Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars

Slow Rehab From Broken Collar Bone

Big Joe is already back to riding his bicycle 35 miles a day. I'm still rehabbing from my broken collar bone. Can't really do yoga or weights. I can ride my bicycle. Range of motion is returning to my shoulder very slowly.

That's pretty much what my should looked like two months ago. I pulled this X-ray off the web.

Old farts heal slowly. Looks like it will be months before I'm completely recovered. Not being able to do yoga is really tough. Yoga is how I control my arthritis. I'm stiff and sore because I can't stretch.

I absolutely hate inactivity. But, looks like I've got to put up with it for a while.

Woodstock Drum Circle Moves to Wall Street

Below, a Michael Moore video, in which the moron calls for mob violence against the evil bastards on Wall Street. Check out the protesters. It’s the SSI crowd from Woodstock that gathers every week on the Green for a drum circle.

Nobody can quite figure out what these protests are all about. If the characters in the video are any indication, it’s about smoking dope and collecting “crazy money,” the Woodstock term for SSI.

Sure, Wall Street stole the taxpayers blind. But, they had a lot of help from both parties, from Fannie and Freddie Mae, Barney Frank… hell, you name it. Everybody was in on the mortgage, financial scam. You’ve got to read Steve Sailer’s coverage to understand what really went on.

No doubt about it… the taxpayers were left holding the bag. What are you gonna do about it? Vote for Obama? Obama’s holding a $1 billion campaign chest, courtesy of his friends on Wall Street.

Fart Pads… Blowing in the Wind

Subtle Butts will clean up your act. Here at last is the solution for old farts. Don’t gross people out. Line your undies with these disposable pads filled with activated charcoal, and you’ll spare the rest of us when you cut the cheese.

A five pack of Subtle Butts will cost you $11.95. Well worth the price.

I’m going to buy a pack for the Old Dogs. Somebody (or maybe more than one somebody) was letting go with the Silent But Deadly variety at our rehearsal this week. We rehearse in a very small room.

You can teach Old Dogs New Tricks!

Well... That Didn't Work

Those pictures from yesterday's posts aren't being pulled in from my Public folder in Dropbox. I haven't solved the file sharing in the cloud.

I read the documentation in Dropbox, and it appears that those folks have a much different definition of public than me. Public, in the Dropbox world, means visible to anybody who has a Dropbox account.

So, the pictures won't be visible until I have access to my desktop computer tomorrow. And, I've still got to figure out this cloud computing thing.

View from Above Ground Zero

The picture below was shot from my client's cafeteria window overlooking the construction site at Ground Zero. I'm excited about being here during the reconstruction.

The glass in the cafeteria reflected a bit, but you can still get a good idea of the panorama. I eat lunch here, right at the edge of the building. If you are subject to vertigo, probably best to avoid.

The picture below is a monument to victims of the 9/11 attack. All along the New Jersey Transit rail line, you'll find these monuments to the commuters who never returned home. Since I am approaching the seventh anniversary of Myrna's death, I understand the endless sorrow that the victims' families must endure.

If you read the previous post, you'll remember that I couldn't figure out how to correctly place a 1 pixel black border around pictures that I was calling in by URL. As you can see, that problem is now solved.

Solution... it's all in the html call. Add this bit to your call: "border:1 px solid black." That's all it takes.

Wall St. Means Lines

This very popular falafel stand in the Wall Street district attracts quite a line of customers for lunch. Lines and people jams are everywhere on Wall Street.

OK, you'll notice that the picture above is a little off. The frame isn't nicely centered. Posting to Typepad from my new iPad is not a simple process... because the Typepad cannot directly upload a picture from the iPad.

Editing and posting a picture from the iPad takes some round about logic. I've tried a few editing apps. For the moment, I'm using PhotoForge2, which cost me $2.99. When I edit pictures, I'm usually doing three things: cropping, setting brightness and contrast, and adding a 1 pixel black frame. So far, I can do everything except set my frame properly in PhotoForge2.

Uploading the picture into Typepad is a chore. Impossible to do directly, because iPad has no file structure to reference directly.

So, once I've edited the pic, I have to use a Dropbox app to upload the pic to cloud storage, then I have to reference the pic by URL to upload it to Typepad. You got that straight?

Yikes! Just discovered, after posting this, that Facebook does not pull in the picture by reference to URL. So, I'll have to post to Facebook separately. No more simply relying on Typepad to post to Facebook!

With a little practice, it will probably be easy. But, for now, it's a pain in the ass.

Sort of like walking anywhere on Wall Street. Crowds everywhere. I love 'em, because I'm a hick. I'm still amazed, all these years later, at how many people jam themselves into Manhattan.

Path Subway at Ground Zero

My new consulting job takes me right into the heart of Ground Zero every morning. I emerged from the PATH subway station right into the construction zone. The picture below is the new One World Trade Center.

Talk about a building with a target painted on it!

It’s a gas to be in the middle of all that action. But, I only get a few minutes of the hubbub before I walk into the office building for a day of sitting on my ass.

The construction site is massive. In the picture below, I count five cranes, including one suspended from the upper floors of one of the new buildings.

The site should have been rebuilt years ago, but haggling with the victims’ families dragged on and on.

I was on 14th Street and 9th Avenue, in my office at the publishing company on 9/11. What an astonishing experience it was to watch that plane aiming for and slamming into the south tower.  Like a scene from the Bible.

Security at the site is very tight. But, I think that sometime in the future another attack will be launched. As years pass, we drop our guard. The terrorists will employ a complete new tactic the next time. How long until we all fall asleep and feel like another attack is impossible. Five years? Ten Years? Fifteen Years? The Jihadis can wait.

I’ll be long gone from the scene by then… or so I think. Back in the saddle again. For as long as the job lasts.

Dude (Looks Like a Lady)… Nigerian Bank Fraud Hits Facebook

I wondered why a voluptuous young woman would be so eager to friend me on Facebook. What a picture she sent me! Discrete though. Took a while before she sent me the most intimate pictures.

When I finally bit and friended her, the sob story started. She had joined the Peace Corps, become stranded in Africa and was now desperately in need of help.

That’s when I realized that my buxom young friend was actually a black dude somewhere in Nigeria.

In the midst of our chat, I shut down the browser and, then shut down my computer lest my “girlfriend” start probing for passwords and credit card numbers. I’m keeping a very close watch on my bank account.

So, here’s a word of advice for you old geezers out there. Don’t get taken in by the Nigerian banking scam artists working Facebook.

The 9/11 Truthers Still Haven’t Given Up

Obama’s been president for three years. He has access to defense and intelligence records about 9/11. We know Obama enjoys blaming everything on President Bush. So, if Bush plotted 9/11, Obama would gleefully release the records proving it. Right?

And, yet, the Truthers haven’t given up.  They just held their annual film festival in San Francisco (where else?), demanding an “independent investigation.”  Yes, the festival is annual!

You can organize your life around Truther events. Film festivals, rallies, demonstrations, teach-ins… you name it!

Even Willie Nelson, God bless him, was a Truther as late as 2008! He planned to organize a Truther music benefit! I figure Willie’s a Democrat. Obama’s election probably cooled his Truther zeal.

Of course, the epic of the Truther movement is the Loose Change YouTube video. That’s still the ultimate “proof” for lots of folks. My favorite comment at that site:

Anyone who thinks those planes really brought down those 100+ story towers are dumb asses.

The producer of Loose Change, according to Wikipedia, … no longer believes the Bush administration orchestrated the attacks, he still thinks there was "considerable foreknowledge" that should have sufficed to prevent them. He has also stated that he is now ambivalent about the 9/11 Truth Movement and has had to "distance" himself from it.

That hasn’t stopped his followers from continuing to championing the Bush did it theory.

The Woodstock Times, of course, was an eager proponent of the Truther hysteria! And, yet, they continue to publish a newspaper. Apparently, they are incapable of embarrassment.

The Truther thing will probably be going on for another 30 years.

Back Into the War Zone at Ground Zero

While the rest of you are engrossed in nostalgia for 9/11, I’m getting ready to venture into the war zone for what I hope will be the last battle of my life… a contracting job in the heart of Ground Zero. I’m starting the gig this week.

I’m not only headed back to the battle zone, I’m venturing into the heart of the beast that was the mortgage, financial, derivatives scandal.

My friend, Peter, works for an outrageously rich corporate law firm. (I used to work there, too.) In good times, law firms thrive on mergers and acquisitions. In bad times, they thrive on bankruptcies.

Although my new client is not a law firm, something of the same dynamic is at play in my new contract. My job exists only because everybody on Wall Street screwed up so badly.  Well... that's a nice way of saying that the sharks on Wall Street ripped us all off!  During that same period when we were all supposed to be getting so sentimental and unified in the aftermath of 9/11!

I can’t really get into the specifics, and I’m only a bit player in the larger drama… but, I’m going to make some money in the cleanup and salvage phase of the financial catastrophe. Sort of like a huge, corporate version of profiting off Odd Lots.

So, it’s off to war!

My new client’s offices are right in the middle of Ground Zero. Step off the PATH station, and you’re right in the midst of the massive construction project. That part of the deal will be fascinating.

So, I’ll be spending most of my time in the city for the next six months or so. I’m hoping the gig stretches out for a few years. Who the hell knows? If I could get a couple of years out of the gig, I’ll be ready to throw in the towel.  Or, so I think.

I’ll be wearing out my new Ford Ranger, trekking up to play with the Old Dogs once a week.

Ain’t dead yet!