Via Drudge comes this story about Mexico displacing the United States as the world’s most obese nation. Damn. I reckon if the immigration bill passes we can reclaim our fat crown.
Sorry if I’ve let my country down. This week I broke the 240 barrier, weighing in at 239.5. That’s a sweet 39 pounds lost since February.
Onward and downward!
She’s certainly nothing like the centenarian I encountered recently.
http://youtu.be/YdxD1uhmvxQ
Via Althouse
This is a video I made documenting my last stay in the Land of the Morning Calm, October 2012-February 2013. I’m anxious to get back!
It was the best of times (mostly)
I’m trying to figure out how to operate my new fangled blog. Like putting up YouTube videos that show up as a video rather than a link. Did it work?
I was at least able to create a blog roll, something that had stopped working here years ago.
Update: Nope, no dice on the video. Hmmm.
Let’s try it this way:
Success!?
This pretty much sums up my political philosophy as it relates to the purpose and necessity of government.
It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve. – Henry George
Fresh off my battle with TWC, I’m ready to take on the USA.
I’ve spent a lifetime dealing with government agencies. When I was 16 I got my SSN from the SSA. At 18 I registered for the draft with the SSS. That was the year the draft ended, so I guess you could say I dodged that bullet. And of course, like everyone else I have an annual encounter with the IRS (and given my Tea Party sympathies, that relationship could potentially become more intense). Chances are this post is being read by some creep with the NSA. And don’t even get me started on the idiots at TSA.
At 21 I began my civil service career with the USPS. Twenty-four years later I moved to ED, then finished my career with DOD. I retired as the GS-15 Director of DHRM for USFK. Of course, the CPAC (a division of CHRA) screwed up my final pay, and I spent months fighting with DFAS to get that straightened out.
Upon retirement I purchased a house owned by HUD. They promised to pay for the stolen aircon unit, but at closing they reneged. Bastards.
My CSRS pension is administered through the OPM, and they’ve been a real nightmare to deal with. I sent my marriage certificate in three months ago to have my wife added to my BCBS health plan, and they still haven’t managed to take care of that. Meanwhile, Jee Yeun needs to see a doctor but she has no insurance. So, that means another phone call and being on hold for 45 minutes to speak to a bureaucrat who will likely be unsympathetic to my plight.
And of course for the past 19 months I’ve been dealing with the division of DHS that handles immigration, USCIS. It has become apparent that my big mistake was trying to play by the rules. Had I brought Jee Yeun into the country illegally things would have been a lot easier, and certainly less time consuming. Ah well, nothing to be done about that now.
I love my Uncle Sam. I just wish he’d stop fucking me in the ass. Is that too much to ask?
*format, font, and user interface have been upgraded. Actual content will remain weak and generally uninspired.
Bigger! Better! Badder! And once again featuring photos and videos (applications that over time had deteriorated and finally stopped working).
I believe the upgrades are almost complete. Still a couple of tweaks I want to incorporate, but I’m generally happy with the new appearance. I like that the blog is actually bigger and that the font size makes for easier reading. Also, I no longer have to manually resize photos prior to uploading. Photographs now post as thumbnails which can be expanded to full size with a simple mouse click. I also like the captioning feature.
So, easier for me to post, easier for you to read and respond.
Let me add my thanks to Alex at WordPress Customization Service for his most excellent assistance.
Welcome to my new home!
Just back from a weekend at Sunset Beach in North Carolina. We “roughed it”, staying in a one room log cabin. We had power and AC, but no indoor plumbing. It was a trek to the community restroom, although truth be told once the sun went down I peed where I pleased.
On the front porch
The small but functional inside. Jee Yeun brought along luxuries like a coffee maker and of course her rice cooker….
Spent Saturday on the beach with my Korea buddy Duke Gates and family…
whenever I go to the ocean I’m reminded of those long ago days of youthful indiscretion. Like the time my buddies and I went down to Mexico, got drunk, and ran over a Mexican weatherman. How do I know he was a weatherman? When he stood up he shook his fist and yelled “sunny beaches!” Bada bing.
Anyway, it was a good time sitting around the campfire, drinking beer, and shooting the bull.
All across this great nation the citizenry are in a celebratory mood. Folks will be gathering with friends and family, there will be cookouts, music, parades, and of course fireworks. These festivities bring the American people together to honor the anniversary of a significant historical event.
That’s right, today marks the birth of Jee Yeun Lee! Hey, I understand the USA is also celebrating a birthday. Kudos to you too!
On the menu at this Kor-Am household: Barbeque spare ribs, hamburgers, corn-on-the-cob, shrimp, baked beans, cole slaw, kimchi, garlic bread, watermelon, banana pudding and birthday cake.
Joining us in the fun will be my son, daughter-in-law, granddaughter, and a couple of friends from Atlanta.
To set the mood, let’s give Jee Yeun’s special birthday song a listen.
Although realistically, it is more of a armistice. I previously wrote about my war with Time Warner Cable (TWC) here and here. This morning I got a call from the “office of the president” at TWC. “Joey” explained that TWC’s mistake had been in telling me I had a refund due, when if fact I owed $12.82 for service from May 24 to my cancellation on June 3. I still don’t agree, because you pay for service a month in advance and I had made a payment on May 10.
Anyway, “Joey” apologized for abuse I had taken from the rude customer service rep I had initially spoken with. He said TWC was willing to waive the $30. service fee for a returned billing and the $12.82 “owed” for a partial month’s service. I responded that I was never trying to get out of paying any legitimate debt. In fact, I had offered to pay the $12.82 from the beginning, but not the service fee. “Joey” insisted that TWC wanted to dispense with the full amount in recognition of the hassle I had encountered. So, I accepted.
Bottom line, I don’t get the $35.12 I think I’m owed, and TWC doesn’t get their $42.82. It’s sorta like redrawing the border at the 35th parallel after three years of bitter fighting I suppose, but sometimes in a war you take what you can get and stop the bloodshed.
I take some satisfaction in knowing that TWC is most likely sorry they ever fucked with me. Sometimes being a pain in the ass is the only way to get the attention of a bureaucracy, be it corporate or government. Besides, I’ve got bigger fish to fry if I have to wait much longer on Jee Yeun’s green card.
My yobo said she wanted English lessons for her birthday. Her English is certainly good enough to get her by, but she feels like she misses out on a lot of the conversation when a group of us native speakers are talking. Also, some folks don’t always understand her, especially upon first meeting. She has a pretty strong accent that takes some getting used to I suppose. Anyway, she is motivated to improve her vocabulary and pronunciation and works every day with an old high school textbook from Korea. We both agree that some focused study with an experienced tutor will help her develop her English language skills much more quickly and effectively.
So, I wasn’t exactly sure where or how to start my quest for a tutor. I wrote to a friend who is in the business up Virginia way and he advised that finding someone local would be more beneficial than attempting lessons via Skype, especially for working on pronunciation. This being the 21st century and all, I decided to see what I could on Craigslist. There really wasn’t a lot. Most of the folks listed were looking to work with school age children on academic subjects. I finally reached an ad that was a couple of weeks old that at least mentioned helping non-native speakers with English. So, I sent an email and was pleasantly surprised when I got an almost immediate response.
Even better, the person who responded (Stephanie) is a kyopo who taught English at Samsung in Seoul before returning to the states three years ago. Also, she lives only about ten minutes away. I had Jee Yeun give her a call and they had a nice chat–in Korean. Stephanie came by the house and took Jee Yeun out for coffee and from all reports they hit it off quite well. The plan is lessons twice a week on Monday and Wednesday afternoons. What are the odds that the first (and only) ad I responded to would be such an apparently perfect fit? I’d call that kismet.
The other reason I’m smiling this morning is that the scale has been kind to me. Down three pounds this week which puts me at 243. And it appears that I’m finally making some progress on my middle. My girth measurement is 45″, down 1 1/2″ from last week. I’ve also had two people I see infrequently comment on my weight loss, a particularly satisfying measurement of progress.
So, twenty weeks into the LCHF diet plan (with a little treadmill on the side) I can report a 35.5 pound overall weight loss and a 6 1/2 inch reduction in the midsection. That’s the way I like it!
Onward and downward! Uh huh uh huh.
As mentioned in the previous post, I’ve been despairing about the fate of my blogging history. In an act of desperation I contacted the former owner of my current blog host, Lisa Sabin-Wilson and asked if she could assist. This morning I received an email from someone at Blogs-About, I told him what I needed (the Cpanel login and password) and within the hour I had the info I’ve been seeking for weeks.
Anyway, I really appreciate that Ms. Sabin-Wilson took some time to help me out with this. What a relief.
Of course, I won’t rest easy until everything has transferred over to my new host (HostGator, who have also been great) and the WordPress update has been completed.
I can’t promise bigger and better blogging than ever before, but at least I’ll be able to post photos again. So there’s that.
The effort to update my blog has failed. It seems I need a Cpanel access login to move data from the servers of my current blog host, Blogs-About. Blogs-About has been totally unresponsive to my repeated requests for assistance. I gave their website some close scrutiny today and discovered nothing has been updated there since 2010.
I did an internet search of Blogs-About’s founder and noted that she is with a new company. I emailed her and asked what the heck was going on with Blogs-About. Hopefully she’ll respond.
In the meantime, I am faced with the prospect of losing everything I have written these past 9 years. Which means nothing to anyone but me I suppose. It makes me sick to my stomach though.
We’ll see what happens.
…carbs. Carbohydrates that is.
It’s nice to see the science behind my cravings. And all this time I thought I just liked the things that made me fat. All in all I’m pretty happy with my overall success in resisting the foods I dearly love to eat. Certain aisles in the grocery store still cause me pain, but that’s the price of addiction I suppose.
I stood at the oche tonight and reviewed my mechanics–my grip is properly balanced on the dart, my stance is stable and balanced, my cock and release is fluid. Yeah, my follow through is bizarre looking, but I don’t think that really has a significant impact on my accuracy. And yes, I need to work on more consistency in my release point, but who doesn’t?
I’m working on the math and it’s coming along. But the math didn’t cost me any games this time around. (well, maybe I could have thrown for additional points in a cricket game, but that wasn’t math, that was a choice. When I’m holding the winning dart in hand I’ve got to go for it. That’s just me.)
Here’s hoping for better results in Charlotte!
Back from a weekend of darting in Winston-Salem, NC. I played pretty well overall, just not well enough to, you know, actually win. The worst part was being on the cusp of victory only to throw it away (no pun intended) with a couple of poorly thrown darts. Ah well, still not ready for prime time I guess.
On the drive home got caught in a massive traffic jam caused by a six car chain reaction pile up on I-85. It happened a mile or two up the road from me, but two ambulances, two fire trucks, and a state trooper vehicle kept both lanes bottlenecked for quite awhile. The accident occurred in the left lane and it doesn’t take an accident investigator (although technically I was trained as an accident investigator back in my USPS days) to figure out what happened–driving 70 plus miles per hour right on the ass of the car in front of you. Someone taps the breaks and all hell breaks loose. Idiots.
My final frustration was weighing in and finding I achieved no weight loss this week. My own fault really. Had the grand kids most of the week and that kept me off the treadmill (yeah, it was ALL their fault!). There was a Wendy’s next door to our hotel in Winston-Salem and I found it impossible to resist those soft ice cream waffle cones. I had two. I guess I should be glad I didn’t gain weight. So, holding steady at 246 (down 32.5 pounds overall). Girth also was unchanged at 46.5 inches, down 5″ since February.
Onward and downward.
“You can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog.”
The New York Times is shocked, shocked I tell ya, that every single Buddhist in the world is not temperamentally exactly like the Dalai Lama. They must have missed stories like this.
I obviously do not approve of these tactics, no matter who the perpetrator. Still, it is quite fascinating to see radicalized Buddhists utilize the same methods that radicalized Muslims have been employing against Christians and Jews for centuries. Dare I say it? This Crusade is quite the Revelation. Ahem.
Today I escalated my battle with Time Warner Cable (TWC) by crafting three sternly worded letters. The first missive was a long tirade detailing how I’d been wronged and my three unsuccessful attempts to resolve what should have been a simple correction by telephone. I included the documentation that I had previously paid through June 24 so the June 7 billing (3 days after cancellation) was completely bogus.
My second letter was to the CEO of TWC (with a copy of the correspondence mentioned above) noting that I had cancelled my service because TWC was no longer competitively priced. I noted that high prices and poor customer service was a deadly combination, especially given the competitive market they serve.
The third epistle was sent to the South Carolina Department of Consumer Affairs. In this one I essentially allege that TWC is engaging in fraudulent business practices. I came to this conclusion based on the fact that TWC knows or should know that may account was paid in full at the time of my cancellation (indeed, I was owed a refund). That they billed me for July anyway I could attribute to a mistake or miscommunication except for the fact that they steadfastly refuse to make it right. Engaging in threats (reporting an uncollected debt to the credit bureau) in an attempt to coerce me into paying a money I don’t owe and they know I don’t owe is just plain wrong.
Do I think this flurry of letter writing will make a difference? Well yeah, I think they will eventually pay me what they owe if for no other reason than to shut me up. I doubt the CEO will give a flip, but I think at a minimum the consumer has an obligation to let the big shots know their people are screwing up. As for Consumer Affairs, I expect they will handle this matter in typical government fashion–nothing will be done.
To be sure, the amount of time I have invested in this matter is worth far more to me than the $42.82 TWC is trying to steal from me. But as a matter of principle I refuse to be cowed.
In other news, I’m advised my blog should be updated, upgraded, and uploaded after a week of upheaval. So far, I can still access the site and post. I’m assured it is all going to be seamless. My domain name will remain the same and all my history will be moved to the new blog host with nothing lost in transition. Here’s hoping.
Oh, and I really want to give a shout out to Host Gator. Once I’d signed up with them I was assigned to my own personal account rep. She sent me a very informative welcome email and then actually called me to introduce herself and offer any assistance I might require. Take note TWC, that’s the way to treat customers!
You’ve been with me from the beginning of Long Time Gone. But when I reached out to you in my hour of need, you turned your back and ignored my repeated pleas for assistance. I suppose it’s the age old story of one outgrowing the other in a relationship. I may be just another small fry to you, but damn I was loyal.
So, it is with some sadness and regret I say goodbye to you forever. There’s a new blog host in my life now, Host Gator, who’s catchy little motto is “we eat up the competition.” Blogs About, consider yourself devoured.
Not sure how long the transition will take, but have no fear, should LTG disappear for a couple of days, I will be back bigger and better than ever before. Kinda like a bad dream.
I had a great day yesterday throwing darts in the ASS. Aiken Singles Series Dart League finals that is. The top six finishers in league play met at the VFW in Aiken, SC to determine a champion and your humble blog host was among them. The format was a round robin (each of the six played each other 3 games of 501) and then the top 4 finishers would advance to the championship round. I took 9 of 15 legs in the semis which was good enough to move on.
In the championship round each player faced off in full 9 game matches–a total of 27 games each–and the top two finishers would earn some dough. I went 4-5 against my first opponent, 3-6 against my second, but finished 7-2 against the third. And through the wonder of mathematics (the guy who beat me 6-3 lost to the guy I beat by a wider margin) that was good enough for the second place prize, a cool $100.00.
If you are keeping score that was 42 games of darts. We started at 1:30 and finished at 8:30. At the end it was more about endurance than skill. And I know folks joke about the athletic qualities of darters; but standing, walking, throwing, and intensely competing over such an extended period of time is both physically and mentally demanding and quite exhausting. Plus, I’m old and fat.
But not as fat as I once was! 18 weeks into the LCHF diet plan I’ve surpassed the halfway point in reaching my goal of losing 60 pounds. The previous couple of weeks I seemed to have flatlined, so I began walking the treadmill to get the weight loss jump started again. The payoff was a drop this week from 251 pounds to 246! That makes a net loss 32.5 since February 19. Color me pleased about that. I also managed to whittle away some of my stubborn girth, cutting my middle down to 46.5″, 5″ smaller than I was when I started the diet. My jeans are definitely riding higher these days!
Onward and downward.