The Great Ambiguity

We can only guess that as the Great Recession of 2007-2009 fades into memory, that things seem to resist doing well - economically of I would say even deeper, philosophically. it seems as though the grand Experiment failed ... now what?

So things are great, wonderful, and living in paradise, yet going to heck at the same time. The environment is clean, healthy, and getting better, yet we live in a world of trash and ones of the largest oil spills ever. We want to "take back the USA" but don't have a clue how to do that, other than kicking foreigners out of our borders.

Ambiguity is prevalent everywhere one looks. We hate taxes or the prospect of raising taxes, so we'll call them "fees" and jack up all the fees one can find - a fee is just a tax in sheep's clothing. For example, the Cameron County Parks want to jack up beach fees from 3 to 4 dollars to 12 dollars, and incredible increase of 300 to 400 percent!

Back in the late 60s through the 90s, we fought over matter of high principle, from the Hippie Revolution to the protests about the Iraq War. But now it is the Great Blah, a time of stasis and contradiction, and death by a thousand little fees. We simply don't know what to think. I ponder the notion, and have no answers.

Wow is this summer or what?

Overnight Partly Cloudy Lo 83 °F

Thursday Isolated Showers Hi 92 °F

Thursday Night Partly Cloudy Lo 82 °F

Friday Mostly Sunny Hi 89 °F

Friday Night Mostly Clear Lo 83 °F

Saturday Mostly Sunny Hi 89 °F

Saturday Night Mostly Clear Lo 83 °F

Sunday Mostly Sunny Hi 88 °F

Sunday Night Mostly Clear Lo 82 °F

Her Eyes

Those far away green eyes
Staring as if through me
Beckoning, as if a dare
But ready to smack me down
The hint of a smile
That "come hither" expression that only a man knows
Suggesting good times like you've never experienced
The arch of an eyebrow
A quick blink of those far away eyes
And I swear, a wink!
Gosh I wish my dog wouldn't stare at me like that

Screw You, Dell

In this day and age of computers in which we seem so dependent, I was amazed when my hard drive on the desktop crashed last month. Boy what a bullshit runaround that was! So a week or so later when I finally got my stuff back together I called my dad up in Maine. He reported that Dell sold millions of laptops and desktops fully knowing that the hard drives would fail, due to a power control issue with the disk controllers. Unfortunately, this is not a big issue on the blogs these days, but Dell owes me several grand now.

But screw them, and I'm thinking about shopping with somebody else. Come to think of it, two or two laptops malfunctioned as well. After being a faithful customer for years, I feel like I should "get even" but I don't have the 10 grand to sue the retards.

This isn't something about a computer virus or some BS like that. It's called a "planned hardware malfunction right after the warranty expires." Do you now how hard that is to recover when you're a small business? All those groovy programs must be downloaded again and if you don't have the license key, well, you're going to have to pay again! True, some where free but most programs cost between $30 and $7,000 dollars. You didn't read that wrong, that's seven thousand dollars. I was able to hack that expensive program but that's not right!

Living on "cracked" licenses really sucks and I hate that. I've been paying my way since 1994 when I started this computer piddling. I think the government should sue the crap out of Dell for having substandard equipment because otherwise, I had a perfectly good system with an expensive surge protector, firewall router, and the top of the line stuff (for a Micro-Shaft Computer anyways). So now my PC is always barking at me 20 ways like "your copy of this software is not genuine."

It's OK and I so get to rant, but in this dang Great Recession I didn't need to be spending thousands of dollars on software because of some company THAT KNEW THEY HAD DEFECTIVE PARTS.

Summertime Blues

Been working hard the last month or two, and am finally coming up for air. Sure beats worrying about going broke! Been having a little fun although not as much fishing as I'd like. For a while the surf was good but now it's pretty flat, although hot as Hades in the afternoon.

Hard to believe that August is already upon us, and that the summer trade will soon end and turn us back into a ghost town - which suits me fine although the locals need the booty because things got a little slow because of Hurricane Alex. The TIFT has passed and today is the Lady's Kingfish Tournament.

The garden did well on its first crop, although the tomatoes died off and I pulled a bunch up after Hurricane Alex. We now have some okra and various melons coming along - don't ask what kind of melons because we eat one up and throw the seeds into the garden! No telling if it's a watermelon or a butternut squash until they fruit ... I hope they don't cross pollinate. I hope the honeydew and cantaloupe does good. When it gets cooler, back to fall tomatoes & peppers and then herbs and onions.

The fam seems to be doing well, with kids moving about - Samantha left last month for Austin. The oil gusher off Louisiana has been plugged, which is good news for my brother in Biloxi. Hard to keep up with everything but no bad news, anyway. Hope y'all are doing well, too.