The Life and Times of Jim
Hi, there. I'm Jim. Welcome to my phlog!
This site was written for Las Vegas, then LouisVille. Now, it seems to be about anywhere. In these phlogs, you'll see a lot of my personal notes and pictures. I like to post my observations here to remember life and celebrate it. I'm not religious. I don't pray for good fortune. I'm ecstatically grateful for the gift of life and I think our time should be remembered and not taken for granted. I'm not a writer. I think pictures tell stories so much better than words. I love just about everything in this life, and, I guess that would have to include you. So, if you've seen me, don't be surprised if your picture is in here somewhere. Of all the critters, people are absolutely the most interesting. 
<< 01/2006 < 12/2006 Calendar 02/2007 > 01/2008 >>Sign InView Other Logs
Wed 
01/24/2007 09:41:05
 jim  Finished up the condo yesterday.
All except for the final clean up. Becky cleaned and  painted. I painted. Sonny cleaned up the garage.
Sonny actually did most of the work this time. Cheers to Sonny...YEAH!!!!
This time, we'll charge a $50 refundable application fee and we will check references.
No more cash deals. Its too much effort.
I called a real estate agent about the houses across the street.
The 1,600 square foot houses cost $310,000 ($193 a square foot)
The 1,800 square foot houses cost $352,000 ($194 a square foot)
So the condo should be worth over $120,000.
Sat 
01/20/2007 21:40:14
 jim  Week End at Jimmys
Thursday day, Becky and I worked on the condo (finally). The holes were patched, the front door was painted. The fridge was cleaned. The stove was cleaned. Our tenants were complete slobs. 
I sliced my finger open, and bled in the paint, darn it! But all thats left to do some touch up painting.
Thursday night, Sharon, Michelle, Mandy and Mirrissa came over. They didn't leave until after 2am.
Friday night, Dustin and Jennifer stayed over. We were up late again. I kept cracking up at them. They say the oddest things. A girl in some movie was standing on a hill all saddened by her loss and Dustin said, "Is she going to jump?". I said, "Yea, she's going to roll down the hill to her horrible death"...and I just couldn't stop laughing. It was the thought of a girl in a beautiful dress doing something that stupid just cracked me up to pieces.
Today, we lazed around, playing Family Feud and watching tube. 
Question 1 - "Other names you call small children"...Dustin's answer, "Virgins". My answer "midgets".
Question 2 - "Other names for horses"...Dustins answer, "Jalopy","Sam","Duke". My answer "Equestian".
Question 3 - "Name things that shrink after using them"...My answer...well, I couldn't say it, its dirty.
Its a strange, but leisurely life.
Wed 
01/24/2007 09:33:36
 jim   (Reply)..Week End at Jimmys
I'd call a newborn baby an adult fetus...haha.
You could only call the baby a virgin if it didn't have a twin brother.
Who knows what preborn babies do in there? Nine months is a lot of time!
Myself, I think I was always trying to peek outside. har har.
I like kangaroo babies.
Their fetal baby is called a "Joey".
Weighing less than two grams, it climbs into its mothers pouch after she licks a path for it to follow.
Her milk will change during its development..
And whats really odd about the Joey
Is has an semi developed backup (a twin in suspense).  It hangs out in the womb for a few weeks after Joey's birth.
If conditions are good, the twin will crawl out.
I think thats incredible how these macropods live.
They live in mobs, ya know.
Sat 
01/20/2007 09:07:54
 jim  Nevada Briefs
Nevada foreclosures over 100,000 for the fifth month
See article. Personally, I own two houses here.
I recently talked to a condo owner who lives near one of them. He said he bought his 3 bedroom condo for $80,000 in 2004. It is now worth $160,000. Like most of the people here, he has refinanced and pulled cash out. If he had only $20,000 into his condo (with payments), that would represent a two year gain of over 400%.
I would think the foreclosures would hurt the loan companies, then the banks, and eventually the US Treasury. I would think the interest rates would go up. But who knows, things often work out the opposite way of how you'd expect to.
On the flip side, luxury houses are going for a mint! A luxury condo at the Turnberry Towers goes for $2,000 a square foot. Most houses go for $20 a square foot.
Child Welfare gets bad an "F".
See article. No surprise there. I've heard the best thing to do, if you need social assistance, is to move to California.
Nevada Educational funding gets an "F".
See Article. No surprise there. Talking to kids these days, they seem to know very little about our Greek and Roman heritage. They're understanding of geograpy is weak. It seems that even with D's and F's, these kids pass the grade. I still find it hard to accept that playing a computer game is considered Physical Education.
Nevada stem cell research is happening.
See article. I was curious about why research was so contraversial so I read up on it. The stem cells can take on the attributes of any cell in the body (IE: liver cells, or in my case, a new brain), but with current technology, extracting them kills an embryo without dignity. Normally, the embroyos would be wasted if not fertilized. See wikipedia.
Nevada Methamphetimine use called Epidemic
See article. No surprise here. I often drive down the road and see people waving their hands and talking to themselves. Sometimes they walk erratic and fast.
This is why I don't read the news much. Its depressing.
Wed 
01/17/2007 12:48:46
 jim  Have you checked out Office 2007 yet?
One of Sonny's engineer buddies gave him MS Office 2007 Professional. Then Sonny gave it to me for Christmas.
Its pretty cool.
I've been using their Access 2007 for my database design.
It looks just like SQL Server 2000. If I didn't know any better, I'd say it was MSSQL 2000.
I like the way table relationships are done...
EG: I have a User table and a Tran table. To create a relationship, you drag User.user_id to Tran.user_id, and Bingo, you've got a relationship! I like that a lot. I did a lot of that for IGT with their transformation tables.
Wed 
01/17/2007 11:38:01
 jim  .Mr Short was asking...
Click this link and tell me what you think about my system: http://www.lvdude.com/notary
The system should take credit cards securely, but I'm using $10 for testing purporses.
I don't want to have brochures and business cards printed up until I have a system in place.
I'm almost done too =)
But you never know how it comes out on different browsers. Netscape is one I'm not even considering.
Mr Short might like this:
Right now, the system calculates distances between zip codes (using my address as a base).
Legally, a mobile notary may only charge $5 a notary and a maximum of $10 for travel during the day, $25 at night.
That sux. So, how are notaries making money?
The way to make money is to inform the customers of additional charges in advance. EG: I want $20 for the order, plus $2 a mile for every mile of 20.
I'm not doing notaries yet. I have to advertise first. My Yellow Page ad comes out in April.
Wed 
01/17/2007 12:45:29
 jim   (Reply)...Mr Short was asking...
Thats what I'm hoping to get ($120 to $250 a signing), if I actually do the work.
Actually, I would like to get ALL the business from the other agents in town.
I'd like them to go through my notary system. That way they can legally get more than the legal limit, and I can get a commission.
The way it works now is clutzy for notaries.
They are lucky to get paid anything, from what I've heard.
Most of them don't take credit cards.
One girl said when she gets a check, and she runs to the bank asp to cash it.
Most of them only make $600 a month doing loan signings, and thats usually around the end of the month.
What I need to do is smooze lawyers, title companies, loan companies, hospitals and real estate agents.
I created a transaction under your name for the heck of it.
If you click on the Notary dropdown or go into http://www.lvdude.com/notary , and click enter twice, you'll see the Pizza transaction. lol.
Let me know what you think, ok?
Sat 
01/27/2007 07:51:49
 jim   (Reply).Lu:Lu:Mr Short was asking...
Sorry it took so long for me to discover your entry.
Sonny got your order on his cell phone the other night.
If I had all my code out there, you would have seen a little cell phone with your message on its screen.
Anyway, now that I know that was you, I'm cracking up !!!!
You are awesome dude, and Sonny's expression was priceless!!!
I fixed most of the problems you mentioned, but its still in my local test system.
I've been having trouble copying my stuff...cause my cable internet burps a lot.
The credit card portion does take credit cards
but I haven't finished yet, cause I'm actually testing with my money.
Right now, if someone paid by credit, noone would know about it...haha. I'm dealing with Paypal, and I still have to find out what they're going to tell me...eg: did the credit transaction work or fail?
I've been testing with both Mozilla and Explorer.
Screw Netscape. IE and Mozilla seem to have their own ideas on what OVERFLOW:AUTO means. Now I've got scroll bars everywhere I look. They're ugly, they're blue, and I can't seem to change the little boogers.
I like how Mozilla handles errors with its magic disappearing cursor.
The cursor just disappears. I'm dealing with 5 languages here, and if I miss a semi-colon somewhere in the 1,000s of lines of code I've written, boom, the cursor disappears. That blows.
Tue 
01/16/2007 10:34:08
 jim  Ah, a new log is born. (For Movies)
The movie log, or as I'd like to spell it, the moovy log. Inspired by the ever so awesome Warren...
Big hand for Warren....rah rah, clapping hands, confetti and dancing girls to ya.
You mentioned Zardoz 

which, by the way, happens to be one of my all time favorite B movies.
I liked that movie so much.
They used crystals for their memory storage.
At that time, I had read they were developing crystals with blue lasers for computer storage.
I thought. "YES, FINALLY, a better medium than VHS tapes! I can free up an entire room now.". 
But they came up with DVDs instead. They looked just like CDs, but cost more.
DVDs confused to people, somehow.
I've seen people throw DVDs like Frisbees, put their finger prints all over them, and even use them as coasters.
Some people decorated their Christmas trees with them. They even hung them on their rear view mirrors.
But outside of their misleading appearance, DVDs are supposed to have a shelf life of 100 years.
Thats great, really great, but I don't keep mine on the shelf! I keep them in a coffee can. I actually watch them too.
They just don't last that long after all the sliding in and sliding out and spinning and screeching to a halt from 1,000 mph.
Another advance that I liked about Zardoz was the flying head thing.
Imagine, if cars flew and looked like your head. That would be great!
No more searching for your car in crowded parking lots.
You could just ask anyone if they knew where you parked. "yea, uh, that car over there looks just like you".
Tue 
01/16/2007 00:00:00
 jim  ..Martin Luther King
Thats a good question Mikey. I looked it up. Who is this guy?
Mon 
01/15/2007 15:35:44
 jim  Life
I've been searching for the meaning of life as long as I can remember.
Growing up, there were too many Bibles, too many insane stories, too many overlooked truths.
I look around and I see animals that are not that different from myself. They have organs like me; hearts, kidneys, stomachs, brains. They have hair. They are as alive as I am. Yet we kill them, because somehow, it isn't a wrong.
I never saw people as black, yellow, white or brown.
That was just a minor difference. All the hate was plain stupidity.
I wondered, if people were smart, why didn't they seek science for longer lives. Why did they seek greed, power and control. I realized, our species is insane. If we don't understand what we see, we invent concepts that are not real. Then we kill our own species if they don't believe in our insanity. As a result, most of the human race believes in things they know can't be real. Our ignorance is only overcome by our arrogance.
It should be obvious to anyone who dares to look...
We were all spawned by the same entity. Everything on this planet is necessary. All life on this planet is related. We are cousins of the animals, and distant cousins of the plants. Our greatest forefathers were single celled creatures. Life on earth could have been spawned by one single celled creature. Four billion years is a long time for life to grow.
It takes our own body only 9 months to form from a single celled life form.
Its not so far fetched, that all the knowlege we were given at birth, was inherited by our ascendants. We are reincarnations of those who spawned us. We just can't remember them simply because we don't need to.
Our purpose is to help life spread.
These observations should be obvious.
I believe that the worst thing we could do to our dead is to embalm or cremate them. To do so, destroys their DNA. It obliviates any chance of their knowledge being passed down.
Adults seem as impatient as children at times.
I've heard people say that when we die, we go to heaven, even though theres no evidence of this.
I think we don't go anywhere. I believe we mutate and there is evidence of that.
I think, in 8 billion years, given nothing else to accellerate the process, we'll be back. I say that because that is how long it took the universe to create us.
Perhaps, in a hundred years or so...
People will drop their fantasies, forget about the gods and devils they imagined, their heavens and hells, and just look at what is real. Maybe we won't use and abuse other life forms just because they are different.
Maybe someday, we'll share with this planet and go on to make the universe a better place.
But for now, the human race seems to be insane with greed, religion and power. We are dooming ourselves.
Mon 
01/15/2007 00:00:00
 Jim  Martin Luther King’s Birthday
Martin Luther King Day was founded as a holiday and was promoted by labor unions in contract negotiations. hmmm. See Wikipedia. I don't know much about this guy, except that he was a Babtist minister. I guess he was pretty cool back in the 1960's. But as a kid, he scared the brownies out of me. He was always yelling and pointing his finger at something. He even yelled about his dreams!
People like that scare little kids.

Thu 
01/11/2007 22:16:41
 jim  Vegas,NV-Gabriel-Becky
Thu 
01/11/2007 20:45:31
 Jim  Did you know
Iraq is smaller than Arizona. It has less people than California. Mexico City has almost as many people.
With that in mind, why is it so hard to conquer?
If something sounds wrong, it probably is.
Wed 
01/10/2007 18:29:59
 Jim  The Iraq war, Bush, and his buddies.
Price Graph
From: Morningstar.com, stock named HAL.
I guess, from what I've read, $1.4 billion was awarded to the Texas company called Halliburton in a no-bid contract. It was run by Dick Cheney, a Bush advisor (See Article).  That stock price has to be one of the hottest ones in the NYSE. Man, why can't I have buddies like that!!!   
The Bush speech was touching. .
Help the Iraqis people grow democratic.
Stop the 'insurgents'. Stop the Alkiada regime. That sounds great!
But how do we know we've won, exactly?
And how we never, ever, hear about the oil production over there?
I've always thought thats what the war was really about. We never hear about that though.
I do wish we'd help our neighbors in Mexico, instead.
Maybe they'd stop fleeing to the US. I suppose there is now profit in that. To bad, hombres. Your country doesn't seem to have anything we would kill for to get. hmmm.
Now, I gotta say that I don't intentionally look up disturbing new.
It just seems to rear its ugly head all by itself.
Wed 
01/10/2007 10:28:56
 Jim  .A pioneer effort
I got your log Sonny and I'm glad to see you're contributing to it.
LVDUDE.com probably has a total of 12 visitors a month...haha.
Sat 
01/06/2007 20:34:39
 Jim  New Years on the Vegas Strip

It was cold in the parking lot in front of the Frontier. We found a parking spot, almost right on the Strip, and right around 9pm. I thought that was AMAZING! We had to hang out for the next three hours for the big fireworks spectacle, so....

Becky and I walked up and down the Strip.
We popped into the Frontier, Venetian, and Treasure Island. Compared to the other New Years, the crowd was as thin as Charmin. But like I said, it was f-f-f-f-f-r-e-e-z-ing!
Finally the time came...midnight on the Strip.
I futzed with my new Christmas camera for a few moments, the looked up, and it was over! Wut thu hay I hooted, and I'm not an indian. 2007 had to be the shortest New Years fireworks display I'd ever seen, lasting only 6 minutes long.
The things I enjoyed this New Years were:
The scantely clad girls.
The guys in heavy fur jackets.
The people with flashing balls in their mouths.
The horse cops.
And the all-slapped-give-out drunks.
Sat 
01/06/2007 17:29:57
 Jim  Tuned the car, fixed the stereo
The car runs GREAT now...nothing like those 100,000 mile tuneups.
The car stereo didn't work on the back right, because the speaker was missing...hmmmm.
Did I take it out, or was it already missng. That's a very puzzling question.
What's my name again?
Sat 
01/06/2007 10:58:54
 Jim  .Good Morning
That is kind of funny about your Mom. Me, I thought Renee was being a normal teenager, until she met Junior.
What a creep Junior was.
Renee started stealing (really bad) while she was with him. She really lost it.
Badd seemed to help her, by getting her away from Junior.
I think she's going to have a wonderful life.
As far as her sex thing goes...wow.
I don't know what she's told other people, but I do know what I've seen and heard.
I don't think your going to find a lot of 18 year old virgins out there...for that matter, 15 year olds.
In the past generations, is it really that odd to think teens are sexually active.
Just look at the way kids dress for school. That should give parents a clue.
Label kids perverts, sinners, or any other bad name you can think of, but most of us had sex when we were teenagers. 
I'd think thats normal all around the world, for all generations past.
When did you Great Great Grandmother have her first child?
Fri 
01/05/2007 02:32:37
 jim  The setting of our sun
If yesterday has no beginning, and tommorrow never comes
Then today is just a place, where everything is done.

If a child becomes a man, and a man turns into stone
Then the love that that man shared, is dust upon his throne.

We all know what to do. We know what's to be done.
We must love our time today, because tommorrow never comes.

And if love won't build our mountains, then what good is it you say.
Its the love you give yourself, that's the love you give away.

Cause we all know what to do. We all know what to say.
Its our voices that we hear, on each and every day.

And if yesterday doesn't begin, and tommorrow isn't done
We'll find ourselves at last, at the setting of our sun. -jrc-
Wed 
01/03/2007 01:23:43
 Jim  You Know You’re a Redneck If:
- You take your dog for a walk and you both use the same tree.
- You can entertain yourself for more than 15 minutes with a fly swatter.
- Your boat has not left the driveway in 15 years.
- You burn your yard rather than mow it.
- You think "The Nutcracker" is a vice on the work bench.
- The Salvation Army declines your furniture.
- You offer to give someone the shirt off your back and they don't want it.
- You have the local taxidermist on speed dial.
- You come back from the dump with more than you took.
- You keep a can of Raid on the kitchen table.
- Your wife can climb a tree faster than your cat.
- Your grandmother has "ammo"on her Christmas list.
- You keep flea and tick soap in the shower.
- You've been involved in a custody fight over a hunting dog.
- You go to the stock car races and don't need a program.
- You know how many bales of hay your car will hold.
- You have a rag for a gas cap.
- Your house doesn't have curtains,but your truck does.
- You wonder how service stations keep their rest-rooms so clean?
- You can spit without opening your mouth.
- You consider your license plate personalized  because your father made it.
- Your lifetime goal is to own a fireworks stand.
- You have a complete set of salad bowls and they all say "Cool Whip" on the side.
- The biggest city you've ever been to is Wal-Mart.
- Your working TV sits on top of your non-working TV.
- You've used your ironing board as a buffet table.
- A tornado hits your neighborhood  and does $10 worth of damage.
- A tornado hits your neighborhood  and does $100,000 worth of improvements.
- You've used a toilet brush to scratch your back.
- You missed your 5th grade graduation because you were on jury duty.
- You think fast food is hitting a deer at 65
Mon 
01/01/2007 13:55:16
 Jim  My version of the Strip fireworks

They should have looked like this, but, and I don't care what the news said, they were short.
And the crowd didn't look like any 300,000 people either...
I was really surprised at the low turnout.
We parked almost right on the strips sidewalk in the Frontier parking lot, which was VERY HANDY!
The show was nice.
But I need to learn a few things.
I started clapping to the beat of the music where this guy was break dancing.
He must have taken that as an invitation to come over and do a strip tease for Becky.
That was not my intention! lol.
HAPPY NEWD YEAR
Mon 
01/01/2007 11:00:08
 jim  HoneyMoonIsland-20070101
Sun 
12/31/2006 12:33:40
 Jim  After making breakfast this morning
Dustin got some breakfast out of the skillet. I asked them how much was left when he came to the table.
He said (holding his hands side by side) "About this much". I said "huh?"
He said, "about a hand full". I said  "Who's hand?"
Then he said, "Theres about 7 sausages left exactly too."
I laughed so hard. Then I said "Becky! There's only a pocket full of scrambled eggs left...you'd better get some".
She laughed.
Sun 
12/31/2006 07:40:31
 Jim  I saw the New Years Ghost
12/31/2006 - I saw the New Years Ghost
I saw a ghost this News Years Eve when I looked in the mirror. It looked just like me.
Then I started seeing ghosts all around me.
When you go out this New Years, look around at the people. Picture them as if you watching them in a video filmed 100 years ago.

Notice how much we all look alike, how well we get along, and how we all seem to be related? Don't look at our differences. Look are how much we have in common.
Pretend you lost your long term memory?
Ever see a picture of a Great Great relative that looked just like you? Ever talked to someone who thought just like you?
If you can think like me for just a moment
Imagine that when we die, we don't go anywhere. Imagine the we are all reincarnations of our ancestors, without their memories. Imagine that it goes much deeper than that. Imagine we are all the reincarnations of the dinosaurs and further back. Too me, life seems too obvious. Animals, birds, fish, insects, we all have the same organs. We all must be related.
We were born with knowledge.
It came from someone. It probably came from our parents.
Nature could have populated our memories with that of our ancestors, but for whatever reason, it didn't.
Who knows, maybe we'd still be arguing about how someone sacrificed our favorite lamb or something...
But doesn't that seem a lot easier to believe than some fairy floating down and touching us with her magic wand.
If you think like I do, you'll know that on this planet, all life is related. Given enough time, we all come back.
Sat 
12/30/2006 13:03:42
 Jim  I love you sweetheart
HI...its nice out today.
Thu 
12/28/2006 10:58:15
 Jim  I’m having to recode my notary site
IE only allows 20 cookies per sight.
It looks like one cookie when you look at it in explorer, but you could basically
unstring a cookie.txt file delimited by ";" into cookie1, cookie2...cookie20.
Handling the cookie is IEs job since you have to go through its routines to access local files.
That really sucks. All the other browsers don't care how many cookies you have.
I hate spending hours trying to figure out why items are dropping off when the reason is plain stupidity.
--- sheesh ---
Wed 
12/27/2006 08:58:02
 jim  Regarding quitting smoking and hypnotism
I've heard good things about being hypnotized to quit. How do you look that up?
Thu 
12/28/2006 10:52:49
 Jim   (Reply).Regarding quitting smoking and hypnotism
Thats kind of why I mentioned it in this blog. I wrote the shrinks name down, but forgot it, and lost what I wrote it on.
Shoot. And if I try to look it up on the net, I get thousands of junk sites.
I thought his name was Bill...but I forgot his last name too.
--- One of these days I'll fix the order of entries on this blog.
Wed 
12/27/2006 07:01:26
 jim  Should auld acquaintance be forgot
People we lost in 2006
Gerald Ford (US president) 93, James Brown (singer) 73, Peter Boyle (actor) 71, Moses Hardy (oldest man) 113, JB Hunt (trucking mogul) 79, Samual Bowers (KKK Imperial Wizard) 82, Dave Kochran (author X-Men) 63, Mike Douglas (talk show host)  81, James Van Allen (Van Allen belt),  James Harvey Young (medical historian) 90, Mikey Spillane (Mike Hammer author) 88, Red Buttons (comedian) 87, Billy Preston (singer) 59, Darren McGaven (actor) 83, Don Knotts (comedian) 81, Wilson Pickett (singer) 64, Shelly Winters (actress) 85, Lou Rawls (singer) 72, Aaron Spelling (TV mogul) 83, Dennis Weaver (actor) 81, Louis Cutlar (my dad) 83.
Wed 
12/27/2006 08:51:19
 jim   (Reply).Should auld acquaintance be forgot
Wilson Pickey was 64...I copied the footnote reference accidentally. Thanks SAE.
Tue 
12/26/2006 23:59:54
 jim  I am sick, IM IM.
Feeling down from a cold
I wasn't really a pleasure to be with today. I guess its a cold. Sore throat, sneezing, itchy eyes, can't breath.
Since I've been back, my breathing has taken a drastic turn for the worse.
Becky and I are going to quit smoking on New Years.
It seems like the right thing to do. Nevada hates smokers and I don't like being an addict.
I suppose if I succeed, I'll end up like all the other people who quit smoking and hate smoking too.
I'll probably end up using the inaccurate term "Cancer Sticks" in slurs, myself.
BTW - The odds of rolling a 3 in craps are about the same as a smoker getting cancer. 
Only an idiot would think 3's are probable. Hence, "Cancer Sticks" is a stupid label. I know it sound cool.
"Empysema Sticks" would be far more appropriate. Everyone that smokes will eventually get emphysema.
While I'm on stupid slurs,
"Heart Attack Coffee", "Chlorestoral Bacon", "Big Butt Burgers", "Fat Fanny Fries",  "Mucous Milk", and "Bimbo Beer"would be more appropriate labels.
You could even slang ham by saying, "Here, have an ass sandwich", but thats just wrong.
IM'd GMa
We thought we were all invited over today for dinner, but it turned out the invitation was for New Years.
IM'd Ida
We talked about our Christmas's.
Ida says her boyfriend is going to liquidate his business and retire. He hurt his hip not long ago.
I should offer to buy it from him. Ida says he was doing well with it.
She invited Allen into our Instant Messenger conversation.
IM'd Allen, after over a year of silence
We'd been friends since high school, but fell apart over money. That kind of thing seems to happen a lot.
He was funny as usual. He said he'd just visited the Blue Hole in Kentucky. Small world.
He was getting run off by the same hillbilly that tried to run us off. I told him that the guy knew both Allen and me.
Its funny how hard it is to recognize people after they've lost all of their teeth.
I thought the hillbilly guy was just paranoid about us finding his pot crop
Mon 
12/25/2006 18:33:03
 jim  Christmas was great!
I thought it would be.
We talked to Ida at 6am.
Sonny, Becky and I went to GMas for breakfast pizza at 9am.
We opened presents, sat around, talked and had fun.
But before I go on, I want to tell you about what I got for Christmas.
That seems pretty relavent to my favorite person (me).
- Becky gave me another Casio camera. I have an Olympus Stylus 7 megapixel, camera, but its pictures wreak (yes, I believe Casio has a better camera than Olympus these days) and I took about 100 pictures. They're great!!!
- Paul gave me a really cool Sears socket/wrench set. It has 180 pieces. I'm told Sears will replace the tools no matter what I do to them, so I could break all the tools in half, take one half to one Sears, take the other half to another Sears, and double my tool set.
After a year of doing this, I could own Sears. But thats a thought.
- Sonny gave me a bag of rocks.
I know that sounds bad, but these are sented, and you pop them in the microwave to heat them up, then wear them. 
This is not just another bag of rocks.
But I digress. Now back to Christmas at Gmas.
Gma gave Becky a do-over, which looks good.
However, I'm not used to Becky looking mature.
Becky has this innocent little girl look thats hard to beat.
So, I just don't know what to think of the make over.
We all ate breakfast pizza, then got back home at 11am.
Michelle (our neighbor) came by to tell us she had found her way back to the Lord.
Meanwhile, I added potatoes, carrots and onions to the water pan in the smoker and it caught on fire. Thats okay though, the ham and pork already looked burnt. Still, it tasted great.
At any rate, it was a great diversion from hearing about the high priest (or whatever he is called) that Michelle talked to at the Mormon Temple.
Becky's folks got to our house at 2pm, just when I was taking off to pick up Robert.
Paul and I went to pickup Robert and Joy, but only Joy was there.
Eventually, we ate smoked pork, smoked ham, veggies, and berry delight. 
Renee even called and we put her on speaker phone.
GMa and I polished off the meal with (and I'm not lying) a non alcoholic Jack Daniels Expresso.
It had no kick to it, but it was still very nice.
We unwrapped presents and all was cool.
I took 100 more pictures but I accidentally wiped them out. Oops.
Take my word, they were great pictures.
It was fortunate, that on this Christmas, I wasn't the only person taking pictures.
Gma and Becky both took pictures...ahhhh, relief.
Gma, Paul and all took off, with Robert, Joy and Amy remaining. 
Sonny's passed out.
At this point, its 7:30pm. Robert took off and said he'd be back in 20 minutes.
That was a 6pm.
We're sitting around watching CSI Las Vegas.
Becky is at the couch enjoying her Ginsu Messager.
Joy is cruising the internet. Squirt thinks we're all crazy!
Me, I'm tired. I think I had too much expresso.
Goodnight everybody.
This was the best Christmas I've ever had.
Mon 
12/25/2006 03:46:57
 jim  This will be my best Christmas
 
The Christmas I'll remember best will be the one thats happening today.
My memories of the past
have faded into sepia-like images, tinted by the colors of the spirits that I've chosen to keep in my mind. What I'm trying to say is, when I remember Christmas, I see the spirits of love.
So, at this time...
I want to thank the 100s of people who have shared their holidays with me and made them absolutely wonderful.
You've worn pajamas, business suits, tank tops, and robes. You've put bows in your hair and worn funny hats.
We've celebrated at work, at your place and at my home. We've spent time together and you made me smile.
And I want you to know that I love you with all of my heart.
Thanks for the memories.
Thu 
12/21/2006 17:47:15
 jim  .The Smoking Law took Effect
The law discrimates against business types. If they said it applies to all businesses, and allowed for smoking areas, that would be a start at being impartial, but it didn't. The law said it applies to you, you, and you and but not you.
If you own a hookah bar (a specific club for tobacco users), your business will be destroyed. If you don't have an unlimited gaming license, or a strip club or brothel, or serve food thats not prepackaged, your business will be damaged.
After the hooka bars did all of the homework to start a legal business, gotten all of their licensing, and dealt with all the Krapola involved, after all that, a law came up that will shut them down. RED just invested $250,000 to expand one of their hookah bars in Las Vegas.
Don't we have too many stupid laws already?
What if they came up with a law that said computer consultants had to be licensed and pay $20,000 a year in taxes.
These kind of items have already popped up in laws claiming to be Sin Taxes. Cute, but stupid.
What will happen when these kind of discrimintory laws hit your business.
I've read the sample ballots countless times.
No way would the voters think that
- any bar that serves a wedge of lime with a drink be counted as a serving unprepackaged foods
- hotel rooms would be included in the ban,
- the health department can now write $100 tickets to customers
   in effect, turning them into another policy maker and enforcement agency.
But really, I could care less. I'm not effected by the law.
Nevada is. I'd expect the winners of the law would be the casinos. They've had business legally thrown in their direction.

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