We’ll also be spending a little bit of time storing our winter apparel away – parkas, heavy gloves, winter boots and the like - and pulling out our summer stuff, including the boating gear.
Speaking of boating gear, the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout is scheduled to to be pulled out of storage this week and prepped for the boating season. If things go according to plan and the weather cooperates we’ll be able to launch the boat next weekend.
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Work was very busy last week, though not so much with actual work. We were moving.
A couple of years ago our division went through a reorganization which saw our production and shipping operations moved to another underutilized facility. Our engineering department remained which meant a building designed to house a business with up to 140 personnel now had 12 full-time employees and another dozen ‘floaters’, employees who primarily work from home but come to the facility now and then for one function or another. Our building went up for sale about the same time with the idea of leasing back some of the space from the buyer unless they were going to occupy the entire space.
Two years later and the building finally sold.
The new owner had no problem leasing space to us, but since we didn’t need the entire facility, we chose to lease part of the second floor. That meant moving surplus equipment, furniture, and other gear we didn’t need someplace else. This usually meant selling it and letting the buyers move it out rather than disposing of it or storing it. The things we did need were moved up stairs over a period of a month. Old files that were no longer needed were shredded and disposed of, old prototypes and samples were recycled, offices and labs were moved, test equipment and lab benches were relocated and set up. There’s still some electrical work that needs to be done as part of the move, but for the most part we finished the move before the end-of-the-month deadline.
At least we didn’t have to fill moving trucks.
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I have to agree with Elon Musk on this one.
And then there’s this from Elon: The far left ‘hates everyone, themselves included.’
It seems the Left is doing everything it can to try to paint Musk’s purchase of Twitter as a move to ‘silence free speech’ on the platform. That’s ironic considering Twitter as it presently operates doesn’t believe in free speech. It only believes in Leftist disinformation and propaganda. Based on their actions on Twitter, actual free speech is tyranny, particularly if such speech disagrees with them or their narrative.
Hypocrites.
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Today is Victims of Communism Day.
I think it should be amended to be called Victims of Socialism Day. Socialism has killed untold millions, directly and indirectly. Communism is just another form of Socialism.
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Yup. I’ll call it what it is – The Student Loan Scam.
Currently there is somewhere around $1.6 trillion outstanding in unpaid student loans. That is approximately twice the amount of all credit card debt. And many thousands of college graduates and dropouts find themselves unable or unwilling to repay their student loans.While student loans to pay college tuition may have sounded like a good idea, in practice they have devolved into something that indebts students to pay for college degrees with values far less than the value of the loans taken. The loans created a ocean of cash from which colleges and universities hungered to drink. Tuitions increased well above the rate of inflation. New courses of study were created, with far too many of them ending in the word “Studies”. To me, such courses of study are useless since the only thing they seem to provide is resentment and intolerance towards a specific group or groups who are seen as the reason(s) for the troubles, real or imagined, being experienced by the subjects of the “Studies” courses. (Yes, this is a bit of hyperbole...but only a little bit.)
How did we get into this mess? It goes back to the Higher Education Act of 1965, but, as with so many government programs, the senators and representatives who voted for it never imagined how it would transform higher education, in part by driving costs relentlessly higher. Now the Biden administration is trying to buy votes in the midterm elections by promising to cancel the entire $1.6 trillion outstanding debt.
In short, Biden threatens (or promises) to take patently illegal action in order to buy votes, in the expectation that his wrongdoing won’t be checked until after November–and perhaps not at all. We live under a scofflaw government.Canceling student debt would be a bad idea. It sets a bad precedent. It will also give future students the idea that they can get a ‘free’ education by taking out student loans and then not having to pay them back.
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Geez, now you can’t even go on vacation without worrying squatters will break into your home, steal all of your belongings, and attack you when you get home.
A Maryland woman returning from vacation got a nasty surprise when she walked in her door. Her residence had been emptied of everything but her bed. And on the bed, she found two squatters.In some states (like California) it can be a lengthy and expensive process to evict squatters. In others all it takes is a call to police. In yet others simply showing your sidearm is enough to get them to leave. Of course, the folks in the story weren’t just squatters, but thieves. They took $50K of her belongings, leaving her apartment bare.
The unidentified woman apparently tried to leave but was tackled by the male squatter. There followed a bizarre sequence of events where the male squatter gave the woman advice on how to keep people from breaking into her home.
“Not only were they in my home, but everything in my home was gone except for my bed because he details how he loved my bed so much. And I’m like who are you? And he says my name. He’s like you didn’t pay your rent. I’m like what are you talking about? I paid my rent.”
The victim left for vacation on March 28 and returned on April 5. The woman says she doesn’t know where her belongings are and doubts she will ever recover them. As for the criminal squatters, they’re still at large after they promised they were going to do the same thing to another homeowner.
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I’d say this is a fair statement.
The Democrats have become the party of miserable, whiny grumps.
The hatred, anger and resentment of liberals is not exclusive to the extreme Democrat. It’s now the entire party.“I don’t like that I can’t morally nag people about masks without the backing of the State anymore.” Hmm, almost sounds like a description of a state-sanctioned Karen. As if we need even more Karens than the ones we already have to deal with.
When was the last time anyone encountered a happy Democrat? They don’t exist. They’re perpetually miserable, annoyed that normal people have moved on from COVID, offended that anyone objects to public schools teaching 7-year-olds about sexual identity, and frustrated that their fetish with “critical race theory” (also known as “how to properly hate whites!”) isn’t as widely shared as they thought.
Consider the response to a Florida judge recently striking down the Biden administration’s loathsome air-travel mask mandate. Social media was immediately flooded with videos of flight attendants and passengers overjoyed that they had unfettered access to oxygen again. Liberals could only sulk.
Similarly at The Washington Post, columnist Kate Cohen wrote Wednesday how awful it is to see Americans ditching their masks in celebration. “I still planned to wear a mask while COVID circulated in my community because I was afraid of spreading the virus to vulnerable people,” she said. “Surely we can personally be ‘done’ with this pandemic while respecting the fact that others are not.”
What she means is something more along the lines of: I don’t like that I can’t morally nag people about masks without the backing of the State anymore.
I have found that even when some Democrats get their way they are still unhappy, are “sore winners”. I have found them to be particularly annoying.
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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the warmer weather has returned, more boats are showing up at slips, and summer cottages are being prepped for opening.