how much things cost at the hospital

Hi,
back from the dead, a 2nd visit to the er, equally as fun as the first.
I got the bill for the first visit of 4 days:
$53,000 total.
Holy crap! you must have had all sorts of exotic surgeries, right?"
Nope. Just a cat scan and some Tylenol.
Here's the breakdown
CAT - $11,000
drugs - $12,000 (tylenol, saline, anti-nausea drip)
lab work for 4 blood draws: $16,000
Four nights in a room - $5,000

My recent fun with viral infections

Two weeks ago Friday, we were at the roller derby watching teams of girls fight and skate in circles. I started feeling kinda crappy and really knew something was wrong when I lost interest in drinking my 2nd beer. Late that night my temp was way over 100, and it was not from getting hot over the roller girls, I can assure you of that.

I sweated it out at home for a few days, figuring it was "just a virus". that's a phrase I shall never use loosely again. By Wednesday it was getting no better, with headaches, and sweating all over the furniture and just smelling bad in general. I went to my doctor and she said I had a virus, take 2 aspirin and call me in the morning. The next day i'm in an ambulance on the way to the ER. Now let explain how the 911 call thing works. No matter what you call for, you are going to get a really ugly ambulance (the lime green box), and two firetrucks full of young, fit, handsome paramedics that are all wearing cool black technical clothing like Jack Bauer wears in 24. We had a house full of these guys and it was fun for a brief period.

They bust me into the back doors of ER just like in the tv show ER. Amazing. The doctors had blood tests run in 10 minutes and immediately assigned me: a hospital staff doctor, an infectious disease specialist, an oncologist, and a gaggle of nurses. I don't know anything about blood tests, but mine must have come back real high in the "let's hit his max out of pocket" category.

This virus was a real ship destroyer that got sent into me and it took few prisoners. And those that managed to survive all got scurvy and died anyway.

I had an acute viral infection that resulted in 10 days of fever of 101-102ish, and complete exhaustion. Both the spleen and liver took direct hits from the destroyer and the liver is still doing repairs. But get this: on top of all this, at the same time I happen to have had a mild colon blockage ("helios" or something like that) that caused me immense displeasure through the duration of my hospital visit. The only reason they found it was because it showed up in the CAT scan they ran to check my organs. So I had this big bloated belly, no appetite, and constant mild nausea, and we all thought it was just because I was "real sick".

I lost 5 tee shirts during my visit at the hospital. A few times each night the fever sweats would get real bad and I'd wake up and have to change clothes. I'd throw the wet shirt on the floor and we did not notice until the last day that they had been collecting them with the towels for the hospital laundry. The fortunate part is that I am really cheap and buy tee shirts at CVS, 5 for 10 dollars.

The fever is all gone, but i essentially now have temporary hepatitis. The doctor thinks it will be a few weeks to fully recover. The complete and total bullshit part of this is that I have been now 2 weeks without a beer, and will be at least another week until I can enjoy a delicious malted beverage again.

gas flight over finland

Who Makes Movies?

Here is the intro to a movie i recently watched. each line represents an individual screen shot:
"United Artists...
"UK Film Council presents"
"BBC Films"
"A Revolution Film Production"
"United Artists Presents..."
"In association with the UK Film Council"
"A Revoluion Film Production"
"A Michael Winterbottom Film"
Frankly, i don't think that 99% of the country give's a rat's ass about who did what on getting a movie to a theater. We just want the film to roll and the movie to start. Do you eally think that somebody might say "hell no I'm not going to see 'Suicide Panda', those bastards are in association with the UK Film Councel!".
Well, i guess film-hipsters probably do. They are the ones that sit around at dinner parties saying things like "Oh, Sam Pakinpoo, my goodness what a great Casting Consultant. His best work was in that small film, I believe shot in 16mm, back in 1947 in Turkey." and other horseshit like that. These folks do their best to only yap about obscure foreign films.
I've decided that I don't lke The Godfather because for some reason they keep calling Vito Corelena "Don Corelona". In one scene one of the actos slipped and called him "The" Don. Nobody calls me "The William".

A slightly wispy softy short that i wrote during a hurricane

I’m sitting at my mother’s house, down near New Orleans, taking care of her during Gustav, and I can say it is an experience. Although the storm was only a category 2, which is not really a very powerful hurricane, it did substantial damage to the power grid, causing a majority of people to be without power for the entire time I was here. I am one of the lucky ones to have had a small generator that I brought with me- most folks did not have this luxury. It is quite strange to walk out in the street at night in total darkness and hear only the sound of generators here and there. Gas was of course in short supply with lines at the stations stretching literally a half a mile. What I find interesting is that by the time you get to the pump, you’ve burned a tank of gas. I’m not sure why people need so much gas, but they sure are willing to suffer for it-I guess because they know no other way. Some stores opened on generator power, letting in people in a controlled fashion. There were trucks handing out ice and some other supplies, and people were grateful for this or anything else. When “China Mart” opens, it is going to be a feeding frenzy like piranhas. Most people don’t know what to do if they can’t buy unnecessary plastic objects every few days.

I ran across lots of people here and there, and what I noticed most was the good mood and friendliness- laughing; total strangers discussing where to get things; what they had, and so forth.
When I arrived here, I started connecting a grid of extension cords all over the house for various things that could be powered by my small generator. Like the old show Green Acres, I found that you had to do certain combinations to keep from killing the generator. I became quite skilled at this activity. Microwave is a huge draw, next is the fridge, then the window unit AC (surprisingly), and so on down the line. My mom asked me every few hours if the cable TV was back on, and did I think the paper would run today. I realized that the elderly depend heavily on daily ritual and predictability. Her memory became terrible, which I found out later is not surprising during major changes in their lives.
The humidity was oppressive- any activity outside resulted in soaked clothes. A shower did little to help since once you dried off you immediately begin to sweat again. Without a washing machine, I ran out of clothes rather quickly and learned about not having a fresh set of clothes each morning as we have all become so dependent on. I would pick the “cleanest pair” of clothes each morning.
But here is the most eye opening thing: I was exhausted due to constant chores- re-routing power to this and that; keeping the generator full; figuring out what we could eat; making sure my mom had a fan and so on. Then it occurred to me what the problem was: I was trying to maintain a “normal” way of life. A life in which people have lived in charmed decades where cheap, abundant electricity and gas is assumed. Every hour or two, my mom would say, “If the power would just! come! back! on!” with an exhausted voice. She, like others, is totally dependent on television, kitchen appliances, lights, air conditioning, and so on.

The biggest problem was boredom. We’ve become completely reliant on computers, TV, radio, video games, texting, blackberries, microwaves, electric stoves, and so on. I’m told Japanese teenage girls typically have two cell phones, which they use at the same time. Take all this away and we have nothing to do. You can only work so many jigsaw puzzles
.
I asked my mother, now 82 years old, what they did in her early years with no electricity. "Were you bored?"“Heck no!” she answered. Her father worked until sundown, put up the mules and horses, cleaned up, ate a big meal, read a little, and went to bed. Her mother was busy full time preparing foods, tending to the garden, canning vegetables and peaches, and doing all the laundry by hand. She too had little time for boredom. My mother went to school, then did many chores until dark, did homework by the light of a kerosene lamp and went to bed. She told me all these things with a smile, I could tell it was a good time for her, I guess when you went to bed your body let you know your accomplishments of the day. There was no obesity because of the amount of work and healthy meals. Her father ate huge, and I mean huge meals, and was thin and well toned. I realize this is all well known (and boring to most), but I guess it was special for me to hear it firsthand.

Consider the stark comparison to our life today- the suburbanites I know live in 4,000 sq foot houses with 6 bedrooms, the kids live in their rooms and play video games. The house is so big I suspect it is difficult to have a family unit. They are often overweight and have regular health issues, thanks to Papa John’s Pizza, and hot pockets. The parents work and commute long distances, work long hours, and have little time in the evening for relaxing.

I recently read a book about a graduate student that decided to live at a Mennonite community for a year, I believe as a school project. The one part of the book that stuck with me was regarding work vs. free time. The student worked in the fields each day with the other men, who worked slowly and stopped to weave stories and jokes rather often. They usually worked until sundown. The grad student would do calculations and such and night, and one day gathered the men together for a discussion. He laid out a plan that would easily allow them to finish work by noon. “Well, what are we going to do the rest of the day?” they replied. The student was stunned. It quickly became clear that the men do not differentiate between work and pleasure- they make their work their pleasure and thus see “getting off work” as an end to their social day. The men do not work their fields separately- they all work at Jon’s place and then go work at Fred’s, and so on. A great deal of people now see work as something they are forced to do so get off as soon as possible so they can go home and… watch American Idol and eat hot pockets.

I grew up in a family of six in a 1,000 square foot house. We got to know each other pretty well and learned patience and relationship skills.

I find it interesting that it takes a hurricane and a week or so with no power to generate all these thoughts.

I can only imagine the hardship endured by those affected by Katrina. My mother and I are in living in luxury right now in comparison.

“If the power would just come back on…”

Crazy Shit we did growing up

buck buck
In 5th grade, we occasionally played a game during lunch known as "buck buck". Here's the drill: We would all line up about 20 feet from a pine tree. the first person in line would go up and bend at the waist and hug the tree. The next kid in line would then run toward the tree as fast as possible and at the last second, jump up and land on the back of the tree hugger. He would then slide down and grab on to his waist bent over as well. Each person in line would then repeat this, but trying to jump as far up the line landing on the back of the pack toward the tree as possible. This continued until everyone had jumped. We'd then repeat this until our backs were killing us.

Another great game was "knuckles".
The rules were simple. Two kids would draw cards from a deck. The kid with the lowest card lost. The winner would then get the priviledge of rapping the edge of the deck against the knuckles of the loser. The number of raps was the card that the loser had, with face cards being 10. Now, to inflict maximum damage to the skin of the loser, you had to hold the deck just right. You hold the deck in your hand like you were shaking hands with somebody, with the card deck sticking out the front. the loser would make a fist with knuckles toward the winner. The winner would then swing the deck down with the edge of the deck just grazing the knuckles, with the hopes that it would remove skin. We would return to class with bleeding hands, but we'd cover them up so the teacher would not know what we had been doing.

Rough, Tough, and Tumble.
Now this was the funnest game ever.
It was roughly football, but with these rules.
1. Every man for himself.
2. The goal was to advance to the goal line, scoring a point.
3. Who ever was "it" would line up at the line of scrimmage and throw the ball back over his head toward the rest of the kids who were all gathered in the backfield, a few yards back. The kid that got the ball would then take off toward the goal line. Sounds simple until you realize that there were no rules about contact. The other dozen kids could kick, punch, grab, or any other method necessary to stop the person with the ball. You would go down with 12 people piled on you, all trying to get the ball. Who ever got the ball was then "it". Play repeats until somebody got a goal. We would return to class completely exhausted, beat up, dirty, and usually with some sort of clothing damage. and usually with a mild headache.
Please compare this to today's "sport" of soccer where kids run around in 100 dollar outfits never even breaking a sweat and never touching another human. With their parents on the sidelines all sitting in lawn chairs yelling at the kids, coaches, and referees about how their kid is not getting enough play time.

rolls in window
On the way back from the cafeteria, we passed the music building (remember that we ate at the college cafeteria). There was always this one window open up on the 2nd floor. So we started saving our rolls ("bricks" as we called them) so when passing the building, we would stop and hurl them at the window. we always got 2 or 3 in there. We figured it was some janitor's closet, and how we came upon that decision i have no idea. It was when i started collage there, majoring in music, that I finally found out what that room was. It was the office of our top music professor. he has perfect pitch and a degree from the Julliard school of music, quite possibly the most prestigious music school in the country.

food delight
We used to create culinary masterpieces in the lunchroom with our leftovers from lunch. Once I made this fantastic "Upside-down Pineapple Cake with Mashed Potatoes and Peas". A teacher wandered by and made me eat the whole thing. It was disgusting, but not as disgusting as the teacher. Bastard.

floating table suspended for 8 days but kept up on school work.
One day at lunch there were 8 of us sitting at our regular table when we just started lifting the table up with our knees. We quickly discovered that if we worked as a team we could get our trays to start sliding up and down the table like a wave. Well, wouldn't you know it, one of the teachers came along and ruined our fun. For some reason, they singled me out as the ringleader and suspended me for EIGHT DAYS. I've never heard of anybody being suspended for more than 3 days. But the funny part was that they let me take my school work home so i could keep up with the class. So I got an 8 day vacation.
peed out window
crowd the door

Gilligan's ISland
Me and the other boys once sat down and attempted to name every gilligan's island episode. we came up with 101. Wikipedia claims there were 98. so we did pretty good if you ask me.

miss kemp paddles
In 9th grade, me and Randall had this small roundish woman for algebra. She was really sweet and a good teacher. She also gave out "licks" with a paddle for poor behavior. She couldn't hit that hard so me and Randall began a contest on who could take the most licks. We would ask Mrs. Kemp for licks at the end of class, in front of the whole class. Randall finally won with 35 in a row.

safety glasses, 14 pair
One time our 8th grade teacher (Mrs. Hyde, the one that smoked her chaulk one time) came in class and Randall was wearing 14 pairs of safety glasses.

jumped the railroad tracks

saw holy grail 27 times

traded vodka for naked lady cards
When I was in about 5th grade or so, some kid brough a deck of "naked lady cards" to school. they were pretty tame, but boy did they get us going. I wanted some and the kid told me that if I brought some vodka , he would gtrade
painted on water tower
Me, my brother, and ricky lived across the street from a big huge water tower. Once our friend Gregg found a cassette tape where he said "I tried calling Ch-Charles, mom". I guess somebody in the room had this tape running while Gregg was talking to him mom. Anyway, one night me and Brian climbed the tower with a gallon of paint and painted on the side in 6 foot tall letters "I tried calling Ch-Charles, mom". Gregg thought this was pretty funny, but we did not get the reaction we had hoped for. It stayed on the tower for like, a year.

flush cans down drain
When in about 5th grade, we were outside next to the building and there were a couple of teachers nearby that were bored and thus watching our activities. they noticed that we were all hovered together looking intentely at something on the ground. then one of us would run inside, then reappear a moment later, scrambling to get back to the gang. curiosity got the best of these teachers so they came up to see what the heck was going on. We were gathered around a cleanout trap in the sewer line watching various objects fly by in the pipe as we took turns flushing them down the toilet. The teachers were faciniated and gave no beatings or anything.

Putty
We went to school in a pretty old building, and the windows were starting to fall out because all the putty had dried up that holds the glass in place. They hired a painting crew to come out and re-putty all the windows (probably a couple of hundred). Well, me and the gang thought this fresh putty was really cool to make things out of, so we went around the building peeling off huge pieces of putty off the windows. Mrs. Clark came along and made the bust. She marched us all to the principle's office, and we were all hiding our balls of putty behind our backs, thinking that he wouldn't see them or something. MRs. Clark said "put on the desk. Be careful what you ask for.... We plopped down a half a dozen basket ball sized balls of putty. It made a mound on the desk the size of a ottoman. We had to all chip in and pay for the repairs.


smoking in the attic
Like many boys, Randall and I started fooling around with cigs in about 6th (roughly). We would buy a pack of Marlboros (back then slore owners could care less who bought smokes), climb up in his attic and light up. We would smoke one after another until the entire pack was gone. Once we had this great idea of trying to smoke an entire pack all at once. We rubber-banded 20 cigs together in a bundle and fired it up. This thing was like torch, bellowing smoke out the tail end. We took a few hits and decided that this adventure was not nearly as fun as we had anticipated.

to do...
bikes into rack
ride the bushes
wrestling

My college roomate "Kubota"

I only stayed in the dorm one semester; my dad wanted me to have that experience. I went to college in the same town I grew up in, as a matter of fact, my parents house is about 4 blocks from the college.
So it is the beginning of the semester and I am just sitting around in the dorm room wasting time, when somebody knocks on the door. "Hi! I am Kubota", said a small Japanese man standing there with an armload of whatever. His actual name is "Yoshinori Kubota, but he said everyone just calls him Kubota because they can't say Yoshinori right. I called him Yoshi. This guy was so cool. When sleeping, he would lay on his back with his arms at his side, and never move during the night. He put his alarm clock right on the bed and never knocked it over. In stark contrast, I would wake up across the bed with the sheets all over the floor. it looked like wild banshees had slept in my bed after drinking coffee.
Kubota was a really jolly sort of fellow and always wanted to go out with me to the bars. He said he learned a lot of culture this way. Well, thanks to my drinking habit, he got a LOT of culture. I would teach him all the good cusswords and bar slang, and he said after a while that I was his "real" english teacher. Kubota was getting a degree in english education so he could go back to Japan and teach.
He never got the cussing quite right. He would say things like "I hate Millican, he is a shit fuck ass!!".
Yoshi taught me the real way to eat ramen noodles. We would get the square packs, not the ones in the bowl. He put the square of noodles in the bowl of hot water and eat it like a steak, not breaking it up.
One night after getting all cooked downtown, we got back to the room starving to death. Onward to the corner store for a frozen pizza. We walked to my parents house at 2:30 in the morning, fired up the oven, and commenced cooking. I guess we were not quiet enough because in walks my dad, with a puzzled look on his face. I guess he was not expecting to see a small Japanese man bent down sliding a pizza into his oven in the middle of the night. Anyway, my dad was cool and let us eat it right there at the table.

"Why can't we be like the Waltons?"

My dad used to pull the Walton-guilt out all the time. We were totally dysfunctional, just like most families back in the 60s/70s. Me and my brothers fought constantly, my mom drank Gallo wine by the gallon to stay sane, and my dad watched sitcoms to escape reality.
The reason we could not be like the Waltons is because it is a stupid TV show.
That show was dripping with wholesomeness and although there were certainly families like that, i would say they constitute about .000001% of the population.
What about that wonderful Brady Bunch? Gosh darn, were they not as cute as shit?
My dad's favorite shows was All in the Family, and he looked a lot like Archie Bunker.

My first 8 years of school

First Grade - mrs. shelton.
Being 6 at the time, I don't remember much about first grade, but i do remember getting whipped by her one time. She used a "bolo paddle", you know, the thing with the rubber ball and elastic band stapled to the paddle. Of course you had to spice up the story to your friends by saying that the "staple was still in it". Speaking of bolo paddles, once I bought one to take on a long distance gas balloon flight so me and Brian would have something to kill the boredom. My mom said "Give me that thing and I'll show you how it works". well, at 75 years old, I had my reservations about my mother's ability to control a ball flying around in the air, but in no time flat she had that ball rapping away against the paddle. She had this weird stance with her right hand doing the paddle work and her left hand firmly on her hip, kinda with her hip kicked out a bit. "you have to have your hips just right to make it work" she told me. My mom inched up a few notches on my "cool people" list after this demonstration.

Second Grade - Mrs. Gunn
She was a nice enough lady, but she had two rather annoying habits.
1. When it was your birthday, she would put on a really heavy coat of bright red lipstick and give you a huge kiss on your forehead. we all hated that.
2. If you misbehaved in class, watch out. she'd roll up one of your pants legs and go to work on your calf with a ruler. This hurts a LOT more than you think. give it a try.

Third Grade - mrs. i cant remember.
This was a rather unmemorable class except for the time that Douglas Kirk threw up in class. The whole class ran to the back of the room in horror. "You kids are horrible" she yelled. "You run away like wild cattle".
We used to throw sewing pins in the back of her dress when she was at the board.

Fourth grade - Mrs. starnes.
Mrs. starnes was nuts, and my so my dad sent me to another school for this year only.
One time i was talking during class and the teacher made me write 500 lines of "I will not talk in class". Another time I had to go up to the board and stick my nose in a circle she drew on the board. I had to stay there a long time.

Fifth grade - Mrs. Blount.
I had a crush on Mrs. Blount.

Sixth Grade - Mrs. Clark
Mrs. Clark was a great teacher, but had a rather substantial sweating problem.

Seventh Grade - Mr. "Asshole" Steward
I posted in another chapter ("Cruel People") about Mr. Stewart. A small gay man (of course we did not realize his sexual preference until a couple of decades later), that seemed friendly, but would whip the living shit out of us for minor infractions. Another rather annoying habit of his was to humiliate anybody that was caught reading a book during class instead of listening to the lecture. When he saw somebody engrossed in a book, he would stop talking and very quietly have everybody slowly gather around this person. Now, you might think that the victim would notice the lack of talking and movement around them, but trust me, when you are consumed in a book, you don't know the rest of the world exists. So anyway, everybody would stand around this person until they finally woke up and looked around. At this point everybody would laugh at them, led by Mr. Asshole.

Eighth Grade - Mrs. Hyde
Mrs. Hyde was a big ol' woman, but reasonably pleasant. She was probably 6'3". She was also an alcoholic and heavy smoker. Once while lecturing, she tried to take a drag off her chalk stick. This was totally cool to us. We talked about that for a week. She used to disappear several times during the day, for reasons not understood to us at that time, but later we realized that it was for smoking and sneaking a shot of Jim Beam. I think Eighth grade might have been the last year of the "Ditto Machine". Any of you over 45 will remember the sweet smell of the purple ink produced on the pages run through the copy machine of that era. That stuff smelled great, and I bet you dollars to donuts it gave us a great buzz that we did not even realize. It was in this grade that my best friend Randall and I achieved the record for wearing the most number of safety glasses at once; 14. You don't think much of that? Ok, butthead, you try to put on 14 pairs of glasses at once.

Cruel People

In 7th grade our teacher Mr. Steward, a short gay man, wielded a rather substantial board and would use it with great zest. After the first lick, you would gray out from the pain. The 2nd caused immediate crying and whimpering. The third did you in. It was a half an hour before you could get in good enough shape to return to class.
But this was not this man's most cruel act.
One day my friend Richard threw a paper ball at the trash can and missed. Mr. Stewart put the paper ball on the floor in the front of the room and made Richard get down on his knees and push it with his nose to the trash can. Richard was humiliated, begin sobbing and had to leave the room
Mr. Stewart, I sincerely hope you burn in hell. You bastard piece of worthless shit.

A long time ago I went with some friends to eat at this famous steak house west of Ft. Worth, "Cattle Barons". Boy did people get moist over that place, so we had to go. It was a big joint that smelled pretty good and looked fun. The four of us sat down and i noticed that there was a huge party of probably 100 people across the room at this infinitely long table. They had a few waiters and were just taking their order. A couple of minutes later our waiter took our order and we started our evening as usual. After about 30 minutes we asked the waiter where our food was, and he said he would check, blah blah. Forty five minutes now, still nothing. I noticed that steaks were being delivered to the small city of people on the other side of the room. 15 minutes later our steaks came. We ate and on the way out, I told the manager that I did not understand how we had to wait while they prepared a meal for 100 people. She said with this little smirk on her face "we serve people in the order that they are seated". The look on her face was like "we are famous and rich and i don't give rat shit about your little problem". I told her we would never be back and she just gave me this little smile and walked away. She was this short little old ugly lady with a crappy typical ft worth puffed up hairdoo.
I wish i could go back in time and take a piss on her, or better yet, burn that place down to the ground.

This one is really nauseating:
I was riding in a car with several people including Roxanne, a girl that was part of our team at a jobsite in Geneva. I was talking about the fact that as a programmer, my work was necessary, but not really important like a fireman or doctor. She looked at me said "oh phillip, you are just having a little mid-life crisis, try to relax". Amazing. i guess she holds no respect for firemen and doctors. What a witch she was.

The brilliance of StarBucks

Here is a conversation between me and one those mindless slopeheads that work behind the counter at Starbucks.

(by the way, I tried to put a tab or spaces in front of the clerks responses to better separate and make this easier to read, but Google Blog does not recognize spaces in front of text. I guess the moron programmers at Google missed the memo)


Me - Hi, I’d like a small coffee
“Ok, one tall coming up”
No, I said a small
“A tall is a small.”
Then what is a medium?
“Grande”
Grande means “huge”.
“Well, it is a medium here.”
So, I fear to ask, what is a large?
“Venti”
Venti means “twenty. I don’t get it”
“Venti’s are 20 ounces.”
How many ounces are “grandes?”
"Sixteen"
So why don’t you call a medium a “sedici”?
What does sedici mean?
Sixteen
(Silence from the slopehead behind the counter)
Do you realize how idiotic this is?
"Um, I don’t know. Do you want a coffee?"
Yes, I’ll take a dodici
"What’s that?"
A small, I mean tall, which is one less than “Huge”, and two less than “twenty”

My Debating Skills (and ensuing rant about religion)

You could put me in a debate competition and give me the position of defending the statement “The earth is round”, and I would get eaten alive. Every single time in my life that I have tried to conflict and argue a subject, even one that I am fluent in, I get torn to shreds. Especially amusing is when I try to debate politics. Hahahaha!!!!! When growing up, my brothers and I were never allowed to argue, my dad would tell us to “be quiet and try to get along”. Excuse me for my tear jerking therapy statement, but it is true. I bet this certainly has something to do with my debating skills.

One time I was discussing religion and my stance was that Christians are pretty pompous and egotistical because they believe that their beliefs are right and all the other religions in the world are wrong. Check out this quote from an independent group that gathers statistics:

A comparative survey of churches and religions - AD 30 to 2200: there are 19 major world religions which are subdivided into a total of 270 large religious groups, and many smaller ones. 34,000 separate Christian groups have been identified in the world.

It seems even the Christians are unable to agree with each other. So anyway, in my discussion with this person, I asked “why did you pick Christianity out of 270 choices”. “Because it is the best choice and only one that is right” was his answer. Considering the fact that Christianity represents only 30% of the world, his answer seems rather pompous and rude. As always, I went on to lose this debate since religions are based on faith. You can’t argue facts with faith. If you get a religious person in a corner they usually just start ranting versus from the bible until you wander off. But I’m no different, I’ll continue to use logic until I’m blue in the face.

Have you ever seen anybody change their mind in a debate based on the other person’s argument? “Bob, you are right! I never thought about that, I now I see I am wrong and you are right”. It’s never happened. People debate and argue, never giving in even to the death. I’ve never seen a single person back down and change sides.

In summary, my debating method now consists of just agreeing with everybody even if I know they are dead wrong. My motto is “unless somebody could get hurt, there is no advantage to arguing with people”. Aggressively trying to convince other people of your opinions is really just an act of insecurity. Those who are secure with where they are in life usually sit back and watch the fight while smiling. Now, quickly I would like to point out an exception to all this; if you are simply goofing around with your friends and say something like “bush is a no talent ass clown”, that’s more of a fun sport among friends. Obviously you cant prove that bush has ever been employed by a circus. Additionally, sometimes it is a good idea to start a debate with a loud opinion in order to get people stirred up and thinking. Sometimes the ensuing arguments can bring new facts to the surface.

My neighbor Arnold, World Champion of Torturing Inanimate Objects.

Arnold lived next door to use when I was growing up, and was highly skilled at torturing anything that did not have a pulse. He was a very kind kid to anything living, especially animals, but if you were a screwdriver, you better run for cover.

Arnold’s earliest influence was his hero, “Jody Dade”, who lived a few doors down. Jody once took a saucepan out back and shot it full of holes with a 9mm pistol because “it burnt his beans”.

Here are a handful of stories and events about Arnold and his skills.

When around 16, he was driving his grandfathers 1960 pickup and it died at a stop sign and would not start. He jumped out and grabbed the jumper cables. Did he proceed to jump start the truck? HA! He took the cables and begin slinging them on the hood in a violent whipping action while shouting “SHIT TRUCK! SHIT TRUCK! SHIT TRUCK!” as loud as he possibly could. He family still has this truck, the scars of it’s past can still be seen on the hood.

He got a “new” truck soon after, a 70s model, and was quite happy with it until one day it stalled at the red light when he pressed on the gas pedal. “Oh, you want to be a city truck, huh?”. From then on, at each light, he would hold the brake and when the light turned green, he would floor it while holding the brake and then release the brake launching it hard. He would run it wide open until the next light when he would wait until the last minute and then stand on the brakes as hard as he could.

In addition, in the mornings, he would would start the motor and immediately put it in gear and floor it, giving the engine no time to warm up.

Small objects that misbehaved, such as nails that bent when hammered, little things that hid from him, and so on, were sentenced to his torture chamber. This special place was an area on the exhaust manifold on his truck engine, the part that gets very, very hot. These objects were taught a lesson by spending various length sentences being burned hot. The severity of the crime committed would dictate the length of the sentence. There were several objects that were “in for life”, but most items got a pardon after a few months or so.

“Abrasion” was a very popular torture method at started up later in his life, maybe in his mid 30s. If you say, drop a screwdriver while working on something, when you lean down to pick it up, you drag the tip on the concrete for a couple of seconds before going back to work. This teaches the tool to not make the mistake again of “jumping out of your hand”.

Once I came home from work and Arnold was out on the patio with some small can with a fire blazing away in it. I walked up in a way that he was not aware that I was watching. I heard him talking to the can. “I’m sorry picante sauce, but if you would not have jumped off the table, I would not be having to set you on fire”.

ANYTHING that ARnold knocked over and made a mess was tortured mercilessly.

Once Arnold got sick with a sore throat. “I’m gonna teach this baby throat of mine a lesson” he announced. He went out back and started gargling with lemon juice and Tabasco, hoping that the acid would damage his throat. But it did not end there. He would gargle, and then start screaming as loud as humanly possible to further damage his throat.

Many objects were destroyed, but if it was essential that it “stay alive”, like a tool, Arnold would use a bit of abrasion or hammer damage, but keep it alive because “It has a job to do”.

Arnold’s “city truck” like all pickups, tended to not handle so well because the back of the truck would bounce quite a bit if the bed were not loaded. This is typical of any truck. Well, Arnold did not think this bouncing was acceptable, so he filled these 3 steel pipes with 300 pounds of concrete and welded them on the rear of the bed to “make it behave”.

Arnold had kind of wavy curly hair, and when it would get a bit long, his bangs would start to hang down around his eyes, so he would get his mom’s sewing scissors out and cut off his “fag curls”. His mom of course would kick his ass for using her sewing scissors.

The lawnmower that arnold used was an old beat up thing. Arnold used to say that lawnmowers were worth no respect and should be worked hard with never an oil change or spark plug cleaning or a wash-down. This mower of his of course started running not too well, and on occasion, the engine would die if you hit high grass. It did this one too many times and Arnold announced "I have had enough of you!". He drained the oil out of the engine and started it up. He then put the throttle at maximum so the engine was just screaming away.

He calmly went inside and enjoyed a sandwich while listening to the sound of agony coming from the tortured mower. After a couple of minutes, the engine go so hot (remember there was no oil in the crankcase), that it seized up and ground to an immediate halt. The next morning it started up fine and has been running ever since.

One time Arnold’s mom set him down on the kitchen counter when he was like, a year old, and while she was talking on the phone, he ate a whole stick of butter. to this day, he still likes to eat butter and also raw meat.

Me and Arnold played golf a few times together when we were in our mid teens, and arnold, as you can guess, did not show the best sportsmanship if things went wrong.

Once, on a par 4 hole, Arnold hauls off and whacks one, big hitter, long. He sent it into the bottom of a 10,000 foot glacier. Oh wait, that’s from CaddyShack. in reality, the ball dropped in a muddy ditch halfway to the green. In normal golf, this is called “casual water”, and you can take your ball out with a 1 stroke penalty. Well, Arnold starts whacking away at the ball, and I stop him and explain the concept of casual water. “NO! I AM GOING TO PLAY FAIR!! He keeps burying his club deeper and deeper in the mude “SEVEN, EIGHT, NINE....”. I walked back to the other guys at the green. “...SIXTEEN! SEVENTEEN! EIGHTEEN!”.

We made him stop at 22 so we could move on. He had successfully dug a pretty nice little pond.

Tennis was similar. With each bad shot, Arnold would whack the ground with the side of his racquet. After a while, the raquet was pretty much square, I am not kidding. And the edges were beat beyond recognition.

When Pizza Hut first came out with their pan pizza (thick) back in the 70s, Arnold started calling them "Dough Hut" and refused to eat there ever again.

The agony of the 2009 albuquerque gas race

The 2009 gas race was a no-go thanks to weather nonsense that cropped up right at the worst possible time: smack dab in the middle of inflation.  The gas committee weather man Randy Lafavor called the winds to be 6-8 knots during inflation, and our private weatherman Don Day called the same thing.  There was a last minute change in the low down in the south that “packed up the gradients” as don said and caused a ridiculous amount of wind; some 25 knot gusts that caused holy terror for us.  Randy beat himself up for this error but it was totally not his error, he did the best he could.  Weather is not exact or well behaved, as we all know.  

Brian and I drew the lucky bean and were first to launch, so 10 minutes before the start we dropped the diffuser in preparation for launch.  Well, we tried to drop the diffuser.  Thanks to me, the ropes were not properly positioned inside the appendix and they got all knotted up on the diffuser while still installed. When we opened the appendix and lowered the diffuser, it was a complete mess, requiring the exciting and embarrassing visit from the manlift.  Our crew member Mick Heim climbed aboard the manlift and successfully got it all untwisted.    Dropping early was our second mistake.  Before dropping, we should have confirmed that launch was on schedule, but we did not.  They put us on a 30 minute hold which meant we were now no longer able to add gas to the balloon.  To make things much, much worse, was that I did not properly tie off the diffuser closer line which allows us to seal the bottom of the bag so the gas does not escape or get mixed with air.  Well, within 10 minutes, we lost the whole bottom of the bag of gas.  We tried to grab the line with people jumping in the air as the balloon swung down near the ground.  Yes, it was that windy, and that ridiculous looking.  The line was short because the bottom of the line was tied in one of those stupid “daisy chain” knots that I have despised since 1985.  They are unnecessary and cause issues since many crew members do not know the secret trick to getting them undone.  I realize that I am alone in this opinion.  All the cool teams use daisy chains.

Out comes the manlift again, and once more Mick climbs up and gets the closer line down.  This was far more difficult than it sounds since the balloon was banging around back and forth like a hootchie mama on a trapeze.  We were now able to seal the appendix, but at this point it was too late.

Now, what might not make sense to any of you that do not fly gas, is that the loss of gas is not an issue for flight.  When gas balloons rise, the gas expands and fills the bottom anyway.  Our situation would have simply meant that we would have climbed about 3,000 feet without having to ballast.  In fact, the balloon actually climbs smoother with a soft bottom.  The reason the gas loss was such a problem was that it allowed the bottom of the bag to essentially become a sail and reeked hell by letting the bag swing all over the place:  A full bag is far more stable in the wind.  Things got so bad that at one point Bert Padelt’s envelope was rolling on the ground, and this is substantial because Bert is a highly skilled gas pilot.

Our basket got a real workout, but you would too if you had 2,000 pounds of sand tied to you in a 25 knot wind.

John Kugler had enough sense to pull early, and the rest of us pulled after the officials called the race around 730ish.  Hearing $60,000 worth of helium release into the atmosphere was truly depressing for both the teams and the gas committee.  The amount of work to get this event off is extraordinary.  We start planning and preparing two months in advance, pouring an embarrassing amount of money into the gear and such for the race.

From the time we got to town the weather guys were already sure that Saturday was probably our only chance and even then the weather was going to be problematic during the entire flight with all sorts of thunderstorms and other various forms of hell to entertain us along our journey.  The winds were so fast up top that 60 hours could  be too fast getting to the east coast.  Best guess trajectories showed landings in or around the Carolinas and Virginia.  This of course means crossing the appalachian mountains with landing possibilites in forested valleys.  Looking back at the weather, there were indeed substantial thunderstorms which very likely would have resulted in a short flight to Kansas or so.  That’s about two bucks a mile.

A really annoying thing that happened right off, was that when we arrived at our launch site after briefing, our launch area was full of hot air teams still partying away.  I think fiesta should have probably gone out there an hour earlier and got them to move off, but this did not happen so we were unable to start our work until they packed up and moved out.  Once again Brian and I drew the lucky bean because in the middle of our launch square was a monster special shape chase commander and about 20 sauced up people and a very busy margarita machine.  The officials went over and explained the situation and asked them to move as quickly as practical because preparing the gas balloons can take all afternoon right up until launch time.  Well, 10 minutes later I walked over to their scene and they had not moved an inch:  they were all still sitting down and the margarita machine was flowing well.  The race official had to go over a 2nd time to get them moving.  Only then did they slowly, very slowly begin to fold up their chairs.  20 minutes later I walked over and they were all standing around outside the monster-commander doing nothing.  I asked if they would mind driving off the site and they informed me that they were traveling with another team and were waiting for them to finish packing.  Again, they only needed to drive about 50 feet to clear the gas area.  5 minutes later, they finally chugged their chase commander out of the way.  There were several other groups that behaved in the same way, seeming to have no concern whatsoever on their actions.  This is not only rude to the gas teams but also to the race officials who had to keep asking them to please cooperate.  I find this discouraging because these teams who think they are entitled to special treatment make a bad name for the balloon community in general.  I like to party on the field as much as any of them, but being rude is never an acceptable behavior.  We asked for no special treatment, only courtesy in helping us out by moving the party over just 3 launch squares.  In Stark contrast Many of the other hot air teams were polite and immediately packed up and were off the area within 5 minutes.

During the wind from hell, Brian held down the fort and I went around to each of the pilots giving them the weather information I had got from Don:  things were going to stay bad for at least an hour and we could hope for 10-15 steady at best for launch.  I found that all the teams were very pessimistic and ready to pull.  Andy Cayton’s basket sustained serious damage.  Mark Sullivan said his basket was now “much shorter than it used to be”.

After Wally Book told us the event was scrubbed, the bag hit the ground, and instead of depression, we all felt relieved and almost happy.  The stress and known weather dangers ahead weighed heavily on us and we were grateful to be on the ground.

The gas inflation teams, put out an extraordinary effort, worked tirelessly from 1pm until we were packed up at 9pm.  They stayed at our sides and did any task that was asked of them, including going to buy me a hat at concession row so i did not get a redneck.  

We went back to the hotel and ate pizza and drank a cooler full of premium Lone Star beer.

It took me 40 minutes to copy a driver file from XP to a Vista machine

And I never got the file transferred

The details...
I needed to copy a driver file for a USB device I have from my xp machine to my vista machine.

1. i cant find a single memory stick.
2. i try to email it to myself.
3. gmail wont let me because it is an executable
4. i rename it to a .txt file and email it. gmail is too stupid to know it is really an .exe
5. I am reminded that Obama really wants moms to return to school
6. i go to vista and download the file but i dont see the extension so i cant change it from .txt to .zip.
7. i dont know how to set vista to show extensions
8. i go back to XP and use a CF card (as a thumb drive)to copy the files.
9. i go to vista and it wont recognize the cf card.
10. i go back to xp and use yahoo to xfer the file
11. I go back to vista, open yahoo email and dont see the file.
12. I realize i did not even have the correct device plugged in.
13. I plug in the correct device that i need the driver for.

The driver installs normally.

I pretty much hate everything right now. I have little life left and i just wasted 40 minutes of it because of the despicable morons in Redmond. i hope microsoft goes out of business and steve balmer commits suicide.

The Segway, Amazing Invention, or Worthless Crap?

If you have never seen a Segway, it is this little two wheeled "thing" that is supposed to me a personal transport vehicle. A long time ago some inventor got the idea for a very small vehicle that people could use to get around instead of a big car. It would respond to simple body movements; lean forward, it goes forward. pull back, it stops and then goes backwards. Word on the street is that this guys spent a pile of money developing this thing, maybe 200 large, maybe a million, but it does not matter, it was a shitload of money.

when I was bored to death in Montreal waiting for the Bjork show to start, I decided to go give one of these things a try at a rental place. For fifty bucks you get to ride around a little bit for maybe 30 minutes. But of course they dont trust you so one the guys there has to go along with you.
They start out giving you a little traing course and yes, it was pretty easy to figure out. I was the only one there, and for good reason, it started raining. they were nice enough to give me a raincoat for the ride. I asked lots of questions while riding, like "How do you lock it up if I want to park outside a store and go inside?". "You can't lock it". "Well, what keeps anybody from stealing it?". He informed me that it was designed to roll inside the store. It did not matter if you took the key with you, I could pick up this thing and throw it in the back of a pickup truck pretty easy.
The inventors actually thought that people would drive this thing right through the front door, into the elevator, then to their desk, work the day, and then ride it home.
It has a pretty short range, I think under an hour for sure. It costs a lot of money, I think $4,000 or so.
The best complment I can give this thing is
"A worthless toy"

The History of my Pathtic Choice in Vehicles

Most folks take time and figure out what sort of car they need, go buy it, and live happily ever after. Not me, and it is not surprising; it's in my genes. My dad actually paid money for a Ford Pinto. My brother Robert bought a Chevrolet Vega. These are two of the worst automobiles (and i use that term loosely) that ever came out of Detroit.
I'll discuss three vehicles here that all started when I bought my first hot air balloon in 1986.
1. Gray truck
So I needed a truck to haul the balloon around in. I found a pretty darned nice looking one, gray, with seats with no rips. Only one problem; six cylinder. Load up the balloon and two people and 60 was pretty much max speed. Then it got worse, much worse. I bought a new balloon and it came with a trailer. Towing the trailer now meant a maximum speed of about 50 or 55 with a best gas mileage of about 10. Yes, ten miles per gallon. We did a trip from Tennessee to Albuquerque, 22 hours in this lumbering thing, never exceeding 55.
2. Jeep Cherokee
HA!! This is a worthless piece of shit of a car. I thought the word "jeep" would mean a rugged vehicle with a big engine and skid plates, and tow hooks, and big gas tank, and all that, making my gray truck look like a mommy car. Well, It's not. This thing also had a six cylinder, 4 speed, 18 gallon gas tank, no skid plates, plastic everything, and so on. I have no idea why i bought it, but back then i was really relentless about not changing my mind. Hook up the trailer, and yep, it would do 55 i 4th gear, and if you floored it in 5th gear, you could get 65. That is, until you approached a hill at which time it would promptly grind to a stop unless you downshifted back to 4th, which meant max speed of 55 again. It also tended to overheat when pulling the trailer so I would come barreling into the parking lot of a balloon race, smoke bellowing from under the hood, with the back end looking like a ghetto car. YEs, that was another thing, the suspension on these things are meant for "mommies" to take their kids to soccer practice. We called it the "sag wagon". I had to go install air shocks just to get the rear end up enough so it did not rake the muffler on small bumps.
3. Ford Explorer
Finally a REAL vehicle i thought!
Whatever, it is a cushy mommie car as well, narrow (not built on a real truck frame), underpowered, sags in the back, small gas tank, but I will say that it would pull the trailer pretty well at 65. Crappy mileage when hauling the balloon of course. This thing was really expensive and had all sorts of unnecessary options like "puddle lamps".
4. Miata.
enough said

Finally, after two decades, I bought a real vehicle; a ford pickup (f150), which happens to be the most popular vehicle ever sold in the US. Good reason; it is a real vehicle. The V8 engine hauls my balloon at 90 if I want. Suspension is solid, plenty of power, 18 mpg even with the balloon in the back, 25 gallon tank, and so on. I is white, sleek, and means business.

Oh, i forgot, i also bought a scooter, that RULES. it is a yamaha vino, gets 75 mpg, looks sleek, and allows me and my shortie to go downtown and park right in front the restaurants and bars.

Major flaws in Famous Movies

Contact: My favorite movie of all time, but there is a huge flaw in the ending. The review board essentially calls Elli a liar on her description of the time travel trip. Hello, the ball landed safely in the net below and clearly is ready for another run. Put Mr. Skeptical in the ball and give him a spin. I mean, I am sure this big machine uses a LOT of gas, but you would think the human race could afford the cash for another run.

Star Wars episode 4 (the first one): In the Death Star destruction scene, a small handful of fighter pilots head out toward the death star in a certain suicide mission to place a missile-bomb-thing in a hole the size of a basketball while cruising at near mach speed. On the way out, "Red leader" comments on the radio "Man, look at the size of that thing". "Cut the chatter Red Leader" barks the big fat leader. So here they are on the way to certain death and Red leader cannot even make a simple comment. If I was Red leader I would have manueverd behind Fat leader and launched a photon torpedo right up his rude ass.

The HoneyMooners
Ralph has a fulltime job as a bus driver. they have no kids, and yet his wife sits at "home", which is a shack apartment. They have not even a single picture on the wall or any furniture. what does alice do all day long? Norton works in the sewer, but his apartment is all painted up nice and looks great.

The Doberman Gang
HAHAHA!!! This movie is a riot! A group of bad guys decide to rob a bank using a pack of trained dogs. They send the dogs to the bank with notes tied around their necks telling the tellers to put lots of money in their saddlebags they are wearing. Well, they come barreling in the bank and start raising all sorts of hell and guess who happens to be standing there; a bank guard with a..... GUN. Boom boom boom, story over. nah, one of the dogs bites the guard on his "gun hand" so he cannot shoot them. Hmm, I bet I could shoot a gun with my left hand if i tried.
It's a stupid movie, but worth the pain for all the laughs.

The accidental Tourist
The flaw in this movie is that IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN MADE. Will Hurt plays a role that is so depressing and boring that you need red bull injected directly into your veins to tolerate him. Gina Davis plays one of the most annoying characters you can imagine, especially that nauseating "cluck" sound she does with her mouth. What a pile of shit.

I don't like Kirk anymore

James Kirk is an asshole, and here is why.

First, check out this picture of him from the movie posters:
Pretty evil looking, wouldn't you say? I would place him as a prime suspect in any serial murder mystery. Or a cocky smart-ass bastard. In stark contrast, William Shatner was a jolly sort of fellow.
In the latest movie, they show kirk as a cocky kid driving a vintage mustang off a cliff and essentially ridiculing a policeman. The policeman should have taken this spoiled brat and beat the living crap out of him to let him know the meaning of the word "respect". Then cuff him, beat him again with a club, and then throw him off the cliff.
So in the movie he reprogrammed the computers so he would not have to do the "face death" scenario during the testing. he cheated death and thus failed at the most important situation a captain can be in. It seems that kirk is one of those people who enjoy "getting away with things". Spock and the counsel should have run his ass out the door right then.
It is beyond me how he managed to stay in power.

The history of my "Technicals"

In gas ballooning, you have several things in the basket that require electrical power from a battery, and you need some sort of distribution "thing" to run the power from the battery to each device. For my very first race, I was all uptight about having everything perfect, and the only technical I had ever seen was Willie Eimer's box. See Fig 1. Below

Fig 1. The "Eimers" version

It looks like something that should be on the dash of a 767 Airbus. I made an exact replica of Wilies, thinking that since he was such a veteran that he must have come up with the optimal solution. Well, it turns out he just likes to tinker. Anyway, This one was a rats nest of wiring on the inside, complicated to hook up, and hard to deal with at 2am.

So I decided to simplify. See Fig 2 below. I figured all I really needed was the connectors on the bottom and a main switch, but I added a new feature, a switch on the front to select one of 4 batteries that are under the seat.

Fig 2. The "MacNutt Multi Battery" version
This looked and worked great, but for some reason my radio would stop working sometimes due to lack of power. After two years of irritation, I figured out that I had too many thin wires with all those battery selections, and it was starving the radio.

This year I had had enough of this shit, and came up with the optimal solution; See fig 3 below.
One very thick cable from the box to the battery, a simple digital voltmeter, and 3 cig sockets for accessories like cell phone chargers.

Fig. 3 The "Finally Something Reasonable" version

It weighs nothing, has almost no wiring on the inside, and provides solid power to the transponder and radio.
I wish I was clever like other people who get things right the first time, but I am a dunce.