Another day with no school

Well, another day when the kids don't have school.

I spent yesterday getting over working a 3rd shift watching our servers in an area that has had power problems. Apparently the generator backup had issues, and they wanted several people on site at all times to shut down servers if the power went out again.

Luckily, the generator was repaired, and I didn't have to do another midnight to 8 shift last night.

School is still out in Louisville, although power seems to be returning to a lot of the area. I spent almost an hour yesterday morning looking for a gas station that had both electricity and gasoline. Got lucky and was able to fill up with less than half a gallon of gas left in the tank.

Junior Bear and Girlie Bear have spent some time in the last couple of days cleaning up our yard. Lots of leaves and small branches to clean up. I also introduced Junior Bear to a pool skimmer net to use to get the leaves out of the pond. The cherry tree next to the big pond shed almost half of its leaves in the storm, and had turned the water to the color of strong tea. The fish seem to be OK, but it can't be good for them, so we got the leaves out.

Going to start picking up cut up wood from people we know who lost trees soon. May as well stockpile it either for late in this winter or for next year.

Owing Money to Your Employer

Apparently a lot of money is owed to the government by government workers.

Funny, when I was in the military, it was common for the government to just take what was owed directly from your paycheck.

I can't imagine it would be too difficult for the IRS to get a judge to let them do the same to civilian workers.

It's never a good idea to be in debt to your employer, especially when that employer has the ability to get it back.

Late update

Sorry I haven't put anything up here for the past couple of days. Saturday Girlie Bear and I went fishing, and we spent the rest of the day working on the trim work in her bedroom. It looks nice now with the new paint and a chair rail.

Sunday we had a combined birthday party for the three older kids. We sometimes do this because their birthdays hit so close together. We had a few friends over, and I smoked a turkey in the grill. First time I ever did that, and it turned out very nicely. Going to have to do that again sometime. The kids made out like bandits, and of course Baby Bear was cooed over. Highlight of the day for me was Little Bear coming over. He hasn't been over to the house in weeks, and it was great to spend a few hours with him.

About noon the wind really started up. My car was being pushed all over the road, but we made it home OK. By the end of the afternoon, we'd had 75 mph gusts knocking over trees and power poles all over the area. By the end of the day LG&E reported that most of their customers were without power. All of the schools in the area are closed.

Luckily for us, we only had a couple of blips in the power at the house. We lost digital cable and broadband for a few hours, and I need to take the chainsaw to some limbs that got snapped in the wind. Overall though, we're in good shape.

From the Your Tax Dollars at Work department

One of the local governments has had a bit of a personnel problem. Basically the city hired a a crackhead as the public works director. When he got busted, they fired him.

Now the city council wants to put in random drug testing on all city employees. The cooler heads of the city attorney advised them that doing so would be violating at least one of the amendments to the constitution, so now they're considering doing them on new employees.

Now they're talking about starting to do background checks on new employees. That's funny, I can't apply to work at McDonalds without giving permission for a background check, and the local government isn't doing it routinely?

Things that make your head hurt on a Friday morning.

Bring it, little man

Apparently Hugo Chavez thinks that it's time to up his ego trip a notch.

Bolivia has kicked out our ambassador, and we've told his ambassador to not let the door hit him on the ass. So Chavez has puffed out his little chest, gotten onto a step stool to reach the microphones, and told our ambassador to get out of his country. Why he's done this is beyond me. It doesn't even begin to concern Venezuala, but why ask why a crazy bastard does what he does.

He's also threatening us again when it comes to oil. Why we continue to buy from this maniac is beyond me.

Here's an idea: We tell Mexico and Canada that we'll buy every drop of oil they can sell us, and we start producing more of our own.

Then we tell this twit with a Napoleon complex to go get stuffed. Let's see how much the world cares about his 3rd world jerkwater hole when he doesn't have the yankee dollars raining in. Sure, he can sell somewhere else, but he won't make as much doing it. And we don't have to make it easy for him to do.

Here's another idea: We tell the world shipping community that any ship that transits Venezualean waters in any way is no longer welcome in our ports. Same goes for airplanes.

We're not telling the rest of the world to not do business with Chavez, we're just telling them that if they do business with Chavez, they don't get to do business with us.

Screw him and the rest of his crazy Latin America head kooks in charge.

Not in my backyard!

What a crock.

One of the local homeless shelters wants to put a facility for women and children into a building that used to be a Catholic high school, and the local neighborhood association and city council member are opposing it.

This is the second time that Wayside Christian Mission has tried to acquire property to move into and has been shut down by the local authorities because they don't want something like this in their back yard.

It's not like they're moving across town. Check this out.

That's right ladies and gentlemen. They're moving 1.4 miles. Apparently it's OK for a good work to happen on one side of the railroad tracks but not on the other.

This NIMBY stuff gets under my skin something fierce. Louisville likes to portray itself as a progressive city, but when an organization that actually walks the walk wants to move to a good area of town and actually provide services to the homeless, these so called humanists get up in arms.

Fall is here!

OK OK! Fall is finally here, and I'm totally stoked!

The hot and humid Kentucky summer is dieing, the trees are starting to turn, football is here.

And last, but not least, the pumpkin spice latte is back at Starbucks. My favorite spicy goodness has returned from it's summer long hiatus!

Going to the amusement park with teenagers

Sunday was the Irish Woman's company picnic at Kentucky Kingdom. The weather was beautiful, and we went early in the afternoon. We had purchased tickets for Girlie Bear and Little Bear, but they were spending the weekend with their mom. So Junior Bear asked two of his friends to come along.

Once we got to the park, Junior Bear and his friends disappeared to go do as teenagers do in an amusement park.

Irish Woman and I had a nice walk around the park with Baby Bear, and we took him to an area that's set aside for small children at the water park portion of Kentucky Kingdom. He was a little apprehensive at first due to the water being cold and all the noise, but he got into it eventually.

We took him for his first ride on the merry go round, and he cooed and giggled the entire time.

We gathered the older kids up and headed out at about 5, and everyone agreed that going to an amusement park on a wonderful late summer day is a wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Some things will just make a man cry....

I was going to go shooting at Knob Creek on Saturday morning, but the weather was rainy and drippy all night, so my shooting buddies and I decided to wait a couple of weekends and try again. Since I was thinking about it, I thought I'd do a quick wipe down and lubrication on the guns. The black powder, shotguns, and handguns looked great when I pulled them out of the safe, but when I reached back to get out the Mosin Nagant 91/30, the barrel had patches of orange and the bore looked pretty dark.

After cussing and swearing as I cleaned the gun inside and out, she looks OK. I love shooting the Mosin, and she's my pride and joy.

I'm going to have to get a dehumidifier for the safe or something. I put a really good layer of oil on the Mosin, but I can't pack her in cosmoline every time I put her away.

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy

Well, as if this weekend wasn't good enough.

Never liked the guy, never will. Sad to hear that another human being is in pain, but if it had to happen, I'm glad it happened to Brady.

Someone can't take no for an answer

According to Fox News a guy tried to pick up three women in a doughnut shop, got shot down, then tried to run down the ladies in the parking lot.

Hey, Captain Success, learn to take rejection. Dunkin Donuts is not the best place to pick up women. If you're looking for a hookup, try a night club or something. People at the donut shop are looking for something to eat and a cup of coffee, not a romp in the back of your van.

Awesome link

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/imao/NTM/~3/382703721/010387.html

Courtesy of IMAO, a wonderful picture of our future vice-president.

I saw a portion of her speech last night. I'm impressed. She makes a very good attack dog for McCain, as Biden does for Obama. She made some good points, and is showing just how valuable an asset she will be to McCain, both in the election and his administration.

Fellow Horndogs, we have a VP candidate

I was pleasantly surprised on Friday to learn that Senator McCain chose someone unexpected for his running mate. I was expecting either Romney or Pawlenty.

Instead, Johnny Mac picked a pretty, vivacious, anti-abortion, pro-gun 44 year old mother of 5. Sarah Heath Palin may not be the most experienced VP candidate we've ever had, but she is surely the prettiest. http://vpilf.com/

I'm impressed with her because she's a real person. She's held down actual jobs. She's worked in really bad conditions, even to the point of being injured on a fishing boat. She's worried about how she's going to pay for her kids' education. She's a relatively clean politician, and isn't afraid to stand up to an entrenched party hierarchy.

She's got executive experience, even if only for a few years. She's had to do a budget and work with legislators to get laws through.

Of course, there will be the occasional bone in her closet, but for the most part I'm not afraid of anything I've heard so far. I've heard about the state trooper she wanted fired and the politician she fired for not firing the state trooper. I've heard about the state commission she sacked en masse and replaced. I've heard about the DUI her husband had in the 80's. And of course I've heard about how her oldest daughter is pregnant.

None of this diminishes her as a great candidate in my eyes.

If McCain didn't have my vote before, he has it now.

All of this hoopla about Mrs. Palin brought something to my mind. Is it just me, or do the Republicans almost have the market on beautiful women in politics cornered? John McCain is married to a beautiful blonde heiress. Sarah Palin is a former runner up for Miss Alaska. And Fred Thomson is married to a serious hottie that's half his age.

Of course, Dennis Kucinich has his own hottie at home, but that's the only one that comes to my mind.

In closing, remember, only you and your vote will put this beautiful woman a heartbeat away from the White House.

My weekend

Well, it was a pretty good weekend. Girlie Bear went to her mom's house for a visit until this morning, so Irish Woman and I started the process of updating her room. We're putting in a chair rail and doing a two-tone paint job. A light shade of purple will go above the chair rail, and a darker shade will go below it. Girlie Bear picked these out with help from Irish Woman. Irish Woman is doing the actual painting, and I'm doing the grunt work and chair rail.

I also got Girlie Bear a new desk. She's outgrown the desk she's been using for the past couple of years. Once it's done, her room will no longer be a little girl's room, but will be where a pre-teen goes to study and sleep. That'll be a surprise when we finish her room.

Irish Woman got an early birthday present. I got her a new iMac for her sole personal use, and a new computer desk to put it on. We put it up in the bedroom so that it's not a temptation for the kids to try to use it, and Irish Woman can use it in peace when she's working on her photography.

It took several tries to get all of her data from the old Mac Mini to her new iMac. I tried to do it over the network, but she just had way too much data and it kept timing out. I eventually had to dig up a firewire cable and connect the two computers.

Irish Woman is very happy with her new computer and is currently trying to find the maximum load she can put it under.

Baby Bear went swimming today for the first time. At first, he wasn't too sure about the whole thing, but after a couple of moments he was laughing and splashing away. Girlie Bear and Junior Bear had fun playing peekaboo by ducking under the water and then coming up with a splash.

Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend as much as I enjoyed mine.

Minneapolis Mayhem

I love Minneapolis and Minnesota in general. I grew up for the most part in North Dakota, and would go camping and fishing in Minnesota often. My grandparents lived in southwestern Minnesota, and Junior Bear's mom is from Minneapolis. I have never met anyone from Minnesota that I didn't like, and Minneapolis/Saint Paul is one of the cleanest, nicest cities I've ever been lucky enough to see.

That's why I'm sad to see that some morons have chosen to act like asshats in Minneapolis to protest the war in the Middle East. http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/01/anti-war-protest-at-gop-convention-turns-violent/

Here's the deal people: trying to set fires, breaking windows, and throwing caustic chemicals at people isn't going to get anyone to take a serious look at your side of an argument. Especially in Minnesota, where as one of my favorite comedians puts it, the introverts stare at their shoes and the extroverts stare at your shoes. What it will get is middle America not even blinking when you're arrested and put into a small cell for disturbing the peace or whatever.

That being said, the groups who held a peaceful march to the state capitol were doing things exactly in the way that gets my attention and gains my respect, even if I don't agree with them. It worked for Martin Luther King, and it can work for them.

Come on guys, you've all gotten some form of education, try to act smarter than this. Put away the black clothes and the matches and start learning to express yourself without destroying something or hurting someone.