Sunday, May 16, 2021

The Hard to Swallow Pill About City Dwellers

My good friend Jason Smith wrote this, and I am sharing it here with his permission.

Hard to swallow pill:

Any weak person can exist in a city. That’s why cities are generally the liberal concentrations of any given state. People not strong enough to live by their own means, flock to the safety, and welfare culture of those socialist landscapes. 

Things are easy. A store on every corner, call for a car, call for food, call for an ambulance, call for the police. Ride a train, a subway, city bus, a shuttle bus, or walk a few blocks. Live in a politically active city, and the government comes to your door offering money, food, shelter; need a phone? Here you go, we take care of you; don’t forget to vote democrat. 

No, I’m serious. Weaker people are generally concentrated in urban areas. Those that cannot survive on their own, those that need the safety net of a thousand politicians and programs. 

Those city dwellers are brought up in an environment that encourages them to believe that they are the enlightened ones, and that rural citizens are their lesser. 

Well, here’s the deal, any rural person could move to the city and thrive, but can we say the same for an urbanite suddenly “on their own” somewhere in rural America? 

Can the IT specialist, sipping his latte, if dropped into the wilderness, suddenly summon the skills needed to survive completely on his own? 

Drop me off naked in the wilderness, and when you come back in a year, I’ll invite you into my warm cabin for a nice salad, baked potato, a steak, and a glass of whiskey afterward; on the rocks if you wish? I could put on a peach cobbler for later if you’d like?

How many urban dwellers know how to feed their family without a store? Get water without a faucet? Provide shelter for their family without a contractor and construction crew? What if threatened with physical violence, and 911 isn’t an option? 

Most of what an urbanite “knows” about the real world, wouldn’t be available to them without electricity and WiFi; and that’s a fact. 

Cities get their food from rural areas, their fuel from rural areas, their lumber, hell; everything. 

But what do rural people get from the cities? More taxes? More infringing laws? Residual crime waves? What? 

Never forget who needs who. Urbanites need rural America to survive, while rural America would actually thrive without the drains of the urban liabilities. 

But what do I know, I’m just a guy from a little ag town.

Monday, April 26, 2021

Malheur Cave

This is a video showing Maheur Cave, owned by the Freemasons that I visited in August 2020. A group of Masons were replacing the bleachers with some nicer aluminum ones they had "acquired" from an undisclosed high school. They said they were preparing for a special secret ceremony the following month.


Thursday, April 01, 2021

Bumper Installation Instructions

The guy who made my Tacoma bumper asked if anyone would be interested in writing installation instructions, since that’s not his thing.



Thursday, January 14, 2021

Appointment Slots in Google Calendar

Wouldn't it be great if you could send out, or publish a link that people could click, and be taken to a view of your calendar, where they could see available appointment slots, and all they had to do to make an appointment with you is click an available slot, and then the event appears on both your and their calendar? Welcome to Appointment Slots!


1. Important: Make sure you are in Week or Day view. Click into any date/time area on your Google Calendar, and a popup will appear. 
Click "Appointment slots" at the top of the popup, and then "Edit details" at the bottom:





2. This is where you will do all (and it's not much) of the heavy lifting:




3. Make sure you put something into the "Title" field that will make sense to both you and your end user. For example, if you are setting up advising appointments with students, rather than "Appointment," consider "Advising Appointment."

4. You are likely using Appointment Slots in a repeating fashion. If so, click the "Does not repeat…" checkbox (I usually need to choose "Custom…":


I set this series of Appointment Slots to repeat weekly on Mondays and Wednesdays until the end of the term:




Also be sure to indicate a meeting duration time, and a meeting location in the "Add location" field.

5. Consider something like this in the "Description" field:

Bring your education plan, degree audit documents from DegreeRunner (if you have access) and/or any documents pertaining to your college course of study.

6. Right-click and copy the long, blue URL:



That's what you can send to your students and/or place in your Moodle course and/or email message, etc.

NOTE: The Appointment Slot URL is the URL for ALL appointment slots for the Google Calendar in which you are creating the appointment slot. If you need/want a unique URL, make a different calendar for that.


7. Click the blue "SAVE" button in the upper left:




Here is what it looks like when I access someone else's Appointment slots link:



Check out all of those appointment slots - I can seem them in context with my other appointments!

When someone clicks to reserve a time slot with you, here is what they will see:



Note that they can customize the details of the event after they save it.

Pretty nifty, huh? I think you've got enough to go on, so go ahead and tinker with your own Appointment Slots. And share your impressions and experience in the comments section below!