Beach Front

I just came upon this speculative map of what the western U.S. would look like after Yellowstone erupted. Very interesting, it looks like Driggs and Vegas could become beachfront property and Salt Lake City would go down (maybe, good riddance).

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Readiness

Here’s another interesting chart to ponder:

Source: The Aegon Retirement Readiness Survey
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Pop Chart

It’s important to know where you float in the River of Life.

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Phoneless

I don’t carry a cellphone around with me like most people in this country these days because I don’t own one and I don’t rent one. When I tell people I have no cellphone they look at me funny, like, you poor man can you not afford one? Little do they know I was the most connected man back in King County, WA. I once walked into a bank with a two-way radio, a NextTel push button device, a company phone and my personal phone all strapped to my belt (I was a transit supervisor), and the teller just stared at me and said really?

I got my son Riley and my mistress Stephanie phones on a family plan so we could stay connected, long before the internet was available on a screen. Hell, I was writing computer code before most people I know were born, so don’t feel sorry for poor me.

As of last year Steph and I had both bought into our local providers phone deal and we were carrying around state of the art Galaxy 8’s. After two months of absurdity where they couldn’t get their texting act together we said screw you and returned the phones. Steph ended up getting a tracfone and I did nothing.

The purpose of this post is to tell you how great it is to be phoneless. We kept our internet connection with SilverStar (obviously) for $58 bucks a month. I hooked a VOIP phone up to it here at the house which uses my Google Voice number and functions just like a landline. I have a phone number.

The Google Voice number is also my texting number, using my variety of mobile tablets. As I travel about all I need to do is find a hotspot, check my text messages and respond. I am connected.

What I don’t have is an obnoxious device that I have to carry with me everywhere. I drive for a living but I don’t have to worry about a call or text coming in. The only social media I indulge in is Twitter and I do that at home on my desktop. I feel like I’m just as connected as everyone else, I just pay less and hassle less.

Being phoneless is the new form of freedom!

btw: If I need to take a picture of something, I have a real camera.

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Pathetic

I eat one orange, one avocado and one banana every morning. I’ve been doing this seven days a week for the last few years and as such I consider myself pretty experienced with these three fruits.

Bananas you can’t go wrong with, I like them with streaks of green. Avocados are all about color and feel, and it’s almost a religious ritual as I peruse the fruit section, looking for the right color and confirming my selection with a slight squeeze. Oranges on the other hand are my nemesis.

Sometimes the palest little guy has just the right feel, separates easily from a thin peel and tastes great. Sometimes they look terrific with a bright orange color but then you cut into them and they look like a pathetic piece of genetically engineered crap…

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Perspective

The Earth and the Moon shot from a NASA spacecraft…

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Scars

Back in the late sixties I got into a fight with the mother of my daughter‘s pimp. He caught me with a right to the chin that missed with his fist, but cut me open with his metallic watch band. Blood was squirting out which ended the fight and I walked out to the stairs of the two story apartment in the darkest of Oakland slums and watched the blood flow down the steps onto the street. I was stoned on 500M of top grade acid at the time and it seemed like a river to me. Somehow I ended up at the ER and they patched me up and to this day I can’t find that scar, probably because of the crazy beard thing hanging off my chin.

Life is but an accumilation of scars. Some are physical which you can hide and forget about, while the mental ones not so much. Most of them you get over and push off to the back of your brain while others rear their ugly head the moment you open your eyes in the morning. Sometimes other people scar you so deeply to the point that their apology doesn’t heal the wound. I forgave the pimp, but that happened a long time ago…

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Trip To Town

We drove into town to run some errands this morning and I captured the event with my new window mounted cam toy. Bought gas, dropped off mail, stopped at the dollar store and then picked up food supplies for the week.

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Local Build

The new house between my nephew Brian’s and our place is going up quick. They have a basement, which is pretty cool, and the well is being dug. Click the photo below for a closer look…

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Ready For VR

I’m about to enter the next dimension. My computer is ready, now I just need to select the Virtual Reality hardware required to get there…

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Fire Update

I lived in Santa Rosa, CA back around 1980, in a house surrounded by trees in a rural area, so there’s a chance it’s gone now. My friends Skoge and Grant live in Petaluma which is down the road and I reached out this morning to check on them. Here’s Skoges report from the heart of the action:

Have you seen the pictures of Santa Rosa? It's sad. So far the Santa Rosa fires were started by an exploding transformer in Mark West Springs (the Russian River/Guernville road. MWS aka Wikiup is gone. Large mansions, middle class homes, all gone. The Hilton on the hill near Wikiup burned down. That moved East and now Calistoga has been evacuated, the whole town! The fire jumped Hwy. 101 and headed towards the Russian river. It was a windy night so the embers set off clusters of total devastation along 101. Some went up the hills behind Santa Rosa and over to Silverado Road, down to Napa, as well as Sonoma. I'm on fire watch here tonight... I mean morning. The only thing between us and the Sonoma fire is Sonoma Mountain. It was windy this a.m. but it was Southeast so it went toward Napa and now the fires are coming down in 3 or 4 different directions on downtown Napa. We had a evacuation alert that anyone East of us should be prepared to get out if the wind changed and it came over the mountain. The smoke is worse than the air in Beijing, China, and the worst recorded here. I packed a few boxes of things that mean things to me, and medicines, valuables, pictures, and some clothes so I can load up the car if we are told to get out. It is in American Canyon and now Fairfield. I don't think we'll get hit today but it all depends on the wind. Otherwise, we're all fine as long as we stay indoors, with the windows shut.
Thanks for asking.
Skoge

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La Niña

It looks like a La Niña episode is heading our way this Winter. These things are wet so it means heavy snow for us. Arizona is looking good about now…

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Vital Force

My body vibrates constantly and I feel the vibrations of others. This is my vital force. Just as blood flows through our arteries and veins, the vital force flows along the nerves in a constant stream. This vital force is poured down upon us from the Sun, which is the source of life. A healthy man with abundant vital force becomes a center of energy, radiating power, strength, health and vitality from his body to the people he comes in contact with.

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Oh My

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My Spit

Last Sunday I drooled saliva from under my tongue into a test tube up to the fill line. I then tightened down a special cap which shot blue fluid down into my spit. Then I shook the tube up for five seconds, put it inside a self-sealing plastic bag and then into a self-sealing small box with prepaid postage and a Utah address on it.

Yep, my DNA is heading out into the world and where it stops nobody knows. I was introduced to the AncestryDNA concept last summer when I visited my California friends Sherry and Grant. They both did it and were pleased to discover the origins of their past.

I’m doing this for somewhat different reasons. My ancestral links in this country are long and strong on both my mother and father’s side, I just don’t know how really far back they go so it should be interesting to learn. But that’s not the real reason.

I may have children out there in the world I don’t know about, in fact, the possibility is strong. If there’s someone wondering who their real dad is, and I’m it, they deserve to know. I’m also at a point in my life where I really like who I have become and I would hope that if someone say’s I think you’re my dad, they wouldn’t be disappointed.

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