Working on it

“I always said that if I wasn’t studying psychopaths in prison, I’d do it at the stock exchange.” – Robert Hare, creator of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist and its variants, the most widely used diagnostic tools for psychopathic personalities.


Three days to go and then Vacation.  Last two weeks have been rough on this old body.  Last week notably by first the Cold.  Wind whipping so hard that I couldn't move in and our of our little trailer the wind threatening to tear the door off.  Consequently, I sat in the Bronco with the Heater on full.  Check in a few rigs and duck into the Bronco, shivering and bone cold.  This was then followed by a few nights of rain.  To refer to what we called a Daveism, the moniker we chose to name my old friend, well Dave's various descriptions of events.  "It rained like a Cow pissing on a flat rock" for hours on end.  Also bone cold chilling. Almost makes one look forward to Summer.  Oh thats right, it gets to around 118 here.

Nevermind.  Because our Crew is breaking up our sweet alternating two week gig is coming to an end after this  period.  Too bad.  We had just gotten to know these guys and our Bosses.  Best bunch so far.  Hate to lose them.  The "Company Men" who I swear range from late twenties to early eighties make a point out of stopping for short chit chats coming and going to the facility. They talk us up to our Company guy, (the one who we are independant contractors for).  Paid top dollar too, $200.00 a day.  Far cry from some of my old bosses at the state.  I would qualify this that not all but some, especially the bigger bosses  either glared at me in passing or seemed to really try to make a point of convincing me that my presence was not really appreciated.  Consequently causing me to complete a list of all those who, if drowning, or broke down in the Desert, probably should not ask me for a lift, life ring, five bucks...whatever 

Repairs
I am slowly getting accustomed to the fact that these rigs we are living in, were probably not designed to be lived in very long.  The upkeep is driving me a little crazy.  I was getting behind and kind of threw up my hands.  Screw it, I'll just take it to Camping World and have their skilled technicians fix the stuff and just pay for it. 

Two weeks later standing in line waiting to pay a thousand bucks for what I had estimated would be about two thirds that amount, I looked down and saw an entry for a hundred bucks for a muriel that had been pasted on my refrigerator door of Deer.  Fifteen minutes of  some heated discussion got that portion of the bill modified.  (The muriel had been glued on somebody else's refrigerator, the kind of person who had excess fun tickets to pay for that kind of thing.)  Still, I walked out nine hundred and change shorter than I had walked in.  

Two weeks later, other that what appears to have been a credible job of attaching a new bumper, I seem to have paid about five hundred bucks for some tech to wiggle a few wires on an old converter and spend fifteen minutes connecting a new water pump without checking to see if it would work all right after it was installed.  Earlier we had sat in a waiting area listening to some other folks griping.  I had discounted the talk as folks who were just hard to please.  Then from the accounts from reviews found on the Internet I'll be rethinking ever going to Camping World for repairs.  I seem to wind up doing most of them anyway.


So, some kind of Google software picked out these two photos as, I don't know, worthy I guess.  I am reposting them here

http://ifarton.com/_farticles-Lincoln-fart-joke.html/#.UyFdGvldXW4



Sorry, got distracted.  And this one......



I don't have a clue.  I could see why Stonehenge Abe might get picked but the Pic I dubbed Redneck 2 I think is only marginal.  Anyway.



Cat's out of the bag.  Had an earthquake here the other night near Yorktown, a short distance from here.  I didn't feel a thing.  Apparently it was a pretty small one anyway about 2 on the Richter scale.  I've literally personally been present in at least five earthquakes wherein I should have felt some tremors.  No nada, never.  But to the point that this most recent earthquake occurred as a direct result of oil recovery activity ie Drilling. For some reason despite all of the back and forth hoo hah between Big Oil and the Environmentalists, each hurling allegations at each other that may or may not be true, there seems to be a lot of dead air.  In this case there don't seem to be any pricey abogado mouthpiece involvement.  The truth is according to the papers here anyway is that nobody is denying this fact.  The culprit is not "Fracking" (well maybe indirectly) but the use of injection wells.  Filling the void where the Oil used to be with water .  Apparently here in Texas these injection wells are located near or on a number of faults.  There doesn't seem to be any expert opinions on what the longer term effects may be or if the Earthquakes might get a whole lot bigger.  One thing's for certain.  The drilling industry is here to stay.  The amount of Oil taken from here is enormous and even though there seems to be grudging acknowledgement of the cause of the Earthquakes, the spin on this  is that the earthquakes are so small as to be inconsequential.  Hmmm, maybe Mother Nature won't take kindly to being  disrespected in such a manner.

The Right wing is always talking about job creation.  It's their mantra really.  Obama Care in the House was officially titled the "job killing" Affordable Care Act or some such thing.  The pushback on raising the minimum wage was that half a million jobs would be destroyed.  However they seem to get a pass whenever they make laws to steal jobs from the private sector and turn inmates into slaves.  Currently the Idaho Legislature is trying to pass a bill to force inmates to work for farmers but only in the event they can't find enough "Agriculture workers" (interpret this as illegals, another class of slave)  But a simple Internet search would have saved them the trouble as this tact has already been tried and failed in other red states.  The cost of supervision and offsite feeding and housing offset any benefits from it.  Unless you want the gasp "Taxpayer" to fund the labor to the profit of private parties.  And another reason to which I think I can speak with some authority on.  Alot of these folks wind up in prison because they don't want to work AT ALL. let alone hard farm labor.  Don't get me wrong, a lot of prisoner's are hard workers but the average unsocialized youngster tends not to be.  As a PO, it was difficult to keep some of these guys working when the jobs were plentiful.  So unless they want to pass another bill called the " Taser Incentivization Bill" or something similar, it's a bust and as stupid as some of the other things they have done.  

Jack Crabb:  General you go down there.

General Custer:  You are advising me to go down into the Coulee

Jack Crabb:  Yes Sir.

General Custer:  There are no Indians down there I suppose.

Jack Crabb:  I didn't say that.  There are thousands of  Indians down there and when they get through with you there won't be anything left but a greasy spot.  This ain't the Washite river General and them ain't helpless women and children waiting for you. They're Cheyenne brave, and Sioux.  You go down there General if you've got the nerve.

General Custer:  Still trying to outsmart me aren't you mule-skinner,  You want me to go down there, but the subtle truth is you  really don't want me to go down there.

From Little Big Man