We are under tornado watch for another hour or so; could have
straight-line winds of 60 mph (96 km/h). I listened to loud winds and
rain all night and I look for the electric to fail.
Here is an idea that should put hundreds of thousands of Americans back
to work: Government and industry working together to put all of the
country’s electrical and other utility wiring underground. Stipulate
that eighty-percent (negotiable) of the materials and equipment used in
the project be manufactured within our borders. Brilliant, Mr. Anderson!
Mark’s blog for today
got me thinking again. My weather page has forecast for two weeks
however it is only accurate for a few hours at best. We need a sky full
of weather drones to go along with government spy drones, marijuana
seeking drones, illegal alien hunting drones, agricultural drones,
traffic drones, astronomy drones, and whatever else they can think of.
Soon, we won’t be able to go outside without carrying special umbrellas
to keep crashing drones and pieces of mid-air collision between drones
and birds from raining own on us. We will take vacations in supposedly “Drone Free” areas just so we can see the sun in day and
stars at night. There are small, personal drones on the market now;
technology will rapidly make them cheap enough for all of us to have a
few. Why not replace birds with drones. Some painted-on bright colors
and a tweet-whistle should cause them to appear somewhat avian-like.
Teach them to catch a few gnats and skeeters, have backyard feeders
stocked with gasoline so they can refuel, and birds will no longer be
needed.
I wonder how our elected leaders will react when We the People begin
using tiny drones in much the same way we “need” and use assault
weapons? Drones for self defense, drones for target practice, drones for
hunting; I think the government would act quickly to make it unlawful
for a private citizen to own drones, N.R.A. or not. What is to keep a
citizen or set of same from stealing a few drones and flying them from
several miles away into the unsuspecting heads of the president or
congress members … or anyone? Taxpayers will have to provide those
law-making weasels protection. The good part: most elected miscreants
will be afraid to appear in the open. Drones, as terrible as their use
in killing innocents is, ain’t all bad.
I’ve got a floater; and eye floater. I’ve had them before but this
won’t go away; been jumping around for two weeks. I can blink it away
and rub it away but in a few seconds it crawls back in sight. Makes it
hard to do this kind of work. Drops don’t remove it and ointment won’t
remove it; I feel insanity coming on if something doesn’t make it go
away. Aaaaghhh!
Supposed to be 72°F (22.2°C) tomorrow. Wednesday still warm but very high winds and then cold again; the seasons are changing.
I suppose it is an honor to have my photo included in a blog tribute to the movie K-Pax
and my favorite actor Kevin Spacey. I would feel honored if my name had
been included with the pic. My blue jay is the only non-film photo on
the page.
Carolyn mistakenly used my toothbrush again this morning; I’m sure either she or I will be poisoned. Aaaaghhh!
Sunny and cold today; supposed to be nearly 70°F (21°C) Tuesday but
back to normal cold on Thursday. As the saying goes, “a bird in the hand
is worth more than two in the bush”.
Got dry skin in the small of my back; I can reach most of it to
scratch and apply lotion but there is one spot along my spine I cannot
touch and it is making me crazy.
I finished reading the book Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel.
It was pretty much a let-down ending. The author built the story around
seemingly sinister happenings involving a book cult and ancient
printing mysteries but the affair ended undramatically with nothing
afoul underfoot or anywhere else. Disappointed I was.
If Obama is a liberal, I wonder what F.D.R. was? I’ll tell you what
he was; F. Roosevelt was a president that swore to keep his word to the
American people and he stepped on the feet of anyone who tried to
prevent him from doing so including those in his own party. He was a man
of personal wealth but a president of all the people. All Obama wants
to do is “compromise”. He is yet to learn that he cannot compromise with
greed and pure meanness; he must stomp on some toes before he can be a
successful leader.
We are having freezing rain at the moment; I am blogging before the electric goes off.
Dan Brown has a new Robert Langdon novel coming out in May; it is titled Inferno. Should be a good read.
Waited all day Wednesday for Sammy to come over but he never did; I
suppose I will have to buy him a car and help him get his driver’s
license. Been a week since I’ve seen him.
With Mark’s help, I finally found Video-Buzz channel for my
Roku; I can now easily watch my–and yours–Youtube videos on the big TV.
Roku has a humongous bunch of channels that are not listed on the device
menu.
I’d like to have a dog if I could afford one. Specifically, a Jack Russel terrier.
Happy Days! I finished all the business taxes; they weren’t that hard
to do but they take time and I’d rather spend my time playing Angry
Birds. I can see the tax money in action: wars to be fought, drones to
be purchased, mega-corporations to be subsidized, congressional and
legislative salaries to be paid. A week off and then personal income
taxes to figure; almost makes me swoon.
Very cold in the hills however it is supposed to warm up to 55°F (12.78°C) on February 15.
I had two cousins to die over the weekend. First cousin once removed
Travis Cloyd died Saturday night. It was much unexpected. He was the son
of my first-cousin Vicky Phillips Cloyd. Travis was thirty-seven years
old and left a five year-old son.
While reading the obituaries this morning, I saw that a more distant
cousin died Saturday, also. Geraldine Garst was kin on my Oliver side of
the family. She was sixty-six years old.
DuckDuckGo!
Yes, you read it correctly. It is a search engine which my son turned
me on to and I am using it to replace Google search. Its best attaboy
is that it keeps your searches private. Google allows companies to use
your search results to place ads that want to sell you something. DuckDuckGo is an add-on for Firefox and other browsers. In Firefox, click on Tools, Add-ons, Search all add-ons, and type duckduckgo. From there, you should be able to add it to your search engine list. Fun-fun-fun.
Maybe a little snow tonight; temperature around 20F — -6.7C. So much for last week’s spring-like feel.
Supper last night: Hunk of mild cheddar cheese, hunk of summer sausage, pickled okra, crackers.
I’m reading a very good book titled Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. One of the best reads I’ve had in quite awhile. I recently finished Rendezvous With Rama, a popular science-fiction novel from the early 1970′s.
I’ve looked like a sore-eyed cat for the past few days; allergies are aggravating my rights to own an assault rifle.
I’m interested to see how sucky the proposed Biden/Obama gun control
“laws” will be. I have a feeling that the NRA is raising hell in public
but are cheering behind the scenes. Like most things Obama has
“accomplished”, these proposals are likely lip-service only because he
knows Congress will rip apart any meaningful legislation that comes from
his office.
I am trying to update my laptop PC; it only has one gigabyte of
memory which is fine for running Linux but now that I have Win7 on it is
pokey slow. I found some relatively cheap memory online and I ordered
four gigabytes which should make a tremendous improvement.
Lots and lots of rain for the past two days and more to come.
Flooding again on Dry Creek where they are still recovering from last
year’s flood. Schools are being closed from fear of too much water
moving down the ridges into the valleys. Our electric was off nearly
three hours last evening; I was reminded of what advanced dark really
looks like and it looks like nothing. I spent the time on the Tab
reading a novel; yes, the world really does exist when there is no TV.
Carolyn has daffodils out of the ground same as in January last year.
Samsung finally issued the long awaited (by me) update to the Android
operating system on the Tab. It is an incremental change which Google
has named “Jelly Bean” but for me it is like having an entirely new
tablet. The home screens’ interface has been changed and rearranged and
everything is faster and smoother. Also, three more Angry Birds games
have been added … Yee-Haw!
Thanks to Jola for the superb winter scene photo of her hometown.
Pleasant, shirtsleeve temperature today; a bit of wind makes it a bit cool for porch sitting.
Sammy was here yesterday; his cold is
lingering but he finally cut loose and was his happy self for a long
time. He got a toy guitar for Christmas and he tries to play it like
David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. When Sammy is in this office,
there must be a music video on my monitor or he will let me know that I
am losing his respect. A whop from his broom trurns my attention back
entertaining him.
He is outgrowing his toys and clothes at a tremendous rate
Not much going on in the world, at least not anything I care to talk about.
Mild temperatures but still no sunshine so far today. Looking forward to some porch weather.
I read that there is supposed to be a very bright comet visit this year. I hope it is at least as good as was the Hale-Bopp
comet in the late 1990′s. It was low on the horizon in the estern sky
at dawn until it swung around the sun and then was low in the western
evening sky for several weeks. On many clear evenings at dusk I would
drive off and stay gone for a few hours—Carolyn thought I was whoring or
bar-hopping. Actually I was alone and headed for a hilltop well away
from city light pollution where I could see nearly all the night sky. I
don’t amaze easily but Hale-Bopp very much stirred my imagination. For
me there is a mystic, celestial magic associated with night skies. I
loved laying in my truck bed on summer evenings as the comet and
shooting stars passed overhead. The beauty and mystery of constellation
Sagittarius with the core of our great galaxy hidden within the dust of
the Milky Way’s spiral arm; the Big Dipper in the north, red star
Antares toward the south, greenish appearing Arcturus nearly overhead;
all there to fire my sense of wonder and help me to set my place in the
cosmos.
All of Nature contains astounding beauty but none so grand as the night sky.
Cloudy and a bit cold today but better things will come. I noticed
the last two evenings that there is a bit more daylight to smile about.
I got the new employee federal income tax withholding charts
yesterday. Most people will be paying more taxes this year than they did
last year, even the poorest paid are taking a hit. The middle-class
loses again contrary to what Obama promised. Until high-income and
corporate tax loopholes are closed nothing will change.
My hair is down to my shoulders again. My sideburns look like they
need a controlled burning. I have to mow my eyebrows. I am so gray and
so cute!
The past two weeks have had an extra Monday each and there is Monday holiday coming later this month. Do they know how confusing all this is to geezers and other lovable creatures?
Armed police
in schools? What next? National Guard in my bedroom? When I was a kid,
we didn’t need police protection on duty in school because not every
lame-dick jerk was allowed to own an assault rifle.
Google mail was not working yesterday on my Android phone nor on the
Android tablet. Other folk are having trouble uploading photos to
Blogger.
There is a possibility I will be using the net even less in the near
future; I wish I could say it is because of knee surgery but that has
been placed on indefinite hold. If I am off-line it will be due to PC
surgery; I am either going to fix my slow Win XP OS which is eleven
years old or I am going to have to install Win 7.
Installing a new
system like Windows 7 will be expensive; the program alone is $140 plus I
will need a new hard-drive which will be about $100. Then comes the
headache of installing software and getting everything the way I like
it. Linux is a much cheaper and better alternative but I have a couple
of needed Windows programs that will not function correctly on Linux.
