Island Of Misfits

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Last nite...Was so bright it was like a classic western at night lol.
moon.jpg

Cooooool this morning...Ahhhhh...Deer right outside the window when I woke tells me it's time to dust of the pew pew and get ready for meat. Season ain't long off. 😁
 
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The last several years of my job had travel built in to it. My job was to go to companies that supplied stuff to mine, and make sure it wasn't somebody's brother-in-law's garage, or their union wasn't about to strike, or their manufacturing processes were not something like a garage sale.

The reason for my job: If you have two hundred-plus companies all over the world making parts (steel casings, wire/plugs, light bulbs, switches, memory boards, circuits, speakers, etc.) required to put personal computers together... and ONE company (the wire/plug company, for instinks) goes tits up for some reason that could easily have been spotted by a visit there...

...Guess how many computers you can make and sell? Zerio.

So I went to the Pacific Rim (Taipei, Japan, etc.) and Europe (Scotland, Germany, France, Holland, etc.) I got to fly First Class, and stayed in the best hotels.

And after a while, it got so fargin stale!! Actually asked my new partner sitting next to me on the plane: "Where are we going?"

He got pissed, thinking I was pulling the long bow on him. A month later, we were boarding a plane and he asked me, "Where are we going?" <-- Yes, I pointed out his reaction back when he was new.

Many mornings, I woke up with no fargin idea of where I was. Had to look at my itenerary to figure it out.

But I sure got to see the whole world (minus Antarctica). Wanna know the best place there is? America.
My international travel was primarily to learn or teach technical things when working for corporate America, and I flew coach for US travel and business class for international. They were short visits and we stayed in nice hotels as well as ate good food, usually being wined and dined.

As CEO of Innovative Project Management, Inc, I flew first class locally but still flew business class internationally. I stayed longer term some nicer hotels and ate good to exotic food, often being entertained and introduced to new fare.

I also bought a Winnebago for projects in state where I needed to manage critical facility shutdown installations/modifications around the clock until they were back in production.

In those cases, I was managing equipment and facility installations which took longer. My internal clocks over multiple time zones usually took up to five days to acclimate going and a couple days returning, during which time I was a little fumble headed at times too.

Traveling internationally with Grayfox for shits and giggles, we flew coach or cruised in a medium-priced cabin, stayed in good hotels, and ate good food. Some tastier that others. Compare airline food to a cruise ship 24hr buffet or the cuisine of the "City of Love", versus the "City of Light" for instance.

Hee, hee, hee, sometimes less exotic! We were being introduced to the taste treats of Tokyo over a two-week period and one day our hosts were especially secretive, giggling between themselves, and after parking and walking a circuitous route, we arrived at the newest hip Tokyo restaurant, a McDonalds.
 
Good morning Misfits.

God, I feel like such a commoner. My "business travel" consisted of an hour and a half of white knuckle, 85-95 MPH driving six inches off the next guy's bumper in a high speed formation that would have made the Flying Blue Angels puke, followed by four hours of back breaking work, whatever was semi edible off of the gut buggy/roach coach, and another four hours of the above, followed by at least two hours of rolling parking lots and road rage. Ever wonder why most construction workers drink? :)
 
Good morning Misfits.

God, I feel like such a commoner. My "business travel" consisted of an hour and a half of white knuckle, 85-95 MPH driving six inches off the next guy's bumper in a high speed formation that would have made the Flying Blue Angels puke, followed by four hours of back breaking work, whatever was semi edible off of the gut buggy/roach coach, and another four hours of the above, followed by at least two hours of rolling parking lots and road rage. Ever wonder why most construction workers drink? :)
I did that every day for three and a half decades…no more for me, dunno how I did it…I get stressed just going into town even drinking the big truck, the Z makes me feel vulnerable…I’m an aggressive driver but a safe one…hit the gas or get out of the left lane
 
It's ruined me for travel. My trips consist of my twice a week seven mile round trip to the watering hole. A tank of gas in the Ford will last me for a couple of months.
Like you Hippie, I stay as close to home as I can. Only exception is an occasional fishing excursion,
 
Robert Shaw and one of the greatest monologues ever in the history of cinematography...

"Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side, Chief. We was comin’ back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. We’d just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes.

Didn’t see the first shark for about a half-hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin’ from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn’t know, was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin’ by, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was the shark come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin’ and hollerin’ and sometimes that shark he go away… but sometimes he wouldn’t go away.

Sometimes that shark looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn’t even seem to be livin’… ’til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then… ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin’ and your hollerin’ those sharks come in and… they rip you to pieces.

You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don’t know how many sharks there were, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin’, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boson’s mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he’d been bitten in half below the waist.

At noon on the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hours later a big ol’ fat PBY come down and started to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945.

Anyway, we delivered the bomb."
 
It's ruined me for travel. My trips consist of my twice a week seven mile round trip to the watering hole. A tank of gas in the Ford will last me for a couple of months.
I burned out on travel as well, including long car trips. Visiting exciting new places is overrated with airline travel so unpredictable these days and our highways rush hour lasts all day.
 
I burned out on travel as well, including long car trips. Visiting exciting new places is overrated with airline travel so unpredictable these days and our highways rush hour lasts all day.
If I ever get on an airplane again it will be to soon. Because of work I was on a business trip every 6 weeks for over 20 years. After 9/11 it became miserable to fly.
 
Besides annual bonuses based on profit, which sometimes added more than another third to my annual salary, I got several bonuses based on savings my inventions produced.

As you might imagine the amount of my performance bonuses were not commensurate with the savings. IE, one solution that saved about $1.5 million annually, fetched me a princely bonus of $1,500 before taxes.

George Burns suggested we that should learn to shoot pool with a rope if we plan to live long lives.

Maybe that and polish and refine our cunning linguistics.
I enjoy cunning linguistics. If I do it too long though, my tongue gets sore. Then I talk with a lithp.
 
The last several years of my job had travel built in to it. My job was to go to companies that supplied stuff to mine, and make sure it wasn't somebody's brother-in-law's garage, or their union wasn't about to strike, or their manufacturing processes were not something like a garage sale.

The reason for my job: If you have two hundred-plus companies all over the world making parts (steel casings, wire/plugs, light bulbs, switches, memory boards, circuits, speakers, etc.) required to put personal computers together... and ONE company (the wire/plug company, for instinks) goes tits up for some reason that could easily have been spotted by a visit there...

...Guess how many computers you can make and sell? Zerio.

So I went to the Pacific Rim (Taipei, Japan, etc.) and Europe (Scotland, Germany, France, Holland, etc.) I got to fly First Class, and stayed in the best hotels.

And after a while, it got so fargin stale!! Actually asked my new partner sitting next to me on the plane: "Where are we going?"

He got pissed, thinking I was pulling the long bow on him. A month later, we were boarding a plane and he asked me, "Where are we going?" <-- Yes, I pointed out his reaction back when he was new.

Many mornings, I woke up with no fargin idea of where I was. Had to look at my itenerary to figure it out.

But I sure got to see the whole world (minus Antarctica). Wanna know the best place there is? Am
My international travel was primarily to learn or teach technical things when working for corporate America, and I flew coach for US travel and business class for international. They were short visits and we stayed in nice hotels as well as ate good food, usually being wined and dined.

As CEO of Innovative Project Management, Inc, I flew first class locally but still flew business class internationally. I stayed longer term some nicer hotels and ate good to exotic food, often being entertained and introduced to new fare.

I also bought a Winnebago for projects in state where I needed to manage critical facility shutdown installations/modifications around the clock until they were back in production.

In those cases, I was managing equipment and facility installations which took longer. My internal clocks over multiple time zones usually took up to five days to acclimate going and a couple days returning, during which time I was a little fumble headed at times too.

Traveling internationally with Grayfox for shits and giggles, we flew coach or cruised in a medium-priced cabin, stayed in good hotels, and ate good food. Some tastier that others. Compare airline food to a cruise ship 24hr buffet or the cuisine of the "City of Love", versus the "City of Light" for instance.

Hee, hee, hee, sometimes less exotic! We were being introduced to the taste treats of Tokyo over a two-week period and one day our hosts were especially secretive, giggling between themselves, and after parking and walking a circuitous route, we arrived at the newest hip Tokyo restaurant, a McDonalds.
time for a second cup o coffee and then it’s off to the salt mines

we sure like the looks of this sea hag



View attachment 339284
I am enamored of sail, and have read several books and novels about sailing. Being pushed about by, and manipulating the power of the wind is an amazing and romantic concept. I can only imagine what early human sailing days were like. They surely took intellect and courage.
 
Robert Shaw and one of the greatest monologues ever in the history of cinematography...

"Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side, Chief. We was comin’ back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. We’d just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes.

Didn’t see the first shark for about a half-hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin’ from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn’t know, was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin’ by, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was the shark come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin’ and hollerin’ and sometimes that shark he go away… but sometimes he wouldn’t go away.

Sometimes that shark looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn’t even seem to be livin’… ’til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then… ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin’ and your hollerin’ those sharks come in and… they rip you to pieces.

You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don’t know how many sharks there were, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin’, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boson’s mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he’d been bitten in half below the waist.

At noon on the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hours later a big ol’ fat PBY come down and started to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945.

Anyway, we delivered the bomb."
Damn right, Chief.
 
got lots of people on the side of the road...I'm still using my reserve tanks of diesel and getting ready to refill them...shiit is getting crazy expensive again...
I always wanted a diesel for the economy, but as soon as I got one, the price of diesel went disproportionately through the roof. They started charging for the extra BTU's per gallon.........................

Because our trucking and diesel electric railways use diesel vis a vis gasoline, the impact is across our full economy.
 

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