Opioids Saved My Life

Opioids Saved My Life

We are fighting a war against opioids. We are told it’s an epidemic. It’s so bad people all around us are dying. I don't know any, but they say they are. It must be true. It's been printed. They wouldn't print lies, would they?

What will the cost be if we win this war, and more, could someone please explain what “winning” looks like? I fear my circumstance will make winning this war more a death sentence and less a victory.

Is it really this serious? Should I feel this strongly? Here is some background information:

When I was close to age 13(+/-) a couple of my friends and I were practicing a few high jumping techniques. We were trying to teach each other what was called the "Fosbury Flop." Go check YouTube about it.  Not being a stellar athlete, I did it wrong, missing the mat and landing on my head. Something strange happened, but I was afraid to tell my parents. I had headaches, neck pain, and tingling in my hands, upper back and forearms--more on the right side than the left. I didn’t think anything horrible happened because I was able to function, after laying on the ground for a while.

A few years later, about aged 17, I worked for several days in the Henry Mountains of Southern Utah pulling 4-inch (10.16 cm) irrigation pipe down a small canyon from a very cold spring to a sluice to find gold. At one point, the 40 foot (12.19 m) length of pipe I had just placed was about 20 feet (6.1 m) up in a tall pine tree. As at every other point, the frigid water was coming out of the end. Rather than climbing back down the way I'd come up and get soaked, I opted to work my way to the end of a branch which joined a 10-inch wide ledge and move towards a small rock slide. However, there was a small bush growing out of the side of the cliff between the tree and the slide I meant to reach, so I could just climb a little ways down to the pathway we’d cut in the side of the canyon.

To stay balanced as I stepped over the bush I grabbed hold of the rock face of the cliff above me. A piece of the cliff broke off, landing on my chest. Judging by its dimensions, it must have weighed over 80 pounds (36.29 kg). I fell backwards as I pushed the rock off my chest to the side, cutting my forearm, then I landed on my head. Just before that first “hit” I’d wrapped my arms over the top of my head which likely saved my life. I landed in large rocks. Hard. I bounced and landed on my feet, the large rock landing on one. It cut a 2-inch slice in my boot on the top of my foot. It didn't injure my foot, amazingly, but did bruise my shin. I then started rolling and as I saw the path come closer, I had the thought to put my leg out to stop rolling. That kept me from reaching the end of the rock slide and falling the remainder of the 200 feet (60.96 m) to the bottom of the canyon. It was a sheer cliff with a few trees growing out of the face. I could not have survived had I fallen over the edge.

The result of the jumping and cliff incidents was that the structure of my neck was changed. It was altered so my neck bends the wrong way between C-1 and C-2 (see figure 1).

Figure 1 - A normal neck with my neck on the right
Aged 61 at the time of this X-ray

If that wasn’t enough, since that time I’ve developed a degenerative spine issue. I was ~6’ when that accident happened. I’m now 5’ 10.5” and likely still shrinking. A decline in height is fairly common, and considered normal, for someone my age. My family, however, has deteriorating spines, and that could be the primary cause of me becoming shorter. Because of that condition, and also the 2 injuries, the bones in my upper back and neck are pressing against the nerves that go to my shoulders and arms. The skin hurts on my forearms and wrists. Without medication wearing long sleeves is very painful. With medication, it's tolerable, depending on the cloth. Denim is out. So is anything resembling canvas. Thankfully men's shirts are not made of those materials much anymore.

To alleviate what has become near crippling pain I take two medications; one for nerve pain and an opioid for joint and bone pain. Without them I feel like curling into the fetal position and crying. I can’t function normally. It’s so painful that depression is a way of life, unless I can take the medication.

I’ve had these meds, or very similar as they lose effectiveness every 20-30 months (rinse, repeat), for the past 8 or 10 years. In the beginning I took 4 - 2 nerve meds and 2 opioids. I've tried pain clinics, but found they only want to keep you on the meds, not find a solution. I'm back with my Primary Care Physician, who is a wonderful doctor who I fear is beginning to think about retirement. I have no idea who I'll move to at that time. Let's hope he never retires. He just retired from the National Guard last year. He's still young. Well, at least younger than me.

Opioids let me feel well enough to hold a job, and do well. Needless to say (so why am I saying it), I'm not doing physical labor. Not at all. I work, as my Mother would say, “doing computer stuff” and am productive and able to function more or less normally for the other parts of my life -- yard work, fixing things around the house, etc. There are caveats, as mentioned above.

If you have wondered, no, I don’t get high. There's never a buzz. I feel almost nothing, especially pain. That’s the goal. I have no noticeable impairment at all. My reflexes are still excellent -- above average. For instance, I occasionally drop a contact lens while putting them in. I can catch the lens before it gets to my waist. If I drop the eye drop lid in the sink, I always grab it on the first bounce. Because it's larger and harder to lose than the contact, I don't care if it hits. Lenses are too easily lost, so I don't want to take a chance.

Over the years I’ve been able to reduce the medication to a minimum effective dose but still function. The drawback to that? I’m in pain all the time.

Thankfully it’s not debilitating. It reminds me to be careful. Don’t run down stairs which cause the joints unnecessary stress. Don’t jump off the porch when playing with my grandchildren. Be careful when using tools--it doesn’t take much to tweak joints, causing a lot of pain later in the day which can cause sleeplessness. I’ve learned to pace myself and be careful so the meds will continue to be as effective as possible. One of the worst things is sleeping in the wrong position. I can wake with neck pains that stay all day and aren't touched by the meds.

Through my experience, I now categorize pain using the following scale:

1. Can be ignored
2. Starting to affect me
3. A distraction
4. Keeping me from concentrating and being fully functional
5. Overwhelming and can't be ignored
6. Totally debilitating

Thankfully I've felt level 6 only rarely, such as with kidney stones, recovery from shoulder surgery when my shoulder was pinned with 2, 3- and 4-inch self-tapping screws, and after open-heart surgery. I've experienced it a few other times after injuries and other surgeries, too, but these are unforgettable.

Sleep can sometimes be hard. Some nights, if I can’t get to bed before my last dose wears off I can expect to be awake most of the night until sleep becomes overpowering. Sometimes there is light in the Eastern skies by the time sleep wins.

Because of early legislative “wins” in the war on opioids there is absolutely no leeway for using secondary meds to cover the gaps when I miss a dose. It’s fairly common knowledge that missing a dose isn’t as easily recovered from as just taking the next dose. It can take as many as 20 to 30 hours to get pain back under control. Unfortunately skipping doses is as easy as being in a noisy environment and not hearing the application I use on my phone, or driving and not being able to postpone the alarm, or any number of other issues.

I won’t take sleeping pills, except very rarely. A prescription of 12 tablets of a mild sleep aid typically will last over a year. The fog the next day isn’t worth it, so I'll use it on weekends if I choose to use it at all. The same issue happens with anti-histamine use. They all cause drowsiness, so they make me artificially tired, and still in pain, and sleep doesn’t come anyway.

So what’s my point in writing this?

To encourage those who draft legislation to please keep people like me in mind. Please balance the law. Don’t let people like me become casualties in the war against opioids.

If you think this might help your legislators, please feel free to pass it on, retaining all author information. I retain all rights to this post.

And I am still Karl

About Comcast

This is for anyone who's interested in Junk Mail. Okay, not interested in getting it, but would like to know one place that sells your personal information to spammers, so they can make ends meet. Okay, get the CEO and his cronies big bonuses every quarter.

I have a little used business name. In fact, I've only officially used it one time. I needed business class internet. I decided to get it from Comcast since they offer business class internet that is pretty good, well, pretty fast anyway. If you read my previous blog, you know the details.

So I called Comcast and spoke with the sales person then yes, installed Comcast Business class internet. The problem was, they couldn't actually fulfill the needs I had, which were to allow traffic to a web server and email server.

I got the email server to work, but the web server, whether it worked or not didn't matter because they didn't allow loop back browsing. What that means is, if I host a domain and write the code in my house, which doubles as my place of business, then go to that domain to see what my code does, I should be able to see the page, right? Wrong!

Comcast, in their Idiotic lack of wisdom, decided to block outbound traffic and route it to the cable modem itself. That means instead of going to the page you've just spent time coding, you go to the cable modem administrative page. Isn't that useful?

It's only useful if you, Comcast, sell hosting and you don't want your customers to host their own pages. I think that's the only reason they'd do that. My current internet service provider (ISP) doesn't do that. I'm sticking with them. I actually don't have any choice.

But that's not the reason I'm writing this blog post. I was able, to their credit, to get out of the three-year contract with Comcast without being penalized. I had to do some serious negotiating, but they relented once they understood they couldn't fulfill their side of the contract. As you can imagine there's more to the story. Go read my previous blog post.

It didn't hurt that it had been installed twice. The first time by some charlatans pretending to know what I needed who put home service in. It was amazingly fast, but alas, no static IP. That's required for hosting domains. I hosted 18 before a catastrophic server fault, compounded by a typo that voided my carefully crafted backups. Yes, I blew it.

Back to my blog topic.

So after everything was settled and our DSL was again our primary Internet link, I thought everything was back to whatever normal is.

WRONG ANSWER, BIG-HEADED FOOL!I started getting letters to the business used only once, to set up the business internet with Comcast. I have verified that Comcast isn't happy to just gouge their customers with high prices. They also sell your information to the highest bidder(s) who bombard you with every type of letter selling every kind of nonsense imaginable.

I got letters about how to buy my domains for 5 times what I pay, with the promise they'll also sell me things I do for free myself.

I got letters about how to ensure my employees are happy. That's 3 employees, me, myself, and I.

I got letters about insurance, both auto and home, plus the bad stuff peddled by Master Obama's pals.

I got letters about magazines having nothing to do with anything worthwhile.

I got letters from The American Association Of Retired Persons. That's the AARP, which I was strongly encouraged to join in college because of my major. (Note: back then there wasn't a sign that organization would become the senior citizen's wing of the Weather Underground. I don't mean the guys who do a bang-up job providing forecasts. I mean the one Obama's mentor was part of. Go look it up, if you can find a place that'll tell the truth about the vile leftist cult that wanted to destroy liberty. Wait, wanted? Wants. Present tense. The AARP would love to destroy all vestiges of personal liberty.

So would Comcast. They are evil. I'll never use them again.

I recommend you don't either, but you have the choice to be a patriot or a prisoner. Choose wisely.

This is still Karl.

Comcast Anyone? Just Say No!

I made a mistake years ago when I setup the backup routines on my email and web server. It caught up with me in January. I'm still not back up.

Part of the reason I'm not back up is because of the changes in server OSes in the intervening years. The reason for this post, however, is not to  continue to denigrate myself, because that's just not very helpful, other than introspectively, which I'm doing continuously any way.

The primary reason for this post is to warn those who might read this. It's about anyone who wants to provide services, including email and web pages, to others. Those others can be inside your home, business, or community, or the rest of the world.

What am I warning about? Comcast.

You can read online posts lamenting the horrible experiences people have with Comcast. Now then, from a technical standpoint, my experience has for the most part, not been horrible as far as personal usability has been concerned. My experience has also been positive in the people I've interacted with, except for one silly little girl who couldn't tell the truth, and also couldn't get past the fact that I actually knew what I was  talking about. She ended up putting me on hold to talked to her supervisor, then after a few minutes transferred me to the support number I dialed to get her on the phone. She was a horrible person, not to mention incompetent.

The following technician I spoke with took her name and employee number (Comcast employee numbers are very strange. many times, no numbers at all, just strange characters, like #!* which begs the question, why do they call them "employee numbers") and reported her to her supervisor for hanging up on my and not being helpful in the least.

But after her, things went very nicely. Of course, I believe that's because I recorded my calls, and told each engineer I spoke to  that I had the previous call recorded, if they questioned what I'd been told that might not have made it into my case notes.

I HIGHLY recommend recording your phone calls. For me that was easy because I use Google Voice, and spoke to them on my PC, and recorded my PC session with them, so I also have a video of what I did during the calls, thus cementing both my memory, and the visits to Comcast's sites.

Okay, what is the problem then, if all I needed to do (up to this point) went smoothly, relatively speaking?

My issue with Comcast comes from one major item: They are essentially a government approved monopoly. The rules they have helped draft by graft and buying congressmen has resulted in very little chance for other entities to grow and compete with them. And then their are the government officials themselves who lack the integrity to provide an environment that encourages growth and competition.

Comcast won't work with others to help the customer. They offer a one-size-fits-all solution, and if your use-case doesn't match that size, you are out of luck, and your square pegged shaped entity will be hammered into the round hole, or too bad.

I haven't been specific yet have I? Okay, here are some specifics:

1 - If you want to operate a web server, and also want to be able to view the associated web pages, you are out of luck. And it's a Comcast-specific firmware issue they aren't going to fix. In fact, the equipment they use, or will only be using in the near future (Cisco--another company I really do not like), has issues in and of itself. And there is no workaround because putting the cable modem into bridging mode disables the chance to have a static IP address. Rock and Hard Place? Yes indeed.

2 - Static IP, since that just came up. You pay them ~$20/month for the privilege of letting them grant you a static IP address. If you run a domain, and do not want to operate behind a dynamic DNS service, then you must have a static IP. My previous (and now current again) ISP gave one free with the connection. Since a bank of static IPs is about $0.25/year per IP address, how can they justify charging $19.95/month for one? Well they are Comcast and what they do is ethical because they said it is. Uh... not so much.

3 - Fees. I bought a small business package for $99.99/month. Add to that $19.99/mo for the IP address, plus the discounted phone addition, which is free for a certain period of time, of $29.99, and my costs, because they didn't honor the agreement, came to just under $199/month. Okay, I know that doesn't add up, and frankly I don't care because I turned them off after 2.5 months because #1 above is a deal breaker.

4 - Selling my information to the highest bidder. Yes, I suspect Comcast has sold my information. In any case, I know for certain they have passed out information about me that wasn't out there before. Since opening up a business line with them, I've been inundated with spam letters and phone calls. That deluge of unwanted garbage started within one week of the installation of our new business internet and phone line. I'm glad we didn't ever use the phone line, else I'm convinced we'd have gotten many more calls than before.

One major annoying thing about that is they are calling my cell phone. Every day I get at least one annoying call for "The Business Owner" telling that if I am that person, to press '1' to be connected to "One of our agents" which I never do. They also say "Press N to be removed" which I dutifully do. I'm on the "Do Not Call Registry" which I think someone in the government is selling anyway, then telling everyone, "sometimes the registry is ignored, but we can't do anything about that." which actually means, "Please do not ask us to do what we said we'd do when we lied to you about why we are setting this up."

Don't get me wrong. I think the original plan for those types of things are based in some government official wanting to feel good about himself, thus coming up with another tax payer funded expense that does nothing to help, and a lot to waste money and provide a job for an otherwise unemployable ne'er-do-well. I'm not cynical at all.

Back to Comcast... They can't give me what I need to operate a free-to-users, service-based, no profit at all (costs us money), home-based business because they have programmed their modems to disallow usability at a very basic level, and when you try to set it up to function right, blocks another part of what you logically/obviously need to do business. Catch 22? Between a rock and a hard place? Yes indeed.

The way things are done at Comcast are purposely setup in a way that will require a  business to get a hosting solution, and move away from providing their own email, web, and any other hosting services. For most businesses, that's not an issue, but for a small service business like mine, it's economically unviable. It's a make or break situation. We can't afford to pay some hosting company to provide us email, web pages, or whatever else is the acronym of the day (SaaS, PaaS, etc. -- those stand for Software as a Service, Platform as a Service, and there are several more 'XaaS's I've not included).

XMission, on the other hand, has been spectacular in making this possible. Were it not for them, our services would have never been able to survive the days of dial-up back in the early 1990s.

We owe them a lot, and their people are easy, and competent, and friendly to work with.

XMission.com

Comcast, on the other hand, is like playing Russian Roulette. Sometimes you'll get a  great person to work with. By the way, how they treat you largely depends on how you treat them. If you go into a call just waiting for them to try to cheat you, they will, and they'll be mean about it, too. ONe call I recorded started like that. When I told the lady I was recording our call, she said, "Well we record everything too" in a snarky way, but then begin to soften, and before the end of the call, I was able to get her to laugh, which is a goal I have for every service call I make. Also, she quit trying to force me to pay all the phone contract (3 years at a total of ~$500) and thankfully waived that for me. It pays to be nice on the phone. In cold, hard cash. Cash, incidentally, we do not have.

So that's the outside story. There are a bunch of inside things I have left out. On purpose.

And I'm Karl.

Again. Still.
----

Can America Learn from Switzerland Where Guns are Concerned?

My thesis is that if we can't, we are doomed to follow other industrialized countries into socialism and fewer personal liberties.

The link below this paragraph will take you to one of the best reads I've found about guns and crime, short of Professor Lott's book, More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws where he explains his county-by-county research over the entire United States.

What America can learn from Switzerland is that the best way to reduce gun misuse is to promote responsible gun ownership.

It explains how Switzerland is keeping communities, and thus the country, safe through the maintenance of cohesive, family-oriented communities where teenagers are closer to their siblings and parents than they are to their schoolmates and other teens in their communities.

And so I hope to begin adding to my blog more frequently...

I'm still, and again, Karl

Betty, my Sweetheart, Had Knee Surgery Today

So it's accurate, today is Monday, July 21, 2014.

As she rests, though moaning in pain a little as her anti-nausea meds wear off, I'm going to attend to her when she's fully ready, which for now, NatGeo is preventing, though I think she'd go anywhere I asked, within reason, of course. She won't stay in the family room at night, she says, because she doesn't want to be alone with the hidden demons that haunt that part of the house.

Okay, there aren't any demons. There's a boarder who's been with us for a couple weeks. He'd have moved out pretty soon but lost his job today. He's going to look in Provo because he's found an apartment in that area of the county. I hope it works out. He gets interviews quickly it seems, so I think he'll be able to make it stick. I hope. It's time.

Back to Betty. It's tough for a lifetime ADHD person (note; no use of the word 'suffer' because I'm not suffering, at least not from that) to focus long enough to actually put something on paper.

I wrote an email to my siblings and children which you can now read:

Hey all,

I have been remiss about giving an update on what's going on with my sweetheart.

First, she doesn't do pain very well, as some of you know. Much of that is because all narcotics so far have caused extreme nausea, so this time the Dr. also prescribed an anti-nausea pill. She's not comfortable, but doing okay.

Here's what the Dr. told us after the surgery, plus he gave me some pictures which I'll post on my blog later.

In her knee, there was a lot of floating tissue. During surgery, they pressed a lot of saline through and blew it up so the pictures show a lot of space that isn't there, so all the shreds of tissue would be pressing against the joint in places it just isn't supposed to be.

The crux of the matter is her knee was terribly inflamed because of the infusion of extra tissue strands that were generated by the protective shell that's around the joint that typically keeps things together.

Dr. Ritchie cleaned up the superfluous tissue on her meniscus, which was torn about 1% of the way through. That tear may have been the cause of all the other issues, or it may have been caused by those other issues.

There were literally huge chunks of tissue that was in some cases, larger than the parts of her knee that should have been there. You saw how huge it was. Just 3 weeks before the surgery, the doctor took about a cup of fluid off her knee.

After the surgery he explained that the extraneous tissue inside her knee very likely caused the fluid build-up. Once I get the pictures on my blog, you'll understand better.

If you have any questions, please let me know. I'll answer them as best I can.

Okay, enough from me. I would like to thank the members of our family who understand our gluten-free requirements and have brought meals to us. The ward threw their hands up because it would take an hour to teach each family who would bring a meal to help out.

So, thanks to Alicia and Andrea who are so diligent in caring for us in our old age.

Love all your guts,

Karl/Dad/me

So there you have the story to date, and as promised, here are the pictures the doctor took:

Now with those shown, there's one thing I need to get off my mind.

About 10 months ago, I had surgery in the same facility to fuse a joint in my right pinky (titanium screw) and replace the end of a large bone in my right thumb with a titanium piece that looks like a mushroom. It is half of the joint. It's working out well. No longer do I have the awful pain of a locking joint. Smooth and strong. But, that doctor, one of the best in Utah, if not the country (Dr. Mark Sanderson), told me he won't work on a joint that's had any type of steroid treatment because the steroid (cortisone) causes the tissue to be eaten away, and if there are a lot of injections, there isn't enough surrounding/supporting tissue to work with.

My private question is, did Betty's knee doctor encounter a large amount of extra tissue because she'd received a cortisone shot to treat the inflammation a few months back?

The thing about any study on people is we don't know what the result would have been had the treatment not been done. We can't go back and get a do-over to see an alternate reality. Can't do it regardless of Groundhog Day (the movie), or Somewhere In Time (also the movie), and their manipulation of the time-continuum, whatever that is (doesn't exist--sorry trekkers).

I'm Karl,
the over-worked, but grateful husband of a wonderful bride.

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Just a Few Thoughts from the past

Yes, these are older than dirt, much like me. They are, however, like all true things--still true. It gives us such a feeling of security to know the truth just doesn't move.

---

A few good thoughts with a little fun from the past

• I'm not saying let's go kill all the stupid people. I'm just saying let's remove all the warning labels and let the problem work itself out.
• I changed my car horn to gun shot sounds. People move out of the way much faster now.
• You can tell a lot about a woman's mood just by her hands. If they are holding a gun, she's probably angry.
• Gone are the days when girls used to cook like their mothers. Now they drink like their fathers.
• You know that tingly little feeling you get when you really like someone? That's common sense leaving your body.
• I don't like making plans for the day because then the word "premeditated" gets thrown around in the courtroom.
• I didn't make it to the gym again today. That makes five years in a row.
• I decided to change calling the bathroom the John and renamed it the Jim I feel so much better saying I went to the Jim this morning.
• Dear paranoid people who check behind shower curtains for murderers. If you find one, what's your plan?

That last one is my favorite, other than the one about a woman's mood and whether she's holding a gun because I made the mistake of teaching my sweetheart to shoot after we'd been married a while. She's pretty good. I'm afraid.

You might ask what I have to be afraid of. 

Simple. I'm a guy. That means I am an idiot. I do stupid things. Often. Some of them make my lovely bride a little "short" with me.

Okay, enough. I hope you enjoyed this one.

Yeah. Karl is me.

Popeye's Chicken anyone?

I'm on the road. I don't go on the road much.

Okay, I lied, technically speaking. I'm in a hotel room. A nice, big, elegant, but old, hotel room.

In California.

Sunnyvale to be exact.

I'm being trained on a product I don't support. It's okay though because I'll have to use it to test my own products. Sometimes. Or more.

What does this story have to do with Popeye's Chicken? Enough that I told it.

Betty, my sweetheart, is a miracle worker where research is concerned. She is the one that figured out that statin drugs cause memory loss. And that it becomes permanent if you take them for 5 years. And it gets worse the longer you take them. I know. I went through the memory loss for ~4 years.

Mine is coming back, but I'm afraid it won't ever come all the way back. Too many years of foolish trust in a failed drug industry.

Back to chicken.

I made the bad mistake of eating at Popeye's Chicken tonight.

I was hungry.

Now I'm sick.

I'm not going to throw up, or that other sick thing we all hate.

No, the sick I am is disappointed in myself sick. I broke my diet, but more than that, I ate ingredients that are proven over and over to kill everyone who eats them.

Not right away.

MSG. Bad and made from GMOs

Soy oil. A GMO that also creates phyto estrogens in the body. Those wreak havoc in little boys, helping them grow breasts and never develop all the masculine stuff necessary to have a deep voice and healthy children, or even have children in some cases.

Canola oil. Another GMO that's really bad for you. Of course, all GMOs are bad for you.

Corn and corn oil. All corn, except some organics and all popcorn, are GMO foods now. Never eat regular corn again. It's going to make your sicker and sicker.

Gluten from wheat. Most wheats are hybrids that have been "bred" to be more glutinous, which is the worst part of the grain. Technically it's not a GMO, but it has been hybridized so that it contains chemical chains that resemble narcotics, and it is addicting.

Other stuff that makes me sick to think I actually paid them to poison me. Check it out at Popeye's Own Site.

Nasty.

Disappointing.

So I bought some organic bananas and ate 3. I feel very full, not better.

Drat.

----

I'm [a larger version of] Karl...

Double Drat!

Proud To Be A Democrat!

The story and image below are about, and from, a newspaper clipping. Its content is a letter to the editor. That letter explains more in a few paragraphs than all the conservative talk can teach.

We know this.

We believe this.

Now we have evidence that supports us.

Right Here:

PROUD TO BE A DEMOCRAT

From the Carteret County News-Times

[Editor's note: The following Letter to the Editor, published in the Jan. 23 edition, has gone viral on the Web after a reader linked it to a Fox News Facebook page. It had received more than 4,000 comments and been shared more than 12,000 times by the following Tuesday morning]

And now an appropriate quote attributed to John Wayne

"Life's tough -- it's even tougher if you're stupid."

. . . and I'm Karl, and 'nuf said!

Frontier Airlines Just Lost My Business - Forever

My Mother died Tuesday.

It's a hard time for my family.

I have 2 children, their spouses, 3 children each--6 of my 10 (for now) grandchildren--who live a long way East of me.

They are in the military, for which I'm proud. Yes, we have the worst military-friendly administration in history, and hoping for never a repeat. Okay, the worst administration, period.

If there could be a worse administration, I don't know how. For once, contrary to Martin Luther King's declaration, this abysmally and purposefully ignorant country voted for a man because of the color of his skin and not for the content of his character. A man who, in the proud tradition of all great nations, should be executed for treason, leads us now.

But, that's another story.

Today my oldest daughter is flying with her youngest child, a nearly 2-year-old, to be at her grandmother's funeral.

Because she wasn't 2 hours early for the flight, Frontier is not only making her wait for a later flight, but they are pouring salt on the wound by charging $100 to change the flight, plus now my daughter has to pay for her luggage to fly.

What other airline does this? Really, I want to know.

I won't ever fly with them again either.

So, if you leave a comment about that, I'll probably update this blog with the news.

Frontier Airlines, you lost my business in 6 weeks when I fly to the coast for business. I get to choose my carrier. I don't choose Frontier. Ever again.

---
I'm Karl. Still. I miss Mom.

John Roberts Blackmailed? + Inoculations Causing Disease!

Was John Roberts blackmailed to vote in favor of Obamacare?

His illegal adoptions were the tool used to convince the already crooked judge to add his game-changing opinion that ObamaCare is a tax, so is constitutional.

So, who has the smoking gun? 

John Roberts Protecting Obamacare?

Adoptive Father, John Roberts

John Roberts blackmailed re: Obamacare - will he be blackmailed to support gay marriage?

I shouldn't be, but I have to admit I'm amazed at the corruption in our country.

Why do I say I'm amazed? After all, the Doctrine and Covenanthatts (for non-Mormon, that's a book of scripture we have, which you can find online; link after the quote) tells us that "In consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days," (D&C 89:4) that conspiracies are always going to be part of the work evil people use to destroy good.

I have strong opinions about that. I know for a fact there are conspiracies, and the nonsense of calling anyone a nut who believes in conspiracies is a tool of Satan to make good people shrink from calling a spade a spade. There are conspiracies. They are all around us. Wake Up People! It's about too late. Obamacare was thrust down our throats against our will by wicked vile kingmen (Book of Mormon, specifically Alma around chapter 60, especially verses 27-29, for the solution which is distasteful to liberal-leaning cowards. The chapters before and a bit afterwards are about this faction of the government that had to be pulled down to protect the liberty of the people. Are we less in need of a cleansing? No, we are not. My father told me we are at a place where to regain our liberties, it will take )

Here's the second part of this post, and it's just as much of a lightning rod. ---- Vaccinations cause the diseases they are supposed to prevent...

When I was in college, I took a biology class. It was taught by one of the most famous researchers in the world for viruses and how they are spread and what they actually are.

One thing he taught is that diseases are prevented by injecting what he termed as "killed" bacteria and viruses. He also told us it was an imperfect science. The following articles tell you what I've believed since then.

Vaccine lies: Whooping cough outbreaks being triggered by vaccinated children

Whooping Cough (Pertussis) vaccine causes the disease

The vaccine hoax is over

These are a few of many links about this conspiracy to separate us from our money. The drug manufacturers are evil empires that must be brought down. At first, they did a lot of good, but that good great into greed, and from there to amoral and vile corporations run by liberals who aren't afraid of murder and graft to get what they want.

These are the equivalent of Monsanto, which is a topic for another time.

Okay, I'm off now. Two posts in one isn't how I'd like to do it, but limited time gives incentives I hesitate to ignore.

I'm Karl, even if I'm dualizing the webnetses

Utah Mormons

This topic is on my mind right now.

Why?

Because of the following email sent to my wife by the mother of a missionary serving in the U.S. (outside of Utah, duh):

Dear Moms,

I don't know if any of you have had this problem or not but it seems to be a re-occurring theme for both of my sons who are on missions, and it needs to stop! As President Uchdorf has said, "STOP IT!"

So, I am writing to the only group that I know who can help spread the word. I'm sure there are none of you in these email groups who have this problem.

There is no room for this in our church, in our wards, in our homes, or in our hearts. My son has written to me and has informed me that there are MANY members, missionaries, and just people in general, who "put him aside" because he is "just another Utah missionary!"

Are you kidding me? Now, I have known people who don't like Utah Mormons and say rude things about them as if we were all grouped into some weird cultish blob. I usually just ignore it as immaturity on their part.

He has heard people in his ward say "I would never want to raise my kids in Utah because I want them to grow up with a strong testimony!" Who in their right mind would say such a thing!? It's happening and it needs to stop!

I don't need to go on about how strong my Elders are, not to mention the 24 missionaries that are serving from our ward or the more than 250 from his seminary class. They are great because they have strong parents who taught them how to be valiant, tolerant, and faithful in all things. It's not because they were born and raised in a different state or country! We have lived outside of Utah and the people we live with here in Utah are not any better, or any worse, than those we lived with "in the mission field."

In fact, the youth here in Utah have been the strongest and most valiant I have seen. My son lived a mission life before he turned 18 and most of his friends chose to do the same. Were there kids in his high school that struggled and didn't have a strong testimony? Yes, but not because they were raised in Utah! Are there great members and missionaries and youth that live in California, or Idaho, or Ohio? Yes! But it's not because they don't live in Utah. It's because they Choose The Right, and live it. Seriously, we must stop playing the "where do you come from" game and start living the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

I'm writing this for my son! He deserves to be treated better than this as does every other missionary regardless of where they are serving! They have enough to worry about and they should not be bothered with this kind of talk from our members, including missionaries. How do those people treat black missionaries? It's no different!

My sister's "adopted" son, who they are supporting because his parents can't--btw my sister lives in Utah--is from Hawaii and serving in Paris, had to silence his district of Elders who were bashing Utah Mormons in front of him. Where do young men and women learn behavior like this? From judgmental and bigoted parents!

We need to change as a people if we ever want to convert others. I'm sorry my son had to hear these negative, derogatory and wicked things. I'm sorry he might be convinced to feel less than worthy because we chose to move back to Utah. Please help it stop by speaking up when you hear of such things. It is not "of good report" and it is definitely not "praiseworthy". It can stop with us. We are these missionaries' Mothers and we after all, are the ones who have largely taught them their attitudes.

Sincerely,

[name withheld by my wife though the sister said putting her name on it was fine]

I have nothing to add, other than:

My wife knows her groups well enough to know there would be more than a few who are offended and would cruelly lash out against this woman's true words. Why? Because they hold the evil attitude that Utah Mormons are bad people. That attitude is evil and will keep them out of the Celestial Kingdom as sure as being [an unrepentant] stripper in a nightclub would. Seriously, if playing poker on a Saturday night will keep you out of heaven, then denigrating others of (presumably) your own faith will too.

Clean it up people. It's time to be a Zion People because we know not when the Saviour will return, and if he comes to Utah, what are you going to think when He asks, "Why did you denigrate members of my Kingdom in Utah?" because if He doesn't verbally ask, the Spirit will whisper to your hearts, "Why are you holding this attitude? It will keep you from My presence."

Isn't the atonement wonderful? It can cleanse us of even the little things that might otherwise tarnish our souls beyond repair (by us alone).

---

I'm still Karl, and I'm happy to be a Utah Mormon who is converted and understands that a faithful Latter-Day Saint is worthy to enter the temples of God regardless of whether he lives in Utah, Morrocco, or downtown Hong Kong. Okay, I lived 5 years in California. I'd never move back, but it's because it's a socialist society now, not because the saints there are any different from those here.

And so you understand about me and my wife, I'm the Owner/Admin of all the services at OurLDSFamily.com which includes LDSMissionaryMoms.com and LDSMilitaryMoms.com, among others. See them all at the first link.

And just in case, anyone can get support for any service we offer here: Support.OurLDSFamily.com

FYI: you can read my profile on "Mormon.org" here: http://mormon.org/me/1GCM. If you don't have a profile there, start one now.

Beware Your Desktop "Gadgets" (Windows 7 & Vista only, probably)

You know those useful Gadgets on your desktop? The clock you put in the upper-right corner of the screen? The weather Gadget?

Well, you will be interested to know that hackers have figured out how to exploit them from the internet side of your PC and get access to your entire computer, thus watching what you type, including passwords.

This is very serious. Please get them off your desktop NOW!

There's a link to Microsoft's bulletin down a bit, which hasn't been made very public. Microsoft has been going through rough times. You won't hear that from their advertisements though because they are painting a picture of how wonderful Windows 8 is. But, it isn't. It's about the poorest selling OS they have ever released. One OS across all your devices is actually a very bad idea. Nobody needs "the same user experience" because the screens are NOT the same, nor are the devices the same.

The underlying OS can be very similar, like the way Apple, or Ubuntu, or Samsung, are doing it. Microsoft is trying to force all the round pegs into triangular holes. Sorry M$. It isn't taking very well.

That's why Android is the #1 mobile OS on the planet. iOS (Apple) is second, and Microsoft's Windows Phone OS is so far behind the others that it shows up as a toothpick on the pie chart.

Back to the alert. You can read it here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/dn261332

I'm happy to have notified you of this alert from my Linux Mint 16 64-bit laptop. It took me 4 or 5 hours to drag Windows 8 off it, but now that I have, I love my Toshiba P75-A7200. Very fast. Very powerful. Very Linux Mint! (http://linuxmint.com - a derivative of Debian or Ubuntu - you have the choice).

I'm Karl, still
---
Karl L. Pearson | karlp@ourldsfamily.com | Owner/Admin:
OurLDSFamily.com | LDSMissionaryMoms.com | LDSMilitaryMoms.com
Support for any service we offer: Support.OurLDSFamily.com
My "Mormon.org" profile: http://mormon.org/me/1GCM
---

NBC Sports Shows Their Stupidity

... again ...

Bob Kostas (I know, it's spelled Costas, but I spell it with a "K" because he's a moronic fool), during halftime of the Cowboys and Redskins game, voices the asinine (yes, I choose to call it that) agenda-ized editorial that the Washington Redskin's owner should leave behind his resolute refusal to change the name and move on, thus changing the name.

He pointed out this one "salient" fact: "If you considered the name if applied to a team of African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics or others, would you see how racial it is? It's a slur and meant to be derogatory."

No, it's not, you historical ignoramus. There are plenty of quotes from history (go look yourself, honestly, and don't bother listening to the almost red-skinned 'wanna-be's you can find here and there who really aren't worthy of the heritage of native American they claim so they can be on the government dole) and you'll find that American Indians (a name that should offend those who ARE American Indians, such as many who I work with who ARE from India), called themselves "Proud Redskins."

Did you ever hear any black people call themselves "Proud Blackskins?" No, you haven't. I don't doubt some have. How about "Brown Skins?" Okay, I actually have heard some of my Polynesian friends refer to themselves that way.

It's not the same, Bob-with-one-"O" Kostas (check that name out. It was probably spelled with a "K" "in the old country" but changed for politically correct reasons). You, Bob, are showing your idiotic ability to use an inappropriate forum--sports--to push a political agenda.

Go away fool.

Go run for office, where everyone will know because you'll have the logo of the American Jackass on your lapel pin. And while I'm on it, consider this: Now that the United States have shown such complete lack of historical sense that they vote socialists into office because they are black, not because of their character, you, Bob, fit in nicely.

Yes, Martin Luther King would be proud of us, right? We elected Obama on completely the opposite principles from those about which Mr. King often spoke. We voted for someone because of the color of his skin, not for the content of his character. My how far we've come.

So I say, can't the progressive wing of the liberal party quit raining on all the parades? They hate the country, and I say it's time to fire Bob Costas (I spell it right here so a search engine will pick this up, and hopefully someone will fire the little brat, though I doubt that will happen, since his managers are even more progressive than he is (okay, probably not possible), and rooted him on when they found out what agenda he'd be pushing).

Why do the lame stream media outlets seem so hell-bent on pursuing their own self destruction? It's because as wickedness is more generally accepted, they are "coming out" more and more.

That reminds me of an article I saw this week. You can see it here: Creating Good Little Communists which correctly explains the fact that the public schools, and more effectively, the public higher education systems of the various states, have become the training ground for Satan's plan to overthrow capitalism, liberty, and most importantly, God's plan of happiness.

That's what it's all about. The forces of darkness are getting stronger as their physical counterparts are more and more brazen in their open disregard of God and all He's done for us, especially the sacrifice of His Son, our Savior.

I love the Savior, and hope to be a benefit to others because of that.

I'm still Karl

The Fool's Unmitigated Hypocrisy

The time is here when citizens of the United States NEED assault weapons (a stupid term for how a weapon looks not what it does, which means nothing) to protect themselves from an out-of-control federal government that needs very badly, a complete pruning.

How can we continue to allow this traitor to stay in office?

Impeachment is Way Too Good.

I call for a full trial for treason, and the obligatory execution to follow. Include Harry Reid, and nearly every other politician around them.

Where is Captain Moroni when we need him?

---
I'm Karl and I'm really ticked!

What a Country!

Does anyone remember Yakov Smirnoff? If not, you missed a funny guy.

He was born as Yakov Naumovich Pokhis in the Ukraine when it was still part of the Soviet Union. You remember that place, right? United Soviet Socialist Republic, which is an oxymoron. The name, not the country.

Back to Yakov. He's a jew and taught art. According to WikiPedia, he still paints. I haven't heard or seen him in years. I've never seen his paintings. I should look those up...

But, he's not the point of this blog posting.

His attitude is.

When he came to the United States, with his assumed name of Yakov Smirnoff, he saw, according to one of his early stand-up routines, a billboard with a picture of a bottle of Smirnoff Vodka, and at the bottom of the billboard the words, "America Loves Smirnoff."

In a nice play on those words he referred to his last name of Smirnoff and said, "What A Country!"

Yes, this is quite a country.

At least it used to be. Oh, it's still apparently free, but the government has imposed so much of its will against ours that we can do little to turn the clock back.

How can I say that, you might ask? Don't we still get to elect representatives who do what we want them to do?

No, we don't. Technically we never did. In a Republic, which we are supposed to be but haven't been since around 1913, we elect people who do what they believe to be the right thing, and then we see what that is and either kick them out, or keep them.

Back to what we do now days: We elect people who either see the power of the elite and long to be part of that power, or we elect those who see elite power, and want to destroy it as should be done. Once they are in Washington, or at the state level in my case, Salt Lake City, they become corrupt and start to get the attitude of those who are there and have been for years.

They look at our money, which they have illegally taken from us through either hidden or the not so hidden taxes, as their own to do with as they please, with little to no responsibility to us to whom it belongs. I supposed I appear naive to them, but I honestly believe I know better how to spend my money than they do. I do not believe my money is earned only to  be taken and contributed "to the greater good."

But, as I A.D.D. myself back on topic, I'm wondering why the progressives (the left) are so adamant on not offending those who hate our country. It's PC to hate the U.S. but it's so evil to hate those who hate "US".

Take the picture below for instance and ask, "Where's the outcry?" and then watch that outcry never happen.

Okay, you can count this blog post as an outcry against it.

What am I talking about? The mass produced in many varieties and proudly worn shirts sold all over that look like this one:

What is that? Click on the picture for a larger image and then it ought to be obvious what you are seeing. And do you see the wonderful, happy, joyous expression? Now there's Muslim Pride proudly displayed for all the world to see.

Oh wait. Not ALL the world. Only the parts of the world NOT covered by our mainstream media. They couldn't possibly show that the mass murder of over 3000 people on 9/11/2001 is still celebrated as a great Muslim victory over the dogs in the West. That would cause the lowly, uninformed Christians to still believe Islam is NOT a religion of peace. No, they can't show evidence of that which we know to be true. [if you are a peace-loving Muslim, you aren't really a "true" Muslim, so you really ought to get out of that anti-Christian, violence-prone religion; in other words, get a "life" dudes.]

Now go ponder how the words of Isaiah go unheeded:

Woe unto them that call ^aevil ^bgood, and good evil; that put ^cdarkness for ^dlight, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (see lds.org/scriptures/ot/isa/5.20 to read it in context) 

I'm not going to preach the obvious. I'm not going to get angry and go do something rash. But I wish I could and not be punished because of how backwards everything is. I actually suspect that if a Muslim broke into my home and I killed him for doing so, I'd be charged with a hate crime. I think things are that twisted now.

To any Muslim reading this: Don't think I wouldn't still kill you if you broke into my home. Not for a second would I hesitate. You'd be dead before you crossed the threshold. I'd make sure your dead and rotting corpse would fall inside the house just to be certain that I couldn't be charged with homicide. If you don't understand what I mean, you need to do some reading up on the law. Oh, and I'd find our friends who own a pig farm and feed you to their swine. With a serving of Quran on the side.

Okay, I've spent enough of your time now. Thank you for reading, and remember,

I'm Karl

Cats, Dogs, and Porcupines

I don't mind saying that I didn't write this. But I wish I had. Oh, and I AM religious. Deeply so. I have a deep and abiding love of Jesus Christ, His gospel, and more importantly, His Atonement. Without that, I'd be dead about now.

So, on to the essay I found on Facebook, and which, because I found it there, it's more or less "public domain" material, and I like it any way, plus, this guy hits the nail on the head.

Why I hate the gay agenda.

(author unknown because some dipstick forgot to give attribution, or maybe he kept it anonymous.  Do you think I'm being harsh by saying "dipstick"? Well, what if you'd written something this good and weren't given credit for it? So, let the true author come forth, as has happened on my blog in the past. That was awesome, by the way.)

     Let me start by saying I don't hate gay people, I'm not particularly religious, so none of that has anything to do with my stance. But I do feel there is a "gay agenda," to push social acceptance of homosexuality in media and academia. And it bothers me. It doesn't obsess me and its not something I think about night and day, but it annoys me. The easiest way to explain why, I feel, is through analogy. Think of the following as a kind of analogical thought experiment, if you will.

     Imagine that gradually you start to hear an inordinate amount in the media about people who keep porcupines as pets instead of the more usual cats, dogs, etc. You might think, "huh, that's weird," but you'd probably shrug and go about your business. Live and let live, right? I mean, ultimately, who cares?

     But the topic keeps cropping up in strange ways, and with increasing (and inexplicable) frequency. You start to notice that on your favorite TV shows and movies, more and more people are shown with pet porcupines, and these pet owners are always fawned over as a discriminated-against minority. Every movie now has a porcupine-owner who is a caring, sensitive, wise person misunderstood by the mean, jeering, hateful cat or dog owners. Cat and dog owners, meanwhile, are increasingly shown as backwards rednecks or intolerant haters. There is always the implication that cat and dog owners are secretly jealous of the porcupine owners, but are too backwards and riddled with hate to admit their own repressed desires to own porcupines. You start to get tired of the way this plot device is unnaturally inserted everywhere, usually off-key with the rest of the movie.

     You start to notice something else weird: Novels and even children's books are being written (and in some cases re-written) to include porcupines. Your beloved childhood favorite "Clifford the Big Red Dog" becomes "Clifford the Big Red Dog and His Buddy Maurice the Porcupine." 

     You attend a college literary course and hope to learn about the great masterpieces of Western literature. In one course on Charles Dickens, the prof spends the whole time bashing Dickens as an evil hater because one of his books has a minor negative reference to a porcupine. You think "who cares?," and mention in class that you really like the book "Oliver Twist,"so Dickens can't be all bad. Suddenly the prof is giving you the hairy eyeball and everyone is accusing you of "hate." You receive a failing grade for the class. 

     Then you go to your art history class, hoping to learn about DaVinci's masterful use of line and shadow in his paintings. Instead, the professor spends the whole class talking about how DaVinci secretly kept a pet porcupine, despite the disapproval of his backwards society, and this inner struggle was the source of his sensitivity and genius as an artist. 

     You read in the paper that your town is spending a lot of tax money replacing a sign showing a man walking a dog at the public park because it might offend porcupine owners. The new sign shows a sillohoute of a man with his porcupine on a leash. When a a car runs over a porcupine in your town one day, it's given blaring front-page headlines and sobbing local well-wishers hold a candlelight vigil. When the same thing happens to your neighbor's cat a week later, however, nobody but the owner seems to care.

     When you tell strangers you have a pet dog, you find yourself compelled to add "...of course, there's nothing wrong with owning porcupines too." You start to feel that if you don't say this when you mention your dog, people might think you are a hater, and you might even lose your job. If you forget to add the little politically correct disclaimer, people scowl at you, call you a hick and a redneck and a repressed soul who bought a dog because he was too afraid to get the porcupine he really wants, deep down inside. You are annoyed at the way you are constantly having to monitor yourself and your language use. It's not that you have anything particularly negative to say about porcupines, but the need to monitor yourself verbally all the time adds stress and annoyance to your life. For example, it's no longer acceptable to say "it's raining cats and dogs." Now you have to say, "it's raining cats, dogs, and porcupines." Otherwise people will think you are bigoted and insensitive. You find yourself spending extra effort remembering little things like this whereas before you would have spoken more naturally.

     Being a little peeved by all this, you go online to your favorite Internet community to let off steam anonymously about the porcupine agenda. Some people are sympathetic, but you can't believe the amount of vitriol your mild disapproval generates. Comments include "Why are you so afraid of porcupines?" and "Come on man, just admit you really want to own a porcupine instead of a dog. It's ok, you can tell us." You try to patiently explain that's not it at all, but this is just taken as further evidence of your sad and retrogressive state of denial. 

     And so on. And on. And on.

     This is why so many people are sick and tired of the "gay agenda." For many of us, (aside from the religious fundies, I guess) it has nothing to do with the actual fact of gayness. Instead it's the feeling of being manipulated incessantly.

     I hope this makes sense to some of you, at least. For the rest of you, let the irrelevant and predictable comments abou "hate" and "being in the closet" begin...

I think this guy hits the nail on the head, and besides, I do hate porcupines. They are dangerous. Get it? No, there's no hidden meaning. I mean porcupines when I say porcupines. If you think otherwise, you just don't know me. At all. Zero bits. 

I'm Karl, and glad my wife loves me, and I love her. Tons!

If you want to know more about how that works,  listen closely to the lyrics. Very closely:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIW5QU2lGe8

which is exactly how my marriage started. I knew I'd marry the lady the first time I saw a picture of her on the cover of a magazine playing her cello. That was many months before we even met.

Star-crossed you say? Nope. Foreordained.

Some Great Quotes

The oldest quote is from before the time of Christ and they span the ages from then until now. It is disturbing that for over 2,500 years we, generally, keep making the same mistakes. Does it seem like the biggest mistake of all is allowing liberal "takers" to continue to occupy positions of leadership and authority?

Yes. Yes it does.

So, when will we ever learn?

GREAT TRUTHS

1. In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress.-- John Adams

2. If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed. -- Mark Twain

3. Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain

4. I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. --Winston Churchill

5. A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. -- George Bernard Shaw

6. A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. -- G. Gordon Liddy

7. Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. --James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)

8. Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. -- Douglas Case, a contemporary of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University.

9. Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. -- P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian

10. Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. -- Frederic Bastiat, French economist(1801-1850)

11. Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. --Ronald Reagan (1986)

12. I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. -- Will Rogers

13. If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free! -- P. J. O'Rourke

14. In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. --Voltaire (1764)

15. Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you! -- Pericles (430 B.C.)

16. No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session. -- Mark Twain (1866)

17. Talk is cheap, except when Congress does it. -- Anonymous

18. The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. -- Ronald Reagan

19. The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. --Winston Churchill

20. The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. -- Mark Twain

21. The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. -- Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)

22. There is no distinctly Native American criminal class, save Congress. -- Mark Twain

23. What this country needs are more unemployed politicians --Edward Langley, Artist (1928-1995)

24. A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have. -- Thomas Jefferson

25. We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. -- Aesop

FIVE BEST SENTENCES

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work, because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation!

So why did I post this? Because I want to see these sentiments available for quoting by others. But more, so I can remember that at one time they were important to me.

If someone else is able to gain something from my efforts at preservation, then so much better.

The problem I have is that I'm losing hope. You see, there are "more on the wagon than what's pushing it" and that marks the end of personal liberty because the majority of people are wicked, and they vote for largesse from the treasury, which is incorrectly attributed to several different men, so I won't bother to put an attribution here.

One thing I will properly attribute is this Youtube video. It was put up by the creator, and this is probably the most concise, and accurate, explanation for why we are failing as a country right now. Briefly, it's because people have been fooled into believing we are a democracy. We are a republic. If not, we would have failed long ago.

But, we are moving to a democracy, which means the majority can force the minority to accept the unacceptable. And we will fall into civil war.

Types of Government Explained

I hope you have enjoyed your visit.

And I'm Karl

Linux OS Anyone?

I'm constantly amazed at how arrogant Microsoft software users are. That includes inside my own family, but more, the men I work with, who have to use Linux whenever they are on a customer system.

You see, the company I work for, who is one of the largest employers around at over 55,000 employees worldwide, uses Microsoft on the desktop, but most of their products are built over Linux. Now to me, that just doesn't make much sense, until I consider the topic of my thoughts here. I've only used Linux on the desktop for the past 15+ years. It's superior, period.

We always hear how much Microsoft works to protect their brand; to prevent pirates from stealing their OS and proprietary tools they build to run on that OS. [okay. for anyone who is a computer neophyte, OS is short for Operating System; that part of a computer that actually lets you use the computer, and for short, I call it "Windows" like everyone else, but even that is dumb, because all OSes now use what anyone would call a window to run things in. But enough.]

My point is this: If Microsoft were serious about their anti-pirating rants, they could easily build into their OS the capability to block any unauthorized use. It's not rocket science. Game designers have done it, to some extent, but fail at it for the same reasons.

If someone can get their hands on some operating system, and a game, then use them without paying for them, they are crooks. Yes, dishonest slugs. But, the company they are stealing from wins anyway.

Why? Because that crook is still using them, which gives the providing companies a little boost in their user base, plus another lackey who is learning, and therefore, pushing their products.

So there you are, a reason why there isn't a lot of criminal prosecution among the pirating ranks.

Now with that said, I know that Microsoft has a large team of employees whose sole job it is to call and offer on-site consulting to help companies learn how to better use their products. What for? 2 purposes.

1. Actually point out where the victims can spend more money getting more Microsoft-centricity inside their walls.
2. Find out how much pirated software is running behind the firewalls of that company.

When I was an I.T. Director, I had a couple calls from Microsoft offering me their help. I declined the first call because I was the new I.T. Director and I had been hired by a bunch of crooks who had, on 25+ desktops, 2 legal copies of Windows. They had pirated those 2 copies on all the other desktops, which they had bought at cut-rate prices without an OS installed, then installed those same 2 copies; one Windows 98, and the other 2000 Professional.

The second call came after I learned why they had called the first time, and though I had brought the company into compliance, didn't want to have my time wasted in a sales call when our inside servers were all Linux and Unix (IBM AIX). [A postscript to that is they let me go after over 6 years there, and within a few years had been bought and are now gone away as a part of a much larger company. That company does their business above-board, so once again, dishonesty pays only the owners who made off (literally) like bandits. Why did they let me go? Control. They hired one of our consultants who was late finishing a project that had already cost over $45,000 so they could force him to complete the job... They paid me more than my annual salary the first year in consulting fees. then kept paying me for another 14 or 15 months, but needing me less and less.]

Now to Linux.

I read an article tonight by an author telling me what I already knew. Linux is neither archaic, nor hard to learn. The ones who believe that are just ignorant.

I think it's been about 7 or 8, I started the process of moving my sweetheart off Windows. The first thing I did was move her off Outlook Express by installing the Windows version of Thunderbird. Then I weaned her of using WordPerfect, which was easy enough because by that time Microsoft, with the help of Novell, had destroyed WordPerfect's place in the word processing world. That's another story, however, so not more than this: It's documented in court cases and WordPerfect won, but by then it was too late.

I had already gotten her off Internet Explorer, which is a very weak browser, so she never missed it. Firefox, and now more so, Chromium Browser, are far superior.

So, once she was off those products that required Windows, she didn't care about the underlying OS. It just needed to work.

So, what distributions did we switch to? PCLinuxOS, then after that distribution fell on tough times, Linux Mint. I've used many more than those, such as DSL, Fedora, Redhat, InSert, BackTrack, Knoppix, JoliCloud(defunct) and some others, but I use Linux Mint now, as does Betty. It just plain works out of the box.

Why isn't Ubuntu there? I just don't like it. That's all. Nothing personal. I don't like Canonical, the company that owns Ubuntu, nor do I like their business model. It's free, yes, but when you download it, they ask for money in a manner that looks like you are insulting them by using it free. Every distribution asks for donations, but not that way. So you see, it's me personally. Oh,  and I don't like that Ubuntu doesn't support everything out of the box like both PCLinuxOS and Mint do.

So, if you want to learn anything about Linux, ask. I'll tell you how to find out, because that's how you learn. You do it, and learn to ask the right questions, and where and how to ask.

I learned by doing. You can too. But you have to want to, and I was sick of how poorly Windows worked. Just too many inconsistencies in too many places. Would I ever go back? No. I don't have to worry about viruses. I just don't. Cool, huh? Yes very. I can ignore those deceitful ads from companies like "MyCleanPC.com"...

Okay, enough, and I'm not going back to read this again.

I'm Karl... to the annoyance of more, and the ignoring-ness of more.

On Men and Women

The following information is true. Women deny it. Men read it and think, "Yeah, that's so true!"

Why do women deny it? I'm not talking about good, honest women who chose to be married and also love their husbands dearly, just as their husbands love and idolize them. They love their husband's attention, and reciprocate unabashedly and unashamedly.

Okay, did that deflect enough so I don't get murdered in my sleep? If this is my last blog, you'll have your answer... [tremble]

I'm Karl - - - for now