Well…as I sit here waiting for the temp to come up enough so I don’t freeze my butt off working outside…and no, I didn’t get on the indoor bike today so I needed to do something else…and this is it. Just read about the latest conspiracy theories that coming out of the right this week and they just can’t get any more nuts than this…okay, I’ve said that before but damn, this is just crazy…oh, crap..buried the lede again…when someone was interviewing some of the deplorables at a trump hate rally this weekend, the true believers have a new on to believe…and that is that Biden is being played by a bunch of actors since he is too feeble to do anything and his handlers are hiding him in the WH basement so they can continue to control the world…and guess who a couple of the actors in rubber masks are? Jim Carrey, for one and James Woods for another….never mind that Woods is a huge trump supporter but he is doing it for some reason that has something to do with the tired old meme that the idiot boy trump is going to be reinstated any day now once all is revealed…and I guess he can do more damage to Biden from the inside? Jim Carrey had a bunch of pretty funny responses on twitter and can’t really understand why they singled him out to get sucked into their delusions but he is having fun with it…oh, and in the interview that I saw, the man who was standing next to the crazy assed woman who was being interviewed had on a t-shirt that read “trump and JFK junior 2024″….and I wondered how that person can even function with no firm grasp on reality….this is one of the nuttiest things I have seen in quite a while…but I will admit I don’t immerse myself in the fever swamps of the modern repub party…sometimes I dip a toe in just for a topic but then use a ton of disinfectant to make sure the infection doesn’t spread to my brain…geez…
Monthly Archives: April 2022
April 28th
Well…hmmmm….feel a little worn out today and I wonder if I should skip the indoor ride today with being able to get out on the bike later? But, it’s the end of April and it’s only 29 frickin degrees out there so that will be much later…and still not too comfortable….slept okay last night but not that well and I’m getting tired of that…just once I’d like to hit the sack and just sleep without waking up all night…okay, enough bitching and whining….it is a little bit of a relief to finally get the car maintenance started and not have to buy a 60 buck set of plug wires…I think I should note how many miles the car has on it to keep track of how far I go on this oil change just to see how many miles I drive in a year….I know it’s been at least two years since I last changed it but only about 3000 miles or so in that time…but I could tell it needed it when the oil pressure gauge reads about 30 at idle…and all of the short trips I take don’t help…I mean 6-10 miles a week? And all those start ups with the car running rich? I know the oil looked pretty bad but it’s supposed to….I am going to do a full clean up on the car today with wax, windows and vacuuming and it will be nice washing it here instead of the car wash…and I may even wash the bike today if I have the hose out and a bucket of soapy water ready….not much to do today…I did get some flower and herb seeds yesterday and need to start the herbs downstairs so I can make a little herb garden next to the back door…going to plant rosemary, thyme, and Italian oregano…should have gotten some chives, too, but I didn’t see them….and I got some perennials that I won’t have to plant every year and should look cool…so, I do have stuff to do today but need much more coffee first and to read the news…damn, why do I feel like I’m late and it’s only 7am? More later…
Getting old is a pain…literally..
Well…I wonder if I’m getting to the point where literally anything that I do is going to result in pain and stiffness all over my body? I know I’m getting old but damn, just changing the oil in the car and putting a set of plugs in and my back and arms hurt like I just lifted weights for a few hours straight….and there was not really much leaning into the engine bay other than to snake the oil filter out…I know I had to lean over to get to the plugs but doing all 4 of them only took about 10 minutes…maybe it’s because they are not movements I do all the time? Who knows? All I know is that getting old is a pain…literally, and I don’t like it….I did get back out to check the air in the tires on the car, too, and I don’t know how they could have gotten down to 20psi on each corner without me noticing it…okay, I did notice that the tires looked a little deflated but with radials, you really can’t see it that well…okay, that sentence right there tells you I’m old…I remember the times before radial tires and I’ll bet most people don’t…so, I aired them up to 32 where I normally run them and also aired up the bike tires to get ready for an outdoor ride tomorrow…and I’ll be cleaning out the trash bin and washing the car and cleaning the interior for the spring cleaning I’m late on…so, I already have the day planned for tomorrow and that is not supposed to happen anymore…oh, well…it is nice to do something other than work on the house….
Could it be karma?
Well…you know, there are times that I do believe in karma and that people get what they deserve when they are so damn terrible people…and yesterday was one of those days when Tesla’s stock dropped almost 140 billion dollars in reaction to ole elon borrowing against it to buy twitter…and the sick thing is that it means nothing to elon…he still has 300 billion dollars and there is just something wrong with that…and the shenanigans have already started at twitter with conservative assholes gaining thousands and thousands of followers while the progressive voices have been losing them hand over fist…even Mark Hamill has lost over 8,000 followers since the sale of twitter was announced…and ole elon’s freedom of speech bullshit has been revealed to be just that…all he wants is to be free of twitter’s moderators and be able to attack whoever he wants…starting with some twitter execs who were then piled on by all of the deplorables who elon is allowing back on twitter…okay, he doesn’t own it yet so I’m not sure how much he had to do with it but he was setting the example that attacks are just peachy with him if they are to support him…hmmm…who does that sound like? trump? Yep….and he is just trying to intimidate people who work for twitter to show them that when he is in charge, they will have hell to pay if they cross him…and that is exactly what elon does…when he disagrees with someone or they disagree with him, he wants twitter to be able to launch an even bigger attack that the people he is attacking can’t respond to…and that is not “free speech”, it is just another rich guy trying to shut everyone else out of any conversation…after all, the only people these rich assholes think should have the right to speak to them are other rich guys…geez…
Got the car work done…
Well….have been neglecting the car for almost all of the time that I’ve been out here and I know I’ve never changed the oil since I’ve lived here until today….went out to zone this morning as part of the grocery run and got an oil filter, oil plug, and a set of spark plugs so I could do all of the things I’ve put off while working my butt off on the house. I normally use fram oil filters but neither zone or advance had any and they said they have been fighting shortages of them for over a year now…so I got an stp one since they have been rated pretty good too and got to work…and it started off pretty crappy with dropping the oil filter after I took it off and spilling oil all over the bottom of the car…there is not much room where the filter is but dropping it showed me a new way to take it out that is much easier so that was cool…and I put a new oil plug in that has a nice gasket on it that should stop that leak that I have been fighting since I bought the car…and it only cost 3 bucks so that was really cool…hope to get a few changes out of it before I have to replace it or the gasket and it is really nice to not have to slather the plug in blue silicone to try to keep it from leaking….after I finished that job, I decided to check to see if I could get the plug wires off and replace the plugs and they came off easily…and the blue silicone I used to hold them together was still working so I saved 60 bucks in not replacing them…but I’m still only about halfway done with the car since I need to do the spring cleaning and every thing else that comes with it…but I’ll wait til tomorrow for that when it is warmer….
April 27th
Well…darn, sleep was pretty crappy last night and I guess I’ll just have to get used to the lack of consistency…I feel okay so maybe the effects are not as severe as I thought….had and okay day yesterday but didn’t get anything done at all but lunch with T…that was a bit of a pain to get to with all of the bridge work being done in GH but I think it’s the first time I’ve been in traffic since I moved out here and I can live with that…it looks like another day on the indoor bike with the high not getting over 45 but I may be able to get out thurs and into the weekend with the warm up that is coming…and all I can say it’s about damn time…I mean it got down to 29 last night and we are 4 days from it being May….I do have a lot of work to do on the car that I have been neglecting over the past year so I’ll stop at zone this morning and get an oil filter and a new oil drain plug that will finally seal since I can’t get the aluminum crush washers for the standard one anymore and it drips oil even with coating the plug with blue silicone…and I think I need a set of plugs, too and plug wires but the NGK ones I need are now over 50 bucks for about 3 feet of wires and that is a bit much…those are being held together with blue silicone, too…I probably should get a tube of that this morning just in case I need it….I need to get the hose out today and try to clean out my trash bin to get rid of the plaster that is still stuck to the inside of it and it looks pretty gross…and I won’t be doing more of that work until the fall and I just want to have a clean one…not much to do today…just the grocery run and a run to depot to get some cuke seeds and some flower seeds that I want to get planted along the back of the house…might even try some herbs this year but I’ll have to see what they have…fresh rosemary would be nice but I wonder if I should get a big pot for the herbs to grow in? that might be better than just sticking them in the ground…we’ll see…more later….
I made it….
Well…had a nice lunch with T today and am still full so no more food for today….but, that’s not what this is about…..when I had the freakout about the rental houses going up across the street and talked to my brother about the effect they would have on the worth of my house…he estimated that if we put it on the market today, I could get 140K for it all day long….if that’s true, that makes 90K that I have in equity and I have gotten to my goal of having six figures in assets if you include the cash I have in the bank…in fact, it is well over six figures and that is amazing to me with where I was 4 years ago…broke and borrowing money to live….and the idea that I have enough assets to deal with anything that might happen does take a lot of stress off me…but, I still need to have more in the bank…could I get to 200K? Not sure if I need to really….the kids don’t need an inheritance but it would be nice to be able to spend 10 grand on the next Miata and not blink….so, I think I’ll just take the night off after taking the day off…and get back at it tomorrow…
Rand Paul is a Russian stooge…
Well…just a short one on how stupid and how bad of a Russian Stooge he is…in a hearing in the senate today, Paul tried to justify Russia’s invasion of Georgia and the Ukraine by saying that they once were part of the soviet union so Russia has every right to invade and try to take them over…word by word talking points that Putin and his cronies have used to justify the invasion…so, under that logic, Russia has every right to attack and try to take back Alaska since it was once part of Russia…and England has every right to attack and try to take over the US or any one of their previous colonies like India or even China…or any country that once ruled another has the right to attack that country again…how about Germany and France? Or Italy and southern France? You see how ridiculous this moron is….and the big question is why the hell would a sitting senator try to justify the attack and genocide that Russia is doing in Ukraine? Rand Paul needs to go…he doesn’t have the brains or honor to be a senator…and he needs to go…geez…
The financials don’t work…
Well…I promise you this will be the last one about twitter and ole Elon today but it deals with just another one of the confusing details about why he is buying twitter in the first place….and this one will be short so no TLDR….when you look at the details of the deal, it looks like Elon will be borrowing around 25 billion dollars to make the deal and at 4-5% interest on the loan, that is about 1.5 billion dollars in interest alone…and the funny thing is that even in it’s best year, twitter has never made that much money…maybe a billion dollars or so and that means that Elon is going to have to squeeze a half a billion dollars of cost out of the organization to make it work…and isn’t that always the way? Venture capital or billionaires swoop in and the first thing they do is fire everyone who is making any money so they can pump the stock and then dump it…with twitter going private, that won’t be the case here with the stock but there still needs to be a half billion dollars in costs taken out since analysts agree that there is not enough potential revenue growth to support the half billion in extra profit. So why? Could it be as simple as a thin skinned billionaire getting pissed that people on twitter don’t kiss his ass as much as he thinks they should? That would be a laugh and right now it is as good an explanation as any other…geez…
Let’s remember this about Elon….
Well…before anyone else feeds the world the bullshit that Elon Musk is a “self made” man, let’s remember this about him…he was born rich in South Africa where his father owned an emerald mine and made his money on the backs of black laborers in the apartheid era when they were treated as little better than slaves and who lived in shanty towns with no running water or any other services like electricity while Elon and his family lived in a palatial estate and that he inherited along with the mine…so it’s bullshit that he “built” everything that he has…like most other billionaires, he started out with a few hundred million from daddy or grandpa and then used the power of that money to get where he is…and when you see the union busting tactics at his tesla plants and the widespread racism that permeates them, and the fact that he was a regular visitor at the idiot boy’s WH tells you all you need to know about him….he is not someone to hold up as any sort of a role model, after all, he can come up with 44 billion to buy twitter but whines, whines, and whines about having to pay any taxes at all…just another billionaire moocher whose companies wouldn’t exist without the largess of the US people and government….geez….