Just a stray couple notes
Good morning! This is me. It’s late in the morning, but I finally feel up to writing again … It’s 10:30 the day before Memorial Day. On that end I want to say a special Thank-you to the people who have served and are serving. No one could know the true devotion they have shown to all our cause of living freely. And, because I’m Thom’s Mom especially – may God Bless him and all those who serve with him.Wow … something else happening here we are waiting the shuttle Atlantis landing right now. It’s coming down in CA instead of FL because of weather. It’s a pretty darn amazing thing. Wow going right into Edwards Air Force base. They say at this point it’s just a glider. Wheels came down. Just about to touch down. WoooHOOO there we go Main gear touch down!!!!
She’s on the ground! For later reference this is the mission that went to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. Pswhoo it looks a little worn out or dirty. I hope they let us see the flight crew come out. They said it was a thrill from start to finish.
Hmm, they have to go through some stuff first … NASA must have known we needed a commercial on Celebrex. YEEKS! Anti-climatic!
I haven’t looked at the last time we wrote, but it might have been a week or so. I feel a little out of touch here. But, I figure I’d like to lay off the Pirates for a bit … I’m checking on it, but it seems that we spent too much on armory and it took most of our loot … and so now its taking forever and a day to get enough money to do anything and what gets done isn’t very much. I had been getting like 5.8 million and now I’m only getting 2.6 million … *Sigh* it will be ok, right?
Rich isn’t expected home now for almost 2 hours. I think he had 2 games today. He left here about 9:30.
Hmm, back into the news … they talk about stuff that I feel a need to catch up on whenever they have a new group of speakers on – even if the new group is familiar as regular CNN correspondents. Right now they are talking about the flash of the Republicans and how they are using their attacks on Nancy Pelosi. Newt Gingrich. I don’t know if that’s how to spell his name, but just the same – in my opinion he doesn’t have enough strength to hold up as the Republican voice – but I also think that I forget his name, but the radio personality is even MORE of a bad example of Repulblican party.
Something interesting is going on is that Colin Powel has stepped up to the limelight affirming that he remains a Republican although supporting President Obama. That would make a good challenge to the democrats … Sometimes it seems that the Republicans are soooo far to the right that they can’t see the balance that would be best for all.
Rush Limbaugh – that’s the other guy I was just trying to think of. That’s guys just a loud mouth, but he’s reportedly got an audience of about 20 million. Lord Protect us – and I’m not sure we’re talking the same Lord here.
Hmm, now there is some soft fluffy stuff with the Mayor of Las Vegas … ba humbug … back to our stuff. Yesterday or maybe the day before I guess I did something with the OneNote program in that I was off the Pirates and taking some loose notes with a couple of the stories. I might try some more of that this weekend. I think the idea is good. It got us to think of a couple issues in a manner that could help us to comprehend the totality of it all. I think the hardest part of listening to the debates over issue is that everyone is coming in at such different spaces and reference points that we don’t get to figure out what the hell they are all talking about. I’ll show you here an idea of what we’re talking about … they aren’t the big stories, but the ones that were playing when I decided to take the notes. The version I’m showing is the version that came after the initial copy … I tried to make a little more sense of them with the second copy … Hold on … I’ll show you.
CNN Friday, May 22, 2009 @8:19 pm
1. John Legend interview after commencement speech
2. Root problem is there is a lack of truth
3. We demand truth, but we don't want to hear it
4. Truth often gets denied
5. The last call is that we don't want to hear about truth or stand up for the powerless
6. Average people don't want the government to tell us bad news
7. Average person wants to run away from real problems
8. Our political responsibility is to hold President Obama to honest candor
9. The public (and show biz people) has to watch and hold the politicians accountable
10. We don’t know if the young generation going through the recession is the lost generation whose silver lining will be that due to lack of posh jobs, they will be able to get involved in the service industry
11. Unsure if Americans can do REAL poverty though Legend suggested that it could one day be any of us and that we should all be in this together
12. We need to decide as a nation what level of issues arenot tolerable
13. We should ask what will we do to get involved and what are we prepared for?
14. Resources are listed on CNN impact page
CNN, Friday 5-22-09 @ 7:40 pm
15. Representative Maloney discussed issues such as fees and interest rate hikes
16. Hikes are being charged even if payment is on time
17. Changed to 45 or 60 days grace before rate change- clarify
18. Issue - should there be a cap on the amount of interest rates charged
19. Issue - would a cap be more protective to the consumer
20. Interest credit cards can change?
21. Banks paid politicians 7.8 million in 2008
22. Senator Dick Durban states banks own politicians
23. Suggestion: keep balances low as you can
24. Suggestion: pay full amount or at least more than the minimum
25. Credit card crackdown will allow the consumer to competitively make choices
26. Crackdown will assist with the worse bank abuses
27. Congress stood up to the industry and they are helping level the consumer playing field and it will give them more tools to work with
28. Example of injustice - vet put medical on credit card and rate was raised to 27% retrospectively on money already used
29. Concern - interest rate cap should stop rate from going up on money already borrowed
Ok, pretty much see what I mean? I’m not sure if this makes sense to anyone else, but it is what I would like to do – or would at least like to see as replacing the game of Pirates. Just that Pirates was supposed to be more relaxing and the same with Farm Town. I’ve let the seeds go to waste over the last week and I don’t feel overly motivated to go back. With the slowdown I explained with the Pirates I sorta feel the same there – though I’m more apt to go back to that. I could see though not fighting so much and just watching my hourly balance pull up some kind of speed.
Thing with that though and the part that keeps me really into it is that I’ve fought for a good Pirate name for myself.
Stats
Jobs Completed 887
Fights Won 4433
Fights Lost 445
Defeats 18
Keelhauls 63
Booty
Total income 11,404,206 / hour
Total Upkeep -8,740,000/ hour
Cash Flow 2,664,206/ hour
I’m not sure how this looks right now after it gets to AMW, but this is my stats.
You can see here how much money I have made and how expensive the total upkeep got in comparison to a healthy cash flow. You can also see the part where the fights lost in relation to fights won is so close to 90%. I’ve worked very hard to hit 10% and I would really like to do better. For a long time I was at 87-89%. If I don’t continue to fight then this number I’ve worked for is going to be lost.
As to why this number is so important to me I have less thought of figuring out. It might have more to do with regular low self esteem and my obsessions than anything else. Dr. Marvin thought that I might continue with Pirates until the end of CARF.
That made me think some … Really it is CARF that I should be working on with my spare time … and have just said a little earlier – the project with CNN news and learning to listen better – well they’d both be a much better idea than following Pirates – AND we still have the part where we haven’t been doing even our mainstay as to the blog. Something is really wrong there if we’re not writing as much as we aren’t.
Maybe for a little while I can let all that other stuff go. I would REALLY like to set aside for that CARF project too … just write now I’ve got writing up and this is soooo good … we want to concentrate only on this. We’ve already let an hour go of not doing much other than listening and skimming our thoughts without writing. When Rich gets home he presents himself sometimes as a distraction by doing necessary things such as laundry. Yeeks the next you are going to hear is that someone should be doing bills.
I’m so far removed from all that it’s unbelievable. I’m thinking what … now like 3 months since paying regular bills? I’m not sure, but it’s up there. I can’t tell you all of where we’ve been … our jumping off marker though was that we were trying to deal with legal issues with Rich’s wife and then being watched so carefully and protectively by Rich’s daughter. I felt very much invaded and it seems that for a long while it had become dangerous for us to even voice our thoughts out loud to ourselves.
I think in there too came not only Pirates, but the parts where we were going to see my sister. I don’t think being with Rich was as disruptive. With my sister – it became more important to handle the situation, feel our way along with her talkativeness and being out of the normal environment like with simple things of listening to CNN in the background. I think writing takes more concentration and focus then I’ve been able to give due to all this above.
One way or another I’d like to fight for my writing sanity again.
Wow just stopped for a moment to use the washroom and refresh the coffee. John King has been on and he just finished introducing a new Google Earth feature. It ties together a whole lot of memorial information on fallen military from their home towns to what caused their death to where in Iraq or Afghanistan that the fell. It does a whole lot more including things like sometimes their obituary and then there’s also a space to write a message to the family and to search for people backward and forward … Let me figure out that address.
Wow that’s incredibly difficult. I think my Internet is all messed up I can’t get Internet Explorer to be using add-ons again and I think that’s what is making finding web addresses so difficult. There’s a place at the tool site for mananging add-ons but it isn’t highlighted so I can’t press it to change the setting. And then I’m having problem with my alternative address bar with FLOCK because I can’t get it to move toward any new address unless I’ve already been to that site directly through a link in its history.
I’m way too frustrated with all that to give it much time and concentration. Let’s leave it to the reference point to get to the new Google Earth thing can be found by going to CNN.com and then to politics, and then to State of the Union with John King – and then 1/3 down and to the right is a link to the map – hmm, have we been able to find it? We just used the search bar we never use on the bottom of our tools bar – maybe put out by aol or something let me try that.
Hmm, well maybe that is going to work … I found something saying I have to download Google Earth first and it is taking a while to do so. I don’t recognize the extracting tool, but I gotta give it some time to do its thing. Need to depressurize here.
Fareed Zakaria GPS is on CNN right now … and I would really have to focus on that to understand it … Fareed presents the hardest stuff that CNN has. He does a lot with the middle east and I don’t understand enough of it to figure out the cues that are being given by Fareed and his guests. Some part of that is the name of people and places that they talk about … it just isn’t on my auditory track. *Sigh*
posted by Ann Marie @ 5/25/2009 09:10:00 AM
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