Phil Huffstatler

Now. Really. Better yet, make it two. Or even ten! Why? ……. Chris Hedges …. That’s why! 

I bought a chainsaw this morning, to cut up some dead limbs from the older trees in the yard. I borrowed a ’stretch’ model yesterday, to reach up into the trees. Worked pretty well. But, with this new saw this morning, well, I’m not 22 anymore. First, I put the chain on backwards. It’s very easy to do. It does NOT cut well like that. And, it popped off in less than one minute of non-cutting. And, it bent some tines, so that the chain wold not slide freely in the bar groove. Back to the store. New chain on, after fifteen minutes, it felt like my back was collapsing. A few minutes rest, back at it again, and after less than half an hour, I put the no longer new chainsaw away, knowing the severed limbs would still be on the ground tomorrow after work, waiting the careful trimming and stacking I planned so well. I’m such a weenie!

I read an article this morning, of two dogs “destroyed” because they mauled a child. A terrible incident, to be sure. But, it you read the comments from the public below, not only do you get to see why our education system needs to be overhauled, but how many folks claim the child’s aunt should be tossed in jail for letting this happen! We currently have 1 out of 100 people in this country in jail for some reason or another. It’s a global record, if you’re proud of that sort of thing. It seems to be our (USA) answer for every little thing. A tragic event occurred, yes, but again, does the aunt (dog owner) deserve jail time? I don’t know the details. But, I tend to lean on a more conservative side, that the animals didn’t have aggression issues around children before this point, else I would be sure the aunt wouldn’t have permitted the animals around. And I really don’t think the aunt was an aggressive person either, else why would a family be visiting a hostile person? Doesn’t make sense. Perhaps the aunt should offer to pay medical bills for the child, offer, not forced by the court led mob. Plus, and here’s the real kicker, it’s not everyone else’s business! Mind your own business, folks! Quit telling everyone else what you would have done! You weren’t there! You were not there!Another case in point, not jail centric, but darned close. There’s a viral video going around of a teacher berating a student on political choices. She knew she was on video, yet she chose her words in a way that offended many people. Again, the public comments made by others far and wide decried that she be fired on the spot! Or worse! Of  course, with all the public attention, the principal swore an investigation was taking place, and that he would resolve the issue, etc. mostly to get the national media out of his school, I’m sure. Should this teacher be disciplined? At the very least, a talk should be had with her about how to approach publicly sensitive issues not pertaining to educational subjects while in the classroom. But firing her? Good Lord, if all those screaming people were placed in that person’s shoes, how would they feel? I can guarantee you that right now, that teacher has already punished herself with her own feelings quite enough, just over the onslaught of media attention. Will she do this again? In my tiny opinion, no. But don’t remove a teacher because of a verbal mistake. Lord, if everyone were treated as they wish this lady treated, we’d have rampant firings across industries on an hourly basis! Shucks, maybe we should…  

Until I figure out why WordPress won’t insert proper line breaks for me, please forgive the run-on paragraphs… I’ll get them fixed presently, even if I have to get another blogging system!

I just joined the CGSociety SteamPunk Challenge, attempting to do a Pegasus character. Oh boy… You can find my thread here.

I like keeping things simple. Although I work with complicated matters all day, as a database administrator for a pretty progressive company, I still prefer things simple when possible. It’s frustrating, when people insist on making things more complicated, just to supposedly save them two minutes of work. I had an example of this at work today. I won’t go into details, because I don’t want to point out the doofuses. (Is that a word? It should be.) There’s enough of them in the world already without raising more flags.I don’t care for clutter, either. I like my home and office simple. It doesn’t always end up that way, but I try. Even now, my computer desk, and my drawing desk is covered in whatnot, that have little to do with computing or drawings, sans a couple of really cool computer drawing books…I’m still working out what I feel this blog should be, and what it will become, other than a place to practice writing and gripe about the world, to said item. I’m also trying to work on my vocabulary, but that also runs against my ‘keep it simple’ motto. It seems my life is one big contradiction… I recently have taken the responsibility of updating the very aged website for my R/C club, HotMac. You can still see the old site at http://hotmacrc.org, so you can see what challenges I’ve ahead.Add to that, now I’m working (and currently typing) on a new iMac, with an equally new iPhone attached to it, and learning Objective C to write some way-whizzy-cool applications that’ll make me a tidy fortune. I hope. So there’s yet more. Whew! Glad I’m keeping it all simple.    

Wow. If this don’t beat all. I’ve taken forever to post something, and now we have a new presidential elect, that for certain will set the world on its collective ear. Let’s hope its on more positive note. More to come, I’m just getting started.

While I’m certain this has been done ad infinitum, there is always the first time for eveyone. Hurray!