I was minding my own business yesterday and as is my usual practice, I went out to the communal mailbox to fetch my daily installment of junk mail and hoping to see a new Netflix DVD. I received a form letter that was from one of our many local utilities. This particular envelope was from Pacific Gas and Electric Company commonly known as PG&E. While the utility does provide electrical service to much of northern California, in our area electrical service is provided by SMUD (Sacramento Municipal Utility District). PG&E only supplies natural gas in my area.
On the face of it, this letter is weird. It appears that PG&E is concerned that past work on their natural gas pipelines has been cross-connected with sewer lines.
As part of our commitment to ensure your safety, we have hired a qualified contractor to perform gas and sewer safety inspections in your neighborhood.
These important safety inspections will ensure that our past natural gas pipeline work did not result in a conflict between your sewer line and gas service line .
Our contractor will use a video camera to inspect your sewer line.
Copy of PG&E letter with proper redaction
All I can think of reading the text of this letter is the San Bruno neighborhood that went up in flames many years ago. However, I know that inferno was the result of a different problem.
When I was a kid, it was common practice to light and then extinguish a match after a person spent a long time sitting on “the throne” to mask the smells in the bathroom; however, I had no idea that such a practice was a life threatening exercise due to PG&E getting natural gas from the sewer lines.
Why doesn’t PG&E spend time checking their own lines? The sewer lines don’t belong to them. I know because we get to write a generous check to the County of Sacramento on a regular basis to have the privilege of flushing our one gallon potty and washing dishes.
If there were any evil gasses escaping from the sewer lines then I would know because we have at least two drain traps in our home that have no seal on them because the fixtures are never used and the water in them has evaporated long ago.
Reading this letter reminds me of the joke about losing something and looking elsewhere because the light is better.
In 1942 a version of the joke appeared in the popular syndicated comic strip “Mutt and Jeff”. Three of the five panels in the strip are shown below. The gentleman in the top hat is Jeff.
I’m glad PG&E is able to fund this snipe hunt for cross-connected natural gas lines. I’d rather see them spend extra money on this because it’s at least related to utility service than spending my utility payments fighting traditional marriage like they were doing back when Prop 8 was on the ballot.
Once this vital inspection is completed, I will be relieved that my bathroom is once again declared a sanctuary free of life threatening gasses; in fact I will breathe easier.
Last week, I took a roadtrip to Ogden Utah to see the middle child. Along the way I had a few ideas that might end up being blog topics but I thought I’d jot down some thoughts that I had.
First, Elon Musk is a fraud. As soon as you depart the once Golden State in your privately owned vehicle, you will find zero charging stations along the Interstate 80 corridor. While electric vehicle travel within California is a sketchy proposition, outside of California it is not possible or practical. Hybrid automobiles are a rare sight away from the Left Coast and electric ones are unheard-of.
Musk thinks he can sell ten thousand vehicles a week and sustain that production? It’s a Ponzi scheme. He can’t even get to 5K per week and is running out of cash and good will.
Musk is a flimflam guy of the first order and gets lots of other people’s money (often tax dollars) from Liberals to do stuff that is not market based because these guys believe that governments not markets should decide what our economy should look like. The AB-32 crowd wants to use the power of the State to force us into electric vehicles that are not able to leave the gilded cage of California just because it is their religion. Their arrogance to pick losers and winners is hubris of the highest order.
Second, the path from Reno to Salt Lake City is the only proof of a universal flood anybody should need. Except for a few mountains here and there, this whole path is clearly a shallow sea that was only recently drained. This was within the last few millennia not millions of years ago.
Third, Brigham Young sure picked a crappy spot to proclaim the new Zion. My biggest gripe of the area is the lack of trees. But he did have big plans.
The Territory of Deseret would have comprised roughly all the lands between the Sierra Nevada and the Rockies, and between the border with Mexico northward to include parts of the Oregon Territory, as well as the coast of California south of the Santa Monica Mountains (including the existing settlements of Los Angeles and San Diego). This included the entire watershed of the Colorado River (excluding the lands south of the border with Mexico), as well as the entire area of the Great Basin. The proposal encompassed nearly all of present-day Utah and Nevada, large portions of California and Arizona, and parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon.
Brigham seems to have wanted the 1840’s version of “fly-over country” to be united under his banner; whether as a state or a separate country depends on what you read. The presence of Los Angeles and San Diego as part of his territory would indicate a separate nation was in the back of his mind. The war of northern aggression ended that dream and he reluctantly settled for Utah statehood after yet another rewrite of Mormon Scriptures to get rid of polygamy. Why the “god’ of Mormons is not the same yesterday, today, and forever like the one revealed in the Bible is a subject for another day.
Fourth, the amount of indigent and homeless people in Ogden really surprised me. Latter Day Saints try really hard to cultivate the reputation that they care for their own—maybe they do—but for the folks outside their church, clearly they are on their own.
Fifth, the amount of young people with ridiculous amounts of body art and piercing was a surprise to me. I was expecting Donny and Marie type youth but clearly not everyone follows this expectation. My wife thinks that Ogden draws youth from outside the LDS world for the skiing. Maybe this is true. Clearly a large segment of young people are nonconformist.
Sixth was a news story that I saw on the local television station. This is interesting because the LDS church is front and center of a story about a man named Joseph Bishop.
(Note: Although the LDS church has clergy with the title of “bishop” this is not the same as in Protestant Christian Churches and not Mr. Bishop’s title just his last name.)
Mr. Bishop was in charge of training youth that knock on your door as missionaries. Mr. Bishop is accused of giving private lessons to some of the female candidates under his care—much like President Clinton did in the Oval Office with Monica.
SALT LAKE CITY — (KUTV) – On March 20, as a sexual assault scandal was exploding around former Missionary Training Center President Joseph Bishop, his son, and attorney Greg Bishop sent an email to 2News unsolicited.
In the email, he unspools a five-page dossier about the past of the woman who had accused his father of rape.
The email included the woman’s criminal record, alleged false allegations she’d made in the past, and jobs she’d lost.
It even included details about an incident that occurred when she was 17 years old. Bishop encouraged reporters to examine the woman’s past adding, “consider the source.”
In the last two days, 2News has obtained a letter that was written by David Jordan, a lawyer at the firm, Stoel Rives,acting on behalf of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The document is a response to a letter from the woman’s attorney, Craig Vernon, requesting a settlement from the LDS Church.
The document includes everything we saw in Bishop’s email, plus a review of her ecclesiastical church record.
At the bottom, the Jordan indicates that he sent the letter to Greg Bishop.
It appears Bishop took portions of the letter, and at times, repeated allegations word for word and sent it to the media.
The woman told 2News Bishop had been grooming her, taking her out of class to talk about the sexual abuse she had suffered as a child. She said he seemed to enjoy the discussion, then one day he invited her to a place he called, “special.”
“He didn’t tell me there was a bed or a TV or a VCR down there, he just said it was this really special room,” she said.
“I was nervous and uncomfortable, and I should have listened to that feeling.”
Once she and Bishop got into the small room, he advanced on her.
“He tried to kiss me and I pushed him off, I was like, ‘oh my gosh, here’s this old man, I’m 21 years old,” she said. “Then he pulled my blouse and rips my buttons off. It had little pearl buttons, then he ripped the back of my skirt, it was an A-line skirt, and then with one hand he pulled my garment and my pantyhose down, there he was, trying to rape me.”
The woman tried to tell officials in the LDS Church on multiple occasions including her bishop.
2News documented as many as four times when the woman tried to speak out to church leaders, but the woman says she had told as many as 10 different church leaders about the alleged abuse.
“Oh no, oh no, I have been talking to bishops and stake presidents for years; one bishop in Colorado Springs called me a liar and wouldn’t even talk to me.”
I find it interesting that the LDS Church saw fit to release a letter concerning the character of the accuser and defending Mr. Bishop by saying there is no need for them to look into this matter. The LDS church has a long history of circling the wagons when things don’t go their way.
Here is another example of the “see something, say something” mentality. Put yourself in her place, do you want your church releasing an official letter about your past?
When has your church ever made an issue of your:
• Juvenile behavior?
• Morals?
• Employment record?
• Criminal record?
• Marital status?
Sorry, I thought churches were in the business of changing lives thru the power of God’s Word not keeping a tally of what notorious sinners we are just in case they need to shut us up.
At the same time this story is going on, another one about sexual abuse had faithful Mormons marching in the streets.
Seventh, we went to Easter services at an Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Ogden. It was a nice service that emphasized the importance of the bodily resurrection of Christ.
I was looking at a job opportunity yesterday and on the application was a map link to their location. Upon clicking the link this is what popped-up. I think these guys have a better rating than my local Denny’s but I’ll let you be the judges.
The wife and I have decided to do a course correction in the life of our teenager. We have come to the opinion that both his older siblings have holes in their upbringing that we don’t wish to replicate in his life. Our son is not allowed to use electronic devices including computers, phones, and television during school nights—defined as Sunday evening thru Thursday night; however, this rule has not been enforced in any meaningful way because if we watch television, he is right there with us. This is not just to insure that he does homework but electronic stuff can end up being too much of a good thing.
We are trying three new changes this year to move in what we hope will be a better direction.
First, once a week, our son is responsible to fix dinner. We have set this as a Friday night event with three caveats; first, he can pick a night earlier in the week to complete this task but not later; second, if we eat out on Friday he is off the hook for the week; lastly, he must make a balanced meal. Chocolate cake and milkshakes is not a balanced meal.
Second, Wednesday night is reading night. We can either read by ourselves or aloud but reading is good and we need to do more. I’m thinking about doing a read aloud of a chapter a week from Paul Harvey’s Rest of the Story because my son has no idea who that is and I can’t get him to read the darn book.
Third, Sunday night is daddy school. For one hour a week, we will spend time with various aspects of the Christian faith such as doctrine and apologetics. Our son has spent his life in Christian schools but much of their theology is shallow (the Apostle Paul rightly called it, “the milk of the Word”). A few books we will be dealing with include Walter Martin’s Kingdom of the Cults and James Sire’s The Universe Next Door. I want him to have an answer for the hope that is in him and be able to discern truth from error. I also want to make an effort to get him to make the faith of his parents his own. Nothing I’ve seen other parents do seems to insure that result and arguably it is in God’s hands but I want to know I did my best in my primary duty as a father.
This week will be our first attempt at these goals. We have some good ideas, I’m hoping that the implementation will bear some positive results even if it needs some modifications along the way.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mr. X and John for their contributions during the year. Also, thanks to the Sith Lord for those occasions when you were either being a listener to some of my ideas or a source of inspiration for some of the ideas expressed on this blog.
Also, thanks to my varied and assorted readers that check in on me from time to time.
Now that Trump is in office, almost everyone I’ve met during this season—even Hindus and Muslims—are wishing me a Merry Christmas. Far fewer people in my life and the places that I’ve shopped are using the Happy Holidays greeting this year; and that is a very good thing. Freedom and Liberty are making a comeback.
Merry Christmas to all. My prayer for you are these words from Randy Stonehill:
But most of all the children, they’re the ones I hope will learn That Jesus is our Savior and He’s going to return And Christmas isn’t just a day and all days aren’t the same Perhaps they’ll think about the word and see it spells His name.
And I know that if St. Nicholas was here he would agree That Jesus gave the greatest gift of all to you and me They led Him to the slaughter on a hilled called Calvary And mankind was forgiven, Mankind was forgiven We were all forgiven when they nailed Him to the tree.
I got back into the old uniform for the first time in 29 years and walked in the Veteran’s Day Parade in Elk Grove today. Its was moving to be thanked for my service.
I was also blessed to hear my wife sing three songs at the event. God Bless America, Star Spangled Banner, and Amazing Grace.
What a contrast from the time when I got out of the Navy back in 1988 and was looking for a job. I distinctly remember applying for work at a local Filco. I handed the guy my resume, he laughed at me, handed the resume back to me, and told me to get out of here. The thought of this treatment still stings.
A story in the news yesterday is gut-splittingly funny on several levels but before I get there, here’s my background on this issue.
During a lazy summer day a few months ago, I met with an occasional contributor to this very blog near the Toys R Us in Elk Grove. As I was minding my own business just walking through the parking lot, I beheld a sight that I shall never forget.
A small car passes me heading away from said toy retailer that is driven by a woman with a most unusual load on the roof of her vehicle. She has one hand on the steering wheel of her little Toyota and the other out her open window holding onto a plastic swimming pool about fourteen inches deep and six or seven feet around. No straps or other safety devices were holding the pool onto her car, just one hand out the window.
Needless to say, I was shocked that anyone would be so brazen (and stupid) to endanger others in her clearly selfish quest to get this pool back to her house. Clearly a gust of wind or a passing vehicle would easily be able to cause her to lose control of the pool and drop it into the middle of the road thus causing and accident and rendering the pool useless.
Clearly this woman was daring the laws of nature and physics to doom her cargo.
Apparently this was not an isolated incident.
A Wisconsin woman is facing charges after her 9-year-old son was tied to the roof of their minivan to help hold down a plastic pool.
Prosecutors allege 28-year-old Amber Schmunk had her son hold down the molded pool they’d just purchased because it wouldn’t fit inside the van.
Schmunk told cops she “had no way to strap it down so she had her [son] climb on the roof to hold it down while she drove,” and later said she did strap the boy down inside the pool, according to the complaint.
Perhaps a rope around his wee ankle to keep him connected to the pool like a surfer to his board?
Amber Schmuck: Car pool mom
Schmunk said she “believed it was OK as her father let her do things like that when she was that age”
Once I saw her name, I thought, did you ever notice that in books like the Bible, that a person’s name often describes a characteristic of their personality? Her name looks a lot like a word you may know: Schmuck. Per the Internet, “the definition in American English is a pejorative term meaning one who is stupid or foolish”. In this case if the shoe fits…
Oh, no surprise that no Mr. Schuck is mentioned in any version of the story that I can find.
Friday, I got another call that you never want to get. This is the second one this year. The last one was from my son’s school saying he was injured. This one was from Kaiser. Kaiser never calls with good news, they send that via email or snail mail. The person on the other end of the phone was from the dermatology department. She was calling to give me the news that my biopsy came back positive for cancer. Yeah, I have melanoma which is a type of skin cancer. About half an hour later I’m on the phone with another person scheduling surgery for later this week.
This is all a bit of a shock but I’m trying to get a handle on the news. Not surprisingly, Kaiser won’t make this easy to research. They will not email me anything about the results nor send it to me via snail mail. In fact, there is no trace of the results anywhere on their secure patient website. No, instead I must go there in person during regular business hours to get a copy of the lab results. They are saying it’s because of HIPAA laws but that’s BS as best as I can determine. I think it’s to cover their exposure to liability by not giving me anything in writing; if the communication stays verbal it’s my word against theirs. Also, Kaiser is actuarial driven. They are run by bean-counters not motivated by patient care. Look at their business model, their staff is paid the same whether they see me or not so what’s the incentive to treat me? Ditto for tests, they will always choose the cheap test before the conclusive one if the price variance is great enough.
Oh, thus far, I have yet to see a doctor during the process of being diagnosed with cancer, everyone thus far is a PA (physician’s assistant) including the guy giving me the surgery later this week. The people there are nice but if they invoke the “C” word, don’t you think that merits seeing the M.D.? If patient care means proving to the patient that you care, I’m still waiting.
It’s been a week since I got that phone call that every parent fears they will get one day. You know which one I mean
“This is the …
Your child was hurt and …
Please come now …”
About 12:30 last Friday, that was the call that I received from my son’s school. It went something like this: “This is the school. Your child was hurt and broke his arm. Please come pick him up.”
I asked what happened. The school was having a “jog-a-thon” that day. (When I was a kid, jog-a-thon meant that you get folks to pledge so much per mile and ran your little fanny off to raise money. Now a days, I guess they just want a check for a flat fee and forget the jogging part.) Anyway, he was in a “human hamster ball” and fell thru the opening when trying to exit. He said someone hit the ball from the other side and this effectively caused him to be ejected out of the ball and onto the ground. He tried to stop falling head first thru the opening and braced himself by using his arms to break the fall.
Human Hamster Ball—this is an example and not the actual ball
At the time, I had a coworker in the car that I had gone to lunch with. I hurried back to the office and then dropped off the coworker, told my boss I was out for the rest of the day, handed all my unfinished work to my boss for distribution, activated the out of office message, and made haste to pick up my son. I drove swiftly (up to 80 mph) to his school and met him in the office. After checking on his condition, I handed the keys to an adult at the school and told them to load my son in the car. I collected his school stuff—binder, backpack, and lunch box—and then we headed to the emergency room of the local hospital.
At his school office, he was given a small zip lock bag of ice and that was the only first aid that he received. As I drove to the hospital, every time we hit a bump, he would say “ouch”. I walked him in the front door of the hospital and checked him into emergency. I then parked the car and waited for his name to be called. Just after his mom walked into the hospital, his name was called. Our next challenge was to get him out of his sweatshirt so he could have his blood pressure taken. When his sweatshirt was finally removed, there was no doubt that the arm was broken. Up until that point, no adults, other than me, seemed to believe the word of a twelve year old—even when other children confirmed that they heard the bones crack when he fell.
Once my son’s blood pressure and temperature were taken, we were escorted to a treatment room. About two hours after the arm was broken, my son was finally given some pain killer to take the edge off of his discomfort. It was a low dose of morphine give thru an IV in the top of his hand. Getting the IV put in seemed to be more painful than breaking both bones in his forearm.
Broken Arm—Line shows where arm should be when resting.
After three sets of x-rays, setting both broken bones twice, and a temporary cast, we finally started heading to the exit after 7 pm. The first stop was the pharmacy for pain meds and then home for dinner.
The following Wednesday, the temporary cast was removed and a more permanent one was put on. This evolution was a primitive one and did not go as advertised. For some reason, the hospital did not have the equipment to hold my son’s arm stationary and made him use the fingers on his broken arm to grip a metal frame when the cast was assembled on his arm. Then when they got to the plaster part, the doctor squeezed his arm—right at the point of the fractures—for about two minutes so that the plaster could set. Then they took an x-ray (the fourth ones so far) and sent us on our way until next week’s visit.
As I watched this unfold over the last week, I was reminded of DeForest Kelly who played Doctor McCoy in the original Star Trek movies cursing the 20th Century doctors for being a bunch of barbarians for their primitive methods. So far the 21st Century docs aren’t much better.
Adam was just entering his teen years when I last saw him. His family moved out of state shortly after I was married. His dad was in my wedding party and a great guy. His dad had a great sense of humor. Except for his irrational love of Monty Python, I usually found that we liked many of the same things.
As is common for church members, we had a going away party for the family before their big move. At the party, I happened to mention to him an obscure song by Marty McCall and Fireworks called Adam.
The song is presented from the point of view of the singer blaming Adam for causing this world of woe by sinning in The Garden. The song wonders what the world would be like if the original Adam had not disobeyed long ago. The lyrics include the line,”Adam how I hated you…”
(“Adam” was released by Fireworks in 1981 and can be found on YouTube.)
Adam’s reaction to this brief portion of our conversation was really weird. He seemed to take it as if the song was about him, not a guy that lived a few thousand years ago. I tried to get him to understand that it was not about him but I still remember him not letting it go.
Years later, he and I became Facebook friends. On Facebook, I was friends with his parents and since he was now an adult, I became friends with him too. (Subsequently, his folks deleted their Facebook account.) When I viewed his page, what a shock I had. The squeaky clean kid I knew in California was living far away and had become some kind of Goth. Everything was black. Sadly, so was his heart. He was into drugs and had tried several times to commit suicide. He was effectively homeless. I occasionally would look him up on Facebook. Sometimes I would post a Scripture or encouraging word.
How this kid that was “raised right” could end-up so messed-up was tragic. From the outside he had everything: a loving two parent family, an upper middle class home, a good church, education, etc. I remember praying for him often during my breaks at work.
Last week we visited Church of the King in Roseville. My wife and I ran into some mutual friends that we know there. It was then that we learned that Adam had committed suicide. Apparently, it happened months ago but word was circulating slowly all the way to California. I was devastated that this wonderful kid that I once knew had fallen far enough to purposely take his life.
The first chance I had, I checked my phone to see if Adam’s Facebook account was still there. I wanted confirmation. Unlike many that I know have died, his Facebook account was gone. (Note: there is nothing creepier to me than getting an automated reminder from Facebook to wish a dead person a happy birthday.)
Later, I think I found an obituary online, but the site wanted money to access the information. Suicide is not exactly something those left behind like to brag about so I understand that it is hard to find information about one, even in this digital age.
I miss Adam. I think the world was a better place with him in it. I’m sad for his family.
