Speaking their own language

Grahm Norton is on the BBCAmerica now.
He was late starting because of some bogus 'breakthrough' show about a vampire, werewolf and a ghost trying to be normal.

Anyway, Graham has some guy that (I guess) is a big star over there and Sarah Ferguson- remember, the fun one of the two princesses of the 80's.

Anyway, the British wife is laughing to some (to my American ears) unintelligible mutterings and slang as an Irishman, a fun girl and some comedian trade colloquialisms that I have absolutely no idea of what they're saying.


Seriously,,,,which of these two do you think would be more fun in your favorite bar, man cave, range or strip club? The Ice Princess or 'the other one'?

I'll take the real sized red head who's down to earth TYVM..... hey guys, curves are good.

Correct me if I'm wrong

But wasn't this guy collecting a salary for being the Illinois Senator for four years before he got where he is today?



I also seem to remember the Dems taking control of BOTH houses of Congress in 2006.

Down here, CPS is looking at more nukes

And the newest mayor of San Antonio, Julian Castro (Dem) is now balking at the idea of building two new nuke plants down at the South Texas nuclear project.

The freaks up in Austin are already up in arms about basically *ANY* new power, but nukes especially.

At least they haven't gone the 'safety' rout yet. Maybe it's because someone will point out that in the ENTIRE history of nuclear power production there has only been one incident that cause death or serious injury....and THAT was caused by a plant entirely designed, built and operated by GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES.

Those anti-nuke people aren't against all new power, however. They'd like nothing less than to cure our growing population and energy problems with conservation and renewable energy.

Ok, that's a nice thought, but do me a favor and get out your 'Big Chief' notebook and a #2 pencil.
We'll make it simple, say we have a plant that puts out 100 units of power and the customers use 95 units, we have 5 units in reserve.
The energy company wants to ad another 100 units so we can have 105 units to sell to other power companies and to have plenty for our ever growing population.

The greenies want to ad maybe 40 units on a plot of land 20 times larger than the nuke site- that will ONLY work during the day and if it's windy enough- which it seldom is both. we'll be optimistic and call it 15 units online.
So we have 20 reserve units that we need to withhold from selling because it's unreliable.
Lets review because some aren't good at word problems.
Nukes- 4 of them giving 200 units of power, with 105 to sell to offset the huge construction bill.
Renuables- 2 nukes and solar/wind farms with a 120 peak output and (maybe)25 in reserve that you can't sell to offset the HUGE construction bill.

Now lets add the reason for the discussion- an additional population that will demand electricity ion the future. I don't know, but since they keep coming, lets say 40 new units of power in the foreseeable future.
BUT they'll be required to build green!
Ok, we'll knock off an unrealistic 15 units there and have a combined demand of 95 plus 25 gives us a demand of...130- cool, we're in hot beans.

EXCEPT....solar doesn't work at night, windmills need a minimum (and maximum) airspeed to operate. There could be days without enough wind. Darkness happens every night and in the heat of this summer, demand isn't going down because it's still hot at night.

So we either have a massive bill with 200 units available and able to sell 105 to offset the HUGE bill
-OR-
A massive bill with 120 units of power and a questionable 25 in reserve- barely enough to meet our needs and none to sell to offset the huge bill. Then we have those HURRICANES we have here that'll shut down those eco-friendly power plants for weeks at a time- not to mention some tourist throwing bread up and getting the windmills shut down because of the massive seagull kills.

That reminds me

Eric has a C.W.McCall ditty to clan an earworm from an earlier post.

Well, after last Saturdays work and moving a trailer to another jobsite- with a balky release valve. I knew how those trailewrs could deal with dragging brakes from my trips over the Rockies and the Appalachians. especialy since it was less than five miles to the new jobsite, so I drug (literally) that trailer with dragging brakes and could only get to 35MPH.
When I got to the jobsite they. were. smiking.
Not as bad as I've seen on the downhill sides of some famous slopes, but still pretty hot. The old plastic wheel hubs broke and spilled lube oil all over the rims.



Anyway, that reminded me of this song..

THIS.............

Is why you don't tailgate.


If that red truck is a semi, which it looks like it is, the front bumper was inside that car before the air even started the rear brakes working.




Bigger and better pic at Dicks.

Operation 'Supply Our Students' is on again

You probably have something going on around you with a similar name.

I know these disadvantaged poor kids need school stuff. Probably more than those that are better off.

BUT--- when did it become *MY* responsibility to be guilted into buying them cr@p that their parents should be?
The stuff they're asking for doesn't really cost all that much. I know what's on the required supply list, I had kids in school lately.
These social-economically disadvantaged adults could forgo their carton of cut rate smokes and get their entire brood school supplies for a year.
-Or put off a payment on those low profile tires gracing your hoodmobile or the preamp and base that pisses-off people for a quarter mile around you,

What all those 'disadvantaged' people need is someone to kick them in the ass whenever they fall down in the parental responsibility department.
But we know that'll never happen because it might cause them to be uncomfortable and now-a-days America is all about fast fixes and feelings.

HI! Did you miss me?

It seems I haven't put anything here in forever, but I see I threw something up just last Thursday.

Not much worth writing about in the news it seems. Michael Jackson is still dead.
So is Tim Russert.
The Newest Auto bailout is broke and showing how badly the .gov can run anything.

We're working 7 days a week and I'm usually gone from the house 11 to 12 hours a day.
I haven't been able to change the oil in the trucks, and they're about three weeks overdue.
We're running on reserve food at Casa Trainwreck because I haven't had a chance to do any *real* food shopping.

BUT, I did send the tax cheat Tim Geitner a quarter of what he says I owe for checking one extra box for the 18-yr-old.

The sense of entitlement in D.C.

Kay Bailey Hutchison, the one who voted for the last Amnesty bill when she though no one was watching has decided it's her turn to be Governor of Texas.
To further her goals, she has decided our current Governor- the very able Rick Perry, needs to step aside in the primaries so as not to interfere with her Senate gig.

AUSTIN — U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's message today was as simple as it was confusing: If Gov. Rick Perry doesn't quit his re-election race to give me a free run at the Republican gubernatorial nomination, I'll quit the Senate to run against him.

In just a matter of hours, Hutchison told a Dallas radio station in a telephone interview that she planned to quit her Senate seat in October or November to challenge Perry. But then several hours later she told reporters in Washington that her statements had been misunderstood and what she really wanted was for Perry to get out of the race.

“Nobody expected [Perry] to run for 15 years, and I think there's a chance that he wouldn't run because he would see how divisive it is and that he's trying to stay too long and that he can really help in many ways if he doesn't run, in which case I could then be able to stay in the Senate all the way to the end,” Hutchison said, according to Congressional Quarterly.
Rick Perry assumed the governorship in late 2000 with the election of Bush as President.

As you read the article, you'll notice that her staff is using the Democrat rout of campaigning and heading straight to the pig pit of verbiage. I guess they learned how to get things done that way in DeeCee, but we don't really want to operate that way here Kay- just in case you forgot where you came from.

I'll not be voting for her again.


Stolen from Alamo City Pundit.

A healthcar preview

Brought to you by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
They're suspending the Cash for clunkers program as of midnight tonight,,,,because of the huge backlog of unprocessed files.

Through late Wednesday, 22,782 vehicles had been purchased through the program and nearly $96 million had been spent. But dealers raised concerns about large backlogs in the processing of the deals in the government system, prompting the suspension.

A survey of 2,000 dealers by the National Automobile Dealers Association found about 25,000 deals had not yet approved by NHTSA, or nearly 13 trades per store. It raised concerns that with about 23,000 dealers taking part in the program, auto dealers may already have surpassed the 250,000 vehicle sales funded by the $1 billion program.

"There's a significant backlog of 'cash for clunkers' deals that make us question how much funding is still available in the program," said Bailey Wood, a spokesman for the dealers association.

The bureaucrats can't take care of less than 25,000 sales- HOW do they think they can manage 300,000,000 medical cases?

And yet in the same article, they predict the fiscal results of the massive healthcare bureaucracy to come...."Even before the suspension, some in Congress were seeking more money for the auto sales stimulus. Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., wrote in a letter to House leaders on Wednesday requesting additional funding for the program."


Now, wtf is the NHTSA doing administering funds for auto sales?

Kewl, It's nice to have friends

Via ZIP

We have surprise help in the Afghani anti-terror war- that's not a war on terror (or something like that).
The tiny country of Columbia is going to repay us, the U.S. for our help in training them to fight Marxist terrorists by sending troops to Afghanistan.

Ten years ago, they didn't even exist. Today, elite Colombian Special Operations troops are preparing to fight alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan, reports CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan.

For Colombia, it's a way to give something back to the U.S., and the American Green Berets who've spent the last decade training them.

General Freddy Padilla de Leon, Colombia's top military man, chose an interview with Logan to make the surprise announcement his men would join the fight in Afghanistan.

"Very soon ... Maybe in August or September. This will be our first opportunity in our history," Padilla said.

Colombia's recent history is written in blood. An insurgency waged by leftist guerillas known as the FARC. And funded with drug money brought Colombia to its knees.

Colombia today is a different world. The economy is thriving and order has been restored.

It's a surprise announcement. Think Obama knows yet? If he does, how long do you think it'll take for him to revoke their ........combat VISAs because they were fighting against his fellow travelers in FARC (no, not the news aggregate), since he'll do that to countries who want to keep dictator free.

Well, color me surprised

The .gov is changing the rules in the middle of the game, and guess who it bebefits?

Any one want to bring this up as a comparison to nationalized healthcare?
I bet Rush has something to say.

But I *did* get them all right

This is the reason I hate taking tests like this.

Instead of getting one wrong and besting 80% of test takers, I know that the sun is made of hydrogen and that affects climate change more than the CO2 AlGore convinced 'scientists' believe.

How did you do?

Cash for clunkers and other car thoughts

Ok, we now have an idea about our Unifier in Chief's new ,,,,,carmulus,,,, plan.

It's reported that his bureaucrats over at the NTSA(???wtf?) have pulled these requirements out of their collective butts.

* Your vehicle must be less than 25 years old on the trade-in date
* Only purchase or lease of new vehicles qualify
* Generally, trade-in vehicles must get 18 or less MPG (some very large pick-up trucks and cargo vans have different requirements)
* Trade-in vehicles must be registered and insured continuously for the full year preceding the trade-in
* You don't need a voucher, dealers will apply a credit at purchase
* Program runs through Nov 1, 2009 or when the funds are exhausted, whichever comes first.
* The program requires the scrapping of your eligible trade-in vehicle, and that the dealer disclose to you an estimate of the scrap value of your trade-in. The scrap value, however minimal, will be in addition to the rebate, and not in place of the rebate.

I also read somewhere that there will be a $15000 fine for not scrapping clunkers. I don't know if this is per each cherry 64 Mustang that didn't get destroyed or just a blanket fine that lets the '74 goat sell for free.- Oh wait, were talking about the '80's none were worth saving- never mind.


OK, I have my 1967 C-10 I'm tired of getting 10 MPG and want to get rid of the thing because it'll cost too much to restore, but it's too old and I can't afford a newer car.

So I just keep driving the gas guzzler because those DeeCee lifers have never seen a vehicle older than 25 years on the road where they live. Right?


I guess this plan WILL apply to Ford, too- even though they're in competition with the two Peoples Auto Manufacturing Collectives.

AND, lastly- as I was wondering this morning while idling 5MPH below the speed limit...will Ford be doing away with those black and white Crown Vics that was causing the slowdown?
Because Obama Motors will make all .gov enforcement agencies buy from them for their cruiser needs.

Great Britain

The doughy island nation that launched an empire that spanned the world for centuries.

Who stood alone against the Nazis.

Who's colonies sprouted countries that lead the free world in liberty, inventiveness and self reliance.

Is now carding people for trying to buy a pizza cutter?
And forcing businesses to remove signs from yards so as to prevent people from walking into them.

And as Lord Nelson spins in his grave, arrests a man for defending his son from a youth gang -with a letter opener.

But hey they have Gov't healthcare!

Watching "Ice road truckers"

Hugh got busted by the Alaska DOT for his logs.
The way he acts, I though he had his chit together on a simple line graph logbook.

I'm not a 'super trucker' like Hugh, but I can show him how to jimmy his logbook to get around the mandatory rest periods.

Sometimes it's a name that captures your attention

You might not know the details, but the names make you remember them.

Galiploli

The battle of Rourke's drift

Bull run

The Alamo

Trafalgar

Sugar loaf

And we have a lesser known one close to home-
The second Battle of Adobe Walls.
Which saw Quannah Parker an 700-800 warriors of assorted tribes attacking the trading post of Adobe Walls with 28 buffalo hunters (including one named Billy Dixon) and a woman inside.

When the attack commenced at dawn on the 27th, Dixon and the others retreated to the camp’s saloon and several stores. The Indians charged on foot and horseback to the very doors of the buildings, killing three hunters. The hunters repelled the furious charge with their revolvers; the attackers then backed off and pinned down the hunters with peppering rifle fire. The hunters, suffering no more losses, switched to their heavy buffalo guns and returned fire, inflicting moderate casualties.

On the second or third day of battle (reports differ), a group of Cheyennes appeared on a mesa some distance from the camp. Dixon grabbed a Sharps “Big .50” rifle, sighted in one of the exposed Indians, and shot the Indian out of his saddle. Sizing up their losses, the Indians shortly retired from the battlefield and the Second Battle of Adobe Walls was over.

The distance of Dixon’s shot has long been a source of debate. Suspect early reports placed the distance at 1,538 yards. Dixon never sought credit for the shot nor even addressed it, leaving the question open for more than a century. Recent research at the site, may have resolved the matter, pegging the shot at a shorter, though still astounding, 1,200 yards, more than two-thirds of a mile.

I'd hate to be the white cop in that room

That room being the Oval Office with the smartest negro in America and his buddy the black racist who got himself arrested for interfering with a police investigation.

You know, the one the most eloquent black person in America called 'stupid'- for doing his job the way he was trained to do.

I'm sure that office politics had nothing to do with Crowley accepting this ........ informal knowledge session.

More joblogging

We're working all weekend to get six runs of conduit in the ground before they have to finish paving this week-end.

See, the guy who used to be in charge of the stadium job was falling down doing it and got demoted for doing it. The conduit was supposed to be in about six months ago before all the parking lots got done.
But he was too busy doing other things than pushing the job.

I don't think he's working for our company anymore.
The boss doesn't like loosing money like that.

My first thought

On this article was *but are they hot* as (dot)Indians can be...
When I saw that they were trying to embarrass the Gods to make rain, when I realized they were the other kind of Indians....

That's all.

HEY-----
Did anyone listen to our Telepromter Messiahs' lie-fest last night?
I had better things to do, and I'd bet without searching, most Americans didn't watch either...which might be why the MSM may be backing off their second coming hype....




AND in other news...Yes it was, all you had to do was attach two wires to it.
"This side towards enemy" says it all right there...

The law of unintended consequences

Most people with common sense know about this one.
The problem is that these people aren't making public policy or being their enablers in the news media.

These are the same people who, looking at a set of parallel steel bars running on top of wooden ties would wonder what threw them 200feet, while someone with a bit of common sense would stay OFF the railroad tracks when a train was blowing it's horn.

Which, I guess is why these people have no problem with the way things are going in DeeCee, and can't understand why anyone would question their TelePrompter Messiah.

I got a phone call today!

It was from my US Rep. Ciro Rodriguez inviting me to meet him at the Hondo libary.
Actually it was a robo-call that he invited me to be at the hondo LIBARY between noon and 4PM.
Sorry Ciro, I work in San Antonio- BUT here's an e-mail I sent to him.

I got your phone call today about meeting you at the Hondo librbay.
I work in San ANtonio, so won't be able to attend. If I were able to attend, I would tell you to vote NO!!!!!!!
on the healthcare scheme that is being concocted in Washington untill you:

-Fix Medicade
-Fix Medicare
-Show us how you can run the VA in the way you say you're going to run the healthcare of 400 million (Americans and illegals) members of your 'Single payer" plan.

Again- VOTE NO! on this plan.





BTW- If you want to see the entire feel-good legislation they've (House) have voted on in seven months, you can find it here.

I see we have the Messiahs birth certificate popping up again

This time in the form of a Reservist who is challenging the head Neophyte to prove he can order him deployed.
According to the ....ummmmm...birthers... the fact that the Army cancelled those orders proves there's something 'there'.

How about this?
Given that Obama has an undeservedly HUGE ego unsupported by anything except that he's been handed sh1t all his life, and sees those below him as things to be used; do you think that maybe he's fighting just because he likes to watch the fun?
That he's spending millions of taxpayer dollars to enjoy conservatives pulling his bobber along like a little Bluegill.

AND on the last day of his reign, he'll whip out the long form official Hawaii birth certificate and laugh all the way to Marine One.

Our newest Supreme court jurist looks like a shoo-in

No. Let me rephrase that, our newest groundbreaking Latina lesbian liberal Judge is a rubber stamp after the show in DeeCee this week.

So, now that all the smoke clears from the red herring fire of the "Wise Latina" comments- does ANYONE remember her getting a question about what she meant when she said that Appeals Court judges should legislate from the bench?

If she got that question, what was her answer? Since the Obama lapdogs in the Lamestream media didn't shove it out there.


CLARIFICATION:
I want to know if anyone remembers the question about legislating from the bench being asked or explained away in legalese?

It took 10 hours

To do what it should have taken the guy that was supposed to be running backhoe about four.
To back up...
Yesterday I was supposed to come in and punch out six holes for pole bases and go home.
Then it changed to do the six holes and rocksaw the trench...then go home (ok backing up to around 12:30, still cool).
Then boss says "Before you head home, do a quick fuel run to (a middles school nearby), and have a good week-end. (Cr@p- there goes my early day)
As I finish fueling I get another call: "Go back to the Orchard and pick up a trailer then pick up the skid-steer (a Cat bobcat) so you can work at (a college downtown) tomorrow. Can you work tomorrow?
...Yes....(sigh)

I was *really* thinking of taking the whole shebang home and just showing up to push dirt for about an hour, but the guy that signs my check knew where I was going and what I was doing. I had this niggling little thing that said 'he knows how long it should take to do this, do you really think he'll be gone before you need to be back?'
He was still there when I got back- an hour later than quitting time.

Today I had to drive an hour northeast to get the truck and drive back southwest for half an hour to the jobsite.
I then had to move about 12 yards of dirt with a bucket of less than 1/3 yard
-backfill and compact four sections of trench
-make a calichie lot presentable by consolidating the spoils into one big pile (with the 12 yds)
-scrape the parking lot clean so they can prep for asphalt work.

I left the yard at 5:30 tonight with 17 hours OT.
It makes a good paycheck, but I'd really rather be doing this:

Sorry

Got nothing.
I worked almost 20 hours Monday, and was so tired I was making puns out of our transformers.
You're lucky I didn't get a chance to know WYE we were looking for 3 phase 480 so we could make a NEUTRAL for a garage size ice dispenser. Just because someone DELTAgated the job to us.
Now we WIND up TAPPING our CURRENT knowledge of our CORE electric technology.
We ended up with the COMMON consensus that we'd have to LOCK-OUT that idea and ended up just pulling 300 feet of 1/O copper in a full conduit to get what we needed.


If you think that was bad there was 6+ hours of that same talk
Monday night.


UPDATE
Got a link from a hot blonde who's scarysmart. Thanks Roberta.

A thousand words

A simple explaination on the stimulous package.

Do you Liberals want ME to tell you?

Ok, since no one in DeeCee wants the truth out, here it is from flyover country.

The reason Cheney told (or didn't- depending on which anonymous source you believe) the CIA not to tell you about an anti-terrorism program was so the New York Times wouldn't have it was a front page headline five minutes after he hung up.

It's because you people were actively rooting for us to loose in Iraq because if we won, then it would make Bush look good.
You were acting against the good of America for cheap political theater, your only core principles are the aggregation of power, no matter how you get it.

"Where are you at?"

Me: Lowe's.
Boss: Where?

Me: Lowe's. I just got back with the one ton from that fuel run, and dropped it at the orchard.
Boss: Why?
Me: I need a new toilet. I can't stop my other one from draining the tank.

Boss: Oh. How much time have you got today?
Me: Two hours- it puts me at 6 OT for the week. (The guy who signs the checks doesn't like seeing much more than 5 OT)

Boss: You need to go over go back over to (the school I just left) and run the boom truck to finish pulling wire, they just broke one pulling head and got another pull stuck in the pipe.


So I get over there and meet a journeyman who's really good at wire pulls (that they called in from home). I get the truck backed to where it should be (instead of where it was) while he takes the top off the switchgear box.
The first crew through inexperience or laziness tried making an angle pull in old,small conduit with sharp radius bends.

After getting the hook down directly above the conduit opening, we got enough mule tape on the barley visable head to get it the rest of the way out.

After that was done, and we saw how much wire lube was *not* used, I repositioned myself to pull the stuck wire out.

To do this, I had to back into a dead-end courtyard with about six inches of clearance on each mirror.


Because I couldn't fit under the walkway.


To make a blind pull, that was relayed by people who weren't up to speed on using hand signals.


While sharing space with the brick masons.





After pulling the stuck wire out, I got to drive through that alley again to set up in the first place I was.

The journeyman made the right head and used plenty of soap and the last three pulled in slick as snot.





Someone is going to hear about that pull from the office on Monday....


UPDATE
For Orangeneck-
All that really happened Monday was lots of yelling and finger pointing, with threats of writing 'someone' up.

So, GM is out of bankruptcy already

And it only took how many BILLIONS of dollars to get them all the way to bankruptcy court?

Now the .gov appointees in charge of the company are saying that the .gov is going to stay out......


.....


....


REALLY?

Does the AP actually believe that Barbra Streisand they printed here?

Lets see if I remember things right-
The Unions (of which there is no mention)refused to bargain with either Chrysler or GM until they wasted TRILLIONS of dollars on a band aid that was supposed to keep them both out of bankruptcy court.
THEN the .gov pretty much stole 70% of stockholders secured investments to reward the UAW for it's support in electing the Messiah.

THEN our head Neophyte put his own people in charge of both companies,,,,,,BUT the .gov won't interfere in the daily running of their new Peoples Auto Collectives (Bow tie and Pentastar divisions) because for some reason bureaucrats will run those companies better than people who actually STUDIED running a business.


BTW, Ford didn't take the .govs 30 pieces of silver- did you know they're number 4 in worldwide auto sales as of last week?

Prescient I am

I had just dropped off the skid-steer after getting the tire fixed.
I was sweeping the dirt chunks off and was almost done when the thoght hit me: "I really need to use a rag for this because I don't kneed a dirty wood sliver in my hand"
But it'll take too long to find one, besides I'm almost done.


I'm waiting for it to get enough pus to squeeze it out of my right middle finger.





Very important UPDATE
The G8 met yesterday and didn't even mention Michael Jackson!