Letter to a wayward child

I don’t understand.

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I treated you as an adult, I stayed out of your affairs, I offered advice sometimes unasked but only because I thought you could use a different point of view. Was I not fair? Didn’t I welcome you into my home? Didn’t I treat you well?

You used my vehicle, you were an equal.

You repaid our kindness by breaking the few rules we have in the house. You were always late with your part of the rent… and I said nothing.

I even asked if you had enough cash to be able to cover your part, if you’d ever said no… It wouldn’t have been a problem. I’d have handed the rent check back. I was more interested in making sure that you had what you needed.

I made myself available to you… all you ever had to do was call and I’d have been there. If you were too tired to drive, I’d have come to get you.

In the end you weren’t even bothering to text anyone to say you were ok. Another rule broken… It’s not like you couldn’t, you & your girlfriend were texting each other 50 times an hour.

You were never where you said you’d be, certainly not when you said you’d be there.

I teased you about it but wasn’t upset by it, you’re young and sometimes being young means that you forget things. You’re easily distracted by the next new thing or experience.

Then I realized you were lying…

The realization began when, one day you asked me what my mailing address was . I innocently gave it to you. Later when I asked what you needed the address for, you told me you were updating your address book. I took you at your word.

A few days later, you asked me if I’d checked my mail… I said yes, thinking you were offering to make the post office run.

A week or so later, when a certain piece of mail showed up. Everything was clear… You’d used me. You’d been sneaky, and you’d facilitated someone else’s sneakiness.

In the bargain, you’d placed me in the middle of whatever was going on and you’d done it without any consideration for the position you’d put me in.

I waited for you to ask about it, I wanted a few minutes to talk with you about it. Instead, you were like trying to capture lightening, I couldn’t get enough of your time to even find out what you were doing much less have a conversation. Then there’s the question… Did you really think I wasn’t going to notice what you’d done or question it? Really?

From then on… I watched you more closely.

I listened very carefully to what little bits of information you let slip as you breezed through on your way to your next destination.

More and more often your stories didn’t match up. What you said about where you were and with who changed with each telling.

How many times when you said you were camping were you really camping? How about those times when you said you were staying at your Dads place?

Given the nearly 10,000 miles (As a conservative estimate) you put on the truck… I’m inclined to believe you were doing a lot more than just driving around the local area.

I came to the conclusion that I simply couldn’t trust you. I was going to ask for the keys to my truck. I wish now that I’d installed a tracking device on my truck because I suspect it would be very interesting to find out just where you’d been.

Then you announced you were moving out immediately.

Again breaking the rules…

The rental agreement said you were supposed to give 30 days notice. When you get into the real world and aren’t living with your girlfriends parents I expect you’re going to learn a lot of nasty lessons very quickly.

Honestly though, it was a relief. I am glad to have nothing but the tail end of the drama to deal with. I’m glad to have my house back.

Don’t get me wrong, you could have stayed here till the cows came home, I wouldn’t have asked you to leave. I’d made a commitment to you and I was going to honor it. I’d have simply made sure that everything was secure when we weren’t around.

I would have continued patiently trying to show you that being an honest, honorable man, and doing the right thing is important and valuable.

These are the same things your father taught you, but for some reason you don’t seem to have learned the lessons.

I thought you were just lying to me.

As you were moving out I found out that you’d brought the potential for trouble right to my door. I believe that you were going to leave without even warning me.

I finally connected all the dots, when I spoke with your Dad this week.

After you moved out, I discovered that you’d been lying to your Father, Me, and I can’t even imagine how many other people.

Your Dad was pissed off at me, because he thought you were asking me for advice and I wasn’t letting him know you were making bad decisions. You knew this, yet you never said a word.

UP to this point I was annoyed, and hurt. Because I thought it was just me you were lying to.

After hearing your Dad, I was flat out pissed off!

All the times I asked you if you’d talked with your dad, and you said “Yes”, you were lying.

Those times when I gave you my opinion of a situation and suggested that you also get your Dads opinion, you just blew me off.

You never once spoke with your Dad. When I asked, following up about your dads opinion, you lied to me again.

You have no place here.

Your keys won’t work, you can’t even access the WiFi anymore. I can’t trust anything about you. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to trust you again.

In time, I may be able to forgive you. But I’ll never be able to forget it.

I hope that your Dad and I can put our friendship back together, I honestly don’t know at this point. What I do know is that it’s going to take a LOT of work, Thanks for that by the way…

You need to consider the collateral damage you cause. I touched on this briefly several weeks ago when I told you you were jamming us up not by what you did… but by not doing what you said you were going to do.

Knowing what I know now… I would and perhaps should have let you leave your Dads house for some of the less savory options you were planning.

God knows it would have been a lot easier, and my home wouldn’t have been disrupted by the constant drama.

I was trying to be a decent person… You used that against me.

I was acting to protect you and your Dad, I didn’t what to see him brokenhearted if you followed in the footsteps of your siblings.

I hoped and prayed that you were different and for a time I believed you were. I actually believed that given some time you’d move back in with your Father and everything would work out, especially when it became obvious that you had no intention of trying the military again.

I can’t believe that I was so very wrong in so many ways about you.

You really should consider a career in acting. You’re good at it. Then again, so are sociopaths.

Now A lot of people are broken hearted and I know none of us will ever know the whole truth about anything about you.

Who are you really?

Do I want to know?

Probably not…

I’d actually hoped to get off the Muslims but…

I couldn’t resist.

After reading the news today out of France.

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Normally the French are wrong just out of habit.

But this morning I woke up read the news and started laughing my ass off, after I  had an epiphany. 

It’s become clear is that Muhammad is the Achilles heel of the Islamic world.

So us evil bastards in the West need to start using it to our advantage.

We need to get England to publish something about Muhammad, then have Sweden follow on with something else about two weeks later.  Then have the other EU countries follow on at 2 to 3 week intervals. 

All we have to do to win the war on terrorism is to keep insulting Muhammad… The radical Muslims will destroy themselves and their countries in a rabid foamy mouthed orgy of hate and stupidity.

Let them keep burning, looting, and bombing their cities and countries. It’s far more effective, cost efficient, and safer way to deal with the problems of the Middle East.

After all, why spend a million dollars on a cruise missile when we can drop a flyer showing a crudely drawn image of Muhammad taking it up the ass from a camel?

The damage the radicals would do to a city or their country is far greater than the damage that would be done by 100 cruise missiles.

Yeah, there may be some collateral damage and we might have to be a lot more careful in public places but that would only last for a little while, Eventually the radicals will decimate themselves and those that don’t actually kill themselves will be too weak to be much of a threat.

It beats the alternative plan… Sterilization of the infestation area with Nukes.

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As an alternative to nukes we could always steer asteroids into an orbit that would be appropriate for planetary bombardment.

Targeting the exact areas in the Middle East would be tricky but we could stop global warming and still have access to the oil reserves after a few well placed asteroid impacts.

Pssst don’t tell the Primitive Islamic Savages, AKA “PIS” we don’t have that capability quite yet.

On the bright side… I’m sure that someone is working on it.

Lets not forget the purpose of Flight Tests People!

Morpheus test lander

I’ve been noticing a lot of negative spin from the media about the Morpheus crash.

To the MORONS in the media

That’s WHY you have flight tests.  

You test the machine before you put cargo or people or anything of real value in it. It’s unfortunate that there was a problem during the flight. However you can be sure that the information gathered from the failure will be used to make the next craft better, more stable, and safer.

Unfortunately, the Media Idiots bitching about the cost of the program and the cost of the lost vehicle… WEREN’T on the craft or under it at the time of the crash.

You want to talk about wasted money???

Look at the presidential campaign, how about congress pissing away billions on social programs that don’t create anything except a sense of entitlement and a class of people for whom getting off public assistance isn’t an option. 

How about reporting that our politicians haven’t maintained the nations infrastructure, or that many politicians today seem to be far more interested in regulating what goes on in American bedrooms or how best to subvert the constitution than actually providing leadership?

7 Million dollars to research and build a device that flew and is designed to leave Earth to deliver supplies to the moon?

That’s nothing!

I’ve heard of  20 million dollar military projects that pissed away 20 million and NEVER produced a damn thing or saw the light of day.

At Least NASA made something tangible.

And one thing the Media has failed to mention at all…

This wasn’t the first test of the Morpheus. There had been a number of tethered tests that preceded this flight. So it’s not like NASA engineers just wheeled this craft out onto the tarmac and pushed a button flushing 500K down the tubes.

All the data that had previously been collected said that the craft was ready to fly. But as with any new device, glitches happen. The preliminary information suggests there was some kind of hardware failure.

I prefer that the machine fails now, rather than when it’s carrying a billion dollars worth of materials and equipment wouldn’t you?

PayPal #FAIL

 

Actually it’s not PayPal that’s the problem.

It’s our wondrous Federal Government. Also known as the Assholes in Congress.

Could these people be any more out of touch? 

Apparently as of April 2012 the Federal Morons, have mandated that all Money Service Businesses must have on file customer verification information. 

OK… I suppose that having a PayPal account fucking LINKED to your checking account and / or credit card accounts isn’t enough!

I guess I can kind of get it… My PayPal account is over a decade old. By this time if there was anything nefarious about my transactions I’m assuming that I’d already be in prison. But for the paltry 200 or 300 bucks that has EVER been in the PayPal Account the Government feels they have the right to know all about that money and whose using it.

Supposedly the new requirements for Identification are to prevent money laundering and terrorist activities.

I could see it if there were 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars going through the account on a monthly basis… that might be suspicious. But for the average person of an established account? Come on give it a rest!

But the real kicker is this…

PayPal, in order to comply with the FEDERAL Gestapo is demanding that I provide them with the following information either as a FAX or Emailed Scan  of my Social Security card, My drivers License, and A paper utility bill.

Do you see the problem here?

We have well known National Banks, Insurance Companies, and even the IRS, who cannot keep this kind of information from ending up on the internet.

Yet PayPal is asking that we make it EASIER for them to lose this information and set ourselves up for identity theft!

SAY WHAT? You have to be fucking kidding me! 

You’re actually saying that I should just hand this information over to a company that I barely have done business with. A company who will not service ALL Vendors. A company who allows their narrow version of morality to dictate which transactions they will process, and I’m supposed to do all of this OVER THE INTERNET and trust them? I’m supposed to believe that the information will not be distributed to criminals because after all we all know how trustworthy and secure the internet is.

BUZZZZZZ! 

I’m sorry that’s the wrong answer, but thank you so much for playing and here’s your lovely parting gift.

We emailed you a little while ago to ask for your help resolving an issue
with your account.

What’s the problem?

As of April, 2012, new Federal Regulations require Money Service
Businesses, such as PayPal, to verify the identity of a customer before we
can provide various services or product offerings. As a result, PayPal must
ensure we have collected and verified important data such as customer name,
address, date of birth, and national tax ID or social security number.
Because we were not able to fully confirm your identity based on your
current account information, we need to request additional supporting
documentation from you.

You will continue to have full access to your PayPal account, but until we
are able to confirm your identity, we may be unable to process certain
types of customer initiated requests such as adding funds to your PayPal
account.

According to their message above, there is another option. I can choose not to give them this information and simply not transfer any cash to my PayPal account.

BUT that’s not good enough… I’ve spoken with PayPal twice, informing them of my choice NOT to have cash sitting in their hands. Instead I’ve chosen to simply use them on rare occasion to facilitate a transaction with someone that may or may not be above board.

Yet I’m still getting emails like the one above, Thus far I haven’t gotten any phone calls but I’m sure that’s only a matter of time.

The way I see this… I’ve got three choices

1) Ignore them.

2) Give them the information. (Not Happening!)

3) Close the account and not do business with them.

I’m leaning to option #3. I’d prefer one less account ID and Password to keep track of anyway. My credit cards are pretty secure and I’m automatically protected in the event of fraud. So why do I need a PayPal account?

OH yeah… for Ebay… Which I don’t use either! Humm. Maybe I can lose Two un-necessary accounts!

 

That unhealthy glow

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I’m a dumbshit! I totally admit it. Laugh all you want, I can take it.

Yesterday the sun was warm and the sky was blue, there was a gentle breeze and I thought;

“It’s a perfect day to spend a little time on the deck.”

So I took my glass of water, my Kindle, and my fat ass outside, without a shirt, and settled in a lounge chair.

I was only outside a little while… OK 40 minutes and my chest and belly are sunburned to beat the band.

I know better!

I never do shit like that without sunscreen on. 

So guys… learn from my stupidity, watch yourselves and your kids in the sun.

With the upcoming 4th of July celebrations we’re all going to be outside a bit more. 

Be a good example to your family, apply sunscreen with them  not just to them.