Thoughts On A Sunday

It was a very busy day for this part of the WP clan, with BeezleBub, Deb, and I spending a lot of time on the road attending various functions, most Christmas related. Before all of that I spent some time at the Weekend Pundit Labs, working on the ever present and necessary paperwork needed to see certain projects completed on time.

Thanks goodness today is a day of semi-rest...not that I really got all that much.

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I saw a report about this website on the local TV news: a place to vent about bad drivers or to give kudos to good drivers. Rather than letting road rage get the better of you, you can rant about the bad drivers you've seen or had to deal with.

Call me old fashioned because I still prefer the old 'pop-three-rounds-into-their-trunk-to-get-their-attention' method.

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Bruce at mAss Backwards is already packing up for his move from the People's Republic of Massachusetts to the Live Free Or Die state of New Hampshire, something he's been working on for quite some time.

Two days and counting.....

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I've been an amateur radio operator for 30 years and I thought there was very little that would surprise or please me when it came to rules changes by the FCC. I was wrong.

The FCC has released it's Report & Order doing away with the Morse code requirement for licensing.

While I am definitely an old timer when it comes to one of my favorite hobbies, I've never been one of those “I-had-to-walk-school-through-waist-high-snow-uphill-both-ways-so-you-should-too” types.

The old argument was that having to pass a Morse code test kept the riff-raff out. Unfortunately the so-called riff-raff were just as capable of passing the code test as anyone else, so it was a specious argument.

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The New England Patriots played the Huston Texans in Foxboro, beating them 40-7. It's quite a bit different from last week's drubbing by Miami. The last two Pats games will be on the road, against Jacksonville and Tennessee on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, respectively.

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Another Democratic Presidential hopeful has pulled the plug on running in 2008.

Senator Evan Bayh (D – IN) announced he would not seek the nomination.

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The controversy about the so-called “view tax” here in New Hampshire has risen to new heights, with more and more property owners being hit with large tax increases based upon the fact that their property happens to have a view of lakes or mountains and so on. Many of these properties are working farms, assessed at their development value rather than their current use value, i.e as agricultural land.

The argument goes that if this arbitrary extra valuation continues that many of New Hampshire's values and a way of life will go with it. Only wealthy out-of-staters will be able to afford such homes and properties and many properties that have been in the same hands for generations will be sold off because the owners will no longer be able to afford the onerous and ever less affordable tax increases.

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I can safely say that the boating season is truly over, now.

BeezleBub and I performed the last of the pre-storage maintenance on the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout, aka The Boat, erected the storage frame and pulled the storage cover over The Boat and secured it in place.

Other than a few minor tasks to be taken care of, The Boat is put away for the winter.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where temperatures are still 20 degrees above normal, El Nino will eventually turn on the deep freeze and dump loads of snow, and where preparations for Christmas continue apace.