dad

I lost my dad on 9/18 of 2003
 It has been a full decade now since my very first best friend left and I do miss him so much.
He was a quiet and yes, even a shy man who had a brain that was outstanding. He was Macguyver before there was a Macguyver.
 If there was something he wanted to do or to know he taught himself.
 Everything from Computers to day trading to creating and building a furnace out of old water heaters.

 For instance: This man once read an article on hydroponic planting once.
That’s all. It was just an article in a magazine that said “Hey there is a way to plant stuff without dirt.” It interested him so he built his own.
 There wasn’t a schematic and there wasn’t a formula. There was just this idea.
 He then proceeded to build his own hydroponic system out of some PVC tubes and an old sump pump. And it worked beautifully. We had tomatoes, cucumbers and various other plants growing out of that beast for the longest time. And that is just a small, tiny example.
 This man never met a single mechanical problem that he couldn’t either fix or find his way around.

   When we first moved to Kansas he was starting a new position where he didn’t know anyone. I found out later from my mother that every morning for 2 weeks he would get up at 4am and puke his guts out. Why? Because he was shy and this, moving to a new place, new job and knowing exactly 0 people in the entire state (outside of his immediate family, with us it brought the tally up to a whopping 3) This was a very hard step for him to take. Shoot this would be a hard step for ANYONE to take. But he did it to take care of his family.
    The job was there and the money was there and so we moved from California to Kansas. Of course I didn’t know this at the time I was to busy being a kid wrapped up in my own preteen/teen world. But he still taught so much. He taught me that sometimes no matter how much something sucks to you; you still have to do it. Not for you but for them. It taught me that being brave doesn’t mean not being scared, it means being scared and doing it anyway.
I miss you dad.
 

Black Friday

How do I hate thee?
Let me count the ways.
    Thanksgiving is by and large a 4 days holiday for a lot of people, because there are a lot of people off on the day after thanksgiving stores started having big Christmas sales on that day to entice people to come shop with them. Because people would come shop with them they started having competition as other stores jumped on the bandwagon Then it just kept escalating until it was a national event BLACK FRIDAY
     Now every year a bunch of idiots bundle up and go stand in-line for really cheap prices of crap they don’t need.

Only those of us who have worked retail know what a horrible day this day is.

    When I worked retail I had to go to bed really early on thanksgiving just so I could get up to be at the store at 4 in the morning for the doors to open at 6. You can tell it’s been a while since stores nowadays open at midnight or stay open 24 hours or even now open on Thanksgiving.
Is it just me or are the sales just not as awesome as they once were either.
 Which I think that this is just because the Black Friday thing isn’t so odd anymore, so the sales are not as drastic. It’s become really mainstream.
   My 2nd year out of retail I decided to go shopping the day after Christmas and see what the big deal is. Wow. Will never do that again. People are rude and morals are left at the door just to get an extra 50 bucks off a TV. Humanity is sold at the price of the newest gizmo and widget. Sadly none of this will ever change. We will never get together as a people and boycott Black Friday because we can never get together as a people. Someone will always ruin it for the others.

I say damn the brick and mortar stores.
 Wait a week order it online and in the meantime eat more pie. But that’s just me

Imagine this Part IV

Flat on your back and drenched to the bone, you slowly come to.

You know you have just been hit by lightning as you ache all over and your teeth itch.

The overall stench of a wet and burnt dog is also a dead giveaway.

Not sure where your friend is to have missed the show but you slowly start collecting up all the dropped comic books. I would guess you are in a bit of shock to be doing this instead of calling an ambulance or something.

As you are picking up the mess you start noticing something.

All the book pages are blank.

There is a ending to this story/idea
Let me know if you want to hear it

Imagine this Part III

Remember our chunk of planet?

Well it has entered into our solar system and finally made its way to the gravitational pull of the 3^rd planet from the sun.

It’s a lovely shade of green and black with swirls and glittering of other colors that we do not even have names for.

It’s about the size of a softball as it screams through the rain streaked sky.

Suddenly the rainclouds produce a huge bolt of lightning and the bolt passes straight through our meteor reducing it to ashes and dust.

However it doesn’t even slow down the lightning.

 

Imagine this Part II

There you are and it’s you.

You know it’s you because you know you and that look exactly like you.

It’s a rainy gloomy day and you are helping a friend move.

As you leave your friends house with your arms laden with 2 boxes of his prized comic book collection (you really shouldn’t carry so much like that its bad for your back)

As you leave your friends house and cross the yard you misstep and down you go HARD

As you fall your vision is blurred by a brilliant flash and then immense pain.

Then darkness.

Imagine this Part I

  Millions of years ago there is a planet very far away.

It’s an earthlike planet that is orbiting a gigantic silver sun.

One horrible day there is a solar flare and the planet explodes.

*KABOOM*

Fragments of planet are blown about their galaxy and boy they are really moving fast.

Watch as one particular red hued chunk cruises through the blackness of space defiantly with an escape velocity and trajectory.

Tumbling and rolling as it streaks through the stars.

It passes through a comets tale which turns the rock a greenish hue, and on it goes

A meteor collides with it and fuses into its mass turning it a goldish glowy color, and on it goes

It passes close to a planet with 2 suns made of water and caught in their gravity well it zips off into another direction, and on it goes.

Time passes.

It travels on.

The planetoid changes shape size and color many times as the ages toss it about at will.

Tech

WoW! This is just… Wow!

I know it is not much now but it has such far reaching implications.

Harvard’s Medical School has created a prototype of what researchers are calling a  “noninvasive brain-to-brain interface” between humans and rats, which allows a person  to control a rat’s tail using only their thoughts .

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Using the human brain to influence/control another brain.

That’s pure science fiction right there.

I am excited about this because it means we are learning more and more about this slab of meat between our ears and how it works.

Which it is about time, I mean, its been there for a while now we ought to know more about it.

The relationship we have right now with what we know about the human mind is akin to having a distant relative move in with you and never even learning much more past their name.

Also

Scientists can clone entire beings

Scientists can create meat

Scientists can grow body parts

And now we are well on our way toward neural to neural control.

50 years from now, ok maybe a hundred, entire armies of perfect soldiers controlled by 1 mind.

Or, even better, Have you seen the movie Surrogates?

Where you can buy/create the perfect you and just connect to it via mental wi-fi and have it live your life like an avatar?

Yeah, I’m not against that at all.