It's All About Perception

Looking back at previous posts I get a sense that my attitude may need adjusting. Sometimes I make announcements as if I received them in stone from a higher power and therefore they are true. In reality most of the time it is just my opinion and is just as likely to be wrong as the next guy. Hey if I was right all the time then I would not even be looking for work. I would be sitting on a beach somewhere counting my money that I made from all my incredibile investments.
In reality, I am tossing darts at the board same as everyone else. But at least they are MY darts. I am not letting some "financial planner" stick his hand in my wallet. Hey if they were all that good, they would be on the beach counting thier money. Even worse maybe thier name is Madoff.
Wow, this is really getting morbid. I think I will sign off until I feel a little more upbeat
Save me a seat on the bus.

The Job Search Continues

There is no real news here. Just some thoughts.
I should have been a Mortician. Let's see them outsource that one!
The only jobs left in the U.S. are service jobs.
I am not impressed with the quality of the job search assistance firm I have been signed up with. The things they want me to do seem to be junior high level. You know, make lists of things you want in a career and check off the entries. Create lists of friends and contacts. Waste of time... By my age if you are undecided then it is way too late. I am in software. That is not a people person industry. You spend 99 percent of your time reading obscure manuals and wrinting and testing code. You only come to the surface to breath and announce victory over the problem.
I would be better off going through the paper and looking for what is really out there.
OK, I made an entry and have my endorphins...Bye

Yet Another Learning Experience

This is a re-post from a forum entry. Actually I am just too lazy to compose something new.

Got in a "one last trip" over Thanksgiving holiday. Learned some new things and re-learned some old ones. First we were without water or electricity and about a mile from the nearest human being so all the anti-generator nazis can just keep a lid on it.
1. All sorts of nasty things live in the woods. All of them would rather be in your RV with you.
2. Parking a Tow Vehicle between you and a cheap generator can make it as quiet as an expensive one.
3. Cheap generators break pretty easy.
4. A 5th wheel cannot make it for 2 days and one night on a single charge with one battery.
5. When the battery quits it will be between 2:00 and 4:00 in the morning.
6. You will know when it quits because the C02 alarm will start sounding.
7. Trailers cool off a lot faster than they warm up.
8. Your Significant Other will somehow think it is your fault.
9. A 3500 Chevy Dually makes a poor substitute for a generator.
Added next day after bailing out to do some chores...A fun time was had by all. 2 grandkids, 2 dogs, 1 daughter, 1 DW ( Thank you Lord for only one of those). The rig is filthy, the TV is filthy, and I was beyond recognition. Somewhere in the East Texas Pines there is a bare spot where the grandkids scraped every living thing into a pile and moved the pile into the RV. Sand, Leaves, Trees, Critters (Dead or Alive) ... made no difference to them. They were all treasure. Now I gotta clean things up so we can go again BTW I had no idea you could dig that big of a hole and move that much dirt with a little bitty plastic dump truck...

While there we did some maintenance which involved cranking up the tractor, Gator, and 4wheeler. The DW took the Gator, The Granddaughter adopted the 4-wheeler, and the 3 year old Grandson fell in love with the tractor. I had no trouble finding them at any time.

Granddad got to play with the chainsaw.

See Ya Out There...

Resolution

Looking back I see that I do a lot of whining about not posting more frequently.
I hereby resolve not to gripe or make excuses for not posting on a regular basis.
Only Doogie Houser ever did this kind of thing without missing a beat. And they had to pay him a whole crap pile of money for each episode.
Wait a minute... that is an idea. All I need to do is to find some fool...er... "rich" fool...uhh..."well endowed philanthropist" to offer me a whole ton of money for each and every Saturday installment.
Hey, it could happen !!

Well, I'll be dipped...

Here we go again. I am suddenly unemployed again and back on the job hunting trail. I swear I did not do a bad job or do anything wrong. Heck I got the project operating 800 percent faster than thier experts said was possible. I solved the last problem less that 3 days before I was told I was laid off. Maybe I should have left it un-fixed. This time around I may try the Contract Employee approach. That way there are no committments on either side and no expectations of loyalty on either side.
If they don't like the way I do things tell me to quit showing up. If I see a better offer elsewhere I quit showing up. That sounds fair right?
As far as benifits go, just give me the equivalent in money and I'll buy my own insurance as needed. Most employers are cutting back on benefits anyhow. And besides, the government is starting to treat medical and other benefits as taxable income. To those of you that have not run into it yet, beware the terminology "imputed income". It income that you did not really receive. However the taxes you pay on it comes from the money that you really did receive.
Don't get me started. They estimate what you would have had to pay for the medical coverage, life insurance, and any other benefits they can spot. Then thay add that amount to your real income and tax you on the total.
So you might as well go ahead and get sick or they will make you wish you had.
OK, back to the main thread of insanity here. I need to get my resume back in shape and start networking like crazy.
Maybe that's what I get for not posting here on a more regular basis.

Some Days are Just Survived

Well things have conspired to keep me from updating this as often as I should. I am making myself a promise to do better. However this one is gonna be brief.
Life has been normal lately. Good things. Bad things. Some in-betweeners.
Summer in Texas is hot. Big surprise...Huh?? More later

If you keep picking at it, it will never heal !!

Well how many times did your mother tell you that one? Did you ever learn? Well, me neither.
I noticed something loose on the trailer (a piece of trim) and I just kept picking at it till it fell off. Oh well, a little liquid nails and it's back in place. Stupid thing should not have been loose in the first place. Of course, I now have to go around and jiggle all the other little pieces to see if they are suffering from that disease too.
We are definitely getting a terminal case of the "wanna travel blues".
We added an Electrical outlet out by the side lot where we park the RV. It is a full 50 amp outlet. Just in case you don't know, you should be impressed by the 50 amp size. Whole houses have been run on less than that. Anyhow it goes underground for about 12 feet. Then up the wall of the house, into the wall , runs the full length of the house then out and down into the main switch.
Have you got the picture in your head yet? The idea is to keep the batteries charged in the RV while it is just sitting there. We can also turn on all the lights, run the slides in and out, and use all the utilities. In other words it can within the limits of the grey and black water tanks, function as a guest house. My thinking is when I find a wad of money on the ground I will have a generator added to the RV. The nice part is when we lose the electricity to the house ( this happens fairly often with tornados, lightening, and high winds in this area) we will just fire up the genny and move into the RV until conditions improve. I could also use the generator to keep certain items in the house like the freezer and fridge. That is assuming I have things wired correctly.
Of course my significant other will definitely have other ideas about what to do with the wad of money. hey, back off... it's a plan right? Sheesh gimme a break! maybe it will be a BIG wad of money..
later dudes.

Seriously delayed ramblings

Well I guess any reader is bright enough to read dates and realize it's been a while since my last posting. We did a last minute initial run in the trailer. Just an overnight to a local state park. However it did show our general level of un-preparedness (is that a word??) to do a longer and further from home trip. A list of screw-ups follows:
1. No propane in the tanks. - my fault for leaving the thermostat and gas on.
2. Took way too long to get underway. I wanted to get there before nightfall so my first experience with leveling the unit, un-hitching, and setting up water, and electrical would not be in the dark. Oops...
3. Too late to get the tanks filled. no place open.
4. Had a problem calling to get a reservation and to make sure the gates would still be open when we got there. Called a friend to do an internet search for a phone number. Then got the dreaded "push 1 for this, push 2 for that" reply.
5. Almost paid the price for doing it in the dark. Came real close to smashing the trailer front with the tailgate.
6. Got pretty close to a divorce over parking and leveling. It wasn't happening fast enough.
7. Slept late and found out check-out time was 1:00 P.M.
8. Didn't get to do much outside.
9. Kissed the tailgate with the hitch hooking back up. No dents.. Dumb Luck.
10. Had a hard time guessing what the brake setting was supposed to be. Lotta bumps and jerks.
11. Learned the hard way that a 5th wheel trailer cuts a little insice of the path the truck makes. Not the same as a pull behind trailer. "hippity hop".
12. Left the steps down while towing. Nice guy pulled along side and told us before we broke something.
13. the dump valves leak a little. So the dump created a new dance step never seen before.
14. The dump hose does not fit in the storage for it. Bummer...that's gonna leave a smell.
15. Learned that you really cannot back one up without someone on the ground watching out for stupid moves on the driver's part. You really need to practice communication skills before doing this. I still have no idea what some of those signals were supposed to convey.
16. Do not put a bag of ice with a leak in the freezer. You end up with a non-removable lump.
17. Dog fell off the doggie ramp after we got home.
18. Drained the trailer pipes as well as possible. Temp went to 20 deg with 5 inches of snow. Barf!

Well, have you quit laughing yet? And a fun time was had by all. Learning continues.

Doodads and Trinkets

Back to the trailer thing. One item that I must warn you about is everybody in the world will be trying to sell you stuff that they claim you cannot live without if you own a trailer. Everything from All sorts of level indicators ( so you know when your trailer is level). to fifteen different kinds of window blind cleaners. Of course if you bought only one of everything they claim you "need", it would take a Missouri Pacific Locomotive to haul this thing down the road. Luck is with me, I don't need all that, I have a spouse. So far there are eight pillows on the bed and we have been exactly nowhere. There are 6 lawn chairs for the 5 of us.
Later

Memory is a Poor Substitute for Records

I guess I have to admit something. When I started this blog thing at least one of my reasons was so I could look back at a hard record without sitting down and thinking something like " Well I believe it was sometime around February of last year.. or maybe the year before...". Well you get the idea. I've always been envious of people who religiously keep their day-planner or diary up-to-date. It seems that they usually have all of their other records neatly arranged by year in some kind of filing system.
My system has usually been a different sized cardboard box for each year. If the box desintegrates, then that is the signal that I don't need that year anymore. I think my memory works the same way. Ocassionally I will get some kind of "blast from the past" like when I run across some old photos or hear about a high school reunion. That will wake up some old pile of memories for a short time. However my recollections of things is blurry at best. When I actually run into old friends or see old photos it comes as a shock because my recollections are usually a little different. In my memories my friends were better looking and the things we did were a lot more important than actual records seem to indicate.
So I am trying to do the day-planner thing and this blog thing. My hope is along with easy retrieval of the past, at least keeping up-to-date by occasional reviews may lessen the shock of change. It may also serve as a reminder that my life needs to be fun to live. Because first "I cannot take it with me " except for the records I keep. And no-one else is going to do it for me because choices I made and who I am has kept me in a state of obscurity such that the general public is unaware of my existance. When most of us leave this existance there will be no published biographies lining the shelves of the bookstores. No records of the decisions we made and why we made them. We ( most of the population) are just not important enough for anyone to care. Dang, this is pretty dark thinking huh? So if we all keep little pieces like this blog, diaries, notebooks, photo albums, and stuff, some one might be able ot at least get a peek into what life was like for us.
OK, that's enough for now. I gotta go. Maybe I'll pick back up on this later. maybe not.

Everybody Duck! Here He comes again!!

OK people. Bear with me as I try do do the impossible. I'm sure there is nothing to it, but that's what Napolean told the Empress too. Watch carefully now, at no time will my fingers ever leave the hand to which they are attached.

Oops. Got the dreaded error bX-499bh2. I think that means the thought police are closing in and I have less than 2 minutes to get out of town. Let's try that again.

Ooh Look at the pretty picture...

Well dear Reader ( whenever !!) there is "Sasquatch" and his faithful companion "Tow'd". This is my special project for probably the next few years. It certainly is where my money is going for the next few years. So I am temporarially changing the direction of this blog for a short time. Really it is not a change since this is supposed to be about whatever is most important to me at the moment.

BTW Look at the right side for a link to "Tioga and George". A particularly well written blog about extreme RV living. I am not going that far, but it is a nice read.

Later, duty calls...

Oops, thar' she blows!!

OK, so sue me, it's not a whale. It is "Sasquatch" the big old dually truck coming to an RV park or state campground near you! New truck, new trailer, look out world here we come.
I've always been envious of the people I see pulling trailers down the road. Mainly because they always seem to be headed for fun. While I am usually headed for work, or back home after work. I used to enjoy driving but that was a while back. We are going to try to get back into camping and vacationing. Life is too short to spend it seriously all the time.
We have tried a couple of times renting motorhomes, but that can get expensive real fast. Especially when we get one that I can stretch out in. And the only ones that I would like to own run into serious lottery winning kinds of money.
So here we go folks. I'll try to keep this up-to-date but don't hold your breath.

Aw...Crapalooza!!

I just has a horribile thought. If anyone ever reads this, they will know just about every thing I do. Should I worry?? Nah, never gonna happen!
However just in case, my real name is Ebeneezer and my number is 555-1212. Gimme a call.

Still working but Getting Dumber all the time

OK, I admit it, old age is shrinking my brain. At least that's what I'm gonna blame it on for now. At this point, we should be stuffing every available penny into some kind of 401, supersaver, get rich quick account. Guess what..? It ain't happening!
We now own ( really the bank owns) a large diesel truck and a fifth wheel trailer. I don't want to wait till I can't remember whether or not I went potty yesterday to travel around a bit. I want to enjoy the outdoors while I can.
Back to the dumber part. Gee you would think that I might pay attention to the gas prices, the falling stock market, and the crashing economy. You might even thing I should be burying money in a tin can in the back yard from fear that the banks are gonna all come crashing down.
Well poo on that!! If they want me they'll have to catch me first. Mwa-haa-haa!!!
Silly truck!! The diesel gets about the same mileage as my Toyota does. And pollutes less. Who knew...?
Later dudes...

idiots, cretins, and other things that go "splat"

There are quite a few things that can cause me to get up on a soapbox and make a fool out of myself trying to fix the world. Most of the time it doesn't want to be fixed. The rest of the time I am talking to people that don't seem to realize that my problems are more important than theirs. This probably includes you, dear reader, so if your particular world is already fixed you can close this and skip my ranting.
Spam. If the credit card companies quit creating all those offers for cards that I didn't ask for then the ones I do have could probably afford to lower my current rate. I am just saying that all that paper, glossy printing, inserts, postage, envelopes, etc. obviously adds up to some real money. Assuming about $2.00 per person to send those out to about 200,000,000 people that have active bank accounts in the U.S. adds up to a tidy sum (you do the math). multiply that by the guess that there are about 20 to 30 companies doing just that and the number begins to stagger me. I'm basing this on just my personal experience. Others may get more or less of this crud than I do.
On top of that I have to waste electricity, machine wear, and time to shread about three inch tall stacks of this stuff every month.
To make things even better they are not even looking at what they do. This month I got four separate offers for a new user promotional interest rate from the same company. I already have a card from that company. Gee, can I get the new one, transfer balances from the old one and cancel it? I don't think they would let me do that. Man, listen to that shredder noise drone on, and on, and on.
Oh well the U.S. Mail would probably go bankrupt if they quit. That would put some people out-of-work and They would come looking for me.
Crap, I'm getting paranoid!! Later folks, I gotta go hide my head in the laundry basket until it's safe to come back out.