I took my car in for some repair work on my A/C system the other day and I went to a place I found in the phone book. Yeah, it’s hotter than Hades here in N.O. and a working air conditioner is always on the top of my list. As an ex-mechanic I’m very picky about who I will trust. I can always tell when someone is bullshitting me or trying to jack me for unneccessary work. The shop was nice and clean and the owner seemed intelligent and straightforward.

Turned out he was someone I knew from high school or at least he remembered me, I couldn’t recall him or his name. I decided to trust him and leave it there for the day for the repair work. As I was leaving though, I started noticing that the walls in the office and waiting area was covered with religious quotes and icons and various other religious paraphenalia. I thought it was just a bit overdone, being proud of your religion is one thing and that’s fine, but this was going way overboard.

Later that day, I went back to pick it up and that’s when it hit me. Well actually he hit me, he clobbered me with Jesus. He asked me point blank if I had the Lord in my heart and if I had found Jesus. Seriously, I am not kidding. And he went on and on telling me all about the goodness of the Lord and asking if I’ve confessed my sins and made my peace, etc, etc, ad nauseum. Then he invited me to his “church”, which turns out to be one that I recognized as a borderline “cult”. You know, one of those independent churches that don’t have an actual denomination. The whole time he was talking, he stared intently into my eyes, like he was trying to mesmerize me or something. I definitely felt like I was being recruited into a future of selling Bibles door to door or wearing Hare Krishna robes at the airport, begging for donations LOL Charles Manson probably recruited his followers the same way!

I wasn’t having any of it though, I lied like a dog, I told him that I had indeed found Jesus and God was in my heart and that I was in regular attendance at a nearby church, etc, etc. just to get him to shut the fuck up. I felt like I was having to chew my frikkin’ leg off to escape his insidious Spanish Inquisition line of questioning. I’m so going to hell…

I’m not against religion in any way shape or form, and I respect your right to worship or not worship, just please, keep it to yourself. Whatever chance he had of ever seeing me at his shop again for future auto repairs was just blown all to hell, so to speak. I never want to encounter that creepy freak again. LOL

I was telling Lisa this story, her response is now my new prayer. “God save me from those who want to save me”. hehe

Hope you guys are having a great weekend!

Have I ever mentioned how much I loathe cutting grass or doing yard work? I’ve always been that way. When I was a kid I was very allergic to fresh mown grass and it made me extremely miserable with swollen eyes, runny nose, burning, itchy skin and short of breath for hours. Did I ever get a break from cutting it? Hell no, my old man probably thought it built character or someshit and I was forced to cut it anyway. It wasn’t like I needed the exercise, I was always very active. And it didn’t matter that I felt like I was freakin’ dying because I could barely breathe, I had to cut it anyway. For some reason, the allergies have slowly diminished as I got older and older, but I hate it now more than ever. I remember dreaming of the day when I would become an adult and would never have to do yard work again.

That never happened! I became an adult, yes (sort of), but did I ever get a break from cutting it? Well, only when I lived in apartments, then some other schmuck had to cut it for me. Yay! And now I find it’s come full circle, my old man is too old and feeble to cut his own lawn so now I’ve had to take over the miserable ritual. Woe is me. If I had a time machine, I would go back and kill the bastard that came up with the idea that lawns needed trimming. I like to think it’s just a sick fad, why can’t it be fashionable to have a small jungle growing around your home? Think of how much more fun that would be!

When you think about the ecological impact, tall, natural grass makes much more sense. We pour fertilizer and insecticides all over it to nourish and protect it then we have to buy fuel and machines to maintain it. We waste fresh drinking water on it to keep it from dying! The poisons end up in our water supplies and the burnt fuel pollutes the air. Then just think of the impact the manufacturing of the billions of dollars worth of lawn equipment we buy every year has on the planets resources. Throw in thousands of serious injuries and medical emergencies that occur while cutting grass and it’s easy to see why it’s a really bad, bad idea. I believe that keeping a well manicured lawn is one of the most wasteful things that a homeowner can do. If you like cutting grass, then I think you’re one sick fuck.

Notice that I have nothing against veggie gardens or growing flowers, just don’t ask me to help you tend one, LOL And of course growing food crops or garden vegetables is a necessity, to me that’s not a waste of time, energy or resources. It’s a positive impact.

You’re probably wondering what brings up this rant. I was cutting grass at my folks house the other day and ended up with a HUGE gash in my arm from brushing past a freshly trimmed bush in the front yard. It sliced me open like a knife and I was barely able to stop the bleeding, two days later it still hurts like hell. It’s going to leave a massive, ugly scar and I’m PISSED. Now, I look like I was just in a bar brawl and right in the middle of job hunting. Just what I needed!

So, happy frikkin’ birthday to me, which just happens to be tomorrow by the way. So I ask you, in honor of my birthday and for the sake of our planet, I want you all to boycott cutting grass for one day. That’s not hard is it? Please, give the poor grass a break, let it grow dammit! The grass just wants to be free, grass has rights too!! LOL

What does the photo below have to do with this post? Not a thing!

I decided it was time to “repaint” the old FEMA trailer that’s been sitting out in the front yard. It’s been there well over a year now, unused, while we wait on FEMA’s engineering reports on what’s to finally be done about the house repairs. The worst part is that once they actually do something we may have to “live” in the piece of crap. Hard to believe but it has room for 8 people to sleep inside, talk about cramped. Sardines have more space to move around. LOL

I came across this cool quote from Ronald Reagan that sums up the governments laggardly response to Katrina.

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” Doesn’t that just say it all? hehe

And speaking of Ronald Reagan, I came across this old cigarette advertisement. Gotta love the “Christamas Card” cartons. Hey Ron, I’ll take a dozen!

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I got a brand new toy a couple of weeks ago and I just can’t stop playing with the damn thing. No it’s not a sex toy, minds out of the gutter please! Although it is almost as fun as sex.

It’s a new LG cu500 cellphone that’s also a music player and a video camera. My old Motorola was getting pretty tired and since I was eligible for an upgrade I decided to go for something really nice. It has a removable 1 gigabyte memory card that can hold up to 250 mp3 or wma songs or 3,000 photos or 300 minutes of video! The memory card even fits in my regular digital camera, so it’s very versatile. Granted, the video quality is pretty low, but the photo quality is pretty damn good, I’m really quite impressed.

And the data is all transferable back and forth to my PC thru a USB cable. It runs on At&T’s new high speed data 3G network and it has quad band so it can be used anywhere in the world. The music player is basically identical to an iPod with song shuffle and repeat and you can create custom playlists. I never imagined a cellphone could be so much fun to play with. Now if it just vibrated a little stronger…

Not a week goes by without a roofing contractor stopping in and asking if we need a new roof put on the old place. They always make it sound like they’re the very first ones to notice too… I can’t imagine why they would think we need a new roof, do you? Just because the tarps are so old they constantly flap in the breeze and there’s a huge hole in the back where the oak tree fell on it, naaa, we don’t need a new roof. We like that it leaks in about 5 different places.

Yes, I took this photo today, it will be 2 years this coming August since Katrina blew thru here and we’re still waiting on FEMA to decide whether or not the house will be repaired or demolished. Don’t you just love governmental bureaucracy at it’s finest?

Bastards…

Here’s a post I’ve been meaning to write for a long time about the work I used to do in the diving business. Although I worked for several different companies during those years the images below are from one company in particular. It’s name was Santa Fe Engineering and Construction and I worked in the Diving Division as a Systems Engineer and a Dive Controller. The company is no longer in business under that name as far as I know because it was bought out and absorbed by some huge offshore company in Dubai in the middle east. That put me out of a job but it was no big deal at the time because I had been offered a better job with another company.

The first picture is a view of one side of the diving complex with the diver’s living quarters (steel pressure chambers) underneath and the diving bell being hoisted over the side into the water in the Gulf of Mexico. The arrow in the photo is pointing to me watching the hull clearance as it’s lowered down. The divers lived in the system for up to 30 days at a time where they stayed under constant pressure equal to the water depth we were working in. This allowed them to save all of their decompression to prevent the bends until the end of the job. This also allowed them to stay underwater using the diving bell for up to 8 hours at a time where they worked in shifts. Notice the 20,000 pound anchor on the vessels deck in the foreground, there were eight of these used to stabilize and hold the position of the ship we were on.

Two divers could ride to the sea floor in the diving bell at one time where one would go outside and work for 4 hours and the other one would stay inside to tend the hose and the diving bell controls, then they would swap out for 4 more hours before returning to the surface. Then, 2 more divers would transfer into the bell and they would go to the seafloor to continue the work. This type of diving was called “total saturation” and allowed underwater work to be done around the clock, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Up to 8 divers could live inside the system at one time. The quarters were extremely cramped, but the divers pay was extremely high.

Total saturation meant that the divers body tissues could absorb no more gases no matter how much longer they stayed down, allowing a fixed amount of decompression at the completion of the job. Sometimes it took to up 3 days of slowly releasing the pressure in the chambers before the divers could safely emerge from the system. It was not very much unlike going into outer space actually, if the diving system were to become quickly depressurized the end result would be deadly, sort of like losing cabin pressure in a space capsule.

This next photo shows the back side of the system and most of it’s auxiliary equipment, including hydraulic power units, air compressors, an emergency chamber, breathing gas bottles and much more and also the control room sitting on top. That’s the small white building with the 2 rear access hatches open. Again the arrow in the photo is pointing at me. That’s an offshore oil drilling platform off in the distance

It took a shitload of equipment and personnel to put men on the bottom to do this type of work where only one man could work at a time. Although the vessel we were on was capable of doing many different roles, when diving was going on the entire crew of up to 300 men did nothing but support for that one task including technicians, mechanics, cooks, clerks, welders and riggers.

Below is a photo of the inside of the control room where 2 dive controllers would sit and converse with the divers on the bottom and in the living quarters. They had a lot of responsibilty because they had to monitor the divers environment pressure and control the mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and other gases in the divers breathing air. They also had closed circuit tv monitors and specialized radio equipment. You can see part of the diving bell thru the window.

The job that these photos were taken from was actually the trial runs for this particular diving system as it had just been completed construction. Everything had to be thoroughly tested on the job site before it could be certified safe to use as life support capable. At this point in my career I didn’t normally work offshore very much, not like I had used to. I was now only going out for initial trial runs because I was in charge of construction of the control rooms and the final asembly of all the major components. That was all done inshore at the companies main base where we completed 5 of these multi-million dollar systems. They were capable of being broken down into it’s smaller components and then reassembled and used at almost any location around the world.

Most often they were used in the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea and in the middle east but I was always on call to go wherever they were to trouble shoot or help with technical problems that may come up. I loved doing this type of work, it was actually a lot of fun and the pay was damn good too. Not to mention traveling to lots of cool places. One job I was on I spent over a year in Europe. Eventually, after 12 years I did get sick of it and after missing dozens of family holidays and spending time at home with friends I gave it up.

Hope you guys are having a good weekend! The N.O. Jazz Fest started yesterday and I’m still trying to decide if I’m going to go or not. If I do, I’ll certainly get some photos and video to post!

My grandmothers house is just about to be sold, my mom put it up for sale several months ago and soon a new family will be moving in. It’s an old “shotgun” style house built in the old New Orleans tradition, raised on short blocks just 2 or 3 blocks from the Mississippi River in old Algiers and near the old Naval Support base. It’s just across the river from the old French Quarter area. I have a lot of fond memories of the place as a child, playing in the yard, Easter egg hunts given by my french speaking Grandfather with pocket change given out as rewards and wonderful cajun style cooking from my Grandmother’s kitchen. Chasing the seemingly millions of dragonflies that fluttered about, getting bathed in a galvanized steel tub out in the backyard on balmy summer nights, and my Grandma’s delicious, sweet tea poured over ice with an unlimited amount of love and affection. Those were some good days and I miss them.

My grandfather was a strong, handsome man, a fighter and a lover and a gambler. He worked for years in the offshore oil industry and had quite a reputation as a ladies man. My grandmother was a home maker that knew how to cook and sew and had a strong sense of self. She was well loved and respected and always gave, always sacrificed, never asking anything in return. I was pretty lucky as a child, I guess I knew it then and I know it now. Those days will never return, but at least I have most of the memories and old photos to remind me. I hope the new family moving in will appreciate and enjoy their new home.

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I’ve got tons of new sites and blogs that I’ve done in recent months listed over at BGW! Way more than I want to list here, but here’s a link to my updated portfolio. Here are a couple of links to a some of the latest ones though. Mahlers on Safari who is an American mother living in Tanzania, Africa with her 2 children, another new one for Afro Nerd featuring Steve Urkel, a very nice recipe blog for Janet is Hungry, her beautiful food photos always make me so hungry! And a very well written political commentary blog called The Dishpan Chronicles written by The Kitchen Window Woman.

And, how about this? Gary’s Condors has collected over $2,000 toward the American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life fund drive and event. That’s pretty impressive and kudo’s go out to Sara for setting it up.

Hey, hope you guys have a nice weekend! The weather here looks to be pretty nice, I know I’m going to enjoy it!

I’ve been listening to all the talk (who hasn’t?) about Imus’ racist remark and it’s true, his sorry ass should be run off the radio. He is a racist prick and his feeble apology isn’t good enough to excuse what he said. I’m sure he can get a job as a radio jock for some neo-nazi, white supremacist hate group because that’s right where he belongs.

I’ve noticed though, that no one seems to have been offended by the fact that he called a group of young female college students ho’s! Black or white, this is just wrong on so many levels all by itself. Where does this bastard get off using such a derogatory term to describe young, hard working, college age athletes. These are peoples daughters, not Vegas hookers for craps sake. I can tell you this much, if I had a college aged daughter and she happened to be on the Rutgers basketball team, I would want to kick his sorry fuckin’ ass. I would like to see his reaction if his daughter had been called a “ho” by some loud mouthed racist lout on national talk radio. Bastard! Eat shit and die!

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Ok, now for something fun! You guys just have to try out this hilarious Flash game, see how many tries it takes you to catch the worm. Post your scores in the comments, it only took me 5 tries. Lets see you beat that! Bet you can’t! Make sure your sound is on too!Catch a Worm Game

Sara over at Life is a Journey is sponsoring a team relay for one of her co-workers who has been diagnosed with stomach cancer thru the American Cancer Society. You can check out the site; Gary’s Condors that I helped set up for news and information on the event to be held in Utah on May 4th and 5th. You can make your donation thru Paypal, a Paypal account isn’t necessary, most debit and credit cards are accepted. Please give to a worthy cause, even if it’s just a few bucks or whatever you can afford!

Cancer is a subject that hits close to home with me, my wife died from breast cancer over 10 years ago and it was a very painful experience that I’ll never forget. Early diagnosis is the key to survival!

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When Newbie Vampires Strike!

I took my final chemo injection last week, so I went in for some blood tests this morning to get the final results of how well the treatments have worked and I ended up getting a newbie phlebotomist to draw my blood. And now I feel like this guy!

I had a bad feeling right off when she didn’t seem to know her way around the computer interface as she looked up what tests I needed. I definitely knew something was wrong when she only had 3 vials to be filled. On a normal visit, they usually fill about 5 and today they were supposed to be doing several extra tests, but she insisted that was all. After she finished drawing the blood, I kept insisting that something wasn’t right. She had to pull the needle out to go look at her computer again and finally realized her mistake. So she had to stick me again to get the rest of the necessary samples. I ended up getting needle stuck twice! In the same arm! grrrrrrr!!

At least she hit the vein on the first try each time. She wound up taking about 9 vials all together, and I think she left me with just a few drops. I don’t really mind getting blood drawn, It’s become a routine thing with me the past few years but having to do it twice in one sitting is not so nice, dammit!

Ahh well, it’s almost all over and I’m actually starting to feel a bit better now that the chemo is done. It will take a few weeks to start feeling completely normal again, that shit stays in your system for a long time and it will take a while just to recover from the severe anemia. I’m just so happy it’s finally all done and I can resume a real life.

I’ll be looking for full time work at an actual job soon, damn, I haven’t had a “real” job in almost 5 years! I’m looking forward to it! Back in the rat race!

Have a happy hump day and don’t forget to donate!!!

I don’t know why Islamic Muslims think they will be rewarded with a harem of virgins at their disposal when they die and personally I really don’t care, but this photo made me laugh out loud.

If you think your “god” will reward you for being an evil, murderous, son of a bitch, it’s time to go “god shopping” is all I can say. And have your brain removed for forensic study…

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Local Council Woman May Be Delusional
Sometimes an idiot comes along that really grabs my attention, and seriously pisses me off. There’s a story in the local New Orleans newspaper today about a city council woman named Cynthia Hedge-Morrell that was stopped by a Louisiana State Trooper for traveling over 100 mph on the shoulder of the road and weaving in her city owned SUV while she had a “blue light” flashing. When he stopped her she yelled at him “Do you know who I am? . . . What the hell are you stopping me for?” Apparently this isn’t the first time she’s been stopped under similar circumstances. This womans main claim to “fame” is that she was once a school principal and is the wife of La. State Representative Arthur Morrell. It’s good to see that we have such “quality” people with “god complexes” and who think they’re above the law running this city. Her “excuse” was that she was late for a meeting. Now there’s a good reason to risk the lives of everyone else on the highway. Link to the article

Yeah, like New Orleans doesn’t have enough problems, the state police have to deal with morons like this. I’m disappointed that the police didn’t haul her sorry ass in to give her a DWI or blood sample test to see if she was drunk or on drugs! Feel free to email her here: CHMorrell@cityofno.com if you want to give her a piece of your mind.

 

 

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Here’s a nice parting shot for Papa Johns, I got this in my email the other day advertising their “Easter Special” and since we all know how I feel about their lousy ass service, I thought I would put it up. Apparently they think we should associate eating pizza with the resurrection of Jesus, LOL How frikkin lame is that! “Light the candles, say the prayers and pass the pizza!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have a fun weekend!

Anyone else sick of seeing Will Ferrell’s movie commercials every 5 minutes on seemingly every single fukkin’ channel on TV? I swear I just wanna throw something at the tube every time I see that goofy looking mug. I was practically driven insane with the Talladega Nights commercials and now it’s for the Blades of Glory movie. If I had a frikkin’ nickle for every one of those commercials I watched I would be a rich man! I think he’s only mildly funny in his movies and I actually hated him when he was on Saturday Night Live, does he really deserve so much damn promotion? Maybe they think if you’re told often enough that he’s funny, you’ll actually start believing it, like subliminal advertising or sumshit. Die bastard DIE! …or at least get off my damn TV.

Anyway, on to something that pisses me off even more! LOL I just had lunch at the local Wendy’s hamburger joint and I decided to “dine in” because I know it’s air conditioned (it’s hot as hell here) and I felt like relaxing for a few. I sit down to eat and I hear what I thought was a talk radio show on the speaker system, I know they usually play music. After a few minutes I realized I was being bombarded by a continuous loop advertisement for Direct TV.

That’s right, a continuous talk show espousing all the “wonderful” benefits of signing up for Direct TV and not only that, but how to trouble shoot your system if it ever stops working, how to use the remote, plug it in to the wall, how to clean the dish, who to call to upgrade existing service and on and on and fukkin’ ON till I wanted to kill someone. Too bad they didn’t tell me who I needed to go “postal” on to make it STOP!! BASTARDS! I started to complain to the manager but decided that it would be more fun to write about it on my blog and of course make up my own Wendys logo! Take that, bitches! Yeah, I know, griping about how lousy fast food restaurants are and how much they SUCK ASS has been a recurring theme around here. But, dammit, fast food ain’t cheap, it’s just convenient, does the service and the experience have to be so shitty?

This same Wendys had their “dining room” completely remodeled lately with all new fixtures, carpet and seating. It’s nice, but what cracks me up is they have a sign next to the building bragging about the new interior and that you should “See It Inside!” Well, DUH you stupid dumbasses, where else would we freekin’ see it, out in the damn street, …on the roof maybe? Whatever…

Now for something good! My friend Joe over at East Coast Gourmet liked his new blog that I designed for him so much that he sent me an awesome dinner of lobster tails, lobster bisque, clam chowder and crackers and even threw in a couple of desserts as a bonus! He Fedex overnighted it to me and everything was ‘tres delicious! He uses his blog to put up recipes for all kinds of tasty sounding New England delicacies, you should check it out. And of course you can order just about anything delivered from the website. Thanks Joe, it was much appreciated!

Now for something even better!! Lisa has been cracking me up for the past few weeks with a little song she sings to me, to remind me that I only have X number of chemo injections left, how cool is that! Tomorrow I take my very last injection out of a weekly series that I started last JUNE!! Yeah, this shit’s been going on forever! I guess I was whining a bit about how shitty it made me feel a few weeks ago and she started singing that I only had three more injections to try to cheer me up. Then last week it was two more, then this week it was one more. You get the picture. Tomorrow she said she’ll be singing “No More Injections” LOL Very cute! Thanks sweetheart!!

That’s all I got! Hope you guys have a killer-diller weekend!~!