Hold My Beer
31/07/22 06:46
This past week has been a hot one! It was 97 degrees along the coast yesterday afternoon. The entire week has been just nasty. It makes doing everything and anything that much more difficult. Our lights here at home were flickering yesterday afternoon due presumably to the overwhelming demand for energy due to the heat wave. It's made for a challenging week of bike riding as well. It's one thing when you have pleasant onshore breezes that take the temperatures down a notch. It's entirely something else when those breezes turn offshore, and the relief you were looking forward to turns to shit. And then, you have two choices. Stay on track, keep pushing through the discomfort, or call it a day and head back to your air-conditioned home.
Trump attended a massive 5,000-person event in Florida over the weekend. The event, mainly of youth activists in the Republican party, was sponsored by an organization called Turning Point U.S.A. Trump gave a speech, as did Governor DeSantis from Florida. Both men are expected to run for the presidency in 2024. There may have been some lesser-known names in the mix, but Trump and DeSantis dominated the coverage. I listened to a little bit of Trump's speech, but it sounded like one of his stock speeches, so I turned my attention elsewhere after about 15 minutes. The most exciting thing for me coming out of the event was a poll of the attendees about who they would prefer as their candidate for the upcoming 2024 presidential race. Trump beat DeSantis by a margin of 78% to 19%. What else do you need to know?
I'm doing my best to keep our garden watered. Everything looks pretty good except for a few string bean plants that stopped thriving after producing a few beans. What is that all about? Should I have put up a trestle to give them something to climb? Is that where I went wrong? The plants never grew tall enough where I thought a trestle might help, so I'm just throwing that out there. I'm getting a few tomatoes here and there and seemingly ahead of schedule. I must have made some good choices along the way back when I was considering which varieties to plant. I have too many zucchini plants, so I'll need to see what I can do with zucchini once they start coming around in earnest. We like vegetable lasagna, so that's one option. I'm sure there are others.
I woke up this morning thinking about how we should have replaced one of our air conditioners long ago. It's an air conditioner that hasn't worked well from the jump. Why we've tolerated it this long is beyond me. The unit is large enough, so I don't think it's a matter of having too few BTUs. The room in which it's installed is not so large that you might think a larger unit might have been a better choice. It is large enough that I'll need to hire someone when the time comes to install another unit. I can pop one in a window as well as the next guy, but this is a wall unit, so things may need to be reconfigured. It's going to be one of those things that, once done, the missus will ask me, what the bejesus took us so long? And, she would be right to ask that question.
The other day, an electrical storm blew through, and it fried three of the four LAN ports on my router. That's my initial diagnosis anyway. I had something that worked before the storm came around, and that something is no longer working. Is it something that I can reset? Will it help if I unplug it and then plug it back in? How about powering it off and on? I know; that's the same as unplugging it and then plugging it back in. I'm trying to avoid having to replace my router as an unnecessary expense. As I'm reading up on this, one option is to buy a network switch and use the LAN port that is still working to add additional LAN ports to my router. I can buy a nice network switch for about twenty bucks on Amazon.
I'll need to time all of this to avoid interfering with the work that the missus has planned for the next couple of days. The last thing I want to do is to have her sit down at the computer only to find that she has no internet. She would not be pleased. I tend to dig a lot of holes when I troubleshoot things, and I'm not always successful in digging myself out of those very same holes in a timeframe that is convenient for people who need to use the things that I'm trying to fix. The missus is always quick to chime in when these things happen. "What would I do if you weren't around?" she asks. I never know how to answer those questions, and usually, I don't even try. I should have a pat answer the next time she asks because the day may come when she'll need to know what to do, where to go, what to look for, and so on. But not today.
If I'm not mistaken, I have a couple of Apple TVs downloading software updates when the storm blew in. Neither worked after the fact, and both have blinking lights suggesting the need for a reset. These devices are not happy when something interferes with the software update process. Pressing the usual reset buttons on the devices' remotes was an exercise in futility. I hope to hell this electrical thing that blew through didn't fry the circuitry in my two 4k Apple TVs. That's not likely, or is it? I'm also holding my breath a little bit because I don't know what else broke when the storm came through. Our cable shows, like Tucker Carlson on FOX, worked last night, but there were issues with the audio, so I may need to try powering the cable box on and off.
As Trump puts it, the missus and I don't play the lottery unless the jackpot is "yuge." Well, it's been pretty big these past two weeks, so I bought a couple of tickets just in case. I mean, you never know. Right? I think the pot was somewhere north of 500 million. That ain't nothing to sneeze at. I think we got a couple of numbers but won nothing, and this is the good news, no one else won either. I forgot to buy a couple of tickets for last night's drawing, and no one won again. I think the jackpot might be north of a billion by the time Friday's drawing comes around. I feel sorry for the people who buy more tickets than they can afford, but that's the downside of any numbers game, especially when the odds of winning are infinitesimally small. People without a pot to piss in still have no pot to piss in after losing, and people who can afford to throw away their money by buying lottery tickets shrug it off without another thought. God plays no favorites when it comes to the lottery.
I still think winning would be a nice problem to have all in all. I would certainly want to stay anonymous if we did win. We get enough shit calls from people trying to part us from our money as it is. The last thing I'd want is people knocking on our door in the middle of the night with their hard luck stories. The local mobsters would likely offer us protection, but that too would come with a cost. What is the upside of winning that much money? So what, now we'll be able to buy more things? We have enough things. We don't need more things. I suppose a French villa might be lovely, but the thought of flying thousands of miles over open water to get there doesn't thrill me. Could I help a few family members with their debts with my newfound winnings? I could, and I would. Then again, if you win that much money, there will always be those family members who think that you could give more. Anything less, you're a no-good cheap bastard and a waste of spermatozoa.
Bumbling Joey Biden's Attorney General (Garland) talks a big game when he goes off on how he plans to pursue justice for everyone and anyone involved in impeding a political process. Still, I have a hard time believing that he is targeting Trump at the end of the day. We're talking January 6th here, to be precise. Were he to target Trump for his alleged criminal activities related to the January 6th "insurrection," and were he to issue an indictment of Trump, it would be seen for what it is: A political hit job. Biden knows that Trump has his sights on running for the presidency in 2024, and Biden and the Democrats know that Trump would likely return to power were he to run. This is nothing more than an effort by the Democrats to kneecap their political opposition, and that is the stuff you see in banana republics. This is especially rich, were it to come to pass, when you consider the abject corruption of the Democrat party, and more specifically, the Biden Crime family.
My chess game is going pretty well. I can't complain. I get to choose my opponent's rating, which is good because we newbies need all the help we can get. I think I'm starting to get the hang of the game since I'm beating my "computer" opponent more often than not. I'm getting a little instruction here and there on YouTube, but I'm not sure how much of it is sticking. Conceptually, I get it. Remembering the terms and applying what I've learned while playing is another story. I've heard the stories about players who can see several moves ahead, and I suppose that's probably helpful from time to time. That's not where I am, so I'm just putting that out there.
Recently, I've moved up a bit, and I'm now playing higher-rated (computer) opponents. Playing better and more experienced opponents is both more humbling and more instructive. My days of shooting from the hip are over. Getting bitch-slapped time and time again has a way of making you think twice before you make your next move. It's now more about what my opponent is doing and trying to figure that out before I make my move. It's no longer just about winning or losing. It's not about the destination; it's about the journey.
I told Mrs. G that I was playing computer chess when we stopped over to see her last weekend. I know she plays regularly, so I thought she might have something to say about the game, her experiences playing online, anything at all. I half expected her to ask me more about my experiences and what I liked and didn't like about playing chess online, but there was none of that. There was no discussion about ratings, tactics, nothing. I don't know how I feel about playing chess with her, so maybe it was just as well that the discussion, what little there was of it, went nowhere. She has a board in her apartment that sits there collecting dust. Maybe she knows me well enough to know that my fragile ego couldn't tolerate a loss at the hands of a 90-something-year-old, so she didn't bother broaching the subject. She might be correct, but we may never know. That's probably a good thing.
I like to stay up-to-date on the number of cases of Covid here in our community by reading the statistics in our local newspaper. Well, the digital version of that newspaper anyway. It tells me how many active and inactive cases we have, which includes cases going back to the beginning of the pandemic in March of 2020. So, I was a little surprised when I last saw that they are now providing data on how many cases have been reported in the last fourteen days. What the hell is that all about? Why the change in what and how they're reporting what they're reporting? How am I supposed to interpret the data? Why do I even care how many cases we've had in the last fourteen days? It might be meaningful if the number per fourteen days went from ten to one hundred. It would require I look at it daily if I wanted a relative measure of cases. That's not how I roll. Do I now, or have I ever really cared about the number of cases, no matter the measurement? Not really. Fuck it.
Well, goddamn it, are we in a recession or not? We'll know in about 15 minutes as I sit here waiting for the number to be announced at 8:30 am. If the GDP number is negative, that would be two consecutive quarters of negative growth, and that, at least according to some economists, is how they define a "recession." Where we go from here, if it turns out that we see a negative number, is anyone's guess. The financial markets rallied hard yesterday for all the wrong reasons (Fed raised rates 75 basis points), so maybe that continues today. The worst things get, the more likely it is that the Federal Reserve will pivot and reverse course on raising interest rates. Right? Maybe we should take our cues from what the stooges in the White House are trying to sell us. They are trying to redefine what a recession is, so what does that tell you? It tells me that we're going to see a negative number today. BOOM!
Well, wonders never cease. One of the two Apple TVs I thought was dead in the water after a lightning strike this past week seems to be showing signs of life. As far as I know, it wasn't because of anything I did or didn't do. I set the two devices on the arm of our couch the other day and plugged both of them in, and connected the two with an ethernet cord. Not because I thought that that would somehow fix the problem of the flashing indicator lights but rather because I thought that doing something, anything, was better than doing nothing. When I looked at them this morning, I noticed that the flashing light on one of the units had turned into a solid light. Baby steps, babycakes! I'm thinking that the Lord works in mysterious ways. I won't know why the flashing light stopped flashing until I reconnect everything to see what works and what doesn't. Are we talking luck here or maybe a little divine intervention?
Bumbling Joey Biden had a two-hour phone call with XI from China yesterday. Who believes for a minute that Joey Biden is even capable of having a two-hour conversation? It makes you wonder how he pulled it off. Who was behind the scenes filling out the cue cards or typing answers so that Joey could read the responses aloud in real-time? The readout after the session came from the Chinese and not from Joey and his trusty and stealthy staff. His staff didn't want the world to know just how demented and stupid Biden sounded on the world stage. The Chinese said something about fire and fury in response to their "discussion" with Joey about Taiwan and maybe Pelosi's planned visit there in the next month or so. In other words, the Chinese have given their stooge, Joey Biden, his marching orders once again. It's just so embarrassing.
I'm hearing that a few FBI agents have stepped forward and outed others in the FBI who are working overtime to suppress any news and, even worse than that, any investigations into Hunter Biden and the Biden Crime Family. We have a better understanding now of how all the pieces fit together thanks, in large part, to what we learned from the laptop from hell that Hunter Biden left behind at a computer shop. Others have stepped forward to fill in some of the blanks, such as who is the "big guy" in the remuneration agreements, etc. It's quite possibly one of the most nefarious pay-to-play arrangements involving the highest levels of our government in our nation's history. Just how compromised is the Biden family, and more specifically, Joe Biden?
And why on God's green earth, knowing what our Intelligence agencies know about all of these deals between the Bidens and the Chinese Communist Party, are they allowing this man to sit in our beloved Oval Office and at the helm of one of the greatest countries on the face of the planet? They must know that every decision Biden makes relative to China is driven not by our country's best interests but by the interests of the Communist Chinese. That explains why the Chinese bitch slap Bidens people every time they engage with them on the world stage. They have no respect for the man because they know who and what he is. He's a feckless and corrupt government hack with a fifty-year record of doing more harm than good for the country he ostensibly "serves." The Chinese know he's corrupt because they were complicit in his corruption.
I want to be careful not to put our Intelligence agencies on too high a pedestal. They were, after all, complicit with countless others in and out of government in trying to remove Trump from office by perpetrating the Russia hoax during Trump's first term in office. Maybe this is what happens when you give people too much power. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. When Trump returns to office in 2025, he needs to eliminate the toadies and losers in every agency and at every level. My biggest worry is that they will do whatever they need to ensure that Trump can't return to the presidency. That includes putting the man in jail on trumped-up charges or, worse yet, threatening or even harming the man so that he is incapable of returning to the office. What is it about Trump that they find so threatening? Does anyone think for even a moment that the Communist Chinese Party (CCP) had something to do with putting Joey in office? After years of investing in everything Biden, they weren't about to let Trump stand in the way of the Chinese installing their puppet. That explains everything.
We met up with the Ev man yesterday where we had planned to do a little food shopping with him. We arrived late, and he went shopping without us for a change. When we arrived, he was rolling out of the store with his shopping cart and into the parking lot. I half expected that he would pick up a few things and be done. I was surprised to see that he had a good cartload of food. What he buys and doesn't buy is none of my business, but there are healthy choices and there are unhealthy choices. I'm not sure I saw a lot of healthy choices, but that's his business, so I say nothing, and we all move on. The missus was pouring over his purchases as mothers will do, and I don't think he appreciated her second-guessing his decisions. Had we done a better job of showing up when we promised that we would show up, we might have had more input into what he did and didn't, but such was not the case. We were late, and he was done.
I was listening to Mark Levin on the radio last night, and he was talking about how the left was doing everything possible to keep Trump off the ballot in 2024. The 10,000-foot view, and taking Trump out of the equation, says that the democrat party will do whatever it takes to keep any Republican from holding the presidency of our great nation ever again. Just who in the hell do they think they are? I know they have their agenda, and the Republicans have a very different agenda, but I thought that's what elections were for. That boat has sailed. Now, the ends justify the means. I think the Republicans are waking up to this new reality, and maybe not so new reality since we all know that Kennedy stole the presidency back in 63 when they rigged the elections in Chicago, but here we are. Mark mentioned that the legacy of Trump would be that he taught republicans how to fight back. He exposed them for who and what they are, and they hated him for it.
Have you heard about the latest cultural kerfuffle where a Sesame Street character allegedly snubbed two black children in a parade in the city of Philadelphia this past week? The video shows the costumed character walking along the parade's sidelines, giving white children high-fives, then strolling right by a couple of black children without giving them a second look. Within twenty-four hours, the parents of the aggrieved children filed a 25 million dollar lawsuit against the parent company of Sesame Street, and, wait for it, Jesse Jackson, the grifter, came out of his hole and insisted that Sesame Street add more blacks to their boards and provide funds for black businesses as amends for their racist ways. Oh, and he wants the company to submit their employees to racial sensitivity training. Not that anyone is asking, but here's my response: Kiss my ass.
It's nothing more than an Al Sharpton-style shakedown. Grifters like Sharpton and Jackson, once thought to be leaders in the nationwide fight for civil rights before they discovered that there was more money to be made in shaming guilt-ridden corporations out of millions of dollars, pounce like the rabid ambulance chasers that they are at every opportunity that comes along. Woke corporations like Sesame Street will fold like a cheap suit before pushing back against these so-called icons of the left and their Stazi foot soldiers in their pseudo-aggrieved war against discrimination and racism. It's extortion by any other name. They need to be called out for who and what they are. The only way this stops is by someone, anyone, telling these grifters to fuck off. Better yet, I'd like to see a judge throw this case out of court and recommend to the local DA that the accusers be charged with extortion. Even more laughable is the fact that the article I'm reading about this matter refers to Jesse Jackson as a "former presidential candidate." What, fifty years ago? He's a clown show and always has been.
I was explaining to the missus the other day that the stock market is in a bear market and, even though she sees the financial markets doing well this past week, the overall trajectory is downward. Both bull and bear markets are processes and these markets we're seeing are no exception. Patience is required unless you want to end up buying high and selling low time and time again until you run out of money with which to trade. There is nothing wrong with being 100% in cash until we see some kind of capitulation when and where the financial markets become a wasteland and nobody wants in. That is, of course, the best time to get in. Theoretically speaking, of course. There is still far too much speculation in this market for my tastes and, quite honestly, we're not that far off the highs of late 2021 so we still need a bit more air to come out of the tires. All in good time, is what Jack Bogle would say. Wait a minute! Wasn't he a buy-and-hold guy?
Who knew? The Ev man loves peaches. We bought three big ones and we left them on the kitchen table to ripen. He apologized this morning for eating all of our peaches before we even knew they were gone. Don't get me wrong. We love to see the Ev man eating his fruits and his veggies but he eats them so rarely that we're surprised when we see him eating one or the other with any regularity. Maybe it's peaches today and broccoli next week. Hope springs eternal. Right? Anyway, we sent him packing this morning with a lot of things to eat and drink so that should should hold him for a bit. Well, I sent him packing anyway. The missus is still sleeping. She won't be surprised to learn that he's gone when she gets up. That's how that boy rolls. That's how his momma rolls.
It looks like another stellar day here on the seacoast. I'll want to get out on my bike early to beat the crowds and get my exercise in for the day. I do think that the crowds have been less if that's an acceptable way of putting it. Gas is still in the $4-$6 dollar range and that has to be keeping people driving less, driving fewer miles, going to fewer far-away places, and maybe travelling in groups when appropriate. Going to the beach wasn't always a luxury but it seems that it is just that these days when it costs an arm and a leg to get there and back. It wouldn't stop me and the missus if we wanted to lay out our blankets on the edge of a dune somehwere but that's just us. Maybe people just put their gas purchases on a credit card like everything else and the party continues unabated. All I'm saying is that it seems that I'm not fighting the crowds like I have in past years when I go for my bike rides. Riding earlier in the day helps.
Did I mention that we took Mrs G out for a ride yesterday? We hadn't planned to go for a ride and, as a matter of fact, we had planned to play it by ear once we arrived at her residence. If Mrs G wanted to go for a ride then we would happily oblige. She never asks, of course, so we're always looking and listening for the right cues once we're on site. It was such a nice day yesterday and her apartment seemed so, well, stifling, that I asked her directly if she might like to get out of the house for a while. She was smartly dressed when we arrived so that seeemed to suggest that she might be open to getting out and about. We drove to the little farm stand out on route 88 which we've visited previously and it's nice little shop where Mrs G seems to enjoy shopping. They have lots of fruits and vegetables and homemade goods that practically jump in your basket as you walk down the aisle. It's a bit pricey but isn't everything a bit pricey these days?
When we arrived back at her place, she asked if we wouldn't mind circling around to an adjoining property owned by her facility where she hoped to get a better look at where they were planning to build a central health center of sorts. Mrs G has a keen interest in all things real estate so none of that was a surprise to us. I've always wondered if she didn't miss her calling in life knowing what we know about her interest in real estate. We rarely have a conversation these days when she's not bringing up the sale of this or that piece of real estate in the community. Having interests in the twilight of your life is not a bad thing. If it helps you to keep putting one foot in front of the other when you get out of bed every morning then you should thank the Baby Jesus for bestowing you with said gifts.
Trump attended a massive 5,000-person event in Florida over the weekend. The event, mainly of youth activists in the Republican party, was sponsored by an organization called Turning Point U.S.A. Trump gave a speech, as did Governor DeSantis from Florida. Both men are expected to run for the presidency in 2024. There may have been some lesser-known names in the mix, but Trump and DeSantis dominated the coverage. I listened to a little bit of Trump's speech, but it sounded like one of his stock speeches, so I turned my attention elsewhere after about 15 minutes. The most exciting thing for me coming out of the event was a poll of the attendees about who they would prefer as their candidate for the upcoming 2024 presidential race. Trump beat DeSantis by a margin of 78% to 19%. What else do you need to know?
I'm doing my best to keep our garden watered. Everything looks pretty good except for a few string bean plants that stopped thriving after producing a few beans. What is that all about? Should I have put up a trestle to give them something to climb? Is that where I went wrong? The plants never grew tall enough where I thought a trestle might help, so I'm just throwing that out there. I'm getting a few tomatoes here and there and seemingly ahead of schedule. I must have made some good choices along the way back when I was considering which varieties to plant. I have too many zucchini plants, so I'll need to see what I can do with zucchini once they start coming around in earnest. We like vegetable lasagna, so that's one option. I'm sure there are others.
I woke up this morning thinking about how we should have replaced one of our air conditioners long ago. It's an air conditioner that hasn't worked well from the jump. Why we've tolerated it this long is beyond me. The unit is large enough, so I don't think it's a matter of having too few BTUs. The room in which it's installed is not so large that you might think a larger unit might have been a better choice. It is large enough that I'll need to hire someone when the time comes to install another unit. I can pop one in a window as well as the next guy, but this is a wall unit, so things may need to be reconfigured. It's going to be one of those things that, once done, the missus will ask me, what the bejesus took us so long? And, she would be right to ask that question.
The other day, an electrical storm blew through, and it fried three of the four LAN ports on my router. That's my initial diagnosis anyway. I had something that worked before the storm came around, and that something is no longer working. Is it something that I can reset? Will it help if I unplug it and then plug it back in? How about powering it off and on? I know; that's the same as unplugging it and then plugging it back in. I'm trying to avoid having to replace my router as an unnecessary expense. As I'm reading up on this, one option is to buy a network switch and use the LAN port that is still working to add additional LAN ports to my router. I can buy a nice network switch for about twenty bucks on Amazon.
I'll need to time all of this to avoid interfering with the work that the missus has planned for the next couple of days. The last thing I want to do is to have her sit down at the computer only to find that she has no internet. She would not be pleased. I tend to dig a lot of holes when I troubleshoot things, and I'm not always successful in digging myself out of those very same holes in a timeframe that is convenient for people who need to use the things that I'm trying to fix. The missus is always quick to chime in when these things happen. "What would I do if you weren't around?" she asks. I never know how to answer those questions, and usually, I don't even try. I should have a pat answer the next time she asks because the day may come when she'll need to know what to do, where to go, what to look for, and so on. But not today.
If I'm not mistaken, I have a couple of Apple TVs downloading software updates when the storm blew in. Neither worked after the fact, and both have blinking lights suggesting the need for a reset. These devices are not happy when something interferes with the software update process. Pressing the usual reset buttons on the devices' remotes was an exercise in futility. I hope to hell this electrical thing that blew through didn't fry the circuitry in my two 4k Apple TVs. That's not likely, or is it? I'm also holding my breath a little bit because I don't know what else broke when the storm came through. Our cable shows, like Tucker Carlson on FOX, worked last night, but there were issues with the audio, so I may need to try powering the cable box on and off.
As Trump puts it, the missus and I don't play the lottery unless the jackpot is "yuge." Well, it's been pretty big these past two weeks, so I bought a couple of tickets just in case. I mean, you never know. Right? I think the pot was somewhere north of 500 million. That ain't nothing to sneeze at. I think we got a couple of numbers but won nothing, and this is the good news, no one else won either. I forgot to buy a couple of tickets for last night's drawing, and no one won again. I think the jackpot might be north of a billion by the time Friday's drawing comes around. I feel sorry for the people who buy more tickets than they can afford, but that's the downside of any numbers game, especially when the odds of winning are infinitesimally small. People without a pot to piss in still have no pot to piss in after losing, and people who can afford to throw away their money by buying lottery tickets shrug it off without another thought. God plays no favorites when it comes to the lottery.
I still think winning would be a nice problem to have all in all. I would certainly want to stay anonymous if we did win. We get enough shit calls from people trying to part us from our money as it is. The last thing I'd want is people knocking on our door in the middle of the night with their hard luck stories. The local mobsters would likely offer us protection, but that too would come with a cost. What is the upside of winning that much money? So what, now we'll be able to buy more things? We have enough things. We don't need more things. I suppose a French villa might be lovely, but the thought of flying thousands of miles over open water to get there doesn't thrill me. Could I help a few family members with their debts with my newfound winnings? I could, and I would. Then again, if you win that much money, there will always be those family members who think that you could give more. Anything less, you're a no-good cheap bastard and a waste of spermatozoa.
Bumbling Joey Biden's Attorney General (Garland) talks a big game when he goes off on how he plans to pursue justice for everyone and anyone involved in impeding a political process. Still, I have a hard time believing that he is targeting Trump at the end of the day. We're talking January 6th here, to be precise. Were he to target Trump for his alleged criminal activities related to the January 6th "insurrection," and were he to issue an indictment of Trump, it would be seen for what it is: A political hit job. Biden knows that Trump has his sights on running for the presidency in 2024, and Biden and the Democrats know that Trump would likely return to power were he to run. This is nothing more than an effort by the Democrats to kneecap their political opposition, and that is the stuff you see in banana republics. This is especially rich, were it to come to pass, when you consider the abject corruption of the Democrat party, and more specifically, the Biden Crime family.
My chess game is going pretty well. I can't complain. I get to choose my opponent's rating, which is good because we newbies need all the help we can get. I think I'm starting to get the hang of the game since I'm beating my "computer" opponent more often than not. I'm getting a little instruction here and there on YouTube, but I'm not sure how much of it is sticking. Conceptually, I get it. Remembering the terms and applying what I've learned while playing is another story. I've heard the stories about players who can see several moves ahead, and I suppose that's probably helpful from time to time. That's not where I am, so I'm just putting that out there.
Recently, I've moved up a bit, and I'm now playing higher-rated (computer) opponents. Playing better and more experienced opponents is both more humbling and more instructive. My days of shooting from the hip are over. Getting bitch-slapped time and time again has a way of making you think twice before you make your next move. It's now more about what my opponent is doing and trying to figure that out before I make my move. It's no longer just about winning or losing. It's not about the destination; it's about the journey.
I told Mrs. G that I was playing computer chess when we stopped over to see her last weekend. I know she plays regularly, so I thought she might have something to say about the game, her experiences playing online, anything at all. I half expected her to ask me more about my experiences and what I liked and didn't like about playing chess online, but there was none of that. There was no discussion about ratings, tactics, nothing. I don't know how I feel about playing chess with her, so maybe it was just as well that the discussion, what little there was of it, went nowhere. She has a board in her apartment that sits there collecting dust. Maybe she knows me well enough to know that my fragile ego couldn't tolerate a loss at the hands of a 90-something-year-old, so she didn't bother broaching the subject. She might be correct, but we may never know. That's probably a good thing.
I like to stay up-to-date on the number of cases of Covid here in our community by reading the statistics in our local newspaper. Well, the digital version of that newspaper anyway. It tells me how many active and inactive cases we have, which includes cases going back to the beginning of the pandemic in March of 2020. So, I was a little surprised when I last saw that they are now providing data on how many cases have been reported in the last fourteen days. What the hell is that all about? Why the change in what and how they're reporting what they're reporting? How am I supposed to interpret the data? Why do I even care how many cases we've had in the last fourteen days? It might be meaningful if the number per fourteen days went from ten to one hundred. It would require I look at it daily if I wanted a relative measure of cases. That's not how I roll. Do I now, or have I ever really cared about the number of cases, no matter the measurement? Not really. Fuck it.
Well, goddamn it, are we in a recession or not? We'll know in about 15 minutes as I sit here waiting for the number to be announced at 8:30 am. If the GDP number is negative, that would be two consecutive quarters of negative growth, and that, at least according to some economists, is how they define a "recession." Where we go from here, if it turns out that we see a negative number, is anyone's guess. The financial markets rallied hard yesterday for all the wrong reasons (Fed raised rates 75 basis points), so maybe that continues today. The worst things get, the more likely it is that the Federal Reserve will pivot and reverse course on raising interest rates. Right? Maybe we should take our cues from what the stooges in the White House are trying to sell us. They are trying to redefine what a recession is, so what does that tell you? It tells me that we're going to see a negative number today. BOOM!
Well, wonders never cease. One of the two Apple TVs I thought was dead in the water after a lightning strike this past week seems to be showing signs of life. As far as I know, it wasn't because of anything I did or didn't do. I set the two devices on the arm of our couch the other day and plugged both of them in, and connected the two with an ethernet cord. Not because I thought that that would somehow fix the problem of the flashing indicator lights but rather because I thought that doing something, anything, was better than doing nothing. When I looked at them this morning, I noticed that the flashing light on one of the units had turned into a solid light. Baby steps, babycakes! I'm thinking that the Lord works in mysterious ways. I won't know why the flashing light stopped flashing until I reconnect everything to see what works and what doesn't. Are we talking luck here or maybe a little divine intervention?
Bumbling Joey Biden had a two-hour phone call with XI from China yesterday. Who believes for a minute that Joey Biden is even capable of having a two-hour conversation? It makes you wonder how he pulled it off. Who was behind the scenes filling out the cue cards or typing answers so that Joey could read the responses aloud in real-time? The readout after the session came from the Chinese and not from Joey and his trusty and stealthy staff. His staff didn't want the world to know just how demented and stupid Biden sounded on the world stage. The Chinese said something about fire and fury in response to their "discussion" with Joey about Taiwan and maybe Pelosi's planned visit there in the next month or so. In other words, the Chinese have given their stooge, Joey Biden, his marching orders once again. It's just so embarrassing.
I'm hearing that a few FBI agents have stepped forward and outed others in the FBI who are working overtime to suppress any news and, even worse than that, any investigations into Hunter Biden and the Biden Crime Family. We have a better understanding now of how all the pieces fit together thanks, in large part, to what we learned from the laptop from hell that Hunter Biden left behind at a computer shop. Others have stepped forward to fill in some of the blanks, such as who is the "big guy" in the remuneration agreements, etc. It's quite possibly one of the most nefarious pay-to-play arrangements involving the highest levels of our government in our nation's history. Just how compromised is the Biden family, and more specifically, Joe Biden?
And why on God's green earth, knowing what our Intelligence agencies know about all of these deals between the Bidens and the Chinese Communist Party, are they allowing this man to sit in our beloved Oval Office and at the helm of one of the greatest countries on the face of the planet? They must know that every decision Biden makes relative to China is driven not by our country's best interests but by the interests of the Communist Chinese. That explains why the Chinese bitch slap Bidens people every time they engage with them on the world stage. They have no respect for the man because they know who and what he is. He's a feckless and corrupt government hack with a fifty-year record of doing more harm than good for the country he ostensibly "serves." The Chinese know he's corrupt because they were complicit in his corruption.
I want to be careful not to put our Intelligence agencies on too high a pedestal. They were, after all, complicit with countless others in and out of government in trying to remove Trump from office by perpetrating the Russia hoax during Trump's first term in office. Maybe this is what happens when you give people too much power. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. When Trump returns to office in 2025, he needs to eliminate the toadies and losers in every agency and at every level. My biggest worry is that they will do whatever they need to ensure that Trump can't return to the presidency. That includes putting the man in jail on trumped-up charges or, worse yet, threatening or even harming the man so that he is incapable of returning to the office. What is it about Trump that they find so threatening? Does anyone think for even a moment that the Communist Chinese Party (CCP) had something to do with putting Joey in office? After years of investing in everything Biden, they weren't about to let Trump stand in the way of the Chinese installing their puppet. That explains everything.
We met up with the Ev man yesterday where we had planned to do a little food shopping with him. We arrived late, and he went shopping without us for a change. When we arrived, he was rolling out of the store with his shopping cart and into the parking lot. I half expected that he would pick up a few things and be done. I was surprised to see that he had a good cartload of food. What he buys and doesn't buy is none of my business, but there are healthy choices and there are unhealthy choices. I'm not sure I saw a lot of healthy choices, but that's his business, so I say nothing, and we all move on. The missus was pouring over his purchases as mothers will do, and I don't think he appreciated her second-guessing his decisions. Had we done a better job of showing up when we promised that we would show up, we might have had more input into what he did and didn't, but such was not the case. We were late, and he was done.
I was listening to Mark Levin on the radio last night, and he was talking about how the left was doing everything possible to keep Trump off the ballot in 2024. The 10,000-foot view, and taking Trump out of the equation, says that the democrat party will do whatever it takes to keep any Republican from holding the presidency of our great nation ever again. Just who in the hell do they think they are? I know they have their agenda, and the Republicans have a very different agenda, but I thought that's what elections were for. That boat has sailed. Now, the ends justify the means. I think the Republicans are waking up to this new reality, and maybe not so new reality since we all know that Kennedy stole the presidency back in 63 when they rigged the elections in Chicago, but here we are. Mark mentioned that the legacy of Trump would be that he taught republicans how to fight back. He exposed them for who and what they are, and they hated him for it.
Have you heard about the latest cultural kerfuffle where a Sesame Street character allegedly snubbed two black children in a parade in the city of Philadelphia this past week? The video shows the costumed character walking along the parade's sidelines, giving white children high-fives, then strolling right by a couple of black children without giving them a second look. Within twenty-four hours, the parents of the aggrieved children filed a 25 million dollar lawsuit against the parent company of Sesame Street, and, wait for it, Jesse Jackson, the grifter, came out of his hole and insisted that Sesame Street add more blacks to their boards and provide funds for black businesses as amends for their racist ways. Oh, and he wants the company to submit their employees to racial sensitivity training. Not that anyone is asking, but here's my response: Kiss my ass.
It's nothing more than an Al Sharpton-style shakedown. Grifters like Sharpton and Jackson, once thought to be leaders in the nationwide fight for civil rights before they discovered that there was more money to be made in shaming guilt-ridden corporations out of millions of dollars, pounce like the rabid ambulance chasers that they are at every opportunity that comes along. Woke corporations like Sesame Street will fold like a cheap suit before pushing back against these so-called icons of the left and their Stazi foot soldiers in their pseudo-aggrieved war against discrimination and racism. It's extortion by any other name. They need to be called out for who and what they are. The only way this stops is by someone, anyone, telling these grifters to fuck off. Better yet, I'd like to see a judge throw this case out of court and recommend to the local DA that the accusers be charged with extortion. Even more laughable is the fact that the article I'm reading about this matter refers to Jesse Jackson as a "former presidential candidate." What, fifty years ago? He's a clown show and always has been.
I was explaining to the missus the other day that the stock market is in a bear market and, even though she sees the financial markets doing well this past week, the overall trajectory is downward. Both bull and bear markets are processes and these markets we're seeing are no exception. Patience is required unless you want to end up buying high and selling low time and time again until you run out of money with which to trade. There is nothing wrong with being 100% in cash until we see some kind of capitulation when and where the financial markets become a wasteland and nobody wants in. That is, of course, the best time to get in. Theoretically speaking, of course. There is still far too much speculation in this market for my tastes and, quite honestly, we're not that far off the highs of late 2021 so we still need a bit more air to come out of the tires. All in good time, is what Jack Bogle would say. Wait a minute! Wasn't he a buy-and-hold guy?
Who knew? The Ev man loves peaches. We bought three big ones and we left them on the kitchen table to ripen. He apologized this morning for eating all of our peaches before we even knew they were gone. Don't get me wrong. We love to see the Ev man eating his fruits and his veggies but he eats them so rarely that we're surprised when we see him eating one or the other with any regularity. Maybe it's peaches today and broccoli next week. Hope springs eternal. Right? Anyway, we sent him packing this morning with a lot of things to eat and drink so that should should hold him for a bit. Well, I sent him packing anyway. The missus is still sleeping. She won't be surprised to learn that he's gone when she gets up. That's how that boy rolls. That's how his momma rolls.
It looks like another stellar day here on the seacoast. I'll want to get out on my bike early to beat the crowds and get my exercise in for the day. I do think that the crowds have been less if that's an acceptable way of putting it. Gas is still in the $4-$6 dollar range and that has to be keeping people driving less, driving fewer miles, going to fewer far-away places, and maybe travelling in groups when appropriate. Going to the beach wasn't always a luxury but it seems that it is just that these days when it costs an arm and a leg to get there and back. It wouldn't stop me and the missus if we wanted to lay out our blankets on the edge of a dune somehwere but that's just us. Maybe people just put their gas purchases on a credit card like everything else and the party continues unabated. All I'm saying is that it seems that I'm not fighting the crowds like I have in past years when I go for my bike rides. Riding earlier in the day helps.
Did I mention that we took Mrs G out for a ride yesterday? We hadn't planned to go for a ride and, as a matter of fact, we had planned to play it by ear once we arrived at her residence. If Mrs G wanted to go for a ride then we would happily oblige. She never asks, of course, so we're always looking and listening for the right cues once we're on site. It was such a nice day yesterday and her apartment seemed so, well, stifling, that I asked her directly if she might like to get out of the house for a while. She was smartly dressed when we arrived so that seeemed to suggest that she might be open to getting out and about. We drove to the little farm stand out on route 88 which we've visited previously and it's nice little shop where Mrs G seems to enjoy shopping. They have lots of fruits and vegetables and homemade goods that practically jump in your basket as you walk down the aisle. It's a bit pricey but isn't everything a bit pricey these days?
When we arrived back at her place, she asked if we wouldn't mind circling around to an adjoining property owned by her facility where she hoped to get a better look at where they were planning to build a central health center of sorts. Mrs G has a keen interest in all things real estate so none of that was a surprise to us. I've always wondered if she didn't miss her calling in life knowing what we know about her interest in real estate. We rarely have a conversation these days when she's not bringing up the sale of this or that piece of real estate in the community. Having interests in the twilight of your life is not a bad thing. If it helps you to keep putting one foot in front of the other when you get out of bed every morning then you should thank the Baby Jesus for bestowing you with said gifts.