Monday Morning Satire...

Not for the Squeamish!

We are the Champions...

Well, the Great Falls Americans have done it again.

Where I Have Been....

Not a Friday Funny, but a little video of the late game Friday night.
Oh and it looks like Mom will be on the news tomorrow night, story to follow.

The Puck Drops Here..

IT IS BACK!!!!
The puck has dropped this morning and Great Falls is once again playing host to some of the best AA & A Hockey this town will ever see. All you locals, be sure to come out and show your support!

For more information visit the Official Site.

Global Warming

Is Carbon Dioxide concentrations causing Global Warming or is Global Warming causing higher Carbon Dioxide concentrations? Just something to ponder, but with the latest threat of a lawsuit against Al Gore and the GW Activists maybe something we ALL should ponder a little more. I don't remember where I obtained the information, but I recall at climate graph that compares C02 concentrations with average temperature and the graph clearly shows, to the non-graphically challenged that is, that a spike in temperature PROCEEDS the spike in Carbon Dioxide...hum...

Thank kind of chunks a HUGE hole in the global warming theory that I have heard, but I will also provide you with the ONLY evidence I have ever seen that supports global warming...

Lookin for Critters

The weather was absolutely amazing on Saturday so I couldn't resist heading out to the field to see what the critters were doing. Not much for excitement, but I did enjoy basking in the sun. Dad even reported a minor case of sun burn on the back of his neck.

Compilations

Negligence of Love

NESS CITY, Kan. — A man whose girlfriend authorities say spent nearly two years in a bathroom in their house, sitting on the toilet so long that the seat adhered to her body, has been charged with mistreatment of a dependent adult.


Where is this going? If he can be charged for allowing a dependent adult to remain in the bathroom for two years, can the caregivers of bariatric adults be charged for feeding them? There are more and more cases of bariatric patients who have lived on the same piece of furniture for years being brought to light by this 'War on Obesity'. What about the food delivery people, are they going to be held responsible for 'mistreatment of a dependent adult' when they deliver food to non-mobile bariatric humans?

Are caregivers and family members of diagnosed patients with mental illness going to be held accountable for not making them take their medications?

I won't argue that the story has very tragic and disturbing facts, but where does individual rights end and other people's responsibility begin? While the story might appear to be as simple as someone being charged for an apparent crime, but is that the entire issue?

Th World without a vowl...

Have you ever had a key on your computer that didn't always work? That random key that if you didn't give it an authoritative tap, it wouldn't register the key press? For the past couple of weeks I have been fighting that issue. I have tried using compressed air to evict all the crumbs and gremlins that live in the keyboard, hoping that maybe I just happened to get something under the key that keeps it from being pressed. OF course the fix can't quite be that easy.

But it just isn't one key, yesterday it was the 'r' key. Which of course is a popular key. The week before it was the 't' key; another popular key. And now as I type this, it is the 'e' key. *pound Pound POUND* Grrrrrr...annoying I say.

Of course, it makes me feel like I am being abusive to my keyboard when I am pounding on a key to get it to register. And if I am not pounding on the key, I am holding the keyboard over my head shaking it while holding it upside down. NOTHING COMES OUT!!!

Now as I struggle with the simple issue of a keyboard I ponder why would I want Microsoft in my car? I have been doing a little car shopping and the newest thing is to have your car interfaced with your cell phone, MP3 collection, yadda yadda yadda. Of course I would love to have my entire music collection at the touch of a button, but a Microsoft product? Is it better than Windoze? Would I be required to randomly pull over and disconnect my battery cables to keep my 'entertainment' system in my car working? Would I be talking on my bluetooth equipped phone and all of the sudden have the stereo system start blasting Queen? Or maybe talking on the phone to my niece and have Larry the Cable Guy start ranting in his 'blue collared' based comedy.

It is all just one of those things, if I can't get a keyboard that will type the keys I press, do I really want to have a highly integrated automobile? Am I just paranoid, or is this a valid concern? What ever am I going to do?

Monday already?

I thought this was worth sharing; the differences between junk and heirlooms is completely different amongst the genders.

Did everyone manage to survive the weekend? Happy Saint Patrick's Day to everyone, don't eat too much corned beef and cabbage or drink too much green beer...

Cats...

Doing more for WHO?

I have been trying to capture a picture of 'my network' since I know it is not as supportive as the big red V likes to pretend it is. Since they claim to have the fewest dropped calls on the network it will do me no good to switch, and I am sure their research is not skewed to attract customers. Why would a company want to do that?

While trying to carry on a conversation the other day I got completely worn out asking, "What did you say you are breaking up" and "I apologize, I didn't hear what you said could you repeat that?" Now add to that the frustration that I had to redial the phone number a couple of times to continue this 'high quality' conversation. Now I understand having this type of call clarity when I am traveling through rural Montana or when in the hills of paradise, but sitting in my front room? You really have to be kidding me...

Oh wait, you ask about the person on the other end, yeah they were sitting at their house as well. So if this is a taste of the network that tests itself everyday to bring me the best service and the network with the fewest dropped calls, what are the other networks like? Can they possibly be worse?

And since I am going on about cell phone networks and their interesting judge of good service, when are they going to fix the problem with the voicemail system. Oh wait, I said that like there was only problem with the voice mail system. My favorite problem is the one where you call someone and they miss your call so you go to voicemail and while you are trying to leave them a message they call you back. Which you of course try to switch over to take the call so you can actually talk to the person and you end up leaving a blank message because they put the call on hold instead of disconnecting you. But if you try to hang up on the voicemail system to let the call ring through somehow you manage to disconnect both calls. Don't worry, because the system is SOOOOO smart it will reconnect the call to the other party using a ringback. Irritating, can't they just connect the two calls and be done with it? Or how about my second favorite, call gets dropped so you both simultaneously dial each other and of course go directly to voicemail because the system doesn't know how to deal with two numbers calling each other at the same time. But while you are trying to leave a voicemail for the other party and they are leaving you a voicemail or worse yet hanging up and trying to call you again leading to the first problem. Grrrrr!!!!

Statistically Speaking...

Well, I was going to wait until my day of ranting for this post, but I think I need to get it out of the way today. Politicians love to quote statistical figures, but what is certain about statistics? Some would have you believe that a majority is all that is needed so that would imply better than 50% would be required, but in the education system we classify 70-79% as average. So does that mean politicians have a larger deviation or a lower certainty than teachers? Of course we can't talk about reasonable doubt without a lawyer being involved, so what does reasonable doubt mean to a lawyer? But of course, lawyers don't like to use numbers so there is no mathematical definition of reasonable doubt.

The ironic thing is that statistical references are thrown around like everyone knows the significance of them. According to the investment firms 67% of the adult population does not have a significant retirement plan. According to Purell, their product kills 99.9% of all germs. According to the weatherman there is a 30% of inclement weather. Blah, Blah, Blah...

Are we really that uneducated that we can be bought with some scary sounding numbers? Can we really be convinced that global warming is a 'serious' issue because of a one degree rise in temperature? Do we really believe that it is the 'weak' dollar that is going to drive gas above $4/gal while the Big E banks record PROFITS AGAIN?

Hum...I say there is a 89% chance that if you are reading this blog you are female, but what is my proof? Did I just make up these numbers and hope you take it for fact or am I sitting on some massive amounts of data of my blog readers? What if I said that 96% of my commenting blog readers are female, 65% of my blog lurkers are female and 55% of my blog readers through search engines are female; would you believe that even more?

Why I Hate My Job

Probably the worst thing about my job is that I never get to do any large projects. The projects are always so small in scale and never really that impressive to look at once they are complete. I have to ask myself was four, no wait seven...no...ten years of college education really worth this finished project?

Oh and for those who don't know me, check the post label...Yeap, that is right SARCASM. For those who are not intimate with mechanical equipment the big black pipes are 11" in diameter ( 34+ inches around in case you want to compare to waist sizes *wink*) Insulating the pipes gives them another four inches so 15" in diameter ( 47" circumference).

And that my friends was why I didn't get any posts in this week. I was busy admiring the quality workmanship on one of the first jobs I worked on as it nears final completion. Difficult to imagine what it was going to be like when I was drawing up the plans, but now I am impressed with the finished product. For those who are interested. The pictures are of the cooling plant which is comprised of two chillers (400 ton and 750 ton). The total plant capacity would be that of melting an 1150 ton iceberg in an hour. For those in big cities in the balmy south, probably nothing compared to the systems you guys see on the buildings, but for Montana I was impressed.

Welcome home?

Oh how I love facebook, let me count the ways. As most could tell from the previous post I was out of town for the weekend, but to my surprise my entire e-mail contact list got requests to join facebook when I was out of town. So today my e-mail is being flooded with all sorts of replies. Now my dolly-lhama is do I send out an e-mail to everyone apologizing from the giant amount of facebook spam that got sent from my e-mail account or do I just start paddling and see what kind of surfing I can get done. Hum, such decisions.

The weekend was a lot of fun and I got to spend a little time visiting with ol' friends and enjoyed some quality time with my nieces. They are a lot of fun and I must be honest my camera never made it out of my back pack when I was there so I don't have any pictures to share. Heather gives a big hello to all my blog readers that she knows. The good part is I almost have her talked into starting a blog of her own.

I had forgotten what it is like to be in a college town and I must have looked like a puppy who just escaped from the lease. Running around all excited like trying to see just who would scratch my ears. That is one thing this town has going for itself, very easy for me to concentrate on and accept the results of my past experiences.

Well, I am off to work will post more later... Oh and those who might have gotten a facebook invitation from my account, do whatever you like and I apologize for that annoying request.