Hate to Break it to the Ghouls out there…

TrumpBut President Trump has a 99.5% probability of survival.

Sorry to dash your hopes and orgasmic dreams.

Oh, and by the way, if President Trump drops dead you’ll still have Mike Pence as President for the remainder of the Presidential term. Sorry Nancy! Go have some ice cream.

The news feeds lit up about the President having Covid-19. Predictably, all kinds of people came out of the woodwork to express their joy that the President was sick. When it was announced that he was being taken to Walter Reed, I thought my computer was going to blow up.

The ecstasy expressed by celebrities, political opponents, and citizens was to me, absolutely disgusting.  The mask NAZIs were so busy saying, “I told you so,” I’m honestly surprised that there wasn’t a rush of sprained index fingers in the emergency rooms across the nation.

I can’t believe what I’m seeing and I’m ashamed for these people. I’m ashamed that they call themselves Americans. In truth I’ve personally realized a growing shame in Americans over the past 12 years, and the era of Covid has only deepened that shame.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ashamed of the police, or our military. I’m ashamed of a large percentage of the American people.

I’ve even begun to feel ashamed of myself for not speaking out against things that were obviously wrong, such as lies, misinformation, and divisiveness.

I didn’t speak out because like many Americans I’ve been afraid of Cancel Culture or losing my job, and plain fear of the mob. I’ve self censored and kept my thoughts to myself. I’ve stood silently by hoping against hope that our better angels would get our attention and we’d go back to being the best versions of ourselves. 

Guess what, it ain’t working. 

Instead of looking inward at ourselves we’ve looked outward for anything or anyone to blame for our failings. 

Last night after the tenth article expressing wholly incorrect information about being able to remove the President and the attendant Schadenfreude over his illness. I was annoyed and the continuous rain of glee from the left was damaging my calm.

Then the other half mentioned that they’d been looking at youtube watching old Laugh-in skits of Ernestine the telephone operator, and that several of the skits had been removed by youtube for apparently violating community guidelines.

I lost it.

I said, to no-one in particular, “This country no longer deserves freedom. At least half the people here deserve whatever hell socialism brings. At this point just launch every fucking nuke on the planet burn it to the ground. A million years from now, something better than the shit called Humans will probably evolve.”  

Needless to say, that got an arched eyebrow from the other half who said, “I think it’s time for you to turn off the tech.”

They were right.

As the screens went dark, I was wondering what had prompted such a strong reaction. 

Censorship of any kind is abhorrent to me.

Being told what to think or believe, especially in a passive aggressive way, is the quickest way to piss me off.

A steady diet of information bereft of facts or where the “facts” are presented in a clearly biased way, does nothing to enhance my calm or confidence.

Seeing rioting in the streets across the country where all the rioters are wearing the same gear looks an awful like a coherent insurrection.

If the rioters (or agitators within the rioters) are all wearing the same “uniform” all I can think of is the Brownshirts of Hitler or Mussolini’s Black shirts. Either way I can’t ignore the similarities in their actions today and those of the NAZI party in its beginnings in Germany.

Like the average German in 1933-36 I know something is wrong, I know someone is pulling the strings, I know someone is funding these “Brownshirts” but I cannot identify who that is.

I sense that there is an enemy to my way of life but am frustrated that I can’t specifically target them. Which simply increases the frustration and causes me as a person to do my best to ignore something that I can’t change. Like the people of Germany I just try to keep my head down and hope that it will all go away.

I’ve come to believe we’re reliving Germany’s experience. This is the same play book with some modifications that led average decent Germans to everything that followed Hitlers rise to power.

A short list of examples:

Growing censorship targeted at “Culturally offensive”, or dissenting opinions. See Cancel Culture and all the voices that have been silenced. Someone even questioning the narrative is attacked and labeled as racist, misogynist, a denier, X Y Z phobic… In short an undesirable.

Specific Targeting of a particular group or affiliated groups as “The Problem”. See the manner in which the Republican Party, or Police have been painted as “The enemy of the people”. For reference see Jews in NAZI Germany.

The creation of an aggrieved class and conflation of that class with the “Common people or Majority” Note that many of the BLM protesters are white bourgeois folks.

Violence, threats, and intimidation, is deemed acceptable if it’s against the bourgeois who are not supportive of the “cause” but people defending themselves from that same violence are labeled criminals.

Defining masks or other symbols, as “For the Greater Good”, then redefining them as a “Patriotic Duty”. What’s next? 2021 ANTIFA Armbands must be worn at all times in public? Whose cock do you have to suck to get an armband?

Encouraging public reporting of “perceived” infractions of regulations. A.K.A an informant network where turning in your neighbors results in tangible rewards or recognition of your service to the state.

Erasure and rewriting of History.  There was never a pureblooded Aryan race. That was a fiction of the NAZI party designed to create a higher social class, as a justification to subjugate anyone who refused the NAZI ideals. The functionality of this fiction was that anyone could be rewarded by being recognized as a long lost Aryan who the former ruling class had treated badly. It created license for those so elevated, to be ruthless and mete out vengeance for perceived ills inflicted upon they and their family for centuries.

Is any of this ringing a bell?

The problem for me is that I know it will not go away. I know this because of history. I can’t look away, I can’t unsee the patterns.

Thanks to COVID, and the complete zero traction I’m getting in my job search I unfortunately have nothing to distract me from watching in horror as the pieces snap together.

The carrot is that everything will be fine after election day. With the caveat; (Everything will be better as long as the left gets its way.) The Left has already said if they don’t get their way the rioting will continue and expand.

Encyclopedia Britannica has this to say about Hitler’s rise to power.

The entire article is linked here. 

I’m putting some excerpts here rather than the entire article.

Reichstag fire, burning of the Reichstag (parliament) building in Berlin, on the night of February 27, 1933, a key event in the establishment of the Nazidictatorship and widely believed to have been contrived by the newly formed Nazi government itself to turn public opinion against its opponents and to assume emergency powers.

<Continues>

On February 28, 1933, the day after the fire, Hitler’s dictatorship began with the enactment of a decree “for the Protection of the People and the State,” which dispensed with all constitutional protection of political, personal, and property rights. Though the ensuing elections still did not give the Nazis an outright majority, they were able to persuade the Reichstag to pass an Enabling Act (March 23) whereby all its legislative powers were transferred to the Reich Cabinet by a vote of 444 to 94, so sanctioning the dictatorship.

My question is; which side will light the fire, metaphorically or otherwise. 

The Left says Trump is after a dictatorship. Honestly I don’t see it. 

Biden and Harris seem to be much more dictatorial.

Trump is arrogant, narcissistic, and bombastic but he’s not changed his spots throughout the course of his widely publicized life. Trump is pretty much today, as he’s always been. He’s results and goal driven and not afraid to fire someone that’s not doing the job.

Biden and Harris on the other hand are engaging in revisionist history about their own policies and lives. That makes me far more suspicious of them and their motives.

More worrisome to me is who is actually pulling the strings? The media is generally skewed left and can’t say enough bad about Trump or his policies instead of simply reporting the good and the bad.

Another question is to what end is someone pulling the strings? What’s the end game?

If as many on the far right claim George Soros is holding the leash then, is he hoping after all this time to create a Fourth Reich? Looking at his history and the fact that he was a full on NAZI could it be that simple? Or is someone holding Soros’s leash as the NAZI party did so long ago?

Maybe all of this is just COVID fatigue. Maybe I’m seeing patterns where none exist. Perhaps it’s a cycle of insanity that humanity goes through when our numbers become too great. Historically, there are ruins of civilizations all over the planet. Each of those civilizations thought itself too big or righteous to fail.

Perhaps this is how humanity grows and I’m simply unlucky enough to be stuck on this rock during one of the death & regrowth phases.

I can tell you this, If I could leave this planet I would. I’d prefer the sterility of the endless stars to dealing with the insanity and uncertainty of this planet infested with insane apes.

Apparently this is a Technology week.

After 11 years, we’ve decided to retire the venerable HP all in one printer.

The machine pretty much works, although its ADF feeder is prone to jamming.

Our reasoning was the cost of ink cartridges. A full set costs about $100. The cost of a new printer isn’t much more.

I have a nice Canon all in one printer sitting in a storage facility but it’s been sitting there for a year and once again we’d have to spend $100 to get cartridges for it. There’s also the unknown about its status. I’d never intended to have it sitting idle in storage for so long and at this point it may need a printhead replacement. Which means it’s cheaper to just replace the whole machine.

This led to the inevitable conclusion that buying a new unit with a warranty was probably the best solution.

Epson Tank PrinterAfter shopping around a bit, we decided to go with one of the new Epson tank machines. Costco was even having a sale on an acceptable unit.

This little thing is pretty dang neat. It’s smaller than the HP or the Canon, and produces really clear crisp prints. I like the no print cartridge aspect. Instead you just fill the tanks up from a bottle of ink. The bottles are much cheaper than cartridges and this thing is rated at something like 7000 pages per fill. This is a full color machine similar to the HP and Canon. The majority of our printing is black & white and the Costco version thoughtfully includes 3 black refills in addition to the Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow.  

The cost per page in just about equal to my nifty laser printer. The only reason we didn’t just go with the laser printer only is because it doesn’t have a scanner and it doesn’t know how to talk Airprint which is very nice if you need to print from your iPad or iPhone.

The new inkjet can print duplex (double sided), and the scan/copy speed is acceptable. It’s not going to win any races, but for occasional use it’s more than adequate.

I can even see a day when the Canon laser finally dies that we’d just go to having one printer. I like having the laser because when I’m writing it’s fast and cheap to print a manuscript.

If you’re in the market for a new machine take a look at the Tank versions of inkjet printers. You’re going to pay a bit more out the outset for one, but you’ll recover the costs over the life of the printer in supplies.

Huh, First time I’ve seen that in a while.

About three months ago, I replaced the hard drive in the other half’s computer. I fought with the system to get a functional operating system on the drive but was finally successful and the other half’s computer was suddenly faster and stable.

I thought, “Cool,” and assumed that I wouldn’t have to deal with computer issues for a while. 

Think again! 

This morning, the other half was sitting there in front of the computer with a very puzzled expression. Innocently, I asked, “what’s wrong?”  There are times when you shouldn’t ask questions!

The other half said they’d tried to use the computer just now and were presented with a white screen and that the computer seemed very warm to the touch. I figured it was nothing, a simple hard reset would bring everything back up and then I could go back to beating my head against the wall in the heinous job search.

This was not to be, no amount of cajoling (a.k.a. swearing), incantations, or holding keys down during the boot up process gives me anything but the white screen. I can’t even get to the built-in diagnostics of the system and those are supposed to be in ROM and therefore independent of the hard disk. In other words, I’m wondering if the computer itself is dead because I should be able to get to something that would aid me in the diagnosis of the problem.

Generic SSDAn hour later I’m holding the nifty new SSD drive in my hand, wondering why it “sings” when I try to mount it on my computer. This is a solid state device… There are no moving parts and yet when I plug it in to my system the device very clearly makes a high pitched sound.

At the same time, the device refuses to identify itself to my computer at all. Placing the old hard drive in the other half’s  computer confirms that there is nothing wrong with the computer itself and in fact the machine boots happily.

I contact the manufacturer of the SSD and after a brief discussion am directed to please box up the drive for replacement.  The person I was speaking with (an American) recognized a kindred spirit and was pretty forthcoming. Instead of leading me through all sorts of useless diagnostics (which I’d already done) they responded to my question, “Did I miss anything,” with a laugh and said not that they could tell. 

It was refreshing to not have endless apologies and kow-towing. This was two professionals having a technical discussion about a piece of hardware that had died during what we used to call the infant mortality period. They weren’t defensive and I wasn’t angry sometimes shit like this just happens. It’s inconvenient on both sides but it’s reality and nothing is going to change that reality.

A new drive should arrive on Monday. 

Aside from a slightly long wait on hold dealing with the company was a real pleasure. The long hold time was due to lots of people upgrading their computers who probably shouldn’t have been inside their machines in the first place.  Apparently, a lot of “average” people failed kindergarten blocks and are unable to correctly put oddly shaped plugs into equally oddly shaped sockets. The tech & I had a bit of a laugh over that.

Now, the only problem is getting the OS back on the new drive… 

I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it!

Yet more home repairs

I’m sharing this for no other reason than to remind all Men,

“You’re not alone brother!”

My morning started out pretty normal. I got up, had a cup of coffee or two. Looked at my ToDO list and started working.

First up, was completion of some edits on and troubleshooting a website. Problems with this site had befuddled me for a couple of days, and this morning I decided to hit it like Spartacus!

Magically, the problems I’d been having melted before my awesomeness! “That was easy,” I said. Then moved onto the next thing on the list with confidence.

Perhaps I was too cocky.

The rest of the morning unfolded as follows;

I began by cleaning the gutters, The back gutter was a solid mess. Pine needles and about a quarter of an inch of dirt filled the entire 40 foot length of the rear gutter.

I was amazed that it wasn’t simply over-flowing when it rained. Using a ladder on the deck, I was able to remove the pile of pine needles. This process was annoyingly slow but simple manual labor. Grab the pine needles by hand toss them into the yard, move ladder to the next section. Repeat as needed. I finished by flushing the dirt out with a high pressure spray of water from the hose and bingo, the rear gutter was clean.

With even more self assuredness I moved to the front gutter. Oddly, it wasn’t nearly as blocked up as the rear, and it is overflowing when it rains. The front gutter is problematic to clean because unlike the back one, there is only a short deck to work from in the front of the house.

Using my handy dandy fiberglass poles and a little creativity with a bit of metal I fashioned a two bladed hook that allowed me to hook the pine needles and other plant debris raking it toward me. I didn’t have to move the ladder which was a good thing because there’s no place to move it to.

Due to the slope of the yard, one end of the front gutter is 20 feet off the ground and I don’t have a 25 foot ladder. After all, I’d only use it once a year.

Debris removed, I grabbed the hose attached to the front hose bib. The intention was to rinse the dirt and small bits of loose debris from the gutter, as I had done in back. Hose deployed and unkinked, I walk down stairs to turn the water on full blast. I run back upstairs climb the ladder and direct the spray nozzle into the gutter rinsing the detritus from the bottom.

It is approximately at this point that two problems become apparent.

Problem 1 is that the water is not exiting the gutter as anticipated.

Problem 2 is that I hear water running even when the spray nozzle is in the off position. I’d noticed that the water pressure wasn’t quite as high as I’d experienced in the back but thought little of this rather obvious clue.

I’m curious why I still hear water running.

I head down stairs and had 2 inches of one stair break off as I stepped on it, and damn near sent me down the rest of the flight, face first.

Priorities dictated that I find the source of the water sound, before dealing with the broken stair, other than swearing loudly, and profusely, as I caught myself.

Ladies, we guys don’t always get hurt doing something stupid. Sometimes we get hurt because we’re trying to make sure that things are maintained and safe for our families. It just happens that in that process we’re the ones who find cleverly covered up broken, or ignored things. My Dad had a knack for finding the one live wire in a bundle of “rat fucked” wires that one of us kids had tried to fix before being distracted by something shiny in the yard. It was a miracle that nothing caught fire, and my Dad wasn’t electrocuted during my childhood.

Once safely down the stairs, I notice that the sound of running water is louder, but it is not coming as expected from the hose fitting. I head into the basement to discover a quarter to half an inch of water pooled directly under the pipe leading to the hose bib on the exterior wall.

Being thankful for my foresight 8 years ago, I grabbed the nifty ball valve on the water line to the hose bib that I usually only use in preparation for Winter, and shut off the water to the bib without having to kill the water to the entire house.

Okay, now the water problem is managed.

I head back up to the deck pausing to check that the offending stair will not crumble under my weight and back up the ladder to see what’s going on with the gutter. It is still full of water. Great! My front gutter downspout is clogged and I don’t have a ladder tall enough to allow me direct access.

In an attempt to remedy the clog, I began disassembling the segments of the downspout hoping to be able to snake the clog with what I had on hand. A.K.A. my handy dandy fiberglass poles.

Unfortunately, during this process I discover another problem. The clutch on my drill is broken and I can barely unscrew the screws holding the downspout in place without the drill slipping. I question if I can drive a sheet metal screw back through the retaining straps when I’m done clearing the drain spout. However, I’m in it now, and going for the gold, I will finish this one task!

(You know, some days you get the bull and other days you get the horn. You can surmise which I got.)

The fiberglass poles are not able to make the sharp turns leading to the clog, (which appears to be, in or beyond the last “S” leading to the short straight section connected to the gutter itself. Of Course! The clog couldn’t be in any of the sections that I can access, it’s just out of reach, (kinda like my dating life!)

I’m able to reassemble the gutter and get it strapped back to the side of the house. Broken drill notwithstanding.

I am curious about why the drill is broken, and why there is a suspicious big white scuff mark on one side of it indicating that it may have been dropped from a height.

I briefly think about beginning a grand inquisition as to who was using my drill, and how it came to be damaged since the last time I had need of it. I do not recall dropping the machine, but it was at least put back in it’s case where it belonged so that is progress in the right direction.

Nah, there shall be no inquisition today. I just have a great excuse to go pick up that sweet Ryobi set I’ve been wanting. I’ll count it as a win!

With the drill broken, I can’t repair the stairs. The plumber will be here in an hour or so, to replace the broken section of pipe.

In the mean time I’m having a coke. I’ve been at my home repair follies for over 3 hours. I’ll have another shower, then go to Home-Depot to see if I can get a suitable drain snake and a new drill / impact driver set.

Other that that Mrs. Lincoln… How was the Play?

See? Now you can laugh your ass off! Misery loves company doesn’t it?

We’re under a fire Evacuation Warning

2020 continues to be a shit show.

I’m so over this year. The fires are encroaching on the town. 10 miles out and the winds are kicking up. Great! We’ve been under the warning for the past 24 hours.

I tried to go to bed tonight. The house is closed and the A/C is on. Smoke is blowing around and my sinuses are irritated. I’m having a problem sleeping in general, tonight the house is a tad too warm, and I was having trouble shutting down.

I was laying there thinking I should get a drink to see if I could use it to relax. I rolled on my side and was looking at the visible stars. Just drifting off… Then the bed started shaking. A quick check of the bedroom showed that there was no demonic activity. So no possession was imminent.

Then another stronger shaking. Since we no longer have any pets it wasn’t one of them scratching. Oh, it’s an Earthquake! Well isn’t that just swell. What next? Frogs? Locusts?

Okay, I’m up!

Poured myself that drink I’d been contemplating and here I sit on the couch drinking and writing.

The local news people are blathering, but it sounds like there’s no damage.

I’m so over all of the crap this year. Honestly, I don’t think next year is gonna be any better.