The Plunge. . .

I took the plunge into the smart phone world.  The old flip phone could not be traded in or any credit for same obtained.  It is just a relic now sitting in its box slowly discharging into oblivion.  The new phone, well it is the same as Judie'sphone, a Samsung Galaxy 5.

It is a heavy little device, I guess it is packed with all kinds of goodies inside including a hefty battery to run all of its innards.  My phone number remained the same as did the contact list and that is about it.  All the rest is learning curve of new stuff.  It is not here on purpose, but I do know it.  Unlike Judie, it is not taped on the back of the phone case.

I have reached the level of frustration already that leads to the trash can.  The small but adequate starter hand book is irksome.  I know the authors have done a great job of telling you how to do things but alas it is in their parlance.  Sometimes a password is a user name, sometimes a user name is a password.  They mean well, it is just a matter of how they communicate.  And they do not always get it right - at least in my parlance. 

Whatever happened to the old adage, "the customer is always right."  It seems in their way is the customer is always stupid or dumb.  No expansion of what they want or mean in their guidance.  It is their way or no way.  But I am the guy putting up the money, so I should have some say so in the deal.  Uhuh, no way, Jose!  They ain't got time to do this so it may work for everybody.  I think sometimes it is written for a teenager only. 

Oh, well, I did manage to make a phone call.  That seemed to work okay.  We did get the WiFi connected, so I can read email now.  The clock works but then it worked on the flip phone too.  Nothing new there.  Tiny Querty key board crops up when you need it, got to be careful when tapping in letters.  Typing or as it is known now days, key boarding is faster in my opinion.  But I will get used to it, I am sure of that.

More frustration ahead, but a great leap into the future.  Pissing and moaning all the way.

Where Is Keith Irwin . . .

Where is Keith Irwin? 

Keith was a fraternity brother and a room mate for most of my college life.  We lived off campus along with Dwight Paulsen.  I can not find Keith Irwin anywhere in these United States.

But I have done more than one search of Keith Irwin to turn up empty.  He graduated from LSU in 1962 and went off to USAF flying school.  He did not make it.  He was washed out primarily because he could not keep his stomach under control.  There may have been other reasons too but he let us know about the stomach stuff.

I lost track of him like we all do as we go off to do our careers.  I too went into the USAF along with Yvie Poret and Woody Bergeron.  Unlike Keith, we all had successful careers.  Yvie retired as a Lt Col, I ran into him at HQ Systems Command a few weeks before he retired.  Did a whole career with only being away from home or his wife and family for some 20 or so days.  Me I spent years away from my family.  Yvie lives in Baton Rouge and enjoys hunting and fishing now days.

Woody also retired as a Lt Col, a war hero and POW survivor.  He was actually on the ground in North Viet Nam for few days and was recovered.  His techniques for escape and evasion were adopted by the USAF.  He had been a Navigator in the back seat of an F-4 when shot down by a missile.  He was able to get a slot in pilot training.  I ran into to him at Davis Monthan AFB on his way to be upgraded to an A-10 pilot.  Pretty sure Woody retired from Delta and lives around Atlanta should he still be alive.

So three of us, non-rated, had a successful career in the USAF.  None of us had gone through advance ROTC, we went in during the Viet Nam war for various reasons and came out career men.  The general population of Air Force troops call us "lifers."  Pretty sure Keith is or was not a lifer.

But no Keith.  I found several of the brothers, knew of a couple that have died.   Dwight is probably the most successful of us all now living on the North shore of Lake Ponchartrian in a family compound.  Dwight was a Mechanical Engineer with a Masters Degree in Business.   He ended up involved with off shore oil drilling and was a principle in the company.

Others have been successful too.  I shall not name them.  Lawyers and engineers for the most part.

But I can not find Keith.  I thought I found him in Colorado but got no answer back to my letters. Then I found a Keith Irwin in Louisiana but it turns out not to be the Keith Irwin.  So the search ends up cold.  I have no way to access Social Security Numbers (SSN), indeed I do not know Keith's SSN at all.

I hope he is safe somewhere.  I hope he was not a casualty of war and that he has a family and lives on.  We are getting old now, pressing 75 years so he may not be with us anymore.

Geaux Tigers!

Brrrrr! Its Cold . . .

When I got up the thermometer out side on the front read 31 degrees, it is a remote repeater to a station inside the house.  The other thermometer on the back patio is analog and read about freezing.  The weather station on the hill a couple of miles from us said it got down to 27 degrees.

I do not care, it is just cold.  Cold in the garage where my model work station is, so I can not build comfortably.  Build or repair more likely.  I have to bring the epoxy glue inside and immerse it in a cup of hot water to get it to do what I want it to do.

Read in the paper we may have snow this weekend.  No let up for a while.  We will just sit it out.

Keep warm.  See where there is a freeze warning for New Orleans.  Bundle up and stay comfortable.

Republican Sweep . . .

Well all those pronouncements of Obama are now catching up.  The big one is "elections results have consequences."  The consequences is that the Democrats have lost control in the US Senate and the US House Republicans have increased their members too.

It is mentioned here and there that maybe Obama's leadership has done immeasurable damage to the Democrats for some time to come.  Of course, the Democrats are trying to spin that back and say the fleeting event means future troubles for the Republicans.  Get real!

Not on did the Republicans can control, they took overwhelming control with a nice margin.  Harry Reid's shenanigans will now come back to haunt him  He changed the Senate rules regarding number of votes for judges and appointments from 60 to 50, that means all upcoming judge appointments are now in the hands of the Republicans, not the Democrats.  So no more liberal progressive judiciary for the remainder of Obama's term.  It makes him a lame duck for sure in that regard.

President Obama says he will use executive orders to correct what he perceives as an immigration problem.  The Speaker of the House has said that will poison the waters. The Congress controls the money and that means they will curtail any funds to execute those orders.  Our fore fathers crafted a wonderful document, the Constitution of the United States of America.  It contains checks and balances to offset the power of the President.

I do not normally like Senator Mitch McConnell but he said some clear and cogent comments.  He said there is now "Only one Democrat to worry about, President Obama."  He also said the Senate will return to a place of "debate and the offering of amendments."  In the past , Senator Harry Reid refused to entertain debate, votes or amendments.  There less than a dozen votes in the Senate in the last year.  That will change, a return to what the Senate is supposed to do, debate and resolve issues.  Harry Reid's way was just to forestall any action what so ever.  That is not the American way.  No more no from the Democrats.

The President will have to do his own heavy lifting, if he does not like it, he will have to be the man of "No."  He will have to veto the bills.  Some bills like the pipeline bill has both Republican and Democratic support and thus an override of his veto is likely. That bill will provide a lot of jobs and make the tree huggers turn blue.   Well I guess they are blue anyway as Democrats.  Frankly that was a sensible pipe line to build and there are literally thousands of miles of pipe lines in the US.  Nothing new in building another one.

I think the EPA will be throttled by budget actions to prevent the President's unofficial "Cap and Trade" program.  Carbon taxes are like Global Warming, a hoax.  I guess Global Warming has morphed into Climate Change, no matter it is now proven to be a hoax, little change in the climate in the last 15 years and the Artic Ice cap is growing both in Anartica and the North Pole.

So now we enter a new era.  The President is trying to spin it in his favor.  That ain't gonna work with the Congress.  He is gonna get hammered.

Salsa . . .

About the time we were leaving Arizona for Ohio, we visited friends en route in Tucson, AZ.  We happened to go to a local swap meet held in an area near the Pantano Wash.  A wash is sort of a dry wadi as found in North Africa.  When, and that was a rare thing, there was a good healthy rain storm, the wash turns in to a raging torrent of flood waters.  So this area was located in good residential area but some what uninhabitable because of the close proximity to the wash.

As we perused though the junk so to speak, we found a family selling Desert Rose salsa, their brand name, out of the trunk of an old dilapidated car.  So we bought a couple of quart jars of the stuff and found it to be absolutely superior.  It had great taste and flavor.

A year or two later while visiting Tucson again we tracked it down to high end department stores.  It had grown in reputation and moved beyond the trunks of cars the shelves of fancy places.  They had even come out with a new issue called "Commeertavio."  Generally meaning commemorative and it was commemorative.  By then we had progressed to the "hot" version of the salsa and the Commeratavio was a step a beyond that but very tasty.

We started at that point of tracking down the maker and found we could mail order the stuff.  And so in our travels we would around Christmas time get a whole case of the stuff sent to us.  This went on for years.

Later, in California while working for Rockwell International in San Bernardino, on Fridays we would bring snacks in and that gravitated to salsa and chips.  Finally we reached the point where we brought in our favorite commercial salsas and rated them.  Desert Rose was the champ.  And was in great demand.

By then we could get the salsa at high end specialty grocery stores in California.  It was now an off the shelf product.  We no longer had to order from Tucson, we could get it in Redlands.

Years later we ended up in Tucson working for Raytheon and the local high end food stores had it on the shelf.  That was really pleasing to us.  In fact, that was about the only time we ever went to that grocery store was to get salsa and we bought all they had in stock.

Then it disappeared.  It was not to be had.  It seems the company sold out to a bigger operation and then was discontinued.

So we looked of a suitable substitute and did not find one anywhere.  Later while now living in Ruidoso, New Mexico, I found a salsa put up by an elderly lady in a small town of LaLuz.  LaLuz is between Terazozo and Alamagordo, NM.  There was a Pistachio company that sold it at their store on the high way between those to towns.  It was close to Desert Rose so we began ordering salsa from the Pistachio people.

Just a few months ago we passed through that area and stopped at the store to pick some pistaschios and salsa.  Well we got the pistachios alright, but the elderly lady had retired.  There was no more LaLuz Salsa to be had.  It seems she could not get her family to help her make the salsa and it had become to much of a burden to her.

None of the local salsas like Joe T. Garcias comes close to Desert Rose or LaLuz.  I guess our tastes are not compatible with the local desires.  We keep looking and trying but it just is not the same.

An era has past.  We enjoyed it but it is no more.  Times have changed.

Ebola . . .

Ebola.  We are learning more and more about it day by day.  It seems we are as up to speed as the Center for Disease Control.

The two secondary cases from Dallas have been moved by the government to higher isolation facilities, one in Atlanta, GA and one in and around Washington D. C.  That unloads the local hospital from the terrible load of treating and isolating the patients.  And the local hospital has turned into a empty palace for the sick.  Patients are cancelling even cancer operations in dire fear of Ebola infection.

It is clear the President has failed to recognize the dangers, or at underestimated the danger.  The CDC has clearly muffed it in all directions.  We learn to day the Frontier Jet, allegedly cleaned three times, has never been taken out of service.  Could thousands now be suspect?  Who approved this nurse's travel plans?

Now a lab person is self quarantined on a cruise ship down in the Gulf of Mexico.  The Mexican government will not let the passengers to embark into Mexico.  The ship is on its way back to Galveston.  I foresee that it will be quarantined and cleaned to (meaning disinfected from stem to stern).  Who let this nut to go on a cruise!

 People are acting stupid including our government. People on volunteer quarantine go out to get their favorite soup.  Now the President as appointed a Czar to manage things - a lawyer.  Give me a break.  We don't need some dam Democratic lacky, we need a competent doctor to be the Ebola Czar.  There are certainly many more experience physicians with disease and disease control that some dam lawyer.  Just another stupid thing by the current administration.

Fox News just had an expert on disease incubation periods say that the 21 day incubation time is a 30 year old number.  He has studied the numbers and infection can occur 30 to 35 days after exposure.  Another study out of Minneapolis says Ebola may have mutated into an airborne virus (I hope not or else we are doomed by the inept central government enamored with being politically correct.)

Will they wake up?  God save us!

The Oaks . . .

We have two red oak trees in the front yard.  They are Shumard Oaks, relatively fast growing trees.

The one in front of the window I look out everyday is the larger of the two oaks.  I think it has to do with the soil.  The top soil on the left side of the front was scraped off to level the lot for the house.  So naturally  the soil is not as nutritional as the soil on the right side.  So the tree on the right is bigger, and grows faster than the one on the left side.  Both have been treated for "Oak Wilt" and that treatment seemed to perk them up a bit.  Both have been fertilized a couple of times and of course the grass has been treated three or four times a year.

Any way the tree on the right is a little more than a foot in diameter now, rising up well above the roof line of our house.  It is quite stately.   I reminds me of the Pen Oak we had in the front yard in New Roads when I was growing up.  That tree was about 75 years old, when lightening struck it, and started an internal fire.  It must have smolder for a year, all remnants are gone from the tree.

I discover yesterday the Shumard has dropped its acorns.  That is a sign of maturity, I understand it takes usually 12 years of age before they produce any fruit.  Since we have volunteer growing in the flower bed (which the deer keep eating the top off) I am sure it produced acorns last year.  But this year there is a bumper crop of rather large sized acorns.  The Burr Oak produces the largest acorns I have ever seen, almost an inch in diameter.  These are about an half inch in diameter.

So I policed up a few of them and will see if I can get them to grow.  We have a ton of Post Oak acorns floating around.  They are smaller in size.  The Post Oak is a notoriously slow growing oak tree, takes maybe 50 years to be a 10 inch in diameter tree.  And they never get very big, die off before for any number of reasons.  They do not tolerate much of anything around them, animals, yards, fertilizers and so on.  I have seen them just die in the middle of the summer for no apparent reason, healthy one day and dead the next.

We do have a Barkley Oak on the side yard that is a volunteer.  There are a few of them scattered around the neighborhood.   They too are members of the "red" oak family, have a similar leaf as the Shumard but have the distinction of not dropping their leaves in the fall.  Their old leaves are pushed off in the spring by new growth.  But it is also a relatively fast growing tree.  I even tried to cut it down once when it was just a two or three footer.  But later we cut down the Hackberry tree that was next to it.  We managed to save it and it is now up about 20 feet and trunk is about four inches in diameter.  A Post Oak the same age is near by and is all of three feet high and about an half inch in diameter.

I had to pull up an Shumard in the back yard that had died.  It was pot bound when planted and when I pulled it up (it was quite dead at the time) the tap root was all coiled up and it had literally chocked itself to death.  I will try to get one of the volunteer oaks to grow there or maybe if successful with by planted acorns will put one of them there.

We have about 30 Post Oaks in the back.  There is one Elm, three large Hackberries (trash trees but produce shade), a smaller Hackberry.  We have two Peach trees off to the left in the back but they have maybe five or six more years before they will die off.  None of those threes are close enough to the house except for one Hackberry to produce an shade for the house.

There are lots of oaks in our neighborhood and most have been well taken care of.   Makes the place look good.