My Substitute Reality -You're just jealous cause the little voices only talk to me-

Sunday September 27, 2009

Rice Cooker

Filed under: Food,Life,Personal — don @ 7:01 pm

There’s a store a mile or so away called Mr. Stuff. It’s got all kinds of one of a kind and small amounts of well, stuff for sale. A few weeks ago I was in there and they had a rice cooker for $15. I was on my bike so I had no place to put it. Today Betty and I were out getting a new light for out front and I suggested we should see if they still had the rice cooker. They did. We bought it and I cooked some rice when we got home. I think we got a good deal.
rc850

Sunday September 13, 2009

Back to Work

Filed under: Life,Work — don @ 7:47 am

I’m headed back to work tomorrow. I’ve accepted a job with ThinKom down in Torrance. They make antennas that are small and lightweight and fairly low cost compared to similar performing antennas. The founder of the company invented this antenna while he was working at Hughes in the early 90s. He formed ThinKom in 2000 and they have been growing since then. They finally got some larger contracts and decided they needed a Test Engineer. I interviewed with them on July 23rd and they made me the offer around the beginning of September.

I would have preferred to find something in the valley but I think ThinKom has a potential to be a pretty good thing for us. The fact they are growing at a time when everyone else is shrinking is a really good indicator.

Friday September 11, 2009

8 Years Later

Filed under: Life — don @ 9:02 am

twin_towers1

Tuesday September 1, 2009

Station Fire Smoke

Filed under: Life — don @ 5:52 pm

Here are a couple of pictures of the smoke from the Station fire. The first one is looking northeast towards the Angeles Forest and the fire itself.
P9010019
This next one is to the northwest. You can see the “edge” of the smoke. It’s actually smoky everywhere but you can kind of see the sky in the far west. We can’t even see the mountains at the north end of the valley. This is one of the worst visual days I can remember.
P9010020

Monday August 24, 2009

A few questions

Filed under: Life,Politics — don @ 4:33 pm

Saw this on Glenn Beck today(you know, that far right extremist). Here’s a list of questions:

• Can we survive this debt? If yes, how?
• Why the rush on health care reform, cap-and-trade?
• Who is writing these bills?
• Will Washington read and understand the bills?
• Why are you called “grassroots” if you are for, but “Astroturf” if you are against?
• Our unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is close to $100 trillion. Is there any way to pay for these programs without bankrupting America?
• We are in so much debt, why spend more borrowed money on cap-and-trade and health care programs before we stop the flow of red ink?
• The stimulus package funneled billions of dollars to ACORN: How does giving billions of dollars to ACORN stimulate the economy?
• If it was so important for Congress to pass the stimulus bill before they even had time to read it, why has only a fraction of the stimulus money been spent six months later?
• Former President Bush said he had to abandon free market principles in order to save them; how exactly does that work?
• Why won’t members of Congress read the bills before they vote on them?
• Why are citizens mocked and laughed at when they ask their congressman to read the bills before they vote on them?
• Was the “cash for clunkers” program meant to save the Earth or the economy? Did it accomplish either?
• How did Van Jones, a self-proclaimed communist, become a special adviser to the president?
• Did President Obama know of Van Jones’ radical political beliefs when he named him special adviser?
• The Apollo Alliance claimed credit for writing the stimulus bill; why was this group allowed to write any portion of this bill?
• If politicians aren’t writing the bills and aren’t reading the bills, do they have any idea what these 1,000-page plus bills actually impose on the American people?
• If the “public option” health care plan is so good, why won’t politicians agree to have that as their plan?
• If town hall meetings are intended for the politicians to learn what’s on our mind, why do they spend so much time talking instead of listening?
• Politicians are refusing to attend town hall meetings complaining, without evidence, that they are scripted. Does that mean we shouldn’t come out and vote for you since every campaign stop, baby kiss and speech you give is scripted?
• Why would you want to overwhelm the system?
• Is using the economic crises to rush legislation through Congress what Rahm Emanuel meant when he talked about not letting a crisis go to waste?
• What are the president’s “czars” paid? What is the budget for their staffs/offices?

Saturday July 25, 2009

A Note From Pamela Geller

Filed under: Life,Personal,Politics — don @ 10:51 am

I saw this on a friend’s Facebook wall. It says pretty much what I’ve been trying to say.

I am a student of history. Professionally, I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied history all my life. I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes, these exist but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.

Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about 10 – 15 years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.

We demanded and then codified into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people whom we knew could never pay back? Why? We learned recently that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has “loaned” two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700B we all argued about so strenuously just this past September.

Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of “We the People,” who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.

We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why?

We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?

We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (now violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it wants marriage to remain between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?). We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?

Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, Social Security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government. Our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and know precisely what I am talking about.) The list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It is potentially 1929 x 10. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot name for fear of offending people of the same religion who cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.

And now we have elected a man no one knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla, Alaska. All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more important.)

Mr.. Obama’s winning platform can be boiled down to one word: Change…radical change. Why?

I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now. This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.

And that is only the beginning.

I thought I would never be able to experience what the ordinary, moral German felt in the mid-1930s. In those times, the savior was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they did know was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory and promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker.. And he smiled and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his “brown shirts” would bully them into submission.

And then he was duly elected to office, with a full-throttled economic crisis at hand [the Great Depression]. Slowly but surely he seized the controls of government power, department by department, person by person, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The kids joined a Youth Movement in his name, where they were taught what to think. How did he get the people on his side? He did it promising jobs to the jobless, money to the moneyless, and goodies for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe , and across the world.

He did it with a compliant media – Did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and…change. And the people surely got what they voted for. (Look it up if you think I am exaggerating.) Read your history books. Many people objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and made fun of. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though.

Don’t forget that Germany was the most educated, cultured country in Europe It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And in less than six years – a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency – it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them.

As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong, close my eyes, have another latte and ignore what is transpiring around me.

Some people scoff at me; others laugh or think I am foolish, naive, or both.. Perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe – and why I believe it. I pray I am wrong. But, I do not think I am.

About the author via Google….

Pamela “Atlas” Geller began her publishing career at The New York Daily News and subsequently took over operation of The New York Observer as Associate Publisher. She left The Observer after the birth of her fourth child, but remained involved in various projects including American Associates, Ben Gurion University and being Senior Vice-President Strategic Planning and Performance Evaluation at The Brandeis School.

After 9/11, Atlas had the veil of oblivion violently lifted from her consciousness and immersed herself in the education and understanding of geopolitics, Islam, terror, foreign affairs and imminent threats the mainstream media and the government wouldn’t cover or discuss.

Wednesday July 22, 2009

Fundamentally Transforming America

Filed under: Life,Personal — don @ 4:01 pm

Five days before the election Barack Obama made a speech. In that speech he made a statement that many of us didn’t really listen to. Here it is.

If what he has done in the last 6 months doesn’t chill you to your bones you are either not paying attention or you advocate making this country something that it has never been and was never intended to be. The framers of our constitution are rolling over in their graves from what this man is doing.

If you are in agreement with what he’s doing I can’t help you but if you don’t want the kind of “Change” that you’re seeing I ask that you start watching The Glenn Beck Show on Fox at 5 pm Eastern. You might just get your eyes opened.

Notice I tagged this as personal and life and not politics. This goes beyond politics. This goes to the core of what America will become if we do nothing.

Thursday June 25, 2009

RIP Farrah Fawcett

Filed under: Life — don @ 10:28 am

farrah

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