KLEM FM

This one goes out to bags for innumerable reasons -- starting with the lyrics....

link

...good luck out there!

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog schools PC students

h/t bago

California Wildfires

"13,000 Under Evacuation Orders as Rocky Fire Rages"

 

Link to video

"Please Bother Us!"

Happy belated 90th birthday to Alfred Bader!

You may have never heard of him. He's one of those American success stories who appear to be waning these days. Not unlike our beloved bagoh20, he started a successful business which grew: Bader co-founded the Aldrich Chemical Company.

Bader's Wiki page lists him as Canadian which I find odd because I associate him with Milwaukee. I first heard of him around 1981 when I saw my first Aldrich Chemical Catalog of Fine Chemicals which graced every chemistry laboratory. You couldn't open a chemistry journal in those days without seeing one of his advertisements which always led with "Please Bother Us!" exhorting his customers to give feedback regarding customer needs.

The Aldrich catalog came out once a year or so and was sort of a Sears Wish Book of what you could buy to supply your experiments. The cover of each new catalog featured a reproduction of an oil painting -- usually a Dutch Masters -- and usually one that Bader had acquired for his collection. More about that here.

Bader, the man, has a rich history: refugee, chemist, businessman, art collector, philanthropist.  Celebrate him.

Quotable Chickelit: "Chardonnay is a great way to get sauced!"

Come to the Detroit area and I will treat you to Chicken Chardonnay. You'll be back. pic.twitter.com/6DZUOu4kiD
— Tari (@uncommentari) March 29, 2014

Earthquake: Near La Habra, California

"Authorities were tallying damage from a magnitude 5.1 earthquake that struck Southern California Friday evening."

Fullerton police said early Saturday that up to 50 people had been displaced because of home damage.

The quake, centered near La Habra, caused furniture to tumble, pictures to fall off walls and glass to break. Merchandise fell off store shelves, and there were reports of plate glass windows shattered.

We have friends there, Chickl and Bags. I hope they are doing ok. If you are so inclined please say a little prayer for them and for the rest of the people there.

Earthquake Map

Guest Post: A great evening at the Laugh Factory

A couple weeks ago some friends and I went to the Laugh Factory in Vegas. The comedians were Chris Farley's brother, a guy formerly on Saturday Night Live, and Pauly Shore's Dad. We sat right at the front with our feet against the stage. All the acts made me laugh like hell till my cheeks were chapped from the tears. Mr. Shore is in his mid-80s, looks exactly like an old Pauly Shore, was very sharp, articulate, and funny, but he also made a remark that was not intended to be humorous at all, was completely out of left field, and kind of ruined his act for me even though I had been enjoying it. He brought up Obama just long enough to call everyone who didn't like him "old fat White racists", and in a very serious way.

Now, despite the fact that these live shows tend to get pretty racy, irreverent, and uncensored, nobody else for two hours of jokes had to say something that stupid, racist and offensive. If not for that one stupid and totally unfunny (nobody laughed at it) line the show would have been a perfect night that everyone enjoyed. Why do some people need to express their bigotry so publicly in the middle of a good time? Still, it was a great evening.

Commenter Bagoh20

Guest Post: "wanted to share the good news"

I've mentioned that I'm on a brand new drug therapy for Hep C. It's called Sovaldi, and it looks like it's gonna be a miracle drug. It's incredibly expensive unless you have good insurance, which I do for now.

I've had this virus for 36 years. After my transplant in 2006, my viral load doubled. I guess the little bastards saw the new liver as a buffet and started fornicating like rabbits. Anyway, viruses are incredibly small, so small that one ml of my blood contains about 1,300,000 copies of the virus - at least it did. After being on this drug for 2 weeks (one pill a day) I had my blood tested and got the news today. My viral count dropped to 114/ml. I'm in week 4 now, and probably have entirely eliminated it from my blood.

This incredible drug does this with zero side effects and no drug interactions. A true miracle invention. I will be taking it for 24 weeks if my insurance approves it for that long. They have so far. They have good reason to balk at just under $1000 per pill. I pay , not even a copay. I know, crazy isn't it? It has a 70% cure rate so far for people with my genotype which is the most common and hardest to eliminate. I'm very optimistic. This virus acts extremely slowly, but causes cancer eventually, first in the liver, but later lymphomas and others too.

If I get cured of this after 36 years, I'll be fucking stoked. I've spent so much time, energy and misery fighting it and it's effects for so long. I suppose if I do get a cure, I'll get hit by a bus the next day.

Anyway, I'm just as pleased as a boy can be, and wanted to share the good news. Have a great weekend all. I know I will.

Commenter Bagoh20

Guest Posts Welcome

Yesterday. in my "I like This Idea for a Post This Morning" (still going strong today) I asked yous guys (a little Trooper lingo there) to suggest topics, that may have gone "neglected", for us to post, discuss, chew over, kick around etc... And, the never disappointing, always obliging, Bagoh20, (Bags, as I call him) shared something I thought I make into a "guest post".

I think something that is very important to a huge number of real people, yet is rarely covered is the subject of opportunity. How can people young and old find, develop, and exploit opportunities to succeed, grow, and build things outside of the standard and over-used one of go to school, go to more school, succeed at school, and then when you are already grown up, go figure out how to make a living by talking someone into hiring you to do what THEY want you to do.

It's not a plan for happiness or self-fulfillment for many people. It's a path based on maintaining the security of doing what you are supposed to for as long as you can pull it off. It's avoiding risk, avoiding challenge, and missing your calling as an individual. It delays for as long as possible your contributing to the people around you, which is how you become self-sufficient - by people needing your work.

The only place I see this stuff addressed is in the work of Mike Rowe. We need more discussion about how people can become valuable assets to their community through self-development that starts out very quickly paying off, and keeps building that throughout a life.

Our education system is a shambles of narrow political experimentation and pet projects of a few philosophies which are antagonistic toward diversity and unconcerned with results. They are experiments insistent on proving their hypothesis with no interest in real results for individuals. Failure is ignored and success is manufactured, and failure is what a great many are getting.

We need more discussion, exploration and experimentation with teaching trades, commerce, business building, how to work in a way where you parlay your minor successes into big ones over a lifetime.

Many immigrants are learning these things, and leaving natives behind in the area of personal development and growth because they arrive without the standard plan as an option, blocking their view of their real opportunities. The reason that immigrants take so many jobs is that they take the damned job. Then, they run with it, advance, start businesses. They don't see their parents' couch as the only alternative to college or a cushy job.

Many millionaires and highly successful, self-actualized individuals and families living great lives owe little or nothing to the standard plan.

I'm not against education - I still work on it every day for myself - but the way it is being done and sold is mostly a scam - a high end version of the stuff sold on late night TV as get-rich-quick lies. They take your money, waste you valuable time, and in the end, leave you to your own devices anyway, but wounded and broke.

That's a lot of rant against what isn't working, but I see the successful people all around me, including myself, and many found a different ways, which people don't really see anymore. They are there. They should be better known.

Thanks Bags. This post also gave me the opportunity to plum the tags bar. (mix metaphors, too late)

Bagoh's Beautifull Day

What an absolutely beautiful day here in Playa del Rey. Mid 70's clear and sunny with a nice breeze. Precisely perfect.

My computer and central hang out spot is at a counter in my kitchen right next to a big sliding door to the patio, and it's all windows. So on a day like this, I'm practically sitting outside with a great sunny view of nothing but open fields and trees to the ocean. The Pandora is MC-ing Texas swing and the Blues, and life is good. Eventually, someday we all end up on Celebrity Severed Heads Roadshow as someones attempt to strike it rich.

 

I pointed out my sliver of an ocean view. It's an ocean view if you're an eagle with binoculars.

 The dogs are all lying about wonderfully content and unconscious.

 

The only thing wrong with that is having no more days like this. Please after the show, mount my head facing west toward the Pacific.

 

Right now: 75 deg., no shirt, no shoes, and since I don't follow TOP any longer, shorts. I could use a servant, or maybe a Danish maid to pick up a few things around here. Strictly professional of course.

Dirty Old Town

I was originally going to post the Pogues' version of this song but this version from the songwriter presented instead. I wrongly had thought that the song was about Dublin but of course it's about Manchester, England. I like the juxtaposition of optimistic love and grimy realism:

"you have to say, please, no soup for you"

 

bagoh20 said...

Holy shit, it's my birthday!

Woohooooo!

Happy Birthday to our dear friend bags.  

Hey, Who Wants to Work for Free?

A guest post by bagho20.

We have a simple, real-world million-dollar problem, and maybe the power of the CH brain can solve it.

The problem: We manufacture a product. Let’s call it a robotic snow shovel. The shovel is pushed by two DC powered electromechanical linear actuators. The problem is that we are forced to use actuators that are not manufactured with sufficient consistency to all push at the same speed. Some are slightly slower. In the product, they are side by side about 6 inches apart pushing on the blade of the shovel. Since they often don’t push exactly the same speed, one actuator does all the work, draws too much current, binds the shovel, and wears out too soon. How do we fix it?

This is a real problem that I must and will solve, but I was wondering what others might come up with. There are better and worse solutions due to costs, reliability, etc, and the best solution is the simplest and cheapest, but we’re just brainstorming at this point. Think outside the box, find a new paradigm, you have to learn to love yourself before you can love anyone else, be the change, give it 110%, It’s a no-brainer, everything happens for a reason, there are no dumb questions, etc. Now take it and run with it….. right up the flagpole.

I’ll let you know what solution we eventually prototype and use. Maybe it will be what you come up with.