Gran Torino

It is official, Clint Eastwood has made two of the best films ever made.
1. The Outlaw Josey Wales
2. Gran Torino

Both movies are a testament to human behavior and how it is molded by tragedy, warfare, ethnic/cultural differences and trust in people that they thought they would never befriend. An entire thesis on social behavior could be written on either movie.

Both movies show an over the top white guy who everyone misjudges on the surface, who in the end, shows that everyone was wrong about him, he is hard to survive in the only way he knows, by the sword. Clint Eastwood has a way of finding stories that show the backbone of America and how things should be. Gran Torino is fabulous and Clint Eastwood is one of the only actors who could have pulled it off without the media blasting him.

GA drivers rank almost last in driver knowledge

According to a recent study performed by GMAC Insurance Georgia drivers rank 47th in the nation in driver knowledge while Alabama drivers rank 26th in driver knowledge.

This is really amusing to me since I live in Alabama but have worked for the last 10 years in Georgia and have heard the sneers and insults from Columbus natives about how backward Alabama is and how bad Alabama drivers are. Anyone who has lived in the Chattahoochee Valley has heard how a lot of Georgians refer to Alabama as inferior in every aspect. I even had a fairly affluent Columbus native tell me that that HWY 431 in Phenix City is the busiest road in Alabama; he claimed it was in the paper. He may have seen that the section of 431 that runs through the Inverness area of Birmingham is the busiest and just have assumed PC.

Bluetooth Class Action Law Suit

Excellent article on a recent class action law suit against many bluetooth headsets. It shows how the lawyers for the suit profited $2 million dollars, how unnamed non-profit organizations received $100,000 and the supposed plantifs (those who the purchased the product and would be effected) received $0. This is how the legal system is protecting us. The article does not go into the fact, we the citizens of the U.S., know this is happening, yet we continually elect lawyers to political offices; allowing them to continue to screw us. Isn't Obama, the Clinton's, etc all lawyers? The republicans are run by big oil companies and wall street and the democrats are run by lawyers and wall street, we so need another political party in the U.S. that represents the people then we can get back to a government that is "For the People, By the People".

Half-hearted Apology

Napolitano issued a half-hearted apology last Thursday after naming war veterans as a possible threat to the security of the United States.

"This was an assessment, not an accusation," Napolitano continued. "It was limited to extremists those who seek to commit violence within the United States. And all this was meant to do was to give law enforcement what we call 'situational awareness.'"

A footnote in the report,

"Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling
Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," said that while there is no
specific information that domestic right-wing terrorists are planning acts of
violence, such acts could come from unnamed "rightwing extremists" concerned
about illegal immigration, abortion, increasing federal power and restrictions
on firearms -- and singled out returning war veterans as susceptible to
recruitment.

She said that this was similar to a report on left wing extremist issued earlier. But there is a big difference; in the earlier report she named specific groups like the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front. Here she named almost all veterans as a possible threat.

"The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist
groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned or
suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today," the
report reads.

She is making a reference to the Oklahoma City Bombing as an example of possible threats. Primarily because this was the only recent example she could find of a veteran doing this sort of thing. Funny that she failed to mention the Washington D.C. sniper who was killing because of his extremist Muslim beliefs (no I don't think all Muslims are terrorists, I know many who are appaled by their extremist brothers). She says she mentions McVeigh because she says that McVeigh received his training in the Army in how to do this sort of thing. I am sorry to inform her, but I have been to US Army Combat Engineer training, and they did not cover blowing up multi-story buildings with truckloads of fertilizer, nor did they cover it when I had my training as an Army Cavalry Scout. And both of these professions cover explosives in great detail as much of their job includes destroying obstacles in both as an offensinve force and as a blocking action in the retreat. While it was effective (Oklahoma City bombing), the military has much better methods of destroying buildings, if you don't believe it just ask the people of Baghdad. So I feel pretty confident that he didn't learn that in the U.S. Army.

If this is the type of person assessing our threat level we are in even more trouble than I thought we were.

Here are some of the official responses to her apology:

"The American Legion is well aware and horrified at the pain inflicted during
the Oklahoma City bombing, but Timothy McVeigh was only one of more than 42
million veterans who have worn this nation's uniform during wartime," Rehbein
wrote. "To continue to use McVeigh as an example of the stereotypical
'disgruntled military veteran' is unfair as using Osama bin Laden as the sole
example of Islam."

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, also criticized the report,
saying its portrayal of veterans was "offensive and unacceptable."

"Their leftwing assessment identifies actual terrorist organizations, like the
Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front," House Judiciary Committee
Ranking Member Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said in a statement issued Wednesday. "The rightwing report uses broad generalizations about veterans, pro-life groups,
federalists and supporters of gun rights. That's like saying if you love
puppies, you might be susceptible to recruitment by the Animal Liberation Front.
It is ridiculous and deeply offensive to millions of Americans."

How much space does a trillion dollars occupy?

Someone sent me a neat site today that actually lets you visualize a trillion dollars.  When you actually see how much space a trillion dollars takes up in $100 bills it is really amazing. They show different views of the money starting with how much 1 million dollars occupy and working their way up, by the way 1 billion occupies 10 pallets of $100 dollar bills.

What is a trillion dollars? Well, it's a million million. It's a thousand billion. It's a one followed by 12 zeros.

$1,000,000,000,000

Another way of thinking about trillions is as follows: - one million seconds is about 11 days - one billion seconds is about 30 years - one trillion seconds 30 thousand years

Dog Lookout

For those of you who do not know I live in the middle of nowhere surrounded by woods in every direction. I have a great german shepard dog who believes it is his duty to keep watch on our property and ensure that nothing comes near, especially the evil herds of deer. Tonight I let him out so he could do his guard duty, he sits on the front deck giving him a good visible perimeter; all night long he scans the woods (every hour or so he will walk around the house to make sure every thing is safe). Well tonight I looked out the window on the front deck and he was doing his stand, I then walked to the back of the house and looked out, there were 12 deer that I could see and it appeared that the herd even had a lookout that was focused on the area where the dog would come from, it was really comical. Oh well, it is the simple things in life I enjoy.

From Brutus

Importance of multiple forms of ID when flying

Yesterday I was trying to catch a flight from Chicago to Columbus, GA, I handed my drivers license and credit card to the ticket agent at the Delta counter and in the rush to catch the plane I failed to notice he didn't give my license back to me, just my credit card. Imagine my horror when I went to hand my ID to the security checkpoint and I could not find my Drivers License. I quickly assesed my options and remembered I had my Concealed Carry Permit for my pistol; I thought what the hell it has my picture on it and it is issued by a government agency, I'll try it.

The agent who spoke a very accented English, looked at me like I was crazy while he was trying to figure out what it was. I told him that was all I had, because my license was lost. I couldn't believe it when he asked if I had something else like a SAM's or a COSCO card. I handed him my SAM's card. In the meantime the supervisor noticed that something was wrong and came over to investigate. When the supervisor saw the Concealed Carry Permit, he told the original agent, to let me go, he told the guy that the Concealed Carry Permit was much better than a drivers license since there was actually a background check done prior to issuing it, and if he saw another one let it go by as well.

After arriving in Atlanta I was paged to the Delta counter for a phone call. I was pleasantly surprised when the phone call was from a Delta agent in Chicago who told me she had found my license and I could pick up my license at the Columbus airport the next day.

Syslog

Recently I was studying the syslog protocol and ran across this statement in the RFC for syslog and I thought it was interesting.

"Since the beginning, life has relied upon the transmission of messages. For the self-aware organic unit, these messages can relay many different things. The messages may signal danger, the presence of food or the other necessities of life, and many other things. In many cases, these messages are informative to other units and require no acknowledgment. As people interacted and created processes, this same principle was applied to societal communications. As an example, severe weather warnings may be delivered through any number of channels - a siren blowing, warnings delivered over television and radio stations, and even through the use of flags on ships. The expectation is that people hearing or seeing these warnings would realize their significance and take appropriate action. In most cases, no responding acknowledgment of receipt of the warning is required or even desired."

                              RFC 3164 The BSD Syslog Protocol.

Luckier Today

My fiasco yesterday with my cart got a little better, after pulling out all of the burnt wiring I rewired the system, bypassing the switch to the hydraulic dump bed and I am now able to actually start the cart and drive it. The dump bed is stuck in the up position from yesterday, but I can either take the hydraulic pump out and lower the bed or attempt to reverse the polarity and see if it will come down until I can get a new 3 position switch for it.

Bad news is I can not find a used lift link for my tractor and it is going to cost me $225 dollars for a replacement. But this is better than the $500 - $800 I was forecasting last night. I am sure I can get the switch for the hyrdraulic lift under $25 so it looks like I am going to get away with only having to spend $250.

Sometimes things just don't go your way

Have you ever decided not to do some type of recreational activity simply because you didn't want to spend the money, then because you stayed at home ended up having to spend 5 times the amount that you would have spent? That happened to me on Sunday. I really enjoy shooting sporting clays, this is a shotgun sport that many call "golf with guns" (more on that in a latter post). Sunday I had one of my buddies try to get me to go with him to a Bird In Hand in Plains, GA. I told him I was going to skip because I didn't have the ammo and didn't want to spend the money on the round, buy ammunition and gas, so I thought I would do good and save that $75 and stay at home.

Wrong decision.

I drove my "Golf Cart" (this is one of the converted types with mud tires, lift kit and hydraulic dump bed I use for maintenance chores around my place) over to my neighbors house to check on them. While I was there one of the kids asked if he could take my cart out to check his deer feeders. I didn't see any harm and said sure.

Wrong Decison again

About 1 and half hours later the kid walked back to the house saying he couldn't get the cart started. I thought maybe he ran it out of gas, so we walked back to my house so that we could get my tractor to tow the buggy back to the house if I couldn't get it started.

Wrong Decision again

We went out to where the buggy was sitting, I was relieved to see it wasn't buried in the mud. I tried to start the cart, and it wouldn't even turn over, I thought it must be a loose wire or something, I have had that happen in the past while traveling through wooded areas. I tried to lift the hydraulic dump bed to get to the engine area and the switch did not respond, I also noticed it was stuck in the down position. I said fine and lifted the seat up to get to the battery and electrical connections and I was horrified to see a lot of wires burned beyond recognition. It appeared that either he had his leg sitting on the down switch to the dump bed and he didn't know that the loud whine the hydraulics were making meant something was wrong so he kept driving, after all he had to check those deer feeders. (To my knowledge he has never killed a deer there, he tends to go out and get too wasted to actually go hunting the next morning.) I held my temper and hooked the 3 point hitch lift bar of the tractor to a tow chain connected the cart so that we could tow it back home and I could see how much damage was done.

Wrong Decision yet again

When I turned the tractor and started pulling the cart I heard a loud pop, no it wasn't the chain and there was not a bloody corpse of the boy behind me, but the lift arm of the tractor was now lying in the mud behind me. Because in my haste and frustration I forgot to put the pin in the sway bar and the lift arm broke in half. I then hooked the chain to the frame of the tractor and pulled it back to my house.

Now after trying to save $75 I am faced with $230 worth of broken tractor parts and if I am lucky probably $300 - $500 worth of damage to my cart.

So saving $75 just cost me $800. Moral of the story is if you get a chance to go do your favorite hobby go play. It may just save you a grand and make you feel a hell a lot better than allowing a kid to tear up your tools that you have to replace!

Beer For My Horses

I just watched the CMT movie "Beer For My Horses", it was pretty entertaining. This movie will not win any awards, but if you enjoy the comedy of Rodney Carrington and the stories told through the music of Toby Keith then you will enjoy the movie. It is worth watching just to see some of the characters played by some great musicians like Ted Nugent, Willie Nelson, Mac Davis, Mel Tellis and David Allen Coe. Then they have a lot of grade A actors like Barry Corbin and Tom Skeret.

This is a "B" grade movie but definitely worth the time, if for nothing more than the blooper reels, make sure you watch the bloopers. With the exception of the bathroom choir the bloopers are funnier than any scene in the movie.

Tim Tebow

Like him or not, you have to respect him. Much to my dismay I sat and watched him single handidly beat my beloved Crimson Tide Saturday afternoon.

There are rumors of him getting a second Heisman Trophy this year, and I believe he deserves it. Without Tebow Florida would not have had a chance against Bama or Georgia or many of the others. He is possibly the single best College Football player I have ever seen play the game. Over the past several years I grew to dislike him, because of all the press and how people worshipped him.

In the recent months I started paying more attention to him, and quickly realized there is a lot to this young athelete. Initially he had stated he was going to forgoe the NFL for life as a missionary. I was thinking WOW, now there is a man with strong religous beliefs! I then thought, you know if he went on to play and be successful in the NFL he could do more to spread the word of the Lord there than he could in some wilderness. I also thought that if he didn't want the money, then he could still live a life of poverty and donate his proceeds to the needy. I read today that his coaches believed much as I do and he is now announcing he will make himself available for the NFL draft, stating that with the publicity and money that comes with an NFL carreer would allow him to do more for the church and his community than he could as missionary.

After reading that article I respect him now as a person as well as an athelete. Hats off to you Tebow! I hope you get the Heisman again and go on the have a great carreer in the NFL.

New York Work

Upcoming Work in New York

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Custom topo maps

This is a link to a custom topo map I created for an area where I do some nature photography. Great site!
http://www.mytopo.com/review.cfm?mytopoid=28507567BD