My Fuzzy Friends

Growing up, I cannot remember ever not having a dog. I just always had one. My first dog was named "Penny". She was a Chihuahua mix. I don't remember much about her as she was hit by a car when I was four years old. I had another dog that looked just like her not long after that and we named her "Gypsy". She never was spayed and soon I had three more dogs. This thing of always having a family dog continued until I married and moved away. We never could get a cat to stay with us. I think that it must have been the dogs or something. At this point, I really didn't like cats all that much anyway. In high school I had a Pointer mix named "Ben". Now Ben was a cool dog. All of my dogs before this had been gun shy. Every now and then, we would go rabbit hunting or quail hunting. Ben wasn't too good at the rabbit hunting thing, but neither was I. However, he was a wonderful bird dog. He would point, and then flush out the birds. If it flew, I could drop it. I was always was a good shot with a flying object. I have yet to get a rabbit. :) After Ben died, my mom got a lap dog that she had at the time I was married.

After I got married, we were able to have cats. My wife had been a cat person all of her life. She had dogs as well, but she really loved cats. One cat led to four cats, and four cats led to twelve. That's when I said, "We have to get a dog." I knew, or thought I did, that dogs would make the cats uncomfortable. Perhaps, they would even run away. I know... I'm awful. So we went to the animal shelter and got a dog, a beautiful German Shepherd. Now he wasn't too happy to be there with us and he broke loose from his chain. Well, that was the last I ever saw of him. I looked for two weeks before I finally gave up. About a year later, we get this Lab/Chow mix that looked like a Lab, but was solid gray with a black tongue. This dog loved me. Finally, everything was going to work out. Two months later, someone stole her. We lived in the city at that time and we were in kind of a rough neighborhood. A neighbor saw her get stolen. Turns out it was the neighbor that stole her. They either sold her or gave her away to someone else they knew. For some reason, I could not keep a dog. I think it must have been the cats or something. Turns out, that the cats we had carried Feline Leukemia, and I lost them one by one. This was when I learned to be a cat person as well as a dog person. I hate to see anything suffer, and watching them get put down just broke my heart.

Now after twenty three years, we have five cats. They too tested positive for Feline Leukemia, so we have to keep them away from other cats that may be around. We take care of them the best that we can. We have lost many cats recently, one by one. I have long since learned to love cats. Eventually, we will lose all of them, and because they are all spayed or neutered, they can't reproduce. They all have trouble with any virus or infection. I may try to get another dog in a few years. After all of them are gone, of course. I don't want them to feel replaced in the time they have left. Perhaps another cat. Maybe even one of each. All of my former pets come to my mind as I write this. I don't know why I love these creatures as I do, but I do. I don't know if there will be animals in heaven, but I really think it would be neat if all of my old pets were up there waiting for me. I would really love to see them again. Yeah, that would be neat.

Hay Fever

Have you ever known someone that had bad allergies?  I mean, they would have an allergic reaction to the point that it was really a serious matter?  I am that way with hay fever.  It isn't a life or death situation like say, being allergic to peanuts or bee stings.  However, I have hay fever to a point to where I have flu like symptoms.  It is a lot like having the flu.  It only keeps me down for about a week though.  I had it worse when I was young, but now it is coming back like it did then.  I was working out in the yard Saturday and it was really nice out there.  I did not even think about the pollen count here.  Turns out, tree pollen count was very high, and last night, I lost my voice.  My nose resembles a malformed strawberry.  Now I have trouble sharing my words of wisdom with my wife. :) I bet she is devastated! :)

I take a new medicine for my Arthritis, and it is designed to weaken my immune system.  It works!  My immune system is what attacks my joints.  My arthritis is much better as of late, but my hay fever has gotten much worse this year as a result.  Benadryl helps, but doesn't do it all, and I get very sleepy as a result.  Other medicines haven't proved successful at treating the hay fever for me.  Cortisone may help, but I had to take Prednisone for 3 years.  I don't want to go down that path again.  I suppose I'm sharing this because I am seeking more information on the treatment of hay fever.  I thought that you guys might be able to point to some things that I haven't thought of yet.  Contact info is on my profile, or you can comment.  Whatever you prefer.  Gonna go now and talk with my wife about....Oh! That's right. I can't talk.

Gardening and Pests

I just love this time of year! When winter breaks, I get outside with my pruners and garden tools and just have a good old time! I like to see the leaves return to the trees and the feel of the warm sun. I enjoy tilling up the ground and I love the smell of freshly turned soil. Perhaps, I would have made a fair farmer. I always keep my shirt on when I am outside, unlike when I used to live on the farm, because I try to be modest in public. I also want to keep the Shamu jokes down to a minimum. ;)


I have lived where I am now for about 5 years and it has been a real chore trying to garden. The plots where the houses are built were bulldozed to clear trees and the topsoil was taken as a result. Getting red clay to do what you want it to do is not the easiest thing in the world. Every time I see a tree service working on a yard nearby, I roll down my window and ask where they will be taking the mulch. Most companies have to pay to take it to the landfill, so they are glad just to come a few miles and drop it off at my house. I let it sit until the next season while it composts. My neighbors love me! :)


The only thing that I don't like about the area that I garden is the pests. Deer tend to like roses and I have to surround them with plants that deer don't like. Another problem is black widow spiders. I have gardened all of my life and I never recall seeing a place with the number of black widows around here. The other day I took one of the roses that I had rooted from a cutting out of the pot. This black widow came running across my hand but didn't stop to take a bite. I can't get away with not using gloves from here on out. Really bad what black widows can do to you. You can only take the anti-venom once in your life, or so I am told. I was also told that copperheads were really numerous in this area before all of the houses were built. I don't like snakes. So I keep a really sharp lookout for copperheads and cottonmouths. They are the only poisonous snakes that we have around here. They are on my mind when I mow for the most part.

Anyway, I plan to make use of some pretty unorthodox gardening techniques this year to keep me out of the brush as much as possible. I hopefully will have something to share if it is successful. The first flush of roses should start in about a week or so. Most of them are pretty small right now, but I hope to post some pictures when they start. Until then, sleep tight! Don't let the spiders bite!

The Job Hunt

I am going to share something personal today. At present, I have been unemployed just a little over two months now. This job hunting thing really stinks! I live in an area that has an 11.5% unemployment rate, and I am not the youngest or brightest person in the job market. I am, however, resourceful enough to know what strengths I possess. I have long since settled down and am not ever late for work or bad about being absent. Still, it is tough to go out there day after day and look for work and get rejection after rejection. A demoralizing process at best.

I used to work in the weave room of a textile mill. It was what my father did before me, and what my brother did as well. One out of every four people in South Carolina was directly employed or received their support from textiles in the early 1970's. I worked at this type of job from the time I was 16 years old until I was 40 years old. Not many textile mills around now folks. Most of those jobs have long since been exported. I did finally find a job after age 40 as an electroplater for a company in the packaging industry. Electroplating was neat work! I got to work with chemicals, perform analysis, and it sure was interesting to see steel turn to copper right before your eyes! It was great fun right up until the company I worked for closed. Still I am sure there is the "perfect job" out there for me. Not being facetious here, I really mean that! If I keep looking and hold fast to my faith, I really believe things will be all right. I think it is more of an issue of timing than anything else at the moment.

I hope this hasn't turned into a downer kind of post. It just happens to be on my mind at the moment. The work that I have done in the past is wonderful to remember, but it is a memory. Lots of work to yet be done! There is pavement to pound and contacts to be made. Never let it be said of me that I did not try. Whatever life throws at us can be overcome. I believe that with all of my heart. I just happen to wear that heart on my sleeve today. You would never have believed that I read Othello, would you? :)

A Few Questions

You know, some things in life just puzzle me. I am a very easily puzzled person.:) It is like there is some kind of inside joke that the whole world is in on except me. I don't always understand the reasoning behind the things that people do or say. Sometimes I wonder why certain things are. For example:

Why does the car that passes you on the road suddenly see the need to turn off onto another road, forcing you to slow down? Or worse yet, why do they slow down to less than you were going originally? Why do other drivers see the need to tailgate just as you are getting to where you need to make a turn?

Why do companies sell shirts, caps, and shoes to you with their name and logo and force you to advertise for them? Should we not get some sort of discount or royalty or something?

Why does it start to rain just after I have washed my car? Why didn't I check the weather beforehand?

How do sardines swim into the cans in such a neat orderly fashion? If a loaf of bread is green on St. Patrick's Day, is it just feeling festive?

Why don't the cats clean their own litter box? Could it be lack of education? Are they just lazy?

Why will a doctor or dentist chastise you for something concerning your health and charge you money to fuss at you? If doctors and dentists were truly good at their jobs, shouldn't their parking lots be empty?

Why is chocolate not considered a vitamin? Does it not deserve a food group of it's own?

These are the questions of life. Perhaps they are just the questions of one that should get a life.:) Two things are certain, however. I don't have all the answers, and I have way too much time on my hands.

The Redneck Geek Recommends...

From time to time, I like to work with computers. I am talking about actually taking them apart, and tweaking them out like some geek hotrod. We have 4 of them at the house right now. Well, actually we have 7 but I don’t count the ones not in use. I have 2 dead blueberry iMacs with OS9. An older Gateway with Windows XP, and 4 Compaqs. I used to really love the Macs. It just got to be too much of a price tag for me. However, Apple has the most intuative and elegant operating system of all. I don't work on computers for money, I do it because I want to. I’ve always tried to keep from turning my hobby into a job because I think that I will begin to dislike doing it. However, I may have to rethink this soon. You would never know it from looking at this page, but I used to use Dreamweaver and hand code html when I used a Mac. I designed quite a few web pages for people and churches. Just not that much into it these days. My daughter has far surpassed my abilities with web design and css.

I recently bought my wife and and my daughter a computer of their own. My daughter is 17 years old and I was hoping that she would be able to use it when she goes to college. My wife’s computer was bought so that she could have a place to keep her documents and recipes while checking her email from time to time. She gets a ponderous amount of email. Enough that it would drive me crazy. I got them a laptop of their own because I love them. Besides, it keeps them off of my computer. :) I have a laptop that I use with Vista on it and I have this “Linux Box” that I had to reformat this week. Cheap computers are the only ones that I buy. You can do what you want here, but I get inside the guts of all makes and models. Some of the hardware is better in some of the premium models, but not always! At this point in time I only require a dual core processor, good power supply (the most important part!), and a gig or two of ram.

Now for software, I do not use Internet Explorer unless some web page makes me. I use Firefox on all of my computers. It is just safer. Firefox is default on any operating system I use. I use Opera as my feed reader, because l think it has an elegant interface. Email clients tend to be too buggy for me so I just stick with web based email. My preference for operating systems is Linux. Linux is a free (most cases, not all) operating system that is really nice. There are several hundred distributions of Linux. It costs nothing except a little learning curve and works very well and fast. I don’t recommend Linux of any kind if you use dial up. It is a lot of aggravation to get working with a dial up modem. The only reason I use Windows at all is that some of my hardware is not compatible with Linux. Now with a broadband connection, Linux is a great OS! Best part of all is that Linux doesn’t need any security software. Companies do make it, but that is to detect Windows malware that may have been picked up. Windows based spyware and viruses do not affect Linux. It has no native viruses that I am aware of and I have been using it for several years now. You can even run it from a live CD to give it a test drive. I know that Ubuntu will send you a CD free for the asking. I will talk more about security software that I use for Windows later.

With the information that I have given here, and a dollar bill, you may be able to get a cup of coffee. If this information is useful to to you...then I think that's great! If not, well, I'll try harder next time around. This may be all you want to know about computers from a redneck with a thick southern drawl. :) Happy computin' y'all!

Fear

 My wife was the editor of her college newspaper and she was a newspaper reporter shortly after we married. She is an amazing writer when she has the time and opportunity. She is a very gifted and intelligent woman. I only say this because I am trying to lay the groundwork for how articulate, intelligent and wonderful she is. She can face almost any crisis situation with much more control and resolve than I can. The only exception to this is when she knows that she has to go to the dentists office.

A few months ago I noticed that she looked to be in pain when she bit down on something. She did go to a dentist and he said that there was some infection and she could either have the tooth extracted or try and have a root canal.  He said the root canal would be no guarantee of saving the tooth and it may have to come out anyway. At any rate, she had to take care of the infection first. Well, she took the antibiotic and never went back to the dentist. I would ask her about it and she didn't really want to talk about it. "I'll take care of it when I'm ready." That was the best answer I got. Some of her siblings also have this pathological fear of dentists. I am not really sure as to why.  Last week I told her to call the dentist and set up an appointment. "I really didn't like that dentist. He had an attitude." That is what I got this time. Folks, I consider myself a patient person, but this was getting ridiculous.  Finally we set up an appointment with another dentist and everything is set. Now I went with her to this appointment for fear that she would put it off like the last time. Or worse, skip out on the appointment all together. Long story short, everything went well and the offending tooth is now gone. :) Truly, I am proud of my wife for facing this fear.

This experience has made me wonder why we are so captive to a phobia of any kind.  In most cases that thing or act that we are so afraid of never comes to pass.  If it does, it can usually be dealt with head on and resolved.  I used to be afraid to ask girls out directly for fear of rejection.  I wish I had that one to do over. :) These fears keep us from living our life to the fullest.  Am I alone in this or do we all have these things that scare and intimidate us?  I suppose the biggest fear that I have is to not try because I was afraid. That would surely be the biggest tragedy of all.