Friday, March 28, 2008



Here is my little man with a lizard he found in our backyard. One of the coolest things about having a child is experiencing the wonderment and joy of seeing new things or exploring things of Nature. This little reptile suffered being incarcerated in a have-a-heart critter cage for a couple of hours before being let loose in the backyard to continue consuming those little buzzing bastards that annoy all of us.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Stay low!!!

Sorry. Haven't been able to post anything new lately. I've been dodging sniper fire (hee hee!).

Friday, March 21, 2008

Steroids in sports

There has been a lot of media attention concerning performance enhancing drugs in professional sports recently. Congress has apparently felt that all of the other major issues concerning America have been solved (war, gas prices, fuel sources, health care, etc) and decided to tie up resources with an investigation into steroids in baseball. There are people who show serious disdain over the use of steroids to increase performance in professional sports. I propose something else:


I propose that we have unlimited professional sports leagues. Imagine if there were no penalties for using performance enhancing drugs. Imagine how entertaining sports would be! Think about it; people running 100 meters in 8 seconds. Watching a defensive end rip the head off (literally!) a running back. Bone breaking tackles. 500-foot home run shots. 120MPH fastballs. Slam dunks from the top of the key. Entertainment! And we can pay them those millions they demand, because we know that they won't live long enough to collect all of the money. The taking of steroids is a conscious decision, so I wouldn't feel bad if the man with a batting average of .495 suddenly succumbed to a brain tumor, especially since I know there is another 'roid user ready to take his place. Let's see just how far we can push the human body.

Wait! There's more! I propose we also do unlimited NASCAR racing. There would be no limit to the amount of horsepower the cars generate. Restrictor plates would be a thing of the past. People say, "But there would be too many crashes. People would die." So, what!!! Think of the entertainment! How cool to see a car blasting around a track at 275MPH. How cool to watch cars crash at 275MPH! The gore! The pandemonium!

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

screw golfers

Two recent events in the area prompts me to comment. Recently, we had a man - a construction worker from out of town doing work on a new hotel being built - who was found murdered in his work vehicle on a dead-end residential street. Somebody put a bullet through his body and murdered him. Whether it was over drugs, a robbery, or a lovers' quarrel is irrelevant; sombody was murdered. A day or two later, somebody drove around the local country club in a golf cart and did damage to the greens, allegedly in the area of several thousand dollars. We have the Crimestoppers program here. If you are not familiar with it, it is a program in which people can report criminal happenings and get rewarded with cash, all while staying anonymous. Crimestoppers works. The biggest problem we have with our program is that it is being headed by a man who apparently holds himself in very high regard. Nobody really cares that he sat on the civilian panel that eventually hired the current chief of police!

Anyway, Crimestoppers put out a reward for information leading to the arrest of the person or persons who murdered the construction worker, and the reward was in the amount of $2500. A day or two later, Crimestoppers put another add in the local paper giving out a cash reward for information leading to the arrest of the person or persons responsible for damaging the country club's golf greens. The amount? $2500. Let that sink in for a minute: In my eyes, this tells me that the self-important individuals who have their hands in the Crimestoppers money feel that the mere damaging of golf greens and a human life are equal, and both warrant an equal cash value. Of course, the same person who heads the Crimestoppers is friends with all of the self-important types who golf at the country club, including council members, mayor, and others who are considered to be high ranking on the social-political scale.

I think the money holders who run the Crimestoppers owe us an explanation of how the murder of a human being and damaging some freakin' grass at the country club are equals!!

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

What an interesting day. I met Col. Danny McKnight (I demoted him one rank in my last post. Sorry, Colonel!). He is an excellent motivational speaker, and he also provided some interesting insight to the events surrounding the Battle of Mogadishu, aka Blackhawk Down. Needless to say, this was a day well spent.

Well, I have to keep this brief, since I am sitting behind a Holiday Inn and using their bandwidth to get this post out.

Signing off from Wilksboro, North Carolina...

Monday, March 17, 2008

The sidewalks are rolled up at 5:00



Well, here I am in downtown Spruce Pine, NC. I am here for a one-day seminar being given by LtCol. Danny McKnight at the Mayland Community College. If the name doesn't ring a bell, he is the leader of the lost convoy in the movie "Blackhawk Down." Spruce Pine is in the middle of nowhere in the North Carolina Mountains. Note the word "pine:" The town isn't big enough to have two trees to call it "Spruce Pines!" This picture is a photograph of the lower street of the downtown area. Most of the shops you see close between 5 and 5:30. To the left of the photo is about a 70 foot drop to a tributary of the French Broad River. I am staying in a place called the Pinebridge Inn. It is an old high school that has been coverted into a hotel. Needless to say, it is definitely different. We walked around the downtown area, cruised around, found the college, and ate dinner at a Western Sizzlin. The only minority I saw the whole time was me!

Sunday, March 16, 2008

My new home project





I decided the other day that I would start a new project at home. I thought that I would take a picture of all of the different flowers that I would encounter on my property throughout the year. Unfortunately, my late start means that I missed out on a few flowers, but I know that there will be plenty more to follow. Here is an example of my project, taken with my simple, 7MP Samsung PHD (Push here, dummy!) digital camera.
A little something if you get bored:

http://ckjcwf.ytmnd.com/

When you get bored with that, try this:

http://picard.ytmnd.com/

Friday, March 14, 2008


As many of you know, I am a self-professed nerd, geek, and all-around Star Wars nut. Now, I don't dress up in the outfits, and I haven't actually purchased any memorabilia in quite a long time, but as long as George Lucas keeps pumping out Star Wars movies, I'll be there to see them!
There was a major letdown after seeing Episode III, knowing that the story had concluded, and there would be no more Star Wars movies. Then I heard rumblings... And rumors...
Imagine my excitement once I found out that this fall there is to be an animated Star Wars movie, set in the days of the Clone Wars between Episodes II and III, much like the Clone Wars animated series (which I have on DVD) from several years ago.
I'm beside myself with anticipation, and I know others are, as well.
May The Force Be With You.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Just don't call a spade a spade...

Geraldine Ferraro is on the hot seat for making the comment that if Obama wasn’t black he wouldn’t be garnering the votes that he is getting. Blacks immediately began to cry foul and said that what she said was racist. Is it really racist if it is true? In some locations, Obama is getting 97-98% of the black vote. He isn’t gathering all of those votes because of his platform! The Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons of the world would be pontificating their own racist viewpoints if he was a white person garnering the same percentage points in white voters. I am not a fan of Ferraro, but you cannot berate her for speaking the truth!

Sunday, March 09, 2008

Oh, and some of you might wonder about the pharmacy/Radio Shack. That is exactly what it is: It is a small family pharmacy that has Radio Shack products along two aisles of the store. You've got to love rural living!
Well, now that I'm back with broadband Internet, I find myself in the interesting position of not knowing what I want to talk about. I have the opportunity to quickly type up something and post it, but I'm unusually at a loss for words.

I ran down to the local pharmacy/Radio Shack and picked up a super G router for 60 bucks. Yes, I know I can find a G router for a cheaper price, but that would involve either ordering it and waiting for a week for it to arrive, or burning gas at $3.15 per gallon to drive a 60 mile round trip to the nearest Wal-Mart. The little Netgear G router that I bought was a breeze to hook up, especially if you just follow the step by step directions on the instructional CD, and it is powerful enough to reach out to my shop behind the house. I ordered a USB dongle so I can do upgrades to my other desktops, plus I can plug into my little one's computer from time to time if he wants to do a little Internet surfing (naturally, I'm going to need something like Net Nanny).

Hey, what does the Easter Bunny hide his Easter eggs?

He doesn't want people to know he fucks chickens!

Friday, March 07, 2008

Well, it's about time!

I am now back in the world of broadband, and oh, how I missed it! The Time Warner contractors came out in the pouring rain and ran the line from across the street to my house, through the brick, under the flooring, and to my desktop all within an hour.

I tried to hook up my wireless B router in order to network in the other five computers that we have, and after an hour of frustration I found out that my old Linksys router is not compatible with Vista. So, I'll probably have to make a visit to a Wally World and find my a G or N router.

Did I say five other computers? Wow, I didn't realize that. My son has a compact Dell with an LCD monitor in his room. The wife and I both have laptops. I have an old Windows 2000 computer with a 17" CRT in my shop, and I have my old HP laptop that just would not let me reinstall Windows XP running on Ubuntu Linux. Oh, and I have my four or five year old Axim X30 handheld. My ultimate goal is to have my house completely networked, with Internet access in every room (except for the bathroom; that's what laptops are four).

Anyway, now that I have by cable Internet back, you can expect to see more frequent posts.

Cheers.