George W. Bush quotes

George W. Bush quotes: "'A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it.'

George W. Bush quotes"

Gerald R. Ford quotes: "'When a man is asked to make a speech, the first thing he has to decide is what to say.'

Gerald R. Ford quotes"

The same can be said of the writer. So the question is " What should the writer do first? Decide what to write."

Fence Repair

In my latest adventures in home maintenance, this weekend I have taken on repairing that old two section 4 foot high, horizontal shadowbox fence of mine that is literally falling apart. Fortunately, the fence posts are in good shape.

First task: Find replacement boards. 8 ft long, 6" width x 1/2" thick. Home Depot? No. Lowes? No. All the big boys have are 6ft length, for vertical fencing. It is amazing that those stores can carry 150,000 square feet or more of merchandise, but have basically two wood type fences and plastic fencing. It sucks. So call some fencing companies. One place 13 miles away has what I need, but not in stock. Then I call back and they say can't sell any right now. Not sure why. Maybe a fence moratoriam? Anyway, then I told the guy I only needed 12 boards/slats, not whole sections. He then said that he wasn't supposed to, but he would sell me that amount.

2nd Task: Supports: Seems the supports on the end are rotting out. So, I need replacement boards for this. They measure 1 3/4" wide by 1". Do you think H.D. would have these? Nope. Just the standard "1 X 2's" One by twos are actually 1 1/2" X 3/4". That's what I buy. (What choice did I have?)

Okay, now I am ready, right? Wrong.

3rd Task: Cut the Supports: They come in eight foot lengths - I need 48" lengths. Get the old jigsaw out for the task. Pretty quick.

4th Task: Paint the supports: You see, I got the non-pressure treated kind of 1 x 2's. This was because H.D. only had beveled 1 x 2's in the pressure treated variety - so that meant even less surface area to screw the fence planks into. Bad news since I already have 1/4" less area to begin with.

Actually, the whole fence is painted. The fence planks are pressure treated too. The guy at the fence company says you shouldn't paint them because the wood needs to breath and have a way to let the moisture out - or it will just rot from the inside out. This kind of makes sense to me. He said to paint one side if they must be painted. You see I live in a deed-restricted community - so the part facing the street must look consistent and be painted. The back side faces my lanai/deck area - so this could look funky.

5th Task: Removal and Replacement of supports/boards: This is the most important and hardest part. The middle two supports seem fine - no rot and in good shape. But, all the boards on the front side are in pretty bad shape. (6 total). The supports on the left and right side are bad. The one against the house is the worst. In taking off the first board, it is revealed that ants have taken over the inside of that support.

Finally, after a couple hours, I have removed and replaced the two supports and all six front fence slats. Even got the level out to ensure they were straight. Still unpainted (the slats) - but I will tackle that next week. Still to do are three boards on the other side of that section and one or two on the other section that faces my neighbor's house. On that one, the slats are mostly acceptable, but the two middle supports are in really bad shape. The challenge on it will be taking off slats that are not new, and not breaking too many of them.

More later....

bring/take

English Mistakes That Drive Me Up The Wall-I
bring/take: "WRONG:
BRING/TAKE

When you are viewing the movement of something from the point of arrival, use “bring”: “When you come to the potluck, please bring a green salad.” Viewing things from the point of departure, you should use “take“: “When you go to the potluck, take a bottle of wine.”"

One person I knows says this regularly. "I am going to bring my daughter to the doctor." It just sounds SO stupid. Am I alone here?

***
My workplace sports several people who simply abuse the english language and me regularly. This pays homage to those words/phrases that drive me up the wall the most.

More interesting, less filling

Perhaps I need to learn brevity in my posting? Too many details tends to quash even the most hardy blog reader. Case in point, my detailed account of my deck painting project (which, by the way, ended well, with the 2nd coat going much faster and an end result I was very pleased with!). The trials and tribulations of any project can be amusing, but in graphic, excruciating detail, readers may lose interest. Then again, I have no readers that I know of (actually I now am tracking traffic, so I will be able to see if anyone actually stops by for a read. The key is getting people hooked and getting them to bookmark and return to the blog and not just move on to the next blog.)

I have always maintained that self-examination and critique can lead to growth - perhaps in a few years I will get this blogging thing down to a science and be rich and famous from it? (Yeah, right!)

Skeptical News

Skeptical News: "Sunday, April 11, 2004
Nigerian in Houston convicted of e-mail scam
http://www.khou.com/news/local/stories/khou040210_jw_nigerian-
schemeverdict.828eb27.html

Victims lost $400,000

10:42 AM CST on Tuesday, February 10, 2004

From 11 News Staff Reports

HOUSTON -- A federal jury has convicted a Nigerian national living in Houston of conspiracy and 13 counts of wire fraud."

My observation: The victims in this scam should also face charges of not having any common sense whatsoever. What it boils down to is people being money hungry and willing to believe any ruse. It is another case of people wanting money for nothing. (and chicks for free....~~).

Blogger still can't find my two biggest blogs

For those of you who have read my posts and struggles with Blogger on my blogs inexplicably disappearing, the news is grim. After essentially brushing me off at first, they finally restored ONE of four blogs, and it was the most recent one I created with only a few posts. Today I got word that no other blogs are registered to my email address and the url's simply don't exist in their database. (I knew that because "page not found" comes up when I type in the url.) So, my hundred or more posts (possibly 200 combined) are lost forever!

I am not trying to claim some literary genius - but one of my purposes to writing a blog in the first place was to be able to go back and see where my mind was at in times past. Journalling on paper or in Word on my computer just isn't quite the same, although I have done some of it.

There is a certain intrigue with the whole blogging thing - and the coolest thing about it is that others can come upon your blog and decide whether they like your content or not.

This is so discouraging. I don't want to be angry with blogger - it is really cool - but I just wonder if perhaps their recent "flag" had something to do with this and the judge and jury who decides if the offensive tags a blog gets are worthy of delisting or outright deletion. I suspect this isn't the case as I would think that they would notify the user of such an action - but who knows.

Not to say that my blogs were particularly controversial - but then again, my main blog was filled with my musings on god and religion - and being a "freethinker" or "unbeliever" could make me a target of the religious right or the conservatives (even though some of my views, such as on abortion, I agree with the conservatives, at least in part). I am not a paranoid type and doubt that the tagging/delisting/deletion took place intentionally on blogger's part. But, what I really suspect is that the person who helped me failed to even check the backups.

I went so far as to send her the url of the cached image of one of my previous blogs on google - but she insists that it doesn't now exist - she never really said if she checked the backup as I suggested.

So - chalk it up to a lesson. Backup your blog yourself - or host it on a server other than blogger.

In the end, I have about five posts from the cached google search and I do have a backup of the template and perhaps two or three other posts. It is really sad.

The funny thing is - here I am posting again - but at least I know now that it could just be a total waste of time until I get my own site.

Blogger Still Working on Restoring My Lost Blogs

My most recent communication from Blogger support about my missing blogs:

They restored one of three - the one I just created days before I lost all my blogs. They say they have no record of the other ones for the email account I was writing from.

Still gone are the blogs that date back to Dec 10, 2004 and Feb 2005 to late October!

I pleaded with them to check the backups from early October and to check my another email address. <<< I will keep you all posted.

The mundane

I had an ongoing feature on my other blog (before blogger deleted it) comparing gas prices from time to time. It was during the run up around the end of August. Prices topped out after Hurricane Rita and for a longer period than for Katrina. I think $3.099 was common regular price for a few weeks. Slowly it fell, and about a week or so ago - I was seeing $2.619 at a few low cost places. But, then I took a day or two off work and last Friday, two stations prices were down to $2.379, and others were in the $2.459 range. In less than a few days, a 25 cent drop is remarkable. Usually we see sudden spikes and very gradual declines. This is unusual. What it tells me is that the prices were super inflated, probably unnecessarily.

Then you read about Exxon/Mobil's $10 Billion profit for the quarter. Set a record. $100 billion revenues. Another record. It is even more than Wal Mart. And my gas bill is $120 per month when it used to be $45.

Yeah, I know, retail price isn't about cost directly. Retail price is what the market will bear and based on supply and demand. Supposedly. But then you think about 10 Billion dollars - more than the GDP of many countries.

Deck Painting

Warning: This post is almost as boring as painting a 16 x 22 deck!
I have this 16' x 22' two level painted deck that really needs to be replaced. I have been planning to do something about it since about 2002. Each year, it is on my to do list. So, a couple weeks ago, I went to Home Depot to remind myself a.) how incompetent I really am at home improvement b.) that I don't have a vehicle to transport large long items in it anyway - presenting yet another obstacle to the whole Do It Yourself kick we all are in these days. And then I start pricing all the various elements and figure out that this little project could cost $1,000 or more and a boatload of time. That's if I do it myself.

So, I decided on another approach. Despite a few boards warping and a small spot of rotted wood, this painted deck really could last another year or two with a good coat of paint. Oh, yeah - that's easy. But first - you must clean the darn thing - it has mildew, dirt and is a lot of the paint is very chipped. In my usual gross underestimate of time to do a project, I figured - maybe an hour to clean it, then the next day, a few hours at most to paint it.

Yeah, right. Cleaning it: This is an art - and I don't have equipment. So, getting the supplies, I ask this helpful guy at H.D. what type of pump sprayer is good for the job. (I don't want a pressure washer, just an applicator.) He tells me the one I was looking at was good. Now, I need cleaner. He suggests this wicked super duper Clorox for outdoors - a super concentrated bleach blend that will lift that mildew right off, in probably ONE application. Yeah, right.

Then, it's over to the paint department. Let's see ... 352 square feet. One gallon should do it. Yeah, right.

So - I get home with my new cleaner, sprayer, paint, paint sticks and an ambitious spark. Problem is that it is too late to do anything. And, it's Saturday night, so time is slowly slipping away for the "weekend" project. Clean and hose down one day. Paint next day. Not happening.

So, I open the box to the sprayer. I read the directions. It says NO CAUSTIC agents (i.e. bleach.) This really sucks. Very seldom do I rely on advice for these types of things, but I let my guard down, and this H.D. guy led me down the wrong road. What to do? Do I defy the directions and just use the sprayer with the bleach mix or do I obey them. A lot of people just ignore these instructions, but I am one who prefers not to ruin devices by going against the manufacturer's suggestions. Not to mention, it can be dangerous.

So - here I have this 3 gallon jug of Clorox Super Duper Bleach with no way to apply it. That is until I read the directions on it, and it tells me that you can apply with a brush. So, I find this handy little O'Cedar mop I never use anymore. I bought it in 1994 I bet. It is just a basic sponge mop, but it has a brillo type pad on one end, so it is perfect should I need to scrub some pesky mildew spots. Yeah, right.

So, here I go, I mix the water and clorox 1:2 and begin applying the solution to the deck. About five or six minutes into it, the old sponge of the mop falls off the holder. I take a look and see the little plastic parts that hold it on have broken on one side, so it doesn't work. Okay - I decide i will go over to the Big K mart down the road to look for a refill. Do you think the attachments to an old O'Cedar mop from a decade ago are still the same? You guessed it, no way. So, I buy a new O'Cedar mop that is a little bigger width wise. It also has an abrasive pad on one side.

Okay - so I am all set right? Yeah, right!

I get home, only to realize that this wider mop will not fit into the bucket I am using and I have no wider buckets. By now, it is like 10 a.m. on Sunday and I am really frustrated. Not to be outdone by these mundane tasks, I find that if I use the roller tray for the painting part of this project, it will hold the new mop head nicely. Less capacity, but it did the trick, problem solved. An hour later or so, I am done with the application and rinsing. Things are good.

Yeah, right!

I am out hosing off the bleach solution and a lot more paint is peeling off the deck now. This is important because you must free the surface of the deck of old loose paint before painting. Problem is, if I apply pressure from the hose stream SLOWLY to an area, nearly all the paint will eventually come off. Guess how long it takes to get four feet of one board done? About 15 minutes. At this rate, it would take me 2520 minutes to complete this process. Think, think - how can I speed up this process?

• Borrow a neighbor's pressure washer. Surely this would speed up the process.
• Take the abrasive pad side of the mop to the deck to loosen the paint.
• Get on my hands and knees with a paint scraper and go to town.
• Get some sort of solvent to dissolve the paint off the deck.

Okay - these options all seem viable to one degree or another. But, i quickly determine that they all suck. If I break my neighbor's washer, I am in deep do do - plus that would take me a while to obtain, and learn how to use.
I tried the abrasive side of the mop - no dice - doesn't budge.
Scraping manually is out of the question.
Solvent means another trip to the H.D. cause K Mart sucks and has nothing that you really need and it would then end up taking me till 2 p.m. to acquire such stuff and then I am using toxic stuff on latex paint - kind of a bad idea.

Okay - so then I decide to just let it dry the way it is. Perhaps when it is completely dry, using a stiff brush on it will catch any loose stuff. What I figured out was that all that paint that was coming up with the force of the hose was probably due to my doing that and that it naturally would not do that. I am probably wrong. Anyway, that is what I did.

Okay - so now it is dry - I am anxious to just see how the new paint will look. I knew that it wasn't yet dry enough to paint the whole thing, but I decided to do one small area.

So - how to apply the paint - for my test, I just got a 3 inch brush and went to town. Lookin' good. I painted more than I had planned, which was probably a bad idea, because some unpainted areas might not have been dry enough.

So, I got the equivalent of four of the 42 16' boards done on Sunday. I felt some vindication in getting at least part of the project done. So the plan to finish it is shaping up.

But, what happened Sunday? We turned our clocks back an hour. Now, instead of a 6:45-7:00 dark time, it is now dark at 5:45-6:00. But, the weather is really nice and dry for a change. We fortunately have a break from the humid days of summer.

So plan is to leave work a little early on Monday to get in a good hour or so of painting. Yeah, right. I ended up getting home after dark and with Trick or Treaters at my door from minute one.

Tuesday - doesn't happen. Wednesday - it rains all day. Fast forward to today. Dry - but more humid - but I do get home early today and start on it at 4:30 p.m.

Now back to how to apply paint for a large area. Only good option is a roller, right? Well, a roller is not the right texture you want on a deck surface - a brush is the best. But, brushing 43 16' boards with a 3" brush is just ludicrous, unless you are a student of Mr. Miagi in the Karate Kid. So, I get out the old roller and begin to apply to one corner. I don't like the texture, so I do two boards at a time, about four feet or so. Then I squat down and take the brush to it to smooth out the paint. Works pretty well, but is a little more involved than simply using the roller. Another issue is that the deck boards are not new and not even - so the roller doesn't/can't apply paint properly. So, those spots I must use the brush anyway.

In about an hour tonight, I got about half done - with the first coat. The porch paint I am using is also the primer, so I knew going in that I would need to do two coats if I really want it to look good.

So, I don't know if one can will cover the whole deck. I think you use more paint when you use a roller. Not really sure if this is true - but as stated above, using a brush for the whole thing is just out of the question. Perhaps the 2nd coat will not use as much paint.

So this is the painting job - to lengthen the life a year or two on my deck.

Total cost - well, by the time all is said and done - probably $50-60. Compared to $900-$1,000, that isn't too bad.

The A Word

If I were a rich man....

Tonight, while perusing the site NoGodBlog.com, I came across a post about NoGodBlog.com: "ABORTION!!!". I am in sharp disagreement with my atheist brethren on this issue. Not to say that all atheists are for or against abortion - but anti-abortion types are also not just religious zeolots trying to run other people's lives. I am as much against the religious right and the fundies as the next atheist.

But, I believe in one thing: LIFE is prescious. We have one chance to make a difference in the world - this life. It is all we have - and I sincerely believe that when we die, we die and that is it - no afterlife, no redemption - no matter what you believed during this life. Cold and harsh - but I feel this is real.

I think abortion is murder. I know that scientifically, life does not actually "begin" in a sense at conception, and that the common thought is somewhere several weeks after conception where you could technically call it "life". But, nonetheless, you can't get to that point without conception and all the leads up to it, so, to me, life starts at conception. There may be a point when random things occur to make a woman miscarry or she has an accident or she doesn't realize she is pregnant, she drinks too much and the body "aborts" the fetus naturally. The religious type would attribute this to God intervening for whatever reason He only knows. Whatever.

I think it is about responsibility. If you are willing to do the deed (sex) and don't take necessary precautions or you get pregnant anyway (that 1% of birth control pill who do get pregnant), then you need to take responsibility and not make the child responsible for your irresponsibility. Abortion is an easy way out in a promiscuous society. Why should that life that was started be aborted?

The usual reasons for abortion range from not being married, can't afford it, don't know each other very well, etc. If you don't know each other very well, then why are you fornicating in the first place? Whether you agree with the Christian doctrine of no sex before marriage or not - the reason they have that as a rule is a sound reason - it stinks when you get pregnant without some plan and security - and people who do not subscribe to religion, like me, can come to this conclusion independent of religion.

This is not to say that I believe everyone should abstain from sex till marriage. Personally, I think that we shouldn't take sex so lightly, but we should have the freedom to try sex before marriage. But, only with people we are really committed to - why? - because of the purpose of us being on this earth - and that is to procreate.

It isn't that simple though. We don't live in some commune where every child is raised by everyone - we live in a society where the norm is that we get married and have children. This is not to say that if a single woman or man wants to have a child and raise it themself, without a spouse, that they shouldn't be allowed to do this. We are in a changing society where increasingly, children are being raised by unorthodox "families."

It is still about responsibility. Take resoonsibility for your life. And if you get pregnant and you feel the timing is horrible - there are choices other than abortion - adoption, family, etc. Not to say any choice is easy - but if you don't want to take a chance at being faced with the decision, then abstain from sex. Period. And don't give me that bullcrap of "I gotta have it" - that is just lack of self-control.

So, do I sound like some religious right person preaching my beliefs onto you? Well, if so, know this - I do not subscribe to any religion, but on this issue, I agree with the religious right ABORTION IS MURDER - period.

So - the next question - do I think abortion should be illegal? I think making it illegal will just push it underground and we all know the horrors of back alley abortions. Human nature means that a certain percentage of people will go to any length to have an abortion. Making it illegal at this point doesn't solve the issue. Making abortion less attractive and not as easy might work. Offer incentives to people to consider alternatives. I know that crack babies are not the high demand for adoption - and we have social ills that are hard to overcome. But if we truly value human life - and if you are a fellow atheist and know that this is it and all we have - and that life is prescious and it should be regarded in the highest terms, then why would you advocate killing babies?

Another key to combatting unwanted pregnancies and in turn abortions is responsible, age appropriate sex education I have read recently that rates of pregnancy and/or sex in abstinance only programs where a pledge of abstanance is taken, delays sex by only a few months in most cases. Solid information about contraception, responsible sexual behavior and frank discussion about the real threats of sex - AIDS and other STDs, can only help to prevent some pregnancies. Is it a panacea - no - humans, and especially young people, will not always make rational decisions. But a change in the thinking of society about sex and its importance, and how it should be regarded as special, can help drive the perceived need for abortion down.

As far as rape or incest goes - a life is still a life - but I really think that in these cases, it should be allowed.

Take life seriously and take your body seriously and live responsibly, and if you get in trouble, seek help.