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independence day, 2008

July 4th, 2008

"W

hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

The Declaration of Independence, now in its 232nd year, is unlike any other document ever penned by anyone, anywhere. Though ranked along side of the Magna Carta, the US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, it is completely unique, in that it sets out Man's Declaration of Principles for Life, Liberty and The Pursuit of Happiness.

Did you note the phrase — "...it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another..." — and relate it to the fact the We, as the flawed Electorate, have elected and re-elected goons, morons, crooks, idiots, liars, frauds, hucksters and all sorts of lowlifes to represent us, in the US Government. It's long past time to "dissolve the political bands" with 96% of them, and bring back Citizen-Legislators, term-limited and knowing full-well "what to do" to get America back on The Right Track. Hells bells, I'd put my life and business on-hold for 2+ years, to help get that done.

These days, Independence Day is more commonly associated with fireworks, parades, BBQs, carnivals, picnics, baseball games, and various other public and private events celebrating the history, government, and traditions of our United States, but is often also viewed as simply a summer festival, apart from its quite obvious-to-me, über-patriotic meaning.

After morphing into "July 4th", in the 60s, this National Holiday, in the following century, becomes the perfect time to identify, root-out, summarily-charge, try, convict, sentence and execute any and all subhuman 7th century filth, murderous, lowlife America-hating, deviant, degenerate, muslim-islamist-arab terrorists, their like-minded muslim-islamist supporters and liberal-demokkkRAT advocates, and hang/string them-up in the local towns' "square". Smash them all like the verminous bugs they are. But, I digress.

It's kind of sad that "Independence Day"/ aka "July 4th" is America's only unique holiday, since we are the world's only true Constitutional Republic/ quasi-democracy and the World's only real Guiding Light of Life, Liberty and Freedom. F*ck it: shoot the whining, lowlife, dirtbag leftist-demo kkkRAT scum, angry, bitter, hate-filled, lowlife, treasonous filth. Can I get all "You Real Americans" another cheeseburger, hotdog, BBQ, chips, deviled egg, potato salad, baked beans, slice of apple pie ala´ mode or iced tea/ cold brewski? Name it, I'll get it; sit still!

Happy Independence Day, America! Thanks for being who and what you are. And above all, thanks to all the US Military who've given some, and especially those who've given their all, to keep us Free. We can never repay you, except with a simple "Thank You".

With the most remarkable Declaration of Independence, America remains "the last, best hope of mankind on earth."

Around The Garden Center.

At 4am, with the outdoor temp at 74°F, I knew it was going to be a lousy day. By 9am, it was already 82°F, and by 3pm, it was 89°F, with a heat index of 97°F. Yuk. I hate using the Office's new AC unit, at 6:30am, but there was simply no breeze in my quarters, and it had to be fired-up and run. With several LSCP Estimates and Billing to finish-up, to clear my desk's pile of "to do stuff", I had no compunction about it, and I made some fresh-ground, extra-bold Starbuck's "Dark French Roast" coffee. Mmmmmm! (In fact, I'm eating Starbuck's Classic Coffee Ice Cream, dusted with Starbuck's French Roast/ Turkish Grind powder, as I write this. Go figure.) It wires-me-up, as well as Jennifer & Bob, and causes me/them to get into the "mile-a-minute-mode" (how's that for alliteration?), while working. Zowie! Plus, with some sugar and Rutter's Half & Half®, it's akin to "Nectar of The Gods", IMO, that early in the morning. I drink it at 4am, when I'm at home, trying to wake-up and feed the condo cats. Works for me! Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz-a-p!

The last 4-5 lscp-site visitation papers on my clipboard, needed to be dispatched, and I did so, on Friday morning, by driving nearly 90 miles, to those specific sites, just to "see dead plants". Oh, what fun. "Yessir, they're dead!" Despite my best efforts 5-6 years ago, in mandating that Drip Irrigation Systems be installed with every landscape job, there are some customers who just don't run them, or who are "adverse to following simple instructions", in protecting their significant lscp plant investments. What's so freaking hard to understand about that? (((sigh)))

By 4pm, storm clouds had gathered and blood-red cells were rapidly-moving through the area. My last customer for Drip Irrigation left around 4:30pm, and I'd already locked-down the GHs and Main Bldg, and was out of the front gate, when TSHTF. 2-3-4" of rain in a brief 20 minute period, made for some interesting driving on the 15-mile trip home. 4-6-8" of water covered many of the streets and roads, myriad vehicles stalled all over the place, and I breezed right through it in my '02 Jeep Grand Cherokee 'Laredo'. It was over and all those morons who'd decided to brave the 1-2ft water, were red-faced and PO'd, at their vehicles, stalled-out, requiring and waiting for available tow trucks. Heh. Even with 14" of axle clearance, I drove *around* the water, and smiled/smirked, politely.

I was in by 7am on Saturday, and the humidity was already 91%, and I knew the day was going to suck. Dad, Jennifer and Tyler were also in, to help... virtually no one; it was dead-slow until Jennifer and Tyler left around 1:30pm, I had no help, temps hit 89°F/ heat index 98°F, and the parking lot filled-up with cars full of people and kids, trucks needing mulch loaded, and only Dad and I were left to get it done. Jeeeez! I had scheduled landscape customers picking-out plant material, to deal with, Dad was working the front counter and loading mulch, people wanting drip irrigation supplies (they'd just seen it on our new website page), several couple just walking around "comparison shopping", which I ignored completely, others coming to the front counter with their garden's insect/disease problems, still other customers calling to see if I'd come right over to their property today, to give some advice... net, net: I had to prioritize — do "horticultural-retail triage" — the growing customer pool, deny most, and try to help those who had the most needy/valid problem, and whose direct attention by me/Dad, would be rewarded by the most income. Mercenary? You're damned right I was. That's called ***capitalism***, and all successful businesses are built upon that bedrock premise. Bugs and mildew can wait for another day; a $10,500 purchase needs doing, right now. I was glad when 4:45pm came around, and I began shutting-down the Complex. New "rules & hours for Sat-Sun work", will be implemented on Monday, at 8am, by me. Count on it. I'm not going through another day like that, EVER!

For most of Saturday, I dealt with my Office RAID 0 machine's upgrade from Symantec Norton SystemWorks 2006, to Symantec Norton 360 v2.0, since Norton would not upgrade/support my 2006 software any further. It cost a mere $59.99, and I got the download done, via my GC&N's Office wireless broadband in under 2mins, and 3.0GB. Installing it — which meant uninstalling all the 2006 software and replacing it — took hours, and involved endless reboots. Configuring it still isn't done, yet, so I went in on Sunday and spent an inordinate amount of time, doing so. I let the defrag/optimize feature run all night, and it'd completed the task by Monday at 6:15am, when I got in to open-up the place. I still have the back-up, storage and several other options to resolve. That new software also claimed to be able to monitor/guard and control up to 3 other computers on a intra-network, such as I have. But my Office unit's new Norton 360 v2.0 Network Map couldn't quite do it; it could see the other two units at the front counter, but just couldn't get its arms around the other 2 units. I'll keep trying to resolve that niggling problem (nay issue).

???

I checked my Condo's RAID 0+1 machine (4 x Sata 250GB HDs), and I still had until July 24th, to get the Symantec-Norton 2005 Utility updated/deleted/uninstalled/reinstalled and the new Symantec Norton 360 v2.0, installed and running. Okay, I have >30days, and will utilize the remaining subscription time, to get it done. Heh. /p>

By 9:45pm on Saturday, I was editing seven (7) various pages — Restaurants, Visitors, Workshops, Troughs, Drip Irrigation, Corporate, and the ubiquitous "Journal" (7.4.08) entry — in two (apps)- HomeSite v5.5 (HTML) and in TopStyle v3.0 (CSS-xHTML), when I noticed the huge line of severe storms almost upon us, after it'd moved thru Adams County, into York County. Yikes! I wished I'd closed-down the GC&N's outdoor Drip Irrigation controllers, before I left work that afternoon, so that lightening strikes didn't ZAP! their $300 motherboard controllers. Too late now, BTW. I'll find the damage on Monday morning, when I open the place up for my staff and crews. (((sigh))) 20-20 hindsight.

I slept-in until noon on Sunday, and went food shopping. I scanned the available Sunday CATV offerings, and they were all crap. The few programs which I watch — History Channel, FX-TV, Discovery Channel, TNT Movies — offered only dog poop for the day, so I turned to my trusty 200GB Seagate external HD, where I'd archived some 70+ movies, six seasons of "24", and other desirable offerings, and chose the 2½hr "Bourne Supremacy", for the afternoon, while I worked on additional website pages. The CATV/TV Tuner Card in my condo's uber-fast RAID 0+1 machine, lets me watch CATV while working on the computer. Although I have a 39" Sony Trinitron and Bang & Olufsen Stereo in my upstairs loft, I haven't used them in 3-4 years, since I have it all right on my downstairs computer. I'm looking at a 24" Dell LCD or 24" Samsung LCD screen to replace the 3-year old, 19" Samsung 191T LCD, which I currently use. Bigger is better, in this case. By 5:45pm, *SEVERE WEATHER WARNINGS* were posted on all the local weather stations's websites, and from the doppler radar I saw, there were a boatload of storm cells moving from southwest to northeast, but all were either below or above, us. Nothing to worry about, for now. The warnings expired around 11pm, and caused zero problems, here in the York (PA) area.

Hmmmmmm, one large 24" monitor, or 2-3 smaller 19" monitors, in an array on the desktop? Or is it a horror show, in either case? I'm getting ready to make the switch/upgrade for my current Office and Condo 19" Samsung and Dell units, to either a single 24" unit or multiple 19" units, re-utilizing my current units. Decisions, decisions, decisions. I've got lots more research to do, in addition to what I've already done.

At 9:30pm on Sunday, "booming noises" rocked the condo, and the two cats scampered downstairs for cover. Based upon the pending t-storms, I thought it was the storms centered right over-top of us. However, when I looked out of the condo's windows and doors, I saw fireworks going-off at >1,000ft, just to the south of us: Springettsbury Township's fireworks "early test firing"? Heh; it's only June 29th.

Bad news on our Ford '94 F450 Super-Duty 10-ton Dumptruck: dead in the water. It needs another (3rd one) $8-9,000 engine/transmission replacement, and with the resale value of that model being zero, I decided to "park it", for the rest of the season. We'll get by with two trucks.

This week, even with the price of crude setting daily records, gas prices at the pump still dropped 5-15¢/ gal, with Unleaded Regular (87oct) dropping to $3.93/gal, Unleaded Premium (89oct) was now at $4.03/gal, and Unleaded Super Premium (92oct) went down to $4.13/gal. Diesel was still around $4.55/gal, last I checked. Demand was down greatly, as millions of people stayed home, and drove billions of miles less, nationwide. Fact.

It hit me a few weeks ago, that I'm not really a garden center or nursery, anymore. Rather, I'm a "trucking company". Everything which arrives here, comes by truck. Everything which leaves here, for landscape jobs and delivery, leaves by trucks. My trucks are all under the auspices of DOT (Dept of Transportation). My fleet is governed by ever-rising oil/gas/diesel prices, now. I have to keep copious daily "Driver Logs" and "Vehicle Maintenance Reports", or face harsh fines & penalties. (((sigh))) So much for being a horticulture operation. "Welcome to the trucking business, Mr Shelley; leave your ID, wallet and checkbook on the table, and proceed to station #2, for further processing."

Okay, I ordered a 24" Samsung LCD Monitor for my new Office Unit, replacing the 19" Dell LCD of 3 years ago. I also ordered a 20" Samsung LCD Monitor Unit, as a "Happy Birthday & Thank You!, for my long-time, far-far-far-better-than-good-Friend, D****. No discounts, but better to get two, than just one of them shipped to me, BTW. Saves a couple of bucks, anyway, in shipping. Hello, FedEx!

Since Friday is one of three paid holidays for my employees, I had to get payroll done on Thursday, so they'd have their checks for the 3-day weekend. I was also out at a rescheduled photo-op on Thursday afternoon, with Lee, my friend & photographer, and the two new Samsung monitors arrived while he was shooting the event! I didn't expect them until Monday. But with the photo-op running late, the usual Friday afternoon Key Staff Meeting, and too many of the week's complete lscp jobs needing completion, billing and mailing, I didn't even have time to unpack the 24" unit, let alone set it up and get it working. I'll get to it, on Saturday, maybe. YIKES! I measured my current computer stand, and based upon the new unit's specs, it's *too freaking small* for the new unit! Shit! Darnit! Okay, I'm off to Anthro to look for a new computer stand/table/cart. Crap.

Election 2008.

Yes, Barry Hussein Obama-Osama-Lama-Ding-Dong IS A MUSLIM RACIST SCUMBAG; he was born and raised that evil, murderous, filthy pigshit, muslim-islamist way-of-hell, as evidence easily validates. Hussein Obama-Osama's a fucking piece-of-shit, hate-America, hate-Whitey Nigga©, who needs to be exposed to America, charged, tried, convicted, sentenced and imprisoned/execute for being a piece of lowlife shit, IMO! His so-called 20-year, lowlife dirtbag Nigga© pastor is a Jew-hater, Christian-hater RACIST, as Obama-Osama is. Shit-for-brains, coward dictator asshole, Libyan scumbag punk Moammar Gadhafi, evidently agrees that Hussein-Obama-Osama IS A FILTHY, STINKING MUSLIM. And Barry Hussein Obama-Osama's pig-fucking, sodomite brother, Malik Obama, agrees by calling his dirtbag "bro", a ""Nigga© muslim"!

When race trumps ideology, simpleton assholes like JC Watts, are simply Niggas©, IMO. he and other sambo scum, who vote for socialist, Leninist filth like Barry Hussein Obama-Osama-Lama-Ding-Dong, are just GOPers-RINOs-Niggas©, plain and simple. Fuck them all.

Global Warming BS.

Have you seen this video: "BBC: The Great Global Warming Swindle"? It was outright-banned from leftist, hate-filled, dirtbag lowlife scumbags, Google.com's and YouTube.com's websites, by the mentally-ill, left-wing, global warming idiot wackos, but I've preserved it, for posterity, aka you, me and *ours*. Watch, be informed and download it for others to see. It's on my corporate server, and will stay there, BTW.

Here's everything you need to know about Global Warming, and why it's a good thing.

The "Greenhouse Effect" is a natural and valuable phenomenon, without which, the planet would be uninhabitable. Global Warming, at least in recent times, is real. CO2 is not a significant greenhouse gas; 95% of the contribution is due to Water Vapor. Man's contribution to Greenhouse Gasses is relatively insignificant. We didn't cause the recent Global Warming and we cannot stop it. Solar Activity appears to be the principal driver for Climate Change. CO2 is a useful trace gas in the atmosphere, and the planet would actually benefit by having more, not less of it, because it is not a driver for Global Warming and would enrich our vegetation, yielding better crops to feed the expanding population. CO2 is not causing global warming, in fact, CO2 is lagging temperature change in all reliable datasets. The cart is not pulling the donkey. Wake-up, folks.

Here's a listing of The Best Global Warming Videos on the Internet.

Hey, fat, shit-for-brains, bloated, liar, huckster, fraud, criminal, charlatan, scumbag, loser, disgraced ex-VP AlGoreBore (LIAR-TN), is back using $300 million of OPM (Other Peoples' Money) to promote his Global Warming Bullshit, after the worst Winter in over 100 years. Welcome back, fatso huckster asswipe, AlGoreBore!

CO2 bad? No; CO2 is good, and we need more of it, or we're in for a very cold period, very soon. Here are the facts about CO2.

Roger Revelle of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Harvard University and University of California San Diego, spits on the lying scumbag, AlGoreBore. My, my, oh my, Mr Revelle. Spot-on! Gore is scum, isn't s/he (((snicker)))

There's another "ice age" coming, not the AlGoreBoreLiar 'glob-bull warming' crap. F*ck you, AlGoreBoreAsshole!

Larsen B Ice Shelf in Antarctica collapses in 2002 = Glo-bullshit Warming? F*ck you, AlGoreBoreAsshole!

Read this idiocy. Go ahead; I'll wait.

Lowlife, Subhuman Filth.

Condoleeza Rice is a dumbassed, idiotic, lowlife, moronic, cretinous Nigga© bitch. Send the idiotic whore back top Africa,if that's where th slut-skank originates,. But, it's all a LIE. Rice isn't an African-American; SHE'S A Niggas©, plain and simple, IMO.

The yellow-dog, gook, slope dirtbag, dink, skank-punk filth, Malaysian opposition leader, muslim-islamist-dirtbag scum, Anwar Ibrahim likes to "enter the exit" — "pave the Hershey Highway" — and hopefully he's gotten AIDS, and will DIE! I truly hope the subhuman, does die!

Awwwww, poor subhuman, lowlife, dirtbag, pig-fucking muslim-islamist-arab, upset at a puppy's picture on a postcard? Fuck you, subhuman filth!

Fonts For You.

Many Journal entries are best viewed in the Charrington Roughened and the Orlando typefaces. You may already have Century Gothic on your Windows-XP machine, and that's occasionally used for the body copy or subheads, but grab it anyway! They're free from my website. Grab 'em! Save them to your HD, and install to C:/Windows/Fonts folder, thru your WIN®-XP® Control Panel > Fonts > File > Install New Font. Simple stuff; just takes a few minutes.

Here are a few others, which my Journal will be written-in during the coming weeks/months/years: Papyrus and Acoustic Bass, and Caesar Regular and Carleton and Charrington Strewn, Mistral and Catherine. Get and install them, and see how much nicer these pages are to view and read. Plus, they add to your repertoiré of available fonts in MS-Word®, as WIN®-XP® System Fonts, so you can use them for your daily documents in MS-Word etc.

Some People Just Need Killing.

None of the subhuman, murderous "Manson Family" should have been allowed to live and waste US Taxpayers' dollars, IMO, after conviction, especially this Atkins bitch. KILL HER, dammit! Kill all of them!

IMO, US Rep Jack-off Murtha should be summarily charged, tried, convicted, sentenced and executed. He's a traitor, seditionist and saboteur, and has willfully undermined the US Military, in a time of war. Stand him against a wall and shoot him.

Give this police officer a medal for killing that child beater/murderer, IMO. Bravo, officer!

OK-1; TX-0. Bravo, Oklahoma!

Lunch in a Box: Building a Better Bento.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Yeah, got it. Now, how about lunch? I think it's the most impossible. By eating out, you face an expensive, potentially bloating waste of an hour. Bring your lunch and dine on a hastily-constructed sandwich, made soggy from too much tomato or pickle. In either case, the caloric chaos is a likely risk. Bring in "Biggie", the self-proclaimed speedy lunch packer and proprietor of Lunch in a Box: Building a Better Bento. Biggie's efforts to quickly prepare healthy and convenient mid-day meals for her family, offer sustenance for us all. A "Bento Lunch" is nourishing, compact, and, if done the proper way, filled with just the right calories for a productive and happy afternoon. Beyond some of the delicious Japanese recipes, a Bento lunch can be more familiar than you think. For those of us who wear lunch around our waists, Biggie's "Better Bento" means building the perfect lunch. (If you believe that, Heaven help you.)