Lost For Awhile

Amazing how time passes. I have not added an article since the middle of Sept. Must be busy.

I can't believe we had a snow storm last week. In November. It usually comes around Christmas Eve. It was eight inches at least, enough to use the snowblower. That snow blower of mine just doesn't throw the snow far enough. I greased it all up this year, but to no avail. So, this summer, I have to take it apart. And I must start early in the summer, in case it takes awhile. It will need a new belt, and I don't know how long that will take to arrive.

I did spend a lot of time writing. Found it best to do every morning. Had to finish my almost first length ebook. 45,000 words should be good enough for the first one. It's about a spoiled Moroccan princess, who gets kidnapped by terrorists.  Two English boys and their guide break her out, and then they get list in the desert, where things go from bad to worse, then worse again. It helped to have been in Morocco and saw camels, trains and desert. Some of the events are from my own experience. Like the lady at the train station, or the two soldiers drinking rum & coke (one of them being me). So click on Amazon and give it a like.
 http://amzn.to/sOB7VW
I think that says you like the picture or the effort.

Anyway, it is better than doing crosswords, which now I have no time for. I had all those words running around with no where to go. I'm working on another book, using my hometown as the scapegoat. Murder, bootleggers, incest. My hometown was never like this, well, not totally.

My project the last few months has been designing a kitchen with my wife. I don't have to describe that  collaboration. I'm getting the parts from Kent, and they sent in a contractor. Well, I must have looked like a meek little lamb being led to slaughter. Lets rip off the senion citizen. Needed a wall put up and he wanted $3000. I got it done for $300. and this guy will do the rest of the job.

The parts will arrive in Jan. and I have to put them all in the house. Can't store them on the patio, and I just hope there is not a ton of snow about.

We put laminate flooring in the recroom. Actually, my son put it down, I did the cutting. The next project will be laminate floors for the dining and living room. Want that done before spring.

There, that should make up for the time I was away. Best put a picture of my book. Have to advertise. No shame.


Jack Sakalauskas
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World Trade Center

Yesterday was 9/11 day. It's like a JFK day. Everyone remembers where they were. On that day, I was at work, at the Hfx. airport. I used to work in the control center, watching all the cameras, alarms, radio traffic, all that kind of stuff. My son was working if Florida at the time, and he contacted me to turn on the tv. So I was the first one at the airport to know about New York. After seeing what was on tv, I called my boss to check it out. Of course then, all hell broke loose. There was a terrorist under every seat.

There was three of us on that particular job, with two of us there at all times. Normally, we would rotate around, but not that day. We both stayed there till 6 P.M. We had to photograph every aircraft that came in, the planes disembarking, and so on.

That was my last day at work before my vacation. The next morning, I was supposed to fly to Florida. That went down the drain. If it had been one day earlier, I would have been flying into Newark, about the same time as those planes hit the trade center. That would have been a bad experience.

Working at the airport brings back a memory. No matter where I went, hardware stores, supermarket, wherever, I would always run into someone from work. But as soon as I stopped working there, I never ran into them again. I find that kind of weird. A thought crossed my mind, that if I thought about the lottery all the time, maybe I would win.


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The Making of a Superpower

I read some bad news the other day, I had a hard time believing. It seems the Ameicans are running out of big rocks. Yes, its hard to believe, but it appears to be true. I am referring to the big rocks, they make monuments from. They do make a lot of monuments, sort of like the Victorian era in England, when they made a lot of statues. It makes me wonder if this carving up of rocks is another sign of the end times.

Rome made lots of statues, momuments and buildings, then plop, down the drain. England, the same way, plop, down the drain. The Martin Luther King statue is the latest. I don't have anything against M.L.K. But the thing is, they bought the rock from China. I don't know about you, but to me it just doesn't seem right. I can see if they bought the rock in Africa, that would be okay.

It also appears, they have no more artists in the U.S, capable of making that sculpture. Maybe it just falls in line with the policy that they have to give all their jobs to someone else. Not only do we (them and us) send all the jobs to China (& India) we also send the factories. Remember the movie "Terminator"? The end has a hand crawling through a steel mill. Do you know where that steel mill is now? It was chopped up and taken to China. They did the same with a steel mill in Sydney and a oil refinery her in Dartmouth.

Sound like good policy? It might be a good policy for greed. After all, the upper class figure they can buy their way out of anything, so might as well grab as much as you can.

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How Jackie Got His TouchPad!

Last Friday I was discussing the iPad with my son. I told him I wasn't interested in an iPad, all I needed was an eReader. Lately I have been checking them out. Finally, I decided to wait till the new Kindle came out. It's supposed to be in color, etc, etc. So he told me about HP getting out of the Tablet market, and maye some of the people who bought them will freak out, and want to sell theirs. Then, maybe I could get one on Kijiji, maybe $150. Okay, that sounds like a good plan.

Next morning, I see my son with a wide grin. "Guess what? I checked the Staples website this morning, and they have the HP Tablet for $99. & $150. I ordered three." An hour later confirmation came that he had two of them, one of each. So, we each have one. Since then, everyone is going crazy trying to get one. Store lineups, etc, just to order one.

So now I have my eReader and it cost $99. Of course I use it for more than reading books. The eReader only didn't last long. Love those Apps. The one that impresses me the most is the Google App. Just say the name of something and up comes the information. Or you can take a photo of something and it brings up items closest to it. Really Star Trekkie.

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Royally Speaking

When I joined the air force in 1961, it was the Royal Canadian Air Force. Then some dummy got the bright idea to join all the services, so I ended up in Air Command. The navy got Maritime Command and the army was Land Command. (Original eh?) That was in 1968 and we were given new uniforms, badges. etc. Most people hated it, especially the navy. In the late 80's, the air force got their uniforms back, sort of. I don't think the army and navy did. Now they are going back to The Royal Canadian Air Force, The Royal Canadian Navy, and The Canadian Army. The army doesn't have royal in front because it is made up of different regiments, like The Royal Canadian Regiment, The Royal 22nd. Regiment, etc. I would be even happier if they went back to air force ranks instead of army.

The French population of Nova Scotia will now be able to get vanity licence plate. Nova Scotia in French and English and the Acadian flag on the side. Sounds all warm and fuzzy, doesn't it. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the $50.00 cost to get one. They call it a donation. Wonder if you can get one without a donation. I shouldn't talk, I have a Veterans plate. It cost me $5.00 extra.

On the front page yesterday, they told us about civil servants getting bonuses. They call it Merit Pay. Of 1700 workers, over 1000 receive it. The purpose is so they don't want to lose good people. Give me a break. With their fringe benefits and pay that is 50% higher than the street, no one is going to leave. What do you take us for?
The top business leaders say the same thing. Give me a 10 million bonus or I'll leave. Yeah, right!

There is this Mayor in a village in Quebec, who gave his ex-wife a birthday present yesterday. They were divorced a year ago. He has a construction company and in the middle of the night, he brought a 17 tonne bolder and put it in her driveway. He said that she always wanted a big rock.


Jack Sakalauskas
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Our Gas Prices

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The Horses Ass

RAILROAD TRACKS The US standard railroad gauge
(distance between the rails) is
4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an
exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used?
Because that's the way they built
them in England and English
expatriates designed the US railroads.


Why did the English build them like
that?
Because the first rail lines were
built by the same people who built
the pre-railroad tramways and that's
the gauge they used.
Why did 'they' use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the
tramways used the same jigs and
tools that they had used for building wagons,

which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that
particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other
spacing, the wagon wheels would
break on some of the old, long
distance roads in England , because
that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long
distance roads in Europe (including England )

for their legions. Those roads have been

used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the
initial ruts, which everyone else had
to match for fear of destroying their
wagon wheels.

Since the chariots were made for
Imperial Rome , they were all alike in
the matter of wheel spacing.
Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of

4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original
specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

Bureaucracies live forever.


The next time you are handed a

specification/procedure/process
and wonder 'What horse's ass
came up with this?', you may be
exactly right. Imperial Roman
army chariots were made just
wide enough to accommodate
the rear ends of two war horses.
(Two horses' butts.) 

Now - the twist to the story:
A Space Shuttle sitting on its

launch pad has two big booster
rockets attached to the sides of
the main fuel tank. These are
solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.
The SRBs are made by Thiokol
at a factory in Utah .

Engineers who designed the SRBs
would have preferred to make them
a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be
shipped by train from the factory
to the launch site. The railroad line
from the factory happens to run
through a tunnel in the mountains,
and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.

The tunnel is slightly wider than the
railroad track, and the railroad track,
as you now know, is about as wide
as two horses' behinds.

 

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of

what is arguably the world's most advanced

transportation system, was determined over

two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass!
And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important!

Credit Card Maxed? So What.

The weather today is whatever forcast you pick. The picks are, cloudy, sunny, showers or stormy. They could sell lottery tickets on this.

Had to go to a funeral the other day. It happens, and the older, the more frequent. An old air force buddy died. That's the second in a month. His son was there and that was weird. Looks like his fathers twin. It was like I was talking to his father, thirty years ago.

Read this morning that Canada and India are teaming up to sell nuclear reactors. If I read it right, our part is selling the uranium with Indian technology. Now that's a scary thought. India has nuclear weapons, and do you know, that's our fault. In the 70's we sold them a reactor, and they learned how to make a bomb. This time they say, when we sell them uranium, there will be a monitoring system so they can't use it for weapons. How stupid can you be?

A third of the American news is about the woman in Florida, who has been released from jail, and another third about Murdoch. The last third is about the debt ceiling. In regard to the deby ceiling, isn't it the same as when my credit card is maxed out, and I go to the bank and ask for a new limit, so I can spend?  I don't know what all the fuss is about. Of course they are going to raise it. What it does, is worry the stock market, and when it is raised, the market can shoot up like crazy.

Lots of coverage on strollers on buses. Most cities have laws that allows only fold up strollers. But not here, too dumb. Here women go on the bus with strollers that just make it in. Then no one else gets in. So every stop on the route waits for the next bus. Duh!. City Council too busy with their own ego's to do anything.

They say shoplifting not a problem here. Maybe just smart shoplifters.

The price of ereaders going down. Saw them advertised  for $68.

Saw the other day that they are going to make colored shoes for men. To celebrate the new colors, I will buy two pair. One black and one brown.

Saw this ad yesterday Ramadans.com. Of course, I thought it was for Muslims. Actually it's Ramada Inn Nova Scotia. Don't say you wouldn't be fooled.



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Mayhem Still Reigns

Sunny out today but Thor is supposed to bang his hammer.

Do you notice there is nothing on tv to watch? It's so bad, I've even given the clicker over to my wife. I may be starting a bad idea here, because I'll want it back when the fall comes. I noticed she was watching Masterchef and they were cooking steaks. There was rare, medium and well done. They never mentioned shoe leather or burned to a crisp.

Read this headline,"Retirees Push Up Condo Prices." That's the "Me Generation" for you. It's never them, it's always someone else. When they are through with us, it will be the fault of the generation behind them.

I wrote in my Facebook about Sears catalogs used as toilet paper. Do you know, the first pages they used were from books of poems. They say, on a windy day, you could see these pages flying all over the english countryside. They wern't suitable for collecting.

Yesterday's front page was about the wages collected by people who run charities. Some earn a quarter million a year. It looks like a third of the money they collect goes to wages. And, as I have said before, these charities never die. If a cure is found, the charty is morphed into another. After all, they don't want to lose their jobs. In the U.S, it is not uncommon for the co. of a charity to earn a million.

Mayhem is still running rampant here. At 7:45 AM, three women smucked a woman on a bus and took her purse. She chased them and tried to get her purse back, but went down for the count. The bottom line is two were caught and before the judge at 10:00 AM.
At 5:00 AM on Monday morning, four guys attacked a couple, and used a hammer on him. With all the screaming, they took off and are still on the lam.



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The Pendulum Swings

Rain today - which is a good thing.

In an economics course I took at university, they talked about a pendulum. How everything swings from one side to the other, from one extreme to the other. We were discussing communism and capitalism. Communism was at its extreme and has since swung in the other direction. Each time it swings back and forth, but not as far as the previous spot, and eventually settle somewhere in the middle. I wonder if capitalism is at its farthest point, or has it already started to swing back.

I mention that, because I was thinking about it in reference to unions. Coming from a coal mining town, where unions started a hundred years ago, it was a good thing. My uncles were twelve years old when they started working in the coal mine. I'm amazed they were able to learn to read and write. (Tomorrow is Sunday, Thank God for comic books.) After much blood, sweat and tears, the union pulled them up.

Then comes the pendulum effect. It went to its extreme and now is a hinderence in many ways. Take the Post Office for example. They really pushed in the 70's with their strikes and got what they wanted. Two weeks ago, they were on strike, and who actually cared. It convinced more people to go on the internet to pay their bills. A loss of more customers. At Christmas time, I tell my wife, stop sending cards, pick up the phone. In twenty years, or less, the PO will be nothing more than a small size parcel delivery service.

So the pendulum for the unions has already started to swing the other way. At one time, to get members to form a union, was a piece of cake. But now, take Michelin Tire for example. No way do they want a union. For them, the pendulum is at the other end, or is it at the center? There has been, I think, sixteen attempts for a union, and all have failed. I think they have been told, they should give it up.

So now, Will and Kate are gone to la, la land. I did notice, that in every article, they never failed to mention what she was wearing. I never knew it was so important. To be fair, they also mentioned what Will was wearing. Today, "he wore pants, a shirt, and a tie." Yes, that's a direct quote. As I said, I never knew it was so important. So, today I am wearing long pants, beige in colour, purchased from a high-end store in Cole Hbr, called Salvation Army Store. It is complimented by a short sleeve shirt, made up of verticle lines of different shades of green, with six buttons up the front, and having no man servent to button them, the buttons are on the right side. It must be an orential style, as it originates from China. My feed are shod with brown socks, and dark brown moccasins, in respect for our native brothers. The articles about Will and Kate don't mention underwear, so I won't.


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Murder and Mayhem

Summer is here, probably for a short stay.

When I opened the newspaper this morning, all I could see was murder & mayhem. Downtown Halifax, yesterday afternoon, two guys hit another on the head with an axe. Then there was the guy, with a bat and a couple of other items, headed into the hospital, th whack his 59 yr. old wife and two children. They stopped him at the door. A couple of shootings ans a couple of court trials, where murderers are set free. I don't know if the one in Florida is a murderer or not, but the one in Montreal certainly is. Stabbed his two children. Set free because he wasn't in his right mind. I wouldn't want someone not in their right mind living next to me. Oh crap, there is someone like that next door. I better get a guard cat or something.

I see the highland games are going on and I noticed from photos that men do wear something under their kilts. It reminds me of a photo I saw recently with Queen Elizabeth sitting with a regiment. The front row was sitting on chairs and it was quite visible no soldier wore anything under his kilt.
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_queen_scots_soldiers.htm  So, is it true or not?


Jack Sakalauskas
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In All the Right Places

A sunny Canada Day to you all.

Looking at the paper this morning, I don't think it was my bifocals, I think it was my thought process. When I read, "Onlooker Grabs French Leader," a different picture passed through my mind, than someone grabbing him by the arm.

Saw a movie the other day with Ellen Page. Crap movie about super heroes. She let it be known, she is no stranger to the F word. I didn't think she had a limited vocabulary, or was hard up for parts. Is she too short? The one on NCIS is short and she won an Oscar. Of course, she did play a man.

I guess there was something on Twitter about getting rid of the camma. It wasn't true, though some people want to get rid of it. Those would be the ones, who don't know where to put it, the comma I mean. Anyway, it's a stupid idea. Without it, you don't know what you're readng.

This morning I had raisin bread toast. I had to slice it myself and do you know how that is done? You don't slice it from the top. You lay it on its side and slice. That way, the slices have the same thickness, unless you can't handle a bread knife, in which case there is no help for you. Which is par for the course, since there is no hope for any of us.


Jack Sakalauskas
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Bifocals Can Be A Hazard

How's the weather? Don't ask!

I just remembered about the yardsale I went to on Sat. Total waste of time and money. I should know better than to go indoor yard sales. They are usually just mini-merchants. The ones that sell jewelry, leather products, that kind of stuff. There was some pockets books there, but they were all for women. I think there are more women authors than men, and they seem to run off those romance books pretty fast.

I usually read two books at once. One is a pocketbook and the other an ebook. Just finished reading, "Rogue Warrior," the building of Seal Team 6. Definately rubbed his superiors the wrong way. For all his work, he got a year in jail, basically for not having the right receipts. Now it seems to be top heavy just like the other elite forces. The ebook was, "Gunboat #14," about the Swedish-Russian War, 1807. Those gunboats were were nothing more than large rowboats.

When you read with bifocals, you have to be careful, not to read incorrectly, especially if you only read the headlines. For example, this morning there was a headline which read,"Canada Primps for Royal Visit." When I first read it, it said,"Canada Pimps fpr Royal Visit." Anyway, I moved my head and saw the error of my ways. The upside is that sometimes it makes for interesting reading.

I was keeping a lookout for a dresser that someone might throw out. I wanted it for my shed, to put my toolboxes on. I have two green toolboxes, with three drawers. When they issued you tools in the Air Force, you were allowed to keep them. So I needed something four feet long to put them on. Yesterday, I was driving around a sub divison and saw this desk someone had put out on the side of the road. So I came back around to check it out. It was a four foot long, metal, grey computer desk, with shelves on one side. Perfect. Tossed it into the back of the van. Came home, told my wife and she said," And who put it in the van for you? Right, operation, no lifting for another month. Promised  not to do it again.

I'll add a photo of my shed.

Jack Sakalauskas
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Brown Sugar Sandwich

It is a beautiful day, finally.

A friend of my wife asked me yesterday, if I remembered brown sugar sandwiches. OMG - Yes, I remember brown sugar sandwiches. Two slices of white bread, cover one side with brown sugar, sprinkle with water so it doesn't fall out, slap the other slice of bread on it, and voila. She told me she sprinkled it with milk, because they had a cow. Yes! The good old days. Makes you wonder why we're still alive.

It's hard to believe. The LA Dodgers bankrupt. They are in the center of a divorce, so good luck to them. They could actually pack their bags and hit the road.

So they finally found Blogojevich guilty. I've seen him on reality shows, and got the impression you don't need to be intelligent to be a Gov. Of course this is true for all politicans. The gift of the gab is what matters. Then again, it could have been his hair. He is now eligible for a 300 hundred years government vacation. Do they really give people 300 years. Probably out in five years. I do notice that people who murder someone are treated less harsh than those that cheat  someone.

I have been watching items on TV about Hitler, and do you know that by the end of the war he had jets, stealt bombers, rockets and was months away from an atom bomb. We were almost toast. Well, I was young, I would have been crumbs.


Jack Sakalauskas
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That Is The Question

There was this big yellow thing in the sky yesterday. Was that the sun? Waiting to see if it returns.

While turning the pages of the paper this morning, one article made me blink a few times. It said "Queer Prom." If I had used the queer word, all kinds of stuff would have fallen on me. It's just a case of, "Do as I say, not as I do."


So the Post Office strike is over. It may be in the rest of Canada, but not in Halifax. The mailmen won't let the inside workers in to sort the mail. That can only last so long and then I will receive my two books I won from Goodreads in the last two weeks.

I notice from a poll doctor workloads are increasing. Not enough Doctors? As I have said before, there are about seventy-five positions to train new Doctors at the University. (White men not allowed.) This year they sold ten of these positions to Saudi Arabia. Ten less for us. Good planning, eh?

There was a huge yellow ball in the sky a few minutes ago, but it has since disappeared.


Jack Sakalauskas
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Who Invented The Wonderbra?

Fog! Enough said.

I see in Nova Scotia, you can get a french licence plate now. Another one of those money grabs. Like my veteran's plate. You have to pay extra for it. They have another plate for bird lovers. I think that"s what it is. There is a picture of a bird on the plate. And of course, there are the plates you can put any name on. Some people shorten what they put on. It means something to them but no one else. Those are expensive.

There is a lot of talk lately about upgrading infrastructure. The big culprit here is the power co. I remember when I was in the air force, it was always fix electronic equipment before it broke. Doing preventive maintenance. This doesn't happen with the power co. since they went public. There is no replacing old transformers. They just wait till they fail. And that usually happens during a storm. I call it the american system. Don't spend any money unless you have to. The important thing is the bottom line. More profit means higher CEO's salary and perks, and higher dividends.

Did you know the alkaline battery was a Canadian invention?
The alkaline dry battery was invented by Canadian engineer Lewis Urry in the 1950s while working for the Eveready Battery company. So do we get credit because he was a Canadian, or do the Americans because it was in the U.S? The same thing goes for basketball. We're taking credit for both, as well as paint rollers, snowmobiles, insulin, Blackberry and Wonderbra


Jack Sakalauskas
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♫ Donald, Where's Your Trousers?♫

Rain! Enough said.

There is an article in the paper today about changing Cornwallis School's name. It's the school board who voted to change the name. It all started when one board member (who happens to be an Indian) suggested they change the name. He got the idea from a Band Chief, who has a personal vendetta against Cornwallis. Then all the Board members jumped on the wagon.

Personally, I don't think school boards should have any say in changing school names. Too easy to lead to abuse. School boards are usually run by one strong willed member, who bullies the rest. In this case it was probably, "We can't argue with a minority. People would think we are predudice. We have to accept his idea, even if it is stupid."

Read this article the other day about men's skirts. A designer, Rick Owens, is in to it. Wouldn't he be better off calling them kilts? At least he would have a built in market. Skirts for men don't seem to fly that well. I'm part Scot, but you won't see me wearing any skirt or kilt. I wouldn't force the sight of ny legs on anyone. If I wore a skirt, everyone would definately look at my legs. Hoot Mon!

There is a giant yard sale in the arena today. Have to check it out. Maybe buy some books.


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Trying To Rewrite History

I know it is daylight, because I can see everything. That is, except the sun. In other words, it's cloudy.

Worked on my barbacue a couple of days ago. I should say, my son did. I'm not into pushing and pulling yet. Yesterday was my first day back at the wheel after the operation. My barbacue is the first normal size one I bought. It must be at twenty-five years old. My wife bought a new gas line last week at a yard sale, for $1.00, so I  cleaned it up, repainted it, bought a new insert, and away we go. Oh yes, then I tested it. Good for another six or seven years.

I looked at new ones, but they are all made of tin. Wouldn't last long. That's why I see so many out on garbage day.

Yesterday I wrote about changing a schools name from Cornwallis to whatever. By the way, Cornwallis was the founder of Halifax. I said yesterday, first a school name, then something else. It didn't take long. There is a park in Halifax with a statue of him. Now they want the statue taken out and done in.

You can't change history. He gets his name on things because he was the founder. So, they don't like the way he operated. That was then, and that was how things were done. There is nothing to be done about it. Having a statue, denoting he is the founder, doesn't mean we agree with his policies.

It seems they are going to put a windmill park in Amherst. The company is putting up 61 million, and the government 39 million. They put it there because it is a high unemployment area. It is sort of a form of welfare. These things sometimes end up as a bottomless pit. Every year the company comes back for more money.

Call centers are the same. They get tax breaks to keep people working. As soon as the tax breaks run out, they close up shop. If you want them to stay, more tax breaks, usually equal to the wages for the employees for a certain period of time.


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It Is What It Is, and That's How It Is

You can have the sun, and still not have warm weather. 12C/54F

They are at it again. Name changing. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2011/06/23/ns-halifax-cornwallis-school-rename.html?ref=rss I wish people would get over this crap. It happened 250 years ago. Quit moaning about it. I guess its like, I win, I got the last word in. First a school , then a street, then what? I don't imagine it will be names after any white man.

If you are a white man, you are definately on the bottom of the ladder now. In Halifax, they lowered the entrance exams for fire fighters so blacks could qualify. That's what I like to hear. If my house is burning down, send the stupid people to put it out. For government, everyone else qualifies first. Then again, that's the government. They have seminars on slowness.

Let's say Canada was discovered by another race, other than white, where would we be now. Like African nations, Arab nations, or India? Our own indians hadn't even discouvered the wheel by the time the white man came. As for Asians, they copied everything from the whites.

And don't go calling me a racist. It's just is what it is. Some men lose their hair faster than others. That's just the way it is.

Along the same line, another thing that irks me is the statement, "Over qualified for the job."
I never heard of anything so stupid. "I don't want to hire you, I would rather hire a dumber person."
Or, "Instead of you, I can hire ten in India, and maybe the ten of them together will get the job done."
You would think it would be, "If I can get the best person possible, my company will do better."
In reality its, "If I can hire the cheapest person possible, I can put more money in my pocket."


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The Best of Times, Worst of Times

Sun again today. This is the second day in a row. It is quite windy though.

So the Utility Board had their open forum about the size of city council, and who gets up to speak, but the Mayor. Well yes, he says. City council is too large. It should be 15 not 23. He must figure he is on the way out anyway.

Yesterday, they had a council meeting. There is a big scandle going on, about the rock bands that come to the city during the summer. It seems that everyone got paid up front. They all got paid before the tickets were sold. The promoters, bands and everyone else who has their finger in it. They didn't need to worry about selling tickets, there was no more money to be made by doing so. This broke all the rules, and the Mayor had agreed to the whole thing.

Last evening, someone put up to vote to fire the Mayor. That didn't go anywhere. 17 - 3 to keep him. Maybe that 17 were in on the entertainment deal. And hey, there are lots of bands coming this summer. Did I fail to mention, the city pays when there are not enough tickets sold? I get to pay, even though I don't go to these shows. Entertainment for the masses. After all, you are not allowed to feed the christains to the lions. Then again, maybe we are being fed slowly.

Down behind my house, there is a shopping mall, and beyond that, the Forest Hills Parkway. At one end of the mall is Canadian Tire, with their own parking lot. After the store closes, the lot fills up with trailers, race cars, camp chairs and lots of beer. Soon, they are racing up and down the Parkway. The mounties get a lot of complaints, and what is their answer, "We're not interested in that."

The evening before yesterday, one of those guys must have run out of beer. Brandishing an axe, he robbed the Subway store in the same mall. I remember hearing a car just screaming out of the parking lot. I just happened to look at my watch at that time. Found out yesterday the robbery had occured just four minutes earlier. Guess we know who was in that car.

The mounties could have prevented that robbery, or even caught them in the act, if they had answered the complaint calls. They always seem to be conveniently ten miles away, doing rounds. Yesterday, all was back to normal, cars racing on the Parkway, everyone drinking beer and the cops doing rounds ten miles away.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.