Welcome
- August 4, 2021
- Coast Guard Day 2021
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My main girl is a coastie. Locally, she doesn't have a lot in the way of people who really appreciate her status in military life because the bulk of them are either land lubbers or didn't do any military service at all.
After I met her I stopped using the term 'puddle pirates' to refer to the coast guard as I did while on active duty out of respect for her rank and work in maritime security.
Being a Navy veteran myself I always stand in awe and give proper respect, deference, and homage to her for her accomplishments as a chief petty officer of the line.
Today is Coast Guard Day. It goes down each August 4 to commemorate the founding of the United States Coast Guard (as the Revenue Marine) on August 4, 1790, by then-Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton.
Congress authorized the building of a fleet of the first ten Revenue Service cutters on that date. They were for enforcement of the first tariffs set by the US Congress enacted under the auspices of the US Constitution. The motto of the Coast Guard is Semper Paratus which means "always ready" or "ever ready".
She dutifully and cheerfully attends scheduled drill traveling out of state to do so. Such dedication.
So Chiefie ... happy Coast Guard Day Day to you !
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- August 3, 2021
- Columbus set sail 529 years ago
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So the foolish leftist libtards who are out to rewrite history because they think everything that happened therein represents racism and as such should be stricken from the record regardless of the factual nature of factual events because this is what the leftist libtard public education system taught them will likely decline to celebrate the date Columbus set sail for the Indies in 1492.
Yes, when these leftists created by the indoctrination of the public school system finally realize just how stupid they are because of that input of a politicized educational system created by the democrats more concerned with misguidance and presenting falsehoods than facts there will likely be a reckoning.
Like it or not, on this day in 1492 Christopher Columbus set sail on his first voyage with three ships, Santa María, Pinta and Niña from Palos de la Frontera, Spain for the "Indies".
He ended up discovering America somewhat before Amerigo Vespucci for whom the continent is named, as he demonstrated to Europeans that the New World was not Asia but a previously unknown continent.
So this being the case I suppose the libtards can just suck it with their ignorant educators.
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- August 2, 2021
- Remembering Carroll O'Connor
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One of those constants in my childhood was All in the Family. My dad loved the show and we typically watched it and don't recall missing an episode. Then there was In the Heat of the Night about a Mississippi police chief and the vague deep south resonance of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.
John Carroll O'Connor was born August 2, 1924 in Manhattan. He passed at age 76 on June 21, 2001 in Culver City, California. He was an actor, producer, and director of various dramatic productions over the years.
Having served in the Merchant Marines in World War II, he became a television icon for those 40 years he remained active. My late biological father was particularly fond of his character Archie Bunker from the sitcom All in the Family which ran the decade of the 1970s from 71 through 79. Needless to say I watched a fair amount of it ... til I enlisted in the Navy on June 10, 1976.
There were spinoffs and other productions such asi that other family favorite In the Heat of the Night — which ran from 1988 thought 1995 where he played Sparta, Mississippi police chief William "Bill" Gillespie. This was another show I watched frequently as it was on the tube while I was in front of it. Other roles performed by Mr O'Connor included, he received 5 Emmys and 2 golden globes for his acting prowess.
On March 28, 1995, O'Connor's adopted son Hugh, who began life as a six day old boy in Rome and grew to be a featured character on In the Heat of the Night took his own life after a long battle with drug addiction. This had a profound effect on the aging O'Connor who went on television to out one Harry Perzigian who was allegedly Hugh's pusher. I was enthralled by his acumen and total lack of fear at this public forceful confrontation.
Also, I can never forget the stupendous grief his appearance in this matter projected. Following his son's passing, Mr O'Connor appeared in various PSAs for the Partnership for a Drug Free America. He devoted the rest of his life working to raise awareness about drug addiction.
Carroll O'Connor died on June 21, 2001 in Culver City, California, from a heart attack secondary to complications from diabetes at age 76. He is interred at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.
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- August 1, 2021
- World Scout Scarf Day 2021
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Nobody was more proud to be a cub scout than me.
I recall back in Aragona Village at Virginia Beach those meetings conducted by my mother and a few of her cohorts in the 'Den Mother' section of the organization. It was a blissful time and I don't remember when it all ended ...
Only that I miss the carefree fun nature of those days even now.
It was a more innocent time when I knew little about the evil left and how they would eventually invade, endanger, and emperil scouting with this woke notion that girls should be permitted membership in the Boy Scouts. It is no longer the organization I once cherished.
World Scout Scarf Day is held internationally on August 1.
It is a time for all active and former scouts to wear their scout scarfs in public in the name of the "Spirit of Scouting".
The date of the event corresponds to the formation of the very first Scout Camp on Brownsea Island in 1907.
The scarf is a symbol of the goal of scouting to leave the world as a bit better a place than we had found it.
This, of course is lost on the leftists who choose to ruin everything they can in that contrary illogical nothingness and utter stupidity they continually pursue.
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- July 31, 2021
- August 2021 is upon us
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Today is the last day of July. August is upon us.
The hot weather characteristics of this time of year has been ramping up over the past few weeks and it's what my late friend Jerry Landry characterized as 'oppressively hot' so many times while embarking on liberty during our time in the Navy.
The Old Farmer's Almanac reports that temperatures and precipitation will be below average while the heat and humidity will remain up there. The humidity lends itself to that sensation of higher temperatures anyway.
Personally, I stopped trying to be a weather warrior and I am quite content to retire to the conditioned environment of my three ton HVAC which cools quite well, particularly in the presence of my brand new 4500 sq ft dehumidifier.
Suffice it to say I won't be purusing a lot of activity though there are many things I could and should be doing.
I'm getting way too old for the pursuit of heatstroke. I will attempt to maintain hydration and avoid the brunt of the hottest month of Summer !
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- July 30, 2021
- Arnold Schwarzenegger seen better days
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I once thought Arnold Schwarzenegger to be the epitome of public personalities with his bodybuilding, political success, and movie career. Since then revelations of infidelity and some of his public flippance in the political arena has turned me off to him ... though I still can be persuaded to see yet another terminator movie without much cajoling.
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger was born July 30, 1947 in Thal, Austria. He is a retired bodybuilder, actor, producer, businessman, and former politician who served as the 38th governor of California from 2003 to 2011.
As of 2021, he is the most recent Republican governor of California the thought of which really doesn't thrill me at all.
He was Chairman of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports from January 22, 1990 through May 27, 1993 working under two presidential administrations.
He began lifting weights at the age of 15 and won Mr Universe at 20. He is author of many books and articles on the subject of body building.
His acting career began with Conan the Barbarian in 1982 and a slew of performances as various iterations of The Terminator — which was my personal favorite for a very long time. He also did Predator in 1987, Total Recall in 1990, True Lies in 1994, a couple of fluff pieces like Twins in 1988 and Kindergarten Cop in 1990, Junior in 1994, and Red Heat, which I enjoyed as well in 1988. Danko. You're welcome. Indeed.
He founded a film production company called Oak Productions likely in homage to his nickname 'The Austrian Oak' from his body building days.
He married Maria Shriver but they separated in 2011 following admission of fathering a child with their housemaid in 1997. Their divorce became final in 2017. Alas, just another Hollywood slut who can't be faithful to anything except those base instincts which surface in many of us.
Suffice it to say I was a big fan but now I have limited enjoyment of his work and I'm not swooft regarding his personal life — not that it's any of my concern. I suppose that matter should rightly remain between Mr Schwarzenegger and Ms Shriver. Sargent and Eunice would likely be appalled.
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- July 29, 2021
- International Tiger Day 2021
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I have an aversion to big cats when they're up close and personal.
It all stems from a visit to the local zoo when a lioness in an enclosure behind a moat got rowdy looking at me in my brand-new large bulky khaki colored down filled overcoat then began roaring loudly and frequently — catching the attention of both the friends with whom I arrived and those standing around; all of whom appeared highly amused.
It was as though the lioness had encountered a wildebeest and dinner was served ...
I never returned to the zoo after this incident.
Today is Global Tiger Day aka International Tiger Day.
It is held annually each 29th of July under the auspices of the Saint Petersburg Tiger Summit in Russia and is a vehicle to raise public awareness of tiger conservation and those associated issues.
I am always a proponent of protecting the natural habitats of creatures in the wild and I am particularly abhorrent to those individuals who would enter and kill these majestic animals in the name of profit.
Sometimes we act as though we 'own' everything on the planet when we do not.
I believe in 'live and let live' by and large and would never condone poaching of any creature minding it's own business of living in it's own habitat.
I simply don't understand where some persons (and jurisdictions) get off. Anything for a buck including extinction of species appears to be the order of the day.
However, all of this being said I would just as soon not be cat food either if you don't mind horribly.
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- July 28, 2021
- Thomas Cromwell executed in 1540
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On this day in 1540 The Right Honourable Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex was murdered by King Henry VIII ... who had a penchant for executing people on trumped up charges as well as mere whims. The cruel monarch lived to regret killing his friend after retrospect convinced him that the advice and support of Cromwell was more important than any political matter his debauched court could contrive.
Cromwell was a proponent of the English Reformation and he was instrumental in engineering various maneuvers involving the kings marriages. He made many enemies during his heyday. The beginning of the end for him was arranging the king's marriage to the homely (depending mostly on the portrait viewed) German princess Anne of Cleves, who Henry VIII ultimately found repulsive to the point of annulment after six months.
Cromwell was arraigned under a bill of attainder and executed for treason and heresy on Tower Hill on July 28, 1540. The king later expressed regret at the loss of his chief minister. Henry soon realised the enormity of his mistake in having such an able and loyal minister put to death.
Having taken Cromwell for granted all those years he suddenly found himself without the brilliant and able administrator that he had made matters of state look easy. That bitter realization that none around could even approach Cromwell’s ability to take care of business effectively.
Henry even transferred blame to his ministers saying that "the light pretexts and false accusations" they made caused him to to have the most faithful servant he had ever had put to death.
Such is the nature of power gone mad. Henry VIII grew from a handsome witty and capable young royal to become a cruel self-serving despotic tyrant and murderer without redeeming virtue. So much for the Tudors.
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- July 27, 2021
- Too much IP Geolocation appears intentionally FAULTY
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IP Geolocation is supposedly a system by which your geographic location is determined by your IP address. Theoretically, Internet Protocol geolocation is software supposedly capable of deducing the geographic position of a device connected to the Internet.
However, for this to work that methodology by which the IP address is interpolated must be sound. This is where the individuals doing the work make or break the process.
HOWEVER, search engines obviously don't feel the need to get the thing right because increasingly I find myself being placed in foreign lands based on their interpretation of IP geolocation ...
For example, I live in West Columbia, South Carolina while google places me in Raleigh, North Carolina and all of their recommendations are oriented 240 miles to the North and are decidedly less than useful to me personally.
Why bother ?
The IP Geolocation which implements whois data gets it right. The idiots extrapolating subnets on their own don't. I have raised concerns with the search engine shitbirds to no avail.
I engage numerous IP geolocation sites and they get everything correctly because they correlate their database to the whois data for the address(es) in question. When my CIDR range is in the mix they come up with my name, address, phone number, and everything else associated with my uplink provider and registrar records of my network.
While I feel sure that the assholes at google and bing are simply outsourcing the technology and using whatever is provided, when you take it upon yourself to specify technological assumptions you need to at least ATTEMPT the due diligence to make sure your stupid data is correct lest you lose credibility.
Besides, it renders all the shopping and ad mess they value so highly a moot point when it's all too far away and irrelevant to be practical.
These stupid search engines don't care if their data is correct. Fake news. Fake data. It's all bull anymore.
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- July 26, 2021
- Some of us like purity
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noun: purity
pu·ri·ty
/ˈpyo͝orədē/
Freedom from adulteration or contamination; as in
"the purity of our drinking water"
My little sweet red headed girl gave me a Brita filter pitcher some time back. I was using it at work up until the time they ran me off. It was among my possessions in the box I received a week or so after I left work.
Nowadays I use it each morning to fill the coffee pot for my daily 2 cups which I drink from my pint bone china mug ...
I utilize a distiller for my drinking water. I find I don't trust tap water nor do I care for the taste. If I could make my ice with distilled water I would, but it gets produced in the freezer by the installed icemaker which is attached to tap water.
Needless to say, my ice consumption is little to none with my preference being tepid drinking water. I usually dump the ice maker bin in the yard once a day or so ... but it is a hoss, producing mass quantities of ice cubes — which occasionally become in high demand during those occasional visits by thirsty visitors.
So I have distilled water filtered one last time by the Brita filter installed in the pitcher. I would think that this makes for pretty doggone pure water for that coffee with which I jack myself up each morning around yon 6 am.
Thank you, poopsie.
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- July 25, 2021
- Culinarians Day 2021
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I have long been a consumate eater of foodstuffs. My enjoyment of food has resulted in both corpulence and the cultivation of taste and tolerance.
There was a time when I would not even think of eating at a close in gathering of strangers because I simply did not care for the proximity. However, the sushi bar has desensitized me to awkward sociality in the name of interaction.
The sushi bar is about community.
July 25 brings us Culinarians Day, a time to celebrate chefs and cooks.
At this time it is appropriate to mention my friend Ryo Watanabe who I have known for a very long time and serves me sushi at his restaurant in St Andrews off Jamil Road ... Inakaya Watanabe.
Sushi is a rice preparation with vinegar and various raw or cooked seafood or vegetables.
I have so many favorites it would be impossible to list them all.
I eat two different foods at the sushi bar.
Nigiri sushi which is formed from a small ball of rice garnished with various seafood or vegetables.
Sashimi which consists of slices of raw fish consumed in a similar manner to sushi.
When I arrive at the bar I order my meal then await the feast.
I am pretty much a sushi eating machine and consume larger orders than a mere mortal customer.
I enjoy my forays into the raw and cooked delacacies Mr Ryo will place before me and I admit to not getting out there to eat as much as I might like.
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- July 24, 2021
- Hulda Hoehn Crooks scaled Mount Fuji in 1987
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When I was discharged from the Navy I engaged a running program which was vastly successful. My athletic days ended when I returned from Southern California in the early 1980s. There I ate chicken breast with pineapple and ran every day. Here I resumed smoking cigarettes and eating fried chicken and laying around. The stressors associated with early career and ambitions simply outdid me.
Athleticism not withstanding, I was able to eek out a career after a lot of false startups and misdirected efforts. Others on the planet have been much more athletically successful than I ever was ... though I did envision myself as this 'jock' at different times in my life. My sports career just never materialized in that reality into which I found myself immersed.
On this day in 1987, Hulda Crooks climbed Mount Fujiyama in Japan. She was 91 years old and became the oldest person to climb the highest peak in Japan.
Hulda Hoehn was born in Saskatchewan, Canada to a farming couple who had 18 children on May 19, 1896. She passed away on November 23, 1997. She was an American mountaineer and came to be known as "Grandma Whitney" among her climbing cohorts.
She climed the 14,505-foot Mount Whitney some 23 times between the ages of 65 and 91. During this period she had climed 97 other peaks.
She enrolled at Pacific Union College north of San Francisco at age 18 and later at Loma Linda University where she met and married Dr Samuel Crooks. She did not begin climbing til 1950, after the death of her husband. He had encouraged her to start after she suffered a bout of pneumonia.
On July 24, 1987, at the age of 91, she became the oldest woman to climb Mount Fujiyama in Japan.
She hiked the entire 212 mile John Muir Trail incrementally over a five year span.
Hulda Crooks was a long-time resident of Loma Linda, California. She often spent time with children in the community, encouraging them to appreciate nature and stay active. In 1990 the peak Day Needle in the Mount Whitney range was renamed Crooks Peak in her honor. In 1991 Hulda Crooks Park below the south hills at Loma Linda was dedicated.
She died in 1997, aged 101.
Old, but not obsolete.
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- July 23, 2021
- First Social Security
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I received my first social security check today. Actually, it was a direct deposit because I could not opt for an actual paper check, though I did try.
Anyway, it arrived on the day they said I would get it and is for the amount they said it would be.
It is appropriate to mention the fact that for all the bellyaching I do regarding teaching at the local technical college they are indeed responsible for this substantial addition to my lifestyle.
Giving me the ability to make bank via all the extra work they gave me for some 20 odd years — with those returns on that monthly FICA percentage deduction has made all the difference in my present day income.
America the Beautiful
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
···
O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
Lyrics by Katharine Lee Bates
Melody by Samuel Ward
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- July 22, 2021
- The ghost in me
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I caught a blast from the past the other day in a random sampling of mpeg music on my NAS server. It was The Ghost in You by The Psychedelic Furs — one of those groups I listened to regularly while employed on the West coast in the very early 1980s.
It took me back to a place and time I didn't really enjoy, but it made me from a "stand on your own skills" perspective. There I learned to take mincomputers apart and put them back together ... and they still operated well.
I became skilled with single and multiuser operating systems, migrated to microcomputers and CP/M — and wouldn't see MS-DOS for several more years.
The Psychedelic Furs are a post punk group from Great Britain who were founded in 1977 London. I was still in the Navy at that time and actually, in Portsmouth and taking trips to London concurrently with their startup.
We didn't encounter each other in person. I have been a fan of their recordings, however. They have offerings which span the gamut of art rock though new wave and even hard rock.
I first heard them being played in Tower Records on Rockfield BL in what was then El Toro ... but is now called Lake Forest, California. It was also my first encounter with mens haircuts featuring blonde pates and black sidewalls trimmed with safety pins and razor blades shudders.
My street address there was on Lake Forest Drive. The road remains but now Lake Forest is also the whole bloody town.
After a goodly hiatus, The Psychedelic Furs released a studio album titled Made of Rain which was their first such release in 30 some odd years.
It's amazing how resilient some of us are, eh sweet Elizabeth from the green grocer ?
The Ghost In You
A man in my shoes runs a light
And all the papers lied tonight
But falling over you
Is the news of the day
Angels fall like rain
And love, love, love
Is all of heaven away (Love, love, love, love, love)
Inside you the time moves and she don't fade
The ghost in you, she don't fade
Inside you the time moves and she don't fade
A race is on, I'm on your side
And here in you, my engines die
I'm in a mood for you
Or running away
Stars come down in you
And love, love, love
You can't give it away (Love, love, love, love, love)
Inside you the time moves and she don't fade
The ghost in you, she don't fade
Inside you the time moves and she don't fade
Don't you go, it makes no sense
When all your talk and supermen
Just take away the time
And get in the way
Ain't it just like rain?
And love, love, love
Is only heaven away (Love, love, love, love, love)
Inside you the time moves and she don't fade
The ghost in you, she don't fade
Inside you the time moves and she don't fade
The ghost in you, she don't fade
Inside you the time moves and she don't fade
The ghost in you, she don't fade
Inside you the time moves
Lyrics by Richard Butler and Timothy George Butler
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