The Enshittification of the World (but its for PROFITTTTTTTS!)

Enshittification is the word of the year, it means to make worse while extracting greater profits. It is shrinking serving sizes while raising prices. It is adding unwanted features and charging more for them because users have no choice. It is squeezing users for more profit while telling employees there's no budget for raises this year despite the banner announcing record profits. It is an AI rejected your cover letter and resume in .00000005 seconds and calling it efficiency. It is allowing job vacancies to remain empty so long that the work ends up being distributed among the remaining workers and that departed employee's pay becomes a little more profit for the owner class.

Back to today's rant... 

Ebay has decided in their infinite wisdom that users MUST HAVE a new module on their homepages imploring whether users are Ready to Resell items they purchased through Ebay over the years. Okay. Seems stupid as fuck since I buy a lot of consumed and no longer existing items so they're simply not resellable. 

But my own special Ready to Resell box has decided that I am 100% committed to reselling underwear I've bought through the site. Its the only thing it shows. There is no means to turn it off. There is no means to change what it stupidly tries to suggest I resell. There is nothing I can do if it decides to display embarrassing items I've bought over the many years. There is NOTHING users can do to prevent this invasive, unwanted, stupid as fucking hell "feature" Ebay shoved at users without the slightest regard for them.

Even going to the individual listings in the purchase list and hiding those things DOES NOTHING. There is no way to control what EBAY decides I should want to resell. This is beyond crazy, this is like cutting crack with fentanyl and then rolling it in PCP. It also serves to make the site completely NSFW if you have happened to, I dunno, have bought a medical device or sex toy through the site because hey, you want to resell that dildo, don't you? Sure you do!

The reality is I am not reselling anything ever and this absolutely MORONIC forced garbage makes the site unusable. 

As such, this is probably what makes me give up on Ebay for good. They've gotten worse and worse over the years and this could be what puts them over the line, the one reads More Trouble Than They Are Worth. A line that many places and products are finding themselves these days.

Related bullshit has forced me to leave Twitter, Bluesky and Reddit, there are probably others that I'm forgetting. Sites that treat their users like crap deserve to fail. Twitter is run by a loser Nazi richest guy on earth and everyone who knows him up close, fucking hates him. Bluesky is run by liberals providing cover for Zionists and Reddit is run by straight up Zionists. Much like our government, a wholly owned and controlled subsidiary of Israel somehow with pledges of fealty from sitting Senators, Congresspeople, Mayors, Governors and more. 

Enshittification is likely to be the word of the year and might become the word of the decade. That or the new capitalist maxim, Profit Uber Alles.

There is also a movement by the fascist powers that be to age-gate access to the internet and websites under the guise of "protecting the children" when it is, as always, about control and censorship. The scum pushing age-verification on the internet rape children, they literally do not fucking care about children at all but will happily use them as a wedge to foist their agenda on the nation and, by extension, the world.

It is hard to not feel overwhelmed by the colossal forces of darkness and greed that are seemingly consuming the planet. Very tempted to change the name of this blog to Vox Clamantis in Inanis, a voice crying out into the void, because that's very much what most of my online posting feels like these days.

Fun With Words

Did you know if you pronounce the U in UPS like a Scandinavian "oo", their name becomes Oops which seems pretty on point for a package delivery and mangling service.

I'm also regularly tickled by the smashing of uniformed and uninformed. Also that resign and re-sign mean opposite things while being nearly the same damned word.

While we're on the subject, I strongly dislike when people use whilst instead of while in a failed attempt to seem smarter or British (the same thing to most Americans which is funny as hell because the Brits are just as dumber than dirt as we are).

I might even publish this one since its been sitting in drafts for nearly six years. 

The Lack of an Actually Real Digital Public Square is an Actually Real Problem

When Elon Musk bought Twitter it was the beginning of the end of the platform because there's no such thing as free speech when one capricious sack of dicks is the arbiter of what can and can't be said and he's a bit of a Nazi-loving freak (just a bit). Aside from all of that, he's a greedy weirdo that can't ever be satisfied by the billions he already has.

It took a while but I got away from Twitter, I'd had three active-ish accounts there and the last to go was my baseball one.

But I moved to BlueSky and made the best of starting over again, going from a couple thousand followers to a couple hundred and engagement dropping by 70-90%. And it isn't like BlueSky's an ideal new haven, its got some serious flaws that are being ignored, its got a reporting problem, its got a labeling problem, its got a shitty milquetoast centrist problem.

To that end, I had an abrasive weekend dealing with Zionists and other genocidal scumbags and pushed back hard enough on them that BlueSky has applied a label of Rude to my account which severely limits its reach, exposure and engagement, effectively killing the account without actually banning me. Which means I am once again looking for a social media home.

Looking at supposed alternatives and keep hitting the same problems. Threads is owned by Meta and Mark Zuckerberg, that's a non-starter. Other platforms suffer from other issues including size and access and being owned by greedy fuckbags like Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg. Mastodon has some promise but is fractured and very empty. Reddit is another rich asshole's playground so its out. Discord is just a big fucking mess and makes zero sense to me

Of course, if there WERE a digital public square it would be dominated by the bombastic sack of ignorance, hubris and self-absorption that is Donald Trump because this stupid, stupid country handed him the keys again. 

Unfortunately, for the present time being, we're fucked and there's nobody coming to save us.

Hey Hey

 Just a quick howdy and hey and maybe I'll circle back to add more as time permits.

We're still kicking, I wouldn't exactly say thriving but we're still surviving and that's something. Knocking on wood, we have remained a Covid free house since the outbreak of the pandemic..

The world is an absolute hellscape of rising fascism but also rising worker strikes and increasing solidarity among the lower classes (which bodes ill for the very fat and very rich cats at the top). 

That's all for now, its hard to not feel the psychic burden of knowing our government is extremely super complicit in committing genocide. It will definitely make Thanksgiving next week a very, very different feeling for me.

The Cacophony

 There was another horrific gun massacre in the only country on earth where this happens regularly and literally nothing is ever done to stop them because the gun nut lobby has some deep ass pockets and they own enough elected types to stop any efforts to reign in America's rampant gun massacre epidemic.

The American people want and demand changes but the leaders of America don't march to our orders, they march to the orders of the Military Industrial Complex that requires billions spent on tools of death rather than the fraction of that money on building a sustainable, just and humane world for everyone.

I've said it in the past but what if America's nearly $800 BILLION for so-called defense was spent on humanitarian aid, building housing and working together to solve what are increasingly looking like doomsday scenarios for the human race? Think about how different the world would be if capitalism wasn't the overarching (and toxic) mindset. 

Capitalism is economic cancer, it requires constant expansion or it implodes upon itself. It requires constant improvement or it falls apart, capitalism is a giant pyramid scheme built on the exploitation, subjugation and desperation of the lower and working classes. 

Anyway, the noise and furor of the latest tragedy will fuel alot of anxiety driven tweets and speeches and then it will all die back down again and nothing will change. Because the powers that be love their profit margins more than slaughtered children and innocent people.

Cooking Post: Sous Vide and Air Fryers

About 8 months ago or so, I got a sous vide device for about $50. A very basic Curtis Stone (infomercial guy apparently) model that is large but works reasonably well. I got an 8 liter clear Cambro for my bath and a cheap vacuum sealer.

And it worked really well. I've made all kinds of awesome food in it including pork chops, steaks, potatoes and poached apples and pears. My current favorite is to peel and cut up a few potatoes, seal them up with spices and a little butter, sous vide them for an hour or two and then now the new thing is to throw them into the air fryer to speed crisp them.

They aren't quite the best potatoes I've ever had or made but they are damned close and waaaaaay easier.

Along the way there have been some attempted upgrades and then some real upgrades and I've got at least one more planned. I got a "better" vacuum sealer off Ebay and it has a ton more features and does work well in almost every way with the fatal exception of a dead spot on the sealer, no matter how much air got sucked out, it would never stay sealed. And that also meant water infiltration.

Eventually I got a really good vacuum sealer that I kind of love, its a Nesco VS-12 and part of why I love it is because its big and powerful and has a locking handle instead of clips and a built in place to hold bags to cut to size and seal. And it can be used on dry and moist things, not quite wet but moist. 

A couple of weeks ago, my kid and I were at Target and happened to remember to check out the appliances aisle and came across a larger air fryer on a good deal and got it. And have been having a delicious time making fries, hash browns, fish sticks, chicken nuggets/tenders and roasted potatoes in it! I wish it weren't quite so big and that it had some with a second rack to double cooking space but this thing has been freaking awesome!

Going straight from sous vide into the air fryer is resulting in outstanding potatoes! And they are as easy as it gets. My previous easy method was to wash and then slice the potatoes with a mandoline but sliced potatoes are space hogs, cubed and partially cubed are much better uses of cooking space.

Local Surfer Dies After Shark Attack Saturday Near Santa Cruz

Cowells Beach and Cove.

Local Surfer Dies After Shark Attack


"A surfer was killed in a shark attack on Saturday at Manresa State Beach in Santa Cruz County.

The 26-year-old man was attacked around 1:30 p.m. by an unknown shark species about a mile south of the main parking lot, California State Parks said in a statement.

The surfer was pronounced dead at the scene and the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office has notified his family.

According to the sheriff’s office, the attack occurred within 100 yards of shore near Sand Dollar Beach...."

We were boogie boarding on Saturday around the same time just a few miles away. Oddly enough, a fish or something swam into me while I was in a little over waist deep water and startled me.

While a shark bite death is sobering for anyone that spends any significant time in the water, the facts remain that you're far more likely get hurt by another human or your own self.

This other article identifies him as Ben Kelly.

Pretty sad but I will also say that I still went out and surfed yesterday. Maybe a little extra vigilant and also a little extra thankful to be a standup paddleboarder which gives me a better view into the water and changes my silhouette from under the water. Conventional wisdom is that surfers can look a bit like wounded seals from below with flailing arms and legs hanging off a board. That said, there was a shark attack off where I do regularly surf a couple of years ago where the shark bit into a kayak, hard enough to knock the guy out of it. That shark took one bite and did not try again.

As tragic as a death from shark attack is, they are rare but part of the contract one signs knowingly or not when one chooses to go out into or onto the ocean. Same for going into the woods or other wild area.

RIP Ben Kelly.

Making Actual Use of 3d Printers

Among the many knocks against 3d printers and 3d printing has been that they are largely not especially useful. At least not at the hobbyist level. It is as arguable that decoration, customization and personalization is extremely useful.

But, in the wake of the corona virus and the exposure of a poorly situated emergency response, many 3d printers are being used to try and help out.

I've been printing face shield frames, trialing a couple of different models until deciding on one that has the most upside and least downside. Want to see it? Its an Aegis remix that incorporates a slick locking mechanism on the front. Add a transparent sheet of plastic and a rubber band and this face shield is very ready to go.

This evening's print is a first attempt at making a mask, a mask with a place to hold a filter to help protect against viral inhalation. With some foam tape and suitable filtration material (I've heard some folks are cutting up hepa filter vacuum bags), I'll have made a very usable 2nd level PPE. The fact that it'll look cool is partly why 3d printers are cool.

Being able to embellish the hell out of stuff for fun is part of why 3d printing is fun.

Game on, Covid 19, Game On

It was definitely not unexpected but the Corona Virus has officially landed on the central coast of California and the current push is to flatten the infection curve by closing schools and more or less encouraging people to shelter in place.

Because of my work in the school system and with children, I was well aware that there would be something big happening here. It felt like things developed from minute to minute for a long time until a plan appears to have been developed.

As of late Sunday morning, I will not be going in to work until after spring break which ends three weeks from now. My co-workers are considered essential and will be working until everything is completely shut down and we have to retreat to our burrows until spring.

In other news, my main Twitter account was somewhat randomly but not altogether unexpectedly suspended. I have submitted an appeal but am putting in lots of effort in building up my back up account into something viable as I do not expect much from the appeal if I'm being honest (which I am and I always wonder when other people say that if it means they're usually not being honest?).

Anyway, the virus is making people a little crazy. Well, maybe a little is an understatement. Stores are getting cleaned out faster than they can get restocked. People are calling around looking for where the next truckload of toilet paper is going to be delivered. Hand sanitizer is now more valuable than gold, almost.

But that does not mean you should try to be this asshole attempting to make a big profit off the pandemic (NYTimes link, much dinkery on that side, sorry). But look at his sad face and all his sanitizer. Not really feeling much sympathy for him.

I am as bummed about the loss of ability to teach and do 3d printing with students at my school as anything else. I mean, I'm not complaining about having several weeks off of work. Especially if the weather cooperates and we get some nice spring swell and good sun. I've been teaching and mostly introducing 3d printing to a bunch of 6th graders. Some have been content to grab and print files that others have designed and some are getting into their own designs.

We've been using Tinkercad to do our designs in because it is pretty easy to use and let me set up a bunch of classes to manage projects a little better. I am learning on the go here as well so it has been fun. I've begun making my own designs. By far my most ambitious is this 3 room stacked mini house built into a riser to stack Ikea Lack tables with (used for making 3d printer enclosures).

This is my latest surfing video with swanky edits and b-roll. And this is about it for this blog update, it is a crazy time right now and will probably get crazier before it gets saner. Oh and it looks like the Dems are going to nominate increasingly demented Joe Biden to run against Trump, I'm sure that'll go well.

The Far Side of the Half Century Mark

Seabright to Main Beach Pano off the Point.

I just had a big birthday and it was one of those momentous ones with big numbers. I'm no longer in my 40's and am, officially, an older man.

So I thought it would be a good idea to try and capture some of my thoughts on turning 50.

First off, I strongly feel like people shouldn't EVER have to use a sick day to not work on their birthday and it should be a paid holiday for everyone. If it occurs on a weekend then an extra day of pay. I think it is silly that I have to pretend to be sick but what the fuck ever because I can't focus on work.

First off, the goodies.
I wasn't overly indulgent for my birthday but I have upgraded and replaced a few things that needed to get replaced. My first 3d printer, a Monoprice Select Mini, has now been replaced with a Creality Ender 3 that I got a great deal on and have had to rebuild and fix up. As of yesterday (now a couple of weeks ago), it is now running well and printing very well! It isn't quite perfect yet but the quality of prints I'm now pulling off it are light years ahead of where they were last week.

Second was to use some savings and finally bite the bullet and buy a Nintendo Switch. My kids have been dying for one for ages and I got a good deal on a bundle with a second set of controllers AND it came with Super Smash Brothers AND, extra bonus, a 128 gig micro sd card that the seller wasn't aware of (a pawn shop selling stock on Ebay).

The third was an impulse purchase as the price had dropped sharply from $60+ to under $40 and is a larger instant tent that'll sleep the three of us pretty comfortably. I'm also in the process of converting the beach tent into a pop up shelter with an adjustable shade area.

I took the day off, slept in, puttered around, got the mail when it was delivered and put in some work on the printer to get the new bed leveled and try it out. The short of it is I have no idea why Creality ships with the bed they do, they'd have MUCH happier customers if they shipped with a rigid plate or glass. The frustration of trying to get the printer working on that shit bed was dumb. I did have to work through a good number of issues with the printer and haven't gotten them all sorted out just yet but most of them are done and the printer is currently engaged in a 6 - 7 hour print job at home while I am at work right now!

I am planning on getting some carbon fiber reinforced PLA or filament for this printer and seeing about printing out some custom fins for my surfboard. I've also got an idea for a tow behind camera rig to get some underwater video footage.

The school year is well under way now. I have a freshman in high school now and I'm still wrapping my head around it. I'm also still wrapping my head around 5 years of dealing with the nightmare that is Aptos High School's access by road. Anyone who's been there knows exactyly what I'm talking about, it is one of the most ridiculously shittily designed schools ever. One road in and out and around 1500 students AND on a major commute route means there are, literally, hundreds of idling cars stuck waiting to drop off kids every single morning. It is an environment disaster happening every single morning and it makes me really annoyed.

I Made An Art

I took some clips from quadcopter footage I shot, put them in a pleasing order, tossed in a very cool effect and then added some good music and I kind of like how this came out. Mostly.

Thursday Spring Has Sprung SUP Surf!

After what has seemed like an endless cold, wet winter, spring appears to have made an appearance and this week has been increasingly nice out! I was able to get out for a little SUP surf after work yesterday and had a good time but wowee am I out of surf shape! Here's hoping we get lots of beach time in this weekend!

Some Random Thoughts and Links

The college entrance cheating scandal is going to get worse before people move on to the next scandal. It isn't news that rich people abuse their positions, money and connections, it isn't news that mothers are crazy about being able to brag about which college their kid goes to, but it is kind of news that they are so brazen about simply bullying their way through life with their wallets.

And it is rather delicious to see Felicity Huffman's rah rah self-empowerment posts coming back to be shoved in her fraud face. Or Lori Laughlin's kid admitting she didn't care which college she went to. The lion's share of the blame rests on the mom's shoulders. I'm sure the dads are culpable too, same for the kids but, imo, the driving force behind the college entrance scandal is so that the soccer moms can brag to the other ones about their super duper amazing kids who really aren't all that super duper amazing (or at least not in the way that allows their vain moms to brag about).

Cutting through the sensationalist aspects of it, the cheaters are shallow creatures needing to accumulate brags to fend off their own insecurities.

Then there's this awful story about an off-duty cop driving way too fast and crashing his car into a car full of people and ending up killing a 1 year old child. Then it gets weird because the child's mother, who wasn't driving the car that got hit, was charged with negligent homicide for not tightening the child's car seat straps enough... Yeah.

In lighter news, my budding artist son and I are collaborating on a design project to make a cool 3d printable widget in Tinkercad. I am also more than a little addicted to these primitive build videos.

Golden Light Over Its Beach

This is one of my favorite videos I've shot recently and I only wish I'd left my camera there for a much longer time!

Not Sure Why I Keep This Site....

So, I just renewed my domain for another year and then noticed I haven't even actually posted anything here in almost a year.

Which makes me ask why I keep this site anymore?

With the impending euthanasia of G+, I think it makes a bit more sense to keep this blog alive as I have no new social media home to relocate to yet. I tried MeWe but it felt wrong and is, from other reports, a happy place for Nazis so that's a no. I'm on Pluspora but find the lack of an ability to block people to make it hard for me to invest time and energy there.

I've been tempted to repost my entire G+ over here as it is apparently somewhat easy to do but then I have to ask myself why. Don't get me wrong, I am upset that Google is killing off G+ as I will never use Facebook but is there a reason to repost years and years of posts from there over here? I'm not sure there is.

I have been tweeting quite a bit lately and expanded my reach there which has been mostly pretty positive with the occasional douchebag being douchey.

I will try to post over here more regularly and probably will, at least until a new social networking home becomes available.

Prepare for Dumpage

Rainbow Wave 🌊🌈 , Peahi, Hawaii. •Pic by @honuwhisperer

A post shared by Surf & Ocean Greatest Hits. (@surfer_world_) on Mar 13, 2018 at 1:57pm PDT

I've got a bunch of open tabs with articles or stories I'm interested in reading so I'm just going to dump them all in here and read them when I get a chance. Two birds, one stone, a post AND I save the articles.

This first one is a profile of Tulsi Gabbard and how she maintains her poise while working for Hawaiians, The Woman in the Water.

Next up is XTC: Ten Feet Tall for some good music!

Then my friend, @GalifreyanJedi, wrote this article in response to an Australian saying we (progressives) should align with the alt-right. Um, no! Lefites, I Don't Think We Should Work with the Alt-Right.

I don't recall where this got posted from but it's worth a read, The Briefing by Arundhati Roy

Then there was this hideously ugly tweet by a racist candidate from Maine attacking Emma Gonzalez, one of the survivors of the shooting in Parkland. This is beyond the pale and totally unacceptable, Did a GOP Candidate Insult a Parkland Shooting Survivor on Twitter? One reaction to this ugliness is that Eryn Gilchrist, a local woman has registered to run against Gibson (who had been running an unopposed race until his gross tweet attacks). He needs to lose.

Facebook and Google are censoring us and here's how you can help.

Some non-politics as a palate cleanser, The Death of the DSLR Nears

Feeling Blankity Blank

Steamer Lane from on high, a cam snap from video I shot with my 3DR Solo drone. Here's a direct link to the video this is from.

I'm going to start doing more flying and videowork and expect to be posting more videos to YouTube.

Here's a link to my channel, if you're down, give a sub and help me get to that fabled 100 subscribers number that'll empower me to choose my own special, custom URL.

Beyond this, life goes on. We celebrated Sully's 11th birthday this last weekend with a long and occasionally epic Nerf war. In the run up to his birthday we acquired many, many new (to us usually, most are used) Nerf blasters. To the degree that we now have a rather large arsenal that requires upkeep to prevent it from completely taking over the living room.

And I'm still getting out and SUP surfing as much (almost) as I can. I'm mostly sticking to Indicators, Middle Peak and Steamer Lane these days as Cowells' generally meager waves are either too crowded or there's just not enough of them. Links to SUP Surfing videos as well, mostly mine but occasionally mixing in another SUP video as need be.

Next up is summer break and lots of time off from work and time to spend with kids. Summer plans include trying to get out and camp again, we didn't go at all last summer and I missed it. Maybe even some bike camping if we can make that work.

News Round Up

I just renewed the domain for this blog another year so I might as well pretend I'll get my money's worth by making a post today. And then I'll promptly forget about this space for a few months. Unlike the last several winters, we are getting rain this year, lots of rain!

The photo on the right is Pinto Lake from a few weeks ago when it flooded all the way out to Green Valley Road. This is among the most polluted and nasty water in California, I can't imagine what the bacteria did to the crops it flooded.

In other news, I've now joined the world of 3D printing. Prices have come way down and it is now entirely possible to get a decent printer ready to go out of the box for around $200. I originally ordered an Anet A8 DIY printer kit from a site called GearBest. They took my order, took my money and then let me know they were planning to sit and do nothing for more than week because of the Chinese Lunar New Year. I cancelled that order and bought a Monoprice Select Mini through Amazon that was delivered two days later.

After some initial bumps in coming up to speed, I've now gotten a whole bunch of excellent prints out of it and am making useful and cool stuff. Our long term current printing project is to create a whole bunch of those castle wall blocks and build our own castle. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes and includes gates, towers, fortifications and more. I found the files on Thingiverse which has an amazing variety of cool things to print. It has been lots of fun to have and it makes every morning a bit like Christmas to come down and find something new under the printer nozzle (yeah, not quite as poetic).

I'll post some photos of the castle as it comes together as well as some of the other fun stuff we've printed out like these very cool low-poly(gon) Pokemon! That's Totodile, Bulbasaur and Squirtle in semi-clear and black PLA. There are others but they've been absconded with by my youngest child and may have even been sold! We are ordering some colored filament to keep making them!

Other stuff? Let's see, with the winter storms, it has been a bit harder to get out and surf lately. Poor conditions and timing have made things tough but Sully and I surfed a little last weekend and I went out for a short surf yesterday on water that was too windy and wild to be out long on. Seriously, the abs workout I get just from maintaining my balance is impressive!

Holy Half a Year Since I've Posted Here

The title pretty much says it all. I haven't posted over here in almost 6 months. I'd love some integration into Google+ to cross post here when I post something significant over there.

But nope, the ol' cut and paste and post is still the state of the art.

How about we throw in some pretty pictures? Looks like they've made some changes to how photos and graphics are dealt with, it was kind of hassle to get this text alongside the photo.

Not sure how it'll work with the other two photos below. Oh well, quick post is quick. Hope you all are well!

Catch Up Post

Its been a little while since I've caught up over here and that's a shame. Especially since I spend a majority of my online social media time on Google properties already (and Blogger is a Google property) but it seems like Blogger's been kind of forgotten about in the move towards more dynamic and interactive socialization.

Anyway, starting off with a couple of stylized photos from recent weeks. Both were snapped and then processed in an iOS app called Superphoto that has a ton of cool filters that it was worth the couple of bucks.

Some more photos that are far better and more amazing via Twisted Sifter.

I had a short Twitter argument with a deranged Hillary supporter by the name of Maggy. Go say hi, she's super fun and not totally insane at all. Nope, nope, nope. See how many tweets it takes for her to dismiss you as an idiot BERNIEBRO. I got it in 4! And then she blocked me because I can't bend the knee for Hillary. No wait, that's not quite true, I WON'T bend the knee for Hillary.

I am part of the #BernieorBust movement. I will not be voting for Donald Trump nor will I cast my vote for Hillary Clinton. They are, in large part, two sides of the same richer than fuck and don't give a fuck coin. I cannot support either of them because they are beholden to the 1% and couldn't be bothered to give two shits about the lower and middle class (functionally the same thing these days).

The argument that Bernie supporters MUST support Hillary Clinton is a complete fail on the part of the DNC and Hillary Clinton. Parroting Bernie's positions on issues isn't going to fly, not when she scampers back to Wall St. for more money at every turn. And we're supposed to actually believe her bullshit when she says she'll reign in the Big Banks? No, sorry, Hillary, we're simply NOT that stupid and the insults and smear and attacks aren't helping either.

Neither is the deafening silence from the Clinton campaign in the wake of yet another seriously fucked up primary event, this time the bogus convention in Nevada run by a Clintonista, supported by Barbara Boxer's lies and then propelled into the news machine by a complicit and bogus media "presence" (that apparently wasn't even present).

Yeah, sorry. #NeverHillary #NeverTrump #BernieorBust #FeeltheBern

In other election news, Rachel Maddow's chosen sides and chosen poorly. She's no longer an objective news source as she's very clearly decided that Hillary Clinton is and should be our next president and that's that and we should NOT question her or her surrogates when they sodomize the democratic process over and over again. Nope, we Bernie supporters should get ready to support Hillary except that's not really acceptable to a vast and ever-increasing number of us.

Anyway, what else has been happening? I've been making a whole bunch of time lapse videos with my SJ4000 "NoPro" action cam. This one is of the Wednesday evening regatta off Indicators (near Cowells and the wharf) in Santa Cruz.
I have a whole bunch more on my channel if you feel like checking more out. And some surfing videos as well. Here's one of the walk down from West Cliff to Cowells and then out into the surf. Or click this link to the same video and jump ahead to the paddle out about 2 minutes in.

Its no surprise that I absolutely love Santa Cruz and love living here. And with the weather starting to get better and better, the time off from work is that much more awesome! This weekend saw my youngest son and me out catching waves together. I still need to get my older son more involved but he's not a big fan of being cold and wet and we've been having some trouble finding booties that fit (and don't cost $60).

And this next weekend is Memorial Day and the weather is forecast to be excellent which means I'm going to get out and surf until I can't surf anymore!