Karma?

Remember a few years ago when the US Supreme Court decided that a public entity could use the power of eminent domain to take your personal property so that it could be redeveloped into something that could provide a city more tax revenue?  It was called Kelo v. City of New London.  Arguably it’s one of the worst decisions the US Supreme Court has ever made, and a very rare instance of my agreeing with the conservative wing of the court.

There has been an interesting turn of events in New London, CT the past few days.  Pfizer is a major player in the property that was taken and now that they have gotten the land for nearly nothing, guess what?

“…Pfizer Inc. will shut down its massive New London research and development headquarters and transfer most of the 1,400 people working there to Groton, the pharmaceutical giant said Monday.”

Yes, you read that right.  After taking the land from the homeowners to develop a headquarters and pay huge new taxes to the City of New London, CT, Pfizer is now ABANDONING the project and moving on.

Will the city of New London continue to reap the bigger public good of collecting more taxes on this property?  After all, that was the rationale of the court.  Give the land to someone else who can develop it into a higher tax base.  Screw the fact someone else was there first, minding their own business.

It’s not like they were building a new rail line or a road, library, sewer system, or other publicly owned work.  Nope, they took it so they could expand the tax base, and now that expanded tax base is leaving.

This travesty of justice just keeps getting worse.  Steal from the people, then abandon the place after you force them out of their homes.

It’s Government of and for the corporations.

A week in the desert

I’ve wandered back from Palm Springs and my second vacation at a gay clothing-optional resort.  Unlike the first time I did this, this facility was less of a fuckatorium.  I think the primary reason is that unlike the Island House (NSFW), the Vista Grande Resort does not sell day passes to the facility.  So the naked men you see there are either facility guests or personal friends of the resort owners.

In direct contrast to the trip in Key West, I weigh significantly more now.  I guess I need to get on the treadmill again, but after the first couple of days I wasn’t as self-conscious as I was when I first got there.  Most of my time at Vista Grande was spent in the room, the pool, the 20-man spa (and I was usually the only one in it), or sitting on a chaise sunning myself.

It’s nice having a tan in November.

Big D and I spent a lot of time touring the area.  The first time out we went over to Rancho Mirage to do a bit of shopping and sightseeing.  The sightseeing was mostly to see where the gayborhood used to be.  Apparently in the Coachella Valley, the gayborhood tends to move around quite a bit.  Right now it’s mostly centered around the Warm Sands district (where the Vista Grande is), but at one time it was a few miles east in Cathedral City on the site of a former fat farm.  We saw that facility, which is now closed, and it seems like it was used as recently as 5-years ago.  The gay life simply moved on, and now the large facility is mostly overgrown with weeds and the Bougainvillea is now creeping through broken windows.  Very sad.  I can see how the property could be great, if only the boys would come to it.

Another day we wandered down to Perris, CA and took in a rail museum.  We rode a couple of trains, and took tours through the many rail barns that adorned their property.  We saw everything from an 1870’s boxcar, a Descanzo funeral car, on up to more modern Santa Fe locomotives.  We even saw a caboose from a small, now defunct, railway here in the little town where I now live.  I had to travel 400-miles to see a caboose that used to venture out on the rails here.  I smiled, of course.

Finally we went to the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway and ventured up into Mt. San Jacinto state park.  It was a very nice ride on an aerial tram that has a rotating floor.  Apparently this tram is only one of three of these type in the entire world.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I have now traveled on two out of the three, quite by accident and coincidence of where I’ve traveled.  Amusingly, I’ve only traveled on two aerial tramways in my entire life, and I manage to find these rare ones.

Where is the other one I traveled on, you may ask?

Cape Town, South Africa.

I’ve already asked TQE if he would like to travel with me to ride the third one, located in Titlis, Switzerland.  He’s notified me that traveling from Weimar to Switzerland is a long and expensive journey.  Perhaps this will be my first trip abroad all by myself, should I schedule it.  Of course, I would always be willing to take Big D with me.

So now I find myself coming back to reality.  It’s sometimes a harsh, but necessary, landing.

Overall, I’ve had a great week, and I look forward to doing more of this type of travel.

10 Vacation observations

1. Mexicans do not know how to drive, they have ZERO lane discipline.
2. I have to drive 400 miles to see a train caboose that ran on rails adjacent to where I live now.
3. Go up nearly any mountain in Desert, and you will find trees and grass.  Rain shadows?
4. This city gets dark 1 1/2 hours earlier than anywhere else because of the big sun-blocking mountain west of here.
5. I need not be self-conscious about my body, there are people flabbier than me around.
6. I must live in a house with a spa.  I feel so wonderful after getting out of the hot water.
7. Skinny boys leave when flabby boys show up.  Dear skinny boys, I’m not after you, and you shouldn’t care if I’m there or not.
8. Do not get a room next to the facility office.  It’s noisy at all hours.
9. It’s nice to have an efficiency kitchen in a hotel room.
10. I could live in the place.  Big enough to have amenities, small enough to not feel like Los Angeles.  Gorgeous weather all year though warm in the summer.

Back to reality on Wednesday.

Wandering…

Big D and I are off to Gay Heaven – South.  No, not in THE south.

I’m guessing with the massive amounts of wind we are having here today I could simply put on a cape, extend my arms, and I’d end up down there in about an hour since the gusty winds are blowing that direction.

I hope it’s warmer so I can get in the water again.   I love spas and swimming pools.

This Old Country House – Part 2

If you remember part 1, I am in the process of fixing the Leaning Shed of Smalltown.  So far I’ve installed a drain to catch the water on one side of the shed and shuffle it under the shed through a pipe to the opposite side.  I’ve also leveled the foundation so we can put the floor back in.  While doing this, I ran into a huge problem – I can’t get the doors closed now.

To fix this I now must take out the lean in the shed.  I think the problem is the nails that hold the shed together have worked loose over time, and I need to upright the shed before I can re-fasten everything.  When I leveled the floor, I went from having the shed lean 3-inches out of square to a whopping 6-inches out now.  Apparently the old, rickety walls have taken exception to the first part of fixing the shed.

Tomorrow I intend to get the truck out, put it in front of the shed and pull it down upright.  Once it’s squared up I will then fasten it all into the proper position with the angle brackets, metal strapping, deck screws, and other assorted items I’ve purchased to make the shed comply with my wishes.

Let’s hope it works!  The alternative is to pull the shed down and start over.  If I do that, I’m building one that’s going stay upright for 150 years.  Or put another way, long enough I’ll never have to worry about it again.  On top of that, it will have space to park the motorcycles (1 touring, 1 sport, and 1 dirt) so that we can reclaim the garage for it’s designed purpose.

Wish me luck.

Broken Toe or Old Age?

I’ve got pain in the toe next to my pinky-toe on my right foot.  I figure I’ve either broken it or I’m getting to be old and it’s arthritis.  I’m not sure yet.  I doubt it’s broken, because it should be swelled, discolored, etc. if it were.

It sucks getting older.

*ugh*

Well Traveled 2008-2009

I think I need to slow down my travel for a while.  Since January 2008 I’ve been to:

• By automobile (driving across borders):
  • Once: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Washington DC, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi,Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Nevada.
  • Twice: North Carolina, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
• By Plane (landing at airports in the state/country):
  • Once: Pennsylvania, New York, and Germany.
  • Twice: Minnesota, Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico.
  • Three times: California.
  • Four+ times: North Carolina.

That’s 22 states, the District of Columbia, and two countries.

With the exception of Minnesota and Louisiana, the states listed were all repeat visits.

I’ve traveled to nearly half of the US states in the past 22 months.  I’ve been to the following airports in that time: SFO, OAK, SJC, LAX, PHX, ABQ, DEN, DAL, HOU, MSP, LGA, PHL, IAD, GSO, RDU, and FRA.  I’ve driven 19 mainline and 16 spur interstates in various parts of the country though I-40 is the only one I’ve driven nearly end to end (only missing the portion from Raleigh, NC to Wilmington, NC though I drove that in 2007).

If you’ve survived reading this far, is there anyone that would like to go with me to a state I’ve not yet visited?  There’s only 7 of those left (ME, NH, VT, WI, ND, HI, and AK).

Protect the Sanctity of Marriage

I encourage all my friends to support the sanctity of marriage.  If you live in California, VOTE!

Yes, I know it’s satire.

Service Department Lies – Part 2

One thing I can count on the manufactuerer of my car is that they will follow-up with the customers on any service they had performed on their car.  Normally I dislike these intrusions, but in this case I only made it to the first question on the telephone survey because my recent experience with them was so deplorable, that if you answer poorly they won’t ask you the rest of the questions.

“How would you rate your satisfaction with the service department of the dealer you took your car to, on a scale of one to ten?”

I rated them a three.  I only went that high because they *did* fix the recall repair item.  However, as you’ve noted by the previous post, they did try to sell me service I did not want or require.

They had a free-form e-mail that the manufacturer could send to the dealer, so I went ahead and had them note my specific concerns in that, not that it will matter to these people.  I found out there are people who bought from that dealer (they sell more than one manufacturer, and these people bought the one I didn’t) and they go to another dealer in town that sells the same manufacturer for service because this particular dealer is so scuzzy.

Lesson learned.  I’ll be searching for a new dealer to take my car to, and hopefully one that isn’t run by scumbags that are sleazier than normal for car dealership people.

Service Department Lies

Today I took my car into a dealer to have a recall item fixed.  If this particular item fails, the brake lights do not come on, nor will the transmission shift out of park.  The service department fixed this and returned my car.

This is not why I think they lie.

Nope, when I got the car back they notified me that my air filter needed to be changed as it “looked a little dirty”.  Funny thing is, I took the cover off it yesterday and looked at it and it was almost as clean as new and I replaced it a mere 1500 miles ago, and they last about 15,000.  I was mostly annoyed as they notified me of this non-existent problem, but they missed the fact that my anti-freeze is a bit low, not low enough to cause a huge problem, but I do need to address it.  While I was in the car yesterday, I checked all my fluid levels, and other service items and the anti-freeze was the only issue.

When they told me that my air filter was dirty and offered to replace it, I challenged them by saying, “You mean the one I replaced 1500 miles ago?”

Don’t try to tell a person that knows something about car service that they need to replace something that obviously does not need to be replaced.   While the expression on the face of the service person made me think they were not amused with my challenge, they should simply be embarrassed that I caught them at their lie.

Needless to say, I will not be:

1. Going back to this dealer for service, or
2. Purchasing a new vehicle from them when the time comes.