Well I have found a new distraction to eat up my time. The other day Linda told me that she had a game called Spyder Solitaire on her computer and that she had been playing it and loved it. She told me to check mine and see if I had it. I assured her I did not as I don't play games on the computer and never install them. Opps, turns out SS comes with Windows XP. I have only recently started using XP. I bought a refurbrished Dell on eBay and it had XP installed. Before that, I had used an older Dell with W2K. The old machine did everything I needed but an early morning thunderstorm took it out along with my phone server and my Ubuntu linux machine.
Anyway, I do have Spyder Solitaire and it is kind of addictive. I think I like it better than regular solitaire, and I love to play the regular version. For now, I am limiting myself to about a half dozen games at a sitting and no more than 3 or 4 sittings per day. Since the weather has been cold, I have been staying kind of cabin bound anyway, but when warm weather gets here, I may have to relegate myself to only late night games just before bedtime. To explain how bad this is, I've even located a linux version and loaded it on to my eee PC so I can play when I travel. I guess its just another life lost to addiction.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
TSA Anal Cavity Searches
Not yet, but give it time. I just read this article on CNN about the TSA reaction to the attempted Christmas flight bombing. It's just a matter of time until some wacko sticks a homemade explosive device up his poop shoot and tries to detonate it while the plane is in the air. As soon as he does, the TSA will start immediately having passengers strip, (what difference does it make, their machine already lets them see you naked) bend over and be probed anally.
As for me, I would not currently get on a plane for any reason short of saving my life or the life of a close loved one.
As for me, I would not currently get on a plane for any reason short of saving my life or the life of a close loved one.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Taking A Chance
Funny how when you get to thinking about one thing, it leads you to another, and then another and finally you are thinking about something far removed from where you started. All the current news about the "Bingo Raids" got me to thinking about gambling in general. Gambling, like drinking, religion, abortion and politics, is a hot button topic. Hot button topics are apt to stir up controversy whenever they enter a conversation. I'm not gonna discuss any of them here today but I am gonna recount a story that this topic brought to mind.
Years ago, at the company where I worked, we played a game called check poker. I'm sure it, or a variant of it was played through out the country. We got paid every other Friday and our company was big enough that all the checks had 5 or 6 digit sequence numbers in the upper right hand corner. Before the checks were handed out, a group of us, usually the same suspects, would put $1 each in a pool. Then when we got our checks, we would compare the check numbers as if they were poker hands, 1 of a kind, a pair, 3 of a kind , 4 of a kind, full house and straight were all possible. The person with the best hand took the pot.
Not everyone played. I suspect that some were too tight and afraid they might loose a dollar. Some didn't want to be seen as associating with "our" kind, except as work forced it. Others maintained that it was gambling and was immoral. When any one brought up the moral argument, there was a guy, whose name happened to be "Guy" who loved to tell the story of an old switchboard wireman that was in his crew when he worked in the field. The old wireman was named Tony. By all accounts, Tony was a good man and a hard worker. I met him myself and remember him to be rather loud, funny and good natured. He was of Italian decent and I suspect he was a good Catholic. I did not know him that well but Guy said that Tony was hard against any form of gambling. It may have been from a personal experience or from something that happened in his family, I don't know, but it is said that he hated any form of gambling. But Tony always participated in check poker. The more sensitive portion of our population would let something like that slid, but the folks in Tony's crew, in fact the folks in all of our field crews were not the kind of folks to let anything slide. They were the in your face types. If they sensed hypocrisy or inconsistency they would confront you immediately. When payday rolled around and check poker was being played, someone new to the crew or someone that had recently discovered Tony's hatred for gambling, would challenge him about the paradox of him playing check poker when he hated gambling. Tony's answer was that check poker was not gambling, it was just "taking a chance."
Often I tell stories because they reinforce some point I want to make but not this time. I told you this story because I like it. Of course it probably does not mean as much to you if you can't put faces with these names, but I can and as I said, I like it.
Years ago, at the company where I worked, we played a game called check poker. I'm sure it, or a variant of it was played through out the country. We got paid every other Friday and our company was big enough that all the checks had 5 or 6 digit sequence numbers in the upper right hand corner. Before the checks were handed out, a group of us, usually the same suspects, would put $1 each in a pool. Then when we got our checks, we would compare the check numbers as if they were poker hands, 1 of a kind, a pair, 3 of a kind , 4 of a kind, full house and straight were all possible. The person with the best hand took the pot.
Not everyone played. I suspect that some were too tight and afraid they might loose a dollar. Some didn't want to be seen as associating with "our" kind, except as work forced it. Others maintained that it was gambling and was immoral. When any one brought up the moral argument, there was a guy, whose name happened to be "Guy" who loved to tell the story of an old switchboard wireman that was in his crew when he worked in the field. The old wireman was named Tony. By all accounts, Tony was a good man and a hard worker. I met him myself and remember him to be rather loud, funny and good natured. He was of Italian decent and I suspect he was a good Catholic. I did not know him that well but Guy said that Tony was hard against any form of gambling. It may have been from a personal experience or from something that happened in his family, I don't know, but it is said that he hated any form of gambling. But Tony always participated in check poker. The more sensitive portion of our population would let something like that slid, but the folks in Tony's crew, in fact the folks in all of our field crews were not the kind of folks to let anything slide. They were the in your face types. If they sensed hypocrisy or inconsistency they would confront you immediately. When payday rolled around and check poker was being played, someone new to the crew or someone that had recently discovered Tony's hatred for gambling, would challenge him about the paradox of him playing check poker when he hated gambling. Tony's answer was that check poker was not gambling, it was just "taking a chance."
Often I tell stories because they reinforce some point I want to make but not this time. I told you this story because I like it. Of course it probably does not mean as much to you if you can't put faces with these names, but I can and as I said, I like it.
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