Monday, February 24, 2014

Self Employment vs. A Job

You'll Never Find A "Good" Corporate Job
Second, understand that economic growth is slowing. We are only growing at about 60% of the rate of the 1940′s and 1950′s.  Without that extra economic growth there are mathematically fewer employment opportunities and certainly less challenging ones. So whereas if you were a GI coming back from WWII Boeing would likely hire you as an aerospace engineer, today Boeing would maybe hire you as dataentrysman. If you’re lucky.

Finally, the Baby Boomer generation was absolutely HORRIBLE in terms of financial planning. Most squandered their inheritance from the WWII generation, blew what money they made on divorce lawyers, and are now the most participatory group in “reverse mortgages.” They did not save anywhere near the amount they needed for retirement which means…
Captian Capitalism points out that working for a company and advancing through the ranks on your way to success ain't happening.

I know people who can say that something like two of the people who have worked in a certain company during the last 30 years have officially retired with benefits.

I also know many people who have been fired on a whim (deserved or not) on orders from the corporate office.

Many of us look for corporate jobs in order to get a "safe, reliable" paycheck.  But it seems to me that working all your life for a company that may just fire you for being a few years from retirement or because of some new management trend is not any safer than hiring yourself.

The risks of losing everything with your own business seem to get smaller by the day.

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Once I figure out the stupid software issues I have, I'll re-release my book, and open The Food Plot Store.  (I'm a good procrastinator.)

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

A Throne of Bones

by Vox Day

Like I said yesterday, I'm no fan of sci-fi, but after having read A Magic Broken I was interested enough to buy and read A Throne of Bones.

I quite liked how the book was arranged, having been written from the perspective of many different characters to move several plot lines along.

My favorite novelist Eric van Lustbader writes his books in the same way, although he uses fewer characters and story-lines that weave through each other a bit more than those in A Throne of Bones, and van Lustbader's books jump around a lot more in time than Vox's linear storyline.

(Read: Jian by Eric van Lustbader)

The final battle in A throne of Bones was the most interesting battle description that I have read in quite a while, becasue of the constant changing perspectives.

The storylines, kinda, moved through different characters in a world of magic, men, elves, dwarves, orcs, and so on.  (One thought that I had was that an army of men in this world would have one  advantage over men fighting in the real world.  Imagine: orc: "Hey man, help me destroy your city and I'll bribe you with a bunch of money and all the orc women you could want...")

Rather than go through the details of the story, I'll describe the story as one about armies, politics, and magic.  The armies and battles that they fight are possible the best fictional ones that I've ever read,  the political issues are interesting in how I'll need to reflect on them a bit more (or gain more knowledge of their world) before I know which side I would've preferred, and the magical scenes were, for the most part, simple understandable and not outrageous.

The book was very good and I'd recommend it.

My criticisms is as follows:

When reading about many characters whose names come from unfamiliar places it becomes much more difficult to remember who is who, especially when many characters seem to be called different things by different characters.  The appendix (?) at the end did help clarify many of the ranks of the various soldiers, but I spent much of the first few chapters trying to figure out if there were several characters or only a few each being described by his family name by one character, then given name by another character, then nickname, then rank, and so on.

The descriptions of the military units left me at a loss too, becasue I am no scholar of Ancient Roman military structure.

It seemed as though there were several points where the book seemed to be a parallel of what happened in real history, and I recognized a few of them.  But some things like the paragraph about Marcus' horse having the same name as Alexander the Great's did in real life, was cool that I recognized it, but seemingly unnecessary. 

One more thing I would criticize is that this book seemed to be more of the beginning and middle of a story.  There was no definite ending to the book.  For example, after reading the last segment of Fjotra's story I was still exepecting more to it until I ended the book and it wasn't there.

I could see the final scene in the book being very cool to end part one of a series of movies, but it was not quite the conclusive ending that I was expecting.  I can understand not wrapping up all of the storylines, but it did not seem as if the main storyline was concluded.

It may well be that this is one of several books about the characters in the book, and it would be nice to know which books I should have read first and when others will come after.  I'm glad that I read A Magic Broken before A Throne of Bones, but I wonder if The Wardog's Coin, which I'm about to read should have been read before too.

Good book, would recommend, not perfect.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

A Magic Broken

by Vox Day

I'm not really a fan of sci-fi, or fantasay, nor do I know, or care about the differences between the genres.  But I do read Vox Popoli regularly and so when Vox had A Magic Broken avilible for free a while ago, I got it and then recently read it.

So the story is of a magician and a dwarf who enter a town of men and leave with a female elf.

My summary is short and so is the book.  But despite my minimal interest in this type of book, its shortness would be my only critizism.

And that's not much of a criticism.  Were Vox to publish a similar book of size and scope every so often, I would be happy to buy and read them.

Apparently this book is kind of a warm up for a longer book A Throne of Bones.  Which I just finished reading  and will have a longer review for tomorrow.

Monday, February 17, 2014

Jim Corbett: Master of the Jungle

by Tim Werling

Jim Corbett was an Englishman who lived in India from 1875-194?.  He is famous becasue he killed many of the worst man-eating animals in history.

There are leopards and tigers in India and many people who live in small villages and survived by hunting and some small farming operations.  Very often some leopard or tiger may become unable to hunt its normal prey, or just finds that people are easy to catch and they become man-eaters.

Jim Corbett killed lots of man-eaters including several famous for killing several hundreds of people before being shot by Jim.

If you look for "man-eater" in Wikipedia you'll find listings of the most famous man-eating animals.  Most of the leopards and tigers were killed by Jim Corbett.

Champawat Tiger: killed 430 people WR

Leopard of Rudraprayag: killed 125 people



This book is a storyized narrative of Jim Corbett's life.  Born in India, hunted various things, and then was repeatedly called upon to kill man-eaters.  Most of the book is interesting enough as a story-like version of his life and first several hunts, although it ends with a mere summary of several famous man-eaters as if this author ran out of time, or pages, in order to keep the story going.

The book is on a very interesting subject, but I preferred reading a few of the books by the man himself to this biography.  Jungle Lore, for example.

Monday, February 10, 2014

The Best Movie Lines

I recently posted a list of what I think are the essential movies to watch are.  (And I forgot Rocky II and the first Dirty Harry movie.)  And while I rediscovered the name of my favorite movie starring Randolph Scott (Western Union) I remembered my favorite line from it:
It was nice meeting you gentlemen...and [turns to a certain guy] you to.
I considered a list of the best movie quotes, but then I remembered that there is no question the best line in any movie comes from Six-String Samurai.  And this movie didn't make the list because it is stupid...but in a good way.
Mesh-Head: If I were you, I would run.
Buddy: If you were me, you'd be good-lookin'. 
No, not that line.
Buddy: Who are you?
Death: Death,
Buddy: Cool.
Still not it.
Head Pin Pal: Nice tuxedo. Nice tuxedo to die in! 
This next one is it, the best movie quote ever:
Ward Cleaver: You ever try a pink golf ball, Wally? Why, the wind shear alone on a pink golf ball can take the head off a 90-pound midget at over 300 yards.


Friday, February 7, 2014

Bad News for Food Prices

California is having a drought.  An awful lot of food comes from CA. 

A+B= higher food prices

Wirecutter:
I can hear all of you out there saying “Sucks to be you, motherfucker!” Uh-huh. Just remember where a huge portion of your food is grown, no matter where you are in the US. It’s gonna suck to be YOU until we get some fucking water. Yeah, they can import some of your produce (that’s where your veggies come from in the winter) but you’re gonna pay dearly for that. Major suckage, folks.

Our cattle herd is the smallest it’s been since 1951. That’s beef. Our dairy herds here are huge but without water, there ain’t going to be enough silage to feed them. The dairymen are already talking about selling their herds to other countries because they can’t afford to feed them.

I would suggest to all my Patriot friends out there that you put in a fucking garden this year, even if you’ve never had one before or you’re gonna take a bigger hit in your budget than what you think.




Thursday, February 6, 2014

Hypothetical Scenario

asshole cop: Do you know why I pulled you over?

me: To generate revenue for the government.



What would be the result?

Same as usual, I suppose.  Although I notice that they no longer start with that question and instead start with the lecture on speeding.

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Note: In an attempt to delete some spam comments, I accidentally deleted a pile of legitimate comments.

Monday, February 3, 2014

My Book

Shoot Deer, my book, as a beginner's guide to hunting whitetails is available for Kindle.  Free Northerner posted a review on his blog.

I'd like to point out that I was unhappy with the editing of it and I've had it edited by someone other than me.  I am in the midst of making some changes, and adding pictures.  I am particularly reworking the chapters on public land, rifles, muzzleloaders, and how to shoot a bow.

I would recommend waiting to buy my book until I re-release it.

In the meantime I suggest that anyone interested in hunting whitetails read two other books on the subject:

Outwitting the Whitetail by Perry G. Reilly

More of a pamphlet than a "book", but it is just about everything that you need to know about hunting whitetail deer.

One Man's Whitetail by Gene Wensel

A better hunter than me is Mr. Wensel.  He hunts exclusively with traditional bows, which makes everything much more difficult.  After being nearly done with writing my book, I re-read this one and discovered three anecdotes that I had attributed to long-lost magazine articles were actually from this book.

He wrote my book two years after I was born!

Visit my deer hunting blog if you have any questions or want more information.

shootdeer.wordpress.com

Happy hunting.

Random picture from my collection