Month: July 2020

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After 7 Months…

The car saga is finally coming to a close.

I’ll call it done when the check has cleared!

Back in November 2019 I had a little “boo boo” driving home form Orange County. At the time I thought it was just going to be an annoyance. If I’d only known…

Short story, car sits in repair shop for a month. I get tired of the fighting between the body shop and the insurance company and tell them, “Just FIX the damn thing, I’ll pay the difference.”

December 31 I pick up the car and drive it home. 1st week of Jan 2020 I call the insurance company to have a discussion with one of their adjusters and the adjuster agrees that they should have paid for all of the repairs not just the portion they did pay for. He says he’s sending a check. I think hurrah!

Check never comes. I call the insurance company and they tell me the check has been cashed. I ask by whom? I’m told by the shop…

I call the shop and ask them to send me the amount owed.. At the time I’m thinking, “No big deal.”

Here begins the saga.

The insurance company hasn’t paid everything the shop thinks they should have. So they’re holding onto the money. Eventually the shop stops returning my phone calls and emails and I think they’re just hoping I’ll go away.

They don’t know me very well.

I keep trying to be reasonable, and they keep blowing me off. This goes on for months, until I happen to need some things from the dealership.

While I’m there, I ask to speak with the General Manager of the Dealership and explain the situation. I’m polite, I’m reasonable, and I tell him that I, as a customer shouldn’t be embroiled in their insurance battles or their personnel issues. Those things are none of my concern.

He agrees and says he’ll look into it. Shortly thereafter I start getting notices from the insurance company that supplemental claims are being opened. Knowing what little I know fo the way the process works I figured that it’s just the shop and the insurance company’s way of dealing with the disputed amounts and ignore the notifications.

Again, that’s none of my concern.

Yesterday afternoon I get a call from the insurance company asking where my car is.

Hmmm. It’s in my garage last time I looked.

The very sweet lady is clearly confused. I explain what I believe to be the truth of the situation and direct her to scans of the final invoice, and email communications where I’d done the math and explained what I was expecting from them. She reviews the documents and says first, that it’s nice that I’d sent all the supporting documentation to them. Usually, it’s a situation of “he said / she said”.

I tell her that I’m all about keeping everyone in the loop and that this way the insurance company knows that I held up my end of the bargain, (paying my deductible and covering additional expenses that I’d authorized). I tell her that what I’m looking for is to extricate myself from the machinations of the insurance company and the shop.

She agrees and laughs when I tell her, “I just want to tap dance away from the mess.”

She thanks me for explaining it to her, and says that she’ll see what she can do.

I hang up the phone as I have many times thinking, “I appreciate her efforts, but doubt anything will come of it.”

About 20 minutes later I get a notification that I have another email from the insurance company. It says that a check has been issued. I’m thinking, “Huh, that’s neat but I’ve been here before.”

5 Minutes later the sweet young lady calls me back and verbally confirms that the check is being mailed and that I should see it in 5 to 7 days. I thank her profusely for her efforts.

10 minutes later there’s another email notification saying that another check is being sent to me. This one is for a lot less so I’ll have to see what the insurance company is sending and why.

Hopefully, this will put an end to the whole mess. I will go in for routine maintenance (It’s a different branch of the business) But I’m not going to be having any body work done by that shop in the future. As to additional cars… the jury is still out on that.

Next on the agenda is the donation of two dead trucks for a tax credit.

Trust me you don’t want to know that story!

Who knows? Maybe I’ll just find an old used pickup truck, pay cash for it and drive it into the ground. It would be a lot easier to “Mad Max” a pickup. The way things are going that might be the best option.

The moral of the story is: Be tenacious. Have the documentation. Be certain of what your goal is, and that you’re correct.

Funny, our politicians could learn from item 2 and 3 couldn’t they?

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Yard Tools.

Last week before I was feeling poorly, I went on a shopping expedition. That was the first time I’d been out for anything except food or necessities in 4 months.

It was strange.

Everyone running around in masks people trying to be “normal” but they were obviously tense. I picked up a couple of things for the car. Then I stopped by BassPro.

On the one hand it was nice to be shopping, on the other hand it was weird.

I bought myself a pretty nice knife. The one I’d been carrying for years has seen better days. I’d decided that I wanted something a bit bigger and settled on a BUCK model that has a good feel.

I was going to ask some questions about guns and ammunition purchases under the most recent California laws but thought better of it when I saw the line.

BassPro’s stock of pistols and rifles, was almost completely depleted. The line had a 7 hour wait and they were out of ammo in a wide variety of calibers. I thought to myself, “Even if you were there to pick up a gun you’d purchased, it would just be a hunk of expensive metal because you couldn’t get ammunition.“

Usually, you can walk up and ask questions but now everything is cordoned off with chairs to sit in, and wristbands being issued to “Better serve you”.

My stop at HomeDepot wasn’t much more productive. They were out of the RYOBI attachment and the Chain saw that I was interested in. 

Ryobi Weed Whacker.jpgBy the way, RYOBI makes some nice tools. I got tired of Black & Decker stuff breaking yearly. I started looking for better tools and found that unlike a lot of manufacturers RYOBI still provides parts lists and maintenance manuals. In other words, they’re not building throw away tools.

After a little more research I found that for the price point their tools seemed to be pretty highly rated.

With that knowledge, about a month or so ago I purchased one of their 40V weed whackers. It’s from their “ExtendIt” tools line.

This thing is awesome and unlike the Black & Deckers that I’ve owned, this one runs the entire time I need it to run. 

I was so impressed, I purchased the hedge trimmer attachment and now, with the same power pack and drive unit I can trim the bigger plants. Much to my surprise, I was able to do both and still only depleted the battery by 50%. That’s a big difference from the Black & Deckers where I had to swap between 4 different batteries to get the job done.

RYOBI makes a pole mounted chainsaw that I can attach to the motor. That should allow me to reach high enough to prune some of the trees and a really tall hedge between my property and the neighbors.

I also noticed that they make an electric chainsaw that is powered from the same battery and thought that might be useful around here in the winter time so I was interested in the price. 

HomeDepot was completely out of both. I’m guessing that I’m not the only guy to be working on the yard this year.

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Ahhh, Finally a decent night’s sleep

GOPR0058.jpegIt’s been weeks since I went to bed and slept soundly through until morning.

The sleep application running on my phone shows the disruptions and restlessness much more clearly than I actually recall being awake.

It’s amazing how lack of sleep makes ya feel like crap. In my case I start to feel really stupid and have a hard time keeping any single thought in my head. I become scattered and then I get really quiet. 

But last night was bliss!

I went to bed, fell asleep immediately. I woke up to the pink blush of the sunrise across the mountain and actually felt ready to get up and start my day. 

I’ve been doing chores and enjoying them. (God, I must be sick!)

Thursday, Friday, and yesterday I felt poorly. I wondered if I’d caught the Covid Boogyman virus. I had no fever and I could still taste & smell and had no other symptoms. So I took it easy and kept a watchful eye on my stats. With all the media attention and masked up people, it was easy to wonder if I’d caught IT and was I gonna die.

My 80 something year old mother is panicking on the other side of the country for the same reasons. I’d spoken to her on Thursday and did my level best to hide that I wasn’t feeling well.

I did tell her that she should turn off the steady diet of CNN but she was having none of that. She told me that apparently some of my brother-in-laws relatives died of Covid.

They were in their 80s and honestly I question if it was Covid or just old age. I did my best to calm her down. Thankfully, the conversation was short. Between the strain of creating the illusion that I was fine and her going on & on about Covid I was pretty short on patience.

This morning I feel pretty much normal. I’m a little stiff from the lack of activity over the past few days, but my head is clear. (I can add 2+2 without a calculator so that’s a plus.)

Been going through the accumulated email catching up. More properly, I’ve been going through the email and deleting the ton of junk mail that the filters missed. It’s funny, only about 1 in 10 emails actually has anything important in it.

It’s hard to believe that we’ve already gotten through almost all of July. 

Time feels like it’s stopped, but the days on the calendar have flown by. I guess that’s a function of the news not really changing. I mean there really hasn’t been much different since about April. I’m finding it easy to lose days and entire weeks.

Ah well, off to complete some more chores that have backed up.

Hope you’re all having a great Sunday.

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The Death of Twitter

Twitter has become synonymous with censorship. Facebook is running a close second. Both services have been called to testify before congress and it’s quite possible that one or both have lied under oath. Both services enjoy (Non-Publication) status and both are now drawing the ire of the Senate and some members of the House.

“Lucy, You got some splainin to do!”

Recently due to Twitter’s incessant shadow-banning of Conservative people expressing opinions that are not in lockstep with the established narratives, (Orange man bad. Protests peaceful, etc.) Folks are seeking other alternatives. Their most recent permanent banning of Congressional Candidate Laura Loomer (R) FL, and attempt to prevent the Trump campaign from using their service. has created an exodus from Twitter.

This has been amusing to watch. As conservative voices leave, the leftists find they’re bored with Twitter. After all, if you want to have a conversation, you don’t necessarily want to have it with yourself in an echo chamber.

I still have one Twitter account open, mostly so that I can watch the implosion. Okay, I also look at some of the nude images that are posted daily. Which is funny because supposedly those images are against the Twitter TOS, given that they often show full penetrative sex acts of various stripes.

It’s funny in many ways that saying, “abortion is murder” may get you banned, but images or video of a restrained woman being forced to submit to orally, anally, and vaginally to three men at the same time is okay.

Saying something like, “putting prepubescent children onto hormone therapies to change their gender, is wrong.” will get your account suspended for a while.

If you ask Twitter why, they’ll tell you that you violated the TOS (Terms of Service) by posting hate speech. While at the same time representatives of CAIR can specifically state that they hate all Jews, and call upon the faithful to murder Jews whenever and wherever they can. Similarly BLM and ANTIFA can outright say, “Kill White People”

It’s this kind of one sided enforcement that has driven conservatives specifically, and even moderates away from the platform. Either you’re really all about free speech or you’re not. More people are realizing that Twitter is not about free speech or equality and while they may have been at one time… That time has passed.

There was an article yesterday describing Twitter’s consideration of a subscription model. Several days prior another article noted that Twitter’s earnings were down. That same article also noted that Twitter’s new user count appeared to be fairly consistent while the number of actual users appeared to be dropping.

There is even some feeling that Twitter is attempting to skew the election. I don’t know if there’s actual evidence, or if it’s just hearsay. I can only opine that from personal experience and observation; Twitter is highly biased toward Democrats & Liberals, and against Republicans & Conservatives.

Over at Parler, (another social media platform) they’re having a tough time keeping up with new subscribers and their site is occasionally showing the strain of hundreds of thousands of new users weekly.

Parler, is pretty free and you can say what you like. There are limits of course. Threatening to kill someone will get you booted. But other than egregious things that you shouldn’t put out on a public forum anyway, Parler doesn’t seem interested in silencing the free exchange of ideas, regardless of whose ideas are being espoused.

It’s very much the digital equivalent of carrying your soapbox to the local park and announcing your ideas.

Oddly, there are a lot of liberal lefties showing up on Parler too. (I guess they got tired of screaming in an echo chamber on Twitter.) The conservatives and liberals on Parler do interact.

The liberal left screams about Trump, Abortion, Transrights, or whatever, on Parler and sometimes they’re challenged but most of the time they’re blocked, not by Parler, but by individual users who have no desire to deal with the ranting. Most conservatives and moderates have heard it all before anyway and aren’t likely to change their minds.

Again, similar to the soapbox in the park. No-one is forcing you to stand there in the park listening to the rantings of someone you think is a lunatic. Once you’ve heard enough, you walk away. Walking away is the physical equivalent of blocking someone.

I’ve blocked a number of individuals who were rude, demanded that I validate their position when clearly I didn’t, or who were simply disagreeable to talk to. I’m sure that I’ve been blocked by others, in a similar fashion and for similar reasons.

After all, you gentle reader, know that I’m an acquired taste.

The funny thing is that the liberals are upset when no-one pays them attention and more upset that Parler refuses to take their side in silencing views that they disagree with.

I’ve been watching the diversity of users drop on Twitter and suspect that it will go the way of MySpace or the old computer BBS systems. After all, without at least a little disagreement all conversations get stale and pointless.

I welcome Twitter’s death. It’s time for the little bluebird to crash headlong into the nearest skyscraper.

There was a time when Twitter was open and free. But then some people started getting butt-hurt that they got to read things they found offensive. That started the whole censorship train on Twitter and has brought us to Twitter’s graveside.

Facebook will probably experience something similar in due time. Even Parler at some point will probably follow the same arc. I hope not, but I won’t be surprised.

For the moment, I’m enjoying that Twitter is suffering. I look forward to them declaring insolvency the layoffs, and Jack Dorsey making impassioned pleas for his users to return.

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Sadly Portland you’re dead to me

Much like Seattle and San Francisco.

Portland at least grew it’s own roses for the funeral.

It’s really simple. As beautiful as these cities are from the air, and they are beautiful, I have ZERO desire to visit them. Why the hell would I knowingly walk into cities where I’m not only a target, but where I can’t be responsible for my own protection and the police have been gutted?

Why would I want to visit one of these cities now? Places where the wrong word or the slightest of incorrect reactions could get you beaten by a mob?

Doesn’t do much for your tourism does it?

57 Days and nights of rioting? Really?

You people are out of your damn minds. And even if the rioting stops (and it will), the people responsible for all this civil unrest will still be there, just below the surface, waiting for another excuse, or opportunity to mete out their particular brand so-called justice.

Seattle, and San Francisco are no better. Los Angeles is heading the same direction. Los Angeles is slightly different because it’s always been a dangerous place. You know what you’re getting into there, and you never travel in certain districts alone or at night.

I remember a scene from Logan’s Run. The hero and pretty girl are heading to a part of the city overrun with rabid children. There’s a voice from their conveyance repeating, “Warning, You are now entering a personal hazard zone,”

That’s how I feel every time I go into Los Angeles. A similar message should be playing on every flight landing in cities in the Pacific Northwest.

I don’t know anymore what these people are rioting about. I don’t know the cause of their lawlessness and further… I don’t give a shit. They can burn their homes and cities to the ground, then start slaughtering each other, over scraps of bread or some imagined insult or lack of respect. I don’t care.

If the feds march in and just start shooting the rioters, I won’t shed a single tear. Nor will I be shocked. In fact I might make popcorn and watch the show.

This is what happens when stupidity, lawlessness, and anarchy are allowed to go on for too long. It loses its impact, and the original message is long since forgotten.

All I see now is people who look and behave like they’re straight out of Fallujah. In my eyes they are no longer human, or worth saving. They’ve become rabid animals and the only way to deal with that, is to put the animals out of their misery.

I would enjoy seeing the Mayors, Governors, and so called city leaders literally ripped apart by the very rioters they’ve been making endless excuses for. They’d serve as an object lesson to other weak willed political leaders.

I know I sound harsh.

I worry for my friends in Portland because the bullshit is happening right there outside their apartments. I’ve told them it isn’t going to get any better until someone steps up and says “NO MORE”.

My friends respond with, “It’s better today… The ‘protesters’ only burned one dumpster and broke only a few windows.”

That blows my mind. My friends are starting to exhibit Stockholm Syndrome. They’re grading the quality of their days not by there being no violence, but by the level of violence that has become constant.

That’s like saying it was a good weekend in Chicago. There were only 35 shootings instead of 37. What!? That there were any shootings in Chicago is a concern, more so since shootings are so commonplace that no-one takes much notice. That speaks to a much more serious problem.

A rather large problem that no-one is talking about.

What about the rights of the people who live at ground zero? Don’t they have the right to live in a safe and secure place? Why do “Protesters” and I use that term loosely get a pass to make everyone suffer? How insane is it that normal average people are fearful leaving their homes?

It’s way past time for LAW AND ORDER to be reinstated. If that means bodies of protesters in the streets, so be it. At this point while the media would loose its shit, I bet that the majority of America would stand up and cheer.