Bear’s Book Blog

I will be on the deck on in the driveway grilling out. Seems to me that this is the safest day of all. Why? Because the scriptures say that no man knows when the end is come, except the Father.

Still, it is a chuckalicious concept for me and more than a few small government proponents like myself. I am so stinking tired of Washington assholes stealing my money and then using it to buy votes with that I am sometimes beside myself. I mean, look at what Obama said to Joe the Plumber.

WHO THE HELL IS OBAMA TO TAKE MONEY FROM JOE AND GIVE IT TO SOMEONE ELSE?

Whatever. I am over it. I am looking at November 2010 for now. 2012 will have to wait.

…and yet, here I sit feeling a delicious involuntary thrill at the idea of not having to pay half my freakin’ paycheck to the government and running around scavenging for what is left of civilization. Most men with measurable levels of testosterone wonder from time to time what it would be like to be in the wilderness, building a butt and pass log cabin with his own hands, said hands growing in strength with every downed tree, and every notch cut… and no one @#$%ing with you every time you make a dollar. Why do we feel this way in the face of such a possible tragedy? Because, natcherly, we will be one of the survivors. What the world changers and the Progressives refuse to understand is that some of us would indeed rather be dead than Red, or enslaved to the likes of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi.

You and I both know the only way that will happen is if one of us is no longer around. Since I really don’t like paying taxes, I do because there is this thing called the IRS with a gun to my head, telling me I have to ‘voluntarily’ file, I vote for a world changing event. Yes, I would rather be free to do as I please rather than sure of three meals, especially because I am not assured of three meals with the draconian taxes we have to pay.

Check out this video set. Do I believe the world will end on December 21st, 2012? Nope. Not even a little bit, but the video is a lot more informative about ancient cultures and mathematical systems, or metamagical if you want to use a different term, than that silly movie with Cusack. Check it out and get your copy here.

Offshore Oil Rig Jobs

I worked offshore shortly after I came out of high school. For some bizarre reason, and bad advice to which I listened, I blew off all my scholarships and decided to hit the road. I would like to be able to type, “Whatever. I am over it,” but it would be a lie.

I worked my way across the country, sleeping on concrete picnic tables in order to save money. One of my jobs was working at an Autozone in Garden Grove, California. Some months later I wound up in Cutoff, Louisiana working for South Lafourche Labor Crews, a company that supplied roustabouts to oil companies. That job sucked outrageously mainly because Mitch was not a good employer and so I moved on, and back to college (on my dime.) I later heard Mitch’s company had been raided for all kinds of illegal activities sending him to prison, so my sense of time to go turned out to be very accurate.

After 14 years of marriage, a semi-successful insurance career and a blazingly successful Internet Service Provider start up which was robbed by my partners and subsequently was a major cause of divorce, I began looking at going back offshore. This was in 1998.

Pondering over how long it took to get my job, I honestly don’t have a sense of how many months it took me to land the job but I do remember that it was not a short process. Once I landed the job, I found myself living in a bunkhouse going through classes and training and depressed as hell because, boy, how the mighty had fallen. My business was gone and here I was, working for an hourly wage again. Thank goodness they started training us on how to exit a helicopter that had made a water landing and had turned upside down in the water. Nothing and I mean nothing will get your mind off feeling sorry for yourself better than keeping your focus on how to get out of a seat you are held in by a seatbelt while you are submerged and upside down.

Once I got into the routine of working offshore I realized a couple of things. First, as long as I was on the job and on the clock, the clock was working in my favor. If I were home watching television the clock was working against me. It was an epiphany that took me reaching my late 30s, going through a robbery and a divorce to understand. Second, coming home after a month long stint to a fat bank account made me want to hold to the rod longer even when I was offshore. I got to where I was uncomfortable if I was not on the ship, barge, or platform working. Besides, it is agreeable work. Some of us started at 6AM and worked until 6PM, some from 6PM until 6AM. Some of use from 5 to 5, same deal.

For the single guy, it was a dream job. I once stayed nearly 90 days straight. That homecoming only made it worse for my hankering to be back on the ship because I could see myself getting ahead. Others worked the traditional two weeks on and two weeks off. Many had saved their money and used the oil field job to pay their bills and ran things like a contracting or backhoe business to pay for toys and fund their retirement on their off weeks. I am sure you understand when I say it took me a little while before thinking of being in business for myself again. I worked in the oil fields and I recovered from the robbery and the divorce, one day at a time.

I wish I had had these people’s help when I started looking. I can guarantee that should I ever look to returning to the oil fields and its honest, well paying work, these people will lead the way.

If you think working in the oil fields might be for you, and I highly recommend it as a place to work, try these folks on for size.

Best Regards,

Tim Singleton

Michael Jackson was a troubled fellow for sure. I never figured out if he really had a skin disease or if there were other issues with regards to his more and more bizarre appearance over time. There were also questions about propriety in his interactions with kids on his compound. I only qualify it by asking the question of what kind of parent leaves their kid with a man known to have questions surrounding his interactions with kids in his care.

All that aside, the man was talented. Whatever he may have been guilty of, being of questionable music talent was not one them.

Michael Jackson was a musical genius in my opinion. His re-inventing himself every so few years will be missed by me.

-Tim

My current reading list is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and Facebook Marketing by Steven Holzner. Currently, I am in love with the character of  Dagny and in admiration of Reardon. I can only work towards their determination.

I am also in the hunt for THE tome on CSS, php, and mySQL. There is no alternative to simply learning CSS if I wish to be in control of my website. Sucks, but there it is. “Ain’t nothin’ to it but to do it,” as the Turk used to say when I was down at the Correctional Academy in spring of ‘85.

CSS, or cascading style sheets, have certainly changed things since the day of static web pages back when I had my own ISP, the completely undeservedly unmourned SIS Online!, Inc. dba infosurge. We were running three servers, a Worldgroup 2.0 for DOS, a Novell file server, and a US Robotics Total Control Server with 64 integrated 56K modems and a T1 card in addition to the Cisco 2501 and all the Sportsters and Couriers we had added on as needed basis. infosurge was a BBS/ISP as many were during those days and we almost made it. I would sit in the basement with the lights out and in my boxers, LOL, or drawers as we say down here, fielding the tech support messages and phone calls from time to time while I watched the World Wide Web explode. Unless you have built something for yourself, you will not understand when I say I would sit down there and listen to the modems negotiate a connection and watch the red lights blink back and forth signaling traffic and it was a feeling of being high. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say I loved every piece of that equipment, as I put every piece in its place and made it work. Some Indian software house has the domain now, alas.

The books I have looked at so far on CSS, php, and mySQL assume an understanding of html on a level not many people have. It is possible I cannot get there from here, but most go elsewhere first. I suspect this may turn into another odyssey for me. Hopefully, it will turn into as much fun as learning servers and hardware from the ground up while trying to build a business.

I am going back to the Philippines on August 26th, stoked and cannot wait.

“The Millennium Problems” by Keith Devlin is not a book for everyone. I have a bent for mathematics and related books because the issue fascinates me. I solved an unsolved geometry problem proving that for any two circles A and B, all circles drawn in any tangential relationship to A and C lay on a conic section as a sophomore in 1980. One category had been demonstrated, but the others had not. I proved it for the parabolic, hyperbolic, and for all the degenerate cases as well. I also did some work on extrapolating the issue into spheres and higher dimension spheres, though I admit I am not as confident of that work because I was having to invent things on the fly. As a high school student I had not been exposed to many of higher mathematics tools. Sadly, due to bad choices in life, I am still not in possession of those tools. It makes a great way to while away the wee hours of the night when I am insomniac, though.

Anyways, in “The Millennium Problems” there is the case of P versus NP, a case that the author believes can be solved by a layman. P versus NP stands for polynomial versus non-deterministic polynomial time as it relates to the likelihood of complex problems being able to be solved for the most correct solution, as in if a traveling salesman has three cities to visit, he has a number of possible choices. How do you solve for the best choice and can the best choice be calculated? Applications in manufacturing are clear in that if you can prove that complex systems have a best solution then you can save billions by making processes more efficient.

Reading this book, along with Games Theory and Economic Behavior, makes me look at books like “The True Story of The Bilderberg Group” and wonder if someone has perhaps solved the problem of N versus NP.

Yeah, I know. Crap like this is probably why I am not married again, LOL.

The five books I have read in the past four weeks or so, to summarize, are “I am Legend,” “The True Story of the Bilderberg Group,” “Becoming a Millionaire God’s Way,” “The Millenium Problems,” and “Games Theory and Economic Behavior.” The last book is a hardcore math read, by the way. I am having to read other books in order to read the notation in it, so I am not going to worry too much about linking to it.

-Tim

Childrens’ International deserves its own link. Check it out here.

The organization’s stats, if I am reading correctly, indicate that 80% of the funds actually get to the child in question which is a heckuva lot higher than others. You can even pick the country. I just have a soft spot for the Philippines because no matter what World War you look at, the Philippines winds up getting hammered by the bad guy for a while. Also, despite their poverty, they seem to be more or less a happy people.

This is a good way for folks who are concerned about actually helping someone in particular, to help a particular someone. You get a picture of the child you are helping and are given reports on the child’s condition and progress and if so inclined, you can even visit or help with Christmas if the mood strikes you. You cannot write the child directly nor can they write you directly. This is to protect the child from predators and you from predation from the child’s neighbors. I suppose they figure if you are willing to fly over to visit the child you have the means and savvy to avoid being taken advantage of.

-Tim

“The “next big thing” our friends at the Daily Reckoning opine, “will be downsizing, cutting back, making do. Barely on the radar screen now, thrift is coming into focus more clearly day by day. So far, people are a bit embarrassed about it…a bit ashamed that they have had to cut back. But soon, it will be popular…fashionable…and finally, almost obligatory.”” I subscribe to this newsletter, and one of these days I hope they will do an affiliate program so I can get paid for recommending them. It will not stop me from going ahead and recommending them right now, though, to you for your immediate benefit. Agorafinancial.com is a quality resource for keeping up on financial matters. Making do and saving money seems to be a theme for the current financial environment, much to the horror of the Keystone Keynesians….

You want to save money? I know a way you can add $150 to $200 a month to your bottom line without subtracting from your current buying patterns. Yes, there is actual work and effort involved. You might actually have to print off coupons and use them when you go to Walmart or where ever you shop.

You cannot be bothered with coupons? Then quit your bitchin’ as they say. If you have so much disposable income that you ain’t got 15 or 20 minutes to add $100 or $200 in coupons to your pocket for when you buy groceries than why are you complaining?

Go here, urgently, and start saving money!

Rush Limbaugh may not support ANY Republican candidate. I can sympathize, Rush, with you between McCain and Huckabee and agree with your synopsis of the fate of the Republican party should either get elected.

Non-fat milk may encourage prostate problems. Cool. Whole milk tastes better anyway and has more protein. Now, if I could just find a place to buy unpasteurized milk within 20 miles of me.

I think I will start showing more interest in the Sundance Film Festival. It looks like a place where the truth about things can come screaming through, unspun and unwatered. Even Reuters is commenting on I.O.U.S.A.

Clinton may be smart like a fox, though she tends to make me think more of another four footed female category. How stupid can people be that she is the leading candidate ANYWHERE? As I say, if the people elect her, then we deserve her and whatever craziness she tries to implement.

I post regularly on a board for folks who have an interest in Philippine affairs since I have an interest there.

I find it interesting that the expats from America tend to be critical of posts that contain too much information.

Trying to fit a complex thought into the timespan of the average American’s attention span is difficult.

Perhaps this is why we never solve any of our problems.

(whew, 15 seconds! Hope that didn’t strain anyone’s brain!)