Have you ever wondered what people get from a food bank? If you're down on your luck, not getting food stamps (or welfare), find yourself with no job, and the pantry is empty, a food bank is a safety rope for your family. This is what is considered a months food for two adults. When I called the food bank, I was told at first, that they were not out of food. Upon emailing this photo, and listing what was included, I was told they had run out of food. Which is true? I waited over an hour for someone else to go in for help without success. I'll be trying again today to talk to people receiving help. God Bless everyone that helps out people in need. BTW, from what I've researched, there are two "soup kitchens" serving Jackson County, MS. Both serve only lunch, and only one is open on the weekend. 

  I started this quest when I saw this old man begging on HWY 90 at HWY 63(in Mississippi). He has a cane and sign, and of course, looked down on his luck.

  After telling my christian neighbor about him, I was told that he was a con man and crackhead who does this between Grand Bay, AL and here. I have known crackheads, and he didn't look to me as one, but I decided to find out for myself. I saw him on his bike one day leaving from begging and sure enough saw him (and took a picture) of him buying crack a couple blocks away. 

   

After being pissed off, I decided this couldn't be indicative of all the homeless people (btw he's not even homeless) and started looking for homeless or otherwise people down on their luck. I found eight homeless people living in the woods behind several businesses here (Pascagoula). Really just a small stand of trees very close to a Walmart serving as protective shelter for this band of souls. Over the last month I've found none of these people to be criminals or alcoholics, just people looking for work, but otherwise no place to go.     

  I've learned a lot from talking to them. None would go beg on the street due to pride. All told me they banded together for safety from the ones on crack (mainly). And surprisingly, each in his own way, proclaimed it could be worse. One has been here for two years, picking up work as he can, stuck in a place he can't step up from. Yesterday someone gave him a bike so he can now expand his life by "20 miles". He and I, signed up for a free training class about 12 miles from here, starting at the end of this month...pipe fitting. Hopefully we'll be accepted into the class, and I get my bike fixed so we can ride together.

  I know all of my friends here are good people, but relay this in the hope that one day when something terrible has happened and you wonder if you'll be able to go on, you'll remember to smile and know that life will get better.
love you all!
   ps, going with my friend to have lunch in a few minutes, at Our Daily Bread. I'll let you know how good it was...

  Later that very day...

  To be honest, I started off thinking about how people could get by on just one meal a day.  So, I started off with my opinion already biased.
  Amazing!  You wouldn't believe how much food or how kind everyone was.  They serve lunch weekdays and Saturday from 11:30am til 12:30pm.  I expected people to be lined up down the street waiting to be served.  Upon entering I noted that it smelled really good, benches were filled with people eating already.  There wasn't anyone talking and I take this was because it was good food.  We were asked to please sign in and told where to start in line.  And then it began to get confusing.  I really was ready for a typical lunch, maybe something along the line of Sheriff Joe's jail food...a baloney sandwich and water.  What happened was the largest food tray I'd ever saw, began to have every compartment filled with wonderful items.  It was one turkey (leg and thigh), dressing, red beans with sausage, chicken and gravy, sausage patties, white beans, stew, a potato fry, mustard greens, blueberry pie, 2 large buttered breads(or corn bread etc), creamed corn, and iced tea.  There were five different types of pie to choose from.  I ate it all to be sure they knew I enjoyed it.  I was asked if I wanted seconds...and told again if I wanted anything else.  On the way out we were told to grab a bag or two and fill them with donated bottled water and loaves of bread.

  I'm sure that not all Soup Kitchens are like what we experienced today. But to be sure, I can see us surviving on one meal a day from this one.  All the workers in this kitchen work there from the TANF program, Monday through Saturday.  Sunday I was told several churches feed everyone.  I heard that it's a really big crowd on Sunday.  I'll be there to find out.

God Bless all the people that help support these programs.  They truly make a difference.

Intellectual property rights and Obama's statement, "you didn't make that".  It's the same thing.  Taking an employees patent they came up outside of their work, or not having anything to do with their job, is stealing.  Just as Obama is trying to steal the hard work and credit that entrepreneurs have invoked in the successful building of their businesses.

  Soon after hearing Our Great Leader make the liberals faint from awe and shock with the statement that if you are a business owner that you didn't do that alone.  As rich for resentment as his statement is, I had started reflecting on how it fits with companies that have intellectual property waivers in their applications (or within the hiring process).

  I had hired into a corporation in the late 90's that was bought out by Sprint.  When they took over they handed out new laptops...with a condition, sign an intellectual property waiver.  A good portion of the technical analysts refused to sign the waiver, thus giving up the laptop bait.  It wasn't surprising even though I didn't know if anyone of them were inventors.  I had thought this waiver was about patents and inventions.  But it goes way deeper, into thoughts, ideas, methods, and CODING.  Programmers up in arms.  Snippets of code, scripts, routines and whole programs where at stake.  But actually there where many guys that weren't worried about what they created at work.  These waivers covered anything you came up with, on company time or not.  To think that Office Depot can take the patent from a cashier that creates a widget while off the clock, just because they needed a job and didn't know what that waiver was all about.  I know they have the waiver, I saw it on the job application, which I threw in the trash as I headed out the door.

  Truth be told, many fellow workers told me Texas law wouldn't hold up in Louisiana, and therefore the waiver was basically toilet paper.  I'm sure I didn't have enough money to fight Sprint in court to find out.  

So, my advice...Job seeker beware!

Reflections from the Bayou

I didn't plan on living in the woods without water or power this long.

Back in October 2011, when we bought this property, we knew it was going to be a ton of work getting it livable after it's destruction from Katrina. It was left as it was for all those years. The food from the pantries had long ago been eaten by the rats, squirrels and mice. The piles of clothing and furniture that we had to haul off or burn took over a month to move out. Cleaning the filth took another 2 months. We bleached it several times over top to bottom. When we found out all the red tape we had to go through to get the electricity back on we pushed ahead trying our best to get the help we needed. I called over and over trying to get a septic company to look at (and repair) our septic system without anyone ever coming out. Plenty of promises though. I did get an engineer to come out and check it out. His report stated I just needed repairs not the design and new system that the Health department wanted from me. I figure the septic companies just wanted new work and didn't want to do any repair work.


At this point I decided to hell with them all we're going solar. Which would have been great had we not been short on cash. I designed and priced out the project which I would build everything from scratch. Solar panels aren't that hard to put together. We lacked the 1300 bucks we needed though. So, we rely upon a good neighbor for water and a source of power for our batteries.

We are getting by with a radio which has a hand crank or can be powered from rechargeable batteries. The radio is important for weather information and for talk radio. Other than the crickets and birds, this is the only noise in our neck of the woods.

I haul water from a well 600 ft. away. I picked up six 55gal drums to have on hand. Bathing involves heating water on the propane cooker in a big pot, or just dipping from one of the barrels that has sun heated water in it. We have a compost toilet or use the neighbor toilet at his shop down the road. It's rough but not like living in a tent in the woods. Almost though.

The hard part is the heat. Most of the time we've had a breeze at night which allows us to sleep. There's been a few sleepless nights though. Skeeters get in without fail, and this leads to a sweat filled night of frustrated swatting. I've thought about getting my shotgun out to deal with them. Reality sets in as I realize this would only make more paths for them to get in the house and I put aside this thought settling into the numbness of being a victim.

For internet and job hunting I have several places to get online. Now it's mostly at McDonalds.

The garden keeps plenty of greens coming in the house. I am raising quail and (curse-ed)chickens in the backyard. We were getting block ice til the local ice house had a fire and closed, now it's cube ice which melts too quickly. A coffee pot goes on the propane burner in the mornings making all the issues relatively insignificant at first smell and sip. Amazing the power of that bean.

More later
And so that's where life is at the moment.

Posted from GScribble.

Home Media Servers

Having a home media server is getting to be mainstream.  With TV's now coming with ethernet connections it makes sense to have your home wired to share throughout the environment.

The setup is quite easy.  You basically need at least one computer, a hub/switch, and TV.  Buying or setting up a server is the next step up.  Once you've got the basic components adding to your system is pretty simple.

 For a hub/switch you should think about how many devices you'll be adding to the network.  Having just four ethernet connections quickly becomes used and therefore I suggest you look for an eight port hub/switch.  Nothing is stopping you from just plugging more four ports hub/switches into each other.  This is referred to as daisy chaining.  This is not ideal for many reasons, including wasting power.  But if you have several hubs, you don't have to spend your cash if you'd rather not.  I like Linksys and Netgear equipment personally.  If you notice hubs and switches look the same on the outside.  You can think of a switch as being a smart device.  Internally it functions to manage your data being sent to and through it.  Therefore you should look for a switch.

I have setup many Windows computers to be media servers.  Starting with XP, sharing your files, music and videos has become easier for anyone to do so.  I prefer using LINUX of course.  Besides being a free operating system, making one into a server is quite simple with just a little reading.  There are tons of faq's and how to's on the web to help you through the process.

Several years ago I decided I wanted a small standalone media server to connect to my home theatre system.  Having a device that contained connections for optical audio, hdmi, usb,  and analog connections was important to me.  I found many devices on the market which would fit the requirements, but I settled upon the Patriot Box Office device.  I found it on sale at Newegg.  It didn't come with an internal hard drive included so I picked up a 500GB drive also.  It was as simple as plug and play.  I have since found other software (actually firmware) that I've flashed onto it to get more functionality from the device.  I find I often just copy a movie to a usb flash drive and plug it in and watch movies directly from the usb drive.  It's very convenient.  I can access my laptops and pc's from the devices menu system thanks to it being plugged into my home network.  It can access internet for internet radio stations, news, and other internet media sites as well.

The PBO device is super portable and I find I take it everywhere in my backpack along with my laptop.  I think you'll love it as much as I do once you try it.
So, for under $100 you too can carry your home theatre system with you everywhere.