One year ago today: July 26, 2015, lunch at the Lanai Kai.
Five years ago today: July 26, 2011, in broad daylight.
Nine years ago today: July 26, 2007, 800,000 dead.
Random years ago today: July 26, 2013, skinny me, 1977.
MORNING
Let’s talk about budgets, and tie that in with sexy secretaries. Don’t assume you know what I’m talking about. Don’t assume I have a number of dollars from which expenses are deducted to see if there is enough left over. If you can’t explain a price variance or efficiency variance, you are about four years of tough study behind in the race. So far, on the new property, every variance has been unfavorable, yet I am still within budget. This is because I had to buy more direct materials than required for the immediate tasks. One cannot buy half a bale of insulation.
My area of accounting expertise was cost allocations. Once every contract negotiation time, the company would herd us in for a meeting to moan how badly they were losing money. What they meant was that revenues were down—because they had foolishly decided not to get into the cell phone business. There was no money in it, they said. Note, I was the first person in the company to have a cell phone.
Where is this leading? Well, you see, during those sessions, everyone quickly found I was regularly more highly-educated than management, who took great stock in “talking down” to the employees. Their unstated goal was to get the rank and file to vote for a low wage increase. But I would point out they were making [at one point] over $2,000,000 profit per employee per year. Try to imagine the question period with someone like me in the room.
That’s correct. The other 8 would perpetually be on vacation, ATO, maternity leave, or call in sick. Of all the wonderful “employee benefits” you hear of at the phone company, the bulk of it was never available to the single men who worked there. Those “departments of women” chewed up close to 9/10ths of the benefit pool so don’t hand me any donkey about wage equality. Naw-uh, Sparky. You give me a fair increase first, then we can talk about closing the gap—at your expense, not mine. Over the years they tried lots of women in satellite repair. Not one of them ever learned the job properly.
How do I know? Because despite the company reluctance to allow for different employee skill sets, they always wound up sending the women to work with me to get them up to at least a minimum level of competence. The problem was, they still expected me to do 100% of my own job while conducting this training. Yes, I scored a lot, but that isn’t the point.
And how do you like the pathetic Hillary supporters trying the lowest possible appeal, that she’s the first woman. C’mon all you uncommitted types, last time you got your first darkie, now be first with a woman. To hell with the issues, cute is more important. Like I said, pathetic. Remember, dear reader, I am not anti-Hillary. I am anti-corruption. The current administration has become an entrenched political class that is entirely on the take. When is the last time one of them went to jail?
Norwegian church.
NOON
Who remembers the Honda 250 Rebel a few years back? How somebody came in and bought it the day before I could show up with the money? Guess what? Today the same thing happened with the Keeway motorcycle I had carefully picked out and tested. And negotiated and planned into my system. Yep, it’s gone. If you think that’s a coincidence, there’s more. It was at the exact same motorcycle shop and the price was the same.
It’s disappointing but not a disaster. The main difference, if you ask me, between the rich and the poor is that the rich have a cash reserve. That’s what has always allowed me to live better than people with far higher incomes than myself, with one qualification—that I have a cash reserve and they do not. For clarity, I’m not comparing myself to the rich with a reserve. That’s a comfort zone most of us will never know.
And you know, I had a cash reserve. So, what happened to it? Why didn’t I scoop the Keeway last month? I can answer that. You see, houses costs money. That sort of took care of any spare money around here since the middle of May, both my money and everyone else’s where I had any say. Plus each trip up there costs $57 per day and there have been six trips.
One recurring theme is how the Pakistanis keep saying they have to let the terrorists stay due to the custom of Pashtunwali. There are actually two codes of honor that apply, Melmastia and Nanawatei. Melmastia is hospitality to strangers who enter your house and Nanawatei is offering asylum in the form of refuge and shelter. This forms the biggest part of the excuses given by Pakistan for harboring the Taliban.
The hilarious part is how the Pakistanis then don’t understand why the world considers them hypocrites. For openers, the majority, including the leader at the time, were not Pashtuns. Next, Melmastia applies only to strangers, and the armored compounds of Taliban living with their relatives hardly qualifies as strangers. Nanawatei names six cities where sanctuary is extended to a person who has killed someone. Quetta is not one of those cities. (The significance is that the code mainly applies to rural areas and the Taliban are hiding in cities.)
Even then, the code does not say it is permissible to harbor a fugitive indefinitely, but only until the situation is clarified. That is, once it is clarified these people are wanted terrorists, they are to be handed over. But the biggest lie, the one that really puts the Pakistanis into perspective, is why the code does not force them to take in the coalition troops and protect them, as well. Gotcha!
The Pakistani Prime Minister is the only known person in the world to have gone on major television networks and denied the Taliban and Al Qaeda are hiding in Pakistan, stating “only westerners” would believe such a thing.
Jaques Beneviste: Chemistry, 1998. Jack proposed that not only does water have a memory, it can be transmitted across the Atlantic Ocean by Internet. Jack lost his funding over that one. Water? Memory? Insert wet dream joke here.
NIGHT
Having overslept my own siesta, I investigated everything from shed kits to recent drone developments. Drones are human piloted for now, but as far as the question will they ever replace humans, the answer is absolutely. It is only a matter of time. The drones are faster, cheaper, expendable, and they’ve been surgically picking off bad guys for years now. As far as the human method of picking which targets to hit, meh. Let the drones hit them all. Like I said, cheap.
I know that designing a remote control device is only a few percent of the cost of a robot, so most drones are still pilot controled. I also think the current practice of letting one soldier control one drone will be discontinued. The drones can hover around long enough to let a single operator take over just the terminal guidance phase. It will not be long before the drones are used domestically. Maybe to take out fleeing bank robbers or hostage takers.
Anyway, last day I said there was no apparent camouflage against the seekers, but I got to thinking about that. I once watched how the Japanese had put of screens matching the scenery to march their troops down a mountain. Why would not sheets of ordinary tinfoil shield the infrared signature of a soldier enough at least to defeat the sensor? A few bright infrared flares every few seconds, like the aircraft spew, would those not reflect off the tinfoil and work even better?
Once I figured this out, I was able to search and find sites that describe such methods.
ADDENDUM
It’s official. The Miami Herald sucks even worse. On weekends, for $2, you used to get 3 crosswords, 2 Sudokus, 2 KenKens, 2 Jumbles, and 1 anacrostic. Now, for $3, you get one of each, and they just lost another customer. Don’t bother with the Sun. It doesn’t even have an index. My budget does not allow for $3 newspapers.
Last Laugh
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