Dawn of Evolution

35 weeks and nothing until NOW!

2009-12-04T10:26:34Z

Wow! Last update was 35 WEEKS ago. Has it been that long? Maybe so. Jus' been a bit of a busy bugger. No time to idle or to relax, just a movin' and a groovin'. Go, go, go!

What's happenin' hotstuff?

Dragon is still alive.

2009-03-05T10:10:09Z

Not much to report really. Not anything that wouldn't bore someone to death. Just busy with work and other things. Head is borderline fried.

Dragon's Goin' Green.

2009-02-18T20:16:25Z

Planning has been underway for a little while now. The numbers and business plan are in process and it has been quite the daunting task. Who ever said saving the world and saving Michigan was going to be easy is nuts. But the end results are going to be phenomenal.

Looking for a couple of brain pan partners to help this along. Anyone interested?

The ground zero for this is Milan. If everything pans out as it is looking to, we can flip the Middle East the bird and laugh.

Shoot me an email.

This Has All Happened Before...And It Will Happen Again.

2009-01-30T21:25:25Z

Well, to tell the truth this has got to ABSOLUTELY be THE worst start of a fucking year. One thing just starts the pile, then another and another. Well with all of these little things on the pile, it was already a stack of shit. Now rewind to last Thursday, my Mother-in-Law passes away. I know I have not had the greatest of relationships with the woman, but I never wish ill will upon anybody. Especially the final bally-ho. Okay, that does add a whopper to the shit stack of things going on, but then the city of Milan was doing some work on a busted water main and pow! No power for three fucking days. One good thing came of that, at least my food did not perish..... So kitties had to be moved to a warmer location for the duration cause Edison said that they could not get out to repair stated line break for at least five days. Fuck! So, trying to plan a trip to Virginia in a hotel room and having all four kids in close proximity is a near unbelievable task. Now just wait. It gets worse. Digging through all of the files that my wife's aunt sends to us we find out that MiL did not have a life insurance policy. FUCK! Because she was living on borrowed time since 1976 upon her diagnosis of MS, no insurance company would touch her with a ten meter cattle prod. Okay, breathe. Well lets look into what we can do. Come to find out the assisted living place she was at had already shipped the body to a funeral home. Said funeral home gave a price of 9,909.78 for the starter package without a casket, and caskets started at 2,300. My initial thought, fuck off you gouging little bastard! So I did some research and found a few more less costly deals. So that crisis is avoided. Now for the timing, bad. All the bills are due right now and ugh. So here I am buried under the pressure of one hell of a shitstack of problems.

But Dragon is still alive.

Another Year Has Come

2009-01-01T08:13:46Z

Happy New Years to all.

Now that the formalities are out of the way.

Nuttin' new. Same me, same family, same house, same job. Maybe I might win the lottery or something.

Doubtful.

Gonna get shit done this year tho'.

Really, I am. Come on December....hurry up.

Happy Holidays!

2008-12-26T02:52:14Z

The ten tons of bricks just got relieved from the shoulders, so Dragon is a very happy camper today.

Dragon and family wish everyone else a Happy and safe Holidays.

For those who don't care and aren't picky, Merry Christmas!

For Kaos....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jqgr4UUqdNg

The Weekend News.

2008-12-22T18:56:19Z

Dragon is a fairweather creature and can no longer tolerate the sub zero frozen tundra. Global warming my ass. I need to move to Hawaii. Or have a house here in MI and another one in Sydney. Alternating homes to avoid the cold and snow.

On A Better Day...

2008-12-15T01:49:55Z

I am onto something really fucking awesome. The lid on this will stay sealed until I can crunch the numbers and figure out just how to get this thing to work. If it proves worthy, then the powers that be will see it and hopefully give Dragon a new direction in which life will take him.....

It was a stroke of brilliance that hits every once in a while. From the looks of the patent office searches, no one has even scratched the surface on this. Cool fucking beans!

Beware What You Wish For...

2008-12-12T20:05:11Z

Those of you who do not support the bailout of the American Auto Industry, I'll see you in the unemployment line.

That will destroy families like mine. Many good people and their families will fall.

Heat is a Good Thing in Winter.

2008-12-09T08:01:02Z

Post about something that made you happy today even if it's just a small thing and even if it's just a one-line post.

Getting the power back on after Farmer Fran decided it was a good idea to drive down the icy road at high speed after leaving the local watering hole loaded like a Cass Corridor hooker. Heat is a good thing. Especially when it is freezing outside.

Preparing for the Apocky-clipse

2008-12-08T03:53:26Z

Yesterday I took a refresher course for ameteur radio and took the exam. Woot! I am licensed radio operator now through the FCC. I am awaiting the call sign they are going to assign me.

It was fairly easy. I was surprised. I am now legal to get onto the airwaves using a transceiver up to 1500W.

One step closer to being prepared when the shit hits the fan.

Meme from Emmy

2008-12-01T18:51:22Z

1) Dragon is a legendary creature.
2) Dragon is an alliance.
3) Dragon is speech recognition software.
4) Dragon is a grand illusion. (Hey! Who asked Styx anyways....)
5) Dragon is welcomed.
6) Dragon is an RPG.
7) Dragon is a database.
8) Dragon is an information event.
9) Dragon is a chinese astrological/zodiac symbol.
10) Dragon is a group of networks.
11) Dragon is a some assembly required model.
12) Dragon is a security application.
13) Dragon is a spacecraft.
14) Dragon is a megabrand.
15) Dragon is a dynamic resource allocation.
16) Dragon is a computer game.
17) Dragon is an old European computer that was the equivalent of the TI-80. (Ugh! Couldn't they have done it later?)
18) Dragon is a Go Server.
19) Dragon is a top secret Chinese space project. (Cool!)
20) Dragon has his own convention... ...Dragoncon!

Huh?

2008-11-30T19:25:23Z

I walk out into rain this morning, and then when I walk out of the grocery store five minutes later, it was a full blown snow event. This morning was just getting worse by the moment. The only thing that made it better was french toast. Now I just am flagging around and not motivated at all. I know there are things to be done, yet, I don't feel like it.

Got to run back out to the store soon. Yuck.

Snow.

2008-11-24T19:28:08Z

Need I say more? That white crap that makes driving miserable for the work commute. If it t'were just for fun, then HELL YEAH! Donuts anyone? Wonderful crazy driving in snow.

Got to torture a couple of new pleebs over the weekend. Good times. Family came over for dinner last night and it went rather well. Sat down for "The Crystal Skull" afterwards and it topped off the night. (For most anyways. I'm Nocturnal remember....)

mckendricks @ 2008-11-19T13:19:00

2008-11-19T18:31:58Z

I find it hard not to continually bang my head on my desk. The ideas are there but the connection is not there. Maybe I need a rewire job done.

Too many distractions maybe. Need solitude.

Must finish this project. I must finish it.

Sanity depends on it.

Tried other forms of throughput, but nothing seems to jog the wiring into position.

Enough babble, brute force may need to be applied again.

I found It!

2008-11-18T20:26:44Z

I managed to find the ringtone version of the Mercenaries 2 commercial song. Oh no you didn't! Sucker tried to play me, and he didn't pay me! Oh no you didn't!

Dragon is very happy!

The Sputtering of the Creative MInd

2008-11-18T08:40:20Z

The brain has been like an old two stroke engine that is being stubborn about starting. It will sputter and look like it's about to start and then stalls out in a dragged out coughing fit. I know not to try and force the fluids to move because I have seen the end results and they are not pretty. So I have been exercising the noodle by trying to beat it into shape. Using a desk. The only thing I get out of that though is a dent in the desk and a very bad headache.

Just for Emmy

2008-11-17T17:33:13Z

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-world-europe/20081117/EU.Britain.New.Word/

This is for Emmy.

Thought you might appreciate this. The word "meh" is actually now an official word.

Thanks to Emmy

2008-11-17T17:27:55Z

On all of the conversations that we've had about driving and how to control spins in a stick. Saved my bloody life last night.

Cruising on home from Holly last night and the road decided to pull the rug out from underneath me and my car. In the middle of traffic on US-23 mind you. Thank God it was sparse on the changeover from the north end to the south end just north of Plymouth Road. Car started to go backwards on a slick road and the first thing was what I remember Emmy telling me from his experience from Bondurant. Pop the car out of gear and let the wheels free spin as you steer into the spin until the car rights itself by letting the heavy end (the front end in most cars) take over. The experience lasted only a few seconds, but I think I had to change my drawers after that.

Luckily I didn't have to fix another car, and change my drawers. The few drivers behind me may not have been so lucky on the pants change. I think I scared them more than they scared me.

On an unrelated note, the one thing that still remains on my mind years after it happened was driving an Escort next to an Autocar and a deer running out in front of me and missing my car, but hitting said Autocar and exploding. I was plucking entrails from my wipers for hours. Grossed out my passenger who had just awoke from a nap. Funny thing, the truck did not flinch one bit.

Rolling Holies....

2008-11-17T03:09:46Z

I think we had a bit of a Holy War a few days ago in Jeruselem. You had Armenian and Greek Orthodox clergy in the same area of the city and they were all trying to cram into one spot in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Thus a brawl broke out.

It all began as a nudging game as the two groups of church staffers were funneling into the front door. Then the nudging got a bit more heated. Punches were thrown and kicks were delivered to try and clear the path. At one point we had "stage-diving" priests who flew over the tops of their peers and onto a rival clergyman. Hats were flying, and beads were yanked. Eventually Christian priests were fair game as well as the brawl between the two grew out of control. Then the bouncers for the Holy City show up in force to calm the bedlam.

The might of the Israeli Police Force was no match for these scrapping men of the cloth. Though no shots were fired, two men were apprehended and the brawl broken up after a while of trying to calm the crowds that had joined in.

How's that for a lesson in Divine Peace?

The Music in the Head

2008-11-05T06:05:17Z

Just hearing a little tune in my head right about now.

1.
Союз нерушимый республик свободных
Сплотила навеки Великая Русь!
Да здравствует созданный волей народов
Единый, могучий Советский Союз!

ПРИПЕВ:

Славься, Отечество наше свободное,

Дружбы народов надёжный оплот!

Партия Ленина — сила народная

Нас к торжеству коммунизма ведёт!

2.
Сквозь грозы сияло нам солнце свободы,
И Ленин великий нам путь озарил:
На правое дело он поднял народы,
На труд и на подвиги нас вдохновил!

ПРИПЕВ

3.
В победе бессмертных идей коммунизма
Мы видим грядущее нашей страны,
И Красному знамени славной Отчизны
Мы будем всегда беззаветно верны!

ПРИПЕВ

Score yourself five bonus points if you can figure out what it is.

What A Mess!

2008-10-11T01:35:37Z

The following is a condensation of a series from the Investor's Business Daily explaining "What Caused the Loan Crisis":
1977: Pres. Jimmy Carter signs the Community Reinvestment Act into Law. The law pressured financial institutions to extend home loans to those who would otherwise not qualify. The Premise: Home ownership would improve poor and crime-ridden communities and neighborhoods in terms of crime, investment, jobs, etc.
Results: Statistics bear out that it did not help.
How did the government get so deeply involved in the housing market?
Answer: Bill Clinton wanted it that way.
1992: Republican representative Jim Leach (R-IOWA) warned of the danger that Fannie and Freddie were changing from being agencies of the public at large to money machines for the principals and the stockholding few.
1993: Clinton extensively rewrote Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's rules turning the quasi-private mortgage-funding firms into semi-nationalized monopolies dispensing cash and loans to large Democratic voting blocks and handing favors, jobs and contributions to political allies. (This potent mix led inevitably to corruption and the 2008 collapse of Freddie and Fannie.)
1994: Despite warnings, Clinton unveiled his National Home-Ownership Strategy which broadened the CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) in ways Congress never intended.
1995: Congress, about to change from a Democrat majority to Republican, Clinton orders Robert Rubin's Treasury Dept to rewrite the rules. Robt. Rubin's Treasury reworked rules, forcing banks to satisfy quotas for sub-prime and minority loans to get a satisfactory CRA rating.   The rating was key to expansion or mergers for banks. Loans began to be made on the basis of race and little else.
1997 - 1999: Clinton, bypassing Republicans, enlisted Andrew Cuomo, then Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, allowing Freddie and Fannie to get into the sub-prime market in a BIG way. Led by Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Chris Dodd, congress doubled down on the risk by easing capital limits and allowing them to hold just 2.5% of capital to back their investments vs. 10% for banks. Since they could borrow at lower rates than banks their enterprises boomed.
With incentives in place, banks poured billions in loans into poor communities, often "no doc", "no income", requiring no money down and no verification of income.   Worse still was the cronyism: Fannie and Freddie became home to out-of-work politicians, mostly Clinton Democrats. 384 politicians got big campaign donations from Fannie and Freddie. Over $200 million had been spent on lobbying and political activities. During the 1990's Fannie and Freddie enjoyed a subsidy of as much as $182 Billion, most of it going to principals and shareholders, not poor borrowers as claimed.
Did it work? Minorities made up 49% of the 12.5 million new homeowners but many of those loans have gone bad and the minority homeownership are shrinking fast.
1999: New Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers, became alarmed at Fannie and Freddie's excesses. Congress held hearings the ensuing year but nothing was done because Fannie and Freddie had donated millions to key congressmen and radical groups, ensuring no meaningful changes would take place. "We manage our political risk with the same intensity that we manage our credit and interest rate risks," Fannie CEO Franklin Raines, a former Clinton official and current Barack Obama advisor, bragged to investors in 1999.
2000:   Secretary Summers sent Undersecretary Gary Gensler to Congress seeking an end to the "special status". Democrats raised a ruckus as did Fannie and Freddie, headed by politically connected CEO's who knew how to reward and punish. "We think that the statements evidence a contempt for the nation's housing and mortgage markets" Freddie spokesperson Sharon McHale said. It was the last chance during the Clinton era for reform.
2001:   Republicans try repeatedly to bring fiscal sanity to Fannie and Freddie but Democrats blocked any attempt at reform; especially Rep. Barney Frank and Sen.Chris Dodd who now run key banking committees and were huge beneficiaries of campaign contributions from the mortgage giants.
2003: Bush proposes what the NY Times called "the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago". Even after discovering a scheme by Fannie and Freddie to overstate earnings by $10.6 billion to boost their bonuses, the Democrats killed reform.
2005: Then Fed chairman Alan Greenspan warns Congress: "We are placing the total financial system at substantial risk". Sen. McCain, with two others, sponsored a Fannie/Freddie reform bill and said, "If congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole". Sen. Harry Reid accused the GOP; of trying to "cripple the ability of Fannie and Freddie to carry out their mission of expanding homeownership" The bill went nowhere.
2007: By now Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee over HALF of the $12 trillion US mortgage market. The mortgage giants, whose executive suites were top-heavy with former Democratic officials, had been working with Wall St. to repackage the bad loans and sell them to investors. As the housing market fell in '07, subprime mortgage portfolios suffered major losses. The crisis was on, though it was 15 years in the making.
2008: McCain has repeatedly called for reforming the behemoths, Bush urged reform 17 times. Still the media have repeated Democrats' talking points about this being a "Republican" disaster. A few Republicans are complicit but Fannie and Freddie were created by Democrats, regulated by Democrats, largely run by Democrats and protected by Democrats. That's why taxpayers are now being asked for $700 billion!!

You can confirm, just click the links below and listen to your lawmakers own words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68D9XrqyrWo&feature=related_

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68D9XrqyrWo&feature=related <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68D9XrqyrWo&feature=related> ) #

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIgqfM5C8lY_

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIgqfM5C8lY <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIgqfM5C8lY> ) #

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9juJr8CSY4&feature=related_

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9juJr8CSY4&feature=related <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9juJr8CSY4&feature=related> ) #

Ronald S. Cole
First Vice President
Financial Advisor
MorganStanley
Mack Centre IV
South 61 Paramus Rd.
Paramus NJ 07652
866-242-2998 Fax: 201-712-4006
Postscript: ACORN is one of the principle beneficiaries of Fannie/Freddie's slush funds. They are currently under indictment or investigation in many states. Barack Obama served as their legal counsel, defending their activities for several years.

mckendricks @ 2008-10-10T11:40:00

2008-10-10T15:51:54Z

Ah the brilliance of management.   They want something that has been nothing short of a cluster fuck miracle.   Where is the copability of our supplier?

Woodhaven Stamping has been shipping less than quality panels to us and it has been one uphill battle after another to keep the quality up on our beloved F-150. The flaws in the metal, albeit repairable, have been just a massive thorn in my side since day one.    Toss a major head cold to the mix since last Friday and feeling like shit, just makes matters soooo much worse. (Sorry Emmy thats why I was a no show at the BBQ. I know eveyone is very appreciative that I did not share this one!!!!)

So today, when everyone else   has the day off, us body repair folks and other similar classifications, have to be there and work all of this fucked up shit they have been shipping us. I suggested to the boss last night that we should rent a bus and take a field trip to Woodhaven, kick their asses and show them how to do their jobs!

Other than that.....nothing.....

Still Here and Life Trudges on at a Boring Pace

2008-10-04T15:43:52Z

Yep, still here. Nothing much worth reporting other than I got to seriously play with a new updated not for sale version of SYNC at the neighbor's house. Cool shit! Onstar requires you to be coherant and able to speak with an operator after an accident . The new SYNC does not. It links with your cell and calls emergency line to get help after a crash. Using GPS to pinpoint your location and to alert the ermergency crew that airbags have deployed. Neat shit. It also has a 20GB hard drive internally to rip your music or other stuff to so it minimizes your troubles.

Gonna get me one of those! Hehe.

Survived the First Week Back to Work.

2008-09-27T16:19:52Z

Went back to work on Monday, and things were slow and pretty decent considering I haven't been to work in almost three months. Though I was going to get stuck with the Queen Bitch at work, but did not. That was a relief. We got the cool guy for a supervisor.

Karma has a wonderful way of getting at you when you least expect it. This guy at work, he always bad mouths Ford. Even though they pay his mortgage, he drives a Toyota to work. Well just the other day, his said Toyota's battery died. He got a jump from someone who was far gracious than I on last break. He left it running in the parking lot for a good hour before we noticed smoke on the horizon from the parking lot. We all knew what it was and so did he as he ran off to the lot to turn it off. Soon after we heard fire trucks and saw the flashing lights enter the lot and the laughter just opened up. It was his little Toyota that caught fire and burned up. I never wished him any ill will. I knew Karma would deliver a blow to his blasphemy.

So now he drives a Ford Focus. Ah, the irony of it all.