And no, I’m not complaining. They put me in a hotel on the harbor with about 1,000 boats right out my window. Today, I walked from my hotel room to the ocean, then had a fresh seafood dinner that I did not share with seagulls. On the way back to my room, I watched a great blue heron pluck a fish out of the water and swallow it.

Nope. No complaints here.

Anyway, I’m working on a WordPress-related project and, to do so, I had to find a bunch of sample WordPress blogs. One of them is just too funny not to share: Sir Satire’s Weblog. Don’t hesitate — go there right now and read it. It’s hilarious. Like another version of The Onion.

For example, today’s blog post is titled “Tax on human gas emissions gains support in Congress” begins:

A tax on human gas emissions has gained the support of at least one member of Congress, but critics are blasting the proposal and say that its proponents are just full of hot air.

Proponents of the “flatutax,” as it has been dubbed by critics, say that human emissions are often overlooked when discussing global warming issues. Human beings contribute greenhouse gases to the atmosphere during the digestive process, they say, and a tax would provide an incentive to curb those emissions.

Get the idea? Funny stuff!

Are you still here? You’re not going to read anything more interesting here, at least for a few days. Go on over and check out Sir Satire. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Pity me. I’ll be on 9 different airliners over the next 40 days.

First Stop: Florida

There’s a joke that New Yorkers “get” and I’ll be so bold as to try it here:

Q: What’s a good Jewish wine?

A: [whining] I want to go to Florida.

While midwesterners and northwesterners retire to Arizona, New Yorkers (and others from the northeast) retire to Florida. Not only do they retire there, but they vacation there. And since New York has a huge Jewish population that vacations and retires in Florida — mostly in the Fort Lauderdale area — this joke is funny. Well, at least it’s funny to New Yorkers. (And having heard it from a Jewish person, I don’t think it’s offensive to Jews. You may correct me if I’m wrong.)

Both of my parents retired to Florida. While many people think that might make sense — that they retired together — it’s not as easy as that. They’re both remarried and they each moved to different parts of Florida with their spouses.

My mother, who I’m going to see next week, moved to the St. Augustine area. Technically, she lives in Crescent Beach, which is on the far southern reaches of St. Augustine. She lives with my stepdad on the barrier island there. Her home, which she had custom-built about 10 years ago, sits on a tiny canal.

She and my stepdad used to have a boat, but fuel and maintenance costs made that impractical, considering the amount of time they actually used it. So now they have a bulkhead with a bench overlooking the canal. Their neighbors have boats that they seldom use, too, and they can look out on those.

The area is nicely treed and quiet. There are lots of sea birds.

My mom’s house was built in a U-shape. On one end of the U is the master bedroom and bath. On the other end is another bedroom with its own bathroom just up the hall. That was supposed to be my grandmother’s bedroom, but like so many people back east, she couldn’t leave the area she’d lived in for her whole life. (In fact, she died within 50 miles of where she was born, having lived in only three or maybe four places her entire life.) Grandma’s room is the best room in the house, with privacy, easy access to the pool and hot tub between the arms of the U, a nice bathroom, and its own thermostat. Although the house has four bedrooms, I try to manage my trips so I get Grandma’s room. I stayed in the “kid’s room” once with Mike and was incredibly uncomfortable sharing the tiny space beside the trundle bed with a treadmill’s bulk.

My mother and stepdad are going to Italy at the end of the month for two weeks. This is a huge deal. They don’t travel much and I can’t remember the last time they left the country. They’re going with a tour group (of course) and I don’t know the itinerary, but I’m sure I’ll be filled in when I get there on Tuesday evening.

I haven’t been to my mother’s house since Thanksgiving 2006. She hasn’t been out here since Thanksgiving (or perhaps Christmas?) 2004 (?). She really doesn’t like to travel by plane. One year, they decided to drive out. Yes: St. Augustine, FL to Wickenburg, AZ, a distance of more than 2,100 miles. You might be asking yourself: what were they thinking? The answer: they weren’t. It was a long drive and they were on freeways the entire way. It might not have been so bad if they didn’t hit a dust storm in the Tucson area, but they were tired when they encountered that and it really rattled them.

It takes two planes to fly to visit them — no one has a direct flight from Phoenix to Jacksonville or Daytona (she lives right between them). I could get a direct flight to Orlando, but then I’d spend more than an hour driving from there. I’d rather spend that hour on the ground, in Houston, looking for a nice lunch and shopping in the airport terminal.

I’ll be in Florida for five days: Tuesday through Saturday. Two jets each way equals four different jets.

California, Here I Come!

My next trip is for business. I’m flying into Burbank, CA to meet with a new client for a brand new job. I can’t go into details because I’m under nondisclosure (NDA), but I can say that I’m working on a new project that should be completed by the end of May. I’ll talk about it more then.

I’m flying Southwest into Burbank. I don’t like flying Southwest. The lack of seat assignments is a royal pain in the butt. I like to know before I get on a plane where I’ll sit on that plane. And since I’m likely to have carry-on luggage, I like to know for sure that I’ll be able to stow it. Southwest makes knowing these things impossible, so I tend to avoid it.

But my client paid for this trip’s airfare and booked it for me, so I can’t complain. It’s a more convenient flight than I’d get with another airline — Burbank is closer to my final destination than LAX, and a heck of a lot less crazed. I’ll probably save a whole hour of travel time by avoiding traffic. And maybe, just maybe, Southwest isn’t as bad as I remember it.

Because this trip is for business, I don’t expect to have much fun. I have to finish the entire project in 4-1/2 days. (I arrive on Sunday and depart on Friday at about noon.) The quicker I work, the more time I’ll have to goof off, so that’s a good motivator. And not finishing up on time is not an option.

It’s just one jet each way, but if you’re counting, that brings the total up to six jets between now and May 9.

The Washington Trip

In mid-May comes the trip I’ve been looking forward to: a helicopter flight from Wickenburg to Boeing Field in Seattle, Wa. There’s nothing I love more than long cross-country trips by helicopter. If I could figure out a way to earn a living doing it, I’d be doing it all the time.

The trip is to reposition the aircraft for my summer job. Yes, this year, after two years of false hopes, I’ve been signed up to do cherry drying for growers in central Washington state. But to do the work, I need to get the aircraft up there. That means a 10-12 hour ferry flight which I hope we can complete within two days. Once at BFI, I’ll leave the helicopter with a buddy’s mechanic for an annual inspection, which will be due by then.

Since I’ll be in central Washington for at least a month, I’ll need a place to stay. So right after I drop off the helicopter, I’ll hop on a plane for Wenatchee, WA, rent a car, and start scouting around. I plan to drive up with my new old truck pulling my travel trailer. Alex the Bird and I will camp out for the entire time. I’m interested in finding an affordable campground with full hookup and WiFi, but there’s a chance I might get a free (or almost free) partial hookup with (fingers crossed) WiFi at the same private airport where the helicopter will be based for the first part of the season. Since I have time, I figured I’d go check out my options. It’s a long drive from Wickenburg, AZ to Quincy, WA, and I want to make sure I know where I’m going to be parking my rig before I get there.

The plane from Seattle to Wenatchee may not be a jet, but it will be part of an airline. I fly from Seattle to Wenatchee and then back to Seattle before flying home to Phoenix. If you’re keeping count, that’s three more plane rides for a total of nine.

Other Work

Between all of that, I have other work to do.

I have two helicopter charters for Flying M Air — one of which is later today. After that, Flying M Air’s Phoenix-area operations are closed for the season. I have 21 hours left on the Hobbs meter before I need a 100-hour inspection (which is about the same as an annual, but must be done every 100 hours). If I fly 2-1/2 hours today and 3-1/2 hours on Monday, that leaves 15 hours for the ferry flight and helicopter training I need to do (in Portland, OR, which I hope to hit on the way to Seattle). While I’m allowed to go over the 100 hours if the flight is repositioning the aircraft to where the maintenance will be done, I’m not allowed to go over it for training flights. So I simply can’t take on any new charter flights until I get to Washington.

(And yes, I can continue to operate my tour and charter business in Washington State. My Part 135 certificate is “portable.” So when I’m not drying cherries, I hope to make a few extra bucks by transporting growers and other folks who need to get from place to place near my summer base(s).)

I also need to record a training video for macPro Video. I would have started this last week, or this week, but I’ve been having trouble getting satisfactory recording equipment together. (See my video blog entry about this.) I might try to do some of it in Florida. We’ll see. Otherwise, I’ll have to do it between the Florida and California trips.

I also need to go to Howard Mesa to pick up a few things I’ll need on my summer-long trip. Among them is Alex the Bird’s mid-size cage, which should fit nicely on a shelf in the camper, my low-wattage one-cup coffee maker, and some odds and ends that’ll come in handy for off-the-grid camping, if I need to do any of that. I’d also very much like to get away from here for a weekend because of a variety of other crazy things going on.

And I need to get ready to write a new book about QuickBooks Pro for Macintosh. I’ll work on that while I’m away this summer. I’ll be bringing two (possibly three) laptops with me so I can write. There’s another book I’ll be working on while away, but I’m under NDA about that and can’t say more.

In any case, I’m looking forward to a challenging summer away from Wickenburg.

I’m also looking forward to my three shorter trips over the next 40 days. I really do love to travel.

I stumbled upon the Basic Instructions comic by Scott Meyer when I followed the Dilbert Blog by Scott Adams.

At the time, Adams had apparently taken Meyer “under his wing” and was trying to advise him on how to make his comic more marketable. (Read “Basic Instructions, Part 1” for more information.) Meyer was following his advice, which required a complete reformatting of the comic. The results were not impressive, although not bad. Obviously, Adams should know how to market a comic, since Dilbert is very popular. But Meyer’s comic was fine in its regular format.

In fact, Basic Instructions is one of the funniest comics I’ve ever read.

I’m not sure why it appeals to me so much. I think it’s because it’s just so incredibly cynical. The characters are all funny and share the punch lines. They say things I often wish I could say aloud to people. There’s usually a good laugh in every frame.

Oddly enough, I think it’s a lot funnier than Dilbert, which is delivered to my e-mail inbox every weekday.

I subscribe to the RSS feed for Basic Instructions, so it’s delivered to my RSS reader’s in box whenever I get around to launching it. This morning, I read through the last few comics and it really cheered me up considerably.

Has anyone out there read Basic Instructions? If so, what do you think?

Here’s another funny I got from a friend. I don’t know where he got it, but if this belongs to someone who doesn’t want it shared, let me know and I’ll pull it down.

George Bush and Dick Cheney, while visiting a primary school class, found themselves in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings.

The teacher asked both men if they would like to lead the discussion of the word “tragedy.” So Mr. Cheney asks the class for an example of a “tragedy.”

One little boy stood up and offered: “If my best friend, who lives on a farm, is playing in the field and a runaway tractor comes along and knocks him dead, that would be a tragedy.”

“No,” said Mr. Cheney, “that would be an accident.”

A little girl raised her hand: “If a school bus carrying 50 children drove over a cliff, killing everyone inside, that would be a tragedy.”

“I’m afraid not,” explained Mr. Bush. “That’s what we would call a great loss.”

The room goes silent. No other children volunteered.

Mr. Bush searched the room. “Isn’t there someone here who can give me an example of a tragedy?”

Finally at the back of the room little Johnny raises his hand. In a stern voice he says, “If a plane carrying the President and Vice President of the United States were struck by a missile and blown to smithereens that would be a tragedy.”

“Fantastic!” exclaimed both men nearly in unison. Mr. Cheney continued “That’s right. And can you tell me why that would be a tragedy?”

“Well,” says little Johnny, “because it sure as hell wouldn’t be a great loss, and it probably wouldn’t be an accident either.”

Since everyone seems to be sharing their Christmas animal photos, I thought I’d share mine:

And yes, Cherokee is sticking his tongue out.

There will be no nativity scene in the United State Congress, this year!

The Supreme Court has ruled that there cannot be a nativity scene in the United States capital this Christmas season.

This isn’t for any religious reason; they simply have not been able to find three wise men and a virgin in the nation’s capitol.

There was no problem, however, finding enough asses to fill the stable.

Some people really need to get a life. Like this guy, Mike, who took time out of what must be a very boring existence to write me this e-mail:

Look, you and people like you have got to STOP spreading crap like your mouse story around. Seriously, I understand your point of view and if I got to to fly a helicopter around when I wanted to I may adopt your point of view. The problem is that 99% of us DON’T!!!
It matters not what you write… whether it’s a novel or just get up on your soapbox and subletly tell others there moral duty in an internet story about mice. Some responsiblilty should be utilized.
I (and others like me) can not shuttle these vermin to an estate in the GC!! In fact, many suffer disease and health problems from these little bastards, myself included. Remeber the plauge???
Please think of the consiquences of your words.
Seems to me as though you are already full of shit.

Wow. For someone who doesn’t care, he certainly seems to care.

Amazing how a simple post about mice can get a guy so riled up. I guess he really hates the little critters. He should get a job as an exterminator.

Normally, I just delete crap like this. But this one was so spectacular with its exclamation points and question marks and misspellings that I just had to share it with the 1% of readers (by his estimate) who actually do care.

And if anyone reading this agrees with Mike, here’s a solution for you: stop reading this blog. Because no matter how much hate mail you send me, I’m going to write whatever the hell I want to here.

Here’s another amusing tidbit I got from a friend of mine. If you know the author of this piece, please let me know so I can give credit where credit is due.

A female CNN journalist heard about a very old Jewish man who had been going to the Western Wall to pray, twice a day, every day, for a long, long time.

So she went to check it out. She went to the Western Wall and there he was, walking slowly up to the holy site. She watched him pray and after about 45 minutes, when he turned to leave, using a cane and moving very slowly, she approached him for an interview.

“Pardon me, sir, I’m Rebecca Smith from CNN. What’s your name?”

“Morris Feinberg,” he replied.

“Sir, how long have you been coming to the Western Wall and praying?”

“For about 60 years.”

“60 years! That’s amazing! What do you pray for?”

“I pray for peace between the Christians, Jews and the Muslims. I pray for all the wars and all the hatred to stop. I pray for all our children to grow up safely as responsible adults, and to love their fellow man.”

“How do you feel after doing this for 60 years?”

“Like I’m talking to a f*ckin’ wall.”

I got this from my friend, Ray, who got it from someone else. (You know how it is.) During my attempt to track down an author, I stumbled upon a Wikipedia entry for Two Cows. Amusing all around.

Enjoy.

Socialism: You have two cows. You keep one and give one to your neighbor.

Communism: You have two cows. The government takes them both and provides you with milk.

Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes them and sells you the milk.

Nazism: You have two cows. The government takes both and then shoots you.

Bureaucracy: You have two cows. The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk, and then pours it down the drain.

Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

Corporate: You have two cows. You sell one, force the other to produce the milk of four cows, and then act surprised when it drops dead.

Democracy: You have two cows. The government taxes you to the point that you must sell them both in order to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow which was a gift from your government.

I got this from my friend Tom a while back and stumbled upon it today while I was clearing out old e-mail. As usual, if anyone knows the author of this piece, I’d be more than happy to give him or her credit and/or a link.

Enjoy.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto went camping in the desert. After they got their tent all set up, both men fell sound asleep.

Some hours later, Tonto wakes the Lone Ranger and says, “Kemo Sabe, look toward sky, what you see?”

The Lone Ranger replies, “I see millions of stars.”

“What that tell You?” asked Tonto.

The Lone Ranger ponders for a minute then says, “Astronomically speaking, It tells me there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, it tells me that Saturn is in Leo. Time wise, it appears to be approximately a quarter past three in the morning. Theologically, the Lord is all-powerful and we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, it seems we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What’s it tell you, Tonto?”

“You dumber than buffalo shit. It mean someone steal tent.”

If anyone knows the source of this, please let me know so I can properly credit it.

On his trip to Great Britain, George Bush had a meeting with Queen Elizabeth.

He asked her, “How does one manage to run a country so well and so effortlessly?

“That’s easy,” she replied, “You surround yourself with intelligent ministers and advisors.”

“But how can I tell whether they are intelligent or not?” he inquired.

“You ask them a riddle,” she replied, and with that she pressed a button and said, “Would you please send Tony Blair in.”

When Blair arrived, the Queen said, “I have a riddle for you to answer for me. Your parents had a child and it was not your sister and it was not your brother. Who was this child ?”

Blair replied, “That’s easy. The child was me.”

“Very good,” said the Queen, “You may go now.”

So President Bush went back to Washington and called in his chief of staff, Karl Rove. He said to him, “I have a riddle for you, and the answer is very important. Your parents had a child and it was not your sister and it was not your brother. Who was this child?”

Rove replied, “Yes, it is clearly very important that we determine the answer, as no child must be left behind. Can I deliberate on this for a while?”

“Yes,” said Bush, “I’ll give you four hours to come up with the answer.”

So Rove went and called a meeting of the White House Staff, and asked them the riddle. But after much discussion and many suggestions, none of them had a satisfactory answer. So he was quite upset, not knowing what he would tell the President.

As Rove was walking back to the Oval Office, he saw former Secretary of State Colin Powell approaching him. So he said, “Mr. Secretary, can you answer this riddle for me? Your parents had a child and it was not your sister and it was not your brother. Who was the child?”

“That’s easy,” said Powell, “The child was me.”

“Oh thank you,” said Rove, “You may just have saved me my job!”

So Rove went in to the Oval Office and said to President Bush, “I think I know the answer to your riddle. The child was Colin Powell!”

“No, you idiot!” shouted Bush, “The child was Tony Blair!”

I just got these from my brother-in-law. If anyone out there knows the original source of these pearls of wisdom, please pass that information along so I can properly credit him/her.

My favorite: the first one.

Murphy’s Lesser-Known Laws

1. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
2. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
3. Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don’t.
4. Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.
5. The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.
6. If you lined up all the cars in the world end to end, someone would be stupid enough to try to pass them, five or six at a time, on a hill, in the fog.
7. The things that come to those who wait will be the scraggly junk left by those who got there first.
8. The shin bone is a device for finding furniture in a dark room.
9. A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
10. When you go into court, you are putting yourself into the hands of 12 people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.

Ever download something and forget all about it? I must have done that with the following image, which I just found on my PowerBook’s hard disk, in my “Desktop Junk” folder. (The Desktop Junk folder is where I throw all the files on my desktop when I need to make it look neat. It has a lot of files in it and I was in the process of cleaning it out when I found this.)

I don’t remember downloading this at all. But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t put on my computer by someone else, since I’m the only one who has access to this laptop.

The image file’s timestamp is December 19, 2005.

My friend Stan sent me these.

Understanding Engineers - Take One

Two engineering students were walking across a university campus when one said, “Where did you get such a great bike?”

The second engineer replied, “Well, I was walking along yesterday, Minding my own business, when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike, threw it to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, “Take what you want.”

The second engineer nodded approvingly and said, “Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn’t have fit you anyway.”

Understanding Engineers - Take Two

To the optimist, the glass is half full.

To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.

To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

Understanding Engineers - Take Three

A priest, a doctor, and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers.

The engineer fumed, “What’s with those blokes? We must have been waiting for fifteen minutes!”

The doctor chimed in, “I don’t know, but I’ve never seen such inept Golf!”

The priest said, “Here comes the greens keeper. Let’s have a word with Him.” He said, “Hello, George! What’s wrong with that group ahead of us? They’re rather slow, aren’t they?”

The greens keeper replied, “Oh, yes. That’s a group of blind fire fighters. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year, so we always let them play for free anytime.”

The group fell silent for a moment.

The priest said, “That’s so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight.”

The doctor said, “Good idea. I’m going to contact my ophthalmologist colleague and see if there’ s anything he can do for them.”

The engineer said, “Why can’t they play at night?”

Understanding Engineers - Take Four

What is the difference between mechanical engineers and civil engineers?

Mechanical engineers build weapons and civil engineers build targets

Understanding Engineers - Take Five

The graduate with a science degree asks, “Why does it work?”

The Graduate with an engineering degree asks, “How does it work?”

The Graduate with an accounting degree asks, “How much will it cost?”

The Graduate with an arts degree asks, “Do you want fries with that?”

Understanding Engineers - Take Six

Three engineering students were gathered together discussing the possible designers of the human body.

One said, “It was a mechanical engineer. Just look at all the joints.”

Another said, “No, it was an electrical engineer. The nervous system has many thousands of electrical connections.”

The last one said, “No, actually it had to have been a civil engineer. Who else would run a toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area?”

Understanding Engineers - Take Seven

Normal people believe that if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.

Engineers believe that if it isn’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet.

My friend Tom sent me this one, which was accompanied by an image of the donkey from Shrek (not included so I don’t get my butt sued off by Disney or whoever owns Shrek). As usual, if anyone knows the author of this, please send me the info so I can give proper credit. - ML

One day a farmer’s donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do.

Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn’t worth it to retrieve the donkey.

He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone’s amazement he quieted down.

A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up.

As the farmer’s neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up.

Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!

Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a stepping stone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up.

Remember the five simple rules to be happy:

• Free your heart from hatred - Forgive.
• Free your mind from worries - Most never happen.
• Live simply and appreciate what you have.
• Give more.
• Expect less.

Now enough of that crap.

The donkey later came back, and bit the farmer who had tried to bury him. The gash from the bite got infected and the farmer eventually died in agony from septic shock.

MORAL FROM TODAY’S LESSON:

When you do something wrong, and try to cover your ass, it always comes back to bite you.