Monday Musings...

Ever get the feeling that this year is kinda screwed up?
Here it is, APRIL, and we're having a bumper crop of MARCH WINDS.
Never seem to get what we want when we want it, do we?
Our Hoosierland weather is starting off innocent enough, but temps will drop during the day and we'll wind up in the low 40s by late afternoon. Expect the winds to subside somewhat, and skies to be partly to mostly cloudy.
Well, it IS a Monday, right? Can't expect  much along those lines.
Anyway, what say we all gt our morning drink poured, and hopefully not have to deal with much of the crap that we know is always coming as we see what's going on elsewhere...
*** First out of the kite factory is our "What the hell happens today, Bob?" feature:
April 4 -
---Today is NATIONAL CHICKEN CORDON BLEU DAY

(only had it once...and a very long time ago Not that bad.)
---It's also NATIONAL HUG A NEWS PERSON DAY

Alyssa Ivanson, they're NOT.

(this certainly does NOT include our carrier, who's late AGAIN)
---And, it's NATIONAL SCHOOL LIBRARIAN DAY

(it's Spring break - no one's in school this week!)
---It's also NATIONAL WALK AROUND THINGS DAY

Beats trying to walk THROUGH things. Less painful.

(I know our "locals" love to walk around trash in the streets - that they put there)
*** Next up, we have to take the Wifeymobile into Yeoman's today.

Seems the car has developed a squeal in the rear wheel, and my guess would be a wheel bearing going bad.
This is one of those things that doesn't go away when you turn up the radio, and can cause worse things to happen down the road. Ounce of prevention time there.
Wifey wanted to head down to visit her dad this week. Better to do it with FOUR good wheels rather than three.
*** And you just KNOW it's a Monday in Fort Wayne, when the morning paper is late (it usually arrives around 0400 hrs.
I know because I happened to have a bad night sleeping a few times - they say high call volume into the papers to boot).
Wonder WTH is wrong NOW?
Never had this problem 10 years ago.
I can't imagine what has changed (he said sarcastically)..
SO, we have to take "the long way around" this morning. This should be "fun".
*** In the meantime, a few personal observations:
--- What was up with that crazy SNOW over the weekend? We had damn near white-out conditions late Saturday.

That's some CRAZY-ASS weather out there.

Our one squirrel, Patches came by for his daily meal, and I was getting rained on one minute, and then snowed on the next.

Much more protected under the table.

It certainly was odd to see the weather change that much that quickly...and constantly.
I knew the snow wouldn't last, but that was between gusts of wind that was blowing the peanuts I tossed all over the place.

--- Fort Wayne also had some power outages across the city as well (our friends, Chris and Laurie were "in the dark" for the better part of a day up north). And we don't feel the need to upgrade our POWER GRID around here...WHY, again?
Kinda sucks when you go and buy all those nice electronic devices to make life "better" only to have them turned into fancy PAPERWEIGHTS whenever the power craps out due to some winds (or the occasional drunk driver marrying his vehicle to some utility pole).
--- I sorta made the "mistake" of watching the season 6 finale to The Walking Dead last night.

While I admire the casting and the writing, the producers MUST have pissed a lot of people off (and that would include me) with last night's episode.
Damn near ALL the main characters are now captured and at the mercy of this putz named "Negan" (played by the same actor who was The Comedian in the Watchmen movie).
While I've watched this show from the start and hardly missed an episode, I might start backing away from this. Why can't these people, who have managed to survive as long as they have just catch ONE...DAMN...BREAK, and not have to worry about the assholes (who are still alive) trying to screw with them? It's becoming a bit tedious to watch, and probably (for me), it's because it's hitting a lot closer to home in some aspects.

Get outta the street.

There are days when I feel like we're living among "The Walking Dead", when I see what passes for "people" in our part of the city.

Get the HELL outta the street.

Many of them just "roam around", either on foot (not ONE on a damn sidewalk) or in a vehicles, and they're annoying to normal folks (what few are left).
I probably wouldn't want ANY of them to bite me, either.

Get the F*CK outta the street!

Perhaps there is a bit of an allegory between TWD and living on the SE side of Fort Wayne.
Many days, it sure SEEMS that way.
Problem is, I  can't just cap these mooks, OR stab them in the head.
Talk about a conundrum.
*** Next up,what happens when you leave a big piece of equipment on a train track (like a BACK-HOE) and forget to remove it when a train comes along?
If you guessed  ONE HUGE MESS, than give yourself a gold star. Here's the story link:
http://www.journalgazette.net/news/us/2-dead--30-hurt-as-Amtrak-train-strikes-equipment-12373723

Yeah, THAT left a mark.

This happened near Chester, PA, which, if you ever had the displeasure of visiting (as I have just ONCE), you'd find that place a LARGER version of SE Fort Wayne...seriously.
Two people were killed (workers_ and over 30 injured when the train struck that backhoe.
I thought we had AUTOMATED SYSTEMS in place to keep shit like this from happening? Be interesting to see how the NHTSB calls this one and where blame is assigned. Gotta love technology (again)...right?
*** Next, did you know about the flap over defective rifle sights for our SPEC OPS troops?
No? Well, here you go then:
http://www.journalgazette.net/news/us/Troops-using-faulty-rifle-sights-12377238

Another "oops" moment.

Yeah, seems again, thanks to this defect (thermal drift) the sights were off between 6-12 inches at only 300 feet. (that's a frigging BIG deal, too - total FUBAR.)
The company has addressed the problem and they (L-3 Communications - EOTech) were sued by the feds last November (and we're just hearing about it NOW?).
The company settled for $25.6 Mil.

The NCIS director (the real one, not the TV one) stated "A sight that ALMOST works is not acceptable."
Gee, 'ya think?

Yet, 3 months after the settlement was released, the gear was neither replaced nor recalled. And this is from current service members. Still gotta love technology, don'cha?
Thank God these troops train (also) with IRON sights as well, but still...
*** Last back to the latrine...we have become a society that has come to RELY on technology for damn near everything.

You've heard me tell this story all too often.
And when you rely on one thing, another thing goes ignored or, worse yet...forgotten.
Doesn't matter if it's a red-dot rifle sight vs. a factory iron sight, or and electronic tablet vs. cursive writing in the classroom. These days, there's just no getting away from technology.
But, there also is not getting way from the fact that we are becoming MUCH too dependent upon that technology, and when it fails (for whatever reason), many people become totally lost or helpless thanks to that dependency.
I look at it like a drug addict...can't get that fix? Here come the DTs
Those people will do damn near anything FOR that next fix, and our jails are full of them, as a result.
But that doesn't answer the question as to WHY this occurs.

Overload much???

Maybe much of it has to do with the waning attention span of people today.
When you have to do things "the old-fashioned" way, it requires MORE attention, and MORE time than a simple push of some button, right? I like to do things that way and for a very good reason:
I get out of something for what I put into something - a fair "trade", as it were.
Plus, my reliance of whatever "gadget" others would use is minimal, if not non-existent.
Yes, I manually ROLL my car windows down, and I use a manual can opener, and I have iron sights on my firearms.
And, I'm no lesser an individual for having them.
Don't get me wrong...technology DOES have it's place, but it's to allow us to the opportunity to do OTHER, more productive things that still require our intervention, and not to cozy up and crawl in bed with that technology, forsaking the things we used to be ABLE to do for ourselves (like reading a real ROAD MAP).

The list of examples as to what we're doing wrong with our technology gets longer every week, while all that we were comfortable doing for ourselves grows shorter during the same time.
Maybe we won;t be happy until the tech runs itself...AND us.
Can't imagine the human race subservient to machines, can you?
How can we seek betterment when our electronic dependency grows (on all these devices)  seemingly exponentially?
That is a question we need to answer soon...very soon.

Be well, make a difference to someone, and...
Stay SAFE out there, America.