Beware of Scams!

As a service to my friends and loyal readers, I'd like to pass along a website that I have discovered quite by accident. If you have some spare time and not much spare change, so you're looking for ways to make some money working from home, be very, very careful. ALMOST every offer you see online is just a scam designed to make money for someone else. YOUR money. So look before you leap by subscribing to the free newsletter offer you will find at
http://www.mrworkathome.com/ The research has already been done for you, the scams identified, and recommended sites are listed for you to consider. So far I've been very happy with what I've learned here. If you use this site I would really appreciate your feedback here, good or bad.
It is possible to make money online, working from home in your underwear. Just don't fall for the millions in a month offers. It takes work and persistence and patience. Oh, and it might take months before you begin to see any success at all. After that, well, that is up to you. Most people either sign up for the wrong oportunities, or they quit just before the success window begins to open.

FAT TIRE is Coming to Georgia!!

In May 2009. If you don't know what that is, well, sorry 'bout that. Keep your eyes open.

Stay Tuned, loyal readers!

Last time I wrote, life was hectic, I was very busy, and frankly I could not make time in my life for my favorite hobby, writing. Thats not a good state to be in. But then the unthinkable happened and suddenly I had all the time in the world. My company invited me, and about 100 of my peers, to take early retirement. They invited me to fire myself, and they offered some nice incentives. Now this was just before the whole economic system fell off the edge. Things were slowing, there were some headline articles using the "R" word. Housing seemed to be the real problem. Greedy lenders, unsophisticated buyers, all riding the crest of a wave that had to break sooner or later. Well, all that has now happened, and we are learning that housing was just one of many shaky bits. We've learned just how special some high level management folks think they are, losing millions for their shareholders while pocketing millions in options and bonuses and other perks, and haughtily saying they "deserve" it all. Well, it seems to me that if you own a bit of my business and I run it into the ground, you are not going to be too eager to give me a bonus for losing your money. Am I just missing something here?

Enough of that. It's all been talked to death already, and there are no quick cures for what ails us now. We have not seen the bottom. We have nothing with which to compare this quagmire. So lets talk about something else. Something much more personal. I'm learning that as we age certain things are likely to happen. Among them is the likelihood that some things won't work quite like they used to, and some things will send us some very painful messages to let us know they are not working so well any longer. The doctors have a nice word for that. Neuropathy, nerve pain. I know. So I'm asking you to please stay tuned here, check in once in awhile, because I'm going to start telling you all about neuropathy and what you might be able to do to relieve some (or all) of your nerve pain, with the advice and consent and help of your doctor, of course. I don't believe in the shotgun approach to resolving illnesses as a general rule. But in my case, I'm throwing everything I have at this because frankly, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. I unexpectedly found myself retired, and in too much pain to even celebrate my new freedom. So I'm not really very patient with the idea of being a patient right now.

Either right here on this blog, or on a website or blog I will direct you too, I will provide some information about various therapies I am doing and affiliate links you can use to buy the devices I'm using. This is not intended to be medical advice. I am not qualified to do that. This is more in the nature of a personal testimonial concerning some severe nerve pain and how I am learning to deal with it. I urge you to make your doctor, naturopath, chiropractor, or who ever else you consult, your ally in dealing with this so that you can get on with enjoying your life.

As I began to experience these pains, I was clueless as to what was happening to me, who I should consult with, or how to simply get through the next night. Since it is more narrowly focused than I wanted this blog to be, I am leaning toward starting a new blog or creating a website just for nerve pain, with special concern for the baby boomers who have become loyal readers. I've enjoyed writing for many years, and I do appreciate the occasional e-mails some of you have sent. I hope to hear from more of you and more often, now that I have more time to read and reply. I hope to have this new site ready for you by the end of March, '09.

Stay Tuned!!

The Times They Are A-Changin'

I have left my post. I've abandoned my writing. I have grown tired.
All of these might have been suitable titles for this post, but the sad fact is that I have just been too busy and could never find both the time and energy to sit here and create. I will soon be retiring and perhaps I will find some time then, though to tell the truth, retirement looks even busier than working every day. There are things to repair that have been overlooked or ignored. There are things to paint that I have conveniently put off. There are bathrooms to upgrade. There is ALWAYS yardwork to be done.

Actually, I don't feel too bad about not posting anything here since August, because I appear to be the only one who ever visits this blog anyway. That's not a whiny complaint, just an observation. I haven't done much to encourage visitors or promote the site in any way. I write as an outlet, and because practice is important. I used to believe that practice makes perfect, but then I learned that nobody is perfect, so I quit practicing. But now I plan to find time to practice and if you have wandered back here again, I hope you will find something interesting to read. Even more important, I hope you will PLEASE leave a comment or at least say hello. Til then (December 19th) I won't try to write more.

Test Your Brain Age

How "old" is your brain? How alert are you? How well do you concentrate? How well do you recall? Here's a great little brain exercise. Use it often. In case you do not read Japanese, here are the instructions in English.

1. Touch 'start'
2. Wait for 3, 2, 1.
3. Memorize the numbers' positions on the screen,then
4. Click the circle from the smallest number to thebiggestnumber.
5. At the end of game, the computer will tell you how old your brain is. Just click the link.

http://flashfabrica.com/f_learning/brain/brain.html

Nostalgia

Here’s a bit of nostalgia for you. Young people today live in a totally different reality from the one you and I had a few decades ago. It’s not their fault they can’t relate, or ours!
Jack


Hey Dad," one of my kids asked the other day, "What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?"

"We didn't have fast food when I was growing up," I informed him. "All the food was slow."

"C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?"

"It was a place called 'at home,'" I explained. "Grandma cooked every day and when Grandpa got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it."

By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table. But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it:


Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore Levis, set foot on a golf course, traveled out of the country or had a credit card. In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears AND Roebuck. Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.

My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow). We didn't have a television in our house until I was 11, but my grandparents had one before that. It was, of course, black and white, but they bought a piece of colored plastic to cover the screen. The top third was blue, like the sky, and the bottom third was green, like grass. The middle third was red. It was perfect for programs that had scenes of fire trucks riding across someone's lawn on a sunny day. Some people had a lens taped to the front of the TV to make the picture look larger.

I was 13 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called "pizza pie." When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had.

We didn't have a car until I was 15. Before that, the only car in our family was my grandfather's Ford. He called it a "machine."



I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line.

Pizzas were not delivered to our home. But milk was.

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers. I delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which I got to keep 2 cents. I had to get up at 4 AM every morning. On Saturday, I had to collect the 42 cents from my customers. My favorite customers were the ones who gave me 50 cents and told me to keep the change. My least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. Touching someone else's tongue with yours was called French kissing and they didn't do that in movies. I don't know what they did in French movies. French movies were dirty and we weren't allowed to see them.

If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren.

Just don't blame me if they bust a gut laughing.



Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?



MEMORIES from a friend:

My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to "sprinkle" clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old.

This concludes the message I received today from a friend. I didn’t write any of it, but I certainly can relate to just about every line of it. Change is not of itself bad. But not all change is good either, is it?

I have a feeling that not too many of our grandchildren have ever actually used an iron…steam or otherwise. They will probably do ok without that experience.

Newer homes are being designed around the lifestyles of today’s families. There is no “dining room”, since most meals are taken in front of the TV. And driveways have to be wider to accommodate all the cars. Very few homes get by with just one TV, or even one computer. As for phones, soon everyone will have one blinking in their ear 24/7, maybe even implanted if we don’t soon come to our senses. And I just read a few weeks ago that BMW now has a car without a steering wheel. It is controlled by a joystick. So all the whiz kid game players will soon have a head start when it comes to driving skills. Scary thought, isn’t it?

Jack

Help Reduce Consumerism!!

(Whatever THAT means!)
Who can deny that those of us in North America tend to buy too much "stuff" we don't really need? Then we tire of it very quickly and go buy some more "stuff". George Carlin got a lot of laughs by pointing that out, but it is a sad situation really. Here's one very easy way you can help counter-balance this, and it is totally FREE. In your web browser type the words
freecycle network. Then join a group in your general area. I even found one in Victor Harbor, Australia (I have some friends there). Once you join, read the rules. Basically, everything you OFFER must be FREE. Before you can list something you WANT, you must OFFER something.
The site will be moderated. Instead of throwing away something you no longer want or need, offer it to someone else who might get some use out of it. It's very simple. I passed along a box of books and a few other items and I'm still looking for a few things we need, like an old (but working) sewing machine. Try it out. And then come back here and let us know what you think.