This is a repost of one that I originally posted in March 2010 but is one that should be redone periodically and I thought has some relevance today.  An interesting postscript is that both Jefferson and John Adams died on July 4, 1826.

“It has been said the greatest volume of sheer brainpower in one place occurred when Jefferson dined alone...” John Kennedy

HOW DID JEFFERSON KNOW??????
When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.
Thomas Jefferson

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
Thomas Jefferson

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.
Thomas Jefferson

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
Thomas Jefferson

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
Thomas Jefferson

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
Thomas Jefferson

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
Thomas Jefferson

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Thomas Jefferson

To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:
‘I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered..’

Quickie #1 One day, Bob came got home from work, and was greeted at the door by his wife who was dressed in a very sexy nightie. “Tie me up,” she purred, “and you can do anything you want.” So he tied her up, and went fishing.

Quickie #2 A woman came home, screeching! her car into the driveway, and ran into the house. She slammed the door, and shouted at the top of her lungs, “Honey, pack your bags. I won the lottery!” The husband said, “Oh, my God! What should I pack, beach stuff or mountain stuff?” “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Just get out.”

Quickie # 3 Marriage is a relationship in which one person is always right, and the other person is a husband.

Quickie #4 A recent Polish immigrant went to the DMV to apply for a driver’s license. First, of course, he had to take an eye test. The optician showed him a card with the letters: ‘C Z W I X N O S T A Z.’ “Can you read this?” the optician asked. “Read it?” the Polish guy replied. “I know the guy.”

Quickie #5 Mother Superior called all the nuns together and said to them, “I must tell you all something. We have a case of gonorrhea in the convent.” “Thank God,” said an elderly nun at the back of the room. “I’m so tired of chardonnay.”

Quickie #6 A wife was making a breakfast of fried eggs for her husband. Suddenly, her husband burst into the kitchen. “Careful,” he said, “CAREFUL! Put in some more butter! Oh my GOD! You’re cooking too many at once. TOO MANY! Turn them! TURN THEM NOW! We need more butter. Oh my GOD! WHERE are we going to get MORE BUTTER? They’re going to STICK! Careful…CAREFUL! Oh, I said be CAREFUL! You NEVER listen to me when you’re cooking! Never! Turn them! Hurry up! Are you CRAZY? Have you LOST your mind? Don’t forget to salt them. You know you always forget to salt them. Use the salt. USE THE SALT! THE SALT!!! THE SALT!!!” The wife stared at him. “What in the world is wrong with you? You think I don’t know how to fry a couple of eggs?” The husband calmly replied, “I wanted to show you what it feels like when I’m driving.”

Quickie #7 Fifty years ago, Fred , a Michigan mountain man, was drafted by the Army. On his first day in basic training, the Army issued him a comb. That afternoon, the Army barber sheared off all his hair. On his second day, the Army issued Herman a toothbrush. That afternoon the Army dentist yanked seven of his teeth. On the third day, the Army issued him a jock strap. The Army has been looking for Fred ever since.

This morning here in Minnesota I had the view now in my Blog header.  Do not often get the perfect mirror image of the shoreline on the lake.  A broader view is below.

The way Best Buy handled the situation with Dick Schulze this past week reminded me of a cartoon that I saw a few years ago.  In the depiction we see a young man behind a huge desk in an opulent office.  Standing in front of the desk is an old woman in ragged clothes. The caption reads; “I know mother but what have you done for me lately!”.

Neither rain nor snow nor dark of night – we have all heard that about our beloved Post Office.  But, and it is a big BUT, times and circumstances have changed.  The Post Office continues to see a decline in mail volume and everything we can see suggests that this trend will continue.  Earlier this year the Post Office recognizing this trend proposed closing about 250 sorting operations and over 3,000 small post offices and stopping Saturday deliver.  What happened?  Congress said no to these options and is working on an option to give the Post Office some $34 billion to keep operating inefficiently.  WOW how about that for cutting unnecessary federal spending?

As I think about this one question comes to mind, why are we only considering cutting Saturday deliver and why are we doing six day per week residential delivery? During the summer when we are in Minnesota we get our mail once a week. The Arizona Post Office accumulates our mail and each Wednesday sends a Priority Mail package to us in Minnesota.  This is a premium service, meaning that we pay for it, offered by the Post Office as an alternative to standard forwarding or providing change-of-address notices for our periodicals and other mail twice a year.  What we have found is that getting our mail once a week works just fine.  So if once a week can work maybe we could look at only delivering residential mail two or three times a week.  Just think about it either way it would be possible to cut something like half or more of the post office staff!  Let’s face it we, at least most of us, have migrated a lot of our correspondence from the “Snail Mail” to some form of electronic delivery resulting in the above mentioned decline in mail volume.  In all probability the volume of mail will continue to drop for the foreseeable future.  Now if your volume is dropping you only have a couple of options.  Either raise the price such that you cover your costs or cut your expenses.  In this case raising the price would in all probability exacerbate the decline in mail volume and chasing that would be a death spiral – that is if you were a regular business.

Now I understand that cutting the staff is not the top of the list for the postal unions – they vehemently  objected to the rather minor cuts in the earlier reference proposal – but as the Post Office is a labor intensive operation that is the best, and probably the only way, to make  a substantive impact on costs. But back to my point – why can’t we move to maybe twice a week residential mail delivery? Probably not something that could be accomplished in one step but why not start with something?  Maybe we start with four days a week and reduce to three in a couple of years and then to two in a couple more years.  In any event we should do something except provide more funding to allow a failed business model to continue. Any other ideas out there – let me know.

As one drives a substantial distance across our United States – our trip was something over 1,700 miles in 2 1/2 days – one observes things that range from the ordinary to the bizarre.  The drive from the Phoenix area to Payson AZ is beautiful.  Huge vistas, deep canyons and amazing rock formations.  Once we reach Holbrook AZ we hit the interstate system and usually stay on the freeway.  For instance, typically we take Interstate 80 through Omaha and pickup Interstate 29 North but because of the problems with I 29 last year we decided to take US 83 out of North Platt up to Interstate 90 in South Dakota.  What a contrast with the drive from Phoenix to Payson. Driving about 120 miles through the Nebraska sand hills there was one small town and a few ranches but nothing else – grazing cattle and mile after mile of rolling sand hills, some covered with grasses other showing large patches of sand. Contrasting such a huge area with little or no habitation to the congested areas of our country leaves one with the questions – What are we missing?  It makes going from the sublime to the ridiculous seem insignificant. Sitting in a traffic jam that is miles long contrasted with going miles and not seeing another vehicle or human being.  You may have thought that windmills pumping water were a thing of the past. Maybe in most places but not in the Nebraska Sand Hills.  We saw many windmills spinning and pumping water into stock tanks for the cattle.  While not on our current trip but going from Wickenberg, AZ to Kingman AZ is much like the Nebraska Sand Hills but the Sand Hills have an even more remote feeling.  At least there is more vehicular traffic on the Wickenberg/Kingman route.

Watching some people drive leaves one wondering what is going on – we followed one woman through a 12 mile construction zone with a 55 mph speed limit.  She was in a pickup and was obviously talking to someone in the other seat – even though we could not see anyone – talking on a phone but using her hands or ???? and she was doing it at 25 to 30 mph on Interstate 90!  Thankfully she pulled off 2 miles short of the construction zone end. And then there are the semi trucks that attempt to pass on uphill grades and take forever backing up traffic.  The dreaded orange signs – a construction zone coming – keep things interesting.  It never ceases to amaze me that it seems necessary to block off 2 or 3 miles of roadway to work on 100 feet!  Or why have two long construction zones going at the same time on the same stretch of freeway rather than having all of the resources on one stretch at a time? Evidently things like this are above my pay grade.

All things said, the trip was relatively uneventful and we arrived safely here in Alexandria Minnesota.  Now if the weather will cooperate we might be able to play some golf but with our luck with May weather the last 4 years that is doubtful.

Not only has it has been more than two weeks since I last booted up my PC but we have made our semiannual migration Arizona to Minnesota and the PC did not make the trip. In other words I cut the cord and completely migrated to my MacBook Air.  If one were inclined to hyperbole you could say the metamorphosis complete! For some I suspect this is not a big deal, but this from someone that has had a Microsoft DOS or Windows machine since the first IBM PC in 1981, it is something that I would not have forecast. I suspect the first question that comes to mind is why? The answer to that question is actually fairly simple – The MacBook Air.  I have found the 13″ MacBook Air to be the best computer I have ever owned or used. What’s not to like.  At 3 pounds with a sharp display, fast with an i7 processor and because of the 256 GB Solid State Drive comes up from hibernate almost instantly, the package is complete. Add to that a great backlit keyboard and silky smooth track pad and the decision becomes even easier.

By way of disclosure, I have not completely gone away from Windows.  Because there are a few applications that I use that are not available in the Mac format I run Windows under Parallels on the MacBook Air. One in particular, Sperry Software’s Send Individually, is invaluable as it allows me to send emails to a much larger group than my ISP will otherwise let through. Sperry has no plans to port the Microsoft Outlook add-in to Outlook for the Mac but have indicated that a Gmail version might be on the horizon. As I noted in an earlier post, one can run Windows on the Mac using Boot Camp, a part of the Mac operating system, but Boot Camp requires a reboot to switch between the Mac and Windows operating systems.  However the convenience of running both operating systems side-by-side under Parallels to me more than justifies the $80.00 expense for Parallels. Having said that, for the most part I run Mac programs, including Microsoft Office and Outlook.  I have to maintain Outlook for Windows as noted above.  On the PC Google’s Chrome was my favorite, and day-to-day, web browser and continues it’s rein on the Mac.

So in five months I will know for sure whether or not I am a convert.  With no PC to default to I will have to use the Apple tools to accomplish, and complete, all of the challenges that arise. Having said that, I seriously doubt there will be any problems as I tried everything that seemed relevant before departing Arizona. But as I go through the summer I will post any issues as well as how things are going generally. By the way this post was composed while on the road on my “New” iPad and Pages but more about that later.

How It All Began

In ancient Israel, it came to pass that a trader by the name of Abraham Com did take unto himself a young wife by the name of Dot. And Dot Com was a comely woman, broad of shoulder and long of leg. Indeed, she had been called Amazon Dot Com. She said unto Abraham, her husband, “Why doth thou travel far from town to town with thy goods when thou can trade without ever leaving thy tent?”

And Abraham did look at her as though she were several saddle bags short of a camel load, but simply said, “How, Dear?” And Dot replied, “I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between to send messages saying what you have for sale and they will reply telling you which hath the best price and the sale can be made on the drums and delivery made by Uriah’s Pony Stable (UPS)

Abraham thought long and decided he would let Dot have her way with the drums. The drums rang out and were an immediate success. Abraham sold all the goods he had at the top price, without ever moving from his tent.

But this success did arouse envy. A man named Maccabia did secret himself inside Abraham’s drum and was accused of insider trading. And the young man did take to Dot Com’s trading as doth the greedy horsefly take to horse flesh. and, before very long, there were many others and They were called Nomadic Ecclesiastical Rich Dominican Siderites, or NERDS for short.

And lo, the land was so feverish with joy at the new riches and the deafening sound of drums.that no one noticed that the real riches were going to the drum maker, one Brother William of Gates, who bought up every drum company in the land. And indeed did insist on making drums that would work only with Brother Gates’ drumheads and drumsticks.

Dot did say, “Oh, Abraham, what we have started is being taken over by others.” And as Abraham looked out over the Bay of Ezekiel,(or as it came to be known “eBay” ) he said, “we need a name that reflects what we are,” and Dot replied, “Young Ambitious Hebrew Owner Operators.” “YAHOO”, said Abraham. And that is how it all began, It wasn’t Al Gore after all.

Thanks to my friend Gayle for this one.

Golf!

• You hit down to make the ball go up.
• You swing left and the ball goes right.
• The lowest score wins, on top of that, the winner buys the drinks.
• It is harder than baseball – In Golf; you have to play your foul balls.
• If you find you do not mind playing Golf in the rain, the snow, even during a hurricane, here’s a valuable tip …….. your life is in trouble.
• Golfers who try to make everything perfect before taking the shot rarely make a perfect shot.
• A ‘gimme’ can best be defined as an agreement between two golfers…neither of whom can putt very well.
• An interesting thing about Golf is that no matter how badly you play, it is always possible to get worse.
• Golf’s a hard game to figure. One day you’ll go out and slice it and shank it, hit into all the traps and miss every green. The next day you go out and for no reason at all you really stink.
• If your best shots are the practice swing and the ‘gimme putt’, you might wish to reconsider this game.
• Golf is the only sport where the most feared opponent is you.
• Golf is like marriage, if you take yourself too seriously it won’t work, and both are expensive.
• The best wood in most amateurs’ bags is the pencil.

Golf can best be defined as an endless series of tragedies followed by a good bottle of beer.

Golf isn’t life – it’s more important than that!

What is a mulligan called in Ireland?  Three.

When is our tee time!! – Have a Great Day.