September 9, 2007

Pedophiles in the Making

This is just sick. I stopped over at MyBlogLog to see what my traffic had been today according to them and ran across a link to a site called marryourdaughter.com

I am listing it here but I darn sure won’t actually deign to create a link to it. These chicks are 15-17 and basically being sold off. I understand that’s how it works in some cultures, but NOT HERE. Holy cow. I am a scumbag but I darn sure wouldn’t condone what amounts to child abuse and statutory rape.

Great Deals From Deal Locker

Deal Locker is one of those coupon site where you can get Printable Coupons, Free Samples, & Deals. With the holiday season coming up I have started my Christmas shopping and I much prefer to get everything online that I can. I always try to get the best deal that I can and at Deal Locker I can get free online coupon codes for my favorite stores including coupons for Amazon, which is one of the places that I prefer to do as much shopping as possible.

Deal Locker is still in public beta testing but for all intents and purposes the site is fully functional. Everything that I need to use there is accessible and should be for most other people as well.

Taxes

Taxes are a bitch. I haven’t ranted about them recently so it’s due for one. That last post about being in the two got me to thinking about it. Did you know that the top 5% of wage earners in the United States pays 55% of the federal income tax? The top 5% earns 31% of the income in the U.S. but pays over half the taxes. That ain’t right. Now I am not particularly for increasing anyone’s tax burden, least of all the people that can ill afford it but I am for doing away with the federal income tax completely and putting in a consumption tax such as the Fairtax. It wouldn’t apply to the purchase of used property, cars, clothing from consignment stores, etc…which is where most of the folks that work for me do their shopping for autos and clothing so it wouldn’t hurt them as bad as opponents of the bill like to mouth off. Not only that but everyone in the U.S. would get a prebate check to cover the amount of sales tax they would be paying up to the poverty level, so people in the bottom 5-10% would actually be making MORE money than they are now.

Think about it. If you make $40-60k a year right now you are bringing home considerably less than that. Wouldn’t it be nice to bring it ALL home and do with it what you want rather than having the federal government make those choices for you?

Do You Live in The Two?

What does it mean to live in the top 2% of wage earner in the United States. You hear all the time that ‘money can’t bring happiness’ or ‘money isn’t everything’ The problem with those statements is that it’s usually people that are satisfied with what they have or are unable to make that kind of money that are uttering those statements. Money doesn’t bring happiness. That very well may be 100% true but being poor certainly doesn’t bring happiness and if I had the choice between the two (and I do) I certainly won’t choose to be sitting in the kitchen eating dog food after I retire.

The top 2% of wage earners in the United states makes over $200,000 a year. This includes families with one or two wage earners. We are halfway there and I don’t plan to stop until I have made it into that 2%. Being driven enough to succeed often calls for hard work but the rewards are security for myself and my children.

Do you have what it takes to be in the the top 2%?  Take the test and find out. Even if you aren’t sure it takes only five minutes of your time. Sometimes the difference between success and failure is being willing to work a bit on self improvement both physically and mentally. Walk. Run. Read a book every couple of days. Ask yourself questions and if you don’t know the answers, FIND THEM. Be willing to set goals and push yourself until achieve those goals. It’s not rocket science and it doesn’t take a college degree or piece of paper to make you successful, you just have to be willing to take chances and learn from your mistakes.


Cell Phones, Wal-Mart, Dog Food…This Ain’t My Shopping List…

Yesterday afternoon I ran out to the local Wal-Mart to get stuff for hamburgers. The girls had company coming for supper and I try to only make them eat dog food when their friends aren’t around so as to avoid answering sticky questions. Get them ready for old age a bit early and all that.

Anyway, apparently on the way out the door I dropped my cell phone. I didn’t realize it until I was getting in the car and flipped. My damn cell phone has hundreds of numbers related to work as well as personal stuff that I really can’t afford to lose. There are several years of history stored in that thing. I checked at the cash register where I was run up and then walked down a couple of aisles. I was pretty much resigned to the fact that I was going to have to go to Verizon and report it lost but decided to check with customer service before I left. Apparently I walked right past it on my way back in to the store because the dude that found it and picked it up was returning it to customer service as I was walking up.

Thank goodness for honest people. I guess I just spend far too much time around these people that I work with because half of the fuckers would have put it in their pockets and left with it.

I’ve started putting the belt thing back on my belt rather than hooking it into my pocket as I normally do. It will take some getting used to but it does tend to fall out of my pocket a lot.

The Crucible

Man, that Luna moth this morning was cool. The photos were just taken with my phone and sent to Flickr. I think I have one more I need to email myself and then post later this afternoon.

Today was a pretty uneventful day at work. I cooked all day and then hit the door right at the end of the shift. All of my managers are in so they can take care of all the mundane day to day stuff while I sit on my ass here at home and blog for awhile 🙂

The wife is napping right now and I have the girls set up in the driveway selling lemonade to support my ugly beer habit. All is well in my world today. The boy should be finished/finishing with the Crucible right about now or possibly in the morning. I know that was a tough row to hoe for him but he’s tough. I am really looking forward to seeing him for the first time since June, later this week. We are driving up to Beaufort on Wednesday afternoon and will check in to the hotel that evening. Any of you guys on the coast want to get together for a beer or something on Thursday or Friday night give me a call or shoot me an email.

Back to the Crucible. The hardest part for him I am sure will be the ten mile hump they have to take at the end. He’ll probably want to sleep for two days straight when he leaves with us Friday afternoon.

Saturday I think we are going to spend the day on Hilton Head. This will probably be the last chance for us to see our friend Niqui before she and her kids move to Cyprus so I know the wife is looking forward to it.


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0909070749.jpg

Originally uploaded by rmiles



Another one

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0909070747.jpg

Originally uploaded by rmiles



Luna moth

Tropical Storm Gabrielle to Hit North Carolina

The outer bands of the storm hit the Outer Banks of North Carolina last night and the main part of the storm is expected to make landfall sometime today. Judging from the map that was up at Weather.com the worst of it will skip over the main part of the state and then move up the coast.

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The National Weather Service and the Coast guard don’t seem to be too worried about it but low lying areas will get some flooding so if you are in the area watch out and try to stay inside. Surge is supposed to be two to three feet and there will be a problem with rip tides up and down the coast.

From Newscom…



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Shadowscope

That one day off stuff has just kicked my tail. I am exhausted this morning. Both of my alarms were set for an hour ago and I just crawled out of bed long enough ago to start coffee. Yesterday was an extremely lazy day. I spent the morning writing, although not much, and making that video. The wife and girls got home from clothes shopping around noon and I ended up lying down for a nap at 1 and couldn’t wake up until 4pm or so. I slept much too long and ended up not getting back to sleep until midnight and that’s only because I took a Benadryl to knock myself out.

I had planned on writing quite a bit more but it just ended up working out that way. If I have time this afternoon I will write several entries and schedule them to be posted overnight. Right now my body is trying to tell me to go back to bed but my brain is saying “kill the moron”…Oh wait, that’s something else entirely.

All three of my managers are working today so unless a whole boatload of people don’t show up for work today I should manage to get home at a decent time this afternoon. I have to get by and check schedules and that sort of stuff this morning and then will most likely spend the morning cooking for one of them to ease payroll a bit.

I called the hotel in Beaufort last night just to confirm my reservations for Wednesday and they are still intact. I also wanted to make sure that it wouldn’t be a problem with late check-in and they said that was fine. With leaving Wednesday that won’t put me there until sometime around 9pm at the earliest and that’s if I can get the wife and girls out by 3pm. It will probably be even later than that unfortunately.