Buckster's Blog - BLOGSTER!

I'm a grandpa!

2009-10-19T18:06:00.001-05:00

Casey 7357 B, originally uploaded by Buck Cash.

My daughter Casey just gave birth to Gracie at 5:01 PM today, 10-19-09, weighing in at 7 lbs. 14 oz and 20 &3/4".

Mom and daughter are doing perfectly, and Casey said she's the most beautiful baby she's ever seen, which is exactly what I said when Casey was born. :) She also said Gracie's got our nose. LOL!!

Woot!!

The End Of America

2009-07-26T21:07:00.002-05:00

I heard about this documentary based on the book by Naomi Wolf, searched it out and found that it could be watched for free online. There's a very short 15 second commercial every 20 minutes or so, but worth it. Check it out:

Phlebitis

2009-07-17T09:32:00.002-05:00

Milk Drop 5989, originally uploaded by Buck Cash.

It's been a long time since I posted anything medical here, but last weekend my right arm got sore around the elbow for no apparent reason. There was no evidence of a bug bite of any kind, and I hadn't injured it in any way. Over the next couple of days, it swelled up and got more painful, until it reminded me of the DVT (deep vein thrombosis - aka: Blood Clot) I'd gotten in my left leg several years ago. That was enough to send me to the doctor to get it checked out.

My DVT put me in a wheelchair and I had to give myself injections of Lovenox a couple/few times a day in the leg (which now has no feeling in that area at all - go ahead and stick me there - can't feel a thing). In addition, I was eating pain meds for it like candy, and drooling a lot. Eventually, the clot dissolved from the injections, I weaned off the pain meds, and started physical therapy to learn how to balance and walk again. My wheelchair's been parked since. I wasn't looking forward to any such experience from this pain in my arm, and the costs in my mind without insurance just made me wince in more pain.

Since I have no insurance, I checked into the emergency room at a nearby hospital bright and early Monday morning. They got me right in and started checking things out, and I was actually quite impressed with their efficiency. I didn't have to fill out 3 acres of forms - in fact, I didn't have to fill out a single one. A hospital worker with a laptop on a cart came by, asked the relevant questions, gave me a card with info and said when the bill comes to call the number and they'll set up payments with me. It hasn't come yet, so I don't know how many millions of dollars it will be this time.

White blood count normal, so not fighting an infection - check. No bug bites - check. Though I'm not allergic to anything I know of, I got an overall allergy med, and nothing changed - check. Then an ultrasound from my neck to my wrist - revealed some inflammation in the veins - phlebitis.

Doc said it's not really a big deal, and to treat it with a heating pad and a baby aspirin a day till it goes away. If that doesn't help and it gets worse instead, come back and see him.

That was on Monday. Now it's Friday and it seems to be working pretty well. The swelling has gone down considerably, and the pain is going away. So, it's all good news from where I'm sitting.

Though I haven't seen the bill yet, I know it'll be a lot cheaper than I thought it was going to be if it had actually been a DVT. In fact, I'd say it'll be a drop in the bucket (photo at the top of this post is actually a milk drop I shot. Click it to see it and others in detail on my Flickr page).

;>)

Strengthen the clean energy bill

2009-06-08T13:27:00.002-05:00

Water Drop 5828, originally uploaded by Buck Cash.

Powerful oil and coal interests have had a stranglehold on our energy policy, demanding loopholes, bailouts, and giveaways from taxpayers. They've won concessions in the energy bill to preserve their profits and weaken the bill's ability to deliver on the full promise of clean energy jobs.

But now, progressives are coming together to push back. MoveOn has joined with groups across the progressive movement, from the Sierra Club to ACORN to Oxfam to Rock the Vote, to tell Congress to stand strong against the special interests that seek to weaken the clean energy bill at every turn.

We can strengthen and improve this bill, if progressive leaders in Congress will join our fight. Can you sign MoveOn's petition to Congress?

I want clean energy and I want the jobs that go with it available to myself and my fellow Americans. Join in by signing the petition here:

http://pol.moveon.org/cleanenergy/

New Tools

2008-11-01T16:21:00.002-05:00

Machine 9526, originally uploaded by Buck Cash.

Hi again all. New tools! Woo hoo! LOL!

First off though, the image above is of a machine I shot at The Henry Ford Greenfield Village. I love that place! You can click on it to go to my Flikr account and see it at the full posted size, which I think is better.

So anyway, a couple months ago, I got an offer from Adobe to upgrade my Photoshop CS3 with the NEW IMPROVED Photoshop CS4. I read up a bit on the new version, and decided it had enough new stuff that I wanted it, and whipped out the old plastic.

What I didn't realize at the time was that the product wasn't quite ready for prime-time. I had PRE-purchased my upgrade and had to wait. Bummer. :>(

But the wait wasn't too bad, and a couple weeks ago, I got the email saying it was ready for download. Between then and now, I've been checking it out, with lots of help from my favorite learning resource: www.Lynda.com and I'm really liking it a lot.

By the way, if you're looking for Photoshop training, at ANY level, go there and find trainer: Deke McClelland. Deke is THE MAN when it comes to Photoshop knowledge and training. Seriously. Guru. Awesome.

So, someone asked me what I thought about it the other day, and I went ahead and wrote it up. Then I thought I'd go ahead and share it with you folks here on my blog as well.

Most of you probably aren't Photoshoppers, and this post won't interest you much, but for those that are, I hope you'll find this helpful. Photoshop is important to me because of my photography mostly, but I also use it to make my cartoons and stuff.

First thing you'll notice in CS4 is that the interface is VERY different, but I'm quickly getting used to it, and liking it. It affords better screen real estate and better tool use, especially in the department of how many ways you can manage pallets (now called "panels" by Adobe). Adjustment layers are on a neat panel now also that I'm really beginning to like too.

Speaking of adjustments, Hue/Sat, Curves and B&W have a new feature that's basically a 'target adjustment tool' (from LightRoom). Just like you sample a color or luminance level with the eyedropper, you use this tool to target, grab and drag to increase or decrease in a way that ONLY affects the color or hue or luminance or whatever (depending on the adjustment feature you're using at the time). VERY cool!

Another new panel is a Mask Panel, and I use masks a lot, so this is real handy to me. It works exclusively with one layer at a time, so you have to be sure you're on the right layer, but that's great because it DOESN'T see all the other layers that you DON'T want to be affected by the new mask, like in the older channels pallet that was so great for making masks - this is even better because of that alone. But it gets even better: With it you can go straight to "color range", feather, density, and so forth right there in the panel.

The new adjustment and mask panels even have a clip button now - not a huge improvement over Alt/click between layers, but it's one step quicker, and no need to go to the keyboard, even for an instant just to do that when you're already mousing IN the panel to make your adjustments.

All the different panels available, from type to colors to channels to history to whatever can be independently dragged around and put together into whatever kind of pallets/panels work best for you. You can group them any way you like, and park them anywhere you like, move them around the screen, easily collapse them temporarily and pop them back out - all without going up into the menus to make any choices, unless you want to pull out a panel you haven't been using at all, so it's nowhere on your desk window.

Part of the new interface is that all your open photos are on tabs that you can drag into whatever order you want, or even drag it out of or back into the tabs to a floating window of its own, and there's a handy button to arrange the windows instantly to pretty much any way you want, using one photo at a time, or two, or three, or whatever, and there are a bunch of different configuration to start with right there on the button flyout. Then you can line them up if you like, and lock them to move together in harmony so you can easily compare them one against another just by moving one of them.

There's a BUNCH of that kind of control you can use now.

Smart Objects have gotten way smarter too in one big, major way. Smart object masks can now be locked in so that they move in sync with the image they're masking, even if you start doing wacky things like full blown distortions to it that image, like warping and whatnot.

Dodge and burn got REAL awesome in this version with seriously improved toning tools. (sponge improved too, but not as much) There's a checkbox labeled "Protect Tones" and it REALLY takes care of business. Dodge and burn used to basically destroy the image as you used them, and you had to be REALLY light-handed to work with them in good ways. It was like throwing chalk or mud at the image. Now, you can go CRAZY with them and get great results.

I've always used the bracket keys to increase and decrease my brush sizes, and shift bracket to change the hardness, and you sort of guess how that's going to work out a few times to get where you want to be. Now, you can also hold down the Alt key, then right drag in the image to size the brush to taste, and it gives a ruby lithe mask temporarily to see what it will look like to paint or erase or whatever with it. Shift Alt does the same, but adjusts hardness. That's how it works on my PC - According to Deke, it's different on a Mac. Anyway, that's pretty neat too - lots more visual input to work your brush sizes better than try, Ctrl Z, try again, Ctrl Z, try again, etc. I like it, anyway.

Camera RAW 5 has a WHOLE lot of cool tools that look REALLY handy in Deke's training course, but I haven't worked with it yet. I'm so used to working in Lightroom... Anyway, it looks like something I should definitely start working with.

Enhanced navigation ROCKS. No more 'bad' quality views at mag levels other than 25%, 50% 75% and 100% either - they're ALL good now, whatever your zoom level is. Zoomed in all the way to pixel level, each pixel has a thin little box around it so you can tell EXACTLY what you're working with - that's really neat. And you can zoom in and out by holding Z and just clicking and holding where you want to zoom to; Alt Z hold click zooms you back out.

Hold H and click down and you suddenly see the whole photo, with a square wherever your mouse is, so you can nav to a new point on the image. Let up the mouse button, and you're zoomed back in on that spot at the previous zoom level. No need at all any more for the navigation pallet.

Grab the hand tool, and you can 'toss' the image, like in Google Earth or something. So, you grab it and 'throw' it under your view to get where you want to go quick, while it scrolls by, as fast or slow as you 'threw' it. There's a rotate view tool now too, and you can just rotate to be able to fit areas on the screen better and work with them more naturally. It doesn't rotate the image permanently - it's just the viewer's perspective, and it's on the fly - no waiting or anything like that. It can also help you figure out where and how you might want to permanently rotate and crop an image.

I really love that stuff, and am finding it VERY useful and intuitive. They're using Open GL to increase the display abilities like crazy in those kinds of ways.

Some of the new "wow" things are the ability to stretch or shrink a photo with Content Aware Scaling, and it keeps the 'objects' at the right size, but works the little stuff like grass and sky and what not to make up the difference. Works pretty well, from what I've seen, and you can apply masks on areas to make SURE to preserve them intact before you transform it.

Another "wow" is the Auto DOF that allows you to throw several photos taken with the focus at different places and it combines them into one that's focuses throughout. This is especially handy for macro photographers, because you just can't get the Depth of Field at intense magnification. So, you shoot it several times, shifting the focus slightly between each, and let PS do the work.

That works best on a tripod, but the PhotoMerge and Auto-Align tools are better than ever. That shit's amazing.

Most of the other 'not new' tools seem to have also been improved in one way or another, from response times to better previews, to more functionality, etc.

In short, I'm loving it. Well worth the upgrade to me.

Visiting Sisters

2008-08-02T12:06:00.001-05:00

IMG_8730, originally uploaded by Buck Cash.

Here's a picture of me and my sisters, Trudy and Candy. We had a relaxing day at Elizabeth Park, enjoying the shade trees and having some KFC lunch. This is the first time we've all been together in a while, and it was great to visit with them again.

Are Corporations Psychopaths?

2008-06-30T22:05:00.002-05:00

FOX Burning Building Story, originally uploaded by Buck Cash.

I just spent 3 hours watching one of the most eye-opening documentaries I've ever seen. Watch it in bits and pieces or watch it all at once, but please... WATCH THIS.

Joe American Speaks

2008-06-28T22:26:00.012-05:00

Joe-American, originally uploaded by Buck Cash.

Joe American has spoken out, and boy is it GREAT! Well, it is until you actually start to think about what he says, do some research, and realize he’s probably a shill for big oil, big money, right-wingers, or all of the above.

Okay, so this Joe American video on You Tube was brought to my attention. I watched it. Then I watched it again. And a third time. On it's surface, it seemed reasonable and common-sense; It seemed to speak for US - Joe and Jane Americans. But there was just something... So I watched it again, and this time I took notes. And that's when the trouble started:

1. Joe American: Don’t keep pandering to segments of people whose votes you want. Pay attention to all 300 million of us.

Buck: Wow! That sounds GREAT! What a great idea! What a great sentiment! Unfortunately, this country is strongly divided. Red states, blue states, remember? You can’t please all the people simultaneously, and running down the middle of the aisle without representing one side or the other is a sure way to get nowhere. If you don’t get elected, you don’t get to effect change. It’s as simple as that.

2. Joe American: We need to make sure that America’s energy costs are not controlled by others. Do YOU get that?! Doesn’t seem so, because preaching about what we drive, questioning oil executives and doing NOTHING about this problem is NOT an answer.

Buck: THE MARKET is a World market, and is thus controlled by “others”. Those “others” are speculators, and as it turns out, they’re in large part right here in America – on Wall Street. The only way to NOT have those “others” control our energy costs is to NOT have a free market that can buy and sell shares of the oil market, which is driving the price per barrel up every day.

Well now, what do you think is going to happen to the right-wing conservative half of the people in this country when you spit on Regan’s grave by declaring that “Let the market decide” is what’s causing the big problem here, and we need to shut it down? What do you think the oil tycoons; with their lobbyists crawling all over the capitol and their favorite son in the White House are going to do? Roll over?

You want to reduce prices? You’ve got to affect the market. How do you, Joe Individual American do that? You STOP using so much ENERGY, so that less of it is moving through the market and the price goes down. How do you do that? Well, one way is to drive more efficient vehicles. DUH! Oh, but you don’t want to hear that preaching about what vehicles you drive, right? You want this problem to fix itself without YOUR PERSONAL support or sacrifice, right? You want the speculators and oil executives to just wake up tomorrow and decide not to be greedy anymore; to not make as much money as they can. Yeah, that’s gonna happen.

3. Joe American: Consider a business manager who brings in new inventory each day, at the highest cost ever paid, instead of using the 3-7 years worth of inventory he already has paid for, sitting in the back room. You’d probably think that manager was making money off the new purchases, or was maybe grossly inept, or stunningly stupid. Well, the US brings in about 65% of the oil it uses every day, while YOU SENATORS have about 32 trillion dollars of proven oil inventory that we already own on Federal land. That’s about $300,000.00 worth of crude oil for every household in America. You’re our manager, but you’re not using it.

Buck: First, the 3-7 years worth of inventory sitting in the back room he’s talking about is the nation’s oil reserves, and they’re sitting there in case of a REAL, DIRE, SERIOUS emergency – like if the oil producers we get our oil from were suddenly nuked or something, and there was NO SUPPLY coming in at all overnight. That’s what we have to keep functioning as a nation for 3-7 years while we get our collective shit together to find an alternative solution to get our SUV-loving mitts on some new supply lines. If we use those reserves up now, and that REAL, DIRE, SERIOUS emergency comes along, we are seriously screwed.

Second, the 32 trillion dollars worth of “proven” oil inventory on Federal Land he talks about ISN’T sitting in the back room, already paid for. It’s still in the ground and under the oceans, and it will take lots of money and effort to get to it, not to mention TIME – The Energy Information Administration has said that even if domestic production increased, it would have little impact on prices at the pump, and even THAT little increase wouldn’t arrive until around the year 2030, and “is expected to be insignificant”.

Not only that, but these back-yard oil fields are not “proven” either. The estimates are in a broad range of speculation, and “32 trillion dollars” worth of oil is meaningless, unless we know how many dollars per unit we’re talking about. Is that at $50 dollars per barrel or $500 per barrel?

Third, all oil is not the same. And while he says the 32 trillion dollars worth is “crude”, he nor anyone else knows what grade of crude it is at this point, because not only have we not tapped into it and started pumping, in most cases we haven’t even drilled down to SAMPLE IT YET. Some of it is only going to be suitable for making more plastics and pesticides, and I bet that’s not what you’re counting on to solve the energy crisis, is it?

There’s at least one more fatal flaw in his thinking here; that “we” already own it on Federal land. News flash Joe: The ONLY entities that will own it will be the oil companies like Exxon, and they play in a whole different world than you and I. In their world, it doesn’t matter that they CAN refine it and sell gas to Americans at $1 a gallon. What matters is that they CAN refine it and sell it to Americans at $4 per gallon. That’s why THEY are posting record profits while WE pay higher prices. Funny how that works, eh?

And guess how that plays into that world market I was talking about earlier, because I JUST know you’re going there next; You think that if we have MORE oil flowing because now WE’RE tapped into it right here at home, the prices will drop, don’t you? Oops! Nope, here’s what happens: OPEC cuts back on how much they provide, and there’s no net gain in production on the planet, which keeps the supply and demand ratios right where they are, and prices barely flinch. Don’t believe me? Keep reading…

Maybe you think that Congress will suddenly FORCE the oil companies to sell it to us at a reasonable price? Seriously? You really think that? Have you been paying attention to the relationship between big businesses like oil and our government? There’s the way things ought to be, and then there’s the way things are. Guess which one we’re stuck with?

The only way that “WE”, average Joe Americans will have that oil to set prices to, is if “WE” take it for ourselves instead of giving it to the oil companies. You know what that means don’t you? State-run oil refineries, that’s what – first step on the road to socialism, and we can’t have that.

Here’s something else you’re not going to like. In order to build the rigs and pipelines and all the rest that’s needed to reach down 4 miles into the ground to get at that slippery stuff, you gotta throw a bunch of money at it. And guess where a lot of that’s going to come from? US Taxpayers like you, me and Joe American. Say it with me now. The word is “subsidies”, and if you don’t think the oil companies will get them to undertake this huge effort to free us from foreign oil (what a noble thing for them to do!), then you haven’t been paying attention to your Congress; they ALWAYS get subsidies for that kind of stuff – ALWAYS. Yes, Joe – YOU will pay to build the rigs and drill for the oil, and THEN you WILL continue to pay through your nose at the pump.

4. Joe American: He next rants a bit about animal herds a thousand miles away because he thinks this is just about preserving an animal habitat. But then he accuses the Senators of BLOCKING the use of our nation’s oil assets “worth trillions of dollars” and force us to send both our treasure and our young soldiers to our enemies.

Buck: On the habitat thing, he’s right - in a way. The animal habitat that’s being preserved is the one that the big fat oil executives live in, which is right next door to the greedy politicians they keeps on their payroll. And we really should not be preserving those habitats any longer. Oh, but he said earlier that he doesn’t want to hear any more about questioning oil executives. I guess Joe American just gives them a free pass now.

Of course, he’s obviously referring to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, and he thinks that we’re all paying $4 a gallon just so that a caribou doesn’t have to look at a pump station out in the middle of nowhere. Truth is, that’s as far from the truth as it could be. It’s completely made up, and I’ll get to the specifics of ANWR in a minute. First though, let’s chat a bit about the so-called “BLOCKING” by Congress. Here’s the real deal - (make sure you’re sitting down for this):

First, contrary to the pleas echoing through the president, McCain and the Republican party for Congress to “lift the ban” on drilling, there is currently no ban. Did you catch that? No ban is currently in place. So calling for Congress to “lift the ban” is pretty ridiculous. Joe American has obviously heard these pleas to lift the nonexistent ban however, and he agrees that they should. Oh, if only the average Joe American would actually pay attention to what’s going on in HIS government, instead of just running around believing every talking point that pops out.

Now, there IS a moratorium on the issuance of new drilling leases. AHA! You say. Same thing! No, not really. Check this out; The US Energy Information Administration looked into this whole thing, and here’s what they found: The oil companies are NOT USING the leases they’ve already got. According to a special report released by the House Committee on Natural Resources earlier this month, the amount of drilling permits issued between 1999 and 2007 (those would be the Bush years, kids) INCREASED by 361%. – But the oil companies aren’t using them!

WHAT??! Yeah. There are almost 10,000 unused drilling permits ALREADY ISSUED by the Bureau of Land Management. The report says the leases are being “stockpiled” by the oil companies. I know - hard to believe. Go figure, huh?

The report goes on to note that only little more than 27 percent of Federal Land leased to oil companies, and almost 24 percent of offshore Federal drilling sites are currently producing oil and/or gas. In total, the committee estimates there are 68 MILLION ACRES worth of leased but UNUSED drilling sites. If energy companies put these sites to use, domestic oil production would nearly DOUBLE and natural gas production would increase by 75 percent. But wait – it gets better!

According to the US Mineral Management Service, 79 percent of the offshore oil reserves and 84 percent of onshore reserves in the US are ALREADY AVAILABLE for leasing WITHOUT lifting the moratorium!

Now, keep all that in mind when I say this about ANWR: There is more than 60 TIMES as much space in Alaska ALREADY AVAILABLE for drilling, and only a fraction of it has been leased.

SO, now you should be able to see clearly that it’s NOT CONGRESS that’s doing any blocking here that’s the root of why we’re not drilling, and Joe American just doesn’t have the facts to make an actual informed speech about it. He owes Congress and all of you an apology for the accusation, in fact.

And what would ANWR get us? According to the US Energy Information Administration, here are the facts:

“The United States produces 10% of the world’s oil and consumes 24% -- the latter about 21 million barrels per day.”

"There is little direct knowledge regarding the petroleum geology of the ANWR region. The USGS oil resource estimates are based largely on the oil productivity of geologic formations that exist in the neighboring State lands and which continue into ANWR. Consequently, there is considerable uncertainty regarding both the size and quality of the oil resources that exist in ANWR. Thus, the potential ultimate oil recovery and potential yearly production are highly uncertain. "

"With respect to the world oil price impact, projected ANWR oil production constitutes between 0.4 and 1.2 percent of total world oil consumption in 2030, based on the low and high resource cases, respectively. Consequently, ANWR oil production is not projected to have a large impact on world oil prices.”

“Assuming that world oil markets continue to work as they do today, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) could neutralize any potential price impact of ANWR oil production by reducing its oil exports by an equal amount.”

Okay, let’s do the math on that: In the BIG picture that we have to look at in real life, not THAT much oil. Worse; No net production gain = no significant price change = no relief for Joe American.

5. Joe American’s big plan: Use our own oil to get us off foreign oil – in four steps.

5-1. Joe American: Put a national energy plan in place. Like, declare that we’ll be energy independent by the year 2020 – that’s about 11 years from now. Approach it like Kennedy did when he said we should land on the moon.

Buck: Great plan. Just say it, and then develop new technologies that will make it happen. Nothing to it. By the way Joe, how much do you figure that will cost, and where do you plan to get the money for it?

5-2. Joe American: Identify allies to help us in this plan. How ‘bout Iraq?! Iraq is the other big issue, and they have about 9 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves. AND THEY OWE US. Not only for the freedom achieved and our soldiers lives, but around 2 trillion dollars in money THEY’VE cost our taxpayers.

Buck: Wait, they started it? They invited us to bomb them? So, if some foreign super-power were to invade us and kill a couple hundred thousand Americans, maim perhaps a million more, and displace nearly everyone in the country, WE would owe THEM for the privilege?

Joe American: We’re in a war, and the important thing is to get it finished, not who said what years ago.

Buck: Riiiight…. Let’s not talk about WMD anymore. Let’s not talk about being greeted as liberators. Let’s not talk about how it won’t last 6 months. Let’s not talk about how it won’t cost us much. Let’s not talk about ANY of that stuff. Let’s not learn from the mistakes, nor make anyone accountable for the LIES that got us into this mess that will cost us about two trillion dollars and who knows how many of our American troops, which is currently over 4000 and continues to grow in number.

Joe American: We need to successfully finish this war, not only for the people in Iraq, but to show respect for our wounded and our fallen, but also because it’s GOOD for the American people because –

5-3. Joe American: Make repayment of that debt mandatory and payable through a discount over the market price over the years of our national energy plan. That will reduce the cost of energy to our homes and businesses below world market price, likely increasing our business competitiveness and strengthening the dollar.

Buck: Good luck with getting ANYONE involved in the oil industry to get on board with selling at below the market rate. I’m still trying to figure out how it’s THEIR debt, when they never asked for their loved ones to be killed, maimed and displaced – and that they’d pay for it.

5-4. Joe American: Establish Iraq as our preferred energy vendor and ally. We will no longer buy energy from any nation hostile to our interests. By using our own proven oil reserves along with buying them from Iraq, we will not need oil from any other source to maintain current consumption levels to 2020 (his target year for The Big Plan), and even beyond.

Buck: OPEC. Say it with me. You think you can just stop buying oil from the Saudis and the rest of OPEC, and force Iraq to sell it all to us instead at below the market price, and you think OPEC and the Iraqis and the rest of the Muslim nations will go along with that without much trouble? Dude, we’re going to need a LOT more troops to pull that one off, because it means going to war with the rest of the Middle East.

And even if we COULD do such a thing and get the rest of the oil producing nations to go along with it, we CAN'T actually GET the oil out of our own ground until the oil companies start actually USING the leases they already have in hand and start drilling! To do that, they need to build a WHOLE LOTTA stuff to make that happen. They claim that much of this drilling is so deep that it will take 'special' equipment to even reach it, and they don't HAVE IT. The estimates are that if they all jumped on board with the idea of using those permits and drilling TOMORROW, we wouldn't actually GET the oil until the year 2030 - 10 years AFTER Joe's 'target' year.

Joe American: By buying our own crude from ourselves, even at 20 percent less than current market price, we can then be investing around 30 billion dollars each week on oil alternative research, development and infrastructure.

Buck: The biggest problem with that scenario is that we won’t be buying it from OURSELVES – we’ll be buying it from Exxon, just like we do right now, and they’ve already shown that they have NO INTENTION of taking a hit on their profits. Not only that, but you can’t do something like that without seriously impacting the markets. Do you really think the vast money interests that are invested on Wall Street are just going to roll over, or do you think that they’re going to join with the oil executives and do whatever it takes to keep our Congress-critters voting the way that they like; the way that keeps them all making maximum profits? You like to yell “WAKE UP!” Look in the mirror next time.

Joe American: Right now, we send that money overseas to crude oil suppliers who build enormous palaces and give our money to their citizens. Spent in America, that money will secure our future, create jobs, stabilize our debt, and perhaps, fund health insurance for every one of us – all while paying less at the pump.

Buck: Sounds great in a speech or on paper – impossible to get past the money players that control the whole thing on Wall Street and in our Government. You simply can’t make sweeping changes to our over-bearing capitalist system like that without an actual revolution pal.

Don’t get me wrong – I agree with much of what you’re saying, and in a perfect world where things are fair and square and common sense prevails, we wouldn’t even be having this dialogue.

But we don’t live in that fantasy world. We live in a Super-capitalist world of sound bites, think tanks, “gotcha”-politics, Swift-boaters and Faux News; A place where you go on a rant like you did and people buy into it, and NEITHER you nor your supporters ACTUALLY bother to do any research of your own or look at the actual facts. That’s why you don’t know about the non-used drilling leases being stock-piled by the oil companies, or any of the rest of the stuff pointed out above. Instead, you take the sound bites developed by some partisan think-tank and spewed out by some partisan hack that Congress is BLOCKING drilling, and run with it. YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.

In fact, the rest of your little rant is similarly simple-minded, flawed and not well researched, so there’s really not much reason to spend yet more time pointing out the many problems on a par with those above.

You’re a prime example of WHY America is sliding downhill faster than our economy can keep up – no actual research, no actual facts, no actual thinking required; just pass along the sound bites fed to you by the money-maker’s think tanks that are designed to get them more of THEIR chosen representatives in OUR government so that they can have an even easier time of bending us all over.

Well done, Joe American.

Now, WHY would you DO that???! His web site says this:

"Joe" has written many published business articles, co-authored a book, hosted a television show, and made many business and some political speeches. He was a stauch Democrat early on and then later became a Republican, having gained more real world experience. At one point ,he was being considered for a run as a candidate, but decided to continue on his business career instead. Ultimately, he became an independent. His intrests in political topics and government has never diminished.

So, Joe's a right-wing businessman wanna-be politician who's been drinking the preznit's kool-aid laced with conservative bullshit. Now we know why he thinks the Iraqi people owe us a debt for bombing the shit out of them and destroying their country. It also explains why he's bashing the current Congress for "blocking" drilling, when they're doing no such thing. Now we know why he doesn't want us to question the oil executives, nor talk any more about how we got into Iraq in the first place, and we understand why he's just buying into and passing along the right wing's talking points. Yep, it all makes perfect sense at this point.

He can call himself an independent all he wants - Bill O'Reilly does that too, and I ain't buying it from him either.

There's a reason this guy sounds like a salesman and looks like an actor. I suspect there's also a reason why you can't reply to his video on You Tube unless you give him praise. You can't have an open dialogue on his web site either - all you can do is email "him".

Edit: I'm not alone in my assessment that this guy's a fraud and a shill: Click Here for more discussion about it, and also Click Here to see an even MORE comprehensive rebuttal at the Daily Kos.

Working on my web site

2008-06-22T07:27:00.006-05:00

Buck at Work, originally uploaded by Buck Cash.

I got a reminder the other day that my web site had a birthday. It turned 12 years old. In that time, it’s grown from a couple of little pages of HTML hand-coded in Notepad to a monster of hundreds of pages and 13,508 files, and growing. In other words, it went from a cute little baby to a 12 year old precocious pre-teen with a serious case of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. The next phase of its life is going to be tricky. As any teen, it will be going through a period of transition. Its voice and appearance will be changing, and there will likely be some pretty ugly outbursts from time to time. But hey, it’s all part of growing up.

See, back in the day which, as it turns out, wasn’t all that long ago, there was very little in the way of web standardization. The internet wasn’t originally made to do what it does today with images and videos and sounds and all that jazz. It was a not-too-fancy text message system for geeks in laboratories and military installations; basically, a science experiment. But over time, geeks found new ways to use it to code, send and decode all kinds of things, like images and sounds and videos. And then the browser was born to make it easier to decode that stuff and view and hear it – Boom – Web pages. Put a bunch of them together – BOOM – Web sites.

But underneath it all, there was all this code coming from different places to try new ways of improving the speed and efficiency and ability in encoding, sending and receiving stuff, and then there were different kinds of code being written to decode it on the other side, and that started the first browser wars. Netscape took an early lead, but Microsoft saw the writing on the wall, introduced IE, built it into Windows and won that particular browser war skirmish by sheer brute force of numbers, since practically everyone was using Windows. Lawsuits followed, MS got slapped around a bit, but by the time the dust settled, it had the market.

Thing is, IE’s code was never all that great. They were kind of off doing their own thing, ignoring the meager standards that some early pioneers had decided would be a good thing to have, so that everyone writing code for web pages and for browsers were on the same page, and everyone out here in internet-user land could get consistency, no matter what machine or browser we used. Because those standards were not being implemented though, serious web designers had to write different code for different browsers, so that no matter what browser the end user was surfing with, they’d see what the designer intended (or close to it). It was a lot of work, and not-so-serious web page and site designers, like yours truly, just went with the flow, chose the browser most people were using at the time, IE, and wrote for it.

Anyway, using a glorified text messaging system to display web pages as though they were animated magazine pages, with not just text, but images, sounds and even video in certain places as a layout, meant ‘tricking’ the system a bit. You couldn’t just plop an image down on a page and it would stay where you put it, for example. You couldn’t just start typing and the text would flow around an image. That code transfer stuff wasn’t intended nor built for that. You had to create little walls of invisible virtual boxes to put stuff into, and the boxes wouldn’t go where you wanted them to either, unless you stuck them into other, bigger virtual boxes for positioning as well, and so on.

Those virtual boxes are called tables and cells, and designing web pages with HTML meant getting to know them inside and out so that you could exploit them to do your layout bidding. It also meant that the code for what looked like a simple web page to the viewer was anything but. And writing for IE, it was REALLY anything but. Coders call it ‘bloat’, because it adds a LOT of code, work, and download time to a page that should be a lot leaner and a lot simpler. And if you used a WYSIWG (What You See Is What You Get) web page editor, like MS FrontPage (yeah, I did that), you got even MORE bloat, and didn’t even know it, unless you bothered to look at the actual code being generated by the program. But unless you were really serious about your coding, you didn’t much care. All that mattered was that it looked the way you wanted it to when someone looked at that page in their (IE) browser. And with faster modems coming out all the time, the difference in load times between a lean page and a bloated page quickly became insignificant, so it REALLY didn’t matter much to the casual web page designer or the end user – except when the code was written for a browser you weren’t using, in which case the page would look kinda screwy, and you were advised to get IE (or whatever page it was ‘optimized’ for). How many times have you seen “This page is best viewed in IE”? Well, that’s what that’s all about.

The people in the back room who were working on standards never stopped though, and they came up with some REALLY good ideas, one of which is called CSS, which stands for Cascading Style Sheets, and it’s now become a web norm for web designers. If you look at the underlying code of most any modern-day made web page, you’ll see code at the top of the page that defines the styles of that page, or a reference to a page that defines the styles for an entire site. There’s usually still some HTML down in the body of the page, and that includes some tables here and there, but much, much less of it, and most of it is just a reference back to the style sheet code.

The idea behind style sheets actually started out in the print advertising industry, which makes sense. You have some basic elements you want to work with; basically, some text and some images like a logo and maybe some art or photos. And you want to use them to create various things for your client; brochures, magazine ads, newspaper ads, posters, cards, etc. They all use the same basic elements, but the layouts are different for each medium so that they’ll fit correctly and be aesthetically pleasing. Well, once you’ve got a layout, or ‘style’, for a magazine page, you can change the individual elements at will, and they just slide right into their proper places, which are predefined. So you can use the same style sheet for a lot of different clients without constantly working up a new design – you just throw the new client’s text and art at it and you’re done, except for some minor tweaking maybe. Over time, you develop several nice style sheets, and then you can give your clients a choice that you can easily implement with a couple of clicks. Or, on the other hand, if you want to change the layout style to something completely new, you make a few adjustments, and all the elements just re-align to it. It’s very slick and efficient and just naturally expanded from the traditional paper mediums to the screen in front of you.

So there’s the background, and it all leads up to why my site is going to be going through those teenage changes I described above. It’s time for me to grow up too in terms of how I manage my web site and the pages on it because, well, it’s simply unmanageable in its present form. And that means that I’ve got to take all that old, bloated IE-based HTML code, and replace it with modern, standardized, CSS code. I’ve got a lot of learning to do, and a lot of work to implement what I learn, but in the end, it will all be worth it.

I’ve known it was coming for a long time; Years, actually. And a little over a month ago, I decided to actually get to it. So I went to my account on www.Lynda.com and started my training. And yesterday, I took my first baby steps into the wonderful world of CSS by updating my work page. And then IE cried when it looked at it, but I don’t care.

And the reason I don’t care is because IE sucks, and I don’t use it anymore! It’s all about Firefox now baby! Yep, there’s a new browser war going on as we speak, and Firefox is so awesome that when they came out with version 3 just the other day, over 15 million people downloaded it in something like 48 hours, and with good reason, I might add. It set a new Guinness World Record for most downloads in a short period of time.

If you’re not using Firefox yet, you don’t know what you’re missing. With the add-ons you can get for it (all free!) it’s the browser that puts the surf in web surfing. It’s so good, it’s insane! Seriously, you haven’t surfed until you’ve tried Firefox with the PicLens Add-on and jumped into a photo site like my account on Flickr or Google Images or other PicLens enabled sites. You’re not gonna believe how cool that is if you’ve yet to do that.

Between that and the hundreds of other great plug-ins you can get for it, plus all the built-in coolness it starts out with, like ad-blocking, it makes IE look and feel like the old piece of crap it really is. If you’re not already using it, www.firefox.com – ‘nuff said. Just go get it, and don’t look back. You can thank me later.

Cedar Rapids Flood

2008-06-13T22:53:00.002-05:00

Cedar Rapids Flood-0166, originally uploaded by Buck Cash.

Well folks, just by coincidence, I'm right in the middle of one of the biggest disasters going on right now; the Great Flood of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and it is DEEP!

I got out on a long hike and had a look around today, and the downtown area is really screwed here. There's water over the roofs of some buildings, and that means that a LOT of people have lost a LOT from their lives here. In a word: devastating.

City Hall and the Courthouse are built on an island in the middle of the Cedar River. The island and all the bridges that connect it are completely under water at this point, with just the buildings sticking up out of it in the middle of the river, which is really something to see. I managed to get a few photos of it, though access is limited.

This is the home of Quaker Oats, and it's under water too. I got a few shots of that as well, though not great ones. Look close at my photos, and you'll see a train half submerged on a trestle that crosses the river. It was parked there to weigh down the bridge so that it wouldn't be swept downstream and do more damage.

You can see all the photos I've got so far by clicking the one above and following it to my Flickr account. I'll probably post some more to my blog later.

Meanwhile, I'm high and dry in my motel, and doing fine.

Cedar Rapids Underwater

2008-06-13T05:57:00.001-05:00

Flooded Road 0029, originally uploaded by Buck Cash.

By now most people who are paying any attention know that Cedar Rapids, Iowa is underwater since it's all over the national news. Last I heard it had already beat the record around here by 6 feet and was still on the rise.

It's got traffic messed up, folks have had to evacuate and find shelter, there are tractor trailers floating down the river that used to be the street. There was a joke on the news last night: "How do you know when you're in Iowa? You encounter carp as road-kill."

So, it's a real mess here, but I'm high and dry at the motel and, other than a power outage yesterday for a few hours, no real problems for me personally. The photo is a shot through the front windshield as we got to a road that's washed out and had to turn around and find another route. There's a lot of that going on right now around town.

I hope to get some better photos. This was on the move, so it's not the best, but I was busy at work.

I'll catch up more in a few days when I've got a few more photos.

Welcome to Iowa

2008-06-08T23:29:00.002-05:00

Iowa Line 8617, originally uploaded by Buck Cash.

Just a quick note to say that I made the trip from Kansas City to Cedar Rapids, Iowa today and I'm all tucked in safe and sound at the motel.

Kansas City

2008-06-01T00:53:00.001-05:00

Kansas City 8554, originally uploaded by Buck Cash.

I made it safe and sound to Kansas City to get some training at our corporate offices before heading off to the next job site. I'm only scheduled to be here a couple of weeks, so I'm taking in a few sights while I can.

It's a really nice place, from what little I've experienced so far. Great blues playing on the local NPR station, great Bar-B-Q and steaks to eat, interesting buildings, lots of sculptures, and landscapes to shoot, and a lot of nice people.

I spent a lot of time at Union Station today. What a fantastic building! It was incredible. I got a bunch of shots of it, and I'll start processing them and putting them up as I get time.

My New 100 Million Dollar Hard Drive System

2008-05-19T21:55:00.007-05:00

VHS DVD burn combo 700, originally uploaded by Buck Cash.

Well, she's finally about done with her run. The beauty pictured above is the machine I built while in San Francisco about 5 years ago. She was a real heavy workhorse speed demon in her prime, but now she's an old dog with a clogged up XP Pro registry that sometimes takes as long as 10 minutes to boot up.

She's not dead though. I've put together a new Vista machine that is my new whiz-bang heavy workhorse speed demon to replace her, and I've got nearly all of my important files and programs transferred and set up at this point. Once I've finished with that process, I can format C: on the old girl and reinstall a fresh copy of XP, which will get her running clean and lean again, and as fast as possible, considering her older hardware and architecture. Maybe I'll just give her to Casey. She needs a machine since her laptop was stolen.

With my new machine, I'm going deeper into the land of super-storage to accommodate my growing library of photography images. Between the Camera RAWs, the Conversion TIFs and the Photoshop PSDs, and a need to keep everything backed up on at least two (preferably three) separate hard drives at any given time, I use a lot of space. Add to that the huge files associated with my digital video camera, and we're talking serious storage needs for a geek like me. I don't even think in terms of Gigabytes anymore. It's all about the TB now: Terabytes - lots of 'em. Too many to fit inside my main system enclosure, so I'm starting to work with external hard drive enclosures.

For the non-geeks out there, here's a quick breakdown of volume sizes:

1,000 Bytes = 1 KB (Kilobyte)
1,000,000 Bytes = 1,000 KB = 1 MB (Megabyte)
1,000,000,000 Bytes = 1,000,000 KB = 1,000 MB = 1 GB (Gigabyte)
1,000,000,000,000 Bytes = 1,000,000,000 KB = 1,000,000 MB = 1,000 GB = 1 TB (Terabyte)

So, 1 TB is one thousand Gigabytes or, if you like, one million Megabytes, or one billion Kilobytes, or one trillion Bytes of information.

With my new machine, I've put together 10 times that: 10 Terabytes = ten thousand Gigabytes = 10 million Megabytes. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. And that's to start with - it's still expandable from there.

For some added perspective (just some idle musing here), the first hard drive I ever had, back in 1990, was a whopping 40 Megabytes. What I have now in terms of storage is like having 250,000 of those hard drives all hooked up together.

The cost-per-Megabyte back then was right around $10, so you could expect to pay about $400 for a 40 Megabyte hard drive at that time. At those prices, I've got about $100 Million dollars worth of hard drive space here! LOL! That was fun.

Now vision this in your head: Back then, each hard drive was 5.75" x 1.63" x 8". At those dimensions, you'd need a room about 22 ft wide, long and tall to fit 250,000 of those hard drives all in, and that's not even counting all the space you'd need between them for cooling and wiring, plus the fans to cool them, plus the enormous amount of power to run them, not to mention some way to actually wire them all together in the first place! LOL! Are you with me so far? My equivalent storage fits into two boxes that sit on a shelf next to my computer, measuring a total of about one cubic foot, fans and power supplies included. Seriously, this is WAY geek cool. We've come a long way baby...

Anyway... because of the huge volumes I want to work with, I need speed. USB won't work for my needs, not even USB 2.0. It's just not fast enough to work with that much volume efficiently. E-SATA II is the ticket for this jazzy super-storage setup for my insane geek and photographer needs.

Here's how it works: I've got a 2 port E-SATA card plugged into the PCI-E slot on my motherboard, which is a pretty fast interface bus. Plugged into those two ports via E-SATA cables are two 5 port multipliers, giving me 10 external E-SATA ports. Plugged into each of those 10 ports is a 1 TB SATA II hard drive, housed in external multi-bay hard drive enclosures made just for the occasion. Very big storage, very small footprint, very fast, very efficient, VERY cool.

I also upgraded to Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom, and they look fantastic and work REAL user-friendly with all the real estate of my new 24" wide-screen monitor with 1000-1 contrast on a 1920 x 1200 px calibrated screen.

Hey, it was my birthday, and I deserved it. ;>)

If you have a need for some big storage solutions, check out the folks over at Addonics dot com. They've got the goods you're looking for.

Eye of the Dragon

2008-05-13T08:40:00.002-05:00

Dragonfly 8227, originally uploaded by Buck Cash.

Here's a shot I've long wanted to be able to get: a serious closeup of a dragonfly's eyes. Now that I've got the gear to do it, here it is!

You can see the full size of this photo and a few more from this series (and all the rest of my photography) by clicking on the picture. That will take you to my flickr account.

49

2008-05-05T07:38:00.001-05:00

Buck Pool 1960, originally uploaded by Buck Cash.

It's my 49th birthday today. Time flies when you're having fun.

Maybe I'll think of more to say later. It's still pretty early in the morning here.

Bush - McCain Challenge

2008-05-02T16:02:00.005-05:00

Pescadero Sandman, originally uploaded by Buck Cash.

The photo is one I shot years ago at Pescadero Beach on the California Coastline. It's a really wonderful, magical place with a vast area of tide pools full of little creatures and life - all trying to eke out an existence. Lurking above them are these sandstone cliffs that are just... other-worldly looking.

I just happened across a few of those old images and started playing with them for no particular reason while listening to Bush's latest bull-spin on the economy, and this is the result. Kinda spooky and scary, huh?

So, anyway here's something you can try out. It's the Bush-McCain Challenge. It's sorta like the Coke-Pepsi challenge. You know how those work - you get a sample and then try to guess which product it is. Check it out:

Bush-McCain Challenge

Buck in Lafayette

2008-04-10T18:11:00.005-05:00

Buck_7580, originally uploaded by shutterbuck.com.

Well, here I am in beautiful Lafayette, Louisiana. I started putting my photos up on Flickr a couple of weeks ago, just to have another place to store and access them mostly.

Thing is, it's really growing on me. I really like the interface, the uploading tool, the collections and sets I can make, tagging, groups to join in with, and so much more. It's quickly become my #1 choice online photo gallery site. If this keeps up, I may just abandon all the others I've been using.

And today I clicked a link there that let me set up a way to directly interface between Flickr and my Blog (which hasn't gotten much attention recently from me - umm... has it really been 7 months?! Oops!). Okay, I guess this is just gonna be too much fun and too easy to pass up! So here I am, first post straight out of flickr to my regular blog. Too cool. Color me 'very happy'.

I did have to change the template a bit. The original wasn't wide enough to deal with a 500 px wide photo straight out of my Flickr pool, so I changed that. I had to remake some of the frame graphics wider to make it all work right though, so while I was at it, I added a little dragonfly that I photographed the other day at the Lafayette Tourist Information rest stop.

I'm still working on my studio / portrait / lighting photography. I think I've come a long way, but I've still got a long way to go - much farther than the short distance I've come so far actually.

In any case, this is a self-portrait intended to practice balancing ambient light with flash. The setup was: Ambient light from doorway left using door as flag to shade behind subject, 580 EX II @ 1/2 power on right with Sto-Fen & ceiling bounced, another 580 EX II with Sto-Fen on camera and pointed up 45 degrees @ 1/32 power for fill.

Now, if you don't speak camera / strobist, don't worry about all that jibber-jabber above - just enjoy the photo and know that I'm having fun with it all. :)

With flickr making it this easy for me to post images and blog updates, chances are good that I'm gonna get REAL active with my blog again.

Oh - cancer update - still feeling great, in remission. Look how long my hair is in the photo - that's how long it's been since my last chemo (which made me bald! - hehehe).

Response to Lon

2007-09-16T13:57:00.000-05:00

A kind reader of my last post responded thus, and I thought it was very interesting and wanted to discuss it a bit, so here it is:

Lon said...

Buck, just checking in to see how you're doing. We were being treated by the same Dr office in CA.

Little troubled by your politics, though. Are you suggesting that conservatives should take a lesson from liberals by setting a low moral/ethical threshold in order to avoid being hypocritical? Low standards, no problems? Conservatives at least punish their own. A failure to live up to a standard is preferable to lacking the standard. For example, few Christians would claim to have lived up to their standards all the time.

Anyway, good that we're both still kicking.

Lon

September 16, 2007 12:23 PM

-------------------------------------

Hi there Lon,

Good to hear you're still kicking too!

I'm not at all suggesting that conservatives should set a low moral/ethical threshold in order to avoid being hypocritical, and I think it's a bit much to suggest that liberals set a low moral/ethical standard, as the phrasing of the question seems to imply. I'm suggesting that they shouldn't continue to loudly claim that they are, above others, MORE moral and ethical and go so far as to condemn others for not holding to such standards, when they cannot hold to them any better than any other large group, such as a political party.

Any large group is only as moral and ethical as the individuals that make up that group, and the individuals in the GOP are no better, nor worse, than the individuals in any other party, large organization, or even America as a whole. They need to stop pretending and loudly proclaiming or even implying that they are morally and ethically superior to others because every time one of the individuals that makes up their group gets caught, it draws attention to the fact that they certainly aren't morally and ethically superior to others, and they are easily branded hypocrites in the process. They're being hoisted by their own petards every time one of the individuals in the group gets caught with his pants down or his hand in the cookie jar, especially those individuals near the top of the hierarchical ladder.

I'm also suggesting that they need not continue to pretend to BE the gatekeepers and defining body of what IS moral and ethical because - they're not. Society as a whole is the defining body of what is moral and ethical. Always has been, always will be, even if some on the extreme right end of the morality scale/spectrum disagree.

"Conservatives at least punish their own." For many of the transgressions, they shouldn't be "punishing" anyone - but now they have to because they opened their big mouths and said that those who don't conform to what they think is morally or ethically right, regardless of the law, SHOULD be punished. In other words, they made their bed, now they're lying in it. Meanwhile, those transgressions that are against the law are punished unilaterally (unless you're Scooter Libby), no matter what party the individual belongs to, so it's a moot point to say that the GOP punishes their own. Again, the big difference is that one party wears each of these transgressions on it's chest in big, bold letters like Superman with his big "S", while the other parties do not.

By the Taliban's standards, those same American ultra-right-wing moral conservatives are liberal pansies, but we don't label them such just because another group that is far to their right thinks so. For much the same reason, I don't think America's moral-conservatives nor the party that embraces them and claims to hold the same standards are badly branding the left or liberals in the way that they clearly intended, so much as they are badly branding themselves with their little morality witch-hunt rhetoric; a rhetoric, by the way, that's passed for political discourse since they cajoled the Christian fundamentalists into the party.

And I really think that's what this comes down to; this morally charged rhetoric started as talking points to entice a largely non-voting block of Christians, and it just got out of control of the GOP over time. The biggest blocks that would be easiest to move were those under the moral advisement of the biggest fundamentalist preachers, like Robertson and Falwell, who didn't just hand over their flocks or point them in the direction the GOP wanted when it came to voting - they tried to take control of the GOP themselves, and the GOP largely allowed it to happen.

There are now many prominent members of the GOP making sounds and moves that amount to "I didn't leave my party - it left me." They want to get out of this hypocritical morality trap and back to their business roots: fiscal conservatism.

And really, above it all - Americans on the whole really are a very morally liberal and morally liberated people, and more so every day. That's not to say they lack standards or good ethics or good moral convictions, which is just moral-conservative spin on the situation. They just don't share the standards of the moral-conservatives, just as the moral-conservatives don't share the standards of the Taliban. If you want, you can say they both "lack standards" (of others), but it's not really a bad thing when put into perspective.

Sure, there are groups of ultra-right-wing-moral-conservatives out there, and they ARE very loud compared to the silent majority of people who enjoy sex, gambling, dancing, off-color humor, and all the rest of the "atrocious behavior" that the moral conservatives spend all their energy railing against. But that silent majority votes too, and they're not much interested in voting for people who would wag their fingers at them or, if they could legislate it, put them in jail for their "atrocious behavior".

If the GOP wants to preach, let them be preachers - get a frock and a pulpit and thump that Bible all they want. However, if they want to work in a temp job FOR the people, ALL the people, they need to stop wagging their fingers at THE PEOPLE, climb down off their high horse, and show that they CAN represent THE PEOPLE because they ARE representative of THE PEOPLE, not just representatives of the morality police.

Those are my thoughts, and thanks for writing. Of course, your mileage may vary, and I welcome your thoughts.

All the best,

Buck

The Future of the GOP?

2007-09-01T16:18:00.000-05:00

Republican Senator Larry Craig just resigned amid yet another scandal in the American political landscape. Who’s surprised? Anyone? I mean, as often as it happens, there’s no way to really be surprised that there’s another scandal, nor are we surprised that he was compelled to resign. We’re not really surprised at the denials, “blame the media” finger-pointing, family standing strong by his side, nor even what it was all about; another GOP big-wig caught soliciting gay sex in a public bathroom. Nope, no real surprises here – just another day of American politics as usual. We’re getting used to it all, I think.

There are plenty of web sites out there that list the many, MANY scandals that involve everything from overblown greed to sexual improprieties (or perceived ones) that involve pedophilia, homosexuality, infidelity, and so forth, so there’s really no need to try to list all the names and sordid facts surrounding them here. Some of these affronts, however, really come down to simple hypocrisy.

That said, I think it’s worth noting that, while both major parties have their problems with this stuff, only one of them preaches that THEY are THE party that IS morally responsible and conservative and good. And that’s why only ONE party is REALLY taking the heat for it these days – they are proving, every time one of their members gets caught, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that THEY were lying about it all, and they ARE, without a doubt, hypocrites.

I mean, if you make it a public, political point to say or infer things like, “anyone that does X is evil, immoral, anti-American, going to Hell, and I support flogging them in public, if only with words and rhetoric” and then you, yourself, get caught doing X, you’re totally screwed. If you align with media hacks on TV and radio and print that spout this sort of divisive, propagandist rhetoric on your behalf, and you don’t denounce them for it, then you get caught doing X, you’re JUST as screwed.

Now, most of the fuss over today’s hot political scandal will probably be over in a few days, brought up from time to time only by the political wonks who want to make more hay out of it, usually when they or someone in their party is under fire for something similar, or when they’re trying to get elected by showing how bad the other party is. The American people though, as a whole, will largely shrug it off pretty quickly and turn their fickle attentions to the next Brittney Spears train wreck.

For a short time though, it CAN make some of us think about a bigger picture; the political landscape on the whole, and here’s what it got me thinking…

Once upon a time, the big-brains of the GOP’s back room strategy tactical unit (known as ‘Think Tanks’) came up with a brilliant plan: Court America’s most influential religious leaders and reap the benefits of their largely untapped resources in the form of money and votes. They have ‘flocks’ of people (often referred to as ‘sheep’, both by the religious leaders and even themselves) who will, in large numbers, do pretty much anything those religious leaders suggest. If they could get these leaders to hitch their wagons to the GOP, why, the ‘sheep’ would be sure to follow.

With that, the party all but abandoned its roots of fiscal conservatism and made a hard right, driving deep into the heart of moral conservatism, as defined by the religious leaders they had decided to exploit for the sake of the money and power to be gained through the tactic.

And, no doubt about it, it worked. With the newly politicized crusade the GOP adopted of Conservative Christian push-buttons like “Moral Majority”, “Family Values”, “Gay Agenda”, “Sanctity of Life”, “Creationism” and so forth, they successfully tapped that ‘’flock” of voters and managed to take the House, the Senate, the White House and, eventually, the Supreme Court.

But then, having been elected, those politicians did little to actually deliver to that newly found voting base and, over time, the “flock” has slowly been waking up to that fact, realizing they’ve been duped by little more than a campaign of rhetoric, think-tank designed to tug at their overly-emotional heart-strings. Adding to the fact that once in power, the GOP didn’t exactly go balls to the wall to deliver on their pretend Ultra-Christianized campaign rhetoric, the number of scandals that show all too many of them to simply be total hypocrites when it comes to these “values” they mouthed while they gazed solemnly up toward the heavens is simply staggering.

Anyway, where things got really tangled up, I believe, is that the reality of the situation is one that the “flock” didn’t really understand throughout it all, and may not really understand even now; these ultra-conservative Christian views of morality simply aren’t what most Americans subscribe to. As has been said, “The Moral Majority is neither.” They thought because their candidates won that THEY had won; that THEIR views were the dominant views of Americans; That THEY were now THE GOP; That THEIR values and agendas would take over America completely because of it.

The reality is that they’re simply one of perhaps ten major blocks of voters that make up the GOP. As such, they have maybe a 10% ACTUAL voice in that party, and MUCH less than that in the overall political landscape that is American politics.

Now, I believe the GOP always knew this, and never intended to make good on following through with any of the rhetoric they pushed to get the votes of the “flock” added to their base Republican fiscal conservative block in order to gain a majority in the 3 branches of government. At best, they would give the “flock” yet more rhetoric as needed and throw them a tiny bone once in a while, just to keep them voting for Republicans.

What they apparently didn’t properly calculate is that courting that 10% influence in the way that they did with the rhetoric they mouthed in the process would shape 100% of the public perception of WHO the GOP is – a perception they could never EVER hope to live up to. It is this perception that subsequently defined them as a party of corruption, greed and hypocrisy because every infraction, no matter how small, is immediately and inextricably juxtaposed against their very own words and supposed ultra-moralistic ideals; words and ideals they chose to thrust as loudly as possible into the public square as the ones that they OWN; the ones that DEFINE them. It doesn’t matter that it was all just a ploy to get money and votes; that they didn’t really mean it – they made their bed, and now they are lying in it.

The biggest voice in the party is STILL the corporations that depend on sales, which depends entirely on abandoning the Commandment “Thou shalt not covet…” For those of you without a playbook, “Covet” means “want” or “desire”, as in, your neighbor’s nice car, nice house, electronic gadgets, everything for sale on every commercial, etc. “Give your money to the corporations” is a much more important virtue in the GOP and the American system of capitalism than “Give up your worldly possessions” or “Give your money to the poor”. And because these power brokers are generally lovers of money and luxury and power itself, they are all too often involved in ALL the things that the religious moral conservatives are totally against, leading to the scandals and the hypocrisy that is now ripping the party wide open.

Polls consistently reveal that most American are a very open-minded lot, and these supposedly big issues shouted from the pulpit by the moral conservatives just aren’t very big to the average American. Every day there is yet more acceptance of gays, more acceptance of evolution, more acceptance that global warming is real and we have to do something about it, etc. In general, there is more acceptance every day of the idea that others do not have some inherent right to thrust their ultra-conservative religious views of morality on the rest of society, and more push-back by average Americans that have had more than enough of it.

In a nutshell, all those moral-conservatism, anti-science, pro-religious talking points that the GOP embraced over the years in order to get a block of voters to add to their ballot boxes are now coming back to haunt them because those views are simply out of touch with the REAL mainstream American who’s not a finger-wagging, ultra-conservative member of the morality police, has no desire to be, and certainly has no desire to be regulated by them through legislation. And, because they’ve now all but totally abandoned their roots of fiscal conservatism and smaller, LESS intrusive government in the process of embracing the ultra-conservative morality police’s agenda of MORE intrusiveness by the government into the lives of private citizens (for their own good, of course), they’re also losing that root base of their party in droves as well.

Worse, as must be viewed from the GOP’s think-tank island, isolated somewhere on the fringe of American public opinion as revealed by polling numbers (despite their claims without proof to the contrary), the younger generations that are coming into voting age and will soon take over the political landscape are even MORE accepting of these mainstream ideals, which the GOP loudly branded “liberal”. With their grasp on internet technology, use of blogs and ability to ferret out the truth of statements and situations before the next commercial, an increasing distrust of the ‘mainstream media’ and increasing interest in politics at earlier ages, this coming generation and those that follow are likely to reshape politics in ways that are wholly disastrous to the “Grand OLD Party”. This is especially true when one considers that their ideals are strongly at odds with the politics of corruption, greed and hypocrisy that have become the norm for the GOP in the years since realigning with the moral conservatives.

When all is said and done, I think they took a simple idea to get more votes by tapping into what was then an untapped block, then got in way too deep with it, and now they have very little chance of pulling their fat out of the fire.

My view is that they can’t go in either direction at this point. If they abandon the moral conservative “flock” that they turned into a politically charged block of voters who ARE now interested, engaged and WILL vote for someone, those voters are likely to come to terms with the bumper sticker that is getting more popular: “Jesus was a Liberal”. On the other hand, if they continue to pursue that minority block of moral-conservatism votes, the new generations coming up that polls show are more accepting of all the things the GOP in lock-step with the ultra-religious right have been bad-mouthing will move in droves to the alternatives; the Democratic or Independent parties (and polls show that’s already happening). In concert with the abandonment of the fiscal conservatives who are beginning to move to the Independent column (a trickle at this time that appears to be growing in intensity), that would leave the GOP completely redefined as “The Ultra-Christian Party”, and nothing more.

Alone with just the ultra-religious moral conservatives views and agendas that the average American still doesn’t relate to, even after so many years of such rhetoric from the right-wing pundits, and in dwindling numbers of even those as the younger generation abandons religion and its related bronze-age thinking in the wake of emerging science and technology and news that explores things like Pastor Ted Haggard’s gay prostitute lover and Karl Rove admitting that he’s not really religious and doesn’t really believe, the GOP better buckle up – it’s going to be a bumpy ride, and it’s only just begun.

On "Sicko" and CNN

2007-07-15T13:03:00.000-05:00

Dear CNN, The Situation Room, Dr. Gupta and Wolf Blitzer,

Having carefully watched the movie and the CNN videos you’ve recently aired, and compared them to the facts surrounding the claims and counterclaims made by both sides regarding Michael Moore’s new movie “Sicko”, it is clear that Dr. Gupta simply cherry-picked a few numbers from Sicko, misrepresented them as non-factual and overly-significant, all in order to engage in a 'hit' piece against Mr. Moore. Worse, he focused on these irrelevant and minute (in the scheme of things) number details (that he got wrong) that are neither here nor there in the overall scope of the problems and real issues that should be debated and resolved regarding health care and the for-profit motivations of the insurance and big pharm industries that continue to drive our health care costs ever higher in this country.

At this point, that giant elephant standing right there in the living room that you seemingly choose to attempt to ignore is crowding you up against the wall, making you all come off as foolish mouthpieces for the very industries this film rightly targets - the same industries that throw piles of money at both our politicians and CNN (read: your paychecks) in order to maintain and continually elevate their ability to blatantly bilk average American citizens to the tune of billions of dollars in profit every year in the name of "helping them".

Moore was right to point out how you've been consistently letting the American people down when it comes to questioning the powers-that-be over their decisions regarding this mess in Iraq and so much more over the years. Why don't you side with the American people for a change, ask the tough questions, demand real answers, stop smiling and smirking and sucking up the non-stop, non-answering rhetoric from the so-called pundits driven by fact-spinning think tanks and corporate and political hacks that pretend they care about us or our problems, when they clearly only care about their bottom line and how they can next screw the common people in order to pad their own salaries and profits even more?

You've turned the Free Press that should be helping us keep our corporations and politicians on the up and up with pointed questions and straight talk into just another corporate mouthpiece for them, obviously in bed with those very corporations and politicians. We know and expect their greed to lead them down the wrong path - a path fraught with danger for the common people of our own country and even the world, but it is unconscionable that your own greed should lead you to be complicit in those morally bankrupt endeavors.

Wake up. The revolution has begun, and this time it’s informational. We, the millions of people you used to be able to lead by the nose, are connecting, talking, debating and comparing ideas and facts online with each other now faster than you can possibly keep up. Everything you say, everything you misrepresent, everything you misreport, everything you attempt to misconstrue is now fact-checked, corrected and disseminated to millions of our fellow citizens before the next commercial break via online blogs.

Moore’s right – it’s time we tune you out. Your corporate-spin media and your corporate, partisan hit pieces are quickly becoming irrelevant in the instant, digital exchange of information and ideas that prove beyond a doubt that the corporate emperor that actually pulls all the strings in this country through our politicians and the media that empowers them has no clothes and no morals, and neither do his servants, hacks nor information dissemination services disguised as “news”.

Shame on all of you.

Dogs

2007-04-14T20:14:00.000-05:00

Long time, no hear, I know. But all's well, and I'm feeling great here. No symptoms to speak of, and I guess the doc in California was right: we really kicked the snot out of my cancer with that last chemo!

A few years ago, Casey and I did a whirlwind tour of the entire length of the West Coast Highway, with stops along the way to explore various interesting things from the Space Needle in Seattle to the Giant Redwoods to Big Sur to Hollywood. At the end of that journey, we made a side trip to visit the Grand Canyon and Meteor Crater, and I was blown away by the Southwest. Later, my friend Laurie and I visited Sedona, Arizona for a long weekend and I was blown away some more.

Ever since, I'd been wanting to get into a position of spending some real time in the Southwest, exploring and shooting photos. I finally got the chance when one of my best friends picked up work where he lives and invited me out to Phoenix to join in the fun.

At the time, I was working all the way over on the East Coast, near Washington DC, and used the opportunity to visit and shoot various Smithsonian museums and the natural habitats along the Maryland, Delaware and Virginia coasts. So the weekends were great fun, and I got a lot of great shots along the way.

Work was a different story though. Frankly, I wasn't very happy trying to appease a certain boss who, IMHO, knew too little about the actual job in the field and tried too hard to overcompensate with intimidation, which has always been laughable to me. Apparently, he didn't like being laughed at, and he fired me as a Christmas present - what a guy. Big surprise there - not. I saw it coming from the day I got hired (it was pretty obvious that something about me just rubbed him the wrong way), and I'd been saving up money to deal with it when the axe fell. I viewed it as a well-deserved and much-needed vacation from another corporate poser with too much testosterone, and it was all good.

I went home to Detroit, spent time with Casey, worked on a management database program I've been developing, bought a few antique cameras and a small studio light setup on EBay, got myself a new light meter, and generally chilled out, waiting for the Phoenix job to fire up.

When the call came from my friend, I loaded up a U-Haul, fired up the GPS unit, and headed South West toward an adventure I'd been looking forward to for a long time. Since then, I've been spending the weekends in the deserts and mountains around Phoenix, while looking forward to it warming up in the higher elevations, when I'll get back up to the Canyon, the Wave, Monument Valley, Sedona and all that stuff to do the shooting I've really been wanting to get to.

So it's all good here on the personal front.

But the job... Well, I took about half what I normally earn just to get my foot in the door, and I figured I'd show 'em my stuff and get what I deserve later. That has yet to happen, and I'm beginning to wonder what it's going to take. If I were to get a better offer, it'd be really hard to turn it down - I need the money. I guess I'll just have to play it by ear for a while and see what develops.

Meanwhile, on Friday, my friend was fired. Hey, he's a big boy and can take care of himself, so I'm not worried or freaked out or threatening to quit or anything like that. We help each other where we can but, ultimately, we're all on our own to make it through the world somehow.

I think it was bad idea though from the company's standpoint. He's a really hard working guy who seriously knows his stuff. He puts in long hours making sure that he's got all the most important bases covered for our customers and the workers in the field, and that's no small task. In the end, that effort and the hard work and integrity that drives it ensures that the company he works for is giving the best to everyone involved and therefore getting the best from them in return. On top of that, he's a local that the customer knows well, trusts implicitly and wants to do business with.

Of course, we've all got our little idiosyncrasies. He's got a couple of hang-ups I totally recognize, because I've got the same ones. For one, we can both be a bit sarcastic. The thing is, we're just dealing with a situation in a way that helps us lighten it up a little so that we can deal with it in real-world ways that make sense. We're formulating plans that can actually work, rather than trying to bullshit our way through a pack of lies we know can't achieve the real goals. We're not "It's GOING to happen because I SAID SO!" kinds of guys, and we tend to think that sort of thing is funny when we see it coming from others, like they're God or something and can bend the will of the universe and break the laws of physics with a mean look.

Well, sometimes we're dealing with someone who just doesn't get the joke, so they react like we just had sex with their kids or something. Add to that the fact that when we run across someone that just doesn't 'get it', it's usually a big, giant sign to us, and not usually a good one. It generally indicates a level of cluelessness - people like that obviously aren't quite in touch with reality on some level. It's like having your boss come up to you and tell you in all seriousness that he needs you to flap your arms until you levitate, then getting pissed when you laugh at him for coming up with such an idiotic plan and, worse, actually thinking he can make it happen through his awesome will-power and intimidation. I'm sorry, but that shit's just funny to me, not intimidating.

But probably the big one that gets us into trouble (and it tends to go hand in hand with the one above) is that we don't automatically respect or suck up to people just because they walk in saying or implying "I'm the boss - YOUR BOSS!!" and acting like that's reason enough to kiss their ass. If they really know their stuff; if they demonstrate real knowledge and ability, they'll get the respect for it without asking, let alone demanding it.

A real leader leads others by example, not by pushing them from behind with intimidation tactics while holding a whip and chair, or by holding the threat of their job over their heads. A real leader doesn't demand, he inspires. A real leader doesn't need to act like a dictator.

Those of us who've been doing this a really long time can spot a poser a mile off - all bluster and hot air and pretentious posturing, while lacking any real substance. You got a BA in selling jelly beans? Good for you. I've got a MD in Cable Construction Job Site Management earned over the course of nearly 30 years at the school of Hard Knocks located in the REAL WORLD. Yeah, it's called experience. Look it up.

Okay, so you get the idea. Enough already. But it all reminds me of my favorite Pink Floyd song. I find myself playing it really loud at times like this. It reminds me to keep it real, to stay human, and not to become one of these:

Dogs

You've got to be crazy, you gotta have a real need.
You gotta sleep on your toes, and when you're on the street,
You got to be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed.
And then moving in silently, down wind and out of sight,
You've got to strike when the moment is right without thinking.

And after a while, you can work on points for style.
Like the club tie, and the firm handshake,
A certain look in the eye with an easy smile.
You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to,
So that when they turn their backs on you,
You'll get the chance to put the knife in.

You gotta keep one eye looking over your shoulder.
You know it's going to get harder, harder, and harder as you get older.
And in the end you'll pack up and fly down south,
Hide your head in the sand;
Just another sad old man,
All alone and dying of cancer.

And when you lose control, you'll reap the harvest you have sown.
And as the fear grows, the bad blood slows and turns to stone.
And it's too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around.
So have a good drown, as you go down, all alone,
Dragged down by the stone.

I gotta admit that I'm a little bit confused.
Sometimes it seems to me as if I'm just being used.
Gotta stay awake, gotta try and shake off this creeping malaise.
If I don't stand my own ground, how can I find my way out of this maze?

Deaf, dumb, and blind, you just keep on pretending,
That everyone's expendable and no-one has a real friend.
And it seems to you the thing to do would be to isolate the winner.
Everything's done under the sun,
And you believe at heart, everyone's a killer.

Who was born in a house full of pain.
Who was trained not to spit in the fan.
Who was told what to do by the man.
Who was broken by trained personnel.
Who was fitted with collar and chain.
Who was given a pat on the back.
Who was breaking away from the pack.
Who was only a stranger at home.
Who was ground down in the end.
Who was found dead on the phone.
Who was dragged down by the stone.

Who was dragged down by the stone.

(End)

Watch out for the dogs, folks. They're out there, and they're hungry little mongrels with big teeth, no compassion and little integrity.

And to you dogs out there - Better watch out; the sheep are learning karate.

Thought for the day

2006-12-20T13:23:00.000-05:00

Thought for the day: One who knows everything, learns nothing.

Casey Graduates

2006-06-25T15:16:00.000-05:00

My daughter Casey graduated from High School a couple of weeks ago, and it sure was a proud day for all! She’s already enrolled for college in the fall, and aspires to be a nurse.

Congratulations to my little girl!

Click the photos to see them full size, or go to the gallery to see even more: >Photo Gallery

The merry, merry month of May

2006-05-27T21:31:00.000-05:00

May 27th of ’06 – my how time flies when you’re having fun!

Well, I turned 47 this month with the usual zero fanfare. I haven’t done cakes and presents in years, and don’t generally make much of a big deal out of the day. I usually don’t mention it at all. I’ve noticed that my mustache is turning white, which is kinda weird to look at in the mirror. I toy with the idea of shaving or coloring it, but I just don’t much care, if ya know what I mean. Heck, maybe I’ll start to look distinguished or something. (yeah, right! LOL!)

I feel terrific and I’m still in great health here, and that’s a good thing, since I still don’t have insurance these days. That’ll all change soon though because I’m back to work again, and man am I happy about that! I’ll tell ya – sitting around on one’s ass playing video games is pretty boring after about a week. Oh yeah, and trying to keep everything afloat while on unemployment is really nothing to write home about either – but I managed to work through it pretty well, so I’m not complaining.

Of course, I did more than video games and naps during my time off. I studied a lot – photography-related stuff mostly, including advanced courses in Photoshop and Illustrator. And I shot quite a lot of photos and learned some new techniques and even made a few drawings and wrote a few short stories while I was at it. I finally finished a long-ago-started animation I’d been meaning to get around to completing, and I perfected my macaroni-spaghetti-hamburger-corn mush dish – and didn’t even use a microwave for any of it. LOL!

So now I’m back to work, on the road again, and shooting photos on the weekends pretty regularly, which I’ve been posting to my web site in the photo section here:

http://www.buckcash.com/images/artphotos/index.html

I've been getting into a lot of bird shots lately, but I’m still picking off a few landscapes, flowers and other critters along the way – just really digging the bird shot thing right now is all. I’m getting plenty of walking and hiking around out in nature again through it, not to mention some pretty good shots (if I say so myself), and that’s all good.

Some interesting things have been happening in relation to my cancer stories and cartoons. This year, I’m an official speaker on the roster for The National Cancer Survivors Day Foundation, so occasionally someone contacts me about speaking to groups about my experience with cancer and humor.

On January 19th, one of my cartoons was featured in a video presentation at the National Academy of Science in Washington DC at the 60th anniversary of the American Cancer Society. Here’s the one they chose to present:

That REALLY made my day!

Another of my toons was featured in an article about humor and oncology in “The Journal of Clinical Oncology” a while back, and then just this past Tuesday, May 23, my web site was mentioned in an article in USA Today, which was pretty cool!

Oh yeah, and I almost forgot! The terrific folks over at www.gotcancer.org now have clothing items that feature one of my cartoons (and other great stuff!). I've got a hoodie now that features this cartoon:

You can get one too if you like. Clicking on the toon above will take you to the page of clothing items you can get it on. If nothing else, go do a little "web window shopping"! LOL!

Or, you can just surf on over to (<-Click on that to go there!) and see all the rest of their fun cancer stuff! They've got a great sense of humor over there, so help 'em out if you can, and get some cool stuff in the deal!

Earlier today, I got a bad cramp in my left leg that reminded me of the pain associated with the blood clot I had way back when; the one that put me in a wheelchair and necessitated my learning to give myself shots to clear it up. I noticed it’s been a bit swollen lately at the end of the day too. I’ll be sure to have it checked out as soon as my insurance kicks in, assuming there are no other problems before then.

That’s about it for now – all’s well here!

My Granny has passed away

2006-02-10T10:11:00.000-05:00

I just found out that my dear Granny passed away last night. She would have been 85 on March 2nd. I loved her very much, as did all who knew her. She will be missed. I don’t really have any more words right this minute.

Edit - 05-28-06: It was really sad for us all that Granny passed away, but that's life for you - it ends.

Granny had a long life, filled with family and friends, love and travel, game shows and puzzles. In the last couple of years, she said she was ready to go. It bothered her that her mind was still sharp as a tack, but her body was no longer able to keep up. She was practically blind, deaf and in a wheelchair, too weak to push herself where she wanted to go, even if she could have seen well enough to navigate, which she wasn't. Frankly, being in that state just plain pissed her off.

It was sad to see her that way whenever I visited. That being the case, it was something of a relief to finally have it over with, even though it was sad to say goodbye to the grand lady that did so much for me over the years.

We never told her about my cancer. We figured it would be too much stress for her to deal with, and that she'd worry constantly about it. She cried enough over my dad when he passed away a few months before I was diagnosed. I couldn't see any reason to add to it. I'd either live or die, but telling her that I have an incurable cancer couldn't have helped anything in any way, so we kept that little secret from her in order to spare her the burden.

The funeral was very nice, and Granny looked great - better than she did during the last few years. They made her up real nice. I was tempted to shoot one last photo of her that way, but figured the rest of the family and friends wouldn't understand. I probably should have done it anyway. Seeing her finally at peace is a good way to remember the last time I saw her, and it'd be nice now to have that as a reminder.

Instead, these are the last photos I got of my Granny, using my cell phone camera:

This is the last one of me and my Granny together:

And this is the last photo I ever took of Granny:

It was a bit preachy during one part, as funerals tend to be, and I opted to take a little walk during that part. I'm not a believer in life after death and all that jazz, and it seems rather silly to me that folks insist on turning things like this into an opportunity to proselytize about God and Jesus and Heaven and Sin and all that stuff. But I guess funerals are for the living that attend them, and most of the folks there believe that stuff, so... Whatever works for them, I suppose.

My cousin and her ex-husband got up and told stories about Granny, and that was the best part of it all. They really brought home all the great memories we all had of her, and how open she was to embrace and defend new ideas and toss old, outdated social norms out the window - and she had no problem being blunt about things. She influenced us all with her attitude, her generosity, and her love of life.

You can find out more about my Granny by going HERE.

February is okay with me!

2006-02-04T18:25:00.000-05:00

Well, here we are in the month of February, and not much has changed here with me. I’m still feeling terrific and getting along fine, so it’s all good.

Just thought I’d throw a quick update out here.

Feeling Great in November

2005-11-21T00:06:00.000-05:00

Been getting some concerned emails lately because I haven’t updated about my health lately, so I guess it must be time (or overdue) to let you all know that I’m feeling just fine here. In fact, I feel great!

I had that little flu thing a few weeks ago, but it blew over, and that’s great news because it means my immune system is working just fine. You know, my doc said we hit it with so much chemo last time that it’d never be back. LOL! Maybe he was right!

Anyway, I’ll write more later. Just wanted to let you all know I’m doing just great here.

Things are shaping up again

2005-10-20T13:56:00.000-05:00

After a couple days of feeling crappy, with a stuffy head, dripping nose, scratchy throat, headache, etc, I’m actually feeling a lot better today. Still coughing up some phlegm, but at least it doesn’t hurt to do it anymore.

I see that Plamegate is reaching up into Dick Cheney’s office now, and there’s even talk that Dick might resign. Other insiders are comparing notes and timelines, and drawing the obvious conclusion that Bush has known about this whole thing and who’s involved for years now, and possibly even from the beginning. Of course, that means he’s also involved in the whole cover-up, though few are saying it out loud yet. Nonetheless, I’m sure it’s coming. After all, how can this reach right up to Karl Rove, his closest advisor, and Scooter Libby, who works for ‘Tricky Dick’ Cheney, without the prez and vice-prez knowing and probably in cahoots over the whole thing?

You know, this is all very reminiscent of Nixon and Watergate. Remember, Agnew resigned? Then, as the evidence reached up to touch ol’ ‘Tricky Dick’ Nixon himself, he did the same? In fact, I read a history of Karl Rove a couple of days ago, and it turns out that he was actually involved with both this and the Watergate scandal, not to mention a host of other dirty political tricks he’s dirtied himself, the Republican party, American politics and the American people with over the years. That’s a hell of a career.

By the way, is Judy Miller really, really stupid, or is it that she really, really thinks we are? I mean, either she’s in bed with this administration, which means she’s not a reporter, but a hack, or she’s so freaking stupid that she let them use her like a $2 whore and even went to jail to protect them for it. Considering her coverage leading up to the war, I think it’s pretty clear which, and it involves her yelling, “Yes, you right-wing power-brokers! Give it to me harder! I LOVE IT LIKE THAT!!”

Speaking of $2 whores, Bill O’Reilly’s even talking about retiring rather than renewing his contract when it comes up. It looks to me like online blogs are kicking his ass using his own big mouth, and apparently it stings quite a bit. I hope Hannity and Limbaugh are paying attention…

Hey, here’s something to really get your “Holy Shit!” factor up: Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell’s ex-top aid and government military guy forever, KNOWS a lot more than we do about what’s going on in the White House, and he’s talking about it: "A Secretive Cabal Running American Foreign Policy is Undermining American Democracy". Check out the video at:

http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=event&amp;EveID=520

Meanwhile, Tom Delay’s now got a mug shots and fingerprints, a holy-roller evangelical has been nominated to the Supreme Court to vote against Roe v. Wade, so that women can go back to back-alley abortions (and wasn’t THAT fun?!), the Republican party is coming apart at the seams, and global warming has produced a record number and strength of hurricanes this year while Bush flips the bird at anything that even smells like Kyoto, while throwing open the doors to industry being able to pollute even more and get away with it.

That’s quite a plan they’ve got going on. I can hardly wait to see what’s next.

October Surprise

2005-10-17T16:45:00.000-05:00

Four years ago, in October of 2001, I got a sore throat. Within a couple of weeks, I was laying in a hospital bed in Tennessee, dying from what turned out to be Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma cancer.

Now it’s October of 2005. I woke up today with a sore throat. This time, I’m not working, and I don’t have insurance. I hate it when that happens…

Musta Been Something I Ate

2005-10-09T06:36:00.000-05:00

Well, there I was yesterday afternoon, listening to some lectures I’d downloaded by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and suddenly, I felt sick to my stomach. So I went to lay down for awhile, and a couple hours later, I was in the bathroom violently sick with diarrhea and vomiting. And I DO mean VIOLENTLY sick with it – sort of like an explosion from both ends. Musta been something I ate. I feel much better now.

Lately, I’ve been reading and listening to a lot of what these guys have to say. On the one hand, it explains some things I’ve been thinking about for a long time, but was unable to put into words or, more accurately, the kind of words these guys do. On the other hand, it's kinda scary to realize that my suspicions are being confirmed.

Think tanks and advertising firms have been used to great success by those with money, especially here in the United States, where I live. They’ve got us all figured out, you know. For the most part, they know just how we’ll react to most questions, problems, presentations, and all that stuff. It’s what now runs our political system, as has been pointed out numerous times. Folks say it’s a popularity contest, and they’re right, it is. But it’s much more than that – it’s mind control on a national scale.

Eventually, of course, a few people at the top will control absolutely everything, and all the rest of us will be at the bottom, trying to scratch out a meager living. That can only work for a short time though, and then the masses at the bottom get tired of it, and a few well-placed voices start to make sense to large numbers of people about how they can change things to their advantage. Next thing you know, the people at the top saying, “Let them eat cake” are in line for the guillotine.

So, I’ve been thinking about how this sort of thing inevitably leads to revolution, but at the same time, I just don’t see how a revolution could occur in this county, mostly because when I think of revolution, I think of violent types of revolution, like our own revolutionary war or the French revolution, and I don't think we Americans are prepared to actually go that far. At least, I hope not. Bloody revolution just can't be any fun, from what I've read in history books and seen in other countries.

But lately I’ve been thinking there could be a different kind of revolution. It doesn’t really have to be violent at all. It could be an intellectual revolution, and it doesn’t have to be just intellectuals that are involved. All it takes is for the American public to see that reality isn’t what the think tanks and advertisers beholding to big business and money politics tell us it is, and we could have a revolution of thought that could unravel that whole mind control scheme that the power brokers at the top worked so hard to put into place.

Up until very recently, the information fed to the masses was very much strictly controlled by the people at the top. They owned and controlled all the available means to get information out to large numbers of people like TV, radio and newspapers, and all they had to do was make sure that the information being disseminated fit with their agendas. That’s now coming to an end, mostly because of the internet and, in particular, blogs.

Recent statistics from PEW surveys and so on confirm some very interesting trends in American culture, and when you put it all together, it gets pretty obvious pretty quickly what's going on and where it will eventually end up. Let's take a look at some of these:

1. More Americans are getting computers and logging on every single day. That gives them the means to get information from other than the media outlets controlled by big money. They're now able to get the "other side", for the first time in history.

2. More Americans are actually doing so. The blogs and independent news sources I'm talking about have online readers and watchers that number in the hundreds of thousands, and some in the millions, every day, and it's growing daily as more people find out about them from friends, family and their own searches, and tune in.

3. Surveys show that Americans are losing trust in the regular media outlets. The numbers continue to drop across all demographics: Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, liberals, all races - everyone is waking up to the scam perpetrated by big money and it's version of the "truth" and the "news". Millions of Americans are waking up to the fact that it's mostly bullshit and spin, and more and more wake up to it every day. The "they said it on the news so I believe it" mindset is disappearing fast.

4. Surveys also show that Americans are losing trust and confidence in their politicians. The numbers continue to drop across all demographics: Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, liberals, all races - everyone is waking up to the scam perpetrated by big money and it's version of "American Democracy" in the form of the politicians we have to choose from, their platforms and agendas, and WHO they ACTUALLY represent.

Put it all together, and we see clearly that: The times they are a-changin'.

Now, my little blog here was never intended to be a big voice for change. It’s a personal blog that gives folks little updates about my cancer and things that are happening in my personal life. The people that read it and have interest in it are mostly friends and family (Hi all!).

But there ARE blogs out there that really ARE making a difference, because they really ARE news sources that don’t necessarily fit in with the power brokers schemes, and the power brokers at the top are now officially very worried about what that means. They see the writing on the web, so to speak, and it’s not good for them. They realize that people in mass numbers are catching on, and it can only lead to millions upon millions of Americans waking up from their think tank induced faux reality. I think that’s a good thing, personally.

See, 20 minutes after O’Reilly or Hannity or Limbaugh or the President or anyone else makes a statement that’s false, misleading or an outright lie, bloggers all over the internet point it out, including the documentation to prove that it really IS false, misleading or an outright lie. And there’s no putting the cat back in the bag when real evidence in the form of documents and videos and so forth have let that little bugger out. And when that’s happened enough times, and enough people see the truth and reality that they’ve been lied to, not just here and there like a mistake, but on a grand and organized scale, a revolution is inevitable.

Well folks, people ARE waking up and the revolution HAS begun. Here's the thing about the revolution that has now begun in our digital age though: There’s no need for this revolution to take up arms to get our country back from the greedy, well-heeled, power-elite. You see, we have the means to make sweeping changes in this country without such violence: Our voices and our votes.

As blogs point out the truth and more people log into them daily to get the real information juxtaposed against the lies we’re being told in the regular media, the president’s approval ratings drop. Coincidence? I doubt it. By the time the next big election rolls around, we could have a populace that is MUCH more informed, and really able and willing to see past the bullshit we hear in the political speeches, designed by think tanks and advertising execs to control what and how we think and act, based on how and why we think and act in those ways. Again, these methods aren’t just at work in selling us the stuff we buy at Walmart. They’re also used to sell us political candidates and platforms, and there’s just as much bullshit involved – from both major political parties.

So, I’m listening to Chomsky and Zinn, which helps me wrap my head around what’s really going on with regards to the mass-hypnosis my fellow Americans are under, and I’m embracing blogs as the means to wake them up and effect sweeping changes in the way Americans think and react to political rhetoric. And you know what? I dig it. Seriously.

If you’re not tuned in to blogs yet, allow me to invite you to the revolution that’s going on around you. Here are some of my favorites:

Crooks and Liars

Media Matters

Democracy Now

Moveon.org

Democratic Underground

Freeway Blogger

Yellow Dog Blog

AmericaBlog

Think Progress

Check 'em out, and you'll find not just the documents and video clips that will help you see the truth behind the spin, but you'll find the links to hundreds of other blogs and sources that are growing daily to wake us all up to the truth of the situation.

Democracy is not a spectator sport folks. You can either get involved or you can continue to get used by the rich and powerful to achieve their greedy agendas. There is no middle ground in the revolution.

Katrina's Political Aftermath

2005-09-08T06:47:00.000-05:00

There are folks out there that are trying to deflect any accountability from the President, the White House and the folks that directly answer to him, and shift it all to the local authorities and even the thousands of people left to die in the streets of New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina. Right wing propaganda that the Governor of Louisiana didn’t cede authority, didn’t call for help, refused help, and a myriad of other ‘red-tape’ excuses have been clearly debunked with actual documentation on blogs throughout cyber-space.

That’s not to say that the local authorities, including the Governor and the mayor of New Orleans should bear none of the responsibility – they should and, no doubt, they will. But for the far right wing political machine to try to spin this so that none of the toxic sludge drifting in the aftermath of Katrina sticks to them is unconscionable, though predictable.

For shame.

Bush declared it a Federal Emergency on Saturday night, the 27th. At that point, he took on the responsibility that the right wing nutjobs are trying to deflect onto the locals. It's ridiculous to think that anyone should have expected the Federal government, the Bush administration, and FEMA to take a back seat and just see how well the locals do after Bush recognized and declared it a Federal Emergency.

Long before that 'official' declaration that his administration in the Federal Government was sending the cavalry, FEMA should have been able to anticipate the needs and ramped up for them. They should have been able to see the need coming. After all, they were given the information required to make informed decisions and plan for it. Then again, the President had folded FEMA up into the larger, bureaucratic, red-tape ridden, largely ineffective Department of Homeland Security, and perhaps it was too much to ask of them to see to the actual security of actual Americans faced with an actual homeland disaster.

In any case, FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security and the administration had plenty of models of the levees breeching from a big storm, and 100,000 poor people not being able to get out on their own. Those model and scenarios predicted long before Katrina had ever been heard of that without Federal aid, exactly THIS kind of catastrophe would happen (such as simulation hurricane Pam a year ago, that FEMA was involved with, and a CD of it was sent to the director of FEMA and the Bush administration). But it was ignored as just more chatter from those pesky scientists and the left wing doom-and-gloomers that continue to be met by this administration's Teflon shield of ignorance.

The head of the hurricane department at Louisiana State University, who did that study, reported to Tim Russert that he called FEMA on that Saturday or Sunday saying that they were going to have hundreds of thousands of evacuees and that they needed a giant tent city set up immediately outside of NO to absorb them, or they're going to die in the streets. He says he was told by FEMA that "Americans don't sleep in tents."

This administration has supposedly been planning for an adequate emergency response to the next disaster zone in America ever since 9/11. They burned into our brains that the question was not "if" but "when", and they threatened that if anyone other than Bush was at the helm, there'd be untold numbers of dead Americans in the streets. They sold us the Department of Homeland security with the promise that the 'next one' would be better dealt with because they'd HAVE preparation, they'd HAVE communication, they'd HAVE command and control in place, they'd HAVE a plan, they’d HAVE the ways and means to effect that plan, and they'd HAVE an immediate and adequate response.

The people of the Gulf Coast got NONE of that. Instead, alligators are feeding on the bloated bodies of dead babies, while homeland security chief Chertoff and the rest of the right's talking heads declare that now's not the time to talk about why that is.

Isn't that what this administration always tells us? "Now" is never the time to question or investigate how and why they failed to respond to a disaster, to find WMDs, to anticipate that troops need armor, and on and on and on. Just add this to the list of things we're not supposed to question concerning the Bush administration. "We can't talk about that 'now'. We've got to keep looking 'forward'" they tell us. Forward to what, Mr. Bush? Your next fuck up?

As soon as they saw a cat 5 hurricane bearing down on NO, they should have gone into overdrive, knowing full well the implications of that scenario. The moment Bush pulled the Federal Emergency trigger, troops, trucks, trains, aircraft, busses, boats, food, water and supplies should have already been prepared, and rolled with their PLAN - a plan we were promised was in place and at the ready to deal with a major disaster in a major U.S. city.

And this wasn't even a surprise attack. They had all the warnings, the scenarios, the information, ahead of time - years ahead of time. As the threat level increased and solidified in the form of Katrina bearing down on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, this administration "stayed the coarse"; That is, they stayed on vacation, went to fundraisers, bought shoes, laughed at Monty Python skits, and watched Katrina hit the Gulf Coast like a nuclear bomb and leave an aftermath of biological destruction in the form of the toxic, putrid water that's chest high and filled with everything from rotting flesh to oil, gas, untold chemicals and more.

He wants to fight against terror? Look into the faces of those folks down there Mr. Bush, and you will see true terror as they beg for help while the rotting bodies of their loved ones float by, gnawed by rats and alligators.

Osama Bin Laden, the man Bush said he would not rest until captured or killed, then later said he wasn't really concerned with, couldn't have planned a better terror campaign than the one Bush and company watched transpire from their vacation spots. Terror they could have largely prevented with a REAL plan, with REAL preparation, with REAL concern, instead of the constant rhetoric and the shuck and jive we get instead.

American citizens all over the country, seeing this "PLAN" in action, are recoiling in horror with the realization that all those plans and promises were nothing more than campaign rhetoric and scare tactics designed to put an administration in power that has worked overtime to stuff money into corporations, outsource jobs and shit all over science, instead of working overtime on the things they promised us. It's now apparent that in case of an actual emergency, the only PLAN Bush and company have are to advise us to put our heads between our legs, and kiss our ass goodbye.

I've been watching videos and listening to audios that are surfacing all over the web in blogs like Crooks and Liars for days, and one thing is clear: Bush and company lied to us about their plans and preparations to protect us as nobody else could or would. It was all bullshit, and now they're caught in the middle of it as nearly everyone who's not a part of the right-wing propaganda machine (and even some of THEM!) exposes them for who and what they really are, including the reporters from FOX News that are actually on the scene in N.O. and surrounding areas, like Shephard Smith, who was clearly exasperated over the whole thing. Even windbag Geraldo Rivera was crying and screaming for help, while talking head Sean Hannity tried to "put it in perspective", ie: put it back in the can. News Flash for ya Sean: The water's over the bridge, and it has dead bodies in it.

Job Hunting

2005-08-30T15:59:00.000-05:00

August 30th 2005 Job Hunting...

Way back in the middle of March, I was a pretty happy guy. I was working for a large company out in the San Francisco area, making good money, and spending my weekends shooting photos of scenic places. I’d just paid off the last stick of furniture in my house, so I had a little extra cash to play with, my cancer was still in remission, and life was truly terrific.

Then I started getting calls from another company that wanted me to come to work for them. I’d known most of the folks on the other end of the phone for some time, as we’d all been working together for years until they split off to form a new company in competition with the company I was still working for.

Their initial offer was of equal value to what I was presently making, in terms of salary and so forth. I appreciated the offer, but was not terribly interested in changing employment at that time, at least not without some incentive to do so. I was pretty well established where I was, had good insurance (important to me because of my ongoing cancer treatments, and so forth), and was somewhat hesitant to take a chance with it. A bird in the hand, so to speak

They understood and said that they really wanted me to come on board with them. They made progressively sweeter pitches to me that resulted in an offer of more salary and responsibilities, more freedom and autonomy in my future position than I currently had in the publicly traded corporation I was with, and stressed that in the new company I could expect a more friendly, family oriented atmosphere than the cold, corporate, quarterly-profit motivated one I was in at the time. Eventually, I accepted their newest offering and turned in my resignation.

In all honesty, there was another contributing factor that was quite personal to me. At the company I’d been with for the past few years, there was another manager that had been making quite a lot of trouble for me behind the scenes. His aspirations for power seemed to outweigh his personal integrity, and time and time again, folks would come to me with accounts of how he’d been saying disparaging things about me to my peers, staff, workers, clients and even the upper management we answered to.

Of course, he always denied it, including the time that I involved our corporate H.R. department to file a formal complaint, which resulted in an official warning to him that was placed in his personnel file.

He’d stated on many occasions that his ultimate goal was to get a “V.P.” title, and it seemed to many that he was obsessing about it. Apparently, he thought that by getting me kicked to the curb, he could take over both our regions, warranting the title. I had no such aspirations myself, and was content to do the best job I could, make a decent living, and enjoy a life worth living between chemo treatments.

The clients he dealt with directly shunned me more and more, making it increasingly difficult over time to negotiate with them. Eventually, they wouldn’t even return my calls and emails. He continued to deny any influence or involvement, and feigned ignorance of the reasons behind their refusal to deal with me, despite the accounts I continued to receive over the years from third parties who’d heard the disparaging remarks against me directly from him or overheard him making them to others.

So, I saw the new opportunity as a way to get away from his power trip and the detrimental effect it was having on my ability to work with our clients. If he wanted the V.P. title so bad that he was willing to stab others in the back to get it, so be it. I had no interest in trying to fight against a campaign of malicious slander. I would simply leave him with his little pot of gold, and move on to a less competitive atmosphere, where I could work in peace.

With that, I turned my attention to the future. I was eager to get very involved with the new company. It seemed at the time that there was a lot of opportunity to grow with them, both personally and professionally. It was all very exciting. I dug right in and worked hard at the tasks before me, and put together a new database that would allow the company to track workers, work and materials, do reconciliation, and a number of other things. All seemed to be going very well.

Five weeks after I started with the new company, the manager I’d left behind walked through my door bearing my job title and description, and carrying with him a FedEx envelope containing a letter to me from the V.P. stating that my services were no longer required, effective the next day.

It was apparent to me that he’d negotiated my demise as part of his bid to take over my new job as his own. No doubt, he’d played the cards he’d carefully stacked against me with the clients, as the means to justify why he could do a better job than I.

A few phone calls later, and my job was saved, at least for the time being. While that was going on, he was bad-mouthing me and my abilities to the folks that worked for me at the new job (they told me later). To my face, he feigned ignorance of why they’d let me go, how valuable he thought I was, that he’d “gone to bat” for me, etc., etc., etc. He said he didn’t even want my job. He made it clear to me again that day that he wanted to be a V.P. and that he could do a much better job than the guy presently holding the position.

I recognized it as the same bullshit as always, just a new company and location, but was naïve enough to think that he’d target the current VP with his malicious campaigns, take the VP position, and leave me ‘beneath him’, which was actually fine with me.

A few days later, the current VP was “let go” and, shortly after, the owner of the company flew out for a visit. He personally apologized for the “thing” that happened to me, and reassured me that my job was not in jeopardy. He reviewed the database I’d been working on, and seemed to be very excited about it, stating that he wanted to deploy it to all the job sites across the country, and also wanted to present it to our biggest client to show the level of competence and documentation ability “we’d” developed. I was all for it, seeing it as a way to be a very productive asset to the company, anchoring my future with them.

Shortly after that, on a nation-wide conference call with the managers of all the job sites, the owner of the company named the new VP. Not surprising to me, it was the guy who’d waged a campaign for several years to get the position. I hoped he’d be satisfied at last, that he’d use his influence with the clients to get lots of work for the company, and that we could all finally just get to work without having to constantly watch our backs.

One of his first decisions was to transfer me to the corporate office in Virginia to work out the intricacies of deploying the database nationwide, and to be the national representative in charge of administering it. I would deploy it to existing job sites, set it up at new job sites, train personnel in its use, and so on.

First though, he wanted me to go to Detroit, though his reasons were vague. He said that he anticipated he would be getting rid of the managers at that site, and wanted me there in case they saw the handwriting on the wall and jumped before he was ready with new management to take it over. He said that he had to be careful because the managers on that site had been with the owner for years, so he had to first convince the company owner that the “change” was necessary. He had no doubt that he’d get what he wanted because, as he put it, the owner had already given him almost unlimited power to do whatever he wanted. He explicitly told me not to say anything about it to anyone, and I instinctively knew the consequences if I did.

Meanwhile, he told the managers in Detroit that I was there to help them with their inventory, which made no sense to any of us, since they didn’t really have an inventory problem, which I discovered upon arrival there. They smelled bullshit, and so did I.

It also didn’t escape my notice that with the transfer, I was in point of fact no longer the regional manager I was hired to be. No one answered to me and I answered only to the new VP, who was now too busy to return my calls. I was suddenly in limbo, without a job title or clear direction.

Sitting in Detroit, feeling about as useful as a screen door on a submarine, I continued to work on the progression of the database structure toward something that could be used nationally, trying to fuse it with existing systems that were in place at corporate, working via phone and email on daily issues the managers left behind in California asked me for help with, and even putting together some photos to be used on the company’s future web site, at the request of another company department’s VP.

Then, 16 weeks after I was hired, the new VP called to let me know that they had to cut back on overhead, and that he had to let me go. Of course, he was very sorry, and offered two week’s severance as a parting gift.

The Detroit managers, who’d been transferred to Chicago when the Detroit job got shut down a few days earlier, came and got my company vehicle, cell phone, laptop computer, etc. So, there I was, stuck in a motel room in Detroit, without a job to continue to pay for it, without a vehicle to get around, everything I owned in a storage unit that would require almost $200 per month to keep, and without fresh prospects to get back to work in a job market that’s presently very slow.

I rented a car, got a personal cell phone and moved into my mother’s unoccupied condo nearby. I typed up my new resume and started making phone calls, looking for a new job. Nearly five weeks later, I’m still looking. I only rented the car a couple of weeks, to get to job interviews and so on. My personal savings continue to decline, and I figure I’ve only got about a month or two left until I’m completely broke, unless something turns up.

And right in the middle of it all, the dread that my cancer may need treatment again soon. I’ve no insurance now, no money to get any insurance, and no idea how I’ll be able to deal with the situation if I get sick. It’s been over two years since my last treatment, which means that I could be facing some serious health issues soon. If caught early, I can work right through my treatment periods, as I’ve done before, but if I get too sick before I can get insurance and treatment, I won’t be able to work; to get a job; to get insurance. And without insurance and the proper treatment that it provides, that means I could soon be facing the end of my life.

The idea that I might actually die as the domino-effect end-result of a campaign of malicious slander waged by an egomaniac on a power trip is like something out of a conspiracy novel, but there it is, staring me in the face with all the stark reality of a freight train coming straight at me.

Still, I keep my spirits up and my outlook positive. I continue to feel confident that something will turn up in my job search, and all will right itself again.

And if not, well… I did the best I could, and my integrity remains intact, which is more than I can say for some...

Home again

2005-07-17T12:57:00.000-05:00

Wow, it's been awhile, eh? Well, not to worry, I'm doing just fine here. Still in remission and all that jazz.

Since the last time I wrote, I've changed jobs and moved back across the country from San Francisco, CA to Detroit, MI. Yep, back home again. I just got here about a week ago, so I'm living in a motel room for the time being and all my stuff is in storage.

Anyway, I've been getting emails from some of you who've been a bit worried because I haven't written in a while, so I figured I should let you all know I'm still alive and doing fine!

ALIVE from San Fran to Sedona

2005-02-23T19:52:00.000-05:00

Hi there everyone! Didja miss me? LOL! Well, I know some of you did, because you've been emailing and calling me lately to get my Blog updated and let you know what's going on. And I know that some of you haven't missed me at all, as I got plenty of emails and such giving me a ration of irrational diatribe over some of my earlier Blog entries and a few other things that can be found on my site. Hmmm... Well, at least I'm getting your attention. Hehehe...

Speaking of which, I think some folks really need to learn to lighten up a little and not take things so personally, especially when it comes to politics and religion. They're just opinions, after all, and everybody's got them. I just don't think it needs to be a big secret what I think, and I don't think sharing my thoughts warrants burning me at the stake. Can't we all just get along, even with differing opinions? Okay, I don't much like our current administration or it's policies. What's the big deal? It's not like I'm trying to overthrow the government or burn your houses down! Aren't we allowed to express our views about that stuff anymore? I thought that was a big part of what all this "American Freedom" stuff was all about! A lot of good Americans fought and died for those rights, after all. Shouldn't we honor them by embracing those rights and enjoying them? I mean, what good are they if we don't use them? I have a right to vote, so I vote. I have a right to free speech, so I express my thoughts. I have a right to choose any religion I want, including none at all, so I do. You get the idea...

And yes, you have the right to write nasty things to me because I offended you somehow along the way. Maybe you're upset because... I didn't vote the way you did; Because I don't like a president you love; Because I don't support a war you do; Because I support the separation of church and state; Because I don't believe in your god(s); Because (insert reason here). Yes, feel free to write nasty things to me because of any of those, or any other reason. Be my guest. Lash out if you must. But wouldn't it be better if we could just DISCUSS them instead, and maybe learn something from each other? How bad could that be? What say we give it a try, hmmm?

Anyway...

NEWS FLASH!! CANCER UPDATE!!: I'm still in remission and doing great here. My next doctor visit isn't scheduled until April 25th, and I suspect I'll be okay at least until then. I feel terrific! ;>) There's not much more to say about it other than that. I'm living and loving life here in beautiful, rain-soaked San Francisco!

I put up a new page recently on my web site. It's the genealogical story of my Cash roots. I've been researching it for about 10 years now, and recently got a big piece of the puzzle from a distant relative named David Bennett who's also been working on it. I tip my hat to him big time for uncovering a long hidden treasure trove of information, and for his detective work in putting it all together. It starts out in Scotland in about the year 1160 with one of my ancestors, King Malcolm, and I think it's pretty interesting. Anyway, here's the page:

http://www.buckcash.com/Cash_roots.htm

I finally broke away from work for a few days to have a little adventure too. My friend Laurie and I took a road trip to Sedona, Arizona, and what a GREAT place that is! It's hard to really describe just how beautiful it is there, but if you're ever looking for a terrific vacation destination, you really need to check it out. Meanwhile, here's a link you can click on to get an internet 'visit':

http://www.visitsedona.com/

We shot a bunch of photos while we were there, and I'll get some of them online soon in the photo album on my main site, so check in from time to time, and check 'em out.

So, that's about it for now I guess. Back to the grindstone for me. I'll probably be putting in some really long hours in some really long days for at least the next few weeks, but it's all good. Hey, at least I sleep well and it keeps me out of trouble - mostly! ;>)

Until next time, take care and keep in touch. It's really easy to do, you know. You can leave a comment here or in the guest book on my main web site, or just hit me up with an email once in a while. Speaking of which, someone help Mr. Agnetti email me! I want to email Granny through him!

Later!

Cancer Checkup & Holiday Season

2004-12-21T00:20:00.000-05:00

Hello again everyone! Might as well get right to it...

I had a checkup with my doctor this morning to see how my cancer and current remission is progressing. I got there a few minutes early and checked in with Delia, then had a seat there in the atrium with a few others who were already there. A few minutes later, my doctor walked in through the front door and gave everyone a pleasant, "good morning", and I couldn't resist a hearty, "What's up doc?!" What can I say... I'm a Bugs Bunny fan.

A few minutes later I was ushered into the room where they do the blood draws and analysis, and the nurse there said she had to get five vials of blood from me. I just laughed and said, "Go for it! Do your worst!" We laughed and she said she was just kidding, and only needed one, and we got right to it, no fuss, no muss

I don't know if I've ever mentioned it before, but they've got a really cool machine there that I would love to know more about. It's about the size and shape of one of those little refrigerators that are popular with college students - the smallest ones you might see at an appliance store. Anyway, they take the vial of freshly drawn blood and put it into a little holder in a window in the front of the machine, press a button or two, and it starts whirring and humming as it analyses the blood right there on the spot, culminating with it spitting out a little computer printout of all the info on that sample. Actually, two copies - one for me and another for the doc that ends up in my file there in his office. And it all happens in about a minute. Modern medical technology is just amazing to me.

While the machine was doing it's thing, she took my blood pressure with another device that's now automated. No more squeezing a bulb and feeling for a pulse and counting beats while looking at a watch. She just wraps my arm and presses a button, and a few seconds later all the info is displayed on an LCD. Very cool stuff.

With the blood draw fun over, she took me across the hall to one of the examination rooms, and I grabbed a Reader's Digest and hopped up on the table to read a few jokes. Before I could even get though the first one, the doc popped in and got right to it. He consulted the printout and said my blood looks great. As he did a little physical exam, he asked how I felt and I told him the truth: "TERRIFIC!" He said I looked terrific too, and pronounced me fit as a fiddle and to come back in four months for another checkup.

We walked back down the hall to the front desk to set up the appointment with Delia, and he told her he'd see me in four months. She looked disappointed and asked, "He's not going to be here anymore?" At first I didn't catch the implications, and laughed, "Miss me already, eh?" Then I thought, "hey, what did she mean by that 'anymore' bit?" I looked at the doc and asked, "are you moving from here?" He explained that it was a little cramped there with the other doctors and so many patients (it IS a rather small office), and that it just made sense for him to stop shuttling between that office and the other one he works out of, which isn't really all that far away.

So, my next appointment, which is on April 25th, will be in their other facility. I was there once before to get one of my chemo treatments, and recall that it's a lot bigger place. Anyway, it's fine with me, though I'll kinda miss the staff at this one. I always enjoyed the pleasant interaction with Delia in particular and, to be honest, I always thought she was kinda cute too. ;>)

So that's about it on the cancer update for now. I'm still kicking it's butt for the time being, staying positive and active, and still in my current remission. Nothing but good news all the way around.

The doc asked me during my visit if I'm taking any time off these days, and I told him that I'm flying to Detroit on Thursday to visit with family for a week, then flying back. It's pretty much a holiday tradition with me to go 'home' for a week or so at this time of year. He seemed to think that's a good thing, and made a comment of approval.

To be honest though, it's rarely relaxing at all. There's the airport craziness, the long flights, the rushing around trying to get a visit in with most of my relatives, the annual shopping spree with my kids, and so on. And to tell the truth, I've never been all that crazy about cold weather, snow and ice. Nonetheless... It's what I do, and it's all worth it for those moments with my family that are irreplaceable.

The other, implied, part of "are you taking any time off" is "how's work?" The end of the year is always pretty hectic in the business I'm in, and this year hasn't been any exception. I spent most of the last couple of weeks, including weekends, putting in about 20 hours per day. I worked about ten hours, then slept two, then went at it again for another ten, slept two, etc., etc., etc., until I'd finished what I was working on, which was mostly a bid for a construction project we'll start in the first quarter of '05, and some budget stuff for the coming year.

By the end, I was pretty burnt out, and spent this past weekend just catching up on sleep and not thinking about much of anything at all - totally relaxing my brain by disconnecting it. I didn't even do any reading, online or off, which is pretty unusual for me. By this morning, I was feeling refreshed, and my old self again, ready to tackle the world. Well, except that I'm still dreaming about spreadsheets, data and formulas... But that'll pass.

Of course, working my brains out banging away on spreadsheets and so forth for the last couple of weeks like an obsessed fanatic means that I haven't gotten out to do any photography lately. Well, it's just a priorities thing, and I'll make up for it in the new year, after I get back from the holidays in Detroit. Actually, I'm likely to start with my trip home. I'll probably shoot hundreds of photos there, though I expect they'll mostly be family album type stuff, rather than artsy-fartsy stuff. Either way, I'll be glad to be pressing the shutter button again.

I doubt I'll have anything more to update here between now and the new year, so I'll take this opportunity to extend to you my hopes that you all have a safe, happy and wonderful holiday season, and a terrific New Year.

Lots of folks have written to ask about my own take on the holiday season, being that I'm not at all a religious person. There is no "Christ" in my "Christmas", so to speak. Well, it's pretty simple really. I celebrate and take advantage of this time of the year anyway - just like nearly everyone else.

It's a time of the year when families and friends get together traditionally, whether for religious reasons or not (and be for real - it's usually not), and it's as good a time as any in the year for everyone to agree on for when to make time in their busy schedules to get together and share some love with each other - me included. After all, you don't need a religious reason to love your family and friends - well I don't. If you need a reason to share some love with your family and friends beyond just the love you feel for them, well... I don't really know what to tell you, but I think it's kinda sad.

Besides, history shows that the winter holiday season didn't start with "Christmas" and the Jesus story anyway. It started loooooong before that. Tomorrow morning marks the winter solstice, which is the longest, darkest day of the year. But it also signals the beginning of ever longer and brighter days ahead, which has been a cause for celebration around the Northern Hemisphere of the world to all peoples of all cultures for all of recorded history and, I suspect, long before that.

People noticed that nearly everything died as the year progressed toward the time we now call the holiday season - December - the winter solstice. With each passing day, there was less daylight time, longer and colder nights, and life, existence and even the world itself seemed to be heading toward a point where it would all be nothing but entirely dark, cold and dead - a pretty dismal thought, especially in those ancient times when superstitions and myths, rather than science, explained what was happening.

Some notable exceptions to all the death that surrounded our ancestors at this time of year were holly and the evergreen tree, which had the ability to stay green year round, thus 'ever green'. The festivities that surrounded their ability to do this, and their promise that all is not lost, goes on today in our holly and Christmas Tree traditions, pagan as their origins are.

Of course, speaking of pagan origins, it's no mere coincidence that church leader Pope Julius I in the fourth century picked December 25th as Jesus' birthday in the first place, despite no evidence to support the notion, and even some evidence to the contrary (Springtime is better supported).

For centuries leading up to that time, the winter solstice on December 21st, and the pagan holiday Saturnalia on the 25th, as well as the birthday of the god Mithra (also born of a virgin on December 25th - a story predating Jesus' by at least 1500 years, per writings found), were all events being celebrated by people all over the continent, complete with holly, evergreen, feasting, partying, decorating and gift giving. Church leaders couldn't seem to disuade the common folk from those 'heathen' and 'pagan' celebrations and traditional practices, so they simply took over that celebration season and the days associated with it as their own by connecting it with their own reasons for having a celebration - the birth date of Jesus, again, invented in the fourth century by a pope.

The church spent the next several centuries trying pretty hard to do away with the traditions associated with it - the holly, evergreen, feasting, partying, gift giving, etc., but it was no use. After all, that's the fun part! Eventually, they all but gave up, and adopted their own stories and connections to fit those practices into their own versions of "why" they're done as part of "Christmas".

Nowadays, some 17 centuries later, most people don't even realize that "Christmas" started out that way in the fourth century, and actually think that Jesus really was born on December 25th. Neither do most realize that it's not been such a smooth ride over the centuries to the mostly common acceptance of "Christmas" that we see today. The notion of associating Jesus with December celebrations has not been as widely accepted as most people think.

In fact, that actual history of the pagan rituals, heathen celebrations and birth of "Christmas" in the fourth century is why several Christian sects even today refuse to recognize or celebrate "Christmas", as they understand that it has nothing to do with the actual day Jesus was born, but has everything to do with the "heathen" and "pagan" roots at it's heart. The Puritans forbade the observance of Christmas, and Massachusetts second governor, William Bradford, wrote that he tried hard to "stamp out 'pagan mockery' of the observance, penalizing any frivolity". In 1659, the General Court of Massachusetts enacted a law making any observance of December 25th (other than a church service) a penal offense; people were fined for hanging decorations.

Nonetheless, Winter Solstice, Saturnalia, Jesus' birth, and even the very similar birth tale of the god Mithra are all stories and celebrations surrounding the end of dismal, darkening, dieing days, and the birth or rebirth of hope, life and brighter days to come. In that way, they all share a common point of reference that most can embrace, in one way or another, whether that's in the birth of the "son" or the rebirth of the "sun".

So, I celebrate in the shared love of family and friends, in the renewed hope and promise of better, brighter, life-giving days ahead, and in the idea that we can all make a little extra effort to be kind and friendly to one another, regardless of our differences or religions, just because it's so much more pleasant an existence to do so. Now if we can just find a way to extend that from just the holiday season to something that happens year 'round, we'll really have something!

All the best to you and yours this holiday season, and every day of the year!

Your humble Blogster,

Buck

Understanding Tax Cuts.

2004-11-26T18:16:00.000-05:00

Tax cuts. Everybody loves ‘em. After all, who wants to pay more taxes? Nobody I know, including me. My taxes are too high! Yours too? I knew it! Everybody who wants lower taxes, raise your hand. Wow. Everybody. I mean hey, this is easy, right? We just lower taxes, and we pay less. We keep more of the money we earn. Why wouldn’t we want to do that?

George knows that’s how we feel, and he’ll ensure tax cuts for everybody, even to the point of pushing Congress to make a permanent tax cut the law. What a great idea! Yippee!!!

Okay, so this is really pretty simple. Less taxes means more money in our pockets and less money in the government’s. I think we’re all okay with that, right? Good. Now all we have to do is trim our budgets and we’re all set.

“But Buck” you say, “we’ll have more money in our pockets! Why in the world would we have to trim our budgets?” Well, I wasn’t talking about our individual budgets (which most can’t handle anyway, judging by their overspent credit cards and late fees). I’m talking about our collective budget – the one in the U.S. Treasury. Yeah, that’s our money too – “Of the people, by the people and for the people” remember? That’s what OUR government IS – it’s US, collectively. So yeah, it’s already “your money”, just like George says, even when it's already in the U.S. Treasury (he forgets to tell you that part).

Okay, so how does it work? Well, it’s a budget – duh. It’s just like your individual budget, but with bigger numbers.

Here’s an example: Let’s say you (as an individual) decide you want to buy three million dollars worth of hunting supplies so that you and your best pals can get in a little weekend action and not have to worry about ‘roughing it’ or scrimping on your good times blowing the hell out of shit. You buy a pile of the very best weapons and ammunition you can find, some camouflage suits, a hunting lodge and a mountain to put it on, several ATVs, plenty of gas to run them, and a duck call.

Your friends are overjoyed as you run down to the nearest sporting goods store/real estate agent and write the check, right? What? Not enough money in your checking account? No problem. You whip our your credit card, and just like that, you’ve got yourself a three million dollar SERIOUS hunting setup, and a $95,000.00 per month credit card payment.

Umm… You DO make enough per month to cover that, right? Because that’s what budgeting is all about – taking in as much or more than you pay out – or you’re screwed.

Well, maybe you can’t afford a three million dollar hunting package to hook up all your friends, but you still want enough for yourself, and you’re willing to spend a little less – say, thirteen thousand dollars instead. That’s more realistic.

Okay, so now your payments are only $300 per month. Of course, that’s $300 ADDED TO your current monthly spending for food, shelter, SUV payments and upkeep, insurance, fuel for home and vehicle(s), clothes, internet access, phone, power and cable bills, medical bills, prescriptions, school supplies, printer ink, toothpaste, dog food, plenty of beer and porn videos for the hunting trips, DVDs, CDs, alcohol, drugs and other assorted ‘entertainment’ and, of course, that awesome thing that you just couldn’t walk by without owning one of your very own while you were out shopping for a new laser sight. Feel free to add to the list as necessary. After all, ‘it’s YOUR money’.

Still got enough to cover it all? Good. Now make sure you put some away each month for a ‘rainy day’ because, as you well know, shit happens. (Like, you never know when a three hundred billion dollar war will pop up out of the blue.)

So far, we’ve been talking about the OUTPUT side of your budget – the spending. But, there’s a whole ‘nuther part to this whole ‘budgeting’ thing that we just can’t ignore, or it isn’t a budget. So let’s talk about the INPUT side of your budget – the earnings (or, in government budget terms - “the taxes”). Cut ‘em, and remember, “It’s GOOD to cut ‘em!” (Always say it emphatically)

That’s right, walk into your employer’s office, wherever you are, and say, “Having looked closely at my budget, I’ve decided to spend more on ammunition and weapons and I’d like you to cut my income because cuts are GOOD – President Bush said so, and I believe him. And besides boss – it’s YOUR money.”

There’s a good chance he’ll look at you like you’re stupid, so be prepared. This is your chance to explain even further… “See, I’m all good with a reduced income (taxes), even though I’m going to spend more on ammo and guns (300 billion dollar wars) because – get this – I’m going to reduce spending in other areas of my budget that I don’t really need (Social programs)”.

“Like what?” asks Joe Boss, who’d like to be able to do a trick like that himself. “Well” you say, “I’ll home school my kids when I’m not at work or hunting, which will prepare them fully for careers in either the fast food or hotel maintenance industries (cut education). Also, I’ll tell my parents to fuck off and die if they can’t support themselves without my help (cut social security). And since I’m now armed to the teeth, I don’t give a shit if my neighbors are jobless and starving, since I know I can fend off the crime wave of them breaking, entering, robbing and plundering everything they can find in order to survive when I stop helping them out with a few bucks here and there (cut social services).”

“Hmmm… Tell me more,” he says. You continue, “I’m also shutting down my fire and burglar alarms to save the associated costs, since I can protect myself and I’ve got my own hose (cut fire and police salaries and budgets). On top of that, I’m going to burn all my books (except the Bible!) in the fireplace to save on home heating bills (cut library spending). And if my wife or kids get sick, I’m going to pray really, really hard to heal them (cut medical services). In fact, I’ve got LOTS of great ideas like these that I plan to implement, hopefully over the next four years or so.”

Excited by your own speechifying, you tell him, “This isn’t just some crazy idea I dreamed up either, you know. After discussing it thoroughly in sound bites, my family reaffirmed that I’m THE head of the household and to go right ahead with my plans.”

“Well, actually, my bleeding heart liberal wife and son who studied economics said it was an incredibly bad idea, but my cheerleader daughter and I thought it was great. The baby was the tiebreaker. I simply offered her a shiny new nickel (Don’t worry - I’ll get it back later, with interest, when she’s not looking), flashed a warm and genuine down-home smile, told her about the way her mother flip-flops back and forth in bed while having bad dreams about my future plans for the family, and topped it off with some baby-talk words like ‘nook-yoo-ler’. Then she drooled on herself, so I counted it as a vote for me and my plans.”

Tell your boss a story like that, and I’m pretty sure he’ll cut your pay. In fact, he may even lay you off, which would cut it even more. And it’s pretty easy to figure out that if a little cut is good, a bigger cut is better, so you’ve got that to look forward to also.

Now that you understand tax cuts and the budget, income, bills and spending, and how it all works together, I’m sure you can see what a really good thing it really is. If not, you’re obviously a liberal left-wing radical yellow-dog terrorist sympathizing intellectual who hates your country, and you should pack your shit and move to France. Seriously – you just don’t get it, and you probably never will.

On the other hand, if you DO see what a great thing these cuts are and how they will improve our way of life in America the Free, Home of the Brave, you’re what’s affectionately called a conservative right-wing gun-toting knuckle-dragging dumb-fuck redneck (be proud!), and should clean your gun more often with the barrel pointed straight at your head. Trust me on this one – it’s even better than the tax cuts thing.

Bay Bridge Photo Shoot

2004-10-24T03:58:00.000-05:00

First things first: I got a new camera! Woo hoo! It's the Canon 20D, and this thing is simply amazing! It's a true SLR digital, 8 megapixel shooter. Here's a picture of it:

Quite simply, this is the camera I've always wanted, even before it was invented! Rather than try to tell you all about it (which is WAY too much!), you can click THIS LINK to an in-depth review of it, if you're interested.

Okay, that out of the way, I'm really excited about my first shoot with it. There's a shot I've been wanting to get for a few months, but got put off by one thing or another each time. It's a shot of the San Francisco Bay Bridge at dusk, from Treasure Island facing West (into the sunset).

Now, the easy place to get a shot of this bridge is from a parking area at the bottom of the hill. I've already done that with my Sony F717, and you can see the shot HERE. But I wanted something a little more dynamic and dramatic - from the top of the hill.

The only problem with that is, there's no place to park up there. It's two lanes, with a cliff wall on one side, a cliff drop on the other, and not even a shoulder to pull over onto - at all. I was going to have to work for it...

I parked down the hill in the parking lot, strapped on my backpack full of gear, and set off on a hike up the mountain. Half an hour later, and I was setting up my tripod at the only place I could get a view through the trees without going off the cliff. I spent a couple hours there, shooting from about an hour before sundown to about an hour after, then packed it up and headed back down. It's hard to tell from the small viewfinder on a digital camera if you got exactly what you wanted, especially when it comes to sharpness, but I had some good feelings about the shoot.

While I was up there, another fellow walked up with a camera and tried to take a shot or two, then lamented that he had no tripod, and knew it wasn't going to work out for him. Well, I always carry a couple of mini-pods, so I loaned him one to get his shot, and he was very thankful. I was glad to help. I hope it turned out well for him.

When I got home and dumped the photos onto my computer, I was very happy! Of the 225 photos I shot there (MAN, I love digital!), I chose this as THE shot of the session:

If you'd like to see the rest of my photos, you can head on over to my photo album. I recently went through it and gave it a whole new look and new functionality. If you've been there before, you may have to refresh your browser to see the new look, and the new photos since the last time you were there. An easy way to do that is to simply press F5 on your keyboard when you get there.

Well, that's about it for now. I'm still feeling great here, and doing fine. Hope you are too! See you next time!

Artistic Dreams and Reality

2004-10-08T00:24:00.000-05:00

Lately, I have dreams of being a photographer. I don't mean aspirations; I mean the stuff that happens when you're asleep. I have to say, they're wonderful, and I wake up feeling refreshed and invigorated!

Sometimes I dream that I'm a big time pro photographer with assistants and all, shooting in some exotic location. Other times, I'm just a working photographer, barely able to make ends meet, but very happy that I can do it for a living. Still other times, I visualize a particular shot, work out the details of how to set up and shoot it, and wake up with a fresh idea to pursue.

Like most people (I imagine), I dream about things that are on my mind a lot lately and for me, for now, it's photography. Other times in my life, my dreams have allowed me to be a cartoonist, musician, writer and once, even a sculptor. They've all been wonderful diversions, and quite welcome from the other types of dreams I've had that are associated with problems at work or in my personal life.

Nonetheless, they are dreams; fantasies; flights of fancy, and I know it. While my artistic pursuits have always played a large role in my personal life, I've always drawn the line at the money issue. There are simply WAY too many starving artists out there, many of whom are much better than I at their craft. I just can't muster the kind of commitment it takes to live in poverty in trade for making the art I love.

My personal artistic pursuits have played a big role in my own life since I was very young. Trudging through the Michigan snow on my paper route, I wrote songs in my head, singing them lightly out loud. Later, I begged for and got a guitar, then spent years learning to play it. Eventually, as an adult, I assembled a small recording studio and began to record my compositions, like this one.

I constantly drew and doodled. From cartoons to more serious drawings and studies of nature and people, to the many inventions that flooded into my mind, my pencils and pens seemed never to stop consuming endless quantities of any kind of paper, pads and art board I could get my hands on. In high school, I began to study more serious drawing techniques, from artistic to architectural. Now those efforts manifest themselves mostly in the form of the cartoons I like to make.

Sculpture captured my imagination early on as well. Clay, plaster and found objects transformed in my hands, and I found great respect and admiration for the works of reknowned sculptors and painters I saw in books. Now I take great pleasure in visiting many museums to see these great works of art in person. In my own life, these tools and methods of the sculpting craft have combined with a love of engineering to become a way for me to realize ideas in three dimensional form, mostly for visualizing inventions or solving small real-world problems.

I've always fancied myself something of a writer as well. Besides the songs and poetry associated with my musical pursuits, I found myself writing essays on nearly anything that touched my life. I spent a good part of my life reading. Fiction, biographies, history, or technical manuals and books to learn more about the art I was interested in making; I sucked it all up. I paid attention to writing styles and techniques, often re-reading the same thing over and over to get the real rhythm and feel of a passage; to better understand the way the words were used not just to convey an idea, but to do so in ways that transcend such utilitarian reasons, rendering them as pure artistic expression. Eventually I learned to type, which helped me transfer my thoughts to written word much quicker. To this day everything I write, be it an essay, this blog passage, or a memo at work, I think about and try to employ those tools and methods I've picked up over the years. It is the artistic side of me showing itself, (even when done badly!).

And then there's the photography. I recognized early on the power of art in photographic images. Beyond the snapshots in the family album, I saw in professional photographs the depth of field, use of shutter speed, compositional arrangement and use of color and light as great tools of artistic expression, though the tools themselves and techniques to employ them were a complete mystery to me. I set out to find out how that art was produced, and read everything I could get my hands on about the subject of photography, from it's history to it's technical aspects. I bought and used progressively better cameras, lenses and associated equipment over the years, and continue to pursue knowledge and technical ability in the art form today.

Now, I don't know why these artistic expressions have played such a major role in my life-long personal interests, or why they play such a role in other artists. Some particular tweak in our DNA structure or thought patterns in our brains perhaps explains it. In any case, it seems to spill over into the rest of our lives, in varying amounts. I know that it affects and influences my views of the world, of politics, of religion, of humanity - of everything.

And yet, while many artists are wholly consumed by it all, I have set the boundary of it's influence over me to one of monetary pragmatism. In short, I have no desire to be yet another starving artist in a sea brimming over with them, most of whom are on the verge of drowning.

Even so, it is very tempting at times to just 'give it all up' for a shot at making a living, even a modest one, making the art I love so much. These feelings are especially strong when friends and family sing the praises of some recent piece I've made with microphone, pencil, keyboard or camera. It gets even stronger when complete strangers run across something I've made and take the time and make the effort to contact me to tell me how much they liked it. And occasionally - just once in a while - an actual professional artist; one who has formal training and makes a living at it; one who has a critical eye or ear for the craft, has something very nice to say about one or more of my works. Then I allow my thoughts to run wild with the possibilities - at least for a short while, until the pragmatic side takes over again, and I remind myself that I'm, at best, a somewhat talented art hobbyist who has a good moment here and there, resulting in a piece I'm quite proud of.

Maybe someday I'll hit the lottery and have the means to pursue my art unencumbered by the need to have a day job to pay for such a life. Meanwhile, I'll just hang onto my dreams - and reality.

Baker Beach Photo Shoot

2004-09-18T13:09:00.000-05:00

Those of you who know me are aware that I'm into photography as a hobby. This past week, I waited anxiously for the arrival of some new Cokin neutral density filters to arrive by UPS. They showed up yesterday, and I immediately packed up my gear for an expedition to Baker Beach in San Francisco for a shoot I've long wanted to do of the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset.

I called my friend Linda, who'd expressed interest in coming along, and told her I'd pick her up after work if she was still interested. She was all for it, so as soon as my work day ended, I headed straight toward the city, picking her up from where she works along the way.

We still had plenty of time before 'magic hour' hit the scene I wanted to shoot, and I knew we'd be out there until after dark, so we stopped off at Houston's for dinner first. It's sort of along the way, depending on the route you take to get to Baker Beach, and I usually like to take the scenic route along the waterfront. I had my usual, a wonderful filet mignon, and then we set off again on our little adventure.

As we wound our way around the North end of the peninsula, it was looking pretty foggy over by the bridge, and I wondered if I'd get the shots I was looking for. Either way, I'd get something, and fog is always to be expected when you're shooting around San Francisco anyway.

When we got to the beach, most of the fog had already dissipated, and the setting sun was absolutely golden, with the light working on the bridge just as I'd hoped for. We parked as far down toward the bridge as we could get, which is still quite a ways from where I wanted to shoot, and headed off into the sand, enjoying a cool ocean breeze as we made our way North toward the bridge.

I'd hoped that there'd be very few people there at that time, since I didn't want the blurs they'd cause in the long exposures I intended to shoot. I calculated that with temperatures cooling this time of year, and on a Friday evening when most people were winding down from a work week, Baker Beach would be the last thing on their minds. I was delighted to find exactly that. There was a photographer and a couple in wedding clothes that went down to the beach just ahead of us for the classic wedding/beach/sunset/bridge shot. They only went as far as they had to in order to get the shot, then hurried back up to the parking area before we even got to where they posed. Other than that, there were very few people out there. We were practically alone.

As we neared the rocky area at the North end of the beach, I stopped to get a few shots here and there, then moved on to get closer to my target shooting area: the rocks themselves. I had an idea that if I climbed up on the rocks and set up my tripod looking down a bit so that the top of the bridge was near the top of the frame, I'd get a lot of the water action I was looking for. My intent was to use the neutral density filters to get some long exposures, producing a more ethereal image than a normal exposure of the water's waves and splashing. I also wanted to experiment with a sunset filter to bring out more orange in the bridge, and a bottom-oriented graduated blue filter to keep the water the right color despite the sunset filter.

Over the next couple of hours, I shot about 100 photos from different perspectives, using a variety of shutter and aperture settings, and playing with the filters. Linda was very patient with the whole thing. I was afraid she'd be terribly bored just watching me stand there with my tripod-mounted camera, tweaking and pressing buttons and going in and out of my camera bag for various gadgets. She said she was enjoying it all anyway, and it was a beautiful place to take in a gorgeous sunset, so it all worked out great.

As the sun finally dipped below the horizon, the lights on the bridge slowly came on here and there, until it was all lit more by artificial light than by the natural light of the setting sun. Eventually, I'd had enough, and was eager to get home and have a look at the results, so I squeezed off one last shot, packed up my gear and called it a wrap.

By then, it was pretty dark, so Linda pulled out a handy flashlight she keeps in her bag (I've got to get one of those!), and we carefully climbed down from our rocky perch and headed back down the beach toward the parking area. We went back to my house, downloaded the photos onto my computer and had a look at them. I was very pleased with the results, and got at least a couple dozen 'keepers' out of the shoot. Here's a sample:

Here's the EXIF info for the shot above:

I hope you like it. I sure had fun shooting it!

Blogster?

2004-09-16T21:15:00.000-05:00

It's all the rage. Blogging, that is. So here I am, giving it a try. And what will I talk about? Well, I suppose I'll talk about my cancer, politics, religion... Basically anything I'm probably not supposed to talk about. And then there's all the other stuff that bumps around in my head, like photography, cartooning, music, and so on. We'll just have to see how it goes, I suppose.

I've actually been thinking about using blogging software for awhile now. See, I keep a journal online at my regular web site about what's going on with my cancer. It keeps friends and family updated, so I don't have to repeat it all over and over to each of them over the phone or in emails. All they have to do is click a couple of times, and they get all the latest news about how I'm doing.

The thing is, it's getting to be a pain to keep it up using HTML to make a new page each time, update the links, etc. It's basically just a cancer blog anyway, so it seemed the natural thing to switch to a blog program eventually to deal with it in a quick, easy way when I've got something to say.

Once I realized that would be a simple solution, I sniffed around on the net looking for some blogging software I could use on my site to make it easy on me. Most of what I found involved PHP, and I didn't really want to get into that for a couple of reasons that are pretty irrelevant here. Suffice it to say, I just put it off until I could find another way to deal with it. I'm thinking this will do the trick nicely. Leave it to Google...

So, here's the cancer update:

I went to see the doctor again this past Monday, September 13th, 2004. I got my blood drawn, as usual, and then he gave me the usual examination. He pronounced me fit as a fiddle and said, "Seeya in three months." That was pretty much what I expected, but it's always good to hear it. So, I'm good to go again. No worries. Back to living life. ;>)

Not much more to say about it than that. I feel great!