- Only one of the Star Wars movies, so far, have been worth the cost of a full price ticket and a bucket of popcorn.
- The same holds true for the Star Trek movies, and most of the television episodes.
- Music wasn’t any better when you were young. You’ve just had a couple-three decades to forget all the crap and only listen to the good stuff.
- Most of the really thorny issues in our nation pretty much boil down to “How do you separate the sheep from the goats?” and “Who died and left you in charge?”.
- Most of today’s technology is either a derivative of something an engineer did half a century ago, or the result of someone having to come up with something to get their thesis done on a Sunday night two weeks before graduation.
- About six weeks after the CMP starts selling M1911’s, there are going to be a rash of posts on gun fora about how they are pieces of crap that don’t shoot worth a darn. A few months after that, there will be a rash of posts that showcase the “customization” that their new owners put into them to “improve” them.
- There are probably more people who can rattle off the properties of a rare card from a game or can recite the intimate details of fictional characters from television shows that were cancelled during the Vietnam War, than can list the first ten amendments to the Constitution or the Ten Commandments.
All posts in category Thought for the day
Hard Truths
Posted by daddybear71 on December 14, 2015
https://daddybearsden.com/2015/12/14/hard-truths/
Musings
- I may be getting cynical, but when somebody advertises “industry leading innovation,” I hear “buggy, untested, and probably unsupported.”
- One of the benefits of having a young son is being able to play “Rock-em Sock-em Robots” for an hour.
- It is December, not October. Why is my furnace off? Why are my windows open? I blame Al Gore.
- One benefit of working third shift for the rest of the month is that while other people are being Christmasy, I’ll either be at work or unconscious.
- I am officially over instant replay in sports officiating. Either trust the zebra on the field or get rid of them and do everything remotely.
- If the only way your team has a chance of winning a football game involves an eerily accurate asteroid strike, maybe it’s time to switch over to watching documentaries on Netflix.
- You know, it’s rather impolite to give Irish Woman the hairy eyeball because the ice-skating program manager asked you to get your son to stop smacking Boo upside the helmet for fun. The alternative was my approach, which involved me teaching Boo how to pull your little twerp’s sweater up over his head and punch him in the kidneys for a couple of minutes.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 13, 2015
https://daddybearsden.com/2015/12/13/musings-173/
Image of the Day
Posted by daddybear71 on December 7, 2015
https://daddybearsden.com/2015/12/07/image-of-the-day-5/
Musings
- Ah, the metabolism of a boy. First “I’m starving!”, then he gets fed and says “My stomach hurts! I ate too much!”. Two hours later, he’s starving again.
- Other parents looked at me strangely when I reacted to an altercation between Boo and other boy by saying “Nobody’s bleeding, so no big deal.”
- That being said, when the other boy got a nose bleed a few minutes later, I sat Boo down and made sure he hadn’t hit back.
- Girlie Bear worked at the local Christmas festival last night, then went to a sleepover, then went to work, then went to her mother’s house for a visit. She’s starting to realize just how precious sleep really is.
- Hey, teenagers! You see that middle-aged guy out in the back yard cleaning things up, raking leaves, and stuffing yard waste bags? You remember him telling you to do something three weeks ago? It might be a good idea to come out and see if there’s anything he needs help with.
- Some waste wood was resisting its destiny in the outdoor fireplace yesterday. I tried reasoning with it, but finally had to resort to the nuclear option – kerosene and newsprint.
- Seriously, I was a Boy Scout, an ancient Algonquin term meaning “pyromaniac.” I can make anything burn with proper motivation and materials.
- The alpha readers for the short story collection are starting to get back with comments. I’m getting the cover art together, and hope to publish in early to mid January.
- I’m a junkie for legends, myths, and just good stories. If you tell the adventure myths of a culture in such a boring manner that I can’t stand to listen anymore, you have serious talent.
- When I ask you to quantify a risk, “We can’t guarantee it will still work at all” is a pretty good answer.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 6, 2015
https://daddybearsden.com/2015/12/06/musings-172/
Musings
- My doctor said I needed to cut back on the stress, spicy food, and coffee. I don’t think she knows me very well.
- Apparently as I came out from under sedation yesterday, I started singing “I love to go swimming with bow-legged women.” Irish Woman stopped me before I belted out the refrain.
- Question – When did it become polite to refer to a presidential candidate by their first name, e.g. “Hillary,” “Carlie”, “Bernie”? I remember my civics teacher in high school talking about the pearl clutching when President Carter introduced himself as “Jimmy Carter.” I think it diminishes the candidate when they’re not addressed by their title (Mrs. Fiorina, Secretary Clinton).
- There are very few things more embarrassing than showing some network settings to a vendor and realizing that what you were looking for was apparently configured by a drunken frat boy.
Posted by daddybear71 on November 10, 2015
https://daddybearsden.com/2015/11/10/musings-171/
Musings
- It is rarely a good thing for multiple people to walk up to you and ask “Are you on call today?”
- Hint – When DaddyBear is tired, cranky, and using knife hands to emphasize points while he is talking to you across a conference table, maybe you’ve finally found that one button in his psyche that really ought to be covered with a locking lucite cover.
- A good manager makes sure their people have a meal when they’re working an unexpectedly long day. A really good manager makes sure there’s a sleep plan.
- There is rarely a reward for pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. Rather, you’re usually put on the task force to inventory his wardrobe, put together a plan to keep him in fashion, and then sent to work in the salt mines some more.
- Whoever put a drive-thru donuts and coffee restaurant a mile from where I work, bless you. You are probably the reason I could drive home this morning without sleeping a few hours in the truck first.
- It really wasn’t the caffeine. That worked well enough to get me something to eat and clean up after I got home. The pain of taking big swallows of scalding hot coffee every time I felt drowsy kept me on the road.
- Love is a wife who has fresh sheets on the bed and moves her work space for the day so that you can sleep like the dead after a 23 hour work day.
- Remember, folks, if you’re not smiling, you’re probably making an expression that convinces people to call Human Resources.
Posted by daddybear71 on November 4, 2015
https://daddybearsden.com/2015/11/04/todays-earworm-675/
Musings
- Bambi is safe from me this year. After my performance today, I’m not sure I can make an ethical shot with two of the three rifles I practiced with. Seriously, I was just trying to check zero on the Savage and the Thompson-Center, and I spent an hour trying to get ON PAPER.
- Speaking of which, just for future reference, the number of shots it takes to gum up the Omega so badly that I struggle to push the bullet down the bore and have a heartbeat’s worth of hesitation between click and bang is 5.
- In related news, Thompson-Center’s Number 13 cleaning solution can be used as a growth medium for brownish-green fungus.
- I had some success with the Winchester .30-30, but I’m going to have to do something with that front sight. Kept losing it against anything that wasn’t reflective and white.
- Note to self – When your optics seem dim and fuzzy, check to make sure you have on your shooting glasses and not your sunglasses before cursing Bushnell.
- H&K rifles are excellent implements for slinging brass into orbit and onto the Norwegian at the firing position next door.
- Every so often, I think it might be a good idea to get RSO training so that I could get a part-time job as an RSO. Then I see what RSO’s go through and realize I don’t have the people skills.
- Seriously, if I couldn’t walk around with a range paddle and smack people upside the head with it, I’m not sure I could do the job.
- Note to self – When attempting to boil water for pasta, it is customary to turn the burner underneath the pot on.
- Note to self – When drinking coffee to stay awake and get some work done, it is counter-productive to use bourbon cream instead of half-and-half.
- Mighty tasty, though.
Posted by daddybear71 on October 14, 2015
https://daddybearsden.com/2015/10/14/musings-170/
Musings
- New saying – “As guilty as a Labra-Beagle with pizza sauce on her forehead.”
- You know, I like to think that I’m a rather intelligent man; not a genius, but not a simpleton either. Which is why I was so perplexed this morning when I went to make a pot of coffee and discovered that I had already filled the reservoir of the coffee maker. How did I discover this, you may ask? Well, kind reader, I discovered this by watching an entire pot of water spill up over the sides of the coffee maker and out onto the counter and floor.
- I demand that Congress pass legislation mandating research into which automobiles, in model and class, are the cause of the largest number of vehicular homicides. I also want funding for studies into which alcohol, both in class and maker, are most prevalent in drunk driving crimes that lead to the death of innocents. Then, I demand that the Justice Department and the Attorneys General of the several states sue the UAW and Big Liquor into the ground!
- It is exceedingly difficult for a 6’4″ man to nap comfortably on a 6″ couch when a 35 pound dog wants to ‘share’ half of it.
- Tomorrow, I believe, is going to be a .30-30 lever, .270 bolt, and .50 muzzle loader kind of day.
Posted by daddybear71 on October 13, 2015
https://daddybearsden.com/2015/10/13/musings-169/
Musings
- Just once, I’d like to hear the family of someone who commits a heinous act come out and say “He was a bad kid. Really, we struggled for years to help him and get him on the right path, but it never worked, usually because of him consistently and maliciously making bad choices. There will be no funeral or memorial for him, and we plan on burying his ashes in an unmarked landfill and denying his existence to future generations. We are all ashamed of what has happened, and will live with that for the rest of our lives. Our only hope going forward is that those who have been hurt and their families will find it in their hearts to forgive our family for the evil that we unleashed upon the world.”
- I don’t know what happens to young men (OK, teenage boys, but I’m trying to give them some credit), but they seem to lose their everloving minds when left to their own devices. I had to tell a bunch of them that the mass of belongings they took camping was a fire hazard when they spread it in a thin layer across the cabin. I’m not even going to talk about how massive amounts of sugar and caffeine impacts their behavior and volume.
- Remember the scenes in “Gremlins” where the young Mogwai were all cute and fuzzy, but were growling and wrestling all the time? Yeah, I helped chaperone about 40 similar creatures over the weekend.
- Girlie Bear and I have a ritual that we’ve been doing since she was little. We call it “bonking,” in which we clonk the upper parts of our foreheads together. Sometimes it’s rather hard. Doing this in front of her JROTC instructors and friends this weekend drew a lot of winces. Apparently, this is an uncommon form of affection among the soft-skulled variety of Americans.
- It took a while when she was younger to teach her to only ‘bonk’ me, because she almost gave Irish Woman a concussion when she tried it.
- I’ve heard three adults threaten to either commit suicide or emigrate if their candidate of choice doesn’t win in 2016. Am I wrong in thinking that I would be willing to chip in for a passport or a couple gallons of kerosene and a book of matches in the event that this becomes necessary?
Posted by daddybear71 on October 6, 2015
https://daddybearsden.com/2015/10/06/musings-168/
Musings
- I am not allowed to refer to redneck, boorish, frat-boy incompetents as ‘brocephus’.
- Self-motivation – I am not allowed to read the new David Drake anthology until I finish the longish short story I’m writing.
- “They all looked up at the bright light in the sky, and in the seconds it took for the blast wave to travel down from the stratosphere, they realized that the heretofore unknown space overlords had had quite enough of their crap. The End.”
- Easy fix for a user that continually fills up a file system with data they never look at:
- Figure out which directory the user’s app uses to write to by default.
- Remove the directory
- Link the directory to /dev/null.
- Listen for high-pitched keening. If not heard, log off box and admit nothing. If heard, log off box and admit nothing.
- Boo ran a mile for time tonight, then jogged a couple of miles with his team to a fast food restaurant for a treat. Instead of getting a small ice cream, as planned and discussed, he ordered chicken nuggets and fries, then went to a restaurant with me to meet Irish Woman and Girlie Bear for dinner. My dear wife had just driven down from Chicago, and I wanted to treat her. He raided everyone’s plate, then ate about half of an adult-sized dessert. I think we have a growth spurt in progress.
- I had another person point to my hat and ask “Do you work for Blackwater?” tonight. I swear, I didn’t know much at all about that company when I asked Robb to create the bear paw symbol, I’ve been using one bear symbol or another online and off for the better part of two and a half decades, and I wasn’t that kind of military contractor.
- Note to self – When leaving the dogs in the house alone for the day due to weather, make sure that the gate between the dining room and kitchen is closed.
- Secondary note to self – Dogs can and will eat a three pack of lip balm if given the chance. Plan accordingly.
Posted by daddybear71 on September 30, 2015
https://daddybearsden.com/2015/09/30/musings-167/
DaddyBear
DaddyBear’s Den 
