A little humor???

Maybe???

Oil Change instructions for Women :

1) Pull up to Jiffy Lube when the mileage reaches 3000 miles since the last oil change.

2) Drink a cup of coffee.

3) 15 minutes later, write a check and leave with a properly maintained vehicle.

Money spent:

Oil Change:              $20.00

Coffee:                     $ 1.00

Total:                       $21.00

Oil Change instructions for Men:

1) Wait until Saturday, drive to auto parts store, and buy a case of oil, filter, kitty litter, hand cleaner, and a scented tree, write a check for $50.00.

2) Stop by 7/11 and buy a case of beer, write a check for $20, drive home.

3) Open a beer and drink it.

4) Jack car up.  Spend 30 minutes looking for jack stands.

5) Find jack stands under kid’s pedal car.

6) In frustration, open another beer and drink it.

7) Place drain pan under engine.

8) Look for 9/16 box end wrench.

9) Give up and use crescent wrench.

10) Unscrew drain plug.

11) Drop drain plug in pan of hot oil:  splash hot oil on you in process.  Cuss.

12) Crawl out from under car to wipe hot oil off of face and arms.  Throw kitty litter on spilled oil.

13) Have another beer while watching oil drain.

14) Spend 30 minutes looking for oil filter wrench.

15) Give up; crawl under car and hammer a screwdriver through oil filter and twist off.

16) Crawl out from under car with dripping oil filter splashing oil everywhere from holes.  Cleverly hide old oil filter among trash in trash can to avoid environmental penalties.  Drink a beer.

17) Install new oil filter making sure to apply a thin coat of oil to gasket surface.

18) Dump first quart of fresh oil into engine.

19) Remember drain plug from step 11.

20) Hurry to find drain plug in drain pan.

21) Drink beer.

22) Discover that first quart of fresh oil is now on the floor.  Throw kitty litter on oil spill.

23) Get drain plug back in with only a minor spill.  Drink beer.

24) Crawl under car getting kitty litter into eyes.  Wipe eyes with oily rag used to clean drain plug.  Slip with stupid crescent wrench tightening drain plug and bang knuckles on frame removing any excess skin between knuckles and frame.

25) Begin cussing fit.

26) Throw stupid crescent wrench.

27) Cuss for additional 5 minutes because wrench hit bowling trophy.

28) Beer.

29) Clean up hands and bandage as required to stop blood flow.

30) Beer.

31) Dump in five fresh quarts of oil.

32) Beer.

33) Lower car from jack stands.

34) Move car back to apply more kitty litter to fresh oil spilled during any missed steps.

35) Beer.

36) Test drive car.

37) Get pulled over and arrested for driving under the influence.

38) Car gets impounded.

39) Call loving wife, make bail.

40) 12 hours later, get car from impound yard.

Money spent:

Parts:                    $ 50.00

DUI:                      $2,500.00

Impound fee:              $75.00

Bail:                       $1,500.00

Beer:                          $20.00

Total:                     $4,145.00

But you know the job was done right!

You just can’t make this up…

Biden goes ballistic over a gun question, HERE.  And there go the union votes…

Portland has a ‘fix’ for the homeless and Coronavirus…

KGW-TV reports that city and county officials have requested that homeless shelters ask “houseless” people to stay six feet from each other in the shelters and if they won’t do that, send them back on the streets and demand they separate themselves there.

Like THAT will work… full article, HERE. I just wonder how long it will take for the virus to work its way through the Seattle, Portland, SFO, Los Angeles, and San Diego homeless?

Cue Cuomo in NY, HE’s gonna fix it… With the National Guard…

Cuomo announced he was dispatching the National Guard to enforce the closure of “large gathering areas” within the radius, including schools, houses of worship, and other large gathering facilities effective starting Thursday and running for two weeks. The two Metro-North stations serving the area will remain open, transit sources said.

Full article, HERE. Oh, and the center of the area is a Jewish synagogue…

Lastly, can ANYBODY ‘splain the run on toilet paper??? Sigh…

The mind…

Boggles…

Is it racist to announce that you’ve contracted a possibly deadly virus while referring to the virus by the name of the city where it originally broke out? For example, is using the phrase “I’m scared because I just found out I have the Wuhan virus” evidence of racism?

Apparently, yes…

Full article, HERE.

WTF people???

And while I’m on that subject, what is it with a virus scare that is causing a run (literally in some big box stores) on stuff? 2,3,4 of the BIG packages of toilet paper, ten or more cases of water, entire shelves of wipes???

I was in Japan just after Fukushima happened. There were some shortages but there was NO hoarding that I ever saw. At most, people would get TWO big bottles of water, or ONE roll of toilet paper. And their situation was presumptively a LOT more dire at that time than we have now.

Of course, if a lot of folks want to self-quarantine, the more the better in a lot of cases…

Just sayin… 🙂

Writers…

Sigh…

At dinner Saturday night we-

Plotted how to destroy Long Beach Harbor, including what armament would be required, down to specific rounds…

Discussed the perils of research. There REALLY needs to be a button you can select for searches that says, “Searcher is an author doing research for work in progress! HONEST!!!” Research can literally ‘eat’ a day, or more, and end up supporting two or three lines of dialog or scene setting… Sigh…

OR it can send your muse down an entirely ‘new’ set of actions for your character, which means you’re revising your WIP, sometimes all the way back to the opening scene. It may also take that minor, throwaway character you were going to kill off in the next paragraph and shove him/her into a subplot you didn’t plan on or even know about until you did the @#$#% research…

Pretty much put together an anthology… I know better… Somebody just shoot me now!

Cussed and discussed the current weather, upcoming Cons, and travel in the current ‘panic’ environment.

Discussed where we are on respective WIPs, gently chided some folks, threatened to kick others in the ass. In other words, a normal evening… LOL

And yes, I spent most of Sunday researching…

Virginia gun control…

Virginia continues down the path of going hard left on gun control with two more bills passed yesterday! I guess they figured nobody would be around to protest, so these got pushed through…

The Virginia legislature passed a new gun control bill requiring background checks for all firearm purchases.

The state passed two measures Saturday, one of which mandates all people purchasing firearms to undergo a criminal background check and another that limits those without concealed-carry permits to one gun purchase each month.

Full article, HERE from the Washington Examiner.

Any bets that one of the things they try going after is CCW permits in the future? Can’t have those pesky permit holders getting more than one gun a month, dontcha know…

Sigh…

144 years ago…

These words were heard…

“Mr. Watson, come here, I need you”

And the downfall of human communications began… 🙂

Full article HERE. However, there is STILL dispute as to whom actually invented the telephone… Article, HERE. Interestingly, Elisha Gray actually founded what became Western Electric, which was the largest supplier of telephony equipment in the world.

Just in my lifetime I’ve seen us go from this, on a party line no less.

To this bakelite monstrosity that weighed ten pounds,

To now this… thing… that does everything, but actually inhibits people actually talking to each other because of all the ‘other’ things it does…

Look at any given group of people in a restaurant or kids at a sleepover and they are ALL texting or looking at their phones… sigh…

Navy ‘stuff’…

Went down a rat hole on something else and stumbled across an interesting oddity of the differences within a class of ships… particularly DEs in WWII…

The DE or Destroyer Escort. First designed in 1942, the USS Evarts, DE-5 was the least ship of the first class of DEs designed to escort convoys across the Atlantic.

Named for LTJG Milo Burnell Evarts, on the night of 11-12 October 1942, in the Battle of Cape Esperance, Lieutenant (junior grade) Evarts was killed in action when his ship Boise (CL-47) was damaged. Disregarding the danger of explosion from the fires which broke out in the gun turret of which he was in charge, Evarts stood to his station until killed. He was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for his unyielding devotion to duty.

The smallest DE at only 290′, and slow by Destroyer standards, at only 21kts, they did have a good range of 4,150nm at 12kts (the average speed of a convoy), they also were diesel/electric powerplants, in that the diesel did not directly power the shafts, the electric motors did, in addition to furnishing power to run the ship. Lightly armed and armored, they were primarily designed for ASW against the U-boats, with hedgehogs, depth charges and starting with the next DE class, torpedoes. 97 were built, 35 of those went to England on Lend-Lease. USS Buckley, DE-51, was the second ‘class lead’ for the new DE class, commissioned in April 1943. At 306′ long, she was a better sea-keeper, a little faster at 24kts with turbo-electric drive, and the first DE to carry 21″ torpedoes. 154 were built, 43 were transferred to England, and another 43 were reconfigured (by adding an additional partial deck) as high speed transports (APDs).

The class was named in honor of Ordnanceman Third Class John D. Buckley, who was killed in action during the Japanese attack on Kaneohe Air Station.

The CANNON class was the third destroyer escort type to enter service. This was one of the smallest classes produced during the war with seventy-two CANNON class ships completed by 1945, including the USS SLATER. The CANNON class was very similar in design to the BUCKLEY class, the primary difference being a diesel-electric power plant instead of the BUCKLEY class’s turbo-electric design. The fuel efficient diesel electric plant greatly improved the range of the CANNON class, but at the cost of speed. Eight CANNON class destroyer escorts were given to the Brazilian Navy during World War II, while six more were given to the Free French Navy.

Except for the propulsion, the EDSALL class was nearly identical to the CANNON class in every respect. This fourth class of destroyer escort mounted a direct drive diesel configuration that proved to be extremely reliable. Eighty-five EDSALL class destroyer escorts were built during World War II. Thirty-seven of the EDSALL class ships have the distinction of being the only destroyer escort class manned by United States Coast Guard personnel during the war. Many of the EDSALL class ships were converted after World War II into long range radar picket ships. These ships, known as DERs, were some of the last destroyer escorts to be taken out of service in the late 1960s.

The fifth destroyer escort class, the RUDDEROW, represented a major departure from the original design. This was the first class to mount 5″/38 guns instead of the usual 3″/50. The RUDDEROW class also featured a completely redesigned, much lower superstructure than that found on the earlier destroyer escorts. Seventy-two RUDDEROW class destroyer escorts were built between 1944 and 1945. Most of these ships were converted into high speed transports known as APDs. Only twenty-one of the RUDDEROW class ended the war in their original configuration.

The final destroyer escort class produced during the war was named for the USS JOHN C. BUTLER. These ships were outwardly identical to the RUDDEROW class, but they mounted the steam driven turbine propulsion plant that was common to most ships in the United States Navy at that time. The BUTLER class represented the peak of destroyer escort design. They combined many of the characteristics of the earlier classes with the weapons and propulsion plants that the other classes lacked due to limited American industrial capacity when the destroyer escort project began. Eighty-three JOHN C. BUTLER class destroyer escorts were built during the war, and many of them remained active in the Navy long after the war ended.

Note that ALL these ships were Destroyer Escort ‘class’ ships, and all built within a 3 year period…

Unlike today when it takes 20 YEARS to go from design to actual production…

TBT…

Dammit…

Harvard University’s student newspaper published the survey results on Tuesday of nearly 500 members of the faculty. Of those who responded, 38% identified as “very liberal” while 41% identified as “liberal.” Another 19% said they were “moderate,” and only 1.5% of the respondents said they were “conservative” or “very conservative.”

Full article, HERE from the Washington Examiner.

I know we bitch a lot about the left taking over education in the US and get blown off a lot, but I really DO believe the left/communists HAVE taken over education in the US, from kindergarten to college.

Part of that, I believe started in the 60s with Vietnam. The honorable guys took one for the country and went into the military either when drafted or to other services to NOT go in the Army. The others used everything in their and their parent’s power to stay out of the military, including running to Canada. By and large, they stayed in school and grew up protesting Vietnam and the American way.

And drove education further and further from what ‘we’ grew up with… History, both state and national, civics, actual math courses, etc…

It is worth remembering what Khrushchev said 60 years ago, I remember seeing this as a child…“Your children’s children will live under communism. You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright; but, we will keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you will finally wake up and find you already have Communism. We will not have to fight you. We will so weaken your economy, until you will fall like overripe fruit into our hands. The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

It was September 29, 1959, when Nikita Khrushchev delivered his prediction for America at the United Nations. Remember the television coverage of him banging his shoe on the podium? At that time, just the word “communism” was feared throughout our nation. Remember this. Socialism leads to Communism How do you create a Socialist State? There are eight levels of control:


1) Healthcare – Control healthcare and you control the people

2) Poverty – Increase the poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them.

3) Debt – Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes, and this will produce more poverty.

4) Gun Control – Remove the ability to defend themselves from the government . That way you are able to create a police state.

5) Welfare – Take control of every aspect (food, housing, income) of their lives because that will make them fully dependent on the government.

6) Education – Take control of what people read, listen to and take control of what children learn in school.
7) Religion – Remove the belief in God from the government and schools because the people need to believe in ONLY the government knowing what is best for the people.

8) Class Warfare – Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. Eliminate the middle class. This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to tax the rich with the support of the poor.
Posted in TBT

Rut Roh…

One of my readers sent me an email yesterday that did NOT make me happy…

<snip>

Hi.

Received my new copy of Burnt Ends from Amazon today.  I immediately started reading. The James story is just like I remembered it.
Then I opened it to the Rio story and one of the pages came out in my hand.  I’ll admit that I did flex the thing in a gentle way to get it to open easier.  I read a few pages. Then two more pages came out. 
Now, I know this can be a problem with perfect bindings, especially when there are lots of pages and when they are brand new and perhaps not thoroughly cured yet.

<snip>

If you run across this problem, please let me know immediately AND complain to Amazon about quality issues. This is totally unsatisfactory!!!

Grrr…

Super Tuesday…

If you’re in one of the states that is voting today and you haven’t voted yet, please go do so!

It is IMPORTANT that you exercise your rights.

I don’t care whom you vote for, or what party you are…

But go VOTE!!!