Fear the Walking Dead

I've been bingeing Fear the Walking Dead through my Hulu account. I've always tried to watch it, mainly for comparison sake to The Walking Dead, but AMC doesn't give the easiest or most convenient way or way at all to watch older seasons. Not even with their 'convenient' app or via their website. Anyway...

There are similarities between the two. Most specifically: stupid writing.

I mean we won't go into the whole "How did the military, police, etc. get overrun with all their fire power?" We have to move on from that for the enjoyment of the show. I mean it's still plausible that the military could have lost because of not understanding the "sickness" but this isn't the post for that discussion.

I'm really just going to say that the show is okay if not good...enough for now, like the original was. However, somewhere along the way the writers started creating these stupid scenes and story lines. At the stage of the series I'm currently watching (season 4), most of the characters still alive are fairly well versed on how to handle the walking dead. But for some reason they end up doing some stupid things or get in some stupid situations or just...STUPID!

So, I guess that's about all I will write about this. If you have the want or time to watch it, you probably won't hate it. It is interesting at times and at others it is downright ludicrous and frustrating. Luckily for me, I watch it while multitasking. I still pay attention but I am also able to keep 'entertained' during the lull or terrible scenes when necessary.

Dallas Stars disappoint me...again.

So, I didn't make the time to post anything about the Stars vs Blues series. I was busy but I also didn't want to jinx them. Well, I should have known better that they would fuck it up themselves.

Yeah, yeah...everyone is saying, "Thank you for the great season." "Thank you, Stars"

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Screw that! They could've won. They should've won.

Bishop had some great goal tending. However, there were two games that the Stars could have won if it were not for Bishop's lackluster play OR him knocking the puck into his own net even when the puck was going well wide of it.

I'm not blaming everything on Bishop. There were veteran players (Benn?) who didn't seem to have the tenacity or effort level equal to those making less money or in their rookie season.

Yeah, I'm bitter. I could go on and on. I guess we could call it a 'good enough' season. However, it could have and should have been a better season!

Did I mention I'm bitter?

Milestones - 20th work anniversary

Today. Officially. I hit twenty years with my current employer. Yippee for me! It's been a long tenure and at some businesses I could retire from but I'm sure it'll be at least another twenty.

No worries. I don't hate working but I do kind of hate having to work.

I have gotten some things from my current employer albeit not high enough annual raises but the environment has been much better than my previous employer's. So I can't complain...a whole lot.

Here's to another twenty years...or five with a move to Hawai'i would be just fine.

2019 NHL Playoffs: Dallas Stars vs Nashville Predators Game 6

I missed posting and watching game 5 because I had prior personal commitments but the Stars took game 5 with a score of 5 — 3.

It's now time for game 6 of the first round Dallas Stars and Nashville Predators series. I'm still anxious about them teasing me but I will watch the game. How can I not?

GO STARS!
UPDATE: Stars win 2 — 1 in the first overtime period. Stars win the series 4 — 2.

2019 NHL Playoffs: Dallas Stars vs Nashville Predators Game 4

It's game 4 of the first round series between the Dallas Stars and Nashville Predators. While I'm a long, long term Stars fan, I sure hope they don't make me wish I stopped watching after game 3. I'm easily frustrated and distracted when they don't hear me 'coaching' them from my couch!

GO STARS!

UPDATE: Stars win 5 — 1. Series tied 2 — 2.

People and toilets

I'm bemused by the actions of people...seemingly educated and professional people.

I had to take a dump at work today. Stall #2 (hehehe) was open so I walked in and this is what I see.

People so afraid of sitting on a bare toilet seat and catching something that they build a 'protective' layer for themselves to sit upon instead.

Feeling protected, they do their duty (hehehe) and leave. But instead of pushing their protective nest into the toilet and flushing it, or not, they leave it. No cares or worries about the next person's feelings. No cares or worries about essentially leaving trash behind. As long as they protected their own ass, why clean up after themselves.

I'd like to punch this fraidy cat bastard in the nut sack!

What this person/these people don't realize is that our restrooms are checked on, wiped down and clean every hour on the hour all day. One could literally eat off the toilet seat and not deal with as many germs as they would eating at their own desk!

Rant over!

Email humor 07/23/2018

Bookseller conducting a market survey asked a woman, "Which book has helped you most in your life?" The woman replied, "My husband's check book!!"

A prospective husband in a book store "Do you have a book called 'Husband - the Master of the House?'" Sales girl: "Sir, fiction and comics are on the 1st floor!"

Someone asked an old man: "Even after 70 years, you still call your wife - darling, honey, luv. What's the secret?" Old man: "I forgot her name and I'm scared to ask her."

Pharmacist asks a customer, "Sir, please understand, to buy an anti-depression pill you need a proper prescription .... Simply showing your marriage certificate and wife's picture is not enough!

A man was granted two wishes by God. He asked for the best drink & the best woman ever. Next moment he got mineral water & Mother Teresa.

There are 3 kinds of men in this world. Some remain single and make wonders happen. Some have girlfriends and see wonders happen. The rest get married and wonder what happened!

Wives are magicians. They can change anything into an argument.

Why do women live a Better, Longer & Peaceful Life, compared to men? A very INTELLIGENT student replied: "Because Women don't have a wife!"

COOL MESSAGE BY A WIFE: Dear Mother-in-law, Don't teach me how to handle my children. I am living with one of yours and he needs a lot of improvement!?

When a married man says, I WILL THINK ABOUT IT - what he really means is that he doesn't know his wife's opinion yet.

A lady says to her doctor, "My husband has a habit of talking in his sleep! What should I give him to cure it?" The doctor replies: "Give him an opportunity to speak when he's awake!"

Packers defeat Cowboys on 01/15/2017

Dear Cowboys friends and fans,

I must apologize and take responsibility for causing the Cowboys' loss to the Packers today.

No, it wasn't the seemingly blatant favoritism towards the Packers by the refs: their bad-calls/no-calls, no-calls/bad-calls.

It was me!

Frustrated, I stopped watching at halftime with Cowboys 10 Packers 21.

Sometime later while surfing the web, I saw an update showing the game score tied at 31. So, I turned the game back on with 53 seconds left and well, you know how it ended.

Yeah, I have that kind of power. The Force is strong in my family although I'm the only one who has it.

So anyway, again, it was me and not the officiating.

Jeep CJ66 Retro Wrangler

Just saw an article (here while it lasts) about Jeep showing a retro Wrangler concept vehicle to celebrate their 50^th birthday.

In the photo, it looks like a Hot Wheels die cast toy.

All I can say is, "I want!!"

I miss my 1990 Jeep Wrangler. I should have never sold it.

I still don't know why I did.

Stupid.

That's why.

I need to make more money

I'm about to move to a new place. Move in is September 1st. I have to prorate rent on my current place for three days, 1st thru 3rd, so I can move out and clean the place. It'll run about $210 for those three days. I have to pay $2,100 for the first month's rent. I have connection and reconnection fees for utilities.

It sucks!

This will be an extremely rough month financially, particularly because it follows an already tough month of August.

In August, there was school registration for both children, one college sophomore and one high school senior. Books for the college student. Band registration and fundraising as well as theater performance dues for the high school senior. Both need new laptops for school. One of the current nine-year old laptops is dead and the other one is dying.

I had to put our family pet's recent surgery on a payment plan with Care Credit. If I don't pay the $1,700 within eighteen months, I'll pay a whole lot in deferred interest.

I already had a payment plan for a recent ambulance ride and E.R. visit for the wife. That started out at like $1,400.

I also have a few more payment plans and just paying outs of accrued debt with interest that won't end for at least six months to a year.

But I try to remain positive. We have our health (barely/mostly). We have a place to move to (as long as nothing goes wrong). I have a job to pay for necessities as well as all this debt (well I have credit to pay and then some money from the job to make payments towards the credit).

So, life is good!

Weird, I felt like I lost a close friend

This was originally started like a year ago but life happens...

I recently had to say goodbye to a friend I've known for 15+ years. They've changed over those years a few times but I've always supported them as best I could. Though I often felt a little taken advantage of. Even when times were tough for me, I put the effort out to maintain the relationship mainly because my kids were younger and enjoyed having them around. However, slowly over the years they became more of an acquaintance as the kids got older. I mulled my decision over a few weeks time and discussed deeply with the wife. It truly was a tough call but it had to be done. I give and gave but we had to move forward with what's best. Being more forgiving, my wife is still not sure about the move but is making do. Truthfully, I feel much better each day since I ended the relationship. I'll always have memories but.....

I HAD TO GET RID OF 'CABLE' TV!

Initially, the adjustment was slow and difficult. Not being able to turn on the television and browse 100+ channels was weird at first. Eventually, we got used to it.

I did go buy an over-the-air HD antennae to get local channels because we didn't want to be completely without television channels. I found a highly-user-rated one at Walmart with a 50-mile range. I was intrigued at first because I've never seen the actual local channels via OTA since they were regulated to be aired as HD. Once I got everything hooked up and programmed the channels, NBC/Channel 5 showed the picture below.

I was like "Holy shit! That's a pretty damn clear picture." The wife was like, "Is that from the over-the-air antennae? That's an extremely clear picture!" I was like, "I know, right?!"

So, that's are journey into being disconnected from pay television. I needed to save money and we just realized that we were watching a lot of reruns of L&O, L&O:SVU, House and many others via USA Network or TNT. I've never paid for movie channels like HBO since the early 90s when I lived in my first apartment with a roommate to split the cost. I don't care to pay a premium to watch movies I've seen many times before and some decades ago (like E.T.). It's just throwing away money when one can pay-on-demand for recent movies via whatever medium is available.

Speaking of pay-on-demand, I must fully confess that we did have some access to certain 'cable' channels. My close friend came over one day and downloaded a few apps like HBOGo on my iPad. He logged in as himself and told me we could watch via his account anytime. It does require a re-log in after so many days/weeks and I'd just have him re-enter his information. We didn't watch many movies but more series like Game of Thrones and such.

Besides my buddy's login, I already had memberships with Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. These two services help alleviate some of the transitioning pain but truly after a few months, we were so happy to get rid of the high-cost of pay television. I saved about $150/mo after rate, taxes and fees on my AT&T bill. I had to keep Internet and we still have a house phone which allowed me to bundle the two and save. Those monthly costs were like $95 after all charges are added and the deal was good for two years even though I had to only commit to one. So, not too bad.

One thing we did notice about over-the-air signal is that location of the antennae is important. We lived in the center two two-story condos all made out of brick and with firewalls in between. There were two-story brick condos very close behind us about twenty feet. The signal would flicker occasionally even when I had the antennae on the inside of the window pane facing the back condos at the highest point I could to the first-floor ceiling. I bought a fifty-foot coax cable to move the antennae to the second floor window near the highest point of the ceiling. I got a much better signal but would still occasionally lose signal especially when the weather was bad. I'm assuming it had a bit to do with the location but I could not get the antennae any higher unless I got a ladder and tacked to the top our condo somehow or had a pole/rod extend above the roof with the antennae attached from the side of the condo. Both options were not easily done so I stuck with what I had.

Just another thought, we noticed that WFAA/ABC 8 was the weakest signal of the 'big' four which also include KTVT/CBS 11, KXAS/NBC 5, and KDFW/FOX 4. Back when I was a kid in the late 70s early 80s, the weakest signals were typically channel 4, 11, 5 and 8 (ordered in weakest to strongest signal). That being said, I live within 15-20 miles of all the stations especially WFAA and it was always losing signal. In fact, there were days that we'd not have channel 8 come in and the weather would be clear skies and sunny. Anyway, we just thought that was weird since we should be in a very good location to receive the strongest signals.

Well, that's my story on cutting the cord. We'll see how long it continues.

Oh yeah, I also upgraded by Uverse Internet as part of the cheaper bundle. I was on like 6 MBPS upload speed but was bundled with 40 MBPS. That's all 'up to' speeds of course. I did a speed test just to be sure they weren't charging me for something that I wasn't actually getting. The speed test was almost exact when I ran it. See below.

Okay, now that's the end of this story for now...

Stainless steel restroom facilities

I occasionally play tennis at Colleyville City Park. Sometimes I have to pee before, during or after I play. The images below are what greets me (and others) if using the restroom facilities is needed.

They're quite interesting and somewhat disgusting! Wouldn't you agree?

Truthfully, I can pee in anything. So, the urinals aren't really a problem. However, they are always filled about halfway with water or pee. I'm not sure which. The stench of old, puddled urine is overwhelming. The flooring around the urinals stinks as well which is surprising since it's a pretty open restroom in the sense that they keep the entrance door wide open and there is metal screening around most of the top of the walls just before the ceiling. So, it's 'airy' but the stench still settles within the cement walls.

With the very strong odor, it makes me think that maybe boys/men may pee in the urinal, on the wall, on the floor—basically anywhere that isn't in their pants! I don't blame the little boys. I used to do the same when I was a little boy for some reason.

Anyway, I don't understand the reasoning behind the stainless steel urinals and toilet other than they think it would mean less maintenance. Sure, it's probably impossible to damage them unless you have a metal bat or sledgehammer but the usefulness kind of ends there.

Who in their right mind would want to use the toilet at anytime but especially during the cold weather? Sometimes city parks and recreation managers do not think through an idea.

Oh well, random thought over.

Broken driver side mirror

So the street I live on is bound and determined to make my vehicle-owning life a living hell. First, my CRV was rear ended and then my Grand Caravan driver-side mirror was sideswiped. I don't see other cars on the block or along the street having this problem but it happened to me within a few months time for both my vehicles.

I have a two-car drive way but sometimes my wife's family stops by while I'm at work. I come home and one of my vehicles and an in-laws' vehicle is in my driveway so I have to park my second vehicle at curb of the street. The in-laws leave and I end up leaving my vehicle parked at the curb for whatever reason like laziness or I'm already in bed. Then some idiot comes by and hits my vehicle(s) and doesn't own up to it because they're probably some stupid drunk assholes!

I looked all over the world wide web and local auto parts shops like O'Reilly's or Pep Boys for a cheaply priced replacement mirror. I didn't want to buy from a dealership because of dealership pricing. I almost had to because my particular model seems to be rare for some damn reason. It seems my mirror is in-between the two models that are widely offered from various vendors and dealerships. Either, I can find a replacement manual mirror or mirror with remote and heat. My mirror is remote with no heat. I have no problem having a manual mirror as I hardly adjust my van mirrors but I didn't want to order online and then the damn thing not fit/work like I thought. Then I'd have to go through the process of returning and probably getting screwed out of some of my money that I thought I was saving. Since I couldn't find my particular model on the Internet or in retail auto parts stores and surely didn't want to go to a dealership, I had an epiphany and thought of looking at a junkyard.

Hell, I haven't been to a junkyard in something like twenty five years! I didn't even know if they still existed...for pulling parts, anyway. I figured there were ones around where they just crushed, stacked and stored cars for scrap metal but what the hell do I know these days. I don't work on my own vehicle much at all these days since I'm busy and they have all these new technologies and shit that only "smart mechanics" know how to fix. Anyway, I googled 'junkyard' and found a few in my general vicinity. The closest was about fifteen minutes away. It closed at 6 p.m. and I get off of work at 5 p.m. but with rush-hour traffic happening at that time AND going the direction I'd need to go, I'd have to either leave work early or wait for the weekend. The weekend timing won.

I made my first trip towards the junkyard and got about three quarters of the way before I realized that I did not bring ANY tools for removing the mirror if I found a replacement. I went ahead and drove the rest of the way to know for sure the location and to be sure it actually existed. I mean it did have a website and all but I just wanted to be doubly sure.

It took me a couple of more weeks before I was able to head to the junkyard again. This time I was prepared. I brought the old mirror as well as my tool box of which I really only needed a couple of tools.

I walked all over this junkyard. It was much bigger than I imagined. The area where most of the vehicles that would contain my mirror was the farthest distance in the farthest corner of the junkyard from the entrance. It was a hot, dry day with a slight breeze and this place was very dusty. After about fifteen minutes, my eyes were watering from the dirt, my nose was running from the dust and I think I was getting a farmer's tan from the sunshine.

So long story completed, I finally got my driver-side mirror replaced.

compared to