lonecity.com

It is funny how seems to be able to bring a whole crap load of things to my door all at once.  It is just cruel how karma pays me back for every good thing I try with something bad.  I’ve mentioned before on my blog about how my dad has had a recent heart attack.  Spending months in hospitals and now unable to work has left him with little remaining but bills.  I found out that he was selling his car(s) to make ends meet.  A logical thing given he can no longer drive and he is still months away from getting any kind of help from uncle sam. 

I decided I would buy one of his cars.  It was a win win situation I thought.  A former mechanic his cars are bound to be in great condition, I can help him out by giving a more than fair price for the car, and it was an excuse for me to get to see him.  The old man lives several hundred miles away so we don’t see each other often.  All seemed to be well.

My current car is nearing the end of its life and I needed a new car.  Since time for renewal was drawing near I thought I’ll get the new car, get it licensed and then sell the old one before its time to renew.  Everything seemed to be going perfectly.  It turns out I had to put rear brake shoes on the car I bought before I could get it licensed but aside from the cost it went ok. 

Now a week after I’ve made the switch I’m driving the new car on the highway and the brakes locked up tighter than crap.  I skidded off the road thinking I’ve got a flat tire.  Got out looked it over but there was no flat.  I thought I might have hit something that made me skid, so I got back in and drove.  The car drove ok the rest of the way home.  I was a bit worried but had conviced myself it was nothing.  Later that night I needed to run to the store.  I got about half mile from the house and they locked up again.  This time I could tell what it was because they didn’t unlock.  The car is unable to move and I can’t even tow it home myself because the wheels won’t turn at all.

Its really a minor problem thought it might be expensive to fix.  Its probably my fault because I did the brakes so I could get it passed safety inspection.  The thing is that its upsetting to know trying to do something good turned into a nasty expense and a couple of really stressful days. 

I had promised the old car to my younger sister and now I won’t be able to fufil that promise.  Since it passed emissions and safety with no problems, I have to get it licensed and keep driving it until I can get enough money together to fix the new car.  I’ve dipped into my credit for another 500 already just so I can keep going to work.  Had I already given her the car it could have been worse.  (again doing something nice would have come back to bite me in the ass)

Its nothing throwing a little more money at wont fix, just I’ve reached the point where there isn’t much money (or credit) left to throw.  Instead of looking for a better job, looking for a second job is probably on the menu.

Lately I’ve been thinking alot about how much and what my family eats.  This has mostly been a direct result of my devastating lack of funds.  You see eating things like macaroni and cheeze from the box, hot dogs, and ramen noodles isn’t really good for our health.  Sure it keeps us moving and out of a pine box, but you can see around our bellies that something is wrong.

I’ve also been thinking about all the soda I drink.  I know its bad for me, but I’m actually addicted.  I’ve been drinking coke since I was old enough to say the word.  Now I can’t get the headache to go away in the morning until I’ve had my first glass.  (where are the people who sued the cigarette companies when I need them)  The worst part about bieng addicted to something is that deep down you really don’t want  to quit.  I’ve stopped drinking coke for about a month at one point in my life.  I learned quickly that drinking soda for so long has damaged my ability to be normal.  I don’t feel the urge to drink anything but soda.  In fact I became severly dehydrated at the time.  The will or instinctive need to drink water just isn’t there. 

Between these two factors I’ve been thinking about all the commercials you see telling us to buy new refridgerators and save energy.  I’m all for the environment and I was almost convinced for that reason alone.  You see how buying a new fridge can save you lots of mony in energy costs and you think is it worth buying that new fridge.  After adding in that I really want an Icemaker and water dispenser in the door makes it even more worthwhile.  I think if Ice cold water was screaming at me every time I walk in the kitchen, I might just be able to ween off the coke habit.

Here’s where the story goes bad though.  About 10 years ago I bought a brand spankin new shiny fridge with all the bells and whistles.  Way over a thousand dollars it set me back.  It was at the time my family bought this house, and we needed a fridge to go in it.  I still bieng young went ahead and bought the extended warrenty.  Inside of the first year the fridge quit working and I needed it repaired.  Under warrenty it got a new compressor.  As it was stumbling across its first months from when the extended warrenty had expired, again it was dead.  This time the new compressor was going to cost me a whopping $400.  Doing the sensible thing I scrapped the fridge and got another one.

I learn my lessons though, and I learned the hard way not to spend thousands on a piece of shit fancy fridge.  So when it was a pinch and I needed that second refridgerator I looked in the want ads and found a dinousar of a beast that is probably from the seventies that made its way into my home for 50 bucks.   

My dillemma, I’ve got a fridge that runs well and obviously will keep running until a meteor hits it.  It costs me only the electricity cost to keep it.  Its ugly, its old, Its kind of like me.  I really want that new refridgerator and there are lots of benefits to buying it, all except the one benefit I really need.  The one where it saves me money. 

My point is that after watching those recycle your fridge commercials you start thinking its cheaper to get a new fridge.  Its not true.  I looked up the statistics and here’s what I found:  The average refrigerator upgrade from a model ten years old to todays technology saves the owner about six dollars a month.  With a fancy new refridgerator coming in at over a thousand dollars, the interest on the new fridge will cost more than the savings you get from buying it.  Even if I payed cash, (which btw is out of the question) It would take fourteen years to pay for itself.  My last fancy new fridge only lasted four years before it was time to scrap it.  There is no way a fridge I buy today is lasting 14.  Even if the hardware is designed to last that long, which we all know it isn’t (manufacturers are making things cheaper and less durable all the time), the chances that the fridge will be as energy efficient or worth keeping after 10 years are zero. 

The fact that I want a new fridge would justify some of the cost, and the health benefits of having the icemaker and water in the door would justify some more.  Bottom line is that the cost is just too much.  Looks like we won’t be getting a new fridge this year.  The finances just don’t make sense.

Recently I’ve been thinking alot about changing jobs.  Some people seem to be able to accomplish this simple task almost on a whim.  I get really hung up on making such massive life change though.  I took a job that requires me to drive for nearly an hour each way when my last employer went under.  The severance package I got from my previous employer was quite nice and I found myself getting double paychecks for several months after changing jobs.  This huge extra income masked the true expense of traveling so far just enough that I didn’t realize exactly how bad it was until after I got settled into the new rut.  The sad truth is that the only real reason I chose this new job is because it was easy.  Someone I knew offered me the position and I didn’t have to apply so I took it.  I’m the hardest working lazy person you’ll ever meet.

With gas prices stedily climbing I’ve started to realize that I’m going to have to get serious about making a real job (and life) change soon.  Here’s the math that’s getting me proof of the need to change. 

Lets say I were to take a job making minimum wage at about $7 an hour, but I only walk 5 minutes to work and I work for 10 hours a day five days a week.  ($7 x 40 = $280) + ($10.50 x 10 = $105) = $385 per week.

Now lets figure out my $12 an hour job at 38 hours per week (never any overtime)  I get $456 per week on my check.  From that $456 you take away the $72 a week I spend in gas money and you come out with  $384 per week.  Seems about equal in the pay, but I am working 12 less hours a week right?  No  because I’m spending 2 hours a day driving to and from work.  Even though I am not actually at work I have to spend 10 hours a week of my own personal time unpaid driving to and from my job.  The reality is that its a break even situation.  I’m probably losing money already if you throw in vehicle maintenance and associated costs.

Where the scale is tipping balance is that the price for gas has gone up half a dollar in the last year.  So the $72 a week I spend in gas is now closer to $82 per week.  Throw in that I’m sure I can get a job closer to home that pays more than minimum wage and you see how it simply isn’t economical to travel to work anymore.

I wouldn’t want anyone reading this to think I’m just another stupid american bitching about the price of gas.  The truth is I think the cost of gas going up is a great thing.  I wish it would get closer to $15 a gallon.  The blind masses of the american people will never open their eyes to the damage they are doing to the environment with their millions of cars polluting the atmosphere.  I can’t blame that entirely on people bing stupid though.  It is more the nature and tendancy of people to follow along the easiest path.  Its just easier to drive to work than to ride the bus.   I hate to admit it, but I’m one of those people blindly following the same path.

I used to think about global warming and wonder when the end of the world would come.  You see I could see that we were polluting the earth, but I couldn’t see how the earth was going to fight back.  It seemed the planet was destined to lose the battle and we were going to be the eventual downfall of ourselves.  I know all about the prinicpal of equilibrium but I couldn’t see its effect on a global scale.  With the rise in gas prices I’m starting to get a glympse of how equilibrium will balance the pollution with lack of natural resources.  A little too much of the Polar Ice caps may have melted to make me comfortable with the situation, but at least I see there is a chance the earth might survive yet.

Now I just need to do my part and get over my fear of change.  I need to get that new job closer to home.  Its whats right for me.  Its whats right for the planet.  I just wonder what this invisible barrier that holds me back is.  I know its fear, but I can’t comprehend the full scope of where it comes from and how to defeat it.  If I could just conquor this deep seeded fear I would become a truly great human bieng.  (albiet still an asshole, but there’s no cure for that)

I wrote a post to my blog a number of weeks back about how my father had suffered a heart attack.  Its been more than two months now and he is still in the hospital.  He was released twice, only to return just one day after discharge both times.  Internal bleeding keeps filling his chest cavity and putting pressure on his lungs to the point where he cannot breathe.  The poor guy is a pincusion full of tubes and wires.  They’ve opened his chest and relocated veins.  They’ve put tubes in through his back to drain out fluids.  They’ve put in stints, and even sprayed talk powder inside of him to clog up the leaks.  You’ve got to admit it sounds more like a diy plumbing job than a heart surgury.

There are different kinds of people in this world.  Some just naturally know how to have fun, while others were simply bread to be slaves.  Its rare, or maybe even impossible to change your lot in life.  Lying in bed he is still thinking about going back to work.  He is weighing all his options and trying to figure how he can move into management so that his knowledge is still useable where he knows he can’t continue to do heavy lifting.  Whats worse is that deep down I know I caught that terrible ailment known as workaholism.  I’ve made up my mind from watching my dad go through this that I will break the workaholic curse and become someone who is fun.  Or die trying…

There are so many things I want to do someday and I’ve been thinking about taking a vacation.  No not the kind of taking days off that I have done in the past, but really taking a vacation.  I’m concidering a princess cruise.  I know I’m kind of young but it really sounds appealing to me.  Not bieng a sporty type I can see myself getting into a game of shuffleboard.  There is alot of deep seeded fear I will have to overcome to make it a reality though.

Some of the toughest things that will keep me from boarding the Grand Princess and cruising off into the tropics are the sun and the water.  Its not like I mind doing a days work, but I have to keep out of the sun to really do at my best.  I see laborers on rooftops with their dark tans and bulging muscles.  They seem not to be affected by the sun.  Put me out in direct sunlight and I start to feel tired.  A headache ensues, and eventually I become a worthless lump seeking the darkness for shelter.  I dare say in the roofing trade I’d become a rasin or a prune in no time. 

I know that on a cruise ship a big part of the adventure is on deck.  I can see myself at night in the tropics out on deck, but during the day I don’t see it happening.  Is there some sort of trick to enjoing the sunlight that I’m missing?  In my daily life I have to work during the day and sleep at night.  These are required to maintain the flow.  On a cruiz ship I wonder if the opposite is acceptable.  I would have no problem sleeping the day away and partying all night.  I just wonder if I’d be up at 3am while all the entertainment is closed and everyone else is sleeping.  I know there are activities below deck, but I’m not one for gambling.  I tried it when I was younger.  The thought of giving away so much of my hard earned money for so little entertainment makes me sick.  Aside from that I don’t know what else they could offer that would really entertain me.  (unless they have cheap hookers…)  Most everything else I can do here at home and have just as much fun.

Besides the sun theres also the water.  Having inherited every other poor condition my fathers gene’s could pass on I’m sure seasickness is among the plagues I have yet to discover.  I know I don’t handle airplane travel well.  I don’t think its a matter of the plane rocking that makes me sick so much as its a matter of the people.  Bieng packed in a can in some sort of cultist sardineism with tainted air supply uncontrollable temperature and massively violated personal space all add to the overwhelming distaste.  I’d much rather drive for three days than fly for just a few hours.  I don’t know if I get seasick or not, but finding out in the middle of the ocean days away from dry land is not what I call smart.  I know that they have pills for that sort of thing.  The underlying problem there is that I don’t want to spend a week doped up on pills pretending to have fun.  I want to go and have some real enjoyment.

So this leads me back to the rut I’m stuck in.  I want to go on a princess cruise.  I want to have fun.  I’m not sure I would have any fun.  If I had a trophy wife slash sexual acrobat to take along I’m sure I would.  This puts me back to going to work every day trying to earn the cash to be filthy rich.  If I have a ton of money the hot chick wife who only wants me for my money isn’t far off.  Then the cruise.  Following that logic I end up just like my dad.  In the hospital from a heart attack still trying to make my fortune so I can eventually get to the fun part. 

So how to break the cycle?  Should I give up on the cruise and find something else fun?  The problem is that I don’t enjoy the all same types of things that other people do.  I’ve been bread not to have fun going to bars and drinking.  I get satisfaction from doing a job well.  Maybe its a grass is greaner complex but I just feel like I can’t have fun like other people do.  What do you all think?  Should I just say screw it and blow five grand on a glorified boat ride just to see if I like it?

About a year ago I finally broke down and bought an HDTV.   I really wanted one but I just couldn’t make myself pay the two or three thousand dollars that it was going to take to get one. I ran across a deal on a marked down return at sears and just couldn’t pass it up.  It isn’t a large tv by most peoples standards, but a 40″ sony LCD was big enough to put the itch to rest.  I payed just over a thousand for the set. 

Everyone knows that electronics go down in price rapidly as new ones come out.  Nowdays you can get visio’s and a few other brands with bigger screens than my sony for the same price as I got it on markdown for.  It really is a beautiful tv though, even if it isn’t the latest model with all the bells and whistles.  It does make for one hell of a cool monitor though.  I’m actually typing this blog on it right now. 

Anyhow what I wanted to blog about this week was the outrageous price of tv wall mount kits.  Now I know after having worked in retail for numerous years that the price of a product has nothing to do with what it is worth.  Pricing is directly correlated with how much the average sucker can be made to pay.  The guys going out and buying three thousand dollar tv sets obviously have big money they are able to spend.  Therefore the accessories cost big money.  Even if they are just a stamped steel bracket…

For the last year my big screen lcd tv has set atop a cheap plastic shelf that used to be home to my old small screen tv because I couldn’t bring myself to spend $150 or more on five dollars worth of steel.  As mentioned before, I have the computer connected to my tv.  I also have a ups system powering both.  (Uniterruptable power supply)  Yesterday it decided it was time to put in a new battery.  The UPS is a flea market special that I payed a dollar or two for so there is no chance I’m going to hunt down a new battery to go inside.  Unable to tolerate the beep every three seconds it became time to make a change.

Since I had decided I was going to have to get behind the tv stand and replace the UPS with a surge protector, and I knew the horror of wires and such I was about to enter I decided it was time to go all out and hang the tv from the wall.  I still haven’t overcome the unwillingness to pay $150 for a couple of metal bars, so I decided to head on down to the home depot and build my own tv wall mount bracket. 

Was it a success?  Well I’m typing this now, so you know the tv didn’t fall off the wall and break.  Was it cheaper?  Maybe,  I spent about $30 altogether for all the hardware.  The tv sets exactly where I wanted it, and it It looks great.  Then why only maybe?  Because it took me about fifteen hours from start to finish, counting in the hour or so I spent stopping off to grab a bite to eat.  Running back and forth to the hardware store, Drilling holes in the steel, designing it and redesigning it in my head, ect. 

Lets do the math here: 15 hours x $12 per hour + $30 in parts = $210.  Now I’m sure it would have taken me at least two hours to hang the tv even with a premade mount.  So the cost would be more like $175 if I had bought the mount.  At the end of the day, this diy project was more expensive to do it myself.  I have $120 more in the bank now because I concider it as having paid myself but it really wasn’t cheaper.  That is just one more day out of my life I spent working that I could have spent doing something fun. 

Overall the most important question is: Was it worth it?  This is a firm yes.  I’m a glutton for punishment I guess because even though I figure building the mount should be counted as work, at the end of the day and after looking back on it, I was doing something fun.

Just for posterity and to save anyone who stumbles on this article looking for information about building a tv wall mount some searching, here is what I finally settled on that worked and was strong enough.  There is a kind of metal beam that is sold that has clips to attach conduit to it.  I ended up buying one of those rails and cutting it into four pieces.  Two attached to the tv and two bolted to the wall.  Then I used the clips that attach to the conduit and two pieces of conduit to attach the rails from the back of the tv to the conduit, to the rails mounted on the wall.  Now if this were mounted on the cieling that would have been enough, but since it is mounted on the wall, the tv would slip down the channel if using just the clips.  The last part of the design was to drill a hole through all four rails in the same place on the sides.  I put a U-bolt through the rail, half inside and half outside.  That way as the tv slides down the rail the clips set onto the ubolts. 

I would post a picture, but there is no way I have the energy willpower or stupidity left to take the tv off the wall to take a snapshot today.  Perhaps that will be a topic for a future blog post.  How to build a tv wall mount for under $30…

Unlike most people, I have never really felt a strong emotional attachment to the people around me.  I’m not talking about complete strangers here, I’m talking about my immediate family.  I guess this probably spawns from my upbringing.  I’ve always suffered from a fierce bullishness and total self dependance.  You’re probably thinking wait, these can be good qualities?  Well I admit I am somewhat admired for my ability to take on almost any situation without any outside help.  The problem lies in the fact that I am totally incapable of asking for or accepting that help.  If my car is broken down, I fix it. If something heavy is needed to be lifted, I lift it.  The underlying element here is that I have severe trust issues.  It’s not that I enjoy fixing my own car, but I don’t feel comfortable letting someone else do it.  I don’t even feel comfortable letting someone else drive it.  I just can’t. 

What broght out this confession?  A few months back a co-worker of mine had her sister pass away.  Normally this wouldn’t even catch my interest, but I really feel alot of respect for this particular person.  In the last couple of years she is the only person I’ve worked with whom I feel is like me.  She is totally competent in every respect.  Having done a stint as an Air Force Mechanic the woman is like a brick.  She exudes confidence and there hasn’t been a single task that she hasn’t been able to handle.  I see her take on jobs that normally would have been given to me simply because nobody else could handle it.  She is also quite intelligent and I find that things I discuss with her she actually understands.  I often don’t converse with people simply because they aren’t in the same intellectual class as I am.  (on a side note, that is one reason I really love the internet. Online I have no problem finding people who match or exceed my intellect where in daily life I seldom find that is the case.)  Getting back to this co-worker, I’d say she would be wife material if it weren’t for the fact that she is much older than I am and having kids almost out of high school.  Her sister went into the hospital for a surgery and didn’t survive the anesthesia. 

I watched this woman whom I had almost thought to be unbreakable turn into a sobbing mess.  I, having little human attachment, was obviously not real understanding.  I tried to be of some comfort, but I honestly don’t understand the emotion she was going throgh.  I must have seemed cold and uncaring.  Probably because I am…

I think it must have been this incident that started me thinking about what it would take to break me emotionally.  I tend to sit back and see things from an outside perspective.  I didn’t have to wait long for something to come along that would test my curiosity in this respect.  Last year I lost a weeks worth of vacation time because I didn’t get around to taking it before my company determined I had accrued too much and they diposed it.    It’s not that I wouldn’t love a vacation, but I’ve made myself too damn irreplaceable at work.  I just can’t take time off.  The whole purpose of taking time off is to get some sort of relief.  The problem is that I have so much to do when I come back that taking time off actually causes me more stress than if I just keep working. 

I was determined that I wasn’t going to take a loss on any more paid vacation time so I decided to figure a way to take a few days here and there at non-busy times so I could use it up.  The first installment of two days plus a weekend came due last week.  I planned this thing for a month in advance.  I bought plane tickets and was going to a renaissance festival with my dad and younger brother.  According to them the turkey legs are good enough to die for.  They must not be lying because about a week and a half before my flight my brother called from the hospital where my dad was in the ICU.

I must really be a monster because unlike my co-worker I didn’t break down.  I didn’t even feel the urge to jump on a plane and head on down.  Instead I went to work and thought about how there was pretty much no chance I was getting one of those turkey legs now.  BTW, I am a triptophan junkie…  Don’t get me wrong.  I love my dad I just didn’t feel the need to rush there and sit in a hospital room. 

My brother is more like me than anyone in this world.  He’s a bit smarter than I am, but aside from that he thinks just like I do.   Despite growing up in different places, he has the same kind of ideas and the same technical skill.  If he hadn’t dropped out of school, probably for lack of interest, he would totally dwarf me in every respect.  I learned through this that he doesn’t suffer from the same uncaring disposition though.  While I was concearned about missing the festival and the little bit of a well deserved break, he sat in the hospital and worried for my father’s well bieng.  I guess I should be thankful that bieng a monster doesn’t run in my gene’s.  It’s just something I caught.

I waited it out until my flight was scheduled.  Come the day my flight was to leave I packed a bag with a few changes of clothing, a book, a pencil, and some graph paper.  I packed myself onto the plane with the other sardines and suffered through the trip.  I then spent my couple of days vacation mostly at the hospital.  My dad was still in ICU and sedated when I got there.  This is where I came to the conclusion that People are like fruit.  Looking at him he looked like he was a sheet on the mattress.  He had lost all color and with all the padding around him that he had sunk into he just looked like part of the bed. 

When a fruit is born it is always fresh looking.  Sometimes it has blemishes, but it always has a look of youth.  Then it separates from branch and begins the process of rotting.  It may get more lustre or color as it develops, but really it is already well on its way to the grave.  Humans are exactly the same way.  No matter how sickly we are born, we always look fresh at birth.  Separated from the cord we begin the process of life, but our growth is really just our bodies beginning to rot.  We may get bigger and we may prolong our life, but really we are just fertilizer yet to be realized. 

My father was finally awake and alert just before I had to catch my plane back.  Though the paranoia from two weeks of lucid dreaming and the financial stress had just begun to set in it was good to see him awake.  It was nice to know that he was still in there, and that his body wasn’t just an empty shell.  Sadly though it looks like there isn’t going to be much left of him.  They said his heart attack was bad.  So bad that if he hadn’t felt sick and gone to the hospital before it happend he never would have even survived.  He had to be resuscitated three times and he retains less than 30% of his heart function.  Two weeks in ICU doesn’t leave much that isn’t atrophy.  He’ll be another month in rehab to learn to walk and to write.  Even then I don’t know how he will support himself.  Like me my father worked every day of his life and never saw any other goal than to go to workand dream of the day he could retire.  Working with his hands is pretty much out of the question now so aside from bieng alive there isn’t much life left for him. 

Deep down inside I truly am a monster.  I’m not thinking how great it is that he survived or anything like that.  I’m thinking about how I can support him when his debt far exceeds the level that my income can cover.  Its not all bad because I do care enough to think about him.  I just know that my heart isn’t in the right place. 

I was on my way to work a few days back when I got pulled over for speeding.  I admit I was speeding so the ticket was justified.  I was going 70 in a 65 zone by my account.  (Probably about as fast as everyone else on the interstate.)  I wasn’t late for work, in fact I was early and I was only going a bit fast keeping pace with the rest of traffic at that time of morning. 

To describe the scene, I got into the far left lane and there wasn’t anyone in front of me for a good 30+ car lengths.  Its still quite dark outside bieng around 5 am.  A car pulls behind me and gets right on my rear bumper.  I don’t appreciate the bright lights in the rear view mirror so I speed up a bit to keep from getting blinded by the bright lights.  Now I’m going 74 and this guy pulls right up behind me.  We repeat the process again and again until I’m getting up to around 80.  I had made up my mind that I wasn’t going to speed up anymore and I start looking for an opening to change lanes.  I figure I’ll change lanes and slow back down so this jerk will finally go around me.  Just as I finally find a spot to get over and am starting to change lanes the guy with the high beams turns on the blue and red.

I guess it really doesn’t matter what the scenario was.  There is no chance I am going to take a day off work and go try to fight the ticket.  In fact he could have pulled me over for something I wasn’t doing and I still would have had to pay the ticket.  Bottom line - It costs me more to take the day off work than it does to pay the ticket.  Then assuming I didn’t successfully fight the ticket I’d be paying double.  Bieng a working class stiff has doomed me to just take it and suffer.  I can’t afford to do anything more righteous.

 The truth of the matter is that I wouldn’t have been going more than 70 if the cop hadn’t been driving behind me so closely that I felt uncomfortable.  I admit I was wrong by speeding up and in fact I’ve already paid the ticket.  Still I feel I was pushed.  The cop said he “paced me at 80.”

I’m not sure there is anything to be done here.  I just wanted to rant about it to get it off my chest.  After all those who don’t speak up are doomed to never change anything.  I feel like this whole “Pacing” thing is dirty politics.  I’m not going to be the one to do anything about it though.  I will be busy watching my family starve till next payday.  After all the money to pay this ticket comes out of our food budget.  Thats the only place where I can find a few bucks and not start getting nasty phone calls.  In the end, I’m just glad there is always cheap ramen!

With the presidential elections in the air alot of social topics are finding the way back into the news.  Everyone seems to want to know what their candidates think about abortion, immigration, capitol punishment, racism, and the economy.  I’m far from an expert any any of those fields, but perhaps its time we got the oppinion out there of someone who isn’t an expert.  What I’ve decided to blog about today is immigration.

Picture for a moment a scene from COPS where an officer drives by an alleyway and spots a gang hanging out.  The same typical scene plays out everyday in virtually every low income area in america.  The cop stops by to hassle them a bit while checking to see if they are up to no good.  From the officers point of view he sees a group of boys hanging out somewhere they shouldn’t be and a high probablility that they are about to commit a crime.   From the boy’s point of view they feel like the cop is out to get them. They invision racial profiling and any number of other concepts as why this cop decided to “Pick on Them.”  Most of these boys will see things the way the cop did after another 20 years or so.  assuming they live that long  They’ll look back at all the dumb things they did as kids and feel smarter for having grown out of it. 

This same scenario exists for illegal immigrants living illegally in the united states.  Every day they hear about more bills and legislation meant to “pick on them.”  The big difference is that the gang kids eventually grow up, get into better societal circles, and realize their mistakes.  Immigrants on the other hand get trapped into small divided communities where everyone has the same problem as they do.  They don’t get the opportunity to grow through the benefit of good social interaction.  The law continues to get harsher hoping they’ll go away.  Just like the gang kids though they don’t really have anywhere else to go.  If they fit in the country they came from do you really think they would have come here?

I’m going to let the cat out of the bag here and openly admit to everyone that I am not a great person.  I really don’t care whether we let them in or kick them out.  All I really want is for the problem to go away.  When I make my decision as to who I will vote for it doesn’t have anything to do with the candidates oppinion of abortion.  It doesn’t have anything to do with anything that doesn’t affect my bottom dollar.  I’m going to vote for whomever promises me the biggest tax refund.  Provided I think their claim is legit.

Illegal immigration hurts my pocketbook.  Money I pay for taxes goes to healthcare, public roads, emergency services, ect.  The more people who are drawing on that tax budget without paying into it the more it costs me.  Illegal immigrants are using the same roads and the same emergency services as the rest of us.  They just aren’t paying for them.  So the billion dollar question is how do we fix the leak in the budget?

Here is my approach:  Run a background check on anyone who wants to be a legal U.S. Citizen.  Make them pay for it.  If they can pass the background check let them in.  That way we can start charging them taxes.  We should eliminate deportation and instead jail anyone caught without papers.  Not to be mean, but as incentive for them to get legal and start paying taxes like the rest of us.  We can even run the background check and get them papers while they wait in a cell.  This will take a good portion of the criminal element that exists here without legal papers and eliminate it.  The millions of undocumented illegals will provide more than enough in additional taxes funds to cover any major flaws in the idea.  I know the reason alot of illegal immigrants don’t get legal is because of the exhorbitant cost.  There isn’t any reason it should cost more than a background check and a printed ID card. 

 For those of you who “Wish they would go back to their own country.” Think about it like this.  Why are the ones that really bother you here?  They came across the border to sponge off our economy and send money back to their families in other countries.  If we offer papers freely, and start charging taxes here is how it will go.  The ones that really want to be a part of the United States will get papers and pay up just like a good citizen.  The ones that are here to Sponge off our economy will either stay here illegally, or they will leave.  With threat of harsher punishment they will have a real motivation to either conform or leave.   Its different to come here and live illegally if all they have to fear is deportation. 

Face it, its not the fact that they are here that really bothers you.  Its the fact that they are here living tax free without fear of the law, while you and I are both paying taxes and following regulations every day.  Its time we opened up the borders and put everyone on a level playing field.  The United States would not look like such an attractive destination to the third world if we make it so life is just as difficult here as it was where they came from.   We could finally get back to the great capitalist society the united states was meant to be.  People with great ideas would flock here where their capitalist intentions could flourish.  People who want to be a drain on society would find it hard to compete in a more driven society.  Eventually the bottom tier of our population would start to emmigrate away, making a better life for those who are willing to work hard and conform.

For more than half my life I have worked in and around the traditional brick and mortar retail business.  I’ve gotten to know the trends and can easily see when items will sell or will not sell.   Sadly with the massive growth of the MegaRetailer Walmart and the bursting out of the internet into retail markets, many traditional retailers don’t have alot to look foreward to.   Traditionally a store’s sales plan would be calculated by taking last years same day sales, adjusting for a few economic factors, then adding a few percent for the growth in the community and in trademark recognition.  All in all you could pretty much expect that the sales plan would be a few hundred or a few thousand more than it was last year.  The trend I’m starting to see is that retailers are no longer able to make these increase plan goals.  The brick and mortar system will probably never die but I think it has reached saturation and many retailers will start to plan on making less if they want to survive.

It is with that knowledge that I have started my own foray into the business world looking at online retail as the way to make my fortune.  Everywhere I turn I see the potential to make money.  Many investors were scared away by the big DotCOM bubble burst, and thats a good thing for me.  The problem with most dotcom business models is that they based their ideas on the possibility of infinite growth. To take for an example pets.com they saw astounding increases in sales after launching their website.  Everyone wanted in because everyone wanted a part of the massive increase. The underlying problem is that every day there are a finite number of people who will buy a bag of dogfood online.  At launch pets.com hadn’t come anywhere near that capacity.  Still with massive growth they fumbled right past the point of saturation and found themselves with more goods than they could ever hope to sell.  This same situation plagued most dotcom startups until massive failure swept the market.

One of the most important things to have in business is your brand.  Anyone can tell you that pets.com is a million dollar name.  Even if the company behind it folds and folds again there will still be people every day who type in the name looking for that bag of dog food.  Likewise, everyone has heard about the guy who registered some short easily memorable domain name and sold it for millions.  But what has happened to the entreprenuer who wants to start an online business.  What do we do now that there isn’t any stellar names left.  In recent years companies that once made profits by registering domains for end users have taken to buying up domains.  At first this was to mark them up and soak end users for the profit.  It sucks, but I agree with their entreprenurial spirit.  However now many have gone one step too far.  Instead of marking up and selling the domains at a profit some companies have begun refusing to sell.  One of these companies name media has gotten to the point where they have registered tens of thousands of names and they are holding them for ransom.  So far they haven’t broken any of the rules, but were only talking the rules that exist today.  If these giant companies who aren’t playing fair continue to grow at some point the internet itself will break. 

Instead of bieng able to build a brand small business owners will have to buy visitors from companies that own all the brands.  The benefit to small business is completely gone and soon they won’t continue offering their products.  Business are there to make money and having to pay for each person who walks through their doors just doesn’t make sense.  (except to the guys getting paid)  As business starts to decline because companies can’t effectively market their products at a gain, the internet will stagnate.  Our only option is to change the way people find what they’re looking for online.  I like the type in “something.com” setup and I’d hate to see it go away but the nails are already in the coffin. 

 So what do you think?  Is creating some sort of anti-monopoly domain law the only way to turn things around.  One thing I came across while researching for the article I wrote on fidel castro was an interesting concept he put in place while ruling in cuba.  He made it a law that nobody could own more than 5 acres of land.  This puts an interesting spin on the domain monopoly idea.  If we were to limit the number of domains any one entity could own to say 200 or so every business or individual could reasonably compete and we still wouldn’t be unfair to the registrars and companies that are presently monopolizing the domain names.  They could keep the names they really want but they would be forced to concider what names they really want.  The older brother is hogging all the toys even though he doesn’t have time to play with them all.  Its time mom reached back and made him share with the younger siblings…

Generally in the mornings I watch a part of the news to see how the traffic and weather are going to treat me.  I commute for over an hour each day and I like to be prepared for what is to come.  Usually this ammounts to me listening to the reports while I get dressed with the television in the background.  During this past week I caught a comment about Fidel Castro resigning in the scrolling text across the bottom of the screen.  I think the name Castro probably drums up different feelings in me than it does to most americans.  I decided he would be a good topic for my latest blog.

It would be in poor taste for me to stand up and declare whether I think Fidel Castro was a good person or a bad one.  History shows that he has done many things that a god may condemn him for.  The very thought of guerilla warfare brings ideas of bombings, murders, torture.  You get the idea.  However if you stand back and look at his life he has always done what he belives is right.  As a young man he rebelled against and eventualy overthrew the leadership of his country.  He didn’t do this out of a viscious desire for power, but rather out of a bitter distaste for the current regime. 

Once in power Castro made policy to make Cuba better.  He started importing oil from the soviet union to improve the economy of his country.  He may not have thought this one through entirely as the oil refinerys in cuba were built and owned by the United States.  When they refused to process the oil that he was importing because it was coming from a communist country, Castro found himself in the middle of an international affair.  Again, to the dismay of practically everyone in the USA, he made the decision to do what he felt was best for Cuba.  He appropriated the oil processing plants.  This was done in much the same way as the government here would take your house or land if they needed to build a highway.  You would get a check for how much they figured it was worth and you would be thrown out. 

The decision for Cuba to become a communist country really didn’t have much to do with communist beliefs.  Rather the United Stated Presidency forced Fidel Castro into it by pressuring him to do things that were in the best interest of the USA instead of the best interest of Cuba.  By siding with the soviet union, Castro gained the external financial support Cuba needed and avoided the fine print that would have come along with US Support. 

 A while back I watched a documentary about the Cuban trade embargo.  The whole thing was supposed to make you think about how the embargo has made life terrible in cuba because trade is restricted.  The point the director was trying to make was obvious.  However after watching the show I walked away with a different feeling.  To me Cuba looked to be a paradise free from the financial enslavement that the big cities offer us.  The people of Cuba embody the spirit that once made us great. 

I would like to site an example from the documentary.  The name escapes me at the moment.  If I needed someone to weld something and there was a welding wire shortage we as americans would go to great lengths to import welding wire.  My project would wait until the wire became available.  If it never came available my project would probably never be finished.  In this documentary there was a man in this situation who did bodywork on cars.  He took apart a chainlink fence and straightened the wire to use for welding.  In all my years I’ve never met even one person who had that kind of spirit.  I know that strength resides in me, but I feel life wither away at it.  This strength that made us great in the 1940’s and 1950’s has long since died for the average american.  Any employer can attest to what I’m saying here.  When is the last time you found an employee who just finds a way to get a job done even when it seems impossible?  I’m not talking about a business owner who is doing it because of the financial incentive, but an employee who is doing it just because they know it needs to be done.

One thing that I and Fidel Castro have in common is that we were both  born into religeous families and grew to be devout atheists.  I think this perspective has shaped the way I see things.  Instead of viewing his leadership with fear and hate as most americans do I can see the reasoning behind the way he ruled.  The trade embargo set against Cuba has over the years put cuba out of the minds of the average joe.  Most would only think of cuba as the place that exports those illegal cigars.   I won’t stand up and say that Castro was a good man.  I won’t even say he was a brilliant dictator, as a true genius would have found a way to avoid things getting bad.  The Cuban missle crisis, the Trade embargo,  The assasination Attempts.  In fact most of his dealings were like the thoughts of a child.  The usa won’t play with me, fine I’ll go play with russia, na na na…  What I will say is that I respect him.  To stand up against the big bully known as the United States for his entire life through multiple assasination attempts and rule in a manner that he believed in takes guts.  He must have a set of cajones that any man would be proud of.