Things about the Walking Dead

 There is one thing that bothers me about the premise of the Walking Dead series. (Despite a few of my relatives instance that the zombie apocalypse will be caused by uninformed voters of both parties, depending on who you listen too.)

 Anyway, supposedly some virus infected some person somewhere and he bit another person to infect them and on and on.

 Now the infected persons are dead, except for some little part of their brain which make them want to eat non infected people and pass the infection along.

 In one episode the Rick person was riding a horse, he got away but the walkers ate the whole horse. At least it looked that way. Now why would they eat a whole horse and not eat a whole person?

 But the biggest bother to me is, if the walkers are dead, except for a little part of their brain, wouldn’t their body decay? I mean a rotting body can only stay mobile, supposedly, for a few days before it falls apart.

 And how come there is not a single dog, cat or even a cow left alive? Horses are deer are but no other wildlife. Did the walkers eat them all or what? Hell horses are more tame than cattle.

 At least in the Night of the Living Dead movies there where skeletons crawling around… but how since their brains where dried up.

 I like the Walking Dead series, but come on now, the premise has some serious flaws.

  

Man O' Man, the hurdles thrown up sometimes

Sometimes you do the right things and it just doesn't work...

 My mom had Suddenlink set up on a draft from her account. 

 On 6/15 Bank of America moved her account to estate account, the same day Suddenlink tried to send a draft, Bof A returned it as NSF.

 I had cancelled the automatic draft last week and received a notice from B of A  today.

 So I called Suddenlink to make the payment, They tell me that I cannot make a payment by check, phone or otherwise for TWO months because of a NSF fund check payment.

 I explained but it didn't make any difference, in ending the phone call with Suddenlink, I said "I guess you don't want my money." They replied "That yes they do, but it is policy, no checks for two months"

 So anyway, I guess I have to transfer funds to my debit card or withdraw cash and go stand in line at the local Suddenlink office.

 One more fire to put out, Houston Anesthesiologist, Methodist Hospital and Baylor college of Medicine all filed with Medicare but not Moms supplemental insurance... two months to get them straight.

 Oh well, one more damn fire to extinguish.

Will Cheap Labor be a Thing of the Past?

I signed up for the Motley Fool newsletter awhile back, the one in Mondays VicAd with the dumbest investments.

Yesterdays newsletter was interesting so I did some research. Yes it is, very interesting.

3D Printing

It is not printing on a piece of paper, there just isn't another word for it currently.

Industrial 3D printers cost over a 100K, commercial printers about 20K, about five are marketed now for home use at about $1,500.

As of now 3D printers are used in every field imaginable, defense contractors, auto manufacturers, medical implants and bone and tissue replication, a kidney has been successfully made and transplanted using this techonolgy, jewelry creation, there is even a chocolate 3D printer that can make any image into a edible chocolate treat.

So far 3D printers can build anything using a CAD program in human bone and a few organs, metals, ceramics, glass, composite and other plastics, wood, paper and chocolate, butter and sugar.

The reason for the title of this blog is because this technology has the ability to replace the labor cost of manufacturing almost anything. It is a additive manufacturing process, where something is made from the ground up with zero waste for drilling, milling, boring ect, and zero need to manufacture new tools and dies to change a products design.

Search for yourself about 3D printing or see...

http://www.economist.com/node/18114221

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/115503-what-is-3d-printing

Some 3D printers are already self replicating, if one of the parts breaks it can make its own replacement part. I know sounds kinda like the Terminator movie, but the technology is here already and will only become a larger part of life.

Can't find your TV remote? Print out another one! How wild is that?

But it is coming.

Love and miss you mom...

Medical costs... Victoria vs. Houston

I have notice a trend in the billing submitted to Mutual of Omaha, plan f provider, since my mom broke her elbow and is still under care.

Two ER visits and a TWO day stay at Detar... Submitted $1750 for the two ER visits, annnndddd get this $60,448.08 for a TWO day hospital stay! The hospital stay charges where found in error, but Detar submitted them. Mom was transferred to Methodist in Houston, $270.00 a day.

The Doctors who visited her in her room at Detar... $250 to $395 a visit.
The Doctors who visited her in her room at Methodist, ( TMI Associates, Baylor College of Medicine, ect.), ... $103 to $250 a visit.

Victoria Orthopedic surgeon, who only cleaned out the infection she developed and did not set the chipped bone.... $1350.00
Houston Orthopedic surgeon, who set the chipped bone, grafted tissue and skin over infected area... $1840.00

Victoria anesthesiologist... $ 975.00
Houston anesthesiologist... $795.00

Does anyone not notice a higher fee charged in Victoria than Houston?
And in no way can you compare Detar to Methodist.

Something To Consider, feel free to comment

All the talk and vitriol displayed about ever single thing from the Keystone pipeline project, deciding who is going to challenge President Obama in the next election, who gets HOT funds and who doesn’t, re-districting, recycling, green energy, climate change, pro-life/pro- choice, Catholic, Christian, Mormon or nothing at all, racism or is it not?, section 8, food stamps, illegal aliens and immigration, gay marriage, Republican- Democrat- Libertarian or any other “cause”, all the way down to should the county of Victoria ban signs that have a X on them, they have one thing in common.

Every one of the above has been made a political issue.

If I can ask a simple question… Why?

People of every culture, nation and belief have a different idea of what is right and what is not right, even within every culture, nation or belief system some agree, some disagree.

By making the issues in the first paragraph political, depending on a election, coup or popular revolt, takes away some portion of the affected “Peoples” choice.

After all, governments don’t live together, people do.

halloween stories ... or not

My daughter and her BF WHERE going to stay at our land six miles NW of Yorktown after going to Western Days... her BF got the heebie jeebes when they went there, so they didn't.

Dakota could have been right... a little local lore...

Our place north of Yorktown is in the area of what some locals call crazy man woods.
The story goes that years ago a family lived in the area and had a "strange" son, probably a treatable disorder these days, but anyhow, they couldn't handle him so they kept him chained and in a cage. He would escape now and then and prowl all around the area, peeking in at and scaring other family s, stealing things and just being a pain in the ass, this was in the late 1930s.

My family bought the land in about 1984 or so. And we met our neighbors...

Felix and Anne Respondeck, a brother and sister that still lived in the house they were born in after their parents had passed away. Felix took care of their cows, drove his pickup to town and bought what they needed. Anne probably never left her little piece of land. You have to understand that neither one of them had every married and lived together in their parents house all their lives. Strange in these days but not so much in crazy man woods I guess.

Anne use to come prowl around our house at night. How did we know? Easy, she didn't own a pair of shoes and in the morning we would find bare footprints in the sand, the soil there is sandy.

She would come over during the daylight and stand at the yard fence and yell "Ello", she did have a accent, and be invited in to ask whatever she wanted. She didn't even know how to use a telephone, my mom had to show her. ANYway...I talked to her one day, this is what she told me...

"There is this old woman, a witch, who lives over there (pointed north), she can make herself look like a 20 year old and she goes to the bars in town and talks men into coming home with her, then she kills them, then she turns old again. She has 23 dead bodies in the house attic, she keeps them."

She also claimed that because her brother Felix had had a stock pond dug on their land, that the digging had set loose 16 dead spirits who now run around screaming, wanting to be buried again. Ohh and the long dead Indian that tormented her until she found his comb and gave it back to him.

I admit, staying there alone I have had a uneasy feeling before, but not ever time.

So was Dakotas fear justified or not?

It is not for us humans to glimpse the other world, or is it?