Buy Stock in Battery Companies

You may recall, I did a post on the pitfalls of electric vehicles. The major one being the batteries that would be required.
According to NPR's series on the power grid, The Messiah also wants more green energy, like wind and solar.
The big problem is that wind and solar aren't reliable or consistent. This means your lights would be constantly getting brighter and darker; your electronics would be having a fit. In a word, unworkable.
The only solution to this is to store some of that power, so that the grid can smoothly ride through the valleys. The most likely source of that storage would be batteries.

"You put a large number of small batteries around a neighborhood," Gyuk says, "just like the neighborhood transformers — just a little green box that's innocuous."

By small, he means about the size of the battery in a hybrid car, and it would be hooked up to the grid.

They didn't say how many batteries would be needed, but a safe bet would be that the number would be in the thousands. Manufacturing and disposal? We'll worry about that later. By the way, batteries don't live very long in hot environments, so if you want any longevity, look to be putting those batteries in air conditioned sheds.

Remember! It's all for the environment!

Bless Her Heart

My front yard is at the lower end of a long slope. When it rains, parts of my yard will stay wet for days afterwards. Because of this, I know that I need to mow my lawn before rainstorms, since I don't know how long it will be before I'll be able to mow it again.
Last weekend, we were forcast for rain on Sunday. I went out to mow, and Mrs Schwartz, as always, was telling me to let it go; she would mow the lawn later in the week. In the past, this was a hollow offer, because there was no way she could start the mower. Now that it's tuned up, she could do it. I have a self-propelled, walk-behind mower.
She put it off. After some nagging, she attempted to mow it on Tuesday. I get this email:

OK, So I'm having a heart attack trying to mow the lawn. There are dips, drops, hills, etc. So this nice mexican guy walks by and says, "may I please help you? Your face is so red! I can help".

So he goes up the hill towards the house and says, "this is by far the worst lawnmower ever" So i told him I asked you to buy a real lawnmower and he said that he has worked on lawns for over 12 years and never did he use such a crappy mower. Why not buy a good lawnmower? You have to mow all the time right?

I told him I promised you I'd mow the lawn as it was raining but I don't know if i can do it. He said he mows lawns all day every day and will pass on helping me out. He had to get home.

So I did my best. But I couldn't get the whole front yard done.

Later that day, I'm on my way home from work and I get an exhausted call from her. She explains to me that she missed the instruction to move the "drive" lever forward.

She had the self-propelled lawnmower in neutral and was just pushing it to mow the lawn. She had finished most of the front lawn before she figured it out.

Current Events

The only surviving Somali pirate is now in New York for his trial. Why the hell are we doing this? Why didn't they just kill this idiot at sea?

Diane Feinstein is in another kickback scandal. Is this even news anymore? She's a crooked scumbag. Hey California! Nice job there, dumb asses!

The news reports that some kid got is ear and scalp ripped off by a pitbull. Only after you get into the story, do you see the dog and realize it's as much pitbull as I am. Also, you find out that the hayseeds have had the dog tied up in the backyard for a month. When will these dopes learn that this is the best way to turn a dog into a killer. The parents were responsible for the dog being tied up. Their kid gets mangled. Sorry for the kid, but Darwin 1, dumbass parents 0.

PETA is protesting the chicken dance at a NASCAR event. If they were protesting it because of the sight of thousands of NASCAR fans doing the chicken dance, I'd be with them.

What the hell is a 52 year old doing stripping?

Janeane Garafalo is simply a nutjob. No link. I'm not driving this dope's name any more than that. I know it's misspelled, for the same reason.

Facebook is bad enough for mental diarrhea. Twitter is worse. Avoid it.

Another Rant againt Primates

Mrs Schwartz has had spiedies marinating since Thursday. Today is the day we are grilling them. Beer goes great with spiedies. I would like nothing more than to have a cold beer with my spiedies.
Unfortunately, this state is populated by unevolved bible thumping troglodytes, so we can't buy any beer to have with our spiedies, because that would make their sky-daddy angry. I can't believe these monkeys get the same vote I do.
I have become a single-issue voter. I would vote for Hitler if he promised to allow Sunday beer sales. I actually voted democrat last election, just to vote against that Prick, David Shafer.

Atlanta's Dogwood Festival

Exador's review? It sucked.

We had read in advance that they discouraged people from bringing their dogs to the dogwood festival. That made sense since the crowds are very dense. We've seen people trying to navigate their terrified dogs through that mess. We planned on having the Missus go into the crowds while I stayed a safe distance from them with the girls.
We get to the park's NE entrance, which is a bridge that goes over the dog park. As we enter the park, a guy with a security vest tells us that we can't even bring the dogs into the park, unless we are going to the dog park. We explain to him our plan for keeping the dogs away from the crowds. His response? "You'll get a ticket."
So I take the girls behind some of the display tents, on a shortcut to the dog park. Our new plan is that I stay at the dog park while Mrs Schwartz does a quick checkout of the arts, coming back to us in 20 minutes.
When she gets back to us, I point out to her that there are tons of dogs in the lower portion of the park, away from all the arts and crafts. I have to pee (badly) and there is always a line of port-a-johns at that edge of the park. We walk over there only to discover that the line of restrooms is not there. We put down our blanket a few yards from a woman who also has a dog.
I see a port-a-john in the distance and leave them to hike over to it. When I get there, I see that it is behind the stage, fenced in, with a sign that says "artists only". Great.
From my new vantage point, I quickly begin to realize that someone decided to cut costs this year by not bringing in port-a-johns. My quest has begun to try and find something. At one point, I see a single, permanent facility with a line out to 10th street. It's one of the million dollar boondoggles that have a stainless steel sliding door. I calculate that I will piss myself before I get to the front of that line. I start running scenarios involving how far I'd have to get into the surrounding neighborhood before I'll find a spot to pee.
Considering the police presence, and my fear of being put on a sex offenders registry, I try walking to the other side of the park, where I know there are a couple of permanent restrooms. About halfway there, I find two port-a-johns with a line of only about ten people. I find relief.
While walking back, I get a call from Mrs Schwartz. An Atlanta cop came up to her and told her that she had to leave the park because of the dogs. There was actually a sign between where she was and the arts and crafts, that said "No dogs beyond this point". She pointed the sign out to the cop and mentioned that she was not "beyond that point". He said he didn't care and she had to leave the park. At least he allowed her to remain until I returned.
So we walked back to the dog park. There is a path directly from the dog park to the edge of the bridge that passes over it. We walked up that path only to discover that they had erected a temporary chain link fence across the area. I lifted the Missus over the fence, then handed her the dogs, then squashed down the fence to get over it.
For my out of town readers, I'll point out that Piedmont park is in "The gay part of town". Gays have a lot of pets, including dogs, and a lot of disposable income. Maybe it's not a good revenue enhancer to keep away a demographic that will bring money to the festival.

After doing some research, I discovered that Atlanta has a city ordinance that says that no dogs are allowed at festivals of greater than 10,000 people. So that explains why the security guard has polite to Mrs Schwartz, while the AP officer was kind of a rude dick.

Well, one more reason for me to not go into Atlanta.

Green Belt

Oh yeah, while everybody was out teabagging, I took my green belt test. Now, I get to where a hakama, or as we say, a skirt.

Wow

How's that whole "Mouthpiece of the Government" Thing working out for ya, CNN?

Navy Recruiting Poster

In Honor of Tax Day

Everyone Should Pay Income Taxes
It's bad for our democracy to exempt half the country.

A very small number of taxpayers -- the 10% of the country that makes more than $92,400 a year -- pay 72.4% of the nation's income taxes.

Contrary to the myth that Mr. Bush cut taxes only for the wealthy, the 2001 tax cut reduced taxes for every income-tax payer in the country. He reduced the bottom tax rate to 10% from 15% and increased the refundable child tax credit to $1,000 from $500 per child, both cuts that President Barack Obama says we should keep. In so doing, millions of lower income taxpayers were removed from the tax rolls, shifting the remaining burden to those at the top, even after their taxes were cut.

According to the CBO, those who made less than $44,300 in 2001 -- 60% of the country -- paid a paltry 3.3% of all income taxes. By 2005, almost all of them were excused from paying any income tax. They paid less than 1% of the income tax burden.
All the while, this large group of voters made 25.8% of the nation's income.

For the bottom 40%, the redistribution deal is even better. In 2001, these 43 million Americans, who earn less than $30,500, made 13.5% of the nation's income but paid no income tax. Instead, they received checks from their taxpaying neighbors worth $16.3 billion. By 2005, those checks totaled $33.3 billion.

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Those of you who've read this blog from the beginning know that I'm in favor of at least a uniform tax rate. Sure, ideally, I think we should all pay the same dollar amount (for the same rights) but we don't have the prison structure to support that, so as a compromise, I'll concede to an equal percentage for everyone; no loopholes.

Perfect, right up until...

We had an absolutely great weekend. We drove to Birmingham to see Wicked again. The drive was great, the show was great. Just perfect.
Sunday, we had plenty of beer stocked, submitted the taxes, and I mowed the lawn with the freshly tuned-up lawnmower. The tuneup was easier than I thought and it runs like a dream now.
I had to practice aikido for an upcoming belt test. I've asked Mrs Schwartz to be my attacker, promising not to follow through on any of the techniques. To put it mildly, she has been hesitant. Yesterday, she came out to offer her help.
We made it through the first few techniques, then something happened.
All I did was pat down her hand and hold her hand and shoulder. Somehow, this pinched a nerve in her neck. She got a flash of pain through her eye socket (I know!), her hand went numb, and she couldn't move her neck.
Fortunately, most of that went away pretty quickly, but the poor thing is still suffering. She insists I hit her multiple times. At last check, she is still having trouble moving her neck.

Happy Zombie Jesus Weekend

Life is Good

I set aside last night to finish the roof repair. After I saw that it was still leaking, I couldn't pinpoint how the water was getting in. At that time, I added some more tar around some areas that I thought might help.
I assumed that I'd be spending hours of misery last night, only to discover that my earlier repair has apparently worked. No more leak.

I set aside this morning to finally do the taxes. Well, they're done. Because of MRS Schwartz barely working all year, we made little enough to be part of the poor, downtrodden poor. (Thanks, Obama!) While the rich are getting screwed, we are getting back a few grand.

Just one thing. So I OVERPAY my taxes in 2007, getting no interest money for floating Uncle Sam a loan; then the gubmint gives me the money back AND I get taxed AGAIN on that same money?! Quite a racket you got there.

Happy Zombie Jesus Weekend.

Just a Little Reminder