General Jackassery

It’s kind of funny, Grandpa used to always call me “Beaner,” that’s what we used to call the migrant workers in the fields out in California. I guess he was sort of right, I CAN work like a Mexican.

I’ve already dug 110 ft of trench. It’s a minimun 6″ deep and in some areas it’s 10″ deep. There is about 30 feet of it that is 4 feet wide, and the rest is a little less than a foot. I’ve got to make the trench deeper to accomodate the pipe and the French Drain itself, but I’m thinking about digging some more out in front of the porch. I want to be able to taper the earth down a little better as it stands the earth is about 4 inches higher than the porch and I want it to be 1″ lower than the porch when I put the dirt back in and seed it. So that would be a pretty good drop, 5″ over 4 feet. Anyway, I’m going to dig out some more dirt in that area so it’s a little more shallow grade. Then I determined that I had two more down spouts that I could tie into this drain, so I’m thinking about making my trench network a little more extensive. If I do that, ALL of the down spouts coming off the house would flow into pipes that turn the water loose well away from the house. I think that would be really nice.

I’ll post some pictures as soon as I have a chance to take some.

There’s something about hard manual labor that is relaxing to me. I’m really enjoying this. I know, I know I’m a sick puppy!

Well, I haven’t had much chance to exercise lately and I haven’t had that much time to work around the house, so my solution is to combine the two. You see, I have a minor drainage problem on my back porch. The entire back side of the house drains to two down spouts and said down spouts outlet on either end of my back porch. This wouldn’t be a huge problem except that the earth that butts up to the porch wasn’t properly graded and it essentially diverts all of the water from the high-side down spout across the porch. When it rains there’s a large volume of standing water that the dogs love to run through. As a result of this my back porch stays dirty and muddy all the time. The solution? Well I’m going to dig a 110 ft long trench 1 ft wide and varying from 10 inches to 2 ft deep, then I’m going to lay geo-fabric in said trench, place 2″ of rock in the bottom, tie the two down spouts to the pipe and run the pipe the length of the trench to daylight it in the wall of the ditch that runs on the west side of my property. Then I’m going to cover the pipe with 2 more inches of rock, fill the rest of the trench with sand and top soil, take the remaining dirt from the trenching and fill all the holes that the dogs (current and previous) have dug. Finally I will re-seed all of the disturbed areas and hopefully my drainage issues will be solved, my porch will stay clean and will not continue to try to break my riding lawn mower by driving into craters that the dogs dig. How, you might ask, am I planning to do all this work? Good ol’ fashioned elbow grease baby! The trenching will require the use of a pick-ax, a shovel and a wheel barrel. Then it will be a matter of wheel barrel load after wheel barrel load of rock, sand and soil. We’re talking about several tons of material. So, that’s where the exercise comes in.

Fun! The next project will be to attempt to raise the gutters in areas so that they drain properly instead of allowing water to stand in them. Maybe THAT will solve some of the Mosquito problem that I have.

If Clinton was so great and he balanced the budget and even had budget surpluses, why is it that the National Debt continued to climb while he was in office? Not just one year, but all eight years he was in office.

Don’t get me wrong, my intention is not to bash former President Clinton, nor is it to try to defend President Bush. My point is that anything can be spun to make you believe that something is better/worse than it really is. While Clinton did have a “Budget” surplus during his administration, the countries financial position did not improve. In fact, our country as a whole was 1.6 Trillion dollars further in debt when Clinton left office. I will give him credit, the rate at which we were going into debt did slow down, but we were still spending more money than we made.

I’m really fighting to find information on the candidates because I want to be able to make an educated guess on who to vote for. Everyone is saying that Bush turned the largest budget surplus in history into the largest deficit in history. Then someone else told me that there really wasn’t ever a TRUE budget surplus. So I said well let’s look at the national debt. If there was a real budget surplus the national debt would have gone down……..right? I found the Federal Budget. Then from there, I went and looked at the National Debt. So explain this to me, if Clinton had the largest surplus in history why did the national debt continue to rise every year that he was in office? I do understand that the National Debt is currently rising at twice the rate it was with Clinton in office. However, right or wrong I understand why it is rising. Slugish Economy and War answer those questions. Anyway, I think it’s interesting how everything can be spun.

What’s my platform you ask?

Alternative Energy! I’m tired of paying for Saudi/Iraqi/Kuwaiti/whoever middle eastern oil. I’m tired of paying for their health care/education/riches so they can sit over there and tell us that we’re evil.

Alternative Clean Energy would reduce pollution and thereby lengthen the amount of time that the Saudi’s can remember the good ol’ days when they were made rich by an oil thirsty west, while they are back to hearding camels.

Balanced budget and paying off the deficit. I would do this by instituting a serious tax reform policy. You would have exemptions for children and mortgages and health care to take off the top of your total income and after that you would pay a flat 15% to the federal government. Possibly 20%.

International Policy. I want peace. If you don’t attack me I won’t attack you. If you start a civil war in your country I’m not going to talk to you. If you place taxes on the stuff I ship to you, I’m going the tax the stuff you ship to me.

I’m going to be honest. There are a lot of things I’ve done in my life that I’m not proud of, but I’m human and I make mistakes. I’ll never lie to you, I don’t do that. If you ask me a question I will either answer the question or I won’t. If it’s in the interest of the country to not answer the question I won’t. Otherwise I’ll answer your questions no matter how hard they are.

Health Care, old people need medicine and it’s insane for them to have to pay hundreds of dollars/pill. I understand that doctors make mistakes, if they do it out of absolute negligence then they deserve to pay. However, accidents happen. If a doctor screws up his insurance should pay for the medical bills that you acrue in recovering from said mistake, However, they are human and you are always taking a risk by going to get help from someone who is fallible, therefore some of the laibility from said accident should fall on you for taking the risk.

Equal Employment Oppurtunity: I agree that everyone should be hired based on their ability to do a job. However, I do not agree with colleges/workplaces saying that they must accept a certain number of minorities each year or workplaces saying they must have a certain number of minorites on staff. If you can’t get accepted on your own merit then you don’t deserve to be there. I know that I don’t deserve to go to M.I.T. I’m not the same caliber student that is generally accepted there. It happens! Get over it!

My final stance is that your life is your resposibility. If you’re not happy with your life it’s your resposibility to change that, not mine! However, you are not allowed to make yourself happy at another person’s expense. Be nice to each other and everyone will be happier!

Thanks and God Bless America!

Let’s see if I can stir up some stuff! No, no, really, please feel free to respond! I don’t care who you are, or what you think I just want to know how many people read this site.

Sarah and I have these long sometimes heated discussions about politics from time to time and last night was one of those nights. I personally am not happy with the way President Bush has run the country. For that reason I don’t really want to vote for him. However, I don’t really feel like John Kerry deserves my vote either. I can sit at home and tell you that I could run the country better than Bush but that doesn’t make me worthy of being the president of this country. That’s the way I feel that Kerry has run his campaign. He’s done nothing but sit back and talk about how the other candidate has screwed everything up but I haven’t heard him say what he actually intends to do to fix the country’s problems. So while Sarah thinks he can do no worse than Bush will do, I believe that he has no plan and therefore could do no better. I do beleive he has a greater command of the english language than Bush, but he hasn’t shown me anything to prove to me that he deserves my vote.

As Anthony said the other day, “The lesser of two evils is still evil.” I personally am not happy with either of the candidates and I say that we should start over. For that matter I believe that everyone currently in Washington should be replaced.

Bring it!

So I’m finally back in town for a few days and I’m not buried with work so I have some time to post.

I went to North Carolina, Colorado, Nevada, and California for work and then headed to Atlanta to visit Mom after her knee replacement surgery when I got back.

Anyway, this, is one of the dangers of my job. This little dude was about 30″ long and I would have had a hard time closing my hand around the fattest part of him. I was about 5 feet away when I took the picture so I was well out of his striking range. I found it interesting that I’m not nearly as repulsed by snakes as I once was. I guess that has to do with watching so much “Crocodile Hunter” and “Jeff Corwin.”

The good part was a trip to the top of Pike’s Peak. Sarah reminded me that I go there everytime I am in Colorado, but something about it really calls to me. I guess I’m going to have to hike to the top of it one day and the maybe I’ll get it off my mind. Until then I’ll have to settle for some pretty pictures. This, is looking North-West from the summit of Pike’s Peak. This, is looking towards the north from the summit, and this, is a look at a cloud that was moving straight up. The wind was blowing towards the mountian and there was really good updraft.

Okay, that’s the bad and the good and here is the Ugly. After we left Pueblo, Rodney and I head off to Reno, NV to do some work at the Sierra Army Depot in Herlong, CA. So we go there to find this lovely “Honey Lake” needless to say, Rodney and I were less than impressed. Here , Here , and Here is the rest of the beautiful job site.

I’m sure that given the majority of the pictures posted here one would assume that my job is pretty fun. However, there are some fun times that are more enjoyable than others. Thad recently returned from his 4 month stint in Colorado and we greated him with a small practical joke. We’ve spent the last 4 months collecting coke cans. First we thought of filling his cube with cans, then we decided that would take too many cans. Then we decided to build a can out of cans, but we decided we didn’t think we could do it. We finally settled on building a Wall , but it wasn’t enough to enclose the cube entrance. we had to make it look like we totally Surrounded his cube with cans.