NFL/October Rant

Hello? NFL? Anyone home? I just want to know who is in charge of dividing the teams up for the AFC. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed this, but how did you guys miss the obvious solution?

Here is the current team division for the AFC:

If we take a look at each division, one by one (starting at the top with the East), we see the New England Patriots. Certainly Foxboro, MA is the most eastern AFC team there is in the U.S. Both of the New York teams, the Jets and the Bills, easily qualify as eastern. But what about Miami? Hmmm, let's hold that one out for now.

Next we look at the AFC North with Cincinnati, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. All of those teams fit in the pattern, but Baltimore seems a bit out of place. Once again, we will hold that one out.

The AFC South, right away we have a problem here. Indianapolis does not fit in a picture of the south, no way, no how! Hold that one out. Tennessee, Houston and Jacksonville certainly fit the bill here.

The AFC West is the only division which is completely in order. Kansas City, Denver, San Diego and Oakland are all west of all of the other teams. Okay, Kansas City and Houston are about equally west, but Houston is way too far south to be lumped in with the other teams in that division. No changes to be made here.

The solution which should be obvious to all of those who have half a brain, move Miami to the South, there is no more southern team in the AFC. Move Baltimore to the AFC East, it is right there is the same area as the other East teams. Finally, move Indianapolis to the AFC North, where it belongs. Problem solved.

The NFC is much easier. Switch Carolina and Dallas and everything lines up. There you go NFL, you are welcome.

Let's see, what else is going on. I have operation clean up my junk and make a little money in full swing. Since I started I have sold 5 items on eBay for a total of $111.87. Right now I have 18 more items listed with a bunch more to go.

I started this project to raise a little money for Buick parts and I have managed to order the window run channel rubber/felt pieces I have been waiting on for so long now. Once these are installed I will be able to roll my front windows up and down and can then drive the car without fear of getting soaked in a rain storm. Yay!

Learned that my son (Chris) and his family will be up from Arkansas hopefully the weekend of the 18th. I really look forward to seeing everyone as I have missed them a lot. I really miss those days gone by when they lived nearby and I used to regularly see them and hang out in the garage while Chris worked on his stuff.

Also got signed up late in September for my social security benefits, which should be starting in January of next year. While it certainly won't make me rich, hopefully it will be enough to pay the bills so that I can continue to live here at my present location as it is pretty much perfect for me. The way I have it figured it will be enough, but my financial advisor (Autumn) is not so sure.

September update

Not a lot been happening here. Went to the doctor, lost 12 pounds, he changed my meds a bit, put me on a water pill that I think is making me dizzy. At least it did yesterday. Hopefully the weight loss will continue, have to go back in 4 months to see how well the new meds are doing.

Worked on the Buick some. Concentrating my efforts to get the front doors finished so I can actually drive the car and have the windows roll up in case of rain. My efforts of late are on the window run channels, which had completely deteriorated to the point where they were mostly gone.

I say mostly b/c the stainless steel channel is there but the rubber/felt part where that the window glides in was gone, making an awful racket when driven with the windows up. So I think I found an excellent replacement for just that part and plan to try it as soon as finances allow.

Speaking of the Buick, I found the perfect example of exactly how my car should look when it's finished. I do random Google searches for 1961 Buick every now and then, and this gem turned up yesterday:

1961 Buick LeSabre for sale

This car is exactly the same body style and exterior and interior color scheme as my car. Hopefully mine will look like this some day.

My grandson (Billy) is firmly ensconced in his new settings at USI. He seems to be adjusting well, if twitter is any indication. He did come home over the Labor day weekend. It was good to see what little I saw of him during his visit.

I made this movie with granddaughter's Lexi and Kylie and posted it on YouTube.

I've been trying to post a lot more videos as it is something I enjoy doing and it keeps me off the streets.

I get to apply for Social Security benefits later this month. If all goes well those will kick in sometime in January. Oh the joys of getting older.

Good times

Spent a few days with family this past week (Monday-Thursday) and had a very good time. Just want to thank Jim and Melody McKinney for their hospitality and kindness in putting up with an old fart like me!

Always a busy schedule there, never a dull moment. Besides the trips to see other members of the family, I went with Jim to take a couple of cars to the scrapyard and also pick up a couple to be scrapped. Jim is a busy man.

Especially enjoyed the trip down to Crab Orchard to see sisters Sharon and Kathy, as well as my brother Rickey. And a bonus as my niece Jamie Ann showed up with her husband (Chuck) and their children. Not to mention a good meal at the Past Time Cafe.

I was unable to stay for the wedding of my niece Amy to husband-to-be Ben, but since the wedding was to take place at 5:30 PM today, they may already be husband and wife by now. So congratulations to Ben and Amy, may your life together be everything you hoped it would be and more.

Got back home Thursday afternoon and took a nice long nap. Went to bed early also as I was very tired from the trip. Didn't do much yesterday either with another midday nap. Ended up going to bed after midnight and didn't get up until 10:30 this morning! I think I was just wore out from all the good food I had to eat down in Kentucky LOL.

At last, today I had a little energy and decided it was time to do a cold start video of my 1961 Buick LeSabre. I had been wanting to do one like this (using 2 cameras) for some time now and finally got the job done. You can see the video on YouTube by clicking the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QqiVYaIYBI

Frustration with the mainstream media

Most people who know me at all know that I don't care for the press at large, but this particular mini-rant has to do with how they refer to people from countries in the far east. The latest example is the tragedy in San Francisco with the crash of Asiana flight 214.

While it is customary for the people who reside in those countries to refer to themselves using the last (or surname) first, when traveling abroad, they usually wish to conform to standards which apply to the rest of the world, which makes perfect sense. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

So what does the media in this country do, you got it, refer to them as if we were living in their country.  I'm not sure if they do this out of respect for their ways or more likely because they wish to sound hip. I think think they just come off sounding elitest.

The modern mainstream media feels it is their job to teach we (the simplistic Americans), the ways of the world, instead of just informing us. I guess we are just too dumb to know that other cultures are different from our own.

To further confuse the issue, it depends on who you are as to what you are called. An example would be Jackie Chan. He was born Chan Kong-sang in Hong Kong but he uses the stage name of Jackie. Would it not be proper for the media to refer to his as Chan Jackie? I suppose in this case, it has something to do with asian actors wishing to fit in with american culture, but the wishes of the common people do not matter I suppose. Double standard much.

Perhaps I have the media all wrong, maybe they just want us to know that the person referred to is of asian descent when they use this naming convention. But isn't this kind of like referring to them as asian? Is that proper?

C'mon mainstream media, refer to people from places all over the world the same. I think we are smart enough to figure out why people traveling from China or Korea are not named Smith or Jones!

You may find this a bit strange...

Some of you may not think this is a good subject for a blog post, but who really is to say what a person might find interesting. The subject is my keyboard, or more importantly, how comfortable I am with it, and how long it has lasted.

As a writer of any kind will tell you, unless you feel comfortable with your writing device, very few words will ever be written. The words need to flow and having the right device can make all the difference in the world!

For those interested, the keyboard I use is a Kensington Ci70. At $50, it was by far the most expensive keyboard I've ever purchased, but I've been using it now for over 4 years and it still performs as well as it did the day I got it. Quite a statement from someone who regularly eats at their desk and rarely remembers to push the keyboard drawer in.

And while others might proclaim a similar ability with their keyboards, few can do it without physically taking the keyboard apart to clean the crumbs out now and then. You can, however, do that with this one. A few sharp taps on it's edge will dislodge most any crumb and have the keyboard working properly again. Very important for people like me who are, shall we say, less than tidy when they eat.

So after 4 years of service, I have yet to dismantle this keyboard for any reason, and in fact would not know how to do it if the need ever did arise. So hats off to you Kensington, for designing a piece of equipment for us slobs. Bravo!

OS X 10.9 Mavericks

Just one of the many announcements made on Monday (June 10th) by Apple at it's World Wide Developer's Conference (WWDC), if you were an enterprising soul you had no problem locating a copy of the first developers preview (DP1) just shortly after it was announced.

Being one of those people, I quickly had a copy downloaded courtesy of the friendly buccaneers who reside in a bay on the internet. Having a copy is not the same as having it up and running though, as often these early releases require one to jump through several hoops to get them installed on a Hackintosh.

I tried the easy way first, myHack had been updated to a beta version to deal with Mavericks, but that experiment did not turn out well. Then I found this tutorial and followed it. This one proved successful and I got to take a look at the new OS on my GA-P35-DS3L system.

As usual with a prerelease, several things didn't work right. The Mail app for me proved unwilling to accept my main email account so no way to use that. I did however get the internet working and was able to play around with the new version of Safari.

Having working internet also allowed me to preview the new Maps app. While nice, I still prefer Google for this task. They have been doing it a lot longer and theirs is much more complete and accurate.

I also managed to install it on my newest system, the Foxconn G33M. Video was a bit wonky on this system however so I didn't experiment much with it. Tomorrow is another day and I may explore further then.

Time for a rant...

A recent commercial I saw for the search engine Bing made me wonder how they can claim they are preferred over Google. A simple search reveals it simply isn't true. Just check this stat: http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/search-engines

How do they get away with it? It's all in the wording. If you watch the commercial you can see what I'm talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf6XhAn6X1g

In addition to the direction by the personality to search only for certain items, the statement at the end is a dead giveaway. Obviously they are referring to their little sample they made while filming these segments, but it's not really stated. I think most people are aware of this, but I thought it worth pointing out.

And while we are talking about Bing, I don't believe for a moment that they are truly ahead of Yahoo as a search engine. Anyone who has visited msn.com will know what I'm talking about. Being another Microsoft site, msn.com uses Bing for any searches their news feed needs to do. A lot of the features they do have to do with celebrities and who is in foreclosure, who is least popular, what a celebs real names, etc. If you click each one, it can easily amount to hundreds of Bing searches in a matter of minutes. Way to inflate the numbers Microsoft!

Switching gears for a moment, I've coined a new phrase, coastal smurfs. As everyone knows, the coastal areas of this country are mostly blue when it comes to voting. New York City, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington DC on the right coast and San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle on the left coast. There are many reasons why this is the case, but the one I want to examine is attitude.

We the people here in middle America know what I'm talking about. The coastal smurfs are better educated, more hip, and just seem to know what's best for the rest, or so they think. You can hear it in their voices when they talk to us in their news broadcasts, documentaries, movies or tech podcasts. They will often claim they have a feel for what the common man needs. BULL$#!+.

I've known this was true of journalists since the time I started paying attention. By that I mean after the kids are grown and you have more time to be aware of things which are happening around you. We all know that when raising children, there just isn't much time for doing anything else, period. But when the little rugrats are out producing rugrats of their own, it frees up your mind to take in and analyze the information you receive from various sources.

A good example was listening to a speech made by the president and then having the friendly members of the fourth estate explain what he said to me. Prior to the time I started paying attention, I would often just let them listen for me. I thought they were my friends. Boy was I ever wrong!

While some in the media obviously have a true agenda, there are others who just can't help themselves. They are coastal smurfs who were just raised believing that they are the chosen ones who are there to lead the rest of us out of the darkness. I have pity on them for they are truly the clueless ones. The ones destined to lead a lonely life in local news or until the time they figure out for themselves that they aren't as important as they thought they were.

Those media people who know what their true purpose in life is are far more dangerous. They know their mission is to indoctrinate the masses with the liberal agenda. It's just been a fact of growing up in this country for a long, long time now. At least until people like Rush Limbaugh and Fox news came along.

But make no mistake, while we now at least have a choice of what agenda mongers we get our news from, the bias is still there. It's just slanted the other way if you choose Fox news. For the record, I believe Fox news is closer to the actual truth than the liberal press, but they still present the facts with a conservative slant if you watch closely.

So what is a person to do? How is one supposed to get the news? The answer is pretty clear. You can choose sides and find a news source that you like and agree with or you can listen to both sides and make up your own mind. For the most part that is what I do. I read news on both the liberal and conservative websites and then decide which one to believe.

It's often not difficult as most of the liberal sites have toned their agenda way down to compete with Fox news. Competition is a great thing and for that reason I am grateful to Rush Limbaugh and Fox news for introducing it into the American news media. We are truly better informed than ever now!