timesjoke

Thanks again, the support I have received even from people I don't know very well has been huge, the lives my mother has touched is many, I have even had calls from people who used to ride her bus to school. My mother's best friend also drove schoolbus, both of them installed 8 track tape players (don't laugh) with a couple speakers and if the kids were good, they could play their music and my mother even learned their songs and sang along and moved to the music while driving. She had all highschool kids but sometimes I would ride with her in the mornings. It was nothing to be out and about with my mother and see a grown woman or man I did not know come up to my mother and give her a hug and find out the person used to be a kid on her bus many, many years ago.

Ouch.......

Thank you both, she was pretty special, but maybe I am just biased.

My mother passed away last night. Many of you already know that my mother has been fighting a long medical battle that has had her in and out of hospitals and on oxygen 24/7 for the last couple years. The last few weeks had her losing the battle in large steps and even her mind had lost all spark of the woman who had been the foundation of my very existence on this world. I had thought myself prepared for this. I had thought myself stronger than this. I was wrong. This woman showed with actions that no amount of personal sacrifice was too great when it came to providing for her family, she worked three jobs before, driving school bus in the morning, waitress during the day, return the kids on the bus that afternoon then she drove cab at night........all to provide for her children..... To provide for me....... My memories of my mother throught the years is of someone always ready to offer her time, what little she had, for anyone who needed her help. I remember as a child we had one of the old washer machines with the ringer on top where you squeezed the water from the clothes instead of having a spin cycle and my mother and sisters hanging the clothes out to dry. Memories of general chores like chopping wood or carrying bags of grain, stacking hay or picking crops, butchering a pig or plucking chickens........we lived a very hands on life and hard work was just as normal as breathing...... And my mother was always involved, always working, always putting in her special touch to lighten the day, get us laughing or singing to help lessen the 'feeling' of work and make it even fun. My mother loved to dance, music was always playing, she rarely watched any kind of television, for her music was the greatest invention ever offered her. While cooking a meal or putting away laundry, or dusting the furnature, there was always music playing and my mother dancing around, seeming to not notice she was actually working. Even at the closing of her life, when she knew her life was nearing it's end, she seemed more concerned with everyone else, how each of us, not only her children but my father and other friends and family would do without her to keep up with us, to call us each day and help us relieve some stress by talking about our problems. I have lost more than my mother, I have lost my very best friend in the world. But I feel so very rich, so special to have had her as my mother and to have lived a life that included her special spark and spice to flavor my life, a life where I always knew I was loved.

There have been studies to show how vacations can be more stressful than work. I have a pretty busy life so the majority of my vacations are more of the laid back type, so far sailing with my boss to Jamaica and back was the best, the Alaskan cruise was my next favorite. I have a friend who wants me to go to spain with him this year, he loves it there and has gone 4 times already. I am considering it, but I guess my new situation with my Nephew's kids might mean any time off will have to be closer to home, lol.

Well, I truly believe that this situation could have been handled without breaking out the sledge hammer. More often than not they hit the parents with everything they have and go to the max on charges and taking away children when a good scare and looking in on them on an irregular basis could fix most of these problems. In this case they had 4 children almost back to back. Caring for 4 very young children is a tough job, the last couple days have reminded me of that the hard way. I believe they both got frustrated and were lost for how to cope and were too proud to ask for help. So now the ball is rolling and it is a very big ball, lots of momentum and energy, tough to stop. My focus is the children, they need to stay together so that is my only goal, I will take this responsibility seriously, and that means I really can't be very involved in helping my Nephew, I have given him some pointers and sent him to a very good lawyer, most of this is now up to him and his wife. The kids are actually doing very well. The kids have stayed with me before and we had family cookouts all the time so they are as much "at home" with me as is possible anywhere. Thanks for the supportive comments guys, I finally got some good sleep last night, I am feeling must better after a couple rough days.

Exactly, Wez loves to say nobody should ever judge another person but without a little judging now and then, we have pure chaos. We should be looking out for each other and making a few judgement calls to step in and try to set things right. Sitting on your hands refusing to help makes you just as bad as the person who is having issues. At least their problem could be scratched up as mental illness, your failure to act is indifference, a lack of caring for your society and fellow man, or even your own family as with these parents. I think you hit the nail on the head right there. "AFTER" the child has grown up all messed up they started acting like they gave a sh!t, not when the child was actually growing up and care could have made a difference. Thank you.

Well there is that....... snaf, I believe most people who only look at Sarah's long record as a public official would have to agree that she has been more against than for big Government and has demonstrated a conservative standard. If the only example of big Government leaning is her "selling" oil at a higher price for the owners she represents, then that should prove just how closed minded people are and how unwilling they are to actually look at her record. Case by case, side by side, if you compare her record to any other long term politician, she would easily measure up to being one of the most conservative politicians to serve in recent years.

There are too many details to go into them all, this started the day before with a walk through and then yesterday child services told them they would be comming back last night for another visit. Being as they know my background (my nephew), they asked if I would come over and just observe and make sure things were done properly. They had no idea they were going to get arrested but I had a good idea that they would be, I have been involved in this stuff a long time. So I showed up mostly for the children and wanted to be sure they did not go into foster care. Wez, I carry my credentials with me everywhere I go, it is called a wallet, just like I have a first responder kit in every vehicle I drive (well not the Harley, but everything else). It is all part of the responsibility that goes with the things I am involved with. Thanks snaf, I always believe that good wins out, that is not to say the good will be easy to find though, in fact good is much more difficult and harder to find than bad. I just got done with the first court appearance, sadly this is just the start. My goal is to help this process move foward and help my Nephew and his wife earn the right to get their kids back. Until that time, I will make sure these kids are loved and cared for, that is the best I can do.

You can call me anytime you like

Just imagine how could it would have been if not for this global warming............

To make a long story short, a Nephew of mine and his wife was arrested last night and it involved child services. They had 4 kids and there was no way I was letting them be placed in foster homes so after staying completely silent during the process, I spoke up when it was obvious they were preparing to leave with the children. Now I have not been "in the field" with child services for a very long time and I did not expect these ladies to know me but their first comments to me were very disrespectful and instead of arguing with them I simply said "don't rush to judgements" as I placed various identifications on a table beside them to include my State certification to work in schools (requires full background checks), my Federal certification for sensitive Government clearence (FBI background check), my Florida Guardian Ad Litem identification, my badge, and I even wrote down the home and cell numbers for the their top boss who works in Tallahassee for them to call as a reference and stepped back to wait for them to respond. Needless to say they changed their tune and I was allowed to keep the children but now I am caring for little kids who are scared and missing their parents.......one of them an infant. Sleep? Ya, right....... I am hoping things will be more settled tonight and the kids as well as myself can get some sleep. Even though my capacity in law enforcement and the Florida Guardian Ad Litem has had me directly working with child services many times, I have to admit, I just do not like how their system works. I know they perform a needed job but more often than not, the workers are a tad power drunk and so many times I have felt that the situations could have been dealt with without breaking out the sledge hammer. I don't know, maybe that is how they maintain their distance, that is one job I would never want to do. Anyone else ever deal with child services?

I think that is the part hugo does not fully unbderstand, the people are selling their ownership of the oil for a price, it is not welfare to sell something you own for a profit.

Some of these guys can get past any firewall like snapping their fingers Snaf, I have tested them on my work computers where they get past the hardware firewalls, past the server, and to an individual station and take it over as if you gave them a remote desktop. You can't stop these guys if they really want in, but usually they don't pick on normal people, you usually need to do something to piss them off or you pose a challenge in some way. I actually had to get the help of another hacker to talk to a guy who turned one of my computers into a robot spammer for the purpose of ddos attacks, he was supposed to be a "friend" of mine but he also knew I had a home network with several computers so he took the liberty of "borrowing" one of them for his attacks. He told me later there was nothing personal and we are "friends" today.....but he saw nothing wrong with what he did either, they just don't see the world the way most people do, right/wrong has a lot of blurred lines involved with them. Scary guys really.

There are certainly people out there capable of this and I know a few very well. I have been involved in the video game hacker world for a lot of years and have been talking to them on messenger and they would take over my computer while we were talking just to screw with me. You can find a lot of those guys hanging out at 4chan and other places who like to cause trouble or even just do stuff for the challenge. If you have one of those guys on your back, you need to change everything, I would drop off the internet for at least a short time, change isp, and change email addresses/messenger accounts. Change bank accounts, everything. One of those guys can really cause a lot of problems. But, she can also be bluffing. Reformatting his computer and such is a reasonable first action but if she shows back up and is still seeming to know things she should not know then it is time to take it seriously and change everything.

Yep, wishing you a happy birthday

I meant the twitter comment from someone who was supposed to be in love with her. Seemed very cold and disconnected to me, the kind of thing you would say about a pet dying, not someone you were going to get married to. Then again I would most likely have more touching sentement for my pet dying too....... You miss the point Wez, looking at the lack of accomplishment from this young woman is not meant to diminish her, she diminished herself more than I ever could. The point is to try and avoid this kind of result in ourselves, to not waste opportunities or waste our lives the way this young woman has. Learning from mistakes made by other people is better than making the mistake yourself. Example: I feel more compelled to spend more time and energy with my daughter to offer her guidence and support to succeed. Letting her know that her being successful is up to her but I give her all my support to help her reach her potential. It is hard to say for sure but I would guess that under the "party girl" exterior there must have been a lot of insecurity driving her to the self-destructive lifestyle. It is sad to me though to see such potential wasted in the haze of drug abuse.

When I first heard about Casey Johnson killing herself with an apparent drug overdose, I at first did not give it much thought but for some reason my mind keeps comming back to this woman and what has happened to her. 30 years old and the only thing she was known for was being a "party girl". All the Johnson & Johnson power. money, and presteige to draw from and this is all she could do with her life? She was reported to be in a same sex relationship with a girl named "Tila Tequila" and I just have to post what Tila twittered: "Everyone please pray 4 my Wifey Casey Johnson. She has passed away. Thank u for all ur love and support but I will be offline to be w family." Sounds very warm and touching.........right? Am I the only person in the world who has issues with this on many, many levels? I feel sad over this.

Not just viruses, even some anti-cheating measures on video games have that same ability. Take World Of Warcraft for example, they have a system called "Warden" that can look at every part of your system and report what it finds. The idea is that cheaters can write their hacking software to look like anything so to stop game hackers, they need access to everything on your computer. The TOS and EULA you agree to at the time of installing the software and you again do it on each patch gives Blizzard entertainment full rights to complete access to everything on your computer. Now, you may ask what stops them from using this in bad ways? Nothing but their integrity, oh and the integrity of every employee involved in that section of the company controlling Warden. The thing that makes Warden special is it is like a robot waiting for orders on what to look at, the orders can change from one second to the next so there is no real way to know what information is being gathered from your computer and sent back to Blizzard. Data miners have been out for a long time that collect and sell information on things like browsing history and other things to try and help sell more things to the public, well this is certainly capable of that kind of thing without anyone knowing. I guess my point on this is we not only have to be careful about the unknown viruses we might get on our computers but also we should be paying more attention to the malware/viruses/data miners, we intentionally install on our computers.

Very good point.

The same system was in place during about 6 years Bush was in office but we did not have this kind of raw failure so why was that? Because the people running the system under Bush were reasonably secure knowing that Bush had their back. These same people now know that Obama is more likely to stab them in the back than support them so you have less risk taking, less 'gut feeling' investigations and actions because should this administration think something was done wrong then they will hang them out to dry. And the worse part? The terrorists know it, that is why they have stepped up operations against America, Obama is seen as weak and even supportive of their terrorist actions.

Hugo is like the Liberals, he makes up his mind he does not like someone then he will adjust reality to fit his need for the dislike. I pointed out that most independants like Hugo voted for Obama for a reason, I believe Hugo did vote for Obama and that is why he feels compelled to take an unreasonable stance against Sarah Palin. Sarah might not even run for office, she could do very well just traveling the Country making speaches and endorsing canidates. My point is she "right now" is the only real conservative who could stand a chance on the National level for high office. Sure, there are a few local conservatives who would do well in their State and maybe a few other States, but beyond that....nothing. Here is the deal, I get the feeling that if someone like Hugo does not get a 100% die hard conservative who is also a die hard isolationist, then he will in turn vote socialist as a kind of "punnishment" to the Republicans who are not doing what he wants them to do. "Cutting off the nose to spite the face" is an expression used to describe a needlessly self-destructive over-reaction to a problem: "Don't cut off your nose to spite your face" is a warning against acting out of pique, or against pursuing revenge in a way that would damage oneself more than the source of one's anger.

You have to explain why something you own, and you sell, is welfare. The people own Alaska, are you now saying that only a government can own oil? Only a big company can own oil? Who do you think owns the oil comming out of the ground Hugo? My point is the oil belongs to the people and they are selling it to oil companies, the oil companies have the option to not buy the oil at that set price so where is the welfare Hugo?

Kill them with kindness......

Semantics. If you benefit personally from the State taxing the oil companies through things like lower taxes in other ways it is the same thing. Your now talking degrees. This is like my example of how we don't have an income tax in Florida, everyone in the State benefits from the tourist industry. Hugo, I am still waiting on you to explain where in the process of Alaska selling their resources and the people getting to benefit from their sold resources that you have an issue with.