Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Joke of the Year

I'll get right into this year-end tabulation thing.

Joke of the year, 2008.

Frank was excited about his new rifle and decided to try some bear hunting. He traveled up to Alaska , spotted a small brown bear and shot it.
 
Soon after, there was a tap on his shoulder, and he turned around to see a big black bear.
 
The black bear said, “That was a very bad mistake. That was my cousin. I'm going to give you two choices: Either I maul you to death or we have sex.”
 
After considering his situation briefly, Frank decided to accept the latter alternative.
 
So the black bear had his way with Frank. And even though he felt very sore for two weeks, Frank soon recovered and vowed revenge. He headed out on another trip to Alaska where he found the same black bear and shot it dead.
 
Right after, there was another tap on his shoulder. This time a huge grizzly bear stood right next to him.
 
The grizzly said, “That was a big mistake, Frank. You killed a cousin of mine and now you've got two choices: Either I maul you to death or we have rough sex.”
 
Again, Frank thought it was better to cooperate with the grizzly bear than be mauled to death. So the grizzly had his way with Frank. Although he survived, it took several months before Frank fully recovered.
 
This time Frank was completely outraged, so he headed back to Alaska and managed to track down the very same grizzly bear and shot it dead.

He felt sweet revenge, but then, moments later, there was yet another tap on is shoulder. He turned around to find a giant polar bear standing there.
 
The polar bear looked at him and said, “Admit it, Frank. You don't come here for the hunting, do you?”

J.O.T.Y. from the ElTee, of course.

Say Happy New Year, Rivrdog.

Happy New Year!

Holiday Bowl

Three and a half hours until kickoff.

Do not call.

Do not email.

Do not even text message or Tweet (04283) me until the game is over.

I'll be glued to my Vizio 42" Plasma watching the Oregon Ducks take apart the Oklahoma State Cowboys.

Oregon's average football day includes 500 yards of offense, and their slashing defense keeps most games one-sided. If QB Masoli could throw a downfield pass, the Ducks would be waiting a few more days and be playing for the national title this year.

Masoli's getting better, and hopefully, next year he will have a stronger arm and better eye, but in the meantime, Belotti's gang will beat up on OKy State.

Guaranteed.

Go Ducks!

*****************************************************************************

UPDATE: 123008 2202 PST: Tough game, but the toughest men on the field were Ducks, so they won. It was a classic Cowboy ass-kicking contest, but the Cowboys lost this one. The Duck defense knocked their #1 receiver/back out of the game, then put THREE bell-ringing hits on their QB which took his edge away, and QB Masoli DID throw exactly three downfield passes, connected them, but RUSHED for three TDs in the third quarter alone.

After watching the Ducks prevail 42-31 in that nail-biter, I turned on the Trailblazers game. Wasn't expecting much, since the World Champion Boston Celtics were in town and Blazer star Brandon Roy was sidelined, but with the game tied at 64 at turn of the fourth quarter, I pulled up a chair and got out the Teacher's. By the time I had put two good hits on the Teacher's, the Blazers had traded the Celtics blow for blow, and stymied THEIR stars (hell, the Celtics are ALL stars), and the hometown crew sent the Celtics packing back to Parquet-land with a five point loss, only their 5th of the year.

Decent night of sports for Oregon.

Risk avoidance and Government

Has anyone else noted a HUGE increase in operations policy changes in government which are driven by risk avoidance concepts?

This latest cold snap and snowstorms are a prime example.

• The US Postal Service delivered no mail for several days, during the busiest delivery days of the year.
• Solid waster haulers (aka trash collectors) have failed to pick up waste for two weeks in many Northwest locations.
• First flake of snow, government dismisses most workers from their jobs, this time, for days.
• Most Northwest schools took an entire week off.
• Public transit shuts down 2/3 of bus routes, even those which have no hills on them.

I could go on, but just a few years ago, this philosophy of cut-and-run in the face of bad weather would have been unusual.

Not today.

I challenge ANYONE to come up with a reason for it OTHER than the absolute power of personal-injury lawyers and their sycophants on the bench (and the failure in most states of tort-claims limitations which would control their influence).

Comes the next Revolution, it might not be too healthy to be a personal-injury lawyer. BOTH sides might consider them targets. 

With Russia, it's worse than you think

Read this article in the WSJ. Try not to laugh at it's suppositions. Then consider that Vladimir Putin probably believes it, word for word. Putin, the man whose fingers are on the launch buttons of the world's second-largest nuclear arsenal. Putin, who invaded a neighboring country just to stabilize Russian oil prices.

THAT Putin.

It's all over but sloppy slushing

...the "Blizzard of '08", that is. Two weeks of wannabe Arctic weather.

I've been snowed in for the past 5 days, but I might be able to drive out today.

A miserable combination of temps in the teens, 20" of snow and drifts to 3 feet have combined to limit vehicle travel in East Multnomah County to 4WD trucks and a few SUVs with tall-skinny snow tires. My vehicles don't do snow in the feet.

It's warming up now, temps are in the mid-40's, with a snow-eating South wind and rain, so the snow is going away quickly.

It was hard to even walk in it, as the 20" was comprised of the snow of three consecutive snowstorms, two of which had a spell of freezing rain to create two crusts in the snowpack. Crusts which would NOT support a 200# human.

The Post Office stopped delivering mail, as their delivery trucks don't have the clearance. No newspapers for most of that time, also.

But this is Schloss Rivrdog, and I didn't go through even a small fraction of my survival supplies. The power held up, although I was forced to buy huge amounts of it to space-heat the two places where I have plumbing in outside walls.

The structure held up nicely, with my front porch roof withstanding the load of a 5-foot lee-side drift on it. I was able to lean out the windows and push some of that off, but the roof seems to have survived it.

Although not forecast to be worse, the snow depth in Blizz08 WAS worse than Blizz04, which was a thirty-year storm. The saving grace was that Blizz08 was mostly snow, with less than 1/2" of ice, whereas Blizz04 had less than a foot of snow, but almost 3" of ice.

My yacht club moorage, which was destroyed in Blizz04, held up through Blizz08 due mostly to superior construction AND the efforts of some stalwart members who shoveled the roofs off three times.

There was one thing which was totally predictable, though. Boneheaded drivers.

Portland drivers can be counted on to go out when they should stay in, and while behind the wheel, do all the wrong things. Here is a video of bad driving at the BEGINNING of the blizzard.

These sort of idiots are the reasons I don't venture out on the roads in this sort of weather. I didn't have those smarts in 1975, and destroyed a decent car ('68 Plymouth Valiant V8) on the freeway when I was forced to stop because of a 50-car pileup in front of me, but the next car, a Porsche 911, thought he had the wunder-auto and was driving 50 mph when HE came upon the roadblock (and me). Porsches don't do well in 50-mph front-enders, but I eventually drove my then front-and-rear bashed Valiant off the freeway and to a safe place, it's very last mile.

With all the snow rapidly melting, we are now set up for floods in the area, but my moorage can take a flood of almost 20 feet over flood stage, and Schloss Rivrdog is likewise safe from the roaring Kelly Creek just 125 yards away.

I think I'll put away the Muk-Luks and get out the gum boots, and slop out to my pickup to see how it likes navigating the 8" of slush that is left now.

Merry Christmas to all...

...and to all, a Good Night.

For my gift exchange to the one who matters most to me, my good wife and companion, the gifts will remind her of the First and Second Amendments to the document which holds that Promise which means the most to me, that of Freedom.

For you, dear Readers, all I can do is give you the gift of my vision of that Promise. I've been doing that for almost 5 years, and I see no reason to stop now.

Although I'm not a Christian, I realize that it is to Christianity and those who practice it that I owe the most, especially these Freedoms which I enjoy.

Accordingly, I am delighted, and yes, humbled to share their holiday with them.

Merry Christmas.

Blizzard of '08

...is upon us. Temp 19, dew point 15, wind ENE 25, gusting 40, moderate snow, moderate blowing and drifting snow.

I'll call myself snowed in for now...

Here's how I dress for a SHORT outside mission to the mailbox 50 yards away:

Top to bottom: Hat is a Helmet, Flyer's, Winter, Model B9B. Longjohns are Underwear, thermal, flyer's aramid (Nomex). Parka is a Columbia Sportswear model, the heaviest Thinsulate-lined parka they ever made, in USAF N2B length, made back in 1982 when all their stuff was made right here in the USA. The pants are heavy bicyclist's stretch pants, with the USAF longjohns underneath, and the footgear is a Mukluk, Flier's, with heavy felt boot inside, and heavy USAF winter wool socks outside of Thorogood calf-high heavy Orlon pile socks.

I only took light nomex flier's gloves, so as not to fumble the keys into a snowdrift.

It took me about 3 minutes to assemble my stuff after I put the parka on, and in that time I started to sweat, that's how good this ensemble is.

Sweat, of course, is the enemy of Arctic ops. If you get your gear wet from the inside, it loses most of it's thermal efficiency. If I'd been doing any work bayond sweeping off my front stoop, I would have unzipped the parka.

Illinois rumors

...just heard a rumor about a Feddle hammer which was about to fall in IL.

Rumor says that Governor Blagojevich was the tip of the iceberg, ONLY.

Rumor says that the Feds have had wire-taps EVERYWHERE in IL for past 4 years, and were about to drop a HUGE anti-corruption bomb which would have gotten just about every politician of note in the state.

Rumor has it that Obama's election victory changed all of that, that President Bush ordered that to prevent a Constitutional crisis of major magnitude erupting, the whole IL corruption investigation be silenced, except for the Blagojevich case.

If this rumor is true, the Feds just dropped the football on a chance to strike a death-blow to the most powerful Democratic Machine in the country.

Visualize if you will, the entire Chicago city government going away, from Mayor Daley on down. All the aldermen, most of the judges, about half the IL Legislature, some in the Congressional delegation, some Federal Judges. In other words, the Democratic Party in IL would have been swept out the door, most to face prison. Many enactments would have to be reversed, or at least revisited. Many contractors to those corrupt governments would go away.

Of course, the only question left is whether that would have involved Obama.

THAT question will now remain unanswered, because POTUS#43 decided not to ruffle feathers. Suffice it to say that one can be fairly certain that this all-encompassing corruption investigation probably involved groups that the either led or worked for in his ascent to the ultimate seat of power.

The remaining question then, is, what now happens to all the accumulated evidence from the wiretaps, etc?

I'm not a gambling man, but if I were, I wouldn't bet on any of that evidence existing four weeks after Obama is sworn in.

Yeah, they'll get Blagojevich, and it will prove to be the circus of the bread-and-circuses act that Obama will have to mount.

If this is all true, it means that the only organized part of the left end of politics just dodged a huge bullet, one which most likely would have ended leftist dominance of US politics just when that dominance was about to take root for good.

If this is all true, it means that the US of A had one good chance to clean up it's act, to reform itself, to get back to the Constitution, and it just threw that chance away.

Thanks for nothing, Mr. Bush.

The Hawk is gonna kick some butt

...says NOAA, as well as all the local TeeVee weather wizards:

AN IMPRESSIVE PACIFIC FRONTAL SYSTEM WILL MOVE INTO THE WILLAPA
HILLS SATURDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH SUNDAY. THIS SYSTEM HAS
CONSIDERABLE MOISTURE ASSOCIATED WITH IT...AND HAS THE POTENTIAL
TO DROP SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW OVER THE AREA. THERE IS STILL QUITE A BIT OF UNCERTAINTY ON AMOUNTS...THOUGH 6 TO 12 INCHES SEEMS REASONABLE. IN ADDITION TO SNOWFALL...STRONG EAST WINDS SHOULD DEVELOP SATURDAY AFTERNOON INTO EARLY SUNDAY POSSIBLY CREATING HAZARDOUS BLOWING SNOW CONDITIONS ACROSS AREA
ROADWAYS...AND POSSIBLY BLIZZARD CONDITIONS NEAR THE GORGE. AS
WARMER AIR MOVES IN ALOFT...A TRANSITION TO FREEZING RAIN IS
POSSIBLE BY EARLY SUNDAY...GIVING THE POSSIBILITY OF SIGNIFICANT
ICE ACCUMULATION FOLLOWING THE SNOW. SLIGHT FLUCTUATIONS IN THE
EXTENT OF THE WARM PUSH NORTHWARD WILL HAVE A SIGNIFICANT AFFECT
ON SNOWFALL AND ICE ACCUMULATIONS.

The wizards only disagree among themselves on whether the majority
of the frozen precipitation will be snow or freezing rain/sleet.

BTW, Yours Truly lives "near the Gorge", so those blizzard conditions will
affect me.

This time, I have to leave the boat to it's fate over in Scappoose, and this 
will be a major test of the strength of the moorage shed roof structures.

I'm gearing up to pay her a last visit before the storm, and retrieve my
Honda EU2000i generator, which may have to perform service here at Schloss
Rivrdog.

Off to weather-war.

Typepad is back, Twailblazers R Twippin'!

...couldn't blog all day. Snowed in, too. Played with Twitter a bit, and tried to figure out why they had to invent a new language to go with their new program, but I suspect the techno-slang they use is already in use by the junior texting crowd.

Still debating about putting a direct Twitter connection on with this blog.

That would make me a Twit, wouldn't it?

Because I can't decide whether 2tweet or not 2tweet, I'm stuck Btwixt and Btween.

Just don't call me a Twerp. I tweet @ 04283.

Trailblazers Rule! Beat Suns 124-119, and Roy had 52, a career high!