"In-security testing, in layman's terms"

It seems that there is a lot of "in-security" in our world today. People are constantly worried about such matters as the economy, wars, job loss, immigration, and having to register as a "sex-offender" if they get caught taking a pee behind the dumpster in back of the local tavern. I believe, that if we're truly going to thrive as the greatest country in the history of our planet, we all need to settle down, and stop all this "needless" worrying about trivial matters. Maybe you're saying to yourself right now that you most definitely are not "skittish" about anything, and that you have about the same quantity of "raw nerve" displayed by a two thousand pound Brahma bull running a-muck in a Pygmy village. I've taken the time to compile a list of questions which, if answered honestly, can help you to determine if you're confident with the way things are going for you, or if maybe you really are just a little bit in-secure. Remember, answering these questions honestly is the only way I can help you! 1: Do you sometimes wonder if you'll be replaced at your job with a younger, sleeker, smarter person? 2: Do you often times wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, and then go "balance" your checkbook? 3: Do you ever worry that you're retirement plan may be in-adequately funded? 4: Do you have to pee when you get up in the morning? 5: Do you every worry that your particular bank will be taken over by a group of armed terrorists from a distant planet? 6: Do you wonder why the self-proclaimed environmental guru Al Gore needs a house with nine toilets? 7: Do you ever wonder why the stories on this blog are never properly formatted, and just come out in one big, stupid paragraph? 8: Do you ever think that your co-workers obviously have the brain content of zucchini, and who knows how they get anything done? 9: Do you sometimes get hungry, but don't really know what for? 10: Are you secretly suspicious that sesame street's Big Bird is really not a bird at all, but rather a person wearing a bird costume? Now, if you took the time to answer all of these questions honestly, and answered no to all 10 questions, you truly do have nerves of steel, which go quite nicely with your honesty imperfections! If you answered yes to at least three of these questions, you're only slightly skittish about the state of the world around you, congratulations! If you answered yes to any number of questions more than three, you should probably immediately go into hiding in some small, dank cave in a third-world country, because you are obviously "damaged goods", and it is only a matter of time before men in white suits from the planet Zork come to take you away! In any case, I'll still be here drinking beer and watching football, and thinking of even more ways to help the readers of this silly blog!

"Committed" (Or just brushed off)!

So here it is, Sunday morning already. The weekend is half gone, or, if your an optimist, you still have half of it left. I'm not an optimist, and I can see that my glass of "tomato juice" is already half empty. I approached my computer this morning warily, which is a tactic I learned from watching the cowardly lion approach the wizard when he wanted to ask him for courage. It's not that I have a problem with courage. I have a refrigerator on the back porch that is just "chock full" of courage! No, I think I have more of a problem with "commitment" than anything else. Don't get me wrong! I'm totally committed to my wife and family, even though on occasion, they tend to have ME committed! Some of the things I'm NOT committed to though, are posting this silly blog every Sunday morning before eleven o'clock. This is a commitment that I brought on myself, clearly because I don't care for "even" numbers, else I would have made it noon. I'm committed to my job, but only when I'm operating a backhoe or driving a truck. If I happen to be operating a "cordless" shovel for the day, chances are I'm not so committed. A 48 year old man can put in countless hours per day sitting in a truck eating "cheetos" and listening to Rush Limbaugh, which is in direct contrast to a 48 year old man running a shovel 13 hours a day, only to come home and find out that apparently, his wife is in a bad mood, and your supper is in the microwave. What is it that makes us do the things we don't want to do in our lives? Money? Prestige? If the measure of a good man is considered to be having enough money to "choke a horse", then I would find myself somewhat short, even though I could have a real blast at a miniature pony farm. What really is prestige? Is this where you put a man with no "values" into an extremely valuable automobile in order to make him look important? Are there really people in this world that drive a Mercedes Benz and still can't afford a "Big Mac"? They say that money can't buy you true love, but yet we all know that money can buy you fake love at a "reasonable" hourly rate, (except in Utah)! Many times I ask myself a lot of questions, such as "who are we to judge others, when we will all be judged in the end", and "why can't we all just get along, and keep this great country united", and "it's seven-thirty on Sunday morning, why don't I smell bacon and eggs, and maybe some pancakes, or toast, or something"! I realize that I'm a "pain in the ass" to most all of my friends, but I wish you all well. I'm old and stubborn, and I believe that things should be done my way, (with some concessions being made to my increasingly HUGE number of readers on this blog, which is now up to 8, and I still don't know who "Blondie" is). I'd stop writing this crap, but I'm sort of "committed".

"The stimulous is obviously for the dogs"

We've been working in a very small town about an hour west of here and then south off from Inter-state 70. I will not mention the name of the town, just in case anybody might actually know of the people I intend to write this story about. The town itself has a population of seventy people, though even the "locals" admit to not knowing where they came up with such a large number. This town proudly boasts being the "county seat" of it's particular county, and comes complete with a brick courthouse about the size of a small college dorm room at a college with a very long name in some place like North Dakota. Other than the courthouse, there are approximately seven other buildings on main street, and only three of them are occupied by businesses. This town is a stunning three blocks long, and still has "both" sides of the street, which in itself, would probably be a good selling point if you owned real-estate here, and were trying to get rid of it. THIS town, believe it or not, received 2.5 million dollars from O'Bama's "stimulous", package, and chose to use it by re-paving the three block main street, plus put in all new curb and gutters and sidewalks, which would no doubt bring huge amounts of business to the town, had they had any actual businesses with which to do business. My company is tearing out all the old sidewalks and curbs and such, and doing the dirt work for the new ones going in, which means that I get plenty of time to visit with the locals, or maybe I mean "Locos", who really knows? I DO know that every morning at about 10:30, a young, scant, woman with a very colorful "gift" bag actually "sneaks up" on main street (Which is also a highway), and will stand in the shadows of the community light pole, for sometimes several minutes before attempting to cross the street to go to the Post office. She looks north and south, making sure that there is no traffic coming for at least a couple days before she crosses, then she'll take off on a dead run, but only for about 3 or 4 steps, then she will walk briskly for just as many, then run again, and so on. If, (God forbid), there happens to be the slightest chance of any human contact on her journey, such as running into one of the workers or fellow citizens, she will put her head down and walk extremely fast, or cut through to the alley, as she does in my case, (which is perfectly normal behavour for women who somehow run the risk of encountering me on the street, at least judging from my High school days)! This woman, by no means wears the crown of the "strangest" person in town, and I'm totally serious on this! There's also a guy, maybe five years my senior by my guessing, who never seems to have to go to work, and chooses to ride his bicycle up and down the 3 blocks all day, which is perfectly normal, and a great job if you can get it, except that this guy always carries his small dog with him, whether riding his bike or walking. Still not enough? The dog sits on his HEAD! I'm plum serious! This guy always has his dog with him, and it's always either on his shoulders or on top of his head. Yes, it's a real live dog. Lucky for me, this guy thinks I'm friendly, and stops every day in order to have a conversation with me on such important topics as what "used to be here", and how much the town has changed since he was a little boy, all the while with a dog on his head. I so much want to ask him if he even knows that he's got a dog on his head, but somehow, I don't know how, when I have unwilling conversations with him, I tend to get the impression that maybe he's "not all there". Or maybe it's just me, as I have done several "tours" at the nut house, where highly skilled college graduates have spent countless hours trying to "change" my way of thinking to a point where it could become more "compatible" with the thinking of regular people, who may or may not have a dog on their head. Even as you're sitting at your computer reading this and thinking how lucky I am that this guy took a liking to me, it get's even better! Lucky for me, the newspaper lady, (from another town in the same county), showed up to take pictures of all the progress going on in town, and without my knowledge of it at the time, snapped a picture of myself having a conversation with this guy. This should certainly be good for business, and I believe it says alot about the citizens of this small Kansas town, such as the fact that even a busy man riding a bike with a dog on his head still takes the time to visit with a "lowly" construction worker! I truly can't tell you how proud I am, at least not on here, because of extremely strict rules and regulations, but I can tell you that when I'm talking to a guy with a dog on his head, I'm thinking about what I'd be doing if I still worked for "Alfs" well-drilling in Shickley, Nebraska, where people tend to take a somewhat dim view of having a live dog on their head. Also, I would like for you to know that at least O'Bama's stimulous money wasn't just pissed away for no good reason.

"There's a Trick to it"!

"Labor Day weekend"! "Three days of doing what I want to do, and the first thing I'm going to do is trade in my old truck for a slightly better old truck"! This is the type of delusional thinking I fell victim of yesterday, as my wife and I exited early from our grandson Caleb's birthday party to do just that. Off we went, to Auto World, Hays Kansas' most reputable auto dealer, where absolutely everyone leaves satisfied, unless of course you happen to be me. I found the truck I was looking for, took it for a test drive, and really liked it. It even had the extended cab, which would come in handy for hauling around some of our young "tricycle motors". Yep! This truck would do just fine, for what I need, and for only forty-five hundred dollars. Now to get back to auto world and see what kind of trade-in allowance I'll get for my old truck. This, of course, is where the problems began. As Kristy and I pulled into the dealership, the salesman was sitting in the drivers seat of my old truck, which was still exactly where I had parked it. I walked up to the window. "It won't start" he said. "The clutch safety switch is just a little touchy", I said. "You have to really ram the clutch down hard on the floor". Salesman (pushing repeatedly on clutch): "I guess I don't have the right touch"! "It's just as well", I say. "You shouldn't drive it anyway, at least not before I give you the safety briefing"! "Safety briefing", he asks? "Well", I say, "there's lots of things you need to know about this old truck before you drive it". "Firstly, the brakes are "iffy", to say the least. You can make it stop, but if you hold the brake down for more than two seconds at a time, it will shoot all the brake fluid out of the master cylinder, so you basically want to stop by downshifting, which is yet another trick, as the synchronizers are out in the transmission, so it's best to shift without the clutch". "You also need to keep an eye on the temperature guage as the radiator has a rather large leak." "If it starts running hot, there's several jugs of water in the back, right beside the brake fluid, motor oil, and log chain." "If you decide to take it out on the highway, you can't drive at 55 mph. You can drive at 54 or 56mph, but not 55, or else the front end will start to shimmy and shake to the point of nearly throwing you out of the cab." "Forget it", he says, "I don't need to drive it to tell you what it's worth"! "How do you open the door", he asked, clearly wanting to get out. "That piece of aluminum storm door handle sticking out above the arm rest is the handle", I say, "the regular handle broke, so I just made this one, rather than buy a new one". "They're only about five bucks", he said. "This was free", I said. At this point, he and I were clearly becoming irritated at each other, as he walked around my truck, expressing his concerns over various dents, mis-matched paint, and rust. "Does at least the four wheel drive work", he asked. "Yes, but there's a trick to it", I say. "Forget it", he says, "I don't even want to know"! "It's got alot of character", I say. "Character is for real-estate", he says. From there, we go inside his office to see what the forty five hundred dollar pickup would cost me, after deducting the cost of my old truck trade. He wrote a figure down on a piece of paper, slid it across his desk, and never even looked up at me. I looked at the paper, asked my wife if she was ready to go, and we left. In my old truck, of course. The piece of paper he slid to me with the revised quote said "forty-six hundred dollars", forty-five hundred for the new truck, plus a one hundred dollar "waste disposal" fee. This really doesn't bother me, as I really kind of like my truck just the way it is. Sure, it's kind of moody, stubborn, bull-headed, and sometimes don't want to work, but then again, so am I. My wife, Kristy, knows how to keep me going, much in the same way that I do my old truck, and for both me and the truck, she'll readily admit that "there's a trick to it"!