And you thought YOU were having a bad day....

The Pakistani Taliban ruling council has chosen this man ^, Mullah Fazlullah, as their new leader.  This came after their previous leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed in an American drone strike, as was the guy before him, and the guy before him, too.  Minutes of the ruling council meeting were obtained by the BBC and show that Mr. Fazlullah was the only member missing from their monthly business meeting and goat roast luncheon.

After he was tracked down and given the news of his election, he was reported to have said, "THANKS A LOT MOTHER F__KERS!"  *Oh yeah....Allahu Akbar*

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

And it may not be such a good time to be a Tea Party member, either.  Today's headline read, "GOP Weighs Limiting Clout of Right Wing".  It goes on to say, "Leaders of the Republican establishment are pushing their party to rethink how it chooses nominees and advocating changes they say would result in less extreme contenders."  

They want open primaries instead of state caucuses or conventions, which they say can be more easily hijacked by extremists.  Seems they realize the Tea Party is a long term losing cause for them. 

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

And finally, the Big get bigger:  Amazon is reaching out to small independent bookstores with a joint marketing scheme.  Amazon wants them to sell it's Kindle eReaders, and in return the stores can then also get a cut of whatever Amazon makes selling books to these new Kindle owners (for 2 years).  Seems Amazon isn't selling as many new Kindles as they would like since both Target and Walmart stopped carrying them.  Win-win?

I have mixed emotions about this one.  I'm a big fan of Amazon, and buy lots of stuff from them, including both books and ebooks.  They're cheaper, and they come right to my door with free shipping (preferred customer thing).  But I still go to the local bookstore and look around there, too. I would hate to see them all go out of business.  

Is this Amazon offer a way to keep the small locals alive, or just a way to put a few more nails in their coffin? 

Who knows.  All I know is I have a load of groceries waiting to be bought.  Gotta go.  :)

S

My wife and her gadgets

My wife, the lovely and talented K, is addicted to gadgets.   

Marketing courses at business schools all across the land teach how to appeal to people with her mentality.  They're studying her like psychologists study rats in a maze.  

"What classes you taking this semester, Bill?"  

"Oh, you know, the usual....B law 314, statistics 421, management 330, and Advanced Kelly 4540."

I have periodic garage sales just to get the gadgets she "couldn't live without" out of the house to make room for the next batch of gadgets I know she'll be bringing home soon.

She has waffle makers, panini makers, tea makers, mixers, food processors, crock pots, a "Magic Bullet" blender, some kind of big fancy blender, a mandolin, multiple coffee makers that were "to die for" last week, but this week are just not cool anymore.

These garage sales often come back to bite me in the ass when she sees an advertisement for a gizmo that she once had, then I sold, and now she wants again.  She's gone full circle....she's become a serial same-gadget buyer.  

I tolerate all those kitcheny things because, honestly, I eat very well.  And besides, they're not very expensive....$40 here, $60 there....they're not breaking the bank.

Kelly's vision of Heaven

Her electronic gadgets are a whole 'nuther matter, however.  Those little electronic bastards cost a fortune!  Here are the ones she's had that I can remember:

HP laptop

HP NetBook

iMac (mine now)

MacBook

Nintendo Wii

Kindle, generation 1

Kindle, generation 2

Kindle Paperwhite

Kindle Fire

Google Nexxus

Samsung Galaxy S2

iPod Shuffle

iPod Nano

iPad, generation 1

iPad Mini

iPhone 3

iPhone 3S

iPhone 5

There are probably more, but my brain is too shell-shocked to remember them all.

Today she saw on Facebook that one of her friends accidentally washed his iPod Nano, so she said she was going to sell him her old one.  I can see what's coming next:  She bought it for $160 a month ago, now she'll sell it used for $80, and a month from now Apple will unveil a "new, improved version in 10 striking new colors", and of course she'll just have to have one for the pre-order super-sweet "better hurry 'cause they won't last long at this price" of $180. 

Publicly Apple will say the higher price is due to "raw material price increases", but among themselves they'll just giggle and call it the "Kelly premium".

I'm considering an intervention.  (Who am I kidding.  I don't have a chance in hell of pulling it off.  :)

S

The opening salvo of World (cyber) War I

Cyber Command Central, located in a secure underground location in Montana.

It began with an excited, almost hysterical call from a Miz Kelly Park of Frisco, Tx.  She reported that the internet was down.  Not just Facebook, but Google, Pintrest and all the rest were black, too.  An immediate check with CNN, Fox News, and the Home Shopping Network mentioned nothing about the attack, leading Miz Park to believe re-runs had been inserted to make it appear all was normal.  

"It's started", said Air Force Maj. Gen. Ralphie Jordan, head of Cyber Command.

"The Event" had been widely anticipated for quite some time.  China's Peoples Liberation Army Unit 61398, their crack unit of government sanctioned hackers, was immediately suspect.  In past bank hacking incidents the origin had been traced back to a non-descript office building in Bejing, and this is where Cyber Warriors loyal to President Brick O'Bama immediately focused their attention.

Efforts were made to inform the President who is currently traveling in Africa, but nobody in Washington could find the area code for Senegal, and the only State Department official who actually knows where Senegal is was with the President, acting as his guide and food and water taster.  Using Constitutional protocol, Vice President Biden assumed command in Washington during the crisis.

Cyber-nerd reservists were immediately activated and ordered to report to their mother's basements and man their computers.  Auxiliary internet channel 6 was powered up, which fortunately was found to be unfazed by the hostilities.

It was assumed there was chaos in the streets all across America, and perhaps even Europe and Australia, too, but as Twitter was knocked off the broadband no one could be sure.  The fear now is that in 9 months there will be one or more babies born to nerd couples who were so bored without their internet they actually tried sex.

One hour and 38 minutes after it began, Reserve Cyber Officer Sheldon Sakowitz phoned Miz Park and asked her to try tightening the coaxial cable connection to her router.  She did, and the internet surged back to life.  

The investigation continues this morning with forensic cyber-scientists trying to figure out how Chinese infiltrators made it across the border and on to Frisco, TX where they Beta tested their newest internet-crashing technology.

Miz Park is currently negotiating a book deal with the Kindle division of Amazon to digitize her riveting, near-disastrous brush with internet death.   You can pre-order your copy now for WiFi delivery on July 8, 2013.

S

*Under duress (by Miz Park) I must report portions of this re-creation were slightly enhanced for effect.  But only "slightly". ;)

  

My downsizing saga, Pt. 2

So I left off with our home sold and moving day about a month away.  Where to live?  It turns out the place we spent a lot of our weekend time, The Shops at Legacy, a super popular shopping/entertainment district, was less than a mile from where K worked, and was just a block away from the Dallas North Tollway which was a straight shot to my work.  

Over an eight-block-long stretch in The Shops there are about 25 restaurants, several clubs, a theater, and more.  And best of all they had lots of adjacent apartments to choose from.  We found a 2 bed/2 bath just a block away that seemed nice enough and was less than half what our home cost per month.  Perfect! We were soon having so much fun we quickly put building another (smaller) home on the back burner.

But before we could move we had to face reality....much of our stuff wasn't coming with us.  First off, everything upstairs had to find a new home.  We gave some of it to our friends and family, sold some on Craig's List, and put the rest in a moving (garage) sale.

Clothes....Jeez....where'd all that stuff come from?  I had 55 casual shirts.  K asked me how many of them I had worn in the past 6 months?  Twenty.  That left 35 that went to charity.  Same with shoes.  Same with lots of old pants/jeans that...ahem...shrunk in the dryer.

I thought the hardest thing for me to part with would be the 500 hardcover volumes I'd collected over the years.  K asked me if I ever went back and re-read any of them?  Ummm....no.  That meant I really had 500 dusty door stops.  Some were given to friends and family, some were sold via Craig's List and in the moving sale, and the rest were sacrificed to Half Price Books.  I kept a few that were signed by the authors or given to me by friends, but the rest are now being enjoyed by others.  Turns out they weren't hard to part with at all.  Now I read Kindle books on my tablet.

Fortunately as things turned out we didn't have any heirloom furniture.  We had very good quality stuff, but it had no sentimental value.  We kept what we needed and no more.  Our HUGE dining table w/ 2 leaves, 6 chairs, and a sideboard was replaced by this...

....and it works for us just fine.

My GIANT oak roll top desk was eventually replaced by this much smaller one....

....and my tall oak file cabinet was condensed into this....

....which fits nicely in the closet.

Every nook and cranny is used for storage.  The backside of most doors has been put to use.... 

In the spring, winter coats, hats, gloves, sweaters, etc are put into plastic boxes and stored under the bed and on the top shelf of closets and are replaced by summer shorts and T-shirts that had been put away the previous fall....

The apartment installed one shelf over the washer/dryer, but I added 2 more....

Need a rod to hang up clothes as they come out of the dryer?  Improvise....

The Container Store became my best friend!

Unless you have a bunch of heirlooms or are auditioning for a roll on Hoarders, it really isn't that hard to downsize.  In fact, it wasn't long before we found that second apartment bedroom turning into a catch-all room, tempting us all over again to collect more stuff we didn't need.  The solution....downsize once more.  

After three years in our first apartment we moved again into another newer, nicer, but even smaller one bedroom apartment.  

We're now down to 850 sq ft and loving it.

The grounds are beautiful with a pool, gym, and 3 courtyards that I don't have to maintain!  And if anything needs fixing (very rare) I just fire off an email to maintenance.  They even change light bulbs!

Our downsizing adventure has been very worthwhile, the disadvantages being few and far between.  "Apartment grade" is a far cry from "custom home", but if you're willing to check your ego at the door, it's a pretty sweet ride.  

Another home for us some day?  If I could replicate my carefree downsized/renter's lifestyle and still give my bride another (mini) mansion she could call hers, I'd be willing.  Never say never.  :)

S

Easier said than done

I read where there is a fledgling movement underway in North Dakota to entirely do away with property taxes.  'Course, the pesky 'ol issue of how to replace the loss of revenue remains (and no, they haven't found THAT much oil!).  One quote I heard did make sense, however.  A guy said. "Even if my house were paid for, I'd still have those taxes.  We're always renters, never homeowners."


Interesting...  Case in point, my brother has a large house, a true McMansion, and his monthly taxes are more than my rent.  True, he and his wife have 5-times the space to ramble around in than K and I do, but so what?  How much space to you need to eat, sleep, read the paper, and watch TV?  I can understand a bit larger home during those years you're raising a family, but those years do have an expiration date.  


We as a society seem intent on living in larger and larger houses, I guess because we need the space for the more and more stuff we buy.  It's just a vicious circle.  And if we one day decide we'll "downsize", that's when we realize all that stuff we've spent a lifetime collecting will have to be discarded, something most of us are unwilling to do.  


My advice?  Learn early on to buck the trend and live modest.  Instead of impressing your friends with your "stuff", impress them with photos of your world travels for example.  Travels you could afford because you didn't buy all that "stuff".


You'll now excuse me while I leave my Apple computer, turn off my big screen TV, and go sit in my overstuffed leather chair and read my Kindle.  Have a good day everyone.  ;)


S