Are we over doing it with handouts?

Posted by wcrowlandksr on March 1, 2013
Posted in: Uncategorized. Leave a comment

Spent an evening in a Local Kuwaiti food courtyard.  Kids were playing outside with each other.  They were riding bicycles with out helmets.  The platytoys didn’t have excessive amounts of safety netting and no one was getting hurt.  This made me think about my own country.  The amount of safety litigation we are forced to protect ourselves from has become so invasive that we have made enjoying life just a little less joyful.

We elect lawmakers into political offices and they do what lawmakers do…make laws.
Sadly, it is these very laws that are supposed to protect us often do noting more than steal little of our joy of living.  Take some time and look at some of the laws that have been made to control the behavior of people but really have no harming effect on society if they are violated.  An example is a law about peanut shells being thrown on the street.
Do we really have such a lack of decency that we need a law governing basic behavior that should be learned at the direction of parental upbringing?  Does such a law need to be on the books today?  Should such a law have had a moratorium?  Should it have even made it to the books?   What happens to the innocent person who mistakenly drops a peanut shell our two on the ground and someone without anything better to do decides to make an issue out of such a mistake?  The legal system is only designed to enforce the laws and while something as simple as a few dropped peanut shells is truly harmless, the person “at fault” must defend such a simple mistake at a level that goes way beyond the action of dropping the shells.  It is this sort of overly controlled society that loses a little of the joy of living under such foolish and oppressive laws.
Granted, this is oversimplified but it it illustrates a point.  We as a modern society have become so litigious and additionally so unwilling to regulate ourselves that we pass the responsibility on to the lawmakers and expect them to regulate our society with laws that we all agree with.  It is to easy to pass the buck and hope that someone else will do exactly what we want on our behalf…instead, we trade off the responsibility of teaching the next generation about being decent human beings to elected lawmakers and sacrifice our freedom in doing so.
This division in viewpoints of what the government should be doing is what divides our nation and keeps us from moving into becoming the strong nation we once were.  Yes we have military power that exceeds many other nations and we have some advanced technology that other countries only wish they had.  But that gap is closing.

Some people would suggest that we don’t need military strength to be successful and protected…tell that to the French, or for that matter the Kuwaitis.  We came to the aid of both nations because they were not fully prepared.
I know that it can be a very slow turn around for a nation unless something drastic happens that gains the unified attention of its people.  Typically it’s a war of some sort, either internal or external that does this.
Our own government has only sought to expand its own power for years and rarely does it exert its abilities for the good of the citizens that elected it into place without a high cost.  Even today, the push for expansion of that power reaches out to foreign lands where its resources are highly valued but when need arises for its own military forces to receive assistance when in peril, they are ignored.  The navy seal team of late comes to mind.
We must take responsibility for our actions and stop expecting the government to do the work of raising our children by regulating our society with laws when we can teach them decency ourselves.  We must stop expecting the government to take care of us by redistributing our wealth in a socialist manner.  If you don’t work, you don’t eat.  Pretty simple.  If you can’t work, that is different but generational welfare cases are out of control and need to be stopped.  Lazy people will become motivated by the same instincts that drives the animal kingdom…HUNGER!
We as nation aren’t truly hungry.  We have more fat people than most nations and this is a sign of overly content, happy to rest on our butts, lazy people who would rather take a handout than work for what they need…be it food or any other needs.
What happened to self respect?  What happened to feeling a little shame when we are given what we need when we are fully capable of earning our keep but would rather let someone else do it?
What happens when the people of a country bring an abrupt end to the free lunch for those who aren’t motivated?  Chaos…ultimately driven by hunger.
What happens to a country that doesn’t bring and end to the free handouts and the government can suddenly no longer sustain the free ride?…Chaos…ultimately driven by hunger.
What happens to a nation that is taxed to the point that business can no longer be sustained and therefore the business must be shut down and no longer provide a tax base for the government to hand back out to the non working people?…Chaos…ultimately driven by hunger.
What happens when people are driven by hunger?  Lawless behavior and increased crime?  I think so.  My own father was once headed out the door to steal the neighbors chickens to feed his family and just at the right moment, he received a call for a job and to start that day.  It is already clear that people will do what ever it takes to meet the physiological drive to answer an addiction to drugs…how much more magnified would it be if it was hunger and it was on the scale of 1000’s of hungry people at a time?
When you vote, be sure that you aren’t just voting for someonewho will “take care of you with handouts”.  Vote for someone who will help business stay afloat and not be trying to regulate us to death with laws on behavioral issues that should be learned about in the home.  Vote for someone who isn’t apologizing for America being strong.
Whatever you do, consider carefully the effects of your vote or lack thereof.

Home

Posted by wcrowlandksr on March 1, 2013
Posted in: Uncategorized. Leave a comment

For everyone its different.  Early on I wrote about square goldfish.  Its the idea that a fish can grow to fit the environment it lives in.  It was the thought that it might become square if placed in an aquarium and allowed to think that the tank was bigger than it really was. 
I started feeling like I had outgrown my environment at home.  Not the house but the town.  It’s limited in what it has to offer unless you are raising a family there.  It has the feel of a somewhat small town, even though it’s losing that feeling and it can be difficult to get to make long term connections because people don’t stay too long in one place.  It’s a military town. 
It has become commercialized to the point that it’s only saving grace that makes it different is the location on the map and the mountians and water that surround it.
There used to be a fair amount of businesses that were not owned by corporations and you knew who the business owners were.  Now it’s so much like any other town on the map with most of the typical corporate owned services that the uniqueness in that aspect is gone. 
There is that point were a younger town starts off with the basics.  Corner grocery store, a local greasy spoon, a gas station or two, a local hardware store, a feed store for agriculture needs and maybe a few other offerings.  The feed stores are the last to go as the land gets eventually consumed and the agricultural need fades away.  When the feed store goes, you know it’s over.  My town still has one and they seem to be doing well. 
That point where a small town becomes a city can be really good or really bad.  The growth should have some form of managed growth or it can become an out of control monster.  In my town, the local hardware store was bought out, taken over by a big box corporation as they moved into the original big  building.  They then vacated that building and built a bigger new store just one mile down the road.  Now the old building just sits vacant for eight or nine years now and it’s in decay.
Next to it is a similar building that had a grocery store in it but the roof caved in during a snow storm.  Another crappy building in decay.  These are reminders of yesteryear when the town was a little smaller and thrived on small business.  Now the money spent in the town goes to corporations outside the town and little comes back.  It’s no wonder why the place seems to be getting the life sucked out of it.  I didn’t understand that way of thinking before.
The big corporations are only concerned about keeping the shareholders happy and the idea of giving back (financially) to any community that has been supporting the corporation goes against the very idea of what it takes to keep the shareholders happy with profitable gains.
This brings me to a thought about small and medium sized towns vs big cities.  Small towns aren’t often inhabited by big business savvy citizens who are well connected and versed in managing big business and work in the small town.  They are going to go where they can do what they do best…into the city.
This is where a bit of “us vs them” comes into play.
My town had a mayor who had come from the city and brought ideas on how to grow the town into something of a place where larger business could have moved there and considered it home rather than just a place to drop in another store and suck more cash out of the town.  The small minded views of the locals killed that.  They also killed a NASCAR racetrack deal.  A rather foolish move as it would have really made the town a destination spot and it would have brought money into the town.  It would have…but the us vs them mentality kept my town from growing just a bit. 
I truly hope things have improved as I now go back.

As I Return Tonight

Posted by wcrowlandksr on February 25, 2013
Posted in: Life In The Sandbox. Leave a comment

Its been a while since I posted anything here as the firewall gods decided that my site was bad juju. While that’s pure crap…I must adapt.
This may be my last post for a while as tonight my middle east adventure in the sandbox has come to a close. I want to thank my readers and I hope that my stories in general and thoughts on debt freedom have been inspiring to you. I hope that my adventure has been of interest and I hope that if you decide to take on your own adventure, you might consider your own blog so that one day you can look back and remember what it was that you did and why and be able to see just how far you have come.

These last few days have been spent remembering my life back home and making efforts to mentaly prepare to return. I know it won’t be the same but neither will I. This last year has surely changed me. I know I haven’t figured out where all the changes are in my view on life but they are sure to appear when I get home. I have found that I miss a truly great sounding stereo. I have only had the option of good headphones and today I am again listening to some tunes through them. They block the daily noise here that I am looking forward to escaping from. If it’s a running generator, a helicopter, the HAVC system or today’s rush of the jet engines as I begin the long journey home. There’s always some kind of racket going here. I am really in need of some deep quiet. I am looking forward to that.

After I get back, it’s not known what I will do for a living but as the days here have rolled by, I have started thinking what it might be like to change career fields. It’s actually refreshing to think of it but I believe that the feeling comes from just wanting to be free of this particular work environment. I think that before I go jumping ship careerwise, I will just take some time out and relax and see where things go from there.

Before I came here, I never had any real interest in coming to Kuwait. Tonight I feel a sense of relief but at the same time, a sense of remorse as I leave a great paying job in a place where the sun seems to always shine and there are few if any clouds. I have made a few friends and I hope that I can stay in touch with them. We always say that we will stay in touch but the day to day activities will probably get in the way. It’s just a facet of the way life is on this big round rock. Maybe I will be wrong this time….

The rush of acceleration comes with the roar of the jet engines and the outside view becomes a blur. I relax into my seat and feel the power and think back to my new friends left behind, knowing I will miss them. The static pictures I have taken of them in my mind flash by in the same way a great movie ends and the credits begin to roll by and you think to yourself…is it really over? Can this be the end? What happens next, will there be a sequel?…Just then, the wheels leave the ground and they fold up under the jet and I am jolted back to my present adventure as I leave the theater. I am going back home to start a new life where I left the old one behind a year ago.
As the plane touches down and I finally get to the door and step outside, just like when you walk out of the theater, the bright light blinds you a little and it is then that I realize that the next adventure is about to begin.

Warm weather, sand and palm trees.

Posted by wcrowlandksr on February 7, 2013
Posted in: General Ramblings, Life In The Sandbox. Leave a comment

Been here for a year and the nice weather never gets old.  I’m sitting outside at a New York based burger joint in the middle east. The outdoor dining is warmed by a few patio heaters but they are more for ambiance than really needing them.
A pair of quads just scooted by in front of the place as it is on a the main road bordering the Arabian gulf.  The police are nowhere in sight and they don’t seem to care about such things anyway.  Back home, you would expect a full on police chase of those quads.  An example of the carefree life here when compared to the United Nanny States of America.

The smell of oud is in the air.  Its pleasant fragrance is something that before I lived here, I never knew.  I will miss it when I leave.

Kuwait is a wealthy country with the black gold in the ground and a world wide demand for it, it appears that as long as it flows, they will prosper.  You can’t blame then for selling it rather than giving it away.  We tend to want to maximize the products we produce in the U.S. In much the same way. 

It is the luck of the draw in life and the middle east has hit it big.  So I figure if you can enjoy a little of the result of the wealth, why not.  It is part of why I am here. 

Back home I keep hearing of cold wet rainy days and I am trying to figure out where the draw, at least weather wise is to go back.  The 3 week summers are beautiful there but the length of summerlike weather is a joke.

Meanwhile, the quads go buzzing by again and shake me from the contemplation of a colder time in the northwest.  I’m in the middle east!  Its warm, the food is good and I’m happy today.  I live in a shared apartment and sleep on a tiny bed in a cramped room…but I sleep well and life is good.  I find that sometimes these times serve to remind us of what is important. 

I am one who needs to regroup quietly and plan a little.  Tonight its night 29 in a countdown before I go home.  In many ways I don’t want to but I know that for now it is time.  I will never look at life the same after having lived here and I think I may want to take on another job that will allow for another experience like this one. 

With bills paid, bags packed and a new outlook on life, I bid you fairwell Kuwait and as strange as it may sound, I welcome another opportunity to return if you should see fit.

Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead

Posted by wcrowlandksr on January 25, 2013
Posted in: Better Living - Eating Right. Leave a comment

A catchy phrase if you ask me…but, it is associted with what appears to be a health based decision to correct the course of years of bad eating habits and the illnesses associated with those bad habits. I know that many readers will just see the program as that….a program. It’s not. It’s about altering your food intake with foods commonly found in our food supply. It’s not about buying anything from any company in order to gain access to the “secrets” to better living. The documentary of Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead is about a guy who decides to embark on a journey of cleansing his body of the toxins that have built up over years of eating foods that we know are bad for us but are also readily available. The guy’s name is Joe. Joe is Australian but has been like so many fat Americans who have been tricked or simply are too lazy to make an effort to prepare food that is good for them and instead they revel in simply eating what has been made easily available.

In the Western diet, we eat “meat and taters” in addition to a host of highly processed foods. Meat and potatos don’t have all the micro-nutrients that we need. The problem is that we loose micro-nutrients on a daily bases because our bodies use them to maintain our health.

If you take a dead piece of meat and let it lay out in the open on a clean surface, it will beging to decay and smell as it rots. It’s no longer part of a system that can kill germs and bacteria and repair that meat it as it ages. That system requires nutrition to do these things and keep the meat in a state of good repair. Because that meat is no longer receiving nutrient based repair it rots. Our bodies are the same. We are essentially a piece of meat that is out in the open and living in an environment that is constantly attacking us on a microbial level. It’s part of the design of the universe and no amount of sanitizing will stop it.

The answer is to feed the system that is designed to take nutrients in and use them to maintain the our health. What do we feed it? Sugar, salt, fat, phosphoric acid, Aspartame, red dye number xxx and a host of other chemicals and preservatives that most cannot even pronounce let alone recognize the benefit from. Most of the chemicals come from research that is designed to create something that resembles food and tastes good and keeps us coming back for more. We have become accustomed to eating things that aren’t really healthy. Think about antifreeze for a moment, it’s a known fact that animals like it and it tastes sweet. It’s also known that consuming it will kill them by shutting down their kidneys. So what do we do? We make it a point to keep them from drinking it. It’s a chemical that is known to be harmful if consumed. It’s a simple analysis but if an animal consumes antifreeze and they die a few hours later the connection is obvious. What if it took weeks to see the result of death? Would the connection be so evident?

But what about all those chemicals created to make what looks like food and taste like food to us? Where are the studies and where do those studies that show the health risks and benefits from consuming these man made chemicals come from? Many people think that the FDA or Food and Drug Administration has their own test labs where testing is conducted to validate chemicals used in food. There are no labs used for such purposes. The same goes for the pharmecutical drug companies as well. So how would the FDA be able to determine if these chemicals should be approved for human consumption? It’s pretty simple and alarming. The company that creates a product for human consumption must submit a report that proves it is safe for such. I don’t know about you but I think that if I were going to create someting that I wanted to sell to the public and the approving agency wanted a report confirming that the product was safe, I’d be sure to deliver a report that says it is. If I had to get that report from a third party, I’d be sure to hire one that will confirm my product is safe. After all I’m hiring them. I don’t know of any third party that just tests these chemicals as a kind guesture of good will. Effectivley, this is a situation where the fox is guarding the hen house. It just doesn’t make sense.

So, back to those aproved delicious chemicals and preservatives. What are they really doing for us in terms of nourshing us and providing the micro-nutrients we need to stay healthy? Based on the condition of so many people who aren’t in the best of health in westerized societies, I’d say not a whole lot and this is where Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead comes into the picture for me. The documentary covers two people who do what they call a reboot of their systems and they consume only green juice that has none of the chemicals and all the nutrients that the body really needs. This cleansing gives their bodies time to flush all the chemicals/toxins out and they loose a significant amount of weight as a side benefit. Their health problems subside and they become “rebooted”. Their was another person in the documentary who had suffered from migrane headaches and once the detoxified on the green juice reboot diet she no longer had the headaches.

The story doesn’t end here but this is part of what I am learning about and I hope that you find the drive to check out the documentary “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead.” I did and it has forever changed my view on what I am eating and how it affects me. My current situation is unique and obtaining a juice only diet is a little out of the question as I am living in anotherpart of the world but I will be returning home soon and I anticipate taking the same steps to a better life. For now, I am eating mostly vegetables and drinking fresh vegetable juice as much as I can so I will be ready when I get home for a reboot. Check the documentary out, I think you will be glad you did.

A new look at an old problem

Posted by wcrowlandksr on January 13, 2013
Posted in: General Ramblings. Leave a comment

So for the last few days, I was fighting a problem. I had a headache that just wouldn’t go away. This was starting to have me concerned because I don’t really have what I would say is access to the best medical care in the world. Seems I had been a victim to an old marketing problem. A rather simple one that could have killed me I suppose. See living in the desert has some key areas that one must be acutely aware of for the sake of staying healthy. The locals don’t have to think about it as it’s a way of life for them…but someone like me…well let’s just say that it requires a conscious effort to stay on top of things that are second nature to the locals. What is it you say? Well it’s about water and staying hydrated. In my country, there has often been a big push to make sure everyone consumes a certian amount of water every day in order to stay healthy. Sounds good, drink water, stay hydrated, be healthy. You never hear don’t drink too much water, it can kill you if you overdo it. That would be bad for marketing….Marketing? Water? Well, there is a bottled water industry that sells it by the boxload. I have access to it here all the time and I am thankful for it. However, the combination of being warned to stay hydrated in the desert and the push for drinking it all the time caused me to believe that you just couldn’t really drink enough water here in the desert. There’s a catch, I also don’t have as much salt in my diet just by the nature of what foods I have been eating here. In short, I should be in good health with low salt in my diet and drinking plenty of water. That’s where the problem came in. I was drinking lots of water and getting very little salt. I ended up with a monster headache that lasted for a couple of days. I thought I might die if it went unchecked. So, I did a little reading…what little you can do with a migrane and found that hyponatremia described what I was feeling and delaing with…maybe. So I started taking a little salt and felt better but knew I couldn’t do to much at once as it’s got to be slowly increased in the body. So I waited until I get to work and then proceeded to consume a bag of spicy salty pork rinds along with a little miracle cure from Switzerland called Volt Fast which also is a diclofenac potassium. It’s for the treatment of many of the symptoms accompanied by hyponatremia. In short, I was able to figure out that I was buying into the marketing speak of staying well hydrated and not knowing I could over do it and also avoiding salt because we are told it’s bad for us.

So what’s the new look at an old problem? During my last few days, I saw a movie that talked about how we in America are sold via marketing on so many diets and eating trends that are supposed to make us healthier and more attractive. The approach form the movie was different. It talked about the fact that we are programmed by nature to store calories in the form of fat for lean times when foods are scarce. In our current society we don’t really have such lean times because food is so plentiful. As a result, we may eat things that are fattening and our body does what designed to do…store the extra calories we don’t burn…as fat. The flip side of the storage of fat from foods we eat is that often the fatty foods we eat are not very nutritous. We continue to eat them because the body is craving something that will satiate us and make us feel satisfied. That feeling of satisfaction comes from the nutrients in the foods we eat but we don’t ever achieve that feeling and satisfaction so we keep eating what we have been told is good for us. This constant craving is what food companies rely on. If we can be sold a product that we think we are craving, eat it and then crave it again, they have created an addiction in us with food and they have a direct line to our cashflow. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? I know, that many people will say that it’s hard to believe that and why would anyone do something like that? In a word…MONEY. Plain and simple.
Do you think that the corporations out there really care about your health or do you think that they care about selling you a product that you will return to buy over and over again? I’d opt for the latter because they certianly don’t just keep the places they they operate to package your food in clean working order because they are concerned for your health. It’s because they don’t want to be shut down and loose money because they can’t sell you their product.
This show also talked about sugar and flour. The first two ingredients are found in many of the foods we eat. Sugar is the main one. It’s converted to fat and stored for future lean times. (That we never see) It’s also what is used to create that taste that keeps us coming back for more. They even mentioned milk in the program…as if it’s not sweet enough and now you can buy powders that are mixed into it and make it taste like sweet bananas or strawberry or chocolate. We are marketed the chemicals that our body craves and is designed to store. It is what keeps us coming back and keeps us fat.
Why do they sell us foods that aren’t really good for us? It’s because we buy them. If we stopped buying foods that were really unhealthy for us, the only thing that Food “manufacturers” could do is find ways to repackage food that is good for us and that would usually come in the form of “natural foods” There are some companies who offer products that are actually healthy and they are in my book where I am going to start trying to gravitate towards. It’s not going to be easy but I am going to try that this year. I am going to try to gravitate towards the fresh produce and lean meats see just how that works out. I think I will be better off this year and maybe I will be able to blog a bit about that now that the bills are paid off and this appears to be a worthwhile goal.
You will also note that I don’t have a goal of losing any weight here as the point is just to start eating more healthy foods, especially when I return home as I know it’s hard to do in America.

The Movie is “Hungry for Change” and I recommend it.

Sweet Victory

Posted by wcrowlandksr on January 2, 2013
Posted in: General Ramblings, Life In The Sandbox. Leave a comment

You know that feeling when your flying and you’ve been up in the air for hours and then the plane just starts to descend? Your ears pop a little and the crew starts shuffling around getting ready to land. You know it’s coming but it’s still just a bit longer away. The landing gear hasn’t come down just yet but the time is near. That’s my point along this adventure. I have made the trip and it’s time to start the descent. That feeling of looking back before I leave and really assesing what has been done and what I have learned this year seems in order right alongside the fact that it’s the start of the new year.

I know that so many of my posts have had a similar flavor or being debt free and the pitfalls it brings so rather than restating those things I will spare you great detail but simply offer you to dig deeper into the blog if you wish to see those postings.

Looking back allows some sense of accomplishment if you determine that any of your resolutions were actually met. I try to pick things that I think I can actually accomplish rather than picking something that may very well be off the charts for me. Some say this is setting lowered expectations but I feel that it gives a sense of accomplishment if it’s actually achieved rather than simply “just another failure”. I also believe that one person’s goal might be within reach for them and near impossible for another. Now before anybody get’s ramped up on how it’s easy for me to pay bills and free myself of debt…dig a little deeper Here

Yes I did it, I paid my bills off with the exception of one and it was expected to be this way. It’s my next and last major targeted bill. This was my 2012 year long resolution and it was life/viewpoint changing, but now that it’s nearing the end, the effort put forward and the lessons learned were worth it.

Some of those lessons are listed below.

Is it ever enough:
For a price of personal sacrifice, you can make more money than you might have thought possible at the station in life where you find yourself but there’s never going to be enough. Just when you think you have reached that point where everything would be perfect if you just had “X” amount of dollars, it’s not. Just ask the big lottery winners who eventually find themselves at a point that is worse than when they started. There’s always something that you can pine for or think you must have and it’s typically going to be just out of reach or it will come at an excessive price. The thought “Just stay a little longer and make a few dollars more” will consume your life…I know, I have met people here who have been here for many years and only started out with the idea, “It’s just one year…”.

On being debt free:
Most people who come here have this one goal in mind and it’s typically a highlight. It was for me as well. There is genuine satisfaction in this because it means I will have more time to spend on activities other than chasing money to meet the demand of the creditors and stealing my life.
See here.

On what I wanted to be when I was young in search of the perfect balance:
Most people don’t like to admit that what they are doing presently for work wasn’t their first choice. It suggests that they may not be happy in their present career field. I wanted to be an Audio Engineer and in some way to be involved in music (not volume) at a high level. That was a youthful dream but I never fully let go of it. I still play with music and recording but I am far from a professional. I do enjoy it so I share it where I can. My current career path allows me to work with some of the systems that I can also use in my hobby. It leans towards being balanced. See Here

The good stuff:
This trip has had so many benefits to it and going in, I could see some of them but not all. I still haven’t figured out all of them but they will reveal themselves in time. Some of them have affected those around me and I hope it’s all for the good. So far, that is prooving to be the case.

Until you find that balance between that which provides you the ability to have enough money to live in a manner in which you have become accustomed to and to not forsake those around you, life will be less fulfilling. When you are dying, your money will not be there to comfort you and it can’t buy comfort, it can however bring vultures who will feast on the spoils after you are dead. Always try to live your life vulture free.

The Sweet Victory of success is yours for the taking. Plan accordingly, execute your plan, be willing to adapt, make some sort term sacrifices if required, don’t be distracted by shiny stuff and trinkets…you are not a raccoon. Raccoons like shiny stuff and trinkets. Know what your goal should look like when you get there and once you do, find another worthwhile goal…see here.

I wish you a happy new year and I hope this blog has affected you in some way…

-C

Home is where and what you make of it

Posted by wcrowlandksr on December 16, 2012
Posted in: Life in the Pacific Northwest. Leave a comment

I have come to some conclusions recently and I have been battling some decisions on where I wanted to live. There are times in our lives when we struggle with such things and I have been going through the battle of deciding on the best place to live as a technical service worker. It’s difficult to find the perfect place and I suppose that if my career field of choice was in some other venue, the Seattle area might not be my best choice. I have voiced my negative thoughts on the area and there are countless sites dedicated to the same things. What I have realiized is that the Seattle Area is going to be covered with considerably more commentary both good and bad on the internet because of the high volume of technically competent people in the area. It’s been said that you can find people who don’t like McDonald’s hamburgers and someone will have a blog or a comment about it. I found one once that showed a normal burger and a McDonald’s hamburger and the rate of decay. The McDonald’s hamburger survived long after the regular burger had turned to almost dust. People still eat the decay resistant burger. Why isn’t for me to figure out. It’s just a fact. Just like the facts about the Seattle area that I am never sure are 100% but they are my best guess.
One of the hardest things I had to learn is that there are reasons that the Seattle area is known for some of the best technological innovation and design. It’s grey outside and the people of the area have simply adapted. They spend their time indoors thinking stuff up. The area is a bit of a technology think tank of sorts. Who would want to stay indoors if it was nice outside all the time? I sure wouldn’t. The rainy grey weather lends itself to the creamy freakishly white skinned nerd types because of the lack of proper sunlight. It’s true that many people in Seattle have little social skills and it’s true that it comes off as an unfriendly place to live. The self serving a-holes are abundant there but that’s not all of what the area is full of. There are many who just haven’t figured this place out and grouped together and made thier own friends…and it’s really hard to do that because the rainy weather will eventually get to you. Newcomers are also often put off by the piss poor social skills of many of the locals and I don’t fault either of them these days.
If you were living in a place that has little in the way of true outdoor entertainment/activities and the weather didn’t supply you with enough sunlight and vitamin D to stay healthy, I suppose you would become like so many have complained about. It’s true that there are a huge volume of adult online game players and that they have more interaction with people just like them. They are shut-ins because of the crappy weather and lack of good strong sunlight. They don’t really learn how to interact with people on a person to person basis and it would be safe to say that technology has been the reason for the locals to be connected if only online and the same reason that they often don’t interact well in person and exhibit such bad manners.
When I used to commute, I was on a tight schedule to catch the right bus or ferry so I wouldn’t get home just in time to go to bed only to get up and do it again. In the winter it was dark when I left home and dark when I arrived back home. What a crappy way to spend your time. Fighting traffic in the rainy dark mornings to get to work, slaving away at work and then fighting your way back home in the rainy dark night, all the while, hoping that the public transportation system would not fail you badly. If anything, you could miss a ride by a minute and be delayed for at the very least, an additional hour. This is just an example of the kinds of reasons that the people are pressed and do not stop to chat with others when the opportunity presents itself. The transportation system sucks and the topographical layout of the area is not easy to traverse. This makes it more difficult to stop and take time to chat. Not a great reason but it is a fact. I can say this with great authority because I was just such a subject when dealing with the same conditions.
Are there simple ways to improve this area for better living? I suppose so but the most difficult thing to do is create a change in the minds of the people to get them to see that the old ways of getting to and from work are limiting the quality of life we want to have. I personally have been someone who never liked the idea of giving up what I thought was freedom behind the wheel of my car because I could come and go as I pleased. I have been living on a city that has 20,000 Taxi’s and it is easy to catch one at almost any time of the day. I like the freedom that this offers because I can still come and go as I please and parking is no longer an issue, I have less vehicle maintenance to pay for and in general, I still can get to where I need to go. I do understand the love affair we have with our cars and I don’t ever want to not have my own wheels but for the sake of getting around easier and having less stress, I get it. Leave the car at home unless you absolutley need it.
This is where the problem comes in. we often do need our cars because the transportation system is actually not very good. The buses are nasty when you consider the bum who just soiled himself and is sitting on the seat next to you as if nothing has happened or the person who hasn’t showered for days is stinking up the air and your only option is to sit next to this dirtbag and get the off-gas effect on you so now you feel like you need a shower all day while you are at work. Not exactly the best solution. Then there is the bicyclist…oh the self inportant bicyclist who sneers at you because you are driving a car and they are saving the world. Sorry Mr. Body Odor man, I would rather show up to work not smelling like a beast, thank you. I have decided that one of the best ways to get to and from work in my case is by motorcycle. It’s a small ride, takes up less space, it’s cheap to get around and the performance is like a sportscar and then some and the carpool lanes are free for taking. This has been my best option for many years and I am thinking that I will be needing another weather sheding motorcycle when I return and begin the commuter shuffle.
Have I admitted defeat? Have I decided where to live? Can I enjoy the Pacific Northwest with a new attitude and a years experience away from there? I think the answers are yes to all but the first question.

I also have decided that the reason I couldn’t figure out where to move to is because I have a love hate relationship with the Pacific Northwest. I love the high tech jobs and the scenery is second to none…when you can see it. I hate the crappy weather and attitudes of people whom I have come to realize are just handicapped when they don’t understand how to be nice to people or they don’t care. It’s a bit of a disease that they have and the cure is recognition and acceptance and adaptability. I also now understand why there are many people in the state who want nothing to do with the cities where these problems are prevelant. Unfortunatley my work will often take me into that rat race and as long as I can keep in mind the fact that it’s not the way of the entire world, I should be able to survive and survive well.

I hope that if you are stuck in this rut out there and are trying to make sense of the overall climate of Seattle that you realize that it is a technical hub to a high degree and the weather does suck for the most part. It’s why there are big homes that people have built for themselves to try to cope by not being trapped indoors in a crackerbox home and they try to find happiness in the toys and useless crap they think they just gotta have to make them happy. It’s a sad part of the way life is there. If you realize this and refocus on what is important, living in the rainly pacific northwest can be a decent place to live but you have GOT to accept the rain and grey or it will kill your soul.

A Bridge to the Island to help all of Kitsap

Posted by wcrowlandksr on December 12, 2012
Posted in: General Ramblings, Life in the Pacific Northwest. Leave a comment

As a long time resident of Kitsap County and a past long time commuter to Seattle, I have been watching the insanity surrounding the Ferry System and I still cannot understand why some of the most logical solutions are never publicly examined. WSF likes to say that the only self sustaining system is the Bainbridge run so it makes sense to conclude that the shortened run and high capacity boats are the way to go. The unfortunate issue here is that the island holds the keys to unlock and resolve the problem faced by the WSF. The tiny two way road of the Agate Pass Bridge just isn’t a feasible route to take for an effective method of managing the traffic loads but a shortened route between East Bremerton and the Bainbridge Ferry run would be. The current route from the Bremerton Terminal and the Bainbridge terminal is time prohibitive when considering a drive to the self sustaining Bainbridge run from Bremerton. As a result, it made sense to spend the extra 30 minutes riding the Bremerton boats. As it is now, the Bremerton boats are broken, nasty and often staffed by ferry workers who appear to hate what they do for work. Based on what we are told, the Bremerton route pulls the WSF into the RED anyway. Why not increase the Bainbridge route to a 3 or 4 boat run filled with travelers/commuters from the entire Kitsap peninsula and shut the Bremerton Route down? This would easily be accomplished with a short floating bridge between Bremerton and Bainbridge. A fast foot Ferry could be implemented between Bainbridge and Seattle as well. This would eliminate the Rich Passage trouble we faced years ago over a fast boat and shore erosion. It would drastically improve the revenue stream into Kitsap county as more people would see Kitsap and a realistic community to live in. It would cut down on the Kitsap Brain Drain and might actually help bring money and talent into Kitsap County. As it is now, who wants to live in Kitsap County and use a Ferry System that is falling apart or fight traffic by driving south and then north to get to Seattle or pay the extortion fee to cross the toll bridge? The job market in Kitsap County is terrible and when you can’t find a job locally you must either move or commute. I for one decided to move to the Middle East for a good job for a year as a result of this ridiculous yet easily resolvable transportation issue faced in Kitsap. I am considering returning but I am not so sure I want to after discovering what is happening there. Yes, it’s that bad and you just don’t know it until you have tried something that actually works.

One Year Later

Posted by wcrowlandksr on December 8, 2012
Posted in: Life In The Sandbox. 4 Comments

A year ago, I began this blog for the purpose of looking back and also sharing some of my experiences with you, my readers. I know that I likley do not have many if any reading my blog here but the truth is, it is OK. I have a place to connect to from most anywhere in the world and document my experiences so I may one day look back and see where I have come from and gone to. This adventurous job I have taken on along with some good advice on life has helped me grow so much that without them I’m not sure where I’d be in the process of understanding things the way I do now but looking back I can see the some of the changes.

It was this time last year that I was nearing a completed a contract at my favorite company ever with a really great manager whom I truly miss working for. He had an outlook that was inspiring in many ways. I used to tell my friends that I worked in the happiest place on earth and they would guess Disney most every time. They were right and I truly miss it.
One of my favorite managers at Disney before he left Disney.


While I have enjoyed living in the desert, I am ready to come back for a while. Not really sure if one can actually come back “home” because some things change…even if it’s just the person returning. Someone who once told me that you can’t really survive here in the desert until you make the move in your mind. I found that to be true because for many months, I kept thinking about how life was when I left and I had forgotten a very critical element of life. It keeps changing things even when you aren’t there. This was witnessed when I went back home for a vacation. With the exception of a select few, did anyone appear to want to connect since they all had lives to live and other places to be. This was a painful lesson because for a long time I held on to these friendships in my mind but they had let go many months ago. It’s the out of sight out of mind thing. Sadly I have found that people these days just don’t have time to spend with others because they are so busy doing something else. I still haven’t quite figured out what is so much more important than friends that causes this draw but it appears to be a reality.
Some of them just aren’t close enough both in distance or connection so I do understand that…the rest…I just don’t.

I also learned that you shouldn’t live your life fast forwarding or waiting until the next big moment where you do meet some goal that you have set for yourself. I did that for a while and have since learned that you must live your life along the route rather than racing from one goal to the next all the while missing the journey along the way. It’s good to have goals but it’s also good to enjoy and learn from the route getting to them.

Other changes on viewpoints:
If you have seen the Matrix, this will make more sense. It’s a great movie to watch…well the first one is the best and what I am basing what I write about here.
I have been extracted from a life and for 20 years, it had become all I had known. I went to work each day and like a good worker bee, fell into the machine that is devised to allow us to fall under heavy control. I followed the steps of being on a regular work schedule and used the mass transit as much as possible to get to work and become a part of that corporate machine. I didn’t travel freely and I was on a schedule…and it wasn’t mine. While it paid enough to survive, the entire system is configured so that you can end up barely making a living wage if you aren’t careful. I used to think I was free.
I have been working in a different system of control and it mostly because I have changed it for myself. I don’t have the looming debt I had before, I don’t have the fear of not being able to afford shelter, I don’t feel like I have to stay at this job anymore but I do because I like the wage and the work. I know that when I go back to the workforce at home I will be able to take on work that I really like rather than what’s available me because I need to funds to keep the creditors happy.

On How “easy” it’s been for me to just pay all my bills off.
Some people I know just say to me that it has been easy for me to take this job here and that I have skills that I can market and make a good wage and getting out of debt is so easy for a person like me and they get tired of reading the “same story over and over again”.
I laugh because they don’t understand or see…or care that I packed all my things that I might have needed into a few bags and one box, hopped on a airplane and left everything I ever knew and and everyone I ever met and left them all behind in an effort to get this goal of debt freedom accomplished. Easy!? Please! It’s hotter than hell here in the summer and there are so many things that you can’t even begin to imagine that you will experience that aren’t really enjoyable unless you have lived here. Try leaving your entire family and all your friends behind only to watch the friendships whither away because you were gone. Try eating the food here and sometimes it feels like Gastronial Intestinal Russian Roulette when you find out that one of your peers almost died because of major food poisoning and what your eating today tastes a bit “off”. Try working in a warehouse setting with pretend cubicles and lights that you could grow some awesome weed under. That light is like sitting by the light of a welder for 12 hours at a time because that’s your workday. Think about the last time you had a new job and the stress was high because you didn’t know the ropes yet. Now throw a curve ball in there and instead…take on a new boss and he is hell bent on changing everything in order to make his mark and it throws the system that everyone had figured out into a tailspin. Yippie…it’s like getting a new job every year…want it or not. Here’s one, spend 48 hours of your meager 3 weeks vacation getting to and from your home. This is also combined with the fact that 3 weeks is an abnormally long vacation and typicall you must break it down into two segments….this means your 48 hours of travel just doubled and you lost a total of 4 days to traveling on your now roughly 8 to 10 days off in a row and let’s not talk about the jetlag where you lose more time because you are trying to adjust to the new timezone you find yourself in. In a vain attempt to stay somewhat synchronized with my hometowm clocks, I have been working the night shift for nearly a year now and that’s a joy unto itself. You walk outside in the morning and the beautifully lit sky is yours for the taking and your internal devices tell you it’s daytime and you shouldn’t be sleeping but rather, wide awake. Now that this mechanism is running full throttle you go home after being up for 15 hours and now you gotta sleep. Good luck with that one. Oh let’s talk about maid service…yeah, they work in the day and don’t often speak much english so you will have trouble getting them to understand “no ringie ringie doorbell in the day, just come in quietly and clean everything but my room cause I am sleeping”. Guaranteed….the doorbell WILL ring and wake you and now you have been awakened in the middle of your night because housekeeping can’t understand you. Here’s more, you get to pick what holiday you want to spend with your family and friends and this year but it cannot be all of them….(See travel and jetlag comments). How about a crappy internet service that take you an hour and a half to watch an hour long movie because of dust storms…or just poor internet service in the first place….why yes sir we have Internet service, it’s a 1.44 meg connection and it’s shared with 70 other tennants. Yes we know that they are streaming movies and using Skype but at least we can tell you that we have the service. Enjoy! You will also need a vpn link out of the country because the movie pirates here can’t get access to Netflix…they would just pirate it all. The VPN…well that is encapsulating technology so you get the pleasure of even slower speeds because of the encrypt and decrypt activities. Thanks firewall guys! You guys rock at blocking my favorite stuph! NOT! You are just an annoying speedbump on the information superhighway!
You will notice that I am not taking issue with the people of this country. It is me who doesn’t understand them and each day I make attempts to do so. Like the guy today who wanted to occupy the same lane on the freeway as I did and forgot about the whole separate matter occupying the same space at the same time thing or neglected to learn or perhaps thought that it was birthright to be there in my position on the road and not me. I really tried to understand this but I am not that capable of understanding how an intelegent society could actually drive in a manner that says they do not understand basic physics.
Back to the point. It’s not easy to do what I have done and I challenge anyone who thinks I am in some sort of priviledged situation to just drop on over and try it. You will likley make more money than you did at home doing the same thing you can do here and according to some, it’s easy. So if you think that after reading my posts about getting out of debt and think here we go again, I challenge you to try it.

Am I bitter about this job and the place I live, not really. Am I glad I did it? Without question, yes! Would I do it again? Probably. Do I want to poke the next person in the eye who says it was so easy for a guy like me and that I am somehow privledged? YES! Was it easy? No, not really. Was it worth it? Absolutley!
I have had an excellent experience here because of what I made of it. I have learned things about myself and would not trade this for the world. I just might look back and wish I had traveled more of it while I was here but this round was mostly for debt payoff.