Archive for the ‘Description’ Category

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Yet another problem, solved.

May 1, 2008

If you don’t have the next 20-30 minutes to dedicate to reading this, move on to something more important and come back to this later, but the longer you wait, the more you hate America.

I am so sick and tired of this. In this post you will find some of the following; Ranting, Complaining, Anger, More Ranting, and to top it off I will be explaining the problem with our economy and why it will either make a major turn around or keep going down hill. If you dont care to read this, click here.

So I am going to make another prediction, this is also a major one. The economy is going to make a major drop, no not like you have been told by the media and the other amateur predictions by the “pros”, remember “The Titanic was built by professionals but the ark was built by amateurs.” Everyone knows the economy is going to kick the bucket, what caused this? Oh! Oh! Oh! I know, Pick me!!! Me! Me! Me!. It has a bit to do with everything, but mainly one thing. This fall could possibly lead to another “depression”. I don’t want my kids to grow up in that kind of world. We used to take this resource for granted, but now that it is getting more expensive its starting to hurt our bank accounts. Yes you guessed it, gas. It is getting over $4 a gallon in some places, and now we need to figure out how to fix this. Fix what, the gas prices? Yes we know Mike, but how do you do that what ever your crazy mixed up scheme is cant be done by simple old ME, can it? I can tell you how to do this now, but wait if you read the rest of this blog you will get knowledge for free thats less than a pennys a day!! (Yes, thats pennys, not pennies, pennys.) With the gas prices the way they are, and they look like that will easily top $5 a gallon by the end of summer, we are pretty much screwed. But here is my plan on how to fix this whole problem.

I know that I frivolously promote my main man, but it’s not because I want to impose my political views on all of you, but I do and will try to do. Paul knows the situation, he has a plan, and he can fix everything if given the chance! I’m so sick and tired of the media only giving coverage to Hilliary and Obama. Two of the three DB’s that are in the race. Paul can fix the economy, he is going to cut spending, make for small government, and bring everything back home. He will improve relations with foreign nations. Not too long ago I found an article of the Saudi Arabian president endorsing Paul, why? Well because everyone except the people of this country see that we are screwing ourselves. We have become so enriched with our own gluttony spending thousands of dollars on parties and alcohol. We need to take a step back and think about ourselves and look at ourselves from the eyes of someone from another country, ask yourself if you were a foreigner, “what would I think of America if I came here to visit?” Now seriously, think about it. Would you think, “hey these people are nice, the cities are clean, people don’t treat other people like the trash that they throw out the window while driving 115MPH down the 5 freeway, there is no trash talking and everyone respects each other.” No, that couldn’t be further from what the truth is. Take a second and think, what do people from another country think of us as a country? I know lets ask google, google always has great answers for our questions! Now I searched for one thing “I hate America”
Results 1 – 10 of about 6,260,000 for I hate america. (0.16 seconds)
Holy crap, thats 6 and a quarter pages returned!! Most of these pages returned from people from out of the country, thats quite a few pages.
Now I search for “I love America”
Personalized Results 1 – 10 of about 37,800,000 for I love america. (0.14 seconds)
Now mike, there were more pages returned for “I Love America”, thats right. And this proves my point That I made earlier. WE ARE TOO FULL OF OURSELVES TO NOTICE WHAT THE REST OF THE WORLD THINKS OF US!!!! They think we are trash!

Ok, now that I have discussed my opinion about the global “approval” of America from the views of other countries. Lets get back to what this is all about, gas. What the heck are we going to do to fix this major problem? Again, I have an answer for you. “Aww, Mike you cant have the answers to everything, why do you keep trying to make this crap up and shove it down my throat.” I will tell you why I shove it down your throat, because if I were to just say this to you like a teacher from your high school would, it would just forget it like you forgot 10th grade history. If you are thinking that, “Mike I am sick of your crap” you should have stopped a few hundred words ago, but now you are angry and want to have some reason to say, “Hey you are wrong!” Basically I have you hooked now. Now my idea to fix this whole situation is very far out there and it needs some time to fully fall into place(5-7 years, which may actually be too long), but it is VERY effective. Ban gasoline for use in cars. Now you think, thats impossible. AH, gotcha! There would be physically no law banning the use of gasoline, but a ban on things that use it, effectively making gas as valuable as a bottle of urine on the side of the street. Washington needs to stop bending over backwards for the oil companies and doing what they want just because they have money, screw that. The little mom and pop show down the street should have the same amount of say in what happens with laws at Arco/Exxon does. You really think that Washington is run by politicians? They are just puppets that you look at on the TV, Listen to on the Radio, or see them in person. It is just a bunch of crap they spew out because someone made an anonymous donation and we as people just take what they say at face value, STOP! I know you all are busy people, “Mike, I don’t have 30 seconds to think about what was just said to me.” I know that almost everyone that reads this is from my church, so I don’t imagine that you watch too much South Park, but last season there was an episode that was essentially a parody on the 9/11 conspiracy, at one point the character playing the part of the president says a line that went something like this:

Stan: But the people of the United States would never believe something like that!
GWB: Hehehe, people…More like ’sheeple’. You see Stan, the people of the United States can just be lied to and manipulated they follow along like nothing other than sheep. Thats why we framed the Muslims for 9/11

Another line from the movie Shooter.
“This is a country where the secretary of defense can go on TV and tell the American public, ohh it’s about freedom, it’s not about oil. And nobody questions him because they don’t want to hear the answers because they know its a lie!”

So instead of being a sheep about it and taking what is said for face value. Look into something before you buy it as it is sold to you. If you just take it as it comes and believe every last word just cause you don’t want to look into it more then you most certainly fail. Now, what the crap is this about $5 a gallon? We need to get rid of gas, in a simple but hard system that will only take a few steps. We can lose our addiction to oil. Yes you heard me correctly, we can LOSE our addiction. It wont be easy, jobs will be lost, money will be lost, truces will be broken, maybe they will stop airing 24 on Monday nights. All of these things would be epic to not only our economy but to toe world. Here we go, buckle up and hold on tight.

Step one: Ban importation and production of gasoline powered vehicles for consumers. Were talking your Minivan, your Honda, your Ferrari, your Lexus, and your Prius. It is still legal to import gas/diesel powered vehicles for use in commercial settings, your MACK truck is ok, your work truck is ok, etc. Obviously there would be restrictions on this, but ultimately all fossil fuel vehicles would be illegal to use. Now you are thinking, yes thats retarded, that will never happen, you cant just call up the companies and say “STOP!”, you are 100% right. We give the companies 1 year warning. January 1st of 2010 it will be illegal to import or produce gasoline powered vehicles into America.

Step two: Restrict the importation of vehicles to hybrid cars only, no not the piece of crap Prius, that thing uses gas, therefore, illegal. Hybrid cars using electricity and Hydrogen. Electricity being easy to produce with solar panels, new technology in solar have only a fraction of the first generation solar cells and up to 3x’s more energy produced. Hydrogen being the most abundant element in the universe, what is there not to like about it?

Step Three: Systematic destruction and reconstruction of gas stations to be replaced with hydrogen pumping stations.

Step four: The dealerships have 2 years, one year warning period and one year after to sell the gas powered cars off, after the 730 1/2 days whatever cars you have left will be sold to private companies to recycle the metal for use in other applications.

Step five: This step doesn’t really need to be done by anyone, simply because it is the cornerstone in releasing our need for oil. Gasoline/Diesel powered vehicles are not completely illegal to drive, you can still own them, but to get gasoline you are pretty much on your own to get because, well there is no where to get it.

Mike, you have crazy ideas that will never work, but thanks for trying. If thats what you are thinking, you are wrong. Most of my ideas are radical, but thats because the MUST be. If we make a few changes here or there its just sweeping a mess that keeps getting bigger under another rug and spreading it out. You may have a mess thats only half as big, but now you have two, one in the garage and one in the spare room. You haven’t solved any problems, just moved it out of the way. We need change not shifting. We need someone in office that can fix everything, and Paul is the guy to do it.

Ultimately this whole plan would do a few things, one it would force companies to start making hydrogen powered vehicles to stay alive, gas companies would either adapt to the new rules or they would die, survival of the fittest now. But wait there is still more! Mike wont hydrogen just become the next gas and you will be paying $5 a bottle/can/some unit of measure, PSI? Yes, that would be a problem, but where there is a problem I, and many others I imagine (or hope so, otherwise I should just give up on humanity) have a solution.

The price of hydrogen is running down hill as companies like GE start making moves to create a easier and faster way of producing Hydrogen. “Mike we still have the problem, a company will make a ‘gas station’ and then continue to charge outrageous prices.” Sure that has the possibility of happening but it will be unlikely, why? Because producing Hydrogen is not something that can only be done in a plant in Louisiana, You don’t need a barrel of crude oil to make hydrogen. You need a small unit in your house that will produce it, “but Mike that unit will be expensive.” Wrong again! In a town somewhere in Idaho the local government requires you to buy a gun when you purchase a house, but if you cannot afford to buy a gun, the government will buy it for you. This same model will be used to distribute hydrogen production units, think about it, you have your heater/AC unit, your water heater, and your Hydrogen production plant. IN YOUR GARAGE!!! Any home that is built after 2010 will be required to have a water heater, heating/AC unit that runs off Hydrogen and then after 2012 every house that has already been built will be required to have one installed. Hey, guess what! You can fill your own tanks for your car too! Gas stations cannot compete with you, so they are forced to make their prices competitive to stay in business. Dirt cheep clean energy.

Solved, no more gasoline for vehicles, Ron Paul for the next 8 years. And to think that he will be the first president voted into office by “write ins”. The next decade is going to be awesome.

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I found a blog by a man in Iraq.

April 28, 2008

http://last-of-iraqis.blogspot.com/

It’s pretty freaking epic, some of the storys are amazing. It is crazy to think that bullets and bombs are just as natural to them as a police siren is to us. You should check it out.

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New Gerbers.

April 24, 2008

I got my new knife and multi-tool today. Gerber. Needless to say, Gerber is the new Le*therM*n. Gerber simply makes better tools. Here are some pics!

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Almost forgot…

April 1, 2008

I can ride my bicycle with no handle bars.

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Surefire

October 17, 2007

My new flash light is epic win. It came with a warning that reads:

  1. Do not leave activated flashlight unattended
  2. Do not set the flashlight (lens) down. Doing so traps heat from the lame and may result in shortened lamp life and/or damage to surrounding materials.
  3. Do not place activated flashlight against any combustible material that could be damaged by heat.
  4. Do not hold bezel or lens of activated flashlight against any portion of the human body.
  5. Keep away from children.
  6. Remove batteries from flashlight before storing or transporting.

The initial opening of the light was momentous, it was everything I had been expecting, then I turned the light on, keep in mind I was on my front porch, after eagerly opening the box with anticipation, and the light was lighting things up that were in direct sunlight. It was, and still is epic.

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Unions.

October 15, 2007

This is all my opinion of unions, this in no way reflects my opinion of people that work in the field as individuals.

That being said, I had a talk with my boss, Jeff, on the way home the other night. He was telling me stories about union gigs that he has done in the past. Some pretty interesting stories. I recently was involved in a conversation with a union worker, he was telling me that unions are better, I disagreed with him. His arguments were something of the following:

  • You wont loose your job to illegals
  • The union will keep you safe
  • You get health insurance

These are all valid, but in audio the unions mandate breaks every ‘x’ period of time, and they are mandatory. That will screw you up when you are trying to load in your gear. You have someone to do everything, there are the truck loaders, the pushers, the utility crew, etc. Now that you know the different ‘classes’ here is what happens. The truck unloaders arrive at, oh lets sa, 8AM to load in, but the truck is late for some reason. The truck shows up at noon. Now the unloaders are on break, when they get back from break the pushers go on break so all the cases are sitting out side while you wait for the pushers to get back from break. The pushers get back from break and load in all your gear, but the utility guys are on break now because of all the delays. So after the truck showing up a few hours late, a job that should be done in 2 hours has now taken 6+ hours.

This is why freelance work is the best.

  • You wont loose your job to illegals if you work hard
  • You get the jobs done faster
  • Union leaders seem to think that the workers are better off when they work less and get paid more, but in reality the customer wants to avoid over time and double time. My personal opinion is get your work done as fast as possible and avoid going into over/double time.

The way I have been influenced by Goodman is “work fast, hard, and accurate.” This directly translates to the client “these guys do the work fast and correct, and they are avoiding over/double time.” If you work hard and fast, you don’t get paid as much, which is granted, but you will get more gigs from the people because you are doing such a great job.

In freelance work you are only as good as your last gig, that being said, you work hard and fast and correct and you will get more gigs because your work ethic is good.

They simply don’t make sense in this day and age. They worked a long time ago when there were not rights for people working for large companies, where they would work for almost nothing. The unions were needed to let the companies know that the people need to be paid correctly for their jobs. In this age now, if you are not paying your employees well, they simply wont work and go find a job that will pay them the correct wage.

In conclusion, I will avoid working for a union as best as possible.

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FiOS Fascination.

October 1, 2007

I have been fascinated with the speed offered with Fiber Optic Internet connection, the upstream and downstream are ridiculously in speed. The only thing that I don’t like about it is the upload speed, there are plans that offer 5mbps upstream but you can only buy that plan with 30mpbs downstream. 30mbps is waaaayy to fast for me. I actually think that my hard drive would not be able to write data that fast. I have been asking the people on “live chat” (which I think are either A: bots; or B: Indian people hired to talk to me via Internet from their home office in Delhi) So after trying to sift through that mess, I decided to go play Counter-Strike:Source, gotta love the Zombie Mod.

Tomorrow afternoonish I plan on calling Verizon to get the connection installed. After reading more about the installation process, I found out that it will be free the first month and the installation fee will be waived, sweet! I will be keeping this up to date with more info as it comes.

Here is my ‘speakeasy‘ speed test results for my current connection:
Download Speed: 6880 kbps (860KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 491 kbps (61.4 KB/sec transfer rate)

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Gig in Beverly Hills, CA. (Part II)

September 30, 2007

Upon arriving today, the place was about finished, sweep some stuff here, plug in a few cables there, nothing big.

I’m having a hard time explaining what exactly went down, the event coordinator was a nice guy, but as for organization, it was terrible. The actual ceremony started around 8PM, just like I thought. But we did not get out until around 10:30PM and I got home around 1AM. I have nothing else to say about this gig, other than the guy was a total jerk, so full of ego that he needs a 50k sq. ft. house to hold it all in. The house has enough space for each of them to have 25,000 sq. ft. to them selves if its needed.

A highlight of the night was the 70ish year old man that played the stand up bass, he was the funniest guy ever, we talked about steam power, skinny women, and some other random things.

I was sitting around waiting to strike when I came across a booklet with all the information about the wedding, it was full of information, even the part about Tyson being the best man. Now who can say that Tyson was your best man?

LOAD OUT —

Cakewalk, easiest way to describe it. Pulled the van right up to the cases, rolled them into the back closed the doors and left.

PICTURES –

My camera seems to have broken, so I was forced to take the pictures on my phone.

(Click to enlarge)
The Final Product of the Gazebo
So after a speculated 11-13 hours of work from the day labors, with no overtime, the project was finished.

Picture of the Steps of The House Looking at the Gazebo
It came together VERY well, last minute touches were added then everyone sat back and waited for the show to begin.

The Walk in Band
The band played some good music for the guests as they walked to their seats.

Last night was long, glad I got at least 6 hours of sleep.

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Gig in Beverly Hills, CA. (Part I)

September 29, 2007

So, this being my first Blog I will put some time into it while I wait for Stargate Atlantis to finish downloading.

THE BEGINNING –

I arrived at the shop this morning around noon to meet Jeff and head up to the gig up in the hills of Beverly Hills, the ride up was cool, chatted with Jeff about rock climbing, about what we were going to do with the gig. Jeff had been the the estate a few times in the past week for meetings/planning/etc… Actually let me jump back and give a brief history of the property, keep in mind this information is second hand from me eavesdropping on conversations –

Roughly around 2001 the land was purchased by a man, no one I talked to knew the name of the first owner, but he found a VERY large piece of land that is roughly 27 acres, by no means a small plot. He then began to build a house on the property, which is roughly 50,000 sq. ft. Soon after the building of the house he was divorced and was forced to sell the property off to pay for legal fees etc. The house was sold to another man, now this story I heard two different versions, I will start with the first version I heard; A man bough the unfinished house and start to build it but ran out of money and sold it a friend, the current owner; the second version I heard was that the second owner of the house died and the current owner purchased it for fairly cheep and is now finishing it. The second owner of the house paid quite a lot to get the house wired for power, CAT5, phone, etc. before the drywall went up and saved a lot of time for the current owner, which the people working on the system were very ecstatic.

– Back on topic now, Jeff had been telling me how the property about a week ago was no where near finished, but he had seen about 200 people working on the house trying to finish everything, he was expecting more to be done, but when we arrived he was surprised to see that not much in actuality had been finished sense his last visit.

THE LOAD IN –
Upon first arrival, around 12:30PM, to the property we drove up a small 1 1/2 lane road that was very run down, not that impressive. After getting up this road there was a temporary booth for the security guards/gate crew. Getting through there was easy, no problems. The problems began on the actual load out, we didn’t have very much equipment, Mixer toprack(O1V96), 4 JF300’s, 10 Hot spots, and cables. As you can see, not very much at all. Now the problems began, the hill that we needed to either 1) push up, or 2) back the van up the hill, we went with option 2. The hill was too steep to back the van straight up, eventually we figured that we could “see-saw” up the side of the hill just go back and fourth until the van was easy to get up. After a few minutes of navigating the side of the hill we made it on the ’service’ road unloaded, everything was smoothe from there, well we almost tipped the toprack over, but we saved it.

SETTING UP –

This was pretty easy, 4 stands with articulating legs, throw the 300’s up on them, place the 10 hotspots, loop them all up. Ran a NL8 to a pinswap box, broke out the speakers to front and back, front being pin 1/2, and back being 3/4. Then looped everything to the toprack, everyone is happy. Now the clock has hit around 3PM, the rehearsal begins around 7PM, we had some time to kill. Jeff and I figured we would walk around the property and check out the house and the views and what not. I happened to bring my digital camera, so no more crappy photos from my phone, scroll down to see the pictures.

MEETING THE PROPERTY OWNER –

So, the owner of the property owns a house up in Malibu that is very nice, I also heard that he owns rental property all over SoCal. This guy named Jeff, not my boss, is rumored to own 1800ish rental condos/apartments and somewhere in the 300,000 sq. ft. range of commercial property. His income is based on the money he makes off of this I suppose, my father thinks that he is a drug lord, but it’s not my place to ask questions.

This guy, from first impression, is a total nut, weird, annoying, hard to work with, just to name a few things, but he signs the checks so it doesn’t matter what I think. Talking to Jeff, my boss, about this guy, he says that a lot of the meetings that they had this guy would not give anyone an direct answer, always just moving ahead with out answering the question at hand. They would be asking him if he approved the plan for ‘project X’ when the people would ask him, he would be on a completely untreated topic.

This guy is a jerk, simply because: He had all of these Mexican labors that he refused to pay over time for, not much of a problem, they are probably still working as I type this thing up. But he is angry because the people that he hired to do specialty work such as lighting, audio, pool, etc. left after 8 hours, because they were not getting paid over time. My personal opinion on this is, “If you are going to get a house furnished, landscaped, and tile work done in a week, you will need to pay for it.” This guy is a moron, I have no idea how he has made this money with his personality.

A phrase used to describe this guy was “slum lord”. He just seemed like a guy that has nothing better to do that make money off of screwing people. That’s no way to act, don’t take advantage of people to make money, it’s no way to live your life.

REHEARSAL –

What? Where? When? These words describe the rehearsal in detail. What rehearsal, it was suppose to start around 7PM. We find out around 7:10PM that they are running late and will be there around 7:25PM, not a big deal. Around 7:30PM the rehearsal group shows up, to do what? They show up half-hour late to socialize and walk through the house, this is not cool, we need to get sound check set and figure out all the details. To make a long story short, Jeff and I left with out ever doing anything related to the rehearsal, oh well.

CLOSING THOUGHTS –

This guy has been engaged to this girl he is marrying tomorrow for 12 years, yes years. That means that he got on his knee when I was 7 years old. What an epic fail. This guy seems to have no respect for people and their time schedules and I seriously doubt that this wedding will start at the panned time, 7PM. And I am willing to make a prediction about his marriage; I don’t see it lasting more than 2 years, sorry big guy, I don’t see how anyone could like you for anything more than your wallet. Tomorrow the job that we are doing should be over by 7:45PM and then we can strike and go home around 8:15-30PM, they will probably delay the start so far back that it will start sometime around 7:45-8PM, we strike and still get out of there by 9-9:30PM and get home before Sunday, not bad. This guys house is 50,000 sq. ft., he only needs to live in 10,000 sq. ft. but needs the other 40k sq. ft. to house his ego. Cant wait for this gig to be over, not enjoying this one.

PICTURES — (click to enlarge, should open in a new window.)

The Vineyard

The property has it’s own vineyard.

The Front Yard
I wish the front yard at my house was like this!

The Front Gates
How many houses have a front gate?

The Courtyard and Front Door
I had a fountain in my drive way, once.

Areal View
This is the property from the guest house.

The Front of the House
This is a picture of the front of the house.

The Ball Room
There is a ball room with a ‘bar’ like thing in the middle.

The Kitchen
The kitchen was amazing, I was at a loss of words.

The Basement/Wine Cellar
There was an upstairs wine room, but we are guessing that this was the basement to the cellar, you know for the hundreds of bottles of wine you will need to drink when you are rich. Drinking wine is a requirement of being rich from what I have learned.

The View From the Gazebo
This is looking over the downtown LA area, the tall buildings to the left is the “century city” area, I did a gig two weekends before there for the Grammies pre-party.

The Gazebo
The all marble gazebo, you did not hear this from me, but that structure is not up to code.

The Gazebo, Its Blurry on Purpose
I got bored and decided to mess with shutter speeds and moving the camera.

The Gazebo From the Back Side
It will be done tomorrow, probably. It was about 90 min from being finished when we left at 8:00PM.

I will update this tomorrow night after I get home from the gig with more details.

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Stargate Atlantis Season 4 is going to be amazing, I CANT WAIT.