I’m with your son.

Thanks! Too much work is, as I say, "A good problem to have." Engineering of healthcare facilities is a mountain of work with a shortage of good people. I am spending at least half of my time fixing other people's screwups. I was really toying with breaking free this year and just consulting for a couple years. But, it hinged on this hospital job. This is it. I'm going to fight off the ankle-biter jobs to fully commit my knowledge to this new hospital and really create something great. Then....fishing, a little golf, and good beer watching the beautiful sunsets here...

It was,. My chosen response to a bull shit question is: "No Englas, I just clean the pipes!"

Laughing, exactly what I thought

About that meme that states "After you turn 50 years old: you can't recognized letters up close, but can recognize idiots from far away," today I had yet, yet, yet another usually a female voice call and ask if Old Dino has Medicare A and B.
Rolling my eyes, me dino said yeah and while I added, "Is this another stupid damn scam?" she was already saying (as usual) "I am connecting you to so and so."
Me dino did not wait to hear if the dude was an Asian Indian or Hispanic. I just pushed the off button.
After that, I hit upon an idea for being a past class clown decades ago.
Perhaps in the future, I'll put on my dumbest Southern drawl and respond. "Sho nough ah gots me A n' B done cleared all ther way up muh kalabuhzoo by thet thar Medicare Department whut's run by thet Coca Cola Bottlin' Company whut's out thar faster doin' scams 'n you!. Sorry, but looks like muh Coke Lites done beat yo' crooked ass. Bye!"
My son thought that approach kinda funny.

The two donkeys sure look trans to me. Maybe they should lose the little umbrellas in their drinks.

Geez, now I'm going to have to change my garage door code. There might be some over 35 year old thieves out there.

Thanks for the smiles, OUC!

Opportunities like that are very rare. Savor it! Congrats!

Wow. I'm seeing the same here in western NY. Solar farms and wind turbines dotting the landscape. Solar farms are covering good cropland that are snowed under in the winter. Meanwhile my utility bills keep going up and up.

CK -- I believe that we are on the same page. The slow incremental devastation has been orchestrated.

All of the failures in policy and fractures in morality are the deliberate exercise to "bring it all down" albeit, in such a manner as a controlled demolition, much like the self-erasure of Building 7... quite convenient to eliminate a few problems being addressed by the SEC and just "Pull it" -- thank you Mr. Silverstein and Company. The damages are set in such a way as to cause just enough commotion, but not enough for any serious change (real breakage ... not the $3M in damages to the US Capitol during the Great Theater of Insurrection ... followed by the taxpayer-funded $300M costs to prosecute the folks that should have been issued a trespassing fine).

I hold that much of the destruction, although planned and carried out, is also the result of plain old optimization in evolutionary biology. An organism will optimize toward efficiency -- if you can live off of welfare checks without having to lift a finger, they why do so? The mental machinery necessary to exist somewhere near the top of the John Galt spectrum is rare among human individuals. As such, the vast herd will go along with the Experts, behave in the manner of Spectators, go-along-to-get-along.

This is all afforded in the context of a world swimming in cheap, abundant, reliable energy. The EROI tells a different story. The Energy Return On Investment was 100 back in 1910 ... high quality oil was available in abundance near the surface of the Earth, sometimes under pressure -- poke a pipe in the ground then collect the oil into tanker cars and pipelines. It cost the energy extracted from 1 barrel of oil to produce 100 barrels of useful equivalent. Fast forward to 1970, the EROI drops to 30 ... we are going to more remote places to get that oil -- offshore, Prudhoe Bay, etc... By 2010, the ERO was round 10. In order to live in a Civilization of Affluence, where even your ordinary Joe can afford Disneyland, Carnival Cruises, Pet Food Warehouses ... you need an EROI of at least 10. The US Shale revolution occurred with an EROI below 10... but was financed, in large, through debt. You can fake a lot with debt. But you cannot fake energy / resources / reality. A falling EROI means that the Quality of Life must go down, for the majority of the people. This reduction can be a controlled descent, OR, using credit, extract energy from the Earth, in the Now, energy which would have been extracted in the Future. By Living in the Now, with credit financing of Energy production, the slope of the Seneca decay curve is steepened. Of course, TPTB and engineers in the energy companies are aware of this. Most folks will just go along -- they will do their jobs -- and follow orders -- possibly with a shrug and sigh "what can one person do?"

On a personal note -- I will be in Olympia Washington, the Temple of Justice, this June 11, 2026 -- a court hearing regarding whether or not a huge vertical landfill (wind farm) will be constructed near some of my land (40 acres in West Richland, WA). This sprawling monstrosity will stretch for 25 miles, with turbines 671 feet tall ... within the viewshed of 300,000+ residents of the Tri-Cities, Eastern Washington. The proposal is in violation of so many State, County, GMA (Growth Management Act), Yakima Nation (native tribes) policies as to be absurd. It will crater property values. Washington State Politicians and the Administrative State have a nice dream -- By 2050, the State will be Net-Zero. No carbon output from any of the power utilities. Of course, that means that the many thousands of wind turbines and solar panels, already installed, or to be installed in the next few years, must be Completely Replaced (Renewable or Replaceable?) -- by 2050. Also of course, none of these bureaucrats will be around in 25 years. By 2050, unless we can discover some new Star Trek form of energy, which I doubt, the EROI will be so low that the energy necessary to replace all those wind-solar-battery systems will not be available. Instead, those 400,000+ wind turbines, both on land and out at sea, will stand there rotting away, an obscene testament to the psychopathology of politicians, bureaucrats and contractors that are just following orders and getting paid. The future looks dark, dangerous and diabolically ugly.

It's a big club, and we aren't in it. (paraphrasing George Carlin)
We won't ever be invited.
Tar, feathers, and pitchforks used to be the answer to political corruption, but the current cops
are brainwashed to treat the public as the enemy and the politicians as the bosses instead of the
way the constitution intended.

Nicely written, pixelate.

Side note: Writing assembly on a 6809. Been there done that including 6800, 68000 family, 6502, etc. Long ago, but great experience.

I'm not surprised one bit. Here in LIttle Ole Reno we had a fantastic police chief. She's actually a neighbor of mine - just spoke with her a few minutes ago. Very sharp, fit woman. For no f'n reason at all (just some cooked up story) they let her go (early on her contract ...probably not the last of this story) and put the local sheriff over the town. Since that happned...zero police presence on the streets. People are driving on surface streets at 70 mph. Good people will not be tolerated in positions of power. There are several good, recent examples of this in DC now.

Mark Twain started his writing career right near here...

I'd certainly have you on. I'd have several on from our Gulch.

Yeah...I'm seeing that too. Literally...those with a sense of humor are among their elite...

I get it.

Sorry about your brother...

Yeah, sounds about right...

This made me laugh...

OUCH!

Me dino talks back both to towelheaded news that's both audio and in print. Me sez, "They always tell lies!. Just blow them up already!"

BTW, did you guys see how Karen Bass said the "ads against her could cause some crazy person to turn violent against her"...

Ummm... Where were you with the media coverage of Trump and MAGA for the last DECADE... BE-ACH!

BTW. Could you imagine how much better 2020 would have went if they funded Kari Lake the way they funded Cornyn (Or better, Murkowski?).

This is why I hate ALL elected officials.

I am MAGA or bust at this point.
So glad POTUS keeps shoving their nose in their sh!t...

Apparently, they left the "n" out on purpose, because they thought leaving it in... Made it into another "n" word... LOL