Cold, colder, and turkey derricks

(A photo of Alton Brown and his turkey. For more detail on Alton and his turkey derrick see the bottom of the post.)











I appreciate the flood of emails that I received regarding the folks who live next to our workshop. Yesterday was unexpectedly warm and so we thought that they were getting a reprieve. After dark I was finishing up some work at the shop (thank you Buddy for dropping by and changing motorcycle tires for me!) and noticed that they had candles. So we went to bed thinking that all was well.

This morning, however, Jacksonville was greeted by record cold temperatures as the Canadian weather did indeed finally get here. For those of you who live Up North 32 degree temps don't sound like much but Down Here many people don't even own winter coats.

So I'm going to try and drop in on them tonight and see how they are doing. If they haven't already moved out, that is. The city is opening shelters and I know that they have relatives across the St. John's River but as I mentioned in my previous post, when you don't have transportation and you don't have a phone (we had been letting them use our cell phones) and you don't have a radio nor a TV then any services that the City is offering might as well be on Mars.

A couple of folks have said - rightfully so - that my neighbors need to help themselves. And I am not going to disagree with that position at all. I don't think they live a particularly stellar lifestyle yet I don't see them as being crackheads or alkys either. My read is that they are just some poor black folks who are really down on their luck and between jobs.

But even the worst alky or crackhead doesn't deserve to freeze to death in my book.

In this case I simply don't want to judge. Freezing to death or starving to death is an awfully high penalty to pay for the crime of being slack. *IF* they are slack, and I don't see that at all. Just old and worn out.

Anywho, I have been very touched by the concern shown by several readers of this blog.

~~~

We had our own little electrical trauma this morning. We moved the Wanderlodge to another park last night. Everything was going well until this morning. As I was packing the silver motorcycle to ride to work (yes, I am still riding in 35 degree weather!) I heard the frickin' irritating sounds of my 'puter uninterruptible power supplies going off inside the motorcoach. Which could only mean one thing. Our electrical power had died.

The Bluebird has gas heat but ... duh ... we've never used it. Never had to. It just simply doesn't get that cold in Florida and in the scheme of priorities refurbishing the A/C for our tropical travels comes up first on list. We had agreed to soldier through this winter with small auxillary heaters for now.

And we have discovered that one of the joys of RV living is knowing what you can - and cannot - run off of a 30amp or a 50amp circuit. Or, for that matter, a 30amp line and a Pirated add'l 30amp line at the vacant space next to you. Not like I'd ever try something like that or anything.

For instance, our RV will run 3 air conditioning units on a 50amp circuit but that 4th unit will pop a breaker.

And 2 electric space heaters plus the factory electric heater in the bathroom plus the hot water heater are about all that you can get out of 50amps before something goes out.

One 30amp line will only run half the electical stuff inside the coach so you either need to choose between your refrigerator or your hot water heater, because they are on separate circuits. And from what I have heard you might as well forget about running the bus A/C units.

With a pair of 30amp lines we have almost the same power as you do with a single 50amp circuit. Even though it's not supposed to work that way. (Our coach was one of the first built on this plan and had the bedroom remodeled once so it's not quite the spec as printed in the original typewritten manuals).

Never mind the "old RV park with old wiring" factor. At our last park we shorted out half of the 50amp circuit and wound up using - with the permission of the management, believe it or not - the 50amp hookup at the space next to us.

Exciting stuff, right?

And just for the record (and for those three gearheads that have actually read this far) we carry a ton of extra cables and extension cords and poo tank fittings because we are geared up for disaster relief and Mexican travels. If it can be humanly connected, we'll find a way to do it.

So no electrical power in this weather means ... frosty housecats, let's put it that way. I guess the upside to freezing the cats to death is that would eliminate their fleas, but somehow that seems to be a bit drastic.

Anyway, the Ace Maintenance Man and Yours Truly pretty quickly determined that the problem wasn't in the yards and yards of wiring, switches, circuit breakers, and relays inside the bus but rather the RV park's power pedestal had gone kaput. Running on the diesel generator we had power (and heat!) but while the blasted thing puts out enough electricity to run a small ship, it's of that vintage where it's noisy and smokes like a cigar afficianado's convention. So we likely didn't make any new friends with the neighbors this morning as we ran the old Perkins diesel generator.

At least they shouldn't have any mosquitos for awhile.

(As an aside, if you want to know why the Brits lost their auto industry, just ask me about a Perkins diesel. Every other diesel that I know of has simple screw-on fuel filters that are disposable. On a Perkins you have about 9 parts and washers and gaskets that need to be aligned to get the disposable filter element to fit properly. And then bleeding the fuel lines is about a 2 day job whereas on a CAT diesel the job is done with a simple plunger mechanism that you pump by hand. I am always reminded that some British tanks used a 12 cylinder Perkins diesel. I suspect that the concept of a civilized tea break comes into play because they need to take a pause to repair and tune those monsters in the middle of a battle every so often.)

As I sit here in my WARM office writing this the RV park is supposed to have an electrician on the way to look at things. Wish us luck.

~~~

I wish that I had found this in time for Turkey Day and Christmas. Still, as it says (in Latin) on the bottom of my business checks, "better late than never."

Have you ever eaten fried turkey? Mmmmmm good! But the process isn't for the faint of heart. In fact, it can be downright dangerous.

Check out Alton Brown's website at http://www.altonbrown.com/ for Alton's .PDF download showing you how to construct his "turkey derrick." Basically using simple household materials and a ladder, the turkey derrick allows you to SAFELY manage your turkey in a pot of boiling oil. Ingenious!

And Brown, besides being an avid motorcyclist and a regular on the Food Channel, is downright funny. So I encourage y'all to check out his stuff.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


--PirateJohn--


http://pyratejohn.blogspot.com/ (the *NEW* blog)


http://www.piratejohn.com/ (my website)


http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HumourList/ (the infamous joke list)





Enjoy!

Happy 2008!

Greetings!

I trust that everyone had a safe and happy Christmas and New Year's celebration.

Kick back, and fix yourself a Bloody Mary. 2008 may well be the best year of our lives. So let's chat a bit.

We are camped out at the workshop, testing out new 'puters and new audiovisual stuff in the RV, and admiring the hardwood floor that we have finally (almost) gotten finished. We've been working on this frickin' floor since the Thanksgiving holidays and it's finally time to kick back and admire the handiwork.

Cats are well behaved {har, har, har} and healthy, and we hit two parties last night wherein you could just feel the good vibes and tell that everyone was genuinely your pal.

Right now I have more writing projects going on than I can shake the proverbial stick at, and myself and other partners are discussing some really interesting collaborative ventures in a couple of fields. The reality of being an entrepreneur is two-fold: 1) for every idea that gells into something that makes money you will sift through hundreds of ideas that don't go anywhere, and that's just the nature of the beast, and 2) as my Momma always said, "Don't give up the day job!"

The RV lifestyle is suiting us well. This is something that I wished that I had done maybe 5-10 years earlier, but the reality is that if I had purchased an RV back then I wouldn't have experienced my Third Perfect House. And the Third Perfect House was the one that finally convinced me that, as wonderful as it was (plenty of garage and workshop space, swimming pool, private offices, fancy vaulted ceiling, and a kitchen to kill for), that it was keeping me from doing what I always wanted to do. Which was to cut some ties to The Perfect City and my Perfect Circle of Friends and to travel.

Things sound awfully good, don't they?

I'm worried.

Here in Jacksonville, Florida the nighttime temps are supposed to get into the 25 degree range for a few days.

And here at our workshop on the Southside we have discovered that the couple in the little concrete block house just outside our fenced in workshop compound doesn't have any utilities. No heat, and no water. Not having any money available for deposits will do that to ya.

A few days ago the lady that lived there asked me if I could spare 50 cents so that she could buy a small bag of potato chips for dinner. I gave her $1 and saw her the next morning eating a bag of chips so I assume that she wasn't joking.

I'm not quite sure what we can do. I did ask the landlord if we could run an extension cord over to them for a few days and the response was ... well ... unprintable here. And I'll print quite a bit on this blog, trust me. So you get the picture.

Now, I have seen plenty of houses in rural Mexico that didn't have glass in the window openings because the owners hadn't saved enough to buy glass.

And I have seen similar things in Appalachia as I was growing up as a kid in Kentucky.

But in an era when we have billionaires competing to see who can build the largest yacht on the planet (think in terms of 450 feet, incidentally), and when the wealth of this planet has spread to the point where the wealthiest man is a Mexican gent (Carlos Slim, who controls the phone system down there) and reportedly there are as many families with middle class incomes in China as there are in the USA, I find it hard to imagine what it must be like to not have heat. Or food, for that matter, here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Did you realize that the Iraqi Constitution provides for health care to all Iraqi citizens? "Article 31: "Every citizen has the right to health care. The state takes care of public health and provide the means of prevention and treatment by building different types of hospitals and medical institutions."

You tax dollars are paying for that m'friend. And I don't want to take that away from the Iraqis, because, after all, what they have is more of the international norm than what we have, which is basically zero health care if you are uninsured.

Did you realize that an employer in Mexico has to provide health care to their employees? In fact, generally speaking, the employer is responsible for the employee from pretty much the time that the employee leaves the house to the time that he or she returns. In an article that I was reading in one of my truckin' periodicals the Hyundai plant in Tijuana, which is producing trailers for, among others, FedEx, is providing shuttle bus services and a full-time physician for their employees.

Contrast that to the negotiations that the UAW have going on with the auto makers which will inevitably require the UAW to give back many of their members' health and retirement benefits.

What's the point, you ask?

Here in the USA we have gotten so wrapped up in cutting services to the poorest of our people that we have lost perspective. Other nations are taking care of their citizens. We are basically the only industrialized nation without any form of health care for our poorest. And to my way of thinking nothing is a more fundamental human right than to avoid freezing to death. Or to avoid starving to death for that matter. Particularly in a nation such as ours that prides itself on our wealth and our humanity.

Something is seriously out of whack here.

As our #1 resolution for 2008 we need to consider our weakest. Those folks without basic necessities. Those folks in frail health. Those folks who could benefit from a helping hand.

Let's all count our blessings. If we have heat and a 'puter in front of us, then we literally may be doing better than the family down the road. Or across town.

The next time that some panhandler asks for money look them in the eye. Don't shy away from them. You can quickly tell the genuinely down and out from the shiftless. But no matter how you slice things, these people are someone's son and daughter. And they are our neighbors.

But for the grace of God go you and I.

Here's to hoping for the very best for you and yours - and your neighbors for that matter - in 2008.

John Kay and Steppenwolf

I was looking at the Steppenwolf web site ( http://www.steppenwolf.com/ ) and was saddened to see that John Kay has appearantly decided to retire from music and to stop touring.

2007 was the last year of their big international tour and if you have seen Steppenwolf in recent years you likely knew that John Kay and the band seemed to be everywhere, worldwide, during most of the year. They were certainly popular during Bike Week and other big motorcycle events.

John writes on his web site that he and his wife intend to travel during 2008 and be part of a charitable foundation that they established some years ago.

Kay and the original lineup for Steppenwolf have a really entertaining history incidentally. Kay was born in 1944. His father and mother were German, and Kay's father was killed in the fighting on the Russian front a month before he was born. Kay's mother took the infant John Kay into what would become East Germany and was forced to flee 4 years later as the Communists took over.

Making his way to Canada, John was asked to sing for a new band, The Sparrows, that had included members of another local band called the Mynah Birds. Two of the Mynah Bird members that didn't make the cut to the new band were an AWOL US soldier named Ricky Matthews, who would later change his name to {drum roll here} Rick James, and an underappreciated musician in a non-singing, non-writing role named Neil Young. It's a small world indeed.

Here's wishing John Kay a well-deserved retirement and thanks for some really good memories. And I guess that the moral is that we need to get out there and see our musical giants that inspire us so. 'cause they ain't gonna be around forever.

_________________

--PirateJohn--

http://www.piratejohn.com/

Where did I put those damned reading glasses?

Now that I have slightly passed the half-century point, I have to admit that some aspects of old age are starting to catch up with me. Specifically, I can no longer see as well as I used to.

More to the point, I have gotten to where lately I have had to walk around the office all the time with a pair of cheap reading glasses on my nose. That sucks.

I wear contact lenses and have for years, perhaps over 30 years. My vision can be adjusted to where it’s better than 20/20 at a distance, but it has become difficult to read without reading glasses.

A few years ago an optometrist suggested that I try bifocal contact lenses and I hated them. But today, as I write this, I am reluctantly trying them again and discovering that while my distance vision isn’t as sharp with the bifocal lenses, that I can once again read without reading glasses.

I think that the solution is going to be to get a prescription for both the standard lens and a set of bifocal lens, and change them as conditions require. In other words, my normal lens is going to be the bifocal ones, but when I plan a day (or multiple days) of motorcycling or driving I am going to switch back to the standard lens.

Interestingly enough, the way that the optician does this only one eye, the dominant eye, actually gets a bifocal contact. The other eye, the not-so-dominant one, has to make do with a standard lens.

As I told a friend, the military could send me to Afghanistan. My distance vision is great and I’d make a helluva sniper, if I would just lay off the coffee. The only problem is that I’d need reading glasses to load my rifle. Bummer.

Anyway, this is just another chapter in the “Better Living and Aging Gracefully Thanks to Technology” files. I frankly didn’t realize that bifocal contact lenses were readily available, but they seem to be nothing special these days.

--PirateJohn--
http://pyratejohn.blogspot.com/ (the *NEW* blog)
http://www.PirateJohn.com (my website)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HumourList/ (the infamous joke list)

Enjoy!

Generosity

My Dad was an attorney. When he passed away, I found a collection of attorney jokes underneath his desk blotter, so you have to take lawyer jokes with a grain of salt. With that said ... here goes ... ;)

~~

The United Way realized that it had never received a donation from the city's most successful lawyer. So a United Way volunteer paid the lawyer a visit in his lavish office.

The volunteer opened the meeting by saying, 'Our research shows that even though your annual income is over two million dollars, you don't give a penny to charity. Wouldn't you like to give something back to your community through the United Way?'

The lawyer thinks for a minute and says, 'First, did your research also how you that my mother is dying after a long, painful illness and she has huge medical bills that are far beyond her ability to pay?'

Embarrassed, the United Way rep mumbles, 'Uh... no, I didn't know that.''

Secondly,' says the lawyer, ' did it show that my brother, a disabled veteran, is blind and confined to a wheelchair and is unable to support his wife and six children?

The stricken United Way rep begins to stammer an apology, but is cut off again.'

"Thirdly, did your research also show you that my sister's husband died in dreadful car accident, leaving her penniless with a mortgage and three children, one of whom is disabled and another that has learning disabilities requiring an array of private tutors?'

The humiliated United Way rep, completely beaten, says, 'I'm so sorry, I had no idea.'

And the lawyer says, 'So...if I didn't give any money to them, what makes you think I'd give any to you?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

--PirateJohn--

http://pyratejohn.blogspot.com/ (the *NEW* blog)
http://www.PirateJohn.com (my website)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HumourList/ (the infamous joke list)

Enjoy!

Momma Has A Brand New Throne

subtitled: The Heartwarming Tale of a Woman, Her New Toilet, and The Man Who Loves Her


sub-subtitled: The Week From Hell, Part 1






Some weeks try a man's patience.

Some weeks drive a man to drink.

This week is just about ready to drive me to drink, except that I am too worn out to get into any trouble. So I think that I will just go to bed early tonight.

As many of you folks know, Yours Truly has become a full-time RV'er and lives in what is essentially a large bus. That right there has its own set of pros and cons and tall tales.

She Who Must Be Obeyed and I have been reconditioning this thing for about 2 years. It's a wonderful piece of machinery, but it's almost 25 years old so it's got its quirks. And that's putting it mildly.

We decided to replace the carpet with a combination of what they call pre-engineered wood flooring, with is pretty neat stuff incidentally, and a cork flooring product that is intended for industrial applications such as restaurants. The cork floor went into the bathroom and bedroom and that was our big project during Thanksgiving.

I am happy to report that the floor looks nice and that I still have all of my fingers.

As part of that project I removed the original RV toilet. Let me tell you brother, that taking out a 25 year old toilet is definitely taking one's life into one's own hands. Armed with rubber gloves and a mask, that wasn't fun. I felt like Ed Norton, Jackie Gleason's sewer-working pal from the Honeymooners. Egads!

The original toilet had a couple of leaks (thankfully all of the clean water variety) and I repaired those leaks. But when I was reinstalling the toilet a third leak occurred and that was the death sentence for that sucker.

So we bought a new, fancier toilet. Or "terlet" as we say here in the Righteous South.

Late on Sunday night we were still struggling with the terlet. It was installed, but we still didn't have the proper water hose. So rather than move the motorhome away from our workshop, schlep across town, and drive back another 30-40 miles I decided to take part of Monday off and get the job done once and for all.

And let's put things this-a-way. Screwing around with that toilet has been about the highlight and most satisfying part of my week so far. Things have been that tough around here!

I had promised myself that I would update the blog at least twice a week. You will notice that this is Thursday and well ... here we are. No tales of travel, motorcycles, UFO's, computers, outrageous living, silly guy stuff, and any of those good things. Nutin'.

A few weeks ago the server at The Day Job crashed. I will give you, Gentle Reader, three guesses as to whose responsibility that is. Three guesses, and as they say in the bars, the first two guesses don't count.

At some point the outside service that provides our POP3 mail decided to quit for seemingly no reason. Then, after about 24 hours, it magically started up again. The admins there claim to be completely puzzled and saying that it didn't impact any of their other customers.

And on our end everyone is looking at ol' John and asking "Where is my email?" You would almost think that if it was old style postal mail they would wonder if I had stolen the company mail bag.

And then, for the last two days we have been struggling with an Internet outage. Never mind that 1) we were in the middle of changing from one service provider to another, 2) the company that we went with is in the middle of a merger and it turns out that their records aren't in synch and they keep confuzing us with another company in the Heathen Northeast, 3) Said Large Phone Company has tech support scattered throughout the planet and the ones in the Phillipines that I got shuffled to literally couldn't understand what I was very plainly saying (and in some cases shouting), and 4) we were told that a fiber optic cable got cut but now I wonder if that wasn't just an excuse for the phone tech to avoid saying that they didn't have a clue.

Oh, and the registrar of our DNS records, for you geeks, is yet another entity and they didn't seem to be awake either.

All in all it's been a hellacious week.

So I am going to take tomorrow off in order to plan and plot something Bigger and Better.

All kidding aside, it's been a tough week, but a productive week. I stayed out way too late one night at a bar but came away with a 23 chapter outline for a fictional book that I am working on, almost as a dare. And yeah, after I got some sleep the frickin' thing still read pretty well.

I have been writing in biker bars using a laptop for years. Lately I've been using an EVDO card to get my Internet access so I, and about a dozen of my closest friends and fellow drinkers, can surf the 'net from the comfort of our bar stools. Lately, I'm not the only one there with a similar setup. This world is getting weird, I'll tell ya.

So you have to laugh at this nonsense. When life gets you down, you just have to keep plugging away and remember your goals. And work towards them. Even if your only goal in life is to make it to the end of the next NASCAR broadcast. Or to find the last piece of Three Stooges memorabilia on eBay. Whatever turns your crank, you have to keep at it.

That, and having a few beers at the end of the day doesn't hurt a bit either.

If nothing else, if you are a writer, you can always reflect and realize that you meet the most interesting characters in pubs and if that doesn't inspire your fictional characters then nothing will.

When life gives you lemons, the wise man makes lemonade. And he has a big smile on his face as he's stirring up those lemons.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--PirateJohn--
http://pyratejohn.blogspot.com/ (the *NEW* blog)
http://www.piratejohn.com/ (my website)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HumourList/ (the infamous joke list)

Enjoy!

The friend that sent this to me asked me if I have an alibi.

Let's just say that I wasn't nearby. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

~~~

From
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gScKIIelzS99auF7ivTtOkGX4USwD8TC1FQ01

Irish Police Bust Beer Bandits
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK – 1 day ago

DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) — Ireland's national police force has arrested two men in connection with an audacious robbery last week on the landmark Guinness Brewery in Dublin — but said Thursday they were still looking others involved in the beer banditry.

The Garda Siochana police force declined to specify how many kegs have been recovered following the Nov. 29 raid, when a lone man drove a truck into the brewery, hitched up a trailer loaded with 450 kegs and drove straight out through the security gate into rush-hour traffic.

Guinness called it the biggest robbery in the 248-year history of the brewery.

Police said they recovered an unspecified volume of the stolen beer Monday at an undisclosed location in County Meath, northwest of Dublin, and arrested two men Tuesday on suspicion of involvement with the theft.

Police said one man was charged Wednesday with possessing stolen property and received bail pending his arraignment in Kilmainham District Court, west Dublin, on Dec. 21 — an unusual delay that reflected detectives' desire to keep looking for others involved in the robbery before showing their hand in court.

The other man was released Wednesday without charge. But police said he was suspected of lesser involvement in the robbery and a file of evidence was sent to the state prosecutors' office, a common practice in Ireland.

The Garda Siochana said it would not release any details about the two men, their alleged involvement, the location of the recovered kegs or how much of the beer booty remained at large, saying it could make it harder to catch others involved in the raid.

Irish detectives sometimes put bailed suspects under surveillance in hopes that they might help police to identify others involved in a particular crime.

The stolen trailer was loaded up with 180 kegs of Guinness stout, 180 kegs of brand Budweiser and 90 kegs of Danish brand Carlsberg. Guinness has a contract to brew and distribute those beers in Ireland.

Each keg holds about 88 British-sized pints, the most common serving size in Ireland — about 20 ounces each. The total theft involves 39,600 pints with a retail value exceeding $235,000.

The Republic of Ireland, a country of 4.2 million, has more than 10,000 pubs and bars. The Guinness brewery in Dublin is the biggest supplier, producing more than 5 million kegs annually.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

--PirateJohn--

http://pyratejohn.blogspot.com/ (the *NEW* blog)

http://www.piratejohn.com/ (my website)

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HumourList/ (the infamous joke list)

Enjoy!