Stuff you never asked for

 Geronimo and his band of Apaches surrendered in 1886. The US fought various wars with the plains tribes throughout the latter part of the 19th Century, culminating in the Great Sioux Uprising of 1890. Prior Indian wars raged through the East and Midwest in the early days of the nation. Those skirmishes and wars are the lore of American history texts. 

Somehow, the longest and most expensive Indian war is rarely mentioned. That would be the Seminole Wars fought over three decades and during seven presidential administrations. The Presidents, commanders and leaders of US troops in the Seminole Wars is a basic Who’s Who of 19th Century politicians and military leaders including Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison,  John Tyler, Winfield Scott, Zachary Taylor, and more. 

Thursday Deep Thought

One could make the argument that Skittles are merely semi-crunchy jelly beans. 

I’m not surprised at all

Imagine hating the president so much you actually wish for bad things to befall the US military. 

It is not really hard to imagine, the Democrats have taken this stance every time a Republican is in office since 1968. 

*spit*

A good time was had

 I’m back from a great week in sunny (most of the time) Florida. Sunny and 85 is replaced with cloudy, windy, and freeze warnings. Sigh.

I have about 100 emails to deal with along with my normal Monday reports. Sigh, sigh. And I even worked during the holiday. 

I know, I have no right to complain after taking a vacation. I would show you a picture, but Google will not let me post pictures or music on my phone. So it goes. 

Life Choices

 I went to grab some lunch yesterday. As I was coming down a long exit ramp from the interstate I saw a panhandler in a wheelchair by the left turn lane. He looked around, stood, and stretched. He walked around the chair, saw me coming and scrambled back to his seat like he was a finalist in high stakes professional musical chairs. 

I laughed and turned right. That is why I never give money to those clowns. 

Somewhere in the archives is the story of the panhandler in some place who set up camp with a “Will work for Food” sign across from a Wendy’s. Wendy’s was advertising “help wanted “. 

Liftoff

As a kid it was always a big deal when we sent intrepid astronauts into space. If it happened during school hours a TV was wheeled into the classroom so we could watch the launch or the splashdown. 

On a beautiful July day in 1969 I was in the house sitting at apt attention watching the fuzzy image of man walking the moon. 

I watched in shock as Challenger’s pieces arced across the sky. 

Yesterday I watched brave souls strapped to a rocket once again, after nearly a lifetime, head into space. 

This is a great thing. I cannot tell you why, but it is. 

I may have find The Right Stuff and watch it again. 

May God keep them safe.

I have no words

 Yeah, I’m still alive and well. 

I have nothing of note to say. I know, that never stopped me before, but it has now. 

Buy my book if you want to read my words. 

Get off the road

 If you are going to drive in the highway use your cruise control. I don’t care what you think, over the miles you cannot hold your speed steady. 

I’ve driven over a million miles. I am not exaggerating. I used to travel a lot. I cannot make the speedometer behave up and down hills and around curves over long distances. 

I am especially looking at the jerk in the red jeep Friday . Over the course of about 100 miles we passed each other 14 times. My speed never varied. I had the cruise locked at 78. 

And when it's time for leavin', I hope you'll understand

 You can never go wrong jammin' with the Allman Brothers.

Go Cubs Go

 

Getty images

Baseball! 

The Cubs are in first place, pending the outcome of today's season opener.

Only nine months until Christmas

 If you were curious, my neighbor down the street took down his Christmas lights last weekend. They had burned every night since before Thanksgiving. 

Kudos to him for keeping up the holiday spirit well beyond  any reasonable person in Mudsock. 

Put me in charge

 After the frequent government shutdown it is the policy of the government to provide the backpay for the essential workers who  soldier on despite no pay., as it should be. The non-essential drones who did not work - if I were king, it would suck to be you. That's the price you pay for the excellent government benefits. You knew the risk when you took the job. Private sector workers get laid off all of the time. Collect unemployment then go back when things reopen. 

The TSA workers refusing to work? Screw you. Use your vacation or sick time but no back pay. No work, no pay. 

This situation should not be. But you can't get paid if you didn't work. EOS.

Of course not

 Maybe the union representatives of the TSA should be calling the Democrats in Congress threatening to withhold support if they do not fund DHS. 

Of course not, the Union doesn't care about its members, and the Democrats don't either. 

There, i Said It

 I am certain the Devil really won. 

Another bad idea

 We had to quit producing the penny because it is too expensive to make coins. Somehow, the government thinks it is a good idea to design and develop a $1 coin with Trump's likeness. Yes, because we love to carry around pockets of heavy change, especially dollar coins that are similar to quarters. Let's ask Sakajawea about that. 

I'm not even going to get into the ego-maniacal need to put your own likeness on coinage.  Calvin Cooledge was a jerk for doing it too. 

Sorry, this is just another waste of time and tax money and the whole idea needs to be trashed pronto.

It was all dial-up

 This is my 8,755th post. It is not a nice round number like 8,700 or 8,800. It does represent a lot of words, sentences, and paragraphs about...stuff. 

On March 22, 2005. I was working in a house converted into an office building. I occupied a room on the top floor. I think there was a credit union downstairs. Some local government entity filled out the rest of the ground floor. The rooms to either side of my upstairs office were little studio apartments converted from bedrooms. My company was based in Italy and I was the only employee in the US. My task was to grow the business from almost nothing (I tripled the business in a little over three years). 

I had worked remotely at that point in my career for about eight years. That wasn't an issue. The problem was I had little to no contact with anyone in the company.  Our product offering was narrow, and you can only cold call the same potential customers so many times. I could only visit my existing customers so often. Frankly, I was bored. I had no one to talk to for large chunks of the week. I was expected to keep the international calls to the main plant to a minimum. Time zones and language would have made it difficult anyway, even if cost wasn't an issue. 

By random chance I discovered blogs. Grouchy Old Cripple led me to Velociman, who brought me to Gut Rumbles, and I was hooked. After a couple of months I thought "I have stories, I have opinions, I could do this." In college my professors said I was a competent writer. Why not? 

So on this date in 2005 I launched this piece o'crap blog. Was I goofing off from work? Yes, did I get my job done also? Yes.

It was my intention to shut down this hobby last year. Twenty years is a nice round number. But here we are at twenty-one and counting. I'm not quitting.  My posts may become more sporadic.  I find I have way fewer stories and a lot less opinions than I used to. Arguing politics on the internet doesn't interest me much these days. A big chunk of people are just plain wrong. Another large group is crazy. Quite a few more are, well, dumb as Hell. Those who do not fit those categories agree with me anyway. 

In my usual manner, here are a lot of words to say thanks for reading. I offer up an internet toast to the many blogs that have come and gone from my blog roll, to the internet friends I have made, to those who are no longer with us. Thanks for the entertainment.  Thanks for being there in good times and bad. This is a strange community,  but I sure enjoy it. 

Good News

 My almost fanatical aversion to blue foods is getting better. I was able to eat a whole bowl of Cap'n Crunch without picking out the blue Crunch berries. 

RIP Chuck

 

We know Chuck probably would've kicked Bruce's ass.

Its's great cinema anyway. 

No longer "when"

 

Exactly

A link worth reading

One of my top five movies ever.