Month: February 2022

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We’re coming up on Spring

Technically the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere is March 20.

That’s the official calendar and Equinox date.

My dog, the trees in the yard, and the flower beds, have a slightly different perspective.

The dog is shedding… A LOT! In the past 2 weeks he’s dropped most of his undercoat.

He’s a husky mix and as near as I can tell he’s got three different layers of fur. The outer coat is longish and seems built to shed snow, water, and ice. The mid coat is pretty dense and looks like it’s built as a wind breaking layer. The under coat is fluffy and reminds me of my down jacket.

That last coat is also prone to static attraction, and flies around the house when I’m running the vacuum. I caught myself chasing little bits of fluff with the vacuum the other day and suddenly understood why the vacuuming chore was taking twice as long as usual.

When he starts shedding the undercoat, he’s also more prone to matting so I’ve been brushing him every other day.

You’d think, “Oh, that’s nice…” You’d be wrong. The dog thinks that brushing is a game. So he plays and spins and tries to keep the brush away.

Admittedly, it’s funny.

What’s not funny is that after the brushing is done. I’m covered head to toe in static charged downey fur and I look a lot like a Yeti. (Brushing is best done outside, prior to a shower, or putting on clean clothes.)

I also try to brush him when there are no breezes. The neighbors probably don’t like clumps of fur the size of small rabbits blowing across their lawns.

Brushing him outside made me notice the large pine trees are greening. There are buds on some of the ground cover plants. As the snow recedes, I’m seeing the work that I’ll have to do in the yard.

I’m seeing greening of the maple in the front yard and sprouts in the flower beds.

If the temps remain warm, I’ve got a plan to fire up the chainsaw and vigorously prune the Apache Plume which has become a little too wild for my tastes. It’s a neat plant but this one has become rather large and threatens to take over the planet.

I need to fence off the vegetable beds. The dog loves digging in the soft soil. That’s great for him, (ahem,) but I want to grow vegetables this year. I don’t want to plant a bunch of vegetables only to have to battle the dog and rabbits. The rabbits are enough of a challenge!

Last year, the vegetable garden wasn’t remotely possible because the dog was new to the household and had no sense of boundaries. I’ve concluded that he still has no sense of boundaries and that a fence will be necessary.

While I’m fencing off the vegetable beds, I’m thinking I’ll fence off the area under the main deck. (Again to keep the dog out of that area. He likes to dig for buried treasure and an unknown number of toys have disappeared into the abyss under that deck.)

The overall plan is to get the spring gardening out of the way, which will make room for my trim and house painting projects.

It’s at these times that I wish I had a pick up truck. I’d like to be able to take cuttings and other stuff to the dump on my schedule instead of stacking it, then borrowing or renting a truck.

There are also a lot of little building projects that I’m thinking about doing.

I’d enjoy doing the projects, but I’m light on tools to accomplish the tasks. I could see myself spending $800 bucks in tools to assemble $150 in projects.

I suppose it really comes down to would I get $800 worth of pleasure and satisfaction out of the work.

Forget the lumber costs! Even decent sawhorses are obscenely expensive these days. Then there’s the issue of being able to store the tools when not in use. The other half also doesn’t much in the way of boundaries in the garage. It’s a royal pain in the butt to climb over all kinds of junk to get to my tools.

I suppose, I can start by cleaning and reorganizing the garage while it’s still too cool to work in the yard. Then I can do the yard work, rent a truck and take all of the crap to the dump. Once that’s done, I can begin the building projects.

It’s a bit like pulling a loose thread on a sweater, one thing leads to another, and another, then before you know it, your sweater is just a pile of yarn.

I’m tired just thinking about it! Oh well, I’ve got a few weeks to think on it.

That compound miter saw looks awfully nice though…

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I Had the perfect post

It was all there in my head. A perfect gossamer soap bubble, it completely encapsulated what I wanted to convey. It was exciting and I’d just started to type it.

Then interruption upon interruption. Dog howling, Washer buzzer going, Extraneous conversation directed at me.

I usually filter out about 75% of the words I hear, to boil the conversation down to the actual facts. The process excludes attempts at humor, a myriad of detail that is not necessary to support the ideas and generally over complex sentence construction.

What I’m often left with is, “Do you want lunch?”

The problem is, all of this requires a ton of extra mental processing. In this case the additional processing load caused the beautiful soap bubble of thought, to go pop!

I tried to recover it, but while I was trying to recover it, store the words in my memory, more and more mental processing was being directed away just to determine if the conversation was anything that required immediate attention.

You know, something akin to, “Hey you’re on fire!”

Although the person doing the talking would probably have phrased that condition something like this;

“You appear to be hot, not in the sexual way, but there seems to be smoke rising from your general vicinity. Oh look, I can see now that you are actually combusting, or is that just your clothing? Well if it is just your clothing I’d suggest that you remove the combusting clothing and seek the resources of the nearest water access point. Unless the combustion is electrical in nature, then perhaps you’d like to have the fire extinguisher that is designed for that purpose. Do you think you’re likely to want the fire extinguisher and would you like me to retrieve it from the closet for you?”

This, I think is why, the person in question is virtually useless in an emergency. All the chatter in their brain limits their ability to actually take action.

Really, it’s interesting to watch. They just stop and stare glassy eyed at a situation. It’s like watching a computer trying to compute Pi to the last digit.

It’s also why I actively don’t hear what they say 75% of the time. Mostly, I scan the sonic stream for key words that may be actionable.

In the example above, the actionable words would be, “smoke,” and “combustion”.

With my stepfather the filtration rate is 95%. President Biden has a filtration rate of 99.8% Biden is harder because he usually manages to spawn at least 4 other conversations or stories and tries to tell them all at once.

Biden’s “word salads” are epic and wholly unsatisfying. The few times I’ve expended the energy to understand what he said, have led to my brain having to restart from first principals.

Autonomic functions – reloaded – normal.
Optical input – normal
Higher cognitive functions – Reloading
“I think, therefore I am…”
and so on until I’m operational again. This can take some time, and is not completely painless. On the bright side, It does clean out a ton of “hung threads” in my thinking processes.

Biden’s speeches are wonderful at rebooting my brain.

There are other things that can reboot my brain, for example 75% filtration of incoming conversation, a bunch of random input and having a really wonderful blog post, or chapter of a book spring fully formed into my head.

Admittedly, I’m somewhat ADD.

At any given moment there’s a lot of other stuff going on in my head. Some of it useful, and some of it not. This makes focus hard for me to achieve and maintain. Once I achieve focus, I tend to go to extreme measures to hold onto it. Including biting someone’s head off if they’re blathering on about something that is inconsequential.

More fairly, something I think is inconsequential.

The fragments of my soap bubble of thought, are lying in a heap in my brain. It will require a substantial effort to reconstruct, and I’m ambivalent about the ROI.

Even reconstructed, that particular train of thought will not be as perfect as it was.

That dear reader, is why you’ve gotten this goofy post, instead of something more enlightening or thought provoking.

Apologies!

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Where do we go from here?

The headlines are screaming, “Putin invades Ukraine.”

“Putin intends to decapitate the Ukrainian government”

To the second headline… My response was simply, “Duh,” That’s straightforward tactics. Destroy the command and control and the rest is simple.

I’m personally sad about the invasion , I have several friends from Ukraine and I’m sure they’re worried out of their minds. I hate seeing them upset and in limbo regarding their families still in Ukraine.

My question is; What’s Putin’s endgame?

Unlike our President, I think Putin is no fool. There has to be a political or economic reason for his actions. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not condoning the action. I just don’t think Putin is a moron. As such, I can’t see Putin invading another country unless he has a clear goal in mind.

That goal could be land, oil, or making sure that he has unimpeded access to the warm water ports along the Black Sea. After all, wasn’t that what the old USSR did?

I said previously in this blog that after Biden’s demonstration of his weakness and mental incapacity, other world leaders would recognize it and take advantage.

Putin’s actions are no surprise, except to the idiots in the Biden administration. Biden handed Putin a gift when his Administration said Russia would invade Ukraine on a specific day.

I pictured Putin laughing his ass off in the Kremlin and telling his Generals, “Oh, let’s wait a little while. We can use this as an opportunity to embarrass the Americans on the world stage. By waiting, we humiliate Biden, and undermine faith in the intelligence communities of the west. This too serves our purpose, and can be used in the future.“

It’s pretty obvious Putin has less respect for Biden than he did for Obama. Anyone remember how quickly Putin stepped over Obama’s, “Line in the sand”? Putin did that for no other reason than to piss on Obama’s parade.

I honestly don’t know what to make of Putin. I know he’s technically a dictator. I know he was part of the old USSR. I know he’s wealthy and that wealth has in part been made in questionable ways. (Funny that we say that as a bad thing about Putin, but look the other way in doddering Joe’s case,)

I know Putin was KGB and that he spent a lot of time in Germany in that role.

That’s about it. Nothing more than you could get from a Google search. Observing Putin over the years, I’ve come to respect him as one respects a strong adversary. Putin is a leopard that doesn’t change his spots when the wind blows. I respect that as well. At least you always know you’re dealing with a leopard.

What drives Putin is a bit harder to follow. He’s not insane like Hitler, he seems to have plans and goals. I’d never play poker or chess with him. Unless, I wanted to get my ass handed to me.

This brings me back to what are Putin’s intentions?

Were I in Putin’s place, I’d be looking to increase my arable land. I’d be working towards complete energy independence. I’d be trying to secure the ability to manufacture a wide variety of technology within my own borders.

If a country has these things in place and the ability to ship goods year round, then they become a world economic player. They also wouldn’t need to bend a knee to any other government or economic consortium.

You know, kind of like China has done.

Who knows, in the next 10 years maybe we’ll be seeing Национальный бренд  on all of our products, instead of Made in China.

Given the chaos the world has descended into. It could simply be that Putin has decided to adopt a “Russia First” agenda.

He may have concluded that financially it makes more sense for Russia to have the ability to isolate from the insanity. That would serve Putin, and the people of Russia.

If a country is dependent on no-one, then it is in the catbird seat when the shit hits the fan. There’d be a considerable bit of Schadenfreude for Russia to have America, Germany, France, England, and other NATO members, with their hats in hand asking for food, and manufactured goods.

The Schadenfreude would be even sweeter if the reason they were asking, was due to shitty economic, energy, immigration, and manufacturing, policies that drove their own countries into the poor house.

Putin is 69, he might even live to see that day.

We can only hope that the moronic Biden Administration takes Putin at his word about interference. Putin effectively castrated Biden, the only thing Putin hasn’t done, is bent Biden over a desk and metaphorically fucked him.

That’s probably on the agenda for next month.

If the timing works out right, maybe Putin could do that, the same day Biden is delivering the State of the Union address.

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Why we can’t have nice things…

Four years ago I was leaving a grocery store near my apartment when a complete stranger walked up to me and commented on my watch.

It wasn’t uncommon for my colleagues to notice it or comment on it. It was not even that uncommon for a clerk in a shop to notice my watch, (particularly if they were male,) and say something like, “nice,” while looking at my wrist.

That day in front of the grocery store, this guy who appeared homeless commented about my watch in a very loud voice. He said something like, “That’s a really nice watch, what did that set you back 10 grand 15 grand?” What caught my attention was that he was speaking loudly enough for pretty much the entire shopping plaza to hear him. I’m a suspicious person, and in the back of my brain a thought popped in, “Why is this guy announcing this? Is he calling to an accomplice?”

I politely said in an equally loud voice, “Thank you for the compliment, it’s amazing how many compliments I get on this cheap $200 Hong Kong knock off. Would you like to hold it? “

At that point the man lost interest. Thank god he didn’t call my bluff.

This event was about the 3rd or 4th I’d experienced in 2 weeks. Admittedly, I wasn’t living in the best neighborhood at the time, but up to that point I hadn’t felt particularly unsafe.

The watch in question is not a knock off.

I purchased it 14 years ago for about 7K. I’d lost a rather large watch collection in a fire and decided that I simply wanted a single very nice watch that I never took off. I’d worn my watch continuously since I put it on in the store.

There were some who scolded me for wearing such a nice watch while doing yard work, working on a car, building, painting, swimming, or just living. I really thought nothing of it.

It is my watch, and since it was the only one I owned, it was easier to keep it on my wrist than to keep track of it, if I took it off.

The watch itself has held up very well. I sent it in for routine service on its tenth birthday. The service center gave it a tune up, and a clean bill of health. complemented me on two things. 1) it was in excellent shape and 2) that they’d guessed I wore it every day and thought that was very cool.

They didn’t even charge me for the replacement of 2 links in the band that had taken the brunt of a saw kickback. The watch band had saved me from a very nasty cut on my wrist. As part of the service the watch was also appraised. I was a bit shocked, and pleased, to discover that my watch had more than doubled in value.

After the repeated incidents in public where the watch garnered unwanted and intrusive attention, (it’s still considered rude to ask a stranger what they paid for something isn’t it?) I decided it was time to put my beautiful functional timepiece in a safe and buy something cheap and ubiquitous.

I’ve enjoyed the lockdowns over the past two years because if I’m around home, or in my little mountain town I’ve been able to wear my nice watch. I also wore it with complete confidence on a recent trip to Florida. Some men in Florida noticed my watch, they just nodded in appreciation, and smiled. You know… “Old School Politeness.”

My cheap watch is an Apple watch. It’s nice, but having to recharge it daily is a pain in the butt. The advantage is that everyone has one and in that homogeneity is safety.

No-one is likely to mug me for an Apple Watch.

The sadness is that my beautiful, simple, functional, watch sits in the safe. I do wear it if I’m camping, diving, or know that I’m not likely to encounter crowds of people. I also wear it more in the Winter when a jacket or long sleeves afford cover for it.

Within the past month or two, I read a news item where a man in Los Angeles had been robbed of his Rolex, at gunpoint after an induced car accident.

Today There was a report from England in The Sunday Times talking about an apparently organized group of thieves who are targeting high end watch wearers. The article is here and it’s brazen.

Most of the men report being approached by lovely women asking for their signature on a petition or something. In some cases the women become handsy and quite forward, talking non stop. In a few cases they’ve offered sex or other enticements.

Often the men are so flabbergasted they don’t realize their watch is gone until the woman has left.

I’ve heard of expensive hookers, but these guys aren’t even getting blow jobs for their 10 to 20K!

The article mentions that the thieves seem to be targeting Rolexes.

The supply of Rolexes is thin and the resale market is booming.

Rolex among other high end watches retain their value worldwide. They’re easy to transport, and with a hot resale market the thief can dump the merchandise quickly.

I’ve been jonesing for a watch that I can safely wear daily that doesn’t require recharging or batteries.

I guess you could say I’m bored with the Apple Watch and its attendant software updates, power requirements, and fiddling.

I think fondly of my nice watch. Ten years, one watch, and zero trouble. Ahh, simplicity!

I’d been looking at a nice simple Omega. But that too is a high end watch and subject to the same targeting by thieves. That being said, I may get one anyway.

I suppose that a venerable Timex might be the best way to go.

It does make me wonder how long will it be before we’re all driving the same car, all wearing the same clothes, all wearing the same watch, and all using the same mobile phone?

Is that where this is going, will we all be stuck with a “one size fits all” solution just to fight crime?

That’s not freedom. That’s the old Soviet Union, North Korea, or China. I want the freedom to have nice things without worrying about becoming a target.

I’m also just old school enough to want a concealed carry permit and a stout .45 on my hip. I’d rather leave the thieves gut shot and bleeding out on the sidewalk. (Why gut shot? Because it’s an agonizing death.) People don’t usually think of me, and mercy at the same time.

I find myself thinking that all it would take is 1 year of would be criminals stacking up in the morgues, and crime would be almost nonexistent. I figure we’d either run out of criminals, or criminals would decide crime itself was too risky.

Unfortunately, especially in California, criminals have been given the upper hand and they’re continuing to press their advantage. Apparently this is also true elsewhere in the world.

Maybe I’ll go with a Timex until I’m able to move to a state where they’ve remembered, “An armed society is a polite society.”

Maybe sometime in the near future folks will wake the hell up and realize The “Wild West” era came to a close in part because we all agreed that a robust police force was preferable to daily shoot-outs at the saloon.

That’s provided that the morons running things haven’t burned the history books or forgotten how to read them.

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I read the “News” today… I Feel like I’m in a time warp.

Everything I read was reminiscent of the Obama Years.

Perhaps this time around is a little more chaotic but nothing has changed.

Reading the news was a bit like watching a soap opera. You can skip days or weeks, but when you do get around to watching, you haven’t missed much, if anything at all.

I did happen to notice that Kamala Harris is notably absent and has been for at least a week or two.

President Biden is still bloviating on about the Russian / Ukraine issues, While the President of the Ukraine has been quoted as saying the issue is resolving.

Justin Trudeau is being heckled in Parliament and openly laughed at. I’d guess his career is at an end. Doesn’t Canada have a no confidence vote?

Ah well, the soap opera goes on, and nothing changes, except the price of goods and fuel. They keep going up.

I’m as disinterested in the “News” and politics as I was during the Obama years. The nut jobs have full control of the asylum and the midterms can’t come soon enough.

Maybe this time we can get some people in office that actually do their jobs. I’m not holding my breath or anything but I’d love to see a bunch of non-politicians swept into office. You know, folks that had businesses and employees and actually produced something.

That is, of course, until they were forced out of business by mandates and lockdowns.

It seems to me those are the people who have the time, the knowledge, logic, and will, to stand up to the establishment powers and say, “NO!”

Maybe, they’d be able to set things back on course by applying their business acumen and common sense.

The one thing I’m certain of, is that all of the career politicians of any political stripe need to get THE BOOT.

I’m probably just whistling past the graveyard. There are a lot more people caught up in their individual divisiveness and specialized causes than there are people who look at the larger picture. I’m fairly sure that whoever is elected in the midterms will just be more of the same old crap.

Well, back to ignoring the news for a week or so unless something really interesting captures my attention.

I’m over the soap opera.