It won’t be long now…
In theory I should be writing a blog today
Trouble is that I’ve become so disgusted by the news I can’t even look at it without going all rage monster.
So I’m not looking at it.
As far as what’s going on around here just a little yard work.
I pruned the heck out of my apple tree. It responded by doing this.
I’m hoping that I’ll have normal sized apples this fall. Last year I have a ton of mini apples that turned into great apple butter & apple sauce. They weren’t all that good to eat due to the size.
The yard work has been good for my sense of wellbeing.
I haven’t been able to plant anything though. Usually by this time of year the hardware store has nice plants that I incorporate into the landscape for the season.
This year due to the lockdown those plants aren’t available. So the yard may look a little more like the surface of the moon.
I’m also hesitant to plant anything because last year the County decided that a plant that had been in my yard since 1992 absolutely had to be removed. Suddenly this plant was the worst thing on the planet and they were threatening fines if I kept it.
I had to pay to have it removed.
But I noticed that other neighbors didn’t remove their versions of this plant, and they weren’t fined or asked to remove them.
The funny part of this is that the plant in my yard was no larger the 3ft by 3 feet and was at the outer edge of the yard bounded by the driveway and the street. It was also maintained to be no larger than 3”x3”. Ironically for that plant being such a fire hazard, when the house burned in 2008, all the plants survived!
I find that I’m losing interest in maintaining my yard and have considered just killing everything out front.
Every year, some bozo from the county comes around and bitches about something and start imposing fines. They claim it’s for fire control.
What pisses me off about it is that I’ve got more than the recommended defensive space around the house.
I moved here 70 miles outside LA, because I didn’t want anyone telling me what I could and couldn’t do on my own property. While I don’t have an HOA, I do have county busybodies telling me what I can do.
I’m considering putting a sign up in the yard this year. Something that says;
“Hey County, you’ve fucked up our street, your flood control project made things worse, you’re spending yet more money to build a higher bridge, (Which we told you to do 10 years ago, instead of your plan to build a sluice,) So fuck off! Leave me alone, don’t set foot on my property, and fuck your fines if you don’t like the plants in my yard!“
What burns me about this so much is that I worked and continue to work really hard to plant native plants in the yard. With just a few exceptions everything is drought resistant and native to this area. I try to have something blooming year round. Natives can be very pretty and easy to care for.
But having to deal with annoying letters and threats of fines year after year and explaining what each plant in the yard is year after year is getting tiresome.
Which is why I’m considering a lunar surface model, at least in the front.
If I go that route, the sign in the front will read; “Dear neighbors, This Lunar surface representation courtesy of the County. I got tired of the threats.“
I could move a lot of the plants to the back, then install a wooden fence to prevent the county from seeing anything from the street. God forbid some bozo would actually have to get out of their car and look.
Maybe I’m just reacting to the lockdown, Nope! I’m reacting the constant erosion of my rights by power mad jackasses who decide arbitrarily what is for my own good.
I’m really thinking it’s time for me to leave kommifornia. The way the news and politics are going here in the USA, maybe it’s time to ask about becoming a citizen of another country entirely.
Bwhahahahah! There are some things that tickle the hell out of me!
I saw this and just about laughed myself stupid.
I thought, “New Jersey is going to have to check homeless camps, ask old bartenders, check with real estate agents, lawyers, and gas station attendants.”
That’s where most of the old COBOL or FORTRAN programmers ended up, all of whom were laid off in favor of H1B1s. Yep, a lot of those programmers were tossed aside like yesterday’s trash by businesses, and government back in the 80’s.
A lot of them moved on to other things and I know several that built lucrative businesses in other fields. For a while I had an Eye doctor that had been a COBOL programmer. He was making way better money as an eye doctor than he ever made as a programmer and the hours were better too.
He didn’t regret getting out of programming at all. Like most of us old school tech people, he’d gone through lay off, after lay off, and had “trained” his replacements at too many companies.
He went back to school after his last layoff, graduated and started his own practice. To do this, he lived in a leaky teardrop trailer for two years after cashing out everything he owned to pay for school. He wasn’t eligible for student loans because he’d made too much in his previous positions.
I know some real estate agents and a couple of patent attorneys as well. They were all great programmers and they were treated like shit.
They wouldn’t touch a programming job now. It brings back bitter memories for them to even talk about programming.
See, they loved what they were doing, they had their joy crushed and were considered disposable in favor of “cheap” labor. Many of them simply walked off the job rather than “train” their foreign replacements.
I say “train” because more often than not the foreign replacements weren’t up to snuff to begin with. Many of these folks couldn’t follow the code, so training was a pointless exercise.
Then I remembered Y2K and thought it’s been 20 years. Couldn’t these government entities be bothered to update the equipment and programs?
Some of the COBOL guys did come back to rework Y2K systems and they charged frankly obscene amounts to do it. I’d heard that several paid off houses and cars loans with the money they earned from Y2K contracts.
Then I thought, “Who’s gonna test it?”
I went back to laughing.
I’m sorry that the people in need of unemployment benefits aren’t going to be helped it’s not fair to them. However, this brings into sharp relief, other problems “leaders” in business and government have been sweeping under the carpet for decades.
The chickens are coming home to roost.