JEPOS loses.  

I know so many conservatives who are so fed up they are just about chanting "bring it" to any mention that inner city yoots might riot.   I also don't see them sitting at home and risking congress seats even if they think the presidency is lost, they will make every effort to turn back the marxist hordes via the ballot box first   ---then will come 'striking' rather than continuing to work to support a bunch of ungrateful marxist mobs  --again with a "bring it" mindset should mobs come looking to do some direct looting.   Hopefully Romney wins handily, the media is shown up as the partisan idiots they are, and Barry and the Dems turn off more misguided white guilt and 'moderate' voters with their petulant behavior and give the "tea party" more fuel to drag this country back to being the capitalist and "property rights for all, not just friends of the party in power" option amongst countries.   Folks that think socialism is so darned wonderful can just emigrate their sorry selves to one of the plethora of nations that practice socialism on various scales.  I hope a huge group of like minded, but formerly apolitical folks has been awakened and will hammer that message out as long as necessary. 

Tulum Mayan city ruins

I was not a good scholar and didn't catch what the meaning of the smaller building with the two faces on the front corners was.   One is eyes open and one is eyes shut and something about the struggle between life and death.    And then the big human sacrifice area.  I'm garbling with the Aztecs and did not catch the spiel about this, just that is was the sacrifice temple.   

I got mainly short video of the tower performers.  We saw this before going into the ruins themselves with no explanations while it was happening and it seemed like just a tourist gimmick.   The one guide explained later inside the ruins that each of the four guys spinning down on the ropes that are uncoiling does 13 revolutions.  13 and 52 are big deals in the Mayan calendar and belief system.   They believed a cycle of life was 52 years and they had a 13 day ritual at the end of each cycle which is the "no leap years needed in their calendar" 

The one guide also had some interesting bit on when the Spanish came.   Several years prior to their main landng a ship had wrecked and one of the survivors had been training to be a priest.  He was kept as a slave and knew the Mayan language.   The Mayans also had an Aztec princess who had picked up the Mayan language.  When the Spaniards went into Mexico they quickly ran into people who only spoke the Aztec dialect and it took the priest and the princess to translate to the locals, who were in resentment of the Aztecs and the high "taxes" extracted from them so were ready to rebel and were very wowed by the gunpowder weapons.  Thus the Mayans believed fate had ordained that the Spaniards would conquer since the necessary pair of translators were in place to help them out.  

Still alive.

Not sure why I haven't felt like doing any journal posting lately but I do tend to do most things in streaks and its not like I have any pressure to avoid disappointing followers.

Spent most of last week near Cancun Mexico attending a conference for COCONet.    Not even sure what the acronym is.   It is countries bordering the Caribbean using GPS to monitor for geodetic hazards and also feeding that GPS PW into hurricane models to hopefully improve track and intensity forecasts.   A lot of these countries get the full suite of natural disaster hazards.   Earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis as well as the hurricanes one thinks about hitting Caribbean islands.

Conference was pretty good.  Some good ideas on getting students to use the GPS PW data to get a group of future proposal writers and bigwigs in their national weather communities interested in using GPS data.   It is a very good data source for countries that may not be able to follow through with maintainence  and calibration for doppler radars and don't have a lot of money to buy radiosondes and launch them twice daily.

I was avoiding internet until thursday night when I dined with liberal scientists and they were all excited that some polls (probably wishcast ones) showed even FL coming back into play for Barry.  Had to go to ace(.mu.nu) to see about this.  There was no gnashing of teeth there so must have been just wish casting polls they read about.  (please lord let the country be going to soundly reject another 4 years of the scoamt.)

Earlier on Thursday we toured some Mayan ruins.  I was a bad tourist and didn't buy so much as a beer from any of the venders at the site.   Pushy salesmen tick me off, and especially when the one guide hurried everyone back and then steered them to a little convenience type store extorting $4 for a bottle of beer  I was not going to cooperate with that crap.   But sitting at the table one of the project engineers was talking about the election and he was at bargaining/acceptance stage.  Expecting Romney to win but saying *Romney will surely veer moderate; stabbing his crazy tea party VEEP in the back*.    I know this could happen and I'm sure I will be dismayed with some of Romney's decisions,  but as the campaign has gone along I have a sense that he was more liberal in Massachusetts because that is what the majority there wanted and how he ran there.

   He understands how crippling the trillion plus dollar deficits are, and I believe he understands that regulations and the threat of big taxes on small businesses filing under the personal tax category are stalling growth.       I did take the opportunity to point out to the table, talking about how cheap it used to be to buy a beer in Mexico or other Latin American countries that part of that was the fact that $16 trillion debt has caused a real inflation. 

I need to download my pics from the ruins and make that a separate post.  The conference was good, it was held at an all inclusive resort so they didn't have to provide per diem for the sponsored attendees.   But I am just not comfortable in the role of highish end resort guest.   The first day a cleaning lady was finishing up in the hall where my room was, pushing the cart of towels and bedding to be washed.  She was going to get the door for me and seemed a bit flustered when I insisted on holding it for her.   ???   She was dealing with a big cart to get through the door,  what kind of rude beeyotch would not hold the door for her instead of expecting her to leave the cart to get the door?  I suppose the doors all have jambs so they can manage but it struck me so very odd to get any reaction for such a trivial bit of common courtesy.   Also they didn't just clean the rooms, they came back in, in the evenings and 'turned down the sheets' and turned on the TV and it was jarring to have seen things one way when I dropped off stuff before going to eat and then come back to TV on and bedding re-arranged.  They didn't even have 'do not disturb signs' available in the room.  I would have deployed one since I was not going to need more towels to make it through my 3 night stay and I prefer privacy over 'coddling'.   

Mom's memorial folder page

Got the memorial handout done

I got the layout to work out so I won't have to wait on a professional and can just print it up.   Have to fix a few typos yet but its sunny outside so I'm going to go ride my horse first.   Dad approves of my non-conventional saying to accompany the inside pics.  ' Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - body thoroughly used up - totally worn out and screaming "whoo hoo what a ride!'   

This is below a pic of mom jumping Duke and then a portrait pic of her with a smile and glint in her eyes.   I'm glad he likes it.  I threw that quote in last night, partly comic relief putting things together but  it had been growing on me as a perfect fit for the pics and its pretty accurate of mom's worldview.  She was careful of her health but she certainly believed that experiences, not years, are what makes for a full life.  

moar sudafed and coffee

Yuck,  I hate being sleepy in the office.   Skipped 12 hour sudafed this am so I guess the good news I don't feel any sinus pressure.  Just feel a bit stuffy and that + general blah is making me sleepy.  I used up my adrenalin riding Sadie this morning.  She didn't do anything wild but it was a cold damp morning and she was acting a bit grumpy about going out and then did seem to have lots of energy and was on some alert for bogeys. 

Great take-down of the MakeBelieveMedia by Ace

  great post by Ace
>>>>>>>>>>>.........The fusion of religion and politics has in fact been every bit as deleterious as the liberals always warned us.
It's just that they were the ones who actually fused God and President.
I long for the days when elections were not about Salvation, and the Press Corps were not Acolytes, each vying to prove their devotion unto their Prophet.>>>>>>

Full story at the link.  I included the last 3 sentences but its that last one that I really love.  Sums up so well why I would vote for almost any Republican right now (although I do happen to think Romney is very good) but even if I thought he was just a power hungry jerk I'd vote for him because the Media will challenge a Republican president and public pressure would keep him way more honest than Barry has been even if he had no conscience of his own. 

I can't really blame Barry too much for ignoring the constitution and general laws of the U.S. since only the conservative blog community and Rush very mildly calls him out on anything.  There is almost zero non-radio/non web media pressure to make him reconsider and in fact a lot of active media pressure from the old media (TV and big city papers)  on congress when they have tried to rein Barry in on anything.   Power corrupts, but media scrutiny shining a spotlight on the chief holder of power is a great counter against the corrupting tendency;  but instead of serving this important role the old media have encouraged Barry to be corrupt by spinning for him and attacking anyone who dares criticize their  Messiah/Prophet every time he behaves badly. 

A little wistful ...

A friend is expecting in January.    She just described all the gymnastics baby to be is doing ....

Usually I am thankful I only have to worry about the future for the country/world in general but every once in a while someone's pregnancy makes me wistful that I have never and will never experience all that.

Oh well,  I had a fun ride yesterday with my dad.

I wimped out on going to an endurance ride saturday because it was forecasted to be and wascold and raw and aside from my wimpiness I did not care to ride an energetic, green Arabian in frisky weather + first time exposure to group of excited horses.

So instead I asked L if she would like to ride there on Sunday like we did last week. Saturday dad asked if I was going riding and I said "yes, want to join us" and he did. L ended up wimping out saturday night, she had gotten chilled on Friday and did not trust it would warm up enough on Sunday so it ended up being just dad and I.

I had planned that I would NOT get my feet wet, made sure to get a good lead rope (not one of my frayed things) on the saddle so that if Sadie needed more encouragement then just following the leader I could have dad pony her across.

However I did not plan on RazzMo refusing to cross for dad. He tried a bit when we headed out and Sadie was getting a bit worked up even as I kept her well back of where Razz was pivoting and being a big baby and I said "lets just go around for now, & make sure and cross on the way back". So we did that.

Sadie was pretty good, we were riding the pasture loop through the prairie dog town and there is a busy highway they were looking at to the North and a kids sports field to the east, neither right next to where we were riding but still more commotion than Sadie has dealt with before. At one point Sadie was in front, doing a power walk and I was thinking "well except for it being so cold yesterday she really was ready for the fun ride and crowd" and I was very relaxed and she saw something she thought was skeery and spun away from it.

Shade or Grey will still spook sometimes at dumb stuff but would have stopped after just a rollback but Sadie spun for a couple revolutions. She may have been upset that the initial move put me off balance (I think she still has some flashbacks from my dumb saddle under her belly this spring) I lost one stirrup and was concerned I'd hit the ground but she did not add any jumps and did stop as I was going Whoa Whoa and finally getting my balance with my stirrup-less leg on her flank and we rode on with no harm no foul rule in effect.

We had to cross the creek on the way back a at a different spot; its been so dry this summer they could just curve right and not get their feet wet but they had to go down a maybe 45 deg. bank first. Razz again would not lead so I got off and led Sadie across first and walked a bit before getting back on.

When we got to the water crossing it was pretty warm and sunny and since it was only 20-30 minutes back to the trailer to ride with wet shoes I got off and led Sadie across when Razz stopped w/o even seeing if dad could persuade him -- which he probably could have if he had needed to. I wanted to have "see its just water, no big deal" with Sadie more than I wanted to keep my feet dry. Sadie did make me very happy by walking right across beside/behind me after just a few seconds of sniffing the water. 

Nobody is entitled to be successful in America?!!

The only reason I can come up with why this is not being HAMMERED is that we use the word entitled to describe folks who think they should have the good life just because they were born in or snuck across the border into the U.S.  but really!   I think Obama saying no one is entitled to success is right up there with his "You didn't build that" marxist remark.  

Is Eli Manning not entitled to success?   He developed his talent, dealt with the famous dad and older brother who went to a more prestigious college and led his NY Giants to two superbowl wins.  And he is not entitled to every damn bit of success now?   In what reality?  

And how about brother Peyton?   Comes back from an awful injury,  takes a risk on a team that is floundering after finally wising up and tossing the dumbest coach ever,  taking commercials poking a bit of fun at the "fragile Peyton"  image he has now ....   He is not entitled to this success?   Barry should confiscate the Manning's money and distribute it to SEIU type union thugs and the welfare class?   

And I firmly believe that 90% of business owners who are successful also damn well earned that success.  They put in 80+ hour weeks,  they white knuckled through the lean start-up years when they could have lost their house or life savings if the business failed, they had the vision to see that their product or service would be in demand and support a profitable business.  These folks are not entitled to success?!   Like hell they are not entitled,  they damn well should be able to drive fancier cars, have bigger houses, or take luxury class vacations now, vs the folks who just played it safe working for a salary.  I am one of those play it safe, salary folks and I sure as hell don't think its unfair that I can't afford as big a house as someone who built a business,  I didn't share the risks why would I expect to share the rewards?  

What kind of idiot believes most business folks would put themselves through the white knuckle years and long hours if they don't get to enjoy the fruits of success later?   How ignorant do you have to be to not know how desolate communist economies always are when the governments owns businesses and no one is entitled to success when the business does well?  

What a difference a day makes ....

I was sad and gloomy Tuesday and Wednesday.   Grieving mom and wondering if too many people would find an excuse to vote for Barry again.   I did not watch the debate last night, actually got a bit of work done but then went to ace to see how commenters rated it.   What an emotional boost reading all the happy posts and some great zingers like "the SS had to take away Barry's tie and shoelaces"

Good ride on Sunday

I hauled Lady and Sadie to KenLyn stables today and L met me there. I had to get off and lead her across and have L help push her but got Sadie to cross the 'creek' (don't tell Sadie but it was so dry this year that only a few sections of this creek have pooled water so we could have gone around) I have really been wanting to work with water on Sadie and this was a great crossing to take a nervous greenie across -- nice footing with no squishy mud, and too wide to jump across

Once we got her in and she waked across I turned around and led her back and then through again to really reinforce the "see this is no big deal" theme.
Success after riding another 2-3 miles in a sort of narrow loop we came back that way and I was able to ride Sadie across following Lady. Sadie seemed pretty proud of herself for going through all the trees and crossing water etc. and I gave her lots of praise and horse cookies. She is a fun horsonality.

Horse therapy

I rode Sadie with L on Lady on Thursday.    Got off and led Ms Sadie through a nice big shallow mud puddle.   She is so funny.  All scared to step in water but then she starts pawing and playing and is in no hurry to step out.    Later we rode across the irrigation ditch at a point where there was no puddled water in the bottom.   L has really learned and she held Lady up.  Sadie rushed through and up the opposite bank but it was not as dramatic as if Lady had done so and gotten far ahead of her first.   I let Sadie rush rather than start a battle that I might lose over asking her to stop and relax.  

The riding is keeping me sane I think.   My horse board that I get annoyed with but never to the point of quitting it altogether is annoying at the moment.   I should at least only stay on the horse page but then I think I don't want to skip wishing happy b-day and so on so I always go to the general life page and even when I skip the threads some of the titles and intro sentences one can see w/o clicking through annoy me royally.   

Have to go through pics and video for mom's memorial.  I think we will do a picture board and have a dvd with some clips from VHS tapes and some stills that we don't use on the picture board but we haven't mapped things out.   Not sure what to think for memorial in ND.   I don't know that dad finalized it but we are thinking Oct 21 for CO memorial.   Thanksgiving is Nov 22 and with my travel for work the end of Oct and then hunting season the first 2 weekends in Nov + the week between it seems like it would be hard to fit it in before Thanksgiving, but maybe we could just as well do it that weekend or the last weekend in Nov.  

I'll leave that call to dad and sis.   I kind of pushed that we might have to wait till spring but that does become quite a long wait.   Brothers wife offered that maybe they could come out for thanksgiving or xmas.  I don't really care to have them do that, don't need any physical stress on pregnant SIL and,  thinking maybe we could fly there instead.   or Maybe I can plan to do the Death Valley Endurance ride between Xmas and NYD and then we could visit them if I found a place to 'board' the horses for a few days before or after the ride.  Except I don't like to tow in winter.  

Kind of think I should go there and see if I can find a used car to buy for them.   They were leasing and can't afford to continue the lease I guess.    Would not shock me if SIL was one of the Jerry Brown votes that tipped Calif. into full on financial doom so I have to overcome the "well thats what you get" instinct.  I have not really talked to her about politics/philosophy just seems like she is probably socialist christian type.   

I never said I was bored, never

I don't want interesting times at work.   Do. not. want.   But it appears our Sys Admin resigned saturday night with a cryptic email.   I thought it was a joke and he was just burned out for the weekend but I sent an email to the group alias yesterday evening and got an automated message that his address is not active, which suggests he took it off working remotely from home.   My earlier email to the group alias did not generate any bounce messages.

I know I was one of the stresses on him lately rather than a relief valve and I feel badly but I'm sure that could only be a tiny fraction of what made him 'snap' to decide in the middle of a weekend to quit.
*******
addendum:   Well the office seems to think that sys admin just needs some time and will come back.  IOW seems to be in complete denial that they need to get their shit together to hire someone  --which needs to be done anyway as we have been having to wait too long for updates that the sys admin has to do for months now and obviously we need to lighten the load ASAP if we want to keep our current guy if he only takes a week or so to de-stress and then comes back.  --which we do,  we don't have catastrophic failures cuz he is excellent about keeping up backups and so on and not jumping on bandwagon of the newest thing before doing research and making sure its not going to be a tarbaby.  My bleeding OS whine was the exception and I think the software engineer who out ranks pushed that upgrade although I don't know the details.  


Sys Admin has been supporting a large # of computers with 3 different major O/S types: microsoft, & apple desktops and CentOS for the workhorse rack CPUs so its not at all that he just doesn't GitRdone efficiently.    I hate the breezy liberal attitude, seems like they think that of course he'll come back and find a way to keep things running and the software folks can fill in for a week or 2.  Except that the one that would be more competent for stringing hardware I think is Taiwanese and we have ITAR issues so he can't go in the main cpu rack rooms and may only have fairly broad sudo permissions but not full root access but I don't know the details.   

Struggling to get back to normal

I needed to get back to work, not because they have any pressure on me but to keep some normalcy.   I thought I would just work a normal week but I am really dragging today so I may have to work some partial days and take PTO to get through this first week. 

I did ride Shade on Saturday and Sadie on Sunday.   They truly were sanity rides.  Just over and under 3 miles on them but much needed to force me to focus on the horse for part of an hour and enjoy them. 

Otherwise mostly spent Friday-Sunday going through old pictures and a few videos for memorial.   Some good memories but its also been mentally wearing, much more so than I had expected it to be.  I hope dad is nearly done with phoning folks to let them know what happened or does it when I'm out of the house.  I think it must be therapeutic for him going over the details for folks but I can barely stand to hear it again.   Not much farther to fingernails on a blackboard effect for me. 

It is so nice not having to deal with a funeral home right now.  I think I will sign up with the science outfit as well but I will specify that I only want the option with family getting cremated remains in 3-5 weeks and then I want them to scatter the ashes in some riding area;  only if I outlive my family and there is no one to scatter ashes then the longer term science experiments is ok.   If the science place rejects for short term research there should be money in my estate to pay for cremation and the survivors will just have to deal with it.  

Mom died Thursday

She collapsed Tuesday around 12:30 and basically died then, but dad called 911 and the paramedics got her heart going again.   The ICU Dr. on Tuesday night wanted us to withdraw her from the ER ventilator but since she was already on the machines we said we would not until we called my brother and sister and would let them decide if they wanted to come and see her even though she was unresponsive.

So they induced hypothermia for 18 hours and then did an EEG on thursday that confirmed there was no brain wave activity.    So after a few hours delay for the organ donor folks to evaluate and decide none of the organs or even the tissue donation would work we pulled her off the ventilator Thursday evening and her heart quit beating within a few minutes.    My brother and his wife and stepson flew back to Calif. Friday.   The MIL just had lung cancer discovered and part of a lung removed and is in a rebab nursing home.  

Mom had pre-registered to donate her body to science through a group called science care.   During the evaluation when we called them they wanted to know if we wanted option two, which we had not heard of.   They do longer term research and we will not get cremated remains back in 3-5 weeks as we would have with the other option.   I don't know if mom knew about this option but we chose it.    I thought it increased chances they would accept her and Dad thought she would have wanted to contribute as much as possible to research.  Sis recalled that mom had said she wanted her body donated to science and didn't care what we did with the remains afterward so she was also onboard with that decision.  

So we are just going through video and pictures, picking things out to do a picture board and dvd for a memorial service and do not have a definite marker for when we should time that.  

Enough philosophy and politics. Horse post

I rode Sadie friday with L and Lady, not a great ride but no flame out. She got rattled and wanted to bolt away from a dog that came running up to its fence and acted tough. I made this worse cuz I was thinking yeah I am glad this dog is on the other side of the fence and then Ole came up to 'help' and I'm bellering at Ole to "COME" illogically thinking he might wind the other dog up where it was might tear through the fence.

But just a bit of crow-hopping and bouncy energy the rest of the ride home from Sadie; not an actual blow up so good job for a greenie and I get a pass on not reacting in the best way Still I did not want to end the ride on the note of Sadie rushing home, even if it was prancing and not bolting so we did 15 minutes in the little arena before I untacked and put her away.

 Sunday I rode Sadie by herself. She was pretty good, I didn't feel like I wanted to ask her to canter JIC, but other than one 180 which I turned into a 360 and "oh yes we are going this way and not just short-cutting home" with a strong leg she was pretty good. I usually prefer not to make a fuss with my ayrabs if they spook. Sometimes I will pull their nose around for a short 'time out', especially if it feels like they are looking for a bogey monster. Just seems like with them its too easy to start feeding them negative energy and make them more likely to act silly/spooky the rest of the ride if I don't keep my reactions pretty low key.

 Today L came out and I grabbed Shade so she wouldn't have to babysit me, being ready to pull Lady up if Sadie was getting anxious and couldn't deal with Lady getting too far ahead etc. That was fun. I let Shade outrun Lady up the cantering hill, I've gotten more comfortable that Lady isn't going to get crazy if I actually let Shade go in front. Did slow down at the top and let Lady gait on ahead. Her and Shade seem to have some rivalry going. Shade is often happy to let Lady be in front at the start and past the "ooh scary brush" bits and I used to always hold her back for the fast canter up the hill so the rivalry has been reinforced especially in Lady's mind.

Why are we updating to a bleeding edge OS version?

In install and patch process on IO-A I noticed there were 7 new patches 
in the last several days. I updated:

Downloading Packages:
(1/7): ghostscript-8.70-14.el6_3.1.x86_64.rpm                                                                                                                                                                                                       
(2/7): libexif-0.6.21-5.el6_3.x86_64.rpm                                                                                                                                                                                                            
(3/7): python-2.6.6-29.el6_3.3.x86_64.rpm                                                                                                                                                                                                           
(4/7): python-devel-2.6.6-29.el6_3.3.x86_64.rpm                                                                                                                                                                                                     
(5/7): python-libs-2.6.6-29.el6_3.3.x86_64.rpm                                                                                                                                                                                                      
(6/7): selinux-policy-3.7.19-155.el6_3.4.noarch.rpm                                                                                                                                                                                                 
(7/7): selinux-policy-targeted-3.7.19-155.el6_3.4.noarch.rpm 

As an operator I've gotten to deal with lots of failures to get data on our data collection computer the last two days because things were breaking.  I can't begin to debug half of it because one has to be root to even read the config files.  I am not a root user nor should I be with my cowboy style, I do know the main sys admin and also the two software users with root permissions doing some of the high level stuff have been nearly tearing their hair out trying to get things working for the fancy I/O cpu's with this new OS.  

If I were the boss I'd be asking why in hell we decided to switch to the very latest OS before they even had the bugs worked out?   I think that the new OS  supposedly solves some slow data transfer issues but honestly with hindsight we certainly should have lived with the slow transfers a while longer while the "new and improved" OS got its bugs worked out and we absolutely should not have got in such a rush to push through the update on the coupled I/O CPUs when it became apparent last week that it was a bear trying to make things work under the new OS.  As far as I can tell everything was working perfectly fine with the processing CPUs using the new OS and the I/Os having the old so why not abort *upgrading* the I/Os for a few weeks? 

Blogging this to try to take my mind off the fact that people still support the JEF and apparently give quite a bit of credence to the MarxSpewMedia.   My dad enjoys watching the History channel science fantasy bits about how earth must surely be a lab experiment of advanced aliens.  They have evidence of societies from past millenniums having some pretty advanced technologies; then those societies disappear/are replaced by groups that are pretty much functioning just at hunter/gatherer level.  I don't believe in the alien fantasy and its scary to think how many times humankind has advanced to a high level and then self destructed.   

Oh the banks are responsible for our crappy economy?    Well they largely are, since they helped Obumbles get elected in 2008.   But I don't think the over educated idiot I just overheard meant it in that way.   Give me a freaking break.   If an over powerful government was not strangling businesses with a bunch of nonsense regulations could banks prevent growth right now?  

Hell No --- folks are getting 0.72 percent interest on CDs.   They would be happy to invest in businesses and get better returns if they felt the business had a decent chance to succeed versus getting way less than the *REAL* rate of inflation on their savings. 

  I don't understand how people can fail to see that if we get rid of Barky and give businesses a chance to grow we *might* gain enough time to get the freaking entitlements under control before we follow Zimbabwe, Argentina, 1920's Germany et al down the path of ruinous inflation.  Otherwise folks dependent on government  checks are going to be begging in the streets and probably not getting much sympathy from the folks whose life savings vanished.   The elderly or otherwise disabled from THAT group will be having to beg too in short order and only those with valuable skill sets or productive land that can barter for or grow what they need or demand raises/increased prices on *their* goods on the fly are going to be getting along OK.  

Do people really delude themselves into thinking "oh aliens came in and wiped out all the great civilizations" ?   Really?? --- and more recently the Germans and English tribes were just such awesome fighters that they were able to overrun the Roman Empire -- the crushing amount of bureaucracy and taxes to fund bread and circuses to buy the votes from the poor segment of the population had nothing to do with Rome's collapse?    

So sad to see how many people just delude themselves into thinking things will just continue even while their "democratic" ie mob rule grabbing of the rewards slowly but surely crushes all incentives for the productive to continue producing.  

need moar coffee.

I do hate when I am nodding off sitting at the 'puter monitor.   

Thank goodness for backup to tape drive and disk cleanup.   Nice easy task which can be done w/o full alertness.   I really need to get cracking on more demanding tasks.   Should start something today so I can pick it up tomorrow early rather than starting cold. 

Maybe I should try to give up wheat

I was so stuffy and sleepy yesterday and taking sudafed didn't even help much.   Perhaps my body has decided to react to ragweed but the other difference from the vacation in WY where I felt good was eating more bread.   We had a sammich every day for lunch but otherwise I didn't eat any wheat on the vacation.    I could put up my waffle iron, or just make grind some oats into flour if I want to keep up my waffle indulgence and have oatmeal instead of toast and pbj when I don't have waffle batter.    I suppose I should try.   I get frustrated with mom making no lifestyle changes but just expecting the right drugs will make her all better.   

I felt so out of the loop at work the last two days.   The first meeting day in a month I could not be there is of course when the rest of them actually held a meeting; plus usual post vacation re-adjustment and it was harsh.    Hopefully next week is better.    I have got to dive into some projects I sidelined.  

I need to take advantage of good weather today but would like nothing better than enjoying a good book all day.   Oh well we will have plenty of indoor weather soon enough and the books aren't going anywhere.   

Back from vacation ....

I am too young to retire but sheesh I need to make some changes.   It was so peaceful camping with sis.    Shade completed a 50 mile ride on Saturday.   Felt good to be 'back in the game' a little bit.   Now I'd like to do more this year but the only options are very long drives unless I bail on doing the fun ride near home on Sadie and I do want to get the exposure on her.   Then we went to the bighorns and did some trail-riding.   Rocky trails but otherwise it was pretty nice.   The campground was well-set up and we were able to do loops of 4-5 hours of walking with leisurely lunch breaks which was what we wanted.   We were not looking for 8-9 hour ride days this trip.

I am pro energy

Folks who are not into the Luddites position that we should all be forced to huddle together in great  halls to keep from freezing in the winter and otherwise forgo all the activities that cheap energy gives us freedom to do so need to hammer this home.   "I am not anti-environmental, but I am pro-energy because ALL people should have the choices that energy provides"  

 Now the luddites are attacking hydro electric as too hard on the fishies.   Well maybe it is and we should be embracing nuclear and natural gas but they really really hate those .   Every day there is more evidence that they are not scared of a CAWG scenario, or a mega nuclear accident scenario they are just flat scared that giving subsistence farmers in Africa access to power will somehow ruin their last illusions of being superior.   In fact they would like to return us pesky "Fly over people"  to subsistence farming too.    We should not be able to peruse the same great works of literature as our superiors, let alone be able to travel to the see the wonders of the world and so on.

  I am beyond fed up with the smugness that only the 'right people' should be able to experience things and the masses of common folks would be happier if they were not distracted from their natural destiny of being simple laborers.   I guess I feel this damn strongly because my grandfather was a direct immigrant, leaving Europe and taking advantage of cheap property although he was not in the homestead act period and on the rest of my ancestry it was great grandparents who immigrated and they mostly did so because they were not the landed class back in Europe. 

Boots is home :)

The bad news is he hurt his left hind leg.    He is getting around pretty good w/o putting weight on it and does not seem as sensitive this morning so I'm not going to try to squeeze in a vet visit for him.   I gave him food and water upstairs and shut the door so the dogs can't go up and eat his food since I don't think he should be jumping up on the pet food cabinet counter in the entry to eat with a bum leg.  

I hope Boots comes home

Got home last night to find the door from house to garage wide open, and I had not shut the big garage door when I left for work, or else dad ran the dogs in the eveningand left it open.    And the cat was out.  Fairly sure he was in the neighbor's yard, I heard him and their cat talking trash to each other, ran over there w/o grabbing a flashlight and only saw 2 grey tabby cats and Boots was not ready to end his adventure yet or just possibly neither gray tabby was him.    I was reassured that he was hanging there, not out in the CRP where the coyotes would get him and dead tired and I slept like a rock.   Was hoping he would be around this morning but he was not.

 Oh well, even if its the worst he did have 30 months with us and he was a middle aged cat to start so I don't feel as bad as the young cats that I was letting be indoor/outdoor and they all disappeared over time.   That was what led me to decide when I got Boots from the shelter that he would remain a strictly indoor cat.

Gave Shade her Adequan shot today.   I was debating taking an extra one to booster after the AERC event but its only 3 more days and will be light riding so I think I'll not bother.  The stuff is supposed to be kept between 66 and 77 degrees F and that is hard to do on the road in summer and she shouldn't need the booster less than a week from this shot.   I should call the AERC office and get Sadie an AERC # and ask if I get a reassurance letter that the drug test from Aug 11 was clear.   It should be,  I'd be surprised if my normal not huge volume MSM supplementing with 'only' 3 days withdrawal was a problem although I usually prefer to stop giving it 4 days ahead of time,  but had forgotten.   But again I am wanting to have Sadie's AHA papers so I get the AERC office all the correct details and of course I don't have her papers at the office where I think about the fact I need to get her an AERC #  I'm such an airhead.

 Mom is pretty sure the side effects of the anti-viral are not the cause of her lung issues  and that the anti-viral keeps her from getting painful cold/canker sores.    I just don't know if any of the docs/hospitals have gotten a complete list of what she takes and run it by a pharmacist that is really good and would know if it was bad to take some of those things especially in combinations.

  But since she wants to take prednisone to keep the lungs clear and hope she can taper off that and keep taking whatever all else she is taking I don't feel qualified to say that the drugs are making her sick and try to argue her out of taking them.  I feel like she is taking too many drugs,  some to counter symptoms caused by others but that is just my personal beliefs, I don't have pharmacy training.

Plus I take plenty of stuff too,  I added Claritin to my Sudafed, not replaced the sudafed with Claritin for overnight stuffiness and I take a NSAID most nights and fairly often the full dose rather than just 1 pill and very rarely do I feel like "I'm pretty good tonight I can just skip the NSAID" and hardly ever do I feel like I want to skip my decongestants.   +  I do the nasal spray and take extra Mg + now a herbal blend that is supposed to balance hormones and does seem to be keeping me on a much more even keel.

 I feel more comfortable taking the herbs that Asian women have taken for centuries than asking my doc to test and put me on a modern HRT or a mood drug, but I do like my OTC modern drugs for my chronic allergies/stuff sinuses.    L is terribly reluctant to take any drug, even a Claritin and she is not convincing me to live drug free.   L has been sick a lot this year and is worrying that she is going to get WNV every time she gets an insect bite or is going to get sick from the Camel back, or we are going to have heat stroke just riding...

I'm just trying to maintain moderation myself and maybe I should get in mom's face a bit, because she isn't as sharp as when she got her degrees but neither one of us is ready to have me lecturing her about how to manage her health.  I'll try to put in a subtle nudge or hint more often and hope that if I'm right she gets the message and thinks it was her idea to decide she needs an expert to look everything she is taking.  If nothing else I doubt if it makes sense for her to be on cholesterol meds right now when she is having more pressing issues after the docs and hospitals have pronounced her heart health to be fine. 

Ummm?

Mom wanted me to see how high Acylovir can be dosed.  She thinks she needs more to control mouth sores from the jaw infection issue.   Her  GP had her try it and she thought it was doing well to prevent new sores in her mouth.  

Geez a lot of these side effects mach up with her lung issues she has been having lately and I can't help but wonder if her GP tends to hand her prescriptions as an easy way to satisfy her.    Well if the drug is not what is making her sick the one thing said HIV/AIDS patients have taken it for up to 6 years.   Of course HIV/AIDS.  Docs are less worried about long term organ damage.   Seriously I need that instruction manual.

What side effects can this medication cause?

Acyclovir may cause side effects. Tell your doctor if any of these symptoms are severe or do not go away:

• upset stomach
• vomiting
• diarrhea
• dizziness
• tiredness
• agitation
• pain, especially in the joints
• hair loss
• changes in vision

Some side effects can be serious. If you experience any of the following symptoms, call your doctor immediately:

• hives
• rash or blisters
• itching
• difficulty breathing or swallowing
• swelling of the face, throat, tongue, lips, eyes, hands, feet, ankles, or lower legs
• hoarseness
• fast heartbeat
• weakness
• pale skin
• difficulty sleeping
• fever, sore throat, chills, cough, and other signs of infection
• unusual bruising or bleeding
• blood in the urine
• stomach pain or cramps
• bloody diarrhea
• decreased urination
• headache
• hallucinations (seeing things or hearing voices that do not exist)
• confusion
• aggressive behavior
• difficulty speaking
• numbness, burning, or tingling in the arms or legs
• temporary inability to move parts of your body
• shaking of a part of your body that you cannot control
• seizures
• loss of consciousness

Where is the instruction manual?

I desperately need to look up a few things and get instructions with diagrams and things :P

Mom is in hospital under care of a Dr. from Jewish Respiratory center.   I thought the hospital with the ER admission released her Thursday so she wasn't too sick but they told her she would be better off keeping her appointment with the lung specialist so they released her and that Dr. checked her into the hospital Jewish works with.   

Saturday dad and I visited and it started off pretty good, mom seems like "this Dr wants to get to the bottom of things and find out what is making me ill so they can try to cure rather than just alleviate symptoms.   BUT Dr. wants to do a biopsy to look for interstitial lung disease and mom doesn't want to have the surgery and is back on the "I'm sure I still have infection in my jaw (bone?)"  She told her Dr that and Dr agreed surgery would be bad if there is an infection.    ARGGHH,  maybe there is a lingering jaw infection but multiple Dr.s have looked and not found any signs.  Of course you can't prove a negative so there is no proof for mom that she does not have an infection.   I should try to find some articles on nerve and other damage from an infection, perhaps mom could be swayed that that is what is plaguing her now. 

I also need to call the Dr. and ask some questions like "Can you do a culture to look for pneumonia and find the antibiotic that will kill it?"     What are the consequences if you rule out other things, don't biopsy,  treat for the interstitial disease and it was something else?   

Shade was kind of sneezing some when I rode yesterday and has white snot this morning.   Argghhh I should have kept her on the Pam's hay until after my 50 attempt coming saturday.    Hopefully switching her back will be good.   I may give her the horse decongestant today.   That should be plenty of withdrawal time.

I think Frosty is allergic to brome grass hay after the moldly brome exposure.   He is looking pretty much hive free after tried giving them the straight brome and he got worse so I went "hmmm, maybe he needs hay w/o any brome in it."   That would be good if he needs the straight crested wheat.  Leaves more wheat free bales to feed to Sadie.  But Frosty won't eat soaked alfalfa pellets anymore so I have to get something else to give him his *benedryl capsules and he has seemed generally a bit off his feed.  I hope that is mainly just hormones and excitement from moving Sadie and CJ closer to the mini's but its a bit of worry right now.  

  I put Sadie and CJ together so they can be fed straight brome.   This is stressing Sadie and Lady out but they'll have to cope at least until I get back from WY.   With CJ in with her Sadie can be given her Platinum supps in the pen rather than having to catch her and take her out to eat  them.   Just have to dump CJ some grain first.  He doesn't go exploring if he's got yummy food in his pan and he won't let Sadie share his and then go share hers or anything.    Plus CJ was a bit thin so having him getting the richer brome hay with Sadie makes sense.  

Rode at Mt Falcon Sunday with L.   It was kind of a disappointing ride for me.  The trails were more rocky than I had recalled so didn't get much faster work to give Shade a final bit of conditioning for her 50 and in fact I started worrying that she might get some sole bruising as I didn't have boots on her, just her iron shoes.   And L was kind of a PITA worry wort that she might be getting heat stressed or something.   It was not THAT hot up there just to ride.  Riding is some exercise but its not exertion that generates a lot of body heat.   I still think I want to do the 15 mile fun ride with L and Lady as support for Sadie in Oct if Shade completes in WY and gets her 50 to keep the decade horse goal alive but I don't think L is a candidate to get very serious about the distance riding.  

So very sleepy today

Mom had dad run her to an ER last night.   I suppose it was a good precaution as her legs were swelling but she sure has weird timing.   Perhaps I put the idea in her head;  I asked her how she was doing when I got home at 11:30 pm.  Well I don't have a time machine so I can't test whether not saying anything would have had a different outcome, but I helped her and dad get things together to go and crawled into bed at 10 till 1am.   Then tossed and turned all night instead of sleeping.

I don't have a play by play.  They did admit her but that may just be what works best to get some reimbursement from medicare.  Dad got home at 6am  and fell asleep.  They released mom this morning and she called dad to fetch her to ferry her so I guess she made it to her appointment at the Jewish National Respiratory health center that had been scheduled.

   I'm going to have to get at least a little involved and push for at least a recommendation for an oxygen meter and HRM since dad is quite deaf and with my sinus issues I can't hear anything through a stethoscope.  If we could get some vital signs we'd have a better feeling for whether mom is having 'congestive heart failure' again or not.   She gets fluid in or around her lungs I guess.   I don't know whether to try to get her into an assisted living place for 1-2 weeks or what.   I guess she and dad had figured she could be home by herself and dad could come to WY and trail-ride before last night.   I am encouraged that she had told him he could probably go earlier this week when they discussed it; but now?   Sigh,  I volunteered to pay to have someone come in before I went to my ride on the 12th but its awfully short notice now.    Perhaps I'll just go to the ride and come straight back and try to arrange a trail riding trip with sis and dad for a few weeks later.  Darn this sucks.

Luddites masquerading as environmentalists

This makes me so mad because everyone wants to be a good steward of the environment so its really easy to sell folks on the luddite nonsense.    Folks would never agree to go back a century to unreliable windmills if the concept was presented directly.   But stir up fears of 'NUCLEAR EXPLOSION will cause MASS DEATHS and then give everyone for hundreds of miles around CANCER'  with nuclear power to take it off the table.  Done.

Oops those darned pesky petroleum and mining engineers are providing enough coal, oil and gas to make energy cheap anyway, now what can we do -- oh hey lets stir up fears of CAGW.    As an engineer/scientist the C and A are important to me.   No one with real knowledge and sense denies there is global warming.   There is plenty of  question about the percentage of warming caused by human activity and there is very good reason to be very skeptical indeed that there will be catastrophic runaway warming.   If the earth's system tipped into runaway warming so easily we should have had runaway warming when the medieval warm period happened and more water vapor evaporated from the oceans a 1000 years ago, except we should have had the catastrophe 2000 odd years ago during the Roman warm period and never even made it to the medieval warm period.  

But the Luddites simply don't like everyday folks having access to cheap power and all the liberties and yes also complications that brings.   Now I will grant those Luddites that the complications can become overwhelming for some folks at some times.    But they know darn well the public is not going to buy into any arguments based on "look it is not good for you to be able to have a plasma TV,  AC,  microwave, computer/web access etc etc"  so they have to resort to stirring up fears of the good power sources to try to convince people to switch to "safer --  HA"  power sources that just happen to be a lot more costly and a lot less reliable.

Knowing what I know now I would wager my life savings that if someone suddenly invented a really good way to store power from wind and solar 90% of the "environmentalists" would all of a sudden *realize* that "Oh dear these big wind turbines sure do kill a lot of birds and the mining for materials and the manufacturing of those solar cells and wind towers sure is hard on the environment so we have GOT to cut way down on these harmful things"   Effing scumbags.

UGH, just UGH

I lived through losing a Senate election here in 2010 because the guy I supported and who won the primary was pretty socially conservative.  I supported and voted for him because I thought he'd be much better fiscally and while I'm rather liberal socially  *I* knew that there was no danger of congress passing any socially restrictive new laws.

   Now I wonder if  the GOP would have won that race if the more moderate woman had won the primary.  And Buck never gave an interview and said "a women's body can fight off pregnancy in the case of a 'real' rape"  or said anything anywhere close to that kind of idiotic statement.  The Dems spun up a whole lot of crap out of very little substance and managed to scare enough folks in CO to defeat him.  

Buck had signed the stupid "Personhood" amendment petition and in a rally (not interview)  after the squishy had accused him of not being a man about something he said ".... My opponent has accused me of not being a man ..... so why should you support me .. I don't wear high heels I wear cowboy boots...."      So the squish  cut the quote to  "support me because I don't wear high heels" and attached him as 'anti-wimmen'  and of course the Dem borrowed her out of context attack ad + hit with attack ads with women saying he would outlaw Birth Control pills and fertility treatments because the "personhood" amendment with its "life begins at conception" language.

So for the blooming IDIOT in MO to say in an interview that he thinks abortion should be outlawed in all circumstances, because women hardly ever get pregnant from rape and using some stupid wording of "real" rape?   OMG,  bow out of the race now you stupid effing idiot!

 MO is probably quite a bit more conservative than CO but that is effing shooting a big caliber bullet in your foot right before the starting gun goes off.   And I gather in this case the Dem who had no challenger and MO not having protection from crossover voters in the primary's encouraged her supporters to vote for Akin because she knew he'd be so dumb in some way or other vs the other TWO GOP candidates.

WTH is wrong with MO GOP anyway letting three people vie in the primary anyway?   That is why states have caucuses and conventions, to reduce the field to two candidates so that its harder for mobys to win when the two better candidates are splitting votes from the folks that want their side to win in November.  

UGH UGH UGH UGH UGH UGH.    

need a title

Can't think of a good title right now.  

I feel off today.   It was a reasonably productive weekend.   Better than many this long hot summer.  I put an ad on CL on Saturday and got rid of all but 3-4 bales of the moldy, dusty problem hay.   Frosty's hives are not gone but I think they are marching along towards the shrinking up just to scabby bits of skin state that Sadie's did.   I rode Shade on Saturday and mixed in extra repetitions of the little hills on my quick route I ride from home.   L was out on Sunday and I rode Sadie.   We went about 6 miles and Sadie went on some new to her ditch roads and past the "ooh scary" junk that folks had dumped beside the road.   Lady had to lead the way past the junk but Sadie was good then and Sadie led the way some herself and was a pretty nice ride.    I did some flat work on Shade Sunday evening.   I put out some more fly bait containers on Sunday because we are getting the usual August uptick in the fly population and I have low tolerance for flies this year. 

I was on call at work and also got a site collecting data that has had a long outage and the local contact just noticed and started working with us to get it functional again. 

This morning L called to cancel coming out to have me show her how to long line Lady; so I wormed the horses.  I had meant to do it this weekend but had not gotten it done so it worked out good to have that last minute cancellation.   Filled the horse water tanks this morning.   Got most of the garden and mom's flower beds watered over the weekend.   Caught up the dishes again.   I've been adding bleach to the last few loads to boost the cleaning on the old thing.  I always soak or pre-wash enough that the dishes get clean, but the plates get an icky film on the bottoms over time w/o the bleach.   Some day I'll have to take the bull by the horns and arrange to get that crappy old thing replaced myself.  We keep putting off doing anything about it because of angst that it will be a big mess trying to get a replacement in that space under the counter top.   It would not be the end of the world to have to redo some of the counter top though.  

So not a bad weekend.   Got some things done,  had some fun time riding.   But I feel like I've just been drifting in a current or something.   I didn't get my cell phone activated.  I will have to call them again .... blah, but could not find the ph quick this morning and wanted to get going to work.  Breaks my heart to have to wait a day or 2 to deal with it ---NOT.  

 I guess mainly I'm just in limbo about mom's health.    I thought she was getting better early last week (course I was gone at work a lot.)   She was pretty lethargic this weekend though, even dozed off rather than watching football and she loves her football.    I have to call sis and see if she has talked to dad,  and if she wants to come and ride in WY over Labor day anyway.  (might be OK,  I rode with dad in July,  sis will come down and hunt with him early in Nov.  but I feel bad that he was looking forward to going on this little trip and most likely can't now). 

I'm pretty sure he is at least as behind as me in wrapping head around the fact that mom now has a pretty serious chronic condition.    But then he has been coughing some and I'm not so sure a high altitude trip in 1.5 weeks would be great for his health anyway.  Argghhh.  I really didn't think I'd have to think about parental health issues for at least another few years, but I guess -- a fair # of people are healthy into their 80's now, but its still not terribly unusual to have health issues in late 60's and early 70's.