RowdyRebel

I've got one move left in me...hopefully within the next year. Was SUPPOSED to be end of this summer...then pushed back to the end of the year...just waiting on a friend to get a horse barn and a couple houses built on his new property, then we're buying his in-law's house & a few acres. My mother in-law (who has been staying with us for 2-1/2 years now) will buy my place & we'll be gone. It's only 20 minutes away, but on the OTHER side of the river. As long as it happens before the boy starts school (next fall), I'll be happy. Chicrapgo democrats & Putzker have passed some laws in the last couple years mandating some woke BS be taught in schools when they're already struggling to have students proficient in reading, writing, math, science, and history. I'd rather my kids go to schools that focus on the core subjects rather than on that SJW crap...but private school ain't in the budget & home school won't work with our work schedules. So, we're doing what we can to GTFO of IL. After that, I have no intention on moving ever again. If it wasn't for the kids, I'd just stay here...that's how much I hate moving. I just love my kids more than I hate moving. I guess that's a good thing.🤷‍♂️

https://www.kfvs12.com/2022/08/29/17-year-old-national-guard-soldier-dies-after-collapsing-during-training-officials-say/

Anyone want to place bets on how quickly they'll rule out the "safe and effective" jab as a potential cause? Guarantee it'll happen without any real consideration, because everybody knows it's "safe and effective" and all.

I just had a good friend spend over a month in the hospital. He's got asthma pretty bad, and despite having previously had the virus, he took his doctor's advice & got the jab pretty much as soon as it was available to him...and then regretted it once he learned more about it & how ineffective it was as a vaccine. He was feeling tired & run down, struggling to find the energy to do the things he ordinarily did every day. His wife finally made him get checked out. Heart out of rhythm & beating nearly 200 bpm. Normal for him is around 50 bpm resting. Pretty sure if he was an athlete trying to push his body to its limit, he'd be dead...but thankfully, he's just an ex-farm hand used to doing physical & strenuous work & in great physical condition that was just trying to do normal ordinary tasks in his daily life when the problem occurred. Part of me wonders if the jab had anything to do with it, as there is no history of heart issues in his family...but we all know that won't be looked at even remotely by the medical community because everybody knows the jab is "safe and effective". Even when it's proven to not do much of anything to prevent people from catching or spreading the disease. When something that is allegedly "safe and effective" shows itself to be ineffective, a rational person would also question whether or not it's actually safe. This is where we're discovering just how many irrational people there are in the medical community & political leadership.

On 8/11/2022 at 10:37 AM, 67RModel said:

From my observation, studying of history, and knowledge of economics this is the problem with the American system and the status quo in this country. Employers refusal to pay a living wage and/or provide benefits except for semi skilled and above jobs and even then the benefits are most times very lacking. $14.80/hr on a 40 hour work week is a little less than $30,000 pre tax dollars. Literal poverty wages regardless of your location within the country. So your only option is to work 60+ hrs/week to make ends meet. I was in a barber shop recently and listening to an old timer say how he couldn't understand how McDonalds and such couldn't get enough workers even at the $15.00/hr they are now offering. He went on to say that he only made $2.75/hr washing dishes at a restaurant in 1970-71. I didn't join his conversation but quietly pulled out my phone and checked an inflation calculator. $2.75 in 1970 is equivalent to $21.00 today. Good luck finding that wage for an entry level job that requires zero skill in todays world. Benefits are the same story. Hollowed out an stolen over the years so more profits are funneled to the top. It's actually rather comical (and sad) to me your healthcare is somehow coupled to your level and/or status of employment in the US. The richest county on earth can't figure out how to provide healthcare as a condition of citizenship. Every other industrialized and developed country got it decades ago.  I often wonder how different the small business landscape would look if healthcare here wasn't such a burden to obtain and/or pay for. Pretty tough to quit your job and start your own gig while always worrying you could get hurt and how you might pay for medical bills or an insane insurance premium. If you have a family it only gets worse. I checked what it would cost me out of pocket per year to buy the exact same health insurance my employer provides my family and I. I forget the exact amount but it was somewhere around $24,000....nuts.

Good luck on your job search Joey. I hope you find something that pays you well enough while still giving you time to play with Mack trucks. ( and contributing on BMT).

Companies got into the insurance business during WWII due to the wage freezes imposed by government. Since they couldn't give employees raises, they started offering benefits. In other words, government created this mess...and they've been making it worse ever since. When I bought my truck, I had a BC/BS policy that cost me $58/month. $1750 deductible, then 80/20 split up to $4750 max out-of-pocket per year. $5M lifetime cap. Then comes the unaffordable care act. Couple years later, it was over $300/month, I was about to get married, and I wouldn't be able to add my wife or eventual kids to the policy without losing my "grandfathered" status. So, I dropped it. Under Obamacare, I could've bought a policy for my wife & me for $1000/month. $6000 deductible IF you were "in network" (which there weren't any providers in our area) or else it was a $12,000 deductible. In network was 80/20...but we'd be 50/50 out of network. In other words, we were better off without insurance, paying out-of-pocket for everything, and hoping nothing major happened.

Healthcare doesn't HAVE to be expensive. It IS expensive because the consumer typically isn't the one paying the bill. When you aren't the one paying for the service, you couldn't care less how much it costs. The one paying the bill isn't the one receiving the service, so they couldn't care less how crappy the service might be. So, you end up with really really expensive, but crappy, service. But at least you can get service. Now go to one of the "single payer" countries where the consumer isn't paying & the payer isn't consuming...but the provider has no choice but to accept the crappy pay from the single provider if he wants to work...and since the person paying doesn't care if the service sucks, there is no incentive to do anything beyond the bare minimum for the crap pay. So, as a consumer you wait 6 months for an appointment, and by then you've either kicked it or it's kicked you. At least your health insurance wasn't tied to your employment, though, right?

On 7/13/2022 at 1:38 AM, Hayseed said:

Me Too Paul,💥

Who HASN'T? I've done it multiple times...old, freyed, barely broke-in Carhart jackets & vests are EXTREMELY flammable. So are cotton t-shirts. Ruined more than a couple of those, too. Happens so often the wife just rolls her eyes & doesn't even ask about burn holes in my shirts anymore. You'd think I'd learn...but sometimes (especially in the winter) the warmth of the fire feels good...😁

😂

7 hours ago, 67RModel said:

Then old man Biden swooped in and took credit for airlifting 1 million pounds of powdered formula from Spain..... 

And that right there is probably one of the most embarrassing aspects of this fool's presidency. WE shouldn't have to have emergency airlifts of ANYTHING! The fact that it's necessary proves this entire administration is unfit & unprepared.

7 hours ago, 67RModel said:

Its like the baby formula "shortage". Hear me out. My wife and I had our first baby On February 22 of this year. I distinctly recall the nurses in the labor and delivery unit talking about a certain brand that had just been recalled and the plant shuttered by the FDA. That's the last I heard about it until it popped up in the "news" in mid May. From mid February to Mid May (3 months) there was zero problems getting formula. Any time we went to the baby section of a store the shelves were stocked. "News" ran the story and got the sheeple into classic panic buy mode and the shelves literally emptied overnight. Here it is about 4 weeks after the "news" story and you don't hear jack about it anymore and the shelves are about 3/4 full in my local stores. To boot the shuttered plant has reopened but not produced anything yet (and got flooded yesterday and had to close again). So I have to ask: was there ever really a shortage? Didn't affect me since we don't use formula but I can attest to being able to easily get it before the news scared everyone. Now that the supply chain has recovered from the panic buy you can walk into any store and get it again no problems....

Been like that for a while...from toilet paper to chlorine tablets to baby formula and now DEF...easy to find the day before the news declares a shortage, next-to-impossible to find the day after, and when you DO see it, the price has doubled. Ridiculous.

Wish it worked that way with this "driver shortage" they talking about in the news. If there really WAS one, you'd expect to see an increase in driver pay, and instead companies are doubling down on stupid with more nanny-crap & the same pathetic wages.

So I turn on Ridepass on PlutoTV to watch the St Louis PBR "Unleash the Beast" event...my little 21 month old daughter (who WAS running around playing) is now glued to the screen as all of the cowboys are parading across the stage during the rider intros. Yup. I have a feeling I'm going to have some REALLY clean guns in a few years.🤦‍♂️

So the wheel bearings showed up this week. Didn't take long to put 'em on. Greased the zerks on the chassis & deck, aired up the tires, sharpened the blades, and did some mowing. Didn't do too bad, but it was only a week's growth. Amazing the difference bearings vs bushings make, and for the $20 it cost for the "conversion kit" (included washers, E-clips, & dust covers in addition to the bearings), it's ridiculous they put the bushings in to begin with.

Then after we got the yard mowed, the boy wanted to be pushed around on the push-cart my grandpa built when I was a kid...so of course I hooked it up to the mower to push him around. Video is from last year...had my daughter on my lap today while we were pushing the boy around, so couldn't really get a new video.

Ain't got through a single year without a breakdown...from the front axle snapping in two, to the sheet metal on the deck tearing...just been one thing after another. Didn't even get a single blade mowed and found another problem. Had pulled it out to charge up the battery I just put in last year (waited too long to plug it into the charger last fall and those new digital chargers are crap...couldn't even bump them with jumper cables off the battery in the pickup without the charger kicking off again as soon as the cables were removed.) Found an old style charger at the new Rural King in town, and it let me get the thing started. So there I am topping off the tank, and I notice the front left wheel looks a little off. Damn outer bushing is gone. So, ordered up the bearing conversion...putting inner & outer bearings on the front wheels instead of the bushings...but they won't be here until later in the week. Had to borrow my neighbor's mower to get the weeds knocked down so my POS Massey-badged-Simplicity won't be overwhelmed next weekend.

Hell, even the push mower needed the crank case drained & refilled. When I checked the oil, it was WAY over-filled & the gas tank (which was still probably 1/2 full or better when I last put it up) was empty...apparently the carburetor has a stuck float or needle and it drained the tank, overflowed the bowl, flooded the cylinder, which drained into the crank case over the winter. Guess until I get around to tearing into it, I'll do my push mowing around the trees & such before I do the rest with the rider...and just mow 'til it runs out of gas. I figure if there's no gas in the tank, it can't overflow the carb & drain into the oil.

All I can say is this is getting ridiculous. Never had this much trouble with the old '83 Craftsman...need to find a new motor for it, though. Parts for a rebuild were up to the price of this POS Massey, which is why we bought it. Craftsman has a worn out 18HP Briggs...I know Harbor Freight USED to have a vertical shaft 22HP motor, but I haven't seen it in quite a while. Be nice to drop that into the old Craftsman & get it going again...not as wide of a deck, but a MUCH better cut...and go back to a gear-drive mower instead of that stupid hydrostatic.

Anyway, guess I'd better go get things put up for the night. Wife has dinner going and it'd be nice to not have to go outside to put things away after dinner.

On 12/16/2021 at 7:44 AM, Freightrain said:

My worst loss at gambling was at the nickel slots.  $20 and I called it quits.

 

Now drag racing, I spend thousands for the chance at hundreds.....so I'm not in the black there either after 26 yrs.

I was laid over in Sparks, NV waiting on my cousin to come up the next day (lived about an hour away) and visit. Spent about 6 hours playing penny video poker and was up about $3. Cashed out & went to the truck to grab a bite to eat. Went back in (that was my mistake) and lost the $3 in 2 hours.

Way I figured, my time was occupied for about 8 hours...and I left with exactly what I had when I went in. Guess I was lucky, but still kick myself for going back in. Almost could've splurged & got a cheeseburger instead...what was I thinking?