Carmina Burana ~ O Fortuna

There are some pieces of music that just hit you. Carmina Burana ~ O Fortuna is one of them.

When you have 1,600 watts, Klipsch RF-82 Reference speakers and 2 monster subwoofers you’d think I would include something with bass, so for that I use Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture which will bring the house down. But it does so clearly and while putting a very big grin on your face. You’d swear you were at the concert, when they pound the drum you feel it.

Awesome!

Awesome!

Playing house music on this system will actually cause the neighbors china to rattle. I only use house music to test the subwoofers about once or twice a year though, it’s all I can handle.

This system will be hard to get rid of when we’re ready to full time because I’m not going to build up the system in the coach. I’m plenty happy with the basics in there. I had nothing better to post today and when I ran across the video I figured why not post it?

Have a great Sunday everybody.

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!

It’s 1982

It’s High School graduation time, Ford released the 1982 Mustang GT H.O. (for high output) and magazines proclaimed “The Boss is back!!”. This GT had 160 horsepower which is laughable today but back then it was a sign that the era of decal performance was over. By decal performance what I mean is stickers applied to the Trans AM, Camaro and Mustang to give the impression of performance with nothing to back it up under the hood.

Fast forward to 2011 and Ford releases the most powerful naturally aspirated Mustang ever at 412 horsepower, no supercharger, no turbo, just one of the best engines ever produced in the United States. 5.0 liters of pure muscle. Is Ford happy with that? No, Government Motors (that would be GM) allows the Chevy division to build a king of the hill Camaro called the ZL1 making 550hp, Ford replies I’ll see your 550hp and raise you 100hp to 650hp!

This is insane, the Z06 Corvette has a top speed of 198mph, this new monster Mustang GT500 has a top speed of 200+ mph. Seriously, if somebody told me back in the day that you could buy a 650hp Mustang at the dealer I’d call you a liar, no way.

Many people think, where can you put all that power to use? That’s not the point, gearheads know what I’m talking about. Just knowing you have it is enough and besides, there are legal ways to use all that power and half the fun is figuring out how to get all that power to the ground. 0 – 60 for the GT500 hasn’t really changed even though power keeps going up, why? Well, tires really don’t have a way of gripping the road any better so most buyers of these monster buy aftermarket street legal drag radials to make it possible to launch the car properly.

By the time most cars are at 60mph these monsters are at 100mph, simply amazing. Not only that but a 160hp Mustang in 1982 got 16mpg, if it was lucky, a new Mustang GT is rated at 17mpg but I had one, I averaged over 23mpg with 550hp on tap. These new brutes are cleaner, get better mpg and are built infinitely better than they were in the past.

You can walk right into a Ford dealer and walk out with a car capable of blowing away full blown race cars from just 10 years ago… Amazing. A new 2012 Boss Mustang is the best Mustang ever produced, this isn’t me saying that, although I agree, the critics that always bad mouth Mustang’s are saying it. You see, they hate live axle cars, but they love this one!

The must have it side of me has been waiting for these cars my whole life, people who know me will be shocked when they learn I have no interest in buying one… my how far I have come.

History

I have been a history buff since I was a kid. Having immigrated here from Norway with my parents in 1964 I am also into Norwegian history. I’m very proud of my countries history, as violent as it was for many centuries. I am also proud of American history and wanted to know more about why my parents immigrated here with my brother and I. Our sister was born here so is first generation American. I read so many stories of American history/heroism and it brings tears to my eyes to read or watch documentaries of them. Even pushing 50 if I had to, I would fight for this country even if it meant my death. I don’t know what an overweight near 50 bad back bad knees and bad elbows guy could do but I’d do what I could. I love the USA, ask my wife I bleed Red White & Blue.

But, I didn’t know enough about the country I was born in so I read what I could while in school and in the library. The Internet sure would have come in handy back then!

WWII was devastating for so many countries but it never touched American shores after Pearl harbor. American’s didn’t have to deal with any Japanese or Nazis up close, thank God. The Nazis invaded Norway on April 8th, 1940, the operation was called “Operation Weserubung” using Blitzkrieg tactics. The Viking’s used complete surprise when they attacked, so did the Nazis, lack of preparedness for a large scale invasion gave the Nazis room for success.

A parachute battalion (a first for warfare) was used to take out the Oslo and Stavanger airfields. 800 aircraft overwhelmed them and resistance was overcome quickly. Neutrality means one thing, weakness, the enemy could care less, if they want a fight and you don’t, they’ll bring it to you and make you sorry for not being prepared, a lesson lost on too many today.

Nazis troops brazenly marched into Oslo behind a brass band, imagine what that must have been like to see. Makes me sick to even think about. Thankfully there was enough resistance to allow the royal family to escape. After the initial shock of the surprise attack they were also able to slow the Nazis advance but superior numbers caused them to retreat.

June 10th the Norwegian 6th division surrendered after the British moved their troops to the French front, without allied support any further defense against the Nazis invasion was impossible. For the rest of the war the Nazis kept 300,000 troops in Norway to keep Swedish iron ore safe and to use its resources.

Norway had traitors who helped the Nazis, the most famous of which was Vidkun Quisling who seized power in a Nazi backed coup and the collaborationist Government proceeded to participate in Germany’s “Final Solution”.  Disgusting.

After the war there was a purge of these people, Quisling was executed by firing squad 10/24/45, which in my mind, that was too good for him. Many fought the Nazis, one of the most famous resistance fighters was “Max Manus” who with other members of what became the “Oslogjengen” which translates to the Oslo Gang, drove the Nazis crazy with acts of sabotage preventing munitions, planes and troops from leaving Norway for the front.

They also saved the lives of thousands of Norwegian sons from serving in the Nazis “National Labour Duty” which was actually a Nazi scheme to send between 75,000 to 300,000 Norwegian men/boys to the German/Russian front. Factory workers would sabotage the munitions they made, tanks and everything else they could so failures of equipment and munitions was high coming from Norway. I’m sure it pissed the Nazis off but good when V2’s failed. What did the Nazis think, people would happily make them? Unfortunately many died when they were caught but they did what they thought was the right thing to do to keep the Nazis from winning the war.

After the war Norway had to rebuild its economy and this took time, when my brother was born my parents decided to move to the US. My mother had lived in the US during the 1950’s and went to school here and wanted to return permanently. A month after I was born we moved here, my father forced himself to learn English and both became productive American’s and taught us to be American’s and to love our adopted country.

What makes the United States great is people from every country on Earth has come here and with them the rich history of their heritage as well. No other country has it and when ever there is a fight people are shocked at how hard and consistent the US armed forces will fight. In WWI the Marines were called Devil Dog’s for their fierceness but along with that fierceness is the willingness to help other countries through tough times, help them fight for their freedom and help them rebuild after a tragedy.

Thanks for stopping by, have a great weekend! God Bless The USA.

State Farm – No Longer Awesome

We have had State Farm for what seems like forever, my wife has had them since the '70’s and soon after we got married we consolidated everything into a State Farm package so everything was covered. Since we had no claims everything was great! We bought the RV and had 2 claims, both were handled in my view perfectly by State Farm.

Enter the house, last June we had a bad wind and hail storm, the roof was damaged as was the siding. The claim process was a nightmare, denied the first time even though the examiner saw damage, so we said fine, if State Farm says there isn’t enough damage then what can we do? I am not the kind of person who files a claim without having very good reason and they say everything is fine. They had done right by us for the RV, why would they be any different for the house?

I have found that how one division acts has nothing to do with another division, they’re like separate companies completely. I was ignorant of this fact.

We had our door knocked on by every single storm damage construction company out there saying they would handle everything and we turned each and every one of them down. Enter March 2011, an even worse hail and wind storm and now there is more damage, you can actually see the roof tiles were cracked from the impact and we have dings all over the siding.

State Farm came out and said yes you clearly have enough damage to warrant roof and siding replacement. They sent us a check for several thousand dollars less than the damage and said we would need to revisit the claim if the repairs were more than the check. We decided to wait until Spring of 2012…. our mistake… last night we get a form letter from some underwriter at State Farm stating “This insurance coverage is no longer acceptable to State Farm Fire and Casualty Company because of your overall claim activity”. Number of claims on file? ONE! 

He then states the overall claim activity was the hail damage which hasn’t even been cashed or repaired yet. I do some research and find out that for State Farm this has become typical practice and there are class action lawsuits against them for it, who woulda thunk it?

I wrote my State Farm agent and told him there is no longer any reason to have State Farm unless this could be rectified since we would lose the discount from having everything insured with them, at least $220.00 a year discount, gone. Lets say he gets State Farm to keep our house insured with them, no way in hell I’m staying with them for longer than it takes to switch. How is one claim in all the years we have done business with them too many claims? The check is for $12,000, the damage is over $18,500 so now we can’t even get everything fixed without going back to get the difference.

I’m calling USAA since they give Veterans a discount plus they also insure everything and if they pass muster we’re going to drop State Farm like they clearly want to be dropped and hopefully USAA works out. I started doing some research about this and have found there are websites dedicated to exposing State Farm for their tactics in the home insurance field.

We’ll see how this new drama unfolds after our Agent contacts the underwriter to see what can be done.

Picture Of The Day & Diabetes Update

This was Tuesday morning. I don’t know if you can see it, but there is a fog bank in the distance that goes from left to right over the tracks. Click the picture and you’ll see it. I wanted to pull over and take a picture of the valley with the fog bank hovering, it was a very cool sight but there was no place to pull over.

On the diabetes side of things my numbers have gone way up again. It’s almost like I’m not taking any drugs at all, or something has happened in my body to make them ineffective, again. For the past month or so I’m back in the mid to high 200’s. For the 4 months prior I was in the mid 100’s so it’s back to the doctor next week for more fun tests.

I’m still paying for the last round of what’s wrong with Erik tests, it’s getting old and too damned expensive. Ya have to do it though so I’ll report back when the results are in, I know my Triglycerides will be high because I stopped taking Lipitor, but it will be interesting to see what other numbers are like as well.

Have a great Wednesday everybody.

Our Rig Has Company

It’s another Endeavor, you think they’ll get along?

Sunset, the HTC Thunderbolt doesn’t capture all of the color but it’s still nice.

The Pressure To Buy To Stay On Top

Long post alert! The new Kindle Fire is out, new CPU’s are on the very near horizon, new technology people expect you to know about and have experience with is coming out and I’m not buying any of it.

Typical questions I get - How does a Mac connect to my TV, how does the Apple TV work (both versions), how do I wirelessly watch content from my laptop on my TV? How do I wirelessly sync my iPad (both versions), iPhone, iPod Touch to iTunes? How do I set up my wireless printer, my wireless network, my wireless TV etc etc etc…

The questions I get are getting harder and harder to answer as more and more products come out. It’s not that it’s hard for me to use these products but you have to have them or have access to them to answer many of the questions you get.

In the past, I bought many of them, because I wanted them and because it made me a better tech. Now, I don’t buy anything and the questions are coming in faster than ever. I try and be as on top of things as possible so I got both kinds of technical magazines for the PC and the Mac, or should I say I used to. I stopped them because now I have stacks of magazines dating back to the 1980’s and when I make the decision to recycle them they will all be gone. I haven’t reached that point yet however but I know I will. I hope.

Now, I read exclusively online because the content is now, not a month old or more like it is in the magazines. I couldn’t understand why I was still subscribing to them when the content was stale when they got to me. It wasn’t that often something would surprise me but it has happened a few times. Is it worth it to be surprised once in awhile to build up more and more of these things? I don’t think so.

My Mac Pro is a dual Quad Core monster with 16gigs of memory and all the goodies… well, it was a monster in September 2008. This is about the time I would replace it and Apple is considering doing away with it, why wouldn’t they, it wasn’t  and isn’t worth the money they charge for it (this is a whole other post). Anyway, I’m going to keep it, as well as the last PC that I built myself in 2007, a 2.4 GHz Core 2 DUO machine with only 2 gigs of memory and a 1 gig video card. It still works perfectly, is more than adequate speed wise but it’s 5 years old and should be replaced. It’s not really worth anything or I’d sell it but since it works so well, why replace it when I don’t run anything on it that requires fast rendering speed? Funny how logic works…

My HP HDX18, great laptop, fantastic even, my MacBook Pro, bought in April of 2009, runs both Windows and OS X so explain to me why I have 2 laptops? So I sold the HP, not because the MacBook is better, trust me, it isn’t but it does run both OS’s and I need to have access to both so bye bye HP. The MacBook Pro does have one thing I love, a very crisp bright LED backlit 1920x1200 display, none of this HD resolution 1980x1080 crap, that’s for TV,s I hate that laptops & desktop displays use it now as well. But that too is for another post.

So, how to stay on top of all this new technology without going into a BIGGER mountain of debt? I’m hoping reading (A LOT) will suffice and I know this is a bit of a long drawn out post to say so but I needed to get into it a bit, technology is getting to a point where you can’t keep up without going flat out broke or work for a company with a lab that loves to test new gear.

I have come to realize I can’t know everything and that’s ok, heck I never did get close to knowing everything so what was I thinking. I have also come to realize I don’t NEED all that new technology.

God I wish I had learned that sooner….