Thursday, June 28, 2012

Blame It On The Titanic

It was one of those days, where it seems the list of things to get done was infinite. Some co-workers and I were belly aching about it. One of the ladies said that she had everything under control and that we could all go home early (jokingly of course).  One of the guys says "hey we could go see one of those new movies". I'm thinking, it's only Noon. So I said if I get out of work this early, I'm gonna go home and chase Mama around the house.  They chuckled, and after a few seconds of silence, one of the guys says "what I hate about going home early is when I open the front door to enter, I hear the back door slam".

Guess you had to be there...

The next day we were cuttin' up again. On the TV they were taking about the tropical storm that formed in the Gulf of Mexico.  It's a strange phenomenon to say the least to have a named storm form this far north, there was another tropical storm recently that formed off the coast of Georgia. So the discussion went of about global warming and such, when it occurred to me what has caused this fundamental change in weather patterns. If the Titanic had not hit that ice burg, the Arctic shelf would not be breaking up.  We wouldn't be having this strange weather.

So today, we're talking about the hot weather in the Eastern US.  I said that when I was a kid I loved it that hot, and we never wore sunscreen. In fact we work the coconut Hawaiian Tropic suntan lotion to get the good tan.  So the argument was that skin cancer was more prevalent now, and I agree with that. But in a serious note I think some people are pre-disposed to that.  I don't personally seem to be affected by all that sun exposure in my younger years. Even now I don't wear sun screen ever.  But for those less fortunate, I had the answer, I blamed it on the Titanic...  (jokingly).







Regards
John Crawford

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Sunday, May 6, 2012

Marriage, Baseball, And A German Chick?

This is a nice little article I found in the Sunday edition of the Augusta (GA) Chronicle. To be honest, I rarely read the newspaper. I only buy it on Sundays, and that's for the coupons and ads. The rest of the papers, I buy 4 of them for the coupons, goes to the recycling bin.

This morning, though, an article caught my eye, "Marriage has many things in common with baseball". I've always preferred baseball over other sports, it's really the only sport I follow. When I relate that to the fact that I've been married to the same woman for 27 years, it's goes to show where my passions lie. The author ends the article with the ultimate comparison between marriage and baseball - choose a team and stick with it.

But when I first glanced at the heading, I had very different thoughts before reading it. The "Bad News Bears" came out in 1976 when I was growing up; it was my last year of Little League. A bunch of bad kids who share a common fascination for the game. Their coaches are washed up, but their bonds cause them to grow into better people by the end of the summer. We could only hope that our marriages fair as well.

In 2005, "Bad News Bears" was re-booted. One of my favorite actors was the lead, Billy Bob Thornton.  He's a washed up baseball player, now a drunken dead beat dad. He's crude, and his heart's not in it. But as the season goes on he realizes this group of misfits has great potential, and he slowly reaches inside himself to bring out the man and the player he should have been.  In his attempt to tell some of the kids that maybe baseball wasn't their forte', or rather they were not very good, he makes a very funny comparison.

"Baseball's hard, guys. I mean, it really is. You can love it but, believe me, it don't always love you back. It's kind of like dating a German chick, you know?" Source IMBD

Read full article at Marriage has many things in common with baseball | The Augusta Chronicle




Regards
John Crawford

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Saturday, March 3, 2012

An Open Letter to Motorola And VerizonWireless

Dear @Motorola & @VerizonWireless,

Your choices of 4G phones with a pull-out keyboard needs a makeover. You seem to be concentrating on thin, but us OLDER people just don't have the dexterity to deal with something that thin and smooth. The RAZR lacks a pull-out keyboard, an onscreen keyboard is just not gonna do it for me. Oh, but there's the Droid 4 you say. It has that nice pull-out 5 row keyboard. But it shares one show-stopper with the RAZR - the non-removable battery. BAD BAD BAD. If I have to take my phone back to Verizon every week to have it fixed because the ONLY solution is to remove the battery, well, that isn't an option. I was at my local Verizon store last week when a young lady came in with her broken Droid 4, she removed the battery and broke the pins.

Did I mention you're way behind with deploying ICS? Yes, I know it's in the works, but Samsung has beaten you to the punch by a country mile.

My upgrade is coming up this month, I've put my faith in Motorola for the past decade, but I may be looking elsewhere this time.







Regards
John Crawford

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Saturday, January 14, 2012

Project to pour water into volcano to make power

This would be an extraordinary breakthrough if it works. If it fails it could be disaster for the region. Could they wake a sleeping giant in the process?

Read full article at Project to pour water into volcano to make power





Regards
John Crawford

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Monday, January 9, 2012

Friday, January 6, 2012

History

If the lessons of history teach us anything it is that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us. —Anon #RockTheReTweet -- yellowrs999 (@yellowrs999)

Monday, January 2, 2012

Iowa Caucuses? What the Horse Left in the Corner!

The very first U.S. Presidential election I can remember is 1972. I was still young so I didn't understand much of anything about elections except that it was a day off school because they used the schools for voting locations.

But, what I do remember was profound. I lived in Hagerstown, MD. When Democratic Candidate George Wallace was in town campaigning, there was a riot in the downtown section. The following week, while campaigning in Laurel, MD he was shot. While he survived he was crippled for the rest of his life.

Then there was the whole Watergate scandal. OK, I've seen the movie, I've driven past the hotel. It was a very stupid thing, and caused ripple effects all the way into today. The wiretapping laws we have today have the Watergate Scandal to thank for their existence. President Nixon's eventual resignation in 1974 pushed voters to the far side, and in 1976, elected a little known Democrat named Jimmy Carter.

President Carter was a humanitarian and a pacifist. His legacy will forever be over-shadowed by his near surrender to Iran over the 52 American hostages held for 444 days, and his signing away of the Panama Canal. In fact, most of his accomplishments worth mentioning came AFTER he left office.

In the 1980 election, voters were so disappointed in President Carter's ability to handle one small military crisis with Iran, they swung to the other side and elected Ronald Reagan, former actor and governor of California. Reagan's election campaign targeted Carter's pacifistic approach to Iran (and our Defense as a whole), and on the day he was sworn into office, the hostages were released. The Iranians knew their free ride was over.

For the next 30 years, American voters will swing from one extreme to another in hopes of finding someone they believe will truly represent them. And every four years it starts in Iowa, an insignificant state with only 7 electoral votes.

Here's the part I don't understand. What is all the hype about the Iowa caucuses? How does that impact me and my vote in another state with many more electoral votes? I don't see it, and it has never entered into my assessment of who to vote for. I've had the Constitution carriers and the political scholars explain it to me, but it's all rhetoric, it's all about the Republicans getting their claws in the meat first. Iowa has been predominantly Republican since it became a state until 1980. But it's been a crap shoot since then, hence the term "swing state".

So how's that any different than a state like Maryland that is and has been predominantly Democrat? Maryland surrounds the District of Columbia (another Democratic jurisdiction) on 3 sides. To me, it would seem to have much more impact on what really goes on inside the beltway.

So I say again, it's rhetoric, it's Political Nonsense. It's all about people who don't live in the real world, that have too much time on their hands, getting paid a pretty penny to feed this crap to anyone in office. It give me that nauseating feeling to listen to the political analysts and their strong arm journalists to force feed us what the horse left in the corner.

And as American voters we buy into it, we drink the Kool-Aid. "No" you say? Think about this. Only half of eligible American voters exercise their right to vote on any given election. And how many of the other half allow the likes of CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, Rush Limbaugh, IMUS, and G. Gordon Liddy (Remember that Watergate thing I mentioned before?) to determine who gets your vote? These people decide the elections, we're just cries from the dark.

Wanna prove me wrong? Vote your conscience in the next election. Do your own research. All political ads are one-sided, meant to make someone look better than another or others. Yes, it's difficult in this Information Age to actually get unbiased opinions, and the TRUTH, the REAL story. So let's get to the truth about our candidates and prove me wrong.

I wanna hear from you. Please feel free to post comments. I can also be reached on Twitter at @yellowrs999






Regards
John Crawford

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