Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Weekend

Weekends flash by these days, seems you blink and they are gone.

Did a good fighter practice on Saturday last week, a good number of people showed up and I was bruised and tired by the end of it (a good time was had by all!)

Did Mother’s day stuff Sunday, I made Deb a nice gluten enriched waffle breakfast. She gets that kind of stuff very seldom these days since I’m breakfast guy. Next we went car shopping, our ten+ year old Rav4 got rear ended a week or so ago and we had to replace it. Deb was the only person in it and thank providence that she was not badly hurt (so far as we know, she’s still sore.)

We looked at a few light trucks and vans, then settled on a white Honda Odyssey. It’s bigger, has some miles but at least it’s paid for. It’s also in very good shape. We took it home Monday. E’ is thrilled because it  has a TV, non working because of the DTV conversion, but I suspect I can tinker with it and get  some use out of it. The doors freak me out, it has two van type side doors that open automatically. I thought electric windows were a luxury!

This weekend was quiet. I did a bit of yard work, we cleaned house and I went to the Anon protest in Clearwater. I rode my bike as apposed to driving. It’s all of three and a half miles so, why not?

Nothing much was going on, the Anons were sitting around – all three of them! It’s gotten very hot around these parts and nothing much is going on in the Clearwater area. The numbers are up some months, down others.  I spent some time chatting with one of the Clearwater PD guys and we looked at a bunch of Scientology literature.

Nothing much else is going on. E’ made honer roll at school and he looks to be on track to graduate.  Operation “Burger flip” is still rolling slowly along and I need to get back onto the submission train. Mr. PH and i have another writing challenge, “A totalitarian dystopia that uses social networking tools to control population” was the theme as I recall. This dovetails  nicely into a concept I’ve been mulling over  - based on the doggerel ”they make the trains run on time.”

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An aside

I need to catch up, for some strange reason I have not been too interested in posting. I’m too busy at work and it seems I’m too busy at home most of the time. Also I have a few “entities” who have chosen to follow me around. My first impulse is to ignore them, but ignoring requires that I post as normal. It’s a mistake for them to do this, someday they will realize this I think.

A bunch of stuff has happed. We lost one of the cars due to a rear-ending. It was the paid off one and we won’t get much on the settlement. Deb was driving and thank goodness she was OK. The rear-ending was someone else’s fault, but it’s still going to make our insurance go up and we have a new driver coming on line in the family in just a few years. (OMG! it was just yesterday that he was a child – now…)

Other than that, I still have project Burger Flip under way. I’ve got a couple of YouTubes to complete, I need to get more submissions into the pipeline and and Starbuck’s has some really good gluten-free cookies. As I get older it’s clear how things are going, life becomes more complex, time becomes more precious and the most precious commodity of all are the people we meet on the way and the things we experience.

In all of this, for me anyway – life is good!

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“I’m not going to do what you and Mom did,” he said.

We were doing homework, my son and I. A paper on inertia for his seventh grade science class. We, or I had been discussing how inertia is like an energy bank for matter. When a particle of matter was moving it stored the energy of its movement until it came into contact with another particle of matter, then the energy transferred,

“What are you not going to do? “ I asked.

“That thing you and Mom did in the pictures!” he said.

“Hu? I said,”what pictures?” (Mom and I never did anything under a camera, the whole idea grosses me out. )

He got down a fat photo album, of our wedding, then opened a page to a photo of me taking the garter from Deb. ”I’ll never do anything like that” he said.

“Sure you won’t “ said I, “I’ll remind you about this someday.”

He was thoughtful for a moment. “ I still won’t do it” he said at last.

‘When you find the right one” I said.  ”you will…”

“So what does inertia do for matter?” I asked.

“It tells matter how far to go” he said. “That’s one of the things I put in my report.”

“Really, “ I said,  “that’s right, where did you get that from?”

“From you “ he said.

“You can’t cite Dad” I said. “for some things…. “

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And April, into Summer!

At some point in time you have to decide that enough is enough, and that the bad guys have to win. Sometimes they deserve it!

A couple of people have noticed that I’ve not been writing here very much. I could say it was a time thing and be mostly truthful. I’m reading lots more than I usually do. One book is this hideous thing called “The Turner Diaries.” Now I don’t believe in censorship but if there was one book to hunt down and burn every single copy of, it would be The Tuner Diaries. Mr. PH asked me why I put myself through it

“sheer curiosity” was my answer (or something close to it.) I wanted to find out how depraved one mans’ imagination could be.  I wanted to look radical racism in the eye and then leave it where it belongs, on the trash-heap of history.

It’s not that the book is badly written (though frankly, it’s no Gone with the Wind. ) The Turner Diaries is more or less a first person account of a racist insurgency which, after bombing buildings and firing mortars into public gatherings ends up capturing some ICBMs and manages to start World War III,  completely obliterating all non-whites and Jews. Around six billion people all told.

I can’t even to begin to express my revulsion of this book. There is no justification for the mass slaughter (lovingly described) in this story – other than “they is not whait like us!.” Over and over again we are treated to atrocities in the name of white purity (whatever the hell that means.) The author justifies wholesale indiscriminate slaughter for nothing more than a belief in his own superiority.

Say what now? Dragging people out of their beds at 3 AM, reading some claptrap about race betrayal (coz they have black associates) and hanging them from lampposts can be justified?

I think someone should make a movie of this book- as a warning. Nor really!  They should play it straight too, just like the novel describes. A cautionary tale about how insane people can get. I think there will be some people (Like Timothy McVey) who will mimic the crap this novel describes. Most (I am ever hopeful) will get it and understand that any society based on the depravity described in The Turner Diaries will be xenophobic and brutal, not unlike some fundie Islamic sects.

It’s a bunch of crap, read it only if you are curios.

***

We took E’ and Mable to a local mutt derby

Unsurprisingly she won her heat and came in second overall, that freaking dog is fast!

***

Swine flue is big news. Two people in my county happened to get it, out of a million. I’d bet that more people were diagnosed with terminal cancer or died in motorcycle crashes today.

***

Deb and went to a couple of SCA things this month. This is the first weekend in a while that I’ve been able to do much other than work. Next weekend I will be working and the weekend after we have another SCA event.

Otherwise, ‘E’ finished up his “spring” soccer season. School is winding down and everyone has spring fever.  It’s been hot and dry this spring (very unusual) and the economy sucks. Deb and I decided that the Japan trip was out of the question this year, ‘E’ was thrilled with that news, he was never very warm to the idea of spending a couple of weeks there, now he may be spending more time with his cousins.

***

Watchmen came out to great fanfare, than vanished as soon as people went to see it. Mr. PH and I went to the matinee because we were too cheap to pay full price anymore. We were horrified that some moron brought their small children, thinking that this was a family movie! I suppose they missed the ‘R’ rating. Mr. PH went over and had a word with the parents just about the time “Rorschach” threw boiling oil on someone. Watchmen was not a nice film just like it was not a nice graphic novel. The film captured the essence of the original piece pretty well I thought. Mostly i think Watchmen is going to be forgotten under the onslaught of more popular summer fare.

The new Star Trek movie is just coming out this week, the reviews have been outstanding but I suppose I’ll catch this when it hits HBO next month. I really haven’t watched movies or TV in a long while. Some times I pop a DVD into the desktop when I’m working on someone’s web page or PC but even that is a bit too much.

Now if I could just figure out what this was all about!

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February, let alone March!

Sometimes you wonder how in the hell you got through the last couple of weeks. I cannot begin describe all the stuff that’s happening.

It’s been really dry lately, we had a bout one afternoon of light rain in the last two months. The weather is fine for this time of year, cool at night and high 70s during the day. But dang; lawns are dying and the county is starting to hand out stiff fines for people watering at all. Someone needs to tell some of my nie

Last night Deb, E’ and I went to see the Kodo Drummers over at Ruth Eckerd Hall. Kodo is a Taiko drummer group from Japan. They played a two hour set and is sure didn’t seem like it. E’ was not too sure he wanted to go last night but he was riveted. We have been trying to sell him on the Japan trip idea. He’s not too sure that he wants to go. Japan is a big, scary, alien place to him. Hell it’s pretty scary to me too and I’ve been there a couple of times.

Work has been a hassle, people are frightened and it’s starting to become obvious. Our admin people are being as reassuring as they can be and things look solvent for now. I’m in an industry that’s thankfully buffered a bit from economic problems. People always need to be educated, there’s always money available for that or so I would hope. Deb’s in much of the same position, her county digs are not likely to change drastically other than possible pay cuts. How the county can even think about cutting teacher salaries I’ll never know.

E’s football season wrapped up with his team getting district champions. They just missed regional by one point. I managed to take a bunch of video at the last couple of games and did a couple of little YouTube-like pieces which I’ve mastered into a  DVD disk to present to the parents at the season wrap party.  I’ve been doing various video things over the last year, PC power has gotten to the point where a modest rig like mine can put out pretty nice looking stuff. Hell even my laptop can produce full motion-professional grade material. I’m kind of astounded by that, after growing up using super8mm and splicing that junk together with tape.  Now I just need to get a nice 3CCD DVcam with image stabilization – and a pony!.

Deb just called to tell me we are going to the dogs tonight (like I didn’t already know that.)  Oh yes and Watchmen tomorrow.
It never ends!

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It’s early November!

It’s been quite a week. We had E’s cousins over last weekend, mostly to do Halloween (since we got the prime ‘ween-hood over here.)  Deb had Homecoming duties so  I played dad to “I was a pre-teen werewolf,” “Army Brat” and “Dangerous Sullen Teenager.” The Halloween hoodicks over here put on a fantastic show just like last year. Candy units were down but E’ seems less interested than in previous years  (he’s growing up! (snif!))

I had on my tall- geek costume as usual, I didn’t feel like dressing up although I wore a black suit with a red tie for our Wednesday Halloween party and told people I was really NOT Anonymous. We had a small turnout (being it was a weeknight,) only about 10 or 12 people. Mostly we sat around and chatted, I ran the HG Wells War of the Worlds broadcast for a while, then we ran “The Incredibles” since the party had a Superhero theme. I wanted to run Mystery Men but we don’t seem to have that one… hmmm.

Saturday I attended a local SCA practice and seminar. Sunday I fixed our oven which turned out to be an easy problem buried under several layers of sheet metal.  When we got this house back in 03 we got some pretty high quality appliances and nearly all of them have broken down in one way or another. I guess this is what keeps maintenance people in business.

Monday was work as usual, some nutball in Nevada filled out a web form on the college page demanding that I be immediately fired . It must be a joke because it’s in a strange butchered English with (um) uniquely spelled words. My boss got a kick out of it and wanted to know where he could get fans like that.

Tuesday was election day (not for me; I voted weeks ago.) I hear there were long lines but, Obama was elected President and it looks like the Democrats have a solid majority in the House for a while. My county finally turned blue .

It’s been a strange ride around here. I’ve never seen so much enthusiasm about an election in this county. It’s about freaking time! Perhaps people will stop believing that the end of the world is around the corner and they can soon stop paying taxes.

Ummmph!  Shouldn’t get my hopes up!

Anyway, Tuesday night we attended a pre-victory party. I didn’t know many of the people there and frankly I was feeling unenthusiastic about the whole thing. I’m not sure why yet. I’m very happy that Obama was elected but at the same time I worry about his future. There are so many nut cases out there that don’t seem to care about the long term consequences of their actions. Obama is not only precedent setting because of his ethnic background, he seems smarter than most people we have elected into the Office of the President and that ‘s going to make some of the nutballs nervous. Nutballs HATE smart people!

Personally I’m thrilled. I was dreading a McCain/Palen administration. I would not have been more of the same in my opinion, it would have been far-far worse. John McCain may have made a competent President but he struck me as merely a tactician. The Chief Executive needs to have his or her eyes fixed on long term goals, yes they need to be tactical but they also need strategic thinking, to find the right people for the right jobs and let them run things. A captain of a ship does not run the ship, the first officer does that and the caption runs the first officer. But McCaine’s chances of living for the next eight years is not good.

Palin struck me as someone who is not even ready t o be governor let alone vice president.  She gives a good speech, she’s competent looking and seems steadfast in her convictions. But her behavior in the early part of the campaign can only be described as pig headed. She got herself into situations where MCain and Palen played to the base Republicans, Obama built a freaking war machine and steamrolled the election to the point where the Republicans could never hope to contest it. I keep telling a friend of mine that the Republican Party is in danger of going the way of the Wig party. I don’t think their message of static government, rich to not so rich trickle down and religious influence is going over so well .
As I said, it’s about time!

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Now that’s Strange!

Someone swiped my Obama for Pres sign!

In fact they swiped all the political signage on my street!

With one exception!

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Joe Sixpack has been found!

But his name is not Joe, he’s not really a plumber like claimes and he owes about $2000 in back taxes.

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Who is Joe Sixpack anyway?

Last Thursday and Friday were washes for the most part. We were getting our ceilings redone after the big AC debacle.  After taking the kid to school I helped move furniture, then stayed out of the way in the mancave for the most part. Friday I watched as our home was transformed into something resembling a toxic waste disposal area, our ceiling has elaborate textured stucco and they had to do the entire great room plus the hallway to make it all match.  I’m impressed, they did a beautiful job and now we have a ceiling again!

Thursday I watched our intrepid Veep candidates  try to sno… Um, inform us as intelligent voters who would be the best President. Sara Pailen and Joe Biden took turns bopping each other, frankly I can’t remember what Joe Biden said, I remember what Sara Palen said because she annoys me. She’s a “maverick” and so is Senator MaCane! I do not think that word means what she thnks it means!

However; she kept bringing up two other characters, “Joe Sixpack” and “Hockey Mom.”

Now, I suppose Sara Palen was talking about the average American, I can’t think of Joe Biden as Joe Sixpack!  But, who is Joe Sixpack and Hockey Mom?  Are we talking about Homer and Marge Simpson? Or are we talking about a stereotype, the fourty-something beer swilling loser who rants at his TV on game day while hideous fellows in tight uniforms pretend to play some bastardized form of rugby? Hockey and Sixpack have a little over two kids, live in a modest home, have car payments and bring in an average of $50,233.00 a year.

Do these characters exist?

Incredibly, Sara Palen identifies herself with the character “Hockey Mom.” Sara Palen? An average American housewife?  Sara Palin, Governor of Alaska? With her million dollar home and whatever salary/perks she gets for her office? A hockey Mom? Please!

She can say “aw heck” with her Midwestern accent all she wants. She’s no hockey mom and she sure as shoot isn’t middle class! Besides, we don’t need a hockey mom as Veep, no more than we need Joe Sixpack as President.

We have already had eight years of him and look what it’s gotten us!

There was the following in Sara’s stump speech yesterday; as reported by the Washington Post.

“Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers,” Palin said.
“Boooo!” said the crowd.
“And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, ‘launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,’” she continued.
“Boooo!” the crowd repeated.
“Kill him!” proposed one man in the audience. “

Ironically this was during her speech in Clearwater Monday morning, a city known for its reserved, relaxed  attitude and tolerance for novel ideas I wonder if the Flag Service Organization ran all the vehicle tags again? There might be terrorist or perhaps even someone threatening the life of a presidential candidate!

Palin keeps pulling out that 1960s crap, I’m older than Obama and I could barely tie my shoelaces when Bill Ayers was mucking around with the Weathermen. These days Ayers is a college professor and completely repentant over his actions when he was in his twenties. Somehow condemning Obama because he chummed around with a professor who made mistakes in his youth is silly. It would be just like me condemning MaCane for being present at the CV Forestall Fire. Let’s not mention Palin’s famous associations.  And I’m sure it’s time to put the Keating scandal behind us!

Those in glass houses ….

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More Crazyness!

I’m seeing a general uptick in activity against anti-Scientology protesters in the last few weeks. Lots and lots of those cease and desist letters are going out and they are four pages long now. The additional material seems to be screeds against alleged “Anonymous” activities on the Internet. Of course Scientology can’t seem to connect the protesters with some of this other stuff (the flashing .GIF files sent to epileptic BBs for example.) That’s a bit like connecting the antics of Fred Phelps’s idiots and your local Methodist Church.

Someone apparently working at the behest of Scientology did on the order of 4000 DMA take down requests on YouTube. Most of the requests were bogus because the owner of a work is supposed to  be the only person making such a request. Well some fellow who does a bunch of online business (including a gay-porn site) started systematically putting out thousands of sworn statements suggesting that he was the owner of lots of videos having anti-Scientology content. YouTube initially took the vids down but just as quickly restored most of them.

There was another World Protests Scientology Day a couple of weeks ago in Clearwater and many other Scientology offices across the globe. This was number eight, like the other seven it was completely peaceful. I attended for a short time, mostly to talk with people and observe. I spoke with the single CPD officer stationed to watch the protesters (in stark contrast to the 25 or so at the first one.) One thing I asked was if he’d heard of the many bomb threats the Scientology legal affairs guy told me about in a previous protest. According to the Flag Official Representative, the Scientology offices in Clearwater were getting multiple bomb threats every day last summer.

The Police officer hadn’t heard of that. He said everything to his knowledge has been peaceful and the protesters were behaving themselves. That’s what I’ve been seeing too but it helps to ask around. I’ve also checked on the CPD web page and their police blotter (which like most PD s is on line these days.) Not a mention of it. It’s not mentioned by the FBI either (I get their bulletins.)

Mmm, either Mr. P was um.. telling me a big o’ fib that day back in May or the Scientology offices are covering up information about people making phone threats against them. I’d say you were just telling me a lie Peter, aiding and abetting terrorist activity has a Federal rap is I’m not mistaken. That pretty much invalidates the old Hubbard mantra of “SPs can be lied to.” No one should be lied to Mr. P. Certainly not in an environment where facts can be easily checked.

I’m not upset that you lied to me Peter, I’m amused by it. Lies tend to complicate things, lies tend to make things worse. I would expect that a 50+ year old fellow who’s the “head of the Flag Legal Department” or whatever your title is might understand that. Most very young children understand this, why can’t you? Or do you just violate that rule because Hubbard tells you to. In my world that would tend to invalidate lots of what Hubbard has to say, but that’s another subject.

Peter tells me that the Anons are terrorists who make harassing and threatening phone calls, then show up in scary masks to terrify people. Other people in Clearwater tell me these are ignorant kids out on a lark. I think both ideas reflect on the general ignorance of the people stating them, but is there a kernel of truth to it?

Weeeell sure, I think the EFG masks are kind of intimidating, I think some of the Anon’s I’ve spoken to didn’t really understand what they were messing around with.  A lot of them (the majority) do however.

What of it? The general movement is the important thing, not the individuals. Individuals can only deal with things in their own idioms. Each can only be true to themselves and each must be dealt with as a separate entity. But individuals can work together without formal command and control if the goal is important enough. Scientology has a history of attacking the center of a “push” as they put it. If the Anon movement has no center, they must attack individuals who may not have a large part of the movement as a whole. but each individual has the power to communicate with the entire movement at a moment’s notice. I have a saying that “how can one expect a mob to be smarter than an average person?”

The answer? “Make the mob out of above average people.”

That is what Scientology truly fears.  They have good reason to.

My only regret is that more people who are into Scientology are not permitted to see the truth for themselves as I’ve done. I think Hubbard himself said that people need to find out things for themselves and not take one person’s work for it. “What is true for you is true,” but you have to verify.

Since I don’t need to buy myself a bridge and I don’t have regs and Sea Org members telling me what to believe, I can go out and talk to anyone about anything I want. I can come and go as I want, can people like Peter truly say that? Could he sit down with me over a cup of coffee and tell me what he  thinks, irregardless of the Scientology bottom line? I sincerely doubt it. He MUST speak only about approved things, he MUST have only approved opinions and I suspect he can’t sit down with someone who has an open mind.

I’d invite him to come, sit down with me once and talk, perhaps listen for a bit. I don’t think he can.

Does that make him more or less free than I?

You know what? I still don’t give a fig about what they believe in. The issue, the only issue seems to be spelled out in Keeping Scientology Working.  If they can decide to give up KSW. If they can give up that kind of thinking and declare. to the world that it’s counterproductive to attack people and ideas they don’t agree with, I think Scientology would find it suddenly had less problems. But they actually have to DO it not just say it, not just pretend or lie about it.

***

During the protest one of the many Flag transport van  swerved (I thought) very abruptly towards a fellow on a bike. I thought the van might have intended to run the guy down but then I saw he only intended to splash him with a nearby puddle of water. It was obviously on purpose he made a “you’re crazy!” hand gesture while he was driving past. It’s not the first time that this has happened, a few months ago one of the vans swerved out into the opposing lane of traffic to (presumably) freak out a protester, he did get that one on film.

I have noticed a general lack of courtesy by the many van and bus drivers in Downtown Clearwater. They tend to share the street like a dog shares a bone. I have observed them racing around the downtown area seemingly oblivious to pedestrians and bikers. They seem to do pretty well in some very tight streets but they remind me of NY cabbies. Heck I’ve seen pedestrians (in Sea-org get-up) walk right into traffic like they didn’t believe a car would actually hit them. I wonder if the pedestrian related accidents are more or less than average around Scientology buildings?

Is it really worth this kind of playing around, what if the bike rider had gotten hit? Is it worth the unbelievable shitstorm that would once again envelope Clearwater, “Bike rider run down by Scientology,” do you folks really want those kind of headlines?

***

In other news;

There have been a number of protests at the Scientology Gold Base in California and this may have gotten some kind of reaction. The local CA police at first permitted the protests, now they are waving an injunctions written in Clearwater ten years ago claiming anyone with an association with people of the now closed Lisa Macpherson Trust may not come within so many yards of a Scientology building yada-yada….

Someone is VERY upset that people are protesting Gold.

Then last week, for some reason the cops pulled back and allowed the protesters to protest, so the staff over at Gold put up a number of large speakers and blasted the protesters with “annoying sounds.”

In New York, Katy Holms arrived at the début of a new Broadway play she’s in, to number of Anon protesters. Scientology was well aware of that the Anons intended to be there because they sent a welcoming committee, several in fact. One fellow was reportedly trying to get the Anons to riot. “Go to the Org and break all of their windows!” he reportedly said.

More importantly, there has been a sharp upswing in harassment activities, surveillance, sabotage and even violence. This mostly seems to be centered on California where, admittedly the protesters have been a bit more aggressive. Some people have been noting that Scientology. members have been growing weary of the constant protests.

At their Gold Base, they (allegedly) have a high concentration of “volunteer” workers who operate the Scientology binderies and CD manufacturing. Volunteer means that (allegedly) they are working at far below minimum wage to produce very expensive products. Apparently the Scientology masters are using their “hide tech” and keeping people inside buildings when protesters show up . This will have a specific dollar value to whoever is benefiting from the sales of this merchandise so I can well understand why the powers that be in Scientology do not want protesters around Gold. It all comes down to money in the end.

I wonder what the workers think of the noise?

Enturbulation.org seems to be down permanently. Why I do not know but this will probably  spawn lots of other sites just like it. (ed note, it looks like http://whyweprotest.org has taken up the mantle.)

***

I don’t see the  people at Gold or the folks marching around Clearwater as being very free.

As I said, giving up my freedom for provisional salvation (not to mention lots of my money) seems silly, especially when I have millions of books at my fingertips, Hubbard’s works (should I so desire) and the much larger wealth of human endeavor. I think I like having the freedom to investigate and criticize, I’d bet most Scientology members would too, if they were allowed. Freedom is a funny thing, we often don’t know when we have it and we cannot always tell when we have lost it. BTW, in case some of you Sea Org member reading this think that I talking out of my bunghole, think again. Look at my DA pack, Peter can show it to you. I gave up several years of my life so you can march around in your salor suits.

It’s easy to tell who’s lost their freedom, who gave it up for no reason. From the outside, it is very easy to tell.

I hope Peter can someday sit down over a cup of coffee with myself or somone and actually talk, actually communicate, as apposed to just stating the party line over and over again. That has got to be frustrating.

I feel for you folks, I really do I and I wish there was some way to help.

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