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The Crawdaddy Page

Best wishes go to my sister, who is recovering from having her gall bladder removed. What was supposed to be "2 hours at the most" recovery time has turned into at least a 2nd overnight stay at the hospital. She's in good spirits, and hasn't complained. Everything went well during the surgery, but she can't eat or drink water without losing it. Doctors/nurses are mum about the cause; which leads me to believe it may be a reaction to the anesthesia they gave her, in which case she will be better once it's out of her system.

I was in New York (upstate) this week, and on the way back I stopped at one of the many scenic overlooks on the way. This one is the first rest area after crossing into Pennsylvania, and also this week's entry in Photography Phaturday!

Okay, this isn't the real entry. Look below.

Many beautiful pictures have been taken from this spot, but this is one of the few times where I had the chance to do it late in the day, when the lighting isn't pitch dark or blindingly bright. The Welcome Center can only be reached going southbound.

And that's that. Three entries in a row without talking about politics. Woohoo. -28AUG2010

Already I am on a roll. Here for my 2nd iteration of Photography Phaturday, I bring my very first digital camera, the one I keep in my car at all times. It doesn't quite know what to focus on at any given time, and this picture turned out to be little more than useable. Didn't even bother with making a thumbnail. I actually took a 2nd picture when the sign was much closer, but the shutter didn't click until two seconds after I thought the picture had taken, so I have a picture of my dashboard instead of a better picture of the yield sign.

I almost forgot about updating today. I ended up getting a call as soon as I woke up from a friend that needed help picking up and bringing to his house a baby grand piano. What was going to be "just a couple of hours" turned into an all day affair. It was on my way home that I was reminded of the above picture, and I managed to remember to add it when I settled down in the apartment. So there you have it. -21AUG2010

I've had an idea floating in my head for quite a while - something to force me into a weekly update. The idea? Photography Phriday (not to be confused with SomethingAwful.com's Photoshop Phriday...) But since today is technically Saturday (it's 12:06 AM), I'll have to call it Photography Phaturday. I think I like that better, though Photography Phunday would be equally amusing. The intent is to post a picture with a comment, and no guarantees outside of that. Just something to keep my duties in check, to ensure I don't neglect this website as much as I have been. The photographs will be of anything, and posted on this main page. I'll try to make it a point to post a picture I've taken during the week, but since I don't carry my camera around with me everywhere I go, this won't be very likely. If nothing else, I'll go back over my picture database and post something that I didn't post somewhere else... of course this will be explained in the comment with the picture if necessary. Once I build up enough (maybe 10 pictures or so), I may make a new page to archive them all... We'll believe it when we see it, right? I'll try to include with the posted image, a larger one (see it by clicking on it). Sizes will vary.

In any case, I present to you the first weekly Photography Phaturday entry. Bask. Drown in its glory.

Taken about a month ago, this was a wasp nest underneath my mom's grill on her back deck. I didn't mess with the nest at all, electing to live and let live. I cooked a dozen hot dogs and half a dozen brats, plus some hamburgers and they didn't seem the least bit bothered by it. Once upon a time I wouldn't have been able to go near it... I wonder what has changed in me where today, their proximity doesn't bother me in the least.

Actually, it might go back to being in the Army, when I was at NTC. We were deployed in Death Valley-ish for about three weeks. No showers. One guy on our team brought a shower bag (you fill it up with water, hang it up, and rinse yourself off). Strangely enough, in a desert where no life could be found if you looked for it, bees in great swarms came out of nowhere to get to any kind of moisture. Of course, when you were showering, you became a sort of beehive. Once you realized that you weren't going to get stung, it was actually pretty easy to shower with 20, 30 bees on your skin, sucking up whatever moisture they could get their little bee tongues on, so much to the point where many of them drowned in the process. You just wiped them off, no harm, no foul. -14AUG2010

When I was in Kindergarten we were subjected to an Easter Egg hunt (clearly a tactic by Christians to indoctrinate me into their religion). We all had our baskets, ready to go, waiting for the teacher to blow the whistle so we could run out and find as many Easter eggs as possible. The top three who found the most would win a prize. I don't remember what the prizes were, but I know that I really wanted one. My eyesight as a child was as perfect as anyone can dream of, and probably the best out of all the kids who were hunting with me. I saw, from where we stood waiting, about ten of the construction paper Easter egg cutouts, flapping in various places in bushes, under rocks... wherever an egg shaped piece of paper could go without reasonable fear of being blown away.

The whistle blew, and I was off. I had more than a couple eggs before anyone else found one, and I kept seeing more with every burst of steps I took. A minute or so of egg-searching fenzy passed, and it was about then that I noticed in my basket that all my eggs were gone, just as I saw one of the kids pull the last one out of it. I had a line of kids following me, fighting over who would reach into my basket next. I was angry, but there were still a lot of eggs to be found. I stopped putting them in my basket, holding them all in one hand. Before I was able to get a third egg in this manner, the bigger kids used a tactic that caught me off guard. Whenever I reached out for an egg, I got pushed away and they grabbed it. After this happened twice, I gave up and cried. It wasn't fair. I found the most eggs, but they were stolen from me, and there was nothing I could do about it.

It was this event in my life, among many others that I believe helped shape many of the principles that I have today. It's frustrating when you do a bunch of work, running around, and generally doing something better than everyone else, only to have the fruits of your labor stolen from you by those that think it's okay to do so simply because you have more than they do. It's also the kind of action that causes those who are successful, to just plop down on the ground and give up, because it gets to a point where there is no point. As a result, many eggs eternally flap in the breeze, never to be found. :( -29JUN2010

What is on my mind this month? Well, this time it's about the ruckus over the Arizona immigration law. The one where, if someone is pulled over or otherwise caught committing a crime, part of the officer's process to process will be to check their immigration status if there's reasonable suspicion that said person is not a legal US citizen. Supporters of the law say it's necessary to curb state costs with schools, health care, and police. Opponents say that the supporters are racist and xenophobic. Supporters say that there will not be any racial profiling involved. Opponents say this will turn Arizona into Hitler-style "papers please" draconian wasteland, where you can get arrested and deported while trying to take your kid out for ice cream. Supporters say we need to control the border. Opponents say we need the workers.

Each argument has a dash of basis in reality, but none seem to be thought through very far. The law will probably do exactly what it's intended to do, which is to make people illegally in Arizona leave the state. The exact same thing happened here when Prince William County implemented a similar law two - three years ago. Crime plummeted according to the author of that law.

Where my thoughts deviate from all others that I've heard/read, is that I see the necessity behind the creation of the law in the first place. It's socialism. Now, when right-wingers bandy the word around in description of the welfare state they usually get lambasted by left-wingers. What do left-wingers think of socialism? They think of a police state, where people have no freedom or rights. Well, my lucky readers... I will reveal to you a secret. Socialism is both of these things. You can't have minimum wage laws, free health care, free education, free food (stamps), free housing, and a free monthly allowance without protecting it from abuse or overuse. That's where the police state comes in. You have the emotional left who want everyone to have everything (as long as it isn't more than they have), and you have the rational right that understand the costs involved with such a utopia. They will always have to merge at the center, the higher the bar on the left goes, the higher the bar on the right has to go to meet it. The more socialism you have, the more police and policy you need to protect it. It wouldn't be affordable otherwise. Your rights get whittled away as your individuality poses more and more of a threat to the collective. This is true for both the Arizona immigration law as well as the health care legislation I talked about previously.

What's the answer? I'm a proponent of open borders, conditional with the elimination of (most) social programs and laws. Where there's a minimum wage law (or income tax, or payroll tax, or health insurance mandate), there's an employer looking for cheap labor to illegally get a leg up on his competition. What bewilders me are the Democrats who are such strong proponents of raising the minimum wage, are also proponents of people illegally within our borders working for less-than-minimum-wage cash payment (ultimately resulting in Hitler-style raids of said businesses). Democrats who are against NAFTA because it "exports" US jobs, while simultaneously "fighting for the little guy who comes here just for an opportunity". And then you have Republicans who support free markets (supposedly), simultaneously wanting to prevent educated immigrants from competing with US citizens for high paying jobs. It's complete nonsense. Poppycock, even. Ridiculous, I say. There's no consistency coming from politicians, journalists, article writers, talking heads, or anyone I interact with.

I won't bore the world with any more scenarios, but my point is simply that a police state is a yin to socialism's yang. Human nature isn't altruistic, where everyone volunteers contribution of their own capital or time and work for the good of others. It is the opposite, where if free stuff is being given away, people will line up around the block to get it.

The majority of this I wrote about a week ago, but I lost interest in it. I realized something though, sometime last week... The main reason I've stopped working on my website. The story behind it, is I heard the phrase "10 - 100" as trucker jargon in a conversation, and I had no idea what it meant. So I looked it up and found this website. It's horrible! I thought "I can do better than that!"... and it hit me. I've stopped working on my website because as the internet has matured, so have all other websites, making mine a below average one - nay... a crappy one - instead of an above average one. There's no more pride in knowing my (very) basic HTML skills kick the hell out of Microsoft Front Page websites, because anyone today can throw together something much better looking and infinitely more functional with a few web-based clicks of a mouse... or by simply registering on Facebook. I guess I feel like an illustrator when cameras first started coming out, or a photographer when point-and-shoot digital cameras started becoming so good. I just didn't realize it until recently. Anyway, till next time. -17MAY2010

I had a dream last night that was pretty surreal. I was standing on a beach, with lots of people my age or younger. They were all dressed casually, and were socializing with each other. Several people even had laptops, a couple of which were sitting in the sand, ignored. The ocean was violent from the wind, and the sky was nearly black with clouds. The water kept coming close to the laptops on the ground, but never quite touched them. I kept looking at everyone, thinking "Are these people idiots?". Then the water started to recede significantly. My wife, standing to my left said "Uh oh...", as we both know what suddenly receding water might mean, and a tsunami began to inundate the area. The kids tried to get their laptops and run away, but it was too late. The computers were destroyed, and the dream switched to another subject before the water got higher than ankle deep.

A cursory search on the internet says that the dream means that I'm scared of the future. I assume that the people standing with me, unaware of my existence and unable to see what I was seeing, are the general educated American public, who hold a much different political opinion than I do. It was directly related to the health care legislation passed last week, no doubt. I read that AT&T expects a $1B operational cost increase for the first quarter alone. They wrote a letter to congress, and congress responded by telling them that the SEC needs to investigate their internal finance documents.

With the passage of this bill, the extra costs levied on employers has made my opportunity at getting another job an unquantifiable percentage lower. If it were only that, I might still feel okay. But considering the mood of the economy and how things just don't seem to be getting better, this might just be the brick to break the camel's back.

To me, the problem with our health care industry is very obvious. It's a supply and demand issue. Pundits try to make it sound scary when they say the government "is trying to take over 1/6th of the economy". But what they never mention is that the government already owns half of that 1/6th - that half is funded by Medicare and Medicaid. Government dollars account for half of the total health spending, while treating only a fraction of the population. So that leaves 1/12th to the private sector, right? Well, not really. There are insurance company mandates at the state and federal level, as well as requirements for doctors and hospitals... not only artificially pumping up demand, but also artificially constricting supply. Anyone with a basic grasp of economics can understand what this makes for... Skyrocketing costs. So the federal government decides (just like Mitt Romney did in Massachusetts) that to fix the problem is to mandate that everyone buy health insurance (again, artificially pumping up demand)... All this will do nationally is exactly what it did in Massachusetts. Doctors get overworked. Hospital costs go up. Insurance premiums go up. It's a little different from the housing industry, in that you can't buy investment packages in health services the same way you could a home mortgage, but even so the health industry is headed for collapse in much the same way. The cost can't exponentially increase forever, but that seems to be exactly what this subsidy (regulatory and fiscal) is designed to accomplish. In addition to all the current regulations and mandates, there are new taxes to be implemented on medical supplies, making them artificially more expensive and harder to come by as a result, driving costs up at the hospital yet even more.

So what's the solution? Well, a CNN article I read yesterday had a sort of expert question/answer session with imaginary people that might actually exist. I took a large amount of humor in what one of those people said in complaint of our current system, and it was "I can get insurance for my dog, but I can't get it for myself." Well guess what, Mr. Guy... Which industry is the government most heavily involved with? Pet insurance or people insurance? There's your solution. Get the government out. Not just taxes, stupid regulations, and stupid mandates seemingly made for lawyers to wait for violations of so they can make 60% off of a settlement, but also subsidy. That means get rid of tax breaks, Medicaid, and Medicare... or at the very least, reduce them drastically. Demand needs to be reduced, and supply needs to increase. To me, the hard, real solution is blatantly obvious - but it seems to be ignored on both sides of the aisle because no politician wants to face the hard reality.

This is a big part of why I haven't been inclined to post much. I'm really in disbelief that there are people out there that think this bill will lower costs, and is overall a good thing. Of course, something like this might be inevitable when headlines like "Insurance Companies' Pre-existing Condition: Heartlessness" often appear. Yeah, this bill really sticks it to the insurance companies. Thanks to it, they stand to make more profit than ever before. They can charge to the maximum limit and we're required by law to pay it. And if they run at a loss because the limit isn't high enough, then they'll undoubtedly get bailed out by (*drumroll*) taxpayers! Woooo! -29MAR2010

Saturday, it snowed (as I posted below, if anyone noticed). It snowed a lot. Sunday was Dig-Your-Car-Out Day. It was then that I met one of my neighbors, a 55-ish year old man named Ray. We had a pretty good conversation about snow and weather and beer. He was clearing out his car and his wife's... I offered to help, but he refused it. Slowly but surely, he cleared out all of the snow around the two spaces he and his spouse occupied... Roughly 6 hours of work (he was using a common dirt shovel).

In Fairfax, it is legal to block off your cleared parking space with property. Lawn chairs seem to be the property of choice.

Yesterday, Ray seemed to have the same idea... all at the same time I decided I was going to set up my camera to take pictures at 10 minute intervals to capture the imminent snow storm to happen that evening and night.

Here, you barely see Ray's folding chair sitting in his parking space.

Same space, different time.

Here, you see a couple in a black Civic making use of Ray's hard work...
seemingly oblivious to the fact that they just ran over his lawn chair (you can
sort of see it in the grill - a slight gray line).

Here, Ray (I assume) is standing next to the Civic after he comes home from work,
and probably not happy about it.

Barely off camera, you see a humanoid blur. This is when Ray knocked on our door,
asking if that was our Civic that parked in his spot. He remembered me, and
remembered that we didn't have a Civic (or maybe he thought our Prelude was a
Civic), but he asked if I knew whose car that was. I didn't, and wished him luck
as he continued to knock on all of my neighbors' doors.

I guess he gave up looking for the culprit. Here, his car is parked behind the Civic,
and the folding chair is removed from the grill/snowbank area. Hmmmm....

Ray appears to be busy doing something. An unassuming bystander has a quick chat with him.
Mysteriously, there are small piles of snow on the Civic's windshield.

With the score settled, Ray goes inside. See a kool animation by clicking HERE

-10FEB2010-