A Tough Decision

Unless something drastic happens between now and Tuesday, I've made my pick for President.

The South40 officially supports Barak Obama.

This was not an easy decision for me. I have long been a fan of John McCain for his ability to reach across the isle and find compromise. But since his loss in 2000 he has sold out. He stopped being "The Maverick". He quit being the roadblock and started directing traffic for Bush. He decided do what it takes to win.

John McCain should have been the Republican nominee in 2000. Instead he was victim to one of the most malicious campaigns in political history to date when Karl Rove painted him as "The Manchurian Candidate" because McCain had said he was broken by the North Vietnamese under torture. He was "damaged goods".

That was just plain disgraceful. But as we would later see it was just SOP for Karl Rove.

That's all history. Or is it?

I'm seriously worried about all the hate I see on the interwebs toward Obama. Most prevalent is the (not so) masked racism. The "read between the lines" sarcasm and spin. It's really spooky if you think about it. Just look at almost any political thread at Liberally Lean or FlameWarriors... and that's just our little hunky dory community. There's more hate out there than most people want to admit.

It's time to move forward.

It's time to unite this country, regain our stature globally, and put our nation back on track.

Will taxes go up?

For some, yes. For others, no. If you make over $250,000 you will probably see an increase. But it's time to pay the fiddler. You can't continue to spend like there's no tomorrow when today IS tomorrow.

The old saying is if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Well... it's f'n broke in 3 pieces. We are in a renaissance period. It takes a renaissance man.

So, with that having been said, I hereby cast my full support to Barak Obama for President of The United States.

RRR is spinning in his grave.

Poll Results

You guys better hope that's Vulcans floating around out there...

Ready? OK!

Spent most of the day making final preperations for this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway. Checklist is complete and we are go for liftoff. The forcast is calling for warm sunny skies all weekend.

Reason # 62 Why I Have DirecTv

You just can't find programing like this on network television.

Via Uncle Barky:

You can either watch this 90-minute "throwback to the old-school holiday variety show" on Nov. 21st or buy it to treasure and keep when the DVD hits stores just three days later.

Oh, Mr. Wizard!!!

Now that's cool! Or is it hot?

Threat Alert!

Full power to shields!

Why is it the crazy ones are always attracted to me? Yeah, I don't have a girlfriend. That does not mean I'm gay or don't like women. What it means is I've been thru 3 divorces and I'm not putting the sum of my estate at risk on a hormone whim.

I'm still looking for the "Kick Me" sign somebody taped on my back.

Just think... If I had a cute little racegirl to spend some time with...

I'm just sayin'.

Weird Co-inky-dink

Bridgeport was very nearly without another grocery store tonight. As I am dragging my virus laden body around the store tonight I noticed something wasn't right. After all my years of trucking and running heavy equipment I have learned to distinguish the sound of properly running equipment vs something not quite right. It was the latter that caught my attention.

I always make an hourly check of things thruout the store. Primarily refrigeration. You would be surprised how much stuff has to be kept at proper temperature and how fast it can go bad if it's not. I had already made my walkdown a few minutes earlier and was just wandering thru the back of the store when it struck me the motor room (where the compressors are) didn't sound quite right. I opened the door and was greeted with a face full of white smoke. Holy snikies!

I did a quick look around and saw that 2 of my 4 midtemp compressors had shut down. But where was the smoke coming from? Scanning around, I found the culprit. An oil line had burst and was spraying hot oil directly onto the electric motors that run the compressors.

Generally speaking, that's a bad thing.

I shut down the entire rack before it (a) ran out of oil and burned up the compressors and / or (b) caught fire and burned the freaking store down. That's the same thing that happened at Diamond just a few weeks ago. Had I been just a few minutes later that's exactly what would have happened to us and Bridgeport would have been without a grocery store.

Hats off to Clyde Lamb Refrigeration. They were there within minutes of my call and had us up and running quickly.

Such is my job. Hours of boredom highlighted with moments of sheer pandemonium.

Cue John Williams

All that's missing is the London Symphony Orchestra playing in the background. This beautiful site is going on inside my body at the moment. It is a picture of influenza virus particles (brown) invading cilia (blue) in the airways of the human lung. BroInLaw was sick with it last week and now I've got it.

If you haven't had a flu shot yet, I suggest you get one before it's too late. I feel like I've been kicked by a mule.

The Return of South40 Slim

I decided to take a short roadtrip and headed off to Thackerville, Oklahoma and Winstar Casino. They had an 80 player tournament tonight and I signed up. $100 buy-in for $3,000 in chips. After my last outing to Comanche Red River I was confident that I would not make a fool of myself playing in a tournament. I also added a new twist wearing my sunglasses and Time Bandit hat. Luck is where you find it.

I did fairly well and had a respectable stack for quite a while, but good cards were hard to come by tonight. King eight treated me well as I won 3 hands with it in the hole, one of them all in. Other players even started to remark about my luck with it. Dance with the one that brung ya!

I made it thru the first break at the 90 minute mark and had $5-7000 in chips. The biggest stack at my table was around $20k. After the break they started shuffling players to fill tables. Apparently my table was going to be one of the finals because they kept filling our seats and the original players stayed put. This ment the competetion was getting tougher fast at my table as winners moved in.

As I said cards were hard to come by and slowly but surely I was losing my stack. I tried to keep from being a calling card, but when you have decent hole cards it's difficult not to pay to see the flop. As the blinds went up it was clear I had to make an aggressive move at a big pot or it was just a matter of time before I was gone.

I drew pocket aces and nobody called. I drew K Q and nobody called. You can't build a stack capturing blinds. For the next 9 or 10 hands I didn't have cards to call with.

I had around $3500 in chips left, the blinds were at $500 & $1000 and about to double on the next hand. I had a pair of Jacks(d, h) and was sitting in a power position at the table. I raised on the preflop bet and got 4 calls. The flop was not bad, 2c 10h 4s. The bet to me was $1,000. I went all in. 2 went with me, (8s,8h) (Qh, As). The cards were Ks, at the turn and 8c on the river. I lost to trip 8's and finished in 32nd.

Not a good finish, but it was better than 72nd.

Coming soon...

South40 Slim Rides Again!

Stuff I Never Knew

OK, stuff I never knew is a long freaking list and possibly the next continuing saga on The South40. But, I felt compelled to put this at the current #1 debut.

Did you know Habitat For Humanity sells their surplus?

I never knew this existed. Turns out that HFH gets a lot of donations they can't use. Instead of throwing it away they resell their excess. It's like going to a crapgame. You never know what to expect!

I ventured down to the HFH Restore in River Oaks in search of some replacement windows. What I found was a brand new Sears Kenmore High Capacity dryer that matched the washing machine I bought last spring.

Retail $559. My Cost $75

Check them out! All the money goes to a worthy cause so you get a "warm & fuzzy" to go along with a great deal.

Cheeky Monkey

Why you would watch anyone else is beyond me.

Devil Town

I should probably list this under "Must See TV". But since it's not a review, I feel confident in my decision to bypass that arena.

For fans of NBC's critically acclaimed drama Friday Night Lights you have a chance at a sneak preview of the upcoming season. If you are a DirecTv subscriber you can catch the new season in HiDef on The101 before it hits the NBC airwaves in 2009.

New episodes air Wednesday nights in HiDef only on DirecTv's The101.

I see you shiver in antici....

Google analytics says we are on the precipis of an historic milepost at the humble little ol' South 40. Let's just say there might be a balloon drop and warm, flat champagne involved. But we need your help for it to happen.

You tell 2 friends and they'll tell two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on.... Does anybody even use Breck shampoo anymore??? Maybe that was'nt the best pop culture reference to pull out of my hat. Possibly explains why nobody has voted for me either...

And while we're on the subject of unabashed shameless self-promotion, get your butt over to Silicone Alley's and vote for President of The Blogosphere. Hopefully that vote will be for yours truly.

No pressure here. No undue influence upon you. Let your conscience be your guide. BUT... if your conscience needs a little help just remember who posted the beefcake ladies! Maybe we'll see some more.... maybe we won't....

Yeah, I'm reduced to whoring out my journalistic standards for votes. But, it is an election year and I'm sucking hind teat.

Equal Time

In the interest of fairplay (and driving up the female demographic) here's French Moto Grand Prix racer Randy De Puniet .

Cute Little Racegirls

Wow, the ladies were vicious last time. Quite interesting really because they were noticing things that I completely overlooked. Probably some of that Mars/Venus stuff.

All I can say is I always make an honest effort to look you in the eyes. It's not as easy as you think, ladies.

Race weekend at Texas Motor Speedway is just 17 days away!

Tony & The Tiger

Remember the story of the 400 lb tiger roaming Galveston Island in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike? Turns out he wasn't roaming loose but was trapped in his cage. Now he's found his way to Wise County with a little help from Tony Stewart.

Full story in The Mess.

Cute Little Race Girl

TMS is coming up...

We Are Lemmings

I filled up today near Denton for $2.87 a gallon. I've heard of it as low as $2.81.

The sad part is people think this is cheap gas.

We are victims of psychological warfare. They took gas from $1.50 a gallon to $4.00, kept it there for a few months then dropped it to just under $3 and we are doing backflips like Carl Edwards.

Old Goat, New Goat

Death of a Salesman (almost)

I'd rather have 2 sisters working in a whorehouse than one brother selling new cars. God damn what a beat down it is new car shopping.

I almost made a deal on a new Dodge truck last month for just under $17K at Karl Klement Dodge in Decatur. This month the best they will do is $22K. After stopping at 3 or 4 different Ford and Dodge dealers around Denton/Lewisville I decided to drive to Rodeo Ford in Dallas (TRUCKS, TRUCKS, TRUCKS, TRUCKS, TRUCKS, TRUCKS, TRUCKS, TRUCKS!!!) advertising 50% off all TX/OK F150 Crew Cabs.

(THAT'S TOO CHEAP!!!)

The best they will do is 30% off because I don't qualify for all the oddball incentives the 50% included. Then they tried to jack my driver's license in order to keep me there. They needed to make a copy for financing approval, OK no problem. After they came back with an offer that was way above 50% under MSRP I said "no thanks".

But new car deals being new car deals he went back to see what else they could knock off the price. I waited over 20 minutes before deciding it was time to walk. I almost made it out of the parking lot before the sales team descended upon me like Dallas SWAT.

C'mon back, we'll give you a Coke. Our top man is working on a deal specially chosen just for you... Oh, the humanity.

Oh, BTW... we still have your Driver's License. Holy Crap! I had completely forgotten that they still had my DL. I am a bonehead!

I go back in, but they switch to Good Cop/Bad Cop tactics. Not a wise move with me. The finance manager has me pinned in and does the hard sell. I'm killing them. Don't I feel guilty making them lose money? It's not their fault I don't qualify for discounts as an AQHA member, Farm Bureau, active military or Ford loyalty owner.

You got to be kidding me?!? FORD LOYALTY?????
I bleed the Blue Oval!!!!

Do you have any idea how much crap I put up with being a Ford Racing fan? I was hotrodding a Ford before you were pooping in your Pampers.

My first truck was a 1968 Ford F100 (Old Yeller). My first car was a 1977 Ford LTD-II. I put over 300,000 miles on my '88 F250 and close to 100,000 on my '94 Explorer.

I'm not a loyal Ford owner?

Give me my f'n license and I'm outa here.

The salesman that took it would'nt give it back. He thought I would be forced to stay and listen to why I should buy a truck from them and why I should pay more than they advertised. Then they sent in the finance manager to cross pitch me with the guilt angle. After making it plain and clear someone's ass was about to get kicked by a certified Wise County redneck they decided to return me my license. Don't play me for a fool.

On the way home I stopped at Lewisville Mitsubishi and took a second look at a used '08 Dodge with 3,000 miles that was very nice. They wanted $18,500 but the lifetime drivetrain warranty would not transfer so I passed. While driving out of the lot I caught a glimpse of a few used cars sitting behind the dealer next door, Bankston Nissan. I drove back there and noticed a very nice Dodge. It had 4 doors, the premium interior, premium soundsystem, lots of chrome and tinted windows. Until I looked at the sticker I didn't realise it was an '02 with 100K miles. The truck had been treated very well. The interior was spotless and there wasn't a single body ding.

What was odd was it had 3 prices. There was the sale tag hanging off the mirror listing the Kelley Blue Book value of $9,300 and the sales price of $8,500. But there was grease pen writing on the windshield that said $4,499.I found a salesman and asked if $4,499 was the selling price. He went to check and told me the truck and all the other cars back there were going to auction tomorrow and that was the wholesale price. I took the truck for a test drive and it ran like a top. Even got a 2nd gear chirp getting on the freeway... nice. I read the Carfax report and there were no incidents.

I wrote him a check and bought the truck!

OK, so I didn't get a new truck, but I did get one newer than I had and made money on the deal (about $3,500). I'm confident that I can get my money back if I decide to trade for a new one in a few months when they get really desperate on unloading those '08's.

I'd like to make a deal on a new one with Josh Heathcock. He's the original salesman I met with at Karl Klement Dodge in Decatur and I think he's a squared away guy fresh from Iraq. I've forced him to sit thru 2 negotiations already without making a deal. Sorry about that. If any of you are looking for a new car give Josh a shout. He's good people.

12 Angry Men and a Couple of Not Too Happy Women

After working overtime all week at work the last thing I wanted to do today was report for Jury Duty in JP court. I get outa bed early, well early for me especially on my Saturday morning. (See:previous post)

I lose the key to the rental car and have to retrace my steps from last night. Found them between the cushions of my recliner where they slipped out of my pants pocket. I drove like a fool to make it on time. I get to the jail (convienient place for a courtroom, eh?) and am forced to sit squeezed together like sardines with complete strangers. Let's just say I had personal space issues.

They call roll and you'd be surprised how many didn't show. We were thanked for showing up and told the ones that didn't would get a nasty letter. She also explained how people had died to give us the right to have a jury of our peers decide our fate. I kinda think this JP took her job a bit more serious than others I've met. I don't recall other JP's wearing the black Judge's robe. She was giving off a Sarah Palin vibe as well.

Note to self: Stay outa her court.

The justice excused herself for a moment to meet with the prosecutor and the defendant's attorney. When she returned we were told they had settled the case and we were free to go.

Sigh...

Well, the day wasn't a total loss. I almost got to perform my Constitutional duty and I got to pull the "moving my mouth with no words coming out" bit on the Desk Clerk in the waiting area sitting behind bulletproof glass with a microphone that kept shorting out. Anytime you get the chance to do that, it's a good day.

Tallll-ahh-dega!!!

Think Mardi Gras at 200mph.

It's Only Friday?

Wednesday is my Monday.

Friday is my Wednesday.

Sunday is my Friday.

But I had to work Tuesday which was my Sunday.

I Got To Get Out!

I've been spending way too much time at the house being good. NASCAR is coming up and I can't wait to get to TMS! I need to let off some steam and I think the party will be huge with Halloween falling on that weekend.

It would be a lot more fun if I had a cute little racegirl to share it with.